“Amen,” Bojack said. “Amen.”
“You know,” she said, “my father used to teach me in parables. And one day he taught about the idea of self-reliance. He said, ‘One morning you wake up and you need this particular thing and you know your neighbor has some of it. So you go next door and knock and ask for some. Your neighbor says no and you go home but you can’t believe it because that neighbor has always been a friend. So you try again because you really need this thing, but your neighbor says no again. A few days later, you try again, but this time the neighbor slams the door in your face, and you go back home and sulk. Eliza, I ask you, how many times will you go and beg before it dawns on you that you’re not going to get any help? If you are going to get this thing from your neighbor, you had better figure out a way to get it by yourself.’
“I think that’s how it is for you, Evan. You just aren’t going to get a lot of help in Canaan. I didn’t, either, but we got some things done. You will, too; you just got to stick on the path that you’ve chosen. It is the right one. I promise you that, young soldier of the cause.”
Bojack and I put Eliza on a plane later that afternoon. I wouldn’t see her again until I graduated from college, but she always remained in my heart. As did Mama Jennie, who, six months after that trip, did as the old folks used to say and “made her way to Glory” from the same hospital that I had been in.
•••
When I walked into her hospital room, I knew that Mama Jennie would not live. I felt weighted down by that knowledge as I made my way to her bed. Already her room had succumbed to the stifling silence normally found around the soon-to-be-dead and dead. A silence, in this case, broken off and on by the hissing, sucking and beeping of the hospital equipment that destroyed my feeling of reverence for the moment.
I sat next to her, suffering from a feeling of inconsolable loss. Her face was sallow, and even as she slept, it was lined with pain. The night before, she had suffered a stroke, and now everything about her was uneven. Especially her mouth, which was pulled down to one side, making obvious the constant tension within her body. I reached out to hold her hand, which was cold and strangely stiff, the suppleness and the warmth of life almost gone.
I closed my eyes and thought about how two weeks earlier, on a Sunday night, she sat in her favorite chair, surrounded by her descendants. She looked bored. At one point, when there was a lull in the conversation, she said loudly, “I’m tired of living. I’m gone be dead before the month is out.” Then she got out of her chair, went into her bedroom, and left everybody to wonder what brought on all of that.
When I opened my eyes, she was still there, not resting, her body pulling against itself like a rubber band. A nurse came in and said that I could talk to Mama Jennie, warning that her speech would be slurred.
After the nurse left, I leaned over and whispered her name next to her ear. She opened her eyes and tried to smile. I recognized the effort and kissed her hand.
She said something that I didn’t understand. I asked her to repeat herself and she moved her mouth around in a funny way, as if she were trying to gain the proper control of it.
“Hello, my baby,” she struggled, her voice higher and coarser than usual. A raspy wheezing enveloped her words.
“Hi, Mama Jennie.”
“Didn’t thank I was gonna see you again.”
“Me, either. They wouldn’t let me come in alone. And when I came in with them, they crowded around you so I couldn’t get near you.”
She made a face like she was disgusted. “What they doing out yonder?”
“The truth?”
She gave an awkward nod.
“They were talking about who was going to get what from your house.”
She made that face again. “Well at least they waited until I gots one foot in the grave.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’ll be alright. I need you to be alright.”
She sighed heavily and gave me a very tired look. She had no more to give. I felt lumped in with my parents and the relatives out in the waiting room.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be selfish.”
She nodded. “That be alright.”
“I just wanted to let you know how important you are to me. What you have meant to me.”
“Thank you, son. I know you worried that you gone be all alone. I know that be scary. But ole Evan Walls, shoot, he gone do just fine. Mind what I say now. Hear me?”
“But who’s gonna teach me about life?”
“You will, by living it. You just do one thang. Remember this. Life goes on mostly with a small circle of trusted people. Life goes on all around you, but you gone move in and out of it with your special friends and loved ones at your side. Might just be a couple of friends. Might just be your wife and children. And you will find out, honey baby, that they is all you really need. They’ll get you through. When you get out on your own and figures this out, you be able to get rid of the need for all them other folk that be ragging on you, no matter what color they be. You know what I be saying when somebody come up to me and be telling me what some fool done said about me? I just laugh and say, ‘Well they don’t put no food on my table.’”
“But I still have to worry about Mama and Daddy.”
“For the time being, anyways. You know that there’s gone come a time when you ain’t gone have to have them in your life, either. You always gone need them, but you ain’t got to have them. Catch my meaning?”
“Yes, ma’am. I do,” I said, smiling. “Do you know I think about you like I do the Bible. Like you always have the right answer for questions about how to live life.”
