Being Clem

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  “You can have it,” he told me. I’d played with it the whole time we were in Milwaukee because Momma never let me have one. She told me I was too young, and I would hurt myself. She didn’t care if other boys had them, “Knives are dangerous,” she told me. But I found out, that’s what made them fun. Me and Kendrick used his knife to dig up ant tunnels, worked on our aim by throwing it at a bull’s-eye we drew in chalk on a tree, and whittled sticks into spears we had to hide from Aunt Thea because that would mean we really were going to hurt someone or get hurt. And then we chased each other, but mainly Kelvin, till he ran and hid.

  “I can’t,” I told him. Looking down at that pretty bone handle that Kendrick had burned with a flame, then carved his initials, K.T., into.

  “I’ll just get me another one,” he said, winking at me.

  I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that somehow, Kendrick would find a way to get himself another knife. “I’ll get the same one again, and we’ll each have one,” he told me. “But you gotta put your initials on it too,” he added, pointing below his. “Right here, K.T. and C.T.”

  I nodded and put it in my pocket before he changed his mind.

  Clarisse and Annette were out the other window hugging Kandace and Kara Ann and Aunt Thea.

  “Y’all ready?” Uncle Kent asked. I shook my head, but I thought I’d never be ready to leave Kendrick behind.

  Uncle Kent took a new job, Momma told us, driving a truck, and he’s gone most of the week, so we couldn’t go right back to Milwaukee. Momma said she’s thinking about sending for our cousins soon to come visit in Chicago. I think Kendrick could even turn Chicago upside down.

  Uncle Kent told us that even though there were just the two of them, he and my daddy lived near all their cousins growing up in South Carolina and it felt like they had a whole family of brothers and sisters. I wished then my daddy was still living, and we could move to Milwaukee, right next door to Uncle Kent and his family. I knew I’d miss Chicago, but I couldn’t imagine anything better than living near family and feeling like I had a whole houseful of brothers and sisters even when I didn’t.

  THIRTEEN

  I’d forgotten how happy Momma could be but then I saw her face at the Everett Street train station in Milwaukee. She was standing there on the platform when Annette shouted, “Momma!” And Momma came running, just about knocking us down. She hugged us all tight at once, wet kissing.

  She kissed and hugged Uncle Kent too and told K.J. how big and handsome he was. After we said our goodbyes and the four us were alone, she grabbed us again just like she did when we left weeks earlier. Clarisse stepped back, staring at momma’s uniform, her face wrinkled up like she smelled something bad.

  “I didn’t even have time to change,” Momma said to us, but really to Clarisse. She smoothed down the front of her uniform like it had wrinkles and fixed her collar. “Mrs. You-know-who kept me so late I almost missed the train.” Clarisse turned her head away.

  Momma pulled us all in close again. “Momma, can this wait till we get home?” Clarisse said, looking around.

  Momma laughed. “Well, I’m sorry if I’ve missed you all so much,” she said, but she finally stopped with all the kissing. On the short train ride back to Chicago, I told Momma every single thing we did in Milwaukee, leaving out some of the craziest things I saw Kendrick do. As soon as we got home, Momma had us unpack our things while she started on supper—fried chicken with okra and the biscuits I love. And she had just taken the chocolate cake out of the oven when we heard the fireworks.

  “What was that?” Annette asked, running to the window in the front room. Clarisse followed behind her and yelled to the kitchen, “Come look at all the people out here.”

  Me and Momma ran to the other window, and people were outside all up and down the street like the block parties they sometimes had on South Parkway.

  “Let’s go see what’s going on,” Clarisse said, kicking off her slippers and looking for her shoes.

  The four of us ran down to the front stoop and by the time we got there, the street looked even more crowded, with people out front and hanging out windows. There was music playing and car horns honking, and folks were kissing and whooping and hollering like I’d never heard before.

  “Our boys are coming home!” a woman yelled from an apartment window across the street.

