Zwerfster Chic Read online

  Holy shit, what a dumb-ass.

  Bev says I would have traded to no one in particular when the man is finally gone. She feels cheated, but after Mia has me scoot over and sits in my middle seat beside her, she gives Bev a smile, a pat on the hand, and tells her No, you want to sit with us.

  My earliest memories are of Die Baai — Port Elizabeth — though I was born outside Cape Town and we lived in Mosselbaai for a short while. We were renting a single room in the renovated attic of a liquor store in the section of town where if you walked in one direction, the sidewalk fell away and the road turned to dirt or mud, depending on the season. In the other direction, if you traveled far enough, there was some beautiful homes that I called “castles,” because they were old Victorians, the type with turrets and long verandas stretched across the front. This was where the princes and princesses lived while they waited their turn to become king and queen because I was like four or five and everyone who lived in this area was white, so they had to be more special. Back the other way, the people were Black, and I figured they didn’t want to be kings and queens because they didn’t even bother to put in a proper road for their carriages. Besides, their homes were not castles.

  There was a park, in the direction of the kingdom, and Ma would take me there every morning so I could get some sun and fresh air, which she said was very important for children of my age. I was old enough to walk, which I always remember being able to do, and Ma and I would walk to the park in single file, with her at the lead and me always three steps back. Ma said that this was how it was done among proper folk — adults in the front and children in the back — even though I once pointed out a woman and child walking side by side, each holding the hand of the other. She was a nanny, Ma told me. A servant. The rules were different with servants. I asked her why we didn’t have a servant, to hold my hand as I walked, and she told me that we left our servants back in Cape Town. She then told me to hush, so I never bothered asking about it again.

  As I played by myself in the park, Ma sat and spoke with some of the nannies that were like her — fair-skinned with long, fair hair. She never spoke with the nannies that looked more like me, with dark skin. No one in this park my age had skin like mine, which was a little odd but I guessed the Blacks had a park of their own down where there were no roads.

  I wasn’t a Black child, you see. I was Coloured. I figured there was a difference.

  I walk quietly behind Mia. We would walk next to one another, but the sidewalk has a wrought iron fence on one side and small shade trees on the other, and it makes it almost impossible to remain side-by-side without having to duck every couple of feet, so I naturally fall back and into step.

  The road we follow cuts across the middle of a park and on the other side is the area known as Donnybrook — or Dannybrook. I wasn’t really listening when Bev was giving us directions because it’s not like I know where anything is in Dublin.

  Mia says it’s close to where we’re staying — the Roxford Lodge — so we can easily walk there, but after being kept awake the entire flight by Mia and Bev talking, any distance seems too far for me. I’m beat. The three- or four-hour nap that morning doesn’t seem to be doing a damned thing for me. At one point, after I was woken so we could go shopping for new clothes and something better than the ratty little nylon gym bag I use as a carry-on, she laughed and called me “petulant” and I am, in fact, pretty damned moody. It concerns me, because it’s when you’re not thinking clearly that you end up screwing your cover. I don’t have much of a record for clear thoughts as it is.

  When we reach the other side of the park, where the trees become infrequent, Mia stops and waits for me to catch up, slipping her arm across my shoulders so that I can lean into her, something Ma would never allow because such a thing wasn’t proper back in the day. Not between whites and Coloureds, that is.

  Now, as we stand before the door of one of the brick row houses in Dannybrook — or Donnybrook — Bev comes at us with open arms, swaying hugs, and a squeal of glee as if we’re her oldest, dearest friends. We meet Kimmie, her daughter, and Frank, the Irish fella Kimmie met after she was dumped by Tanner, her boyfriend for going on to near three years, who was over at UMass. Tanner was a faithless little shit, let me tell you.

  Mia tells me, as we ride in the taxi back to the hotel, that Bev and Kimmie are going to take us out in the morning for what they called a real Irish breakfast, somewhere in downtown Dublin. Strange thing is, when we first arrived, as Bev was talking with Mia like she was the daughter and Kimmie was the guest, there was this burning gaze that Kimmie would direct at Mia for most of the night. She even came to me, as I sat alone on the couch, to ask questions that I couldn’t answer even if I was being truthful with her.

