When he called back and I was giving him the information, he told me to talk slowly because he was making a diagram. This is really it; I thought. I’m going home. Based on the specifics I had given him, he’d decided I should come out of the bathroom window, which was on the second floor. The window opened to a flat part of the roof that abutted an apple tree in the backyard. “At the stroke of midnight, out the bathroom window and down the tree… got it?”
“Got it.”
Even though I said I’d gotten it. I was hesitant; I had no problem climbing up things, but I was terrified of climbing down. In this case, though, I was willing to do anything. The plan was fail proof, it seemed, but we had forgotten to factor in a few crucial variables. I was eight, and he was 10. There was snow on the ground, he was coming to rescue me on his bike, and we lived in different cities.
That night, I was in bed by ten o’clock. Once in my room, which was the only bedroom on the first floor, I realized I had no way of checking the time. I waited until I thought it was midnight, then came out of my room and headed toward the stairs. I glanced at the clock; it was only 10:30. I continued to the bathroom so as not to look suspicious to Erma Lee, who was still up watching TV. When I made it to the bathroom, I found the window frosted over, and it occurred to me for the first time that I would need to wear something other than my nightgown to make the trip.
I went back downstairs and got into bed and wondered how I could get past Erma Lee wearing a coat and boots. Perhaps I could tell her I forgot something outside and then simply walk out the front door and meet Kenny around back. I thought about this option even though I knew it was impossible. I eventually dozed off and when I awoke, it was morning. I called Kenny to see if he had come the night before, but Bobby said he was out with his friends.
Unaware of our previous plot, Erma Lee and Aunt Betty agreed to let Kenny come spend a day with me. When he arrived, I realized that when I was home, we never really played together. Whenever the boys would go out foraging or exploring, Aunt Betty would make them take me. “Why do we have to take her? She’s always bawlin’ and crap!” It was either that or, “Mom, Nancy’s been in our stuff again!” So on the day of our visit, we were incredibly bored.
“Wanna go to the park?” I asked
He nodded.
There were some guys on the basketball court, but otherwise the park was empty. It was too cold to swing, or slide, or do anything, so we sat on a picnic table with our hands shoved deep in our pockets trying to stay warm. The guys on the court gradually made their way in our direction. At first I thought they would ask Kenny to shoot hoops, but then one of them said, “What you doing here?” I assumed he was talking to both of us, but before we could say anything, another one said, “Hey man, we don’t want no honkies in our park!” Kenny grabbed my arm, “C’mon Nancy; we’re not wanted here,” and as we rushed away, I knew that for the first time, I wasn’t the one who wasn’t wanted.
In times past, it was common for me to hear, “You guys can stay, but the nigger has to go,” or “What’s that little nigger doing here?” I would hear this whether I was with Aunt Betty’s boys or Aunt Katie’s girls. On the Back Road behind Aunt Katie’s house, a family from West Virginia had moved in. They had a thick southern drawl, and their talking sounded more like singing. The kids had promised Aunt Katie’s girls that they could come over and swim, so the four of us put on our swimsuits and headed toward the Back Road.
Katie’s house faced the front avenue, and her expansive backyard went all the way back to the road on the next block. No one whose house faced the avenue called this road by its proper name. Instead, they simply called it the Back Road. As it was a very quiet road, it was a general gathering place for the kids in the neighborhood. It’s where we learned to ride our bikes, where we played hopscotch and jump rope, and where we had foot races. If there was any fun to be had, the Back Road was ground zero.
As we crossed the Back Road and reached the neighbors’ yard, the girls stood looking at us. The youngest, probably no more than four years old, said, “Us mama don’t want no nigguhs swimmin’ in us pool.” Becca, always the first one to speak, said, “Who? Her? She ain’t no nigger.”
“Well what is she then?” The oldest girl asked.
All eyes were on Becca, including mine, and, in what she would later describe as a stroke of genius, she very matter-of-factly said, “She’s Mixperado.”
“Is that like a nigguh?”
“No, it’s more like White.”
The neighbor girls conferred among themselves, but the oldest girl finally concluded, “I don’t think Mama will stand for it.”
Becca said, “Well if she can’t swim, then we can’t swim.” In all of this, there wasn’t any anger or animosity; we were simply trying to work our way through this impediment to an afternoon of fun. The oldest girl asked, “You guys wanna just do something else then?” A bit sullen, we all agreed. As we walked back to the house to change out of our swimsuits, Becca turned to me and said, “Look kid, from now on, if anybody asks, you’re Mixperado. You got that?” Being Mixperado turned out to be a good thing because even though it didn’t get me into their pool, it did get me into the good graces of these southern kids who sang when they talked.
Now Kenny was in the same predicament. In the few short months that I had been with Erma Lee, it seemed I knew all about Black and White and what it meant to be either, and both. But Kenny, although older than I, was just an innocent kid, and as clueless as I had been when I’d first come. Realizing this, I felt so grown up and wise in the ways of the world. He still thought we were the same, and even though we really were, that’s not how the world saw us. I understood it, but I didn’t have the heart to explain it to him. If I had been thinking, I would’ve come to his defense like Becca had come to mine. “Who? Him? He ain’t no honkey; he’s Mixperado.” Anyhow, I don’t think it would’ve flown.