  “Wha—” Momma looked around. “The war’s over?”

  We all turned to look at Momma. She looked up at the sky, like she was asking the stars and the moon, and in the dark with the fireworks flashing above, we could see the tears running down her cheeks.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Annette said to me and Clarisse, looking scared.

  I took Momma’s hand, but she wouldn’t move. “The war’s over,” she said again. Not asking this time but saying it loud and clear.

  “Hallelujah! Sure is!” a man said behind us, clapping his hands. He continued on down the street past our stoop.

  “Momma, let’s go on up,” Annette said, trying to grab her other hand.

  Momma half fell, half sat on the steps. “Help me, Clarisse,” Annette said.

  The two of them tried to lift Momma under her arms. I tried too, but all of a sudden, she seemed like she weighed about one thousand pounds.

  “Y’all need some help here?”

  I looked up and it was Errol’s father, Mr. Watkins. When he leaned over all I could smell was the drink on his breath, like he’d started celebrating early.

  “No, we’ll be fine,” Clarisse said, cold, like she wasn’t speaking to an adult. But even with all he had to drink, he could see we needed help. He stumbled a bit but pulled Momma up with one arm and got her to her feet.

  I stepped forward. “Thank you, Mr. Watkins, we’ll be fine from here.”

  Momma looked in his eyes, not saying a word, and started walking on her own, up the stairs to our apartment.

  “You’re welcome!” I heard Mr. Watkins yell to her back, his words slurred. Momma stopped and stood a little straighter but didn’t turn around, just kept on walking.

  I sure hoped Mr. Watkins wasn’t going up to the apartment to start up something with Errol’s mother, because Momma wouldn’t be able to sit and talk about Mrs. Watkins’s problems with her husband tonight. Instead, we were gonna do our best to get her into bed and do for Momma what she did for Mrs. Watkins. And then we would have to turn up the radio to quiet the sounds of the party outside, and hope and pray that while everyone else was celebrating on the South Side, our momma would fall asleep to one of us rubbing her back, listening to the music of the Ink Spots, and not have too much time to think about the husband she’d never get the chance to welcome home.

  FOURTEEN

  Since Errol started at Lincoln, as far as anyone could tell, we were friends. Wasn’t my job to tell them anything different. And seeing as there wasn’t a long line of folks waiting to be friends with the Professor, and Errol was the new kid last year who didn’t know anyone, it worked out just fine. I don’t know how Errol did in his other school and since he wasn’t talking, I’ll guess I’ll never know, but here at Lincoln, as long as Errol stayed quiet in the back of the class and minded his own business, he’d do all right.

  I thought being the Professor and helping out with answers made me safe from what some of the other boys had to deal with. The fighting and being pushed around and teased all the time. As far as I could tell, near everybody in class liked me. But what made sixth grade different from fifth grade was that I learned that there’s two kinds of smart. I had one kind of smart, and Curtis Whittaker was about to teach me another.

  I stayed clear of Curtis since he started at Lincoln two years ago. When you get boys like Curtis, who don’t give two licks about spelling tests or homework, being a little professor ain’t no help at all.

  Curtis ran the school yard like he was a general. Two times bigger than anyone else and every day acting like he was leading troops into battle. Me, Errol, and anybody else who got in his wa
y was the enemy. His body was the tank.

  My daddy might have been a soldier, fighting against the Japanese, but every day, I was just trying to survive Curtis and his troops.

  Once Curtis realized I was too small for his army, not good enough at stickball, and too smart to sit in the back of the classroom, he didn’t have no use for me at all.

  And when you got problems with Curtis, you got problems.

  Now if Curtis was just a little bit smarter, he might have noticed me long before we hit sixth grade, but Curtis Whittaker ain’t known for being quick. But once I did catch his eye, Curtis made up for lost time.

  The first time, I got off easy when Curtis just shoved me down in the school yard as school let out and all I got was a busted lip.

