Malcolm and Me

by Robin Farmer

  After a few minutes she returns with a small paper bag. Opening it, I squint at a padlock tiny enough for a jewelry box. I refuse to ask what it’s for. It doesn’t matter.

  Sister makes my spirit groan. Mom can’t hear it, but Daddy will.

  I sulk on my bedroom floor with Daddy’s Autobiography of Malcolm X on one side and the be-all and end-all of all phones on the other. It’s perfection in a bubble gum shade with a dial pad doubling as a nightlight. And here I sit, unable to rap with Bonnie, my bestie, about my life yo-yoing out of control.

  Sighing, I pick up Daddy’s book with a holy card of the Virgin Mary sticking out of it, my makeshift bookmark. Suspension means I’m free to read it all day tomorrow. How ironic that Malcolm X also had an encounter with his racist eighth-grade teacher. I recently read that he was the only Black student in his class back in the day when racist monsters roamed unchecked, before Black Power and all. No wonder he became so militant. His book is unlike anything I’ve read. His autobiography electrifies my mind and sets my soul on fire. And I’m just on the second chapter.

  I slide the book back under my bed and peek into the hall. Mom’s on the phone with the door shut. Closing mine, I use a pillow to muffle my dialing of a number I’ve called since age four.

  “At the tone, the time will be 3:15 and 20 seconds,” a voice says. My alarm clock is right. At the beep, I hang up. Never has a secret one-sided conversation pleased me more.

  A car door slamming draws me to the window with a grin. Daddy’s here, finally. Instead, a stranger inspects a tire on his station wagon parked in my father’s spot.

  Chest tightening, I grab my poetry book. Just the crinkly sound of turning pages to a blank one starts to relax me. Before I know it, working on a poem has me breathing easier. An hour later, I’ve found the right rhymes after counting meters on my fingers.

  If God is our father, aren't I his child?

  One to be embraced, not slapped and reviled

  I’m not a science experiment gone wrong

  with bushy hair you see as ugly and wild

  If you’re married to Jesus

  aren’t I your child?

  Sister, before answering, I must say

  there were awful lessons I learned today

  My soul is scraped like a bike without a kickstand

  after you tried to slap me into no-man’s land

  You just proved you’re a two-faced, religious crank

  who thinks answers to some questions are best

  left blank

  The last line fills me up. Writing is my superpower. Just like that, I no longer feel misunderstood or misheard. I’m shiny and sure—the confident and smart me.

  In front of my mirror, I pretend I’m reading in class. A portable 8-track tape player blasts an oldie: “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Sister’s eyes twitch as the class claps to the beat. I turn the music down and all motion stops. Shoulders back, head high, voice loud, I read, “If God is our father, isn’t hating and slapping—”

  The door opens, bumping my big behind back to reality. Mom barges in without knocking as usual, her lips heavy with fresh attitude.

  “I’m reading a poem,” I say, “not talking on the phone.”

  Ignoring me, she studies the finger wheel of the phone. Suddenly, she whips out that shrunken padlock and hooks it around the first finger hole of the dial pad, clicking it shut. I can’t make a call now, even if I were that sneaky. Shocked, I drop my poem.

  “Glad I didn’t get the new push button version,” Mom mumbles.

  “It’s my birthday! That’s so unfair!”

  She turns in the doorway. “You forget you came close to being expelled?”

  When her feet hit the squeaky floorboard at the bottom of the stairs, I run in the hall. I yell, “Swear to God, I can’t wait for Daddy to get home!” Then I kick my door shut.

  After that, I spill my sorrows to my well-worn diary until shortly before dinner.

  My homemade chocolate cake begs my fingers to dip into its gooey icing. But Mom, adding shrimp to a frying pan of popping Crisco, shoos me away. The phone rings.

  “Hello. This is Mrs. Forest.”

  I leave to set the dining room table. Charles is already waiting with a comic book. Minutes pass. Clearly, the caller is clueless it’s my birthday, as messed up as it is.

  I peep into the kitchen. Spatula mid-air, Mom stands rock still.

  “So awful. Please call when you know more.” Mom hangs up and casts a hard sideways glance at me.

