Oh, music. I’ve never heard of the play, but I nod as if I have. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “I might not have time. But I’ll see.”
Afterward I tear down to El Camino, kicking shriveled leaves, hardly noticing where I am while I stare at parched, yellow grass bordering the sidewalk. I’m not a black kid: I don’t watch BET, I sing white folk songs with my mom, who I suddenly feel, in the oddest way, is the one person I’m closest to. And she’s white. Or so-called white, Jewish-Irish white. It’s hopeless.
Before I know it I’m at San Pablo. Without thinking I turn right and head down toward the lower flats. A strong, sour garbage smell hits my nose. Eeeww. I look around. The shadows are long. I’m not used to the shorter days yet. My mom would murder me if she knew I was here by myself on the corner of San Pablo and Central. Well, that would get their attention, wouldn’t it, if I got mugged. I’m cold and it’s grayer by the minute. When I see two drunk guys weaving toward me, I turn and start to trudge back up the hill, thinking about Sarah. Did I get my name from her owner, Mr. Armstrong? Is that why I’m up front when we sit in alphabetical order?
Finally, when I can hardly take another step, I stagger up my block, and there’s Mom on the top step of our porch, playing her guitar. It’s so embarrassing. She looks like a wild, red-haired elf, with a raggedy sweatshirt under a huge guitar. But still, I’m glad to see her. More than glad.
Her face lights up like it always does when she didn’t expect me and I swing into view. By the time I get to the foot of the steps she’s beaming. “Sweetie, I’m glad you’re home. I thought you were at Jessica’s.” She looks puzzled but she sings a ditty she wrote when I was little. “Oh Nina, you’re the one. Your face glows like the morning sun.”
She’s so happy that I join in on the chorus, and for a minute the world spins back in its orbit. Yeah, this is my mom, and this is me. When she beams the way she is now, everything that’s tight inside melts and I want to hum along, in harmony. Nina, Nina, you’re the one. It’s a baby song. I’m sure everybody in the neighborhood has heard it by now. After we finish she strums the chords to “Union Maid”: There once was a union maid, she never was afraid. We belt out the chorus, “Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ to the union, I’m stickin’ to the union.” When my mom and I sing that song, we totally blend into one. We both sing soprano; hers is higher than mine, but we’ve sung together so much that our voices wind around and it’s special, not like anything else. Mom and Granny Leigh, her mom, sing together too. This time, though, just when everything’s normal for a minute, a sharp thought pokes in: Mom’s voice sounds tinny and thin. Real white. And these union songs that are brave, like, “We’re standing up to the bosses,” well, my American History teacher told us unions didn’t let black people join—for years. They had to be scabs if they wanted jobs. Why am I singing like unions are so great? Okay, I admit that unions were good for working people, and I feel the tug to Mom and Granny Leigh and G’a Milt, but I can’t believe Mom would keep singing this racist stuff. Can’t she see what she’s doing, pitting herself against African American history? The warm ripples swirling in my body spin into my stomach, until I’m nauseous, just like I was at Jessica’s. The steps are crumbling, and God just tumbled out of heaven. Gravity might be loosening its hold too; nothing makes any sense again.
“Oh no,” I mumble, putting one hand on my tummy.
“What?” she asks.
“I don’t want to sing.” I stand and race up to my room, where I lie facedown, rubbing my bedspread between my fingers, scraping the bumps in the material against the pad of my thumb until I hear Rolling Stone scratch on my door, and as soon as I let him in he plops on my back for a few minutes. When I roll onto the floor he rubs against my legs, like he’s my best friend and where have I been?
The two of us settle down to homework, which I can hardly do because Rolling Stone is walking on top of it and waving his fat tail in my face. The more I push him away, the more he insists on sitting on the book. No way can I do homework. Anyway, my mind is as mixed up as my ancestors are. I give up and send a quick text to Fran, asking how it’s going for her, and telling her to call me. Soon.
Later, when I can’t avoid Mom, because I have to go to the kitchen to eat, she hands me a brown envelope and stares as if she’s trying to penetrate my soul. “Your father left this for you.”
Your father again. Can’t you say Dad, or even Silas?
