Betsey Brown

by Ntozake Shange

  Not being a man of God did not make him a distant man. His hands fumbled one of the knots and the veins in his temples jumped, thinking what would become of his daughter in a city that might as well be below the Mason-Dixon Line, where plenty of colored made their way on the wrong side of everything. Now Betsey was out there with them. Greer knew she’d gone to one of the Negro neighborhoods, but he couldn’t set his mind on which one. All the note said was:

  I love you all very much, but I don’t belong here. I’m different from you all. Take good care of Margot and Sharon. Charlie be a doctor. Please watch Allard and those fires. Tell Eugene he’ll have to look for me when I’m grown-up. I love you,

  Betsey

  Greer had gone over the note again and again, trying to imagine what made Betsey think she didn’t belong at home, that she couldn’t grow at home, that her house wasn’t as full of good colored as the next. He tried to tie more surgical knots, but as the tension and anger grew in him, his fingers began to beat a bomba on the conga drum.

  Jane leapt to her feet, virtually flying into the kitchen.

  “You goddamned black niggah! Can’t you understand my child’s missing and you have the nerve to be in here playing those stupid drums. African! Don’t you have any sense at all? Are you out of your mind? You better get down on your knees and pray the good Lord doesn’t strike you down. Heathen! Lowdown colored jackass!”

  Jane fell apart in Greer’s arms beating his chest as he had beat the drums.

  “Where’s my daughter? Where’s my daughter? Where’s my child? Make them find her.”

  Greer held on to his wife. He wanted her to know he wanted Betsey back more than anything, but he couldn’t kneel before a white Christ, trust the white police to do anything but ignore all his calls, the repeated inquiries, his description of his child. They all look alike. That’s why Greer was always sewing up the wounds of Negroes shot “mistakenly” by the police.

  He knew it was coming. He felt it when Jane pulled his hand to come to the room where the chandelier swayed from the lilt of Vida’s humming and the children’s building anxiety. Allard wanted to build a fire right in the middle of the room and throw precious things in it. That might bring Betsey back. Africans offered things up to the spirits and got their wishes. Indians danced and got rain. All Jane would allow was prayers to Jesus. Prayers her husband would not say. Prayers that filled his wife’s very being.

  Greer held back as Jane moved toward the rest of the family. Now the drumming had stopped, she was coming back to herself. She hesitated peculiarly, turned round, looked Greer straight in the eye.

  “If you can’t pray for your own daughter, maybe you don’t belong in this house.”

  And off she went to the praying children, the humming Vida, and the evening lights surrounding them as though the front room was now a sanctuary.

  “Dear Lord, please, see us to the safety of my child and bring her home as herself, Lord, as You know her to be and we know her.”

  Jane heard Greer’s footsteps nearing them, she hoped he’d join them, but he turned and went up the stairs.

  He’d decided to go out himself and search all the places he’d ever mentioned to Betsey, on a hunch she wanted to be an Ikette. How could he explain to Jane that Betsey wanted to be an Ikette at a time like this. Jane down there on her knees with Jesus. His whole family looked like a bad scene from Green Pastures.

  Greer came down the stairs with great purpose and abrasiveness. Jane turned to him.

  “Greer, please, I can’t do this by myself. Greer, I swear if you don’t join us in prayer, I’ll leave you. Do you hear me? I can’t do this all by myself.”

  Greer kept moving toward the front door.

  “I thought Jesus was helping you. I’m going to find my daughter.”

  Jane resumed silent prayer fervently. Now she’d lost not only her daughter, but maybe her husband as well.

  “Oh, where’s my favorite child?” Vida murmured from the other end of the room. The children had escaped to their individual mourning spots, asking Jesus and their private fairies to bring Betsey back. Who would they tell their secrets to? Who would have patience with Allard’s shoes and his matches? Where would Charlie get girl tips from? Where was Betsey? They hadn’t thought they’d miss her.

  Jane helped her mother off her knees to a rocker where Vida kept asking for Betsey, which only made Jane feel more helpless now Greer was gone. But Christ was her rock, her solid ground. She went to her room to wait.

