Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

  The woman quickly disappeared, and they sprawled on the living-room rug, laughing and talking at a high pitch. They danced, Selina and Rachel doing a reckless lindy in their stockinged feet. Later, they flowed out into the kitchen to watch Margaret pour a long amber stream of bourbon into the punch. “Libations to the gods!” Selina shouted and, swooping down, touched her forehead to the floor. The others knelt around her and then jumped up, clamoring for a drink. After their second glass she and Rachel did a pantomime of two drunks while the others shrieked and scrambled out of their way.

  Gradually the noise died and they lay in an exhausted circle on the rug, talking softly and drinking. Selina and Rachel sat together, Rachel smoking and talking of Bobby and Selina half listening and thinking of Clive. Later tonight, alone with him on the sofa under the bright lamp, the day would reach its fitting end. A rush of desire warmed her as she thought of his face at the height of their passion. It held then a lovely expression of almost unbearable pain and ecstasy. He would grasp her roughly and thrust deep, seeking to discover her even as he sought to rid himself of his pain in her—and as her hand caressed his tense back, his hair, as her luminous eyes assured him that she did not mind his roughness, he would gather her up, laughing as they plunged together in that last joyous burst . . .

  They were all dancing again—Selina and Rachel twirling each other dangerously—when Margaret hurried over and, taking Selina’s arm, tried to pull her away. “Hey, come with me for a minute,” she said, “my mother wants to meet you . . .”

  Selina shrugged her off, protesting, “But we’re dancing. Anyway, why does she want to meet only me?”

  “Because I just told her how good you were and how I had a catharsis watching you. Please.” Her eyes, lost in her plump face, pleaded.

  “Oh, all right,” Selina said. “But wait till we finish our dance.”

  After the dance she and Rachel drained their punch glasses, touching them first, and then she left her with a grandiloquent gesture. “My public calls.”

  “You ham,” Rachel laughingly called, as Selina, bobbing to the music, and waving her empty punch glass above her head, followed Margaret.

  “Hello,” she said and swung into the small sitting room behind Margaret.

  The woman there must have carefully arranged her smile before Selina had entered. While she had been dancing down the hall perhaps or finishing her punch with Rachel, the woman’s mouth, eyes, the muscles under her pale powdered skin must have been shaping that courteous, curious and appraising smile. Months, years later, Selina was to remember it, since it became the one vivid memory of the evening, and to wonder why it had not unsettled her even then. Whenever she remembered it—all down the long years to her death—she was to start helplessly, and every white face would be suspect for that moment. But now, with her mind reeling from the dance and slightly blurred from the punch she did not even notice it.

  “This is Selina, Mother,” Margaret said and the woman rose from a wing chair under a tall lamp and briskly crossed the room, her pale hand extended. Her figure in a modish dress was still shapely, her carefully applied make-up disguised her worn skin and the pull of the years at her nose and mouth. Under her graying blond hair her features were pure, her lackluster blue eyes almost colorless. Something fretful, disturbed, lay behind their surface and rove in a restless shadow over her face.

  She took Selina’s hand betweer hers, patting it, and Selina could feel her whiteness—it was in the very texture of her skin. A faint uneasiness stirred and was forgotten as the woman led her to the wing chair and said effusively, “Well, my dear, how does it feel to be the star of the show?”

  Selina fell back in the chair and, laughing, gestured upward. “A little like the real ones. Very high up. Out of this world almost.”

  The woman’s laugh joined hers. “What was it you danced again?”

  Margaret called from the doorway, “The birth-to-death cycle, Mother, and I had . . .”

  “I know, dear. A catharsis.” Irritation flitted across her pale exterior, but when she turned back to Selina she was smiling. “I should think you’re much too young to know anything about birth or death.”

  “I don’t. I had to rely on my imagination.”

  The smile stiffened and the woman studied her openly, sharply, then asked, “And how was my Margaret?”

  Thinking of Rachel’s description of Margaret she said, too enthusiastically, “Very good. The entire chorus was good.”