“Oh, you giving me way too much credit now. I ain’t hardly got nothing on Jesus. See, I ain’t never done no work where I had to use my noggin. Just field work and laundry. So I guess I thought a lot while I worked. And, chile, I’m near about as old as Methuselah, so I done had a lot of time to be thanking. If I was this wise all my life, I’da had the white folks licked,” she said, smiling. “Naw, chile. Ain’t nothing special in this old head. Just the years talking.”
“I read where it says experience is the father of wisdom.”
“Well, I reckon that sums it up then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled and yawned. “Why don’t you let the old lady get some sleep now.”
I said okay and got up to leave, but she called me back.
“Give me a kiss, honey baby. I might not see you again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true, Evan. And I wouldn’t stop thangs if I could. Death ain’t scary to me like it once was. I can taste it already, and it sho’ is sweet.”
I looked deeply into her eyes. I took a snapshot for my mind and heart. Even today, I can see her exactly as she was right before I kissed her for the last time.
TWELVE
I sat at the end of our pathway, alongside Bullet, and thought about how much I had come to hate riding bus number 58, about Mama Jennie, about Hampton Institute, Bojack and how I wanted to escape the misery of another school year in Canaan. No one dared sit next to me, no matter how crowded the bus might be. I knew it would be the same my sophomore year. I’d lose myself in thought, staring out the window, only to be shocked into reality by being beaned in the head by a book or ball, or anything else someone thought was funny to throw at me. As I stood waiting, my stomach burned again, and I worried that my ulcer would be bleeding freely before the first week of school was over.
However, I was saved. At least as far as the ride to school was concerned. A horn blew in the distance, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the car contained two of the three teenagers in my life that I could call “friend.”
“My saviors!” I shouted.
“Thought you might like a ride,” Dee said. “Tex here got this piece-of-junk car a couple of weeks ago. We’ll pick you up every morning if you like.”
“You must be kidding. Of course I like!” I said as I j
umped into the car.
“We couldn’t let a fellow jock down,” Tex said.
I settled into the back of Tex’s convertible Chevy Impala. I noticed Dee’s shoulders. He was wearing a tank top and looked so much bigger than when school had let out.
“Dee, you’ve really been lifting.”
“Yeah, man,” he replied. “Trying to get a body like yours.”
I laughed. The changes had made Dee seem somewhat a stranger to me when I saw him two weeks before at football practice. At that point it had been two months since we’d seen each other. I wondered if he’d noticed any changes in me. I still hadn’t seen or spoken to Eddie. Although we could mix during the school year, blacks and whites separated during the summer.
Two years earlier, Eddie tried to break that rule. He’d invited me to a church picnic. I went, without my family’s knowledge, of course. People were stunned, and one of the women running it took Eddie aside for a short lecture. Then she asked me if I would do her a favor and leave, and not return to any subsequent functions at her church.
“One of you might be fine,” she said. “But it never stops there, does it?”
Richard Baker, or, as we called him, “Tex,” had shown up three years before. From Texas, he was a junior, and the best receiver on our football team. One day, he’d go on to win a Super Bowl ring.
“Like my ride, E?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“Dad got a new one, so he shifted this one my way. Says if I catch six hundred yards this year, he’ll get me a new one for senior year.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah,” Tex continued. “And I’ll be able to get all the best girls.”
“Lucky bastard,” Dee said. “Wish I had my own car. How about you, E?”
“Wouldn’t help me any,” I replied.
“But you could get—”
“Nothing!” I shouted, quickly ending that piece of conversation.
Girls were definitely poor topics. It was more than taboo to date a white girl, and no black girl would have me. In fact, black girls laughed whenever my name came up. One of them summed it up. “Boy, you ain’t got no cool. You don’t talk right, don’t look right, and furthermore, you can’t even pimp.”
So where girls were concerned, I could only listen to the locker room talk. I wouldn’t have dared try to fake it, because everyone knew I was a virgin.
“Practice has been really tough the last couple of weeks, right?” Tex asked.
“Yeah,” Dee said. “Coach really wants us to take state this year.”
“We could have done it last year, but our defense was weak.”
“Well, that’s where Evan and I come in,” Dee continued.
“You’ll be the best middle linebacker in the state this year,” I told Dee.
“I think you’ll make an average-at-best free safety,” he replied, and we laughed.
“There’s only one thing that can hamper you,” Tex added.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Taliferro Pitts. That’s what. He’s been waiting on you. That mountain hates your guts. And he’s got a lot of people on his side.”
“Well, not many people like me,” I replied, trying to show no emotion. I recalled seeing T. Wall and Flak on the first day of practice hanging out with Taliferro, their hatred for me on display.
“But most of them ain’t like Taliferro Pitts. He hates you to the core. He says football is a legit way to bust your ass, and that the moment is at hand since you’ll be a lowly sophomore in your first year of varsity. Dee and I heard him talking to some of the other black guys. They’re gonna be laying for you. Said they were going to teach you a lesson.”
“Ha!” Dee said. “I wonder what lesson he thinks he can teach you.”
