A Summer of Kings

by Han Nolan

  I signaled for Beatrice to start the music, and we waited eight counts while Sophia climbed into Mother's lap and got settled, and then we were off, kicking and tapping and swinging and shooping, and it was so much fun, I laughed out loud and so did King-Roy, but then in the middle of our "double wing" steps, I heard an ear-piercing scream.

  I looked over at the audience, and I heard it again. Sophia screamed, "No! Stop it! Mother, make them stop! She's better than I am! Esther's better than I am!" She hopped off of Mother's lap and ran at me. "Stop it. You just stop it! You're ugly and stupid and a no-talent dumbo."

  King-Roy and I had both stopped dancing and Beatrice had turned off the record player, and while Sophia ran at me, screaming, Mother jumped up and ran after her and grabbed her just before she rammed into me with her fists.

  Mother picked Sophia up and said, "Shush, now, Sophia. It's all right. She's not better than you."

  "She is. She's better. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that dance," she wailed, and kicked in Mother's arms.

  Mother spoke to Sophia as she carried her back to her seat. "Sophia, it doesn't matter. It's just a silly little tap dance. Anybody could learn it if they wanted to. It's nothing. It's nothing, Sophia, dear."

  Everyone else had stood up by this time, and they gathered around Sophia to soothe her while she sobbed and choked and stole the show right out from under us. I looked over at King-Roy and he looked so angry, I thought he might march over to Sophia and Mother and strangle one of them, but he didn't. He marched right past them, through the solarium and the living room to the foyer, and then I heard his tap-tap feet marching all the way up the steps.

  Mother kept telling Sophia that my dance was nothing, a silly little tap dance. She had called King-Roy's dance a silly nothing. She had called my efforts a silly nothing. I stood in the middle of the ballroom stunned and unable to move while Mother kept trying to soothe Sophia.

  "It doesn't matter one whit," she said while Sophia kicked and cried some more. "You're our star. You'll always be our star, Sophia, honey."

  Then Dad suggested Mother take Sophia up to her room while the rest of us cleaned up. The show was over. Because of Sophia, the show was over, and I didn't get to finish my fancy footwork tap dance.

  I slapped over to the row of chairs and with all the noise and fury I could muster, I slammed the seats shut and hauled a couple of them off to the closet in the foyer. When I returned to the ballroom, I saw that Stewart and Dad were gone and I asked, "Where's Stewart and Dad?" and Monsieur Vichy pointed toward the library with his cigar. "In there. Your papa wanted to have a leetle talk with Stewart."

  "Oh yeah?" I said, feeling more anger building up in me. I imagined my father telling Stewart that he couldn't dance ballet after all, and I felt like barging into the library and yelling my head off, but I decided to march on up to Sophia's room instead and yell my head off at Mother.

  Beatrice had collected the record player and the records, and Auntie Pie had gathered up all the silly typed-up programs and was taking care of the food table, and Monsieur Vichy was hauling the rest of the chairs to the closet, so I decided to do just that, march into Sophia's room and give Mother and her both a piece of my mind. I headed toward the solarium, and Beatrice called after me, "You did a really nice job with everything, Esther."

  Auntie Pie mumbled around the pound cake she had stuffed into her mouth, "Very impressive, dear."

  "Well, you didn't get to even see the impressive part," I said, stopping to glare at Auntie Pie. "Nobody did because Sophia had to act the brat and spoil everything!"

  I stormed off and charged up the stairs and down the hallway to Sophia's room, and there I found Mother cooing over the dear little precious Sophia, who lay on her side in the bed, choking on her leftover sobs.

  "Mother!" I said.

  Mother looked up at me. She put her finger to her mouth and shook her head. "Shh," she said. "Not now."

  "But I want to talk to you, Mother."

  Mother patted Sophia's back. "Not now, Esther. I just told you. Now is not a good time."

  I put my hands on my hips and I felt my face just burning with rage. "It's not a good time? Not a good time! When would be a good time, Mother, in the middle of someone's performance? In the middle of Sophia's play, maybe? Should I jump up then to have a talk with you?"

