by David Haynes
*
Next thing I know, what almost never happens here happens: the alarm clock buzzes. Loud. Usually Mrs. Big Sam is carrying-on, yelling or threatening you to get up with buckets of cold water—that being her version of a very funny joke at six-thirty in the morning. It is seven. Sam is already gone, pickup truck and all. The Cheerios are where they were last night: scattered on the floor. The pile of slop still hides beneath its melmac shelter. Perhaps it has grown green slime and legs and will ooze off the table and fill the whole house by lunch time. The Casserole that ate Washington Park. When Ma comes back expecting a warm welcome … well, it won’t be a pretty sight.
Sam hasn’t eaten. No coffee made, no burned black skillets in the sink. Sam’s version of cooking: cook it and keep cooking it until you’re sure it’s good and dead.
Living here is sort of like living with a deranged Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima.
I guess he’ll have sense enough to feed himself someplace. I hope so.
*
The bus stops for Eisenhower High at 7:30. The boys and me catch it up by Miss Ida’s store.
Miss Ida’s store is to the right, up the hill on Dorset, on the morning side of the hollow. Sam says that long ago Miss Ida’s daddy, L. W., ran moonshine out of a back-country roadhouse right there—last stop before Kansas City. He says it was a regular Dodge City sort of deal, with cheap women and cheap booze, and on a Saturday night he says they’d haul many a chopped up nigger and a few white folks out of there, too. According to Sam, one time his daddy and L. W. was holed-up in the back room, holding off some bootleggers with a couple of old shotguns. Same guns they used to hunt squirrels with. He says you can still see the bullet holes on the side of the store. Who knows what to believe of his old timey stories. I don’t see any bullet holes. Sam is always talking some mess.
Miss Ida’s store is on the main drag now: Colerain Road, and right out front the buses come and go for Eisenhower and for just about everywhere else in Saint Louis County, as well.
My favorite thing about Miss Ida’s store is the way it smells. No other place I know smells just like it: strange and exotic smells—cinnamon, garlic and cheese, old burlap sacks which maybe hold coffee or nuts. There is a pickle barrel, and if you want, Miss Ida will drill a tunnel in a fat sour one and fill it with a peppermint stick. Nothing better with a grape Nehi soda on a hot July day. That’s the truth.
The place is a mess, though. Boxes block the doors, and a fine layer of dust covers a bunch of old-fashioned cans of B’rer Rabbit Molasses. I dare anybody to eat any of that molasses, and who knows what other nasty old stuff is laying around up here. Artie’s not much help keeping it together. Once, Miss Ida asked him to alphabetize the canned goods for her. She’s still looking for the cream-style corn.
Each morning we meet Artie here for school, Todd and I do. Artie comes down all sleepy-eyed from the apartment over the store, except for when he stays down the hollow with Miss Ida’s daughter, Betty Lou. People say Miss Ida is too old to have a teenage boy messin about, but she always acts glad to see him in the morning. Us too. She never sends us on our way without something sweet.
“Morning Mr. Marshall,” she says. “You out bright and early. You even ahead of Baby Boy.” Baby Boy: that is her pet name for Artie. He must have spent the night down at Betty Lou’s. She puts a cold Coke on the counter just for me.
“Thanks.” I say, taking a long pull. “My daddy been in?”
“Haven’t seen Big Sam since yesterday noon,” Miss Ida says. “You need something? I’ll get him a message later.” She pauses in that sentence just long enough for me to wonder if she knows anything.
“No, ma’am.” Best not air the family dirty laundry anywhere in the hollow. Everyone in Washington Park knows everything about everyone else. And the best stories—who’s doing it with who, who got shot because of it—cross Miss Ida’s counter faster than change for a dollar.
Ida’s doing the crossword from the Post Dispatch. It is usually quiet here in the morning. Her big rush times are at lunch, or in the evening when folks stop in for a cold six pack of Busch or a can of nutmeg. You wouldn’t stop here at all unless you knew about it. The weathered boards outside are faded to gray from green, and the 7-Up signs are rusted to pink. Nothing—not the gravel lot, not the ragged canvas awnings—testifies to what or who might be inside. Those other folks drive right on by to the 7-Eleven, and let ’em, anyway. Everyone in the hollow shops Miss Ida. What else would you do?
