“Who’s up in heaven?” Esther asked, rolling over and kicking so her shirt slid up again.
“Aunt Hannah says there won’t be any massas in heaven,” Sarah answered firmly.
“Where do the massas go?”
“Hmm.” The question stumped Sarah.
“Did God make white people too?” The doubts seemed to tumble from Esther’s six-year-old mind.
“God made everything,” Sarah began. But try as she might, she couldn’t reconcile the loving Shepherd her parents described with the evidence of his handiwork. Even Mama and Papa had to do everything white people said. “But there won’t be any white people,” Sarah repeated decisively, turning over onto her stomach.
Esther, appearing to be satisfied, tumbled and rolled down the muddy bank. A frog hopped out of the water and Esther chased it, her little arms stretched out in front of her body as she stumbled along.
Sarah stayed in the grass thinking about what Ol’ Mister Armstrong preached on Sundays in their little African Baptist church. “Servants, obey in all things your masters,” he shouted, apparently reading from the Big Book. “He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes!”
She’d asked Papa about this once. “Why do we have to obey him?” And “What are stripes?”
But Papa, picking her up and holding her tight, only said, “You’re too little to be thinking such big thoughts, Lilla Bit.” Then, big as she was, he tossed her in the air and caught her, swinging her by her arms so her feet barely scraped the ground.
Still, Sarah wanted to know. Over and over she heard ol’ massa lecturing in the tiny whitewashed room. “Faults you are guilty of toward your masters and mistresses are faults done against God himself, who hath set your masters and mistresses over you in his own stead.”
Why? Sarah wondered.
And ol’ man Armstrong constantly warned, “Thou shalt not steal.” Sarah puzzled over these words. She didn’t know what to tell her sister about this. If she was hungry, as she so often was, and there was ample food nearby, was it wrong to eat?
Sarah thought back to her mother returning to the cabin one Saturday evening, saying she’d “found a stray chicken” and promised, “We’ll have a broiling.” The next day they’d roasted potatoes in the fire and burned rags to keep the white folks from smelling the cooking chicken. Sarah thought of the good filled-up feeling in her tummy with that chicken and potatoes in it. And how after they’d eaten that evening she’d chased little Albert back and forth in front of the fire, then around and around until they both fell dizzily onto the floor. Esther had fallen on top of them, tickling them both. They laughed so hard Sarah gasped for breath, and Mama started to laugh too.
Another thought plagued Sarah’s thoughts: How had she come to belong to ol’ massa? She tried to puzzle it out while Esther played at the edge of the water. Sarah didn’t tell her sister about the whispers she’d heard. Mama’s daddy. It didn’t seem possible.
“Is it true?” she’d asked Mama. “Where’s your mama now?”
For answer, Mama slapped her, hard. It was the first time she’d ever hit her firstborn. And she didn’t say a word.
Mama had held her later and said she was sorry, but her face didn’t look sorry. It was mad. And she didn’t explain.
Sarah recalled her feelings were as hurt as her face. Why couldn’t she ask that question? What was wrong?
Ever since, whenever Sarah saw ol’ massa at a distance, she stared. Watching him move threw broken glass into her heart; when he bent his head to the side, cocking it in a familiar way to examine a fence rail or a broken wagon wheel, his gesture knotted her stomach. She thought then of Ruth’s grandpappy, who teased her and brought her treats, candies he tucked away from the Big House and, once, a bouquet of wildflowers: yellow-and-white daisies, blue larkspur, and best of all, pink bleeding hearts, with their delicate bells.
Anxiety tightened Sarah’s body too when she watched young massa and saw his eyes rake the women. Would he look at her that way now that she was growing up? She wished that every day of the week was Sunday, and she could stay by the river with Esther.
Late on Sunday afternoons, when the afternoon sky was latticed with ribbons of pink, she and Esther dashed off to gather firewood for dinner. Aunt Hannah sometimes came too, swaying and tottering, pointing out magic in the plants. “See, this one cures the arthritis, and that one, if I boil it, will get rid of the fever.” She plucked a long, thin plantain leaf and held it out to the girls.
