Elsewhere, California

by Dana Johnson

  Avery, I say. But I say it in a low, quiet voice. I feel funny, like she gone take my name and do something with it, now that she know what it is. Where is Mama? Dont she hear somebody talking to me? Why aint she coming so Joan can talk to her instead of me?

  Avery, she say. What a pretty name. She finally, finally put her hand down, so I know I dont have to shake it no more, but now I want to. She still smiling at me and she said my name is pretty. Is your mother home? she say. I think about this for a little bit. No, I say. She aint home. But Mama is home, and I dont know why I say she aint.

  Im sorry to hear that, Joan say. Please tell her that I stopped by and give her my regards. But I dont know what regards is. I’ll give them to her, I say. Where they at? Joan laugh at me. Just tell her I said hello. Thank you, Avery, she say, and then she walk down the driveway and disappear around the palm tree. Regards, I say to myself. Regards. I shine it up around the edges. That day, the day with Joan, thats the first day that I really start to pay tention to the sound of white people when they be talking.

  ONE DAY BEFORE school start Joan came over and ask Mama if I can go swimming in her backyard. She ring the doorbell, and Mama walk over to the door with Pine Sol in her hand cause she mopping the floor. Im watching TV in the living room, so I can see her talking to somebody at the door. I can hear its Joan. Joan say, Hello, Addie Mae. How are you today?

  Mama say Fine, Miss Cooper, and you? but dont open the screen door. I turn off Lucy pretending to Ricky that she caint remember who she is because I already know how its gone end. She gone get a spanking from Ricky, and anyway, she remember. She just faking. I walk to the door and stand next to Mama. I like Joan, I like the way she sound. I like how nice she be whenever she see me in the yard or trying to roller skate on our dead end street, a cool the sack, Daddy call it. When I stand next to Mama, she look down at me and her eyes say I bet not say nothing until she tell me to.

  Joan look down at me and smile. Then she look at Mama. Weve got a pool in the backyard. Its so hot. I thought Avery might like to go swimming, she say.

  I want to go to Joans. I want Mama to open the door and say come on in and tell me something good, like she always did on 80th Street. But she dont. She say, Avery dont know how to swim. And I dont. I aint never been to no pool. Only to the beach sometime and a river in Tennessee. I swallowed a bunch of water and then cried all about it.

  Oh, its only a wading pool, Joan say. It wont come any higher than her chest.

  Avery aint got no swimsuit, Mama say.

  I have one she can wear, Joan say.

  Then Mama put her hand on the screen door like she gone finally let Joan in. Avery got her lunch to eat and then she can come over. I bounce up and down cause Im happy to leave the house. Im bored. Dont know nobody. School aint started yet. And all I do is sit in the yard reading Trixie.

  Hows that? Mama say, looking at Joan. When I look at Mama, one corner of her mouth smile, not the whole mouth.

  Wonderful, Joan say. She pull on the side of her head and move some of her hair out the way. Put in behind her ear. Her hair white and fluffy like a cloud. She older than Mama. Ill take good care of her. Please. Dont worry, she say, and then she turn around and leave. She got on purple pants that stretch across her behind. Tight. Me and Mama watch her walk down the driveway and across the cool the sack to her house.

  Nosey, Mama say. She take her hand off the screen door, look at her hand, frown and then wipe it on her shorts. She nice, Mama say, but she too much in our business already.

  But I like Joan. When Mama make me a fried baloney sandwich and give me a bowl of turnip greens from last night, I eat it so fast I dont taste it. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful, I sing to myself and wiggle in my chair. I try to sound like Joan, like a TV lady. Wonderful. Joan.

  Quit playing and eat your food, Mama say at the kitchen sink. Washing dishes.

  But in a minute, Im already through. Im ready to go, Mama. I wipe my face and hands with a paper towel.

  Go on then, she say. She frown like when she mad at me, but I aint done nothing wrong. Go on then, Mama say, squeezing the towel in her hand. Leave. And dont stay too long, wearing people out.

  And I run out the door. Slam it.

