I gathered the butterflies, ants, beetles, worms, mice, crickets, katydids, grasshoppers, and walking sticks in the boxes and jars near the house, or sometimes, if I could, I snuck them inside. I gathered them as carefully as Noah. I watched them to see if they would notice me, or if I was too big for their eyes, or if I was too small. I never tired of watching their movements and speeds, their angles and colors. They were often like nothing else on earth. A monarch’s yellow is not the yellow of a canary. Is not the yellow of a daffodil. Is not the yellow of a primrose. Is not the yellow of a banana, or a yellow squash, or a tomato.
Colors vibrated. They rose like spirits of the dead and hovered around the thing. The hovering had ridges in it. The ridges around a katydid were nothing like those around a cornfield. Or those around asparagus, or a stem of wheat. They were not really like those around a blade of grass the katydids hid in, although they were much closer to those. That’s how I found things so well, like green katydids in the grass, by looking at the ridges rather than at the colors.
I wanted to eat cicada songs. I wanted to retreat into some earlier form of life and enter the brown shells and exoskeletons they left gripping tree branches and fences, posts and leaves, stalks of tall grasses and mounds of earth. Whatever they left their shells on was suspended in time. When they sang, it felt like fields of a thousand ecstasies. Insistent. Urgent. As if life would end after each wave of singing gradually tapered off.
I didn’t just keep the animals. I reveled in the feelings they gave me. I also gathered things that came from them. I thought the animals and the earth left them for me, like offerings to a friend, like gifts. I knew what “friend” meant. It meant someone who was nice to me, and life was nice to me, at least some of the time. It gave me sunshine. It gave me plants and animals, and they were nice to me in the feelings they gave me. I collected dirt dauber and wasp nests, cicada shells and dead cicadas, snakeskins, animal bones, teeth, tusks, claws, and spurs. Bodies and skeletons that had been hollowed out by ants. Things that didn’t smell. I gathered wings. I kept pieces of butterfly wings I found in the grass.
I looked at bird wings in the woods, left over after a cat had eaten the bird. But I never kept one. They would bring bad luck. Feathers in a room would make the room move back and forth, and I would get nauseated. I kept birds’ nests, though, abandoned in the spring for new ones. Nests kept the room warm, kept my spirit level. Some were made of thin twigs coiled around and woven together. Some were made of mud and twigs. Some had bits of plastic bags woven in. I was excited to find broken bird shells, imagining what it was like to be curled up inside one, to wake up and push out until the shell cracked open. They were so delicate and smooth. When I held them, their colors seeped into me.
The book set about the plant kingdom was also divided into several volumes. I was most interested in flowers and trees and all the magical things about them. Just reading some of the words and thinking about what they stood for was a kind of ecstasy. Reading “fruits,” “seeds,” “leaves,” “stems,” “blossoms,” “pistil,” “stamen,” “pollen,” “buds,” and “roots” and looking at the pictures was like having Christmas morning, over and over and over. Reading “pollination” and “photosynthesis” made me giddy. Other words, like “mosses,” “fungi,” “bloom,” “conifers,” “algae,” or “chlorophyll” were like the dark side of the moon, and so I avoided them, sped past them with eyes closed.
The faith of the seeds and bulbs amazed me. The idea that a seed could wait in the frozen ground, quietly, still, and alone, and then without looking know when it was time to sprout. That it knew when spring had come. That it could allow itself to rip open on the bottom, to burst again along an upper seam, and allow something delicate and albino to push upward, thirsty for a light it had never seen. I was also taken with the idea of forms. The idea that the bud would grow, that it would know what form to take. It would know whether to grow straight or tall, or to bend, or to curve, or to curl, or to twist. The idea that the stem would then grow buds and that, where once there was nothing, suddenly there were leaves. And the leaves knew what shapes to take, what colors. I loved the excitement of leaves, the way they loved the magic of sunlight that turned them green. And then there was all the magic of buds and blossoms. How they knew how to curl themselves and how they were sometimes more color and shape than they were matter.
