And This Too Shall Pass Page 4

  But a column would give Sean an opportunity to explore important issues that the two other columnists never addressed, like institutional racism, and the images of African-American athletes, the good and bad. He knew that people in decision-making positions in the sports world read columns, while hardly noticing regular coverage. They only cared that articles reported the scores right and spelled their names and those of their star players correctly.

  The Chronicle’s rival newspaper, the liberal and larger Atlanta Journal-Constitution, employed two widely read and respected African-American sports columnists, and the few times the Chronicle had let Sean write columns, the paper’s fax machine and mailroom were swamped with praise. Of course, the Chronicle never knew that much of the praise came from Sean’s friends. Even so, the letters and faxes didn’t seem to help. Ironically, when the O. J. Simpson case began to dominate the op-ed and sports pages, Sean’s former editor called and offered big money for him to become a guest columnist covering the Simpson trial. They felt it would make more sense for an African-American to write a biweekly column on the highly sensitive and racially charged trial. Sean declined. He also declined to write columns about Mike Tyson and the burning of football player Andre Rison’s country club mansion, a fire started allegedly by his rap-singer girlfriend. Sean felt very strongly about the image of black men in the media, and was a card-carrying member of the Please Don’t Let Him Be Black Club, when bad things happened. He worried that if he stated the sometimes obvious, that some black sports heroes did bad things, black athletes and the black community would shun him. He didn’t want to be labeled an Uncle Tom like other African-American journalists who wrote pieces going against the community. Once, while in college, Sean had written a piece on several star black athletes involved in pulling a sexual train on a black female student. It was almost a year before any of the black players would speak to him again. Although the article put Sean in a difficult position with his peers, he felt that as a minority journalist he had to report the rape. He knew that black-on-black crime, especially violations against women, couldn’t be ignored. He felt that the same story in the hands of a white reporter would sidestep that issue, and instead blame the incident on all black athletes in one fell swoop.

  While Sean had not decided on the guilt or innocence of Simpson, he had other reasons for not joining in the circus of Simpson commentary. Sean knew professional athletes could become violent when the cheering stopped. His own father, Travis Senior, had beaten Sean’s mother, Laura, often, when an injury prematurely ended his potential Hall of Fame baseball career. Unable to play, his father started to drink heavily and dabble in drugs. Many times Sean and his older brother, Travis Junior, had had to pull their father off their mother, wash him up, and put him to bed.

  It was during the height of his career that Travis Senior met Beverly Watson in New York City. Travis had to be in New York City several times a year to play ball and an extramarital affair quickly developed. Travis and Beverly were expecting the birth of their daughter at the same time Travis and Laura were anticipating the birth of their second son. Anja was born in New York’s Harlem Hospital two weeks before Sean was born in Atlanta’s Grady Hospital.

  It was ten years before Sean, his brother, and his mother found out about Anja. Sean would never forget the look on his mother’s face when Beverly showed up drunk at their home, nor would he forget the beating his father gave Laura when she dared question his morals.

  Anja did not accompany her mother down South, but Sean saw the picture of his half-sister Beverly had left with Laura. From the photo Sean could see they shared the same smooth cinnamon skin color, golden brown eyes the color of brandy, high arching eyebrows, and a toothpick-sized gap when they smiled.

  After decades of putting up with countless affairs and abuse, his mother finally divorced his father when Sean finished high school. Her leaving forced Sean’s father to finally get himself together with drug and alcohol treatment and therapy. Recently, his parents, who had somehow remained friends, had started dating again. Sean’s father had had no further contact with Beverly, who, Sean later learned from Anja, was also addicted to drugs and alcohol. Sean and his brother were hopeful their parents’ rekindled affair would lead to remarriage. Despite their father’s previous problems, Sean and Travis Junior loved their father and believed that he had changed. But Sean would never forget those violent nights during his youth. So while he despised the attention men like Mike Tyson received, he was relieved it brought attention to a problem he had experienced firsthand. He wanted to believe there was always some good hidden in evil.

