They Tell Me of a Home: A Novel

by Daniel Black

  “I don’t thank I heard dat one,” people mumbled to encourage Mr. Blue’s storytelling gift. Of course, they had heard it before, but the joy was in hearing Mr. Blue tell it.

  Folks shifted their chairs around and frowned, pretending they were sick and tired of hearing these lies. This behavior was precisely the prerequisite Mr. Blue needed.

  “What happened was, Pa’nella calls Nila Faye and say, ‘Girl, ain’t you goin’ out to de fune’?’

  “And Nila Faye say, ‘What fune’ you talkin’’bout?’

  “‘Out ta Elizabeth’s fune’!’ Pa’nella say.”

  Everybody was either smiling or shaking their heads because we knew this was going to be a good one.

  “And Nila Faye say, ‘Naw, girl, I ain’t goin’. I don’t thank I knowed hu’.’

  “And Pa’nella went ta frownin’’cause she know Nila Faye knowed’Lizabeth. Dey growed up togetha right hyeah in Swamp Creek. She thought dat maybe Nila Faye was havin’ a hard time dealin’ wit’’Lizabeth’s death, so she didn’t push hu’ on it too murch. Nila Faye turned right round and said, ‘Now I’ll go wit’ chu if you want me to. I wun’t gon’ go myself.’ Pa’nella say, ‘Yeah, girl, come on and go wit’ me.’ So Nila Faye went.”

  Mr. Blue was sitting on the edge of one of the church pews. His mouth was trembling from soulful merriment, but he was trying to hold it. Others were looking at him and acting like they couldn’t take any more, which, of course, meant that Mr. Blue should proceed.

  “So Pa’nella went and picked up Nila Faye and dey went to de fune’. De whole time, Nila Faye sittin’ in de back o’de chuch sayin’ nothin’ to nobody. Folks is holl’in’ and fallin’ out and carryin’ on, but Nila Faye lookin’ like ain’t nothin’ movin’ hu’’cause she don’t know no’Lizabeth. Well, time come to go review de body and Pa’nella ask Nila Faye to walk wit’ hu’. Nila Faye say OK’cause she don’t know de woman noway and Pa’nella might get weak and need hu’ to lean on. So dey start walkin’ toward de casket and folks is touchin’ Nila Faye on the arm sayin’, ‘I’m sorry fu’ yo’ loss,’ and Nila Faye is wonderin’ what folks is talkin’ ‘bout’cause she ain’t loss nothin’. When dey almost gets right in front o’de casket, Nila Faye tells Pa’nella to be strong and know dat de Good Lawd knows’xactly what He’s doin’. Pa’nella shakes hu’ head, sayin’, ‘Sho’ you right,’ and they walks on.

  “When dey gets right in front o’de casket, Nila Faye looks over at de body and folks say she start screamin’ like somebody tryin’ to kill hu’ ‘Oh Lawd! Poo Girl! Girl, is dat you? Oh shit, Jesus! I didn’t know yo’ name wuz no’Lizabeth, girl! All I eva knowed you by was Poo Girl! Oh shit, Lawd!’”

  Folks yelped with laughter. Some faces looked angry because the story was so ridiculously funny. Mr. Blue was wobbling from side to side and shaking like one having an epileptic fit. “Blue, you oughta be ‘shame’ o’ yo’self,” Daddy kept repeating every chance he could catch his breath. “Dat woman ain’t said all dat!”

  “Sho’ she said it!” Mr. Blue screamed as he laughed. “I was sittin’ right dere! She jes’ kept on holl’in’, ‘Girl, I ain’t neva knowed yo’ name was ‘Lizabeth! Hell! Somebody coulda told me yo’ name wuz’Lizabeth. Girl, you my firs’ cousin! Oh shit!” And every time Mr. Blue hollered “shit,” people weakened all over again.

  I was laughing at other people laughing. Ms. Polly’s laugh sounded like a soprano hyena. “Heheheeeeeeeeeeeee!” Every time she laughed I would crack up. People were desperate to hold on to their laughter, knowing it might be a long time coming again.

  “Blue, you’s a fool!” Daddy said and shook his head in disbelief of the man’s antics.

  “Cleatis, you don’t b’lieve it, do you?” Mr. Blue bucked his eyes as wide as they would stretch. He looked horrified by the mere possibility someone didn’t believe his story.

  Again, Daddy’s expression was exactly what Mr. Blue needed in order to further embellish the tale.

