Black Like Us

by Devon Carbado

  “After seeing Miss Jane Pittman on t.v., the whole world must think niggers in the South always resisted peacefully and only talked the rhetoric of freedom and got killed by the honky,” N. sliced through their preoccupied silence.

  “And all the women did was live one hundred years and cry over their men being killed,” the tag-woman said, seizing upon N.’s invitation to converse.

  “Don’t forget,” said J., “that the high point in any nigger’s life is to drink out of the honky’s water fountain in front of other niggers with picket signs and pigs with riot gear on and cattle prods dangling alongside they pricks.”

  The tag-woman pulled off the road onto a shoulder shrouded by pines. “Be with you in five minutes.” She grabbed her bag and was out of the car and seemed to be removing her front car tag. She proceeded to the rear and seemed to be doing the same thing. She returned to her car and her riders, adjusted her mirror, and swerved back onto the road. The tag-woman asked J. to open the glove compartment and pass her the registration. As J. did so, the tag-woman fished in her jacket pocket and pulled out a similar looking document which she gestured toward J. to replace in the glove compartment. “We’ll be in W. in ninety minutes,” she said.

  This is WNAZ news at 3:30 p.m. President Nixon maintains that he will stand firm against impeachment.

  Israeli air forces are bombing Lebanese borders.

  Governor George Wallace today accused the Republican Administration of making the middle class bear the brunt of the economic recession.

  One hundred medical experts reported to the Senate Committee on Health and Nutrition that the rate of starvation is higher than it has ever been.

  _________ City police officer, Jefferson Madigan, resigned from the city police force this afternoon to secure the release of his fifteen-year-old son, Eliot, who was kidnapped by black terrorists, who have also claimed responsibility for the bombing of a police station and the kidnap and murder of that city’s deputy police commissioner, Patrick Halloran.

  Now, we return you to our program of music to suit your every mood.

  “Shit, what about Erlene?” N. implored.

  “What about us?” J. answered.

  “The woman you’ll hook up with in W. runs a tiny bar called ‘The Sanctuary’—oddly enough. At one time she was involved in prison work, until a stoolie told one of the matrons that she was spreading communism.” The tag-woman tried to change the subject, wanting to keep the two women focused on the here-and-now—never mind about what the radio ain’t said.

  “Oh yeah?” N. responded more out of politeness than interest.

  “She’s a real sister in the struggle,” the tag-woman assured N. and J., who appeared bored with her story.

  A state police car glided past them. The two policemen, wearing black wrap-around sunglasses, looked askance at the tag-woman’s car as she pulled abreast of them.

  This is Soul Starship coming to you from the Black Metropolis. We’ll continue with our program of rock, blues, and jazz after the evening news.

  _________ City police found Eliot Madigan unharmed in the phone booth of a filling station on the east side of the city. Eliot is the fifteen-year-old son of Jefferson Madigan, the policeman who was recently acquitted of murder charges. His son was held prisoner by SHAKA, a black revolutionary group, until the

  release of Erlene Williams, who had been in police custody, and the resignation of Officer Madigan from the city police force. Mrs. Williams, widow of slain black revolutionary Carl “Poochie” Williams, was released shortly before young Madigan was found.

  Police are now looking for two women, believed to have been accomplices of Poochie Williams in the kidnap and killing of deputy police commissioner Patrick Halloran and in the partial bombing of a police station on the east side of the city. Police have not revealed the names of the women, but believe they are fleeing north and have put out an all points bulletin on the two suspects.

  Now back to Soul Starship in the Black Metropolis.

  “Uh-oh, that means they know we’re moving south,” J. emitted in a disgusted tone.

  “Then it may not be wise to wait five hours before you travel on. But then again it may not be wise to travel on,” the tag-woman suggested as she gassed her car up to seventy-five.

  “Humph, you better slow down or we won’t have to make any decisions,” said N., eyeing the speedometer.

  “No, I don’t want to hold up in no W. I want to keep going,” said J. “I guess I’m with my partner,” N. said.

