Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva Read Online Free Page B

fierce when those imps gave the Sudsy to that Gina Chiccetelli. She can’t act herway out a brown paper bag nohow. Doggone shame you didn’t win that trophy.”
    “You can say that again, Grandma. Emmy’s got four Sudsys to my
none
. One thing’s for sure, she’s been doin’ a lot more than actin’ all these years.”
    “Ms. Jones, tell Calysta she was snatched like
all get out
last night!” a voice yelled in the background.
    “Shush your mouth! What’d I say ’bout talkin’ like that in my house,” Grandma scolded. “Back in the day I’da washed your mouth out with soap.”
    “I ain’t said nothin’ Beulah ain’t never heard before.”
    “Pipe down and button up,” Grandma commanded. “That girl and her fresh mouth, always running like a bell clapper.”
    “Who’s that?” I asked.
    “Miss Whilemina’s fast granddaughter Eartheletta. Got herself in a little trouble so she’s visitin’ from Chicago for a few weeks thinkin’ she grown. Now listen to me, Beulah, never mind all that foolishness out there, I raised you right and you’ll get yours the old-fashioned way. Besides, you done won eleven NAACP Image Awards.”
    “Yes, Grandma, and I’m very proud of that,” I replied, knowing I couldn’t begin to explain Hollywood politics. Though the prestigious Image Awards were star-studded, and the NAACP was steeped with rich political and theatrical history as far back as the 1915 protest against D. W. Griffith’s
Birth of a Nation,
the painful absence of qualified brown people before and behind the lens still remained and affected everything from soap operas to feature films. The camera didn’t lie, and it was still out of focus.
    “And how many times can Gina Chiccetelli . . . I mean Emmy Abernathy say she’s been on the cover of
Jet
or
Ebony
? Shoot, I have two scrapbooks full of your clippin’s for safekeepin’. Winnin’ an Image Award is one heck of a prize, baby, you right up there with all the big shots, andHarry Belafonte still looks good, used to be sweet on him. I’m lookin’ at that Image Award you sent me right now. I have it smack dab in the middle of the kitchen table with the salt and peppa’ shakers so
no one
can miss it when they come visit. Now, I know there’s one award missin’, and I bet you even keepin’ a space for it, but don’t you worry, somethin’ bigger is comin’ down the pike. I can feel it. Been prayin’ for it to happen for ya.”
    “Thanks, Grandma. Just wish the haters would stop the madness and vote fair.”
    “Babygirl, you know that ain’t gonna happen ’cause you’d win. And if you win they’d think you too big for your britches and had too much power, and if
you
had too much power you’d change some things, and they can’t have that. Beulah, what have I told you? When you leave this earth, awards ain’t gonna matter one iota. ‘A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth . . .’ That’s Luke 12:15. ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul?’ That’s Mark 8:36. Now don’t you go concernin’ yourself with all that other foolishness. Who gives a good kitty what those simpletons on the
story
think? You and I both know you can act up a storm and so do your fans. You’re
favored
and can’t no one take that from you.”
    Grandma Jones’s friend Miss Odile, a member of the Church of the Solid Rock choir, told me when I was a little girl that I had something wild behind my onyx eyes that folks just couldn’t put their finger on, that I was intelligent beyond my years and beyond book smarts. I had learned the hard way and by listening to the whispers between the lines of life. My inner compass always in overdrive, I read people comin’ and goin’, by using what was oftentimes frowned upon, “the knowing,” my intuition, my lifeline. Regrettably, I stopped listening to it as I got older, trading my psychic wealth in for a different kind of