by Judy Juanita
I waited for Renee to do something; her eyes darted back and forth, more nervous than ever. I had forgotten to be nervous. She started blinking real fast, which I thought was my signal to go, so I grabbed up my bag, left out the automatic door into the bright afternoon, thinking of who might feast with me, when I felt a light touch on my shoulder like a baby’s finger, and then a little voice like a boy’s saying, “Excuse me, miss,” and I turned still walking toward SF.
The light touch clamped down and the voice turned from boy to man: “Did you forget something?” I looked at my groceries, my power from the people, and said in all honesty, “No, I didn’t forget anything.” He placed me under arrest for shoplifting chicken, shrimp, and sourdough bread, not for a sit-in, bombing, or protest demonstration, not for the movement, the cause, the vote. Handcuffed and led to a police car, I talked amiably with a young white policeman who looked at my student body card and said, “What’s a nice girl like you doing shoplifting?” I shrugged my shoulders, because he didn’t know the half of it. I was booked, photographed, given my phone call, which I debated making to Xavi but decided against because I was ashamed, so I called Bibo at the flat instead and then sat in an empty modern well-lit cell with no one but myself (“We’re not so busy midweek”) for an hour and forty-five minutes, until they told me someone had posted my seventeen-dollar bail. I got out of jail and saw Bibo looking scared for me. His face registered my submerged anguish. I was stunned to have been touched on the shoulder by what felt like providence. We got in the car in the Safeway parking lot. I said, “This car feels like my skin; I never want to get out of it.” He started stripping gears like he had been arrested. I felt my insides being shoved back and forth, so I drove back not actually trembling until I got home, shut my bedroom door, and saw my face in the mirror, black ink stains under my eyes.
Getting arrested, booked, and fingerprinted wasn’t a good feeling. It wasn’t even for the revolution. I didn’t write it in my diary. What was a nice girl like me doing shoplifting? Bull Connor and that young white policeman were two entirely different specimens of cop. I was tutoring black kids from the projects one minute and robbing white businessmen the next, doing good work for the revolution one day and crazy nigger shit the next, stuff I couldn’t even tell my roomies.
Sitting in that jail cell all by my lonesome brought it home. I wasn’t even brave enough to get arrested in a march. I wasn’t Tracy Simms or a woman in Birmingham protesting segregated buses. I wasn’t in deep dukey because I was fighting for the people. I was just a female version of the jackanapes that Eldridge talked about. I got caught stealing onions, garlic, bell pepper, and root vegetables from the virgin soil of the revolution. A common thief. My father might have been hardheaded. But he wasn’t a thief. My family might have annoyed me. But they weren’t thieves. They were workaday people, not a thief in the bunch.
It had taken a long time to get disgusted with myself.
51
But life went on, self-disgust sitting on my boxed heart where things were getting crowded. The buzz at Fell Street, up- and downstairs, and in the world, was about the Tet offensive. It looked like a defeat for the Communists, because they had forty-five thousand casualties. But LBJ lost support in part because of one photo of a general assassinating a soldier in broad daylight. Murder belongs to night, where its cruelty can’t be witnessed, where conscience will not prod one to do something, report it, tell somebody, photograph it. That photo said: We’re not invincible. We make mistakes. We are an evil country when we act immorally or encourage shameful acts or ally with wicked, corrupt leaders. We are not impervious to evil.
I hadn’t talked with anybody about the bust, about what I was going to do. It seemed insignificant in the face of everything else going on. And stupid. I kept getting the court date postponed. First till March, then April.
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
I found when I did tutorial now the faces of the children buoyed me. I brought Tammy and Yvette home with me when I knew the house would be empty. I could raise them, if only for a night. A neighbor they called Grannie had taken them in for the time being. Taking them felt like I was giving them a home, if only for a minute.
Yvette sat on the edge of my bed waiting for Tammy to finish showering.
