The Color of Water

by James McBride

  My brothers and sisters were my best friends, but when it came to food, they were my enemies. There were so many of us we were constantly hungry, scavenging for food in the empty refrigerator and cabinets. We would hide food from one another, squirreling away a precious grilled cheese or fried bologna sandwich, but the hiding places were known to all and foraged by all and the precious commodity was usually discovered and devoured before it got cold. Entire plots were hatched around swiping food, complete with double-crossing, backstabbing, intrigue, outright robbery, and gobbled evidence. Back in the projects in Red Hook, before we moved to Queens, Mommy would disappear in the morning and return later with huge cans of peanut butter which some benevolent agency had distributed from some basement area in the housing projects. We’d gather around the cans, open them, and spoon up the peanut butter like soup, giggling as our mouths stuck closed with the gooey stuff. When Mommy left for work, we dipped white bread in syrup for lunch, or ate brown sugar raw out of the box, which was a good hunger killer. We had a toaster that shocked you every time you touched it; we called our toast shocktoast and we got shocked so much our hair stood on end like Buckwheat’s. Ma often lamented the fact that she could not afford to buy us fruit, sometimes for weeks at a time, but we didn’t mind. We spent every penny we had on junk food. “If you eat that stuff your teeth will drop out,” Mommy warned. We ignored her. “If you chew gum and swallow it, your behind will close up,” she said. We listened and never swallowed gum. We learned to eat standing up, sitting down, lying down, and half asleep, because there were never enough places at the table for everyone to sit, and there was always a mad scramble for Ma’s purse when she showed up at two a.m. from work. The cafeteria at the Chase Manhattan Bank where she worked served dinner to the employees for free, so she would load up with bologna sandwiches, cheese, cakes, whatever she could pillage, and bring it home for the hordes to devour. If you were the first to grab the purse when she got home, you ate. If you missed it, well, sleep tight.

  The food she brought from work was delicious, particularly when compared to the food she cooked. Mommy could not cook to save her life. Her grits tasted like sand and butter, with big lumps inside that caught in your teeth and stuck in your gums. Her pancakes had white goo and egg shells in them. Her stew would send my little brother Henry upstairs in disgust. “Prison stew,” he’d sniff, coming back a few minutes later to help himself before the masses devoured it. She had little time to cook anyway. When she got home from work she was exhausted. We’d come downstairs in the morning to find her still dressed and fast asleep at the kitchen table, her head resting on the pages of someone’s homework, a cold cup of coffee next to her sleeping head. Her housework rivaled her cooking. “I’m the worst housekeeper I’ve ever seen,” she declared, and that was no lie. Our house looked like a hurricane hit it. Books, papers, shoes, football helmets, baseball bats, dolls, trucks, bicycles, musical instruments, lay everywhere and were used by everyone. All the boys slept in one room, girls slept in another, but the labels “boys’ room” and “girls’ room” meant nothing. We snuck into each other’s rooms by night to trade secrets, argue, commiserate, spy, and continue chess games and monopoly games that had begun days earlier. Four of us played the same clarinet, handing it off to one another in the hallway at school like halfbacks on a football field. Same with coats, hats, sneakers, clean socks, and gym uniforms. One washcloth was used by all. A solitary toothbrush would cover five sets of teeth and gums. We all swore it belonged to us personally. Our furniture consisted of two beautiful rocking chairs that Ma bought from Macy’s because on television she saw her hero President John F. Kennedy use one to rock his kids, a living room couch, and an assortment of chairs, tables, dressers, and beds. The old black-and-white TV set worked—sometimes. It wasn’t high on Mommy’s list of things to fix. She called it “the boob tube” and rarely allowed us to watch it. We didn’t need to.

