Zami

by Geraldine Audre Lorde

  I knew for sure that real live people came in many different shades of beige and brown and cream and reddish tan, but nobody alive ever came in that pasty-white shade of flour and salt and water, even if they were called white. So the vanilla was essential if my little person was to be real. But the coloring didn’t help either. No matter how many intricate rituals and incantations and spells I performed, no matter how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers I said, no matter what I promised god in return, the vanilla-tinted clay would slowly shrivel up and harden, turn gradually brittle and sour, and then crumble into a grainy flour dust. No matter how hard I prayed or schemed, the figures would never come alive. They never turned around in the cupped palm of my hand, to smile up at me and say “Hi.”

  I found my first playmate when I was around four years old. It lasted for about ten minutes.

  It was a high winter noontime. My mother had bundled me up in my thick one-piece woolen snowsuit and cap and bulky scarf. Once she had inserted me into all this arctic gear, pulled rubber galoshes up over my shoes and wrapped yet another thick scarf around the whole as if to keep the mass intact, she planted me out upon the stoop of the apartment building while she dressed herself hurriedly. Although my mother never liked to have me out of her sight for any period of time, she did this to keep me from catching my death of cold from becoming overheated and then going outdoors.

  After many weighty warnings to me not to move from that spot, dire descriptions of what would happen to me if I did, and how I was to yell if any strangers spoke to me, my mother disappeared down the few feet of hallway back to our apartment to get her coat and hat, and to check all the windows of the house to make sure that they were locked.

  I loved these few minutes of freedom, and treasured them secretly. They were the only times I ever got to be outside without my mother urging me along on my short stubby little legs that could never run fast enough to keep up with her purposeful strides. I sat quietly where she had put me on the slated top of the stone banisters of the stoop. My arms stuck out a little from my sides over the bulk of my clothing, my feet were heavy and awkward with sturdy shoes and galoshes, and my neck was stiffly encased in the woolen cap and wrapped scarf.

  The sun shone with a winter milkiness onto the sidewalks across the street, and onto the few banks of dirty soot-covered snow that lined the sidewalks near the gutter’s edge. I could see up to the corner of Lenox Avenue, about three houses away. At the corner near the building line, the Father Divine man ran his Peace Brother Peace shoe repair business from a ramshackled wooden kiosk heated by a small round stove. From the roof of the kiosk, a thin strand of smoke drifted upward. The smoke was the only sign of life and there was nobody on the street that I could see. I wished the street was warm and beautiful and busy, and that we were having cantaloupe for lunch instead of the hot homemade pea soup that was simmering on the back of the stove awaiting our return.

  I had almost made a boat of newspaper just before I had to start being dressed to go out, and I wondered if my bits of newspaper would still be on the kitchen table when we got back, or was my mother even now sweeping them away into the garbage bag? Would I be able to rescue them before lunch or would there be nasty wet orange-peelings and coffee grounds all over them?

  Suddenly I realized that there was a little creature standing on a step in the entryway of the main doors, looking at me with bright eyes and a big smile. It was a little girl. She was right away the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen alive in my life.

  My lifelong dream of a doll-baby come to life had in fact come true. Here she stood before me now, smiling and pretty in an unbelievable wine-red velvet coat with a wide, wide skirt that flared out over dainty little lisle-stockinged legs. Her feet were clad in a pair of totally impractical, black patent-leather mary-jane shoes, whose silver buckles glinted merrily in the drab noon light.

  Her reddish-brown hair was not braided in four plaits like mine, but framed her little pointy-chinned face, tight and curly. On her head sat a wine-colored velvet beret that matched her coat, and on the very top of that sat a big white fur pompom.

  Even with decades of fashion between us now, and the dulling of time, it was the most beautiful outfit I had ever seen in my not quite five years of clothes-watching.

  Her honey-brown skin had a ruddy glow that echoed the tones of her hair, and her eyes seemed to match both in a funny way that reminded me of my mother’s eyes, the way, although light in themselves, they flashed alight in the sun.