“I smell funk from you, and it’s coming from here, here, and here.” I pointed to my armpits and between my legs. “Yvette, your turn to get clean and then to bed.”
I had planned to sit and write about all the turmoil inside me as the girls washed. But I could hear them splashing water and suds all over the place. I had to referee.
“Gimme the soap, Yvette.” Tammy grabbed Yvette by the head and pulled her under the showerhead. Yvette yanked away.
“Don’t get my hair wet, Tammy.” She slapped Tammy.
I took the towel and dried Yvette’s head. “Do you guys do this at home?”
Yvette grabbed Tammy and held her under the water until she screamed.
“I hate you, I hate you.” Tammy turned to me. “She wants my hair to be nappy. When her hair dries she can brush it. My hair gets wet, I’m gonna be ugly.”
“Yvette, why did you do that to Tammy?”
“She ugly anyway.”
“I ain’t ugly. And you ain’t pretty. Bastard. You ain’t got no daddy.”
“Tammy.” My voice was stern.
“I’d rather be a bastard than a nigger with squinty eyes.”
“Cut it out, calm down.” I began undressing. “Come on, I need to wash myself before all the hot water’s gone.” They got out; I got in and soaped up.
“What happens to your hair when it gets wet?” Tammy asked, her hands around my waist.
“Tammy, let me go, girl. You want my dirt to wash on you?” She dried herself.
“Are you gonna wash your hair?” Tammy asked. “It’s gonna get ugly.”
After our showers, we sat on the bed as I braided my hair. Yvette tried on my earrings and necklaces.
“Geniece,” she said. “What happened to my mother?”
“Your mother’s going to be in the hospital for a long, long time.”
“What’s gonna happen?” Tammy wrapped kente cloth around her pajamas. “I don’t want to stay at Grannie’s. I sleep with her and she snores. Can’t you take us?”
“Don’t be stupid, Tammy. She not old enough.” I took a delicately carved Nigerian comb and wound Yvette’s long, straight hair into a roll.
“I’m old enough. But I can’t take care of you. Grannie’s is only for a while.”
The nature of the promise and the promise of nature, those bonds by which children are born and nurtured—to be somebody, to function independently, to pursue ideas or goals or even people—birthright. Maybe I lost birthright when my father left, but I retrieved it. Maybe it hardened me to struggle for it. “God bless the child who’s got his own.” I had to fight for everything. I didn’t give a damn if everybody till kingdom come said I needed to stop going for it and fuck lumpen brothers instead. I was fighting to get my degree. My tutorial babies had birthright too.
“Then we have to go to juvenile home. Why can’t we do it? Momma can stay home and a nurse can come take care of her. I can do the cooking and cleaning and take care of Tammy.”
“Honey, welfare won’t pay for that.”
“But maybe you could look after Momma during the day,” Yvette said, talking fast and gesturing, “and then as soon as we get home from school, you can take night classes and me and Tammy can do the rest.”
“Sweetie, your mom is too sick to stay at home. She has to stay in the hospital.”
“What’s gonna happen to us?” Tammy said, alarmed.
“I know what.” Yvette jumped up and the comb fell to the floor. “Do you want to hear it, Tammy?” Her voice trembled and she knelt in front of her, avoiding looking at me. “Bibo and Geniece could get ma
rried and adopt us. Then everybody would be family.”
I picked up the comb and rearranged Yvette’s hair without it, setting the comb in Tammy’s hand.
“That won’t work either.”
“Then what’s going to happen to us?” Yvette’s voice went flat, and she fell on the bed. “Nobody wants us.”
I lay on the bed between the girls. “I talked to the lady there, Mrs. Williamson. The juvenile home won’t be that bad. She said they definitely wouldn’t separate you.”
“From each other?” Tammy asked, running her finger on my shoulder.
“It will be bad. The girls at school told me about dykes.” Yvette sat up. “She said they put their fingers up your booty until it hurts while somebody holds you down. You have to do what they say. I’ll run away before I go there.”