  “Right on,” said the tag-woman.

  In another thirty minutes, the tag-woman was pulling off the highway into W. and driving through the city, which was lit only by traffic lights and headlights. They got out of the car in an alley which led them through a wooden door of a red brick building. A woman with long, straight brown hair, glasses, and a small, wiry frame admitted them to an office with a cot, water cooler, a small refrigerator, and a cluttered desk. “Welcome to the Sanctuary,” she greeted the three women, smiling. “What’s happenin?” the tag-woman answered distantly.

  J. looked suspiciously at the white woman. N. placed a reassuring hand on J.’s shoulder.

  “I leave you in good hands,” said the tag-woman.

  “Hey, hey, no you don’t. We ain’t buying insurance here,” called J., grabbing the tag-woman by the shoulder and pushing her into the hall. “What’s the idea of leaving us with that whitey?!”

  “Hold on, sister. You ain’t in a position to be a separatist now. You might find yourself being aided by anybody. We have credibility. Would we put you in the hands of anybody who hadn’t proven herself a friend? We ain’t lost or had anybody informed on yet. That woman knows the roads. She’ll be a good cover for you, too. If you don’t trust her, tell her so. She’ll get you a black driver, but I bet you’ll be stopped before you get out of R.”

  J. jerked her hands away sullenly and returned to the white woman’s office, where she and N. were chatting softly over a road map as the white woman cleaned her shotgun with castor oil.

  “It might be a good idea to leave sooner than planned,” suggested the tag-woman, who had followed J. back into the room.

  “Yes, I think so. I’ll tell my bartender to close up. Then, we can leave in an hour.”

  “I’m bookin,” said the tag-woman and stood on tiptoe to embrace N. and J. She shook the white friend’s hand shyly. “Stay well.”

  The new friend put the parts of her shotgun together, loaded it, and pulled the safety catch forward.

  “Stay back here and I’ll go out and tell my bartender to close for me. Then we can leave.”

  As the white woman left, J. grabbed N. and pulled her ear to her lips. “I don’t trust no white person to take me to the corner store…”

  “Just be cool. She’s been around. She useta be with the Brigade. She’s spent two and a half years in the joint. I remember her case. She’s too well known to go back underground. So, now she’s an aider. She was with S.N.C.C. in Durham till the nationalists took it over. She really does know the roads. If we travel her route, we’ll be there in five hours. So, relax,” N. pleaded.

  The woman came back into her office a half hour later to find J. and N. curled around one another in a troubled sleep on her cot. She woke J. easily, who started and then wheezed a sigh of relief in recognition of the new friend.

  “Sorry, took longer than I expected. There was a pig out front and I had to go through a routine with him about the rooms back here. They harass us as a matter of course.”

  “What’d you tell him?” J. asked nasty-like.

  “That he couldn’t search anything unless he had a signed warrant,” the new friend answered in a reasoning tone.

  Soon, the woman led them to a light blue wood-paneled Ford station wagon with M. tags. They loaded their bags in the rear, hopped in the wagon, and waited for the aider to adjust her seat and begin to drive.

  The three women said nothing. The aider kept her eyes peeled to the front.
Not even the radio was on. The handle of the white woman’s shotgun rested intimately against N.’s heel. The roads drew them and enchanted them with crisp, dry summer greenness. N. and J. were surprised by the aloofness of the white woman. When would they have the chance to come down on whatever liberal, communist, feminist we-can-be-together rap they hadn’t had to hear because of their isolation for so many heavy months?

  N. recalled the nightmarish spectacle of M., her brother, and herself in the courtroom, fighting for their lives. M. had been so drugged, because of the bullet pain in his shoulder. She had been so traumatized emotionally the day M.’s lawyer had asked that their cases be severed. She remembered how naked she’d felt when she jumped up and screamed curses at the lawyer—a charlatan whom all the movement people said was radical political because he’d got so many brothers and sisters off with light sentences. He’d claimed their charges were different, that M.’s health was poor and he could not withstand the rigors of the trial, and that N.’s contemptuous behavior was jeopardizing the success of her brother’s case.

