Selina sensed this but still pressed forward to speak, the deep well of her eyes mirroring that scene and her horror. Through her shock she divined something: that sore, in a way, was the thing that had really yellowed Miss Thompson’s eyes, grayed her skin and given her face its tragic mien . . . Suddenly she ached for violence, as she did plunging along Times Square. It came on her like a thirst. In a wild pulse beating at the pit of her body. To grab the cane and rush into some store on Fulton Street and avenge that wrong by bringing it smashing across the white face behind the counter. Her breathing was a loud râle in the stillness. “Miss Thompson . . .”
“Don’t ask no fool questions! You don’t know nothing about the South so just don’t ask no questions!” she said harshly and pulled the light chain.
“I declare,” she said pleasantly when they were walking down Fulton Street, “you’s my baby, always been my baby but you’s too serious. Sitting around with folks like me that’s done through with life. Worrying yourself. Missing folks. When I was your age, honey, I was having me some good times. Yes indeed. Don’t think I was always old and hard and rusty. And don’t think there wasn’t plenty mens wanted to marry me neither! Somebody was always in love with me and I was always in love!” Her words slowly dissolved in the night air. Around them the traffic hurled, laughter and music spewed from the bars, and next door to the bars, from the store-front churches came ecstatic singing, the ringing clash of tambourines and the moans and shouts of the saved.
“Yes, honey, start having you some good times.”
“How?” she said bitterly. “You’re always telling me that but how, where?”
Miss Thompson swerved sharply her way and stopped her with the cane. “I’ll tell you how and where. Right down there at this here Association your people have. That’s where. Your momma was telling me all about the dances and nice social things they has for the young people. You might meet some nice boy down there and . . .”
“Are you serious?” Selina drew back in aversion. “I wouldn’t be caught dead there. With those money-changers!”
“They’s your people,” Miss Thompson said casually and resumed walking. “But you won’t go. And I knows why.” She gave Selina a piercing and disdainful glance. “You’s afraid. Scairt. Frightened.”
“It’s not a matter of being afraid.”
“That’s all it is a matter of,” she said knowingly and hobbled on, her eyes fixed indifferently ahead. “Scairt that if you went you’d begin to understand your momma and them a little better. Scairt that then you wouldn’t be so hard on them all the time . . .” She rapped the cane in emphasis. “Scairt that you’d have to change some of your ideas. Just plain disgraceful scairt.”
“Change my ideas! It would just convince me that I’m right.”
“Then I dares you to go!” Miss Thompson struck the cane triumphantly, her eyes turned gleaming to Selina. “I dare you. Just once!”
“Why?”
“I double-dares you.”
“But why? Why would you want me to go there?”
“To understand, that’s why. So when you start talking so big and smart against people, you’ll be talking from understanding. That’s the only time you have the right to say whether you like them or not, or whether what they done was right or not. But you got to understand why first. So I dares you to go. Just once.”
“All right,” Selina cried irritably, “I’ll go. But just once. Just to show you I know what I’m talking about.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“I know you’s not a person to go back on a promise.”
“No.”
“All right then. Now leave me,” Miss Thompson said with sudden weariness and stopped Selina with the cane. “Leave me. You done walked far enough. Go on back.”
Selina was puzzled and hurt. “Don’t you want me to walk you home?”
“No.”
“Are you angry? Did I say something disrespectful?”
Miss Thompson smiled, her face cavernous and old. “No, it ain’t you, honey. I just wants to walk quiet and think about my bed, that’s all.” She gave her a gentle but probing look in farewell. Selina had on a bright chiffon scarf instead of her tam, and this, blowing around her face, made her eyes bright and blown somehow, and accented the faint reddish cast to her dark skin. She had on a pair of medium-heeled shoes, and her body under the coat was slight but softly molded now, as were her legs.
“You was right, honey. You ain’t no more child,” Miss Thompson said softly and walked away, looking oddly indestructible despite the cane and her swathing black dress.
“I’ll see you,” Selina called, and the cane lifted.