  While a teenager, Sean vowed never to hit another person in his life. This created problems when his older brother used to hit him if Sean beat him in basketball, and when his peers wanted to display their manhood with their fists instead of their playground finesse. These memories convinced Sean to play baseball because it was not as physical as basketball and football.

  When they were teenagers, Anja wrote to Sean and they became pen pals, writing each other at least once a month, exchanging school photos and poetry they had written. Through Sean, Anja was able to collect bits of information about the father she had never known, much to the dismay of Sean’s mother. It was only in recent years that his mother would even say Anja’s name.

  They finally met face to face during Sean’s first visit to New York his sophomore year of college. They were amazed at how much they had in common. Anja and Sean both wanted to become writers, they both loved sports and read and collected baseball cards and Archie comic books.

  While Sean followed his boyhood aspirations, his sister’s dreams were sidetracked by the birth of her child during her junior year at Hunter College. She and Gerald now lived in Brooklyn, though Anja worked in Manhattan as a customer service supervisor at Chase Manhattan Bank. She took writing classes at the Learning Annex when time and budget allowed.

  Six months after Sean moved to New York, Anja began dating the Reverend Theodis Wilder. She had seemingly dedicated her life to the Reverend and his nondenominational church. While Sean was happy with his sister’s apparent religious bliss, his attitude toward organized religion was definitely, “Been there, done that, got the soundtrack.”

  Sean opened his eyes from a two-hour nap to find evening had fallen. Rubbing his eyes and wiping tiny beads of perspiration from his upper lip, he noticed a picture of a smiling Anja and Gerald on his desk. Maybe he had been too tough on his sister, he thought. She was only trying to help. Sean got up from the sofa, popped in a Phyllis Hyman CD, and went into the kitchen and poured a big bowl of Frosted Flakes. While eating the cereal, he leaned his back against the sink and moved his head with the music. The CD was a gift from Anja and his thoughts moved from the tasty cereal and music to his sister. He placed the empty bowl in the sink, reached for his phone, and dialed Anja’s number, but after several rings, her answering machine came on and informed callers that she was at prayer meeting at Brooklyn Eastern Church. The message ended by inviting callers to join her and the Reverend Wilder.

  Sean smiled to himself as he hung up without leaving a message. He had a meeting to go to himself, where there was a different kind of praying going on.

  CHAPTER 4

  AM I BLACK ENUFF FOR YA?

  The ivory silk nightgown dropped smoothly and swiftly to Mia Miller’s ankles. She stepped out of the gown and into her glass-enclosed shower, where the heat and water pulsated in a steamy mix. Mia was savoring her time in the shower so much that she washed her chestnut brown hair three times with strawberry-scented shampoo. She covered her body with an almond bath scrub and backed up against the wall, using her hands to shield the water occasionally and then stepping directly under it to feel the force of the shower as it rinsed away the granular substance.

  This was a big day for Mia, and she wanted to enjoy every single moment. Today she would appear with the Channel 3 FiveAlive anchor team as the first African-American female sportscaster at the Chicago Fox affiliate.
Mia had joined the station two years prior, as the substitute sportscaster and host of “Mornings with Mia,” a talk and news show that required her to report to work at 5 A.M. With her new position, Mia was not due at the station until 3 P.M. unless there was some major sports story breaking.

  After her shower, Mia blow-dried her hair. When she saw that it was only 6:15 A.M., Mia thought about climbing back into bed, but she was wired. Her body clock hadn’t adjusted to her new schedule, so she went downstairs to the kitchen of her townhouse and heated water for a cup of herbal tea. She looked in her refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bag containing a day-old bagel. Noticing a half-empty bottle of Mumm’s champagne, she decided to make a mimosa to celebrate her new job. Mia put the bagel in the small toaster oven and reached into the freezer for some concentrated orange juice. The can was covered with icebox frost, so she slipped it under warm water to speed up the melting process. She poured the champagne into a large black coffee mug and took a gulp to see if it still tasted as good as it had the evening before. It did.

