by Dana Johnson
I laughed. And later I cried.
I deleted the e-mail because I wanted it out of my world. Once, I told Massimo about it, this letter from so long ago. He asked me a very simple question: “Why are you still telling this story from almost twenty years ago?” In Massimo’s world, Americans and their constant discussion of race was a nag, as inconsequential as a gnat I was supposed to swat away. My blackness had me on a string, he said, in his way. “One idiot talks and that is the only one you hear. Always, there will be some asshole. Sometimes you think they are truly asshole, and sometimes you think they are asshole and they are not. You want to cry over both of them.” I wasn’t sure why I cried, this was true. Massimo likes to remind me of the president, who is always so calm. “Do you realize, Avie, what he had to do to get elected? What he puts up with now? He’s Muslim, he’s racist, he’s socialist, he’s fascist, he’s not even an American? Do you see him crying?” I had to agree. But still. I look at our president closely, looking for that slight bend in his straight spine, the strained grin, the loose string that may unravel, because I know it is there somewhere. Tucked away.
My portraits, the ones that so incensed the anonymous woman, weren’t that complicated or that incendiary. I’m not even original. Other artists, famous artists like Kara Walker with her silhouettes of white masters fucking their male slaves, are much more audacious. But these artists, they were in galleries, not in coffee shops hanging over people’s heads while they tried to go about their lives and drink their lattes. I simply painted portraits of Shirley Temple’s cherubic face, Elizabeth Taylor circa her thinnest, most luminous days, June Cleaver in her crispest dress and most elegant pearls, and Sandra Dee during her sweetest, just-learning-how-to-surf phase. All of them in blackface. I used four portraits for each woman. The first frame is the original, how they looked as we saw them on film, on television, in pictures. The second frame looks as though someone has flung mud on their faces. Or shit. Cadmium Red and black, thick, thick oil paint, and I put one dollop somewhere on their faces—the forehead, the cheek, the chin. I wanted the viewer to be surprised, to wonder what was that muck ruining sweet Shirley’s dimpled cheeks? The third portrait is full blackface. I put rags on their heads, made their skin completely brown, and fattened them all, desexualized them, gave them big clown lips stretched in magnificent smiles so that they all looked like they just walked off a box of pancake mix. In the last portraits all the faces are scratched up, as if someone else or the subjects themselves had tried to scratch all that dirt off their faces. I was trying to collapse time, layer irony. My intent was not to infuriate anybody. I was hoping to simply arouse thought, discussion, and consideration. I didn’t realize how someone could get furious just by seeing Sandra Dee with big, doughy tits, a rag on her head. Shirley Temple’s face, not altered in the least, a replica of an original photo of her in blackface, except I painted her sitting on the steps of a dilapidated apartment building, broken wine bottles all around her.
There were more portraits. Reagan eating a big piece of watermelon. Leif Garrett, one of my several girlhood crushes, eyes popping out of charcoal face, fishing off a riverbank in tattered trousers. George H.W. Bush stealing across a burning field with two chickens under his arms.
Massimo doesn’t quite get this phase of my work. I’ve shown him images from the past, none of them with layers of irony, all the mammies and uncles I could find on film, on toothpaste packages, selling detergent. Little Shirley Temple in blackface, just a normal scene in a Hollywood movie. He sees what I’m doing, but doesn’t appreciate it, not really. He’s told me this, himself. But I’ve told him that he’s not my audience, the European who’s been in the States for only fifteen years. And anyway, I’m past that now. The art I do now comes from any and all things that don’t seem to go together because this is what I appreciate about life and living. There is race, but there are also lots of other things. Things that aren’t supposed to fit and go together but nevertheless do. I’m not very good, putting together all my pieces of discarded things. But it is also who I am.
MAMA WAS RIGHT. It aint been but one year and my princess costume dont fit no more. Mama was finna throw it away cause we moving but I thought I might could still fit it. When I tried to put the mask on the rubber band snapped out the staple on the side, and the sleeve split when I tried to put my arm in it. Thats when Mama throwed it in the trash. I didnt care, not really. I was looking at all our stuff packed in boxes and happy to be moving, going somewhere. To a better place, Daddy say.
