“I knowed you wasn’ nothin’ but a monkey all the time, Jonsie!” said Miss Lucille. “An’ I know what you gonna do when the deal goes down. Just like ever’body else! You gonna fall down on your black knees an’ ask that jackleg preacher to pray for your black soul!”
“I’ll go to hell first!”
“Don’ talk like that, Rutherford!” said Viola in a frightened voice.
“You gittin’ too deep now, man!” said T. C.
“If I don’ mean it,” Rutherford declared, “I’ll take a bloody oath on my momma!”
“Rutherford!” Viola cried.
Sea-song poured into the gulf of silence.
“Fourth!” Amerigo said absentmindedly.
“What you talkin’ about, li’l niggah?” said Rutherford.
“T. C. said I’ll be in the fifth grade next year. I’ll be in the fourth!”
“What’s that got to do with the price of tamadas!”
The fourth grade, he thought, embarrassed by the upsurgence of a wave of pride in and love for his father.
“I took ever’thin’ apart …” he heard him say, “an’ I remembered where it went. An’ then I cleaned what was dirty, an’ replaced what was worn out. An’ then I put it all back together agin. An’ I polished it till it looked like new!”
“It’s about your bedtime, ain’ it?” said Viola. “You have to git up early in the mornin’. Tamarra’s your big day!”
“What’s happenin’?” T. C. asked.
“He’s goin’ to the art gallery to git some art appreciation!” Rutherford said mockingly.
“Art what?” said Miss Lucille. He could see her grinning in the dark.
“They didn’ have jive like that when we was in school,” said T. C. “Ain’ that somethin’! Well, I know my boy here’s gonna learn it, if they’s somethin’ to learn. Walk away with a-l-l that high-powered stuff! Mingle among the best of ’um, Jack! Show the whities who we are. What we kin do if we have half a chance!”
“Better teach that little darkie to earn a loaf a bread!” said Miss Lucille tartly. “Fill his head up with all that kind a stuff an’ then send him back down here to this slum to hustle pennies on street corners!”
An unspeakable rage filled his consciousness while familiar voices now filled the channels of his ears:
“What you gonna be?” Tommy asked. “You’re so smart!”
A prince! he thought, A king! The smartest man in the w-h-o-l-e world! The president of the United States of America. A preacher, teacher. He looked at the sky, and then at the trees: “I’m gonna be a symphony leader! With a hundred — two hundred — with a million trumpets an’ things! — with me doin’ the leadin’.”
“Aw man — you crazy!” Turner exclaimed.
“Haw! haw! haw!” Lem laughed so hard he almost fell off the porch banister.
“I’m gonna do it, too!”
“Yeah —” Tommy said, “in the municipal auditorium! Downtown, Jack!”
“Aw naw! I’m gonna go in France an’ places like that, like Ira Eldridge an’ —”
“Who’s that?” Tommy asked.
“Don’t you know who that is, man? You don’ know nothin’!”
“Who was he, smarty!” Tommy asked.
“He was a Negro! A actor! An’ he never was no slave, neither! An’ he went all over the world actin’ on the stage — an’ ate with kings an’ queens an’ princes an’ things like that!”
“When was that?” Turner asked.
“In slavery time.”
“How could he be doin’ it in slavery time — an’ not be no slave hisself, niggah! Ho! ho! I got you! You kin sure tell ’um! A spook — actin’ — in slavery time — gittin’ booty from queens!”
“Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!” Willie Joe squealed.
“Yeah, he did, too! Niggah! It was Ne-groes that was free when all the other Ne-groes in the South was slaves! An’-an’ he was like that. An’ I’m gonna be one, too! Like old Paul Robeson, man! Only I’m gonna be the biggest! I’m gonna stand up there on that stage in a real tux, like Duke Ellington, with that little old white stick in my hand directin ’um down! Man, let my hair grow reeeeeeal long! So it kin fall in my face, like it does old Chikoffski in the show!”
“How your nappy hair gonna fall in your face, niggah?” Turner shouted. “You better slick that moss down with some Murray’s!”
“I don’ care. An’-an’ the people — big shots! — all over the whole world! — millions of ’um’ll be clappin’ an’ clappin’!”
