by Judy Juanita
“I tutor kids. How does that connect to medical school?”
He sits and says, “There’s a tremendous shortage of physicians in urban communities. We’re committed to changing that, and you are bright and committed.”
He shakes my hand and walks out. The resident beams.
“I still don’t understand why my name came up for this.”
“It came up three different ways. The chair of your psychology department gave us a list of possible candidates, and your name was on it.” I never had a decent conversation with him. Why would he have done that?
“Secondly, we know of your community ethic with both the Panther Party and your work on Potrero Hill. That’s huge for us.” Not as huge as it was for Tammy and Yvette.
“What’s the third?” They know too much about me. At this point he got excited. “I know that you are almost solely responsible for open admissions. The BSU chairman told me about your work in bringing that about.”
Chandro-Imi! I’m stupefied.
“There you have it—the future. Help us change the world.” He gives me a sheaf of application papers and I leave the building in a haze. I cross a footbridge and my legs give out. I see Bibo waiting for me and crawl into the car.
“What happened? You’re shook. Did you have a confrontation?”
“It was crazy, that’s all I can say. Crazy.” I give Bibo the blow-by-blow. He cracks up so hard he has to stop driving.
“This is exactly what Huey predicted. He said we’d know we achieved the revolution when black people had all the opportunities and psychoses of white people.”
“You better drive this car. Why is this funny? I don’t see cause for hysteria.”
“It’s funny because it’s surreal.” We get out of Palo Alto and back on 101. “This is a message from the future.”
“Oh, I was dreaming this whole thing? They couldn’t possibly be serious?”
“No, baby, they were serious. Are you? Do you want to be a doctor?”
“I was a candy striper in high school.”
He yells at me so loud it hurts my ears. “Do you want to be a doctor, fool?”
I yell back. “No, I don’t want to be a doctor. Dammit.”
He finds some R&B on the radio and lights up. I don’t want any but get a contact anyway. Back in the city, Bibo drops me at the pad but touches my shoulder to say, “We won’t see the results of the revolution. We’ll either be dead or in jail. Dig?”
I call the resident and connect him to the black premed students. I don’t want to be a doctor. But it was interesting to peer into the future.
57
It’s May Day, 1968. Students all over the world demonstrate by cutting classes April 26 to end the war in Vietnam. When I step again into Yvette and Tammy’s apartment, which smells of garlic sausages and fried potatoes, they’re washing down dinner with grape soda. They mostly stayed at Grannie’s next door even after Mrs. Moore came home from the hospital. Whenever I called, they weren’t at home but at Grannie’s. I look around for Mrs. Moore. I’ve got free tickets from the tutorial program to see the Harlem Globetrotters in the gymnasium at State. I want to be on time.
Tammy says her mom is back at her boyfriend’s apartment, been there since coming from the hospital. We find seats in the middle of the bleachers, canned music from “Sweet Georgia Brown” filling the room. The kids go nuts as the players cakewalk onto the floor. The kids, slurping Popsicles, love Curly, the bald-headed player—even when he stands mute and stares at them.
Tammy says she wants to move up higher. Yvette tells her to shut up.
Tammy begs. I say, “The bogeyman’s crawling around up there. You don’t want to go up higher.”
Tammy asks to go to the bathroom.
Yvette says, “You went already when we came in.” Tammy says, “Can’t help it.”
I say, “A whale mouse waits in there for little girls who drink grape soda. And he’ll bite your pee-pee if you go to the bathroom before halftime.”
Tammy asks, “What happens at halftime?”
I say, “He gets spooked when he hears all the toilets flush and hides.”
Yvette says, “Yeah, Tammy, he’ll bite if we go in now.”
The Globetrotters irk me; they’re a throwback to Stepin Fetchit. It’s painful to watch them, minstrels with basketballs. I buy cotton candy, Crackerjacks. I think of Bert Williams, who had to please the crowd that wanted nothing more, nothing less, than blackface, an object of ridicule. Yet his essential dignity shone through. I attempt to see the Globetrotters’ dignity, but it’s hard. The children’s laughter resounds.
