by Kia Corthron
“Then you know about their honeymoon?” Buppie finally adding his voice. They all glare at him, as if this was going too far, yet I know wherever the hell we’re going, we were headed there from the beginning.
“They drove to New Orleans,” he continues. “Fancy schmancy.”
“I think I know where my parents’ honeymoon was!” Though thinking back, if I ever brought it up, they never seemed to want to talk about it.
“She seen em.” Artie Ray regaining his voice. “Your ma seen em, the two of em.”
Buzzing in my ear. Cheeks hot.
“Two from the horde done it to her back in the navy. They seen her in New Orleans: déjà vu. You might understan the awkwardness, everybody reckonizin everybody. She tried to avoid em—”
“YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT, ARTIE RAY! Who told you? Some trash you heard on the street!” A boy-scream’s unusual, and the family thirty yards away looks over at us.
“Your ma tole my ma,” Artie Ray says carefully, “and my ma tole Lily. Not till she was grown, she asked about B.J. once. An Lily tole me. Sure you wanna hear?”
“It wa’n’t her fault.” Deb Ellen jumping in, trying to snatch the punch line. If I hear her say that one more time—“They were like, ‘We had her first!’ Two against one, your poor pa couldn’t fight em off.”
But Artie Ray steals it back. “An after they knocked him weak, there’s your poor ma. One holds your daddy down while the other—”
I seize the jar of lightning bugs, lift it high over my head, slam it down, crash! The fireflies escape, a contained yet spectacular moment of panicked flittering lights that renders all those Joneses to silence. Deb Ellen is particularly mesmerized, and I imagine in the future she’ll want to crash every firefly collection. I storm away. Behind me, “Don’t blame your pa! He jus feels bad, I bet. That’s why he’s sore on Ty, he can’t help it.” Shut up, Deb Ellen, before I come back and cut your goddamn tongue out. “An don’t blame B.J.! He can’t help where he come from! Wa’n’t his fault—” and I hear one of her brothers slap her, then some kind of screaming skirmish.
You have to walk pretty far into the woods to come to the clearing, the clandestine space where I once spotted that groping high school couple in full view of my perch at the oak top, and in the pitch-black it takes me longer to find it but I do. Lie on my back. No moon and a million stars. If I look straight at one place and not think not think then the fireflies also become big yellow stars, shooting stars, and I decide to start making wishes. And though I know my life is wanting in a thousand ways, at this very moment I can’t come up with one damn thing worthwhile to wish for.
9
Autobiography
I was born April 14, 1928, the year before the Crash. My brother Benjamin, Jr. (“B.J.”) was going on five then, and my sister Benja was three. They were both named after my father. My mother gave me her first initial: “R” for Roberta, though everyone calls her “Bobbie” so it sounds like my family is four “B”s and an “R.”
I have three vivid memories from before I could walk. One was when I was in my crib and my mother had a stuffed bunny, playing with me.
The second was when I crawled over to Benja who was combing her blond doll’s hair, and I tried to grab my sister’s doll, and she was pulling it from me and finally she smacked me and I began to cry. Then my mother came in and smacked my sister and my sister began to cry, and my mother gave the doll to me. The next day I looked for the doll but my mother told me the doll moved away from us because the doll was so sad that we kept fighting over her. I cried but my sister didn’t cry, and I didn’t understand why my sister wasn’t crying. Years later I asked Benja if my mother had fibbed, if she had really just told my sister to keep the doll in her room hidden away from me. “Yes!” Benja exclaimed. She seemed impressed that I had figured this out, and more impressed that I even remembered it. She laughed very hard for several minutes.
The third vivid memory is my brother B.J. carrying me around and me watching the world go by in his arms, because my house and my yard felt like the whole world. In the yard he put me on the tricycle and pushed me and let me go, and I fell off backwards into the soft grass, and I remember how scary it was, how it happened fast, and suddenly I was on my back looking up at the sky. I wasn’t hurt but I cried, and my mother came out and yelled at my brother but he couldn’t hear her because my brother is deaf. And she picked me up, and he cried and cried, and little as I was I knew he wasn’t crying because she yelled at him but because she had taken me away from him. I screamed louder and louder which made her keep me from him, but ironically I was crying because I wanted to be back with my brother, so the more she kept me from him, the harder I screamed, a vicious cycle.
