Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

  Only Iris spoke. “How, I ask? Neither name of yours is on the papers for it.”

  “I don need that.”

  “Then you must gon work obeah.”

  “Silla-soul, don do nothing you’ll regret,” Florrie Trotman whispered. “Maybe you best forget it . . . This obeah don does always work.”

  “Forget it?” Silla’s laugh drowned her warning. “I just now start to think ’bout it. Everybody buying and I still leasing? Oh no, Florrie. I gon fix he and fix he good. I gon show the world that Silla ain nice!”

  With that she raised her arms, her body reared, and as she stood there pledging her whole self while the others sat struck silent, the day changed. The early winter sunset stained the sky beyond the pear trees with harsh yet lovely threads of mauve, wine rose, brassy yellow, and the last light reached in long attenuated strips into the kitchen. Shadows were there also, spreading their dark tentacles as the sun thinned. Silla, the barred sunlight and shade on her face, was imprisoned within this contradiction of dark and light. Indeed, like all men, she embodied it. Yet somehow it was more marked in her. Perhaps because the struggle was nearer the surface and more intense.

  “Selina,” Florrie Trotman whispered nervously, “get yuh mother some water.”

  Selina hesitated, then as Florrie motioned again, she drew the water and, with it slopping over her shaking hand, approached the mother. Silla did not shift from her threatening pose but simply glared down at her. Then quickly she swooped, her hand struck, knocking the glass from Selina’s hand, and grasping her close, she whispered between closed teeth, “If I was to hear one word outta you ’bout what I said here today I gon kill you. You hear? I gon kill you even though you’s my child and I suffered plenty pain to bring you . . .”

  Selina said nothing; neither did she struggle. Behind the fear in her eyes, behind the welling tears there was the old resistance that so infuriated the mother. Seeing it now, Silla pushed her away, saying bitterly, “Oh I know. I know I isn’t to do a thing against your beautiful-ugly father. He’s Christ to you. But wait. Wait till I finish with him. He gon be Christ crucified.”

  “Silla!” Florrie sprang up, shouting. “Stop frightening the child. What she could say anyway?”

  “The Lord make peace,” Iris intoned.

  Florrie slowly approached Silla and touched her compassionately. “Silla-gal, I know it’s hard. That man had led you a dusty road. But forget the piece of ground. Forget it!”

  Under Florrie’s soothing touch, the harshness faded in Silla’s eyes, but she still whispered, “Mark my words, Florrie, I gon do it.”

  Florrie shook her head and turned solicitously to Selina. She bent over her and with the same compassion placed her hand on her shoulder. “Come, girl,” she said, shaking her gently. “What you crying for? Tell your mother that you’s no more little girl, but near a full woman like us now that you’s filling out—and that you can hold your tongue like a woman . . .” And as she spoke and laughed tenderly, her hand passed from Selina’s shoulder through the wide neck of her middy blouse and, with a casual fleeting gesture, brushed one of her small breasts.

  Selina sprang away too late; her hand struck out at Florrie Trotman’s hand too late. All she could do was send up a cry of outrage that rived the air and drove the mothers back. Still howling, she stooped. Through her blinding tears she searched for the broken half of the glass which the mother had struck from her hand. Finding it, she rose and offered it to her again; and whirled, offering it to Florrie Trotman with a rancorous look. Then she raised it and, with one last shrill cry, smashed it to the floor, and fled.

  It was for them to accept her gage . . .

  II

  That slight but intimate pressure of Florrie Trotman’s hand remained like an intaglio on Selina’s barely formed breast. She knew, in a remote corner of her mind, that she would carry its damp warmth and roughness, the feel of it, all her life. It was the rite which made her one with Florrie’s weighty bosom and Virgie Farnum’s perennially burgeoning stomach. It meant that she would always have vestiges of Iris Hurley’s malice and the mother’s gorgeous rage. Although she did not understand this, she was often seized by a frenzy of rejection and would rush to the bathroom and there, behind the locked door, rub her breasts until pain coursed through her body. But no matter how hard she rubbed, the imprint remained, for it was indelible.

