Good Negress

by Verdelle, A. J.

  “Grade seven,” I told her.

  One a the boys got in, “You supposed to say seventh grade.”

  I just look at him. Even if I am supposed to say it, don’t mean I have to say it after him.

  “You gonna be in seventh grade, you gonna be in Missus James’s class. That’s the class I’m in.” Her name is Brenda, and she so polite. Chubby, she has glasses, and long hair in three plaits. She has sat still in one place almost the whole party and her dress of all is the newest. She say she live with her grandmother and I think I like her the best.

  I smile at her and her cheeks push her glasses up when she smile back. Her eyebrows disappear behind the heavy glasses frames. Her hair is not pressed, but brushed hard and plaited down. She has Glover’s Mange on her scalp; it reeks and glistens, but everybody has been nice and not said anything. Hers is the only hair longer than mine.

  “You been kept back?” It is Dana again.

  “Naw,” I answer.

  “You have so,” this a girl named Karen Lynn, hollerin. “I’m thirteen and in the seventh grade and I been kept back, so so have you.”

  I open my mouth to answer, and Morris the chubby boy cross the room licks his lips and says, “Karen Lynn, you always tryina make somebody dumb as you. Schools down the country is different, and she don’t have to be kept back just cause you have.” Morris is loud back at Karen Lynn and the record needle leans on the paper label, and Margarete and her friends hoop and holler in the kitchen; Luke comes in.

  “Why ain’t y’all dancin?” Luke wants to know. He puts on some music by the Marvellettes. (Lantene would have loved it—the music, Luke edward, the party, the North—the whole thing.) Luke grabs my hand before I realize embarrassment is comin. He gets me into the middle of the floor and pulls lick-your-lips Morris to dance with me. (Gettin me up, and then he won’t even dance with me.) Morris is happy, and they both—Luke and Morris—start to do some steps. It is clear Morris is my dance partner and Luke edward is grown up.

  Now, I don’t know how to dance. Not then anyway. This is a problem.

  Lantene has spent many afternoons tryina teach me, but I usually had my mind on some story told at school or some dinner I was plannin to cook with Granma’am. Payback at Margarete’s party.

  I tried to remember to turn my feet right or left—to bend my arms both in the same direction and slide them back and forth like a pump. That’s what Lantene said I should do. I didn’t much look up at Morris; I watched Luke pull other kids to the floor. Somebody in the kitchen said, “Luke got em dancin,” and in a minute all the grownups circled round. Everybody knew the songs. Everybody clapped. The room bounced on the beats of the records. I heard Miss Tip talkin bout what we children did: “It’s a suprise Morris can dance, ain’t it, Margreet? Neesey know a few steps too. She learned a little bit down South.”

  The dancin and stompin raised the heat in the house. Miss Tip watched me till I nearly gave up, and then she came and joined us kids, so then I couldn’t sit down. She took one a my hands into her sweaty left palm. Dog. There I was in the center a the dance party. I started hoping I was doin somethin close to right. The hope caused a crease in my forehead. To hide the crease, I looked down at the floor.

  Miss Tip had started another rowdy, thumpin circle. “Go head, Dana,” was the first thing she said. And then she went on to comment on everybody. Thank goodness she didn’t say nothin loud about me.

  I liked dancin, or I liked music one. Lantene’s mama Evelyn say of course I like music cause my mama know more bout music than anybody ever lived in Patuskie. One time Margarete come down home, and she left a 45 record of Fingertips. Me and Lantene near played the grooves off that record.

  Lantene was practicin to go north round then. (She had always been fixed on that migrant dream.) Margarete had brought us the Fingertips record and showed us some new steps. The steps got sloppy from down-home silences, wild limbs, and our forgetfulness. But we still practiced what we could remember from what Margarete showed.

  Lantene said I cain’t dance. “I can too dance!” I hollered back, but I was lyin and we both knew it.

  Lantene studied dance steps hard. She was almost mathematic about it, which was funny. Lantene could hardly count three dollars in the sun. But she could and did tell me: Put your arms down some, don’t bend em so hard! You makin corners with y’elbows, you puttin y’feet out too far, Neesey, don’t let your head fall back. You sposed to keep y’head and neck straight, Neesey, pretend you lookin in y’boyfriend’s chest.

