Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

  Indigo had been very concerned that anything was near her fiddle that she hadn’t put there. Looking at her violin, she knew immediately what her gift from Santa was. A brand-new case. No second-hand battered thing from Uncle John. Indigo approached her instrument slowly. The case was of crocodile skin, lined with white velvet. Plus, Hilda Effania had bought new rosin, new strings. Even cushioned the fiddle with cleaned raw wool. Indigo carried her new case with her fiddle outside to the stove where she found a music stand holding A Practical Method for Violin by Nicolas Laoureux. “Oh, my. She’s right about that. Mama would be real mad if I never learned to read music.” Indigo looked thru the pages, understanding nothing. Whenever she was dealing with something she didn’t understand, she made it her business to learn. With great difficulty, she carried her fiddle, music stand, & music book into the house. Up behind the wine glasses that Hilda Effania rarely used, but dusted regularly, was a garnet bracelet from the memory of her father. Indigo figured the bracelet weighed so little, she would definitely be able to wear it every time she played her fiddle. Actually, she could wear it while conversing with the Moon.

  Hilda Effania decided to chance fate & spend the rest of the morning in her fancy garb from Cypress. The girls were silent when she entered the parlor in black lace. She looked like she did in those hazy photos from before they were born. Indigo rushed over to the easy chair & straightened the pillows.

  “Mama, I have my present for you.” Hilda Effania swallowed hard. There was no telling what Indigo might bring her.

  “Well, Sweetheart. I’m eager for it. I’m excited, too.”

  Indigo opened her new violin case, took out her violin, made motions of tuning it (which she’d already done). In a terribly still moment, she began “My Buddy,” Hilda Effania’s mother’s favorite song. At the end, she bowed to her mother. Her sisters applauded.

  Sassafrass gave her mother two things: a woven hanging of twined ikat using jute and raffia, called “You Know Where We Came From, Mama”; & six amethysts with holes drilled thru, for her mother’s creative weaving.

  “Mama, you’ve gotta promise me you won’t have a bracelet, or a ring or something made from them. Those are for your very own pieces.” Sassafrass wanted her mother to experience weaving as an expression of herself, not as something the family did for Miz Fitzhugh. Hilda Effania was still trying to figure out where in the devil she could put this “hanging,” as Sassafrass called it.

  “Oh, no dear. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything with these stones but what you intended.”

  When the doorbell rang, Hilda Effania didn’t know what to do with herself. Should she run upstairs? Sit calmly? Run get her house robe? She had no time to do any of that. Indigo opened the door.

  “Merry Christmas, Miz Fitzhugh. Won’t you come in?” Hilda sank back in the easy chair. Cypress casually threw her mother an afghan to cover herself. Miz Fitzhugh in red wool suit, tailored green satin shirt, red tam, all Hilda’s design, and those plain brown pumps white women like, wished everyone a “Merry Christmas.” She said Mathew, her butler, would bring some sweetbreads & venison over later, more toward the dinner hour. Miz Fitzhugh liked Sassafrass the best of the girls. That’s why she’d sponsored her at the Callahan School. The other two, the one with the gall to want to be a ballerina & the headstrong one with the fiddle, were much too much for Miz Fitzhugh. They didn’t even wanta be weavers. What was becoming of the Negro, refusing to ply an honorable trade.

  Nevertheless, Miz Fitzhugh hugged each one with her frail blue-veined arms, gave them their yearly checks for their savings accounts she’d established when each was born. There be no talk that her Negroes were destitute. What she didn’t know was that Hilda Effania let the girls use that money as they pleased. Hilda believed every family needed only one mother. She was the mother to her girls. That white lady was mighty generous, but she wasn’t her daughters’ mama or manna from Heaven. If somebody needed taking care of, Hilda Effania determined that was her responsibility; knowing in her heart that white folks were just peculiar.

  “Why Miz Fitzhugh, that’s right kindly of you,” Hilda honeyed.