  That touch, lingering as the long winter lingered, meant even more. It made her party to the mother’s dark vow. And what did that vow mean? What would it encompass? Would there really be candles sputtering in the rooms at night and dark shapes rushing over the roof? Would there be incantations and duppy dust and her father weakening until his will was gone and he wanted only what the mother wanted? Frantically Selina searched the mother’s face for some hint and always found it shut, inscrutable. Those eyes, when they encountered hers, revealed nothing. Then the mother got a job in a defense factory and Selina hardly saw her. Desperately she searched the halls, the cellar, the master bedroom for some sign and, after each futile search, stumbled upstairs to the landing under the skylight and crouched there, the fears festering on her mind like Miss Thompson’s life-sore.

  And guilt joined her there. For wasn’t she betraying her father by her silence? But what would she say?—she almost cried aloud each time. Simply that the mother had vowed? Hadn’t she vowed and threatened before? Each day these questions swarmed her mind and she writhed, often moaning, under their attack. Until one afternoon her mind was too bruised to take any more and she crawled up, knowing that she must find help somewhere.

  “Miss Mary . . .” She peered through the room’s timeless and tarnished yellow fog. “Miss Mary . . .” She groped amid the dusty relics to the bed and the wasted form there.

  “. . . Aye, it did yuh heart good to see them on a Sunday—the girls in them wide hats with the ribbons flying and the mistress in her lace shawl looking like the fine beauty she was—all going to church . . .” The cracked voice was in full pursuit of the past, the faded eyes blind to all but those scenes.

  “Miss Mary. . .” She sat on the low stool beside the bed and touched the hands clasped in painful motionlessness on the blanket.

  “. . . Faith, it was a fine house. Never a hard word spoken . . . They wus none as happy as them . . .”

  “Miss Mary!”

  “Tom!” the old woman cried. “Him so tall and strong with a smile for everyone . . . Dead in the war somewheres and me with the child coming and no wedding a-tall . . .”

  Miss Mary dreamed loud, Selina called and the afternoon lengthened while time held motionless in the rooms. Finally Selina was too weak with frustration to call. Finally the old woman’s rapt voice drove her from the room.

  “Miss Suggie, you home?” she called tearfully and pushed Suggie’s half-opened door.

  Suggie was there, hunched over the bottles of perfume on her vanity, her red chenille robe open around her thick thighs and her hair spread on her shoulders.

  “Miss Suggie . . .”

  “I quit.” Suggie shouted without turning. “That’s why you see me home. Yuh think I was gon spend my life cleaning that white woman big house—biting muh tongue when she snot-nose brats insult me? I quit.”

  “Miss Suggie, listen please . . .”

  Suggie turning, her hair whipping black across her face, her eyes straining to see Selina in the failing light. “Selina, mahn, tell muh, you think I could get one these good war jobs . . . ?”

  At the sight of her troubled face and the anxioius way her arms reached out to her, Selina’s own fears abated. Suddenly Suggie seemed more the child than she and more in need of help.

  “Yes,” she said gently, coming into the room.

  “But do you think I could do the work if I put muh mind to it?”

  “Yes,” she assured her. “My mother’s doing it.”

  Suggie jumped up and strode to the window, the robe flouncing behind her. “I talking ’bout me! Could I do it?” she cried angrily, fac
ing the winter sunset above the park. “Yuh mother and them so can do anything they put their mind to.”

  At that Selina’s fears surged back and the scene in the kitchen was vivid again. “Please, Miss Suggie, listen. My mother’s gonna sell . . .”

  “Yuh mother! Them so! My people! I’s hiding from them with tears in my eyes,” she raged, unheeding. “Y’know what they want me to do?” She spun around. “I must put on a piece of black hat pull down over my face and go out here working day in and day out and save every penny. That’s what. I mustn’t think ’bout spreeing or loving-up or anything so . . .” She swept to the table, poured a long drink of rum and swallowed it in one draught. “But they’s sadly mistaken,” she shouted defiantly as though the rum had given her courage, “I gon spend my money foolish if I choose.” She waved to the perfumes. “And I always gon have some man or the other. When people see me coming they gon know it’s Suggie Skeete, even if it’s only because I’s the biggest whore out. Be-Jees, I ain gon be like them, all cut out of the same piece of cloth. . .”