  Gripping the messy spatula, Mom plops in her dining room seat. She fails to notice the grease dripping on our special occasion tablecloth. Charles gapes at Mom’s odd look.

  “It won’t stop.” Mom’s bottom lip quivers. She drops the spatula. “That was Rita McNabb. She heard Sister Elizabeth went to the hospital an hour ago. Sister Elizabeth,” Mom swallows hard, “had a massive heart attack. She may not make it.”

  Thou shall not kill.

  The Sixth Commandment pops in my head and turns my skin clammy.

  I whirl around. My world looks the same, only a bit hazy. My eyes sting at the sight of my second-place writing awards in Mom’s prized cherry curio in the living room.

  The distant wail of an ambulance twists my stomach.

  The thought of me as a possible felon makes it hard for us to breath. Charles can’t stop coughing. Smoke rushing from the kitchen knocks Mom out of her state of shock.

  Fanning the scorched air, she bolts into the kitchen before a grease fire makes my birthday a bona fide real-life horror movie.

  CHAPTER 3

  We race toward the kitchen windows, raising them as high as they can go. We wave dish towels to fan the smoke outside until Charles’s hacking coughs force Mom to shoo us away.

  In the dining room, I stare at a Creamsicle sky. The sun is running out of time. Am I?

  Behind me, plates clink against the table. I wait for Mom to get the cherry Kool-Aid I mixed earlier before sitting. Her anger I’m used to; her quiet terror, not so much.

  I sit across from Charles at the table now missing Mom’s plate. Wish I could skip dinner. Slumped over like thirsty plants, we pick at our food. So much for my last supper.

  Ignoring me, Mom sets the pitcher down. I feel lower than an earthworm.

  “I hope you’re not arrested,” Charles says after Mom leaves.

  “Don’t be silly,” I sniff, watching my arm hairs rise at the idea of leaving in handcuffs. The screen door opening startles me. I jump. Are the cops here already?

  The front door swings open. In walks Daddy. He’ll wrestle King Kong to keep me from being fingerprinted or thrown into a reform school with heathens.

  “What’s burning?” Nose scrunched, Daddy carries a gift-wrapped box roomy enough to hold a record player. He sets the box down and drops his keys on top. I sprint into his arms as Mom rushes over, newly energized like a toy with fresh batteries.

  “Happy birthday,” he says, kissing my cheek. I study his smooth chocolate face, dark happy eyes, and new mustache. Like me, his smile reveals a right dimple. Seeing him happy and handsome in his blue and gray SEPTA public transportation uniform makes it feel like my birthday.

  Mom zaps the magical moment. “Chuck, talk to her. Motor mouth almost got expelled for getting into it with a nun, who,” she rubs her forehead, “I just learned had a heart attack.”

  Daddy’s dimple disappears in slow motion. He freezes. Shame, along with my father, grips me.

  “How can they blame Roberta for that?” Daddy removes his arm from my waist.

  “Sister slapped me, and I sort of hit her back in self-defense,” I mumble.

  “What? You struck your teacher?” Dad starts to unloop his belt.

  Mom wedges herself between us. In thirteen years, I’ve only been whipped with a belt a handful of times because Mom did not want us beaten like she had been. “Adults should never touch a child when angry,” she would always say, her eyes fierce and distant.

>   “Hold on,” she said now. “You’d have known if you’d gone to work. The school called you first.”

  An odd tic flickers across Daddy’s face. “I did go to work.”

  Mom does a double-take. Guilt covers his face like Noxzema covers mine at night. Something weird between them hangs in the air like burnt toast.

  Dad turns to me. “Why were you fighting your teacher?”

  “Roberta called the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite,” Mom says.

  “And what’s incorrect about that?”

  “Let me finish?” Mom huffs. “Sister didn’t like her answer and told her to go back to Africa.” Mom pinches her lips. “Then she proceeded to slap the crap out of her three times.”

  Daddy flicks the light on, studies my cheek. It’s not sore but I wince as he rubs it.

  “Is that what happened?” His tender tone reminds me how raw I still am.

  “Yup.” Tears well.

  “The nun set her up,” he snorts. “What other answer suffices? I told you that damn place was full of nut jobs. I’m going there, right now.”

