Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

  The Wheeler girls came home from Vassar last week. They were a little behind you, I think. At any rate, they have gone completely African. Changed their names; wear these big old pieces of cloth . . . look just like mammies, to my mind. Their mother, Gertie, has refused to let them out of the house till they go round to Mrs. Calhoun’s and get that hair pressed. So, it’s all right that you and your sisters don’t come home, when I think about how you must look!

  That little Schuyler boy, the one who went to Dartmouth and is now at Meharry, has wrecked two cars already, and still his father hasn’t put his foot down. I can’t understand loving somebody so much, you let them make you a fool, but, thank god he’s no child of mine. That’s that boy who kept you out all weekend when I came to visit you in New England. Don’t try to act like I’m mistaken—I may not be a liberated woman, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I can’t see what you saw in him. For all that breeding, and the money spent on him, he acts like a natural-born hoodlum.

  What else . . . oh, guess what? Your name is in the alumni magazine of the Callahan School. Seems like you are the only one, out of all those rich children, to go on ahead and be an artist. Don’t be upset with me. I sent the information in myself, with samples of your work. It’s the least I could do, after Mrs. Fitzhugh sponsored you and all. I can’t understand why you hated that place so . . . not going to your graduation, refusing to go on to college. Oh, Sassafrass, weaving is a fine craft, but with the opportunities open to Negroes your age, I just don’t know why you insist on doing everything the hard way.

  I hate to say this, but it follows my thoughts about your resisting the bounties our Lord has laid before you, in order to take up with the most unfortunate among us. How could you take up with a man who wasn’t raised in a proper home . . . not even an orphan, just a delinquent? Even I have heard stories of the terrible conditions in the reform schools, and here my very own daughter searches far and wide, moves all the way to California, to fall in love with a man who has nothing to offer, no background, no education, no future. If you think for a minute, darling, you’ll see that all the training you’ve had is far and away more than that boy can imagine. So what is it that you’re going to learn from him? You should get down on your knees and pray for guidance. And while you’re down there, thank the Lord for giving you the good sense not to compromise yourself by living in sin. You can at least still meet some more folks who are up to you, and who’ll appreciate what a fine young woman you are. Truly, dear, try to get out and enjoy yourself. The race has had problems ever since we got here. You can’t do anything about them by staying in your house, refusing to take part in the world you belong in.

  Call cousin Loreen. I told you, her step-sons are all doctors, and mighty good-looking . . . (a word to the wise).

  Love,

  Mama

  P.S. You don’t have to tell Mitch everything I said about him . . . if that’s an open relationship, humpf. You need a closed one!!

  L.A. nights are not quite dark; the lights from all the freeways keep it in a zone of perpetual twilight, so Sassafrass rarely used electric lights, only candles. As she peeked from her weaving room to see where Mitch was playing his horn, the house, her house, was a blueberry-tinged house. She thought the furniture and paintings lining the walls were enveloped in a blueberry aura, and that comforted her, seeking Mitch.

  “Hey Sassafrass, come catch this action!”

  Mitch was in the front room. Sassafrass hadn’t approached that room by fifteen feet since Howard and Otis had left. She timorously made her way through the icy blue haunts of her realms to see what new trip Mitch had fixed on this time. She was even charmed by the idea he had called for her so soon; soon as he came in. Mitch was grinning with his horn in one hand, and a strange, accordian-shaped tube in the other.

  “Hey there, beloved,” Sassafrass slurred coquettishly, “what’s up?” Mitch was magnificent in an orange crêpe jacket with beaded eagles; Quetzal, the Aztecs’ creativity spirit, flying across his breast, and the Ashanti-styled bead choker Sassafrass had arduously finished for him only days ago. Mitch was grinning and magnificent, but he didn’t respond to Sassafrass; he started walking back and forth in front of her, without taking his eyes off her. He was grinning and quiet, and with all the force he had and all his exquisite grace, he struck her across the face with the tube. Then he laughed out loud, and moved the tube to his mouth; made deep wispy sounds like beer-bottle tooters, then he hit her again, still laughing.