  Sophia yelled over her shoulder. "Go away, Esther. I hate you."

  "Oh yeah, spoiled baby brat."

  "Esther, that's enough!" Mother stood up. "I do not need one of your scenes right now."

  "One of my scenes? One of my scenes? Boy oh boy!" I stamped my foot. "That just takes the cake. Why, Mother, why, do you always tell me I'm making a scene, but when Sophia throws a tantrum, it's poor little precious Sophia? Why is that? I'd just really like to know, 'cause it looks to me like you've created a little monster over there." I pointed at Sophia's back, and Sophia rolled over and stuck her tongue out at me.

  Looking at her lying on her frilly little princess bed with a gleam in her eyes, I just wanted to reach out and yank her up and shake her so hard all her little baby teeth would fall out.

  Mother moved toward me, blocking my view of Sophia, and said, "Esther, I will not tell you again. Now is not a good time to talk; we'll have this conversation in private later." Mother took hold of the door as if she was going to close it in my face, but I stepped inside the room so that she couldn't do it.

  "No, Mother. Now is just the right time to talk. I don't care that I'm making a scene. Who cares? I'll make a scene if I want. I want some answers."

  Mother grabbed me by my arm and said through gritted teeth, "Sophia, I'll be back in a little while. Why don't you read a book? Will you do that, sweetheart?"

  Then Mother, still with her hand around my arm, pulled me out of the room and led me down the hall to her bedroom saying, "Esther, I don't know when I've been so upset with you."

  "It was about a week ago," I said. "You're always upset with me. How is it I'm in trouble when Sophia was the one who ruined the show? Why don't you ever say to Sophia that you don't know when you've ever been so upset with her? I'm upset with her every day. She's a monster, Mother. Everyone down at the theater thinks so, you know. How can you let her call me stupid all the time? Why do you let her?"

  By this time we had arrived at my parents' room, and Mother pulled me inside and closed the door behind us.

  "Esther," Mother began, after letting go of my arm, "you're a smart enough girl to understand that Sophia is a lot more delicate than you are. She's high-strung, do you understand? She's a little girl with a big girl's mind, and she feels everything more deeply, more painfully, than the rest of us do."

  "So when she makes a scene, she's high-strung and we should all feel sorry for poor little Sophia, but when I make a scene, I get yelled at and told to shut up."

  "Esther, I have never told you to shut up. I do not use that kind of language."

  I ignored this and said, with my arms flailing wildly, "And you— you, Mother—you tell her my dance is silly and that it's nothing. King-Roy's dance is nothing! You insulted both of us just so our dear little precious doesn't think someone might be better at dance or prettier or smarter than she is."

  My mother stood with her arms folded and one toe tapping nervously on the floor and said to me, "I'm sure King-Roy understands completely."

  "Oh, does he? Is that why he stormed off so fit to be tied, I thought he was going to strangle you?"

  "Esther—"

  "Am I supposed to act stupid and ugly just so Sophia doesn't have a conniption fit or a mental breakdown? Am I not allowed to have a dream? Is Stewart not allowed to have a dream? Is no one allowed to dream anything because it might upset Sophia? Is that why you always make me feel stupid and ashamed of myself? To protect the fragile Sophia?"

  "Esther—"

  "You can't control the whole world, Mother, you know. There are prettier and smarter and more talented people out there. You can't protect her forev
er."

  "But I can protect her now, while she's still young, and so can you."

  I stopped and glared at my mother. "Mother, I'm almost nine years older than she is. When is it my turn? Why didn't I ever get my turn?"

  "Esther—"

  "Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to be a gym teacher and maybe I don't even want to be a mother or a wife, either? I mean, why can't I be a star? I could be one, you know. I could be an actress, too, you know," I said, my heart pounding hard in my chest as I prepared to tell Mother what had happened down at the theater during Sophia's auditions.

  My mother smiled at me with a sad little smile, and said, "Esther, if you want to act in your high school's little plays you—"

  I stamped my foot. "No, Mother, I mean I could be a real actress on Broadway. Is that so hard for you to believe? Well, it's true. At Sophia's audition, the casting director wanted me to play the part of Zelda. He wanted me!" I jabbed my thumb into my chest. "He said I was really good. And so did his assistant and Stewart and King-Roy."

