Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

  “Selina? You in here?” the mother’s voice intruded. Guiltily she snuffed out the candles and crumbled them, still hot, in her fist.

  “What’s that you burning? You practicing obeah or something so?” When Selina did not answer she asked, “But why you always draw up in some dark place?”

  “I’m waiting for Daddy.”

  In the room’s dim quiescence Selina heard the mother catch her breath as though to speak but she said nothing nor did she leave. Selina waited, puzzled, wondering why her father hadn’t come yet. Suddenly she desperately wanted him to come, to see his white shirt hanging disembodied in the dusk as he stood in the doorway, to hear him sigh like a girl as he closed the door on the long day at the mattress factory. For some reason she was anxious and suddenly she jumped up, crying at the mother’s silent figure, “Something’s happened?”

  And the mother’s voice came, so gentle that it barely disturbed the silence. “Yes. Yuh father had something happen to his arm today at the factory. Nothing serious but he’s in the hospital for a few days . . .”

  The strength that had brought her to her feet failed her now and she sank down.

  “They start up some new machine and he ask to work on it without knowing what it gave and the arm got caught. The nerve gone, they say. Crush so.”

  Selina barely heard, for her own blood thudded loud as another voice in her ears. The sound became the machines roaring at the factory, and she saw him, a slim figure with an ascetic’s face standing amid that giant complex of pistons and power, shuddering inside each time the steam jettisoned up and the machines stamped down.

  “They told him not to work the machine till he had learned it good but he wun hear,” the mother was saying, her voice dull with sadness. “But that’s his way. He does only half-learn a thing. The same with the blasted trumpet and the course he was taking for all those years . . .”

  The mother talked and Selina saw the huge hungry maw of the machine opening while her father tended it absently. “Watch,” she cried in her thoughts as it clamped down on his arm, sucking it in as it sucked in the metal to be shaped, then spewing it out crushed. Couldn’t the machine have seen that he was already crushed inside? Couldn’t it have spared him? And thinking of that impersonal brutality, she wept. “When?” she whispered, gagging on the tears. “When did it happen?”

  “This noon. They did call me on the job and I went straight to the hospital but . . . but he wun speak to me . . .”

  Noon! While she had been listening with almost indecent delight to a sordid story of seduction, while her own wish for a boy was slowly forming, it had happened.

  “No tears, I beg you,” the mother pleaded, her own voice breaking with them. “I can’t bear the tears, you hear! I got enough with your sister crying bucket a drop downstairs and she’s a full woman. I can’t bear the tears, I say.”

  But Selina’s sobs persisted in the dusk silence, along with the distant clamor of the streets and Ina’s muted wail from below—until finally darkness spread like a balm through the room. Then she said, “Where’s the hospital?”

  In answer the darkness moved as the mother shifted.

  “Where is it? I’m going to him.”

  “No,” she said gently.

  “No? I say I want to see him and you say no?” She sprang up, peering through the shadows. “Tell me what hospital.”

  “I not saying the name.”

  “You’re not saying . . . ?” And she stumbled up and across the room, feeling her way until she saw the mother’s strained face emerge from the gloom and felt her breath breaking over her face. “Tell me or I’ll phone every hospital in Brooklyn until I find him.”

  “They wun say he’s there.”

  “I’ll call his job then.”

  “They wun say either.”

  “I’ll find out, you hear.” Selina spat the words in her face. “You can’t stop me from seeing him.”

  She charged past the mother and was almost out of the room when the mother called softly, “I ain the one stopping you.”

  “Who then?”

  “Yuh father-self.”

  She turned, stunned. “You mean he doesn’t want to see me?”

  “He don want you to see him.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “As God is my witness. That’s the only thing he said to me there in the hospital. ‘Don let the children come here.’ Those the only words he had for me and then he turn ’way his face,” she whispered brokenly, and then suddenly spoke to the presence who always listened and sympathized. “Be-Christ, you does ask for vengeance and sometime the sight of it when it comes does make you wish different . . .”

