“Here you getting ready to argue with me. Kate, don’t argue with me, hear? All I’m trying to say is, the boy got his own life. I be scared to let him sleep at them white boys’ house, just like you. Me and no white boys was ever friends, never could be, and you wasn’t friends to no white girl.”
Mary Kate was silent.
“This ain’t the world we growed up in. Sometime I don’t know what to tell Mikey ’cause I don’t know the world he living in.” Samuel started coughing again.
“You need to see a doctor,” Mary Kate said. “Your cough don’t sound like it’s getting no better.”
When he stopped, he said, “What a doctor going to tell me that I don’t know? I’m a be all right. Mikey the one I’m worried about. You know, the boy told me he don’t got no dreams. All he want to do is get out of here, get as far away as the wind can carry him. What can we do?”
22
No One Home
NO ONE KNEW how long she had been there alone, swimming through the blue silence of the house. She made no effort to leave the space that confined her.
Mikey was the first to know she was there. For three days, when he had gone to deliver the paper to 79, he saw the paper from the previous day. On the first day he paid little notice, but on the third day, when he opened the screened front door the other papers fluttered and blew apart at his feet. How rude it was, he thought, for Zena to go away and not tell him to stop delivery.
Mikey had come to expect little from these people. There was a customer who lived on the last row, in the very last house, whom he had had to cut off. The man would not pay on time. When Mikey went to deliver, the man was always there, and always said, “You late, boy.”
“I’m sorry,” he would answer.
“Don’t be sorry, be on time,” the man would say.
Zena was a good customer, though. She always paid her bill. She had gone away before, but on those occasions she had told Mikey or left a note for him.
The day Mikey found the papers was a Thursday. He did not return until Sunday, collection day. When he knocked on the door and no one answered, he turned to leave. But before he could step off the porch, the door opened. He turned to see the colorless girl.
She stood in the door, looking up at him, her blue eyes moving rapidly from side to side, trying to get a fix on him. He so rarely saw her when he delivered or collected that he had nearly forgotten about her. She would be lost so deeply in the blueness of the house that it seemed as if she had wandered through a wall and was living her life as a ghost.
Her eyes made him uncomfortable, and he asked, “Is your mother in?”
“She gone,” the girl said.
“When is she coming home? I need to collect.”
“I don’t know. She been gone.”
Mikey looked beyond the girl, into the stillness of the house, to see if Zena was somewhere back there, if she had sent the child out to lie for her.
“I seen you,” the girl said.
“What?” Mikey asked.
“I seen you put the papers in the door.”
“I didn’t think anyone was here. Why didn’t you come out and get them?”
“There wasn’t nobody home,” she answered.
He glared at her, though she did not seem to notice. “You were here,” he said. “You just told me you saw me.”
“Wasn’t nobody home,” she said, casting her eyes away.
It was time for Mikey to move on. He could not waste the afternoon talking to this child.
At dinner that night, slicing into a piece of fried chicken, he mentioned what the girl had said. “She kept saying that no one was there, but she was there. She’s been there all this time. She was weirding me out.”
His brother and sisters looked at one another and laughed.
“What’s funny?” Mary Kate asked. “Ya’ll think what he said funny?”
“No ma’am,” they answered in unison.
They all thought their brother was turning white: eating fried chicken with a knife and fork, saying “weirding me out.”
Samuel said, “I don’t want to be the one to say it, but I think the child mama done run off.”
“It don’t sound right,” Mary Kate said. “And come to think of it, I ain’t seen the mama here lately.”
“I haven’t seen her recently either,” Mikey said, “but that doesn’t prove anything. You are jumping to conclusions.”
“Yeah,” Dorene said, “and it’s weirding us out.” She and the other children laughed again.
“They’re making fun of me,” Mikey said.
“Ya’ll stop laughing at ya’ll brother,” Samuel said.
“Well, he shouldn’t be talking like that. What he say be funny,” Dorene said.
