Then I thought of something Mama Jennie had said, something that agreed with what Bojack had been preaching all night. I figured I would say it. No one would say a word against Mama Jennie. So I walked back to where the adults were sitting. They looked so unhappy that I hesitated.
“Mama, can I say something?” I was never as bold as Eugenia or Rosetta. I couldn’t just pipe up in the middle of an adult conversation, so I always asked for permission.
“Sure you can, baby.”
Of course, the only problem with asking permission was that everyone stopped what they were doing and concentrated entirely upon you. Whereas, if you just spoke up, you might be able to stick in your opinion before they knew who’d spoken. But now they were all staring at me with anger still etched in their faces.
My voice trembled. “I thank Bojack be right.”
“Well, what you know about anythang?” Ethel Brown said. “You ain’t no older than a minute!”
“That’s right,” Aunt Mary said, flipping her hand as if to brush my opinion away like some bothersome bug. “You better stick to riding that bike that you keep covered up like it’s Elijah’s chariot. That’s all a boy your age know anythang about.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “You don’t even know what you be saying.”
“It ain’t got nothing to do with what I say,” I replied. “It just seem like good sense. I was remembering something Mama Jennie had said one night when we was talking about white folks keeping us down. She said, ‘Y’all always talking about white folks acting like the Civil War won’t never fought. Well, y’all just as bad. Thangs is different now. Reverend King seen to that. Being Negro ain’t gone make you president, but you can still do something with yourself. The handicap ain’t being Negro so much as it is y’all’s attitude.’ That’s what she said, to the best of my recollection.”
“I do remember that,” Mama said.
“The old bitch is senile if you ask me,” Aunt Mary said.
“Now, Mary,” Mama said, “you can talk bad about a lot of thangs on my porch, but by God, my grandmother ain’t one of ’em.”
“If she wrong, she wrong!” Aunt Mary said.
“Mama Jennie ain’t get to be that old by being no fool,” Bojack added.
“I just don’t know about all this nonsense,” Daddy said.
“I know!” I shouted.
I was furious at Aunt Mary for speaking disrespectfully of Mama Jennie, and I was confused as to why they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see the logic. All I knew was that I didn’t want to end up like them. And that realization hurt me terribly. I had to be more than Mama or Daddy if I was going to lead a happier life, but I didn’t really want to tell them what I was thinking. Nobody wants to hear that you can’t settle for what they are because that indicates their life is less than desirable. Even though I realized they knew the truth about their lives, I knew they didn’t want to hear a ten-year-old kid rub it in their faces. But I had started the thought, so I had to finish it.
“I’ll go to school with the white kids. And I’m gonna read and study and get out of Canaan. I’m gonna be somebody!”
They were all silent for a moment before Chauncey Mae spoke. “What you saying is that all of us is nobody, right?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, what is you saying then?” Ethel asked.
“Younguns is so smart-mouthed these days,” Jim Brown added.
I turned to Daddy. He looked mad, and Mama looked concerned. I turned to Bojack, who was smiling.
“I just don’t want to be like Bojack,” I said while thinking of Daddy, Jim Brown, Arthur Pitts, and other Negro men in Canaan. “I want to like what I am. I want to be somebody.”
“Somebody!” Aunt Mary shouted. “Huh, I know what somebody mean around here. You be learning soon enough.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Aunt Mary replied, “A nigger by any other name still be a nigger.”
“And you be a nigger just like us,” Jim Brown said.
“A black gnat drowning in a sea of white,” Chauncey Mae said.
“No!” I shouted.
I was surprised that I was being so vocal with adults, but I could see Bojack’s theory coming to life. I didn’t want anyone to put a damper on my life out of jealousy before I had a chance to live it the way I saw fit.
“I’m gonna be different.”
“Don’t get riled up, chile,” Aunt Mary said. “We ain’t speaking nothing but the truth.”
“You got to realize who you is and where you from, boy,” Chauncey Mae said. “Ain’t no nigger from Canaan ever done nothing but stay here and work in them fields out yonder, or in them meatpacking plants.”
I turned to my only ally, who remained one even though I had looked him straight in the eye and said I didn’t want to be him. “I can do it, can’t I, Bojack?”
He was still smiling. “You sure can, little brother. You sure can. All of you can,” he said, looking around the porch at the four children.
“I ain’t learning no white folk’s nothing,” Eugenia said.
“Me neither,” Rosetta said.
“These girls here be talking smart,” Aunt Mary said to me. “You learn that shit, you be more a puppet to the white man than we is already. And they control us enough as it is. Keeping us down like a starving dog on a short leash.”
“In the end, you probably right,” Bojack said. “You can get somewhere in life, but when it all be said and done, no matter how much you learn, the white man can keep you down to a certain extent. After all, he own everythang.”
“About time you start to wise up,” Aunt Mary said.
