He recited priggishly:
A whistling woman
and a crowing hen
both come
to a bad end.
His shrug said, Sorry, not my rule.
“I thought hens had to crow,” I said stupidly. He seemed so calm about my eternal damnation; I was more disturbed by his easy abandonment of me than anything else.
He was quickly exasperated. “Y’all don’t never learn nothin in the country. Roosters. ’S roosters that crow. Males. Women got they jobs and men got they’s. Decent women don’t whistle. Just like they don’t cut they hair ner wear pants ner answer back. ’S mannish. The Bible say.”
Bored with cleaning, this caught my fancy. I loved indices, tables of contents, appendices, footnotes, encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, atlases—I adored fact-checking. When the ministers gave chapter and verse in church, I raced the old ladies around us to find it first. Daddy had always been proud of that. I wanted to track this down, too. I accepted everything I read at face value and knew women were second-class citizens. It didn’t occur to me to object to this stricture; I did, however, want to see it in print. Old Testament or New? I wondered. Knowing my Daddy, it had to be Old.
So I asked him, “Where?”
His lips thinned.
I was “quizzin” him, calling him a fool. He turned on his heel and left. Nastily, I thought to myself: At least I won’t be lonely in hell; Mama’ll be with me.
It was well into the afternoon and we’d been cleaning nonstop. Since he was so stealthy, it was hard to know exactly where he was in the house. He was always sneaking up on us, poking his head through doorways and appearing from corners to keep us off-balance. He’d appear on top of us from a shadow and exult in our gasps and frightened exclamations. Then, he’d say something like “Had I a been a sniper, you be dead.” After all, there was no one else to use for target practice.
Bored with my dustrag, my mind wandered to the new book I was reading. I tiptoed over to flip through it; I never meant to actually read it right then. But somehow, I found myself stretched across my hospital-cornered bed, lost in Little Women.
The next thing I knew, Daddy’s razor strap had me pinned, whimpering and disoriented, to the covers. The whole time, he kept up the question-and-answer session with which every African-American of my generation is so familiar.
“Didn’t . . . I tell you . . . [WHAP] . . . to . . . [WHAP WHAP] redo those mirrors?” WHAP!
“Yes sir . . . [WHIMPER] . . . you told . . . [WHIMPER] . . . me you . . . [BLUBBER] . . . told me.”
WHAP. “Next time . . . [WHAP] . . . you gon . . . do . . . [WHAP] what I say . . . ?” WHAPWHAPWHAP.
CRINGE. “Yes . . . [WHIMPER] . . . sir.”
“I [WHAP] know [WHAP] you aint [WHAP] crying. [WHAP] Shut up that [WHAP] . . . noise . . . [WHAP] fore I give you [WHAP] . . . something to cry . . . [WHAP] . . . about!”
Silly me. I thought you just did.
I flooded my mind with a million similarly caustic one-liners to stop myself from crying. It was imperative to stop because he’d beat me as long as I cried. Why? Because he’d told me to stop.
We cleaned pretty much straight through until dinner with a lunch break only long enough for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was starved. My stomach rumbled and gurgled through Daddy’s blessing. There was grape Kool-Aid, fried chicken, black-eyed peas with cornbread, and fresh tomatoes from our garden, my favorite meal. Mama was trying to cheer us up after a day in the salt mines. More hungry than neurotic for once, I opted for simplicity. So, when Daddy finished, I lowered my standards and mumbled a fairly commonplace “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”: overused and less than a tenth of my usual performance but still probably twice as long as anything anyone else was going to say. It was “Jesus wep”’s all around. I won.
Daddy began lecturing on the evils of white people—how they couldn’t sleep at night unless they’d harassed somebody that day, how deep down in their hearts they knew other folks were just as good, if not better. That was what kept them so mean and hateful all the time. I understood that by “white people” he meant the rich and powerful, the college-educated, the movie stars, and, by all means, the Jews—the haves, in other words—not just the merely Caucasian. “Other folks” really meant the poor, the sickly, the workers of the world: the have-nots.