I was especially excited about the tones and textures of leaves and stems. How there could be so many tones of green light and so many endless textures. When clover touched my skin, it reminded me of my mother’s arm brushing against my face. The vines of morning glory made my body tingle. The color of their leaves in the early morning was like the C note on an oboe, and the blossoms swaying ever so slightly were like hypnotic splotches of light. The leaves of maples seemed to laugh and play like children, to take me up in them and float me on the wind. Poplars whispered. Cedars mourned. Pines did not want to be touched. The forsythia grew like baby fingers and could not stand straight for long under the weight of its own desires. Strawberry plants smelled me coming and got quiet. Blueberries never stopped talking. Blackberries were like old men, tired of the world, wanting to sink down into the thickets and explode with dark, ancient sweetness. I heard all the time from family and classmates and friends that I was in my own world. What they meant was that I wasn’t in their world.
Seeds and pods were among my favorite things. Except in winter, we walked in a world of pods, and they were all different places with different personalities. There were distorted faces in the lily pods, faces of people who suffered for so long they were beyond us. When they burst open, they were like the bees. They were intensely into themselves, intently sending waves out to some force that remained hidden. The drum-head membranes of honesty pods also took on faces as spirits moved from one of them to another.
There were the startling white furs of milkweed pods that left an entire field near the woods rippling with eerie, otherworldly light. When they opened and the seeds started to crawl through gauze, the field became a sea, with mysterious creatures urgently moving in silent currents. I could hear moans, and I would never enter that field. If milkweed pods moaned and hissed like snakes do when people approach them, then thistles grimaced. They leapt onto my socks and onto the legs of my pants and tried to burrow into me.
Then there were the quiet orange pods of the silk tree. I could see the seeds plainly through the almost translucent skin. Sometimes they would open their eyes and catch me by surprise and then start laughing. Butterfly weed pods turned their heads and looked at me and then craned their necks upward, orange faces topped by silky white hair. They seemed to long for something in the heavens, to be calling out like a bird does when the eggs have been stolen from its nest.
Red maple pods filled the October air when wind blew, twirling downward like helicopters all around us. I picked them up and felt the bulge where the green let go of the stem and then brushed their fragile feather tips across my hands and cheeks. I washed myself in their odd magic until I could feel myself drifting through air. I flung them back into the sky, again and again, mesmerized by their spinning as they spiraled slowly down.
My favorite pods were those of the Kentucky coffee tree. There were two of them in Granny’s front yard, near the wisteria arbor. The pods were dark brown and about two inches wide and sometimes eight inches long. If I picked the pods up at certain times and shook them, they shhhhhed like maracas. But if I just held them long enough, they hummed, and although they seemed at first to be hardened ripples, they started to mold themselves into the palm of my hand. I sometimes pried them open at the seams. Inside, a perfect row of three to five black, kidney-shaped seeds lay suspended in a yellow, molasses-like gum.
I played games, like hide-and-seek, with the spirits in the pods. I talked to them. I didn’t tell them my troubles, though. Because when I was sick or upset I didn’t talk. And when I was talking I didn’t remember I had troubles. By the time I was eleven, I no longer pla
yed games with spirits in pods as much, but I still talked to them. Some of my favorite ones were in special boxes in my room, like Uncle Tommy’s Prince Edward cigar tins. But along with pods, I kept dried petals of flower blossoms that spirits liked. I liked handling them, how they dried to almost brittle but were still so full of energy. How it changed my hands to pick them up and hold them. I kept rocks with different textures and colors. I kept pieces of bark and stems, and pieces of sticks, usually ones that had faces in the grain or that seemed to hold a gesture I couldn’t put my finger on, the feeling of motion.