Tammy says, “Yvette still has some Crackerjacks. Make her gimme some.”
Yvette says, “I didn’t ask for any of your cotton candy.”
I say, putting my ear to the box, “The Crackerjacks say, ‘If Tammy eats us, we’ll turn her into a big ant, big as this room.’”
She giggles, but she’s scared off. When we get ready to leave, Tammy won’t go in the stall in the ladies’ room by herself. I go in with her and use the toilet standing up so she can see the whale mouse isn’t there.
Tammy shrieks, “There he is.”
I turn around and look. She smiles.
Tammy says he had big orange eyes and a tail like a whip.
One last treat I buy from a vendor inside is a pack of black Jawbreakers, the strongest manifestation of blackness in the show. We suck them to the center, which is a hunk of chewing gum. They take a while to suck. I hate the texture. It feels like gravel rolling around my mouth. Our tongues turn black. We show each other. “My tongue feels like a driveway,” I say. The two of us make big bubbles. Yvette teases Tammy for not knowing how to make bubbles.
Back at the apartment, I wait for Mrs. Moore. She wasn’t there when we left. She isn’t there when we return. The girls begin getting ready for bed as if this is routine.
“Where is your mother?”
“Out,” Yvette says. “She does the same thing all the time.”
“She prolly went to a bar,” Tammy adds.
They want to snuggle on the sofa with me. We talk about the game, school, the foster home, and how they got used to it. I’m getting tired. Come on, Mrs. Moore, I’m not staying here until the bars close. Or your boyfriend falls asleep. I yawn.
“Don’t go to sleep, Geniece,” Tammy says.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
“I want to show you what I can do,” she says. She pulls a Jawbreaker out of her pajama pocket. I thought we sucked them all. She bounces it on her palm a couple of times, and before I see what she’s trying, throws it up. She positions her mouth to catch it, like a flamethrower. It goes in. I jump up. I hear it hit her pharynx. She makes a sound like she’s gargling it. I hold my hands out. I expect it to come back out like mouthwash. Yvette peers down Tammy’s wide-open mouth.
“It’s stuck,” she says. She looks up at me. I look at Tammy’s blackened tongue. It looks like a blacktop driveway, the Jawbreaker an oversized stone at the end. Gingerly I put my fingers in her mouth.
“She’s not going to bite you. She can’t move her mouth,” Yvette says. I take my fingers out.
“Your hand is smaller than mine, Yvette. Try to get it.”
“No, your fingers are longer.” She’s right, she’s always right. Damn. I stick my fingers into Tammy’s mouth. I hated cutting up frogs in lab. Yvette’s voice goes up with her anxiety. “Hurry up, Geniece, before she can’t breathe.”
“Go call the operator, Yvette.”
I hear her feet against the linoleum. I hear her dial. I edge my thumb and forefinger toward the ball. I hear each click of the dial as it returns. But the bridge between my thumb and pointer finger is too big for Tammy’s mouth. When I close the two together, the thumb doesn’t reach far down enough. Tammy keeps blinking but stays calm. Scared stiff, I hear
Yvette talking. The Jawbreaker turns a little. A sweet-smelling black viscous strand drips off the ball. It goes down her throat. Tammy begins to gag. Yvette comes back.
“They’re sending the fire department.”
Tammy’s eyes close. I have to do something before she chokes on her spit. I edge my forefinger and index finger toward the ball. If only I had talons. I get ahold of one side but not the other. Tammy gags again. The Jawbreaker spins downward and settles on her windpipe. Her body goes slack. We sit her down. Her eyes blink open. She looks at me, fully conscious, silently beseeching me to let her breathe again. I try again, but it is entrenched. A black thing stuck in her windpipe.
“Maybe if we push it back up. Squeeze it out?” Yvette suggests. The sound of the fire engine approaching steels us. Yvette squeezes Tammy but only funny sounds come out. I reach in again but can’t do anything for fear of pushing it down more. Tammy lifts her fingers to her throat as if pointing to the candy.