When Miss Dawson assigned us to write our autobiographies (and even I joined in with that collective class moan), she said we needn’t cover everything, that it’s better to hit a few highlights and be specific than try to go through our entire lives quick and general. This would be a start.
I finish my homework at the kitchen table, then come up to my room where I stop in the doorway. B.J. on his bed studying Benja’s latest National Geographic. Not flipping pages, like someone just looking at the pictures. He seems to be reading. But he can’t be reading, he can’t read. Now he starts hand-spelling, his lips moving like he’s having a discussion with his hand about some article. As I step into the room he looks up, but seems to see through me, his hands still moving, his mind on Africa and elephants or Asia and tigers. He turns back to the magazine.
Occasionally Henry Lee and I fall out, or I just get bored with his stupid trains, and I’m back with B.J.’s sign lessons. My brother should snub me for always making him last resort but instead he’s perpetually happy-happy when I come around. My mother and sister have learned a few words but, beyond the basics, nobody but me’s persevered with the language, and my brother and I have gradually begun to have real conversations. Even in my most neglectful days of distraction by school or Henry Lee, B.J. always makes sure we hand-talk a little in bed before turning out the light. Now I gentle slip the magazine from his fingers and take out something new: pen and paper.
Under my tutelage, B.J. writes B.J. and Mother and Randall and Benja and Father and pen and paper and Randall writes and I write. His letters are large and crooked like a first grader’s, but legible.
I teach him a game. Take out some marbles. This sky blue one you may borrow, this red one you may keep. A few minutes later I take back the borrowed marbles, but when he tries to return the others I refuse. He loves games, and he loves new words, so he throws no tantrums about me taking back the borroweds and is delighted when he comes to understand the concept of borrowing, which happens fast. Meanwhile I start teaching him days. I show him our calendar, and I draw one up for him. Every morning I point out the date. By the third day he points it out to me before I can show him. Prior to this he comprehended a week intuitively: five days Benja and I spend at school, followed by a day at home, followed by a part-day at home after Sunday school—but now he has it on paper, a chart seven squares across that makes his instinct concrete. Combining the lessons of borrowing and of days, I show him a book I’d borrowed today, and let him see on his calendar that exactly one week later I return that book and have now borrowed another. After all this I feel he’s ready as he’ll ever be. So Saturday the 21st of March, start of spring, I take him: first trip to the public library.
Soon’s we walk in B.J.’s mouth flies open, awestruck at the hundreds of volumes. I take him to the children’s section. There aren’t a lot for him. Most on the kids’ shelves are chapter books beyond his level, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew. But on his own he finds Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Some of the children stare at him, coming up on nineteen perusing the picture books. B.J. takes no notice. He’s often stared at, and I wonder now if he really isn’t aware or if, over the years, he’s built some kind of wall between himself and the gaper
s. I’m infuriated by adults who exercise such a rude lack of self-control, and while I’m somewhat forgiving of little kids on their own, if a parent comes near they’d better correct their wild brats quick or get the nasty look from me.
As B.J. turns his pages, I consider my task done and start to move to the adult section for my own book. But my brother wants to know what “Mulligan” is. I tell him it’s the character’s last name. He seems confused. Like our last name is Evans. He stares at me, and I realize until now he never knew he had two names.
When I think we’re ready to check out, B.J. points out that he has noticed people with more than one book. I give him a limit of two, and he leaves with Mike Mulligan and Madeline. At home I read them to him once, signing them, then I run off to Henry Lee’s for a while. When I return he can read them by himself.