Artie comes in at 7:25 with Todd on his heels just like some Irish setter. Todd would never come in here without one of us. And not that anyone would notice either: when you hang around black folks long enough, people just assume you’re one of us—even if you do have red hair and blue eyes. Not coming in, well that’s just how Todd is: shy and afraid, always waiting for someone to tell him what he’s done wrong. He nods at me where I wait over by the pickle barrel. He comes over to join me.
“You didn’t tell your dad about yesterday at school, did you?” Todd asks me.
I tell him no.
“I wouldn’t want mine to find out,” he says. “My ass would be a goner. What do you think yours will do?”
I’ve got everything under control,” I whisper. I shush him by nodding in the direction of the usual morning spectacle developing across the room.
Miss Ida, after getting her standard morning kiss and hug, is tugging at Artie’s seams and collars, making him turn around for the full inspection. This goes on every damn morning. When she’s done, she holds him at arm’s length, admiring her work.
“Don’t you look fine,” she gushes. “Come on and give Mama one more kiss before that bus gets here.”
Artie blushes, warming his deep tan skin almost the way hot water might. His hair is shaved close to the scalp on the sides, and picked up on the top. Mr. High Fashion is the first person I actually know to ever get that box cut. It naturally suits the shape of his boxy skull, and even his hair seems to color when he blushes. I make a kissy face so Miss Ida can’t see me, but it doesn’t have any effect. As much as I tease, the fact is, he likes it … likes giving Mama a big kiss every morning, even in front of the boys. Maybe if Miss Ida was mine I’d like it too. Still, you have to wonder about folks who carry-on like this. There’s something soft about Artie, something mushy and weak. I say you got to be strong. Hard and strong so they can’t get you. Take Todd, for instance. He may be skittery and even thin-skinned, but he wouldn’t cry even if you stuck toothpicks under his fingernails. My kind of man.
As for me, I’m rather ornery, even if I do say so myself.
*
Eisenhower High School is nothing and nowhere. From the road it is another unfortunate pile of suburban bricks—it could be the telephone company or sewage treatment plant—and every day is the same there, and nothing of consequence ever goes on. But just tell that to the Pinheads inside. For them every day might be the first day of the Royal American Shows. You could cut the high spirits here with a dull butter knife.
Pinheads:
They make a person want to stop every other one of em up in here and ask if they have a license to be as stupid as they act. These people are always laughing—har har har. As if white folks were in on some big private joke. But when you listen to them it’s either what funny thing happened to somebody’s new car or else some warmed-over line from “Saturday Night Live.” For a while there it was “You look mahvelous. You look mahvelous.” Till you wanted to puke. It wasn’t even that funny in the first place. They go around saying those stale lines like they made them up themselves, and then they laugh like it was the first time they’d heard them. Har, har, har.
“Lighten up, Finney,” they say: you know how they call everybody by the last name, and I get turned in to Mr. Shannon, the A.P., for being sullen. Sullen means white folks’ stale jokes don’t strike you as funny.
“Are you unhappy, Marshall?” Shannon asks. “We want ya’ll to be happy here.”
Well, the first
thing you white folks need to do is get the fuck out of my face.
Of course I don’t say that.
It takes all my energy most days to keep from turning into a Pinhead myself.
It is 1:00. The air in Redneck World Literature is charged. Buzz Simpkins broods, his thick neck sunk deep into his shoulders. Connie Jo looks hurt and disappointed, as though she’s been slapped by her baby brother. She looks like one of those rich women who come around Washington Park at Christmas and can’t figure out why folks don’t want their used clothes.
The air is supercharged. The smallest spark could set it off and annihilate a large part of Saint Louis County. Neighboring communities would be buried in a fallout of greasy pink flesh.
