Being Clem

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  “So Clem is going to a white folks’ pool with their son Matthew to get lessons?” Clarisse interrupted Momma again.

  “Yes,” Momma said, looking straight at me. “It’s before the pool opens, Mrs. Franklin said. The swim teacher offers private lessons at a pool in a building over on Fiftieth Street. She’ll need to get permission from the building owner. Of course, with Mr. Franklin being who he is, that won’t be a problem. No one will make much of a fuss about one colored boy getting lessons as long as he’s their guest, and no one has to see him, of course, that early in the morning. It being a private lesson and all. And as long as he’s with Matthew. She made it clear that this was a very special circumstance. A huge favor to me. For the sacrifice of my husband and all.” Momma’s eyes rolled as she stretched out all the words Mrs. Franklin had used so that she never had to actually say out loud that Colored Folks and White Folks Should Never Be Sharing Swimming Pools.

  “Well then, can I go too? I don’t know how to swim either,” Clarisse said.

  “Clarisse, I have never heard you say one thing about wanting to learn to swim.”

  “You never asked me.”

  “Clarisse, all you want to do is lay out in a bathing suit while the boys watch.” Annette laughed.

  “I can’t help what the boys do.” Clarisse winked at her.

  “Enough of that!” Momma said, serious. “You girls finish your schoolwork?”

  They nodded their heads.

  “Clem, you already missed one lesson, and tomorrow is the last day of school, but on Wednesday morning you are going to get up with me and go to your first lesson. You’re smart, you’ll catch on fast.” Momma hugged me tight.

  “I told you I’d figure something out,” she whispered in my ear.

  TWENTY

  Usually the first day of school and the last day of school are the best days of the year. And even though we’d never be coming back to Lincoln Elementary and would be going off to Haines Junior High School blocks away in September, I couldn’t make myself get excited.

  “You leaving tomorrow?” I asked Errol.

  “Yup,” Errol said. “My dad’s driving me first thing.”

  “You go to North Carolina every summer?” Lymon asked him.

  “Yeah, my grandmother’s there and some of my cousins too. It ain’t too bad, but God dawg my nana makes me get up early! She don’t believe in summer vacation.”

  We laughed. Since Lymon came, Errol went and found himself a sense of humor.

  “You going to visit your aunts?” he asked me next.

  I looked up at the sky and held my hands together. “Thank the sweet Lord Jesus, not until July. If I survive, I’ll see you all in seventh grade.” I laughed.

  I told Errol and Lymon all about my aunts in D.C. and how me Annette and Clarisse took the train to visit them every summer. I told them about the museum visits and their parlor and fancy ways. But I never told them about the swim lessons I was going to take with Matthew Franklin.

  “Wish I had somewhere to go,” Lymon said, quiet.

  Lymon sometimes told us about his crazy little brothers, but not much about his momma and her new husband. I know enough to know that sometimes not saying anything is saying plenty. There were days he came to school looking so beat-up, you’d think he’d gone a few rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson before breakfast. Once when his eye was puffy and red, I asked him, “Your eye gonna be all right? It looks—” and Lymon turned on me so fast I nearly wet my pants.

  “So you a professor and a nurse?” he snapped. I noticed he didn’t call me a doctor like a man, but a nurse, like a girl.

  “Nope.” I smiled. “Just a professor.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have bothered, but the next morning, on the way to school, I tried to talk to Errol.

  “What do you think is going on with Lymon?” I asked him.

  “Ain’t my business,” Errol said, just like I thought he would.

  “I didn’t say it was your business. I asked what do you think is going on?”

  He walked quiet for a bit. “You so smart and you acting like you don’t know?” he said.

  And that was the last time me and Errol talked about Lymon.