A week later I’m apprehensive. How will the returning go? But he happily lets go of Mike Mulligan and replaces it with The Poky Little Puppy. Madeline he renews. The next week he does the same, replacing Puppy with Curious George and re-renewing Madeline. The librarian tells me he will have to return Madeline next time so others can borrow it, and though he isn’t pleased, he does so minus theatrics. The week after he returns The Little Engine That Could, he notices that Madeline has not been checked out over the last week, so he decides he has now earned the right to have it again. At the circulation desk the librarian purses her lips but says nothing, and B.J. happily leaves with his favorite. Madeline is in rhyme, and I wonder how he can appreciate it without hearing the cadence. What’s it sound like in his head? Some nights before bedtime, especially if B.J. has had a hard day, I read the book aloud while signing it to him, and he signs with me and calms down.
The supper dishes washed, my mother goes to sit on the edge of the back porch to smoke and think. Late April, the sun mighty warm already, preparing for the coming dog days. At the kitchen table my head’s into the Louisiana Purchase. My father sits in his living room soft chair reading the paper. Although I’m supposedly not to be disturbed, I’m the only person remotely within earshot of him, and he’s compelled to comment on the most interesting tidbits aloud. “Hey. There’s a team in the nigger leagues called the New York Black Yankees.” He chuckles to himself. Truthfully he dismisses all professional baseball and football as Northern hogwash since, with the exception of St. Louis, no teams are south of Washington, D.C., and St. Louis isn’t exactly Dixie. His loyalties remain with the school outfits: University of Alabama, Lefferd County High. Country music has been playing softly from our bedroom upstairs, and now it gets louder.
I think about going out to my mother. This is the time she might talk. Doing the housework, she’s too busy. This quiet time, her head’s in a different place. The music gets louder still.
“Turn that down, boy!” My father bangs loud on the wall. B.J. gets the message, and the music goes out. He likes it loud. Full volume he can put his hand on the radio and feel the vibrations. I walk out to sit with my mother. She says nothing, which means I’m not bothering her, I’m welcome to stay. For a while we don’t speak. She would be fine to keep it that way though she’ll tolerate my breaking the silence, we both know I didn’t come out here because I wanted not to talk. Still, when she decides her breather is over, she’ll get up and go back inside, this window of opportunity is not necessarily a wide one. Where to start. Do I want to start? Ma, you never talk about nursing in the navy, what was that like? You know why Pa always seems so hard on B.J.? You and me and Pa’s and Benja’s earlobes all hang loose, B.J.’s is attached, wonder why.
What I say is, “How come B.J. fears the firecrackers?”
She takes a puff, her eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. “Kids. He was a little thing, six or seven. They never played with him, but guess they lured him out this one day, actin like some game.” She taps ashes into the ashtray she holds. “Put firecrackers on his shoulders. He didn’t know what firecrackers was, he thought they was his friends. Set em off.” She spits out a bit of cigarette paper. “I was worried soon’s I’d noticed he’d disappeared. The other kids never liked him before, so he had no call to run off with any of em. I was worried cuz I couldn’t just holler his name an bring him back like with yaw.” She closes her eyes. “Heard him long before I seen him. Runnin home hysterical, you never noticed that little brown colorin, his neck an shoulder? ’Tweren’t no birthmark.” Sighs. “I took him around a while, pointin out this kid or that, this house? That one? Wantin him to tell me who done it. He kep holdin up three fingers, three boys. I assumed they was boys. But either he didn’t wanna give em up, or they was strangers from outa town cuz he never pointed out no one. I prayed they was strangers. Hated to think he was so desperate for friends, he knew who the devils was an—” She looks up at the sun, wipes her brow. I wait, but she just keeps staring skyward.
“How did he get outside by himself?”
“Your pa was watchin him. I had to go to the doctor. With you, I think. Still a baby, you got some cough. Pretty rare I left him home with your pa.” She chuckles. “There was one other time, I can’t remember why now. He was a toddler. I come home an all his bottled milk gone. I said, ‘Ben, you don’t jus give it to him every time he hollers! Drink all that milk, make him sick!’ Which musta been what happened, I could see his little puffy eyes, cried hisself to sleep.” She stamps out her butt. “You wanna go fetch your ma a nice cole glass a ice tea?”
