Coffee Will Make You Black

by April Sinclair

“Linda and Melody?” I asked, walking into the living room in my sock feet.

  “I know Linda and Melody, I’m talking about those other girls.”

  “You mean Tanya and Patrice and Carla?” I asked, plopping down in Daddy’s big bronze vinyl chair, and digging my feet into the dark green carpet. I glanced up at the mantel. Daddy had gotten a new bowling trophy.

  Mama was sitting on the couch. She had changed out of her bank clothes into a blue duster. She frowned as her finger felt a tear in the plastic slipcover where gold material was showing.

  “I thought that was Carla Perkins. Why does she have to be so loud? I could hear her mouth all the way in here. I’ve never understood why negroes have to be so loud.” Mama leaned forward and straightened out the Ebony and Jet magazines on the glass coffee table. She glanced at the smiling white faces on the covers of Woman’s Day and Life magazines. “And you wonder why white people don’t want their children to go to school with you.” I hunched my shoulders and headed toward my room, carrying my books.

  “What are you doing walking home with Carla anyway?” Mama asked, hot on my trail. “After that fight, I thought you’d had enough of her.”

  “That’s dead, Mama. How much you wanna bet we don’t end up being friends? How much you wanna bet, Mama?”

  “You know I don’t bet,” Mama said, passing my door and heading for the kitchen.

  “Jean, get a knife and cut up this green pepper for the meat loaf,” Mama said as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Wash your hands first.”

  “Guess what, Mama? Carla got her period today!”

  “I suppose it won’t be long before she’ll be pushing a stroller.”

  I turned away from the sink. “Why do you say that, Mama?”

  Mama frowned as she took stuff out of the refrigerator.

  “Don’t both of her older sisters have babies now?”

  I nodded, surprised that Mama was so up on the ’hood.

  “Neither one of them could keep their dresses down. So how can you expect any better from her? She’ll do well to make it through eighth grade.” Mama chopped away at the onion.

  “Oh, Mama, she’ll make it way past eighth grade. Carla’s popular but she doesn’t even have a boyfriend right now.”

  Mama closed her eyes to avoid the onion. “Time will tell,” she said.

  “Anyway, Mama, I bet Patrice and Tanya have already started their periods too.”

  “So what? Everybody gets her period sooner or later.”

  “I hope I get mine sooner. Mama, how old were you when you got yours?”

  “I was older than twelve, I’ll say that. In my day girls didn’t develop as early.”

  “How old were you, Mama?”

  “What difference does it make? Can’t you find something else to talk about? Getting your period is nothing to celebrate. Why do you think they call it the curse? It’s just the beginning of a lot of mess, you’ll see. It’s nothing to get excited about, believe me.”

  “What kind of mess?” I dumped the cut-up green pepper in the bowl with the onion and ground beef.

  Mama poured a can of tomato sauce into the mixture.

  “It’s messy to take care of. It’s one thing to smell a man, it’s another to smell a woman,” she continued. “Nobody wants to smell a woman’s period on her.”

  “What does it smell like, Mama?”

  “Let’s put it this way, people would rather smell a dead fish. Now hand me my spices.”

  Boy, Mama sure could take the fun out of things, I thought as I watched her shape the meat loaf.

  It was the next day and I was standing on the playground with Carla, Tanya, and Patrice. Carla had seen me and waved for me to come over. They were giggling like girls do when they talk about boys.

  “I don’t know who it was, but I swear I felt something up against me when we were playing Squeeze the Lemon yesterday.” Tanya giggled.

  “What you feel, girl?” Carla giggled too.

  “I swear I felt …” Tanya couldn’t talk without laughing.

  “Come on, girl, tell it,” Patrice said.

  “Okay, okay, I swear I felt somebody’s you know what!” Tanya laughed.

  “Somebody’s thang?” Patrice asked.

  “Some boy’s dick?” Carla laughed.

  Everybody giggled. I tried to giggle too, although I hated giggling. Maybe I just wasn’t good at it. Probably it helped to have older sisters.

  “How you feel somebody’s thang up underneath all them coats and stuff?” Patrice wanted to know.

  “Must’ve been your ’magination, girl,” Carla said.

