Laverne smiled brightly as if selling something in a TV commercial. “Well,” she said “Nice to see you. What you been up to? Traveling again? I just love the Four Seasons, don’t you?” She smiled as she talked, showing her white perfect teeth. I did love the Four Seasons room that we maids-of-honor were seated in, with its large pane windows facing M street and the small tables with white damask where we sat and talked, brought together that day by our common links to the bride-to-be. “No, for real!” I said rhetorically. “I love it here. The Four Seasons is fabulous.” Laverne looked into her champagne flute and then looked at me. “What’s Africa like?” she said. Laverne’s straight black hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a loose chignon. Her creamy olive skin was perfectly made up, and her dark eyebrows arched in inquiry. Her long, straight nose that tilted at the end made me think of other people and other places. I wondered to myself if she knew how much she looked like an Arab. She leaned forward and I looked at the several gold rings she wore on her fingers. They contrasted well with her black and white summer tweed suit. I tilted my champagne glass and took a sip. “Africa is a different world,” I said.
I looked around the room. We all knew each other from years of Jack and Jill parties and occasional brunches around D.C. Most of us had been in the Girlfriend’s Cotillion together, a traditional coming-of-age event among the Black hoi-polloi. I could hear the tune “Jamaica Funk” playing in the distance from some other room. The sunlight shone through the glass, covering the space with bright geometric patterns and illuminating elegant clothing and brown or tan faces. Expensive perfumes permeated the air and added to a feeling of opulence and luck. I overheard people talking in hushed tones, part of the magical atmosphere of a Black event in a first-class hotel near Georgetown.
We caught up with each other’s news. Some had moved away, a few others were already married and lived in town. It was comfortable and comforting to be surrounded by people I’d known for years. Yet, I was there, but not there. My political views reflected a life, so far, of engagement that most of the women there didn’t worry about for themselves. I wasn’t married or engaged at the time. Lately I’d been traveling so much that I carried accretions of other cultures and countries. I had become a composite being with multiple cultural repertoires. The brunch required my DC ‘bougie’ girl identity, but the rarified atmosphere of this local elite reminded me of other women in Africa who also gathered for weddings and lunches in fine clothing and gold jewelry. The whole thing reminded me of the many different ways that people live in contiguous Black worlds. In my head I acknowledged the different melody of this world and the pull of a related beat underneath.
Ten years later I was back in D.C. from one of my frequent trips to West Africa. I was at the National Press Club talking to people about nomads and economic development. After a few minutes my eyes got used to the spotlights above the stage where I was standing. The audience looked up expectantly from their dimly lit seats, and I could see other vague shapes through the glare. I looked out apprehensively at the hazy, anonymous, glowing blur. I’d given lectures and presentations before, but this was different. As I waited for my turn to speak, I scarcely heard the introduction that Leonard Robinson, the Director of the African Development Foundation, was giving. Leonard was Black and well known, and I was Black and not well known. We were the only ones on stage.
Leonard is gone now. He was an ‘Old School’ North Carolina Black Republican. He was a generous, magnetic person. Now, in 2025 I wonder, am I a Democrat? An Independent? Would he be a Republican now? I doubt it. Please, can we have something new?
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