by Diane Munier
Well, he never had painted, except for pictures about the black man’s struggle, she said, but he was a big strong boy, she said. Oh Lord, I was too depressed to want company and he was such a talker.
I said okay but I didn’t want it sloppy cause that would just be more work in the long run but she sent him over.
He still was the most annoying boy in the world, him and me thrown together a lot over our lives being some of the Temple children. He was off Temple now. He thought it too old fashioned. He was rethinking Jesus, he said, and he wore African dress now and read lots of books. Eldridge Cleaver was a favorite author.
Well, he was glad to be out of the house and he brought a portable radio. I’d been off music for a few days, was actually afraid of it now. But he set it to the local soul station so I’d be sure and collapse with emotion before I got through one wall. Every song really was about love, betrayal, joy, pain, cheating, breaking apart, coming together, all about love, every song. In general…about Danny.
Derrick had on old clothes. They were ironed…but they were old. That was good. I told him to use the drop cloth cause I didn’t want a mess and he said he wasn’t gonna be the one to walk white all over, and I said ha-ha. So we got to it.
We were painting the part behind the pulpit, the part everyone could see. Well Derrick Jones hated white, the blandness, he said. Why didn’t we do a mural, big wings, big white bird and the cross and blood and the heart wrapped in thorns and maybe some people playing harps and others with their flesh all burned off in the flames?
I thought of Felix and what he would do with this space. Everyone in heaven would be naked and sharing a toke. In hell they’d be in church. Or painting a church. With Derrick.
He was on fire about this mural. I said, “We can’t do it without permission.”
He said, “They don’t like it we’ll just paint over it…that same dull-ass white. C’mon it will liven this place up.”
I was too weak to argue so he got a pencil and started to sketch this big scene and I told him, “It can’t be civil rights.”
He said, “I know. Think I want the Klan coming in here carrying off Naomi and the church ladies?”
I wasn’t worried about the Klan. It wasn’t likely they’d be coming in here. But Naomi would be, and she would take this serious.
So while I painted…alone, he sketched, then ran home for some paints and started in. He had a big white dove, like he said, carrying an olive branch which he thought would be hysterical if he made it a marijuana plant, but I told him don’t even think about such, and he laughed.
I said, “Is this you rethinking Jesus?”
“Call it a parting gift,” he said grinning and painting.
So by late afternoon we had a big white bird holding the olive branch with a giant cross behind him and rising from the back of a cross a giant black fist clenched in the symbol of black power.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled at him cause I’d been laying on the floor for a long time painting along the mopboard and that fist hadn’t been there last time I’d looked.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “You got to understand it. It means black power has to come through the cross and the love of the dove. Can’t you see it? It’s Dr. King’s message.”
“With a little Malcolm and Jessie thrown in,” I yelled. “She’s going to behead you,” I said. “And I’m going to hold you down.”
I set my brush over my bucket and tried to work the kinks out of my back. Then I walked to where he worked. “You have to paint the fist out. Then it’s good.”
“The fist stays, Grunier,” he said. “You need to broaden your mind.” Then he went on about how broadened his mind already was and after a few minutes I spoke over him and I said, “If other white people ever come in here….”
“You ain’t white,” he said, his brush dripping over the pan.
We just stared at each other. He hadn’t said this to me in a while. He used to say it all the time until Naomi spoke to Lavinia. Naomi said it was a crush. Danny used that word, said when he was little he had a crush on me. And both of them had pretty well crushed me in different ways.
“Still the Queen of Egypt,” he said, meaning I was still in denial. “They talk about it round here. Don’t they say nothing at school?” This wasn’t the same juvenile teasing. This was real.
I shook my head. “I know there’s talk. I’ve heard. It’s all my time growing up…two worlds,” I said quoting Nina.
“It’s more than that. Look at yourself, girl. There’s some coffee in that milk.”
“You know me so well?”
“You been looking at yourself so long you don’t see what we do.”
“The Negro community? You speak for them all now? How about painting out that fist while you preach.”
“I ain’t…doin’ that. I’m just telling you to quit passin’.” He slapped more paint on the wall and went about his business and I was stuck staring at him.
“Hey Derrick…if I throw this bucket of paint on you…you’ll be white, too. A lot of milk in the coffee,” I said. He didn’t know about the Coca-Cola bottle I’d thrown.
“Girl, you ain’t gonna do that. Now let’s get this painting done so I can give you your first driving lesson.”
I stared at him. “Really?”
The freedom to drive? “I don’t have a car,” I said.
“One thing at a time, pumpkin!”
I had to laugh at that. But the wheels in my mind were already spinning.
“How long does it take a person to learn driving?” I asked.
“Depends on the person,” he said leaning into his work.
I just kept thinking. “Hey,” I said after a minute, “you got a car?”
“Where someone like me gonna get a car?”
“Well…I need to get to Memphis.”
He stared at me long enough to set down his brush.
“How’s that?” he said.
“I need to get to Memphis day before school starts.”
“Take the bus.”