  “Yeah, girl, must’ve been your ’magination,” I agreed, wanting to at least say something.

  Tanya looked at me sort of surprised, like I didn’t know her well enough to be jumping on the bandwagon.

  “It couldn’t have just been my ’magination, cause guess what happened.” Tanya raised her eyebrows.

  “What?” we asked.

  “Promise not to tell nobody?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” Carla said.

  “I’ll keep it a secret,” I said, ready to hear it.

  “My lips are sealed,” Patrice squeezed her mouth together.

  “Okay, well, I know it wasn’t my ’magination, cause my love came down!” Tanya whispered.

  “Your love came down!” Carla said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Ooh, girl!” Patrice scrunched her face up and sucked in her breath.

  “Oh, wow!” I said, wondering what the heck they were talking about. One day I would have to ask Mama. I was glad that I hadn’t crossed my heart and hoped to die like Carla.

  chapter 5

  I’d seen a robin on the way to school this morning. Mama called spring the growing season. She was right because all of a sudden I had breasts. It felt strange to have two bumps sticking out of my chest. Mama had taken me to Sears to buy me my first bra. It was a size AA. She said if I took after her, one day, I’d be wearing a D cup. That was hard to imagine.

  Anyway, I felt grown-up wearing my new bra, but I also felt fenced in, like I was giving up something. Now, I could never walk around the house without a shirt on. I couldn’t run or jump without a bra because my breasts would bounce. Young men on the corner who had never noticed me before were saying, “Hey, mama,” or “Hey, baby.” I always spoke and tried to smile so they wouldn’t call me a bitch. But I got tired of jokers asking me how I was doing or if they could walk with me. When I complained to Mama, she said, “It’s all part of being a female. Men like to meddle, always have, always will. So long as they don’t put their hands on you, just smile and keep stepping. Wait until you hit thirty-five, you’ll be glad to get a little attention then,” she added.

  I still thought breasts might be more trouble than they were worth. Growing up reminded me a little bit of Hide and Go Seek. When it was your time to grow up, Nature said, “Here I come, ready or not.” And Nature could always find you.

  Carla’s thirteenth birthday was coming up right after Easter. She was definitely having a party and I was definitely invited. Carla had asked me what boy I hoped I got to kiss when we played Spin the Bottle. I’d told her I didn’t know what boy I wanted to kiss, but I could sure think of a few boys I didn’t want to have to kiss. Linda and Melody had worried me to ask Carla if they could be invited too. When I brought their names up to Carla she’d said, “Sho, if they’re friends of yours, okay.”

  It wasn’t cold enough to play Squeeze the Lemon anymore. Now it was Double Dutch weather. Last week Carla had asked me to be her Double Dutch partner. Of course I’d said yes. Tanya and Patrice were going to be partners too, and we even let Linda and Melody play. I had taken my allowance money last Saturday and bought a brand-new plastic clothesline for us to jump with. I knew a lot of girls looked up to me now on accounta my rope.

  We were on the playground jumping Double Dutch at afternoon recess. Linda and Melody turned the rope and sang as me and Carla jumped. Patrice a
nd Tanya stood waiting for us to miss.

  “Fudge, fudge, fudge, boom, boom, boom, call that, judge, boom, boom, boom, boom. Mama’s got a newborn baby, boom, it’s not a girl, boom, not a boy, boom, just an ordinary baby, boom, wrap it up in toilet paper, send it down the elevator, kick out.” Me and Carla kicked our feet out. “Shirley Temple went to France to teach the girls the Watusi dance, first on the heel then on the toe, then split the rope and around you go.”

  I felt something wet on my thigh that I could no longer ignore as I crisscrossed my legs. There was a strange heaviness in my stomach as I tripped on the rope.

  “Y’all missed!” Tanya shouted.

  “Y’all ain’t missed, Stevie missed.” Carla groaned. “How come you messed us up like that, girl? We usually get all the way to I like coffee, I like tea, I like the white boys and they like me. What happened?”

  “She missed, that’s what happened. Here, hurry up and give us our turn before the bell rings.” Patrice handed Carla the rope.