  “Going where? The damned school is closed!” Mom screams.

  “I’m going to the damn convent!” Daddy hollers, grabbing his keys off my gift box.

  “I’m going with you.” Mom snatches her pocketbook from the coffee table.

  “Will Roberta be arrested?” Charles asks, jumping up.

  “No!” they scream, rushing out the door and slamming it.

  Charles cries, his tears mixing with a gooey stream of snot, which knots up my stomach. I slouch next to him, understanding his bewilderment. An almost fire. An almost fight between our parents. A sister headed to the pokey for possible murder. Having just mastered the multiplication tables, this is all too much for Charles. It was for me, too.

  “Is this what happens when you become a teenager?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.

  “I hope not. September 26, 1973, is going down in history as the worst day of my life.” My head thumps like a drum on a party record.

  “We didn’t even sing ‘Happy Birthday’!” Charles says, wiping his eyes. “Want me to call Bonnie and tell her to call on your new phone? It still works, you just can’t dial out.”

  What a great little brother. I nod. If anyone can make me smile, it’s Bonnie Haley, my gossipy best friend since she arrived in second grade and kept me from being the only Black girl in class.

  “Eat the rest of my shrimp,” I offer to reward him, scribbling my number on the TV Guide cover. In the kitchen, I cover Daddy’s plate in aluminum foil and stick it in the fridge, then cut a fat wedge of cake to chow on in bed. “Call her now,” I say, licking my fingers and zipping upstairs. Bonnie, whose popularity thankfully rubs off on me, can sort through this confusion.

  Waiting for her call, I alternate between gorging myself with cake and picking the lock on my phone with a bobby pin the way it’s done on TV. I stop when the phone rings.

  “Girl, it’s a wild house over here,” I shout. “Guess you heard what happened.”

  “Yup. So you drove Sister Elizabeth over the edge. Short trip, right?” Bonnie snort-chuckles. “I would have pulled off her habit so we could see she’s bald.”

  “Bonnie, Sister Elizabeth had a heart attack not long after—”

  “Girl, stop playing!” Bonnie interrupts.

  “She might not make it!” My voice cracks. I death-grip the phone.

  “You don’t think it’s your fault, do you?” Bonnie squeals. “She’s about forty. Old people have heart issues. Something’s wrong because she falls asleep. That’s not normal.”

  “If something bad happens, I might get expelled or worse.”

  “Look, let’s pray for a miracle,” Bonnie says.

  “Dear God—”

  “If we had that Black nun with the Afro this wouldn’t have happened,” Bonnie interrupts.

  “You’re the only one who has seen—” A car door slams. Peering out my shade, I spot my newest neighbor. “Gotta go! If Mom calls from a pay phone and gets a busy signal, I’m dead.”

  “Girl, Sister is too mean to die. Happy birthday! I’m sorry Sister ruined it. Later.”

  “Later.” I white knuckle the phone long after the line goes dead.

  I felt better until she said “die.” I eyeball my flowery wallpapered room with glossy pinups of Michael Jackson, Kevin Hooks, Foster Sylvers, and other famous crushes, maybe for the last time.

  Dropping the phone in its cradle, I flop against my bed with palms pressed. “Dear God, please let Sister Elizabeth live. I swear I’ll never ask for another favor.”

  Churning in my stomach forces me to sit up. Great, I’m nauseated on top of it all.

  “Daddy will fix it,” I say to my Michael Jackson poster. I imagine Michael nods. My father has the gift of gab with women. I guess his charm works on nuns, too. But what if Daddy is too late? What if Sister dies?

  Mom says God hears you better when you’re on your knees. I kneel.

  “Dear God, forget the hot pants and the Schwinn 10-speed for Christmas. All I want is for Sister Elizabeth to live and not get expelled. I—”

  A car door closing stops me. Out my window, Daddy strolls ahead of Mom with quick, long strides.

  Is Sister hospitalized or heaven bound? Or in purgatory? God, I did not mean that in a bad way. I feel clammy and dizzy.

  The front door slams. I dive into bed and bury my head, faking sleep. My stomach hula hoops as heavy footsteps rush upstairs.

  “Roberta, get up,” Daddy shouts. “You need to hear this!”