  I know Lantene practiced when I was home doin lessons or when I was at school in the afternoons. But Lantene say she didn’t practice, only when it was the two of us together. But I knew better than that cause she was such a sight better dancer than me.

  Lantene would roll up the mat in her mama’s room, and we would take the top a the record player box clean off. That way we wouldn’t have to keep liftin up the top to put the needle back down on the record edge. I figured that out. When the record player was first brought, the handle went back to the front by itself. That don’t work no more. We had got a little system together: whoever was closest to the record player when Little Stevie Wonder stopped blowin the harmonica, that’s who moved the needle. So we just kept dancin; my arms was swingin, my hair half comin loose, us pretendin we know all the steps the city girls know, and nobody there to see how country we was. You couldn’t tell Lantene she wasn’t Margarete, and you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t Lantene. Every turn or two or three, Lantene and I would bump each other somewhere, elbow or ankle flyin. We didn’t stop or say it hurt or even notice it always. We was keepin up with each other and the time. We was havin a party like in the city where we wasn’t.

  Got so close to night, I had to run out with the record still playin. Me and Lantene ain’t say one word a partin. Grabbed up my shoes from by her mama’s bedroom door, left Lantene just a-twirlin, her head hitched up the way she kept tellin me not to do. We had had us a good time, I thought, gettin back to Granma’am quick on my bare feet. When I sat down out back to wash my feet off, my teeth still lit up my new memory, and Granma’am was callin my name.

  BRENDA, WITH THE glasses, involved herself in the dancin demonstration. I lined up next to her. Miss Tip has on a light green sweater top with a turtle neck; her sweater shows all her bosom shape. Miss Tip’s blue skirt has neat little specks of green and orange and red in the material, brushed up like. It is a beautiful skirt, straight cut and short, and I ain’t seen no material like that before. The neat nylons she wears stay right on her skin like they lickin something sweet. She has on green shoes to top off the whole outfit.

  These are what I try to follow, the feet. I will never be able to shake my hips like she does, and I never get, in all my life, a full brassiere to turn and twist above my waist. I don’t want to do exactly what she does, anyhow, because she is fast. So I try to mock her feet, that’s all, and she says, “Good, Neesey, good.”

  After I get my feet to repeat her steps without stumblin, she pulls Morris again from behind, and me and Morris do the steps over and over together. By then, it is very very hot in the room, and Mama’s other friends have stopped makin a circus of us kids. The grown folks are talkin again about all kinds a things and drinkin again from their tastes in the cups. Luke keeps playin records and keeps playin records, and in between the changin, he dances with Miss Tip. I can tell by their feet on the floor, they know each other pretty well. I don’t look at them directly, but Luke’s creased pants so near Miss Tip’s nylon-naked leg make a full picture by themselves. You don’t even need to see above the knee to hear the story told. He has on roach-killer shoes, so hard to come by down home. Curious, I try to do this twirl-around they showed me, so I can peek at Luke edward’s top and face. His brown button-down sweater is loose on his chest and though it is striped, it matches exactly the brown of his slacks. I got a good look at my brother, but my twirl was messed up. His clothes are not remade or handed down like mine; his clothes are not gray and
navy blue like David’s. He does not wear plant shoes like Big Jim, and the grown women watch him dance.

  Luke edward and Miss Tip dance together and talk together all afternoon. Miss Tip has accepted responsibility for keepin Luke edward’s cup fresh with what’s in it, she said, and Luke edward ask Miss Tip what she want to hear, or what she want to hear next. I watch them as best I can. She too old for my brother.

  BOUT FORTY MINUTES before it got dark, in between records, Luke said, “Y’all better get goin.” He was talkin to all us kids; he faced the hi-fi, and we were in the room behind him. Little Anthony and the Imperials start to sing, Love is not a gadget, Love is not a toy. Luke is slowin the music down.

  Brenda walks over with her empty glass and a folded-up napkin. “Thank you for inviting me,” she says while I take her glass. “I’m so glad we’re in the same grade. You’ll like Missus James, our teacher. She’s nice.” I am glad she talks to me.