I pour two glasses. The music from upstairs has come on low again. When I go back outside my mother has moved a few inches to lean her back comfortably against the pillar. She smiles lazily at me. I hand her the glass and sit opposite her, sipping from mine. The ice gives me a headache.
“Deb Ellen goes everybody knows what happens to women in the navy.”
I am stunned I said it. My mother also, staring at me. Then she shakes her head, looking elsewhere.
“Deb Ellen is an ignorant girl.” She sips. “You two are skippin down different paths. She’ll be married an a ma fore you know it, prolly not in that order. You goin to college. Cousins now but grown-up, you be like strangers, stickin with your own tribes. Be lucky we ever see ya again.” I think she’s teasing with the last remark. Then I see she’s not.
“I’ll always come back! My family!” Not necessarily the extended part.
Her eyes sad but she smiles. “I hope so.”
I take another sip. You goin to college.
“Mr. Hickory thinks maybe I should be a lawyer.”
“He does?” Now she is smiling. “Whatta you think?”
I’m trying to be serious but can’t help but smile myself. “A lawyer could be good.” The radio music blasting.
“Goddammit, boy!” My father barging up the steps.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” my mother says before going inside. In advance of the coming mêlée, I step into the kitchen just quick enough to snatch my history book, then run out to sit way over under the elm at the end of the yard where I’ll hear nothing but the birds.
When I return three-quarters of an hour later, my mother is making cookie batter and humming. B.J. waits close to her, expectant and happy. From his reddened eyes, I can tell there was quite a row before the intervention of the diplomat. “I suddenly got the bakin urge.” She tears off a piece of dough for B.J., who eats it like a dog she’s feeding. She tears off another piece, sets it in front of me. I stare at it. I’m nearly an eighth-grade graduate. I’m too big for dough, I’m not some pet eating uncooked food. She doesn’t look up from flattening the raw pastry with her rolling pin when she says, “I’m gonna have to have a talk with Pearlie. Seem like Deb Ellen know a lot more than she oughta, her age.”
“Maaaa,” entreats B.J., so she tears him off another piece. He eats it and smacks his lips loud and rolls his eyes all goofy, and she laughs so hard she practically falls over the chair. I smile, chewing on my own dough.
When the treats are hot and fresh out o
f the oven, my mother asks me to take a couple up to Benja, who’s writing a letter to her assigned soldier. I knock. I know my sister’s in there but she doesn’t answer. “Benja?” I crack it open.
She’s crying. I remember seeing her cry when she was little and I littler, but how many years has that been? She sits at her desk looking down at some letters, several internationally postmarked envelopes, and a bunch of stationery sheets balled up. “Shut the door, shut the door!” I quickly obey.
“I write, ‘You stay well and you bomb those Jerries.’ He writes,” she snatches up a letter, “‘The Jerries are a little far from here. I’m in the Philippines. And I’m in the infantry. It’s a little hard to drop bombs from the ground.’ I write, ‘Oh yeah! I knew you were in the Pacific, sorry! Well, you get those Japs.’ He writes, ‘Well if you’ve read a newspaper anytime lately, you might have noticed the Japs are pretty much getting us,’ what am I sposed to say? Whatever it is, it’s wrong! So I write, ‘Well okay you hurry home then.’ And today I get, ‘The fastest way be step on a mine, home no legs in a wheelchair, or hit by a grenade, home in a very small box’ I hate him! Every other girl got a soldier so grateful for a pen pal, and I get—” She wipes her face. “Tomorrow I’m askin Mrs. Nedermeier for a new one.” She balls up the letter she was writing, then picks up another blank airmail sheet and goes to her drawer, taking out a dime. “You write it.”
I stare blank at her.
“Tell him goodbye from me. I don’t think it’s right to just stop—” She catches her breath. “Tell him goodbye.”
“You could—”
“No! I don’t care if it’s two damn words, I can’t bear writin him no more. I don’t care your handwritin’s different from mine, you write it and I’ll sign it. And I’m not signin it ‘Benja,’ I’m signin it ‘Benja K. Evans.’ And not ‘Kaye’ my name, ‘K’ my initial. Formal. Take it back to your room. Ten cents for your trouble.”