The Itch: A Novel - Softcover

Little, Benilde

 
9780684854304: The Itch: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684854309 ISBN 13: 9780684854304
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

“[A] nuanced, Edith Wharton-style treatment of the upper reaches of black society…[Little] is an arbiter of that insular world.” —The Washington Post

Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle. She leads a charmed life—having attended all the right schools, married the right man, and started a successful film production company with her best friend, Natasha Coleman—and seems like an ambassador from the world of perfection. It is only when her impeccable marriage turns suddenly shaky that her utopia is left in pieces…

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Benilde Little  is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair (selected as one of the ten best books of 1996 by the Los Angeles Times), The Itch, Acting Out, and Who Does She Think She Is? A former reporter for People and senior editor at Essence, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband. Follower her on Twitter and Instagram @BenildeLittle and read her blog, Welcome to My Breakdown, at BenildeLittle.Wordpress.com.

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Chapter One
Sometimes it's the easy way that's hard.
Abra Lewis Dixon had carefully sculpted her exterior existence. She paid close attention to her physical environment -- the trunk formation of a Japanese maple, the many red shades that came before its brilliant autumnal crimson. She regularly consulted her Farmer's Almanac so she could better predict the weather; she liked to be prepared. The interior stuff, however, was too unwieldy, unpredictable, and difficult. She left that unattended, willing herself to believe it insignificant.
She sat at the oak vanity her mother had given her as a housewarming gift, looking at her reflection -- so much like her mother's -- noticing for the first time that parentheses had formed around her mouth, adding to the diminutive lines under her eyes. Her skin was parched. She twisted open the gold-rimmed top on the heavy smoked-glass jar, scooping out a mound of precious skin cream with her finger, smoothing it over her cheeks, forehead. A different potion, squeezed from a tube, was dabbed under her eyes.
Looking at herself again, waiting to see a change, Abra ran her fingers across the grooves of the antique vanity, the one she'd always loved. She tried to imagine her face covered with wrinkles, her hair the color and texture of cotton, but she couldn't. Childhood was much closer, a blink ago. When she was a child, she'd lose herself at her mother's vanity, playing in all her mother's makeup and perfumed creams and fine talc in cardboard containers; her neck wrapped with her mother's best leopard-print silk-chiffon scarf and her pubescent face made up with lipstick, rouge, and Groucho Marx eyebrows. She'd pulled her eyes back, stretching them toward her ears, and taped them. "Who are you, darling?" she'd say in a loud, dramatic voice. She'd breathe in and pause. She never knew the answer. That was when she learned to stop asking the question.
Slits of light fell across the blue-as-a-robin's-egg carpet; they were the only sources of illumination in the apartment. Her mother kept the windows sealed. Abra would walk across the room, turn on the TV, open the blinds. After she had checked under the beds and in the closets, she'd pile two faux-leather and aluminum kitchen chairs as well as an empty footlocker against the door. There had been a time when her mother would leave a snack -- sometimes a tuna sandwich with a pickle and sometimes an ice-cream sundae in the freezer. The phone would ring once, stop, and then ring again. It was safe to answer because it was Mommy calling from work. "Just me. You all right?" Odessa would say every day, and every day Abra would assure her mother that she was, even though she was scared most of the time that someone was waiting for her under the bed or in a closet. There was a number for the building manager right near the phone; that was supposed to make Abra feel safe.
She'd create herself a tent of an umbrella, pillows, and blankets in front of the TV -- another fortress she designed to make her feel secure.
Abra looked down at the tray of potions in beautiful bottles, makeup, brushes, hair things, knowing she needed to get ready for dinner. She looked beyond the mirror, through the window that provided a view of the sprawling side yard and more trees than she'd ever seen on private property. She thought about the actual conversation she'd had with Cullen, which was merely one of the dozens of maintenance types married couples have all the time, mundane dialogues with mundane concerns: Don't forget to go to the cleaners. Do we have any beer? What are we doing this weekend? This conversation was just to confirm that Cullen would meet her tonight at Sherry and David's at seven. She smiled at the thought of her life.

Dinner parties at the Steptoe-Warrens were a significant part of Abra and Cullen's social life, and, as often happened, the men ended up in one room; the women in another. Abra and Cullen were friends of the Steptoe-Warrens and acquainted with the other regulars. There were friends and there were couple friends, who all got along as long as the evening's subjects remained superficial. Abra sat in an ancillary room, a den off the living room, observing the men who spoke in loud Black American dialects reserved only for each other. She watched Ray through the glassless window in the living room as he talked about the Million Man March, acting out with his hands and arms the emotional impact of the event and what it had meant to him.
"First, I wasn't gonna go. Then I don't know why, but that mornin' I just jumped up, pulled on my jeans, and headed to First Baptist, where I knew I could jump on the van they had goin' down there."
The others, sitting in a semicircle of cane-backed chairs, ottomans, and a love seat, looked at him, nodding, understanding his feelings because they, too, had struggled with the idea of going. All of them, except Cullen, had decided finally to go, to make the emotional pledge with brothers from around the country, to atone, to do better by their families, even though every brother in this room was living America's wet dream. These men were members of America's upper class, the top 2 percent wage earners -- going to work in thousand-dollar suits, doing deals in the high-seven and eight figures, living with their intact families in fantasy suburban spreads or enviable co-op apartments. They were all functioning schizophrenics, held master degrees in ruling-class customs, which meant checking anything ethnic at the door. All these men bonded on the duality issue. At their high-paying professions they had to do two jobs: the one they were hired to do and the other unspoken one -- to adopt landed White-boy mannerisms. These brothers needed a march to band with other cultural schizophrenics.
"You know, it was like the greatest thing I could've done, man. When the radio alarm went off that mornin', Coltrane was blowin' and y'all know, to me he is what Jesus Christ is to Christians. I took that as a sign," Ray said.
The others were nodding between gulps of Cristal or Coronas with lime, snacking on bean dip, salsa, and blue corn chips, the precursors to the catered buffet dinner. Abra searched Cullen's eyes to see if they revealed sadness for what he'd missed. She didn't detect any. No one asked him if he'd gone, and he didn't volunteer anything.
Cullen graduated Howard, summa, a reformed nerd, and the most focused person she'd ever met. Abra had recognized him as a swan even before he did, and now she was the envy of most women.
"This White guy at my office asked me why I went. He said he could understand inner-city Blacks marchin' for jobs and education and shit, but he just couldn't get what I'd get outta somethin' like the march," said Ray, a tax lawyer at a Wall Street firm. "I told him, 'Man, you see me here, doin' my thing, tryin' to make partner, but when I walk outta here at night, I say a little prayer of thanks for the car service home. You know why?' I said to him. 'Cause I'm a Black man first, and the moment my feet hit the pavement, the average White person out here is assumin' I'm gonna knock 'em over the head, and I can't get a cab.' The dude kinda looked at me, like he was seein' me for the first time, and he just nodded. I don't know if he got what I was tryin' to say, but I think he thought about it."
Sherry Steptoe and David Warren liked to entertain in their generous pre-war apartment on West End. The two other couples, like the Dixons, had opted for suburbia. Yet David, because of Sherry, held on to their life in the city. David and Cullen had gone to college together. David was a lawyer, but he worked for a record company, on its business side. He was nice but about as interesting as iceberg lettuce. Sherry, on the other hand, had a lively disposition and was a copywriter at the same record company, which is where she and David had met. She was unlike all the...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684854309
ISBN 13 
9780684854304
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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