Betsey Brown

by Ntozake Shange

  Betsey dropped her books at the mention of Eugene Boyd’s name. Liliana turned round like someone who had been purposefully provoked:

  “Girl, what’sa matter with you? Get holdt to them books and act grown. Don’t you let them books get no run in my stockings, ya hear me?”

  Betsey was shivering, she was blushing, she was all thumbs; the books wouldn’t get back in her arms. “Speak up Ike, an’ ’spress yo’se’f” and Eugene Boyd danced up and down the stairs, but it was Twanda waving her huge arms over Betsey’s head, screaming at her.

  “Get a move on, rhiney heifer! Whatchu think this is, yo’ desk? I got traffic to move heah!”

  Betsey thought she was gonna cry or faint. She wanted Liliana and Mavis to like her, but here she’d made them mad. Now Twanda was shouting so the whole school could hear. “Rhiney heifer,” that’s all she needed, a new nickname. How could a rhiney heifer invite Ike or anybody else to speak on anything, much less to come on round, please?

  Liliana and Mavis were long gone by the time Betsey gathered her thoughts, her books, her crush on the basketball player, Eugene Boyd. He was like another poem to her. She didn’t know him but she “read” him the way you read poems. She watched his every move; the way his blue-gray eyes took in the ankles of all the girls. She knew he liked ankles. She tried to imagine inviting Eugene Boyd to come on in, but she got so excited she whispered out loud: “I’d better stick with Ike.”

  Not only were the floors of the Clark School shining like the halls of Tara, but Betsey’s brow was weeping with sweat, as were her panties and underarms. She imagined she shone like an out-of-place star in midday. She felt hot. And there was Mr. Wichiten with the razor strap at the head of the hallway, justa swinging and smiling.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth,” Mr. Wichiten murmured, justa swinging and smiling. Betsey knew she’d get a licking with that ol’ razor strap with the holes in it if Mr. Wichiten had any idea what was on her mind. Eugene Boyd and Ike, the prize, what “she” gon’ give up, who was “she” anyway? Oh, Mrs. Mitchell was not goin to be in a good mood today. She’d never win the prize. There’d be no trip to Paris, no Paul Robeson, and Eugene Boyd would never lay no serious eyes on nobody called “rhiney heifer.”

  Soon as she’d passt Mr. Wichiten—Praise Be to the Lord—dumb Butchy Jones came rubbing himself up behind her. Betsey dropped her books again, but this time she screamed: “You nasty lil niggah, keep yo’ hands off me.” And here came Mr. Wichiten, strap justa swinging, Mr. Wichiten justa smiling.

  “What’s the problem, Elizabeth? You never use language like that.”

  By this time Butchy was nowhere to be seen and Betsey’s books were strewn all over the floor as if she’d lost something on the order of her mind.

  “Mr. Wichiten, Sir.” It was very important to say “Sir” to the likes of Mr. Wichiten, who had not quite gotten used to the fact that his marvelous principalship was over a horde of colored, and only so many white children as you could count on your fingers.

  “Mr. Wichiten, Sir, Butchy did, uh . . . I can’t explain what he did exactly, Sir, but it wasn’t nice and I got scared. I said bad words to make him go away cause that’s all he could understand, Sir.”

  Mr. Wichiten looked about slowly for the shadow of a creature Elizabeth Brown was calling Butchy and saw nothin. He knew she was probably telling the truth, but with Negro children, no matter what ilk, there’s always that shady side.

  That strap justa swinging in his hand, Mr. Wichiten stared at Betsey till tears liked ta fall. “I don’t care what happens to you in these halls, you come to me before you let the words I heard come from your mouth. Is that understood?”

  Betsey nodded yes, picking up her books. Now, she was going to be late for Mrs. Mitchell. Whoever heard of telling a white man anything first? Jesus! Betsey ran, which was also against the rules, to her class. She had to get to “Ike.”

  Mrs. Mitchell was not happy even before Betsey entered the room in her sweat and anger at Butchy and Mr. Wichiten. Plus, Liliana didn’t say who Eugene was messin with. There were so many things going on. Liliana sat with her legs wide open so Willie Ashington could look up her panties. Mavis was writing love notes to Seymour, who was staring at her breasts, which weren’t quite breasts, but pecans. Mrs. Mitchell’s hands were already full when Betsey came in, dripping wet and late.

  “Well, I see you’ve decided to come to class after all.”

