Being Clem

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  This was the first summer we were going on the train with just the three of us. Being on the train with just my sisters made me feel almost as grown as a man.

  Aunt Bethel and Aunt Dorcas sent our tickets when school ended. They wrote Momma that they wouldn’t be coming to get us this summer because they thought Clarisse and Annette were “mature enough to navigate the trip from Chicago,” while our momma was working. I think momma thought differently but she let them send the tickets anyhow. When it comes to her sisters, they do the telling and Momma does the listening. Kind of like Clarisse with me and Annette. The tickets came with a long letter from my aunts about the plans they had for us this summer. Momma read it over dinner and I knew, like always, we were going to have our usual “aunt fun” and not the fun I’d had last summer when we went to visit Kendrick and his family in Milwaukee.

  Looking at the tickets in the envelope, Momma put her head in her hand.

  “Don’t worry, Momma, I’ve been on the train plenty of times before.”

  Annette laughed out loud. “Clarisse. Plenty of times? We’ve been on the train the exact same number of times, and it ain’t plenty of times.”

  “That’s not true, Annette. Daddy would sometimes take me with him on some of his runs. I don’t remember you being on the train with me then.”

  “I don’t care how many times you’ve been on a train, the three of you are going to all look out for each other. You understand?”

  “Is Clem going to look out for me?” Clarisse smiled at me with that sickening, sweet smile she gives when she’s being mean. I smiled right back.

  “Momma, wouldn’t Clarisse’s face scare everybody away?”

  Momma got up from the table and went to the sink.

  “I’ll get the dishes, Momma,” Annette told her. “You go sit down.” Momma went into the front room.

  “Can y’all just quit it?” Annette whispered to me and Clarisse. “Can’t you see she’s getting upset?” So me and Clarisse quit it and brought our plates to the sink for Annette to wash.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The summer we went to Milwaukee was the shortest train ride I ever took, but it seemed like the longest. Momma always let me sit next to the window, and as we pulled out of Chicago, I was just about glued to the glass watching every building pass by till there were none left to see.

  “Clem, why don’t you close your eyes for a bit, baby? You don’t want to be too tired when we get there,” Momma said.

  But I loved to watch the buildings as we sped past out of Chicago. Usually Momma watched with me, pointing out the buildings we knew, but this year she stayed quiet, staring straight ahead. When the porters came by and tipped their hats to Momma, I watched her eyes fill up. I slipped my hand in hers and with her other hand she reached for her handkerchief. I knew she was remembering how my daddy once worked the train, loading up passengers’ bags alongside his older cousin Elwood. Momma said he rode sometimes for days at a time, traveling his route from South Carolina to Washington, D.C., stopping at every city in between. But then my daddy’s cousin met his wife, and they settled down in Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C. When my father visited them in between one of his runs, he stopped into a little coffee shop over on Eleventh Street and Florida Avenue where Momma used to eat with her friends from school. He saw Momma, “and the rest, as they say, is history.” Momma always laughs at that part. Clarisse likes to fill in the other parts about them falling in love and other things I don’t want to hear. Every time she tells the story she adds more like she’s reading from one of her Young Romance magazines.

  I don’t know if any of what Clarisse says is true, but I know that ever since Momma met my daddy in that coffee shop she fell in love so hard, she married him just as soon as she graduated with her secretary degree from the National Training School for Women and Girls in D.C. And then they left Washington, D.C., when he got assigned to a new train out of Chicago and never looked back.

  She didn’t know he’d leave again when the war started. That he’d think fighting for his country was about the bravest thing a man could do for his family even if it meant leaving his wife and three children behind. I always wondered but was too afraid to ask if when he left for the navy, did Momma feel he left her behind and never looked back. After Momma finished wiping her eyes, she went off to that place she sometimes goes when she’s sad.

  Momma kissed each of us one last time on the platform and we hurried on. The three of us found seats in a half-empty car where we could sit facing each other. Clarisse slid in so she could sit closest to the window. Annette took the other window, and I sat down next to Annette. A good-looking young porter who barely looked older than Clarisse put our bags up on top.

  “Anything else you need help with, just ask for Charles,” he said, smiling right at Clarisse.

  “We sure will, Charles,” she said, like all of a sudden she was one of those Southern belles who fluttered their eyelashes and spoke with an accent.

  I couldn’t see Momma on the platform from where we were sitting, hard as I tried, but it was fine with me. I wanted to feel like we were alone and doing something grown without Momma fussing over me. I pulled out my satchel and dug around inside where I kept all my books and papers and pencils Momma got for me on Christmas and my birthday too. I took out a piece of folded-up paper and a pencil and laid it flat on my lap. For weeks, I’d been drawing a map of Washington, D.C. I started out with 67 Gallatin Street NW, where Momma grew up with Aunt Dorcas, Aunt Bethel, and her momma and daddy, who passed before I was even born. Next I put in where Momma went to school, but she said they tore that building down and put up an office building, and where she went to church every Sunday at Metropolitan Baptist Church. Next I put the White House, where President Roosevelt lives, and I drew in wavy lines for the Potomac River. Momma told me Washington has streets with numbers just like Chicago, but it has letters too, and you have to know if the street is Northwest or East, Southwest or East too. Every night when Momma got home, she helped me add just a little bit more to my map, and she told me I could fill out the rest when I got to D.C. and walked around some. Six hundred ninety-two miles from my house to Momma’s house in Washington, D.C.

