Grandpa Thevenet, who was nobody's grandfather that either boy knew, was magical. “Hey youself,” he said to them.
Grandpa Thevenet had a piano-key smile and told stories that would light up a place, wherever he happened to be. When Grandpa spoke, he sounded like the French Canadians Darryl had seen in droves when Jack Mitchell took the family to Disney World, but Grandpa Thevenet was from Louisiana.
On his lap, between hands soft and strong and long like Sunday, rested an accordion. Grandpa could do with his accordion what Hoodie Duncan did with a football. “You boys tell me what you tink of dis song.”
Some people called it zydeco. Grandpa Thevenet called it house-dance music. The best music there is. Grandpa said he'd learned it as a boy in the bayous in the twenties. He said his papa would play it on the violin on Saturday nights for the family and the neighbors. Folks sway-dancing and laughing; the swamps would be charged on Saturday nights. Grandpa had taken to the accordion and joined his papa in the music-making when he was only eleven (“I wasn't not'ing but a son den”) and could hardly handle the accordion's bulk between his spindly arms. When his papa followed the oil boom from the swamps of Louisiana to the plains of West Texas, they brought the music along. For awhile, Beezville (which was what Grandpa still called the Flats) had been plugged into the same current that had lit up the bayous on Saturday nights. But he mostly played for himself now. And very infrequently.
Two and Darryl, sitting Indian-style on the porch, clapped with the beat. Grandpa smiled and swayed his head with the pumping accordion. The smile seemed to be as much a part of his music as the instrument. It replaced the lyrics, which were few, and let the listeners know that no matter what the words said, the people were together to have a good time.
“Ma Claire est belle,” Grandpa sang:
Say, ma Claire, elle est belle.
Mais les haricots n'sont pas salés
Faut que je la renvoye chez elle.
He threw back his head, loose sunshine-yellow shirt rustling with his laughter. “Now, what you tink a dis song?” Grandpa asked, carefully laying the accordion beside his chair.
“Tops,” said Two.
“It was great,” said Darryl.
“Ah, you like it.”
“What do the words mean?” Darryl asked.
“Tey means: Ma girl Claire, she a beauty. But she no know how to make my beans, so's I have to send her home.”
The boys laughed.
“Naw,” Grandpa laughed with them. “High-yalla gals just cain't cook,” he said, himself a shade only slightly darker than his shirt; and he laughed some more. But then he stopped. “What's tat you got on your wrists?”
“Rubber bands,” Two said, almost in a whisper and no longer looking at Grandpa.
“Rubber bands?”
“Yeah.”
“Boys, you take tose off now.” He was no longer smiling. “You crazy? Cut off te circulation to your hands.” Grandpa Thevenet raised his own to accentuate his point. His hands were beautiful: delicate but strong. They looked sculpted.
When Darryl unwound the bands, he noticed the bulge of veins on his forearms. On Two's, too. Like Hoodie Duncan.
He handed the rubber bands to Two, who was rising.
“We got to go, Grandpa Thevenet,” Two said.
“Yeah.” Darryl rose, too.
Two said, “Thanks for playing that music for us.”
Grandpa Thevenet smiled again. Wide. “You boys don' be so scarce no more. Come by and see me some.”
“OK,” Two said.
“We will,” said Darryl.
And they climbed down off the porch and into the dirt street.
The twins, Fredrick and Dedrick Horton, were walking in the other direction. Two scrawny boys who together might make one normal-sized teenager, they often acted as though, because they were one grade higher in school, they were superior to Darryl and Two. As they approached, Darryl noticed one or the other—Fredrick or Dedrick, he could never tell them apart—snickering and looking toward Two and him.
Two raised a pumped and protruding-vein-covered forearm and pointed at Fredrick and Dedrick. “Y'all see something funny?”
“Yeah,” said Fredrick (or maybe it was Dedrick), “you two knot-headed nigros up there samboing like slave days with Grandpa Sambo hisself.” The other's laugh (Dedrick's; or maybe it was Fredrick's) was equally derisive.
“If you see a knot-head nigro,” Two said, “give him ten dollars.” Two waited. “Uh-huh, that's just what I thought.”
