Betsey Brown

by Ntozake Shange

  Where Regina came from the curtains in the windows hung limp from heat and lack of care, and it wasn’t unheard of for youngsters to rear children of their own. The Johnsons lived over by St. Mary’s Hospital, that’s how Greer had met them, clinic patients. Every one of the Johnsons had something wrong with them. Something that came from too little of everything. Not enough food, not enough exercise, not enough light, not enough love. Got to the point that old man Johnson most gave up, that’s why Greer invested so much time and energy with them. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing another colored family to the pressure, not just high blood pressure but the pressure of little rooms smelling of too many people and little wants feeding big hungers for light and air. Stairs had to smell of more than oldness and urine. There was a way to raise a girl to be a lady who was not a lady of the night. Greer’d made the Johnsons his special project, despite Vida’s complaints that Regina was bringing what she came from to where it didn’t belong, the ears and imaginations of her grandchildren. Even Charlie, who should have known better, was walking like he belonged to one of those bunches of bad boys, wielding knives and pipes in the alleys that made the not so grand thoroughfares of St. Louis a world unto themselves.

  Regina’s longtime boyfriend Roscoe was studying to be a mechanic. He was going to have his own gas station one day. He’d told Regina so. He’d told all the children. Charlie couldn’t stand him, his presence, or his plans for Regina.

  “Yeah, I’ma get Regina a fine house and I’ma take her to New York City one day,” Roscoe boasted. He was a chunky, good-natured, muscular guy with a short neck and a straight back. His hands were rough, but he whittled the grease out of his nails each evening. He thought on the colors of his gas station, Regina opening the door for him each day with an apron on, a kiss and hug good-bye. Sometimes Roscoe would get a little edgy, wondering if he could manage to support a wife and get a business started at the same time. Sometimes he thought he wanted to see the world before it all got away from him, but in high school he’d promised Regina his heart and a way out of her grandfather’s house.

  When Vida napped and the children were off at play or at school, all that autumn Roscoe whistled up to Regina’s room. She’d come on down and hot kisses in each other’s arms and rolls and grabs wheeled them bout the yard. Regina enjoyed Roscoe’s visits. She imagined she was Jane and her husband was home for some loving. Regina took no mind of her body when she was with him. Her woman gave into his man and there was a hush, subduing her throbs and moans in the midst of a sepia rush that was Roscoe. Mrs. Brown had told her specifically, “No callers,” but Roscoe wasn’t a caller. He was the world, her future.

  “I’ma wear your kisses round my neck. I’ma feel your hands up and down my spine. They gonna say ‘there’s Roscoe’s gal’ and they won’t be lying. I’ma swing my hips with this gold round my ankles. They gonna say ‘ever since that Roscoe got holdt to that gal aint no man could handle her sweet sweet meat.’ ”

  Roscoe and Regina hadn’t spied Betsey and the girls peering through the bushes.

  “Are you gonna kiss her now, Roscoe?” Betsey pleaded.

  “Betsey, this aint none of your business!”

  Regina tried to get herself back in some order, but it was no use. They’d seen too much already.

  “I could kiss her now. Couldn’t I, Regina?”

  Roscoe lifted Regina off the grass and into the air, sliding her down his body like a man who didn’t give a damn what the world thought.

  “Betsey, you know your mama won’t approve.”

  “Please, Gina, a real kiss. I just love kisses.”

  Charlie shouted from the back porch, “He don’t have no business round here. Regina don’t need to be kissing nobody.”

  Regina turned round, waved Charlie off her mind. “Charlie, you mind your business and I’ll tend to mine.”

  The girls egged Regina and Roscoe on, as they came up onto the porch.

  “Please, a kiss. A real kiss.”

  “I’ll give you a kiss, Betsey,” Charlie offered sarcastically.

  “Charlie, go on away, will you? Don’t nobody want no kisses from you.”

  That was exactly what Charlie was thinking. It made him mad. He’d fix em. He’d fix all of em.