Something in the paper had set him off. He screeched his chair back from the table and thumped the paper down in his lap. He began tearing through it and shouting about how, if a white man manages to blow his nose, they quick run out and put him on TV. He held up a random picture filled with whites as if written above their heads by the finger of God was the word GUILTY! We shammed studying it intently, non sequitur that it was. Humoring him was our only hope of returning to a quiet dinner. But he’d already whipped himself up into a class-based, race-enhanced frenzy.
Waving a portion of the paper over his head, he shouted, “I dare you to show me colored folk in any of these fancy pictures!”
He flung the paper down so it landed just off to my side on the floor. The advertisement section opened to an ad featuring four women; three white, one black. The sister was right up front.
I looked down at it for a nanosecond too long. I knew when I raised my head that Daddy would be staring me down. I said nothing, kept my face blank. Looking away might well be considered back-talking. I held my breath and held his gaze, trying to look as stupid as possible. Forks clinked faster and faster against our VV plates. No one spoke. Finally Mama cleared her throat and sent me upstairs to make sure there was toilet paper in the bathroom.
I stretched out on the floor for as long as I dared. Bleak as my immediate future was, I enjoyed knowing that, for once, no one would bang on the door and invade my privacy. I did what I always did when I managed to be in a room alone back then; I recited passages from the books I loved. Dickens was my current favorite. I recited the beheading scene from A Tale of Two Cities, just to make sure that the good twin’s bravery would still bring tears to my eyes even as I faced my own angry mob. It did. I went back to dig my way out of that half-assed foxhole I’d dug.
When I returned, Daddy looked calm. I sat silently for a minute in case he had something to say, then resumed eating. Or tried to. My fork was gone. For a comically long time, I looked around for it on the floor, even though I knew where it had to be.
For the rest of the meal, he never looked at me. He made chirpy small talk to which everyone responded with extreme caution. They needn’t have worried; he was charming. Even so, when he reached past me for the cornbread, Bobby flinched. I watched my fork there on the far side of his plate with my hands in my lap.
After he’d finished eating, he did what he always did: with the last of Mama’s homemade biscuit, he scraped the last morsel of food away so the plate looked scoured clean even before washing, then began chain-smoking neat piles of Belair cigarette ashes into it. He held forth on the stupidity of every person he’d come into contact with that day. Across from him, Mama gazed somewhere through and beyond the window behind him. Though she seemed far away, as each of my siblings made it furtively known that they wanted to leave, she nodded permission. Finally, just the three of us were left. Without one clever thought in my head, I did what I had to. I let the tears roll down my face.
Sometimes you had to stop crying. Sometimes you had to start. His call.
“Clean up this kitchen and git to bed,” he said, and left.
My stomach roared with hunger. My tears disgusted me. I wanted to slam a door or throw something at the wall. I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured myself answering Daddy back with big words he wouldn’t understand, but my fantasy’s very dreamlike quality made it just that much more frustrating. Dangerously, I tossed a plate from hand to hand and made faces at the hallway, knowing I’d never have the nerve to drop it. Daddy would see that for what it was: defiance. At the best of times, a broken dish would earn you a thunderous sermon on your
ingratitude and sloth. This was hardly the best of times.
I knew which book I was going to start as soon as I finished with Louisa May Alcott —The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe— and I couldn’t wait. Reliving dinner again and again, I hated myself for not simply asking for my fork or for not having just gotten another from the drawer. But I’d been too scared. Too scared of what Daddy might do. My anger gave way to confusion. What happened to the zoo-zoos and lollipops? What was I doing wrong that he didn’t like me anymore?
Crying and hiccuping, I lifted the dishpan to empty it down the drain just as my knees gave out in a blinding swirl of pain. Dirty, greasy water from the upended dishpan drenched me as the doubled-over extension cord cut into the back of my legs again. Daddy’s strong arms pinned my face to the faucet by the scruff of my neck and kept me from falling down. I hadn’t heard him coming.
“I’m a give you somethin to cry about,” he snarled. “I’m a teach you about back talk if it kills me.” His voice was a hiss in my ear.
