Selena’s laugh, as she crosses the street, rises to reach you. She is leaving, followed by her armada of young, proud women. She glances at your window. You bow your head almost imperceptibly. Your skin’s lunar glow announces your presence to the whole street. Selena waves to you.
You sleep on your stomach, arms open, legs too, as if you had just landed after a long fall, having been caught by a yellowed mattress in the middle of the night.
The world is already coming alive outside when you open your eyes.
The iguana stares at you.
It is inviting you to stay. But you are afraid of standing still. It’s when you’re moving that you feel your chains. They comfort you as you run away.
You don’t unpack, ready to leave at any moment.
In the months that follow, you will travel without incident from 122nd Street in Harlem to the studio of Jean-Paul Riopelle, who has made it in the big city. He has his shows, his friends, his habits. He invites you into his life. But it doesn’t appeal to you. You want to paint in silence, and he gives you the opportunity.
In his large Manhattan studio, on the concrete floor, he opens the doors to whoever wants to come in. Young students and seasoned painters can be found there, crouching and abandoned, but you aren’t interested in them.
You avoid the looks and flee the conversations. You spend hours wearing out your knees on the rough floor, your neck at a right angle, your body open over a canvas that will become your territory.
You empty and free yourself onto it; you vomit yourself whole and in colour until the early morning hours, when you often leave last, returning to your Black neighbourhood, cheating death every time.
Because Harlem has not yet eaten you alive. Every day you endure reactions to the haughty whiteness that you trail behind you on the sidewalk. People heckle and harass you, steal from you and spit in your face. White whore is in town.
You just don’t care. Something in you feeds on the rejection.
But one night when someone is following you too closely, you take refuge in a phone booth.
And you dial Marcel’s number. A woman answers. With her high voice, she asks who is calling.
‘It’s Suzanne.’
Silence. You imagine her floating over to Marcel. You, who had lead feet. She must be soft with him.
Marcel answers. He seems far away. But his furtive voice is the voice of too-raw emotions.
You just want to tell him you still exist. You are afraid to ask whether he has seen the children.
Mousse came to spend a day in the studio. She ate oysters with him.
‘On a tablecloth?’
That’s the question you ask. You want a clear image. Of a picnic between father and daughter. Of a single meal, an ephemeral connection to your fractured lives.
‘What about François?’
Marcel doesn’t know where your baby is. He was taken to somewhere in Abitibi. Where a family of undertakers witnessed his first steps.
You hang up the phone and trail your pain back to your lair, where Selena is waiting for you.
She is lying on your mattress, half naked. She is polishing off a bottle of rum. Sweat beads on her emaciated torso.
So you sink into her. She founders in you.
Pained and famished, you swallow each other. You taste her sweet skin, suck her large, rippled sex. She explores you savagely, scarifies your abandoned body.
And between two breaths, you let your pain show. Mid-caress you wail your emptiness.
Selena wraps herself around you and licks you. And talks about herself.
Her children. Her premature twins. Two little Black bodies latched on her breast, their breath growing weaker as one … Two little bodies too Black to be saved. The doctors who watch them slowly die because the incubator is Whites only, kept in the White wing of the hospital, where they don’t let people die.
The weight of her two children leaving a permanent imprint, there. She presses her palms into her stomach.
That’s it. That’s where you form one. Eviscerated.
You sleep in each other’s arms.
At Jean-Paul’s studio, Jackson Pollock is lord and master. Awestruck disciples mill around without ever approaching him. He bites.
You don’t care.
You hurl your self-destruction on the new canvas. You follow the anarchic metronome of your guts that can only come undone here.
One evening, you run out of black paint. But the white of the canvas seems to be vanishing, and you feel the distinct need to tie it down with thick black.
It’s four in the morning. The only people left are you and Jackson. He is at the opposite end of the studio, dozing in a haze of alcohol, huddled against a still damp painting.
You creep up to him, linger for a moment over his rough, resting face. He isn’t moving, and yet everything about him still seems to be fighting. His broad nose and his bare forehead give him the sad look of a boxer on the mat. You fall for a moment into the small cleft in his chin. You don’t know why, but he makes you want to cry. You make yourself small and snuggle up against him, lost in the remnants of childhood in his angry face.
You grab the dregs of the black paint lying at the foot of the sleeping giant. And you stride back across the room.
You finish your painting with Jackson’s paint.
It is seven in the morning when you leave the studio, leaving the damp canvas behind you. You won’t be back.
The painting, entitled Métronome, will be exhibited at the Montreal spring salon. It was picked up in the morning by Jackson, who thought it was tragic, and fabulous.
On February 22, 1960, Borduas dies in Paris. You see his face in black and white, reduced to a tiny picture in the Births and Deaths section of a New York paper. You aren’t sad. But a powerful wave of anger washes over you. You are mad at him. Abstractly, but deeply.
You are mad at him for having let you go. You are mad at him for not having chosen you, for not having kept you. You are mad at him for having let you believe that you were a special person, in special times.
