Right into what she has already decided to say, she launches: “Yes, Denise, that’s an idea. It may be that you find the people you know want to migrate from one place to a place they think will be better. Of course, never having been to where they say they want to go, they don’t really know how much better or worse it will be. Now, do they?” I look on, in awe of how she thinks about things; mygrate, I write down. “But what I’d like you to consider, and think deeply about it, is that we Negroes have been forced to live in temporary places. We have been made to consider, no matter who of our family and friends may be with us, that any day could bring an edict that we be split up, sold. We are accustomed to separation, splitting up, losing members. Our families are the families that slavery made.”
I pretend I am a rat. That I can nibble with speed and ferociousness through whatever slices of pasty or dark or stale or crusty bread I find myself sandwiched between. Slathered with mayonnaise, or mustard, or shame.
CAKE IN THE OVEN
MARGARETE USUALLY CALLS me into the bathroom to wash her back. Before Clara came out she needed help in the bath in general. After Clara because she was used to it and it felt good. Before Clara was when I first got a good look at her belly with the baby in it. Margarete would call me, “Neesey, will you come in here and wash my back?”
I would say OK from the kitchen, next door. I would go in the bathroom, close the door quick behind me, and Margarete would be sitting on the cold side of the tub with only her feet in a low layer of water.
“Margarete, why ain’t you down in the bath?” I asked.
“Ain’t good to sit in water while you pregnant.”
“Oh,” I say, dipping her washrag in the few inches of water round her feet, rubbing her back with soap, rinsing the washrag, rinsing her back, wondering about that baby in control of everything, not even born yet.
Margarete trained me in the bathroom years ago. The bathroom is where her religion lives. First, special soap. Saved. Used once or twice, then let to dry completely, then wrapped in wax paper and stored high up in the medicine chest. “See, Neesey, don’t it smell special? We won’t use a lot, let’s wash with regular soap first. Then we’ll wash with this, and then the smell will last.” Then creams and oils and lotions next, different bottles and jars for the different parts of our bodies. Perfumes and powders. All things from different places. Some from stores, some she made, some concocted by her friends, some stewed and boiled by Granma’am. Some things they have exchanged at Miss Sally’s. This goes on your hands, and this goes on your feet. This cream goes on first and then this oil. You rub this in your hair. And you shake this powder in your panties, and under your arms. Last she paints her face. She dusts me lightly with the powder from her compact so I don’t shine. “Don’t say nothing to your daddy,” she whispers. “It’s our secret.” And it is.
She pulls on stockings from a package. They are thin and see-through and come out of the package shaped like a leg. I like looking at the curved foot part. I stow the cardboard insert with the top of my pajamas. I will draw a picture on it for my daddy, later on.
I pull on my white socks with lace around the edges and slip my feet into my new white shoes. They are patent leather with one strap across. Mama and I both leave the bathroom in our slips, and when we open the door, the scent of woman rushes.
We meet the wall of roasting ham in the kitchen.
NOTHING COMES TO me these days; not the stomach part at least. If the stomach is ________, then it’s a girl. If the stomach is ________, then it’s a boy. One position is high and pointy, and the other is midsection and all around. And no one in Detroit was talking about the high or low of it.
Every day—more than once usually—I raked my mind and tried to remember, what with Margarete’s belly weighing so heavy on my next few months and years. She just got bigger and more pregnant, and nothing to help me came from my raking. The idea of her baby to come took up all the space in the house that wasn’t already occupied by furniture, or men, or me and Margarete. And I couldn’t remember how to tell what it was. If I could have boxed the wondering up and taped it shut and put it in the closet until the baby came, I think that would have helped me. I like it when things are neat and ordered, a place for everything and nothing out of place. But I couldn’t put the questioning away, and every morning, it seemed, Margarete’s baby in the belly was a heavier weight. So I rushed to get dressed, and then rushed out the door into Detroit’s cold air. On the way to school I want to know from myself: Is the truth about the stomach gone come back to me? And why can’t I remember so plain a thing?