“If I had ten dollars, you the last niggah see the green on its back.”
“You don't wanna be messing with me today, Fredrick . . .”
“I'm Dedrick.”
“Don't care who you is,” said Two. “You two big-lipped baboons look so much alike, it's like I'm talking to just one of you niggahs anyway. Just don't be messing with the kid. Not today.”
“The kid?”
“Yeah,” Two said, shaking his head no and raising his hands as if in disbelief. “Don't be missing with the kid. Or I'm a have to open me up a can of whoop-ass on you.”
“Whoop-ass on who?”
Two looked around. “I don't see nobody else in this road.”
Dedrick, leering, squared up on Two. “Well, kid, go ahead. Do it then . . .”
Darryl felt Grandpa Thevenet's stare on them and felt suddenly small. He pulled back Two, who was now face-to-face with and mimicking Dedrick. “C'mon, Two. I've got to go. Jack Mitchell's waiting for me.”
Dedrick turned on Darryl. “Well, go on and run after that tomming niggah then. Wasn't nobody talking to you. Oreo.”
Darryl felt himself tighten, terror and rage racing through his body so strongly it turned his stomach. His legs felt weak. But he just stared at the other boy, who was now equally quiet.
Two stepped between Darryl and the twins, speaking excitedly. “Man, if I was you, Fredrick . . .”
“I'm Dedrick . . .”
“Don't care who you is, I'd quit that squawking and I'd be walking if I was you. My man Darryl wind up doing you just like I saw him do yo' momma the other day.”
Dedrick surged at Two—“Don't be talking about my momma, niggah!”—but Fredrick reined his brother's charge. “Chill, Ded,” said Fredrick. “Chill.”
Grandpa Thevenet called from his pea-green porch, “Y'all boys cut t'at mess out 'fore I comes down t'ere and whups all ya's skinny tails myself.”
Two, pulling Darryl by the shirt, shuffled backward, like an Ali dance step, wearing a victorious smile. Darryl still felt his throat choked up, his legs shaky; but Two, speaking with his hands, his body still dancing, delivered the knockout punch: “Yo, Dedrick. Yo, man . . .” When Dedrick finally calmed enough—leaning against his brother's restraining arm—to listen, Two sang: “I saw yo' momma at Burger King;/ Hit that bitch with a chicken wing!”
Dedrick swung wildly, but Darryl and Two were already laugh-shuffling up the road.
“Chill, Ded.” Fredrick struggled to restrain his teary-eyed and flailing-armed twin. “Chill!”
“Yo, Fredrick,” Darryl called over his shoulder. “She's your momma, too.”
And Darryl and Two, hoofing it up the road, burst out laughing.
Their smiles died when they arrived at the gravel intersection where they would part. Two lived a few houses down the side street. The Three Jacks', cast in the shadows of trees, loomed quietly just a hundred yards up the road.
Looking toward the bar, Darryl said, “Jack Mitchell's going to kill me.” Jack Mitchell didn't usually scold Darryl. Over dinner, driving his stepson to and from the Flats, he hardly even spoke. But this was different.
“Maybe they won't know,” said Two, looking toward his house. “I'm a tell my daddy we got fired and white man didn't give us nothing.”
But Jack Mitchell would know. He'd know how much they got, when they started and when they stopped, and he'd know what Darryl had said in the song. Jack Mitchell and Wiley Edwards and the other councilme
n were buddies. In fact, had it been anybody but one of them, Jack Mitchell probably wouldn't say anything.
Two patted Darryl on the shoulder, moving past, and he smiled. “Oh well,” he said, “can't die but once, and never be deader than that.”
Darryl stood, looking down the road at the Three Jacks'. He could hear Two's quarters jingling in his pocket as he jogged toward his house. Then Darryl started walking to face Jack Mitchell. He steeled himself, his step steady and resolved, because he hadn't done anything wrong.
Pool balls' clacking clatter burst over the dusk of the Three Jacks' Bar and Lounge as Darryl entered. After his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Darryl noticed the other two Jacks, Jack Pickering and Jack Johnston, playing cards at the bar. When he saw Darryl, Jack Pickering pointed over his shoulder. “Your daddy's waiting for you out back.”