V
Selina kept her promise to visit the Association, announcing her decision just as the mother—handsome in a black coat with a high silver fox collar—was preparing to leave for the meeting. There was a careful silence, during which she felt the mother’s innate mistrust seethe beneath her astonishment, saw it twitch in her face and in the sudden confused play of her hands. She submitted to her scrutiny. It was a long wait before the distrust ebbed and the mother said with uncertain relief, “Well, it about time you got some sense in that head. Come along then.”
The meetings were held in the basement of a small, formerly condemned factory building on Fulton Street, which the Association had bought cheaply and was slowly renovating. Light bulbs hung from the network of pipes and vivid yellow and red banners hid the damp stone walls. The banners showed two black hands in a firm handclasp against a yellow background, with the Association’s full name at top, and below on the banner was embroidered the Association’s motto:
“IT IS NOT THE DEPTHS FROM WHICH WE COME BUT THE HEIGHTS TO WHICH WE ASCEND.”
A banner and the American flag draped the platform where the officials sat, their dark, sharply planed faces set with an almost funereal seriousness, their watchful eyes fixed on the audience. And the audience of perhaps three or four hundred reflected the officials’ gravity and subjected them to the same rigid surveillance. Their watchfulness was like a chill current of air to Selina, who sat beside the mother, Florrie Trotman and Iris Hurley. Their silence was a deep wide bowl into which the speaker poured his words.
The speaker was Cecil Osborne, a small fierce man with work-ruined hands, gold-edged teeth and a high, finely molded nose rising out of his thin face. He held the nose always at a high scornful angle, using it, it seemed, to judge the world.
It was an installation meeting for new members and he was telling of the Association’s accomplishments and aspirations, his voice rising and falling in the rich cadence of Barbadian speech. He spoke with fervor of the “Fund,” to which all members contributed and which in turn made small loans to members. “. . . But we got bigger plans,” he shouted, and the high nose caught the light, “we looking now to set up our credit system under government protection. When you hear the shout we’ll have our own little bank. Then watch us move . . .”
He told of the political ambitions of Percy Challenor and other members and the Association’s potential influence in local politics and community affairs. Leaning over the lectern, a small finger wagging, he warned them of the city’s plans to replace the brownstones around Fulton Park eventually with housing projects. “Gone!” His short arm cut the air. “All those houses we sweat so to buy and now, at last, making little money from gon be soon gone! That’s why we got to have a voice at City Hall to see that they go slow. And if we have enough pull and enough money behind us, they gon have to listen . . . !”
After going on for some time, he bared the gold-etched teeth in a smile, “C’dear, we ain all business. I know they does say a Bajan don know how to enjoy himself. But we does break down sometime and play little bridge maybe on a Sat’day night. Oh, nothing like how those big-shot white executives does play in their exclusive clubs—all the while drinking the best of scotch and smoking the finest of cigars. No, we don have none of that. We ain white yet. We�
�s small-timers!” he cried in sudden fury. “But we got our eye on the big time . . .”
Then, suddenly, he became pensive. “But tell me why we start this Association now when most of us gon soon be giving business to the undertaker? I gon tell you. It’s because of the young people! Most of us did come to this man country with only the strength in we hand and a little learning in we head and had to make our way, but the young people have the opportunity to be professional and get out there and give these people big word for big word. Thus, they are our hope. They make all the sacrifice, all the struggle worth while.” Then, very proudly, he announced that in another year or two the Association would be offering a scholarship to one of its deserving young members.
Finally the nose dipped and the small wiry arms reached out in conclusion, “This then is the Barbadian Association. Still in its infancy. Still a little fish in a big white sea. But a sign. A sign that a people are banded together in a spirit of self-help. A sign that we are destroying that picture of the poor colored man with his hand always long out to the rich white one, begging: ‘Please, mister, can you spare a dime?’ It’s a sign that we has a business mind! I thank you!”
There was something frightening in the way they applauded, without the slightest change in their sober watchful faces, and the ejaculations of “Hear! Hear!” like gunshots punctuating the din.
“The man is an orator!” Florrie Trotman declared.