  “It’s not true,” Selina still shouted. “He wants to see me.” Suddenly she remembered the crumpled candles in her fist and flung them down, shouting, “I’m fifteen and I’m going to see him. I’m fifteen and you can’t stop me from doing anything now.”

  The mother’s voice drooped tragically; her arms reached out in the darkness. “But look at you. You does get on like you know all but you don know nothing yet. You can’t understand that with a man like your father, the last thing he would want would be for wunna to see him when he ain dress back and making like a big sports. Leave him, nuh. He got enough to bear without the look on your face when you see him in that bed . . .” Noiselessly she moved past Selina and at the door added tenderly, “Come down nuh and eat. I made coconut bread for your birthday.”

  But Selina remained, paralyzed as the blood flowed down, leaving her head and chest chilled. As the tremors began she knew that she also began screaming, yet the screams seemed apart from her, as if someone else in the dark shared her sorrow and impotence and screamed for her. Even when she stopped, the screams continued, refusing to dissolve into silence . . .

  It was almost spring when he came home. Already the spring mist hung in a pale gold curtain during the day and in a blue filigree during the evenings. Down the interminable streets, a soft green relieved the bare front yards; the fruit trees in the back yards stirred with new leaves and the ivy flickered green against the worn stone. Selina stood under the leaving tree at the curb watching for the cab while Ina waited in the yard and the mother stood at the parlor-floor window. When the cab came Ina ran out and the mother withdrew.

  Except for the bandaged left arm he was no different. The same playful smile, the same mild eyes, and he held his face at the same listening angle. They reached to help him from the cab and he waved them off, leaping out and brushing his lips across their cheeks, “How’s the lady-folks? How’s tricks?” Without waiting for their reply he strode jauntily across the sidewalk and up the stoop.

  They hurried behind him, disturbed because his movements were too swift, his manner too flippant. Noticing a bundle of newspapers under his arm, Selina said, “Lemme carry the papers for you, Daddy.”

  “No. Leave them, nuh,” he said irritably, then seeing her hurt face, he smiled.

  It was then that a chill swept her. For his eyes as he glanced down were shrouded by an opaque film. She wondered if he really saw her. She wanted to pass her palm across his eyes and say, “Are you with us?” the way the girls in school did when anyone stared into space. Even his smile was blind. She turned to Ina, whose troubled eyes stared back. Uneasy, they followed him into the house, down the long hall, past the open parlor door, where they knew the mother stood listening to their footsteps.

  He waited at the bedroom door for them to open it for him. Selina had lighted his small rose-shaded lamp and drawn the drapes, and the room was as he liked it. He smiled fondly at the frieze of angels and cherubs on the ceiling, at the massive furniture and faded Oriental rug. Then he saw the music stand in the corner and he trembled slightly and the haze quickly closed over his eyes.

  “I’ll turn down the bed so you can rest,” Ina said, hurrying over.

  “No.” His voice was sharp with alarm. “That’s yuh mother bed. Lemma go to the sun parlor, where I can breathe little fresh air.”


  Again they exchanged a worried look as they unlocked the tall French doors. While he stared down at the blown back yard they made up the cot and gathered up the last autumn’s leaves that had lain there all winter.

  He lay down fully clothed, the newspapers next to him and the bandaged arm across his chest. His whole body seemed as limp as that arm. All of him might have been sucked into the machine and crushed. And because he was so limp, he seemed quiet inside. A kind of dead peace hovered about him.

  “Ah, the air smell too sweet after that hospital,” he said. “I tell you, the stench alone in that place was enough to make you sick if you wasn’t sick already . . .” Glancing up, he saw their uneasiness and attempted his old playful tone. “Well, come tell me, muh, how my lady-folks?”

  “All right.” Selina smiled shyly. “How do you feel?”