  As it was, Mia had told Bev during the flight over that we are, in fact, sisters and that we both work in the independent film industry. I had to ask her what it meant, my working as a PA on a second unit, during the walk to their home. And when it came to the obvious question about my being black and Mia being Hispanic, unasked by Bev but you could see it in the way she looked at us, Mia’s simple answer was that Our father is Dominican.

  By the end of the evening, it was Kimmie’s idea to take us to breakfast.

  While Mia slips out behind the hotel to smoke, I call Bouchard to give my report. He speculates that Mia’s testing me, which is obvious, but I simply agree because Bouchard, or his company, or the client, made it clear that my sole purpose on this journey is to act as a parrot. I’m to state what I see, what I hear, without interpretation. Back in the day, such an assignment would’ve pissed me off, but with the way my head is working now, I wouldn’t trust myself to give an accurate assessment anyway.

  Mia doesn’t mention our going to Belfast until later the next morning.

  When I was in the middle of high school and Tonya was in junior high, back when junior high was called “junior high” and not “middle school,” she ganged up with a group of friends who called themselves The Mocking UN, until they could come up with a better, more bitchin’ name, which never happened. There was Cyndi, with the ‘y’ and the ‘i’ swapped around, who was the white girl; Lin with one ’n’ who was the Asian girl; and Angie, the Hispanic in the group who refused to be considered Hispanic even though it was obvious with the last name of Martinez. She told everyone her last name was “Martin,” as though her purely American tongue couldn’t get itself around that last syllable. Of course, Tonya was the black girl of the group and she was damned proud of it because, if nothing else, she was Mom’s daughter. I’m pretty sure that if she had any say in the matter, she would leave the McNeil off her last name — McNeil-Boakai.

  Dad’s great-great-grandfather — or something — on his father’s side was a Scotsman coal miner who fell in love with the daughter of freed slaves who still lived somewhere down in the South, around the area where Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee touch. He moved her up north, to the coal fields of western Pennsylvania, probably telling her that the life of a woman of a coal miner was so much better than what she had back home, which was probably true up until the point where he started beating on her. Still, as it was in the times, she stuck it out and together they had five children of Scotch-African descent, all of whom went on to have relationships with other blacks, meaning that even though Tonya, Naddie, and I are only one-sixteenth white by way of Dad, we’re still saddled with the name McNeil. I, of course, am nine-sixteenths white, but eight of those nine are solidly deVries, so they don’t count.

  Mom’s grandparents, on both sides, all came from Liberia, so you’d think there’s some white in there somewhere, but she’ll never attest to it. It’s thanks to Mom that Tonya and Naddie are blessed with their long, straight hair with the big, soft curls at the end, while it’s the combination of Ma’s Dutch-straight and Dad’s afro-textured that led to the mess of loose corkscrews that come exploding out of my head.

  Thanks for that, guys.

  Mom never uses the term African-Am
erican. She says that it disenfranchises the millions of non-American blacks, and she’s fighting for all of them too. Privately, I believe she has an issue with the fact that I’m the only one in the family who was actually born and raised on the continent of Africa, though my African half is all white. She doesn’t see the humor in it like Dad did, until he didn’t, because he knows better.

  (Mom and Dad had not even met when I came into existence. I don’t want to give the impression that Dad was somehow a deadbeat. He first found out about me at the same time Mom did, after Ma’s family boxed me up and shipped me out of the country. It was the late seventies. Hard enough to find someone in your own country, let alone know about someone on the other side of the world. Particularly when you and your Ma were living near-destitute in Apartheid South Africa.)