Of all Margarete’s and Big Jim’s friends, and Luke’s friends too, who visited, who were in and out the house; they all looked at her belly, but no one said, like they would have down home, High as Margarete’s stomach is? You know iss a ________.
My thirteenth birthday comes and goes. Margarete is seven months pregnant and I still can’t read her belly. This failure of my recognition taunts me. It is low and all around, I think to myself, but this still meets a blank in my forehead where I expect the meaning to live. Margarete has forgotten my turning thirteen, what with her belly jumping to life. When I was down home, I usually got a package from her with something in it from Detroit. Must have been my being away that made her remember, and now that I was there, I was forgotten. Lantene would double over with jealousy in front of me about whatever had come in the mail from Detroit. If what Margarete sent could be worn, Lantene would ask to borrow it and would near stretch it out of shape. Granma’am said I can’t let Lantene borrow nary another thing my mama sends.
Harold brought by a card and thirteen dollars from Granma’am. I put the card up on the table, and then I got a flurry of presents. Two skirts and blouses that looked adult from Margarete (and Big Jim); I put the clothes on and looked in the mirror and looked like her. Two of the same white button-down sweaters from David and Luke edward. When he saw them both, Luke edward took his back and brought me blue. I don’t think David knew about their same choices, because he left the box for me, and I thanked him, and that was the end of it. J sent a card through the post with Denise spelled the American way on the envelope. One afternoon, I take the money Granma’am sent and go down on Woodward. I buy myself a necklace that looks prim like Miss Pearson, and I decide there is a girl in Margarete’s belly. How could there not be? Granma’am has sent the potion, and look at me, here, hovering, ready to raise. I don’t know the first thing about raising no little boy. Neither does Margarete.
SHORTLY AFTER CLARA came, I was feeling sick like I had been for almost a week, and knowing it was because all hope for my after-school progress had ended and seemed like I would be busy with the baby for the rest of my days. Waiting on Margarete, washing linen and diapers, listening to the little noises the baby made, telling Big Jim everything the baby did while the baby was in my sight and not Margarete’s. And after he finished listening to me and eating his dinner he would go in the room if Margarete was in there and sit with Margarete and the baby, and ask Margarete about everything the baby did while Clara was in her sight and not mine. The three a them cooed together; I would hear it in the kitchen after I had finished running the water and before I started rinsing the dishes I was washing. I admit it, I would strain to hear. If I hadn’t been straining, I’d of rinsed the dishes not all at once like I did since Margarete didn’t care about my using up the water. But I wanted to hear everything I could; this was a straining time.
Like I said, I had been feeling sick about the whole mess the house was in. And two weeks after Clara come, about eleven in the morning after the child is back to sleep for most of the rest of the day, and Margarete too is napping, I go into the bathroom and close the door with my geography book. I open it to the section about Turkey and sit down on the commode. The shocking spread of red blood on my pants is stretched between my knees directly north of the map in the book.
First, I am immobilized, and then I groan. “Aw, na-a-aw.” Maybe out loud, maybe
not, can’t remember. I feel the tears trying to ball up there where they first start to choke, down in the core of my throat and back between my mouth and jaw. Nothing to do but go tell Margarete.
I breathe in, then I let myself lean forward to the book. I slide it forward to cover up the sight of the blood, and I gently lay my forehead in the crease of the pages. Alpha beta gamma delta epsilon—I singsong the whole thing in my head, and when I’m finished, I am wishing for two things. To be able to talk to Granma’am about this bleeding mess, and to be able to visit Turkey.
When Margarete wakes up from her nap, the chicken wings are soaked in gravy, and I have a neatly folded bandanna between my legs and a clean pair of drawers on. I have used hot hot water and have not been able to erase the first blood; I have a hard time deciding whether to throw those drawers out, or to ask Margarete what works to clean blood.
