Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,46
to pass, and covers her eyes with her hands. “He says you gave him no choice. What’s up with that? Don’t you care about our family? Don’t you care about me or Kendrick?” Her voice booms across the room.
Lena laughs. A crazy laugh, like the mad wife in Jane Eyre whose barmy laughter echoed through Rochester’s mansion. Her laughter is so loud, so hard, that fear widens Camille’s eyes and nostrils. Lena prays that daughter understands what mother finds so hard to understand: Randall won’t talk to her, but he has the nerve to tell his daughter and son, before he tells his wife, what will happen to her life. Lena steps close, and Camille freezes when Lena embraces her. “I love you, Camille. Go to school. This is my fight, not yours.”
Without a hug, a wave, a “see ya later,” Camille slams the door. Lena hopes that one day Camille will understand how incapable and powerless her mother is at this moment. How she wants to kick and scream and hold her daughter tight, protect her, and show her how to be strong. When the time is right, when her head is right, Lena will sit Camille down and make sure she never ends up this way. There isn’t one word she can think of that would have made these past ten minutes easier. Damn Randall for putting that on Camille, for putting her in the middle, for putting her on his side.
As clear as the view through the windows of this metal- and granite-filled kitchen, she tries to see the lesson in divorce, wants it to open out like the landscape before her: garden, trees, streets, sky, sun, clouds, stratosphere, heaven. Everything happens for a reason. She knows what Randall doesn’t: she has to be free to fulfill her destiny. How could he explain that to Camille?
f f f
Beyond the windows, the day is brilliant. It feels like black inside Lena’s head. Like midnight and death. Perhaps ninety minutes focused on her body; a release of her mind to its inner energy is what she needs. Stretch, downward facing dog, sun position, hands over heart, warrior pose; meditation for a restless mind that cannot stop. But the lethargy, the heavy weight of gloom, sends her one sluggish step at a time up the stairs.
Randall offers no option. Randall is not the option. Every single part of her body feels dead: her head lolls, her shoulders slump, her hands hang, her body sinks deeper into the bed until she feels that she is on the floor. Already, her body aches for the old days, the joy, the joking, sitting together without the need for words, body heat, the pride in her family and what she worked so hard to build: the promise of happily ever after.
She reaches for the telephone. It takes an eternity to lift it from nightstand to ear. She pushes eleven numbers. If she can hold on through the sales staff, the canned music, the minutes until her call is transferred to Bobbie’s office, then she can cry.
“What’s up?” The keys of Bobbie’s computer keyboard click in the background.
“I got divorce papers.” Lena explains Randall’s proposal. She knows she’s done the right thing. It is the anger at being spineless that hurts the most; the realization that, having given her all to marriage and family, the person she loves more than herself could let go as quickly as he did his ill-fated assistant. “Maybe I should call Randall—”
“Stop! Don’t let him bully you into something you haven’t thoroughly investigated. Run the numbers. Get a lawyer.”
“A woman. Black.”
“Divorce isn’t about gender, color, or emotion. It’s business.”
“A black woman might understand how another black woman feels.”
“Pain doesn’t know color. Divorce is no more difficult emotionally for a black woman than it is for a white one. The difference is the shock on the lawyers’ faces when they’ve spoken to you on the phone and heard your very white-sounding voice and then see what they didn’t expect walk through their door. When they see your black face drive up in your gaudy Mercedes-Benz; when you list your assets—more than their own—and they want some explanation of why you’ve got it and they don’t.”
“So, how do I decide?”
“Pick the best, the sharpest. The most experienced lawyer will do what it takes to win.” Bobbie’s sigh is long. “There’s a big difference between cynicism and racism. Understanding how much of either one you will take is how you decide who you’ll