Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva Read Online Free

She’s half black and from where I sit at the piano during rehearsals, quite attractive, and talented too.”
    Grandma Jones could hardly believe her ears as the two pale society ladies chattered away in their Delta drawl. Having licked her last stamp, she jotted down the details before leaving the post office.
    Later that evening, the only black person in the audience, she nervously sat inthe last row of an improvised theater in Carrollton, intensely watching me act up a storm.
    During the curtain calls she made her way to the back of the building and asked for me.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you must be mistaken, there ain’t nobody in this here production named Beulah Jones,” the stage manager responded.
    Giggling and puffing on a shared clove cigarette, I heard, “Beulah!”
    A buzz kill for sure; I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. I exhaled the smoke through my nostrils like a defeated dragon, dropping the butt and grinding it beneath my sneaker.
    We rode home in deafening silence in Pride-All Taxi Service. The frozen expression on Grandma Jones’s face made her chin dimple like a pocked orange skin.
    Arriving at the front door, exasperated, she searched her bottomless black pocketbook, her painted fingernails scratching the polyester lining for the key. And as she opened it she looked dead at me, saying, “You not too grown ’n’ I ain’t too old, now you get you a switch ’fore you come in, and don’t be steppin’ on my strawberry patch either. No dilly-dallyin’.”
    After washing my mouth out with soap, Grandma found the hidden strength all women possess, no matter how old, to whup any lick of disobedience or theatrical fantasy out of me.
    Not daring to look up past her knee-highs, I cried out, “Grandma, please stop! I promise never to do it again.”
    She continued swingin’ with her J. C. Penney coat still on, a hard staccato rhythm in her voice as if in a trance, saying, “Only-freaks-and-strange-folk-want-to-be-on-stage-and-TV-and-you-let-that-boy-kiss-you-all-over-your-mouth-for-everyone-to-see-if-I-evah-catch-you-hitch-hikin’-or-actin’-up-on-a-stage-again-so-help-me . . .”
    As I lay in a cold sweat, the merciless ringing of my telephone rescued me.
    “Ms. Jeffries?” asked my answering service.
    “Huh? I’m sleepin’.”
    “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but your agent is on the line.”
    “For crissake, what does he want? Never mind, put him through,” I slurred wearily with a splitting hangover, gulping down a bottle of Evian next to my bed.
    Weezi—my agent, manager, publicist, legal counsel, confidant, financial adviser, and escort—barked into the phone, “What the hell are you trying to do to us?”
    Never signing a contract, we were each other’s first clients, during the lean years, ever since I stepped foot in New York City a zillion years ago.
    He always managed to irritate the hell out of me, like the time I met him for lunch at Chateau Marmont, a favorite Hollywood haunt for A-list movie stars. Weezi insisted on introducing me to De Niro, never mind that he didn’t know the man, who was minding his own business, incognito at a neighboring table. Putting on a thicker than usual New York City accent, Weezi shamelessly asked, “Yo Bob, how ya doin’? Loved ya in
Raging Bull,
ma’ man. My client Calysta here is quite the actress on the number one sudsah,
The Rich and the Ruthless
. I’m sure ya hearda’ it.”
    What came next trumped all. Weezi brazenly slipped his business card onto De Niro’s table, a glossy picture of himself on the back.
    Cringing, I wanted to evaporate. The A-lister took another sip of espresso before peering over his shades, saying, “I don’t do soaps,” and walked off leaving Weezi’s card and a half-eaten biscotti.
    As much as I swore I was firing Weezi after that embarrassing episode, like thousands of times before, I knew I wouldn’t, ’cause pastures just ain’t greener on the other side. I tolerated