I grab the package and zoom up to my room; as soon as I tumble into bed I rip open the envelope and read a note clipped to the front page: “Lilla Bit, let’s talk about this all after you read it. Notice the curiosity (smile). Sound familiar?” Riffling through the manuscript, I find three whole chapters of MISS SARAH ARMSTRONG: ON THE RUN. Sarah, who might actually be the only person on the planet I can relate to. The only problem: she’s dead.
Reading: Don’t You Dare
Even though she’d turned nine—too big for a Lilla Bit, as Papa proudly teased her—Sarah still waited all week for Sunday. But now it was for the after-hours preaching. On Sunday evenings, late, after Papa left, she would hear the singing start, sweet and low, “Steal away …” and her heart leaped. She knew what the music signified.
She’d follow the voices to a prayer meeting deep in the woods, held whenever Preacher Thomas could organize the secret gathering. The rail-thin preacher had a gift for reciting long Bible verses he’d committed to memory. These nighttime services had a different message than the ones she heard in the chapel during the day, the ones ol’ massa preached. On full-moon nights, eyelids closing, Sarah loved to burrow into her mother’s lap and hear the old preacher talk about Jesus, who suffered for her and offered rest. Or Moses, who led his people to freedom. Sarah pictured her whole community walking in a group, their few bedraggled belongings on their heads, marching up to freedom. She imagined great gates bursting open. Gates to that heavenly place called Freedom, which seemed so far away that she could only picture it in another realm. Laughing, people would change into fine, new, shiny clothes before settling down to eat all they wanted: biscuits, butter, pork and chicken, gravy, vegetables, three kinds of pie. They would sleep right past first light. At Freedom there would be no field work, no beatings, and shoes for everyone. Shoes that fit, that didn’t pinch or rub her ankles. And her father would stay all week.
At the camp meetings people shouted and prayed, “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Then why not every man?” Why not? Sarah wondered. Would she be delivered? And Mama and Papa and Albert and Esther?
Early one morning, Tamra, a sixteen-year-old heading to the field while carrying her baby on her back, whispered, “We got a secret school, out in the woods. On nights when the moon is full.”
“School?” said Sarah.
“Yeah, reading and writing. Aunt Rachel—” She broke off when the overseer passed by and, lost in a crowd, Sarah heard no more that day. But soon she learned that a few brave people met for lessons in the evenings. Everything in her hungered to go, though she knew Mama would never allow it. The danger of prowling at night, with the bloodhounds ready, would drive her mother wild. No, Mama would say. Absolutely not.
Sarah tried to forget all about school, and reading. But every time the moon shone brightly, she couldn’t sleep. No matter how tired she was, her mind raced, wondering what it would be like to read the Good Book for herself. Surely all her questions would be answered there. The more she thought, the more she wanted to go, and she had to force her mind to concentrate on her mother’s heavy breath, in and out, in and out, until she put herself to sleep.
One moonlit evening Sarah lay on her pallet listening to her mother’s nighttime chatter: Aunt Hannah’s antics in the Big House, and Sally’s thirteenth baby, white, blond, and blue-eyed as could be. The next morning Sarah called out to her mother, “I heard Aunt Sally say, ‘He made him some more dark babies. Like shelling peas out a pod. But I’ve a mind to drown them all.’ Why did Auntie say that?”
“She’s just mad
at ol’ massa,” Mama said, redoubling her concentration on her mending. Whatever she was doing when Sarah asked questions like these seemed to become doubly important.
Sarah paused, her mind grabbing and prodding the unruly idea until she could wrap it in an answer. When Mama kept her silence, she ventured to ask, “Why?” The unanswered thought hung in the air. Still Sarah waited, hoping her mother would volunteer more.
“She just is.” Mama turned away, shushing her daughter. Mama, who was so kind when Sarah got hurt or scared, never seemed to answer the deepest questions. Whenever Sarah brought up anything about ol’ massa, Mama simply flushed, wiped her hands on her apron—even when her hands looked clean—and looked away.
What did that mean, “He made him some more dark babies”? How could Master Armstrong make babies, when the turkey buzzard hatched them? He wasn’t a buzzard, was he? But all Sarah heard for an answer was the familiar humming before her mother’s prayers. “Hold on a little while longer, hmm hmmm.”