Besides my spirit friends, and animal and plant friends, the wind and the clouds, my other best friend was a girl born prematurely with a boy attached to her at the hips. Her name was Ruby, and she was one of my best-kept secrets. Ruby was so shy. So delicate. Even more than the boy inside me. And I was so protective of her. I saw how girls were treated. I saw how girls were looked at. I heard how girls were talked to. We were taught that our sisters and mamas were special. All girls and women were special, and so we should treat them with respect. But people didn’t practice what they taught us. They made them special, but at the same time, they were always watching them out of the corner of their eyes. When my sisters did something wrong, they were punished more than the boys were. It was like they were wrong before they did anything. When we got whippings, our sisters were beaten worse than we were. Once, Mama found some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Sister had put in a hole in her wall. She was supposed to have been taking them for school lunches. The thumps of her body against the wall and her screams were so frightening. Daddy just went on and on beating her. We thought that he was going to kill her. I remember the sour taste of her fear. The heat of it. It made me sick in my stomach. Nobody was ever going to lay a hand on Ruby.
Inside me were mansions, and Ruby lived in them. They had clean rooms with no dirt. They had furniture that never changed places. Soft red couches. Soft blue couches. Wooden tables that soothed her when she touched them. They had kitchens where every cup and plate was perfect, in a perfect place in the cabinet. They had bedrooms with firm mattresses and soft cotton blankets and white spreads and lots of pillows. She didn’t have to share her bed with anyone else. It had lots of windows, looking out at flower beds that were always in blossom, and trees, and just enough shade and just enough light. She had strawberries in her garden because she loved strawberries. Wherever she put something, it stayed there, because there was no one to come along and move it. It was always warm, and wind blew in the windows.
I was so happy when Mama and Daddy went to town and took my brothers and sisters with them. Then Ruby could come out. Many objects knew me as a girl with slender hips. She came alive for them, prancing around kitchens when no one else was home. She’d take out special teacups and saucers, plates and glasses, forks and spoons, measuring cups and bowls, whisks and spatulas—usually the same ones I insisted on using at meals. “Come on, y’all,” she would say to things, with her thoughts. “Come on, everybody,” and clap her hands. “They’re gone, children, they’re gone, honey children, they’re gone, sweet friends.” But she didn’t talk the way you talk, with clear words. She talked with sounds, and feelings.
“You have been so good to me, red plate. Red. Red. Red. So red! Let me give you a hug! You, my favorite cup in the whole world, in the whole universe and galaxy, in all of space, in all of time, you’ve been so quiet today. What’s wrong? Give me some water, blue glass, beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful!” And to a tin cup, “Someone dropped you? I know. I heard the crash. I was afraid you’d be dented, but you look OK. It’s OK. I’ll rub you.”
“Guess what I did last Sunday? I walked back from church by myself. You should have seen me. I had on this nice white dress with black shoes. And my hair was done so nicely. I cut through the woods and saw a light-green car parked over at our cousin Freda’s house. I touched it with my hand because I didn’t see anybody around. It was cool and hard and held my hand like water holds my feet when I step into a tub. Then I ran, trying not to get any dirt on my dress or my shoes. My shoes are so shiny! You would love them. Hey, let’s turn on the radio.” Then she’d pretend to dance and laugh and laugh. She’d dance and didn’t care about timing or symmetry. She’d dance like she was mocking people and then stop and start laughing. After an hour or so, our family’s car would pull into the driveway, and a sadness would come over her. She’d hurriedly kiss all of the things, whispering to them, and put them back in the drawers and cabinet. “Hurry, hurry,” she’d say, as we heard the car doors banging and voices approaching the house. She’d look at me, smile, and disappear into my body.
Cool
One hand can’t shake.
When I was around twelve, I started to realize that I had people friends who loved me. But as far as spending time together, they were friends I only had for moments at school. They weren’t from Canaan’s Hill. They were from the nearby town of Ashland, or from other parts of the county.
On the maps, Ashland was only three miles away, but the people who made the map didn’t know what we knew. To us, Ashland was another world in another space and time. Black people in Ashland weren’t as free as we were. They had yards but not fields, not woods. They lived next door to someone, and next door to someone else, and across the street from a lot of other people. They lived on the outer circles of the town, behind the center ring of white people. They couldn’t have animals or gardens. Everybody around them wasn’t a cousin. They weren’t getting fed every day from touching the ground that echoed with their ancestors or where spirits still moved in the trees. Listening to Mama and Granny, living in town was a fall from grace.