  “Why Hilda, you know I feel like the girls were my very own,” Miz Fitzhugh confided. Cypress began a series of violent ronds de jambe. Sassafrass picked up all the wrapping papers as if it were the most important thing in the world. Indigo felt some huge anger coming over her. Next thing she knew, Miz Fitzhugh couldn’t keep her hat on. There was a wind justa pushing, blowing Miz Fitzhugh out the door. Because she had blue blood or blue veins, whichever, Indigo knew Miz Fitzhugh would never act like anything strange was going on. She’d let herself be blown right out the door with her white kid gloves, red tailored suit, & all. Waving good-bye, shouting, “Merry Christmas,” Miz Fitzhugh vanished as demurely as her station demanded.

  Sucha raucous laughing & carrying on rarely came out of Hilda Effania’s house like it did after Miz Fitzhugh’d been blown away. Hilda Effania did an imitation of her, hugging the girls.

  “But Miz Fitzhugh, do the other white folks know you touch your Negroes?” Hilda responded, “Oh, I don’t tell anyone!”

  Eventually they all went to their rooms, to their private fantasies & preoccupations. Hilda was in the kitchen working the fat off her goose, fiddling with the chestnut stuffing, wondering how she would handle the house when it was really empty again. It would be empty, not even Indigo would be home come January.

  “Yes, Alfred. I think I’m doing right by ’em. Sassafrass is in that fine school with rich white children. Cypress is studying classical ballet with Effie in New York City. Imagine that? I’m sending Indigo out to Difuskie with Aunt Haydee. Miz Fitzhugh’s promised me a tutor for her. She doesn’t want the child involved in all this violence ’bout the white & the colored going to school together, the integration. I know you know what I mean, ’less up there’s segregated too.

  “No, Alfred I’m not blaspheming. I just can’t imagine another world. I’m trying to, though. I want the girls to live the good life. Like what we planned. Nice husbands. Big houses. Children. Trips to Paris & London. Going to the opera. Knowing nice people for friends. Remember we used to say we were the nicest, most interesting folks we’d ever met? Well, I don’t want it to be that way for our girls. You know, I’m sort of scared of being here by myself. I can always talk to you, though. Can’t I?

  “I’ma tell Miz Fitzhugh that if she wants Indigo in Difuskie that tutor will have to be a violin teacher. Oh, Alfred, you wouldn’t believe what she can do on that fiddle. If you could only see how Cypress dances. Sassafrass’ weavings. I wish you were here sometimes, so we could tell the world to look at what all we, Hilda Effania & Alfred, brought to this world.”

  Once her Christmas supper was organized in the oven, the frigerator, the sideboard, Hilda Effania slept in her new negligée, Alfred’s WWII portrait close to her bosom.

  My Littlest Angel, Indigo,

  I’ve been making preserves to send to my girls, some canned tomatoes & pickles too. You know, I have to stay busy, even though the Lord knows I would be a mighty big somebody if I ever ate all that I sat up cooking. Meanwhile, I miss you all so much. There’s times in a mother’s life that are simply trying times. I’ve prayed & thought a whole lot ’bout my life & yours. Wouldn’t I look simple, keeping a house full of grown women, aching to be part of the world, from being part of the world, just so I wouldn’t be quite so lonely. That’s enough of that. You all have your ’mends to make with the world & so do I. That’s the Lord’s way.

  I heard from Sassafrass that she hitch-hiked all the way across the country, when she told me she was gonna “drive-away.” That child is a mess. I’m up at night worrying ’bout her wanton ways. But she’s finally in Los Angeles, & settling down a bit, I hope. I keep looking for Cypress’ face to be on the news, when they talk about those youngsters who’ve lost their minds in California. I swear, I feel in my soul that she’s wandering around San Francisco all painted up with stars & peace symbols. I p
ray the TV cameras never find her. She might do a dance, then what would I say to all my neighbors. I got a painted dancing daughter in Haight-Ashbury? (smile) You are such a comfort to me. You’ve always been so serious & thoughtful. I want you to keep your head on your shoulders, & try not to be so hard on your sisters. They aren’t frivolous. They’re just a little wild.

  If you don’t mind my saying, you’re entitled to more fun than you allow yourself. Aunt Haydee’s never been one for entertaining. If she gets a nap ’tween all those women out there having babies every time you turn your back, it’s a miracle. Now, that I’m thinking about it, you might enjoy having a baby of your own more than delivering everybody else’s. That does not mean for you to take up with one of those island boys either! I am concentrating on a nice young man here in Charleston. You really should have been a doctor. No sense in being a nurse with all the experience you’ve had by now.