A while back, after Daddy had done already decided we was moving, Owen came home with blood dripping down his arm. The Crips had done cut him up because he wasnt gone join they gang, not cause he didnt want to, but because Mama say Daddy would beat his ass if he did.
After Owen come through the door bleeding trying to make it not look bad, Mama called Daddy at the car factory and told him all about it. He musta ask how Owen look cause I hear Mama say, He bleeding, but he look awright. Ima call the ambalance, though. Then she say, Um hum, un hunh. Nod, say, Okay then, I wont. And hang up the phone. Your daddy coming home to run you to the doctor hisself, she tell Owen, and he stand there squeezing his arm with a towel Mama gave him. Mama dont know how to drive, and we only got one car anyway.
Daddy got home, took Owen to General Hospital, and got him thirty-two stitches. But when they got home, Daddy was mad. He stand with one hand on his hip, quiet. He take his cap off and turn it around in his hand some, then he put it back on. He say, Take me to the mothafuckas that cut you up. I got something to tell em.
They was gone but a little while before Owen come back grinning and calling Daddy Shaft, but Daddy wasnt grinning. Owen say Daddy walk down to 83rd Street, found two of the boys that cut Owen, and told them if they ever touch his boy again, he was gone kill they black asses. They aint bothered Owen since. Good thing there was Daddy. I dont think them boys would of listened to Mama like they did Daddy.
Now we moving to a place that aint got no gangs, so it dont matter to us no how.
ALL OUR STUFF in the van, and Mama hugging folks and Daddy shaking hands. We packed and ready to go. Me and Cassandra sit on the steps, and I think I want to remember what she look like, but I dont know why since Im gone see her again. We both got Baby Alives that pee and boo boo and eat and drink. When Mama holler at me to come on, lets go, me and Cassandra trade dolls at the last minute and say we gone trade em back next time we see each other. We gone babysit each others kids. I trade my black Baby Alive for her white one, even though Cassandra done washed her hair too much and made it hard. Its different than what I had all the time at least. But still, I hold my black baby one more time and kiss it. I say, Goodbye, Baby Alive. Then Mama say she aint gone tell me again to come on here, and we get in Daddys Buick Wildcat and drive away from 932 West 80th Street, partment 8. I want to be prepared for my long journey, I tell Daddy.
Journey? he say. It aint but thirty minutes up the road.
I dont care. I take all kinds of books with me for the trip to the valley. Daddy say its the San Gabriel Valley and I never heard of that before, San Gabriel. But it sound pretty to me. I never been to where we going but I been to the desert and down South. It aint as far as all them places, but its far enough to read for a long time. I been reading Little House in the Big Woods, about traveling far from where you from.
Owen seen the house before. Daddy took him to see it, and Mama too, but I aint never seen where we going. Mama just say the house nice. Theres gone be grass in the front yard and the back yard. And no guns.
I look out the window before I read some more of my book. And after while L.A. start looking different. Dont see no trash in the street, no liquor stores, no Church’s Chicken. We driving on a long highway. The sign say 60 with Pomona next to it. I see hills on both sides of the freeway, green and yellow, thats the color of the hills, and theres flowers in patches, yellow, white, and purple. And cows way off in the fields. Not a whole bunch, but cows anyway! Big and brown. I g
et happy to see the cows and I say, Look, cows. They make me happy cause I never see no animals never, not where I lived, not even hardly cats and dogs, except at the zoo. Got to be down South to see animals. But how can this be so close to L.A. and be so different? How come I never seen this before if its so close?
So what, cows? Owen say, and slouch down in the seat and put his cap over his face to take a nap. But Daddy say they got dairies around here and they need the cows for the dairies. But a couple cows aint dairy cows they farm cows cause they brown. Just because the cow is brown it does different work? Ima ask Daddy about this later.