“Who’s gonna press my hair there?” Tammy got more upset.
“Listen, I know the girls there press their own hair. So somebody must have a hot comb. If somebody tries to do something to you, and I don’t think anybody will if you don’t hassle anyone, then do this.”
I was hearing Goosey. “Hope that can be seen is not hope.” I went to the bathroom and came back with Mercurochrome. “Carry this with you, in your case with your Vaseline and bobby pins. Now if it gets to be late, and you think they’re going to hurt you, then smear this all over your vagina. It’ll scare them off.”
“What’s a bagina?” Tammy asked Yvette.
Yvette shrugged. “It’s vagina, with a v. It’s the place where you pee-pee. Dang girl, shut up.”
“Yvette,” I asked, “how many holes do you have in your body?”
“You mean all of them?”
“Count ’em, go on.” She touched ears, nose, mouth, eyes.
“Seven.”
“Wrong.”
“Two for my nose. Eight.”
“Wrong.” I pointed toward her crotch.
“Your pee-pee and your poo-poo, what else, dang?”
“Don’t get evil with me. Just get that mirror and squat over here by the light.”
She squatted.
“Now, put the mirror between your legs.”
Yvette held it between her thighs. She hissed, rolled her eyes, and frowned.
“It’s nothing to be upset about. We are female and we have to know what’s down there. You haven’t started your period yet, have you?”
“Nope. Hope I never do. It’s silly. How come women bleed every month?”
“Yeah, Geniece, how come?” Tammy looked in the mirror and Yvette slanted it so Tammy couldn’t see.
“I can tell you how and show you where. The why is that’s how women have babies.”
Yvette started to get comfortable and sat.
“Little lady, I ain’t finished. Get up.” I took the mirror and in one move, bent and spread the lips of my vulva. “Look! Both of you.”
They peered into the mirror and drew back.
“Ick, it’s funny looking,” Tammy said.
“It wasn’t put there for looks.”
“Why do you have that funny thing?”
“Listen, you have it too.”
“Oh, no, I don’t. Not that,” she said.
“Okay, just wait a minute. Now look at this.” I squatted deeper. “Wait a minute, this is crazy.”
I put the mirror on the dresser and got on the bed, drawing my knees to the sides of my chest.
“Okay, this is the real thing. You don’t have to look in a mirror to see it. Now when I point and say the word, repeat after me.” I splayed my hand over my pubic area.
“My genitals . . . Say it.”
“My genitals.”
I touched my pubic hair.
“Pubic hair.”
“I don’t have any of that, so I don’t have to say it,” Tammy said.
“All right, be funny, ladies.” I spread the lips surrounding my vagina. “The lips or labia. I think there’s four.”
“You think? You don’t know, Dr. Geniece?” Yvette said, eyes glued to my body.
“Say the lips or the labia.”
“Say the lips or the labia.”
As I parted the lips, I wiggled my clitoris. “This is the clitoris.”
“Clitoris.”
“Clitoris.”
“What is that for?”
“All of it works together.”
“For what?”
“For goodness sake, okay! Let’s move along. What’re the parts called again?”
Yvette named each one. Tammy stumbled over all of them, calling the clitoris the clickit.
“Look.” I contracted my vagina in and out. “Do you see that?”
They stared.
“Make that again,” Yvette said.
I contracted again. “That’s the vagina.”
“How in the hell does a baby get out of that keyhole?” Yvette asked.
“It expands.” I sat up. “It’s called an act of God. Sometimes, the doctor has to cut it a little.”
“I ain’t having babies. Ever.” Yvette walked to the dresser to comb her hair. “Ain’t letting nobody touch me down there either. Ever.”
“You’ll change your mind.”
“No, I won’t. Babies are for people who don’t want to have fun.” Yvette turned around. “I’m right. Babies make people cry.”
“Babies bring happiness. But they have to be fed and clothed.” I lay back. “We’re not finished yet.”