  “Yes, M’am.”

  “Is it raining outside?”

  “No, M’am.”

  The whole class tittered, watching Betsey answer up to Mrs. Mitchell, who was a smallish woman with a hump in her back. Must have come from carrying too many books. Anyway, Mrs. Mitchell was mighty little and had taught at the Clark School since Adam, or that’s how folks put it.

  But Mrs. Mitchell had watched the children come and go from her classes, 7A and 7B, with delight and dismay. There were years she’d had genius and years she’d been burdened with slow learners, or no learners at all, like Liliana and Mavis and that terrible Butchy, as he called himself. She hadn’t reacted like some of the rest when the school turned over from white to black. No, Mrs. Mitchell liked children; she liked young minds. Today, she’d have her regular Elocution Contest, just as she’d had in the past when the girls warbled Byron or Shakespeare and the boys Twain and Stevenson. Today she’d hear something different. Today her students were different. Some of them had been in St. Louis only a day, others a year, few more than a generation. She changed as they changed, and Dunbar, Hughes, and Fawcett were the champions of her new charges. Still, there was this matter of Elizabeth Brown, all wet and late.

  “Go to the corner, dear, and calm yourself. I have some talcum in my drawer you may use.”

  Betsey slid to the back of the room where the encyclopedias were lined up and the complete works of all the white people right underneath. Norman Little whispered to Charlotte Ann that Mrs. Mitchell needed to put some of that talcum on her twat. Mrs. Mitchell heard that and slapped his knuckles good with a long, long ruler she never let go of. She pointed with it, spanked with it, cuddled, cudgeled and directed with it.

  To Mrs. Mitchell’s surprise her Negro students dug up Whittier and Dickinson, Robinson and Kipling, just as her taffetaed debutantes had thirty years before. Only those two ruffians, Liliana and Mavis, in unison had disrupted the elegance of the program talking about:

  He was the boss

  Cause he had the sauce

  When he put it in

  A lil baby dropped in

  Mrs. Mitchell was not at all impressed, but Betsey felt something else rising up in her. Listening to Mavis and Liliana, she knew how to speak to Ike, how to get him to express hisself, even if she did have to wear socks instead of stockings. Least she was in the grade she was ’sposed to be, not like Liliana and Mavis, who’d moved far in other directions and were put back each semester. Liliana wore hints of forbidden make-up, while Mavis kept her slip peeking thru her blouse. In those days a silk or, more likely, a rayon scarf was a sign of grown-up-ness, if tied round the neck like a cowboy, though not suggesting anything cowboyish.

  Her companion of thirty-six inches nestled under her arm, Mrs. Mitchell asked, “Are you ready with your presentation, Miss Brown?”

  “Yes, M’am.”

  Betsey took her turn, having learned while watching Liliana and Mavis, who were swiftly slapped on their behinds with Mrs. Mitchell’s ruler, that “it” had something to do with Ike and Eugene Boyd. Betsey couldn’t see anything but Eugene Boyd’s eyes and those legs of his that flew in the air when the ball went through the basket. “Who dat knockin’ at de do’?” took on a more coquettish tease than Betsey’d ever revealed. Yes, there was sucha thing as a mighty love, but who would want a seventh-grader with rhiney skin and only five hairs on that special place where you get “it”? Whatever “it” was? “It” must be very good, the way Liliana talked.

  With her “Hmph!” Mrs. Mitchell gave Betsey the first prize, a bun
ch of red roses from her garden. The first place for a boy went to the one white boy in the class, Richard Singleton, whose burly rendition of “O Captain, My Captain” musta moved Mrs. Mitchell’s heart, cause Skeeter Woods and Earl McFee had done real fine on “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay. That probably didn’t move Mrs. Mitchell’s heart the right way, though. Betsey let her flowers sit on the piano during singing and math. At recess she pulled one out and pushed it into her hair. Maybe Eugene Boyd would see her and ask her where she got such a beautiful rose. What boy from round this way would think to give her one?