  My panties felt wet. Suddenly it hit me that I had started my period.

  “I think I just started my period!” I felt happy and scared at the same time as I watched the smiles on the other girls’ faces.

  “Don’t worry, you can’t see nothing. But you better go straight to the nurse,” Carla warned.

  I tied my sweater around my waist to be sure.

  “She’s lucky it ain’t summertime and she wasn’t wearing white pants, you remember Peaches and them white pants, don’t you?” Tanya asked the others.

  “Who could forget Peaches and them white pants?” Carla answered.

  “Yeah, who could forget Peaches,” I heard Linda agree.

  I headed for the nurse’s office. I wondered how come I didn’t remember Peaches and them white pants.

  The nurse, Mrs. O’Malley, had taken care of everything. She’d given me a brand-new elastic belt and shown me how to tie the ends of a Kotex pad to it and which side to use. She’d told me I could expect to bleed three to five days every month. If I got cramps, I could come to the sick room and lie down with the hot-water bottle. The nurse was a cross between Mrs. Santa Claus and Hazel, the maid on TV.

  I marched into Mrs. Cunningham’s room with a pass and a little booklet that said I had become a woman and was part of the mystery of life and stuff like that. I didn’t hide the booklet or shove it up in people’s faces. I just held it so anybody could see it if they had a mind to. Mrs. Cunningham took the pass without smiling or frowning. I tried to walk normal with this bulky thing that seemed to have a mind of its own in between my legs. I looked for Carla, and she gave me her dimpled smile. I felt proud as I took my seat, no matter what Mama said.

  “You don’t need me to tell you anything, it sounds like the nurse told you everything.” Mama sounded like she was relieved.

  We were in the kitchen and she was about to fry the pork chops. I was mashing the potatoes.

  “Oh, that blue box in the bathroom cabinet is where the Kotex are. Let me know if we run low.”

  I nodded. “Mama, are you gonna tell Daddy?”

  “No, he doesn’t need to know about this.”

  “What about Grandma?”

  “I might mention it to her, but it won’t be the first thing that comes out of my mouth.”

  “Oh.”

  I wanted to hear about the juicy stuff. Mama had never really sat me down and told me the facts.

  “Mama, what happens when your love comes down?”

  Mama dropped a pork chop into the hot skillet and jumped away as it splattered.

  “What are you talking about, Jean Eloise?”

  “Somebody said that her love came down. What does that mean?”

  I added a little more milk to the potatoes.

  “Who said some mess like that? I bet it was that Carla Perkins, wasn’t it?” Mama wrinkled her forehead.

  “It wasn’t Carla.”

  “I bet she was there, I bet she had something to do with it!”

  “Well, what does it mean, Mama?”

  Mama turned a pork chop over with the long fork.

  “It means that whoever said it has her mind in the gutter, that’s what it means. The devil is everywhere these days. Well, I won’t have you talking that trash in my house. Whoever said it, you need to stay away from her. You need to stay away from that whole Carla Perkins crowd.”

  I would just have to find out stuff from other people. Mama wasn’t getting up off of nothing, I thought. Besides, Carla’s birthday was less than two weeks away and I didn’t want to push Mama now. I knew I had to lay low for a while.

  We were in the coatroom getting our sweaters and stuff for morning recess. I reached for the jump rope hanging from my hook.

  “Forget it, Stevie, we ain’t jumping today,” Carla said.

  “How come? It’s not raining, the ground’s not even wet from last night.”

  “Just be cool, Stevie, just be cool. We ain’t jumping today, okay? Just follow me.”

  I followed Carla into the auditorium, which didn’t make sense to me, because we were supposed to be on the playground during recess.

  “Carla, we’re not supposed to be in here. What are we going to do in an empty auditorium? What if we get in trouble?”

  “I told you to just be cool, you’ll see.”

  I followed Carla past the rows of empty seats to the back. I could hear giggling. I was surprised to find Tanya and Patrice all hunched over a book.

  “Here, Stevie, you’ve got to read it. It’s my sister’s diary, girl, you gotta read it!” Tanya handed me the smooth blue book with a flap hanging from it. I flipped over to the cover. It said ONE YEAR DIARY. It had a place for a key.