  Our house was a combination three-ring circus and zoo, complete with ongoing action, daring feats, music, and animals. Over the years we assembled a stable of pets that resembled a veritable petting zoo: gerbils, mice, dogs, cats, rabbits, fish, birds, turtles, and frogs that would alternatively lick and bite us and spread mysterious diseases that zipped through our house as if it were a Third World country, prompting health clinic visits chaperoned by Ma where bored doctors slammed needles into our butts like we were on a GMC assembly line. Ma once brought home a chick for Easter, and it grew and grew until she came home from work one night, opened the door, and saw eight kids chasing a rooster around the living room. “Get him out!” she screamed. He was removed and eventually replaced by a fierce German shepherd named Abe who bit us all and would occasionally leave a mound of dog poop in a corner somewhere, then growl and dare us to beat him for it. The mound would sit, untouched. After a day the odor would dissipate and we’d avoid it further until it dried up and hardened like a rock, whereupon some brave soul would kick the offending artifact under the radiator, where it would fester and further fossilize into dust or extinction or discovery.

  We never consulted Mommy about these problems. Her time merited only full-blown problems like, “Is the kitchen floor still under two feet of water since y’all flooded it?” and school, which was a top priority. Excuses for not doing homework were not accepted and would draw a beating. Cursing was not allowed. We weren’t even allowed to say the word “lie,” we had to use “story.” “Do your homework and don’t tell stories and you might become like your brother Dennis,” Mommy admonished. “Just look at how good he’s doing. Educate your mind like your brother Dennis.”

  Dennis.

  You could hear the sighs all through the house when she mentioned that name. They sounded like the whistle on the Long Island Rail Road that passed by on the tracks a few blocks from our house.

  Dennis was the eldest sibling and the family pioneer. He was an artist who drew pictures that told incredible stories about the places he’d been and the people he’d met. He had money in his pocket, actual dollars and cents, with change to spare. He was a giant among us, casting a huge, oblong shadow that hung over us children like the Lincoln Memorial, which he had visited—twice. His great achievements, spoken of in his absence because he came home only for holidays, were glowingly recounted, dissected, rumored, enhanced, extolled. The heights he had attained, heights we puny mortals could only dream of achieving, were trumpeted and crowed about by Mommy in every corner of the house. Dennis had finished college. Dennis had gone to Europe. And now, for his crowning achievement, Dennis, oh glorious Dennis, oh mighty Dennis—Dennis! Dennis!—sought the highest, most wonderful, most incredible achievement any human being, any son, could hope to achieve.

  Dennis was going to be a doctor.

  Well, there was no greater honor. I mean, forget it. Doctor, teacher, take your pick. Had Mommy known what Dennis was really doing in school, other than being a straight-A student, she might have had a different opinion of him. Dennis was one of the most active civil rights students the University of Pennsylvania Medical School had ever seen. He marched on Washington. He organized a hospital workers’ union. He sat in at lunch counters in the South. He got sprayed with Mace and fire-hosed by civil authorities. Dennis was at war with the system, but as long as he kept his war out of the house and stayed in medical school, that was okay with Mommy. But my sister Helen didn’t do that. Helen was at war with the white man and took it home and laid it at Mommy’s feet.

  Helen was the second-eldest of my sisters, all of whom were gentle, naive, talkative, and curious, which is why Mommy kept them off the street and away from men at all times. They were all pretty, ranging from Helen’s deep brown skin to Kathy’s very light, almost white skin, and all had long arms, freckles, and dark curly hair. Every boy in my neighborhood knew my five sisters by name and face. I would walk down the street and some big dude I’d never seen before would say, “Yo. How’s Kathy?” “Okay,” I’d shrug. I got my nose nearly broken over Kathy a few times. There’s noth
ing worse than having to fight for your crummy, ugly sister whom half the neighborhood is in love with. It was a real problem.

  Helen was the most artistic of my sisters. She was slim, with black hair that she wore in a bun, jeans, and a denim jacket with peace insignias, “Stop the War” buttons, and red, black, and green liberation patches sewn on. Boys of all types—black, white, Asian, Latino—followed her everywhere. She was a student at Music and Art High School, and played piano for our church choir until, one Sunday morning, my youngest sister Judy, who was nine and also played piano, was suddenly pressed into service. It seemed that Helen had retired from playing for church that morning. When Mommy asked why, Helen said, “I don’t want to,” and that was the end of it. Such terse responses to Mommy were unheard of. We watched in awe as Helen stood her ground, repeated her resolve not to play for the church choir, and survived a beating with the belt by Mommy without a whimper. She shrugged when Mommy was done.

  Not too long afterwards, the dean of Music and Art called our house and asked Ma why Helen was quitting school. “You must be joking,” Ma said. “All my kids are A students.”