  “If you don’t b’lieve dat, you sho’ ain’t gon’ b’lieve dis.” He stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head from side to side, whetting people’s appetite for the remainder of the story. He took a long swig of home brew and said, “You’d think Nila Faye would jes’ go ‘head on back to hu’ seat and git hu’self togetha, but naw, naw.” He swallowed another gulp of wine to give our anticipation time to rise.

  “What she do, Blue?” Mr. Somebody asked with an impatient excitement. He had acquired the name, Daddy said, because his grandmother sought to build his self-esteem, as a child, by having him repeat, “I am Somebody,” over and over again. Actually, because the man was almost ninety years old, his birth name was irrelevant to most folks. The Mr. was the important part.

  Mr. Blue continued. “Nila Faye stood at de casket fu’ a while and den all of a sudden she hollered, ‘Girl, you can’t be dead, shit! You owe me fifty dollars!’”

  Mr. Blue toppled over with laughter! Mr. Somebody grabbed his cane and took off hobbling toward Uncle James Earl’s house, laughing so hard he could barely maintain his balance.

  “Blue, you know you lyin’!” folks screamed.

  “Cleatis, you know Nila Faye, wit’ hu’ crazy ass! You know dat bitch li’ble du say anything, don’t cha?” asked Mr. Blue insistently.

  Daddy told Mr. Blue dat he wasn’t in it, but Mr. Blue wouldn’t let Daddy go easily. “Shit, you is in it! Dat’s yo’ cousin, too. Don’t act like y’all ain’t family. Shiiiiiiiiit! I practically raised all you goddamn niggas!”

  No one could dispute him, so we laughed along. After Mr. Somebody returned to his seat, his shoulders continued jerking spasmodically. “Blue, you oughta be ‘shame’! You oughta be’shame’!” he sang repeatedly.

  As the evening waned, the crowd grew larger. Mr. Blue kept trying to convince everyone the story was absolutely true until Mr. Somebody said, “I got one even better’n dat! Y’all sho’ ain’t gon’ b’lieve dis hyeah.” He spit out a mouthful of tobacco juice and leaned up on his cane to tell his story. He was sitting on the pew next to Mr. Blue.

  “I went to visit my cousin down in South Car’lina’bout five years ago—”

  “Stop lyin’, nigga!” interrupted Mr. Blue playfully. “Yo’ old ass ain’t left hyeah in de last thirty years! Who you thank you foolin’?”

  “I did go see Cousin Wizerine! Shit! I know where I been! I went right ‘fo’ we got all dat rain dat year. Shit, I might be old, but I ain’t crazy.”

  Since Mr. Blue wanted to hear the story, he didn’t press the matter. Everybody knew Mr. Somebody hadn’t been to see anybody in the last five years or even fifteen, but his stories were always good, so he was allowed to proceed.

  “Well, like I wuz sayin‘, I went down to see my cousin in South Car’lina. She and hu’ husband live way, way out in de country in a l’il ole bitty place called Sugar Ditch.”

  When he said this, folks began to mumble and suck their gums.

  “I ain’t lyin’! Dat’s what it’s called! Don’t blame me! I ain’t had nothin’ to do wit’ namin’ de place.”

  “Go’head, nigga, shit,” said Mr. Blue, the only one with the authority to say what all of us were thinking.

  “Dey was gettin’ ready fu dere pastor’s anniversary program at church, and Cousin Wizerine was picked to be over de program. She decided she gon’ put togetha a program like ain’t nobody eva seen befo’ in life. She take hu’ fat ass down to the local college and ask a white German man if he’ll come and be de guest speaker fu’ de pastor’s anniversary program. He got a buncha letters behind his name, so Wizerine thank dat mean he heavy and shit. I guess he tell hu’ he’ll be glad to do it,’cause she come home grinnin like a ole bear in a fish house.”

  Mr. Somebody’s antics alone induced chuckling. His eyes, mouth, and hands worked together, like a puppet’s, in perfect gestural unity. Accompanied by a squeaky soprano voice far too high for most people’s liking, his trembling arthritic hands shaped each word he spoke, forcing others not on
ly to listen but to watch him. Suddenly he leaned back and laughed loudly, and David and I did the same although we didn’t know why. The punch line of the story must have overwhelmed Mr. Somebody for a second, we thought, making us more excited to hear it.

  “De mornin’ of de pastor’s anniversay, Wizerine get up and go to hummin’ as she cookin’ breakfast. She know she’bout to blow de minds o’ de whole community. She so excited ‘bout dis German man comin’ dat she cook a German chocolate cake in order to take him a piece.