  “How I feel?” He sucked his teeth. “Girl, I feeling fine. Especially now I breathe little fresh air. In fact, I don feel not a thing is wrong with me, except when I go to raise the arm and it wun budge.”

  “Will it get better?” Ina asked.

  “So they say. If I take special exercise and thing so. But it would never be well enough to play no trumpet or work no machine again. So why bother up myself?” Slowly he raised up and gazed down at the limp arm, his head quivering. Slowly the film dropped from his eyes and he half smiled. Bitterly at first. Then a certain joy crept into the smile and into the hollows of his lean face. His good hand groped out to the limp arm and he stroked it almost fondly, as if instead of defeat this was a strange kind of fulfillment—the one thing he had been truly seeking even as he sought the job in accounting and the return home. Still stroking the arm he turned suddenly to Ina and gazed strongly at her. “Y’know, my mother, God rest she in her grave, did always say everything happens for a reason. If a spoon dropped she would say it drop for a reason. I used to laugh at she. But now I come to see what she did mean. After all these years I come to see . . .” His head dropped back on the pillow and he closed his eyes, still smiling, still fondly stroking the arm.

  Not understanding, Selina said, “We wanted to come and see you.”

  He shook his head. “A hospital ain no place for my young ladies. I was up there in a nightgown like some woman, and all around me people hawking and spitting up their insides and crying for pain. And that smell strong enough to choke a horse. No, that ain no place for young ladies.” His voice had dropped to a whisper but suddenly now it surged up. “But everything does happen for a reason and for the best too.” He gripped the newspapers beside him.

  Selina and Ina turned to each other, baffled again, and in the swift line of their glance, saw the mother behind the door. Her face reflected their bewilderment and she gave them a look that both threatened and pleaded for them not to disclose her.

  “Are those old newspapers?” Selina asked.

  His hand roved affectionately over them. “Yes, I guess you could call them old. I thought they was old too when I found them in the cabinet next to my bed in the hospital. But when I read them I saw that even though they was old, what they had to say was new. Thank you, Father,” he suddenly cried. “Peace, it’s wonderful!” he uttered solemnly, then closed his eyes and, smiling, slept.

  During those next weeks he read only those newspapers and nothing beyond their pages seemed important. Each was entitled The New Light. Each had a large picture of a kindly, round-faced man on the front page, and bold headlines read: “I AM THE FATHER UNIVERSAL,” “I AM THE TRUE AND LIVING JEHOVAH,” “NEW BIRTH AND REDEMPTION IN GOD . . .”

  After the disruptive impact of the trumpet Selina welcomed the stillness as he read The New Light. But it was no longer the intimate silence that bound them together. He never paused to talk to her, and when she spoke he started and sometimes stared at her without recognition. He spoke only to himself, murmuring the same puzzling phrases over and over again, “Peace, it’s truly wonderful,” “Thank you, Father,” “Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful . . .”

  His life became simple and cloistered. He spent the day in the sun parlor and also slept there. At mealtimes Selina came for him and he silently followed her downstairs and ate with The New Light propped against his plate. He no longer went out on Saturday nights, but early on Sunday afternoons he dressed with Selina’s help and went out, returning after midnight. One Sunday he brought home a framed photograph of the kindly man in The New Light.

  “Who’s he?” she asked, although she knew by now.

  “It’s Father,” he said quietly.

  “Whose?”

  “Father Peace. God Incarnate!” he cried.

  She almost laughed. How could a benign little man in a business suit be God? He was not even like the mother’s God—that quiet presence who always listened to her, or Maritze’s supplicant Lady with her mantle of dust. He was ordinary. She knew that he breathed and smelled like a man. What had her father to do with him? Fear suddenly dropped like a weight inside her and she went and sat down on the floor across from the cot. While she huddled there the sun veered to the west, shattering the bare room with the spring’s soft sunset colors. As dusk edged its way in the room Deighton turned on the lamp and continued reading, and Selina waited still, hating the numb peace in his face . . .