  Luke has opened the front closet and the kids are takin their coats. I go in the kitchen, where Margarete is, to tell her everyone is leavin, in case she has to do something.

  After all the kids have left, Margarete and her friends and Luke edward and Big Jim spread out over the flat. The space that was taken up by Brenda Greenfield, her glasses, and her Glover’s Mange now has ashtrays with cigarettes. The front room full a smoke.

  So much goes on all evenin long. I finally found myself a corner chair sometime after all the children left. Down, way down, I went into it. Had to be the lowest chair in Michigan. I imagined I was a lace curtain, hung quiet and still. The breeze of people’s comments made me swing, but just a little. I could see, and was see-through, but mostly I was fixed in my window. Josephus come over and wanted to talk and talk to me. I’m shamed to say I fell out, dead sleep, in that chair, and I’m sure I snored through years a the stories Josephus told. Margarete woke me up when everybody was gone. I don’t know what time all the grown folks left. “Luke, put up Neesey’s cot, honey. Poor chile,” she said, standin over my crumpled dress, “she tired as me.”

  After I laid down on the cot, in the middle of the house, and it was finally no people around me, there was quiet to frame me like a window, and I was still the curtain. I remember thinkin there were children from school and Josephus from the country and grown folks—Luke edward’s and Margarete’s and Big Jim’s friends. David disappeared early on, gone to Serena, I guess. This is as big as it gets, I told myself. I turned over, knocked out.

  In the middle of the night, I wake up thirsty. I go to the kitchen, where every dish, cup, pot, and pan in the house was dirty and on its side. They all called my name. As I recall, I took off the dress I still wore and washed up all the dishes in my slip. Also, I remember washin every ashtray ever made. Me and Granma’am ain’t have no ashtrays; she used handkerchiefs for snuff.

  Only a sliver of window showed through the curtain, and my head, at that time, reached the line of the lowest pane. In the glass was my reflection, and behind that the dark; I talked to myself that middle of the night: Well, Neesey, now you here.

  THE DAYS WERE so short when I moved to Detroit that by the time it was time to cook dinner, the panes in the window were dark. So most of the time when I looked there, my face stared back from the glass. Over time I began to witness to this window, and to imagine that the window witnessed me. I watched myself grow in the black night reflections. I tried to ease the sadness I had noticed from my face. I saw the inches of maturity gain on me, as I grew up over the bottom panes, and up toward the top ones. I mouthed words to Granma’am as I faced the window that faced south.

  It was the window over the kitchen sink, where I spent all my meal-cooking, dish-washing, and later, diaper-soaking time. I came to know everything that could be seen from that window, and in all the seasons too. Got to the point, of course, that my daily watching happened fast, so my eyes turned inward then.

  That was my window. I was twelve and standing at the sink when we met.

  I ONLY HAD that one party at Margarete’s. Most of the rest of the time I lived there, I was alone. I cleaned and studied and learned to play the hi-fi.

  In the back of Margarete’s closet I had found something that wasn’t hers. It was too big, and it was too old for anything she would like to wear. The first time I stumbled on it, I was scared Margarete might come in and catch me there so I didn’t pull it out. But once I got her schedule down good, and once I knew the schedules of the rest of the house, I could go in there and take my time.

  The porter’s smock had SOUTHERN machine-stitched on the sleeve. It was white, but dulled to maize by time. From the size of it, you would think my daddy was almost as big as Big Jim. Course, I don’t know how it fit. The sleeves were long and seven large buttons proceeded down the front. From the way it smelled, you would think my daddy wore Margarete’s perfume.

