Miss Sally says, “Audrey, this is Margarete’s daughter.” I stand up to say hello. Miss Chatters smiles at me and says I’m pretty. I still have a nappy quarter head. Miss Chatters says, “Who knew Margarete had such a grown-up daughter?” Margarete urges me back down in the chair by pushing my shoulder with her hand. Then she has the hot comb again. Margarete says she will be running late if she don’t get finished. Margarete mumbles that she cain’t be running late first thing Saturday morning. Miss Sally takes off Miss Audrey’s hat and dives into her hair.
Margarete tells Miss Audrey she can’t get me to let her give me a bob. Miss Audrey talks about something from way down in the hair wash bowl. I can’t hear because the voices and the press of hair and the sink water and the radio on and then the click of scissors jumble all the sounds. Margarete keeps repeating that she’s trimming my ends, not even taking off an inch. She pulls my straight hair with a comb, catches a section and holds it flat between two fingers of her other hand. She snips below her fingers. She does the back, the sides, and the top. She says this will help it grow. She says she will give me a flip. All the girls wear flips, she says. She finishes cutting; she has given me bangs. She curls what long hair I have left with a heated roller iron. She mumbles while she finishes that she ain’t curling it too hard, it’ll be nice and loose. She shows me myself with a hand mirror. Miss Sally and Miss Audrey—whose head is wrapped in a towel—say, “Ooh, that’s sweet. You like it?” while Margarete sweeps up a lot of straight hair off the floor around the chair. I have a flip. It looks all right. (From that day forward, I have to sleep in curlers in order to look right the next day. Until I take control of my hair again.) I don’t like the bangs. Margarete says you have to have bangs to have a flip. Margarete says to Miss Sally, “She doesn’t like it.” She sounds disappointed. Miss Sally says I will like it eventually. Miss Audrey is sitting under a dryer bubble, looking on and smiling. Margarete’s eight-thirty comes in while Miss Audrey is saying, loud because she can’t hear, “It just takes some getting used to.” She is saying that to somebody. While Margarete is saying hello to her eight-thirty, I put on my coat. I say, “Thank you, Margarete.” Then I say, “Bye-bye, bye-bye,” one bye for each one.
I RUN TO the school, where I sit on the steps. I have on my coat Mrs. James gave me. I can smell the sheen on my hair. I am still there when the buoyant gray evening light comes, recasting the yellow day. My hair and the morning had been yanked away from me but look what I got for just sitting still. I have never met any movement more startling than the sun. That sun! Time, heat, weather, light, safety, view, vista, mood, date. I had watched the sun’s many moods this day. This yellow day I have watched go by, sitting on the schoolhouse steps. In the first moments of darkness, I get up to go home. I can still smell the sheen on my hair.
THERE WAS A big window at the end of the school hallway. It was tall and wide. It was big enough for me to stand in.
I ran down the hall toward the pale gray of that window light, my feet clap clapping on the dark and polished wood. I thought it was school that had made me, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t Miss Gloria Pearson either. It wasn’t Margarete what with all of her controls. I was made by the insistence that I cut the teetering pumpkin. Just by that sliver of window in the wide building of the days.
I wash the diapers and the blackboards. It is also that specific. That direct.
THE LANGUAGE OF MASTERY
MISS GLORIA PEARSON tried to help me bury my backwater bad habits. She’d be there in the mornings: sweatered, straight-skirted, and wearing perfect stockings. Unmarred by any hurry, or anyone’s baby, or a struggle to get a stroller out of doors. She wore gloves every day, cotton in the spring and fall, and some other smooth material in winter, no heavy, scratchy wool.
She would fill up all three blackboards, writing with chalk. She started at the left, and progressed to the right. She erased one board at the time, starting with the left. If you daydreamed—and I did—then when you got your mind back in place, you wouldn’t know the sequence of the boards. So, what I copied would occasionally be jumbles of things. When the first blackboard I copied was the center, but she was actually at the center having started on the right, so right was first and center was last and the left was the middle of the lesson, I would have center first, right second, and left last, hurrying to catch up. So what I got, early on, was in segments not in sequence. This was before I learned to turn my mind to a subject like a flashlight. Miss Pearson had me practice doing that. “Concentrate,” she’d say.