  “Yes . . . I keep telling her she’ll never get out of the chorus if she doesn’t lose some weight.” She touched her own narrow hips. “But still it’s good for her. All girls want to dance or act or write at some stage. I fancied myself a great tragedienne after I played Lady Macbeth my freshman year . . .”

  For a long time she talked of this, perched on the edge of a chair near Selina, her white textured hands meshed on her lap, her pale eyes under the finely arched eyebrows bright with a smile. Selina turned the empty punch glass in her hands, listening politely but impatient to leave, while Margaret stood near the door, outside their circle.

  Still the woman talked, but after a while the brightness left her eyes and from behind their pale screen she regarded Selina with an intense interest and irritation. Her lively voice became preoccupied. Other words loomed behind it and finally she could no longer resist them and asked abruptly, “Where do you live, dear, uptown?”

  “No, Brooklyn.”

  “Oh? Have you lived there long?”

  “I was born there.”

  “How nice,” and her hair gleamed palely as she nodded. “Not your parents, I don’t suppose.”

  “No.” Despite the encouraging smile, Selina added nothing more. She was vaguely annoyed. It was all like an inquisition somehow, where she was the accused, imprisoned in the wing chair under the glaring lamp, the woman the inquisitor and Margaret the heavy, dull-faced guard at the door.

  Suddenly the woman leaned forward and rested her hand on Selina’s knee. “Are they from the South, dear?”

  It was not the question which offended her, but the woman’s manner—pleasant, interested, yet charged with exasperation. It was her warm smile, which was cold at its source—above all, the consoling hand on her knee, which was indecent. Selina sensed being pitted against her in a contest of strength. If she answered unwisely the woman would gain the advantage.

  She muttered evasively, “No, they’re not.”

  The woman bent close, surprised, and the dry sting of her perfume was another indignity. “No . . . ? Where then?”

  “The West Indies.”

  The woman sat back, triumphant. “Ah, I thought so. We once had a girl who did our cleaning who was from there . . .” She caught herself and smiled apologetically. “Oh, she wasn’t a girl, of course. We just call them that. It’s a terrible habit . . . Anyway, I always told my husband there was something different about her—about Negroes from the West Indies in general . . . I don’t know what, but I can always spot it. When you came in tonight, for instance . . .”

  Her voice might have been a draft which had seeped under the closed windows and chilled the room. Frightened now, as well as annoyed, Selina gazed across to Margaret, who stood in a stolid heap at the door, her eyes lowered.

  The woman’s eyes followed Selina’s and she called, “Can you remember Ettie, dear? She used to call you Princess Margaret because you looked so much like the real princess then.”

  “A little,” the girl murmured. “She was very nice, Selina.” Margaret gave Selina a fleeting glance.

  “She was wonderful,” her mother cried effusively, “I’ve never been able to get another girl as efficient or as reliable as Ettie. When she cleaned, the house was spotless. Margaret, remember what your father used to do when she cleaned?”

  “Yes . . .” It was a strained whisper after a long pause. “He’d . . . he’d take off his shoes in the doorway—just like in a Japanese house . . .” Her pained glance fled Selina’s. “She was just like one
of the family, Selina.”

  “She was!” Her mother carried this to a higher pitch. “We were all crazy about her. Margaret was always giving her things for her little girl. She was so ambitious for her son, I remember. She wanted him to be a dentist. He was very bright, it seems.”

  Her voice, flurrying like a cold wind, snuffed out the last small flame of Selina’s happiness. She started to rise, and the woman’s hand, like a swift, deadly, little animal, pounced on her knee, restraining her, and the brisk voice raced on, “We were heartbroken when she took ill. I even went to the hospital to see her. She was so honest too. I could leave my purse—anything—lying around and never worry. She was just that kind of person. You don’t find help like that every day, you know. Some of them are . . . well . . .” And here she brought her powdered face with its aging skin close to Selina’s, the hand fluttered apologetically, “. . . just impossible!” It was a confidential whisper. “Oh, it’s not their fault, of course, poor things! You can’t help your color. It’s just a lack of the proper training and education. I have to keep telling some of my friends that. Oh, I’m a real fighter when I get started! I wish they were here tonight to meet you. You . . . well, dear . . . you don’t even act colored. I mean, you speak so well and have such poise. And it’s just wonderful how you’ve taken your race’s natural talent for dancing and music and developed it. Your race needs more smart young people like you. Ettie used to say the same thing. We used to have these long discussions on the race problem and she always agreed with me. It was so amusing to hear her say things in that delightful West Indian accent . . .”