  I usually went to look at the smock when Margarete first left the house. Because then I could know that she wouldn’t come in on me. I was scared to take it off the hanger for a while. One day, I was playin Little Anthony. I had decided they were my favorites. I went to Margarete’s closet and took the smock hanger off the rod. I took the smock off the hanger and put the hanger on the doorknob. I stood in front of Margarete’s vanity and held the smock up in front of me. It had SOUTHERN RAILROAD stitched on the chest pocket too. Little Anthony sang, and in the mirror, I danced behind the smock. Then I turned the smock with its procession of buttons to face me. I threw the right arm over my shoulder, and rubbed my hand up and down the back; eight buttons there were. I held the left arm out. We danced. If we could start anew, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d gladly take you back. And tempt the hands of fate. Tears on my pillow, Pain in my heart, Caused by you. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

  GIBRALTAR JONES

  WHEN I WENT to ask Missus James how come I couldn’t find the Carolinas she told me that it’s a plural name for the two Carolinas in the United States; she asked me do I know about North and South Carolina. I tries not to get situated in my disappointment that I didn’t figure that out, and I answers her Yes, I seen the Carolinas—lease I can say it and picture it in my head now that I know what is bein discussed. To prove myself, I tell her that North Carolina is long and South Carolina is short. Best that way, I keep talkin, cause my mama and my Granma’am say it’s a lot a problems in the South, so it make sense that the South is short like it is.

  “Where is your grandmother, Deneese?” Missus James ask me.

  I sure do like the way she talk. She so crisp and proper and even like a drum. All this rumination and I done forgot the question.

  “Scuse me, what you ax me?” I have to ask again.

  She wince. I realize I seen her do that before. I think, dog, after I done answered smart, now I’m askin stupid. I feel like runnin out, but I just picked up one foot and start to rub it on my other sock.

  Missus James looked down at my feet, me standin next to her desk and all. “Stop scratching, Deneese,” she say.

  I put my foot back down.

  First, she sighs. “Neesey, do you know your language is atrocious?”

  This halts my thinkin altogether. She returns to our conversation then as if I don’t look blank or smacked down, as if she has not expected me to answer after all. Atrocious, I decide to wonder exactly what is that. “I as-k-eduh where your grandmother lives,” she say.

  She might as well say Cakka Lakky at the end. She leave a space between her words, like I don’t know where they start and finish. She makin me nervous.

  “Down home in Fuhginia,” I answer. “Down Souf,” I add, quietlike. I try to leave some space between my words.

  “South,” Missus James say back to me, and she aims her head at mine and holds her tongue between her teeth like beef in bread.

  “Say it, Deneese,” she say to me; “say South.” Tongue sandwich again.

  “Say ask, Deneese,” she say to me, “ask.” She still looks at me straight on, close like I’m a newspaper.

  I run out the roo
m. Then I start to hope that my socks is soakin up the pee, cause before I got through the schoolhouse door, it’s just a-runnin. I hear Josephus callin t’me, and I imagine he will catch up, but finally he doesn’t come along. I decide he has left me alone to my shame, and so I forget all about him.

  I didn’t run all the way home cause it’s a long way, but I ran four corners away from the school, had my coat in my hand and my geography book pressed close to my chest. Missus James sure did get my shame to racin that day. I am a country gal, and I don’t know top or bottom a them city sounds she be makin. I keep hearin her say that word ask, could hear it only in my head on account a I don’t have no ability to make no sound like that, not with the mouth I got, at least. Sound to me like somebody in a hurry to leave the table, rushin, got the chair cocked on the back legs, and they mind already in the next room.

  The walk home was all the way one wet step on ask, the next wet step on south, big tongue a beef sandwich between my teeth. My socks just squished, gettin clammy in the cole. My freezin cole feet in my wet socks is what reminded me to put my coat on. I had it on my arm while I was lookin inside my head at Missus James movin her tongue round. I wished I could make the right pronunciations. Exchange for the nice coat she give me. I wished I hadn’t a peed and run off like I did. I wants to stand forward like somebody with sense.

  Our geography books is the newest books we got, and they nice. We only have geography lessons two days out the week, but I carries mine home most every day. I has looked ahead at all the maps. At the front and at the back is pictures a the whole world. The maps in between what has all the names a states and towns and cities and counties on it, well they is just as interesting. Every place inside a every other place got a name of its own. Sometime I would like to understand all these things about continents and countries and bodies a water automatic, instead of havin to read about it over and over every time. I would like to rememorize all the cities in one state, but I cain’t yet decide which state. Missus James say it’s a good idea I have, it will do me good to work on recitin from memory, it will help my pronunciation.