There is something sour in the air. The smell of rising waters. The smell of contained anger. Harlem is finally erupting. Harlem is spilling out of its emaciated neighbourhood.
First you notice that there are more Black people in the street. They are walking with purpose, headed somewhere. You don’t remember seeing such a clear sense of direction here before. There is no trace of aimless wandering. It’s a clear path that stretches to the horizon.
You advance, alone, and you feel more scattered than them, whose ranks are swelling before your eyes. Then they disperse and come back together.
And, suddenly, something snaps. Nothing you can hear. Nothing you can see. An inaudible call, and yet so clear. The peaceful crowd reacts to it. Explodes.
Windows smashing. One, then ten, then hundreds.
Harlem has jumped its banks, a river of naphtha. The city goes up in flames.
New York is burning, ripped apart.
Cars that dare drive into the magma of rage are set on fire. Stores are emptied, pillaged. Children emerge from them, their arms filled with whatever they can find. Salami, toilet paper, socks.
Old women stumble, tangled up in their bags filled with frozen food. Victory cries mingle with political demands.
You hug the walls, you cross the storm, intimidated by the chaos that inspires you and draws you in.
They have taken over space. From the ground up, buildings are consumed; Black faces emerge from them, victorious. They conquer the city in turn.
You envy the people walking by, a child on their shoulders, their cries carrying farther thanks to the piece of eternity they have on their backs.
Mousse’s weight suddenly lands on you. Would you be able to carry her on your shoulders, her two little knees framing your jaw, her pretty hands running a path through your hair?
You stumble. At your feet is a panting cat. Around the cat is a constellation of pink kittens, still wet. They hav
e just been born. Passersby jostle you. If the cats stay there, they will die.
You take off your jacket and wrap them in it.
Their claws prick your arms. You advance through the storm, your living cargo pressed against your gut.
A man is being beaten; spread-eagled on the ground, under the weight of two policeman, he is struggling, enraged.
An eager child watches him, emptying a bag of stolen chips into his mouth.
You feel the warm weight of the cats against you.
You are looking for a path. You are looking for an exit. The cat and her kittens have become the focus of your life. What still matters.
An alley. You slip into it. You find a den to hide your survivors in.
You kneel down, gently spread out your jacket, which the mother escapes from, scared. You watch her go. She is headed toward the heaving street, her bottom bloody, her breasts full.
You put the frightened kittens on your bloody jacket; their hoarse meows make you anxious. With a trembling voice, you try to reassure them. Then a hard blow knocks you to the ground.
A heavy weight on your jaw, which cracks.
‘White whore, get out of here.’
You open your eyes, looking for the source, glance at the Black faces with fine, crazed features. Young women. A pastiche of Amazons in a fury, growling, bent over you, astonished wolves. You try to protect the kittens, curl up in a ball.
‘This is our war, nigger lover.’
The final salvo. Your bones crack and sink into the hot asphalt.
Total darkness. Which you tumble into.
Your door and window are shut. You don’t go out anymore. You don’t sleep anymore. The remains of a riot linger outside, growing fainter every day, put down with increasing violence by the police.
Night finally lets sleep overtake you, and you surrender to it for a few hours.
When you wake up, you see Selena in your kitchen, a bowl of cereal in hand. She holds it out to you, and you wolf it down. You haven’t eaten in days.
She doesn’t say anything, but she examines the bruises on your face, which are slowly fading.
‘You look great.’
She asks you to go out.
Her light spreads over you and almost burns your skin. She casts a spell on you.
In a small room, White people and Black people, mixing together and packed in. They are in their twenties and are hanging on the words of an older man, who stops speaking when you arrive. You are late. Faces turn toward you.
You already regret being there. You have a bitter sense of déjà vu. A master with his young disciples, thirsty for possibility.
A shared purpose emerges under the harsh neon lights.
You recognize this silent agitation, and you don’t want anything to do with it anymore. Selena feels it and tightens her warm hold on you.
The man greets you. He knows Selena by name and bids you a warm welcome.
Your head is spinning. You have the sordid impression of recognizing the gentle face of your attackers, scattered through the audience.
You hang on to Selena, who finds you a seat, where you land. She sits in front of you.
At the front, the man is continuing his speech. After landing, you don’t listen to him right away. You check out the room. You try to recognize parts of the vicious bodies who beat you senseless. But your eye comes to rest on Selena’s slender neck. And all of these Black bodies become hers.
At the front, Farmer – that’s his name – methodically goes through the itinerary for the upcoming trip.
You have never seen such a mix of colours. White people and Black people have come together, in a soup of protestors. The simple fact of raising questions together, under the same roof, is a minor revolution.
While paper and pencils are passed around the assembly, the Freedom Ride is summed up for you.
It takes you back to your childhood, at the back of the class, watching the attentive, still necks, that you find moving in their fragility.