  Sassafrass was stunned. She did not move, she didn’t speak. Mitch tossed the tube in the air and it curled up like the toy snakes kids have at circuses; Sassafrass ran to pick it up, and Mitch shoved her to the side. Once he had the tube in his hands again, he twirled it—and he struck again, again, and again.

  “Mitch, have you gone crazy . . . stop, stop, stop . . . I can’t stand it, you’re hurting me . . . stop it, Mitch, you are hurtin’ me!” And he stopped, picked up his horn, and began to play the solo from Eric Dolphy’s Green Dolphin Street cut. Sassafrass left the room slowly, bewildered and frantic. And Mitch said nothing.

  Sassafrass wandered hesitantly through the kitchen. In vague ways she picked up the car keys, let the dog out, and changed the Kitty Litter. She locked the door to the weaving room, and eventually left the house. She sat in the car in front of the house for at least an hour. She had never been beaten by a man; she had sworn that whoever did, she would leave. And she had told Mitch, in the Japanese garden in Exposition Park when they had first met, “If you ever strike me, I will leave you or see you in jail.” Mitch hadn’t said anything then, just as he didn’t say anything tonight. And Sassafrass cried, tormented, and afraid she would have to leave Mitch, whom she adored. She started the tumbling-down auto and drove from the Pasadena Freeway to Santa Monica, where she stopped to watch the sun rise over the deserted beach. Sassafrass was locked, like all the barred and dingy wharf cafeterias. She was tight, and the ocean nibbling her ankles in another dawn did not arouse her spirit. Instead, the monotonous coming back, coming back of the waves reminded her that she, too, would return to her own rubble-strewn shores. She was going to go back to Mitch; she could not leave . . . not now. Sassafrass was afraid to look at the sun for fear the golden garments the moon’s daughter had woven would rot from her gaze. She had betrayed trust and prophesied inviolate independence. She was a woman, and she was strong—and she loved Mitch; had only served as an instrument for the will of the spirits. She’d been too headstrong, too sure she needed no man; and she did understand, now, that she needed Mitch of all things in the world. She needed Mitch because Mitch was all she loved in herself.

  It wasn’t so far from what she remembered . . . that night it had rained something terrible in Charleston, rained so hard she and Cypress put Indigo at the foot of the bed under the covers with them, in case all the trees round the house came crashing through the roof—like they were bound to, since they were shaking and scratching and making awful noises that left children speechless and quaking. The other noises were her mama and daddy shouting; mixing in with the howling wind till the commotion on the stairs forced all the girls to creep to the door, because it wasn’t just the hurricane that was upsetting everything.

  “Daddy, let go a mama! Daddy let go!” That’s all she shouted, as she watched her mama being pulled down the stairs toward the front door, her hair in the grip of his fists. It was raining, and the girls were all crying so . . . their mother looked so tiny in her nightgown and bare feet, battered by the rain on the front porch. There were more screaming noises between the adults, along with the whimpers of the girls, the thrashings of the forsythia ’gainst the screens . . . but when it was all over, and the girls had vowed never to speak to their father again on account of his hurting their mother, all Mama had said was, “You got to leave room for the fool in everybody.”

  By the time Sassafrass got back to Highland Park it was late morning. She had insisted to herself that getting caught in the early rush hour was just anoth
er debt she had to pay for being a brazen hussy, and she pulled the front door of her house vigorously because she knew more of what she wanted in this life, and Mitch was most of it . . . and he was in there waiting for her. The queer silence puzzled her; usually Mitch would be practicing, or humming to himself while he painted. Sassafrass felt a knot in her heart. She went through each room with more anxiety—in the kitchen Mitch sat nodding out, by the window. She ran to the bathroom . . . blood. Blood was on the bathroom floor again; Mitch’s junkie works were lingering on the sink. And Sassafrass let whole worlds, dreams, and kisses, fall from her eyes. Deftly, almost mechanically, she cleaned up the mess Mitch and some of his friends must have made. She fed the animals, straightened each room, and finally went to where Mitch was sitting, sleeping. She stroked his cheek with her hand; she loved him. She kissed him on temples, on cheeks—each one—and then she kissed his lips tenderly and long. He woke up a little. Sassafrass kissed him again, and one more time he responded. When he was relatively lucid, in the middle of touching his eyebrow with her full mouth, she whispered, “You’re a lousy, stinkin’ junkie, Mitch. I haveta go now.”

