Fake Pearl and Fake Gold Earrings from the Mall

When my husband told me that he had been depressed for two years about working in our Marin County California garage and only getting out at the lunch hour for pizza and a drive to the beach, and that we were going broke paying those kinds of mortgage payments, I said I would move to Atlanta if I didn’t have to work anymore. I was 44 years old and had been commuting an hour and 40 minutes each way across the Bay for as long as we had been married.

We got scared about selling our house in a down market and being stuck with balloon payments, so I called someone I knew who used to work for a congressman, and she said there was an opening to head up a child advocacy group.

I wore a navy blue suit with fake brass buttons and low navy heels to the interviews in mid-town Atlanta. I bought the fake pearl drop earrings at Lenox Mall, I can’t remember which jewelry counter.

I took the job, even after the woman who recommended me said I had to talk slower and asked me to come up with a plan to lower teen pregnancy and solve child poverty in five years.

When Governor Zell Miller was inaugurated for the second time, I went back to Lenox and bought the fake pearl cluster earrings with the dark blue beads inset to match a black sleeveless dress I wore with my mother’s old blue fox fur. No one told me it was a country theme.


Digital Photograph by Doug Greenberg

Three Ethnic Earrings on a Flea Market Napkin

My father and mother have both traveled all over the world, but that was before and after I was an adult. When we were growing up the four children and the dog and my parents made three trips across the country ( the dog only once).

We went to Tijuana and to Victoria, but that was before I had pierced ears and before suburban mothers ever did. So our gift shop purchases were things like small soapstone seals, or decorative blankets or for my mother, bottles of duty free Tabu perfume.

When we moved out and they divorced, each one of my parents found ways to go to lots of places where ethnic jewelry was available, but I don’t remember getting any as gifts. Each time I have gone to Mexico I have bought some silver earrings, all of which have disappeared.

When I went to China, I didn’t see any earrings to buy that January I flew,to Beijing. Or maybe I just wasn’t interested since it was as cold as I have ever been. I brought back a down jacket from a street stall and the feather leaked immediately; an old gourd and ivory cricket keeper from an antiques market that has been bull-dozed; and a Chinese Opera figurine from a hotel gallery.

All the earrings from foreign countries that remain, including most that have lost their mates, were purchased at Cost Plus or Chico’s or at garage sales, especially the ones held by churches. These seem to be the ones that are given away.

Photograph by Doug Greenberg