Miss O’Hare, cautious if anything, runs her class as if it were a dynamite truck crossing the Alps. No detail is beyond her control. We are greeted at the door with a page of questions, texts placed on our desks already opened to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” O’Hare’s hair is drawn tightly behind her head in a ponytail.
She’s in one of her moods. For almost nothing she’d pop that rubber band off her hair and blast someone in the face with it.
“Today you will read Dr. King’s essay, after which I expect you to complete the handout. When you are finished you are to begin reading the novel excerpt from Native Son. The glossary in the back of your text will help you with the essay.”
In other words: come near this desk and die.
“Be prepared to discuss this material and be quizzed on it. Tomorrow. Are there any questions?”
Yes. Who do you think you are, up there like that, walking back and forth, having the nerve to call yourself a teacher? Just who do you think you are? Of course I don’t ask it at this time.
O’Hare removes her brown-framed glasses and sets them on the desk in front of her. No contact lenses today. Her blue cardigan sweater has the effect of a policeman’s uniform. She taps her ruler in her hand as if it were a nightstick, all the while scanning back and forth inviting any and all trouble with a stack of detention slips, date and crime already filled in. Everyone watches her out of the top of their eyes, heads bent over in nervous concentration. We’ve been here before.
One day last fall Buzz decided it might be fun if we all stared at the same spot on the wall behind her. And so we did. When O’Hare walked in front of a person, he or she would sort of lean to the side as if to see around her. O’Hare even looked back there a few times herself before she caught on.
“What are you looking at?” she said coldly. “Mr. Simpson? Mr. Finney?” She went down the roll asking each one.
Of course, no one responded. We all just sort of hung our heads.
“Perhaps you need a reminder of who’s in charge of this class and why I’m here,” she said.
On a day like today there was little doubt about that.
Ohairy stops behind my desk during one of her regular rounds. “I’d like to see you after class,” she says. “And watch out for double negatives.” She makes a big red slash under what I consider a perfectly good English sentence.
I’d been called out.
So there I stand in front of her desk, books caught behind my back, feet shoulder length apart.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
Miss O’Hare stands up on her side of the desk; I have to raise my eyes slightly to meet hers.
She addresses me by looking me right in the eye. “First of all, a little technical matter: I’ve noticed on your papers this tendency to use like as a conjunction.”
I give her a retarded face. The one Artie uses, except with him sometimes I don’t think he means to be doing it.
I’ll give you an example. Listen to this—from one of your papers: ‘In those days people took care of each other like family was the most important thing in the world.’ Not good.” She shakes her head and makes a prune face. “People don’t even bother to hear your ideas unless they are in good standard English. It’s worth your time to master it.
“Now, I know that people talk that way, but just work on it, okay? The other thing is: about the other day.” This time she makes a face as if she thought we’d shared some stupid experience that neither of us could believe.
“Yesterday’s slang lesson got … ridiculous, out of my control. I thought I knew what I was doing but … It won’t happen again. These black history lessons aren’t for my benefit, and I know you’ve already had most of this stuff, right?”
I give her my blank look.
“Wonderful!” she gushes.
What some mistake for smarts—my open mouth, my bulgy eyes—is often only mindless drooling.
“What really bothers me is: I tried to give you an opportunity to show what you know and you passed it up.”
“Huh?” I say.
Real mature response, huh?
“It’s the same as the commercial says—a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I’ve had my eye on you. I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time. When I see someone with a spark, I’m willing to stick my neck out. If you don’t want me to do it—fine. Just don’t make me look foolish. Clear?”
I nod. She hands me a pass to the next class.
*
So: How am I supposed to react to her little pep talk? Was that an apology? An explanation? Am I supposed to feel humiliated? Scolded? What about Buzz? The other Pinheads? Did they get off with just a day of the famous Ohairy cold shoulder?