But its not just the cows. They got a big ol shopping center out here, Puente Hills Mall, they call it. Mall, I say to myself. Mall, with a water slide and little cars you can drive with bumpers. A big place for walk in movies where they play a whole lot of different movies all in one place, not just the drive in where we used to go when I was real little. They got more stuff to do out here. More places to go. It smell different and look different and everythings gone be different. We headed west, to West Covina in San Gabriel Valley. I say it to myself over and over again, WestCovinainSanGabrielValley, and it sound like a song.
JUST WHEN I was getting to the part in the book where Laura and them might drown in they covered wagon trying to cross a river, Daddy say Look, we here. We turn a corner and in the middle of the street that take us to our house there a tall white pole with a ball and points coming out of it, like a planet. Under it, it say, Welcome to Galaxy Homes and stellar living.
What stellar mean Mama? I ask. She move her shoulder up.
Darnelle? Mama pull on her hoop earring and look at Daddy.
It mean something to do with the stars, Daddy say. He driving the car going up and up a long street to the new house. Stellar mean up there with the stars, Ave.
I can understand that part, but what do stars and houses mean to each other?
Daddy seem to know I dont understand. So he add, They built these houses in the 1950s, Ave. Long time before you was born. When space and progress was on everybodys mind.
Now I dont understand what progress mean, though. I want to ask what it got to do with houses and planets and stars. But then Owen say, Well, its 1976 now, and that little ball on top the pole look stupid.
Our house look like a barn, not a star or nothing I thought it supposed to look like. Its a dark red almost the color of chocolate and the garage door is the part that look like a barn. Two Xs in white, and white all around the edges. But then, the barn make me think of Laura Ingalls, even though she wasnt living in no barn. I dont care. If this was a house on TV there would be hay and chickens and horses, and I would be milking my cows and pitching my hay with a giant fork. Chores. I always like the sound of that word, so many chores to do with Pa getting the lay of the land, they say. Chores to get your house in order. But this is just a garage that got a water heater and dirty paint cans left from the people who used to live there so I aint no pioneer. I feel happy because we got grass in the front and in the back, too, Daddy say. When we get out the car and walk to the door, everybody quiet. Daddy put the key in the door and turn around before he unlock the door. He smiling at everybody. Yall want to go in?
Quit playin, Darnelle, Mama say. Its hot out here, but she smiling too.
And when we go in, I run straight to the room thats mine and lay down in the middle of the floor. Its mine. I got my own room. Dont have to share with Owen. Its the smallest room in the whole house, only my bed and one dresser gone fit into it, but I dont care. All around the house everything make me feel happy and silly. I get up and run around, trying everything out. We got a glass door in the kitchen that supposed to slide back and forth but when Mama try it, she caint open it. I tell Mama, Let me do it! Let me do it! And then I open it easy. It must be broke, Mama say. She look at me like Im playing a trick on her, like I made it hard for her. But Mama, I say. It aint broke. You just have to know how to do it. And I open that door easy. I slide it back and forth until Mama tell me to quit it. You smart, I can see that, she say. You know how to do it. Good for you, she say and tug my hair and pat me on the back. And then theres a tree, a big, big tree I can climb up until I get scared to go higher. Rubber, Mama say. A rubber tree. We got three bedrooms and one bathroom with a tub, and one bathroom with a shower. A living room. A kitchen more than two people can stand in. I feel like we rich. When I tell Daddy it feel like we rich, he laugh. Naw Ave, we a long, long way from rich, but we doing better than we was. Thats what progress mean.
2
THE HOUSE WE live in is much too big for just Massimo and me. This house has embarrassed me with my family, miles and miles away from the suburbs and 932 West 80th Street, where I lived as a young child. My mother calls it the crazy house, but it’s just modern architecture, a knockoff of Frank Gehry’s Schnabel house built in the late ’80s. Even though it’s too big for the two of us, this is not a very large house compared to some of the other houses on the hill. But it is the one that’s the most unique, even if it copies another style. Stucco, cinderblock, copper, wood, glass, and lead all come together to make a house the shape of cubes, pillars, and trapezoids. This is not what houses are supposed to look like. Houses are supposed to be recognizable as places to live and work, where children are supposed to play. Like my beloved barn house. But I delighted in the puzzle when Massimo first brought me here. The playfulness of it, the oddness of it, reminded me of Miro’s Peinture Collage. I was so relieved. I thought that Massimo did not take houses seriously, the having them and getting them and holding on to them. Why else would one live in a house that didn’t seem to make sense? But I was wrong. Everybody still cares about having and holding on to everything they have, even if it doesn’t make sense.
