“I’m moving out of the dorms,” I announced, right after the blessing. This went over about as well as if I had suddenly revealed some entirely unforeseen sexual orientation.
My Daddy, who is white—my Mama married a dark, handsome Cajun man after she had me—was in the middle of passing the mashed potatoes to my sister—not that white people pass mashed potatoes any differently than black folk. He looked up at me with his heavy-lidded eyes and drooping black mustache. “That’s good; it’s about time.” Then he looked at my Mama uncertainly. “The school lets them move out of the dorms after the first year, don’t they? Sissy doesn’t want to hang around South Quad forever.”
Mama, resplendent in an autumnal orange-and-yellow bandana that complemented the beautiful brown complexion of her face, looked horrified, as if I had just announced I was joining the Peace Corps on the Moon. “But your scholarship covers room and board, Sissy,” she said. “What do you want to give that up for? Who do you suppose is going to pay your rent now?” She shot a concerned look at Daddy. “Do these girls think just because I’m branch manager of a Civic Savings and Loan that we’re somehow made of money?”
“I have my summer camp counselor money,” I said, even though I had mostly spent it already on textbooks. I mentioned how little the rent would be, plus utilities.
“Do you know how much ‘plus utilities’ can be in Ann Arbor?” Mama demanded.
My daddy, God bless him, returned her look with one of his own that said, in a single, laconic gesture: (a) he was making good overtime at the auto plant lately, (b) he and Mama were nearly finished remodeling this house in the historic Boswick-Addison neighborhood, and (c) his eldest daughter had done a great job at Arbor State University so far, and should encouraged to spread her wings. Then he looked at me and said, “Sissy will be starting that part-time job in January, isn’t that right, Sissy?” He winked at me.
My eyes must have grown wide as pies. “Uh, what part-time job would that be, exactly, Daddy?
“Waitress in a restaurant, or something,” said Daddy. “Isn’t that right, Sissy?” he added, emphatically.
“Uh, sure, Daddy,” I said. “I mean, yeah, waitress…or something like that.”
“Uh huh,” said Mama, skeptically.
My grade point average of four-point-bazillion suddenly flashed before my eyes. How was I going to devote every waking hour to my studies and keeping up my GPA now if I had to work some grueling part-time job? Why hadn’t I considered this before agreeing to go in with Stella and Pammy? Was it too late to back out? Oh, but I wanted to see the Megahero baby! Maybe Stella would let me still come and visit.
My half-sister Avril actually bothered to look up from the script she was memorizing for a school play, and insisted on studying right through Thanksgiving dinner. “Sissy, you mean to tell me you’ve actually made some friends at college this year?” Avie was already as tall as me, with a more Rubenesque figure and a lighter complexion—almost as light as Daddy was dark. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Yes, I’ve made some friends, Ms. Extrovert,” I said snidely, lumping some stuffing onto my plate with one hand and dousing it with the gravy boat in the other. “They’re all very intellectual and studious and cultural.”
“See?” said Daddy. “Sissy’s got to be allowed to grow up socially as well as academically.” Daddy was very wise. “Don’t you worry, hon,” he said to me. “We’ll make this work.”
Mama sighed, softening a little. “I know your grandmother would be so proud of you, Clarissa, how you’re doing so well in school,” she conceded. “Both my girls—Seedy’d be proud of both of you and Avril.”
I’d been hearing Grandma Seedy stories all my life, even though she’d died eighteen years before I was born; every time I came back home to Detroit for a visit it meant hearing all the old stories one more time. Seedy James had been a learned academic in the sciences, teaching some advanced combination of physics and biological interaction at some research institution in Chicago—that’s where Mama and her brother Rodney were raised. Seedy—Mercedith—was called away to Washington, D.C. to work on some top-secret project during the war. Mama and Rodney were left with an aunt in Chicago; Seedy never came home. All they got was a letter of posthumous congressional commendation or somesuch for Seedy’s contribution to the war effort. Rodney became an advisor in the earliest days of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, in the late fifties, and died before I was born. Both might have been alive today if it weren’t for those wars. Mama insisted on keeping the James name alive by passing it on to us, with Daddy’s full consent. As I listened to these stories for the umpteenth time, I suddenly felt a pang of regret that Grandma Seedy wasn’t around to compare notes on quantum theory with Stella Starlight.
I hadn’t mentioned that my housemate-to-be was the former See-Thru Girl, or that she was planning to raise the love child of Megaton Man with her for-all-I-knew lesbian partner in some kind of postmodern, extended-family arrangement.