  The UN thought of themselves as a fairly adequate girl band, in the vein of The Go-Go’s and the Bangles, who were not well known at the time but Cyndi knew of them because she had an older sister who was big into the L.A. club scene and knew about the band back when they were still called The Bangs. The UN would practice at our house, in Tonya’s room, while Naddie and I sat through their repeated attempts to get the chords right on “Would I Lie to You?” Her sister didn’t know that Cyndi was constantly borrowing the guitars she left behind while she was in L.A. — they were supposedly valuable — and that Cyndi and her friends were scraping along the strings with the spoons that they used to eat from pudding cups, sometimes having to stop mid-song because someone’s fingers became too sticky. Still, along with Lin’s makeshift percussions and Angie’s slightly off but unique voice, they were pretty good. In fact, they became so surprisingly good that the idea of actually forming a girl band, and actually cutting a record, and actually going on tour was discussed with some seriousness, though in the end it always came down to parents responding to the plan with a unified No.

  One afternoon, I told them that their last attempt was really good, and I meant it, but I also added that it would be cool if Angie and Tonya sang the chorus together, giving it a more edgy, angry-girl feel. I then announced that I was going down to the kitchen to get a Diet Coke, that I would be right back.

  I was happy. I liked being a part of things.

  I was halfway to the top of the stairs when I was struck by yet another idea and the thought of it was so great in my head that I had to immediately go back and tell them, because I was certain that they would think it was great as well. The door to Tonya’s room was closed, but with four pre-teen girls, it couldn’t possibly keep their voices contained. Someone — Angie, I think — was asking who invited me into the room. Someone else — Lin, I think — said she wished that I would not hang out with them; she didn’t want me around. There was agreement, including from Tonya, and then someone lowered her voice enough so that I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it caused the others laugh.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. My hand was on the doorknob but I yanked it back as if it had become suddenly red-hot. I would’ve started crying right there if I hadn’t been so stunned, if it wasn’t so hard to breathe. I turned, first to the stairs and then back around towards my own room, which was down the hall, past Tonya’s room, meaning I would have to walk past her door. I found myself suddenly unable to do it.

  Then the door opened and Naddie came out, smiling until she found me standing there in the middle of the hallway. Her face immediately drained, the smile vanishing, replaced with an expression of guilt and horror and sympathy all in one. She closed the door and didn’t say anything. She was only eight or nine or ten at the time, so how could she possibly know what words should be said?

  How would anyone?

  Mia and Bev are in the back as we head north along the M1 — Mia telling us how there were checkpoints right there along the highway where we would have had to stop, the car searched, back a couple of decades ago.

  Strange, she says, how things change. You never imagine it will.

  Kimmie glances in the rearview mirror, checking up on them. She then peers sideways at me, quickly, and smiles awkwardly when she sees that I’m watching her from behind the mass of hair hiding that side of my face. She motions with her chin, to draw my attention, and when I look at her she quietly asks me about that, and then traces a line down the side of her own jaw with her thumb.

  I’m not sure how much is the heavy, greasy nature of a “full Irish breakfast,” but I experience the spontaneous need to vomit and before I lose it, I cry out for Kimmie to stop the car. She freaks, screaming hysterically as she slides the vehicle across the lanes of traffic and onto the shoulder. I try to open the door but find it’s so unfamiliar that I fumble to find the handle and it causes me to start crying. It’s unbelievable — the unexpected monster wave of emotion that crashes down upon me, like the breakers down on the Cape in the winter, picking me up and tumbling me about, trying their best to kill me.

  If Mia hadn’t had the presence of mind, I would’ve opened the car door and stumbled straight out into traffic because while they drive on the left-hand side of the motorways in Ireland, I hadn’t realized that Frank’s BMW has the driver on the left as well, like an American. As it happens, I’m still stuck in the vehicle, clawing at the window, when she steps out, opens the door, and then carries me around the front to the rail. I feel so bad, so much like screaming, but I can’t even catch my breath as my stomach heaves again and again. Mia stays with me, trying to keep my hair back as she speaks softly, though I’m in no state to understand what she’s saying.

  Not to knock Irish cooking, but it feels damned good to empty my stomach.

