Page 63 of Mazywood

The sisters launched themselves down the hill. Imani found her balance despite the weight of the rifle and her losses, and Sharise kept pace with her in a way she had not yesterday. But yesterday was a millennia ago.

Imani and Sharise followed the Monster’s jagged trail as they flew toward the woods.

Lazy Mazy

Twenty-One

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

APRIL 1939

THE GATES OF HELL WERE yawning open.

A sea of white men, women, and children resembled fleeing phantoms as their feet stirred up a cloud of red dust choking the crowded street. They shrieked and shouted, grabbing loved ones by the hand, some of them tripping in their hurry. Horse-drawn wagons weaved through the chaos carrying hurriedly packed belongings, from chicken coops to a golden harp flaring in the sunlight. Nearby, an explosion sounded, inciting a chorus of screams.

Mazelle covered her ears where she stood beneath an awning, just out of the path of the chaos. Since it was her first day on the set, her stunned expression wasn’t acting. After hours of milling around and tiresome instructions from the director and his assistants trying to keep everyone in place while they set up their equipment, the frenzied motion on cue made Mazelle forget about the oversized new color motion picture cameras planted around them like strange, towering black beasts, the boom microphones swinging like giant tentacles above them.

Mazelle felt slightly dizzy, slipping out of time. She was in Atlanta, not Los Angeles. The women’s petticoats and the gray uniforms of the white men marching in formation as they advanced against the tide of panicked townspeople convinced her that she was in the 1860s watching Atlanta fall in the Civil War.

Be careful what you wish. She reminded herself of this at least once a day. More.

Only last week, Mazelle had been miserable at her desk at Thomas Jefferson High, dreaming of her graduation so she could finally pursue acting again the way her parents promised. Now she was on the set of the production the whole country was talking about: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind!

Mother’s diligent calls to Charles Butler at central casting had finally paid off. Mazelle had hoped to audition for Prissy, the youngest Negro woman with a speaking part, but that role had gone to Butterfly McQueen long before Mazelle graduated. Working as an extra was the best she could do—playing a newly freed slave for five dollars a day. She’d heard the white extras made more, but she calculated that if she got called for even five days, she could afford to buy Daddy the large, padded reclining rocker she’d seen in a Sears catalog he needed in order to sit comfortably. She hated the way her father was always in pain.

Motion on the street churned until “Cut!” blared from a loudspeaker, echoing against the hollow storefronts, and shouts passed up and down the crowd until everyone stopped and began milling again. Mr. Fleming, the director, sat high above on his platform, with little below him missing his eye. Dogs barked, children cried, and horses dropped piles of manure. Mazelle stood watching it all in a bedraggled dress that looked like a castoff from a plantation missus, dust from the dirt road coating her hair and clothes.

Mazelle hadn’t realized she was smiling, but her cheeks hurt from grinning.

“You better wipe that grin off your face ’fore Mr. Fleming sees it,” another Negro extra, Otis, told her. He was a couple years older than Mazelle and a man, so he’d gotten a much better part, marching with a contingent of Negroes singing “Go Down, Moses.” He wore a straw hat and was carrying his prop shovel over his shoulder. Like her, he had been performing since he was young.

“Why shouldn’t we be happy?” Mazelle said. “We’re free now!”

“Sure, they was happy back then,” he said. “But this picture’s for white folks.”

Mazelle stifled a laugh behind her palm, but it quickly died as the wind shifted, bringing particles of road dust flying into her eyes. She had heard someone say that crushed bricks had been used to replicate an orange Georgia road, and she tried to blink the dust away.

“That’s more like it,” Otis teased her. “Look sad. That’s why it’s called acting.”

Her sight came back into focus as she blinked: The massive Atlanta street sets—a dry goods store, bakery, and blacksmith, all with meticulous details—felt too real for comfort. The haze of red-clay dust reminded her of Gracetown, and thoughts of Gracetown only made her sad.

“Nobody’s spending all these millions on a movie about slaves happy to be free,” Otis said. “Millions, you hear me? You didn’t read the book, huh?”

“That book weighs a ton,” Mazelle said. “I bet the stars didn’t even read it.”

Mazelle and Otis waited beneath the awning of the set’s prominent hardware store, watching the hundreds of white extras. Mazelle noticed that a few of them were wearing trousers or shoes they had just bought, too new and nothing like the nineteenth century. Charles Butler had warned Mother that Mazelle should not wear anything that looked modern, so she was wearing Gram’s scuffed old black ankle boots. Close enough.

Otis told her he had just stepped off the train when he got the job offer from central casting. His wife in Chicago was so excited that she was already making plans to join him in Los Angeles, believing his career was charmed, since newspapers were printing constant stories about the casting and shooting of Gone with the Wind. Mazelle was disappointed to hear that sweet-faced Otis was already married—and she had never been on a real date! She felt more convinced that life had left her behind while she was trapped in school.

“This your first time working on a picture?” Otis asked.

Year by year, fewer people recognized Mazelle as she got older, her face thinning as she grew taller—at five eight, she stood over Mother now. Mazelle enjoyed erasing Little Mazy and reclaiming herself. She remembered how well she had imitated Millie Sharpe’s darky voice and even improved upon it, her lip drooping with mushy words. Little Mazy had been almost as bad a lie as the sad slave she had now been hired to play.

“Yeah,” Mazelle said. “First one.”

Otis grinned at her like Brother would. “Look at us, huh?” He was bursting with pride.

Mazelle stared down at her shredded dress the costumer had given her when she arrived on the lot of Selznick International Studios just after dawn, worse than anything she’d ever worn on Li’l Gumshoes. “Yeah, I’m looking—we’re dressed like slaves,” Mazelle said.