Doctor Dew Boys. Now he was her hero. I knew I spelled his name wrong and got none of the zillion initials in front. But Gloria Pearson could talk days about him and did, in the five years I did everything I could to learn from her. She got elated when she talked about him, her eyes shining like Margarete’s when Margarete and Big Jim were having their parties, and they had beer after beer after beer.
I didn’t quite understand all she said about him, but then when did I ever understand all she said? Miss Pearson said it was very important for me to understand about heroes, and to always have one chosen for my own. It’s like having a star to follow, she said. I wish that then I could have made my way through my stumbling, faltering English to tell her I already had a hero in her. But I couldn’t. I find out in this hero process that some things she expects me to get, and some things she doesn’t. I hadn’t known that; I thought I was supposed to understand everything, which is why I tried.
She said I seemed overwhelmed by Doctor Dew Boys. And so she introduced me to Doctor Carver. She said I might understand him better, me being from the country and all. Since he is a farmer who turns into a scientist, she thinks maybe I can follow him from tomato plants to the laboratory. She told me he looked into the peanut and the sweet potato with a microscope. We had one microscope at the school, and she showed me what it does. Out of his own curiosity and initiative, she said, he picked up the crops from the ground. He took them inside to a laboratory, where he made new compounds. He invented things. She said he ground up both the peanut and the sweet potato. Remind me of the kitchen. Made things this country had a need for, but that no one else had figured how to get. From her voice, you could tell, she is proud of Dr. Carver. “Yes, I am proud of Dr. Carver,” she answers me; “he is a Negro of great genius.” According to Miss Pearson, This Country needs to see that there are many Negroes of great genius.
According to Miss Pearson, We need to pluck genius Negroes from the farms, and railroad flats, and shotgun houses. And We all need to know that We have our geniuses too. That if We look at what We do closely, We too will Invent and Discover and Be celebrated. Many more of us Negroes can be heroes, she believes.
Dr. Carver started out working with the soil. In farming there is so much to do, the demands of the land and the weather make you work, and notice, and understand. But, she says, she thinks that Dr. Carver—who was at that time just George—was paying close attention. He was practicing turning his mind to a thing because what he ended up noticing and what he ended up going after was specific and small. With studied attention to the specific and the small, he revolutionized science, she said.
Gloria Pearson got in the habit of being able to tell when I was vague about what she said to me. “I’ll slow down,” she said once or twice, and that gave me a minute to breathe in and start to concentrating fresh. Once I learned to breathe in and concentrate fresh, then I could also do it for myself, in the times she didn’t say she would slow down.
MISSUS GLORIA PEARSON went to Livingstone College in North Carolina. She told me. I guess that’s why she know so much about how to fix my English speaking. I wrote to Granma’am about Missus Pearson and Granma’am say ain’t no reason I cain’t go to a college, Livingstone or Hampton Institute, when I gets to be woman enough. Granma’am say Hampton Institute cause she want me to come back to Virginia. I want to too; me and Granma’am feel the same about this. Granma’am say she got a little piece a money stored up in the house she can draw
on when the time come. I don’t exactly know how all that business happen but Granma’am say it’s a grown folks’ question. Granma’am say learn much as I can in Detroit, and then we can see about me going to college.
I DO ALL my work on the big kitchen table. In fact, the whole kitchen is mine. Nobody comes in to turn on the hi-fi, killing my quiet sound. Luke edward will not plop down on the couch, shaking it underneath me, or stretch his feet across to the coffee table so that I have to move my papers. In the kitchen, I don’t have to use my back to bridge between their divan and the surface where I can write things down, what with all the papers I am stacking and restacking, writing on and reading through to learn.
