circumstances?”
“Oh,” Trey replies as if he may have said something he shouldn’t have. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” Wavonne asks.
“Um...” he says. “Art Smith was originally slated to be the judge on today’s episode, but there was some sort of emergency at his other restaurant in New York, and he had to cancel.”
“I thought it was Walter Carnegie who canceled.”
“Yes, but Mr. Smith was supposed to replace him.”
“So Halia was their third choice?” Wavonne asks.
“Um... well... I think they tried for José Andrés when Mr. Smith canceled.”
“So, I was the fourth choice?”
Trey looks back at me as if he’s trying to conjure up a diplomatic response before I hear the words, “fifth choice actually.” They come from a full-figured black woman who sort of snuck up from behind me. She appears to be a few years older than me with a plump face and a shoulder length bob of relaxed brown hair. “But you might get a kick out of who their fourth choice was,” she adds.
“Really? Who was it?”
“Sylvia,” the woman says. “Sylvia Woods of the famous Sylvia’s soul food restaurant in Harlem.”
“Um,” I say. “She’s dead.”
“You know that. I grew up in Harlem, so of course I know that. But Russell and Cynthia? Not so much. Cynthia and her team must have made about ten phone calls before they finally figured it out. At one point—I think it was the day before yesterday—Cynthia was on the phone when I walked by, and all I heard was, ‘Dead? Are you sure?’”
“If you knew Sylvia had passed, why didn’t you tell them?” I ask the woman, who is still a stranger to me.
“What would have been the fun in that?” she responds. “I’m Vera, by the way. I see you’ve met Vanity Smurf here.” She gestures toward Trey, who rolls his eyes but also cracks a smile following her comment. “And I saw you talking to Zendaya earlier.” She smiles and waves at Sherry, who is talking with Russell and Twyla. “So, you’ve met number one and number two. I’m contestant number three.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, and introduce myself and Wavonne to her. Unlike Trey and Sherry, she goes right for a hug rather than a handshake. She has a warmness about her that makes this somewhat intimate gesture among strangers appropriate. I suspect it’s her age—she easily has twenty years on Sherry and maybe fifteen or so on Trey—and/or her matronly, completely nonthreatening appearance that prompts a smile, rather than a scowl, from Trey when she compares him to a notoriously vain cartoon character. She even manages to let Cynthia making phone calls to reach dead people come off as completely inoffensive. My guess is that she’s endeared herself to Trey and Sherry in a motherly sort of way and makes quips like this all the time. Within seconds of meeting her, you get the feeling she’s comfortable in her own skin. She speaks her mind, and while Trey has been trying to figure out the best way to flex his biceps for the camera, and Sherry has been touching up her hair and making sure her fake eyelashes are in place, Vera stands before us with a simple, likely drip-dry haircut, no makeup, and an outfit that consists of a pair of “mom jeans,” a plain pink T-shirt, and some basic brown walking shoes.
I’m about to ask Vera where she’s from when she lets out a loud sneeze, turning her nose in toward her elbow.
“Bless you.”
“Thank you,” she says. “But you probably only want to do that one time. This time of year, you’ll be blessing me all day. My allergies are awful at the moment.” I’m only now noticing how congested she sounds. “I think the tree pollen is hanging around late this year.”
As I nod my head in agreement Cynthia begins clapping her hands. “Okay, everyone. Let’s get this party started. We have three hours slated to tour the museum,” she calls over the general clamor of the busy concourse. “We’ll start with the lower level first. Let’s all head toward the elevators.”
Our entire gang—me, Wavonne, Russell, Twyla, Sherry, Trey, and Vera—follows Cynthia toward the other end of the main hall, where a young man gets Wavonne and I set up with clip-on microphones. Then we step into the elevator, someone presses C3, and as the doors close, Wavonne, much like a 1930s elevator operator, says, “Going down.” And, for a quick second, I get an eerie feeling that her words are some sort of omen... a forewarning of things to come... that something other than the elevator is about to go down.
Chapter 8
The elevator doors open to a dimly lit exhibition area, and a young woman in a blue blazer greets us. “Welcome to the David M. Rubenstein History Galleries. These galleries contain three exhibitions, layered one on top of the other. You are starting at level C3: Slavery and Freedom. From here, you will work your way upwards to level C2: The Era of Segregation, and level C1: A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond. From this spot to the third level of the exhibit you’ll travel through six hundred years of history. At the end of the History Galleries there is a Contemplative Court where you can spend some time in quiet reflection before touring the rest of the facility. Enjoy your visit.”
We thank the young woman and begin to tour the displays. The weak lighting sets a certain tone for this area of the museum, and everyone, even Wavonne, seems to instinctively know to speak in lowered voices and refrain from taking selfies or talking on a cell phone. We take in a video about how, starting in the 1400s, the people of Europe and Africa began to trade with one another... and how part of this trade included enslaved individuals. Such trade continued into the 1500s, but only really began to proliferate with the advent of sugar and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas, which created a near endless demand for labor—this combined with greed and an unimaginable disregard for human life led to the capture and transport of more than twelve million... twelve million Africans, who were made to cross the Atlantic in squalid conditions aboard European ships, bound for a life of slavery in the Americas.
“Wow,” is about all I can muster to say as the gruesome video ends, and we move on to view some relics from a Portuguese slave ship. When we come upon actual iron shackles used to restrain men, women, and children, I begin to find myself jarred in a way I had not expected. Of course, I studied slavery in school, and I’ve read the books and seen the movies, but as we move about the Slavery and Freedom area, I become increasingly unsettled. There’s something particularly unnerving, beyond anything I experienced reading Twelve Years a Slave or watching Roots on TV, about seeing an actual whip used on human beings who were bought and sold as property, coins from hundreds of years ago minted with gold generated from slave labor, and the lace shawl and hymnal owned by Harriet Tubman.
My general disquiet continues as I come upon a flat stone the size of my coffee table that, during the 1800s, served as an auction block just a few miles from here in Hagerstown, Maryland. My mouth goes dry as I begin to read some of the names, descriptions, and prices of slaves displayed around the stone—all of the information lifted from actual bills of sale—bills of sale for people... for humans.
The cameras follow us as we continue to tour this dark period of American history, but we really don’t say much to each other... or interact with each other at all. A few of us assemble in front of a 150-year-old slave cabin brought to the museum, in dismantled pieces, from a plantation in South Carolina, but no words are exchanged. I think we are all too deep in thought to speak—picturing
