Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

  “A flower that does smell only at night. When you in your bed you can smell it and it’s like the night-self is the thing smelling so sweet . . . And in the front yard I gon have a flamboyant tree. You ain never seen anything like that tree, lady-folks. The blossom does be a blood red and the branches wide so. And when the blossom fall all the ground does be covered in red like a rug,” he said, standing absorbed in the middle of the red-faded Oriental rug.

  “Daddy,” she whispered, and he waved the trumpet, silencing her.

  “And I got the house clear-clear in my mind now. I gon build it out of good Bajan coral stone and paint it white. Everything gon be white! A gallery with tall white columns at the front like some temple or the other. A parlor with ’nough furnitures and a dining room with glasses of every description and flowers from we own garden . . .”

  “Daddy.” She strained toward him.

  “And upstairs ’nough bedrooms with their own bathroom—and every bathroom with a stained-glass window like in a church. People gon come from all over to see those stained-glass windows . . .”

  Suddenly Selina leaped up, and as the trumpet made another wide dazzling arc she grabbed it, screaming, “She’s gonna sell it. She’s gonna sell it all.”

  “What, lady-folks? Who selling what?”

  “Mother. She swore to Iris Hurley and Florrie Trotman that she’s gonna sell the land. Your land.” The shouted confession took all her strength and, still clinging to the trumpet, she slid to the floor at his feet.

  He dropped beside her. “Girl, what you saying? What you saying?” he demanded harshly and, grabbing her chin, forced her head up.

  When she saw his eyes and the fear crouched there she knew that she should have said nothing—for it was like shattering his life. A fierce protectiveness welled in her. She knew suddenly that she had to lull him with lies. Slowly she raised her hand to calm him and said softly, “I . . . I’m . . . sorry, Daddy . . . I didn’t mean . . . to scare you . . . It was . . . nothing. She was just kinda showing off for them. Y’know how she always fusses about it . . . and talks big about what she’s gonna do if you don’t sell . . . But it was nothing . . .”

  Under her soothing voice, the fear dropped from his eyes and he rose, picking up the trumpet. “She’s always talking big,” he said with a short empty laugh, “but there’s not a thing she can do. Don let she frighten you with her guff, girl.”

  “But maybe you should write anyway and ask your sister if everything’s okay . . .” she pleaded.

  “No, I wrote once telling she to look after it for me, but I promise muhself I not gon write again till I make muh first money playing this trumpet. Then I gon write and start making plans. Then I gone.” He shouted, “You and me. Ina, if she want to come. Even your mother can come, but she gon have to watch that mouth. I gon be firm with she ’cause it’ll be my house and my land and I ain gon stand for no foolishness. And if they don wanna come, I gon make you mistress of the house. The servants gon have to take orders from you. When you want your fancy clothes I gon put you ’pon a plane to New York to do your shopping. And when these Bajan here see you, they gon say, ‘Wha’lah, wha’lah, look Deighton Selina! I hear that man living like a lord home.’

  “Yes, and it all gon come from this.” He gazed fondly at the trumpet, and then at Selina. “But the very first money I make from it gon be ours, lady-folks, yours and mine. And we gon lick it out like sailors . . . Come, what you want? Tell me quick!”

  Numbed, beaten, she murmured, “A new coat, I guess.”

  “A coat! Two coats! And a big doll like you once had.”

  “Oh, no dolls. Books.”

  “We gon fill the house with books,” he shouted and then paused.

  In the silence a child screamed outside and the almost dark sky became suddenly gray with snow. He flicked the trumpet, laughing uneasily. “But g’long, girl, you does start me talking and I don does get my work done.”

  Out in the hall again, she waited for the trumpet’s onslaught, and when it came it was the distraught voice of her failure. She slid face down on the dusty carpet, trying to escape its mocking blast; her legs in the ugly wool stockings struck the carpet once, soundlessly, and she ground the tie of her middy blouse between her teeth to stifle her cries.

  Suggie’s bell added another shrill note, and she crawled behind the stairs to watch the familiar ritual: Suggie’s languorous descent, her perfunctory greeting at the door and the slow climb to the sagging bed. It was a soldier this time, his brass buttons glinting, his cigar glowing red and his eyes, lit by the cigar, following the soft shudder of Suggie’s hips under the robe.