Mom and Owen were the first family to come see me. I like to think of this first time because it was the beginning, when I did not think much about anything and suddenly did. The past came pushing through to remind me of so much that I forgot. Like now, sitting on my bed, I see her. Mom is here, wearing jeans and sneakers. She’s at the door, hesitating at the threshold, as though she doesn’t know how to enter. And then, Massimo is pulling her through, kissing her cheek, turning his head to kiss the other cheek. Mom does not know what to do with that. “Okay,” Mom says, nodding, looking at the puzzle all around her. “This is a house,” she says. “No lawn or nothing, front or back, all right?” she says, as if convincing herself. And Owen says, “Shit, Massimo, man. This is nice.” But Mom is suspicious. “Any black folks live around here?” she asks. Massimo slips his arm through Mom’s, waiting for me to answer because this is not a question he cares about, either way. “What you think, Mama,” Owen asks. “What do you think?”
Mom turns up the corner of her mouth and levels her eyes at me like she’s about to tell me something that’s funny, but something that I’ve got to know nevertheless. “One or two,” she says. “One or two of us might be around here. Got three of us now, in this house, don’t we?”
And there, that day, the question sat next to me, quietly, waiting for me to consider it. Not, What do you think the answer is, Avery, but, Remember why the answer is so.
Still, when Massimo’s friends and acquaintances visit, I am grateful to have this house as an accessory to hide behind. I can fade away into the house, serving cocktails in fancy glasses and dishing out Massimo’s complicated meals on gorgeous bright dishes that call to mind Kenneth Noland color fields, vibrant concentric circles, inviting and mesmerizing.
Now, I lay out two dresses on our large antique bed, my favorite thing about the whole house. Boxy and plain, with distressed wood that looks as though it was retrieved from a shack. I can sleep for hours and days in this bed. I have.
DONT NOBODY ELSE lie down in they yard, but I like to. I get a towel and lay out in the yard with books and the radio like Im at the beach. I like that song that go Fight it! Fight the power, and thats been playing all the time, and Oh girl Ill be in trouble if you leave me now. We been here just one
week, but I do it almost every day. Owen say I better watch it else the white folks gone call the police about niggas laying in the yard in they neighborhood, but Daddy tell Owen not to say nigga, and he tell him, this our neighborhood now, not just theirs. If Avie want to lay in the yard and read books, then she ought to. So thats what I do cause I dont know nobody.
One day Im reading in the front yard. The book is Trixie Belden that Daddy got me because he says its time to move on from Laura. He ask me, Aint I about tired of her yet? Because he surely is. Im reading about how Trixie having trouble figuring out the math, just like I do, when all of a sudden I got a shadow over me and when I look up, theres a white lady. I think Im in trouble, that she gone tell me not to lay in the yard. She have white hair all over her head like cotton, and big blue eyes. The lines around the circle of the eyes are extra blue, like somebody traced them with a crayon over and over again. They kind of scary eyes with all that blue trace. But when she smile, I aint that scared no more. Them eyes change and I dont look away.
Hello, she say. I am your neighbor, Joan, and then she brush the front of her pants. They the color of orange ice cream. She put her hand out and I stare at it. She say, I would like to welcome you to the neighborhood. Her voice sound sharp to me. Clean at the end of each word like when you snap your fingers. After each snap, the sound end, aint nothing coming after it like when we talk. When we talk, its like you humming at the end of every word you say. I just stare at her big hands because I dont know what to do. Grown people I know dont really shake my hand. They just nod at me. And Joan more than grown. She old. Its okay, Joan say. Whats your name? She wiggle her fingers at me like come on, take my hand.