  After school Charlotte Ann, Veejay, and Betsey ran round to Mr. Robinson’s for an ice cream soda and to watch the boys from Soldan High School catch the trolley. Now these weren’t the stars of track, basketball, or football, but they were still boys. It could take forever to finish one of Mr. Robinson’s sodas, especially if one of the boys from Soldan came into the pharmacy for a leg brace or a notebook, or justa piece of candy. Sometimes Charlie would pass by and scream through the window where the chocolates were displayed, “Betsey is boy crazy.” Everybody would look around trying to see who she was, but Betsey would have hidden down under the counter by then. But today with her roses, Betsey sat regally, most arrogant, with the chocolate in her straw tickling her tongue. She smiled when Charlie tried to embarrass her. Thank God he didn’t know about Eugene Boyd.

  Up from Mr. Robinson’s is where Susan Linda lived. She was po’ white trash according to Vida, but Charlotte Ann with her braids wound round her head, Veejay with her hair long as a minute and red, and Betsey with this strange rose sticking through an almost ponytail sauntered on over to Susan Linda’s to play double-dutch and watch Susan Linda’s brothers work on their motorcycles. Tom and Billy Bob had tattoos all up and down their arms and grease under their nails, which was a sure sign of poor upbringing, but Susan Linda’s mother was never home and the girls could talk about things and look at each other without fear of being callt names or punished for being brazen. The issue this day was Susan Linda’s concerns about hair coming from underneath her arms that was a different color from the tawny blonde hair on her head and distinctly different from the auburn hair inching round her “honey pot” as she liked to call it. Tom and Billy Bob told her that was her honey pot. Betsey wondered if hers was a honey pot, or if that only applied to white girls.

  Susan Linda lived on Cabanne Street, which was round the corner from Betsey’s and down from the Catholic girls’ school. The houses lay back from the curb squished together, like so many windows and porches shouldn’t exist where folks passing by could see them. Tom and Billy Bob kept their machines all over the place, and beer cans dotted the side porch insteada begonias or carnations like where Betsey lived. Susan Linda’s mother worked in a restaurant, that’s why she wore white. Betsey knew that colored women wore white only if they were maids, hairdressers, or nonsurgical nurses. Susan Linda’s mother didn’t like the colored, so the three girls had to be gone before she got home from flipping flapjacks and hash browns at the twenty-four-hour breakfast place she worked, “For Whites Only.”

  But there was a serious problem Susan Linda had this day and she hustled Charlotte Ann, Veejay, and Betsey upstairs to her flat to examine it. One of her raspberry nipples was bigger than the other. Susan Linda pullt up her blouse and sure enough it was true. The left nipple was definitely bigger than the right. Betsey felt sorry for her. Charlotte Ann suggested rubbing roses and garlic on the littler one. Veejay blushed through her India-black cheeks. What was the point of looking on yourself so. It was a sin. She knew it was a sin. Susan Linda invited everyone to touch both nipples to see if they felt different, as well as looking strange. Betsey and Charlotte said they felt the same, but Veejay would have none of it.

  “Y’all calling on the wrath of God, feelin on each other like that. You better quit or somethin terrible gon’ happen. I know. I swear fo’ God, I know.”

  Veejay fled as if the Devil were on her tail when the girls started counting their pubic hairs. Susan Linda, who had most, rolled hers up in tiny pink spoolies with setting lotion, so they’d be pretty. Betsey knew she only had five, but she thought she saw another one trying to sprout up. A lil black dot that was gonna make her more of a honey pot. No, she thought, she liked the idea of a lily pot or a rose pot. Some kinda flower that smelled good. Charlotte Ann had ten hairs, but they were so spread apart and soft that Susan Linda couldn’t roll them. So she brushed them and oiled them real good with her mama’s cold cream. When they finished their anatomical explorations and beautification, Susan Linda put a dab of perfume on everybody and asked them to leave quickly cause her mother’d be walkin in the door any moment and weren’t no “niggahs” ’sposed to be in the house.

  Betsey knew there was something wrong with that. She and Charlotte Ann always let Susan Linda come over to their houses. Veejay scoffed at them. “Y’all so dumb. Don’t you know bout prejudice? It’s when white folks don’t like Negroes. Didn’t you hear that gal call us niggahs. Now, that there is a bad word. My mama tol’ me don’ ’ssociate wit nobody callin me no niggah, not even colored what does it.”

  Deep inside, Betsey knew that Veejay was right. They should “boycott” Susan Linda for a while. That’s what they were doing in Montgomery, boycotting the white folks till they came round. Papa read the news to her every night bout the Negroes and the whites and the boycotts and standing up for the race, but Susan Linda was so much fun and they were friends. It was too complicated. Betsey shook her head as if she were shaking off her color and all these problems not being white made. Why, there was the sky and clouds that bubbled up in huge towers above her head, and soil smelling of tomatoes or sage, the warmth of the sun on her arms, and here she had to worry bout white folks too? No, not today. Betsey waved bye to her compatriots and made off for her favorite secret place that no one knew was a secret place cause you could see it, if you looked, real easy.