  “Not this one,” the dean said. “She quit two weeks ago. It’s a shame,” he said.

  Mommy beat Helen harder this time, then talked to her for hours. Helen cried after the beating, promised to change after the talks, then shrugged and kept on missing school. Mommy enrolled her in two more schools, but she quit both, declaring, “The white man’s education is not for me.” She became a complete hippie before our astonished eyes, dressing in beads and berets and wearing sweet-smelling oils that, she said, gave you certain powers. A folk guitar player named Eric Bibb followed her everywhere. We were awed. Mommy called in reinforcements—ministers, friends, my stepfather—but Helen ignored them. She sat up late at night with my elder siblings and talked about the revolution against the white man while we Little Kids slept upstairs. My little sister Kathy and I would creep to the top of the stairs in our underwear, listening as the Big Kids had animated conversations about “changing the system” and “the revolution,” extolling the virtues of Martin Luther King over Malcolm X and vice versa, and playing records by the Last Poets. Helen, once a peripheral figure in these discussions, became the epicenter, instigator, and protagonist. “You have to fight the system!” she’d yell. “Fight the Man!”

  This would set off a barrage of laughing commentary from my elder siblings, gurus of life and wisdom who had seen and done it all.

  “Yes, but is the Man you? Or are you the Man?”

  “Do you mean the Man, or the Wo-man!”

  “Who is the Man…?”

  “But are you the Main Man…?”

  (Sung) “When a maaan loves a wooomannnn!!”

  These goof sessions, which almost always ended as earnest talks on civil rights, often went on until Mommy got home from work.

  One night as Kathy and I lay upstairs pretending to be asleep—we sometimes snuck over to each other’s rooms—we heard a tremendous boom! followed by cursing and swearing. We sat straight up. Downstairs, Helen and Rosetta were having a fight.

  It was not often that my siblings had true fights, but when they did, they were monster, one-on-one fisticuff affairs, and Helen had picked the Mount Everest of fighters. Rosetta was the eldest sister and the smartest of all my siblings. From her perch atop her bed—a bed, incidentally, that she shared with no one—Rosetta sat regally on a throne of bed pillows, legs crossed Buddha fashion, while drinking ice water, listening to her favorite public radio station, WBAI, and giving commands all day. She would order us to serve her ice water in tall glasses and send us to the candy store for Devil Dogs and Montclair cigarettes, which we fetched with great dispatch and offered to her with proper subservience. She slept with the radio blasting and the lights on. While she napped, we would creep past her bed, afraid to arouse the slumbering master. She defied anyone to challenge her. My older brothers wore their hats sideways and talked in low voices about Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, but not even the boldest of them, not even eldest brother Dennis, to whom we all bowed low, fooled with Rosetta. Rosetta was the resident queen of the house.

  I heard the sound of a coat tearing. Rrrrrrrip!

  “You bitch!” Helen screamed. I heard fists landing on flesh. Rosetta roared.

  Kathy started to cry. “Be quiet,” I said. Cursing in my house was not allowed. Cursing was out of bounds. Cursing meant things were out of control.

  More commotion. I heard the boys downstairs saying, “All right, break it up. Hold her, Billy, wait—” Boom! Laughter by the boys, an agonized cry by Rosetta. “Oh, you’re gonna get it now!” Whomp! Helen’s scream. Another tussle. The sound of furniture flying, David shouting, a lamp breaking. More laughter and cursing…A vehement argument ensued, and I heard Helen declare she was leaving. Suddenly the boys got serious.

  “Wait a minute!”

  “Hold up! Hold up!”

  “This is crazy!”

  “Don’t touch me,” Helen said. “Don’t nobody touch me. Y’all make me sick. Every single one of you.”

  Titters and giggles.

  “I’m sick of this house!”

  Silence. A sob. Then heavy weeping.

  “Aw…Helen …”

  I heard the sound of the door opening, then slamming shut.

  Later that night, when Mommy came from work and saw all the lights on and all of us, even the Little Kids, downstairs waiting for her in the kitchen, she knew there was trouble. “Where’s Helen?” she asked, panic climbing into her voice.

  “Gone,” she was told.