“We see it, Tammy. We can’t get at it,” Yvette says. Her voice cracks. “We just can’t get at it.”
Tammy convulses twice, her eyes reach to me, pleading, between waves, and she goes limp. Her eyes close. Then her lips form a horrible rounding over her teeth. Her mouth is still open but like a fish mouth, limp. The firemen knock on the door. Yvette, in tears, goes to the door, lets them in. They rush to the sofa, take over. As we explain, one holds her lifeless body over his knees, as if the Jawbreaker will come out. But it is lodged there. They take her pulse, go through motions, but I can tell by their faces it’s no use. One takes me by the shoulder. He explains it’s a freak accident. . . . We would have had to crush her throat to get it or break both jaws. . . . She would’ve died either way. The ambulance attendants come with the stretcher. When they place her body on it and I see that her top is buttoned crooked, I shudder. The attendants lay her hands at her sides; her head looks like it has wilted from its stem. Yvette holds on to me. The firemen ask if I’m the mother. When I tell them I’m not, they say they didn’t think so. I have no idea where she is. I tell them that. I want to touch Tammy’s head, straighten it out. It lolls to the side as if she is pretending to look silly. I touch her; I feel the pressed edges of her hair at her temple. I align her head with her body. I brush my lips against her warm face and stand up. Yvette touches her forehead. Death, as if it’s been sitting in her throat all day, relaxes the muscles and pushes the Jawbreaker out. It rolls off her chin and onto the floor with more liveliness than anyone in the room. It comes to rest underneath the stretcher. They begin to wheel Tammy out. Our eyes turn toward her. One of the front wheels crunches the Jawbreaker to pieces, black to black to black. The wheels flatten the pieces, rolling out the gumminess. I gather our sweaters and, with Yvette in her nightgown, walk out.
All is quiet, even though many people stand around waiting to see who will emerge on the stretcher. When they see Tammy, they gasp. Each drawn-in breath rips off the box around my heart; people begin wailing and sobbing her name as we get in the ambulance. Yvette holds on to me for dear life. I want the paramedics to explain how they handle this, fresh, young, inexplicable death. Instead, the ambulance rolls down the hill and I hold on, wanting this entire black, blacker, blackest night to be a parable of destruction I imparted to the girls. Only a parable.
Yvette turns to me and says, “Geniece, something moved around in your stomach, I felt it against my cheek.”
It hits me as hard as the surface of one of those Jawbreakers. I am still pregnant. I haven’t had time to get an abortion. The ambulance rolls on and Yvette puts her ear at different places on my abdomen. My throbbing heart feels as if someone has touched it and it might hemorrhage. I can’t take one more blow to this entity called my life.
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
Between finals I go to the funeral home to see Tammy. I recognize some of the girls’ neighbors, their social worker, and Grannie, who motions me to sit next to her.
“Why is the casket closed?” I whisper to Grannie.
She whispers back, “They Catholic, but Mrs. Moore don’t go to church. So they had it here. Cheaper. Don’t have to move the body back and forth.”
“How is Mrs. Moore holding up? Is she all right?”
“No, chile, she ailing bad. Back in the hospital. I don’t think she’ll be out soon.”
“And Yvette?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t hear?”
“I’ve called and the phone is disconnected.”
“Yvette sent to live with her great-aunt in Texas, on the white side of her family. Say they got a good home for her.”
“What a horrible shock to lose Tammy, her mother, and then to have to move to Texas.”
Grannie pats my knee. “Chile, that girl was pulling the whole family on her shoulders. It was too much. Being an orphan not the worst thing. Sometimes you get to start over, if you can only get some kindness shown you.”
Maybe Aunt Ola was right. Maybe I was fortunate Family had spread its wings over me until I left the nest, the orphan blackbird.
