“I'm talking about Africans in America,” I said.
“Not all Africans are dark,” Millicent said. “Especially not the white ones.”
“There's no such thing as a white African,” Cissy said.
They had both forgotten my question.
“We outnumber them, so why do we let them rule everything?” I asked.
“That's the way white works. There aren't many of them either,” Cissy said.
“In America?” Millicent asked.
“No, I'm talking about the world,” I said.
“Yeah, but there ain't any whites in Africa,” Cissy said
They'd completely forgotten my question.
“Black is beautiful, right?” I asked.
There was a long pause before they said what they thought they should say: “Well, yeah.”
• • •
With Lysol and bright yellow gloves, I was stuck cleaning the bathroom. That was just one of my after-school chores. I found a toenail. It looked male. Yuck. I spied on my brothers and cousin out the window. Raking leaves, taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, and helping Daddy clean the gutter along the roof—those were their jobs. That kept them busy year-round, theoretically. Yet, as opposed to actually working, like me, the boys did more playing than raking the maple leaves. Horace and Leo tossed Tracy John around. They moved him from pile to pile, and buttery yellow pieces took off in flight.
Every now and then, Daddy went out there and observed their nonprogress. He'd tell them not to work “tit to tit.” Spread out, they'd get more accomplished.
They still threw lion-colored leaves, roaring, as soon as Daddy's back was turned.
My dad usually came home from his twelve-hour day around five-thirty in the evening. He was five foot ten. I wasn't taller than him, but I was gaining. He was medium brown in complexion and sported a trim mustache. He wore his hair in a short Afro with licks off to the left and right where it was falling out. He had a wonderful wide smile, a broad nose, and a big voice that always made it seem like he had something important to say, even when he didn't. He grew up in West Philly, and besides Auntie Karyn, he had two brothers: Uncle E, who'd been in and out of jail over a glossary of minor offenses, and Uncle O, who had over the summer moved back to Wilmington after a failed marriage. Daddy was Pisces, the fish.
At five foot seven, I was already taller than my five-foot-two ma, but most people said I looked exactly like her because we had the same mahogany complexion. A Gemini, she had warm eyes, a soft smile, and something I really envied: long hair—long enough to put into a pony-tail. It was a good grade of hair too. Ma had the gentlest form of prettiness. She didn't wear makeup or nail poiish. She always wore simple dresses. Her hobbies were even more basic than Daddy's were. She liked to sew and cook and go to church. She was originally from down South and spoke with an accent. She came from one of those ridiculously large families and was one of fourteen. She was the only person in her family to have ventured above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Though their eldest son was about to join the army, Daddy and Ma were in only their mid and early thirties. They had been married very early in life. Very, very early—yet riot too early for my brother to have been conceived. There's a copy of their marriage license in the drawet with the family Bible that dates their marriage ten months prior to Horace's birth. Yet there is an alternate license that's kept in the back of the closest under Ma's coin collection. After finding that one, I did a counting-back exercise, only to discover that Horace had been born after a miraculous three months of gestation. I asked Ma why they had two marriage licenses. She told me to stop looking through her things. Conclusion: my parents were determined to appear respectable, even if they had to lie to do so.
Ma called the boys in for supper. As we Upshaws sat around the family table in a moment of silence, my father had both hands up to the Lord. Horace, Leo, and Ma had their eyes closed, but Tracy John had his eyes wide open and his legs kicking under the table. I glared at him. Tracy John one-upped me by sticking out his tongue.
As Ma served the meat loaf, Tracy John didn't speak. He just pointed. He kept pointing at things until someone noticed and passed him what he wanted. I hated when he did that. What, was he too precious to speak?
Tracy John was also selective in his eating habits. He ate the food he liked and ate around the, food he didn't like.
“Tracy's not eating his beets,” I told the table.
“Now, don't just eat the meat. Finish the vegetables on your plate,” Daddy told him.
“They don't taste good,” Tracy John said.
“You're a man; you can take it,” Daddy assured him.