“How to be sufficiently black,” I replied.
•••
I found my homeroom and took a seat in a back corner. The teacher was a tall, skinny white woman who walked in, announced herself as Mrs. Childers, and promptly started calling the class roll. I hated this. All the white kids responded to their names with “Here” or “Yep.” From the black kids came assorted replies like “Yo!” or “Solid.” I wanted to have something clever to answer, but I couldn’t. If I had come up with something and used it, the response would have been, “The little wannabe white boy is trying to act black.” If I just said “Here,” I would be acting like whitey.
So I did my usual and raised my hand, forcing the teacher to look up from her notes and ask me if there was something wrong with my voice. But that was okay, because I’d rather have Mrs. Childers a little miffed at me than give the kids another reason to taunt me. You’d think that calling the roll would be an easy thing to get through. Everything that I was a part of, no matter how small, carried some political fallout.
When the teacher got to the Cs, I had my head down, wanting to separate myself from the goings-on as much as possible. But I raised it and turned around when I heard a new voice respond to Mrs. Childers. This “here” was different. Her voice tore at my insides. It was deep and husky like that singer Mama Jennie had liked, Bobbie Gentry. When this new girl spoke, I could just hear Bobbie Gentry singing her “Ode to Billie Joe.”
“You are new in Canaan, correct?” Mrs. Childers asked.
“Yes, I am,” responded Patty Cunningham. “I’m from Philadelphia.”
“Well, I guess you’re welcome even though you’re a Yankee,” Mrs. Childers said, laughing.
Patty Cunningham didn’t react, her face stoic. Then she looked in my direction, but I wasn’t sure why. I smiled back at her, hoping to let her know that it didn’t bother me that she was from Philadelphia. She smiled back at me. Right away, I thought of a poem by Thomas Campion I’d stumbled across one day while reading in the Canaan library.
There is a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies blow,
A heavenly paradise that place
Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow.
Yes, you could say that I was immediately smitten. I kept glancing back at her the entire time we sat in homeroom. Her hair was black and fluffy, and it fell well below her shoulders. Looking into her blue eyes was pleasantly unsettling. At one point, she got up and walked over to the trash can. On her way back to her seat, she smiled at me again, and I was lost for a second in that beautiful face. Lost until a little voice inside my head yelled at me, Hey, she’s white! I dropped my head again and began scolding myself for losing my perspective. As quickly as all those emotions had come, they had gone, banished by Patty Cunningham’s skin.
At lunch, I found myself alone. I saw Dee, Eddie, and Tex down in the parking lot trying to get some of the cheerleaders into Tex’s car. Other students strolled around me at a distance, and that was just fine with me. Over the past few years, I had become the ultimate wallflower. Only when I was alone did I feel truly comfortable. I had pulled out my journal and begun to write when I heard that voice again.
“Homework already?”
I looked up, dumbfounded that Patty was standing over me. A white girl and a black boy talking anywhere in Canaan was unheard of. If anyone took notice, I would be right back in the thick of gossip and a prime target for retribution by angry whites—and, of course, blacks. Even still, I didn’t want her to leave.
“I’m Patty—”
“Cunningham,” I interrupted.
“Yes, I’m surprised you remembered.”
“I’m not.”
She smiled. “Mind if I join you?”
“No, not at all,” I said, trying to figure out why she had come to visit.
“I hope you don’t mind my intruding, but you seemed so friendly this morning, and you looked so peaceful over here. Peace is great when you feel out of place.”
“Yeah, I know all about that.”
“So I hear.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re Evan Walls, right?”
“Yes, and I’m really surpris
ed that you remembered my name.”
“Why? You’re the only one who tried to make me feel comfortable. It was so cute the way you kept stealing glances at me.”
I cringed. “I’m sorry. I guess I couldn’t help myself.”
“No need to be sorry. Really.”
While she talked on about getting settled at a school with a bunch of people who were not fond of Yankees, I looked her over. She was just so beautiful. After all the trouble I’d had with girls, I couldn’t believe she was sitting beside me.
“Yeah,” I said, agreeing with her. “Most of these people make me uncomfortable, too.”
“I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, not knowing why she was in Canaan. So I just nodded.
“So, you play football,” she said, changing the subject.
“Yeah. Who told you that?”
“Some guy with the good-old-boy name of Tex who was trying to get me to take a ride in his car.”
I laughed.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I asked him about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you were so nice and I saw you talking to him before lunch.”
“Well, I play free safety.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. It’s the perfect game for someone full of rage. A good friend of mine told me that.”
“Are you full of rage?”
“I guess so.”
“I think I know why.”
“Oh, you do?”
“You’re not very popular. I asked one black girl about you. Before she told me to mind my business, she called you a ‘whitey wannabe.’ A white girl told me that not too many blacks like you much.”
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 19