  Margot and Sharon took up for Betsey, who was thinking on Eugene, of course.

  “You her cousin, simple.”

  “She wouldn’t want no kiss from you.”

  Betsey tried to explain it wasn’t that she wanted a kiss. She did want a kiss, but not that kind of kiss. Roscoe and Regina had graduated kissing to an art. Betsey knew beginning kisses, but she wanted big ones, like when you fall in love. Roscoe and Regina were in love. Love kisses were the best kind. There was no denying that a kiss from someone you loved was different from any other kind of kiss and should be studied up on and looked at carefully, so you could recognize it when love came down on you. That’s what love did. It came down on you like rain or sunshine. All of a sudden there’d be this sensation in all the muscles and a dizziness in your head and a reaching out for someone and love’d be all on you. That’s the kind of kiss Betsey wanted to see. True romance.

  “I wanna see a kiss like when you fall in love.”

  “You aint never been in love,” Charlie retorted.

  “Of course not, I’m getting ready though,” Betsey flew right back at him. She was determined now to get this kissing lesson.

  “Mama and Daddy don’t do that.” Allard scrunched up his face.

  “Where you think they got you at,” Sharon replied.

  “We don’t come from no tongue kissing,” Allard insisted.

  “Y’all don’t understand what you been missing,” Betsey exclaimed. “Look at that. How can they breathe? How can they? Oh, when will I fall in love?”

  “I wanna be carried off my feet.” Margot pranced.

  “I wanta be fainting in the street.” Sharon lay on her side looking at the sky.

  “I want him chasing me every heartbeat.” Margot couldn’t stop leaping in the air.

  “I bet they get germs,” Allard added.

  “No, Allard, people in love don’t get germs,” Betsey assured him.

  “No. One of these days some boy from somewhere . . .”

  “Hey, how bout right over here.” Eugene walked up to the porch, his eyes seeing no one but Betsey.

  “Well, maybe someday some boy from somewhere’ll come over to share all my grown-up ways, cause I’ma be a woman someday.”

  Just as Eugene was about to let Betsey have her wish, Charlie came out from the kitchen with Vida by his side. Regina didn’t have a minute to let go of Roscoe before Vida began her harangue.

  “You know, I can’t seem to find my fan. It’s so hot around here these days, it’s a wonder a body could stand to wear clothes, much less be all on top of another body in all this heat.”

  Regina pulled away from Roscoe and tried to stand up tall so all the wrinkles in her blouse might straighten out and the passion in her cheeks somehow simmer down. Yet Vida went on in a circle around them, looking so close at the damp and rumpled couple.

  “Don’t you think it’s much too terribly warm, Regina, to be receiving company? The chirren are beside themselves in all this heat. My, my, here’s my fan in my pocket. And who might be this young man? On his way back to work somewhere, no doubt.”

  “Mrs. Murray, this is Roscoe, my beau.”

  “You don’t say, Regina. Allard seems a mite untidy and the girls could use some talcum quite nicely. If you don’t mind, I’ll see your visitor to the door. Then you and I will talk.”

  Roscoe stepped up to Vida. “I didn’t mean no harm, M’am. It’s just that she’s my gal and I missed her so . . .”

  “Regina is off on Sunday, young man, not Tuesday, not Wednesday or Thursday or Friday.” Vida ended that.

  Roscoe defended himself anyhow. “My intentions are honorable, M’am.”

  “No need to impress me, young man. I’ve got no high-school
drop-out to fend for. I’d hoped Regina would elevate or gravitate to her potential, but it seems her bodily needs are more the essence of her background.”

  “This young man is worth more than you know, Mrs. Murray.” Regina intercepted what looked like an ugly fight. “I’ve got plans of my own with this one. I’ma make me a home with younguns of my own who’ll beat the living shit out of the likes of you and your kind.”

  “That’s quite enough, Regina.”

  “Oh no, that aint enough! You all in a tizzy cause the chirren asked us what love is. I can’t work in no house where you got to run round like a mouse cause you in love. I’ll be leaving this afternoon.”

