Chapter 54 Verity
FIFTY-FOUR
Verity
“Verity, you’re here.” Canon stands from the director’s chair in the video village tent that came to feel like a second home over the course of the film. “Thanks for coming.”
“I wouldn’t miss shooting the final scene.” I imitate him stroking his beard in that way the cast and crew tease him about. “So will you cut that beard now that we’ll be wrapped?”
“I think this is the longest shoot of my career.” He strokes the beard thoughtfully. “The end of the road. Well, we still have postproduction and edits.”
“And the score,” I offer softly.
“Ahhh, yes. The score.” Canon quirks one thick brow. “Is Monk keeping you up at night banging on that piano, or is he using that massive studio he built underground?”
My cheeks burn at his assumption that I’m living with Monk, which, of course, I am.
For the month I spent in New York with Tessa and Mel, he stayed, too, only returning to LA when absolutely necessary for any work on Dessi he couldn’t do remotely.
We’ve been back in LA for two months, and when my lease ended a few weeks ago, it seemed ridiculous to renew, since I’ve spent so much time at his place.
“He’s doing a little of both.” I answer Canon with a laugh and a shrug. “Some in the studio and some on the piano upstairs. Listening to one of the greatest musicians of this generation play piano isn’t exactly a hardship.”
“Unless it disturbs my sleep,” Canon grumbles. “That must be love.”
I shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans and look at him directly. “It is.”
“About damn time.” Canon laughs at the exasperated look I give him. “Hey, I’m happy for you. And for that asshole, too. I guess he deserves to be happy.”
“If you do, then he does,” I lob back, but gentle my voice. “I’m happy for you and Neevah, too. Thank God her sister was a match.”
“Yeah.” Canon blows out a long, relieved sigh. “Her body’s responded really well to the new kidney, and her doctor finally cleared her to come back so we can shoot this last little bit.”
“Props to you for keeping Galaxy at bay so she could heal and we could still get this done.”
“It was certainly not out of compassion on their part,” he says dryly. “I had to use every threat in the book to keep them off our backs while she recovered. This town is a den of vipers, but you know that.”
“Agreed, but every once in a while, someone will surprise you.” I bite my lip. “We got a series order from United for my new show.”
“Holy shit.” Canon extends his fist for a bump. “That’s fantastic. What’s the show?”
“Um, it’s called Black Pearl.” I hesitate before going on. “I’m the showrunner.”
“Wow. That’s great.”
“Because of my diagnosis, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to run a show, but when they offered it to me, I decided to tell them I have bipolar.”
“Frankly, after seeing the way Galaxy tried to treat Neevah when they found out about her lupus, I can’t blame you for being careful about who knew.”
“My agent and I discussed it, and I care about this show too much to have it suffer if I have an episode, so I met with their president of scripted. When I told her, she said she understood because her son has bipolar, too.”
“No way.”
“Yeah. Her son is this high-powered lawyer in New York now, but it took him a long time to finish law school and a lot of fight to get where he is. She said his clients are lucky to have someone like him, and United is lucky to have someone like me.”
“Sounds like you couldn’t ask for a better situation.”
“Nope. She only asks that I choose a strong second. Someone who is right there every step of the way as we develop the show and can step in if I need them to, so the show wouldn’t skip a beat.”
“You got anyone in mind?”
“My friend Desiree from film school. We’ve always wanted to work together, so here’s our chance.”
“Hey, Canon, can we check the blocking before we start?” Jill asks, entering the tent without looking up from her notes. When she sees me, a huge grin splits her face and she walks over to give me a hug. “So glad you’re here, Verity.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I tell her.
Jill’s eyes stray back to Canon and some of the softness dissipates as she shifts back to work. “The blocking?”
“Oh, yeah,” Canon says. “Let’s look at it.”
“I’m gonna sneak over to see Neevah before we start,” I say. “If there’s time?”
“Sure,” Canon says distractedly, his mind already turned toward the discussion he and Jill need to have. “She should be in her trailer.”
I wave goodbye and head to find Neevah. When I knock, there’s a muffled “come in,” so I open the door.
“Verity!” Neevah squeals, but keeps still as Takira slides a pin into her wig. “Hi! Come. Sit!”
I walk deeper into the trailer and settle onto the comfortable armchair a few feet from where she and Takira are finalizing Dessi’s hair for this last scene. The makeup artist aged Neevah for the late 1950s when Cal and Dessi were in their early forties.
“I’m almost done,” Takira says, a look of concentration on her face.
“No need to rush,” I tell them. “Just saying hi because I haven’t seen you since you got back, Neevah.”