“Let’s give ’im the claps, men!” cried Turner:
Clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! They laughed and yelled, while he bowed deeply, again and again, his hair falling into his face, like Chikoffski in the show.
“… hustlin’ pennies on street corners!” Miss Lucille was saying. “You ain’ my momma!” he cried, surprised by the tears that filled his eyes.
“That’s right, ’Mer’go!” cried T. C. “Look out, Lucille! This boy’s your even change! He’s got more brains than you, me, an’ his momma an’ poppa put together! Don’ let ’um hold you back, Amerigo. You go on out there an’ look at them pictures like the rest of ’um. That’s where the white man’s gittin’ his. Yes, sir! Mister Charlie don’ like to see you readin’, or sittin’ quiet-like, thinkin’ about somethin’. He likes to see you laughin’ an’ full a booze! ’Fraid you might learn somethin’ he don’ know! Them high-society niggahs know it! They sendin’ they kids to learn all that stuff … all that high-powered music. Like — what’s ’er name? What’s the name a that tough little girl — s-m-a-r-t! always givin’ ’em piana recitals all the time.… Ain’ no older’n Amerigo.…”
C-O-S-I-M-A, he thought. Funny name.
“You mean Cosima Thornton,” said Viola.
“I guess that’s her. Her old man’s got that photography shop over on Eighteenth Street. Looks like a whitie. The momma t —”
“Cosima Thornton,” said Viola. “Allie knows ’um. Doris has been dancin’ with ’um a long time.”
“How is old Allie?” T. C. asked. “I ain’ seen that gal in a coon’s age! She’s a cute li’l sleepy-eyed gal!”
“Her brains is ’sleep, too!” chuckled Miss Lucille.
“She’s all right,” said Viola. “Just the same as ever. Worryin’ ’erself over Doris …”
“Yeah, well …” said T. C., picking up his thought: “All them. An’ them big-shot doctors and lawyers out south. You got to have class these days! Even the preachers is gittin’ hip. Ain’ no more a that bein’ called crap — an’ openin’ up a storefront with a few hus’lers in the choir! Naw naw! Them days is goin’. Am I right, Rutherford?”
“Right as rain!”
“Yes sir! Now you got to be educated! Got to put-that-jive-on-the-line! Without all that jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. These new little niggahs like ’Mer’go want talkin’ — lecturin’ — to!”
“Lawd! You young ’uns sure got problems, ain’t you!” Mrs. Derby exclaimed in a quietly mocking tone, shooting an invisible stream of snuff juice into a can filled with water that stood beside her chair.
“Amerigo’s gonna be the president!” said Rutherford with a sly grin. “What’s that got to do with art? That little niggah’d better be studyin’ how to keep his poppa out a war!”
“Well, so long, Jackson!” T. C. was saying.
“So long, man. Take it easy!” Rutherford replied.
“I got to do it, man!”
“Wait a minute there, Thomas C.,” said Miss Lucille. “I’ll walk you a piece.”
“Take it easy, there,” said Viola.
“So long, Vi!” said T. C. “We’ll have to open up a keg a nails agin soon!”
“Unh! — will you listen to that joker!” Rutherford exclaimed. “We prob’ly won’ see this cat no more till doomsday!”
“Bye!”
“Bye …”
“S’long …”
In the darkness of the middle room Rutherford was say
ing:
“Like I was saying … I want you to look —”
“Sssssh!” whispered Viola, “he’ll hear you.”
“I want you to look nice just as much as you do. But here we are scufflin’ an’ scrapin’ to barely git by, to have somethin’ to eat an’ a roof over our head. People barely kin work agin an’ you, buyin’ furs! Shit! You scare me to death! No kiddin’! For me to do somethin’, I have to think about it a long time. An’ then I’m half scaired somethin’ll go wrong! But you! You do the impossible just like it was the most natural thing in the world!” Silence. Then: “Nobody, nobody in his right mind’d buy fox furs on what we make. E-v-e-r since I kin remember I been payin’ for livin’ I done already done! Or borrowin’ for the livin’ I’m doin’! Just as soon as we git one bill paid — I’ll be damned if you don’ go an’ put the man’s hand in our pocket agin!”
