The Emancipation of Evan Walls

by Jeffrey Blount

  “Yes.”

  “This is Mrs. Gleason.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, pissed beyond belief that Eddie would set me up like this.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong, hon. My husband and I aren’t those kind of people. So, if you really want to come, we’d be happy to have you. I know the attitudes around here, but we don’t share them. All of Eddie’s friends are welcome.”

  “Okay,” was all I could get out. I was still a little too stunned to speak.

  “Then you’ll come?”

  I thought quickly. I didn’t want to tell her that my parents were the problem. That they hated all white people and didn’t like me associating with them. I didn’t want to tell her that Daddy would punish me if I asked. So, to avoid her asking questions like “Why won’t they let you?” and then saying things like “Let me talk to them,” I said yes.

  I didn’t go back to the den to watch TV. I just went to bed at seven thirty on a Friday night. I lay awake for a long time wondering. I had to go. I told her I would be there. But then again, I also thought that maybe I could run away and never come home again. That way, no one would be asking me why I didn’t show up or where I was all day. In the end, I figured I’d just have to get on the bike and go—then hope that, as usual, Mama and Daddy wouldn’t care enough to ask where I’d been. Even though I thought I had it all figured out, I still woke up with my stomach on fire.

  I never thought I’d find myself appreciating my parents’ disdain, but that next morning I felt lucky when I got the usual cold shoulders. I went about my business trying to keep things as normal as possible: watching a few cartoons with Mark, feeding and playing with Bullet, and practicing punting the football. About eleven, I told Mama I was going to ride to town. She grunted at me, and I got on my bike.

  Thirty minutes later, I arrived at Eddie Gleason’s. Believe me, riding through the all-white neighborhood of West Hill was no picnic. I’d worn one of Mark’s baseball caps and pulled its brim down over my face as far as possible, as if that would keep people from noticing that a black boy was riding through their neighborhood. Of course, it didn’t work. Nobody said anything to me, but I got lots of long and intimidating stares from some simply amazed people. Kids dropped toys and stopped mid-game to scurry into their homes, I presumed to tell their parents. I expected at any moment to see adults come running out with guns to mow me down.

  After reaching Eddie’s house, I stood on the steps second-guessing myself. I was afraid because riding through West Hill had changed my concern from Mama and Daddy to white people in general. Maybe Cozy Pitts and Chauncey Mae were right. Maybe white people were not to be trusted. Maybe Ethel Brown was right that night she was at our house gossiping about me. I had heard it from the den.

  “Is it true what they be saying, girl?” she had asked Mama.

  “I ain’t much in the mood to talk about it,” Mama replied, but Ethel being Ethel continued.

  “Evan better be learning that ain’t no white cracker around here no friend of no Negro. That child better open his eyes.”

  “We done told him that.”

  “What he say?”

  “He want to know how we thought they was using him. Augustus told him off right good. For his smart-assedness.”

  “Good for Augustus, then. What he be talking about, how they use us? White folk don’t do nothing but use us every which way. Hell, sometimes I thank that’s all they be around for.”

  “Amen, girl. You ain’t gone get no argument from me. Mark told Augustus and me that Evan say them two boys ain’t done nothing to him. That they innocent till proven guilty.”

  “Lord, child,” Ethel said, completely incredulous. “They done brainwashed your little nigger.”

  Now I stood on Eddie’s doorstep asking myself if I was being used. But before I could reach any conclusions, the door opened.

  A white woman of average height stood before me. She had brown hair and brown eyes and a porcelain face. I remember thinking how smooth her face looked, and that she probably never had a pimple in her entire life.

  When it looked as if I couldn’t speak, she did.

  “Hello. I’m Elizabeth Gleason.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Gleason. I’m Evan Walls, but I reckon you had that already figured out.”

  “I did,” she said, smiling while pulling up the brim of my hat. “You have a nice face. Don’t cover it up so much.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, thank you, ma’am.”