  WE DONT KNOW nobody here, but Mama done already signed me up for school. It didnt take but ten minutes to walk there, and when we got to Westdale a white lady helped us find the office. There white people everywhere in West Covina; Mexicans and Chinese people too. I never saw that where I was living. Only white people sometimes down South. And at my old school, there was only Maria. She only spoke Spanish and got tired of me playing with her long brown hair.

  Before we leave, Mama make me dress nice. She put out a yellow Easter dress thats too dressy for school. Aint even started yet. She grease my hair real good and make two plaits. Put ribbons in them. I feel like I want to die. Its too dressy, Mama. People gone laugh.

  Nobody laugh at you if you look good. If you look neat and put together. They only laugh at you if you look dirty and sloppy.

  I dont believe that because if I was in a school and a nine years old girl come in looking like me, looking like a baby doll in a box, I would laugh at her. But I dont say nothin else to Mama. Do, and Ill be in trouble.

  When we get to the office at school, everybody look up and they all white, too. I look up at Mama and ask her if everybody here is white. Her eyes tell me I best be quiet.

  May I be of some assistance? the lady say. She pretty, with long black hair down her back. She have blue eyes like one of the dolls I used to have where the eyelids flip up if you pick her up. I stare at the lady cause she sound funny to me. Different.

  Um, yes, Mama say. Her voice light and soft, not Mamas voice at all. Heavy and hard. I think something all of a sudden. I think, Mama is trying to sound like the lady. I want to enroll my daughter in this school, Mama say. I got some a the papers you gone need with me.

  The lady smile at me, nod at Mama, and I look back and forth between them. I think about how the lady sound and how Mama sound. Not like our peoples in Tennessee that got voices sound like long slow singing. The way the lady talk be the other side of that. Short fast talking. Like night to the day. Like TV.

  I KEEP THINKING bout the way that white lady talk at school. When she and Mama finish the papers, she say to Mama, Welcome to the neighborhood, Mrs Arlington. Im sure Avery will do very well here. Then she look at me. Avery? she say. You are going to like it here. Youll fit right in. She bend over the counter in the office and touch my face. Then she smile at me. I look at Mama when the lady touch me. I feel funny. Mama never touch me like that and sometimes when other people be really nice to me and talking to me like a baby, Mama dont like it. She say whenever that happen that aint nobody gone always be around to hug you and kiss all on you. Better be ready when that day come Avery. And when I look at Mama after the lady touch me, I see Mamas eyes move all over the ladys face. She looking at her long brown hair parted down the middle. Straight. Straight. She looking at all the other people in the office. Nobody in there looking like us. There two men, one tall, one short and blond. One other lady and she old with tight curly gray hair. They all look different, but they still aint looking like us.

  Thank you, Mama say. She pull me away from the counter. I know Avery gone fit in, Mama say. Why wouldnt she? And when Mama say why wouldnt she it sound hard like when Mama aint playing. And the lady smile get a little small. This dress, Mama, I want to say. Thats why I aint gone fit in. This hair. Two braids with yellow ribbons on the end. How bout that? But Mama already walking out the office.

  FIRST DAY OF school. I beg I beg I beg. Mama please not the two braids. Please. I want to wear a afro. We in the kitchen. Im sitting at our table that is round and glass with placemats stacked up across the table so we dont get hair all over them. Mama got the Afro Sheen out on the table and I love the glass jar it come in. I love that the grease be blue and I love how smooth the grease is in a new jar before you put your finger in it and mess i
t up. I love the way it smell too. Clean but with a little bit of perfume in it. But Afro Sheen is for the hot comb on the stove in the fire turning red hot. And I dont want my hair pressed. I want a afro. Please Mama. Mama look at the clock on the wall. White with yellow and orange flowers. The 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 are big and the other numbers small. Its 7:30. I have to be at school by 8:15. All right, she say and turn off the stove. She say, We aint got time no how. So I get a afro. Mama pick my hair out and then she put a red scarf on my head and pat all around it to make my fro good and round. She lift the scarf slow so she dont mess it up. I pat it and she slap my hand. Leave it alone, now. You gone mess it up. And she walk me to school like Im a baby and I hope nobody see me walking with my mama. Its so quiet on the big streets. No cars and noise like on Vermont in L.A. This look like the streets on TV with they lawns and nothing else. Mama say I can walk home by myself and I want to tell her I could have walked to school by myself. Im nine years old.