  “When we get to church, folk go to snickerin’ and whisperin’ ‘cause hu’ nose is’bout fifty feet up in de air. Plus, she got on canary yellow from head to toe! Hat, gloves, dress, scarf, stockin’s, pocketbook, and shoes. Everythang is de exact same loud-ass yellow. She look like goddamn Big Bird, but you couldn’t tell hu’ nothin’. We walk into de church and see dat de white man done brung a whole group o’ white folks wit him, so Wizerine know it’s’bout to be a gred day.

  “When it come time to introduce de speaka, Wizerine walk to de podium like a proud-ass peacock and start readin’ off de man’s’complishments. When she get through wit’ dat, she realizes she don’t know how to pronounce de man’s name proper. His name is ‘Fuqua,’ pronounced wit’ dat guttural sound like most German folk have, but Wizerine didn’t know dis. She fumbles around a little bit and then says, ‘I would like to present to some and introduce to others Dr … um … uhru … Fucka.’”

  That was it! The Meetin’ Tree vibrated from all the laughter underneath. David’s head fell backward as though it were going to drop to the ground as he lost composure and began to cry tears of ecstasy. His arms dropped limp to his side and he gave up the fight for self-control. Mr. Blue fell over on the pew once again, but this time the scream he emitted should have scared even the mosquitoes away. “Stop! Please, stop!” he kept begging, panting and holding his side.

  “Don’t say nothin’ else to me long as you live, Somebody!”

  The story was far from over. Mr. Somebody sat perfectly still like he didn’t know why everyone else was laughing. That’s what made the next part riotous.

  “No, no. Dat ain’t de funny part. Shit. If she woulda stopped there, everythang mighta been all right. But no, no. She got to be high-and-mighty, so she whisper and ask de man who dem folks is wit him and I guess he tell hu’’cause then she raise hu’ head proudly and say, ‘He has his three children with him today. The little Fuckas, will you stand and be recognized?’”

  “Hahahaha! Hehehe!”

  People were on the ground, some clutching their chests, while others simply hollered without shame and wiped tears from their eyes.

  “Then, she introduces his wife and turns to go back to hu’ seat. Somebody whispers dat she fugot to introduce his momma, so she turns around and hollas, ‘Oh yes! And Mother Fucka, would you stand and be recognized!’”

  Mr. Somebody couldn’t hold it any longer. He dropped his cane and fell onto the pew, vibrating freely. Everyone else was in their own fit of laughter. I had never seen people in Swamp Creek—or anywhere—more full of joy. They slapped one another’s leg or arm in disbelief, they leaned on one another like they simply couldn’t help it, and they grabbed one another’s hands and walked into the land of pleasure together.

  I hadn’t laughed that hard in years. Either nothing funny ever came along or I never realized that my greatest joy was found in the life I was trying desperately to abandon.

  “These are some characters here!” David said finally, huffing for breath. “Are they like this all the time?”

  “As far as I know, they are,” I said, ashamed I hadn’t appreciated them earlier in life.

  “I could listen to this stuff forever,” he announced.

  “Yeah, me, too,” I murmured sadly.

  “You shoulda seen de niggas in dat chuch fallin’ out laughin’ at Wizerine!” Mr. Somebody panted rapidly. “You woulda thought de Holy Ghost came ova everybody and knocked dem plumb out!”

  The people’s laughter rang in the night. It was still hot, but the joy of storytelling cooled the sweat considerably. Folks fanned like they were in church and took deep breaths as they tried hard to recover. “Dat’s a clown sho’’nuff!” Ms. Polly offered. “Somebody Washington? I wouldn’t fool wit’ him no kinda way! Not Polly McPheeters! Y’all might fool with Somebody, but I ain’t!” Her high-pitched laughter evoked even more from others.

  The darkness erased the particulars of people’s expressions and made all of us seem like spirits gathered at a tree. Who was cute and who wasn’t and who had money and who didn’t proved absolutely meaningless. We were all contributors unto a communal joy that was enough to sustain everyone. There must have been at least thirty people gathered at the Meetin’ Tree, but together we created enough laughter to go round. As a child, I never noticed how wonderful it was to watch people abandon their daily roles and laugh out loud as they fashioned their own survival in a world prepared to kill them. This was one place and time where the power of white folks was of absolutely no consequence. It was great to see what Swamp Creek folks were like when whites were not our focus; indeed, it was blissful to see us being ourselves without any concern about them.