They nodded, then darted ahead to gather kindling for Aunt Hannah. Rushing back, they hurried to the corncrib to pick up the week’s ration of meal—”A peck and a half.” The foreman scowled, reaching out to Sarah. With a practiced feint she dodged him and raced to the smokehouse for bacon or middlin’ meat, and finally on to the quarters to eat their cornmeal.
“Young fellow ran away from Winston’s place last night,” a friend of her mother’s whispered one evening while she ate from an old blue bowl. “Young fellow, praise God, gone north.”
Papa leaned in with a worried look. “Too many …”
“A woman showed up in the quarters last night. A wild woman, coal black,” Yasmine said and shook her head.
“With an iron collar,” another said. “I heard she clawed at a window over there. Where is she now?”
Yasmine shrugged.
Through the chatter Sarah heard her parents speak harshly of the moods the foreman had that week, of the way tobacco was wearing out the land, and, always, of a time when their lives would not be so hard.
“Hold on a little while longer, hmmm.” That was her mother’s favorite song. She hummed it day and night, until late in the evenings when she switched over to “Am I born to die and lay this body down? And must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown? Oh, am I born to die?”
But over and around their anguish her parents laughed. They teased their neighbors and boasted of transgressions: stolen apples or a chicken, a quickly broken hoe or rake (“Can’t work no more right now, boss, sure am sorry.”), a feigned illness, an instant of privacy free of surveillance.
Too soon Sunday evenings ended, and the week was ready to bare its fangs. Sunday night signified Papa’s return to the Winston place. Sarah had only heard about his tiny room, the windowless one he shared with two other men, a room that was the fifth from the front in a long row of rooms. Each week, his leave-taking made her cry. From the adults around her she understood that Papa might or might not be back—always depending on the master. Rumor whispered that ol’ Winston had gambled away all he had and needed cash.
But on Sunday nights before Sarah’s father left, he sang to his children. The music, he told them, “carried from my father’s father,” who’d remembered a youth “far across the water, before the men with turbans came.” Papa told sorry stories about captured people, yoked with long, slender logs and forced onto big ships. Some jumped overboard and their bones, he said, walked back home. Hearing the tales, she shivered. Then her father would lean over to warm her in an embrace. His big arms enfolded her, and despite the dread that bruised her days, for that moment the world was good.
CHAPTER 5
What’s the matter?” Jessica waves her hand in front of my face. Today when we were hurrying inside after lunch she asked, “Do you want to come over after school?” When I said, “Soccer?” she looked as if I’d proposed deer hunting, so here I am, sitting on her bedroom floor under the Hawaiian poster. Last winter she found a palm-tree spread for her loft bed and two shaggy green pillows, and painted the window frame yellow. Even the cup on her desk is a coconut shell.
“Nothing.” I shrug.
“I said, ‘What about ice skating on Saturday, with Claudette and her brother at the West Hill rink?’ Her dad’s gonna take us.” Jessica scratches her pink tee, scraping off a microscopic stain.
Wasn’t it Claudette’s dad who proposed shooting “looters”? A nasty lurch unsettles my stomach. “I might be at
Dad’s on Saturday.”
“You haven’t heard anything! Before that I asked, ‘Do you want to walk to Fat Slices and get fudge?’ You didn’t even answer!”
She shoves a pile of books away and pokes her head into my face. “Nina?” She scootches closer.
Despite biting my cheek until it’s raw, tears dribble next to my nose until I wipe them with my sleeve. “Everything’s different,” I blurt. “I’m reading this book my dad’s writing, about my great-great-grandmother running from slavery. It was horrible—dogs were after her …” I freeze. Jessica’s pinched, pink face, radiating disdain, could be the spitting image of ol’ miss flicking her cat-o’-nine-tails. It could’ve been her family’s ancestors who owned Miss Sarah; her dad’s family is from Virginia. Suddenly I can’t wait to leave, but to where? At Dad’s I don’t even have a room, only the Deathbed in Jimi’s corner. At Mom’s—wow, it’s strange to call it that—everything’s too quiet. The silence is driving me crazy. We haven’t seen Rolling Stone for days, and Mom’s as different these days as Dad is. She’s grouchy, for one thing, in a way she never used to be. And even more clueless, like her mind is somewhere else. The mom who used to cook great dinners or offer me rides now simply waves toward the fridge, like Dad does, and kind of stares past me vacantly. Not that I’m eager to hang out with her, but she’s so out of it she makes me nervous. When I see her in the living room I mumble “I’m busy” and head up to my room, which is lonely too without Jimi nearby.