  For the first time Selina allowed the obscene images to form. She had failed, now she would sin. He’s kissing her, she almost shouted, and there’re shreds of tobacco on his lips. His black hands are tearing the robe. He’s deep between her fleshy legs and the old bed’s thumping . . .

  “Ina!” she cried, stumbling up and running down the hall to the parlor.

  Her sister was at the tall parlor window, partly hidden by the heavy maroon velvet drapes, watching the snow gather over the park while her neglected music book glowed white in the dusk.

  Selina, sensing her serenity, quieted a little. She wanted suddenly to stand beside her at the window and wait for the snow, to feel the room behind them with its massive furniture and inviolate calm.

  “Ina . . .” she whispered, then added with a nervous laugh, “Suggie’s got a new boy friend. A soldier. He looks like a bulldog with a cigar in its mouth. I wonder where she meets all these different guys?”

  Ina’s only comment was to gather the drapes around her.

  In the gray silence Selina searched desperately for words that might bring her from behind the drapes. “I saw that boy who likes you on my way from school today. He asked for you. He said . . .”

  “Go away.”

  “Please, I got something to tell you.”

  “I don’t wanna hear it.”

  “It’s nothing silly this time. Ina? It’s very, very important. Ina? You gonna listen?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway.”

  “Don’t waste your breath.”

  But Selina was already confessing. “It’s about Daddy’s land. Remember that day Florrie Trotman was telling ghost stories and you ran out? Well after you left Mother swore . . .”

  “I don’t wanna hear it . . .”

  “. . . to sell it.”

  “Get out.”

  A pulse of rage began to throb in Selina’s loins. It was as if her heart had been torn from its socket and was lodged there now. She lunged and switched on the chandelier, and yanked open the drapes.

  Ina was almost crying as she turned. “Why don’t you leave me alone? Why are you always barging in?”

  Selina shied from her sister’s dark loveliness, muttering, “I just wanted to tell you what she said.”

  “Don’t tell me nothing about that land. D’ya hear! Do you know what all this fuss is about? A patch no bigger than a city block, maybe. That’s all. I’m sick of hearing about it. I hate it, d’ya hear. I despise it. Stained-glass windows in every bathroom!”

  “You were listening.”

  “Greek columns around the gallery.”

  “You were listening.”

  “Flowers that smell only at night.”

  “Ya sneak.”

  “Flamboyant trees.”

  “Sneak. Listening to run back and tell.”

  “Listening to what! Nothing but silly dreams.”

  “He never talks to you, one thing. He doesn’t say two words to you.”

  An unutterable hurt filmed Ina’s eyes and her soft mouth quivered. “He doesn’t . . . have to . . . say anything to me. . .” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t.”

  “I’ve had better times with him than you’ll ever have,” she cried.

  “You’re lying.”

  “He never takes you anyplace. He shoves a
nickel at you and you think he cares. But he always took me out with him . . .” Slowly her voice dropped and she stared with abstracted eyes beyond Selina. “We’d go window-shopping downtown and he’d pick out things he was gonna buy me. It was our game. Every Saturday. He’d pick out crazy things that I wouldn’t want . . . lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners and crazy things like that . . . I remember once it was golf clubs . . . I didn’t even know what they were for. That was our game . . .” Her voice trailed into a wistful silence and she stood tangled in the memory.

  “You’re lying,” Selina shouted, and Ina said in a voice remote with pain, “Then the other one came and then you. He was always sick and mewling and you’re always sweaty and loud. So he talks only to you? Well, you can have him. See if I care. I hate him!”

  “I’m gonna tell him what you said.” Selina started for the door, but Ina swerved past her and reached there first. “I’ll do my own telling,” she said fiercely. “I’m gonna tell him that he can’t play that awful trumpet and never will play it!” She darted up the hall.

  For a moment Selina was too startled to move. When she finally bolted after her, Ina was already at the bedroom door, her fists raised, and whispering tearfully, “You don’t have to talk to me any more, d’ya hear . . . I hate . . .”