“Shut your smart mouth or I’m a send you from the table,” Mary Kate said. “Can’t even have a peaceful Sunday meal without ya’ll yapping like a bunch of puppies.” Once the children had settled down she said, “It’s dangerous for a child that age to be left alone. Anything can happen, but it ain’t none of our business.”
“You right,” Samuel said. “But me and Mikey run ’round there after dinner. If we don’t go, you ain’t going to leave it alone.”
“I’m a go too,” Mary Kate said.
“Naw, you expecting, and I don’t want you going. You never know,” Samuel said.
“Samuel, it’s a child.”
“I say I don’t want you going, and I mean that. You stay here. Me and Mikey ain’t going to be gone but a bit.”
The door to 79 was closed when Samuel and Mikey approached. Samuel knocked and waited. Knocked and waited.
“She’s hiding from us,” Mikey said. “Let’s go.”
The door opened.
“That’s her,” Mikey said.
Samuel glared at him. “What you think, I’m blind or stupid?” He turned to the child. “Where you mama at?” he asked in a gentle voice.
“She gone.”
“I know,” Samuel said. “How long she been gone?”
“A good while,” the girl answered.
“What’s ‘a good while’?” Mikey interrupted. “Can’t you give a time estimate? One, two days?” She did not respond. “See what I mean, Dad?”
“Shut up, boy. Let me handle this,” Samuel said.
“She been gone a good bit,” the child said.
“We going to take a walk to your grandma’s, hear?” Samuel said.
Mikey looked up at his father. “You’re taking her to Greene’s?”
“Who you think you is, calling grown folks by they Christian name? Next thing I know, you be calling me Samuel. Come on,” he said to the girl.
The girl stepped out of the house, and the brightness of the day caused her to squint.
She walked alongside Samuel, stumbling over the uneven sidewalks. Mikey lagged behind. He could see women, their heads popping out of windows, women stepping onto porches, wiping their hands, hands on hips, hands pointing. He knew they were watching, for walking a few steps ahead of him was the embodiment of a spell, walking around like a real child.
Mikey did not believe in black magic, but he was embarrassed to be seen with this imitation white child. He did not believe she was the product of a spell. There were no spells, no magic, no hoodoo. Life was reason with no rhyme. Mikey did not know that while ghosts were being vanquished during the Age of Reason on the Continent, the ancestors of his people were performing magic, building a nation of brick and stone, of wealth and power, out of bolls of cotton. They had no reason to discount magic when they worked it every day.
Greene was on her porch churning ice cream, looking quite ordinary, surrounded by four of her boys. Samuel did not exactly know what he expected her to be doing, but this was not it. Who thought of a conjurer making ice cream?
“Good evening,” Samuel said.
Greene stood up and cast her eyes down on them. A milky film covered her left eye, and though Mikey tried to not look, he was drawn to it. It was the eye of
a snake.
“Hot enough for you?” Samuel asked.
“It ain’t never been hot enough here for me,” Greene said.
One of her sons took off the top of the freezer. “Mama, it’s ready,” he said, pulling the paddle from the cylinder. Another child, another boy, came from the house with spoons and a stack of chipped bowls.
“Ice cream?” Greene asked. “It’s peach. I would eat some myself, but all that cold make my teeth hurt too bad.”
Before Samuel could answer, Mikey said, “Yes, please,” and a bowl was passed to him.
Samuel could not remember Mikey ever wanting Mary Kate to add peaches to the ice cream she made. He always wanted vanilla. Yet here he was eating, of all things, fruited ice cream stirred up by a witch. And then there were Greene and her children, acting as if the girl were not there. Samuel had to look down at the child to make sure she was.
He was damned if he’d be stating his business out in the yard. “Can we step inside?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Greene said.
Once they were in the house, Samuel got to the point. “You see, I got you grandbaby. I know it ain’t none of my business, but I brung her here ’cause she say her mama done run off.”