  Mia took a seat on a metal stool and gave herself a big hug. She was so happy with her new position that she wanted the rest of Chicago to wake up and join in her joy. Her promotion to the main sports anchor was unexpected to many people at the station. But not to Mia, who was not a bit surprised. When the station’s regular five o’clock man, Jonathan Nelson, had been offered a position with the new Fox football pregame show, the station’s general manager brought in five different candidates for the slot, all men and all white. Mia had started kissing up to Helen, the general manager’s secretary, while the interviews were taking place, sending her catered lunches and flowers. Helen kept Mia posted on the potential candidates, and even slipped Mia copies of some of their audition tapes. After viewing the tapes, Mia became even more confident that her time had come. When the GM had called Mia into his office two weeks ago, she’d wanted to shout what took you so long, but instead she acted shocked and even shed a few tears. She thought they were happy with her work, but in television you could never be sure. Electronic media personalities were subject to Q ratings and invisible Nielsen families who decided who got to keep their jobs and who might consider career changes.

  Nevertheless, Mia knew people were watching her and enjoyed what she was doing. People stopped her in the local market, at the coffee shop where she read her newspaper and took notes for story ideas. Even though she enjoyed the attention, like school age autograph seekers, there were times when she resented the intrusions, especially when she was out on dates or makeup free. She was neither as warm as she appeared on television nor as cold as some of her former classmates thought. Despite working in a city where national talk show hosts, aside from media mogul Oprah, were almost as common as store clerks, local newscasters still had their fans.

  As much as Mia loved Chicago, she had visions of bigger opportunities. She planned to be the first black female national sportscaster since Jayne Kennedy. People had often told her she looked like the younger, pre-marriage and -childbearing Kennedy, which she considered a compliment, but she certainly didn’t see herself ending up doing infomercials for a psychic service. Mia was also quick to point out that she had hazel eyes, tinged with green, while Jayne had plain, though warm, brown eyes.

  Mia Renee Miller was a beautiful woman, and she had the pictures to prove it lining the walls of her two-bedroom townhouse. Mia as a homecoming princess … Mia at the prom … Mia posing with the family dog. Only her parents had more pictures of her. She was tall, slender, and elegant, with a head full of hair. In high school she had made varsity cheerleader two years in a row, not because of her jumping and tumbling abilities, but because, as Mia put it, “I can slang my hair with the best of white girls.” She had mixed feelings when people described her as light, bright, damn-near-white, or as one former boyfriend called her, “Mariah Carey lite.” Mia often used darker shades of makeup on the air and in public so people would stop asking if she was all black. She recognized the recent trend in dark-skinned beauties in movies and on television, but Mia was not about to let a trend put a roadblock in her plans.

  In her new position she would have her own hair and makeup person, and she had her agent make sure it would be a black person, who would understand her special makeup concerns. Mia’s agent had negotiated a new six-figure contract, which included a thousand-dollar-a-month clothing allowance, with an out clause that would allow her to leave the station if she were offered a network position, or a job in New York or Los Angeles. After two coffee mugs of champagne, the second with a sip of orange juice, Mia spread apricot jelly over the burned bagel and took a couple of bites before she went upstairs, climbed back into her bed, and turned on her television to see how Shelly Alexander, a cheerful blonde, was doing in her former position. Just as she was lying dreamily on the pillows, the phone rang. This early in the morning Mia knew it could only be one person.

  “Hello, Mother,” Mia said.

  “How did you know it was me?” her mother laughed.

  “Who else would be calling me this early?”

  “Well, how does Chicago’s newest super sportscaster feel?” Emma Miller asked.

  “I’m doing okay, but just between me and you I’m kinda nervous,” Mia said.