  Then she put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me into the house. It was the first time a white adult, except a doctor, had ever touched me. Before Elizabeth Gleason, there had never been so much as a handshake. When she touched me, I felt very warm inside and sensed that there was as little prejudice in this woman as there could be in any person alive. She guided me through the house into Eddie’s room. Noting the difference between this home and the houses of the black people I knew, I tried not to hold it against the Gleasons that they had so much.

  “Evan’s here,” she said as we entered the room.

  “He made it!” Dee said. “I can hardly believe it.”

  “Dee,” Mrs. Gleason said. “Don’t be so hard on Evan. This is not as easy as it seems. You boys behave, and I’ll bring you something to drink in a while.”

  “Your mother is very nice,” I told Eddie after she’d left.

  “You can say that because she’s not your mom. Everybody else’s mom is nice.”

  “I guess you could look at it that way. Though I don’t believe it’s necessarily so.”

  We played around in Eddie’s room for a while, among other things talking about the kids at school that we hated. By the time that conversation was exhausted, I realized that the great majority of the people I hated were black. I was embarrassed, and I wondered what they thought about that. Afterward, Mrs. Gleason fed us lunch and sent us out to play basketball.

  And we played well together. I took on Dee, one on one. I won and then took on Eddie, who beat me. We laughed and joked like crazy, saying stuff like “Swish” when we hit nothing but net or “In your face, sucker” when we scored a basket on one another. The last time I’d felt that kind of camaraderie was in the good days with T. Wall and the fellas. Thinking about them made the moment bittersweet.

  I leaned on the trunk of Mrs. Gleason’s Chrysler New Yorker and watched Eddie play Dee. Dee made a lucky hook shot and started rubbing it in.

  “You see that, E?” he shouted. “’Cause Eddie sure didn’t. He just saw the smoke off the net.”

  I laughed with them, looking for the smoke from the fancy red-white-and-blue nylon net while thinking of the chain-link net T. Wall and the rest of us had played with. Though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help contrasting the two worlds to which I had been exposed. Of course, I felt I belonged to and, more importantly, wanted to belong to the world of the chain-link nets. But I felt separated from that simply by the acceptance of my white friends. I mean, if they liked me and the blacks didn’t, didn’t that mean I was more like them than the blacks? Didn’t that mean that I had no link to great people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Jackie Robinson or to my heritage in general?

  Before I let myself get too down, I jumped up and suggested we play HORSE, because we could all be involved, and I wouldn’t have time to sit around and think.

  While we were playing, an older couple from Eddie’s neighborhood drove by three times within a few minutes, obviously because they couldn’t believe I was within the community perimeter. Dee and Eddie took up arms to defend me by vigorously waving their middle fingers at the couple who, after their final pass, drove away, plainly upset.

  We laughed it off, or I should say Dee and Eddie laughed it off. I laughed because it was one of those things at which you either laughed or cried, and I didn’t want to cry. I felt separated from my heritage, and now, because that couple had reminded me of who I was, I was feeling separated from my new friends. As they walked around laughing a
t the couple, I realized that no matter how close I came to these two boys, I could never be a part of them. I’d never see the world as they did and never have the world react to me in the same way. They were regular white boys who liked to yell, wear John Deere hats and go hunting. They had the comfortable swagger of white boys. The kind of stride that came with the knowledge that the world was yours to explore and to own. Later on, I would hear John Denver singing, “Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny, funny riddle. Thank God I’m a country boy.” I would think about Eddie and Dee, and how they could walk through life with an ease I could never touch.

  I was in the world with these black people, some of whom were my family, and these whites, some of whom were my friends. Yet, I felt close to no one.

  •••

  That evening just before dinner, Daddy went to town to pick up something from the hardware store. When he came home, he was as mad as I had ever seen him. I knew he’d found out. How stupid of me not to remember how small Canaan was.