“Be a man! Be a man!” Horace howled, cheering him on like a coach.
Tracy John chewed, making a prune face. “Maine always tells,” he said, but he continued eating the beets, making his face more torn up with each bite. He squinted. His nose crinkled. No one else on Earth could put such emotion into eating. Begrudgingly, I could admit what everyone else knew. He was a cute kid. He had really dewy skin, and his lips always looked wet.
As Ma went to the kitchen for more rolls, the subject switched from beets to the army.
“Seven days left of freedom,” Leo said to Horace.
“Six days and a wake-up,” Horace corrected.
“You got the lingo down at least,” Daddy said.
Ma came back with a steaming basket dressed in cloth.
At this, Tracy John perked up. He reached into the basket like everyone else.
“You sure we don't have to go shopping for anything, Horace?” Ma asked.
“For the last time, missy, there's no need. They take care of everything for him right down to his drawers,” Daddy told her.
“I never heard of going away for that long and not taking nothing,” Ma said.
“They will take you with just the clothes on your back.” Daddy pointed at Horace with his fork. “Make sure they don't learn your name. And don't volunteer for nothing.”
“Is that what you did, Daddy?” Leo asked.
“Leo, they knew my name the first day,” Daddy said.
“Is Horace going to Korea like you did?” Leo asked.
“I asked for Hawaii,” Horace said.
“You and everybody else,” Daddy said.
“I just hope I don't get down South. I want to go where something's happening,” Horace said.
“What's wrong with down South? You might meet the love of your life, like I did,” Daddy said.
“I want to see the world,” Horace said.
“Are these drills black or white?” Leo asked.
“More of us are getting into those positions,” Daddy told us.
“I hope you don't encounter any racism,” Ma said.
“Is there a lot of racism in the army, Daddy?” Leo asked.
“There's racism in the world,” Daddy answered.
Tracy John asked, “What's racism?”
A horn blasted outside. Horace wiped his mouth and stood up. “That's Claude and them.”
Daddy gestured with his knife. “Look at him all independent. You better ask somebody before you get up from this table.”
“Sorry.” Horace clasped his hands in prayer. Oh, Mother, Father, may I please go out tonight?”
“You better be home at a decent time,” Ma said.
Horace nodded, gave Ma a quick peck on the cheek, waved at the rest of us, and was out the door.
Claude and Horace joined under the Stripes for Buddies Program. They were both skipped to PV2 for joining together. Claude Terrell's family had a hot dog shop, Terrell's Franks, in North Philadelphia. He always said he didn't want to work there all his life, so he traded hot dogs for helmets. He and my brother had these serious 'fros. Huge ahd round like Tito's or Jermaine's or Michael's. They also had those sideburns that were so in right then. It was a shame what Uncle Sam was about to do to them. They'd be sheared like lambs. At any rate, over the past few weeks, Claude had done a
lot of this, going out at night. Horace said that this was his last chance to whoop it up.
Ma shook her head. “That boy swears he's grown.”
“He is, Miss Sweet Thang,” Daddy told Ma. “He is.”
She smiled, then quickly frowned. “I'm so worried about him Joining that army, I don't know what to do.”
“There is nothing to worry about,” Daddy said. “It's just the army. Grenades are fun.”
“Lord, they got my boy messing with explosives.” She fanned herself from the excitement.
“And during that night-fire exercise, I'm sure he'll stay low.” Daddy continued to tease Ma.
She got up from the table, taking her half-cleaned plate.
“We just got out of that Vietnam conflicts Things'll be quiet for a while,” Daddy said.
“What's night fire?” Leo asked.
“It's when the troops go out after dusk and low-crawl through this mess of mud under barbed wire—they crawl and crawl and all the while bullets are flying just inches above their heads.”
I heard a plate break in the kitchen.
“Women are very emotional,” Daddy told us, and he motioned to me to go in and see how Ma was doing.