  She remembered that betrayal. She remembered that she’d had to settle for a public defender, when her own lawyer dropped her case because she could no longer afford his fees and her parents had refused to help her because they were sinking all their resources into M.’s defense. The public defender told her to plead guilty and get a lighter sentence. She knew better. She pleaded not guilty, acted as her own witness, and told the court that whatever her brother did he was still her brother and she would protect him. The public defender asked to be relieved of the case. She defended herself. She was sentenced to ten years. Her brother got ninety years. She was out in four. He was still in the joint. She never recovered from hating M. for his stupidity in allowing their cases to be severed. She never tossed from her mind his passivity before the white male authority of his lawyers and all the others. She also couldn’t help but feel, despite her love of women, that the white man’s authority was easily transferred to his woman, for it had been a white woman judge who sentenced both her brother and herself to their respective prison terms.

  J. was quite resentful at the silent aplomb of this white woman. The bitch really is cold, thought J. She’s wheeling this tank like a truck driver and this road is dark as a mother-fucking cave. “Put on your high beams,” J. ordered her.

  “They’re on,” said the woman casually. The woman resembled all those nuns who’d flogged her in the Catholic girls’ home the state had sent her to for “incorrigibility,” J. thought.

  “What’re you in this for? Excitement? You get your liberal jollies off helpin some bad niggers out?”

  “I haven’t asked you any questions, have I?”

  “That’s not the point. I wanna know what your stake is in this.”

  “You might have to do the same for me one day—some people already have. I’d hate to have to question your loyalty on the basis of your skin color,” the aider snarled, not even turning her head to look at her interrogator.

  “Bullshit,” J. spewed back.

  “How much further, I have to pee,” N. interrupted this promising argument.

  “About two hour’s drive. I’ll pull over here,” said the woman in a relieved tone. N. got out of the car with a farcical, panicky gesture. J. and the aider exchanged hostile glances.

  “How’d you get inside the prisons? What group do you work for?” J. started up again.

  “I don’t belong to any group. I used to get in on a clergy pass. I provided ‘spiritual’ guidance.”

  J. did not appreciate her humor. “You a nun?”

  “No.”

  N. knocked at the window and halted J.’s next comment. “Let’s go. Turn on the radio,” N. directed the aider.

  This is WPEC, your country station bringing you the best in country music. Dutton County Board of Education has refused to allow neighboring Marlow County nigra chil’ren to attend its schools to create racial balance.

  Three nigra convicks have escaped from P. Farms prison. State troopers, sheriff’s men, and deputized community residents are combing the area.

  Jennifer Christmas, a known felon and arsonist, is wanted for questioning by _________ City police in connection with the kidnap and murder of deputy police commissioner Patrick Halloran, whose body was found a week ago in an abandoned car. Christmas is believed to be fleeing north in the company of another nigra woman. Christmas is also a nigra.

  click! “I’m sick of listening to this corn-pone mouth,” J. snapped. The friend burned the roads. N. felt the gravelly road boil in offense. A gray and yellow patrol car followed and drew abreast; the pink-faced driver, whose stomach pillowed the steering wheel, waved for them to pull over.

  “He’s by himself. It’s dawn and the shotgun’s right under my foot,” N. whispered to both the aider and J.

  “That mother-fucker’s awfully sure of himself. He would want to be careful travelin alone with all those bad niggers on the loose,” J. hissed. “Ee-een kwot a her-ree, aincha may-um?” the brute smiled, showing two solid gold crowned canine teeth among his tobacco stained dentures. “Oh, aw-fi-suh, Ah promised Cal-line, our girl, Ah’d git her grits to a bus station in D. by seven a-clock. I kinda los mah way and track a-time. They gotta ketch that bus or they’ll lose they jobs in R.,” the aider feigned a syrupy plea.

  “Lah-cense and reg’stration, may-um.”

  “Heah, awf-fi-suh. Pleeze, her-ree,” the aider panted.