  She packed two large bags: one filled with clothes, the other with notebooks and yarns and needles of all sorts. She left some money with Cleo, the neighbor, to buy food for Albert and the cat they kept, and told Cleo to tell Mitch she would send for her things. She left on a 3:00 shuttle flight to San Francisco, to stay with her sister Cypress. In the airports, on the buses, Sassafrass kept saying, “He never promised me anything . . . I didn’t ask for a ring, no money, no monogamy . . . just no dope.” She made no attempt to smile, once she got to Cypress’ house. She was of the same stone as Isis, searching for the lost Osiris. She drank some black Guatemalan coffee, and stalked off to the room Cypress saved for her to begin another piece of cloth.

  Cypress was always smiling. She had made amends with her living, and thoroughly expected everything to happen to her, given time and the way her luck ran. She was round and sturdy, but elastic like a gathering of sunflowers in a balmy night. Cypress liked sweet wine, cocaine, and lots of men: musicians, painters, poets, sculptors . . . photographers, filmmakers, airplane pilots. Her house was full of folks from dusk to noon; and she was usually draped in an oriental robe glossed with coffee stains and the smell of her body. Sassafrass’ arrival didn’t disrupt the hoopla that was Cypress’ home, because Cypress had, in her easy, cynical way, told every soul she knew that her sister would be coming soon. Cypress was sure that no real man could put up with Sassafrass’ absolute demands for total involvement, total perfection, total personhood for more than two or three months. Cypress was sure that when a man knew his woman knew he wasn’t near perfect, or going to be, one of them would have to split. So she held on to a room for Sassafrass, and chuckled about the closed door and glum face Sassafrass used as protection from the many possible suitors lingering around.

  Cypress’ kitchen was deep amber, and the rest of the rooms were all swamp green. She didn’t allow any chairs in her house, only pillows—and no shoes, either. She insisted on respect for her space, and was liable to throw out visitors who didn’t follow the rules:

  WHEN YOU STEP THROUGH THIS DOOR /

  YOU’RE IN MY HOUSE

  Wash all dishes you use & put them back

  Empty ashtrays when full

  Change beds every two days

  Don’t leave any clothes lying around

  Don’t use any profane language

  Don’t talk loudly

  Don’t bring any dope fiends around here

  Don’t touch the altar for the Orishas

  Don’t take anything for granted

  MAY THE SPIRITS BLESS YOU

  Sassafrass didn’t really know anybody but Cypress in San Francisco, and she was cold all the time. Her thin smocks for L.A.’s perpetual spring didn’t have the stuff in them to cope with the dense fog and chill of northern California; the cold she felt continually reminded her that she was alone—forsaken, she liked to believe. She huddled in her room with her mama’s carders (Cypress had dug them out of some ancient trunk), and prepared fleece for spinning. She would hum spirituals to herself, like “His Eye Is on the Sparrow, and I Know He’s Watchin’ Me” or “Jesus Is Just Awright with Me, Jesus Is Just Awright with Me” and “I Come to the Garden Alone.” Leroy McCullough would stand in front of her door and sing be-bop love messages to her: “Sassafrass gotta mighty fine ass; won’t you come and play with me . . . be-blee-de—oh-wha-doo . . .” And Cypress would matter-of-factly respond, “Sassafrass is busy today, can you call again tomorrow.” And then whoever was there would just laugh, or toot a horn. Sassafrass would sing her old time praises of the Lord louder, until everyone got quiet, and she shushed too, eventually, and maybe cried or sat among all her wools and stared at the fading floral-pattern floor.

  Cypress’ house smelled like curry, and when she wasn’t cooking, she was dancing down at the studio with most of the folks she was cooking for. There was something about dancing that was family, and Cypress loved her family. She could definitely put herself out for some dancer-honkytonk-singer friend in a second, but she could definitely put herself on some railroad tracks for her blood sister. At least that’s how Cypress got herself around to cornering Sassafrass about her “melancholia.”