Selina’s hands started up and as quickly dropped. She stared wonderingly at the small figure stiffly bowing the way a boy would. All the years she had seen him and never suspected the power and passion in his voice, in his ruined hands. Slowly she gazed around at the faces that had moved in an endless parade through her childhood, at the blurred hands pouring that crescendo of sound into the air. They were no longer individuals suddenly, but a single puissant force, sure of its goal and driving hard toward it. Their surety of purpose frightened her. It was enviable. She felt some conviction that had held firm in her suddenly jar and tilt dangerously. She could not suppress a spurt of disappointment that it was not her father standing there receiving their acclaim. Oh God, she pressed her hands into the rough wool of her skirt. Oh hell, she wanted to leave!
The applause had ceased and the insatiable silence returned. Another speaker, Claremont Sealy, was on the platform—a large solemn man with slow hands and discolored teeth. She forced herself not to listen, until after a time she felt an uneasy stir in the silence and saw the man’s face working and his finger stabbing out at the banners on the walls. “They need changing,” he was shouting. “You need to strike out that word Barbadian and put Negro. That’s my proposal. We got to stop thinking about just Bajan. We ain’t home no more. It don matter if we don know a person mother or his mother mother. Our doors got to be open to every colored person that qualify . . .” He paused and shook his head tiredly. “I know it gon take time. Wunna gon have to ruminate long, but I ain gon return till I see that word Barbadian strike out and Negro put in its place. I thank you!”
The silence swept up to him in a cold wind and trailed him out of the room. Then, as rain comes in the West Indies—without warning, to lash the earth in a helpless hysterical deluge—their indignation broke with the same fury. The meeting was at an end. Their set faces were contorted, alive now, with wrath. The women’s arms, which had been folded judicially on their high bosoms, now punctured the air with outraged gestures. The dank basement was hot with their anger.
The furor was to Selina but another dimension of their force, which would sweep aside all like Claremont Sealy from their sure way. For a long time, while the debate raged around her, she sat with her slim neck bowed, her slight body tensed under her sweater and skirt, feeling somehow devitalized, without purpose, a nonentity in the midst of their formidable force. The understanding that Miss Thompson had spoken of seemed even more remote . . .
“Oh, Jesus-God, I can’t get over how your own can turn against you.” The loud condemnation of Claremont Sealy was almost over but Florrie Trotman still raved, her massive bosom bubbling up. “Look how that man want us to let in the Sammy-cow-and-Duppy for them to take over. But look at him—with his teeth yellow-yellow like he bite the Virgin Mary!”
“He’s nothing but a commonist,” Iris Hurley said flatly.
“But what you know ’bout communist?” Silla said irritably.
“How you mean, Dear-heart? They’s a contentious, discontent bunch just like Claremont, looking to overthrow the government by force. Look how that Russia is looking to make war in Korea and we just come out of war . . . You think we could own house in Russia? Or have this Association or talk ’bout the government the way we do? You think Claremont could of get up in Russia and say what he said tonight? Never happen! They’d cart his tail off to Siberia to freeze!”
“You best hush,” Florrie warned, “and know that you can’t talk about such things nowadays ’cause the authorities will take away house and all and ship you back to Bimshire.”
“I tell yuh, I wun mind if they did take the blasted house, I’m so sick of aggravating myself with roomers,” Silla said with disgust.
A troubled frown suddenly touched Iris Hurley’s usually unperturbed face. “Yes, the roomers is a nuisance but . . . but . . .” She glanced hesitantly at Florrie. “I does still feel sorry enough for them sometime, y’know . . . Even though they ain Bajans they’s still our color . . .”
“Sorry!” Florrie’s enraged whisper cleaved Iris’ voice. “Sorry for roomers? Sorry? But Gor-blind yuh, Iris, who did sorry for you? I ain’t sorry for a blast. I had to get mine too hard. Let the roomers get out and struggle like I did. I sorry for all the long years I din have nothing and my children din have and now I got little something I too fat and old to enjoy it and my only son dead in these people bloody war and he can’t enjoy it. That’s what I sorry for!” Tears stung her small slanted eyes and she pulled her Persian lamb coat angrily around her and swung away her face.