Later, when Aunt Betty came to pick him up, I felt a sense of desperation. He was leaving, and we’d let the whole day slip by. We hadn’t made any new plans to get me home; we hadn’t even discussed our failed attempt.
I walked with the two of them out to the car, and when Kenny got in he asked, “Mom, why can’t Nancy come home?” And I waited for her answer, hoping she’d say, “Nancy, get your things.” Instead, she said, “This is Nancy’s home. She lives here now.” And so I stayed and grew up right there with Erma Lee and Paw-paw and the barrage of foster children that would come and go.
Chapter 11
I was a bit of an oddity in the foster home. The other children had been taken from their parents because of abuse or neglect. I was voluntarily given up. Even so, Aunt Betty remained very much involved, and one of the conditions of my placement was that she have unrestricted access to me. So, unlike the other children, I maintained full contact with my family. As such, I never really saw myself as a foster child even though I was living in a foster home with many foster children.
Almost immediately after being placed with the Daniels, there was talk of adoption. The caseworker was the first to bring it up on one of her routine visits. “Nancy, how would you like to be adopted?” My answer was an emphatic, “No!” Being adopted meant I would no longer be my mother’s daughter. It meant they would change my name. I was so strongly against it that when the caseworker began insisting that adoption would be the best thing for me, I became hysterical. Erma Lee demanded that they drop the subject. “If she don’t want it, leave her alone.” Later she asked me why I was against being adopted.
“Because I already have a mother.”
“Honey, your mama is gone.”
“But what if she comes back and I belong to someone else? What if she can’t find me because I have a different name?”
“Your mama is dead, baby, and she ain’t comin’ back.”
I was the one who’d called for help the night my mother died. I saw them put her on a stretcher, and I went with her to the hospital. I watched Aunt Betty come undone when t
he doctor came out to talk to her. I watched the nurses with whom my mother worked cry and hug each other. I remember the doctor kneeling in front of me, telling me I was a very smart and brave girl. I was there when Aunt Betty picked out my mother’s casket. With my own eyes I saw her dressed in lavender lying in that same casket. With my own hands I felt her chilled skin as I placed in her hand a note I’d written, but the more I understood why our lives had been so difficult, I was even more convinced that my mother, in spite of everything I’d seen, had simply gone away for a while.
And so these two theories, the one that was true and the one I wanted to be true, coexisted in my mind. When I was happy and thought about one day seeing my mother again, I always thought about seeing her in heaven, but when I was heartbroken, I imagined her living in some distant country, working and saving money so that she could one day come for me. Erma Lee would not let them ask me about adoption after that.
Although I’d refused adoption, I couldn’t ignore the reality of my situation. I was in a new place and completely unaccustomed to the way things were done. I quickly learned that my fear of being Black had been completely unfounded. All the cruelty I had expected to befall me now that I was Black had actually already occurred when I was with my mother; I simply hadn’t known my Blackness had been the cause.
Since I’d moved in with the Daniels, no one called me nigger, I didn’t have to worry about vicious neighbors, and the police were never called to the house, except on the rare occasion a birth mother would come and try to take her child. However, being at ease with my Blackness was only the beginning of understanding my new culture, and the touchstone of this new culture was the interconnectedness of the Black community.
Of course, most families are proud of their identities and cultures. For Blacks, however, it’s not the family unit itself that’s praised as much as the Black community as a whole. Everyone belongs to and has an obligation to the whole. What’s your name? Who’s your people? Where are your people from? These three questions were asked routinely by Blacks meeting other Blacks.
I’ve been told that this practice came about after the abolition of slavery. Once the slaves were freed, their primary goal was to find their family members that had been sold to other plantations, so when they came across other Blacks, they started dropping names. This type of name dropping is very much alive today, especially among the older generation. It’s a beautiful and lingering need to gather back that which was scattered.
I saw Paw-paw do this on countless occasions. He always used Erma Lee’s side of the family when he dropped names because like most Black families, hers had come from the south. He seemed to take such pride in the fact that his own family wasn’t from the south and when asked, he’d rattle it off as if it were one word. “I’m from SpringfieldIllinoisLandOfLincoln!”
“Who’s your people?” He’d ask some unwitting soul he’d come across at the Post Office or grocery store.
“Broadnax, most of us.”
“What about Page, y’all have any Pages?”
“Now that sounds familiar. I think we got some Pages down in Gulfport.”
“How ’bout in Arkansas? My wife’s from Augusta.”
“We got people in Arkansas, but Page don’t ring a bell.”
“What about Lovelace?”
“Oh, now we sho got some Lovelaces. My cousin was married to a Lovelace that worked down in the rail yard just outside of Searcy.”
“Joe Lovelace?”
“That sounds ‘bout right.”
“That’s my wife’s uncle.”
“Sho nuff?”