  Errol looked at me, laughing.

  But the next day, when Curtis did the same to Errol, he wasn’t smiling then.

  “I see you ain’t laughing today,” I told Errol, giving him the same smile he gave me the day before. Errol looked mad.

  “We ain’t got a chance against Curtis,” he said to me, wiping his lip.

  “That’s about the smartest thing I ever heard you say,” I told him.

  Me and Errol ain’t alike in nearly anything, but neither one of us wanted anything to do with trying to fight Curtis.

  Me and Errol took to walking fast after school, hoping Curtis wouldn’t catch us. When Curtis found out, he had one of his troops wait at the front door early. When we took our time, Curtis was as patient as could be, sitting with his buddies on the front steps of the school, legs stretched out long. “What took y’all so long?” he’d say when we finally came downstairs after hiding out in the stairwell for what seemed like hours.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I said, “I was scared to walk home by myself.” But Curtis liked jokes even less than he liked me and Errol.

  “Stop messing with him,” Errol told me, like it was my fault I got hit in the head.

  “You got any better ideas, you let me know,” I said, holding my head where Curtis had smacked me so hard, he left a mark.

  “Maybe Annette and Clarisse could meet you after school,” Momma told me that night when she got home from work and saw my lip.

  “I can’t have my sisters walk me home, Momma!”

  “For the life of me, I do not understand what is wrong with these boys,” Momma said, pressing too hard on my lips with a cloth smelling of the red stuff she puts on when we get a cut.

  “Ow, Momma!” I said, turning away. “I’ll be fine.”

  “This does not look like fine to me. Where was Errol? I told you, the two of you need to stick together.”

  “Me and Errol ain’t exactly Al Capone’s gang. We’re not gonna scare anybody away.”

  “We’ll have to think of something,” Momma said, looking worried.

  The next day, when Curtis grabbed me from behind and ripped my shirt, Clarisse and Annette gave me their two cents.

  “You gonna have to learn to fight back,” Annette said. “Momma told Mrs. Watkins she’s gonna go speak to the principal if it keeps up.”

  “And. You. Don’t. Want. That,” Clarisse said, poking me in my arm with each word.

  One sure way to get a beating worse than you got is to have your momma tell the principal on the boy who beat you.

  “I can’t do nothing to Curtis,” I said to Annette. “He’s bigger than Clarisse.”

  “You want another fat lip, Clem?” Clarisse asked me.

  “You’re gonna at least have to stand up for yourself. Even if you lose,” Annette told me.

  “How’s the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz going to stick up for himself?” Clarisse laughed. “You want me to go take care of him?”

  That sounded like a good idea to me, but I kept that to myself.

  “Don’t tell Momma about my shirt,” I said to Annette.

  “What are you gonna tell her then, I ripped it?” Clarisse asked.

  Me and Annette looked at each other.

  “Can I?” I asked.

  “And then I get in trouble? Nuh-uh,” Clarisse said, shaking her head back and forth so hard her big curls swung in her eyes.

  “I’ll tell Momma it was an accident,” Annette said.

  “Momma always believes Annette,” I added.

  And all of a sudden Clarisse’s head stopped shaking. “And what do I get?”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I’ll let you know,” Clarisse said to me, smiling just as sweet as could be.

  I was about to learn quick, probably the only thing worse than getting beat up at school, and then maybe having your momma tell the principal on the boy who beat you up at school, was seeing Clarisse smile that big Silver Streak Pontiac smile and knowing I was about to owe her a favor.

  FIFTEEN

  Every Thursday I lied to Errol and told him I had to go and help my momma at her job. Thank the Lord Curtis was too dumb to figure out my secret back door escape route. And thank the Lord Errol didn’t ask questions either, because even someone with half a brain would know that me going to help my momma at her job didn’t make any kind of sense. First off, the Franklins hired Cecille Thurber to dust and mop their floors and cook their meals, not her son. And second, my momma would rather throw herself in front of the el train before she let any one of her children work as a maid.