Ah, tears were such a complicated phenomenon. Tears of submission were acceptable, the proto-lawyer in me had the time to conclude, while tears of sadness and blame were not. I’d better get this right pretty soon or there wasn’t going to be much left of me.
Of all the things to be whipped with—bare hands, tree switches, belts, hairbrushes, razor straps—extension cords were the worst. They made a sickening whistling sound as they whipped toward your bare flesh which, no matter how you steeled yourself, squeezed agonized, anticipatory moans from you. When it landed, it cut a strip of skin away and seared the very air from your lungs. The sting of an extension cord robbed you of all coherent thought except this lone sentence: I cannot survive this. It left painful welts that took as much as a week to heal; they were visible for far longer. Females could not wear pants to school in those days, but even if you could, you could not bear the pain of cloth touching the welts. Tights were a special form of torture. When the entire schoolyard is snickering because you have to sit on the edge of your seat, humiliation is a word that just isn’t deep enough. In the hood, extension cord whippings were like VV clothes: everyone got them but we all pretended to be unacquainted with them.
The world went white with pain and fury while he used the extension cord on me. I heard Mama yelling something but was never able to make it out. It was probably what she always said when he whipped us:
“That’s enough, Eddie. That’s enough, Eddie.”
He beat me and he beat me and he beat me. Sweat dropped from his face onto the back of my neck and his breathing was ragged. The hand squeezing my throat against the fixtures closed and opened spasmodically. By then, I was clinging to the faucet as if it were a life preserver while the rest of my body bucked and thrashed, unable to escape either Daddy’s grip or the cord’s reach. I rubbed my face wantonly against the faucet’s coolness while colored lights flashed behind my eyelids. I babbled little prayers to it—my smooth metal tether to an unwhipped world—that I only heard once the whistle of the extension cord went away.
“PleaseGod, pleaseGod, pleaseGod, pleaseGod, pleaseGod,” I begged, understanding for once the full extent of the humility the preachers were always lecturing about in church. Please God make it stop. I’d left the last three words off, but I was sure He knew what I was talking about.
Daddy dropped both me and the cord as if we suddenly weighed a ton.
“Put that up,” he spat. With my face still at sink level, I could only assume he meant the cord I could see coiled up like a sudden snake at his feet.
“Clean yourself up and git to bed like I done told you.” His voice shook. Somehow, I found myself standing at the foot of my twin bed. I chose not to remember how long it took me to climb the stairs. A sweltering fall night, Necie was a stone mound swaddled in blankets against the far wall next to her bed. She was whimpering. I had nothing to say to her.
In the center of my bed lay the big family Bible. Behind me, Daddy was saying that I’d done read enough about white ladies in long dresses carryin on. I needed to get right with the Lord, good sista. I had not heard him coming this time either.
Something fell on my sneaker. I looked down and there was the extension cord again. I must have picked it up. I wondered if I’d get in trouble for not putting it back like he said, but he must have melted away.
My neck was excruciatingly sore, but even so I forced my head around to check the dresser top. As I’d suspected, my pile of library books was gone. My legs bloody, my pride gone, I determined to start hiding my books. That way, as long as I hid them well, he could only take them away one at a time. We would soon know if I had inherited the Dickerson stealth.
I struggled into my (too large, one arm shorter than the other) nightgown, moaning and rocking myself like an old lady to finesse the pain. Sleeping bottomless, let alone naked, was indecent, out of the question. Necie’s mound never moved. I de-hospital-cornered my bed just enough to slip into it, hit the light switch, and collapsed face first on my thin pillow. I sighed, knowing I’d be awake all night, then cut it off in terror before the sigh could become tears. God help me if I cried again.
I ached for C. S. Lewis, or Dickens. Even a Brontë. Then I remembered the Bible I’d let tumble to the floor. I lay on my stomach waiting for the house to settle. Daddy began snoring within a half hour of my turning out the lights. Within a half hour of that, I heard the mice begin their night’s work in the back of our dresser drawers and scurrying along the floorboards.
After Daddy’d snored for a continuous hour, I knew it was safe to get out my flashlight (scavenged from a roadside when he wasn’t looking) and start in on the Bible.
