Betsey Brown

by Ntozake Shange

  “Mama, you wanna listen to a little bit of my elocution preparation? I’m doing Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar.”

  Jane thought, taking her time mischievously, and then shook her head yes.

  “Betsey, of course I want to hear your interpretation of Dunbar, but hurry. You know your daddy’s getting the morning quiz ready.”

  Betsey ran to her mama’s closet and grabbed the first red womany thing she saw, a scarlet slip she draped round her hips. Jane’s eyebrows rose, but she contained herself. After all, elocution was close to theater. Betsey stationed herself by her mother in front of the vanity, wanting to watch her every gesture and facial expression. Mama knew this poem awready, so she had to be good, or at least that’s what she thought.

  Jane thought anything her little girl did was just fine, but it pleased her that Betsey wanted to impress her.

  “Who dat knockin’ at de do’?

  Why, Ike Johnson, yes, fu’ sho!

  Come in, Ike. I’s mighty glad

  You come down. I t’ought you’s mad

  At me ’bout de othah night,

  An was stayin’ ’way fu’ spite.

  Say, now, was you mad fu’ true

  W’en I kin’ o’ laughed at you?

  Speak up, Ike, an ’spress yo’se’f.”

  Betsey sashayed and threw her teeny hips, glinted her eyes, and coyly demonstrated her newly learned skills as coquette, much to her mother’s delight. Jane hugged her girl and was about to offer some dramatic advice, when the morning rituals, authorized and unauthorized, overshadowed them and interrupted that very special moment they’d shared.

  “Who’s got my geography book?”

  “Come on, tie my shoes.”

  “That dress is not yours. Give it here.”

  “Lord, Lord, please help me with these chirren.”

  “I’ma tell Daddy you took my books.”

  “I bet you won’t have no backside side, if he gets holdt to ya.”

  “Come tie my shoes, please.”

  “For God’s sake, somebody tie Allard’s shoes.”

  “Margot, you better do something with that mess you call hair.”

  “You said you would comb it for me.”

  “She sure ’nough did.”

  “Where’s my geography book?”

  “Somebody tie Allard’s shoes, fore he trips over himself.”

  “I’ma tell Daddy.” The refrain arose from everyone’s lips.

  No one could find Allard to tie his shoes. Meanwhile Greer had strapped his conga drum round his shoulder. It was the one he’d brought from Cuba where Sharon was conceived under a sky of shooting stars, or so the story went. As if he were a southern Mongo Santamaria, Greer mamboed up the back stairs, through the halls, and down the front steps, gathering the mass of family he called his own, chanting all the while.

  “The Negro race is a mighty one

  The work of the Negro is never done

  Muscle, brains, and courage galore

  Negroes in this house

  Meet me at the back door

  Oh! the Negro race is a mighty one

  Each and every one of you is an example of one

  Oh! the Negro race is a mighty one

  We goin to show the world

  What can be done

  Cause the Negro race is a mighty one.”

  Jane was not crazy about her children screaming at each other or about her husband’s idea of reveille. Cuba, yes. St. Louis, no. St. Louis was still an old-fashioned place. With “Yes, M’ams” and “No, Sirs” grating Jane’s ears every time she heard one of her children say sucha thing, but Greer swore it wouldn’t hurt them and Greer knew a lot about the worlds Jane had never considered. Matisse, Gauguin, Pippin, Bearden, and Modigliani. Whenever Dizzy Gillespie came to town, there they were, justa waiting. If Chuck Berry was in a scrap with the law, there they were. Greer operating and Jane taking pictures. Sometimes she couldn’t believe what she did for this man. Love and buckshot, music and street diagnoses, late-night feuds bout the future of the Negro race, whether DuBois or Walter White hadda place and where. That time DuBois had carried Betsey to bed was history. Everybody knew what a crotchety ol’ figure of a man he was, but couldn’t nobody but W.E.B. himself get that child to sleep. Was like the night Betsey’d hid in the back seat of the car to see Tina Turner, as if nobody would want to collect a ticket from her or see some I.D. from an eleven-year-old at the bawdiest night spot on the wrong side of the tracks. Saying “I wanna be an Ikette” didn’t do it. Greer had to hightail it back to the house with his girl, trying to explain that Tina Turner didn’t accept applications from young women under the age of eighteen. From that second, Betsey decided she would do everything just like Tina Turner do. Greer knew that and that worried him, and then again, he was assured Betsey’d be good at whatever she put her mind on.

