The Gilda Stories

The elder Gilda is a 300-year-old white vampire with a “whiskey rough” voice and a “face painted in colors like a mask,” though she wears “men’s breeches and a heavy jacket” (13). Physical descriptions of the elder Gilda always contain this balance between masculine and feminine; she has “tiny features” but smokes cigars, always “mov[ing] in her own deliberate way” (16). The younger Gilda even mistakes her for a man at first. Elder Gilda’s blend of gender markers shows that she is fully in command of her position in the world and evokes historical images of cross-dressing lesbians unwilling to play the heterosexual roles assigned to them. 

Since 1835 she has run a brothel called Woodard’s, and she is protective of and fair to the girls who work there regardless of race—unusual for a white woman in the antebellum American South. Though there are few white women in the novel, the fact that the younger Gilda’s “mother” vampire is white shows Gomez’s inclusive utopian vision: a world where white women protected escaped slaves and used their resources to empower them.

Despite her strength, the elder Gilda feels angered and exhausted by life on earth in a way other vampires in the novel do not. She can be fiery when confronted with the hate and short-sightedness of mortals, like when she yells down some men in her brothel who are speaking in support of slavery. In the end, she decides to take the true death because she has seen so many fights for justice fail and does not have sufficient belief to participate in the upcoming Civil War. Despite this, she still believes in Gilda and Bird, and her decision to give the younger Gilda her name and turn her into a vampire shows her leaving a hopeful legacy for the future.

A native of the Lakota tribe, Bird is a vampire with a deep voice, braided black hair, and an earthy scent. Her clothing often includes leather or beads. She can be “aloof,” especially around strangers, but warms up with those she knows well. Bird contracted smallpox as a young woman—the scars of which she still bears on her back—but her tribespeople drove her out when she managed to survive it, believing she had supernatural powers. The elder Gilda found her and transformed her into a vampire, after which Bird worked in the brothel and became the elder Gilda’s lover.

Though Bird is not the oldest vampire we meet, there is something ancient about her. Gilda feels she is perpetually anachronistic, existing “in a place untouched by the new, the transient commodities called modern” (136). This is likely because, as a Native woman, Bird has the oldest ancestral connection to the American soil they live on, which is especially meaningful in the context of Gomez’s version of vampire mythology—all the immortals must keep in close physical contact with soil from their birthplaces. Her connection seems to extend to other native peoples, as evidenced by the fact that she begins a new vampire settlement on the ruins of Machu Picchu. Bird’s decision to choose continued life even as the world collapses is a demonstration of Native people’s resilience despite historical odds.

Bird’s greatest conflict in the novel is her difficulty forgiving both the elder and the younger Gilda for the elder’s death. She leaves the younger Gilda alone in the world relatively soon after her transformation and does not keep in contact with her. When the women reunite in Boston, Gilda is genuinely uncertain whether Bird means to make love to her or kill her; Gilda’s openness to either possibility shows the tremendous trust she places in Bird. Bird’s major personal conflict is resolved in the fourth chapter when she realizes there is nothing to forgive and that she was simply “too selfish to hear” (141) that the elder Gilda was happy with her decision. After this resolution, she takes on the role of mentor to Gilda, and her advice often moves the plot forward with a well-timed letter or thought message. 

Sorel is the benevolent patriarch of Gilda’s vampire lineage, responsible for turning the elder Gilda in the 1500s. He is described as a large man with an ostentatious fashion sense, a mustache, and a booming voice, and he attributes his “enduring good looks” to his partially African heritage (79). Sorel laughs often and has the gift of making his interlocuter feel “as if they were absolutely alone rather than standing in the middle of the patrons of a busy salon” (60). He has lived all over the world and runs two drinking establishments during the book’s timeframe, in California and later in New York. Sorel’s most consistent signifier is the champagne he is always drinking and lavishing on others: To him, every moment spent alive with his vampire family is worth celebrating, and his joy is infectious.

Sorel is a flat character, undergoing no major changes throughout the book. He is an unwavering source of fatherly love throughout Gilda’s tumultuous life, and his bars serve as sanctuaries to which Gilda repairs when she needs safety, community, and wisdom. Sorel’s love is so reliable that it extends to members of his vampire family who have gone astray, like Eleanor. He feels guilty for turning her and gives Gilda a realistic appraisal of her weaknesses, but he never stops welcoming Eleanor into his salon. As one of the book’s oldest vampires, Sorel represents an all-encompassing ancestral love that endures across time and space.

The vampire Anthony met Sorel in France in the 1800s and has been his constant companion ever since. In many ways, Anthony is Sorel’s opposite—quiet where Sorel is loud, with a small frame and hair of a “forgettable brown color” (59). But he has “immense deep, blue eyes” and shares Sorel’s ability to make Gilda feel she always has his full attention (59). Anthony plays a maître d’ role in Sorel’s Yerba Buena salon and in general is a bit like Sorel’s sidekick, but he has his own brand of intensity and wisdom that Gilda regularly benefits from. Over the course of the book, she spends more time having conversations with Anthony than she does Sorel, and she often benefits from his steadying advice. Whereas Sorel’s drink is champagne, Anthony’s is red wine, indicating the rich depth of his character below his less sparkling surface.