  His grim face tells me the verdict. My stomach heaves as if I just rode a roller coaster in an endless loop. The bedroom spins. I clutch my woozy belly.

  “Daddy, I’m sick! I need to go to the bathroom.”

  I try to push past him, but he grabs my arm and pulls me close.

  “Sister Elizabeth is . . .” He stops, as I lean over and spew chunks of shrimp and birthday cake down one leg of his trolley uniform and all over the pile of dirty clothes on the floor Mom told me to pick up days ago.

  He grabs the wastebasket, holds it under my gagging mouth. “What a terrible birthday for my baby.”

  Jesus, he still calls me his baby after what I’ve done?

  “Dora,” he yells downstairs. “Roberta is sick. Get some soup and tea going.”

  Mom races upstairs. She sidesteps my vomit and touches my forehead.

  “What a day,” Mom grunts, glaring at Daddy instead of me. “I’m not sure how much more I can take before I blow.” She looks back at me. “You feel warm.” When she leaves, her zombie shuffle is gone.

  “Sister Elizabeth is fine. That nut who called is the one always blabbing to the weekly newspaper about the neighborhood going to pot. Why your mother would listen to her mystifies me. The ambulance was for another nun with chest pains. Sister Elizabeth went with her to the hospital.”

  I kiss his cheek. He pretend-gags. By the time I return from the bathroom, he had cleaned up my mess, and Mom had left steaming tea and soup on a TV tray. I promise my father I will never hit another adult no matter what.

  Daddy leaves and returns, carrying my new record player, even though I can’t play it until I’m off punishment. I’m grounded for a month, and my parents will ask for weekly reports. I’m so relieved Sister is alive, I don’t feel that sorry for myself.

  “You know you’re stuck with her since she teaches Track 1 classes,” Daddy says, examining his pant leg. “The first sign of trouble, tell us so we can address it. I’m not having anyone beating on my kids when I don’t.”

  “So you and Mom are meeting with her, right?”

  “Yes, indeed, tomorrow afternoon. We pay tuition, and if she has a problem teaching Black kids, we need to find a remedy.”

  “Daddy, she lied. This country needed Black people to help build it.”

  “Pumpkin, that won’t be the last lie you’ll hear. The Bible is full of them.”

  He reaches under my bed and pulls
out his copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which he spotted during Project Vomit Removal.

  “I wondered where this was,” he says, opening the book to my bookmarked page. “I had been rereading it until it disappeared. It’s deep. Unclear about anything?”

  “Nope. It’s so good. I just read the part where his teacher called him a nigger.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Sister didn’t call me that, but she implied it.”

  Daddy rubs his chin, which means he’s about to drop some knowledge. “I am livid about what happened. She’s the adult, and she lost control. Big time. But you have to control your temper, too. Technically, she could have filed charges. So promise me when someone angers you, count to ten and think hard before reacting. Cool heads think better than hot ones.” He fingers his paperback. “Brother Malcolm said some of our best revolutionaries are teens. So speaking up matters,” Daddy says. “I’m proud of your answer about Jefferson. Malcolm would’ve been, too.”

  His words and kiss comfort all of my hurting hidden places. Leaving, he presses the edges of the Shirley Chisholm for President bumper sticker on my door and turns.

  “Happy birthday, dear Roberta,” he sings, his rich voice soothing my heart. Then he says, “Happy thirteenth birthday to you, Pumpkin.”

  “Love you lots.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Banging and yelling wakes me up.

  “I’m not a toy. Don’t play with me,” a voice screams. “You’re a liar, Chuck!”

  I look out my window and gasp. Clothes rain down on Daddy’s car parked beneath my window. Poking my head out, I see Mom’s arms tossing it all out of their window. What in the Sam Hill is going on?

  My parents spot my head at the same time. “Go to bed, Roberta!” they yell in stereo.

  Fat chance. I jam my feet into slippers and zip down the steps and out the door. I run to my father, who holds an armful of clothes.

  “Daddy, don’t go!” I whisper. “Come inside, this is so embarrassing.” Porch lights from other houses turn on. I realize I’m in my nightgown. I fold my arms across my braless chest.