  Selina’s fist cut off the next word and smashed Ina up against the wall. Her next blow forced Ina’s breath out in a whoozing sound. She pommeled Ina from below, wielding her fists between Ina’s raised arms; her fingers dug into the soft places of Ina’s body; she clawed at Ina’s hair and face, her hands in their eagerness slipping on the tears. She welcomed Ina’s efforts to defend herself for they fed her rage and she struck more viciously. After a time Selina wasn’t even conscious that she was beating her. She knew only that with each blow the fears that had been clamoring inside her for weeks subsided and the pulse in her loin slowed. Ina, at least, understood her desperation. She had wanted to tell Ina quietly behind the drapes, but she had refused to listen and there was nothing left but violence.

  Finally, Ina sagged, yet she still gasped her contempt, “You’re . . . you’re . . . sweaty and loud like I said . . . Oh, nobody’s ever gonna . . . like you . . . or want you around . . .Oh . . . All you’ll do the rest of your life is walk . . . the halls and talk to yourself . . . Nobody’s ever gonna like you . . .”

  With all her strength, Selina brought her knee up under the brim of Ina’s pelvis and she screamed. The trumpet shrieked to a stop then, and Deighton flung open the door.

  “What wunna two hellions doing? Fighting again?” The horn flashed menacingly, and he caught Selina by the wide collar of her middy blouse and pulled her away. Freed, Ina ran down the hall, her dress flicking away in the dimness.

  “You, Miss Ina, come back here,” he called, but the parlor door slammed on his voice and the piano erupted into sound as Ina piled loud jarring chords into a wall high enough to shut out the world.

  “What happen with wunna now?” He shook Selina.

  “She was calling me names.”

  “Here I trying to learn this thing and wunna got to get outside the door to fight.”

  “She was calling me names.”

  “As for you,” he shook her again, “you does make me shame sometime—always fighting like some boar-cat. You’s yuh mother child, in truth!” He shoved her hard and closed the bedroom door.

  As she stumbled, crying wildly, the trumpet joined the piano and she was trapped within their dissonance. Then, to complete the assault, Suggie’s pagan laugh rang down through the stairwell. The derisive trio lashed her as she had lashed Ina, and she turned, sobbing, and, in the darkness, groped downstairs to the basement and, still sobbing, fumbled into her coat and ran from the house, slamming the heavy gate on them all.

  III

  “I beat up Ina again.”

  She stood, a penitent, in the narrow smoke-hung booth, which was itself like a confessional, while Miss Thompson, with her penetrating eyes and bruised tragic face, with her attenuated form raised high on the stool, might have been her confessor. The foot with the ulcer was propped on a chair, and she was eating, taking great chunks out of a fried fish sandwich.

  She put the sandwich aside and said very gently, “You know what I told you the last time. That you’s getting your developments now and it ain’t nice for you to be fighting so wild no more . . .”

  “I know. I know I’m too old to fight, but I just wanted to tell her something and she ignored me.”

  “Maybe she didn’t feel like talking. Ina’s a young lady, honey, and she’s got her own troubles.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have done it. And then my father yelled at me.”

  “He didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “I guess not. He was just upset about us fighting. And then I’ve been thinking all the time . . .”

  “You thinks too much.”

  “. . . about my father’s land. My mother’s gonna sell it. Somehow. And she swore she’d kill me if I told anyone.”

  Miss Thompson chuckled and took a bite of the sandwich. “Now you know she don’t mean that.”

  “This afternoon I heard like voices trying to warn me.”

  She laughed lightly. “Now look here, gal, don’t be hearing no spirits round here.”

  “I’m scared.”

  She lifted her face, and when Miss Thompson saw the eyes wide with tears and the small mouth trembling with the inarticulate fear, her laugh broke off and her smoke-glazed eyes became shrouded with compassion. Quickly she drew Selina between her thin legs; her long worn hands closed in benediction over her head. Softly she said, “What scairt my baby?”

  “This feeling I got today.” She pressed her face into the warm hollow of Miss Thompson’s stomach, her tears dampened Miss Thompson’s uniform. “I tried to tell people I was scared and nobody listened. Not one of them—not even my father really.”