  I WAS SO HAPPY about the afro. And I had on Toughskins and I had on a yellow T-shirt and white tennis shoes. Mama drop me off at the playground and I watch everybody play tetherball, handball, and I just stand alone by the steps that go inside the classroom until the bell ring. I see a black boy look like my cousin Keith. But his hair is cut short. Its not big like mine. Too bad for him. I dont think nobody look as good as me. Im looking sharp as a tack, like Daddy always say.

  3

  TO GET TO our house, Massimo’s house, there’s a direct way, but you can also take a more scenic route. You can start at the beginning, in east L.A., at Cesar Chavez in downtown, drive until it becomes Sunset, and drive all the way down Sunset Boulevard, past the panaderias and taco stands of east L.A., as far west as you can before running into the ocean and drowning, I like to say. But Massimo thinks that sounds ungrateful. “Drown yourself, then. Shit,” Massimo said one time when we fought. I said I was unhappy. I said it was his fault. “You act as if you are special to be unhappy,” he said. But right away he said he hadn’t meant it. And I lied. It wasn’t his fault at all.

  Hank Williams’s voice floats down to me from the house. I’ve left the door open so I can hear him explaining to me, “I’m so lonesome I could cry.” Up here the houses are close together, crowded in so that as many people as possible can own pieces of the hill. Within the enclave of houses, most pieces of the hill look the same, houses nearly up under each other with no lawns or with minimal lawns, turf grasses or ornamental grasses, succulents and bamboo, some spiraled. There is always a potted palm here and there. The landscape of the neighborhood, the various textures of house and greenery, reminds me of the patchwork quilts my grandmother made from scraps. Nothing matches, not exactly. And yet. All the textures and pieces are having conversations with each other. Only in the distant hills does it still look like the wild, unclaimed West.

  Our backyard is not a yard, but a small concrete space with a living wall of succulents. The front has no lawn either. Just a pool, but with all the chairs and tables and potted plants for entertaining. Massimo has, of course, a system for outside, so that the music is so loud and confrontational all you can hear is the noise. Hardly anything that gets said between people is heard. That’s why I leave the door open, so that I can hear. The last time I was in the pool, Massimo was in the pool with me, and we fucked. It was two months ago, December, but it was so hot. I wasn’t teaching that day and Massimo didn’t work. The quality of the air was bad. The sky was hazy, a heavy brownish gray, and our eyes were burning from the pollution, but the sun that penetrated the haze shined on the distant hills like a Sergio Leone film, as though Clint Eastwood would be coming through any moment on his horse, taking off his poncho, his boots and socks, dipping his feet in our pool.

  That afternoon, the music that was too loud was Paolo Conte, and I loved his gravelly voice and the style in which he sang, delivery reminiscent of French cabaret but with the power of the blues. Maurice Chevalier mixed with Howlin’ Wolf. It was one of the few CDs that Massimo and I both liked, and it was a happy combination; the Wild West, Italian, French, the blues. Ordinarily Massimo was very narrow about his music. Anything by black people was good—jazz, rhythm and blues, hip hop—and it was my music too, but I also had inclinations that pained Massimo. Patsy Cline. Merle Haggard. The Partridges. They were banned. Whenever Massimo was home he screamed like a knife had just been plunged into his back if ever he had to hear Keith Partridge’s honey voice telling the world, “I woke up in love this morning! I woke up in love this morning!” “I will puke my guts,” Massimo said, the first time he heard Keith. “You cannot possibly be serious.” He was spooning pasta into our dishes and his cigarette dangled from his lips, as always, and he tightened the muscles in his face so that he could smoke and complain at the same time.