  I had no idea how old she was.

  “What’s your name? Mine’s Toni.”

  The name called up a picture book I was just finished reading, and the image came out boy. But this delectable creature in front of me was most certainly a girl, and I wanted her for my very own—my very own what, I did not know—but for my very own self. I started to image in my head where I could keep her. Maybe I could tuck her up in the folds under my pillow, pet her during the night when everybody else was asleep, and I was fighting off nightmares of the devil riding me. Of course, I’d have to be careful that she didn’t get squeezed into the cot in the morning, when my mother folded up my bed, covered it with an old piece of flowered cretonne bedspread and shoved the whole thing tidily into a corner behind the bedroom door. No, that certainly wouldn’t work. My mother would most assuredly find her when, in my mother’s way, she plumped up my pillows.

  While I was trying to image a safe place to keep her by a rapid succession of pictures in my mind’s eye, Toni had advanced towards me, and was now standing between my outspread snowsuited legs, her dark-bright fire-lit eyes on a level with my own. With my woolen mittens dangling down from cords which emerged from the cuffs at each of my wrists, I reached out my hands and lightly rubbed the soft velvet shoulders of her frock-coat up and down.

  From around her neck hung a fluffy white fur muff that matched the white fur ball on the top of her hat. I touched her muff, too, and then raised my hand up to feel the fur pompom. The soft silky warmth of the fur made my fingers tingle in a way that the cold had not, and I pinched and fingered it until Toni finally shook her head free of my hand.

  I began to finger the small shiny gold buttons on the front of her coat. I unbuttoned the first two of them at the top, just so I could button them back up again, pretending I was her mother.

  “You cold?” I was looking at her pink and beige ears, now slowly turning rosy from the cold. From each delicate lobe hung a tiny gold loop.

  “No,” she said, moving even closer between my knees. “Let’s play.”

  I stuck both of my hands into the holes of her furry muff, and she giggled delightedly as my cold fingers closed around her warm ones inside the quilted dark spaces of the fur. She pulled one hand out past mine and opened it in front of my face to reveal two peppermint lifesavers, sticky now from the heat of her palm. “Want one?”

  I took one hand out of her muff, and never taking my eyes off her face, popped one of the striped candy rings into my mouth. My mouth was dry. I closed it around the candy and sucked, feeling the peppermint juice run down my throat, burning and sweet almost to the point of harshness. For years and years afterward, I always thought of peppermint lifesavers as the candy in Toni’s muff.

  She was beginning to get impatient. “Play with me, please?” Toni took a step backward, smiling, and I was terrified suddenly that she might disappear or run away, and the sunlight would surely vanish with her from 142nd Street. My mother had warned me not to move from that spot where she had planted me. But there was no question in my mind; I could not bear to lose Toni.

  I reached out and pulled her back gently towards me, sitting her down crosswise upon my knees. She felt so light through the padding of my snowsuit that I thought she could blow away and I would not feel the difference between her being there and not being there.

  I put my arms around her soft red velvet coat, and clasping my two hands together, I slowly rocked her back and forth the way I did with my sisters’ big Coca-Cola doll t
hat had eyes that opened and closed and that came down from the closet shelf every year around Christmas time. Our old cat Minnie the Moocher did not feel much lighter sitting on my lap.

  She turned her face around to me with another one of her delighted laughs that sounded like the ice cubes in my father’s nightly drink. I could feel the creeping warmth of her, slowly spreading all along the front of my body through the many layers of clothing, and as she turned her head to speak to me the damp warmth of her breath fogged up my spectacles a little in the crisp winter air.

  I started to sweat inside my snowsuit as I usually did, despite the cold. I wanted to take off her coat and see what she had on underneath it. I wanted to take off all of her clothes, and touch her live little brown body and make sure she was real. My heart was bursting with a love and happiness for which I had no words. I unbuttoned the top buttons of her coat again.