  On Thursdays, after I lied to Errol and snuck out of the back of the school instead of the front toward our apartment building, I turned left and walked down a long, pretty street till I got to Michigan Avenue and the George Cleveland Hall Branch library.

  My momma’s been taking me, Annette, and Clarisse to the library for as long as I can remember. A few years back, Momma started letting me go on my own some Saturdays once my chores were done and only, she said, if I went “right there and back.” Thank goodness she didn’t mention Errol’s name. Momma ain’t no dummy. She knows the last thing Errol Watkins wants to do is go to the library. Sometimes Momma used to ask me to pick up something for her at the library too. “You know what I like, Clem,” she’d say. And I do. It’s gotta be one of those mystery books where somebody kills somebody for their money on the first page and the writer tries to make you think it’s anybody except who you think it is, only to find out on the very last page it was the person you thought it was from the very beginning.

  I don’t have time for those kinds of books.

  With her job at the Franklins, Momma didn’t have time to read like she used to, but when I went, I still picked out a book now and then for her and left it next to the couch. But I could tell it hadn’t moved from the spot I put it in by the time I needed to return it.

  Most of my time at the library was spent downstairs. The librarian there was Miss Cook and sometimes I thought, after my momma, she was about the nicest person I ever met.

  “How’s your family, Clem?” she asked me almost every time I saw her. And since my daddy died, it’s like she made it her job to be my very own personal librarian.

  At first, of course Clarisse and Annette came with us too, staying in the section with bigger books and longer chapters. I could always hear Clarisse’s loud whispering no matter how many times Miss Cook or the other librarians put their fingers to their lips. By the time we left, we all had a stack of books to check out, and at home, we’d show each other what we got. Up until Daddy died, Momma always picked one book she could read aloud to all of us at night, and there wasn’t nothing I loved more than hearing her voice, strong but still soft too, acting out every part in the book. I liked to sit right up close to her and sometimes lay my head on her arm so I could feel her body move as she turned the pages.

  It was Momma who told Miss Cook how much I loved maps. And the next time I showed up downstairs, Miss Cook had books waiting just for me that made me realize there was a whole lot of world to see outside of Chicago, Illinois.

  “You might like this one, Clem,” she said to me one day when I showed up, handing me a book called Five on a Treasure Island
, about a boy who goes on adventures with his sisters and cousins all over the world. On the cover was a small white boy standing in the middle of a boat.

  Now when I read those books, they make me wish it was me and Kendrick and all of my Milwaukee cousins.

  “Do they get lost?” I asked Miss Cook.

  “You’ll have to tell me,” she said, sweet as could be.

  So I finished extra quick so I could get back to the library and tell Miss Cook exactly what happened to everyone in the book. She looked like I was telling her the most interesting story in the world. And then after I finished my telling, she gave me another one about another adventure she’d been keeping at the desk just for me.

  “There’s another one?” I asked her. “With the same people?”

  “Yes, Clem.” She laughed. “It’s a series, so you can read as many as you like.”

  I read that one too, but not as fast as the first. Because sitting at home reading these books was like making new friends and traveling with them all over the world without ever leaving Chicago.

  SIXTEEN

  Me and Errol first saw him on the playground at recess.

  “Who’s that?” I pointed across the school yard. Of course, Errol didn’t notice a thing. But before we could find out, I saw Curtis walk over and introduce himself to the new boy. I’m sure it wasn’t a “How do you do, welcome to Lincoln Elementary,” but when I saw Curtis puffing up his chest and standing tall, I knew he was making sure that new boy knew who was running things. Funny thing is, the new boy didn’t look scared. He didn’t look no kind of way, really. He stood looking at Curtis like he didn’t care much about what he said.

  Once Curtis moved out of sight, I hit Errol in the arm.

  “Let’s go see what’s up,” I told him.

  “For what?” he asked.