  The Lord will set you upon a path of decent pleasures, sure as He makes a way for honest toil. Saints be praised, Indigo, I’ve got to run. The strawberries are boiling over. I do love all of you so much. Rushing away, now.

  Love,

  Mama

  Nothing but tenor sax solos ever came out of that house. Sometimes you could hear a man and a woman arguing, but almost always some kind of music. Sassafrass and Mitch lived together in that house, sort of hidden behind untended hedges and the peeling shingles. Even though they were living in L.A., there were always some dried leaves lying all across their stoop. Sassafrass thought it was the spirits, bringing them good luck; Mitch thought it was because she didn’t ever sweep. But there was still the music, and the black Great Dane, Albert, whose real name was My-Name-Is-Albert-Ayler. None of the neighbors knew the dog’s full name, so Sassafrass never worried about him being stolen because he only came when someone called his whole name. Sassafrass had named him after the screenplay she had started after the album she had made, and after her lover she never met . . . Albert Ayler was found in the East River. That was one of the reasons Mitch was attracted to her, because she had named her dog so irreverently after his mentor, alto-saxist Ayler. Still, Sassafrass was so full of love she couldn’t call anybody anything without bringing good vibes from a whole lot of spirits to everything she touched.

  Walter Cronkite’s voice could be heard through the open window next to Sassafrass’ bed. She was sitting there in a long blue and red cotton skirt, crocheting another hat for Mitch. The long walls of the fallen-down, almost Victorian house were totally covered with murals of African exploits. Every time the landlady came to repair the falling plaster on the ceiling she’d look so uncomfortable; her redneck lips would get littler than a needle and her cheeks would get all stiff. Sassafrass loved watching that old peckerwood get nervous from total blackness all through the house. The old peckerwood got $100.00 a month for the whole flat, which Sassafrass and Mitch had worked on to be a permanent monument to the indelibility of black creative innovation. She glanced up from her sixty-sixth stitch to see if there was anything else to do to the house to make it the most perfect place for her and Mitch to stay in until the black revolution, or until they moved to the black artists’ and craftsmen’s commune starting up just outside New Orleans, and pretty near a black nationalist settlement. Sassafrass believed it was absolutely necessary to take black arts out of the white man’s hands; to take black people out of the white man’s hands. But here she was in Highland Park, Los Angeles, with rednecks and Chicanos, because Mitch’s parole officer refused to grant permission for them to live in any black area—and because they could only afford $100.00 a month—and because they didn’t have the money to buy into the artists’ commune near New Orleans anyhow: almost one thousand dollars, cash. So Sassafrass looked around to see if there was something else she could make to make them feel more like loving each other and hitting sunrise with hope, instead of the groans and crabbiness that ate through them toward the end of every poor month.

  There were the exasperating patchwork curtains she had managed to get done, and macrame hangings in every doorway—one named for each of their heroes. There was the long and knotted purple jute, hanging for Malcolm, who was a king. It had bullets woven through the ends of it, and dried sand covered twigs passing in and out of the center. “Bullets and land of our own,” Sassafrass had said, standing on Mitch’s shoulders to hang it. Then there were the ones for Fidel, Garvey, Archie Shepp, and Coltrane. In her study, Sassafrass had sequestered a sequin-and-feather hanging shaped like a vagina, for Josephine Baker, but Mitch had made her hide it because it wasn’t proper for a new Afrikan woman to make things of such a sexual nature. Just as she was remembering Mitch’s tirade against her feather-work, Sassafrass felt the doors open and there he was—the cosmic lover and wonder of wonders to her: Mitch.

  Mitch had to stoop a little under the doorway; he was almost seven feet tall, and long limbed like a Watusi with Ethiopian eyes that arched like rainbows, and gold earrings in both ears, etched real fine because they were from Mexico (antiques). His nose was slightly hooked like Nasser’s, and his presence was that of one of those Olmec gods. Mitch thought of himself as a god, and he was always telling Sassafrass not to succumb to her mortality; to live like she was one of God’s stars.

  That particular day Mitch was wearing his blue homespun shirt Sassafrass had made with laced cuffs, and an orange coral medallion and some copper corduroy pants that sat on his thighs like he was the hottest thing in town. But this time Mitch was serious and brusque when he spoke to Sassafrass, who was trying to push her crocheting under her skirts.