  Mother's brows drew together and she asked me, "When did you audition?"

  "It happened by accident, but they said I was great. They wanted me to play Zelda."

  My mother closed her eyes and waved her hand in front of her face as though brushing away a gnat. "I'm sure they knew you were Herbert Nelson Young's daughter."

  I nodded. "Yeah, I told them I was, but that's not why they offered me the part. They practically insisted I take it, but I didn't. I didn't because I didn't want to hurt Sophia in case she didn't get her part. But now I think I should have taken it."

  "I'm sure you were too afraid to take it," Mother said. "I'm sure it had nothing to do with Sophia's feelings." Mother looked away. She looked toward the windows, so I jumped sideways to get in her view again and I said, "No, Mother. I wasn't afraid at all. It had never even crossed my mind to take it. I guess you've got me trained so well to think so little of myself and only to think of Sophia that it never even occurred to me to take the part." This realization had just come to me as I spoke, and then as soon as I said it, I knew it to be true. Mother had trained me to play the supporting role to my brother and sister all my life, and finally the role had started to chafe. I looked into my mother's eyes and I thought I saw fear there. I didn't understand it. "Mother," I said, "why wouldn't you want me to be an actress? Why don't you ever give me credit for my dancing or when I sing?"

  Mother said, "I just don't want you to get your feelings hurt."

  "But you're the one who's hurting them. Why don't you ever think I'm good at anything? Why haven't you ever encouraged me the way you do Sophia or Stewart?"

  Mother walked over to the windows that looked out over the front yard and the polar-bear rock and stood with her back to me. "This is nonsense. Of course I've encouraged you."

  "To get better grades maybe, to take better care of my hair and clothes, to learn how to bake a cake, to look after Sophia and Stewart, make the beds, vacuum the foyer. Maybe you think you're encouraging me with these stupid things, but who cares about those? Those aren't anything to encourage me about, except maybe the good grades. But those aren't talents. Those aren't my dreams."

  Mother whirled around and I saw tears in her eyes. "Well, they are mine, Esther. You have just described my life as a wife and mother. So what you think of as no talent and unworthy of dreams is all I have. I have taught you only what I know. I have given you all that I have to give. I don't teach Sophia these things. I don't teach her anything. I only try to protect her, and Stewart is like your father, so like your father, but you, Esther, you've always been most like me."

  There isn't anything in this world my mother could have said that would have stunned me more. I had never in my life thought of myself as being anything like her, and here she was telling me, asking me, even, to agree to this, to agree to be like her, to live a life like hers, and I felt so sad and guilty because I knew inside that I couldn't live her life. I couldn't be her, just as I couldn't be like Kathy and Laura. I thought about this and I wondered if there was something wrong with me. What kind of strange bird was I?

  I looked at my mother, standing by the windows, her head held high and proud, her eyes blinking at me, and all I could say was "I'm sorry." I didn't even know what I was sorry about; I just knew someone needed to say it.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  After I left my mother in her bedroom, I went down to King-Roy's room to try to talk with him, but he didn't want to speak to me or to anyone else in the house. I could hear the anger and hurt in his voice when he told me to go away. "Esther, I got nothing to say to y'all. I got nothing to say. You go on, now, and don't you keep talking to me."

  "We don't have to talk about what happened," I said. "We can talk about this book I'm reading. I'm reading a good book by James Baldwin—The Fire Next Time. Have you heard of it?"

  "I got nothing to say."

  "The librarian in town gave it to me. She knows all about you because I told her, and she said for me to read this book. It's new." I paused for a few seconds and listened at King-Roy's door. "King-Roy?"

  "I got nothing to say."

  "He's a Negro like you and he says how he wants freedom and justice but he doesn't want to lose his soul in the process of getting it. He doesn't want any Negro to lose his soul going after freedom, and he thinks that doing to the whites what they've done to you is beneath your dignity." I waited. "King-Roy?"