Though I wanted to hear more about night fire, I got up. Once I was in the kitchen, Ma promptly put me to work. She pointed to the sink and told toe to wash and dry the used pots and pans. Now, washing made sense; I was all for basic cleanliness. It was the drying that I had a problem with. Didn't the air do that?
Ma was going a mile a second, sweepirig the kitchen with bullet speed. After she was done, she fetched Tracy John and told him to get ready for his bubble bath.
• • •
I ran into the bathroom to brush my teeth and nearly fell on my butt. There was soapy water all over the floor; I didn't think that even Noah would have been safe with all that water. Tracy John was sitting in the tub, clapping his hands on the water, making waves.
“Stop all that splashing,” I told him.
“I like splashing,” he said. He continued to pat down the suds with great glee.
I growled and closed the door, figuring Ma would say something about his conduct. I hung around the area. But Ma didn't scold him at all. In fact, when she came back into the room, I saw her with a mop. A little later, she was in Tracy John's room immersed. Calm. She read him a story that had something to do with a rabbit; then she hugged him and kissed him and wished him sweet dreams, and just when I thought he would keel over from an over-dose of attention, Ma had the nerve to sing to him. “Lullaby and good night…”
Leo walked past me.
“Ma doesn't tuck me in,” I told him.
“Not anymore. You're a teenager,” Leo said.
I listened to Ma sing some more in her southern-fried contralto.
“I want my room back,” I said.
“Don't tell me you're on that again, Maine.”
“I don't like him. He's rude. He makes a mess everywhere he goes. And his head is shaped funny.”
“That's the same way Auntie Karyn's head was shaped,” he told me, his teeth gleaming in the nearby night-light.
Hatred bubbled in my stomach, resentment settled in my throat, and I said, “He doesn't look anything like Auntie Karyn.”
“No, he's just her son.” Leo rolled his eyes. “You really say some dumb things.”
“I'm not dumb. I was in the enrichment program,” I said hastily. I'd spent elementary school in the pull-out program for the gifted.
“Whatever.”
“Leo, he bothers me.”
“I like him,” Leo said flatly.
“What do you like about him?”
“I don't know why I like him. It doesn't matter. We're related. He's like our brother.”
“He is not my toother,” I said.
“Maine, we are all brothers and sisters,” he insisted.
Just then, Ma emerged.
“What are y'all doing wasting time sitting outside of the door?” Ma asked. “Your homework better be finished.”
“Mine is, but Leo's isn't,” I told her.
“I want to see,” she said.
We both ran to our room and got our assignments. Ma gave our notebooks a good up and down. “Your handwriting is neater than this. Look at all this scratched out. Copy it over,” Ma told me.
“It's just a journal entry. It doesn't even count toward my grade?”
“That don't make no never mind. Always do your best.” She said to Leo, “This looks fine so far.”
Then she turned back to me. “I want to see this by nine o'clock.”
I frowned and said, “Yes, ma'am.”
“And sharpen that pencil,” Ma told me, then walked down the hall.
I turned to Leo as if to say Weil, doesn't this prove that the world is against me? I snatched his paperwork up and looked it over. It did look fine. I rolled my eyes and handed it back to him.
“You know, a black man invented the pencil shaq ener,” Leo said, and smiled like the god of victory.
• • •
I was in a good shameless snuggle of sleep due to these three things: the soft patter of the rain outside, my soft flannel sheets, and my delicious thoughts of Demetrius McGee.
“I'm not gonna let you go buck wild in your last days in this house ! “ Daddy hollered from downstairs.
Both Leo and I sat up in bed.
“Don't go thinking I'm gonna bail you out neither. I have already danced that tune with your uncle; it's time for a whole new number.”
“Oh, he's talking about Uncle E,” Leo said.
Downstairs, Daddy shouted, “Horace, I am completely ashamed of you!”
“But I didn't—” Horace began.
“Did I ask you to speak? Car thief, did I ask you to speak?” Daddy sounded like he was about to throw a natural fit.
Horace stole a car?
This was getting good. I put on my glasses, and Leo and I ran to the top of the stairs to get a better listen.