  Truth be told, I fell in love with my home folks that night. The old, the young, the unsure, the desperate, the loud, the soft-spoken all put in their two cents as we constructed, if only temporarily, a world where everyone was free. The differences that disallow unity in America never interrupted our space as we listened to story after story, regardless of who was telling it. What a brilliant way to live, I thought. For the first time in my life, I was glad to be from Swamp Creek.

  I told David my thoughts and he said, “Amen! Maybe one day we’ll have our own schools and then we can educate our children right. Until we teach ourselves, we will always hate ourselves.”

  “I know dat’s right,” I affirmed. “What good is a degree if we can’t sit out here like this with our own people and enjoy ourselves? Everybody wants us to acquire education in order to move our people away from our own traditions. We are already in the land of milk and honey because we’re black and together!”

  “You done said somethin’ now, boy,” Mr. Blue said and winked at me. I didn’t think he had heard the conversation. “If education don’ bring us closer together as a people, then it ain’t no good. Dat’s brainwashin’ and white folks is benefittin’ as our communities is fallin’ apart. You college-degree chil’ren can go to white schools and live in white neighborhoods, and y’all thankin’ y’all done progressed. Shit! You done gone straight backward! You know why? ‘Cause you love his shit more than you love yo’self. If you got God and yo’ own folks, you already got heaven. Ain’t nothin’ better’n dat! Ain’t nothin’ to rise to. Shit.”

  “You teachin’ now, Blue,” Mr. Somebody chimed in. “Seem like to me education oughta make us love one another mo’, but it don’t. Dem black teachers and writers talk about each otha like a dog and marry white folks and feel good’bout knowin’ dey ain’t neva got to’sociate wit’ us no mo’ if dey don’t wont to. I wonted to go to school and all, but I’m sho’ glad I didn’t if dat’s how I was gon’ be.”

  “It ain’t got to be like dat, though,” Mr. Blue countered. “Dat’s jes’ what happens lots o’ times. Learnin’ is a good thang when it’s done right, and black people could use a whole lot of it. Like take dis boy hyeah for’xample.” He nodded toward me. “He done gone off to school and got a whole buncha degrees, but he can still come home and laugh and talk wit’ de rest of us wit’out thankin’ he’s too good to swat mosquitoes and listen to old nigga stories. Most of’em don’t come out like dat, though. Dat’s because dem teachers tell them that dey come to school to better theyselves, which mean dat somethin’ was wrong wid them befo’ they got there. Yet dey don’t need to better theyselves ‘cause dey already de best. They jes’ need to gather some learnin’ in order to fill in what we don’t know’bout ourselves. That’ll help all us love one another better and know jes
’ how good God done been to us. Now dat’s what education s’pose’ to be fu’. If it don’t do dat, you can throw it away,’cause it ain’t no good. Mark my word.”

  Mr. Blue’s profundity commanded attention, causing all laughter to cease. “I betcha dis boy hyeah could tell us a whole lot we don’t know’bout black folks.”

  Everyone gazed at me expectantly, prepared to receive whatever I had to give. The elder had paved the way and I had no choice but to deliver.

  “All right. Um … did y’all know that black folks owned slaves?” I stated a bit fearfully.

  “Get outta hyeah, boy! Ain’t no black folks owned no slaves. Black folks was slaves theyselves!” Mr. Somebody posited.

  “Not all of them. There were a few free ones who got rich enough to buy their own slaves.”

  “Why would they do that?” Ms. Polly asked, genuinely confused.

  “For different reasons. Some of them were actually buying their relatives into freedom. They posed as real buyers at the auction, but in actuality they were freeing their kinfolks. They would buy them, take them home, and let them go. It was a masterful way of helping black folks escape from slavery.”

  “What you sayin’ is dat we was trickin’ white folks into believin’ dat we was really buyin’ our own people and treatin’ dem like slaves, but what we was really doin’ was buyin’’em and settin’em free?” Mr. Blue asked.

  “Exactly,” I said confidently.

  “I likes dat kinda shit,” he chuckled. “Dey always thankin’ dey outsmartin’ de black man. Shit, dey de stupid ones.”

  “Uh-huh,” people mumbled.

  “Some black owners kept their black slaves as slaves, though. I know it don’t sound good, but it’s certainly true.”

  No one said anything. Mr. Blue examined my eyes disappointedly.

  “Some black folks simply took advantage of the economic situation at the time. They bought slaves because they had the money, and they worked them in order to make a profit. A book called Black Masters highlights several black families that owned slaves whom they worked like any white master would have.”