  “I was just at the store,” Daddy said, “and Michael Beauchamp stopped me. He said ole man Taylor saw a colored boy playing basketball with two white boys over in West Hill. Said it was at somebody Gleason’s house. Ain’t that one of your little honky friends?”

  I saw no reason to try and lie my way out of it.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You went over there?” Mama jumped in. “Today?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you didn’t tell us where you was going?” she continued.

  I got mad. “You never care where I go. I didn’t think I needed to tell you.”

  With that, Daddy slapped me across the face. I fell against the kitchen table, knocking a stack of dishes on the floor. Mama screamed because they were her good set. Mark came running and saw Daddy pick me up and slam me against the wall. He slapped me again and then held me by my shirt collar with one hand and pointed at my face with the other.

  “Didn’t I tell you to leave them white boys alone?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, before spitting some blood.

  “Well, is it something wrong that you can’t listen to me?”

  “No, sir. It’s just that they are the only boys who will play with me.”

  “I wouldn’t play with you neither if you was with them stone crackers. And I don’t care if nobody ever plays with you; you leave them white boys alone. You hear me?”

  “But they’re my friends!” I shouted.

  “Don’t you raise your voice at me, boy. I’ll slap you to hell and gone. And furthermore, I don’t give a good goddamn about that friend business. You gone stop it or else.”

  I didn’t respond, pretending I couldn’t hear him. How could my father be denying me something as simple as friendship? It was all I had, and I wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Well,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I finally said.

  He slapped me again.

  And again.

  “Say you ain’t gone see ’em,” he shouted.

  “Evan!” my mother yelled. “Tell him!”

  “No!” I shouted.

  He slapped me some more. My eyes began to water, my vision blurred, and I couldn’t hear well, everything sounding as if I were in a tunnel. The imbalance of my senses turned me from anger to fear. I decided to give in because I thought I might fade out and never wake up.

  “Say you ain’t gone see ’em!” he shouted between slaps.

  “I won’t!” I yelled. “I won’t!”

  “Don’t talk white talk to me, boy. I said you ain’t gone see ’em.”

  At first I just didn’t get it. You don’t think too clearly when your head is being beat in. So I just said once more, “I won’t.”

  He slapped me again. “I said for you to say you ain’t gone see ’em no more.”

  I finally understood that he wanted me to repeat what he’d said word for word. He wanted me to say ain’t. This would be a symbol for him, a sign that he had beat the fight out of me, a sign that would be the denial of my friendship with Eddie and Dee. A sign that would be the denial of my quest to become somebody, a sign that he had finally put me back in my place, which was beneath his thumb, behind the images of Augustus and Treeny Walls. When Bojack spoke about parents who didn’t want a better life than their own for their children, I never thought he meant Mama and Daddy. I thought he meant people like Chauncey Mae and Arthur Pitts.

  I could stop seeing Eddie and Dee, but I would not give up my desire for an education and my dreams for being something special in my life. I shook my head, no.

  This time I got hit harder. I realized it was Daddy’s fist—not an open palm. I heard Mama scream.

  “Evan, please!” she pleaded. “Please just say what he want!” Tears were streaming and she was trembling. When I didn’t respond, she ran away, quick footsteps disappearing down the hall. Mark ran, too.

  “Say ain’t,” Daddy said.

  I opened my mouth to say no, but blood from my nose ran into it and choked me. I couldn’t speak, so I vigorously shook my head again, and as they say, the lights went out.

  •••

  Hours later, I woke up. It was dark and Mark was asleep. My face hurt so much I began to cry. I got up, went into the kitchen, saw that it was one thirty in the morning but called Mama Jennie anyway. She tried to calm me down and said she’d have another talk with Mama in the morning. I went back to bed, where I stayed all the next day, resting and hiding my bruises.

  No one bothered me until Aunt Mary came into my room. She sat on the foot of my bed and told me that she heard about what had happened, and didn’t I think it was time to stop all the nonsense and stop troubling Mama and Daddy so much? I just hunched my shoulders. I wasn’t in the mood to hear about it, but she was intent on making me see the error of my ways.