The kitchen is also where I know everything going on. I know whether there are leftover chicken legs for Luke edward to snack on when he comes. Luke edward always goes to the icebox when he comes in the house. Big Jim says Luke edward holds the box door open like there’s a hungry woman inside. I don’t quite know what he mean, but I don’t like the tone of it. What Luke edward really does is come in late at night, and check out the stores; he picks what he wants, and then he eats it, all. We don’t have no rules in the house about leftovers. Big Jim and Luke edward and all us know, first to the leftovers, first to the leftovers.
When it’s time to make the next meal, I just get up from where I’m sitting and move into my next set of things to do. I can look up words and write down definitions while the kidneys are parboiling. I keep a clean dish towel hung across the chair so I can wipe my hands from the cooking to my books and back again. I can hear anybody who calls me, or anybody calling anybody else. Margarete has to call through the kitchen for David or Luke edward. Sometimes they answer, sometimes they don’t. When they don’t answer, I can help things out and say, “Luke ed-ward. Margarete is callin you.” I can even see the front door opening and closing from the place where I sit at the table.
MISSUS PEARSON PUSHED up her sweater sleeves. After some of the other kids start to leaving, she kept me and Josephus late as we could stay. Her arms write everything neat and lined up on the board.
Missus Pearson’s interest in me, and Josephus’s present pride, made me want to shine. I didn’t have the time I could see it would take to prove myself to Gloria Pearson, but I worked with a fever, racing Margarete’s baby to life.
It’s funny and sad how I saw everything in terms of Margarete’s child then. I think I thought there would be no life for me afterwards. I worked hard, hard, hard at Missus Pearson’s lessons. At the same time, I resisted Margarete’s.
MARGARETE SAID SHE wanted to clean out a drawer and look at my things. She had me clear out my grip on her and Big Jim’s bed while she rearranged. She said she wasn’t wearing much of nothing anyway, big as she was getting.
“Where the rest of your things?” she asked me.
“This all I got.”
“What you mean, Neesey?”
“This all I got.”
“You ain’t got no clothes to wear to school?”
“Yes I do.” I pointed to my blouses and skirts. “Four skirts and six blouses.”
She picked up my two dresses and held them up to my shoulders. Then my skirts. “These skirts look mammy-made,” she said, “and besides they too short. These dresses ain’t much better. I can’t believe this is all the clothes you got. What you do, leave the worst things at Mama’s?”
“Yes,” I answered, but I hadn’t left much.
“Somebody hand these things down to you?” she went on.
“Yes. Lantene,” I told her.
Margarete looked sad. “After I have the baby and get back to work steady, I’m gonna have to buy you a thing or two,” she said. “I don’t want you to be embarrassed about what you have to wear.”
MISSUS PEARSON SAY she will teach us all the rules. She say English is governed by rules of grammar, and the rules, she say, go special with nouns and verbs.
Missus Pearson don’t do exactly what she said. She don’t tell us no rules. She start to asking us questions and wanting us to say the answers or write them down. I want to know about the rules. I don’t have much time. I ask her, “Missus Pearson, which a these is the rules?”
Missus Pearson say, “Say, Which of these.”
She waited, looking at me. So I say, “Which of these,” and I remember the rest of my question, “is the rules?” She takes a deep breath, and that usually mean we got a lot to do yet. Shoot, I could of clocked myself on the head for making whatever mistake I made, but I didn’t. Miss Pearson say I must express myself with English, not with gestures.
“Say, Which of these are the rules?”
“Which of these are the rules?” I repeat very carefully.
“Which of, two of, one of, six of.”
“Which of, two of, one of, six of.”
“On account of.”
I am surprised. “On account of,” I repeat very slowly.
“Can you think of other examples?”
I hesitate.
“Can you think of other examples of when you might use the word of, Denise?”
“Could of, should of,” I say, looking up at her.
She blinks. “No, Denise.” She picks up her chalk and says come up here to the board. She draws a swift line down. She writes:
Could have Should have Would have
Copy these phrases thirty times each, she says. I start to write, very slowly, so as to not screech the chalk.