Marching through, Darryl thought: Jack Mitchell is not my daddy. Darryl called him Dad when addressing him directly, but otherwise he was always and only Jack Mitchell. A nice enough man; his mom's husband, his little sister's father; but not his own daddy. And it wasn't spite that made him feel this way. It was just the truth. So if Jack Mitchell was waiting out back to scold him, well, it disturbed Darryl; because Jack Mitchell was his elder, because he was an authority figure, it cowed Darryl—but it didn't haunt him, because it could involve no fall from grace. Jack Mitchell was not his daddy. Not like Mr. Waymans, the boxer, was to Two.
Jack Mitchell sat heavily in a too-small chair at the desk in the back office. He looked up when Darryl entered, stared, but said nothing.
Darryl stayed where he was, near the door. “Hey,” he offered as greeting.
“What happened at the post office?”
“At the post office?” Darryl asked.
“You heard me fine.”
Darryl shifted his weight. “Mr. Edwards sent us home,” he said.
“Sent you home?” Jack Mitchell's eyes were working to meet Darryl's.
“Yes,” Darryl said, looking from Jack Mitchell to his feet.
“Boy, you know better than playing around! . . .”
“We weren't playing around,” Darryl said, looking back up. “We were working hard, but he heard us singing and told us to go home.”
Jack Mitchell stopped. “Weren't playing around,” he said. “But he told you to go home.”
“Yes,” Darryl said, eyes slipping down to his feet again.
“He told you to go home for a reason, I suppose?”
“For laughing, but we worked hard . . .”
“Boy, you know better than playing around! Laughing! White man sees you playing around and laughing, he thinks you're not working. He thinks you're clowning. Just another lazy niggah wanting a handout”—Jack Mitchell never used the word nigger; he said it was beneath him—“and now here you go, clowning and playing the fool and acting like a niggah. Is that what you want?” Jack Mitchell asked, and he stared at Darryl. Just stared.
Darryl didn't answer.
“You want to grow up to be nothing?”
He didn't answer. He stood by the door, looking down. When he looked up, Jack Mitchell had put his hat on his head and was rising, no longer even looking at Darryl, looking past him. “Let's go,” he said, and he carried his bulk through the door and out of the office.
Darryl followed, a few feet behind, his face trained on the ground. He looked steadily down because he felt tears fighting their way up, and if he couldn't keep them in, he didn't want anybody to see.
“See you all tomorrow,” he heard Jack Mitchell say.
The two other Jacks grumbled.
Outside, Darryl followed Jack Mitchell's round shadow to his Chrysler New Yorker. The tears were still there somewhere, but he felt that as long as Jack Mitchell didn't scold him anymore, he could keep them corralled on the inside.
Two would never cry like this. Two would go home and get his tail whipped for wasting his money and cry because of the pain, but never like this. Two would get sent to bed and wake up tomorrow and all would be forgotten, because Two was just a boy growing up, like Mr. Waymans had once been a boy growing up, and it was expected that a boy growing up get into trouble like this. “Spending all your money on games.” He could hear Mr. Waymans say, the whip of the belt singing the chorus: “I sure ain't'bout to give you no more.” But tomorrow all would be forgotten. Two would come out to play, Mr. Waymans staring on, his face quiet as a closed door, and all would be forgotten.
The inside of the car was too tight. Darryl was very close to Jack Mitchell and couldn't distance himself at all. Inside himself, though, was infinite space in all directions and nowhere anything to hold onto. Behind his eyes, Darryl was in midair, in free fall, and he didn't know when he would hit, nor where, nor how hard would be his landing. Behind his eyes, Darryl could see Grandpa Thevenet's Sambo song and Hoodie Duncan's wolfish leer and the twins' clowning scorn, black faces in blackface, with wide red lips and bug eyes, and laughing . . . These images, dancing in space behind his eyes, were all that Darryl could see. And inside he felt himself falling, falling, falling free.
My Mama, Your Mama
BY CONNIE PORTER
FROM Imani All Mine
I been inside me to the place I ain't never wanted to know. That's what I was thinking to tell Bett-Bett when she asked me why I wasn't in school this past week. I say to her I been sick. Which is good enough for her to know about my business. I don't need her digging up some bone and passing it around. Last thing she need to know is the truth. That I missed school because of him.