  “Oh, that’s normal. But remember how well you did in Mississippi. I bet those people at that station are still talking about how great you were,” her mother said.

  “I guess so,” Mia said as she watched Shelly with the mute button on.

  “What are you going to wear?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find something in that closet of mine.”

  “Something from your closet! No, darling, you have to go out and get something new. I don’t care how much it costs. Send your dad and me the bill.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Mother. They gave me a clothing allowance,” Mia said.

  “Good, then listen to your mother. Go to that store in the Water Tower you like so much and get something jazzy. Where does Oprah Winfrey shop?” Emma asked.

  “Anywhere she wants,” Mia laughed.

  “I know that’s right. I knew I should have gotten you something and FedExed it to you. You know we do have some new stores in Dallas that can compete with that stuff you guys have in Chicago. Now don’t forget to tape the show tonight, especially the opening when they show you doing your thing and overnight me the tape. Your daddy and I can’t wait. We’ll add it to our collection.”

  “I won’t forget, Mother. But it’s not like you and Dad haven’t got enough tapes of me on television. Tapes of me graduating, me playing soccer, me doing ballet.”

  “We’re proud of our daughter. And this is special. You’ve been talking about this job ever since your first day at Northwestern,” Emma said.

  “I know, Mother, and thanks for calling, it means a lot to me,” Mia said softly.

  “Well, I wasn’t gonna let this special day come without me being the first one to wish you good luck. You don’t have anybody there with you, do you?”

  “You’re dipping now. But the answer is no. No new prospects,” Mia said. She started to inform her mother that getting a man had never been one of her worries.

  “Maybe with your new schedule, you’ll have time to meet some of those fine Chicago men you used to tell me about,” Emma said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. That will have to take care of itself. I gotta go, Mother. I love you and Dad very much.”

  “And we love you too, baby,” her mother replied. “Oh, Mia, before I forget. Derrick called here the other night. He wanted your new number.”

  “I wonder what he wants?” Mia asked as she looked toward the closet that housed audition tapes, and pictures and letters of former lovers, including Derrick Smith, the Mississippi businessman she had almost married. A month after she had accepted his engagement ring, and after a heavy night of partying, Derrick had slapped Mia across the bedroom when she had refused to participate in anal sex. Mia wanted to make sure that his first sla
p would be his last, so she filed a police report and had a restraining order issued against him. Derrick had called her day and night crying and begging, promising Mia that nothing like that would ever happen again. She accepted his apology, advised him to get help, and never saw him alone again.

  “He said something about being up in Chicago soon and wanting to get ahold of you.”

  “You didn’t give him the number, did you?”

  “Oh no, baby. I know better than that. I don’t give your number to anyone. Sometimes I will see some of them girls who used to give you such a hard time in high school. They will come over at the beauty shop or mall and say how they heard you were a big television star and do I have your number, just in case they’re ever in Chicago. I want to tell them, of course I have her number. I am her mother, you dumb bunnies. But I just smile and ask for their number, explaining that I will let you get in contact with them,” Emma said.

  “That’s good, Mother. That’s what you should do. Isn’t it time for you to get ready for your day?”

  “Yes, darling, it is. Are you trying to get rid of your mother?”

  “Of course not, Mother,” Mia said.

  “Well, bye, Mia.”

  “Bye, Mother.”

  Mia hung up the phone and pulled her knees up to her breasts, wrapping her delicate arms around herself. She thought how blessed she was to have her parents. Parents who didn’t have to love her but had chosen to after her natural mother had given her up for adoption, just hours after her birth in Dallas. Mia was born in the same Parkland Hospital where President Kennedy had died exactly two weeks later. She never knew why her mother had given her up or who her natural father was, and she had convinced herself that she didn’t care. She told herself she wasn’t rejected, but wanted. Ellis and Emma Miller told her about her adoption when she was twelve years old, when one of her playmates teased her that she didn’t favor her parents, grandparents, or her younger sister, Tanya.