  The pink and paunchy ugly cop perused the items given him by the aider. J. and N. were constipated with anxiety.

  “You ole Apple Orchard Bayard’s daughter? How’s yo daddy? He’s a fine Southern maa-en. Stands up fuh Dixie. Go head, may-um. Hope Ah ain’t cost you no inconvenience.”

  vroom! “He can be so sure of women. So fucking patronizing and cute. He didn’t even have sense enough to feel threatened by that shotgun I know he saw under my foot,” the aider fumed.

  “If he’d tarried any longer that barrel woulda been up his nose,” N. assured her.

  “Is that Apple Orchard dude really your old man?” J. asked in unself-conscious curiosity.

  “No, his daughter was my roommate in college. I borrowed her license at a class reunion two months ago and nature took care of the rest.”

  Both N. and J. laughed hysterically as the redness of the friend’s anger gradually withdrew like the mercury of a thermometer.

  After ninety-odd minutes of silence, N. and J. were delivered to a dusty bus station. They got their makeshift back packs and stood at the passenger side window of the aider’s car.

  “A bus should be here in forty minutes. It’ll take you to within twenty-five miles of your destination. Stay well,” the aider said to both of them, but made eye contact only with N. N.’s eyes followed the car’s trail of dust.

  “There she goes-off in a mighty cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Ho, Silver,’” J. taunted.

  The bus was hot, old, and segregated. J. and N. caused a near stir when they sat toward the front of the bus. No one said anything, but the stares and glares spoke for them. The black folk on the bus either looked out the dirty bus windows or bowed their heads in exasperation or shame. N. and J. just stood their ground, and pretended not to notice. The road gave them an uncomfortable ride as the pre-noon sun created a glare on the windows. They felt dusty, clammy, and strangely hungry.

  “We shoulda brought some fried chicken in a greasy brown paper bag and been right in style,” J. quipped. The bus stopped at numberless little towns, corners, roads—some with markers, some anonymous, except to the particular inhabitants who disembarked with each snappy halt the driver made.

  “The next one’s ours. Feel like hitchin?” N. asked J.

  J. rolled her eyes. “What choice do we have?”

  “We could walk.”

  “I’m really sick of this trip, girl.”

  They descended from the raggedy bus and started footing it east on the dirt road. Few cars passed them and those that did weren’t going t
o stop.

  “Maybe I oughtta go barefoot then somebody would surely pity this homeless darkie.”

  “You have such a stereotyped mind, you know. You haven’t even been here ten minutes and already you know how the whole thing works. Can’t you just be cool?” N. shouted at J. for the first time, defensive about her Southern roots.

  “Sorry, sister. But every stereotype has borne itself out in the last five hours,” J. said, apologetic but unable to resist this last dig.

  N. laughed uproariously. “Well, one thing I know—I ain’t no stereotype.”

  The sound of a vehicle pulling over behind them made them reach for their equipment, but a loud, friendly voice calling to them halted that action. “You ladies want a ride?” a young, brown-skinned man yelled from a dusty black pick-up truck.

  “We’re going ten miles east,” N. answered, smiling.

  “Come on, get in.”

  “Thanks,” N. and J. said simultaneously, happy to get out of the sun.

  “I live over thataway. On my way back from a brick-layin job. I work for my father. He’s a bricklayer,” the youngster, who appeared to be no more than fifteen, bragged.

  “We’re visiting my grandmother, Hattie Moses. We came down from school. This is my roommate, Connie. My name’s Paulene,” N. said hospitably.

  “Pleased to meet you. My name’s Logan.”

  The women settled back, lit cigarettes, and breathed easily for the first time in several days. The young man, respecting their rest, was quiet and reassuring.

  “Here’s y’all’s stop. I gotta turn off here, now. My father’s expecting me home. Say hello to Miss Hattie for me.”

  The two women waved at the boy. After a moment’s hesitation, they both moved tentatively toward a small clapboard house held up on cinderblocks. “This is it, Connie,” N. said to J., clasping her hand.