  “Let me tell you a story,” she said. “I used to be like you. Trusting and all. I had this white friend. A little girl down by the beach. She and I got real tight when Daddy was chopping weeds in her daddy’s peanut fields. We was both sixteen, and she just got her driver’s license, so she took me to town for a sundae. She went in and brought out the sundaes ’cause I couldn’t go inside. We was in a truck, so we drove out to one of her daddy’s fields and then sat in the bed to finish the sundaes. Her two brothers showed up and jumped in the truck with us, shucking and jiving and stuff. Then, before I know it, she said she wanted another sundae, and her brothers say for her to take the car since we was all comfortable in the truck.”

  There was a pause. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Aunt Mary had started to cry.

  “You don’t have to tell me this if it’s gonna hurt,” I told her. I meant it, too. I didn’t feel like I needed any kind of lesson from a person as full of hate as Aunt Mary, but I wasn’t so hard-hearted that I couldn’t recognize and sympathize with real pain.

  “No,” she said, wiping the tears. “You need to hear this so you will know that you can’t be trusting ’em. Now, she never came back to the field. She set me up.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave?”

  “They threatened my life. You know as well as I do that they coulda taken it and not one thing woulda been done about it. Nobody but colored folk woulda blinked a eye, and they woulda been too scared to do much more.”

  “What happened?”

  She took a deep breath. “Them two boys . . . now, I know you ain’t but eleven, but I know you gone know what I mean. Them two boys, they took my virginity. For six straight hours they took turns raping me. Raping me. And my best white friend—huh! That bitch, she set me up.”

  “Does Bojack know?”

  “No, and don’t you tell him. He thanks I’m the only thang he got that the white man ain’t tainted. And them two boys, they still around. Mens now. They gives me a dirty, degrading smile every time I passes ’em. If I could get away with it, I’d kill ’em dead as a stump.”

  I sat there stunned. You never know what kinds of pains people carr
y around with them, I realized.

  “Well, what you thank ’bout that?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Teach you anythang?”

  “Yes. It teaches me another reason why life is so hard for black people. It teaches me about how we get used and hurt. In our minds and in our bodies.”

  “And don’t it teach you that you got to stay with your own, and leave them that would hurt you alone?”

  “Yes,” I replied, thinking of people who wanted to be with me as “my own.” Color didn’t factor in.

  She smiled. “So you gone let them white boys alone then?”

  It would have been so easy to appease her, but I could not give up Dee and Eddie, even in sympathy for Aunt Mary’s lifelong pain. Without those friends, my life was painful, and I didn’t believe I should suffer just because she did. Besides, Dee and Eddie didn’t rape her. I couldn’t imagine them ever raping anybody.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Mary. I wish it hadn’t happened to you or anybody else, but Eddie and Dee didn’t do nothing to you. They can’t be guilty for something somebody else did.”

  Aunt Mary stood quickly and stared down at me with such hatred you would have thought I was one of the rapists.

  “If you can forgive them for what they done to me, then you can have ’em!” she yelled. “Just don’t expect no love from me.”

  “But I don’t forgive the men that raped you,” I said, shaken by the entire moment. “But my friends don’t even know you. They never touched you. Why should I hate them?”

  “Because they is white,” she said forcefully. “Because they all is the enemy. Every damn one of ’em.”

  She stormed out of the bedroom.

  TEN

  Sunday mornings at our house meant sausage, applesauce, sweetened iced tea, and Mama’s locally famous homemade rolls. Probably every black person in Canaan knew about the rolls. Mama got calls to make them for all kinds of events, from church bazaars to weddings to after-funeral dinners. But on most Sundays, she made them just for us. I loved waking up and smelling them baking, my mouth watering with the thought of butter melted in them and then dunking the whole thing into some cold White House applesauce. It was the most pleasant meal of the week. We all woke up fresh and happy.