Soon, thinking her exhausted mother had fallen asleep—though she didn’t hear the customary snore—Sarah began to creep toward the door.
“Girl, don’t go down there!” She heard the muffled cry from under her mother’s covers. “A storm is coming, I can feel it. Master’ll catch you; he’ll whip you. Daughter, don’t you dare go or I’ll whip you myself!”
But Sarah bolted out the door. She had to find answers for the questions that were burning holes in her brain. And since Mama and Papa wouldn’t—or couldn’t—explain what she saw in the world around her, she was going to find out another way.
She’d heard that deep in the woods Wilbert and Tamra, with Aunt Rachel, had dug a giant hole, working for weeks on the underground cavern, and then covered it with branches and vines. As Sarah approached what she imagined was the secret area, she spotted Wilbert, a stocky twelve-year-old. Sarah’s heart jumped, and together they pulled back the boughs. Sarah, always agile, easily leaped down into the pit, while clumsy Wilbert tumbled after her.
The smell of damp dirt and moldy leaves hit Sarah’s nostrils. Then she inhaled the smell of a torch. Smoke scratched the inside of her nostrils. So this was pit school.
She watched Tamra and Wilbert struggle to hang a wash pot bottom up. Aunt Rachel explained that it would catch the sound of their voices. Sarah reached out to help them hook the pot onto two cut-off roots sticking into the pit. On this night, no overseer would hear them talking. For good measure, Wilbert had carried water in a bucket from a creek nearby. The water too would muffle their talk, she learned. Finally, they hung a quilt over the opening.
Secrecy was essential. In this pit, Aunt Rachel, her lined, oval face lit by a stolen candle and a torch, taught reading to her few courageous students. She’d learned the illegal skill years before at another plantation, where she worked in the house and kept a schoolbook hidden in her blouse. When white children came home from school, Rachel said, she’d asked questions about what they learned that day. Because she was so proud of every scrap of book learning she picked up, the white children taught her how to read and write. Whenever she found a chance, she passed it on.
Learning to read, Sarah knew, was a crime. She’d heard of masters threatening, “If I catch you learnin’ I’ll chop off your hands.” Though they didn’t usually follow through—for, as Papa said once grimly, a man with no hands couldn’t work—she’d heard that young Master Phillips over by Richmond cut off a finger when he caught a girl trying to “git learnin’“ from a Bible.
“Hell,” that white man said while he chopped, as people in the quarters told it, “you don’t need no learnin’. You’ll never be free. And you ain’t got sense enough to make a living if you were free.” No judge punished him, it was said.
But in spite of everything she heard about the danger, Sarah burned with a passion to decipher the Good Book herself. Was it as Preacher Thomas told them: that they’d get to heaven no matter what they did, and the sooner they got there the better? The masters were going to hell for sure. “Better yet,” Preacher Thomas said, “go on and run to freedom! That’s what ol’ Moses did!” And he’d recite a verse.
Or did it tell, as ol’ massa said, “Any of you see anybody stealing Mistress Armstrong’s chickens or eggs, go straight up to her and tell her who it is and all about it.” How could the Book say that when Mama, who loved the Lord, taught her never to tell white people anything? Aunt Sally and Aunt Suzy, who both cooked in the great fireplaces at the Big House, brought food back to the quarters at night. They’d reach under their aprons into the pockets of long gingham skirts and pull out big pieces of ham, or a handful of white-flour biscuits. Was that wrong?
Sarah vowed she’d learn to read, and she promised herself that the next night when she came back to school, she’d bring Albert and her friend Ruth, who was always ready for an adventure.
Finally, when the moon had moved across the sky, almost touching down, Sarah crept back to the quarters, worn but exhilarated. Aunt Rachel had given her a tiny Bible to keep, so long as she kept up with the work. Yasmine, with a drooping body and lines in her face, looked as if she’d sat awake half the night. “Daughter, don’t go out in the woods again at night!” she screamed, and brought her hand up. But Sarah ducked before her mother could hit her, and tumbled into bed, glancing up to see Esther and Albert poke their heads up out of their pallet, likely hoping to see the commotion. “That man won’t spare you, don’t think he will, just because—” Her mother stopped. She stood silent, her fury spent, then lay down beside her daughter and flung a heavy arm over her back.