  Selina, weighted down by her own anxiety, her frustration renewed, only half listened. She did not even try to call Suggie again. Then, when Suggie’s bitter grievances were over, she noticed Selina’s drawn face and cried, “Selina, mahn, what wrong? I talking too much?”

  “No, it’s my mother. She’s gonna sell the land behind his back.”

  “What you talking?”

  “Sell it. Without his knowing.”

  “She just talking.”

  “No, she means it this time. She swore.”

  “She just talking. Neither name of hers down for it.”

  “She isn’t joking. She means it. She’s gonna work obeah, I think.” Tears stung her eyes.

  Suggie’s laugh filled the chilly room with its lush summer sound. “Wha’lah, mahn, that obeah foolishness don work in New York. So stop worrying yuhself. She was just trying to frighten you.”

  “I know she’s gonna do something.” Her hand struck the air.

  “Mahn, she can’t do a thing. Not a thing.”

  Strangely, the resignation she felt was almost soothing. The tears no longer burned her lids and she nodded at Suggie to indicate that she was convinced. For it was not that Suggie had refused to believe, but that she, Selina, had failed in words that would convince her. Selina leaned her forehead on the footboard and said nothing more.

  After a time Suggie’s worried voice reached down into Selina’s numbness. “Selina, mahn, do you really think I could get one these good war jobs—that I could catch on and learn good like yuh mother and them so . . . ?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “yes.”

  Outside in the hall again she pressed her face against the cool paneling to still the voices of Miss Mary and Suggie swirling inside her and to prepare herself for the blaring onslaught of the trumpet. It was her father’s trumpet. He was studying the trumpet now that his correspondence course in accounting was finally over. The course had ended, and his ambition to be an accountant had ended the first day he had looked for a job. Trailing slowly downstairs into the trumpet’s din, she remembered that day, two weeks ago, and ached for him again.

  “Lady-folks, how I look?” he had shouted, entering the kitchen that morning, impeccable in a white shirt, a dark figured tie that blended well with his dark suit, his hair brushed flat and his shoes gleaming in the gray morning light.

  Before they could answer, the mother had turned from the sink and said, her voice sharp with reproof yet strangely protective, “But where you going and you only half-studied that course? How you can be putting yourself up in these white people face asking for some big job and yuh’s not even a citizen?”

  Smiling, he picked up Selina’s bread from her plate and Ina’s cup of tea and, eating, said, “Don worry ’bout that, Silla. Where it say citizen on the application I gon put yes. They ain gon bother searching up the birth certificate. Besides these white people here does think all colored people is from the South.”

  “Which places you going?”

  “The three places offering the best salary.”

  With a look both cruel and pitying she said, “You don want no job,” and turned to the children. “Instead of him going to some small office where he might have a chance—no, he got to play like he’s white.”

  “Silla, lemma tell you something,” he interrupted, his smile gone and annoyance darkening his face, “I ain looking for nothing small. I ain been studying this course off and on for near two years to take no small job. Tha’s the trouble with wunna colored people. Wunna is satisfy with next skin to nothing. Please Mr. White-man, gimma little bit. Please Mr. White-man, le’ the boy go to Harrison College so he can be a schoolmaster making $10.00 a month. Please Mr. White-man, lemma buy one these old house you don want no more. No, I ain with wunna. It got to be something big for me ’cause I got big plans or nothing a-tall. That’s the way a man does do things!” With that he replaced Ina’s cup, handed Selina what was left of the bread and left.

  That afternoon, racing through the master bedroom to the sun parlor, Selina saw the tie trailing over the foot of the bed and the jacket thrown carelessly across a chair. Apprehensively she pushed open the door to the sun parlor and saw him—lying there on the cot as though he had been severely beaten and flung there like his jacket. The floor around him was scattered with the accounting manuals.