  Why couldn’t Greer see what kind of an influence he was having on the children, Jane worried. Her sister would never have let Charlie stay with them if she’d known all this was going on.

  Betsey’d run off behind her father to get ready for the morning quiz. Up and down and round about the house they went with Greer chanting, the children dancing.

  They all marched into the kitchen where Grandma sat in a corner by the window that opened on an oak tree frequented by bluejays she fed whenever something was simply beyond her. She hummed, “I been ’buked, & I been scorned.” Her daughter had married a mad man, bringing all this Africa mess into her house. Low-down music and prize-fighters at his heels soon as he stepped through the door. Nothing but the lowest of the low appealed to him, cept for her daughter, Jane. How could this be going on in her family? What would her father have thought in his starched trolley-driving uniform? What would her poor early-passt-on mother have made of a household run in such a brazen manner?

  Greer paraded the children in file past Grandma to get their lunches and the 35¢ he left in stacks for each of them. Then he began.

  “Betsey, what’s the most standard of blues forms?”

  “Twelve-bar blues, Daddy.”

  “Charlie, who invented the banjo?”

  “Africans who called it a banjar, Uncle Greer.”

  “Sharon, what is the name of the President of Ghana?”

  “Um . . . Nkrumah, I think.”

  “Thinking’s not good enough, a Negro has got to know. Besides, it’s Kwame Nkrumah. Margot, where is Trinidad?”

  “Off the coast of Venezuela, but it’s English-speaking.”

  “Allard.”

  Everybody turned around, realizing that Allard was nowhere to be seen. Grandma tutted to herself in the corner. At least one of the chirren wasn’t taken in by this mess. Yet if Allard was missing, he was up to something terrible. That boy just loved fires.

  “Allard!” Greer shouted out to the back porch, “Allard, come in this minute and put those matches down.”

  Allard let loose of the rags he’d been piling up and ran back to the house just before his father’s hand would have laid a whap, lickety-split.

  “Allard, you and I are going to have a talk this evening, but right now I want to know what discipline is?”

  Discipline? All the children looked at each other askance. Daddy never asked questions like that. He asked fun questions about the Negroes, or music, or foreign places where colored people ran countries all their own and on their own. “What is discipline?” Now, that wasn’t Daddy’s kinda question at all.

  Allard looked up ingenuously at his father with his shoes still untied, making little lakes around his legs, and answered: “Discipline is the hallmark of a mighty people.” Then he sat down to try to tie his shoes again.

  When Jane entered the kitchen, the line of children melted into hugs and kisses good-bye to Grandma and thanks to Daddy for the extra nickel for correctly answered questions at morning drill. No one bothered to figure where Allard got his answer from, but it must have been right cause Greer gave him five copper pennies. Jane had found time to do
her nails, her hair and face, so she looked more like she was going shopping at Saks than to the segregated colored hospital to work with the crazy ones, the mad niggahs couldn’t nobody else talk to. Betsey’s word had been “psychopath” one time and she answered, “Mama’s patients, niggahs what aint got no sense,” for which she’d been sent to her room. Jane was furious. Of all of her children, Betsey should have understood it wasn’t that folks didn’t have any sense, it was that they were in pain and had so little, so very little to look forward to. Jane loved to miss the morning drill, and show up just in time for a grin from each urchin, a tidying of heads and belts, a moment to take pride in her womb’s work. Every time she turned around she was poking out again. Jane loved being pregnant and she loved her children. She loved Greer, motioning for her to get a move on.

  “Betsey, good luck today. Allard and Charlie, don’t play too rough. Sharon, I bet you get at least a ninety on your geography test. Margot, those are lovely ponytails you’ve made for yourself. Mama, see you later. Enjoy the TV and let me know what is going on on ‘Edge of Night,’ you hear.”

  Greer chimed in, “That’s right, Mama, take it easy and I’ll bring you something nice. You mustn’t strain yourself on accounta your heart. Take a stroll before the heat’s too much. I’m gonna bring you something nice.”

