Any Way the Wind Blows - E. Lynn Harris [36]
Suddenly my face felt warm, and I rolled the paper up quickly and tossed it into the wastebasket. Who was LaVonya talking about? I was the only up-and-moving-very-fast diva. Could she know about Madison?
I decided I couldn’t worry about LaVonya and her lack of journalism skills, so I pulled out a People magazine and made a mental note to get Motown to get me into this magazine, or at the very least In Style. I read a few of the album and movie reviews and continued to thumb through the magazine. Just as I was getting ready to put People back in my bag, I came across the headline “Diva with Diapers.”
There was a large picture of a pretty black woman and a handsome man. He was holding two children who appeared to be the same age, and the woman was holding a newborn. The woman looked familiar, and when I pulled the magazine closer to my eyes I realized I did know her. It was Nicole Springer.
There was Nicole, smiling like she was on the top of the world and standing in front of an elegant two-story colonial home. The article said that Nicole and her husband, Jared, had had a difficult time conceiving a child and shortly after they adopted twins, Nicole got pregnant. And despite a difficult pregnancy, she had recently delivered a healthy baby boy. But that was not all. According to the article, Nicole was getting ready to return to Broadway in the lead role of the hit revival Kiss Me Kate, becoming the first African-American actress to play the female lead.
The article quoted Nicole as saying how happy she was about the miracle of birth and the miracle of faith. Well, I couldn’t take any more of her happiness, so I closed the magazine. I wondered if she had been bedridden like Windsor. Had Nicole ever figured out that I was the cause of her sudden illness in Grand Rapids, Michigan, some years before? But most of all I wondered what it felt like to have the same man love you for so many years.
I actually felt a twinge of guilt over some of the things I had done to Nicole when I was her understudy in Dream-girls, but it was very short-lived. Clearly, nothing I’d done had prevented her from fulfilling her life’s dreams.
• • •
I had just gotten home from a strenuous day of rehearsals and meetings. I was getting ready to check on Windsor, when I heard several voices coming from her bedroom. I peeked in and saw Windsor and four other ladies. Two were sitting on her bed, one was sitting in a chair and a rather tall, pretty girl was standing up at the end of the bed. As I glanced at her, she looked at me like we knew each other.
“Yancey, come on in,” Windsor said.
“How you doing?” I asked as I went over to her bed and gave Windsor a kiss on the cheek.
“Aw, I’m having a good day. My sorors stopped by for a visit, and we’ve been having a good old time catching up. As you all know, this is my famous roommate, Yancey B!” Windsor said as she motioned her hand gracefully in my direction.
“Hello, everyone,” I said. Sometimes I felt competitive when I was surrounded by women. Not so with this crowd. Except for the tall girl, none of these ladies could ever be in the same limo with me.
“I’m Dionne.”
“My name is Tara. I knew you at Howard,” the one sitting on the bed said as she smiled.
“Lisa.”
“And I’m Marlana,” the tall one said with a deep, theatrical voice. “I also knew you at Howard, but you were a couple of classes in front of me.” Marlana had long dark auburn hair, and she looked like she was on her way to a nightclub, since she was wearing