Upstairs after dinner, my sister was still memorizing her script in her bedroom. I could hear Mama and Daddy discussing the fiscal particulars of my new housing arrangement, my Mama raising her voice intermittently as my Daddy calmed her down. I flopped down on Avril’s bed. “What do you know about Megaheroes?” I asked.
“They usually wear garish costumes,” she said. “Although the workmanship, I understand, I often first-rate.” This was how Avril James evaluated everything—by first determining how and to what extent it artistically overlapped with the world of the theater.
Where are the comic books we had around here when we were kids?” I wondered, which was like only two years ago. I looked around the corners of my sister’s room, which were stacked with books and magazine. “They weren’t under my bed in my room, where I left them.” The kinds of stuff we read had been mostly humor comics, horror comics, teen romance—stuff we’d read a thousand times until they were falling apart. We didn’t have too many Megaheroes, because there weren’t too many funny ones, but I was sure we had a few stray ones in our stack.
But Avie didn’t keep any comic books in her room these days; she only read intellectual-political stuff, and theater criticism, and dense film theory I couldn’t begin to understand, and radical newspapers that were given away for free on the streets of Detroit.
“I think Mama tossed those into the bin for some church newspaper drive after you went off to school,” said Avril, not taking her eyes off her script. “Why the sudden interest?” said Avril. “Are you going through your second childhood or something?”
I was crushed. “I just thought I’d look something up,” I said, hugging a spare pillow to console myself.
“Did you meet some guy who’s never left his parents’ basement?” Avril asked. “One of those nerds who has all six thousand issues of Wombat Wonder in plastic bags? Figures your new housemates would be people like that. How did you ever convince them to move in with you? Blowjobs?”
After I whumped Avril on the shoulder with the pillow—I’ve always been fierce for my size—I said, matter-of-factly, “No, smart-mouth; my housemates are going to be Megaheroes—I mean, one of them used to be a Megahero; they’re from New York and everything.”
“Which Megahero? Maybe I’ve heard of them.” Avril was enthralled with all things New York, mostly because that was where Broadway was located.
“The See-Thru Girl, as a matter of fact,” I said.
“What is she, a stripper?”
That deserved another thump of the pillow, but I let it pass. “She’s pregnant with the love-child of Megaton Man. But for heaven’s sake, don’t tell Mama and Daddy.”
Even Avril had heard of Megaton Man, even if the See-Thru Girl’s name wasn’t immediately familiar. I described Stella, how tall and beautiful she was; it seemed to ring a bell. “I think I remember now…Megaton Man joined some foursome after the naked-lady member left; they had their team hangout right there in the middle of mid-town Manhattan. Some Megavillains found out where they lived—I guess it wouldn’t be hard to find out, if your headquarters were on top of a skyscraper—and after years of resentment for being brought to justice and everything, these evildoers blew the whole things to smithereens. Now there’s nothing but a hole at that address on Fifth Avenue.” Her high school theater group had actually stopped to gawk at the hollow foundations on their bus trip to Manhattan earlier that semester, to see the musical Me and Sue Caza.
“Really? A whole skyscraper, just blown up like that?” When had it happened? I had been so busy with my studies all semester I had hardly glanced at a TV or looked at a newspaper or otherwise come up for air the whole time.
“Actually, it happened way back last summer, when you were off at camp,” said Avril. “Look over there, in that stack of magazines—there was an article.”
Sure enough, some newsweekly that our household subscribed to had found its way into Avie’s library—no doubt because of its theater coverage—dating from early August. She was right—I had been up north in the woods at church camp as a youth counselor, like a lot of Arbor Harbor students, and the story had completely escaped my attention. “The Megatropolis Quartet!” I said in astonishment. “Yeah, that’s her old group.”
“You’re going to be housemates with the Megatropolis Quartet?” Avril asked. “That sounds awfully dangerous.”
“No, just the See-Thru Girl, and she’s not that any more. I mean, she could probably still turn naked with but a thought, but she’s just a non-traditional college student now.”
But it was fascinating to learn what had happened after Stella had left Manhattan with Pammy. According to the article, Megaton Man had joined the group—with Yarn Man, Liquid Man, and the Human Meltdown—becoming Captain Megaton Man in the bargain. Shortly thereafter, Yarn Man disappeared on the Time Turntable, never to be seen again. Then, some young, redheaded babe joined the group—it was unclear whether she could turn naked with but a thought, or had any Megapowers besides looking good in the blue “Q” uniform - effectively replacing the See-Thru Girl as honorary eye-candy and team wallflower.