  “No, don’t do that! My grandma won’t like it. You can rock me some more.” She cuddled down again into my arms.

  I put my arms back around her shoulders. Was she really a little girl or a doll come alive? There was only one way I knew for sure of telling. I turned her over and put her across my knees. The light seemed to change around us on the stoop. I looked over once at the doorway leading into the hall, half-afraid of who might be standing there.

  I raised up the back of Toni’s wine-red velvet coat, and the many folds of her full-skirted green eyelet dress underneath. I lifted up the petticoats under that, until I could see her white cotton knickers, each leg of which ended in an embroidered gathering right above the elastic garters that held up her stockings.

  Beads of sweat were running down my chest to be caught at my waist by the tight band of my snowsuit. Ordinarily I hated sweating inside my snowsuit because it felt like roaches were crawling down the front of me.

  Toni laughed again and said something that I could not hear. She squirmed around comfortably on my knees and turned her head, her sweet face looking sideways up into mine.

  “Grandma forgot my leggings at my house.”

  I reached up under the welter of dress and petticoats and took hold of the waistband of her knickers. Was her bottom going to be real and warm or turn out to be hard rubber, molded into a little crease like the ultimately disappointing Coca-Cola doll?

  My hands were shaking with excitement. I hesitated a moment too long. As I was about to pull down Toni’s panties I heard the main door open and out of the front hallway hurried my mother, adjusting the brim of her hat as she stepped out onto the stoop.

  I felt caught in the middle of an embarrassing and terrible act from which there could be no hiding. Frozen, I sat motionless as Toni, looking up and seeing my mother, slid nonchalantly off my lap, smoothing down her skirts as she did so.

  My mother stepped over to the two of us. I flinched, expecting instant retribution at her capable hands. But evidently the enormity of my intentions had escaped my mother’s notice. Perhaps she did not care that I was about to usurp that secret prerogative belonging only to mothers about to spank, or to nurses with thermometers.

  Taking me by the elbow, my mother pulled me awkwardly to my feet.

  I stood for a moment like a wool-encased snow-girl, my arms stuck out a little from my body and my legs spread slightly apart. Ignoring Toni, my mother started down the steps to the street. “Hurry now,” she said, “you don’t want to be late.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. The bright-eyed vision in the wine-red coat stood at the top of the stoop, and pulled one hand out of her white rabbit-fur muff.

  “You want the other candy?” she called. I shook my head frantically. We were never supposed to take candy from anybody and certainly not strangers.

  My mother urged me on down the steps. “Watch where you’re stepping, now.”

  “Can you come out and play tomorrow?” Toni called after me.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. My mother was already one step below, and her firm hand on my elbow kept me from falling as I almost missed a step. Maybe tomorrow…

  Once on the street pavement, my mother resumed hold of my hand and sailed forth determinedly. My short legs in their bulky wrappings and galoshes chugged along, trying to keep up with her. Even when she was not in a hurry, my mother walked with a long and purposeful stride, her toes always pointed slightly outward in a ladylike fashion.

  “You can’t tarry, now,” she said. “You know it’s almost noon.” Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

  “What a shame, to let such a skinny little thing like that out in this weather with no snowsuit or a stitch of leggings on her legs. That’s how among-you children catch your death of cold.”

  So I hadn’t dreamed her. She had seen Toni too. (What kind of name anyway was that for a girl?) Maybe tomorrow…

  “Can I have a red coat like hers, Mommy?”

  My mother looked down at me as we stood waiting for the street light to change.

  “How many times I tell you not to call me Mommy on the street?” The light changed, and we hurried forward.

  I thought about my question very carefully as I scurried along, wanting to get it exactly right this time. Finally, I had it.

  “Will you buy me a red coat, please, Mother?” I kept my eyes on the treacherous ground to avoid tripping over my galoshed feet, and the words must have been muffled or lost in the scarf around my neck. In any case, my mother hurried on in silence, apparently not hearing. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.