  During those weeks they all waited. Ina suddenly joined St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and began her preparations for confirmation. Now, at meals, while Deighton read The New Light she read the “Articles of Religion.” The mother worked overtime at the plant and came home each night, charging with her head like some wary animal, her eyes inflamed with fatigue. Yet no matter how late she came in, the light in the sun parlor was on, and it slanted across her bed and the empty pillow beside her, across her face as Deighton read The New Light far into the night.

  Upstairs Suggie paced the enameled-blue room, raging as she repeatedly lost the factory jobs, while next door in the dusty rooms, Miss Mary wheezed her memories and hacked away at Maritze with her fretting. And even they seemed to be waiting for Deighton’s recovery.

  Selina waited, spending most of her time with Miss Thompson in the beauty parlor. She was certain that each morning would bring the end of Father Peace. The obsession would pass like a fever from his body. One day they would hear his teasing voice, “Well, how the lady-folks today? How’s tricks?” They would know then that he was restored. Or some Saturday night she would find him at his dresser, caressing a new silk undershirt and humming the tuneless song to proclaim that he was well again. But the weeks passed and the day of his restoration passed with them.

  Alone in the sun parlor one day she took up the photograph of Father Peace and gazed at it, wondering at his hold over her father. She became slowly infuriated at the cherubic face smiling back at her and began shaking it, until finally she loosened the glass and it dropped out of the frame, scratching her arm as it fell to the floor and broke.

  “What you doing in here?”

  Sucking the blood from the scratch, she had not heard her father enter. When she looked up, he was standing over her, repeating irritably, “What you doing in here?”

  She was frightened, then angry, and didn’t answer.

  “What, I asked.”

  “Nothing.”

  Then he saw the broken glass on the floor and the photograph in her other hand. He snatched it from her. “What you doing to Father picture?”

  “Nothing, I was just looking at it and the glass fell out and cut me.”

  With his good hand he suddenly yanked her close. An exultant rage shook his voice, “You see? You see? Father struck you down! You interfere with him and he struck you down! Thank you, Father. Go ahead. Go ahead, keep interfering and he gon strike you down each time. Just like he does all them who interfere with him and refuse to believe he’s God. Take that big-shot Judge Jones. He put Father in jail. And Father prophesy that he was gon die the next day. And he die!” His voice rose, shrill as a woman’s. His breath fanned Selina’s face with its heat. He was wholly possessed. “He
die, I tell you, that big-shot white judge die . . . and the big-shot white doctors cun tell what he die from. You think Father was frighten for them ’cause they was white? Not Father. He let loose his power and showed them he’s God Incarnate. Oh, thank you, Father. Thank you for the sign!” He staggered back, and from the emptiness inside him came a sigh full of relief and trust. “Peace, it’s truly wonderful.”

  Selina slid from his lax hold to the floor and they remained like this for a time: she crouched, sobbing, at his feet, while he swayed above her, murmuring his litany of absolution.

  Outside the wind lifted suddenly and swept aside the clouds and the sun splashed in a wave through the glass walls, across the floor, and lay in a soothing hand on them both. The sun, their silence drained her anger and terror, and she was vaguely peaceful. She lifted her head after a time. “Take me . . .” Her hand hesitated near his leg. “Take me to see him.”

  He roused briefly, then lapsed into his detachment.

  “Take me to see him!” She tugged his trouser.

  “What . . . ?” He looked down.

  “I want to go with you to see him. Please take me. I want to go.”

  “You want to see Father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Up to Harlem, to the kingdom?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes suddenly cleared and he peered close at her upturned face. Finally he sighed and with a remote smile said, “All right, come this Sunday I gon take you.”

  He reached down and tenderly raised her up to the cot. He sat beside her and inspected the scratch and the thin line of dried blood. “It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” he murmured, stroking her arm and lifting his dazed eyes to the sun.