  The car lurched out the driveway like a niggah gone mad, to Vida’s mind. Jane dug her nails into her flesh, hoping Greer wouldn’t be fool enough to drive like a jackass so some other Negro would have to sew him up tonight. Police in St. Louis didn’t take kindly to Thunderbirds with out-of-state tags and a colored behind the wheel.

  Vida rocked in some netherworld of despair, her precious baby gone, humming “Come Thou Almighty King” intermittently, etching her hymn with verbal pleas for the safety of her grandchild.

  Jane made herself a strong jigger of scotch on the rocks, sat by her vanity trying to play solitaire to pass the time, to do something with her hands, to stop crying, to keep this feeling of helplessness off her shoulder and her back. She swayed over the King and the Jack. She was blurry-eyed over the Ace and the Queen. She wanted her daughter back. She wanted her Greer back, with all his foolish ways and notions. She wanted her family to be a family again. The children were so quiet. They weren’t themselves. No one was the way they usually were. All of them depending on the Grace of God and the good will of a city they still couldn’t call their own.

  Jane went to take a shower, steaming, then rushing cold. She washed her hair. She powdered her body till she looked like a damask mannequin. She fell asleep between two photographs: one of Betsey learning to ride a two-wheeler bike; the other of Greer in his favorite orange shirt, deep sea fishing off Atlantic City after Allard was born. She’d even done her nails. The palm of her left hand lay on top of Psalm 91:

  Whoever goes to the Lord for safety,

  whoever remains under the protection of the Almighty,

  can say to Him, “You are my defender and protector.”

  Greer wasn’t thinking about any police. He was thinking about his daughter. Where would she go? What crazy feeling out of nowhere would come over her to take her out till all hours of the night? Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he was wrong to have filled her head with tales of Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, let alone take her to see Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Maybe it wasn’t right to wake up to Chico Hamilton, Lee Morgan, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey in the morning. Watch the sunset with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Little Willie John. But Greer didn’t know what else to offer that was beautiful and colored and alive, all at the same time. He drove from one club to another, thinking Betsey might be crouching by the doorway listening to some music. He thought she might be hungry so he drove past the place where Little Richard liked to get fried fish, the spot where “Sugar” Ray liked the barbeque. No Betsey. No child of his to take home.

  Somewhere in the frenzy of his search for Betsey, Greer realized he’d not made rounds at the hospital. He had to make rounds. They’d write him up. He wasn’t their golden boy, after all. Everybody knew he took private patients. Everybody knew he liked foreigners and was committed to causing trouble for the Negro. He had to make rounds. He went like a man at the breaking point to Homer G. Phillips Hospital to see his patients. Their lives depended on him, like his life depended on finding his Betsey.

  “Why Dr. Brown, I was just going to call you. The police have Betsey in the Reception Room waiting on you. She claims to have forgotten her address and insisted that only her father would understand. Wait one second, I’ll call the officers in. Patrolmen McMahon and Carlotti. Please come to Nurses Station C. Officers McMahon and Carlotti, Nurses Station C.”

  “Where is she, Miss Jefferson?” Greer forgot all about his patients.

  “She’ll be righ
t along. The police wouldn’t let her out of their sight, ’fraid she might run off again, I guess.”

  Greer felt a smile over his body. His hands even grinned seemed like, while he was dialing home to tell Jane Betsey was all right. Vida took the message. She said Jane was in too frail a condition to take such startling news right that minute. Vida added, “Praise Be to the Lord for this, one of His many blessings.” Greer hung up the phone. His eyes filled with visions of his daughter.

  “Daddy, Daddy, I knew you’d come! I knew you’d come.”

  Betsey leapt into her father’s arms crying and smiling at once. She hugged him and kissed him, snuggled and wouldn’t let go.

  “Dr. Brown, I’m Officer McMahon and this is Officer Carlotti of Juvenile Affairs. Is this girl, Elizabeth Brown, your daughter?”

  “Why, yes Sir. She is.”