I ain't saying his name. I ain't never, ever going to say it. I won't ever put it in my mouth. I don't even want it in my mind, because it's all connected to his face. And the day I seen his face in the cafeteria three weeks ago, I thought I was going to die right there, holding a tray of tacos and fruit cocktail. I seen him coming right at me from the snack line where you pay with money, not lunch tickets. He had a whole tray of fries and he ain't even see me. But I seen him and dropped my tray on the floor and run out the cafeteria. I ain't stop running until I got to the lavatory, even though this security guard started chasing me, screaming, Where you think you going? What you done did?
But he couldn't come in the lavatory. Wasn't nothing but these girls in there combing they heads and looking at theyselves in the mirror. I went in a stall and locked the door and I had to shit real bad. I usually can't go in a public place, but I couldn't hold it and I even sat down on the seat. Then this lady security guard come banging on the door of the stall I was in. Who in there? she ask.
I say, I'm sick. Can you just leave me alone? I ain't done nothing. I'm sick, is all.
She sick, I hear one them girls say. Hell, she smell like she dying. Then they laughed and I heard them leave. I was so embarrassed.
The security say, What you was running for? You know you ain't supposed to be running in the building.
And I'm thinking, Why she standing out there smelling my shit and asking me stupid questions? But I just say, I had to go.
She say, All right. I'll let you off this time. Next time you getting detention.
Then she left, too, and it was just me there with that boy name inside my head. With that boy name inside my mouth so nasty-tasting that I hocked and spit right on the floor. My knees was shaking like before. Like then. That night. I wished Eboni was with me but she ain't even in school now. She having two twins and her doctor say she need to be home in bed. She already know they girls, and she done picked out names. Asia and Aisha. I wanted to cry but it seem like my tears is all dried up in me and they left some craziness behind like salt. I could taste it in my mouth when I spit.
All I could think to do was get out of school, and I went right straight to the nurse to get me a excuse. The nurse a white man here at Lincoln. Who ever heard of a man a nurse? He act like he ain't want to let me go home.
I'm sick, I say.
Is that so? he say. He was reading a book and snapping gum like a girl. Then he ask, What time does
your soap opera come on, girl? One or two?
I say, Excuse me. I'm for real. It's my stomach. I got my period and I got some bad cramps. I done bled through three straight pads this morning.
He looked at me like he done heard that excuse a thousand times before and say, I don't care if you go home or not. It's no skin off my nose, hon.
Static. Static. Static. That's the thing be getting to me about school. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. Ain't no difference. It's all the time some teacher nem act like they know you. Act like they can shine a light inside your head and see what you thinking.
I ain't say nothing to that nurse. I let him think that my head was so empty that all I want to do was fill it watching some stupid-ass soaps about a bunch of skinny white women wearing expensive clothes and living in fancy houses even if they supposed to be poor and having a bunch of make-believe problems. Black women, too. They lives be just like the white women's. Fake. I got real problems. So I kept my mouth all shut up and got my excuse.
Then I got Imani from the nursery. She was sleeping, looking just like me. Even though I can't say I know what I really look like when I sleep, because I be sleeping and can't see myself. But it's got to be just like Imani. My eyes shut real tight like I'm studying on something. Like there be something in my dreams I especially want to see.
Mrs. Poole say babies dream. She say don't nobody know what they dream about. Sometime Imani be laughing in her sleep. If it's night, she be waking me up. I jump up thinking that girl wake. But she ain't, and I stand over her crib looking at her. I know Imani got to be dreaming about something. I be hoping it's me. Wishing there was a way I could climb down inside her dream and shine a light on me holding her in my arms. Seeing me rocking her in my arms strong like the branches of the tree outside my bedroom window. And her laughing because I'm rocking her higher and higher, past all the soft leaves and into the dark where the moon rising over us and she know she safe because I'm holding her and won't never ever let her fall.
When I was little, sometime I would wake up laughing. I never could remember exactly about what. I like to think it was Mama and me I was laughing about. That she was holding me with love all in her arms.
Gumbo Page 56