  “That won’t be soon enough to suit me, my dear.” And Vida marched back off into the house.

  Roscoe took Regina’s face up in his hands. “When there’s enough, we won’t have to take low to her kind. When there’s enough, nobody’ll look down on me and mine.” And he rocked her till the salty brine of Vida’s words fell away.

  Eugene and Betsey were by each other’s side. Eugene took Betsey’s hand. “When there’s enough, you go where you have to go and give what you got. When you’re really in love, there’s never enough to go round.”

  Betsey was afraid. Being in love brought the wrath of her grandma on Regina’s head. Lord knows what would happen to her if she were to fall in love, too. Eugene wouldn’t let her go, though. He kept whispering, “When you’re really in love, there’s never enough to go round.” Betsey’s heart began to beat less from fear than from anticipation. Eugene and Betsey were at a new stage. Betsey was over her head. Eugene, clicking his heels.

  Regina kissed each of the children and hugged them all together, like a litter of kittens. Roscoe took her off and all Betsey could think to say was: “Look, they’re in love.” Looking at Eugene she wondered did they look like that, too, but there wasn’t much time to ponder. Vida’s voice pierced their ears: “Betsey Brown, you bring yourself and all the rest of those chirren in here right this minute. You hear me?”

  Betsey was afraid again and let go of Eugene’s hands.

  “Come on y’all, we’re in for it now. It’s all Charlie’s fault. Getting Grandma, when he knew we were having a kissing lesson.”

  Charlie was beginning to get on Betsey’s nerves, especially when she saw that Vida’d made him a glass of iced tea, when he was the one she swore was no good northern trash.

  “I want all of you to sit at this table and listen to every word I have to say. Y’all were mighty impressed with some low-down niggah mess.”

  Betsey kicked Charlie’s leg under the table. “Why’d you do it, Charlie? You knew what would happen.”

  “She wasn’t ’sposed to be keeping company on Aunt Jane’s time. Sides that, she was a little tramp.”

  “You hush your mouth, Charles, I’m talking now. Get that gal off your minds. This is the last time for such carrying on. Lord, I need my fan to soothe my soul. My children been exposed to Satanic ways. Lord, protect these girls. Keep those panties up and them legs closed. Lord, Lord, keep those fresh boys out these fresh girls’ pants. Betsey, you mind that Boyd boy, ya hear. Oh, Jesus, you know I need my fan.”

  “Grandma, Regina’s in love. That’s all.”

  “Elizabeth Brown, taking up with trash is gointa be your undoing. Now go study your lessons like you had some sense.”

  “That’s right, Elizabeth, go study your lessons and stay way from trash, ya hear,” Charlie echoed, so satisfied.

  Betsey walked away from the table, hating Charlie for making Regina little in everybody’s mind, when each of them knew he was the one had a thing for her. Betsey kept hearing Eugene say, “When you’re really in love, there’s never enough.” Maybe that was why her mother and father went off so much. There were only two of them and five of the children plus Grandma, that made six. So their love got all divided up into little pieces among the whole family. But Betsey knew her mama and papa were really in love cause they’d said so, and though they’d never kissed like Roscoe and Regina they kissed in some kinda way. Betsey could tell by her mama’s eyes and her papa’s easy grin. What she didn’t know and wanted very much to understand was why if you’re really in love there’s never enough. It seemed to her if you were really in love there would be more than you needed.

  Jane couldn’t believe her ears. Regina gone at a time like this. Not now, when the white folks were going to follow the law instead of taking the laws. Not now, Regina couldn’t be gone. But she was. So much the better, Vida thought. Teaching those chirren all that nasty business. Best be rid of dirt fore it gets under your nails, was her way of thinking. But now, with the buses and the new schools, God only knew what miseries her children would have to endure with all those peckerwoods out there. Jane was disheartened. She felt a collapsing of her spirit akin to despair. She had no idea where half these places the children were going to go to school were, much less how to get them there. Would there be ugly crowds of thin-lipped rednecks throwing tomatoes and bottles at her children? Would she have to go up to the school every day on account of some poor racist child who didn’t know niggah is not the same as Negro? What was going to happen to her children now the white folks put their minds on integrating some things. Jane didn’t miss white folks, she didn’t like white folks, she tried not to think about them. She kept her world as colored as she could. There was enough of it. From Langston Hughes to Sojourner Truth, her children’s worlds were hardly deprived.

