They Come in All Colors

by Malcolm Hansen

  An emotional bottle, having inadvertently come uncorked, was spilling over, and Mom was desperate to catch every drop. I wasn’t following half of what she said, but it didn’t seem to matter. Lexington Avenue may as well have belonged to her.

  I’m going to tell you this once, sweetheart, and then I’m never going to tell it to you again. So listen well. Any person you know who has not had a family member enslaved is at a two-hundred-fifty-year advantage over you. Okay? Not the other way around. You must understand that one simple fact. You have ancestors—blood relatives, real people, connected to you by blood and history—who were enslaved, who had their families, language, labor, freedom, possessions, and identity taken from them by force and used to the advantage of everyone you see around you right here, right now. That is, everyone but us. So do not ever let anyone talk to you like you’re some goddamned drain on society. Ever! That would be like scorning the man who has built your house for not owning one himself. That’s just wrong. The only thing you oughta be worried about asking any of them is what the hell they have to show for the last two hundred fifty years of their advantage. And I don’t care if for those two hundred fifty years their ancestors were in Europe or Asia or Russia or on Mars or wherever, because I can guarantee you that they were not in chains. Your Grampa Hicks once reminded me of that fact. And now I’m reminding you. I probably should have reminded you a long time ago, but I was too busy trying to be someone I’m not.

  The honking grew loud enough to break through Mom’s ranting. She pulled me out of the way of traffic, onto the sidewalk.

  You want fair? I’ll give you fair. If I were to go down to Akersburg now and demand my fair share of all the work I put in for your father, some magistrate would laugh in my face, and they’d look at me like some two-bit hustler trying to game them. I’m nothing but a hussy to any of them. No different than someone who was his one-night stand. You hear me? A fly-by-night. An easy come, easy go. Me? Oh, what am I saying. You probably don’t even know what that is.

  Yes, I do.

  I was too proud to ask for help early on, but let me tell you, I’m not too proud to ask for it now. Only now it’s too late. If I were to do that now, people would talk like it never even happened. They’d probably have something cute to say like, “Oh no. You must be mistaken, Miss. We never let any of our coloreds cohabitate with Caucasians in Akersburg back then. That sort of thing simply didn’t happen.” Or like, “Well, why didn’t you get yourself a marriage license, darling, if you loved him so much?” As if people like us never lived together. As if it never happened. Please! Because if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life in this country is like living on a dollar-store inflatable you’re constantly having to blow up unless you want to sink. There’s not a day of rest. It’s a perpetual assault on my basic humanity. And it’s exhausting. All just to keep this damn floaty above water, when it seems like other people are hell-bent on tearing into it with a knife only because if they can’t have it all to themselves, then they don’t want anyone to have it.

  Listen. You never got to know your Grampa Hicks. But you know me. And I’m telling you, you get to be whatever the hell you want. You’ve earned that much. It’s not for me or anyone else to say. All I want to see you do is take back what’s rightfully yours. That’s all. Lay claim to it like others before you have not been able to do. And if anyone tries to stop you, make them get out of your way. You owe that much to your Grampa Hicks. They’ve rearranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission. Don’t ask for theirs. You don’t owe them anything. And it’s high time some of that comes back around for us.

  Mom snapped me back around and dragged me down the sidewalk and reeled off a list of stuff she wanted to pick up while we were out. She should have written it down, if you ask me, what with the box of tampons, eyeliner pencils, two wide-ruled notebooks—make that two dozen flowers for Zuk—special hairspray, two blush markers, and an eraser for me. Which she said we should get two of, since I was bound to make a lot of mistakes when I got around to writing my essay. I told her that maybe I should type it. She said to get them anyway. Called them the bare essentials. I could tell that she was more desperate for my eventual return to Claremont than I was.

  Which is only a half truth. Listen, even if I feel resentful and a little conflicted about Claremont it’s just because I’d had somebody whisper nigger to me under their breath in a crowded room one too many times. Even though its painstakingly cultivated sense of exclusivity exacts a toll on people like me because we know we will never share in its aristocratic heritage, I’m still thankful that I have the experience of going there. I guess that maybe at the end of the day, I love Claremont much in the same way that I loved Mister Abrams’s pool. I see it as a keyhole through which I get to peek into a life bursting with possibilities that would otherwise never be known to a kid like me. I’m thankful for it because even though it was never truly mine, it has, in a perverse way, become a sort of home away from home.

  Even if I know that elitism is wrong, the floor-to-ceiling burnished wood paneling, ivy-covered wrought iron and redbrick out front, and portraits of stately men wearing powdered wigs and dinner coats puffing on meerschaum pipes are still kind of cool. I guess I’ve come to dig them. Stalwart slave-owning criminals and crooks though Mom claims many of them to be, they’ve all become a part of who I am, and they have as much a claim on me as anything else. Which is why they mean every bit as much to me as they do to Vernonblood and Lichenberger, and have, with time, become every bit as much a part of me as them.