“I’ll be payin’ most of it myself!” Viola whispered. “I know you can’t afford to buy all the nice things that other women have on the sal’ry you make. That’s why I work! So that you an’ me an’ the baby — all of us — kin have some a the things we couldn’ have otherwise. If we waited till we could afford somethin’ we never would buy somethin’ new! At least we kin have ever’thing the rest of ’um have — an’ — an’ git a little fun out a life!”
“What I care what the rest of ’um have!”
“Sssssssh!”
“Be damned what the rest of ’um have! It’d be different if we was borrowin’ money to pay for somethin’ to eat. But for furs!”
“Mister President?”
He stirred sluggishly.
“President Jones! Let’s git up an’ git with it! It’s time to git ready to go to the art gallery an’ learn all about how to run the country. Now listen! You awake!”
“Yessir.”
“All right. Now I heated some water for you, an’ laid out your clothes. I want you to git up an’ wash your face an’ hands good. An’ don’ forgit your neck! An’ put on your clean underwear an’ your white shirt, your Sund’y shoes. I done already shined ’um for you. Here’s the quarter for the bus an’ four bits to keep in your pocket — in case you have to buy somethin’.
“I know you gonna act like a gen’leman an’ listen good to all they tellin’ you, so I don’ have to tell you that. Ah got to go now, so have a nice time an’ take it easy, you heah?”
“Yessir,” he nodded from the side of the bed, watching his father go through the door. He leaned out the window and watched him start up the alley, taking long strides through the deep snow. He tried to discover his tracks, but the burnished cobblestones yielded not a sign.
He tiptoed into the middle room and crawled into bed beside his mother.
“Uhm,” she grunted irritably, opened her eyes, and looked at him.
He turned restlessly on his back.
“I’m gonna make you git up in a minute!” said Viola.
He looked at the Indian maiden upside down, at the disciples sitting around Jesus in the picture over the bed. Their figures were elongated, and their heads rested on the bottom of the picture frame, while their outstretched hands seemed to push the table against the ceiling.
He turned on his side in order to have a look sideways. The weight of his shoulder pressed against Viola’s arm.
“Git up now!” she commanded. “Shoot! You too big for this jive. You ain’ no baby no more!”
He lay very still.
“Boy?”
The word echoed throughout his consciousness:
“I’m a boy!” He carefully stretched himself out to his full length until his toes touched his mother’s toes!
“What time is it?” asked Viola, suddenly sitting up in bed. The shoulder strap of her nightgown fell off her shoulder and exposed her left breast. “You better git out a this bed. You got things to do!” She adjusted her shoulder strap.
He stood in the kitchen door, facing the brilliant bar of oblique sunlight alone. The streetcar ground hotly up the avenue. She’s at work now, he thought, and tried to discover within the shady depths of the elm trees in Miss Minnie’s yard the big rich apartment building with the big red neon sign burning the word B-I-A-R-R-I-T-Z into a night sky filled with falling snow.
The art gallery! A sudden spark of happiness flickered in his mind. The great building loomed up out of the darkness. The brittle snow crunched beneath his feet, as he spread the thick lather of soap upon his face and neck.
That’s the prettiest house in the whole world! He put on his fresh white shirt, and then the iron-pressed trousers of his Sunday suit.
“An’ don’ forgit to grease your legs!” he heard Viola say just before she dashed out the door. “You don’ want your legs lookin’ all rusty!”
He rubbed Vaseline on his legs, and then put on his shoes and socks. He combed and brushed his hair three times, slicked it down with Murray’s, and put Rutherford’s stocking cap on and made a knot in the back and rolled it up till it fit his head real tight, the way Rutherford did. After he had finished his Post Toasties, he took the skullcap off and admired the tiny wavelets of hair that rippled over his skull in the front room mirror. Then he carefully put on his cap, cocked it on the side the way Rutherford had showed him, the way it was in the photograph in the album where at age three he stood beside Rutherford dressed in a light tweed double-breasted overcoat and cap just like his father’s. He stared his face out of focus in an effort to measure the time since he was three. It resounded deftly within the vast dark gray regions of memory in a volley of colorful explosions, in bursts of black and white interspersed with big red numbers: Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Boooooom! BOOMmmmmmmm! BOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
“Boy!” Viola had exclaimed.