“Margarete,” I say, going into her room because I have heard her moving around and she has not come out. So I go in and say, “Margarete, I started my bleeding today.” She looks at me sympathetically—I appreciate that—and she sits down on the side of the bed. “Lord, more blood,” she says. What she means is all the bleeding that happened with Clara has probably made me bleed too. That’s when I remember, like a goof, that it’s cold water that gets the blood out the linen and will get the blood out the drawers I have stuffed in my pocket. Well, turns out I had already boiled the blood in those forever, but my next pair of drawers that got blood on them weren’t ruint like that. I threw the first pair away in a garbage can cross town. I got a fright about leaving my blood so far away from me, but as preservation I determined that even if the stain wasn’t gone, I had boiled myself sufficiently out. All that was left could be left cross town.
Margarete says, “Look in my drawer and get two dollars.” I get up and cross the room and get the money. She is reaching in her bedside drawer. She pulls out a big Kotex napkin and says, “Put this on.” There are two pieces a tissue sticking out from each end, and Margarete holds one a them out in her fingers. “You thread this part through the clip in the belt, and you do the same with the other end,” she says. “Now, go on down to Peckway’s and get yourself a belt,” she says; “it ain’t gone be but a dollar and some change. And put these in the bathroom.” She pulls out a whole blue boxful of them napkins.
I walk up and down Tireman to Scotten and back three times before I get up the nerve to go in Peckway’s. First I pray that that old young boy ain’t in there. And then I realize that that’s ridiculous he is always in there. And then I start to practice what I will say and do: I will hold up the two dollars and say, “Gimme one a the belts that holds up a Kotex, please.” And then I start to wonder is there someplace else I can go. I look up and down the street to see if anybody is there I can ask to do it for me, but everybody I would know is round the school of course. I have a quick thought about Luke edward, but now that he’s sposed to be sleeping on the sunporch, ain’t no telling where he is.
Deep breath. Alpha beta. I get to the door and see him through the glass. Gamma delta epsilon. The address of the store, I never noticed before, is 561. I push the door in and go up to the counter. I hold up the two dollars and say, “Can I have one a the belts that hold up a Kotex, please?” He looks straight at my moving lips, and it takes more than a minute for his to curl just a teeny bit up. He is laughing at me, I am thinking, and though I expected this, the two dollars in my hand start to shake. I put the two dollars down on the counter, and put my hands down by my sides, but I don’t move my eyes. I glare at him like he is completely responsible for the predicament I’m in. Take that money and get that belt, I am thinking. I don’t mind smacking the both of them, I am thinking, I can smack this whiteboy and smack Margarete too.
He responded to my glaring. He reached up to a place I did not look at. I concentrated on directing his simple butt. He brought the belt down to the counter. He put the belt in a bag and dropped some change in the bag too. He put the bag down on the counter, and then I picked it up.
I left the store slow as I could.
My walk back to the flat was direct and I was burning up, and so the walk was short, but it gave me plenty of time to think on some things. This could not possibly be all Margarete was going to say on the matter of my bleeding (but it was). And how often would I change the big Kotex napkins: because of their size, I started with morning and night. Nope, four times a day and once again, if I woke up during the night.
I HAD TAKEN a photograph some months before leaving, at Mrs. Valentine Kinsey’s suggestion. We were expecting Mary Kinsey, the Kinseys’ oldest daughter, to bring the photograph over to our house anytime. But the photograph didn’t arrive before I left. And, in the dismal gray of going back, I forgot about smiling-me in front of the Richmond lights.
Mrs. Kinsey invited Granma’am to have me take the photograph. She and her husband had a car. Mrs. Kinsey was one of the rich ladies at Calvary, our church; she was invited to participate high up in every function because of her donations, and her list a friends was part of what made a Ladies’ Day successful. The whole town had heard I was leaving; it was a subject of parlor talk—the same as the lovely bows that had decorated the church at Ellen Coles’s wedding or the carved wood truck with moving wheels that had come by mail for the pastor’s son’s birthday. Neesey Palms is going back to her mother in Detroit.