“Ooh, no more,” Yvette said, but kept looking at my crotch.
“This will only take a minute.” I drew my legs up. “This is the urethra, the last opening, the one you forgot to count.”
“Where your urine comes out?” Yvette said.
“Yeah, I can hardly feel it myself. Can you see it?” I fingered it.
“It’s tiny,” Tammy said. “I didn’t know there was a hole for my pee-pee.”
“Yur-reeth-ra. Say it.”
“Yur-reeth-ra!!” They said it.
“All right, all right. Now here is my anus.” I parted my buttocks.
“That’s your poo-poo hole, and it’s wrinkled, Geniece.” Tammy frowned.
“Tammy, you’re too smart to call it that. It’s anus. A-N-U-S. Everybody, male and female, has one.” I closed my legs.
We got into bed, where we became a soft purring animal with six legs and six arms.
* * *
I cared about these two little creatures more than I cared about the cause. They were my cause. Through them, I was becoming a caring person.
52
Everything changes in an instant.
* * *
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis on April 4, ten days before Easter. Riots break out across the nation in over 120 cities, including Chicago, D.C., and Baltimore, but not Oakland. Bibo and I are in the car the evening after, listening to KPFA-FM’s reporting on the riots. The station plays Stokely talking about King:
White America made its biggest mistake when she killed Dr. King last night. When she killed Dr. King last night, she killed all reasonable hope. When she killed Dr. King last night, she killed the one man of our race, in this country, in the older generation who’s a militant and a revolutionary, and the masses of black people would still listen to.
Silent tears are flying down Bibo’s cheeks. They make me full-out cry. All in the space of twenty-four hours, the rhetoric, the buzz, the unbelievable back-and-forth—Burn Oakland down! Huey says riots are no longer revolutionary actions. Fuck that shit! Burn baby burn—gets to me. Stokely’s voice is calm and sad:
When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us. There will be no crying, there will be no funerals. The rebellions that have been occurring around the cities of this country are just light stuff for what is about to happen.
We have to retaliate for the deaths of our leaders. The execution of those deaths will not be in the courtrooms, they’re going to be in the streets of the United States of America. When white America killed Dr. King last night, she made it a whole lot easier for a whole lot of black people today. There no longer needs to be intellectual discussions. Black people know that they have to get guns.
Bibo says, “King became a Panther the instant the bullet took him out. That was a bullet aimed at the people.”
“It’s a crying shame that he had to give his life for us to respect him. He wasn’t Martin Luther Queen. Remember when you said that?”
“I underestimated him. Feel better?”
“If one more city goes up in flames . . .” I can’t finish thoughts, let alone sentences.
We stop at my place to get something to eat. The front window is broken. I open the unlocked door. Li-an and Chairman Bob, and Alex and Elsa, two middle-aged white leftists who support the party, are sitting in the messy front room, amid a pile of my stinky laundry. I turn to Li-an and start sputtering, embarrassed that my shit is on display.
“What the fuck happened?” My blood is beginning to boil.
“They had to break in. Everybody was gone and Bobby’s on the run,” she says. Bobby, looking strange minus his beard or thick natural, is on the phone talking a mile a minute. I start picking up underwear. Bobby gets off the phone.
“The pigs in Oakland have been planning for weeks to take us out all at once,” he says with finality and calm. “We gotta split. It’s not safe to stay here.”
There’s no time to change clothes, grab food, or finish picking up. We leave the city in Alex’s car, the six of us crammed together. The streets in Oakland are deserted and eerie, as if the last days are upon us and citizens are preparing quietly for disaster. It’s quiet inside the car too, except Bobby says when we get to West Oakland, we have to split up. Bobby, Li-an, Bibo, and I take to the back streets. Alex and Elsa, who must be in their late forties, leave in their car. We hop over fences, scurry down side streets, and dart through backyards. The chill from the San Francisco Bay sends cold into my bones even though we keep moving.