  “Why did you let her go?” she asked.

  “She wouldn’t stay, Ma. We tried to make her stay but she wouldn’t.”

  “Oh Lord …” Mommy moaned, slapping her forehead, then balling her fists. “Why didn’t you make her stay? Why?” Silence, as we blinked and gulped, guilt settling on us like rain clouds.

  Helen didn’t come home that night. Nor the next day. Nor the next. She was fifteen years old. Mommy called the police the second day. They came and took a report. They searched the neighborhood, but couldn’t find her. Mommy called all Helen’s friends. Still no Helen. The following week my sister Jack called Mommy from her apartment in Harlem. Helen loved Jack. Everybody loved Jack. You could talk to Jack about anything. “Ruth, she’s with me,” Jack said. “She doesn’t want to see you, but don’t worry. Let it blow over. Don’t scare her off.” But Mommy couldn’t wait. She hung up the phone and summoned my brother Richie to the kitchen, gave him carfare and explicit instructions: Tell Helen all is forgiven. Just come home.

  Richie dutifully donned his leather coat, popped his Lester Young porkpie hat on his head, and headed for Harlem while Mommy paced the floor, on edge. He returned late that night with his hat pushed far back on his forehead. “She’s not comin’ home, Ma,” he said.

  Shortly after, Helen left Jack’s altogether and disappeared.

  Mommy was beside herself. She spent entire nights pacing up and down the floor. She called on preachers and friends from church, called on my stepfather, who made several rare, during-the-week appearances. More solutions were discussed. Prayers were said. Regrets taken. Apologies made. But there was no Helen. “She’ll come back,” Daddy said. “It’ll work out.” He had no idea what to do about Helen. They spoke a completely different language. He was an old-timer who called school “schoolin”’ and called me “boy.” He had run off from Jim Crow in the South and felt that education, any education, was a privilege. Helen was far beyond that.

  Weeks passed, months, and Helen didn’t return.

  Finally Jack called. “I found her. She’s living with some crazy woman,” Jack said. She told Ma she didn’t know much about the lady other than that she wore a lot of scarves and used incense. Mommy got the address and went to the place herself.

  It was a dilapidated housing project near St. Nicholas Avenue, with junkies and winos standing out front. Mommy stepped past them and walked through a haze of reefer
smoke and took the elevator to the eighth floor. She went to the apartment door and listened. There was music playing on a stereo inside, and the voice of someone on the phone. She knocked on the door. The stereo lowered. “Who is it?” someone asked. It sounded like Helen.

  “I’m here to see Helen,” Mommy said.

  Silence.

  “I know you’re there, Helen,” Mommy said.

  Silence.

  “Helen. I want you to come home. Whatever’s wrong we’ll fix. Just forget all of it and come on home.” From down the hallway, a doorway opened and a black woman watched in silence as the dark-haired, bowlegged white lady talked to the closed door.

  “Please come home, Helen.”

  The door had a peephole in it. The peephole slid back. A large black eye peered out.

  “Please come home, Helen. This is no place for you to be. Just come on home.”

  The peephole closed.

  9.

  Shul

  In Suffolk, they had a white folks’ school and a black folks’ school and a Jewish school. You called the Jewish school “shul” in Yiddish. It wasn’t really a school. It was just the synagogue where Tateh taught Hebrew lessons and gave Bible study to children and taught cantoring to boys and that sort of thing. He’d practice his singing around the house sometimes, singing “do re mi fa sol,” and all that. You know, they’d let him circumcise children too. That was part of his job as a rabbi, to go to people’s houses and circumcise their kids. He had special knives for it. He’d also kill cows in the kosher faith for the Jews in town to eat, and we often kept a cow in the yard behind the store. We’d lead the cow to the Jaffe slaughterhouse down the road and the butchers would tie it from the ceiling by its hind legs. Tateh would open his knife case—he had a special velvet case with knives just for this purpose—and carefully select one of those big, shiny knives. Then he’d utter a quick prayer and plunge the knife blade into the cow’s neck. The cow would shudder violently and blood would spurt down his neck and through his nose into a drain in the cement floor and he’d die. The butchers would then set upon him and slit his stomach and yank out his intestines, heart, liver, and innards.