Greene reached into the pocket of her housedress and took out a small, rusty red tin. She took a pinch of its contents and placed it inside her lower lip.
“You right, Mr. Taylor. It ain’t none of your concern,” she said, placing the tin back in her pocket. “And I got news for you. If you brung Clotel here for me to keep, you can keep walking with her. I can’t keep her. Times is hard, and I ain’t got no extra, nothing to feed her, no place to put her. If you leaves her here, I’m a have to turn her over to the state.” Though her voice was flat, underneath it was sadness sewn as finely as a blind stitch.
“You thinking I’m a hard woman, ain’t you?” she asked.
Samuel did not look at her. He looked around the room at the yellow walls, the pots of food on the stove, the dishes piled in the sink. How ordinary it seemed. This could be his house.
“Her other grandma live in Buffalo, over in the Fruit Belt, on Grape Street.”
“Can I get the number?” Samuel asked.
“There ain’t no phone,” Greene said.
“I see,” Samuel said. “I know you ain’t got no car. I could take the child over there, run her by there tomorrow.”
Greene got up from the table. “Let me get the address,” she said, and she left the kitchen.
Samuel glanced out the door. The child was sitting on the sidewalk, her knees drawn to her chest.
Greene came back with the address written on a piece of brown paper bag. “All a body can do is what it can, Mr. Taylor. No more,” she said, handing the scrap of paper to him.
Samuel left the house. “Come on,” he said to Mikey, and he picked the girl up.
“What’s going on, Dad?” Mikey asked.
“Shut up,” Samuel said.
Mary Kate, Venita, and the children were crowded on the back porch when they arrived.
“Open the door, Martin,” Samuel said.
Everyone filed into the kitchen and Samuel placed Clotel down. The children gathered around her. She stood looking at the floor, her eyes moving, searching under the pink lids, while the children stared at her.
“It’s a white girl,” Mary said.
“She ain’t white,” Martin said.
“All ya’ll get out of here. Every last one of ya’ll get,” Mary Kate said. “Staring like ya’ll ain’t had no upbringing.”
Samuel pulled a dollar from his pocket. “Mikey, take them all to the store. A dime apiece, and bring the girl back something.”
They scrambled out of the kitchen, and Mary Kate went to the stove to fix the girl a plate.
Clotel ate everything with her hands, corn bread, chicken, green beans, tomatoes. While she ate, the adults went into the living room, and Samuel spoke softly to the two women about what Greene had said.
“You shouldn’t have went in the house,” Venita said.
“She right. You shouldn’t have. She could of put something on you,” Mary Kate said.
“She didn’t,” Samuel said.
Mary Kate said, “I don’t know, you come back here with a child.”
“Don’t you start with me, now,” he yelled. “She was going to turn the child over to the state!” He began wheezing.
“Ssh,” Mary Kate hissed.
“I shouldn’t of went there period,” he said in a lowered voice. “I promised to run her to her other grandma, and then I’m through with it. This what you get for sticking your nose in where it don’t belong.”
“Well, she can’t go to her grandma’s looking like this,” Venita said, and while the other children were out, she began cleaning up Clotel.
As she filled the tub with tepid water in the bathroom upstairs, she pondered her feelings for this child. Clotel did not have baby Miguel’s beauty, his copper skin, his shiny curls. She was no angel, though she lived her life unseen. This was a child who needed someone to look after her, and if Venita did not do, who was going to do?
Venita bathed the child and washed her hair and put her down in a bottom bunk in the girls’ room, where Clotel cried herself to sleep. The women went and sat out back, where Olivia, Mary, and the youngest child, Jonetta, were playing hand-clapping games.
“We brung Mary Janes for the white girl,” Jonetta said.
“You call her by her name,” Mary Kate said. “Your daddy say she Clotel, and you call her that, and she ain’t no white girl. Mary, you go find Dorene and Mikey, and have them get started on them dishes.”