  Jane and Greer sauntered to the car like young lovers. The children raced out the screen door, slammin it each time. “See ya, Grandma,” “Bye-bye,” “Back after basketball,” “Love you, Grandma.”

  Only Betsey lingered on the porch next to the forsythia and azalea that Grandma loved so much. “Speak up, Ike, an’ ’spress yo’se’f.” The gentle old lady moved from her bluejays and robins toward her sweet child saying, “It’s a matter of faith, Betsey, alla matter of faith.” Betsey looked up at her grandma and took a deep breath, those southern eyes were sure of her. Her grandma’s silken hands twisted her bangs a bit to the left.

  “Betsey, if your grandpa could see you today I swear he’d be so proud. One of his own reciting from the great Mr. Dunbar. Yes, my Frank would certainly have loved to hear your very own rendition in that dialect of our times. I wisht you coulda seen him. I’ma pray for you, ya hear.”

  With that, Grandma grabbed up her apron and sat upon the porch glider to let the morning sun in her soul as she watched Betsey meander down the driveway with a sullen grace and a child’s pace. Then Betsey stood absolutely still, shouting at the top of her lungs, “SPEAK UP, IKE, I’S MIGHTY GLAD TO SEE YOU,” and off she ran.

  From the back porch Grandma could see only the carefully tended beds of tulips and the lengths of coral roses that Mr. Jeff looked after for the family. The small play yard that this ragamuffin loafer had erected for the children when they were little was now the gathering place for Betsey’s imaginary friends, her digs to China, and the ripest honeysuckle vines to be found north of Charleston, or so it seemed to Vida. The quiet of the breeze and the smells of roses, honey, and her fresh cornbread eased her soul. Whenever she thought on Jane and that Greer her heart would getta fluttering and she’d verge on shortness of breath. Caint live nobody’s life for em, but sometimes Vida wisht to the Heavens she could get inside her daughter’s skin and find out how she got in this predicament. The stories were gonna come on and she was gonna remember to tell Jane bout “Edge of Life,” or was it “Edge of Night”? Her memory wasn’t what it usedta be, couldn’t even crochet anymore cause she’d forget what she was making and for who. But it didn’t cause anybody any fretting, Grandma was the gem of the household, fulla more stories than a bunch of Will Rogers could ever have told.

  Mostly she talked on Frank, her long-passt-on husband, the Valentino of Allendale and the hills there’bout. He was sucha gentle man and couldn’t nobody tell he was a Negro, not even when he opened his mouth. Fine diction, mighty fine articulation, Vida’d recall. His dark hair hangin like a drop of black honey cross his eye; that part as straight as a Cherokee’s aim. Yes, her Frank was a truly fine man. Not on the order of the modern men of color she’d come across in her daughter’s life. No, there was a gentleness bout Frank that they’d lost. Maybe it was the war. No, it couldn’t be, Frank had served in ’17 in Germany.

  “Take it easy and I’ll bring you something nice,” that’s what that Greer had said, as if presents could make up for how black and kinky-headed he was. Oh now, she mustn’t think like that. After all he’d done for Jane. What all he’d done to Jane. That was the plus and minus of it. He took Jane outta the Bronx and to this fine old house in St. Louis, but he’d filled her svelte body with more chirren than a she-heifer in heat should ever know. He kept her in nice clothes, took her to Paris and Savannah, no, Havana, that was it. Havana. And he was a hard-working soul, the Lord could attest to that. Why, he worked day and night just to keep all those chirren looking right, and Jane in those hats she loved so much, with veils and feathers and sequins.

  Vida turned to go indoors, but the breeze tickled her ankles a wee bit, reminding her: once she was courted and treated real sweet. Once she was courted and swept off her feet in a dingy ol’ roadhouse out on the islands where her folks woulda died had they known she was parading in hose and satin where throats got cut and women were easily had. Yes, Greer would bring her something nice and she could fan herself on the front porch recollecting the magnolia and the spanish moss where Frank would hide her in the night for one small kiss. In those times a kiss was very personal. Very committin, like a ring, or a first waltz.