  She waited, as she always did, for him to speak first. Soon the sunset gave way to dusk beyond the glass walls, and shadows invaded the room, overtaking the bare floor, the cot, moving quickly up his limp body. When they slanted across his eyes he whispered, “They’s all the same, lady-folks. Here and in Bimshire they’s the same. They does scorn yuh ’cause yuh skin black . . .”

  Despite his bitterness, there was a nuance, a shading of something else. A frightening acceptance, it seemed to be, which sprang, perhaps, from a conviction hidden deep within him that it was only right that he should be rejected . . . He said nothing more after that, and two weeks later he brought home the trumpet and a beginner’s book in music and was soon his affable, teasing self again.

  Selina hated it. Its indecent shrieks not only destroyed their intimacy but desecrated the aged silence of the house. Yet she wanted him to play well, for she knew how the mother laughed and said to her friends in the kitchen on Saturdays, “Yes, soul, he call heself playing the trumpet now and can’t mark fat with the thing.”

  She stood in the doorway of the master bedroom now, the trumpet assaulting her ears, watching him. His body, stretched stiff and tense, looked as though it would vibrate like a struck chord at the slightest touch. The muscles corded thickly in his neck and at his temples; his head leaned back as though bent by a wind. He was all black and gold to her: bright gold trumpet pressed to his dark lips, black fingers faltering on the gold keys. With each uncertain note his head trembled and the perspiration slid in bright tears down his face.

  At last he tore the trumpet from his lips and leaned, exhausted, against the stand, shaking the spittle from the valve. “How the lady-folks?” He turned, smiling. “I thought I did hear you sneaking in. Yuh old white friend upstairs complaining ’bout the noise I guess.”

  “She can’t hear anything. It sounds like you’ll soon be able to play that song.”

  “Ah, you heard me then.” He smiled widely. “I almost had it down, nuh. I tell you, I must have natural talent for this thing. The book says you must have the scales down pat before you start playing any song. Even the teacher say so. But I ain worrying with all that. I ain got time to be practicing no scales or learning those foolish little pieces the teacher give me. I looking to play real songs—and fast.”

  “You like this better than the accounting then?” she asked carefully.

  “It’s a hundred times better,” he said with heat, remembering his humiliation. He placed the trumpet to his lips, hesitated and lowered it. His eyes narrowed as his thoughts formed. “You got to get somethin’ that you don have to look to nob
ody. Now take these musicians. They don say cat-dog to a blast. And they does pull down good money—that Louis Armstrong, Erskine Hawkins and the ’mounts of them. People does beg them to play. Besides you does get people respect when you’s a musician. You’s not just another somebody out here scuffling for a dollar. You’s an artist! You can play in any of those big bands . . .”

  His eyes on Selina became bright with purpose; he held the trumpet as if it were the wand which had finally ordered life around him, and without it he would be shunted into the old confusion again.

  “Maybe you’ll be very famous,” she cried, caught by his words.

  He pointed the trumpet at her, shouting, “Famous! How you mean, lady-folks? Famous! They does string up yuh name in lights!”

  She saw his name in lights in the golden mouth of the trumpet and people crowding around him as he dashed from the theater with a white scarf at his throat and a cape flaring from his shoulders.

  He swept on—“Once I get started I gon make ’nough money. Then these Bajan with their few raw-mouth houses will see what real money is! But I wun get like them. Not me! Everybody gon say: ‘Deighton Boyce is one man that makes good money and lives good. He wear the best of clothes. He eat the finest. He rides in the swellest cars.’ That’s the way a man does do things . . .” His eyes flashed and the trumpet flashed as he gestured with it. Seeing that golden streak in the twilit room, Selina imagined that all the things he mentioned would magically appear.

  “And when I show these Bajan here, I gon left them to run themself in an early grave in this man New York. I going home and breathe good Bimshire air ’cause a man got a right to take his ease in this life and not always be scuffling.”

  He raised the trumpet and again lowered it. “Did I tell yuh I gon plant ladies-of-the-night round the house?”

  “What’re those?” she whispered, remembering with a wrench the mother’s vow.