“I can’t.” Danny would be taking the bus. I couldn’t chance getting on the same one.
“If I can get Naomi’s car…could you drive me?”
“I’ll be gone for school.”
“Could I learn to drive by then?”
“Maybe. But you got to pass the driver’s test to get a license. And then you should have insurance…and Memphis…you should have some experience…and a map definitely.”
“Can I drive without all that?”
He was shaking his head. “Anything’s possible. But…what are you fixin’ to do?”
Finding My Thunder 30
“Nah!” Derrick said when I’d mixed up the gas for the brake and plunged us forward only to figure out my mistake and slam us to a halt.
“Hilly…let’s just go to the car place. You’re not going to get better and maybe you’ll luck out and the guy will be so scared he’ll just pass you.”
Lavinia’s big Buick shuddered as I let off the gas and pulled into the empty street.
“Now you’re going to have to really pay attention,” Derrick said because we were fixing to get into some actual traffic as we neared Corning.
“Just…you make me nervous,” I said.
“I make you nervous?” he said. Emphasis on ‘you.’
He did. But if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be driving at all, so…gift horse.
Well, Naomi had almost dropped over when she saw that mural over the pulpit. And he had explained it to her, the art behind it and she said it could stay for the time being if he would come back to church, and he said, “Sister Naomi I’m going to college.” She said, on Christmas break, spring break, any break she wanted to see his face, and on she went and she had him against the wall pretty much. But she told him if the congregation didn’t want the big black fist he had to paint over it before he went to school. She liked the rest of it…or pretended to. Actually I couldn’t believe it…the lengths sh
e’d go to as a fisher of men.
But things I could not believe kept on coming. I made it to town, driving careful, like an old person, our oldest member of Temple, Sister Tremont. That’s who my driving reminded Derrick of, he said, especially with me gripping that big wheel, sitting forward, barely able to see over it.
I had to put up with his ramblings and couldn’t tune them out like usual because every once in a while he reminded me of something like a tree or another car or a curb or a person trying to cross the road or something. And as I drove, he taught me to drive, what everything meant. He was a good teacher. When I told him so, of course he agreed.
I was a wreck. Derrick accompanied me into the office and I took a number and sat there bouncing my knees. He called my name and Derrick had to nudge me and say, “That’s you.”
Well the guy looked from me to Derrick, where he sat. “You Lonnie’s girl?” he said.
“I’m Hilly Grunier,” I said, guessing there was no way around it.
He looked back at Derrick like maybe he’d kidnapped me or something.
“Well come back here for the written test,” he said. So I went back there and he gave me the test and told me the time on it, and I hoped it was enough.
I opened the book and it didn’t seem so hard. I guessed a couple times but I ended up passing, and Derrick laughed so hard and said, “Excellent teacher.”
I hugged him, and he laughed some more and said, “If you pass the next part, the driving part, what I get then?”
And I said, “A smack in the face.”
He laughed more and that guy giving me the test didn’t look too kindly on us.
So the officer got in on the passenger’s side and I took off and Lord I was a wreck all over again. It had seemed kind of reasonable with Derrick telling me what to do, but I wasn’t sure. I rounded a corner and didn’t put on the brake and it seemed like I was going to lose control and he yelled, “Young lady put that brake on!”
And I did and he lurched forward and put his hand on the dash and his clipboard fell onto the floor. He was mad. He told me how to drive back to the station. The test was over.
“When can I take it again?” I asked.
“Three days,” he snapped. “Get some instruction.”
“Yes…sir,” I said.
Derrick was standing out there waiting to see me parallel park so he could have a real good laugh.
“You’ll get it,” he said getting in.
I drove home, slowly, carefully. We passed by Lonnie’s shop, and the front window was boarded up. I got sick to my stomach, not about the window, but about Danny.
Then I saw him, in Mac’s parking lot holding a bottle of Coke, talking to Tahlila and Lauren. Danny. Black, brown, white, red…my heart. Derrick was screaming at me and I kept the car on the road just in time. I’d nearly grazed another car. “Sorry,” I said, and these tears burst out of me and he kept his hand on the wheel and helped me get off the square. As soon as we were on a side street I pulled over…with his help. Then I just collapsed there, and he was kind, patting my back, and it poured out of me. How Danny had broken with me. How I wanted to drive so I could see him off in Memphis. Just see him that last time before he left for California cause I didn’t know if he’d ever come back before Vietnam.
“You are crazy,” he said. “Danny Boyd is…you can’t be for real Hilly? Those girls will slit your liver open. He was right. Stay away from him.”
“I’ve got as much right as anybody…you talk all the time about rights…you of all people.”
“You notice how hard we are fighting for some rights? And even then…you can’t just rise to the top like that! You ever hear of a lynch mob! Burning crosses! As real as those things are, girl they are also symbols of a thousand other creative ways the white man has to make sure you die.”
“The color of my skin is not the problem, Derrick.”