  We stopped at the corner of East Fifty-Seventh Street and waited for the signal. Across the street a marquee was lit up like a blast furnace, so bright Buzz Aldrin could probably see it from outer space. The Wild Bunch was showing. Mom reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her coin pouch. She unrolled each of the five curled-up singles stuffed inside, all the while telling me how she’d once found herself at the Blumenthals’ building uptown without subway fare home and swore she’d never make that mistake again. I remember how exhausted she was by the time she got home. I had to fend for myself that night. She was out like a light on the sofa, with her overcoat still on and spit-up baby food staining her dress and her pumps brushing up against the box of cereal I’d balanced on the sofa arm amid the soft flicker and glow of Dick Cavett announcing his first guest of the evening.

  Mom tucked her coin purse away and proclaimed how sad it was that all the western stars she’d grown up with were over the hill. With John Wayne contemplating retirement and Jimmy Stewart right there behind him and Gene Autry out of the picture, who would save the day? They don’t make them like they used to, Huey.

  You can say that again.

  The light turned, and we crossed with the herd. Mom said it wasn’t every day that you got to see the end of an era. She linked her arm with mine, and we headed for the theater.

  I pulled at her coat. Can’t people like me be a new generation of cowboys?

  Mom laughed. That was a good one. All the same, she agreed that I could be her cowboy any day. Which, frankly, offended me. It was something in the way she said it—like it required too much imagination. Then what the hell was she sending me to Claremont for?

  You’ve got it all wrong. Cowboys are only as good as the challenges they face and swear to overcome, come hell or high water. It’s the big heart and unyielding courage in the face of insurmountable odds that matter. That’s what’s made this country great. Don’t you know anything? I can be a cowboy. Anybody can be a cowboy. That’s the point.

  Mom was still chuckling. A little too long, if you ask me. She thought I was being cute. She said she just wanted me to be more realistic, was all. Said I had my head in the clouds too much. If there had been a can there, I would have kicked it. Mom led me across the street, and we popped into Woolworth’s. She grabbed some flowers for Zuk and a protractor and erasers for me and some tampons for herself.

  Mom was tapping her
feet to the music emanating from overhead while we were waiting in line. She said she’d like to try her hand at something different—maybe go back to school and study to become a certified public accountant. She could work on contract for small businesses. Handle all their back office needs—kind of like she did for Dad, only now she’d get paid good money for it.

  That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

  I opened a bag of chips and stuffed some in my mouth. Great.

  I just love sitting down in front of a clutter of receipts, invoices, bank statements, and payroll reports—tapping away on an adding machine—figuring out where all the money is going.

  I unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it into my mouth. If you say so.

  What—you don’t think I can do it? Or you think I can but that it’s beneath me? I can’t tell which.

  It’s not that. You’re a modern woman, I see that. Anyone can see that. You can do anything that you set your sights on. And have the right to. So it’s not that. It’s just that—well. I paused. It’s not that I think you should be home, cooking and cleaning, or anything like that. It’s just that I wonder—well . . . I mean . . . what about me?

  What about you?

  How can we both be in school at the same time? Where’s the money going to come from? And when are we going to have time to hang out? Besides, whatever happened to doing people’s hair? Didn’t you like that? Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for you leaving the Blumenthals. But. Well. I just thought that, if you do leave the Blumenthals, well—I dunno. I guess I just thought that somehow you’d find your way back to doing people’s hair. Why would you just give something like that up, when it used to be such a big part of your life?

  Mom sighed.

  First of all, I hated the work. Second of all, I checked into it, and I’d have to rent out a chair somewhere and I’m not doing that. Third of all, I need a change. And I’d like to try something that I actually enjoy for once. Of course I’ll need to ease into it, silly. I was just thinking long term. This kind of a move would take a while to materialize. It wouldn’t happen overnight.

  I shrugged. It was as much of a blessing as she was going to get from me. We stepped to the check-out counter. Mom unloaded our stuff from the basket and asked if I’d mind waiting for her outside. She was going to ask to speak with the manager about the HELP WANTED sign leaning in the window. It said to “See Cashier.” The matinee didn’t start for another half hour, and she’d been talking about changing jobs for the last year. Who knew? Maybe they had some sort of training program that would jump-start her new career.

  The woman behind the counter was ringing up our items. I looked up at her as I stuffed my pockets with the gum, chips, Milk Duds, and Mike and Ikes I’d gotten for the movie.

  Are you sure this is right? You’re able-bodied and capable and you want equal pay for equal work. Trust me, I get it. What’s there not to get? You want a job where you get the respect you deserve. I guess I just thought that—well. I mean, I just think of you as being more of a people person. And besides, how can you be sure that you’re not doing it for the fancy business cards? Or the novelty of having “CPA” tacked on at the end of your name? Or the allure of maybe even having your own LLC one day? Or for the promise of maybe flying high with the corporate jet set one day? That’s where it all leads, right? All just so that you have a fancy story of your own to tell someday? I mean, if you’re doing it for me—you don’t have to. Please. God, don’t do it for me. I just thought you liked doing people’s hair, is all. Because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing people’s hair. And it just seems so much more manageable. Because you can do it from home. I could even help find you customers. And that way—well—we could have a lot more time together. I dunno. I guess I was just hoping to eventually get my mom back someday. You know? Have more time together. To talk and stuff. Kinda like we’re doing right now. Jesus. You’re all I’ve got.