“He's sure mad,” Leo said to me.
I nodded.
“Come tomorrow morning, I'll have a Whole mess of things J want you to do around this house. I'm gonna have you corking from can't see to can't see. You're gonna wish they'd kept you in jail”
“Oooooooh, he's grounded, and. he has to do chores,” someone said behind us.
Leo and I looked over our shoulders. It was Tracy John in his powder blue jammies.
“What are you doing out of bed?” I asked.
He flipped it on me. “Same thing you are.”
Leo smirked at his answer.
I rolled my eyes. I was about to say something to Tracy John when I noticed that the fighting downstairs had stopped, and I heard footsteps coming upstairs.
We all scattered like crows after a scare. I was halfway down the hall before I realized I was going the wrong way. I turned, only to see Ma and Daddy flanking Horace like wardens. Ironic that I, the one with the longest legs, got caught. I quickly made something up.
“I was just getting a sip of jail,” I told them. “I mean, water.”
Horace grinned at my flub.
Ma told me to go back to bed.
I thought that junior high would be to a student as a cat was to a mouse. It caught me off guard and tossed me around a bit, and I was convinced that after it was satisfied, it just might eat me whole, I was sure this would surprise most people since I had always gotten excellent grades and teachers held me in high regard. Yet my expectations as I advanced in school were never met. I hoped for new material, harder problems, and deeper literature— stories Pd never heard of, or at least heavier books. But it was October. I couldn't feel it. There was no ninth-grade challenge. It was like grade 8.5. This was my last stop before the real deal—high school. But it just didn't feel right.
First up, Miss Baineau taught French with lots of English subtitles. She was from Paris, and she had been just a child during World War II. She often regaled us with tales from her girlhood—how she and
her three siblings had hidden in the basement during the air raids and how much she'd loved Americans. That was very interesting but had nothing to do with conjugating verbs or mastering the subjunctive mood. Since she rarely spoke in French, we learned nothing about French pronunciation or vocabulary.
Second period, my English teacher, Mr. Mand, wore these blue monochromatic patterned ties that coordinated with his shirts. He was balding on top. He was into assigning journal entries, which he never checked or collected. Currently, we were reading the poetry of Walt Whitman, aloud, page by page. Line by line. Word by word. Though I always read with spirit when it was my tumpmy fellow students put nothing into the delivery.
Third period Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays was music with Mr. Huckleberry, a brother who didn't put much into his class besides Every Girl Bakes Disgusting Fudge—E, G, B, D, F on the treble. Millicent and Cissy were in that class with me. Tuesdays and Fridays, I had phys ed with Miss Crathers, a heavyset woman with downy hair on the sides of her face like sideburns. So far, all we'd done was stretch for ten minutes and play field hockey for twenty minutes. If you had worked up a sweat or hit puberty, there was time for a shower. Neither one was the case with me.
Next was twenty-two-minute lunch, and that was when I really got to gab with Millicent and Cissy. No complaints there. We gossiped about horoscopes, TV shows, what was hot on the R & B charts, and my fixation, Demetrius.
After lunch, I had Mr. Gowdy for U.S. history. He loved to talk about civil rights. He was from New York and had that Brooklynese way of speaking; next to his briefcase lay a Yankees cap. I found him the most informative of all my instructors, and Millicent was in that class. Even more interesting than that, so was Demetrius.
Algebra II was fifth period. I didn't like imaginary numbers, but our teacher, Mrs. Thrice, was nice.
Sixth period was this class called self-sustained silent reading; there we read. Every other month, the instructor took us to a big room, and we got to pick a book donated by Reading Is Fundamental.
Most got books like Ripley's Believe It or Not or Guinness Booh of World Records. (Like they really needed to know how big the world's largest tapeworm was.) With my extra change, I'd often buy used classic books. Things that sounded good. Things that sounded smart. Things like Notes from Underground or Wuthering Heights. I usually read only the first chapter. Nevertheless, when I grow up, I'd like to have a whole room devoted to books. A library, like in that board game Clue.
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