“No one has.” Neevah rolls her eyes. “Canon’s kept me under lock and key, confined to the house and barely out of his sight.”
There’s no irritation in her comment. If anything, she looks more serene than I’ve ever seen her.
“There,” Takira says, teeth clenched around a bobby pin and eyes narrowed on Neevah’s wig. “That should do it. I’ll be back. I need to go check Hazel’s… Belle’s… hair.”
When the door closes, Neevah leans forward, her eyes gleaming with delight. “I heard about you and Monk. I wasn’t sure if everyone knows.”
“We haven’t been screaming it from the rooftops,” I laugh, tracing the floral pattern on the armchair. “But it’s not a secret. I don’t care if people find out now. We didn’t want the whole cast and crew gossiping about us.”
When I realize how I just put my foot in my mouth, I lean forward and grip Neevah’s hand. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“Girl, you fine. Canon and I haven’t had much privacy, even from the beginning. I am glad to wrap, even though it’s hard to leave Dessi. She’s taught me so much, ya know?”
“Yeah, I do.” I hesitate before plunging in with what I came to say. “I wanted to tell you how much I admired you for chasing your dreams and not letting your diagnosis stop you. Seeing you navigate chronic illness in this industry under such a bright spotlight gave me a lot of courage.”
“Really?” Neevah’s sweet smile prompts me to go on.
“I have bipolar disorder.”
Neevah’s eyes widen a little, but there’s no other reaction. So I plunge on: “And now I have a shot at running my first show, so I told the studio executive overseeing it. She’s making some accommodations but not counting me out.”
“That’s all we want, right? A chance not to be counted out just because our bodies and minds aren’t like everyone else’s?”
“That’s all we want,” I agree softly. “You and the women of this movie reminded me what we’re capable of when we don’t give up, even when they try to stop us at every turn.
Take Hazel. At the height of her career, she was making more money than she ever imagined, but she was also blackballed after she shut down The Heat’s On until they agreed to dress the Black actresses in something better than rags. ”
“God, she was brave,” Neevah mutters. “Harry Cohn said she’d never be in another movie, and she wasn’t.”
“And though she was the first Black person with her own television show, a full six years before Nat King Cole, people always attribute that to him. The week after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, they canceled her show and did everything they could to erase her contributions, but her sacrifices mattered. No one can take away her impact.”
“I’m so glad you found a way to highlight her and Gladys in Dessi’s story,” Neevah says.
“Some people think Gladys caved, compromised, but I see a woman who did what she had to do to survive. All she wanted was to perform, and that was taken from her because of who she loved.”
I try to imagine living then. Feeling so desperate that I would write a piece like Gladys’s “I Am a Woman Again” in Ebony magazine, literally renouncing her queerness in the most public way, while still reportedly maintaining relationships with women.
The piece even featured photos of a “domesticated” Gladys in dresses, cooking and cleaning for a man she claimed was her husband.
Declaring herself “cured” of homosexuality, hoping to continue performing and to escape the effects of McCarthy’s Lavender Scare.
I can only find compassion for a woman navigating bigotry even beyond what I’ve encountered.
I know how it is to feel exhausted by your own existence—feeling so miserable and at the end of yourself that you don’t necessarily want to die, but you want to flee the thing that’s fucking you up.
But how do you flee from yourself? What do you do when your body, your own mind, is what confines and tortures you?
You hold on. That’s what Hazel was ultimately able to do.
“You know Hazel insisted that in any movie she wore her own clothes,” I offer. “She wasn’t going to let them white folks dress her in rags. And she insisted that she be billed as ‘Hazel Scott appearing as herself.’”
I pause and gulp at the emotion rising in my chest and throat before going on.
“That’s what I want. I want to appear as myself.
I don’t want to apologize for my condition, but I will advocate for myself.
I don’t want to hide, but to show up fully and authentically as myself.
I’m Black. I’m queer. I have bipolar. Deal with that shit. ”
I laugh, but don’t quite catch the tear before it sneaks from the corner of my eye.
Neevah reaches over to squeeze my hand, tears trembling on her lashes. “They gon’ deal with our shit.”
I nod and reach to hug her at the same time she reaches for me.
The trailer door pops open and Takira walks in.
“They’re ready for you, Neevah.” Her eyes widen in horror. “Are those tears? Biiiiiiiiitch, your makeup!”
Neevah and I laugh, slowly letting each other go.
“Lucky for you,” Takira says. “It’s not bad and I can fix it.”
“I’ll see you out there,” I say, sharing a smile with Neevah. “One more time for Dessi.”
She meets my eyes, her mouth trembling with emotion. “One more time for Dessi.”