  What on earth was she to do? She could refuse to let her children be bused. She could put them in the Catholic school. If she got mad enough she could keep them home and teach them herself, but then how could they pay the mortgage? Jane’s head was buzzing frantically, when Greer brought her a deck of cards and a highball.

  “They’re going.”

  “Greer, how can you say that? They’re babies. Who knows what those crackers’ll do to them. I just don’t know.”

  “They’re paving the way for those yet to come, Jane. There’s thousands of lives that depend on our children having the courage to go somewhere they’ve never been accepted, or wanted, when they have a right to go and a right to the best education our taxes pay for.”

  Jane took the deck of cards and mechanically dealt herself a hand of bridge. She played every hand. Greer listened to Miles Davis and Art Blakey, while his wife, who’d been round white folks all her life, decided her children’s futures.

  Hesitantly, but ever so seriously, Jane spoke.

  “All right. They can go, but at the first sign of trouble of any kind, they go to the Catholic school . . . is that understood?”

  Greer nodded yes, and the two of them were quiet together, praying no one of theirs would be hurt or pierced to the quick by some flying words outta peckerwood mouths. Jane and Greer knew about these things. They’d been chastened since birth by the scorn and violence the race had known. They’d been brought up on lynchings and riots, name-calling and “No Colored Allowed.” The neighborhood had saved them, they thought. With the Negro-owned businesses, the hairdressers and laundry, the schoolteachers and the shadows of the great trees, the neighborhood had sheltered them from what they knew was on the outside: the white people.

  All the usual commotion of an ordinary evening in the Brown house was stilled. Even Charlie wasn’t bad-mouthing the girls or telling tales of his exploits. Margot and Sharon weren’t playing make-believe. Betsey wasn’t reading about anything. The children knew the morning brought a new way of living, another realm into their lives, one they’d been taught was dangerous and hostile. The white people. A classroom full of white people. No Twandas, Veejays, and Charlotte Anns. No Willettas and the rivalries tween Sumner and Soldan. Nothing familiar. Maybe not even any dill pickles wrapped in brown paper or candies like Mr. Robinson’s. What could you talk about with them? What would they want to talk about? What they knew awready was shouts, bottles, and catsup. This no one mentioned out loud. Only Allard crawled on his bed crying: “I don’t want to go. I d
on’t want to go off with no white folks. They gonna kill me. Mama, they gonna kill me.”

  Jane reassured her babies as best she could. Greer let everyone play the conga drums, but they all knew their lives would never be the same. Betsey couldn’t understand why they weren’t good enough already. Why did she have to take three different buses to learn the same things with white children that she’d been learning with colored children? How was she going to keep her friends if she never saw them? Why didn’t the white children come to her school? Let them get up at dawn and take a trillion different trolleys. Why did the Negroes have to do everything the hard way? Why weren’t they good enough already?

  Jane prayed through her sleep. Greer did his best to quiet her fears, the anxious look in her eyes, how her limbs crouched beneath his, taut, ready to run.

  Betsey slipped from her bed to her window. Through her tree she could see the stars and clouds that were so lithe the moon shone through them. She wondered if the white children saw things like that. Did they search the skies at night for beauty and answers to wishes? The darkness was a comfort to her. The window slid open without so much as a creak. Betsey went over to the tree limb that was toughest, the one that could hold all her weight, grabbed hold and pulled herself up. This was one night she would see all the stars and the moon as the sun rose, when there was that peculiar mingling of past and tomorrows, when the sun glanced cross the sky to the moon hoverin over the telephone wires, and everyone else was ignorant of the powers of light and the dark.