And the hardened neck of Selena. Who grabs you and pulverizes you. Her clay neck, so straight. The refined neck of an injured woman.
At the front, he continues: two integrated buses. Filled with Blacks and Whites. Blacks and Whites together. Touching each other. Breathing each other in. Cutting across the States to the Deep South, armed with the explosive hubris of togetherness.
Someone holds out a blank sheet of paper to you.
‘No real risk. But better to do it,’ Selena whispers in your ear. ‘Just in case.’
Just in case. A will.
You are dumbstruck for a moment.
You have nothing to leave anyone. And no one to say goodbye to. Looking at the blank sheet, you take stock of your solitude. You come to terms with it and carry it like a flag. You have nothing, no one. You are free. You pass the empty sheet on.
Prospective stops: Washington, Richmond, Greensboro, Columbia, Atlanta. Then … Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama. Alabama: the Johannesburg of the States. Where the Ku Klux Klan reigns. No protest movement has ever gone that far. The goal is clear and decided: to inflame the South. To provoke a crisis.
You hurt everywhere. In your gutted, crazed stomach, in all the white fragments of your unloved skin, in the blood that pounds in your temples and in the blue marks that cover your face, your thighs, your back, and that scream, You don’t belong.
But in front of you, the black neck of a giant woman stretches before you, a hyena woman with her guts torn out, the sharp-edged neck that hisses its vengeance. The neck like an arrow that turns toward you, revealing to you the moving softness of her childlike features.
‘Come.’
You cling to her pride.
You are ready to plunge in wherever she asks.
‘Okay.’
You will travel the miles together. You will be the white half of your fuck you.
The bus leaves tomorrow. It will be a two-week trip.
Your reflection is superimposed on the passing road. In that in-between place where you breathe easiest. The desire to be part of something is gently reborn inside you.
You are sitting near the window. America is passing before your eyes. In the bus, they are singing a traditional gospel song.
I’ll ask my brother, come go with me.
I’m on my way, great God, I’m on my way.
If he won’t come, I’ll go alone.
I’m on my way, great God, I’m on my way.
I’ll ask my sister, come go with me.
I’m on my way, great God, I’m on my way.
If she won’t come, I’ll go anyhow.
I’m on my way, great God, I’m on my way.
I’m on my way to the freedom land.
I’m on my way, great God, I’m on my way.
A roadside diner. You go in, alternating Black White Black White. Hanging over the back section, there is a sign yellowed by grease splatters that reads Colored Only.
You all sit at the counter. Under the Whites Only sign. The young waitress freezes, plates in hand. She watches you take your seats, horrified. She glances at the cooks, who have stopped moving.
The other diners are also in suspense.
‘Hello, Miss. I’ll have a burger and fries, please. And a lemonade.’
The waitress snaps out of it, babbles a few words, then nervously jots down the order. Her eyes land on you. You hold back a smile.
‘Same thing. Same as my friend,’ you add, a bit theatrically.
The waitress jots that down and then takes the other orders, clutching her pencil, the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Behind her, one of the cooks grumbles that he doesn’t cook for ‘niggers.’
But gradually all the plates wind up on the counter. You relish your first victory in silence.
A jar of pickled beets sits in front of you. You pull it over and plunge your hand in.
No one here knows about your past life.
You put a sweet beet in your mouth. Force yourself to sw
allow it without batting an eye.
Selena slides a hand along your thigh, squeezes it lovingly, smiles at you.
Here, you are new.
You feel almost happy.
You take your seat on the bus. Your seat. If you weren’t there, it would be empty. You struggle with the idea. You are becoming part of a group.
Trees are moving beneath your white reflection in the window. You’re hot. Your damp thighs stick to the seat. A terrible feeling of déjà vu. A trip to nowhere in the heat of a day like any other. Mousse too close to you. Her pale little thigh brushing up against yours. You pulling back a few centimetres, foreshadowing the imminent rupture; you retreat from her little body, which is too soft, too much yours.
Your stomach hurts.
You don’t want to think. Soon you fall asleep on Selena’s shoulder.
They strike up a new gospel song, which lulls you until the next stop.
It’s sunny outside. The two buses are crossing through the invisible gateway to Alabama together. A faded but solidly planted official sign is all that awaits you: Welcome to Alabama. We dare defend our rights.
The atmosphere is light, and already there is a sense of minor victory in the air.
Then a car passes you. There are two ghosts aboard. You had only ever seen them in pictures. There they are, passing you and driving a few centimetres away from you.
Your throat gets dry. The piercing eyes of the Ku Klux Klan, under the spotless hoods, have looked at you.
The bus is forced to stop. The car is blocking it. Selena presses up against you. You look at the car, from which five hooded people emerge, with disconcerting grace.
You look around. Are you alone? A few steps from the road there is a small gas station, a minimart, a few cars. In front of you there are men. A few women and children too.
So you have not been abandoned. There is hope. You whisper to Selena that it will be okay. You have witnesses.
Suzanne Page 12