by Daniel Black
I’m an emotional wreck. I jumped on my brother a few minutes ago and got my ass kicked. My anger got the best of me. This house, these people, this place, is making me crazy. It’s hard to believe I lived here once. Harder to believe I got out. Why did I come back, George?
I wish I had let you come with me. I could use your strength. Man, just being close to you would do me a world of good today. I can’t really explain it to you because I don’t understand it myself. All I know for sure is that I’ve got to see this through. I have too many questions, especially about my sister’s sudden death. No need to write back because I’m not staying long. Just pray for me. I need you worse than you know.
Your friend,
Tommy Lee
5
I heard Daddy come through the door about fifteen minutes after I finished my letter to George. Daddy told Momma he got caught in the rain and took shelter in Chicken’s shed house. Chicken was Daddy’s best friend since childhood. He and Daddy were born three days apart, and because Chicken’s momma’s breast milk wasn’t any good, she asked Grandma if she would feed her baby, too. Grandma agreed. Mr. Blue told me Daddy was on one of Grandma’s titties and Chicken was on the other. People called him Chicken because, as a baby, he was little and thin and resembled a frail baby hen. Grandma said she knew he’d be all right after he suckled her breast for a couple of months. She had some good milk, she bragged. In other places, folks might have found this arrangement bizarre, but when folks in Swamp Creek said children belonged to everybody, they meant it.
I didn’t hear Momma mention my name to Daddy, so I prepared for another intense collision. Emerging from the bedroom, wracked with nerves, I approached Daddy with his back toward me. I had no choice but to speak first.
“Hey, Daddy,” I said, sounding like a toddler.
Daddy turned around, and, for the first time in my life, I saw emotion in his face. He actually appeared moved to see me.
“What chu doin’ here, boy?” he asked after gathering his composure.
“I came to see how everybody’s doin’.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Well, it sho’ took you a while to git heayh. You musta been a long way off for it to take you ten years to git back.”
Daddy started fixing his plate of fish and fried potatoes and onions. Tears gathered in my eyes again because I knew Daddy was about to give me hell, yet before they fell I blinked them away, trying to stay strong and focused before Daddy’s overwhelming energy crushed my ego.
“How’s the farming going?” I asked, fixing my plate. I needed something tangible to hold on to.
“Oh,’bout de same,” Daddy stated coolly and sat at the head of the table. I took the seat at the opposite end. Tension lingered between us thicker than homemade molasses. Daddy started smacking on fish and glancing at me in a way that made me uneasy.
“I … um … hope you’re not angry with me, Daddy. I know it’s been a while. I just … didn’t really think … um …”
“You neva did think. You was s’pose’ to be so damn smart, but you couldn’t think. Ain’t that funny?”
“No, it’s not funny,” I said, frustrated.
“Well, I think it’s funny.” Daddy laughed in mockery. “I think it’s real funny that a man who s’pose’ to be so smart can’t even think. Yeah, dat’s funny to me.” He roared in a way clearly meant to demean.
“See! That’s why I left here! How was I to grow and thrive with you tearing me down every chance you got?” I screeched.
“No, no, Son. I didn’t tear you down. If I had tore you down, you wouldn’t ever be able to build yo’self up again. I don’t half-do nothin’.”
Daddy stared at me contemptuously. I knew coming home wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t think it would be this hard.
After a moment, I said, “Daddy, I’m sorry if I ever dishonored you.” I kept my head bowed in fear of his retaliation.
All he said was, “Um.”
I had come a long way to resolve old family issues, I reminded myself, but I must have left my diplomacy in New York, because nothing was getting resolved.
The staring left me unable to chew. Every time I raised my head, Daddy searched my face desperately for the truth of why I had returned. His eyes were squinted narrowly, allowing me to see only his pupils, which never moved the entire time we sat at the table. Daddy’s bodybuilder frame intimidated me into a submission that disgusted me.