  The cashier was taking her time, doing a price check on the flowers. Mom was digging money out of her purse. She looked up and sighed.

  You wanna know something, Huey? Math was my favorite subject in school. I liked reading. But I loved math. Did you know that? You wanna know what I loved about it? I loved how everything starts out messy but ends up nice and neat. Other kids would make fun of me. Especially the boys. I don’t know why. I think it was because I was so much better at it than any of them. I didn’t mean to be, but I guess it just made them feel insecure. So I wasn’t too popular with many of them. So I backed off that stuff, because I didn’t like being made fun of any more than anyone else, and the unfortunate result was that I never did much with it in school. I just sort of played it down and let it fall by the wayside. The only time I used it since was to help your father. And every time I’d sit down at the kitchen table with the ledger, I got a rush of excitement. Because I knew it was important, and because I just loved how I could see the story that all those numbers were telling me. It was never difficult for me. Because none of them ever lied. And ever since we’ve been up here, I’ve felt this longing. I used to think that it was for your father. But now I realize it’s not—it’s for that darn ledger. Can you believe it? Does that sound strange to you? Well, it’s true. When we first arrived here, we simply couldn’t afford to go without a paycheck. We had no place to live yet, no food, nothing. But now it’s different. It’s taken me a long time, but I finally know what I want in life. That’s what I want, Huey—I want my life to be like a math problem that starts out messy but ends up nice and neat. At some point in this lifetime of mine, I’m going to have to do something for me. Nothing splashy. Nothing fancy. Not some get-rich-quick scheme, not some pill that you take that solves all your problems. Just a small step in the right direction. You asked how I know it’s the right decision for me. Well, that’s how I know.

  I turned for the door. Mom waved me back and handed me her umbrella and told me to take it, in case.

  She blew me a kiss at the door and told me to wish her luck. I leaned into the spatula-style door handle and looked up at the sky—gray as it was, at least it wasn’t raining. It was something that Mom would say. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about her eternal and unbending optimism, but it seemed to be rubbing off on me. So there I was, on the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Lexington, standing on the sidewalk outside Woolworth’s in the bitter cold, holding a white paper bag with one hand and a bouquet of lilies, carnations, and buttercups up to my nose with the other. I buttoned up amid the honking cabbies jamming the three-laned avenue in front of me, and the hectic flow of pedestrian foot traffic and grumpy sidewalk vendors wobbling past with their steaming hot dog carts. The clipped strides of women in heels hauling large shopping bags. I’d just about gotten the last of the potato chips out from between my teeth and was feeling pretty good about that, and sort of got to thinking about what I’d write in this essay of mine, which was already starting to weigh on me a little and, as you now know, turned out a little longer than it was supposed to. You see, I knew more or less that I wanted to say something about the summer seven years back, but I wasn’t sure what exactly to say or how to say it. I just knew that it was still weighing heavily on me. I guess that in a way, you could say that writing this damned thing has helped me figure out that what was so humiliating about that whole summer wasn’t the bone-aching inevitability of it all, or the fact that school was segregated, or even having been the last person in town to discover the truth about who I am. It was the way I’d been forced onto a bus and shipped willy-nilly out of town on the overnight express, under the cover of the darkness—jettisoned without a say like a dead leaf kicked up in the autumn wind. I hated the fact that it denied me the wiggle room I’d need to make up an excuse to save face. You know, like, a dear old relative of Mom’s had fallen ill in a neighboring town and so I had to go assist in her convalescence and liked it so much I decided to stay. Better yet, Dad could have said that it might be a long while before I returned. Even if Theo and Darla and Derrick would hardly h
ave cared, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it look like the actual leaving had been my choice. I figured I was owed that much. Of all the lies I’ve ever told myself over the years, that was the most important—the one I carried with me from day to day. You know, the only one that ever really hurt to give up. I may live on the twenty-third floor of a housing project in the East Village, but Akersburg is still my home, and deep down I know that’s where I belong.

  I could have just kicked myself when it started to drizzle. Damn it all. I knew I should have brought my galoshes. I fumbled with Mom’s umbrella, all the while asking myself why oh why I had believed in that asshole right up until the bitter end, and now no letter had come since the one I’d sent him back in April. I was getting a little worried because it was starting to seem like maybe life had moved on for him, and here I was spinning my wheels, getting in all sorts of trouble. When I asked Mom if four unanswered letters was a lot, she said not for him. I was starting to think that maybe I should just suck it up and write Dad a fifth letter, just to be on the safe side. Because it’s entirely possible that he just figured that I was doing fine without him. Except that it’s been over a year since he’s so much as called, and like a complete douchebag I’m still waiting, as if that’s ever going to happen. Which is why I think I’ve got no choice but to bury the hatchet, let bygones be bygones, and start accepting that I’m never going back.