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Why? What’s—” Jessica asks, arching her back like an exact replica of Claudette.
“Nothing. I have to.” I’m on my feet, hoisting my backpack.
“Nina, we just got here.” She leans forward and yanks my wrist, trying to pull me down, but I shake her off. Then, before she can grab me again, I tear out into the hall, run downstairs, and burst through the front door. But where to go?
I wander over to the Cougar track and run around a couple times, trying to figure out my mixed-up life. But it’s hot, even for October, our hottest month; the wind burns and the dust chokes me. Everything’s brittle and dry. We haven’t had rain since March. As I wander off the track onto the street, a red bike whizzes by, chased by a screaming boy shaking his fist. After the blur passes, I do a double take. Was that Jimi on the bike? His head was tucked, no helmet, and he was pedaling fast, but I recognize his Afro, which is growing wide like Dad’s. Jimi’s bike is an old brown beater, though. This couldn’t be Jimi or his rust bucket. Funny how it looked like him.
The scene of them whirring by and the shouting lingers. It sounded like “Thief!” and the other boy looked like Dwight Jackson—or his evil clone, Tyrone. But that couldn’t have been Jimi.
I wipe my face with my hand to clear away the vision and head over toward Sierra Street. I hardly know where my feet are leading me, but by the time I look up I’m passing Fran’s old house, which makes me catch my breath. Why did her parents have to separate? They were both white. If you call Italian white, since Fran’s darker than me. She says her parents fought because her dad wanted another baby—a boy, he insisted, after four girls—and her mom refused. And then her mom had to go to Italy when her parents got sick, so Fran doesn’t know if they’re ever gonna live together again.
Maybe Fran would understand some of what I’m going through—or at least listen if I called. But first I need to get home. My feet just don’t want to go there yet.
All of a sudden I’m standing at the corner in front of Lavonn’s, banging the brass knocker. The sound startles a blue jay from a perch on the porch, and its cry as it soars off, screechy and scratchy, sounds like my jangled nerves.
“Oh, Nina.” It’s Lavonn’s mother, Saundra, who looks pleased to see me. It’s been a few months since I’ve been here. “Lavonn’s not home, but you look thirsty. It’s so hot outside. Come have something to drink.” She’s seriously dressed. Cute, like always.
Today she’s wearing a black dress with a crinoline, so the skirt sticks out in a triangle. She leads me through the living room. It’s always been soothing, with dark wooden statues and carvings and beige woven baskets. A strip of orange kente cloth on the back of the couch is the only color. Saundra guides me to a counter that separates the kitchen and living room, and clears away a basket of yellow gourds. The polished wood and African art remind me of Dad’s apartment, where he’s hung masks, and last Saturday he brought home a giant wooden giraffe with swirls of black for the living room.
“Do you want a soda or iced tea? Water?”
“I don’t know,” I say softly. I’ve known her since I was a kid, but I’ve never talked to her alone like this.
“Oh, sit up here; give your feet a rest.” She motions to a high stool at the counter. “How about some orange soda?”
“Sure,” I say, still quiet. “Thanks.” I don’t know how to leave, now that she’s offering me soda. And it feels good, for the first time in weeks, to have an adult actually take an interest in me. When she returns with my drink in a glass clinking with ice, she asks, “What’s up? How’s life treating you?”
I don’t know what to say. My life couldn’t be more confusing.
“Or how are you treating it?” She smiles and I remember how kind she was to us when she drove carpool. Seeing her watch me the way she is now, as if she cares, I feel those rotten tears start behind my nose, but I choke them back and mutter, “It’s okay.”