“What chu really heah fu’?” he asked softly after a while.
“I came to figure out some stuff about myself. And all of us.” I felt a trickle of urine run down my leg.
“What chu tryin’ to figure out? Ain’t nothin’ deep’bout us.”
“Well, I beg to differ. There are a lot of things about us that seem very deep to me. Like this grave in the backyard.”
“That ain’t deep.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I said that ain’t deep.’Cause it ain’t.”
“Your own daughter’s death ain’t deep?” I probed, feeling my courage return.
“Nope. People die every day.”
“Not like she did!”
“You don’t know how she died, so what chu talkin’’bout?”
I couldn’t argue. Instead I said, “Why don’t you tell me how she died and then I’ll know.”
Daddy dropped his head and continued eating, ignoring me perfectly. I would have to work on him much longer, I concluded, before he yielded any information, if he yielded any at all.
“Daddy, she was my sister!”
“I know who she was.” He raised his head slowly.
“Am I missing something here?” I purposely dropped my fork onto my plate. “This is all supposed to make sense to me?”
“You done missed ten years o’ shit, boy. You got a lotta catchin’ up to do. I ‘speck you betta keep yo’ mouf shut and yo’ eyes open. Never can tell what you might see.”
“What? Why can’t you tell me what happened? I know I’ve been gone a long time, but that doesn’t mean I’m not supposed to know. She was my best friend!” I pleaded desperately.
“She wuz? Well, I hope I ain’t neva yo’ best friend,’cause you sho’ don’t talk to yo’ friends very often.”
I almost told Daddy not to worry because he would never be my best friend, yet thinking the statement rude, I kept it to myself and bellowed, “Why I left here is not the point right now. I need you to tell me what happened to Sister!”
Nobody said a word. Daddy appeared rather amused at my insistence, thinking, I believe, that I was challenging him to some sort of game, which he certainly intended to win. He began to giggle.
“Did I miss the joke?”
“You are the joke,” Momma volunteered. She wore a smile on her face of vengeance and evil, a sign she and Daddy had conspired to create the whole ordeal. I would have to get Daddy alone before I could manipulate any information from him. I backed off and thought to change the subject, but Daddy beat me to it.
“I guess you done finished school by now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What chu take up?”
“Black studies.”
“You mean to tell me you went to school all dis time to study black folks? You didn’t need to go to school fu’ dat.”
“There’s a lot about black people we don’t know.”
“We? I knows colored folks better’n I knows anythang.”
“But there’s a lot about our history most black people don’t know.”
“Like what?” Daddy asked, surprised at the possibility he didn’t know something about his own people.
“Like how we used spirit to survive the Middle Passage.”
“The Middle what?”
“The Middle Passage. It’s more correctly called the Maafa. That’s the boat ride we endured to get from Africa to America.”
“I know we was slaves, boy. You ain’t teachin’ nobody nothin’. Everybody know we came over here on boats. You gotta do
better’n dat.”
“What you might not know is exactly what we endured along the way. First of all, many African villages were hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast. How, then, did they get to the boats?”
“Dey walked, shit!”
“What if they had to be there in the next couple of days?”
Daddy didn’t respond.
“The slave catchers would march them for fifteen hours a day until they reached the boats. This period of the process is known as the Long March. Thousands died on this part of the journey from exhaustion or physical abuse. Children and elders were usually murdered on the spot, and pregnant women often lost their babies. All of this happened before we left Africa. When history books speak of how many died during the Middle Passage, the numbers must be horribly incorrect, because most scholars don’t even count those whose blood was spilled on African soil before departing.”
“OK,” Daddy conceded. “But when dey got to de water dey was loaded up and brung here. I know dat much.”
“No, sir. It didn’t happen that way.”
Daddy examined me with bucked eyebrows, outraged by my gall.