  "I'm not listening to that."

  "He wants to know what makes a white man so arrogant as to think a black man would want to be equal to him. He says to be equal to a white man isn't good enough."

  "That's what Elijah Muhammad says, too."

  "Yeah, this James Baldwin met Elijah Muhammad. He tells about it in this book. You want to read it?"

  "I don't have time."

  I leaned my head against King-Roy's door and I could smell the paint on it. I took a deep breath of the paint and then spoke, my lips almost touching the door. "Why don't you have time? What do you mean?"

  "I don't have anything to say to you."

  "Are you packing in there?" I asked, hearing King-Roy moving about. "Are you cleaning up? What are you doing?" I knocked on his door. "Can I come in?"

  "No, now go away."

  "But the march is just three days away. You're still going, aren't you?"

  "I can leave for the march from Harlem."

  "So you are leaving."

  "My momma said living here for the summer would change my mind about white folks, but it hasn't changed anything. Not a thing. Not one blessed thing. I don't know how my momma and yours could ever have been friends. Your momma doesn't even see me as a person. Calling my dance no account, she might just as well have said the same thing about me—it all comes to the same thing, anyway."

  I heard something bang inside King-Roy's room.

  I pounded my fist on the door. "She didn't mean to hurt you, or me, she just meant to protect Sophia." I lowered my voice. "I think she's afraid for her. She's so high-strung and all. But she doesn't have to worry about us, you see. She knows we can handle it. It's a compliment, really," I said, trying to explain to King-Roy what I didn't quite understand myself.

  "Yeah, I know all about those kinds of compliments. That's the only kind white folks give a black man, ones that sound like insults."

  "So you're going to run away?"

  "Go away, now, Esther. I don't want to talk to you."

  I pounded the door again. "You're always threatening to leave. That's what you do, isn't it? You leave. You run away. You always run away. Just like at that march last May."

  King-Roy yanked open the door so fast, I didn't have time to pull back and I fell against him. At the same time that I fell, he said, "What did you just say?"

  He pushed me off of him and glared at me, and I never saw him look so angry. I didn't know his mild-mannered face could get that mean-looking. His eyes smoldered and he jutted out his jaw, flared his nostrils, and held his body so
rigid and puffed up, I thought he might strike me.

  I backed away from him and straightened out the flapper dress I still had on. Then I said, "It's just that James Baldwin says that what we're all really afraid of in life is death, the fact of death. That's what we're running from. But he thinks we ought to face up to death, because that's the only sure thing in life. Isn't that something? And—and he thinks we ought to go on and earn our death by living our life and facing up to our problems with passion." I shook my fist in the air when I said the word passion.

  King-Roy glared at me, his nostrils moving in and out. He was breathing hard. "So you think I'm a coward, too. All this time, you've been thinking I'm a coward?"

  I backed away some more and came up against the opposite wall. I shook my head. "No, King-Roy."

  "Why do you think I joined the Nation of Islam? So I could run away? So I could hide? So I wouldn't have to fight? The Nation is all about passion—passion for the Negro, passion for freedom and human dignity. What I see is that I'm not running away, Esther, I'm running toward. I'm going where I belong, and if you or my momma or anybody else can't understand that, if you gon' keep calling me a coward, well, you go on, 'cause it won't make a difference to me. I know just what I gotta do. I know who my people are, and they don't live here."

  King-Roy took a step back and slammed the door, and I felt its reverberation run straight through my body.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I changed into a pair of shorts and a button-down shirt and spent the rest of that afternoon reading in my favorite climbing tree. I thought that if I stayed up in the tree, I could keep a lookout for Pip across the road and also keep an eye out for King-Roy in case he came out and said he was leaving for Harlem. I tried to convince myself that it would be all right if he left. I could still go visit him. I could visit him in Harlem and maybe learn how to skip double Dutch with those girls I saw skipping rope in the street. Maybe he would even come back out to our house for visits once he stopped hating everybody—if he ever did. I knew he'd be a lot happier in Harlem than here with us. Yes, it would be all right. It wouldn't be the end of the world.