  Held down by her hand, drowning in the deluge of her voice, Selina felt a coldness ring her heart. She tried to signal the woman that she had had enough, but her hand failed her. Why couldn’t the woman see, she wondered—even as she drowned—that she was simply a girl of twenty with a slender body and slight breasts and no power with words, who loved spring and then the sere leaves falling and dim, old houses, who had tried, foolishly perhaps, to reach beyond herself? But when she looked up and saw her reflection in those pale eyes, she knew that the woman saw one thing above all else. Those eyes were a well-lighted mirror in which, for the first time, Selina truly saw—with a sharp and shattering clarity—the full meaning of her black skin.

  And knowing was like dying—like being poised on the rim of time when the heart’s simple rhythm is syncopated and then silenced and the blood chills and congeals, when a pall passes in a dark wind over the eyes. In that instant of death, false and fleeting though it was, she was beyond hurt. And then, as swiftly, terror flared behind her eyes, terror that somehow, in some way, this woman, the frightened girl at the door, those others dancing down the hall, even Rachel, all, everywhere, sought to rob her of her substance and her self. The thrust of hate at that moment was strong enough to sweep the world and consume them. What had brought her to this place? to this shattering knowledge? And obscurely she knew: the part of her which had long hated her for her blackness and thus begrudged her each small success like the one tonight . . .

  “Oh, please say something in that delightful West Indian accent for us!” The woman was standing over her now, brightly smiling, insistent. As she gave Selina a playful shake the punch glass slid from her limp hands to the floor and broke, splintering the woman’s brittle voice and its hold on Selina. Leaping up Selina savagely flung off the woman’s hand; the woman fell back, her startled eyes arcing past Selina’s, and struck the lamp, which teetered and then crashed to the floor. Just before the darkness exploded in the room, Selina was at the door, viciously shoving aside the dazed Margaret, then rushing out, down the hall, veering sharply into the living room. The others converged on her with gay shouts, Rachel shouting among them, “What kept you? Come on, let’s dance . . . Hey, Boyce, what’s wrong . . . ?”

  In her distraught eyes, through her welling tears, they were all—even Rachel—sinister figures who would cage her in their arms until the woman came and she was utterly destroyed.

  “Get out of my way!” She struck brutally at the soft white arms reaching for her. “Get out of my way!” She charged their circle, scattering them, and snatching up her coat, hurled from the apartment, down the long flights of echoing marble stairs, through the seedy lobby out of the building.

  The woman’s face, voice, touch, fragrance, pursued her as she careened through the maze of traffic and blurred white faces, past spiraling buildings ablaze with light. Car horns bayed behind her, the city’s tumid voice mocked her flight. She ran until a stitch pierced her side and her leg cramped. Clutching her leg she limped—like an animal broken by a long hunt—into the deep entranceway of a vacant store and collapsed in the cold shadows there. And like an animal she was conscious only of pain. Long shafts of pain struck true and quivered in each muscle, her lungs wrenched from their socket with each breath, her heart battered the wall of her chest as if, understanding the truth, it rejected her and wanted to escape.

  Still groggy with pain, she raised her head after a time. The meager glow of a distant street light fell aslant the window and, suddenly curious, she held her face to the light. With trembling fingers she found her handkerchief and, wetting it, wiped off the stage make-up and then rubbed the dirt from the window. She peered shyly at her reflection—the way a child looks at himself in the mirror. And, in a sense, it was a discovery for her also. She was seeing, clearly for the first time, the image which the woman—and the ones like the woman—saw when they looked at her. What Clive had said must be true. Her dark face must be confused in their minds with what they feared most: with the night, symbol of their ancient fears, which seethed with sin and harbored violence, which spawned the beast in its fen; with the heart of darkness within them and all its horror and fascination. The woman, confronted by her brash face, had sensed the arid place within herself and had sought absolution in cruelty. Like the night, she was to be feared, spurned, purified—and always reminded of her darkness . . .