SHE PUT UP on the blackboard Rules of Agreement, with fast and level lines under the words. Missus Pearson explain that the subject have to agree with the verb, and you use a different verb depending on your subject. I want to look at Josephus, see do he know what she talking about, but I also don’t want to look away since Missus Pearson is talking right to me. I wonder will she explain it some more. “For example,” she continue, “I is is not correct.”
She ask us to repeat what she say, and we both repeat, “I is is not correct.”
Don’t make the first bit a sense to me. Then she ask us what is correct, and I think I need to know what what is, before I can even try to tell what is correct. I think we both just look at her. She wearing a pink sweater and gray skirt. She wear black T-strap shoes every day with stockings look like they fresh out the package. When she move round I smell counter-bought talcum. Her hair has loose waves and skirts her shoulders.
I wake up; her long chalk is writing on the board again. I look at what she is writing, and I wonder did I miss something important, like what this is on the board now. I had been wondering where she got her clothes from, see could me and Margarete go. The writing on the board say:
I am
We are
You are
You are
He or she or it is
They are
“Do you know these are verbs and pronouns, the present tense of the verb to be?”
Aw God, it’s getting worse. I don’t answer. “Say, I am,” she tell us. We both say it. She ask me to read all the pronouns and verbs off the board, just as they are written. I read: I am. You are. He or she or it is. We are. You are. They are.
I can read pretty good. Granma’am had me read out loud all the time. I like the way I sound in the classroom, though, reading out loud with the big windows all round. Josephus don’t read good as I do. I wonder if she know the “you are” is the same on both sides. I wonder what is the rule to help me understand this when it’s not up on the board.
“Denise,” Missus Pearson call me; “Josephus,” she call him too. “I want you to start hearing these words.” She tugs at her ears, and then points to the words on the board. “These are where you make your worst mistakes,” she say, leaning toward us. “We will go over this, and over this.” She go on, “You both must concentrate.” She say, “Remember to form the ends of words, not just the beginnings. These words, and all others. Denise, say I am-m.” Sound like I am-uh, and my mouth is screwed shut because she been leaning to me talking about my worst mistakes and I thought I do
ne good reading out loud. “Denise,” (clap) “say I am-m.”
“I am-uh,” I say.
“Josephus?” she call his name.
“I am-uh,” he answers.
“Now, listen,” Missus Pearson go on. “The next time you hear yourself say I is, know that that is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Stop right then and say I am-uh. I want you two to really start listening carefully to how you talk. Listen to what you say when you talk and correct yourself immediately. This is so important.
“Again, be very attentive to the ends of words. If you say only the beginning of a word, that is only half the word. And since so many words begin similarly, you could be misinterpreted. Don’t say fo’, say for-r. Don’t say a, say of-uh. Don’t say gone, say go-ing-uh. Don’t say ’gwon, say go on-uh. Don’t say mah, say my-y. Don’t say ah, say eye. Eye. Eye.” She making me tired she think so fast. I don’t really know what misinterpreted means but I guess it mean somebody cain’t hear what I’m saying. “Don’t say iss,” she still talks, “say it is.”
Dog. These is the rules and I ain’t ready. I’m trying to get out my pencil and get my book open to a clean page. She say, “Don’t say ast. Don’t say ax. Say ask. As-suh-kuh.” I don’t get no rules writ down cause after that she clap on my name again with her voice.
GLORIA PEARSON HAS given me ten years’ worth of spelling words—I go from one set to the next, and I am never idle. I am so grateful that she taught me to try to match the English language to what I was trying to say. Making a match between what I wanted to say and what is permitted in English is the closest thing I had then to religion. Although the whole of what she is showing me has yet to come clear, it’s something I trust that she knows. I don’t doubt what she tells me. So I open all my books, and get familiar with the red marks on all my papers. I check and recheck my spelling and try to make sure that the nouns and the verbs have the s’s in the right places.
Good Negress Page 16