I was the first one at the table the next morning, simple enough given that I’d hardly slept. When my turn came to say a verse, I recited all sixty-seven books of the Bible in order. There was an impressed silence. Just as Bobby began “Jes—” I interrupted him and recited them again. Backwards.
Daddy leaned back expansively in his chair once the table was blessed and beamed at me. He lectured my siblings; let “that” be a lesson to them all. The threat in his voice and the pride he took in his handiwork on the back of my legs was clear.
I said nothing. My legs were on fire and I’d woken up with charley horses again; both calves. For the rest of the time we lived with him, I’d wake four mornings out of seven with my calves in a vicious knot.
Through the six hours of church, I kept my head buried in the Bible and ignored Wina when she tried to commiserate with me. Back at home, I lugged the Bible from room to room, trying to find a quiet spot. When we sat down to dinner, I noted that Mama had made Daddy’s favorites—deep-fried pork chops, boiled cabbage, butter beans with spicy hot chow-chow, fried green tomatoes from the garden, cornbread and lots of buttermilk to crumble it into. He sat down, rubbing his hands in high good spirits. He blessed the table and I began reciting the mind-numbing lists of names from the second census of the Israelites in the twenty-sixth chapter of Numbers:
These were the Israelites who came out of Egypt:
The descendants of Reuben, the firstborn son of Israel, were: through Hanoch, the Hanochite clan; through Pallu, the Palluite clan; through Hezron, the Hezronite clan; through Carmi, the Carmite clan. These were the clans of Reuben; those numbered were 43,730. . . .
I did this for three and a half minutes.
I went on so long at breakfast the next morning, Mama had to wrap Daddy’s breakfast for him to take with him. Since I was still sitting on the edge of my seat, I could feel his feet tapping impatiently as I filibustered my family. I orated for another five minutes at dinner—more lists from Numbers. When I finished, Daddy faked a hearty “Amen,” his fists clenching and unclenching in confused frustration. The table once blessed, I never raised my eyes from my plate, never spoke again. I only had so much energy.
On the third day, the Bible disappeared. I went across the street to the Reverend’s. He was only too happy to give me another one.
On th
e fourth day, I began with Song of Songs, second chapter, sixteenth verse:
My lover is mine and I am his;
he browses among the lilies.
Until the day breaks and the shadows flee,
turn, my lover,
and be like a gazelle or like a young stag
on the rugged hills.
All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I lo—
Daddy gasped. That shocked me so, I stopped speaking. Daddy was speechless but powerless to bring down God’s wrath by interrupting and disapproving of His Word. I had him right where I wanted him. Daddy, who had probably never read an actual page of the Bible, both dreaded and longed to hear what I would say next. I peeked up from my lowered eyes and saw him breathing through his mouth in abject, but approving, surrender. He was impressed. Bobby began to whimper. Suddenly, I was exhausted. Tonight, at last, I knew I’d sleep.
“Jesus wept,” I said.
The next day, after I’d gotten my first night’s sleep since the beating, I wore my “new” brown plaid jumper, the one Daddy’d taken his pliers to. Even though it was still too warm for it, it was perfect for hiding the scars on my legs because of its length and the stiff way it belled around me like a hoop skirt. After some practice, I learned to walk so that it never made contact with the backs of my legs. Sitting was torture, given the scratchy corduroy, but sacrifices had to be made. Matched with my longest kneesocks, virtually none of the extension cord marks showed.
As we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, I thought back to breakfast. Daddy might even be proud of the way I’d outflanked him. Confused, angry, sad, and sore, I wanted nothing more than to have things back the way they used to be when I could sit on his lap and watch him laugh. Then I tried to sit down.
My feet were pinned in place. Sometime during the Pledge, the pliered chains had come loose and my dress had fallen off. It was garlanded around my stained white plastic go-go boots with back zippers (only one of which was operational when Daddy’d found them). I stood in the middle of my classroom wearing nothing but a too-small-to-button-below-the-sternum secondhand white blouse, white panties, white kneesocks, and raggedy white boots.
An American Story Page 7