  Above all, the horror was that she saw in that image—which had the shape and form of her face but was not really her face—her own dark depth. Her sins rose like a miasma from its fetid bottom: the furtive pleasures with Clive on the sofa, her planned betrayal of the Association, the mosaic of deceit and lies she had built to delude the mother. They took form in the shadows around her—small hideous shapes jeering her and touching her with cold and viscid hands. They were unbearable suddenly, monstrous. With a choked cry of disgust, her arm slashed out, her fist smashed that mouth, those eyes; her flat hand tried to blot it out. She struck the reflection until the entire glass wall trembled—and still it remained, gazing at her with her own enraged and tearful aspect.

  It was no use. Exhausted, she fell against the glass, her feverish face striking the cold one there, crying suddenly because their idea of her was only an illusion, yet so powerful that it would stalk her down the years, confront her in each mirror and from the safe circle of their eyes, surprise her even in the gleaming surface of a table. It would intrude in every corner of her life, tainting her small triumphs—as it had tonight—and exulting at her defeats. She cried because, like all her kinsmen, she must somehow prevent it from destroying her inside and find a way for her real face to emerge. Rubbing her face against the ravaged image in the glass, she cried in outrage: that along with the fierce struggle of her humanity she must also battle illusions!

  Her angry lament filled the entrance, reached the street, and the few passers-by glanced nervously toward the source of the sound and hurried on.

  X

  It was eleven o’clock when she took the subway to Brooklyn. As the lights along the tunnel wall stabbed into her vacant eyes, she thought of Miss Thompson—the long black dress almost hiding her wound and her long thin hands on the cane handle—recounting, dispassionately, her story of violation. In each light she saw the shovel cutting like a scythe in the sunlight and, in a way, it was no different from the woman’s voice falling brutally in the glare of the lamp.

&nb
sp; She was one with Miss Thompson, she knew, as she pulled herself up the subway steps to Fulton Street and saw the closed beauty shop. One with the whores, the flashy men, and the blues rising sacredly above the plain of neon lights and ruined houses, she knew, as she stumbled past the White Drake Bar. She paused across from the darkened Association building, where the draped American and Association flags billowed from the cornice. And she was one with them: the mother and the Bajan women, who had lived each day what she had come to know. How had the mother endured, she who had not chosen death by water? She remembered the mother striding home through Fulton Park each late afternoon, bearing the throw-offs under her arm as she must have borne the day’s humiliations inside. How had the mother contained her swift rage?—and then she remembered those sudden, uncalled-for outbursts that would so stun them and split the serenity of the house.

  The mother might have killed them. For they were the ones who drove her to that abuse each day, whose small faces reflected her own despised color. She might have come home some day, the bitterness rankling deep, and seeing them there—Selina with her insolence and uncombed hair and Ina feigning some illness—she might have smashed out and killed them . . .

  Who are we to scorn them? Clive’s cry on the summer night a year ago resounded through her numb mind and she turned and walked the lonely blocks to his house.

  “Clive,” she called as she unlocked the gate. “Clive,” she said, blinking in his lighted room.

  He turned an anxious face to her, one hand cupping the telephone and motioning her to be quiet with the other, then he quickly bent to the phone again and said with an irritable resignation, “Yes, yes, all right, I’ll be over . . .”

  The rest of what he said was blurred in Selina’s mind. Only the slight Barbadian accent emerged distinct, and was frightening. The small hope that had nudged a way through her despair fell back. She knew that it was his mother, so that when he finished and said wearily, “She’s at it again. Even had the doctor this time,” she added bitterly, “She’s not sick. It’s like all the other times. An excuse to get you there.”