Venita sat picking at her nails.
“You all right?” Mary Kate asked.
“Yeah, girl. I was just thinking. What kind of mothers women are these days.”
The next morning Mikey woke up sick. Mary Kate went to see about him, and Martin said, “Mama, he ate at Miss Greene house yesterday. He say he ate ice cream.”
“He what?” she yelled. “Samuel! Samuel!”
“Kate, you going to wake up the whole house,” Samuel said as he was coming up the stairs.
“I don’t care if I wake the dead. That boy ate at Greene’s?”
Samuel hung his head.
“He did, he did, didn’t he?” Mary Kate screamed, her voice high-pitched and strangling.
“Before I could stop him, he did. What was I supposed to say after he accepted? Say, ‘Hey, boy, don’t be eating nothing from that woman’?”
Mary Kate went back to Mikey and Martin’s room. Mikey had the covers pulled over his head. He wanted to disappear.
“What can you tell that boy? He think he know every damn thing,” Samuel said from the hall.
“Well, he don’t. You happy now, boy?” she asked Mikey. “You believe in her power now? I’m a dose you with castor oil. That’s all I can do.”
All day Mikey lay in bed, sick and sulking. His stomach was queasy and his mother was ignorant. Why did she insist on walking through darkness when she could walk in the light?
Clotel had not gotten up either. Lying awake, balled up in a corner of the bed until after nine, she thought she must be dreaming, and her stillness kept the spell from being broken. If she moved, she would awaken in her own bed, her mother never having left, the paperboy never having come. Until Venita came over to ask about her, Clotel stayed in the bed holding on to the dream. Even as Venita dressed her, gave her a bowl of cereal, she was not quite sure if she was awake.
After breakfast Venita pressed Clotel’s hair. Clotel sat perfectly still, even though the heat and anger of the comb was right on her scalp.
“She hold a good head,” Venita said.
“Olivia hold a bad head,” Mary Kate said. “Don’t you, baby?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said. She was sitting on the floor playing jacks. “I don’t like no straightening comb. When I grow up, I ain’t going to straighten my head.”
“When you do that, do
n’t come to my house, you hear? You ain’t running through my house looking like no African,” Mary Kate said.
“I ain’t going to straighten my hair either,” Dorene said. She was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, already beginning to look like a woman. “I want me a afro, a big bush.”
“Girl, you old enough to know better. Venita, tell this child she too black to have her head nappy.”
“Your mama right. Don’t no black man want a nappy-head black woman, especially not a dark-complected one.”
“Well, they should marry white women, then,” Dorene snapped.
“Don’t get sassy,” Mary Kate said.
“Mama, even you said that before. When Daddy be complaining about you pressing our hair, saying he ain’t like all that loose hair flying through the kitchen, ’cause if some of it got in his food, and was going to grow in his stomach.”
“You ever heard of such foolishness?” Mary Kate asked.
Dorene continued, “And you be telling him he should of married a white woman if he don’t want no hair in his kitchen. And beside, you be burning our hair, right?”
“Right,” Mary Kate said. “Down home we say, you burn your hair that fall, ’cause if you throw it out and a bird get hold of it and make a nest out of it, you’ll go crazy.”
Venita left after Dorene and Mary went to deliver Mikey’s papers. She had made a tuna and macaroni salad for Moses, and she needed to fry some livers and gizzards before he came home. She was going to ride over to Buffalo with Sam and Kate when they took Clotel to her other grandmother.
Moses didn’t like the idea when she had told him the night before. “What happen to that child ain’t none of your business. Why you going, getting tied up with somebody else child?” Moses asked.
“Moses, she a good girl. I straightened her hair and combed it. We just going to run her over to Buffalo, that’s all. Who going to do?” she asked. “Her mama might never come back.”
“What kind of mama is she, anyway? Leaving like that,” Moses said. “People want children, and other people be throwing them away like they nothing.”
All-Bright Court Page 17