  “May we see some identification, please? There are some forms you’ll have to fill out. It’s normal for runaways. What got me is she wouldn’t say where she lived, only where you worked. We just got here before you came in. She looks to be healthy. Far as we can tell, no danger fell upon her.”

  Greer let Betsey down with one of those I’ll-be-speaking-to-you-in-a second looks and dealt with the officers. Betsey sat on one of the post-op tables waiting for her father. She didn’t know whether to tell him all the things she’d done or be mysterious, or be plain closed-mouthed. She knew there’d be trouble at home. Boy, oh boy.

  When Greer came back, he took Betsey off the table. He didn’t know whether to spank her or hug her. Yet he hugged her, just the same.

  “Betsey, why did you do it? Why did you run away?”

  “I don’t know Daddy. I had to, I guess.”

  “You had to run away from everybody who loves you and wants you home with them?” Greer drew his daughter under his arms and off they went on rounds, while they talked.

  “Well, Daddy. I’m not like the rest of them. I mean I like music that Mommy doesn’t like. I like dances Grandma swears are the Devil’s doing. I like to read books way into the night and keep the other children awake. I like to make-believe there are no white people. I want my nappy hair to be pretty like Mommy’s and refined like she is. And I just can’t do it. So I ran away. That’s all.”

  Greer understood some of what Betsey said. He even felt some of those things himself, sometimes, but he couldn’t help laughing at one of Betsey’s dilemmas. “Listen here, don’t say I told you, but your mother’s got a head full of nappy hair. She gets something done to it.”

  “Really, Daddy? Honest Injun?”

  “Yep.”

  Greer listened to Betsey’s tales of Mrs. Maureen’s and, in fact, she had eaten over to the place where Little Richard ate. All the sick folks were delighted to see the doctor’s little girl, but Greer was caught in the middle. Betsey’d run off for the reasons Jane’d claimed, and he had found her in that world, not even trying to go home.

  Betsey and Greer said little in the car, but Greer stopped at Arnett’s Fried Chicken and Shrimp joint to pick up enough food for the whole family. There was going to be some ranting and raving, but there was going to be some joy and rekindling of family spirit as well.

  Betsey stole a few french fries from one of the jumbo packs, and then asked, “Is Mama real upset?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she’s going to whip me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did anyone miss me?”

  Greer felt his heart clench at the question his daughter asked. Did anyone miss her? The whole house had been down on its knees and the wailing going on rivaled sounds heard in Jerusalem. They had a problem, a real problem, if Betsey didn’t know she’d been missed, or if she felt she didn’t deserve a whipping, which Greer thought he’d administer himself. The Shirelles were singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

  Betsey thought of Eugene, who would definitely “stand by her,” but she wasn’t sure how her mama was going to react to all of this. Her father hadn’t noticed the rouge on her cheeks, the painted nails and newly pressed head. This would be akin to a matador’s cape to Jane’s angry eyes when she set them on her wanton child. Betsey curled in the back seat blocking out the hollering and scolding, whipping and tustling that was coming her way. Besides, she’d had a good time, no reason to think she wouldn’t have to pay for it.

  Gosh, she wished her mother understood there was so much in the world to feel and see. So many things that it was just too hard to be reasonable. A girl had to get out of the house and into the thick of life, the heat of it, not knowing what all one could do with whoever you happened to be. And Betsey had just tried to be herself, where folks would assume that’s how she was all the time. Herself. Plain old Betsey Brown.

  Allard was the first to spy Greer and Betsey coming up the front stairs. He shouted à la Chuck Berry: “Jesus must have a telephone/ we callt on him and he brought Betsey home.” Margot and Sharon joined in the chant. Vida sang a soft “Amazing Grace.” Jane rushed through all of them to give her baby a hug. She held Betsey like the very flesh of her flesh had most risen from the dead. She clutched at her arms, her neck, her hair, she caressed her cheeks, her baby, safe.

  “Thanks be to the Good Lord.”

  “She was waiting for me at the hospital,” Greer bragged, pulling his wife and daughter close to him. “We’re all here. Every last one of us and guess what I got?”