  But what I didn’t know was that by the time I left that summer, working on my map would be the last thing on my mind.

  First stop out of Union Station was South Bend, Indiana, but we had barely left Chicago before Clarisse had already set up the rules.

  “Clem, wouldn’t you be more comfortable sitting over there?” she said, pointing to the empty seat across the aisle. Annette looked at her sideways but didn’t say anything.

  Clarisse looked at us both. “That way he can stretch out and work on his drawings,” she said.

  That’s the thing about Clarisse. You never know what she’s got up her sleeve. Sometimes she’s being bossy like a momma for your own good and sometimes, most times really, she’s being bossy for her own good. The trick is to know which is which. I took a guess that since we just left Momma and since Clarisse just made the promise that she would look out for us, she was bossing for my own good, and I got all my pencils together and moved to the seat across the aisle. Once I got settled, Clarisse said, nice as they come, “Isn’t that better?”

  I didn’t have time to think about Clarisse and went on back to my drawing. Annette took out a book and was reading, but I peeked out the corner of my eye and saw Clarisse looking around in her purse. First, she took out one of those little compacts that grown ladies have, and I saw her patting some powder on her face. Then I saw her put on a red lipstick and fluff her hair up.

  “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up and smoothing down her skirt. Why she needed to do all that fluffing and puffing just to use the bathroom, I didn’t know, and honestly didn’t much care now that I had started in good on my map.

  Annette raised her eyebrows at her, then at me, and went on back to reading her book. I was glad to have the space to myse
lf. I spread out my papers on the seat across from me, the pencils in the seat next to me. At least on this side I had my own window to look out at buildings and then fields speeding by.

  “Annette!” I whispered loud across the aisle after we pulled out of the second train station. “Annette.” But Annette had already fallen asleep with the book across her chest. I had to go to the bathroom something bad. I put my pencils back in my satchel and got up, going the same way I saw Clarisse go. I walked through one car, then the next, and then I came to the dining car.

  “Excuse me,” I asked one of the porters, “where is the bathroom?”

  He smiled, “Right through the dining car, young man,” he said, tipping his hat to me. I started walking through the dining car, when up ahead I saw the young porter Charles, standing and laughing with a passenger seated at one of the tables. Her head was thrown back laughing as if he was the funniest comedian she’d ever heard. And then something about her laugh sounded familiar…

  Clarisse?

  I stopped in front of Charles, and he looked down at me.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked, still smiling.

  Clarisse turned around. When she saw me, she stood up quick.

  “I better get going,” she said.

  “Now, you don’t have to leave so soon?” he said, reaching for her hand.

  But Clarisse tucked her hair behind her ear and smoothed down her skirt, pretending she had no idea who I was. “No, I have to go and check on my sister. Nice chatting with you,” she said, her Southern belle voice back again, but she was red in the face now. She pushed past me like I was a stranger. I watched her back as she walked out of the dining car. Charles watched her walk away like he had been hypnotized.

  After I used the restroom, I made my way back to my seat. Clarisse was sitting there now, her hands folded on her lap, pretending to be sound asleep.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I always thought it was funny that our trip went from Union Station in Chicago to Union Station in Washington, D.C.

  I remember asking Momma, “Did they run out of names for train stations?”

  I made marks on my map every time I heard the conductor shout a station stop in a new state, thinking now about all the states I could mark off on my map at home, even though I hadn’t really visited them, just sped through on a train. I was expecting that when we crossed into each state, I’d know it by how different they looked from each other, but Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia all looked about the same from the train window. But when we got to the Washington, D.C., Union Station, it looked like a busier, prettier Union Station than the Union Station in Chicago. My aunts were there waiting on the platform as soon as we stepped off, and just about snatched us away like they thought someone was going to kidnap us.

  “Stay close and keep your eyes straight ahead,” Aunt Dorcas told us. She grabbed my hand and Aunt Bethel grabbed Annette’s. Clarisse pulled back just in time so no one could grab hold of her. I looked at Annette out the corner of my eye. She looked about as scared as I did. We marched like that all the way to my aunts’ car parked out in back of the train station.

  When we pulled up in front of their brick building, I thought how lucky Momma was to have grown up here in a house all her own with no landlord coming to collect the rent each month. She told me her daddy bought this house when she was younger than me, working seven days a week as a chauffeur for a white family and saving every penny.

  “Working to buy that house just about killed my daddy,” Momma told us one night sitting on couch when we looked at old photographs of her and her sisters and Momma and Daddy standing in front of the building. The picture was fuzzy, but my granddaddy stood tall and proud in the back row, his arm around my grandmomma. “But he wanted us to have something of our own.” After her momma died, my momma lived here with Aunt Dorcas and Aunt Bethel, just the three of them in this big ole house. Momma told me her sisters take in boarders from time to time, and they both tutor students, saving every penny, just like their daddy. That with their teaching jobs, they make out okay.