  We had our split-pea soup, and hurriedly retraced our steps back to my sisters’ school. But that day, my mother and I did not return directly home. Crossing over to the other side of Lenox Avenue, we caught the Number 4 bus down to 125th Street, where we went marketing at Weissbecker’s for the weekend chicken.

  My heart sank into hopelessness as I stood waiting, kicking my feet in the sawdust that covered the market’s floor. I should have known. I had wanted too much for her to be real. I had wanted to see her again too much for it to ever happen.

  The market was too warm. My sweaty skin itched in places I couldn’t possibly scratch. If we were marketing today, that meant tomorrow would turn out to be Saturday. My sisters did not go to school on Saturday, which meant we couldn’t go pick them up for lunch, which meant I would spend all day in the house because my mother had to clean and cook and we were never allowed out alone to play on the stoop.

  The weekend was an eternity past which I could not see.

  The following Monday I waited again on the stoop. I sat by myself, bundled up as usual, and nobody came except my mother.

  I don’t know how long I looked for Toni every day at noontime, sitting on the stoop. Eventually, her image receded into that place from which all my dreams are made.

  5

  Until this day, the essence of sorrow and sadness like a Picasso painting still-lifed and forever living, is the forlorn and remembered sight of a discarded silk stocking brick-caught and hanging against the rain-windy side of the tenement building wall opposite our kitchen window from which I hung, suspended by one hand, screaming at my elder sister who had been left in charge of the three of us while my mother went out marketing.

  What our interactions had been before is lost, but my mother came home just in time to pull me back inside the dark kitchen, saving me from a one-story drop into the air shaft below. I don’t remember the terror and fury, but I remember the whipping that both my sister and I got. More than that, I remember the sadness and the deprivation and the loneliness of that discarded, torn, and brick-caught silk stocking, broken and hanging against the wall in the tenement rain.

  I was always very jealous of my two older sisters, because they were older and therefore more privileged, and because they had each other for a friend. They could talk to one another without censure or punishment, or so I thought.

  As far as I was concerned, Phyllis and Helen led a magical and charmed existence down the hall in their room. It was tiny but complete, with privacy and a place to be away from the eternal parent
al eye which was my lot, having only the public parts of the house to play in. I was never alone, nor far from my mother’s watchful eye. The bathroom door was the only door in the house that I was ever allowed to close behind me, and even that would be opened with an inquiry if I tarried too long on the toilet.

  The first time I ever slept anywhere else besides in my parents’ bedroom was a milestone in my journey to this house of myself. When I was four and five, my family went to the Connecticut shore for a week’s vacation during the summer. This was much grander than a day’s outing to Rockaway Beach or Coney Island, and much more exciting.

  First of all, we got to sleep in a house that was not ours, and Daddy was with us during the day. Then there were strange new foods to sample, like blue soft-shelled crab, which my father ordered for his lunch and would sometimes persuade my mother to let me have a taste of. We children were not allowed such alien fare, but on Fridays we did have fried shrimp and little batter cakes with pieces of clam in them. They were good, and very different from my mother’s codfish-and-potato fishcakes which were our favorite Friday dinner back home.

  A shimmering glare of silver coats every beach in my mind’s eye. Glistening childhood summers that sparkled like the thick glass spectacles I could not wear because of the dilating drops in my eyes.

  The dilating drops were used by the Medical Center eye doctors to examine the progress of my eyes, and since the effects seem to have lasted for weeks, my memories of those early summers are of constantly squinting against the piercing agony of direct sunlight, while stumbling over objects that I could not see, since everything was dazzled by light.

  The crabshells in the sand were distinguished from the clamshells, not by shape, but by the different feel of them beneath my brown toes. Delicate crabshells crumpled up like glasspaper around my heels, while the tough little clamshells crunched a hard and sturdy sound from under the balls of my fat little feet.