“Most often, slaves had to wait weeks before they were herded aboard ships. They waited in what became known as slave pens. These holding places of filth and unbearable stench claimed the lives of thousands more of our people. They were located all along the western coast of Africa, and millions of people died in them before any boat departed. Tourists go to Africa today to view them as historical landmarks. Isn’t that funny?”
“No, it ain’t funny,” Daddy said. “It’s crazy.”
“By the time they were actually taken aboard ship, they defecated upon themselves, vomited upon one another, and died chained together as people were forced to watch their brother’s or sister’s body rot. And there was nothing any of them could do. They were shackled aboard deck, despondent, weak, and depressed. Many of them simply decided to die.”
“You can’t je’s decide to die and then die, boy.”
“Most people can’t, but some of our people did. They pulled upon their own spirit and resolved they would rather dwell in the land of their ancestors than live in captivity with white strangers. Hence they closed their eyes and died. They commanded their spirit to move from the realm of the physical into the realm of the spiritual. Everybody didn’t possess such mastery of spirit, of course, but many did.”
“Uh-huh,” Daddy mumbled.
“That ain’t all. On those ships is where African people began to hum melodies and cry out to God in moans and hollers we use in churches today. Because they were in the same condition, the humming gave room for everybody to participate in the lyrical moment even though people of different languages were often bound together. Journals of slave traders speak of the noise belowdecks being loud at times, to the point where white traders became horrified at the energy of the sound. Our people were enslaved, but their spirits were not.”
“Dat’s how come we do so much hummin’ and moanin’ now?” Daddy asked, surprised at the connection.
“Yes, sir, it is. The moans and humming keep us from having to depend upon language to communicate with God or each other. Of course, most of us speak English, but the moaning tradition has a power we’ve not been able to replace.”
“Maybe you did learn somethin’,” Daddy said, signaling I had said enough.
He continued eating supper. A moment of silence ensued wherein I felt horribly awkward. I wanted to ask about Sister again, but the time wasn’t quite right.
“How’s everybody doin’ round here?”
“’Bout de same.”
I was trying to think of other questions to ask, but I couldn’t, so I sat there and nibbled on my piece of fish, too.
Daddy finally said, “Well, you back.” He didn’t look at me or raise his voice. He never was one for small talk. Any time he said anything it was the bare minimum, and he meant what he said.
“Like I said, I wanted to see how everyone was doin’.” My voice floundered a little.
“You done seen. How come you ain’t gone?”
Daddy had a way of asking questions that left one paralyzed. I took a deep breath, found courage in my heart, and said, “Daddy, I needed to come home again and find answers to some questions.”
“Questions like what?”
“Like why none of us ever loved each other, or why you beat me like you did.” I didn’t believe I had said it.
Daddy became silent and continued eating. He discovered slivers of fish between bones most people would simply have discarded. I examined Daddy’s face, waiting for him to respond to my statement, but, once again, Daddy ignored me. After a while, I knew he wasn’t going to engage me. Instead, he asked, “What chu doin’ dese days? You workin’?”
“No, sir, not yet. I graduated last month with my Ph.D. I’ll be teaching at a university somewhere this fall.”
“Good for you,” Daddy said smugly.
“Colleges need young professors,” I offered in my own defense, “so I’m sure I won’t have a problem finding a job.”
Daddy wasn’t interested in hearing about my future. He wanted me to explain why I had reappeared after ten years. He probably had a guess, but he wanted to hear me say it.
I held my peace. He finished his first piece of fish and got another. Every now and then he glared at me and shook his head up and down slowly, thinking thoughts he would never share. I felt immobilized by his authoritative presence, and Daddy knew it. Since childhood, I was afraid of the sound of his voice. He would yell at me and cause sweat to break out all over my body, even in the winter. Whenever he was around, my equilibrium was shot, because I couldn’t hold anything steady or speak without stuttering heavily. To one extent or another, he affected everyone in the family this way. Years ago, we had to wait for Daddy to finish eating before we could leave the table, even if we finished before he did. I never knew why, and, of course, none of us were bold enough to ask. So, reminiscent of old times, I sat at the table wondering what the next few hours of my life would bring.