  She leads me back to the car afterwards and I’m still crying because I’m feeling absurdly stupid and ungrateful and humiliated. Bev moves up to the front so that Mia can sit with me, holding me as she tries to calm me down, shushing my sobs as she gently strokes my hair. If I were half my age, I wouldn’t feel so bad, but women in their forties are not supposed to act this way.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  We sit there, parked on the side of the road, for nearly twenty minutes, not only to see whether I’ll become sick again, but because Kimmie is too shaken to drive. She blames herself for what happened and I become tired of hearing the apologies. I really don’t care.

  All I can think about at the moment is how pleasant it feels, Mia petting on me. She’s so soft and careful and she smells so very nice.

  It’s the most intimate contact I’ve had in over a decade.

  I leave a message with Bouchard later that afternoon, as I stand outside an office building that Mia had entered alone. I had offered to go in with her, since I didn’t know what else I could do, but she instead asked me to cross the road and go up the street to find a small coffee shop; she wanted a latte. (Personally, I drink General Foods International Coffee – Cafe Vienna. When I can afford to drink coffee, that is, which was long ago. Anyway, Fuck off, coffee snobs.) We’re down near the waterfront somewhere in Belfast, near some piers where there’s signs about the Titanic, though I’m not sure if they mean the Titanic — the one they made the movie about with that inappropriate wedding song about drowning.

  I tell Bouchard that I’m out of the Republic of Ireland. I don’t know what this means in terms of my passport. It doesn’t seem as though anyone gives a shit about crossing borders there, so I guess Mia is right — like crossing into another state. Still, I’m hoping that we’ll be heading south shortly, to fly out of Dublin. We came all this way and the one time when it seems that I should be with her, I’m left outside like the family dog.

  4

  Dundalk

  Late in the afternoon, we find Maggie at the Belfast Central Station while we’re waiting for the train that’s supposed to take us back to Dublin. She’s only twenty-three, a girl really, with short red-brunette hair, a long face, and hazel eyes that seemed rather dull when we first approached her but that have sparkled since the moment she looked up and found that Mia was speaking to her, of all people. I have
no idea why we approached her. But by the way Mia is acting, it was very much a deliberate move, though I don’t think it was planned.

  The girl speaks non-stop the entire train ride, sitting next to Mia while I sit across from them, which irritates me to no end. Somewhere behind me, someone starts spraying an inordinate amount of underarm deodorant. It goes on and on and on — pshht pshht — pshhhhhhht! — and it soon creates a fog in our little section of the car. Mia is bemused by this while Maggie blushes crimson out of utter humiliation. Me? I’m startled. I didn’t know people still use spray-on deodorant.

  We arrive at a station that reminds me of a T-stop back home. I don’t know why we’re here. I don’t even know how we ended up on this train, but when Maggie leads us down to a scruffy parking lot where there’s a little three-door hatchback that used to be red and now smells of sheep, I get the feeling that we won’t be returning to Dublin anytime soon.

  I look to Mia, but all she gives me in return is a knowing smile as she holds the passenger seat forward, allowing me to climb into the back and squeeze in beside a box clearly marked Ovine Suppositories — Not for Human Consumption. Keep Out of Mouths of Children and Infants.

  Jesus, my clothes are going to smell funny after this.

  Anyway, the stinky little hatchback rattles and shimmies as Maggie grinds it through its gears up out of the town and into a region of rolling hills and single-lane roads that are really nothing more than two muddy tire tracks separated by moss. Every vehicle coming in the other direction is an exercise in patient guidance as one squeezes by the other in the narrow space defined by stone walls so overgrown with vines that it’s hard to imagine that there are walls under there somewhere. I don’t know what the rules are, of who does the waiting and who does the passing, but it’s apparently a given that, at some point, both vehicles must come to a stop so that windows can be rolled down and pleasantries exchanged. Much of this is a show on Maggie’s part, I think. A demonstration to the neighbors of her own worldliness. I don’t think people like these encounter people like us very often.