by Danzy Senna
A song played overhead that afternoon—a Muzak version of Diana Ross’s “Mahogany”—and my father, nursing his Tiki Bowl, with his head cocked to the side as if engaged in a private discussion with himself, laughed when he recognized the bastardized Motown melody, saying, “Damn, I guess nothing’s sacred.”
He had taken Cole and me to Aku-Aku so many times before, on more banal occasions—birthdays, Easter lunches, or simply his weekly visits. He liked it because it was anonymous and I think also because he enjoyed the racial absurdity of the place, where Chinese men with name tags reading “Charlie” passed as Polynesian and gave out drinks with little brown fat-bellied men and women floating naked in bubbling pink froth. My father had once muttered to us, “These Orientals are making a killing off of the white man’s racial fantasy. Niggers need to get in on the action—start opening restaurants with niggerish themes. Bow and scrape, step ‘n’ fetchit, then laugh all the way to the bank.” Then he had chuckled quietly, the way he did when he knew his jokes had gone over our wild-child heads.
Cole and I liked Aku-Aku for different reasons. We thought it glamorous in its over-the-top decor, and we always ordered the pu-pu platter “with a roll of toilet paper on the side,” cutting up into hysterics every time, no matter how old the joke got.
But that day I was seeing it all from my mother’s eyes, and it spoiled the fun. I could see from her tight expression that some long-suppressed part of her found the place repugnant, classless, hideous. All of a sudden the restaurant’s gaudiness was clear to me, the cheapness of the plastic palms and the insidious pink of the vinyl seats. The wall was decorated with a three-dimensional mural lit from behind, depicting island jungle scenes with pretty brown women in grass skirts. The decor, which had once seemed exotic to my child eyes, struck me suddenly as sad and seedy, as did the ferocious warrior masks that once had thrilled me.
It was the first time my mother had come with us, and it was strange having her there, as if we had let her into our hideaway and exposed our little fantasy for what it really was. She sat stiffly in the booth over a tall orange drink called “Doctor Funk of Tahiti” that my father had talked her into ordering. She spoke to my father in whispers, while Cole sat curled over Jane Eyre and I kicked my shins, making patterns with spilled salt and pepper on the red linoleum tabletop. My father’s and my mother’s faces were drawn, heavy, adult.
I nudged Cole and said, “Tell me a story. I’m bored.” But really, there were little flutterings in my belly. Cole put down her book and began to speak to me in Elemeno, telling me a story about a girl named Afrodite who would come and take us away to that land called Elemeno, which she said looked like the Lanuki Lounge at the back of the restaurant. I listened to Cole whisper while trying to block out my mother and father’s conversation and the sudden melancholy that weighed around our table.
My mother was saying in a loud strangled whisper that seemed to echo throughout the empty restaurant, “It just feels so out of control, like it’s taken on a life of its own. Jane seems nearly psychotic these days, and I can’t even talk to Linda. I guess I didn’t know what I was getting into.” She stifled a sob into her Doctor Funk, glanced up at Cole and me, a little wild-eyed, then settled her gaze back on my father. “I mean, couldn’t we just leave? All of this. Behind. Right now. Just get in the Pinto and keep driving till we get there. I mean, anywhere. Up to Canada. Just the four of us. Who’s to stop us?”
My father forced a weak smile and said, looking down, “Sandy, you know I’ve got other people to think about now.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course. Your little brown sugar, Carmen. How could I forget?”
He barely registered her sarcasm and looked up at the TV screen over the bar, where a baseball game was in progress. “It’s more than just her, Sandy. You know that. This country is suicide for a black man. Suicide.” He paused. “Besides, Sandy, if you were gonna get involved in something like this, at least have some balls about it. And remember, it was your fucking decision. I told you not to mess with those crazy thugs. But now that you have, stop acting like you’re still at Buckingham.”
My mother leaned forward toward him and said, clenching her drink so that her knuckles turned all white, “And to think, I actually thought you’d approve. I thought I could trust you. But you’re just like my mother. In blackface.” I thought that would inflame my father, but he only patted her hand awkwardly, looking around the restaurant in some odd display of decorum.
