“How?”
“Discretion.”
“Feminine charm.”
“Shrewdness.”
“No, I mean what do you do? What work?”
“Negro inclusion in the film industry,” Cora said. That explained her dedication to Abner, someone decades her senior, all these years. “He was starting to come around to hiring a Negro actor. Most times, they just don’t want to be the first one. Pushing the envelope of change is hard. There’s a lot of money to be made in Hollywood if they’d just let us in.”
“We need better movies and characters first.” Kitty hated the exaggerated dialect assigned to Negro characters.
“They want us to stay right where we are—you know what happened to Dorothy Dandridge after her Oscar nomination for Carmen Jones?” Cora didn’t wait for Kitty to answer. “They asked her to play a maid. She did a triple performance—acting, singing, and dancing—and they wanted her to play a bit part as a maid.”
Lucy interjected. “There’s money to be made outside of performing—as costumers, hairdressers, directors, writers. It’s an industry most of us don’t even know exists.”
“It’s the only way we’ll ever have a true say.” Cora covered Kitty’s hand. “Help us make Telescope the greatest film studio there is,” she said. “With you having Nathan’s ear, we can get films made about the things we need to talk about.”
“Was the plan always for me to work with Nathan? It seemed like he’d made up his mind about hiring me before I interviewed.”
“I won’t deny it—your looks got you noticed, but you deserve that job,” Lucy said. “He gave everyone a chance to show up. You did.”
“Abner was a meticulous craftsman,” Cora said. “I’m not sure Nathan has the magic touch. He’ll need some help.”
Familiar with that rhetoric, Kitty defended him. “He can do it, he just needs time.”
Cora was impatient. “Time is what I don’t have.”
Lucy translated. “Cora wants to win an Oscar.”
“The Misfits was a shoo-in, but with Abner sick, I’m not sure we can garner the same interest.”
“What’s the point if no one knows you’re Colored?” Kitty asked.
“She’ll reveal it one day, in some dramatic fashion,” Lucy explained.
“Imagine their faces when they learn the truth.” Cora chuckled as she pulled the collar of her blouse closed. “Sometimes the thought alone is enough to get me through the day.”
Lucy shook her head at Kitty. “She’s sinister; don’t pay her any mind. This isn’t about revenge or outsmarting anyone, it’s about helping to make things right.”
“That’s why passing is nothing to be ashamed of. People been doing it since the beginning of time to survive, and not just us Negroes,” Lucy continued. “Some Jews passed for gentile in the war if they could. It’s survival.” She paused. “As long as you’re not passing because you think being White is better.”
“I never wanted to pass in the first place. I had a fiancé, I had a life planned,” Kitty said.
“Good, because that kind gives our kind a bad name. Some pass trying to love themselves better. That’s not our kind. And sometimes it’s hard to tell which a person is. We’ve determined which you are and we want you to join us.”
“Yes.”
Her answer came quicker than they expected. Cora’s face turned grave. “It can be dangerous.”
“I understand.”
“If you get caught, or something happens, we can’t help you. That jeopardizes us all.”
“I understand.”
“You’ll be under a lot of scrutiny, and more often than not, things won’t go our way,” Lucy said.
“Do you want me to say no?” Kitty asked.
“I want to be clear. This is for life. You can’t un-know what you learned today. You’ll wonder who’s who everywhere you go.” She raised a brow at this part.
Cora patted Kitty’s hand to draw her attention from Lucy. “We’ve had more disappointments than triumphs. The Emmett Till trial was heartbreaking. We had two jurors in the pool, but neither was picked for the jury.”
“We’re lucky it even went to trial,” Lucy reminded her. “When you do get a win, there’s no better feeling. Last year, I got Jack to donate the proceeds from the sale of his parents’ house in Maine to the NAACP. Took me four years, but I did it.”
“One day one of us will be in a position to really change things,” Cora said.
“Last I checked, White women don’t have that kind of power,” Kitty argued.
“They do—by controlling the right White man.”
“So you use marriage as a tool. That’s why you match couples.”
“Yes.”
Kitty looked at Lucy. “Does my sister know about all of this?”
“Ahh, Emma.” Cora shook her head.
“No. We determined she wasn’t suitable,” Lucy said.
“We were looking for a sixth in our unit, but—”
“Your what?”
“We operate in groups of six. Twelve passing, with you now, and twelve not. A unit is six.”
“Why me?”
“You feel guilty being able to pass. Emma doesn’t want to look back.”
Yet another accurate assessment. Was Emma really that transparent? “Is that why you sabotaged her engagement?”
Lucy sighed. “Yes. Emma didn’t know what to do with Lincoln and, as a casting director, he was too important to lose as an asset.”
“But how would she have made him an asset?”
“Married him for his capacity to donate, for one. Gotten Jamie an audition. Anything but what she did. I mean, damn—I didn’t think I had to tell her everything. He was in awe of her, and she ruined it.”
Cora tried to soften Lucy’s words. “It wasn’t personal; our work always comes first. We knew we couldn’t trust her to do anything serious.”
“She has her own priorities.” Kitty considered Emma to be a liability too.
“And you—well, not just anyone could have landed in such a position at Telescope so quickly,” Lucy explained.
With Abner retired, it was now Kitty, not Cora, closest to the person who could advance the agenda.
“Lucy says you have his ear. He talks to you about scripts, staffing.”
“Yes.” Kitty was a little disappointed to know her conversations with Lucy hadn’t been private and was happy she hadn’t disclosed more. Who knew how they’d want to capitalize on that?
“Well, you just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing,” Cora said. “Nathan doesn’t have the same ego as his father, and I believe we can get more done.”
* * *
Folding chairs had been arranged around the living room. Kitty tip-toed through the center, behind Cora and Lucy, to sit on the stairs. She peered through the railing, listening to Laurie at the podium, centered in the cedar-trimmed doorway.
“They’re planning a boycott of the city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Before the end of the year.” Negroes there would walk to work, refusing to pay the same amount of money as White passengers only to face humiliation and relegation to the back of the bus.
“Those White folks won’t know what hit them.”
“Wives will just fire their maids. How will they eat?”
“They’ll have the same problem with every maid in town.”
“Can you imagine those women doing their own dishes?”
The room erupted with laughter.
“Caring for their own children?”
“Picking up after their own husbands!”
Cora yelled over them. “The longer it goes, the more shameful it’ll look, and the more dangerous it will get. They’ll get desperate once they realize they’re going to lose. It won’t be funny.”
“People will have to walk in sun, rain, sleet, snow,” Laurie said. “We have to support their efforts, no matter how long it takes.”
“What about the people who can’t walk long distances? Will there be carpools?”
“We need to raise money for gas and to buy cars.” Laurie looked at the beige-colored woman sitting to the right of the podium, whom she called Nina. “So bigger donations now.”