Free Babylon Sisters by Pearl Cleage Page B

long as I’d known her. One of those rare people who truly understands the difference between style and fashion, Miss Iona was wearing a dark green dress from the fifties that looked as modern as today. She was my role model. Sixty-five and sexy was a goal worth striving for, but today I doubted I’d make forty before my insane child gave me a heart attack.
    When I walked in looking for Louis, Miss Iona greeted me warmly. “Hey, girl! Where have you been hiding?”
    “Just trying to stay out of trouble,” I said, hoping I didn’t look or sound as agitated as I felt.
    She cocked her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. “Is it working?”
    That made me laugh. “It’s not working worth a damn!”
    She laughed, too. “I didn’t think so. How’s my Baby Doll doing?”
    My mother’s friends always called her “Dolly,” which is why we first started calling Phoebe “Baby Doll.” When she was an infant, she looked just like my mother. It was almost as if they had used me as their conduit. To Dolly’s buddies, Phoebe would always be Baby Doll.
    “She’s her grandmother’s child. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
    “Nobody up there at that school is bothering her, are they?”
    Old black people always assume overt hostility runs rampant in environments like Fairfield, but it’s almost never like that anymore. There are so many people from so many places that national boundaries are more likely to cause friction than squabbling between citizens of the same country. “No. She’s fine. She’s driving me crazy all by herself.”
    Her desk sat just outside of the glassed-in cubicle that was Louis’s office and had once been his father’s private sanctum. I could see him in his office talking animatedly with a young woman who was frantically taking notes. “I need some advice from her godfather. What’s he up to?”
    “One of the freelancers brought in something about migrant workers in south Georgia, but she doesn’t know how to follow it up. He’s trying to help her find the thread.”
    Louis was always talking to reporters about finding the thread that ran through a story and held it all together.
    “Otherwise,” he’d explain patiently, “all you’ve got is a bunch of facts. What’s holding it all together?”
    For Louis, what was holding it all together was a deep and abiding love for and faith in black people. He believed we could do better, and he lived his life as if we already were.
    When he looked up and saw me, he smiled and held up one finger to say he was wrapping things up. The young reporter had one more question, which Louis answered as he walked her to the door. “How soon can I get that rewrite?” Louis said, sounding like the editor in the
Superman
movies.
    “Before five,” the woman said over her shoulder, already headed back to her desk.
    Miss Iona turned away to answer another call with her trademark greeting. “This is the
Sentinel,
black Atlanta’s beacon of truth; how can I help you?”
    Louis leaned over and kissed my cheek as he walked me into his office and closed the door. “I’ve been expecting you all morning. Did your mail come late?”
    I was carrying Phoebe’s letter in my purse to read it to Louis, but it seemed he had already seen it.
    “You knew?”
    He nodded. “She copied me.”
    “And you didn’t call me?”
    “I’ve been trying to call her.”
    “Did she really change her number?”
    “She did, and her roommate says she’s living off campus but she’s not at liberty to tell me where. I left word for her to call me. I think she will.”
    “This is a nightmare.” I sat down on the big brown leather couch that took up half the space in the room. “What am I going to do?”
    Louis sat down at the other end of the couch and took my hand. On the other side of the glass, Miss Iona was charming a FedEx man half her age.
    “Do you think she really did it?”
    He wanted to say,
Of course she didn’t do it,
but he couldn’t lie, especially not