“I won’t finished,” Bojack replied. “So here you is, feeling like the white man is sole responsible for where you at in this life. That’s the way it is. And like I say, in the end you may be right. So accept that and then say, ‘What do I do about it? Sit here on my butt complaining all the day long about what the white man done to me? Or do I work hard to make the best of what I can get from him?’ Studying them books can help you make the best of yourself. The white man can keep you from being senator or the owner of a big company, but you can still be a teacher, lawyer, or doctor. You can use his books to get at least that far over the hump. And you ain’t got to give up your blackness for that.”
Mark looked at me and then Bojack. “I can do it, too,” he said.
“Thatta boy,” Bojack said.
“Bojack, why don’t you stop putting fool notions in these boys’ heads? You ain’t doing nothing but setting ’em up for disappointment. Next thang you know they be so sad ’bout failing, they be done killed theyselves,” Chauncey Mae said.
Bojack frowned. “You live like you want to live, and let these boys live like they wants to live.”
“Negro, you making me sick,” Cozy Pitts said. “Anythang white folks got, they can keep to theyselves.”
“You sho’ nuff got that right,” Daddy said.
Bojack became quiet. He ate a potato chip, put down his empty glass and walked to the porch door. Then he turned around.
“Well,” he said, “I just got me one more thang to say. Then I guess I done said my piece for tonight.”
“Well, they is a God after all,” Ethel Brown said.
“I don’t know the boys real well,” he said, ignoring Ethel and looking toward Mark and me. “But I seen Evan sitting up over Morgart’s Lake reading them stories in the Reader’s Digest magazine. One day he went off and left one and it blowed down the hill to where I was shooting my .22. I had a good look at it. I couldn’t hardly read none of it. It made me sad that I couldn’t read good, but happy that Evan could. I was right proud.”
“How you know he was reading it?” Aunt Mary asked. “Mighta been just looking at the pictures.”
“He reading alright, ain’t you, Evan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, keep on reading ’em. If you listen to these folks and stop and don’t put up no fight for yourself, you b
e just like me. Thank hard on that one. Take a good long look at old Bojack. I’m your ghost of Christmas future. Like they say in the story, it don’t have to turn out this way for you unless you want it to.”
Bojack opened the screen door and took his leave. Bullet scooted out the door behind him and dashed into the cornfield, leaving two cautiously hopeful boys, two very angry girls, and seven twice-as-angry adults. The porch session was over.
•••
Later on, while we were cleaning up, I noticed that Daddy was only talking to Mark. I knew what was wrong, and I wanted to talk about it, but I had to wait for him to bring it up. If I did, he would perceive it as a challenge, and you didn’t push Daddy when he was mad.
The silent treatment kept up until Mark and I said our prayers and were in bed with the light out. I had tossed the bedspread down to the foot of my bed and lay there with just the sheet over me. Mark had opened the two windows in our room to let in a cool breeze. I was just about asleep when Mama and Daddy came into the room. They didn’t turn on the light. They just stood there for a moment, two shadows against our bedroom wall. Daddy’s anger at me hung heavily in the air like humidity on a 100-degree day.
I pretended to be asleep, hoping that they would decide it was better not to wake me and that we should talk about it in the morning. By then, I knew, he would have calmed down a little. But I was never a lucky kid.
I was so tense by the time Daddy finally spoke that when he called my name, his voice was like what I always thought the voice of God would sound like. I jumped up into a sitting position. I felt clammy all over.
“Evan,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“If you ever embarrass us like that again, you will be one sorry boy! You understand me?”
“But, Daddy?”
“Don’t you but me, boy!” His voice quaked with rage, making me shiver.
Mama’s hand went up. I knew she had a finger to her lips. I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined it to be strained.
“Those people look up to us,” Daddy continued.
I thought of the Walls’ family legend, Mama’s image consciousness and the heels from loaves of bread.
“You made us seem like nothing tonight,” he continued. “Talking ’bout how you gonna be something better than us. The Walls family is one of the best Negro families in this town. You talked about us like a child that ain’t got no respect for elders, particularly his own parents.”
“I didn’t mean I want to be better people than you. Just to be in a better situation in life.”
“Seem like much the same to me,” Daddy said.
All of a sudden I felt picked upon, singled out.
“Mark agreed with Bojack, too,” I said.
There was a rustling of the covers on Mark’s side of the room.
“Well, he won’t rude about it, talking back to us and our friends like somebody in this room. And it ain’t no need to try and sidetrack me. You just better not let it happen again. Mark my words, boy!”
“Yes sir, Daddy,” I replied, and they left the room.
“Why you have to bring me into it?” Mark asked.
“Because it was true. I won’t the only one that agreed with Bojack.”
“That’s true, but they right. I won’t disrespectful.”
“I didn’t mean to be. I just believe Bojack.”
“Well, you just ought to watch yourself. Following after Bojack ain’t worth getting in trouble with Daddy.”
“Yeah, I know you right.”
“And I know you are. I didn’t need Bojack to tell me nothing. I been knowing all along that I couldn’t live like this. I didn’t need him to start me dreaming.”