  “Why didn’t they ever get married?” Clarisse wanted to know.

  “Never had the time, I guess.” Momma breathed out heavy. “They spent all their time working and running from here to there. You know Dorcas, she always has to be in charge of everything.” Momma laughed. “Chapter president of the National Council of Negro Women, chapter secretary of Delta Sigma Theta…”

  “Never had the time or no one ever asked them?” Clarisse asked.

  Momma looked at her. “Well, they had suitors now and again. I guess none they ever wanted to marry.”

  “That’s sad,” Clarisse said, shaking her head.

  “Is it?” Annette asked her. “Sounds to me like they have a good life.”

  “A good life with no husband?” Clarisse said.

  I looked at Momma, wondering if Clarisse was making her feel bad with all the “no husband” talk, but Momma kept right on.

  “Girls,” Momma said. “You never know what God has in store for you. You just have to have faith and make the best of whatever you are given.” Momma got up to clear the table.

  “I’m not sure I’m going to get married,” I said, trying to make Momma feel better.

  Clarisse laughed. “Everyone knows that Clement—Clem…” Clarisse looked up at Momma to make sure she hadn’t heard her about to call me by that nickname. “No one is going to marry you,” she whispered.

  “I heard you, Clarisse,” Momma said from the sink. “You need to focus more on your schoolwork and less on talking about marriage.”

  “I am, Momma,” Clarisse said in her fake voice. When Momma turned on the water at the sink, Clarisse mumbled under her breath, “But I am sure not going to be some old spinster…” and Annette sucked her teeth.

  The front room of my aunts’ house, which they call the parlor, almost looks like the George Cleveland Hall Branch library back in Chicago with shelves stacked tall with books on top of books.

  Except their books don’t look like the ones I like to read, and they’re mostly covered in dust and packed in tight. I once asked Miss Cook at the library if she’d read every single book on the shelves and she laughed out loud.

  “I wish I had the time to read every one, Clem. By the time I finish one stack, there’s a whole new stack to read. I just can’t keep up.”

  When I thought about spending all day working at the library like Miss Cook, I thought that must be about the best job in the world. After that day at the library, I got home and told Momma I wanted to be a librarian when I grow up. She looked at me funny and told me that being a librarian wasn’t a job for boys. And, besides, “a librarian’s job is not sitting at a desk reading books all day. They do a lot of other things too.” I didn’t ask what other things they do since Momma told me boys can’t be a librarian.

  I knew my aunts weren’t librarians. They’re high school teachers. Aunt Bethel teaches English and Aunt Dorcas teaches history, but the last thing I was going to do was ask and get either one of them started on the subject of teaching or I’d be sitting up all night listening to them preach about “the value of education.” The one thing I know about teachers is that they must do a lot of learning in college because when they graduate, they think they know every dang thing. They are about the knowingest people on earth in the classroom and outside it too. Twenty-four hours a day they’re teaching. Every time we walked out the door with our aunts, it was a geography lesson. When we ate at a restaurant, it was a math problem. And Lord we could barely pass a street without a history lesson and one of them pointing out where Mary McLeod Bethune or Paul Laurence Dunbar lived. And just look over there because that is where Langston Hughes worked as a busboy.

  “He lives in Chicago,” I added, trying to show I “valued education” and knew something about history and Langston Hughes too because he sometimes spoke at the George Cleveland Hall Branch library. But Aunt Dorcas didn’t want to hear none of what I w
anted to add.

  She stopped and looked down at me with her big hands on her hips. “But he lived in Washington, D.C., first,” she told me. “And this is where his writing was first discovered.”

  I shut up then. I could hear Clarisse laughing behind me. One thing I learned about teachers, they don’t want to hear nothing you have to say.

  “You think they’re gonna let us do anything fun?” I asked Annette one night after dinner when they had us washing up the dinner dishes while they sat in the front room talking to Clarisse. Seemed our aunts had a lot of ideas about what Clarisse should be doing about “her future.” More ideas than Clarisse.

  “They think this is fun,” Annette said, smiling.

  “If this is fun, I hate to see what their bad time is like,” I said. Me and Annette laughed loud. Aunt Dorcas yelled from the front room.

  “Now are you all laughing or washing dishes, because you can’t do both!”

  “We can’t?” I whispered to Annette.

  She put her soapy finger to her lips, telling me to be quiet.

  “They told Clarisse tomorrow they got a special surprise planned for you,” she whispered.

  “I feel a stomachache coming on,” I whispered, holding my belly. Me and Annette held our laughs behind our hands.

  The next morning after breakfast, Aunt Dorcas told Clarisse and Annette that Aunt Bethel was taking them shopping for a few things for school and Aunt Dorcas was going to take me someplace else.

  “Can’t I go shopping too?” I asked. I was scared to be alone with Aunt Dorcas.

  “Now, I know my sister taught you better manners than that!” Aunt Dorcas shouted at me.

  “I think Clem is just wondering where he’s going,” Clarisse said. About once a year Clarisse ain’t so bad.

  “That’s why they call it a surprise,” Aunt Dorcas said, a little bit nicer. “You’ll find out when we get there.”