And from there, the union would be sealed with laughs and hearty handshakes. Then Paw-paw would go home and say to Erma Lee, “Guess who I saw at the Post Office.” Seldom did these episodes ever end without everyone somehow being related or connected in some way, and if someone seemed to not have family, that person was gathered in and would soon show up at Sunday dinners and family functions because everybody had to belong to somebody.
And it wasn’t always necessary for names to match up exactly. I found this out one day as I walked home from school and was beckoned by a woman sitting on her porch. “Hey sweety, who’s your people?
“Daniels.”
“Daniels? Don’t believe I know no Daniels. How ‘bout Darby, you know any Darbys?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You sho look to me like a Darby.”
And when I insisted that I didn’t know any Darbys, she called for backup.
“Fay, step out here a minute. Don’t this chile look to be one of them Darbys?”
The lady looked me up and down and said, “Yes, Lawd! Look at the hips on her, made up just like them folks.”
“I knew she was one of them Darby gals. You’s a Darby, sugar. We know all your peoples from way back.”
And quite content that they had found a place for me, they sent me on my way with a message, “Tell your mama Sister Effie and Sister Fay Lee said, ‘Praise the Lord.’”
And just like that, I was a Darby simply because it was important for these two women to identify me and make sure I had a place within the Great Family.
This spirit of connectedness is something I hadn’t experienced until I moved in with the Daniels. When I lived with my mother, I was at the mercy of the world when I walked out the front door. Whether I was going to school, walking to Aunt Katie’s or to the candy store, I was fair game until I made it back to the safety of my house. But in the Black community, no such singleness existed. I learned very quickly that when I rounded the corner at the end of the block and Erma Lee could no longer see me, I was still being watched. Where her eyes ended, another’s would begin.
The Daniels lived in a neighborhood where people owned their homes. Most families had at least one car, but many had two. The streets were quiet, the lawns well-maintained. Most homes had two parents. The fathers had good jobs in the steel mills or with the railroad, and the mothers were stay-at-home moms who had dinner on the table every evening, and it was these moms, perched in windows and on screened porches, from which there was no hiding.
It wasn’t unusual to be questioned while walking down the street, “Your mama know you got all that make up on your face, lookin’ like a Jezebel? I’m callin’ her right now!” Getting in trouble away from home was one thing, but having the information make it back to the house was the absolute worst. I always knew when “news” had beaten me home because when I rounded the corner, Erma Lee would be waiting for me on the front porch.
To understand the depth of this involvement is to understand the relationships the people in the community had with each other. In middle school one afternoon, my locker jammed and I was late for class. My math teacher Mr. Trevino walked up behind me, tapped his watch, and said, “You’re late, Miss Stephan!” As he saw me struggling with my locker, I thought his stating the obvious was incredibly ridiculous… and I told him so in very unsavory language. Later that day, I was called to the office and given a suspension notice.
By the end of the day, I had been scolded by Miss Gibbs, who lived next door, Erma Lee’s cousin RL and his wife Irene, who lived across the street, and the pastor’s wife Mother Taliefero, who demanded, “I want to see you in tarrying service[5] because obviously you done backslid.” Because Erma Lee had spread the word amongst the church congregants, they’d begun calling, in succession, to ask, “How in the world did you fix your mouth to say such a thing?” And to remind me that, “Christian girls don’t use such ungodly language.”
The rebuke wasn’t limited to my family, church, and neighborhood. At a routine doctor visit, Dr. Manley walked in the exam room, glared at me over the rim of his glasses and said, “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard it!” I kept quiet because I knew from experience that Dr. Manley would take my words and mangle them like scrap metal.
This was the same Dr. Manley that required me to bring each of my report cards for his review, and he would examine them as if he were examining a
patient, “Uh huh… uh huh…” and when he’d get to a grade that wasn’t an A, he’d let out a low growl “Hmmmm! How do you expect to be a doctor if you’re getting Ds in math?”
“I never said I wanted to be a doctor.”
“Oh, so you’re dropping out of college before you even start?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what you meant.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So now you’re calling me a liar?”
There was no winning with Dr. Manley, so when he started in about the incident with Mr. Trevino, I just sat quietly. “Is that what you do, go around cursing out the teachers?”
“No, Sir.”
He tag-teamed himself as he examined me. “deep breath... what college will want you with that on your record… breathe out… are you going to curse the poor college teachers too… swallow… are you going to jump on me, do I need a restraining order… lift your chin!”
Although I wanted to explain the situation to Dr. Manley, I didn’t bother because I knew it would’ve ended badly and then Erma Lee would’ve been waiting for me on the front porch.
This was the nature of the community. People looked out for others, and they especially looked out for the children. For the Daniels, this commitment was further strengthened by their faith. God was the bedrock of their existence. As such, and much to my chagrin, we practically lived at the church.
Chapter 12
Sunday
9:30—Sunday School
12 Noon—Morning Service
4 pm—Afternoon Auxiliary Service
7 pm—Bible Class
Tuesday
7 pm—Prayer & Tarrying Service
Wednesday
12 Noon—Noonday Prayer / Visit Sick & Shut-ins
8 pm—Mid-week Service
Thursday
7 pm—Choir Rehearsal
The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir Page 8