  Vida lilted through the house to the front porch like she was waltzing in Frank’s very arms, and saw Betsey running down the street to the school. Was good the school was right cross the street, that way Vida could keep her eyes on every one of her younguns.

  The Judge was backing out his driveway, the chauffeur was opening the door for the museum man to go see over all them crypts from Egypt and the busts from Greece, the rich lady was taking her rich white little girl to the rich little school for the likes of tow-headed smart-alecks. Betsey’d picked up more than a few bad ways from that gal. Betsey didn’t know yet that white folks could get away with things a Negro’d be killed for. That’s what was wrong with this integration talk, it made the children believe in things that just weren’t possible. It was best to be the best in the colored world, and leave the white folks to their wanton ways.

  Vida hummed to herself, “Lord, I wanna be a Christian in my soul,” and sat rocking on the pillared front porch. Miss Pittypat couldn’t of done better. Jane had never had to say “I’ll never be hungry again,” cause Vida’d seen to it that every one of her chirren ate. Every single one of em. All seven. Huhuh-uhmm, maybe wasn’t Jane’s fault she was so fulla blossom chirren, maybe she took after her mother. Still, that first picture she saw of Greer was most like a monkey-man she’d ever seen. Greer, jet black in his little monkey hat, talking bout bebop or bopbe, some music that a man he callt Bird jingled outta a saxophone. A monkey man in a monkey hat done run off with her daughter and that was that. Four chirren and God only knew how many more. Please, Lord, no more. Thy Bounty Is Mightily Received. Vida swayed in the wicker chair like the lily of a woman she was, amber-ivory skinned, elegance in the morning.

  The street grew still, cept for the slurring oaks and jays in the winds. Everybody who had somewhere to go had gone. Brick houses, ranging from sun-yellow to night maroon, etched the walks and the maids swept the stairs as if dirt were a sin. Soon the housewives would saunter back and forth cross fences, sharing gossip and recipes or the plain old doldrums of living in the roses as they did. Haitians, East Indians, Ricans, and prizefighters’ wives went on bout their business: being beautiful and fertile. Weren’t many places the likes of them could live in St. Louis and know the nooks and covies of fifteen- and twenty-room houses. Weren’t many places the likes of them could be themselves and raise their children to own the world, which was the plan never spoken.

  2

  St. Louis considered itself the only civilized city on the Mississippi, after Ne
w Orleans, of course. Every boulevard bespoke grandeur and Europe, for even the colored avenues weren’t without some token frenchified accent. The Civil War accounted for most of the monuments in and about the colored section, and the buildings were graced in marble and granite, as if the nappy or straightened heads and many-hued skins simply had no implications. Betsey’s school was sucha place. A great red brick edifice covering more than a block, taking in the colored children from behind the library, cross the trolley tracks, behind the rich girls’ school, and back across to the colored teachers’ college. All these rushing, giggling brown babies loaded with books and language all their own converged upon Clark Street each morning: one mass of curls and prepubescent excitement.

  Betsey was hurrying up the stairs where Twanda was directing up & down traffic, putting the third-graders in their places and looking like Ma Rainey in a fluorescent yellow tent. Twanda’s mama did hair the old-fashioned way and wouldn’t allow her to comb out the bumper curls till the end of the week. But Twanda was so big, a real big gal, nobody said a word bout how howling funny she be looking. A big black roll of a girl covered up in them big roller curls. Liliana and Mavis twitched in they tight skirts with them slits up the back a little higher than was the usual style: so fast in the seventh grade.

  “Charlie gon’ give she some, come t’morrow. Betcha money on it. He gointa the high school. Now, how he be in the high school an’ he aint gon’ give she some?”

  But what’s he gonna give her? Liliana and Mavis were right in front of Betsey, talking the talk she couldn’t make sense of. All Betsey knew was that she was going to give this poem for her very life and win that prize. Huhmph, what was the prize? Betsey wisht it was a trip to Paris, but she knew better. Maybe the prize was a brand-new book, Countee Cullen, or a Paul Robeson record. Wow! Stop thinkin’ on the prize. Think on the poem.

  “I’ma tell ya one mo’ time. If she aint give it up yet, she a fool. Who you think don’t want Eugene Boyd?”