Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

  At the sight of their bowed heads the words tangled in Miss Thompson’s throat and she ceased. Slowly the seizure passed and her anger cleared. Love, suddenly, was a warmth flowing from her wasted body and the children stirred, touched by it, and shyly lifted their faces. They smiled.

  “All right now,” she clapped, and they scattered laughing. “Big Momma’s here and the holiday’s over. Everybody in the tub . . .” She bathed and fed them and then distributed the presents. Finally the only sound in the darkened apartment was the complaint of the bedsprings as she settled her body. Lights from the passing cars careened across the room, and as they swept over her face it resembled an African wood carving: mysterious, omniscient, the features elongated by compassion, the eyes shrouded with a profound sadness . . .

  Suddenly the door of her small room opened, bare feet scurried across the floor and three small bodies clasped hers.

  “Big Momma . . .”

  “Hush it,” she said sleepily, gathering them into her arms, “you all done come in here, now go on to sleep.”

  “Get home safe, soul. Send one the children when your time come ’pon you,” Silla called and watched Virgie Farnum merge with the darkness. She remained at the gate, her strong full arms folded, a little of the tenseness gone from her back. Slowly, as she stood there, she was drawn into the calm center of the night, which nested in the trees and stirred with each warm stirring of the wind. Her eyes lifted to the glow of Fulton Street above the dark rise of trees, and she forgot the land and all that she and Virgie Farnum had talked of. For that nebula of lights sprinkled like iridescent dust on the night sky held the meaning of Saturday night—its abandonment and gaiety, love in dark rooms. She could not stave off the thought of the women in the bars with their warm eyes and bright mouths and the men hovering over them. She gazed up at Suggie’s darkened windows and the scene there rushed over her mind. Her thoughts reached out to Deighton and the faceless woman together somewhere. Suddenly she felt old and barren, deprived, outside the circle of life. But she only succumbed briefly to this feeling, then her back was stiff again, her face resolute, and she sucked her teeth, dismissing them all.

  “Ma, can I have a nickel to get a soda?” Ina, strolling with her friends, saw her and called.

  “Not penny one. That cold soda just gon give you more cramps.”

  “But it’s so hot,” she said, coming up to the gate. “Well, can I just go with them to the candy store then?”

  Silla studied her mild face, her graceful pose at the gate, and glanced at the breasts rising softly under her blouse. “Not two foot! You does just be going there to meet boys. That’s all this drinking soda is. But lemme tell you, soul, if I ever see you with any boy I gon break your neck out in the street ’cause I not tolerating no concubines and I ain supporting no wild-dog puppies . . .”

  Distress filmed Ina’s eyes, her head slowly bowed under the familiar threats. Then suddenly she leaned close and said pointedly, “I saw Daddy going down Fulton Street.”

  Silla broke off. She feigned indifference, but after a time she asked, “Which way?”

  “Down. He never goes up—not on Saturday night anyway.”She glided into the yard. “Gosh, it’s hot.” Then she whispered, “Is it true we’ve got property home?”

  “He tell you so?”

  “No. They were talking.”

  “Who they?”

  “Him and Selina. They were talking this afternoon in the sun parlor and I heard him telling her about it. Does it mean we’re rich?”

  “Rich what!” she cried scornfully. “How rich, when people in this country does own thousand upon thousand of acres.”

  “Does it mean we’re going to have to live there?”

  “Live where! Barbados is someplace to live too?”

  “Well, he was talking about building a house there.”

  “Yes? Yes! What else he had to say?”

  “Not much else but . . .” Ina whispered all that she had overheard, and the thick night, the brownstones looming around them joined their conspiracy.

  “So they making their plans,” Silla said grimly when Ina finished. Her head snapped up suddenly; she whispered between clenched teeth, “Call she here for me.”

  Ina rushed out and Selina’s name echoed hollow under the trees. She darted back. “She’s coming. Can I go to the candy store for just a little while, please? Just ten minutes . . .”

  “Oh, g’long,” she said absently, her eyes fixed on the street behind her.

  As Ina slipped soundlessly into the darkness, Selina’s bangles clamorously announced her coming. Before Silla could prepare herself Selina was there, her dress shooting in a white puff under the trees, her form wheeling out of the darkness. And then abruptly, in the midst of all that flurry, she halted and lifted her eyes, clear and bold and questioning, to the mother.

  “Get in the house.”

  Again she was all movement and sound, racing in a white streak past Silla, her bangles singing their dissonant tune.

  They were in the kitchen now, immured within its white walls, and although they were motionless they seemed to be warily circling each other, feinting, probing for an opening. The mother’s voice swung wildly across to her, “What you two was talking today?”

  Selina’s gaze did not shift, neither did her head drop from its high, obstinate angle, yet inside she tensed. For she knew how those eyes could pierce and prize out her thoughts. “Who two?” she said quietly.

  “You and your beautiful-ugly father.”

  “When today?”

  Silla’s arm whipped out, the hand ready to sting Selina’s face. “Oh, you’s playing smart.”

  “I’m not. I’m just asking when, that’s all.”