I was completely taken aback. I had never heard Mark express what was going on in his mind. Before this revelation, I never knew one thing that he felt deeply about. He never had a Mama Jennie kind of friend to talk to that I knew of, and I knew he didn’t confide in Mama or Daddy. He was the loner of our family.
Dumbfounded, I simply stopped the conversation right there. I guess I was afraid that the floodgates of emotion would open if I continued to question him and that neither of us was prepared to handle the onslaught. And later on after we were only brothers in name, it was too late to ask. So I never found out what there was in Mark’s past; who he might have seen beat Daddy or make Mama cry, or who had hurt him so much that it showed him that Canaan was not the place for him.
So I took his advice about not making our parents mad. I rolled over in bed, wondering if Mama and Daddy thought I had been frightened out of my resolve. Well, if so, they were wrong. I was even more determined. From that point on, I decided I would avoid any direct confrontations with adults about the issue. And I thought that if I was going to be a black gnat in a big, white ocean, then I’d just have to learn how to swim real well.
TWO
Mama Jennie was ninety-five years old and belonged to a group called the Death Club. It was an assemblage of elderly women, of which Mama Jennie was the oldest. The rest were in their late seventies and eighties and had all outlived their husbands and many of their children. They were strong women who refused to live anywhere but in their own homes, despite their many ailments. Every morning they called each other, and if someone did not answer, one of the club members would call that person’s family.
On the morning after I’d made my stand, we received a call from Miss Antebellum Taylor. She spoke to Mama and told her that everything was all right. It was just that Mama Jennie sounded particularly tired that morning and she suggested that Mama check on her. Mama said she would later on in the morning, but I could not wait for later on. Mama Jennie had been slowing down, and any sign that she was slowing further worried me.
“I’ll be there when you get there, Mama,” I shouted as I prepared to leave the house.
There was no answer, but I wasn’t surprised. No one said anything to me that morning. We got up, did our chores and ate our breakfast in silence. Daddy was still angry, and Mark, I’m sure, was afraid he would stoke our father’s ire by speaking to me. I knew this was only a cease-fire. The gun was still loaded and pointed. One false move and the battle could erupt again.
So I went on quietly through the morning, figuring we just needed something to get our minds off the night before. You know, like you can cut your finger, and it hurts; you think about it until someone stomps on your toe, and suddenly you’ve forgotten the problem with your finger. I thought that maybe the call about Mama Jennie would be the stomp on our toes, but I was wrong.
Mama slipped out the back door.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “You go check on her. Get you out of Daddy’s way for the morning. And you think about that nonsense and the trouble you started last night. Get it out of your head, and tell Mama Jennie I’ll be ’round the way shortly.”
Outside was my prized possession: a metallic-red spider bicycle I had gotten for Christmas. I kept it covered and protected with a big piece of plastic. It was so sleek that it looked like it was moving when it was standing still. It had gleaming, silver raised handlebars with red plastic grips, a slick red banana seat and big black tires like a trail bike. Daddy had taped an old car antenna to the back of the seat. It came up behind me, its tip draped in yellow, blue, and red streamers.
In a minute, I was riding into the wind, which was one of my favorite places to be. I leaned across the handlebars into the oncoming gusts. My shirt flapped against my side like the wings of an eagle, and the streamers swayed above my head. Man, I loved to be on that bike. I let out a yell. I popped a wheelie and held it until I got to the point where the dirt road from my house met the dirt road leading to Days Neck. When my front tire dropped to the road, I heard someone yelling.
“Hot dog! Look there, a damn hot dog!”
I turned and smiled. It was T. Wall, my best friend. With him was the rest of our gang—Beno, Muskrat, and Flak. They were on bikes, too.
“Hey, slick!” T. Wall called.
“Well, you tell us,” T. Wall said, smiling.
They were all looking at me and grinning as if they knew something about me.
“What y’all got going on?” I said, kind of half smiling.
“They tells us,” Flak said, “you pitched a bitch last night over at your place.”
“Who told you that?”
“Who you thank?” Beno asked.
I laughed. “Eugenia.”
“That’s right,” T. Wall said.
“That girl got a mouth big enough to swallow my daddy’s Massey Ferguson,” I said.
We all laughed.
“So,” T. Wall asked. “What happened last night?”
Suddenly, he was unnervingly serious, which caught me and the rest of the guys off guard. He stared at me a moment.
“Tell me it ain’t so,” he said, forcefully.
I smiled at T. Wall. It was the only thing I could think to do that might lighten the somber atmosphere and make them realize that it wasn’t a big deal.
T. Wall was my best friend, and I couldn’t think of a time when either of us felt unsure of the other’s loyalty. I wondered if Eugenia had embellished the truth in a way that portrayed me as a betrayer of friends.
“It won’t no big deal,” I finally said.
They still looked at me with questions in their eyes. I realized that the adults’ reaction to my statement wasn’t just an isolated event—that I couldn’t dream my dreams in a vacuum while growing up in Canaan.
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 4