He stepped out the door into the sunlight that flooded the front porch, over the clean spot where … He unconsciously looked at it, even though it was gone. Under the spell of a strange elated feeling he descended the stair and made his way through the cellarlike coolness of the shoot.…
He swaggered proudly up the avenue, carefully avoiding the rocks and bottles and tin cans. Tommy and the others were half a block ahead of him. They called out to him, but he pretended not to hear. He walked alone.
“Look at that s-h-a-r-p little niggah!” said Mr. Hicks who used to sell popcorn at the show, just as he passed the big frame house where Aunt Pearl.… He walked straighter and held his head higher, unconsciously obeying Viola’s admonition to: “Hold your head up an’ walk like a man!”
“Hi, Tony!” said Miss Mamie.
She goes with dago-Sam at The Blue Moon.
“Mornin’, Miss Mamie!” He tipped his cap.
“Ain’ that nice! A real gen’leman!” she exclaimed to a passerby, a tall tawny red-eyed man with greasy overalls looking about him as though he had lost something. He looked distractedly at Amerigo for an instant, scratching his uncombed head with a huge dirty hand, and then continued his search — somewhere down between the cracks in the dirty asphalt street.
Just as he reached Troost Avenue a boy about his own age and dressed up as he walked awkwardly down the hill, as though he felt a little uncomfortable in his Sunday suit on a Friday morning.
That’s the new boy.
“H-h-h-hi!” he smiled a broad smile, bearing a set of white rabbit teeth, which exaggerated the size of his mouth, so that his round peanut head seemed too small and his skinny neck too long.
Listen to that little niggah stutter! he exclaimed to himself, barely able to suppress the impulse to laugh. He eyed the big black mole over his upper lip. His name was Isaac. Amerigo was warmed by his sincere, anxious, and somewhat fearful smile. Something about Isaac reminded him of Toodle-lum, and yet he was different. He studied his impression, as Isaac drew nearer, remembering the first time he had seen him, last First Sunday when he had joined the church with his mother. Her name’s Mona … moan.
“A be-u-ti-ful black woman, I wanna tell you!” he heard Rutherford exclaim. “Like a African qu
een! An’ dig-na-fied, Jack!”
“Come on,” Amerigo said.
“O-o-o-o-kay,” said Isaac gratefully.
They marched together up the avenue until they came to the corner of Independence Avenue and Pacific Street, where they joined the unavoidable stream of children bound for school.…
“Mom?” Viola was just stepping into the kitchen that evening.
“Hi, baby!”
“Mom? Kin-I-go-to-the-show? Tommyan’Turneran’them’s goin’ …”
“Ain’t you forgot somethin’?”
“No’m.”
“Seems to me you have.”
“What?”
“You done got to be such a big shot that you can’t say good evenin’ to somebody when they speak to you? I see the art gallery ain’ improved your manners a bit!”
“No’m.” He fidgeted uneasily on the orange crate.
“No’m — what!”
“Evenin’.”
“That’s better.”
“Kin I go?”
“I don’ know ’bout you goin’ all the way down on Twelfth Street at night. Better wait till your daddy comes home an’ ask him.”
“But Mom!”
“You heard what I said! I don’ want to have to tell you agin. What’s come over you this evenin’? Well, how did it go!”
“What?”
“What! Boy!”
Boy.
“Boy! I believe you losin’ your black mind! The art gallery! You went, didn’t you?”
“Yes’m.”
“Better take off them clothes before you git ’um dirty.”
He moved dreamily through the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the woman who stood at the drainboard taking groceries out of a brown paper sack.
“An’ hurry up! Your daddy’ll be home in a minute. An’ straighten up that front room. It looks a mess! I don’ know what’s got into you taday.… the house all dirty … an’ look at these dishes! Standin’ all over the table!”
Such Sweet Thunder Page 34