  “When?” she cried. “You know full well when. When the two of you was out in the sun parlor this afternoon making your plans.”

  “What plans?”

  This time she lunged but even then Selina did not move. Not that she didn’t cringe inside. Not that a kind of terror didn’t spur her heart. But she could not move. For if she did, her defeat was certain. The mother would pounce, and under the stinging slaps she would confess all.

  “I just asked what plans,” she said evenly.

  Again Silla retreated, disarmed. “Don play ignorant,” she hissed. “The plans ’bout the piece of ground.”

  “Oh that,” she said casually and for the first time shifted her weight. “It was about us having some land home.”

  “Yes, yes, but the plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “Somethin’ ’bout a house and thing.”

  “No . . .” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Somebody must of been sneaking around hearing things nobody said.”

  The mother’s hand quivered just inches from her face now. “Oh, your womanishness gon do for you, soul.”

  “But I don’t even know what you mean by plans.”

  “Well then, what he said he’s gon do with it?”

  “He didn’t say nothing but that he got this letter about us having some land.” Softly she added, “I think I’d like it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Going there to live.”

  “What you know ’bout Bimshire?”

  “Nothing, but it must be a nice place.”

  This, strangely, infuriated Silla more than Selina’s evasiveness and she swung away, rage congesting her face, words choking her. “Nice? Bimshire nice?” She swung back. “Lemme tell you how nice it is. You know what I was doing when I was your age?”

  Selina shook her head.

  “I was in the Third Class. You know what that is?”

  Again she shook her head, but as the mother continued to glare down, demanding a fuller response, she said, “No . . . unless it’s got something to do with school.”

  “School, ha!” Her sardonic laugh twisted the air. “Yes, you might call it a school, but it ain the kind you thinking of, soul. The Third Class is a set of little children picking grass in a cane field from
the time God sun rise in his heaven till it set. With some woman called a Driver to wash yuh tail in licks if yuh dare look up. Yes, working harder than a man at the age of ten . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she traveled back to that time and was that child again, feeling the sun on her back and the whip cutting her legs. More than that, she became the collective voice of all the Bajan women, the vehicle through which their former suffering found utterance.

  “And when it was hard times,” she was saying now, “I would put a basket of mangoes ’pon muh head and go selling early-early ’pon a morning. Frighten bad enough for duppy and thing ’cause I was still only a child . . .”

  Selina listened. For always the mother’s voice was a net flung wide, ensnaring all within its reach. She swayed helpless now within its hold, loving its rich color, loving and hating the mother for the pain of her childhood. The image of her father swaggering through the town as a boy and bounding on the waves in some rough game slanted across that of the small girl hurrying from the dawn ghosts with the basket on her head. It seemed to Selina that her father carried those gay days in his irresponsible smile, while the mother’s formidable aspect was the culmination of all that she had suffered. This was no more than an impression, quickly lost in the haze of impressions that was her mind at ten. But it was there, fixed forever.

  “No,” the mother was almost shouting now. “No, I wun let my mother know peace till she borrow the money and send me here. But what”—her voice dropped tragically—“I come here and pick up with a piece of man and from then on I has read hell by heart and called every generation blessed.”

  The silence was pale after the rhapsodic fury of her voice. She squinted down at Selina, seeing her only dimly through the vision that still crowded her eyes.

  Selina had not moved. Outwardly she was unyielding still, still uninvolved. But inside she was frightened by the thought of those memories always clashing within the mother. She was afraid that they would rend the mother soon and kill her finally, and she would be left without her. The world would collapse then, for wasn’t the mother, despite all, its only prop?

  “Yuh still think Bimshire is so nice now?” Silla cried.

  “I still think I’d like it.”

  Oddly, instead of angering, Silla regarded her with a kind of enraged love. “But look at you,” she muttered, appraising the wide-set eyes which filled the small adamant face. “Look the dress. Full of chocolate. Look the knees. Like they never touch water.” She thought of the heart leaping inside the narrow chest. “Always tearing ’bout like a holy gig with yuh heart beating like a band of music inside. Look how yuh brother . . .”

  Suddenly Selina sprang forward and leaning close into the mother shouted, “I keep telling you I’m not him. I’m me. Selina. And there’s nothing wrong with my heart.” For a moment the words hung between them, then Selina darted around her and strode from the kitchen.

  Stunned, Silla could only stare at the thin swift legs below the puffed skirt, at the frail neck bravely supporting the head and the small back as unassailable as her own. “But look at my crosses,” she whispered, awed, as Selina disappeared. “Look how I has gone and brought something into this world to whip me.”

  Book 2

  Pastorale

  I

  For long months the question of the land draped itself in a thin gauze throughout the house and they were all caught within its mesh. At night the children were often awakened by muffled arguments from the master bedroom; savage words sparked in the darkness: “Sell it, sell it . . .” and always the same reply, growing more weary each night but persisting, “It’s mine to do as I please . . .”