Upon closer scrutiny of Daddy’s face, I realized he shared features with James Evans from Good Times. The broad, flat nose, high cheekbones, and shiny black complexion gave Daddy a warriorlike aura. He would have been a handsome man had he cared about grooming, but Daddy was totally divested of form or fashion. When I was a child, he had one church suit and the rest of his wardrobe was work clothes. I was sure he hadn’t bought anything since I had been gone. He didn’t need to. Women talked proudly and boldly about Daddy’s deep-set eyes and his thick, bushy eyebrows. “Girl, dat’s a fine ole country boy!” I overheard Ms. Mae Helen tell Ms. Helen Faye one day after church. “Dem wide shoulders and dat thick ass could keep a woman warm on a cold Arkansas night!” They chuckled to themselves, thinking no one heard them. I felt proud, actually, that my daddy was attractive to women. I never could see it, though, probably because my eyes were blinded by my fear of him. His loud voice, big hands, and protruding lips intimidated me into a silence I never outgrew. Daddy enjoyed the power he wielded, even as we sat at the dinner table that day, although he was a bit nicer than I remembered. It may have been my own maturity that softened his presence, or it may have been his own aging process. Either way, I wasn’t totally frightened of him anymore. For that I was grateful, because over the next several days I would need all the courage I could get.
After what seemed like an eternity, Daddy rose, put on his hat, and headed for the door. “A man oughta spend his time outdoors, boy,” he used to tell Willie James and me. “The house is the woman’s territory. Bible’ll tell ya dat.” Daddy only came inside to eat and sleep. He used the bathroom outside, napped outside, entertained his buddies outside, and made Momma stay inside.
I rose and followed him. Although Daddy was direct, he never said all he wanted to say at once. I decided to join him outdoors in hopes of learning more about what happened to Sister. He went to the barn to get a bucket of feed for the cows, and
I grabbed a bale of hay and walked slightly behind him into the field.
“Ole Bessie dere is’bout to have a calf, boy,” Daddy announced out of the blue.
We fed and watered the cows and returned to the barn. Daddy put the bucket back in its place and began to sharpen the garden hoe.
I sat on a bale of hay like a naughty child awaiting reprimand. This is ridiculous, I thought to myself. I am entirely too old to be afraid of this man. However, my fear kept my thoughts from ever being expressed.
“Ms. Swinton is down low sick,” Daddy reported nonchalantly. I think he spoke simply to relieve me. Maybe Daddy could be kind.
“Is that right?” I said, honestly moved. Ms. Swinton was the teacher at Swamp Creek School. The only teacher. I guess we didn’t need but one, since we only had a one-room schoolhouse. Swamp Creek was far enough from the next county that, years ago, black parents convinced the local school board to let them keep their one-room school instead of busing black kids thirty miles to the nearest white school. The board didn’t want Swamp kids integrated with white kids anyway, so everyone was happy with the decision. Ms. Swinton simply had to report attendance and test scores to the Pope County school board every six weeks. Other than that, white folks couldn’t have cared less whether we learned a damn thing.
Ms. Swinton cared about us, though. She was an incredible teacher who taught every subject masterfully. Her aim in life was to help black children learn in order to love themselves. She started teaching in Swamp Creek in 1948, and rumor had it that she has given every child she’s taught pure hell. Daddy said she came when he was in the first grade and assumed every child was an Einstein. She read with such eloquence and emphasis, her students boasted, that they would sit and cry as they listened. Sometimes she would cry, too. She had a love for teaching most people can never fathom. How she managed to teach all elementary grades alone was phenomenal, but Daddy said, even in his day, no one was bored or misbehaved. She was immaculately clean every day, rain or shine, and when she wrote on the board, students marveled at her calligraphic penmanship. All the boys had a crush on her, and all the girls envied her. Everyone loved her.