  On the days Lymon came to school looking like he was beat-up on the outside and the inside, we stuck by him. And even though we were friends, the Three Musketeers, I realized most days I felt like everybody else in school. Scared of him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  After my daddy died was when I decided I wanted to learn to swim. When Daddy was in the navy, Momma told me Daddy was the best swimmer she ever saw. “Like he was born in water,” she said her eyes looking all dreamy.

  “I want to learn to swim,” I told her, hoping my momma would be proud of me the way she was of my daddy.

  “I’ll have to see about that, Clem,” Momma said. “There aren’t many places here in Chicago for colored to get lessons, but let me see what I can find.”

  “Where did Daddy learn?” I asked her.

  “Oh, your daddy learned when he was younger than you, down in Ashley River. Said his big brother threw him in and it was either swim or drown, so he started swimming and never stopped.” Momma laughed. “When he enlisted in the navy, he was one of the only colored men they didn’t have to teach to swim to pass the test.”

  “Do you know how to swim?” I asked her.

  “Never been interested. I don’t mind splashing around a bit, but swimming? In a pool? No thank you.” She smiled at me. “But you are going to be a swimmer just like your daddy.”

  “And then I’m going to join the navy and travel all over the world,” I told Momma.

  Momma shook her head. “Yes, Clemson Junior. Just like your daddy.”

  Me and Matthew Franklin’s teacher was a man with white hair, wearing a one-piece swimsuit I thought only girls wore. He had a big cross in the middle of his suit and small writing underneath that spelled out RED CROSS.

  “My name is Mr. Hotchkiss, and I will be your swim instructor.” He reached out to shake my hand. “Our Matthew here is off to a good start and I am sure you will catch up to him quickly if you pay close attention.” Mr. Hotchkiss sounded like he was training us to be in the military. I stood up straighter.

  I might have been the smallest one in my class, but with Matthew Franklin I was at least a head taller. Of course, he was only in second grade at a school I never even heard of. My momma said he wasn’t any trouble at all, quiet as a mouse, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d swear Mrs. Franklin wasn’t his natural momma, he was so sweet.

  I looked around the pool and noticed it was so early, it was mostly empty. There were some old people swimming back and forth in swim caps, and they made swimming look as easy as breathing. I wondered how long it would take before I could swim like that.

  “Young man.” Mr. Hotchkiss was looking at me. “You will need to pay attention to the safety instructions before we begin your lessons.”

  I nodded but went back to looking around. The pool was small but off to the side was an even smaller baby pool connected to the big pool. I thought if we had a baby pool like this in our neighborhood, or even a pool at all, and I went there every day when I was younger, I wouldn’t need these lessons now.

  Mr. Hotchkiss had us step down a ladder and into the pool at the shallow end. The water was so cold I bit down on my tongue. I took my time getting in.

  Matthew was already in the water, up to his chest, waiting.

  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Hotchkiss said. “You’ll warm up in the water.” I looked down from the ladder. The water was a pretty, shimmery blue and I could see clear to the bottom, where I could read 2 FT painted in white. I couldn’t remember how tall I was. I knew I was taller than Matthew and knew I had to be taller than two feet, but from here, with the water rippling, it looked as deep as the ocean.

  I closed my eyes thinking about the bravest things I’d ever had to do—survive losing my daddy, watch my momma lose my daddy, skip from third grade to fou
rth, survive Curtis Whittaker. And when that didn’t work, I thought of the bravest people I knew—Clarisse, Kendrick, Lymon, and my daddy. I tried as hard as I could to remember my daddy’s face from his pictures, and think about how scared he must have been in the navy, loading explosives onto ships every day, knowing only colored soldiers got the jobs that could get them blown up, but he did it anyhow until he did get blown up. I stepped down off the ladder into the pool and the water was barely at my waist.

  “There we go,” Mr. Hotchkiss said. “Now, let’s get started.”

  Looking out at all the water in front of me made me think of my daddy, blown apart, somewhere in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Knowing how to swim didn’t help him in the end. Cold as I was when I got in the water, my body was on fire now.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I told the teacher.