  Sassafrass was trying to be busy, winding thread and counting warp ends per inch, when Cypress caught some of the orange cotton between her toes, in a perfectly executed grande battement. Sassafrass looked piqued, and meowed, “Cypress, you know as well as I do, you’ve always been too bouffant to be any kind of dancer, get your ducky leg outta my yarn. Please, dear.” Cypress was twenty years used to remarks about her peasant figure, and didn’t give two hoots, so she let Sassafrass wrestle with the uselessness of sibling slurs and began packing the stray threads away, like any weaver’s daughter would. She called on all the hopefulness in her core to get Sassafrass to let loose a little and feel the newness of where she was really at. Cypress just moved through Sassafrass’ supplies like she was Sassafrass’ shadow, and Sassafrass watched her sister being impeccable as usual, and realized this was one of those times Cypress would have her way. So she allowed Cypress to lead her by the hand into the kitchen, same as they used to go sneak coffee way into the night at Mama’s, so many questions past.

  Sassafrass languidly positioned herself in a paunchy straw mat, waiting for Cypress’ inevitable “sermon for the daughter of little faith.” She smiled inconspicuously as Cypress almost glided back and forth across the room. “She really is elegant,” Sassafrass thought, as she attended to the womanly grace oozing out of Cypress’ every motion.

  “Well, Cypress, what’s on the corner of your fat ol’ ass?” Sassafrass could hardly believe herself, but she kept on. “Now Cypress, I want you to tell me all about my future, and how bright the sun’s going to be shining in my back door some day.”

  Sassafrass was wheeling in her seat as though she was showering in scotch whiskey. “Did you hear, Cypress? I wanna know all about how I got it made, and ain’t got no cause to be gloomy right now.”

  Cypress just giggled, and placed some cream cheese and pineapple concoctions on the table next to a fresh porcelain pot of coffee. She slid into a seat exactly opposite Sassafrass and murmured, “Why don’t you let me know what all went down with Mitch, because I ain’t got a thing to say ’til I know if you’re still a devoted mistress.”

  Sassafrass blushed and threw her arms in the air like she was going to choke flies . . . then she saw Cypress’ face held no malice, no judgment. Cypress nestled her head up against the side of the stove, and started again.

  “Sassafrass, isn’t there anything you can say about what happened between you and Mitch . . . or is that top-secret-confidential he-ro-in’ just between you and him?”

  Sassafrass pulled her chin up and out, like a prouder woman than she was, and sucked in her teeth like she was thinking what a bore this all was. Cypress delighted in her canapés and coffee, u
ntil she decided playtime was over.

  “Look-a-heah, Sassafrass, Miz Been-Thru-It-All. I need to talk to you. I know better than you how hard it is to live with an artist . . . the ‘artiste.’ Black men ain’t no easy picking; ain’t no easy staying. That’s why I keep them all coming here, then I don’t have to pick not a one, and can keep them all. But you aren’t like me, Sassafrass. You got to have you a single cosmic wonder with more than all the troubles of Hades in his horns and arms. Come on, girl. Will you tell me what’s going on? ’Sides, I might want to rent that room, if you’re going back to him.”

  Cypress’ astounding request set Sassafrass to laughing, and finally able to share the events of her last few days with Mitch, she poured out anecdote after anecdote, telling Cypress all his good points and all his weaknesses.

  “Ses faiblesses,” Cypress cynicized, “gonna cost you all the hair on your head and probably any joy you were expecting.”

  Sassafrass stuck by her man whom she had abandoned, and became healthily articulate about her problem. “Now Cypress, Mitch has endured more loneliness than a human being should ever encounter. His mother abandoned him when he was eight, and he raised himself in detention homes all thru this country full of crackers and madmen. Mitch is so good—he created himself; he made up somebody to be. Inside the joint, he took up horn playing and painting. Mitch is so strong, Cypress—he just gets that loneliness sometimes . . .”

  Sassafrass waited on that word “loneliness” for a sign of understanding from Cypress, who was staring right through her. Cypress was rendering all her lovers past, who could leap with the fire of Shango racing through their limbs, and make her cry from the beauty of their incarnate spirits. Cypress remembered every torrid affair—like a Hit Parade from the fifties. She was close to a primal scream, when Sassafrass interrupted.