  Listening to those voices raging in the dark, Selina often thought of the family who had lived there before them. The nights had been safe and quiet then with the children asleep in the nursery upstairs, the pale mother and father lying in each other’s arms below and the heavy door locked against the chaos outside. As those voices soared, Selina, the sheet wrapped tight around her head, imagined that she was one of those children, secure in sleep. During the day there was no escape, for no matter what was said it was as if they were all speaking of the land. It loomed behind each word; each look contained it.

  It was summer again now and Sunday, and Selina had been wandering the house since dawn. When Maritze was at mass she sat with Miss Mary in the dust-yellow room while she wheezed and gasped her dirge of memories. Afterward she stopped at Suggie’s and found her sprawled amid her rumpled sheets, sluggish from the rough pleasures of her night. She laughed a good deal, a lovely sensual sound, and Selina gazing shyly at her from the foot of the bed said, “You’re a summer woman, Miss Suggie.”

  The laugh became more wanton; Suggie struggled up, wrapped her naked body in the sheet and trailing it behind her, sauntered into the kitchen. She returned with a small glass of rum. “Come,” she beckoned, “I gon make you a summer woman too, just for your womanishness.”

  Despite Selina’s struggles she forced open her lips and the rum bit into her tongue and spurted hot down her throat. They stood quietly afterward, Selina rubbing her chest and frowning.

  “Y’know, it feels kinda good,” she said after a time.

  “Deed it does, faith!”

  On her way downstairs, the rum coiling hot in her stomach, she felt that she, like Suggie, carried the sun inside her. Passing the parlor she glimpsed her sister at the piano and gave her a shout, receiving only an exasperated sigh in answer. Ina’s body was bent in the same exasperated pose, her head bowed as if pressed down by the heat. Selina peered at her through the parlor’s embalmed gloom, wondering at her strangeness, wincing at the wrong notes that punctuated her playing.

  “Hey, cut out that noise,” she called, passing on. “Daddy’s in by now and trying to sleep.”

  He had come while she was upstairs and was asleep in the sun parlor with his clothes on. One arm shielded his eyes from the sun; his body seemed sapped like Suggie’s from his night with the woman. For a long time Selina sat on the bed, gazing down at his face, innocent in sleep, at his chest moving lightly under the shirt. He was a dark god, she dreamed, tiptoeing away, who had fallen from his heaven and lay stunned on earth . . .

  The mother was the only one who had not succumbed to the day’s torpor, and as Selina entered the kitchen she helplessly admired her. She sat cool, alert, caged in sunlight from the barred window, holding the newspaper a little away from her as though the news of the war in Europe might contaminate her.

  Selina said, “Let’s have some lemonade.”

  The mother gave her a look that was shifting and complex. On one hand it dismissed her and the offer of the lemonade; on the other, it beckoned her close as though to embrace her. She said, “The best thing in heat like this is a hot-hot cup of tea.”

  “I’ll make tea then.”

  “What kind of tea you could make?”

  “I can make it.”

  The mother was silent and Selina made the tea and brought it to the table. Silla put down the newspaper and, without looking at her but frowning scornfully, took a quick sip. “Lord-God, tea strong enough to choke a horse,” she complained but drank it, and they sat within the cage of sunlight, drinking the hot tea, reading and sweating, an ease and intimacy between them. Selina grew bold as the rum and hot tea fired her blood and asked after a time, “Can I go to Prospect Park with Beryl?”

  “Pestilence,” Silla said without annoyance, “here it tis this world is almost in war and all you thinking ’bout is patrolling the streets.”

  “Can I go?”

  “You must gon hoof it there ’cause I’m not giving you penny one.”

  “But can I go without Ina? Just this once, please.”

  “What you need Ina for any more? You’s more woman now than she’ll ever be, soul. G’long.”

  Selina folded the funnies and placed them on the table. She did not hurry, afraid that if she did the mother might renege. But once outside the kitchen she ran, fleeing the house and its tumid silenc
e, racing down Chauncey Street, which dozed in the Sunday torpor. The brownstones leaned against the soft sky, the ones owned or leased by the West Indians looking almost new with their neat yards, new shades and fresh painted black iron fences, while the others where the whites still lived looked more faded in the hard sunlight.

  Selina thought of the white people behind those drawn green shades as having wasted faces and worn hands, as sitting all day in bare rooms. She was annoyed, for they seemed to disdain her by never showing themselves. She picked up a stick and ran, rasping it on their fences, hoping to startle them out of their dusty silence and bring them to the window . . .

  There were new cream-colored shades with fringes at every window of the Challenor house and behind them filmy curtains waving in the warm wind. The Challenors had started buying the house two years ago. The wife, Gert Challenor, despised by the Bajan women because of her docility, did day’s work. The husband, Percy, worked in the same mattress factory with Selina’s father and sold stockings at night to meet the two mortgages. Silla always said with grudging respect, “But look at Percy. He’s nothing but a work horse.”

  Selina stood in the dining room now, looking at him where he sat at the head of his table with his six children arrayed around him and his plump anxious wife facing him. To Selina he was a pagan deity of wrath, his children the subjects cowering before the fire flaring from his nostrils, his wife the priestess ministering to his needs. A thought cringed in the corner of her mind as she greeted him: he was too big to live among ordinary people. . . .