  “Hurry up then,” he told me, looking only at Matthew.

  “Today we are going to work on the flutter kick. Matthew, I want you to turn and face the wall. Now hold on…” I heard the sound of Matthew kicking as I ran to the bathroom fast as I could. I thought I could make it to the toilet, but just as I got there, every bit of the breakfast Momma made me eat before we left the house landed on the front of my brand-new swim trunks.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Sick? What do you mean sick?” Momma asked when she picked up me and Matthew from the pool.

  “I got dizzy”—I lowered my voice—“and then I threw up.”

  “Oh, Clem,” she said. “You missed the whole lesson?”

  “Momma, I was sick.”

  “I know, baby. It’s just…” She didn’t finish. I know she was thinking about how much she was going to owe Mrs. Franklin and thinking about this being my only chance to get a swim lesson.

  She rubbed Matthew’s head. “How was your lesson, Matthew?” she asked him real sweet.

  “It was good, CeeCee.” I looked up to see my momma’s face, but she stared straight ahead. No matter how many times I heard it, I couldn’t get used to Matthew calling my momma by a name that wasn’t hers. Any Negro boy his age in his right mind would know to call my momma Mrs. Thurber, not by her first name, but not Matthew Franklin. I know that’s how white folks do, but it sure doesn’t make it right. But my momma didn’t say a word and she wouldn’t look at me even when she knew I was staring.

  When we got back to the house, Matthew went upstairs to his room and I pulled up a chair to the table in the corner to read my book while Momma worked. The radio was playing soft on the kitchen counter and right away I knew the song playing was my momma’s favorite. When Momma didn’t sing along with the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, her head swaying from side to side with her eyes closed like she always did, I knew she was upset.

  I was reading one of the series books where the Five were surrounded by a marsh and there was a kidnapping, smuggling, and an underground passage all in one book. Every once in a while, I’d look up at Momma, scrubbing in the sink and wiping down the stove. She looked older here than at home, and all bent over.

  I wanted to tell her to stand up straight like she told us when we let our shoulders droop down or we leaned on one leg, but I knew I couldn’t do that. When she asked me if I was hungry, I had to remember I was supposed to be sick, so I told her my stomach still hurt and said no. Momma looked at me funny and came over and touched my head. Smelling her bleachy hands almost did make me feel sick thinking about the water.

  “Well, you don’t have a fever,” she said.

  “But my stomach still hurts,” I told her, and tried to look as sick as I could.

  I couldn’t tell if Momma believed me or not, but she kept on cleaning until Mrs. Franklin called her in the dining room. I could hear them talking. Well, I could hear Mrs. Franklin talking and saying “CeeCee this” and “CeeCee that,” and my momma saying quiet, “Yes, Mrs. Franklin.”

  Right after my momma took the job with the Franklins and Errol’s mom came over one night, they sat in the kitchen talking while I laid in bed listening. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I heard my momma say, “… Cecille Thurber, I told her. And do you know she had the nerve to say to me, ‘Cecille? Why, that’s a French name, isn’t it? Why don’t I just call you CeeCee, to make it easier for everyone?’”

  All the way in my room I could hear Mrs. Watkins suck her teeth. “Easier for her, she meant. All that fancy schooling and the name Cecille is too hard for them to say? Mmmm, mmm, mmmm,” Mrs. Watkins said.

  Momma and Mrs. Watkins went on like that nearly every night they got together.

  The next morning when Momma woke me up to go with her to work and the swim lesson, I got up slow and went to the bathroom and sat at the edge of the bathtub, staying in there as long as I could. Even though I was pretending sick, when I thought about the lesson and the pool and Daddy, my stomach started bubbling all over again.

  I heard knocking on the door.

  “Some of us would like to go to the bathroom this year,” Clarisse started in.

  I flushed the toilet and came on out.

  “You’re nasty. You didn’t even wash your hands.”