Artie and Todd and I are clustered near the back of the bus as usual. Old habits die hard. In junior high school you could talk dirty if you sat in the back. We did. Todd would practice stringing together as long a list of smutty words as possible. His record was ten different words in the same sentence. Just imagine. You’ll have to, cause not even me is about to put some of those words on paper. These days cursing isn’t even fun, and the back seats are just another place to sit.
“I’d tell my mom is what I’d do. I wouldn’t let no teacher talk to me that way.” Artie says. He adjusts the neck to his Benetton sweater. He is quite the dude: Miss Ida has him everyday looking like he just stepped out of the Saks Fifth Avenue ad or something. He sticks out like a black cat in a snow storm. Not that he dresses better or worse than the Pinheads. It’s just so … perfect: creased trousers, tie bars, collar stays. Like he was somebody’s daddy or something.
Todd calls Artie a “fucking mama’s boy” and then says to me, I’d leave well enough alone. You got off pretty easy.”
Todd speaks mostly in whispers. He is quiet and to the point, though like everybody else, he is sometimes full of a lot of crap that you don’t really want to listen to.
Like now.
I tell him so. I say, “I didn’t do anything. So what was there to let me off easy for? Ohairy’s not being fair.”
“You had another fuckin tantrum is what for,” Todd says. “All your life, when things get rough, you lose your temper and then you holler like a girl ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair.’ Like in second grade when you told …”
“You and your ancient history can kiss my ass.” I say.
“I believe back then it was kiss my black ass, and you said it to that sweet old Miss Adkins. She had to retire after you.”
“She was a hundred and six years old. And were talking about fairness. Did Ohairy call out Buzz? No. Only the black kid. That’s what I call unfair.”
“Jesus Christ, Marshall. You never learn. If the teacher yells—it’s unfair, if the bus is late—it’s unfair. Your mom burns dinner …”
“My mom ran away from home last night.”
Nobody says anything for a minute. They look to see if I’m serious. Artie looks away embarrassed. I raise my hand in a way to indicate that it’s okay.
That’s how I worked it in. That’s how I got it out.
Todd continues quietly, “Well, anyway, you never learn. If Artie and I …”
“Two chickenshits, might I add.”
“… weren’t here to keep you in line
… Forget it.” Todd looks away.
I make some clucking noises.
Todd’s gone back to staring out the window. Todd is usually staring out the bus window. You have to wonder what it is he sees out there. He’s always been that way. Always at the window. The cold air turns his freckled cheeks redder and a draft teases at his tangled shoulder-length hair. No one at Eisenhower except for Todd has hair this long. That combined with the fact he runs with Artie and me … well he might as well be as black as coal.
Todd could never finish an argument either.
“Thanks for nothing,” I say. I make some more clucking noises.
Artie fixes a cuff as he waves me off with his watch hand. I see the sparkle of the diamond that is where the twelve should be. Todd closes his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He leans back and gives me the finger.
I love these guys, but sometimes they are just a couple of wimps.
*
Opening the door I understand at once what must be done. First, of course, turn on the TV. The amplified tinny voice of the Flintstones makes everything seem normal. I could turn on MTV, but even though I’ve seen all of these episodes before—where Pebbles is born, where Gilligan finds the TransPacific telephone cable which has washed up in a hurricane—reruns are just what you need sometimes.
In the kitchen I sweep the Cheerios into a pile and then dump them into the garbage disposal. A gray-beige fountain spouts up until I remember to turn on the water.
On a roll, I scrape the tuna-noodle slop from the table onto the melmac plate and dump it in there, too. That hurts the most: it’s a pride thing. I ought to have let that crap rot on the table till it turned to stone. But that could have been a long time. For spite, I dump the melmac plate into the trash bin. That felt good. Those plates are hundred-year-old hand-me-downs, anyway.
When everything in the kitchen looks somewhat as it ought to—not hard considering what usually passes for housework around here—I go to make dinner. The refrigerator holds only a six pack of Budweiser and some eggs. The cupboards hold nothing but canned slop: Vienna sausages, corned beef hash, chili con came, tomato soup, mushroom soup, fifteen tins of tuna fish, a miniature can of Contadina tomato paste.