Mrs. Kinsey had a piano and three children. She was taking her children to the photographer’s visit in Richmond center. They were having a family sitting, which they tried to do every other year, God willing. When Granma’am sent a cake over one Saturday, Mrs. Kinsey sent back a card, which I read out loud to Granma’am. Mrs. Martha Dambridge, it said. May the Lord continue to bless you and thank you for the delicious cakes you make. I am taking the children to R. center for a family portrait on Saturday August the 4th. I have heard that Neesey is going to her mother this fall—you must be grieving, she is such a good child. I wondered if you would want me to take her for a portrait. Two copies could be arranged, one for you and one for Margaret. I am sure Margaret will be surprised and happy. I am meeting Mr. Kinsey at the train. We have room in our car for Neesey. The cost is $3.00 each portrait, since Mr. Kinsey and I have already paid for the sitting. Since this may take all day, Neesey is welcome to stay the night with the children, and we will all meet you at first Sunday. Sincerely, Valentine Hall Kinsey.
Valentine Kinsey’s handwriting was beautifully curved, so well drawn. Granma’am got six dollar bills out from her grip under the bed. She had me write a note that the Lord blesses, even when his children don’t know what is next. I tried to imitate the handwriting best I could. Granma’am looked over it for neatness and noticed my imitation. She rubbed my hair. “That’s right,” she said. “If you gone imitate people, imitate the best people. The people like the Kinseys what got nice houses and professions. It never does harm to imitate whitepeople either, what have lace curtains and inside heat and educations.” She had me carry the note over the next morning, before school.
The Kinseys were the people Granma’am preferred to be my friends. They were good churchgoing people. They lived in a house with an upstairs. And Mr. Kinsey did business in Richmond and other places. The children had different kinds of clothes to wear. These things were all the more reason for the friendship, as far as Granma’am was concerned.
Granma’am upped and sent the picture by Harold; I had been in Detroit four months when it came. Margarete said I look older already, and Luke edward laughed. David liked it, and so did Harold Grayson. I was surprised that the camera could show my nervousness like that. I could almost see my knees shake.
Granma’am noticed. Down home with Granma’am, there wasn’t a feeling could cross my face Granma’am didn’t notice or some other kind of way feel. I guess it’s because she raised me. With the photograph, there was a note from Granma’am, written by Harold Grayson. “Neesey,” it said, “I see some sadness around your mouth and eyes. You too young to be grievi
ng, child. The Lord got a life planned for you. Grand Ma’am,” it was signed. Two words, that was funny. And then at the bottom: “It is a very nice picture of you, my dear grandchild. I have put it on my bureau to remind me of you.”
Hearing her words read back to her, Granma’am would add encouragement. She always wanted me to have what I would need to go on.
I only had two good dresses, both for church. And Granma’am washed and ironed them both. Hung them high up on the rod over the dresser in her room. They hung there five days. Granma’am chose the white dress over the blue. I knew she would pick the white one all along.
I was well behaved, as usual, in the car. With the Kinsey children, I was always the example. That was the ladder of instruction: Mrs. Kinsey would imitate whitepeople and Granma’am would imitate those things Mrs. Kinsey might have learned that Granma’am had not had a chance to yet. I would imitate the both of them—Granma’am and Mrs. Kinsey—and Mrs. Kinsey’s children would imitate me and each other.
Mrs. Kinsey’s children were much younger than me. Her oldest daughter, Mary Lynn, was nine when I was twelve. Age was why we weren’t closer friends. Well, also, ease in life makes you seem even younger than you are. So Mary Lynn never seemed to catch up to me somehow.
Mrs. Kinsey had her children dressed. Both girls had their hair straightened and hot-rolled. Clothes so new they still smelled like the boxes. It was terrible Virginia-hot that day, so the smells of hair grease and new clothes and Granma’am’s good soap singed in the air. All four of us children had on white; the baby boy, short pants.
The Eboline stained the back seat, I know, because all of us were greased to shining. On the walk to the Kinseys’, Granma’am had me wear my old shoes with everyday socks and carry my white socks and good shoes in a paper bag. She told me not to put them on until I got to the photographer’s place of business, and she told me several times to make sure to ask Mrs. Kinsey to make sure my socks was straight.
Good Negress Page 20