  Before I could think of something to say back, Clarisse slammed the door in my face.

  I walked slow into the kitchen.

  “Momma, I still don’t feel good,” I said to Momma’s back while she was at the sink.

  She turned, not saying anything but looking in my eyes.

  “It’s my stomach,” I said.

  “Go on back to bed, Clem,” she said, turning back to the sink. “If you’ve missed three lessons, I don’t see how you can catch up, so we’ll just have to cancel. I’ll tell Mrs. Franklin.”

  “Sorry, Momma.”

  Momma was quiet. I waited for her to turn around, but she kept right on at the sink. I went back to bed, ashamed I let her down. Ashamed to not be like my daddy. But so happy I was done with swim lessons.

  TWENTY-THREE

  We always left for Washington, D.C., after the Fourth of July to get back in plenty of time for the Bud Billiken Parade in August, where just about everybody on the entire South Side of Chicago came out to celebrate.

  The parade stretched so far down South Parkway, with bands and dancers and cars and singers, you’d think they were going to march straight out of Illinois into Indiana. I remember the first time I went with Momma and my sisters, we sat on Mr. and Mrs. Scott’s stoop, Momma’s friends from the NAACP, who lived right on the parade route. Momma sat me next to her and we cheered together watching folks go by in costumes. Momma laughed when I screamed loud and clapped my hands and she kept saying in my ear, “Isn’t that something, Clem?” pointing to the ladies twirling sticks all stepping in time to the music of the bands playing behind them.

  “Can you believe this is the biggest parade in the country, baby? Right here in Chicago?” Momma said, sounding like she was out of breath.

  Momma stood me up when the shiny car with Joe Louis in the backseat drove past slow. He and his pretty wife waved to everybody and Joe Louis looked like he was in the neighborhood, just dropping by to say hello.

  “He’s even more handsome in person,” I heard Momma say to Mrs. Scott after he passed, and Mrs. Scott nodded, yes, he sure was.

  “Yeah, he may be handsome, but he got half the sense knocked out his head in the ring,” Mr. Scott mumbled.

  “Ooohweee, here comes that big shot Abbott in his Rolls,” someone said behind us. And a long, white fancy car drove past us.

  “He owns the paper,” Momma said to me. I don’t know which paper Momma was talking about, and I didn’t care, but his car was sure pretty, and so clean it looked like it didn’t have not one speck of dirt on it. Right behind were a band of young boys with caps on, playing their hearts out. Behind them, were more boys carrying sacks on their shoulders and waving their hands in the air, shouting at the crowd.

  “Who are they?” I asked Momma.

  “Oh, those are the Chicago Defender newsboys and their band, Clem. That’s who
the parade is for,” she said, clapping and cheering them on.

  I’d seen the newsboys on the corner selling papers and shouting out the words from the newspaper headlines when me and Momma walked Clarisse and Annette to school. There was one on nearly every corner we passed.

  When the parade was over, everybody got free ice cream and Momma let me have two cones. I was so sticky and dirty when we got back home, I had to take an extra-long bath. I fell asleep thinking I could hardly wait for next year’s parade.

  Momma told us her and Daddy never missed a parade since they moved to Chicago. And once he even walked in it, holding the banner for the Pullman porters. “That night, he had to soak his feet in salts, he walked so far,” she told us, “but he was proud as could be.”

  Since Momma started taking us, we haven’t missed a parade either.

  When we got on the train at Union Station my momma stood on the platform looking like she was never gonna see us again.

  “We’ll be back in three weeks, Momma,” I told her, hugging her tight.

  “Three weeks,” Momma said into the top of my head. “Clarisse, watch out for them.”

  “I will, Momma.”

  She didn’t have to tell Clarisse nothing. I felt bad for anyone who tried to mess with us while Clarisse was in charge. Clarisse took the tickets from Momma’s hand and told her, “We’ll get word as soon as we get there.”