  “I am serious,” I said. “I love this song.” And I still do. Massimo had put the wooden spoon down and stared at me. He looked concerned. The ash from his cigarette was long and in danger of falling into our pasta. But then he grinned at me. “You are a very funny girl,” he said. “Now. Enough.” And he took out my CD.

  Moments like these are the moments that used to disappoint Massimo. He did not find them endearing then, but rather he found them indicative of something that was terribly amiss with the black American woman he thought he bargained for. When he picked me up at the Formosa years ago, I’m certain he had visions of the black girls on sitcoms, black girls full of sass, with singsongy voices and playful gyrations of the neck for making their points. “Oh no you didn’t,” Massimo prompted me. He was pleased with himself that he was relating to me, the black woman he was just getting to know, and I stared at him as though he were speaking to me in Italian.

  When we were last in the pool together, I clung to him and he pumped into me and we laughed because it was not the kind of thing we usually did, but Paolo Conte was singing to us and the heat felt good on our bodies and our skin felt good, slippery and light, and Massimo rubbed my head which is shaved close to my scalp like a man’s and the water felt cool, trickling down my neck and down my eyes, and even though we had only been out for a little while and the smog was obscuring the sun, I was browner than I was thirty minutes before. My skin soaked up the sun. Massimo especially liked me in the summertime when I was three shades darker than in the winter.

  DONT NOBODY PAY tention to me when Im in the school yard, but when I get inside the class and sit down, the kids look at me. They stare. I stare back. I dont care. Im bad. We sitting in rows and Im in the front where I like. That black boy sitting in the back. Its only me and him thats the same. The teacher stand at the door until everybody in and then she close the door, slow, so the sunlight coming in gets less and less and then aint no more. Just the bright light in the ceiling. This girl sitting next to me. Im Brenna. Whats your name, she whisper.

  I tell her and stare back. Her face got a bunch of brown dots on it. She look like Pippi Longstockin and I love Pippi Longstockin. Her orange hair is straight like Barbie. But when she smile she got a gap in her two front teeth like me. I like Brenna.

  But then the teacher say, Class settle down. She roll up the sleeve of her yellow blouse and push her glasses up her nose. Before we start, I want you to welcome your new classmate Avery. Avery, wont you please stand?

  Hi Avery, everybody say at the same time. And that was it, until later. Mrs Campbell give us art to do. She tell us to pick up our own box of crayons and draw whatever we want on the page. She say, Just use layers of color. Just scribble a bunch of yellow on the page, a bunch of orange, maybe even some red, if we want to. I dont want to just scribble so I take the colors and make a real picture. I draw Mama, Daddy, and Owen. I draw our new house too and I mix up the color to make other colors. I know how to do that. I know that blue and yellow can make green. Yellow and red can make orange. I got a orange crayon but I dont like that color orange. Its too bright for what I want to do, make Mamas afro, which is brown and orange, not just bright orange like a clown. Then I make our palm tree in
the front yard with a brown trunk but make the green part of the tree purple. I like what I done. I stare at it, happy. Then Mrs Campbell say, Kids are you all done? Yes, we say all at the same time. Good, she say. Now I want you to take your black crayons and cover up your pictures.

  We look at her. Dont know what she talking about. I worked hard on my picture. I raise my hand. Mrs Campbell, I say, I dont want to mess up my picture. Here, she say. Let me show you. She come to my desk and she pick up the black crayon and she start to color all over my picture. She dont stop until its all covered up. Its shiny because of the black crayon and I cry. She messed it up. Why she mess it up? Avery why are you cryin, she say. But my eyes just watering. No tears running down. Look, Mrs Campbell say. And then she take a pencil and draw a heart in the corner, small, just to show me, she say. I like it. I like all the colors underneath. I see colors and all the things I love, that are good. Mama, Daddy, and most of the time, Owen. And even though I like it, I like what I started out with best, before she put all that crayon on top and covered up everybody. When she go help other people, Brenna touch my arm. Its okay, Avery. I think it looks good both ways, she say. But I liked your way the best.