The article was illustrated with picture of the Megatropolis Quartet’s mid-town headquarters—a sleek, modern skyscraper—brand new in the 1950s, next to another picture showing the empty foundations after the dastardly Megavillain attack. Miraculously, the Megatropolis Quartet had survived unscathed, but according to the article, the group was finished. The Human Meltdown took off for Europe with the redhead; Captain Megaton Man went back to being Megaton Man; and Liquid Man, team leader and Stella’s ex-husband, was just absorbed into the urban fabric.
“No wonder Stella never heard from Megaton Man, after an onslaught like that,” I said. “He could be wandering around suffering from amnesia or something.”
“All guys suffer from amnesia,” said Avril, “after they’ve gotten what they wanted from a girl—especially if they’ve knocked her up.”
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, my daddy’s pickup rolled into the driveway on Ann Street. It was loaded with my single twin bed, desk, dresser, a beat-up dining room table that would look good with a tablecloth, a sofa that wasn’t too shabby at all, and a few other odds and ends from my Detroit bedroom. It was still cold, and I had on my winter coat. Based on my description of things, Daddy wanted to check out the place for himself first; there would be time for Alice—my mama—and Avril to visit over the Christmas holidays. He brought enough tools for any contingency.
Before we unloaded, we found Stella baking cookies in the kitchen again; she and Pammy both had their work—Stella her homework and Pammy whatever she was writing—each covering approximately half the kitchen table. They were obviously huddling in the warmest room in the house.
“This is my daddy,” I said. “I mean, my dad. He’s white.” I’m not sure why I felt the need to mention this since it was obvious. But for some insecure reason I wanted to demonstrate that I could live in close proximity to white people, and my daddy was proof I had done so all my life.
“Chrétien Bellisle,” said my daddy, without any pretention, but I loved it when he said his name with a perfect New Orleanian French accent. He politely shook Pammy’s hand. “It’s an old Cajun name. People just call me Cray for short.”
“Oh, so you’re matrilineal,” said Pammy, looking me through with her black-framed reading glasses. Later, when she thought nobody was looking, she made a quick note on her reporter’s pad.
“What’s matrilineal?” I asked.
“When the surname is passed on through from mother to daughter,” said Stella. “Just like my child is going to be a Starlight.” She rubbed her tummy.
Daddy couldn’t have helped but notice Stella’s tummy, even if she hadn’t rubbed it, and frankly stared a little too long at her breasts, which I realized had also grown substantially since the weekend before Labor Day.
“How do you do,” said Daddy, making eye contact with Stella a split-second before she caught him looking. “Clarissa’s told us absolutely nothing about you. Either of you.”
Pammy explained that she was teaching journalism at Arbor State, and that she was also editing a collection of her best controversial columns for a literary agent back in New York who thought she could get her a publishing deal.
“And I’m pregnant,” said Stella, somewhat tiredly. “And I’m not planning on getting married. I hope that isn’t a problem.”
“Not with me,” said my Daddy. “But I’m glad Alice—Clarissa’s mama—didn’t come with us this trip; she’d make me cart that bed right on back to Detroit, and Clarissa, too.”
I got a peak at Pammy’s note later. Matrilineal and hypocritical.
Stella and Pammy both offered to help us unload the pickup—both had been through enough college-town moves in their day—but daddy and I did it easily by ourselves. Daddy was strong enough to get the bigger pieces of furniture into the house and upstairs by himself almost without my help, and I got the clothes and dresser drawers and smaller stuff, no problem. While I was setting up my bedroom and making my bed and all, Daddy proceeded to fix the running toilet upstairs, bleed the radiators of air in all the rooms of the house—the landlord should have already been around to do it, in this weather, he remarked—and weather seal all of the upstairs windows with clear plastic. He did the same to the big picture window in the living room, the window in the back of the dining room, and finally the kitchen window over the sink.
When the time I came downstairs, Daddy was cautioning Stella and Pammy not to use the fireplace until the chimney had been inspected and professionally cleaned, which meant waiting until the spring. But the house was already noticeably warmer, thanks to the radiators working and the weatherproofing. Stella and Pammy took down the blankets; they were almost beside themselves with joy at the drastic improvement. Daddy smiled and winked at me. We ordered pizza and salad from Bimbo’s Roadhouse Pizza Shack on the southern outskirts of town; when Daddy left in his pickup to pick it up—he knew Ann Arbor like the back of his hand from his misspent youth—Stella asked, half-serious, “Can Cray live here, too? We’ve still got that extra room.”