  “Why aren’t you writing, girl? Do you think you gonna be some kind of writer sitting up here making me hats? I got so many damn hats I have to give some away, and you sittin’ here makin’ me another one. Well, if I didn’t know you were being so considerate because you don’t wanna deal with your writing, I’d say thanks, but you makin’ me stuff and hangin’ all this shit around the walls in every room so you won’t haveta write nothing today.”

  Sassafrass was holding her lips so tight between her teeth she could barely stand the pain, and she was making moves to get up and away from Mitch’s harangue when he pushed her back on the bed.

  “Look, Sassafrass, I just want you to be happy with yourself. You want to write and create new images for black folks, and you’re always sittin’ around making things with your hands. There’s nothing wrong with that, ’cept you’ve known how to do that all your damn life.” Mitch began to grow fierce again, and held Sassafrass briskly by the shoulder with one hand, bringing her chin and eyes straight to his gaze with the other. And Sassafrass couldn’t avoid the truth: the man she loved was not happy with her charade of homebodiness, because all this weaving and crocheting and macrameing she’d been doing all her life, and Sassafrass was supposed to be a writer. Mitch forcefully held her face close to his and continued.

  “Now Sassafrass, get into yourself and find out what’s holding you back. You can create whole worlds, girl. I don’t wanna come and see you like this any more, listening to some white man make it easy for you to stop thinking, telling you all the white folks’ news, so you think that nobody doesn’t know you got to pay your dues to the spirits. Sassafrass, if another person don’t tell you you’re a writer, you’ll know it all your life. And you better take care of it or you’ll end up some kind of wino or slut, trying to fuck it away with some punk-assed schoolteacher who can’t see you a jive-assed little bitch.” Mitch slowly let Sassafrass’ face come into her control, and stood all the way up so Sassafrass couldn’t forget who was overwhelmingly right in any situation. He straightened his shirt in his pants, and left the room to go practice horn playing.

  Sassafrass was weak from Mitch’s torrent. She sat so still her old fear of actually being a catatonic came back, and scared her so much she wiggled just to make sure. Mitch didn’t have to say all that even if it was true; it was ridiculous for some man to come tell her she had to create. That’s the same as telling her she had to have babies,
and she didn’t want to have babies . . . she could hardly feed herself, and Mitch didn’t feed anybody. All he did was play that old horn, and look for the nearest bar that could use an “avant-garde free-music” sax man. “Humph.” Sassafrass caught herself focusing in on Mitch again instead of herself, because she did want to be perfected for him, like he was perfected and creating all the time. Sassafrass was running all through herself looking for some way to get into her secrets and share, like Richard Wright had done and Zora Neale Hurston had done . . . the way The Lady gave herself, every time she sang.

  Do Nothing till You Hear from Me

  Pay No Attention to What’s Said

  From out of the closet came Billie, The Lady, all decked out in navy crêpe and rhinestones. She was pinning a gardenia in her hair, when Sassafrass realized what was happening.

  The Lady sighed a familiar sigh. Sassafrass tried to look as calm as possible and said, “I sure am glad to see you—why you haven’t come to visit since Mama used to put me to bed singing ‘God Bless The Child,’ and you would sit right on my pillow singing with her.” The Lady smiled sort of haughty and insisted Sassafrass listen carefully to everything she was going to say.

  “It’s the blues, Sassafrass, that’s keepin’ you from your writing, and the spirits sent me because I know all about the blues . . . that’s who I am: Miss Brown’s Blues . . .” The Lady was holding a pearl-studded cigarette holder that dazzled Sassafrass, who could hardly believe what she was hearing. The Lady went on and on. “Who do you love among us, Sassafrass? Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Freddie Washington, Josephine, Carmen Miranda? Don’t ya know we is all sad ladies because we got the blues, and joyful women because we got our songs? Make you a song, Sassafrass, and bring it out so high all us spirits can hold it and be in your tune. We need you, Sassafrass, we need you to sing best as you can; that’s our nourishment, that’s how we live. But don’t you get all high and mighty, ’cause all us you love so much is hussies too, and we catch on if somebody don’t do us right. So make us some poems and some stories, so we can sing a liberation song. Free us from all these blues and sorry ways.”