“After making like Valentino?”
“Yeah, girl, had me about to pant like a dog.”
“The scum!”
“That’s what I’m talking about!”
“Oh, he’s definitely still mad at you,” was Frannie’s considered opinion.
“I know.”
“You’re doing all you can,” Frannie said sympathetically. “You wouldn’t have accepted your last assignment if you had known he was going to propose. But Elizabeth was already under our protection before he popped the question.”
“Bad timing.”
Frannie nodded her agreement, her frizzy hair bobbing up and down. “You’re making a huge sacrifice for that schlimazel.”
“What does that mean in English again?” Frannie was always tossing out a Yiddish word or two that Sara had to have translated.
“It means someone who’s prone to mistakes or plagued with bad luck.”
“It was all just bad luck when he proposed. I was so ready to say yes, I could taste it. But I couldn’t because Elizabeth needs us.”
“Oh, girl, I do feel for you,” said Frannie. “But, now, lend me your ear because I actually have a problem that I could use your help with.”
“Fire away.”
“Melissa is hinting around about setting me up with her father. The poor kid wants a mother so badly, she’s considering me for the job!”
A pickup truck that they recognized as belonging to Joe Rizzo, a local olive grower, slowed down next to them. “You ladies in those jogging shorts does an old man’s heart good!” Joe yelled.
“Get on to work, you pervert!” Frannie yelled back at him, grinning. Joe meant no harm. He often bought her a beer at the tavern on a Saturday night. Fifty-nine, and a widower the past five years, he was so busy fending off most of the single women of a certain age that he didn’t have the energy for serious flirting. At least that’s what he’d told Frannie.
Joe laughed heartily. “Enjoy your day, ladies.”
“You too!” Sara called.
“Anyway,” Frannie said, continuing the conversation Joe had interrupted. “Yesterday when she dropped by the store after school she asked me if I’d come to her sixteenth birthday party tomorrow night. Fool that I am, I immediately accepted. I like her, and I was flattered that she’d asked me. Then, I remembered that her father is the same creep who used to make your life miserable when you were her age and now I regret that I accepted so fast.”
“I’m all for sisterly solidarity,” Sara told her. “But you don’t have to feel offended by him on my behalf. Jason told me that Erik said he regretted being an ass back then. If you want to go to Melissa’s party, then go. But what makes you think she’s going to try to fix you up with him?”
“She told me to wear something sexy, as if she would know anything about sexy. She wears clothes so big they’re practically falling off her body.”
“That’s the style these days. Plus, since she’s a little heavy she thinks it camouflages her body.”
“I’d love to give her a makeover,” Frannie said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I took her shopping for her birthday?”
“Make it a girls’ day out and I don’t see why. Invite me and Elizabeth along and she won’t feel as if you’re targeting her.”
“Good idea. We can hop over to Santa Rosa before the mall closes tonight. Are you sure you’re free tonight? I’m pretty sure Melissa is. But I wonder if her dad would object?”
“Yeah, I don’t have a love life anymore, remember?” Sara said with a laugh. “And why should Erik object?”
“His daughter going shopping with three black women?”
“I wish he would object,” Sara said. “I have a few choice words for him that have had nearly twenty years to simmer at the back of my mind!”
Frannie laughed. “Now, watch yourself. You may be talking about my future boyfriend if his daughter has anything to do with it.”
“I’ll pray for you, girl.”
“Don’t pray too hard. I’ve seen him around. He’s got a nice tush. You know I go for big guys.”
“He’s six-four, Frannie, more than a foot taller than you. Isn’t that too big?”
“Oh, please, I once dated a guy who was six-seven. He could almost put me in his pocket. But it was nice while it lasted.”
“What was nice about it?”
“Do I have to tell you about the main advantage of dating a tall guy?”
Sara actually blushed. “No, don’t say it.”
Of course, Frannie had to say it now. “It sort of leaned to the left and, girl, I had to go around the corner to get on it.”
“You ought to quit!” Sara cried, laughing. Knowing Frannie’s history with men she was happy that Frannie could still joke about sex.
“Well, lately, all I’ve got is a few good memories,” Frannie said wistfully.
Later, back at the house, the three housemates, Sara, Frannie and Elizabeth, had breakfast together. Elizabeth had slept in while Sara and Frannie had their morning jog. When they returned, they heard her in her bedroom’s shower. Sara and Frannie went to their rooms and showered and dressed, too. By the time Elizabeth came downstairs Sara had prepared their breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham and toast.
Frannie was pouring coffee in mugs at their place settings when Elizabeth came into the kitchen and gave them a timid, “Good morning.”
Elizabeth was twenty-two, had light brown skin and dark brown eyes. She wore her natural black hair in a short afro. Although Elizabeth was a genuinely shy and modest young lady, she was under the organization’s protection because she had led a walkout of nearly five hundred gold miners in Johannesburg. Since apartheid had been abolished working conditions had improved for blacks; however, there were still some throwbacks to a colonial system that in many aspects resembled slavery.
The government passed laws to protect workers, but the gold-mining companies failed to comply. A group of miners, led by Elizabeth’s father, Edward, wrote down and presented to their bosses their grievances which included the need for better pay, health insurance, an on-site infirmary and more frequent water breaks.
Two days later, Edward Mbeki was gunned down while walking home from work.
The police never found his killer. A week after that, Elizabeth, who was in medical school in Johannesburg at the time, led a march through the city in protest of her father’s death and called for an investigation of the company that he had worked for.
She and several others were arrested.
A group of American human rights lawyers got her released the next day. A few days later, Elizabeth convinced the gold miners at her father’s company to walk out of work and stay away for twenty-four hours. The company owners went ballistic and hired toughs to beat up several of the workers.
An enterprising reporter for a Soweto newspaper actually caught one of the company’s thugs beating up a worker on video. It was shown on every television station in South Africa. Shortly after that, the company came under investigation, and was forced to comply with everything that Edward Mbeki had asked for before his assassination.
However, it wasn’t over for Elizabeth. Her family’s house mysteriously caught fire and her mother and younger sister perished in the flames. She began receiving death threats. Her college friends tried to help by concealing her in their homes. They tried to raise her spirits, but she became despondent, and contemplated suicide. That was when a black woman with a tattoo of crossed spears on her upper arm came to her and told her she was taking her to America where she would be among friends and she could continue her education.