Their small uncomfortable silence held in the midst of the hubbub until Silla said in a very low, pained voice, “The terrible thing is that Florrie make sense. People got to make their own way. And nearly always to make your way in this Christ world you got to be hard and sometimes misuse others, even your own. Oh, nobody wun admit it. We don talk about it, but we does live by it—each in his own way. C’dear, Iris, I know you feel sorry for the roomers. Even Florrie does, despite her talk. You think I like myself when I’m in the hall getting on like a black-guard with them? But Iris, if it wasn’t for them you wun be in Crown Heights today . . .” Her voice suddenly lapsed, her thick hands lay open and tragic on her lap, her face sank deep into the fur collar. Then she said, very simply, “We would like to do different. That’s what does hurt and shame us so. But the way things arrange we can’t, if not we lose out. And another thing, Iris. It’s true the roomers is our own color. But if they was white or yellow and cun do better we’d still be overcharging them. Take when we had to scrub the Jew floor. He wasn’t misusing us so much because our skin was black but because we cun do better. And I din hate him. All the time I was down on his floor I was saying to myself: ‘Lord, lemme do better than this. Lemme rise!’ No, power is a thing that don really have nothing to do with color. Look how white people had little children their own color working in coal mines and sweatshops years back. Look how those whelps in Africa sold us for next skin to nothing . . .” Again there was the flat drop in her voice and the silence like a fragile bubble in the uproar around them. Then she said—and each word seemed to wrench her deeply, “No, nobody wun admit it, but people got a right to claw their way to the top and those on top got a right to scuffle to stay there. Take this world. It wun always be white. No, mahn. It gon be somebody else turn soon—maybe even people looking near like us. But plenty gon have to suffer to bring it about. And when they get up top they might not be so nice either, ’cause power is a thing that don make you nice. But it’s the way of this Christ world best-proof!” A tragic acceptance line
d her face and the bowed chastened faces of Florrie Trotman and Iris Hurley. “What’s that saying ’bout the race is not to the swift?” Silla sucked her teeth cynically. “I tell yuh, you best be swift, if not somebody come and trample you quick enough.”
The silence echoed and reëchoed with each word, and Selina again felt that certainty within her threaten to topple and break on the floor of her mind. Sitting there, with her underlip clenched childishly between her teeth to stave it off, she tried to define it. It was her own small truth that dimly envisioned a different world and a different way; a small belief—illusory and undefined still—which was slowly forming out of all she had lived. This was what teetered now before the mother’s carefully wrought testimony and her voice—that well-tempered instrument which she used with infinite skill. Then, too, the mother might be right. That thought made Selina suddenly bear down on her lip until the skin almost broke, it fanned her rage and dread into a fierce heat. If only she could turn and give the lie to that argument and shout her truth to them all! If only there was a way to prove to them and herself how totally she disavowed their way! But how, when her own truth was so uncertain and untried? How, when she knew nothing of the world or its ways? This was the gall and the humiliation. She turned, some angry word springing to her lips, only to die there as she found the mother’s eyes fixed on her with their mute plea for understanding and tolerance—not only for what she had just said but for all she had ever said or done.
“Girl, don sit up here listening to me,” she said gently. “G’long over with the young people.”
Selina leaped up, intending to rush from the room, yet impelled by the mother’s strong gaze on her back toward the large group of young people. Their faces came into her angry focus, in a scale of colors first, from the smooth black of Iris Hurley’s two handsome flaccid sons to the pallor of Virgie Farnum’s sons and daughters; then their features, the harsh, sharp-boned beauty of their parents tempered by their youth and easy childhoods. She gave them an abrupt wave, avoided Beryl Challenor’s surprised, pleased and apprehensive smile, and sat a little apart. They were excitedly discussing the scholarship award that Cecil Osborne had announced and Claremont Sealy’s condemned proposal, and hardly noticed her. She was left alone with her confusion, despair and savage thoughts.
Brown Girl, Brownstones Page 22