  “Tanya, won’t your sister be mad? Isn’t it sort of personal?”

  “Who cares, with all the dirt she’s done to me all my life? Besides, I’m gonna take it home at lunchtime; she’ll never know I found it. It’s her fault for forgetting to lock it.”

  “Go ’head, Stevie, don’t be no square. It ain’t no harm in it. Her sister Annie Pearl’s the one that did it, you just reading about it.” Carla elbowed me.

  “Besides, how else we supposed to find out about stuff?” Patrice wanted to know.

  I thought she kind of had a point.

  “Why should I be the one to read it?”

  “’Cause you on the honor roll, I don’t want nobody stumbling over they words at a time like this,” Carla explained.

  “Read about the part when her love came down! Turn to March 22,” Tanya insisted.

  I sat down with the book. I figured this beat trying to get something out of Mama.

  “‘I know I’m in love, don’t care what nobody say, ’cause ain’t nobody ever made me feel this way,’” I read aloud with Carla, Patrice, and Tanya sitting on both sides of me.

  “Dog, your sister’s a poet,” Carla declared.

  “‘Derrick just look at me and I go to melt. I can’t keep my mind on nothing else. Seem like everything be Derrick and Derrick be everything.’” I let out a sigh. You couldn’t help but be affected.

  “Yo sister sho do have a way with words,” Carla cut in, again.

  “I wish I had me a Derrick,” Patrice added.

  “Keep reading, Stevie, hurry up and get to the good part!” Tanya said.

  “‘When he be kissing me, I don’t never want him to stop.’” Patrice let out a couple of giggles. “‘Last night when he rubbed his thing up against my thigh …’” I had to come up for air; this was getting juicy. I could hear my heart beating. I could tell that the others were hanging on every word. Carla elbowed me, “Don’t stop now, keep going, girl.”

  I continued, “‘My panties was wetter than they ever was before.’”

  “OOH WEE, see, I told you her love came down,” Tanya whispered. I swallowed hard. This stuff really was something!

  “‘I know the reason I be scared is ’cause we don’t have no protection and I don’t want no baby.’” I wondered what protection was.
It didn’t sound like it was a gun or a German shepherd.

  “Hurry up ’fore the bell ring!” Carla shouted.

  “Okay. ‘Derrick say he gonna buy some rubbers before the next time he rub his dick against me.’”

  Why would he need boots? I wondered.

  “Stevie, be cool.” Carla elbowed me again.

  “Carla, why are you stopping me now? It sounds like it’s really about to get good.”

  “I know, Stevie, but there go Mr. Davis and Mrs. Robinson standing right behind us.”

  I turned my head and saw the principal and the music teacher staring at us. They were two red-looking white people. Patrice and Tanya let out big sighs.

  “Mrs. Robinson, let me know if the piano needs tuning for the assembly. Remember, it needs to be in tiptop shape for the graduation in June.”

  Mrs. Robinson nodded. We sat like statues.

  Mr. Davis leaned over and snatched the diary out of my hand.

  “You girls follow me.”

  I cut my eyes at Carla. That’s what I got for following her. I could tell from the sound of Mr. Davis’s voice that our gooses were cooked!

  Carla, Tanya, and Patrice were suspended from school for three days. Mr. Davis had talked to our teachers and they had decided not to suspend me because I was on the honor roll. Mr. Davis said that Tanya could have her sister’s diary back if her mother came up and got it.

  Mrs. Cunningham told me that I couldn’t return to school without my mother. There was no way I could have Mama miss work to come up to school about me, when Carla’s birthday party was this Saturday. No way, I thought.

  Me and Carla were walking back to our class with Mrs. Cunningham.

  “I don’t know when I’ve been so disappointed. Jean, you are one of my brightest students. No one expects anything from Carla, but you have really disappointed us.”

  Carla rolled her eyes as Mrs. Cunningham continued.

  “We have an old Jamaican saying, ‘Every tub must sit ’pon its own bottom,’ Jean. You can’t go through life following behind other people; you have to have a mind of your own.”

  “I didn’t say it was anybody else’s idea,” I reminded Mrs. Cunningham.