58
“Here’s the lowdown on the paper,” Li-an says. She and I are driving out to State. “They’re making Eldridge’s cell mate the editor.”
I nearly ram a Muni streetcar. “In my place?”
“Don’t get pushed out of shape,” she says, and touches my shoulder. “It’s just the way things are. They make promises in prison. . . . You can still contribute articles.”
“I never do articles, I edit.”
“I’m telling you what I heard, the scuttlebutt.”
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
I’ve rowed to the middle of the deep blue sea in a leaky boat, faced down Scylla and Charybdis, and now I’m being told to take a walk. Nobody’s indispensable.
She says, “By the way, Bibo’s back in the pen.”
“Back?”
“Don’t act surprised, Geniece. He got popped robbing a gas station in fucking Fresno. Packing.”
“Armed robbery? He’ll be expelled for being a jackanape.”
“Already happened. And, Geniece, don’t visit his nihilist ass. Leave that for his damn wife.”
I’m silent for a few blocks, then say: “I fucked my way into this whole crusade. I thought I would have to fuck my way out.”
“Somebody else did that for you,” Li-an says. “All you have to do is step aside.” It felt like a feather had brushed against me. It didn’t feel like a blow. It didn’t feel like I thought it would. Everything that I had been doing was behind the scenes. Way behind. I hadn’t expected to become helpful and caring. I had wanted to be admired and inspired. I wanted men to call me fine and pant after me. I wanted to be pumped up by one rally after another. I thought it was going to be fun and exciting for days on end. Yet here I was taking galleys to printers in the deep of night, delivering sausages, and scrambling eggs for children whose parents either couldn’t or didn’t know to say thank you, running out to Santa Rita county jail, where problem inmates were taught the skills that would help them survive outside of jail. My life was a race, not to the protests or press conferences or confrontations or the podiums where the speechifiers held sway, but to the printer and the churches where we served kids breakfast and the county jail.
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
Even though Li-an had told me not to visit Bibo, after three visits to Santa Rita to visit other brothers I didn’t even know, I visited him. I waited outside the facility for two hours while the long line of mostly women, some pushing strollers, showed their ID and had their purses searched. It took forty-five minutes before I walked past a labyrinth of zones. We were the prisoners here too. The guards led a group of six into a room as big as a hospital waiting room. Other guards stood at the far side as the detainees filed in. I was surprised that there were no barriers. It wasn’t like the
movies. Bibo spotted me before I spotted him. He looked different. He had shaved his mustache and trimmed his natural way down.
“Ah, my girl revolutionary. You came to see me. My own wife hasn’t been out here.” We hugged. I looked around to see if the guards were looking, but they weren’t. Other couples were kissing and hugging.
Bibo started talking real fast, too fast for me to understand him. “Slow down, I can’t understand you.”
“You don’t know bout the fire. We did it.”
“What fire? What’re you talking about?”
“The Revolutionary Night Lighting, White-frightening Fire Brigade. Remember that?”
I nodded. I had been working on the paper. “You mean when I talked it up with the SNCC guy with Stokely at our party?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. A bunch of us . . . we went out to the suburbs and did it.”
He kept on talking while the other people in the room got even busier with the face-to-face and body-to-body jamming. “We did it. We set the night on fire.”
“You guys made a fire. Where?”
“You don’t need to know where. That’s why I’m in here.”
“I thought you were in for a robbery in Fresno.”
“Do I look like I’m in jail in Fresno? Who told you that?”
“Never mind who told me. What are you in for?”
“Arson, attempted murder, resisting arrest, and carrying a loaded piece in my car. I’m gonna need a whole lot of lawyering.”
I buried my head in my hands. We had just printed a long article on why the party retained the services of Charles Garry, a Marxist attorney, instead of a black lawyer. Garry had won cases for radicals and trade unionists.
“Bibo, your stuff is lumpen proletariat shit.”
The sound of a man coming right there in the room jolted our conversation. I looked around and saw a woman wiping his cum from her face and hair. The guards were talking to each other like nothing had happened.