With her red hair and pale skin, the vampire Eleanor makes a dazzling impression everywhere she goes in Yerba Buena. Her voice is “deep but breathy” (63), and Gilda is instantly attracted to her. She is a vampire child of Sorel’s; he notes that “her family has lived here by the bay longer than perhaps any other” (63), and she doesn’t appear ever to have left the area. She is provincial, referring to the countryside Gilda traveled through as “the uncivilized hinterlands” (63).

A major symbol of Eleanor’s weakness is her association with material possessions. She delights in taking Gilda to the dressmaker and seems to be accustomed to ordering people around. She employs servants and rides through Yerba Buena in a carriage. The book’s other vampires don’t seem to rely on luxuries in the way Eleanor clearly does, causing her to appear shallow and impractical by comparison. Eleanor’s uncontrolled desire easily veers into greed and hate.

Eleanor’s purpose in the plot is to demonstrate for Gilda what it looks like to have poor control over one’s vampire powers. Sorel openly regards bringing Eleanor into his family as a mistake because she is reckless and selfish, which she showed most vividly by causing Samuel’s wife’s death and transforming him unwisely. Her lack of self-control is also tied up in her inability to see Gilda as a true equal, leading her to order Gilda to kill Samuel for her as though Gilda were her servant.

Eleanor is closer to the stereotype of a vampire whose goal is to keep others in her thrall, so her inclusion in the book throws this unique vampire community’s values into stark relief. However, there is some redemption for Eleanor when she decides to take the true death, recognizing her guilt in Samuel’s case and wanting to prevent herself from harming him further. She is even able to spend meaningful time with Sorel at the end of her life. Even with this troubled character, the book points toward possibilities for hope.

One of the only mortals with whom Gilda forges a strong connection, Aurelia is a young widow making roots in her black community in Rosebud, Missouri. She has a full figure and a “dark, shining face made more alluring by her broad smile” (105). Both her parents and her husband have died, leaving her with plenty of money but unsure how to move forward. She finds purpose with Gilda’s help after inviting the Harlem Renaissance writer and activist Alice Dunbar to speak to her church group; Dunbar’s visit inspires her to create her own local programs for social good. After Gilda leaves Rosebud, she goes on to become an activist in her own right. Aurelia is also the only mortal who knows Gilda is a vampire, thanks to a letter Gilda sends her before she leaves Rosebud.

Like “Gilda,” the root of the name of “Aurelia” also means “gold.” Aurelia is Gilda’s human foil. She, too, balances independence with interconnectedness, but she does so in a mortal context. Gilda’s decision not to turn her into a vampire shows that the human way of living is not inferior, simply different. 

Julius is a lighter-skinned young black man, thin but broad-shouldered, whom Gilda transforms into a vampire. He has freckles and brownish-red hair and wears a sapphire earring. Gilda likes the efficient way he manages the theater company they both work for. Julius is full of optimism and energy, exemplified by his exuberant use of black slang, even when it’s implied that it’s gone out of fashion in the book’s futuristic section.

Julius is driven by a desire for family. He has lost his own parents and keeps a picture of them on his bedside table in a symbol of his yearning for that connection. As the hunger for family is also one of Gilda’s driving motivations, she feels a strong affinity for him, though she initially holds back from adding him to her vampire family because of the weight of that decision. When she does turn him, she becomes a mother figure to him, showing her increasing maturity in the vampire ways.

Ultimately, Gilda feels comfortable turning Julius because she can see that the scope of his dreams, born of the Black Power movement, matches the long life of an immortal. He genuinely wants to commit to political work that could take centuries to come to fruition, and he has the buoyancy of personality to handle its ups and downs. In this way, he can be contrasted with the elder Gilda’s exhaustion after her long years of work for justice, and with Aurelia, who also has activist ambitions but who is firmly rooted in mortal time. In the last chapters, he is shown as a major figure in an organization called the GrassRoots Coalition, carrying out his work with joy despite the increasingly bad circumstances in human society.

Effie is the most ancient vampire in the novel, though she has a youthful appearance. Her fashion sense is understated but striking. Like Gilda, she has a past as a slave, though her enslavement appears to have taken place in ancient Greece. Her experience gives her a control over her powers that other vampires may not have, exemplified by her ability to conceal her true nature from Gilda over the long term. In addition to being a lover to Gilda, Effie helps Gilda begin to move on from her entanglement in mortal lives. Effie’s perception of time is vast, and she understands that vampires must acknowledge that their lives occur on a different scale than mortals’. The lessons Gilda learns from Effie begin the phase of Gilda’s increasing withdrawal from human society, culminating in her departure from the collapsing United States for Machu Picchu at the novel’s end.