“Because what?” Sarah asked.
“Means nothing to him,” Mama murmured. “Fact is … meanest of all.” She spit out the garbled words, putting her forefinger to her lips. Her voice was a whisper, harsh and bitter, before she fell into a deep sleep.
What did that mean? Sarah lay puzzling it, her tired mind whirling.
In a moment quiet snoring filled the room.
Too soon the driver blew his horn, signaling time to get out to the fields. But slipping out into the dark morning, Sarah knew even at nine that in reading she had found a precious light, one she would need to untangle the mysteries of the world around her. She hoped it wouldn’t cost her a hand, or a finger. When she thought that, she balled up her fists and put her hands behind her back.
CHAPTER 6
I’m sauntering home after school, kicking leaves, when I see Jessica and Claudette ahead, arm in arm. “Hey,” I yell, and run to catch up.
“We’re going for candy,” Jessica calls back. “I know you want some, double-triple chocolate to be exact.” When she laughs it’s comforting. Yes, she knows me inside and out.
After we walk into Fat Slices, next to the dry cleaners, Jessica and Claudette giggle and wave their arms—weaving, twirling, kind of dancing—but the aisles are so narrow you can’t get by without brushing against the toys, perfume, and stationery piled on the shelves. Dusty old stuff. Suddenly Claudette tumbles into a metal stand of birthday cards. They fly everywhere, scattering and knocking a shelf of colored pencils, pens, and markers onto the floor. In the commotion I see Claudette scoop something up and jam it into her back pocket. I blink my eyes and convince myself I must have imagined it. Claudette might be snooty, but I’ve never heard of her stealing. She and Jessica start laughing at the mess then, so I join in. We’re still kind of chuckling when Alvin, the old guy who’s the owner, heads toward us. He’s paunchy and balding, with a stringy gray ponytail that hangs down past his shoulders.
“Don’t move,” he growls, before he turns back to lock the door. No one else is in the store, except for the three of us. “I know your tricks,” he mutters, and I’m scared that he’s going to finger Claudette. Until he limps toward me. “You think you can have your friends divert me while you stuff everything you can get your cotton-pickin’ hands on into your clothes. Well, girlie, you’re not getting away with it today! Old Alvin’s not quite ready for the grave yet. The old eyes still work
pretty well.” He inches in and repeats, “Don’t move.” Up close I see his blue eyes, cold, glittery. Hard. Why is he picking on me when I didn’t take anything?
I don’t say a word, though.
“Let’s see what you’ve got in here.” He reaches toward me. Instinctively, I step back. “Not so fast,” he says, seizing my arm; he thrusts his meaty, disgusting hand around my back, then tells me to empty the pockets of my jeans. I have my small Afro pick in there. “Humph …” he snorts. “Let’s see what’s in this bag. Dump it.” He points to a shelf. One of my books bumps down the shelves until it hits the floor; my papers float.
“Hey!” I say, when I see my schoolwork scattering like that.
“Don’t you ‘hey’ me, missy. I’ve seen what you people have been doing in Oakland, using the fire as a cover.” His eyes bore into me. I don’t want to rat out Claudette and tell him she took something. I figure he’ll find out soon enough, once he searches them.
When I bend to pick up my papers and books, my hands slide on the paper; my arms splay out and I’m on my stomach, like an idiot. I scramble up, expecting to see him cornering Jessica and Claudette next. But he doesn’t. They’re standing, watching, real quiet, with a strange expression on their faces. Like they’re scared too. Claudette’s eyes are narrow, as if they’re saying, Don’t you dare tell on me.
Alvin doesn’t apologize. Not a bit. Instead, while he unlocks the door he turns his head back to me. “I’ll let you go this time, but this is a warning. No funny business in Alvin’s store, got it?”
“Uh-huh,” I tell him, keeping my head down while we file out. Once we’re on the curb Alvin calls out, staring at Jessica, “If you’re in on this gang, you better think twice or you’ll end up in juvie right along with your friend here.”
The three of us don’t say anything until we’re half a block from the store.
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