  Nestled in her private cranny made by two wide boughs of the ancient tree at the corner of the house, Betsey laid her roses in a circle round her head, a halo of flowers befitting a princess, she thought. The huge oak sprawled over her front lawn, letting the shadows make lacework on the grass and the porch below. The uppermost branches stretched past her very own window, so Betsey knew this was her tree, where she could think all kinds of thoughts and feel all kinds of feelings. She thought on Little Rock and the true crackers down there in the South. Though Grandma said there was crackers every which way you turned. Mama said it was about time. Papa said it wasn’t time enough. Papa got real mad and stormed out the room every time the soldiers took those children to the school. He would be saying something on the order of, “Someday they’ll see what’s right. Someday they’ll get what’s coming to them.”

  The first time Betsey saw the soldiers and the mothers like Susan Linda’s mother screaming at nine little black children, she threw up all over the floor. Vida got in a tither bout how the colored should leave well enough alone. There wasn’t no point in bothering with trash no how. Besides, look at what it’d done to Betsey, upsetting her so, she couldn’t hold food down. Betsey thought on those thoughts and bout what she’d do if a crowd of crackers came cursing her and throwing eggs on her pressed clothes. She thought and tears came to her eyes. She’d be ’fraid is what, but Papa said a struggle makes you not afraid, yet Betsey’s tree and she weren’t assured of that.

  With the early evening breeze Grandma came out on the porch to rock and tend her flowers. Grown-ups started driving back up into their driveways and the children came from every direction to greet their parents who’d been off all day working somewhere they let colored work. Next door they was speaking French and down two houses they were Hindi, which was really romantic to Betsey. The nice thing bout segregation was the colored could be all together, where the air and the blossoms were their own, as clear as it was impossible for white folks to put a veil over the sun.

  Betsey always felt better when Papa came home. Then he’
d play Machito or Lee Morgan. Sometimes he’d put on the colored radio and listen to the blues or turn Bo Diddley way up high. Betsey loved Jackie Wilson. She couldn’t wait to see Jackie Wilson in person. She’d heard he took half his clothes off and threw them to the girls who loved him the most. After Jackie Wilson, Betsey wanted to see Ben E. King, so she could let him sing “Stand by Me” just to her. Then she wanted to see Smokey Robinson, but he was in Detroit.

  Betsey sat in her tree just thinking away when Jane and Greer pulled up. Home at last. But Greer just waved to the children who’d come running and left Jane by the front stairs with a mess of groceries. Greer honked the horn as he drove off. Betsey could hear Little Willie John blaring from the car radio. That must have been the reason Jane was shaking her head so. Jane could only take so much common Negro music. Just so much of it, and then she’d had enough.

  As she looked down the driveway, Jane put her hands on her hips underneath her suit jacket, closed her eyes, looked bout to cry. When Betsey’d looked around to the back of the house, she saw why her mother was in sucha state. Two big white police were walking Allard and Charlie up the back driveway. Trouble. Trouble. Vida could feel it and came hustling to the back, peering through the screen door.

  Jane believed she could feel her blood flowing. Police in the South meant lynchings and beatings and the deaths of Negroes, while white folks laughed. Fire-bombings and burning crosses. Police in the South meant danger to her. Now, her two boys, well, Charlie might as well be her boy, were being escorted up the driveway by two huge red-faced white policemen. In New York she would have called them cops, but here in St. Louis, she knew they were police, just like she knew to say “Sir.”

  Charlie and Allard, who’d been riding with him on his new three-speed bike, didn’t look Jane in the eye, and with good cause. Charlie’d decided to reel and free-hand himself and his little cousin all over the grounds of the Catholic girls’ school. Up and down the hills, round the Virgins, flesh and statue, through the rows of nuns on the way to chapel and up and down the stairs of the dormitories. Oh, Charlie’d had a grand time, and the priests had called the police cause not only was it trespassing, but colored weren’t allowed to do anything at that place, not even the cleaning. Irish ladies with rose-colored hair and graying faces did that. They were pleasant enough, but only if you minded to stay in your place.