“Nina, I was sorry to hear your parents split.” She sucks her teeth. “It’s tough, I know.”
You wouldn’t.
“My parents divorced when I was your age.” Saundra gives me a penetrating look, as if she’s deciding whether to say more. “We lived in South Central LA.”
“Oh,” I say politely. You don’t have a clue about what it’s like for me, being scrambled. Or all the other stuff going on. But then I really hear what she just said. “South Central. Wow. I’ve only heard about it. What was that like?”
She becomes very still before she bends forward. “Oh, any neighborhood kids grow up in is ‘normal’ to them. The community was okay. It was my family situation that was so tough.”
I thought she meant the divorce until she added. “You know, my mother’s black and my father’s white.”
“Whoa,” slips out of my lips. I thought Lavonn was black, plain black. “Lavonn is mixed too, then,” I say, before I realize I’m voicing my thought aloud.
“Most African Americans are. But it’s not always acknowledged.”
I’m stunned into silence.
“More white people have a touch of the brush than they want to admit. Or even know. Everybody wanted to deny it back then. My father’s parents disowned him, so I never met my white grandparents or cousins until I was grown. One aunt—my father’s younger sister—broke the family rule and contacted me, years ago, after he passed. That broke the ice.”
I’m totally uncomfortable, wondering how to absorb this personal information, when she adds, “Sometimes the white folks who are most vociferous about keeping us down are the very ones who’ve got some hidden great-grandma themselves, some ancestor they can’t bring themselves to accept.”
Claudette’s face flashes into my mind. Could that be the case with her? Then I wonder, if that’s true, what does being white mean? I remember Mom telling me that Jews like her mother’s family weren’t always considered white, right up to today in some places. Irish people too, on her dad’s side. My mom told me about the “No Irish need apply” signs that used to be around. Is Mom even white? How do people decide who’s what, and why does it matter anyway?
Saundra breaks into my spinning thoughts. “So I do have an inkling of what you might be going through. More than the average kid coping with divorce.”
I don’t even have words for how crazy I feel, so I’m not sure how even Saundra would get it all. Divorced parents. A dad who’s changing into another person right before my eyes. Two homes. And this insane race stuff that I never even noticed befo
re. Why do I have these humungous issues when all other girls have to worry about is how good their hair looks? Or what jeans to wear? Or what boy likes them? It isn’t fair. Even when Fran got so upset about moving and ran away, coming back to Canyon Valley for a couple days, she didn’t have to deal with all this other stuff.
Just when I’m feeling like the unluckiest kid alive, Saundra says, “You know, Nina, biracial kids signed up for a big life.” She smiles again. Her face is narrow, not like Lavonn’s, but when she grins they look the same. “A big life,” she repeats. What does she mean? “You might feel fragmented now—especially with Silas and Maggie on such bad terms—but, in the end, you’ll see. If you can pull it off, you’ll have access to two complete, fascinating worlds.” She laughs with a big, deep laugh. “It’s a trip.”
I take the last sip of my soda, my mind exploding like the Oakland fires. I wonder if the chair I’m sitting on will dissolve and I’ll tumble to the floor. My science teacher says matter isn’t solid anyway; it’s all energy. I believe her. Nothing feels solid right now.
“The culture will call you African American—that one-drop rule still reigns—yet you get to choose. It’s complicated, but you can play it all!” She throws her head back and laughs again. The sound is like a musical line, dipping up and down. “Listen, I’ve got to run off to a meeting, but I wanted to talk for a few minutes with you.” She pauses and gives me that stare. “Lavonn said—” She stops again. “I’m so glad you dropped by. Why don’t you call her?” On the way to the door she says casually, “Lavonn’s rehearsing for the Black Nativity, at the James Baldwin Theater. She’s over there now with Demetre. They could use more black kids.”
More black kids. Despite her talk of “playing it all,” of getting to choose, that’s how she thinks of me. Why does everybody want me to choose?
“It’s the Langston Hughes play, you know? The black Christmas story.” She laughs. “It’s great, gospel.”
Black, White, Other Page 5