One of my people friends was Osie Mason. When I was around fifteen, he asked me if I wanted to go to a carnival and stay overnight at his house. Doing something with someone else, or staying at somebody else’s house was a new idea. We had never done anything with other kids outside Canaan’s Hill. I can understand now that Osie was thinking of me as a close friend, but then I didn’t realize it. It was really nice of him.
We rode on a Ferris wheel, and I closed my eyes and prayed when our seat spun upward toward the sky. I thought I would get sick. Osie’s mother bought us some cotton candy, which was different from anything I had ever had. The most fun was just being in such a different place where there were so many other people. I was stunned by all of the stimulation. The dings of game machines, blinking of neon lights, and hundreds of mingling scents. The cranking of motors for the rides and the straining of ball bearings and screeching of cogs and chains made me nauseated but also drunk and giddy in a way I had never felt. I glowed like a white blaze. I dispersed into the currents.
I was amazed that night at Osie’s that someone else would let me sleep in one of their beds. That they didn’t seem to be guarding secrets. It was so different than in my house. Me and Osie lay awake and talked for a while as the embers of my newly found flame slowly went dim. It felt good having a friend. But the next morning I awoke feeling like a traitor, to my family and my pillows and my bed, to the secrets and shadows of our house.
Another people friend of mine was my aunt Debbie. She lived in New York City, and we were friends when she came to visit in the summer. My grandma Arlene had given birth to Mama and left her in the country with Granny so that she could go north and find a better life. It was common in those days. Later she sent for Mama, but Mama didn’t want to go. Grandma remarried in New York and had seven more children, and some of them were younger than I was, like my aunt Debbie. Every summer they came to visit, sometimes all of them, sometimes only some. There was Aunt Rosie, Aunt Clara, Aunt Annette, Aunt Sandra, Aunt Debbie, Uncle Andrew, and Uncle Kenny. Those were fun times.
Everything in the country was so strange and often scary for them. They’d watch the cats eat, when we took scraps out to them and put them in a big pan, the way people watch animals in the zoo. The thick blackness of the night, without any streetlights or lights from any nearby town, was for t
hem ominous and surreal. The snakes and the outdoor toilet. The lightning bugs spotting the darkness, and us running barefoot in grass to try to catch them, were otherworldly. The sounds of frogs croaking in the creek in the bottom, the owls, whippoorwills, cicadas, and katydids were unsettling and eerie.
My aunt Debbie sank into an open space in my heart that no one had ever touched. The things others found strange or uncool about me she simply saw and loved. We knew that we were family, but our bonding happened in an instant, like when the day is still, sunny, quiet, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, there is a strong wind, sweeping the petals off a chrysanthemum, blowing the papers and cups from the edge of the porch, tearing the cardinal off the plum branch, and slamming the door of the barn. And then you are in motion, gathering things, holding yourself, and then there’s another wind, pushing you along. After that, the day before the wind came is gone and another day has started. You don’t even remember the day before. Everything has changed, the colors of things, the light, the mood. Even you are different. I was twelve, and I was taking Aunt Debbie to look at butterflies on pink gladiolas. And suddenly, the wind blew.
I rode her on the handlebars of my bicycle as often as she wanted, determined never to swerve, never to fall. I showed her secret things, a special rock, a piece of wood with a woman in the pattern of the grain, a dolphin in the knot, a hawk’s feather. She went with me to feed the animals, to pull weeds in the garden. Our siblings teased us. Our parents worried and talked. But then they were leaving for New York, and I would grieve in silence and wouldn’t talk, and eventually no one would think about it again, until the next summer.
My two best people friends were Malcolm and Burton, and they both lived in Ashland. We were at-school friends since first grade, but we didn’t visit each other, or if we did, I don’t remember it. We were brainy kids, and were from pretty strict families. We were sensitive and good in school. We spent a lot of time around older people, and it showed. We did what we were told to do and never got into trouble. We tried to get A’s. And we were teased by other students who were cooler than us.
The Secret Life of a Black Aspie Page 8