  “Arnett’s fried chicken and shrimp!” the children cried like a Greek chorus.

  Vida came up to Betsey and kissed her on both cheeks, tousled her head. “How’d you manage to get your hair done up like that, girl? I’m so glad Christ brought you back safe and sound.”

  Betsey hugged her grandma, little tears came to the corners of her eyes. She never intended for Vida to be in a fit. It wasn’t good for her health. Vida was too near to heaven’s gate for Betsey’s liking anyway. What trouble she must have caused. She really could tell from the way Charlie hugged her that he’d been worried.

  She’d just wanted to see the world. Marry a Negro man of renown. Change the world. Use white folks’ segregated restaurant tables to dance on, and tear down all the “Colored Only” and “Colored Not Allowed” signs. She wanted to be somebody. She wanted to be Miss Elizabeth Brown out in the world, not in a house full of children still learning their tables and long division. She wanted to swing her new hairstyle and have her Humphrey Bogart not be able to keep his eyes off her, while she smuggled rifles for the Resistance. It didn’t matter what movie she lived, but the woman had to be a heroine. No, a hero.

  Jane swayed in Greer’s arms the way she had on her wedding night. Not quite sure she was still herself, but knowing she was still in her right mind. She was so full of gratitude and love, she thought the dampness under her arms must smell of honeysuckle and dahlias, which was a very unlike Jane thought. On the other hand, Jane had never risked so much in her life: her husband and her baby. Now, just like that, the Lord had seen fit for her to know again what she sometimes forgot were blessings. A husband with ideas before their time, and a daughter with the adventure of Amelia Earhart in her soul. But they were hers. Yes, Jesus, this was her family.

  “Mama, are you mad at me?” Betsey asked very quietly.

  “No, I’m not mad, Betsey. I just think there are some things we have to talk about. Things we have to talk about like women together. I love you so much, darling. There’s nothing you could do to change that. But don’t worry now, we’ll talk.”

  Vida had already slipped away to bed to stay on her knees a good while, thanking The Lamb of God for His Grace. The other children wandered to their rooms once all the shrimp and chicken’d disappeared.

  Jane looked at Betsey’s manicured hands and wondered when was the last time she’d treated herself so kindly. Years ago. It was years ago on a cruise she’d taken to Cherbourg with her new husband. Maybe Betsey’s excursion wasn’t just a child’s first itch to be in the world. Maybe Betsey’s flight offered Jane a glimpse
of herself fifteen years ago, when she wasn’t always shouting “no” or figuring what was for dinner. Years when she went to bed with Matisse on her mind and kisses running along her arms. Times before the children. Times Jane was not just Mommy, but a good-looking woman with a good head on her shoulders.

  There wasn’t much talking going on in the house that night. A calm filtered the air damp from tears and prayers. Betsey lay softly in her bed cherishing her parents’ good-night kisses and remembering she was the first Negro Veiled Prophet’s Queen. Jane and Greer made love till dawn, like there would never be enough, like “Dontchu know you make me wanna shout!”

  Jane let herself dream like she used to before the children, yearn like she usedta before stretch marks and nursing, be who she was when Greer first courted her, a lady of intellect, mystery, and surprises. A woman who’d not be taken for granted, or slight herself by forgetting how much she was and could be. Jane made love with a passion Greer had to change his style for. She wanted him to know the difference between wife and Jane, Mommy and Jane, social worker and Jane. Jane was still becoming herself.

  10

  “Greer, how do you have the energy for all this Africanizing every morning?”

  Jane looked rather chic in her psychiatric social worker suit, all beige and taupe. She was smiling more than usual too, but Greer went right on, though he was grinning himself up a storm of hellacious rhythm:

  “The Negro race is a mighty one

  The work of the Negro is never done

  Muscle, brains, and courage galore

  Negroes in this house

  Meet me at the back door!”

  On and on he went almost dancing, pulling Jane into poses quite inappropriate for her attire. He wanted her like last night or this morning, all undone. Yet he kept a drumming and the children kept a coming, one after the other, half-dressed, heads uncombed, pieces of homework to be checked in their hands.