“Ain’t you noticed? You got no standing in the white community. Your own daddy disowned you. You live with a black woman. Black…black woman. You got a big old question mark stapled on your skin. And truth be told…your mama…folks said…troubled in the head. There’s just all kinds of reasons….”
“Job’s comforter,” I yelled.
“Pardon me for telling the queen she is naked!”
“What?”
“That’s the real problem. You’re too good for this place. You don’t fit here. You don’t fit in Snyder either. That’s the truth.”
“Just…,” I looked out the window, “shut-up.”
So he did for minute. “Hilly,” he finally said, “us sitting here in this car together in a white neighborhood…Bixby gonna be by any second.”
“Derrick…how do you know that…about my father?”
“My mother.”
“Is that all they do is talk about me?”
“When they ain’t talking about me throwing off Jesus and Dr. King.”
We laugh but it’s weak.
“Some say…Eugene. For you. Some say…pretty much they all say Eugene. They knew him. He was around Snyder town. He was the man.”
“Naomi would have told me that. I’ve asked her. She says I got to face it…I come from Lonnie Grunier.”
He laughed so hard I thought he would die.
“It’s not funny,” I kind of yelled. I might have shoved his shoulder, too.
He settled down some. “The timing, Hilly. What about that? That’s what they say.”
“It was long after the war. I was born in fifty-two so don’t tell me Lonnie wasn’t around by then. He was.”
“It’s all there if you want to see it. He kept the yard when your Daddy fought. They was friends Eugene and your Mama. Close in age. It’s like a movie…that old Imitation of Life where the daughter is always passing for white and one day her old mammy shows up at school in front of her friends and she says she don’t know Mammy.”
“Is Naomi Mammy?”
“Yeah, and you’re the one won’t claim her…the daughter that passes.”
“Lovely little summary of my life.”
“Or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with my man Sydney. It’s some of that, too, white daughter coming home and oops, guess who she’s got on her arm…Hello Boss!”
“Has nothing to do with me.”
“No…that would be your Mama.”
“Anyone get by with talking about your mama lately? First you call my mama crazy and now an adulteress,” I said angry, shoving against him again.
He had his hands up but he kept talking. “Eugene had women after him in Snyder Town, could have had anybody is what I heard but he didn’t want none of them. They said he already had him a woman. Naomi raised him to think too much of himself. Didn’t know who he was. They say she did the same with you. That’s pretty much what they say.”
I went for him, but he got out quick and went to the driver’s side.
I locked the door and he stood there looking in the window at me. “You should know. I been trying to tell you for years. It’s one of the reasons I never felt I could listen to Naomi…believe anything she said.”
He was looking at me without apology. He’d wanted to say all this for a long time.
I unlocked the door and got out of the car.
“Get back in, Hilly. I ain’t bein’ evil. Ask me…it’s been evil not to tell you. Somebody had to. All those years we were put together…you never really fit in…like our royal guest. Just a guest wherever you were…even at school. You got to get this settled, don’t you think? Don’t you think you got a right to know? Don’t you want to know who you are?”
“I’m gonna walk,” I said. “You best go on.”
“I’m leaving in two days,” he said.
“Well…good-bye then.”
“Don’t be all mad. Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said.
“I ain’t going to paint out that fist,” he laughed.
I looked at him. “Like I didn’t know?”
He steppe
d toward me and awkwardly hugged me, but I didn’t hug back.
“Take care of yourself little sister,” he whispered.
“Yeah…you too,” I said, the road under my feet as thin as onion skin, ready to let me drop through.
Finding My Thunder 31
After Derrick pulled away I stood there…Danny was just blocks away…blocks away from me now…but miles apart, already an ocean between us. I was just a part of a girl.... Those others, shallow or deep, no matter, they knew what they were. Maybe not who. But they knew what.
Color was not my issue with Danny. It was my issue with myself. With my history, my roots in creation, with what I’d been told about myself by the folks I was supposed to trust with those things.
Danny had asked me how my family set up so he could know me…but he couldn’t know me cause I didn’t know myself. This is why people could hurt me, not because of Danny Boyd, Danny Italiano, but because I didn’t stand on anything, for anything, I couldn’t, I was a shadow, I was nothing, too much, not enough. I couldn’t fight because I didn’t know!
I felt all of my focus and all of my rage pull together and land in one place. Naomi Blue. I ran for her house. She had to be home. After all this time, my whole life in fact, after all of it I couldn’t wait another minute, second, I had to know once and for all I had to.
I ran there. I ran, down what used to be my street, tore past what used to be my house, where my mother used to live, then what used to be my yard, over the Canna bed to the fence in back, through the gate where my dog used to bark and snap, across the porch where Danny used to wait for me, but it was all gone, moved inside me, all of them coming together, all of them closing in.
Naomi sat at the kitchen table with Debra. They were eating some of the cake…sixteen years…of silence and lies. I had to catch my breath and they were alarmed, standing, hands on me, what happened? Are you hurt?
“Who,” I breathed, I panted, “who is my father? Who is my father? Who is he?”