“I think we have to give him back to my mama,” I said.
After pizza, Daddy did a quick inspection of the front and back doors, and made sure the outside spigots were turned off from the inside so the pipes wouldn’t burst. He noticed the Megatropolis Quartet station wagon parked in garage that no one ever drove because everything was within walking distance, and took a tarp out of the truck and threw it over it. “You might want to take that out for a drive once in a while,” he advised my housemates. “Otherwise, it’s just going to sit in there and rot. Or sell it. Not that it’s any of my business; I just hate to see a good running car go to spoil.” Finally, Daddy hit the road, but it was really late.
Over the next few weeks and until the end of the semester, Daddy came out to Ann Street every weekend. He fixed or cleaned the screen door, the drain in the basement, the washer and dryer, and the garage door. He left a tool box with a hammer, nails, safety glasses, pliers, and wrenches and everything for us on the workbench that was already there in the basement. He hung up some saws, screwdrivers, and wrenches on the peg board and promised to bring lawn tools if I was still living there come spring. He said to me, “Don’t use these unless you have to. If it’s anything major, leave it to me.”
I said, “Daddy, we’re not damsels in distress; just because we’re female doesn’t make us utterly helpless.”
He said, “No, it’s worse. You’re academics.”
He was right. The three of us probably couldn’t have screwed in a lightbulb without first visiting the Arbor State Historical Manuscript Archive and consulting the single piece of correspondence in the collection: a note from Thomas Alva Edison’s brother-in-law to his dry cleaner, Hymie Mortensen, about how much starch to use on his shirt collars.
The house was so hot now from the steam heat that me, Stella, and Pammy were in a sweat even during a severe cold snap; we took to wearing nothing but athletic shorts and T-shirts indoors and walked around on the hardwood floors in our bare feet except on the coldest of days. I don’t want you to think we paraded around in nothing but our underwear or anything, but it was certainly less than I had to wear in the South Quad dorms where guys from the floors above or below might drop in on our all-girl floor unexpectedly. On Ann Street, we didn’t have that problem, at least not yet, although we did have to quickly throw on oversized shirts or football jerseys or Abyssinian Wolves sweatshirts and sweatpants whenever Daddy came over.
I spent Christmas back in Detroit. It didn’t occur to me until Daddy picked me up where I was going to sleep, since we had cleaned out my old bedroom. But I needn’t have worried; Mama had gotten a sleeper sofa for my room and had plans to turn it into the TV room—but was waiting until after the holidays to get a new TV. So, I slept in my old room on that sofa bed; I just didn’t have my desk and dresser and stuff, which were at Ann Street.
The Sunday night before the spring semester began, Daddy drove me back to Ann Arbor. He still hadn’t brought Mama and Avril out for a visit; he said there were still a few little projects to be done around the Ann Street house before he’d wanna let Mama see it, but that they’d have to wait until the warmer weather. I told him he had done enough, and that it wasn’t his responsibility. Besides, it was a rented house. “You live there, don’t you?” he said. That was the end of that conversation.
As we pulled into the driveway, he asked me what I’d done to find a part-time job. I asked, “Are you kidding?” It was a rhetorical question.
With the truck in park and the engine still idling, he pulled out his checkbook and started writing. “Only because you made the Dean’s list again,” he said. He tore off my first month’s rent—December—and handed it to me. “This will be our little arrangement; I’ll keep mailing these to you every month as long as you hold up your end of the bargain. But don’t tell Alice—as far as your Mama’s concerned, you’re pouring coffee in a 24-hour doughnut shop.”
I kissed him on the cheek and hopped out. Before I could close the door, the front door of the house opened; we could see Pammy in silhouette, wearing a man’s shirt that left her bare legs exposed. My Daddy was craning his neck around the rearview mirror to get a better look.
“My, that journalist-lady sure has some nice jambes,” he said.
“Go home, Daddy!” I shut the pickup door and clambered up the steps and into my warm Ann Street home.
Archival Images:
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| The jambes (legs) of Pamela Jointly (2019 drawing). |
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| Their headquarters destroyed, the Megatropolis Quartet are bereft and desolate. From Megaton Man #2 (Kitchen Sink Press, February 1985). |
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All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.
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