  “Don’t nobody listen to nobody much.”

  “Why?” She brought her head up sharply.

  “Why? I don’t know why, honey.” Miss Thompson tenderly flicked the tears from her face. “Peoples ain’t got time, I guess. Or they’s just plain too wrapped up in theyself. Look, lemme tell you something, Selina. Don’t pay much attention to grown folks, ’cause half the time they don’t make no kinda sense. Now you come on with me. Thompson’s gonna take off them wet clothes and then fix your hair nice.”

  She led Selina to the kerosene stove and there, within its radius of heat, took off her coat, dress and the long woolen stockings that were wet with snow. “Lord, honey,” she said affectionately, “when is them legs of yours gonna stop growing?”

  “Never,” she said dully, staring at her long loose-jointed legs in the mirror, at the narrow body perched on top of them. Except for the tiny breasts she still belied her sex; she still wore the badge of her frail childhood: the piece of camphor wrapped in cotton and pinned to the inside of her shirt to ward off colds. The bit of camphor intimated another weakness, she thought, staring at it: her inability to convince anyone of her need for help, her failure to abort the mother’s plan. Suddenly she ran back into the booth and slammed her body down into the swivel chair and sent the chair hurtling around at a furious spin. Each time she sped past the mirror her face was more blurred until it was only a brown streak. She was blurring into nothingness and she deserved it.

  “What’s ailing you tonight, Selina Boyce?” Miss Thompson brought the chair to a jarring stop and Selina saw her face again, haggard with fear, and she yelled, “I’m gonna go and tell her to her face that she can’t do it!”

  “What? What is you taking about?”

  “My mother,” she cried, kneeling in the chair, her eyes deepening so that you could almost see the plan taking shape in their depths. “I’m . . . I’m gonna go right to where she works—just to show her that I’m not scared of anything—and tell her right to her face that she can’t sell it. That I’ve warned everybody. I’m gonna walk right in there and tell her right to her fac
e!”

  “Stop it!” Miss Thompson pushed her down in the chair. “Stop talking outta your head. Lemme tell you something. Even if your momma was doing something it ain’t none of your business. You understand that? That’s between your momma and daddy. It don’t concern you. Stop worrying about big people’s problems.”

  Selina wasn’t listening. She settled into the chair and closed her eyes, suddenly calm. The futile search for help that afternoon, the corrosive fear of months was ended by her sudden plan. “All right,” she said, “I’ll stop worrying.”

  And her mind did move away from its nest of dark thoughts while Miss Thompson’s hands moved in a light sure caress through her hair. She dozed, awakening when Miss Thompson loudly called, “How you like it?” and swung her to the mirror.

  She stared, astonished, at the sleek curls framing her face. “You made curls . . .” she cried accusingly.

  “What’s wrong with that? They looks pretty.”

  “But I don’t wear curls. I don’t like them.”

  “What girl getting her developments goes around with braids?” Miss Thompson fussed and snatched the smock from around her. “Okay, lemme braid it.”

  “No, wait,” Selina said, touching a curl. “They can stay. For tonight anyway.”

  Later, crossing Fulton Street with the darkened beauty shop behind them, Selina clung to Miss Thompson, using her meager warmth as a shield against the snow and the mixed terror and excitement that flurried inside her. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “’Bout eight.”

  “How do you get to Berry Street?”

  “Where?”

  “Berry Street in Williamsburg.”

  “The Reid Avenue trolley. Why? Why?” Miss Thompson swung Selina around to face her.

  “I just asked.”

  “Selina, I’m putting you in that house and you better stay there.”

  “Oh please, don’t you be angry with me too.” Selina reached for her.

  Miss Thompson struck her hand aside. “Is you gonna stay there?”

  She waited for an answer but Selina had not really heard. All her senses were focused inward, shaping her bold plan. Miss Thompson raised her hand once to shake Selina, then let it drop. A look of tragic understanding creased the taut flesh around her eyes, her long lean face sagged with it. “Come on, honey,” she said, “lemme put you in your house ’cause I gotta get to my night work.”