I spilled my virgin piña colada just then, and we all froze, mesmerized as the pale liquid overtook the red tabletop in a slow, gliding motion. None of us moved to wipe it up. Cole saw my chin begin to tremble, and broke the silence. “Don’t cry, Bird. You can have some of mine.” She thought I was crying over the spilled drink. Later, in the bathroom of the restaurant, Cole stayed in the stall for a long time, not making any noise. I stood in front of the mirror, speaking softly to myself in Elemeno, trying to stay calm. After a while she flushed the toilet and came out of the stall. I asked her what was going on. She avoided my eyes and set to washing her hands with vigor. “Nothing, Birdie. Mum’s just freaking out about something, as usual.”
When we came outside into the bright light of the afternoon, I was confused, like coming out of a movie into the day and forgetting where and when and who you are. It had seemed that it was the deep of night when we were inside the restaurant, and now the light hurt my eyes.
We drove back to Columbus Avenue in silence, listening to the drone of the sports announcer as he rattled on about the Red Sox’s latest losing streak. Cole was quiet, looking out the window. I stared at the take-home menu in my hands. It had a little educational bullet in the corner that read:
Aku-Aku means “Brothers-Brothers” in Polynesian. It means “Guardian Spirit” to the natives of Easter Island in the southeast Pacific, the loneliest inhabited island in the world. On this barren and isolated island, men of mystery built huge stone images—and then disappeared.
It sounded like the land of Elemeno to me. I tried to show it to Cole, whispering to her in our language. vitiligoo peruschka.
She glanced over at me, and I saw that she was clenching and unclenching her fist around her little calfskin purse. She stared at my face with an expression I had never seen before. I touched my hair, wondering if there was gum stuck in it. There wasn’t. I asked, “What you looking at?”
She shook her head and then turned away, resting her forehead against the car window as she gazed longingly out at the passing street. She wore a purple denim jacket that Carmen had bought her, and new microthin cornrows with gold beads on the tips. She looked older to me all of a sudden, like a very pretty teenager—pulled-together, ironed, and smelling of Jean Naté After Bath Splash. I wondered if she was thinking about a boy she liked, who had given her his gold initial—“A,” for Anthony—which hung now from a thin chain around her neck.
When we pulled up to the house, my mother said into her hands, “C’mon, Bird. Your sister’s staying with your father tonight.”
“She is? But it’s a school night.”
My mother barked at me, “It doesn’t matter. Now come on.”
She heaved her body out of the car and stomped up the stairs to the house without looking back. After a moment, I thought I glimpsed her pale form in the window on the second floor. For a minute she remained there, like an apparition, then she disappeared into the shadows.
I guess it struck me then and there that we were parting, and that fact—along with my own foolishness—made me feel thick and clumsy and oddly thirsty as I got out of the car. My father and Cole got out too, but not like they were coming with me inside. They stood side by side, leaning against the car, arms folded across their chests, not speaking.
The weather was confused, both rainy and sunny all at once, a web of drizzle glistening in the light. I followed Cole’s gaze down the street to a bunch of girls our age sitting on the stoop, braiding one another’s hair. My father pulled me to
him suddenly, hugging me so tightly that it hurt, and I was surprised to feel his shirt was wet around his back—from sweat or rain, or maybe both. He told me, still hugging me, his face hidden, that Cole and he were going away on “a little trip.”
I pulled away from him, breathing in.
He said, looking over my head, speaking to something behind me: “Boston, America, is a fucking mess and it’s only going to get uglier. Real ugly. Black people need to start thinking internationally. We’re going to Brazil. Cole and Carmen and me. Just for a while.” Then, his eyes flickering down on me, he said, “Take care of your mother. She needs you now.”
Cole looked at me, and her eyes appeared like bright shimmering emeralds. She tried to smile, but it turned into a kind of grimace, and all of a sudden I could see that she was scared but trying not to show it. “Tell Mum I love her, okay? Tell her I’ll talk to her later?”
They got back into the car then, and my father’s face was twisted into some expression I had never seen on a grown man before, like that of a child who has just been abandoned to his first day of school. He turned his face away from me as he cleared his throat and shuffled the newspaper on the seat beside himself before starting up the engine.
It was clear, finally, that they were leaving me—why and for how long were still mysteries then—but I also understood that none of us was going to acknowledge this fact until it was over. Funny, but Cole and I didn’t even really say good-bye. She just got in the backseat and waved to me as my father pulled away from the curb, her face—small and doll-like—pressed up against the window. I stood frozen to the spot. Only when they were out of sight, when the Volvo had blended into the other chrome colors in the distance, did the enormity of what had just occurred hit me.
I turned and tore up the steps to the old brownstone, looking for solace, or answers, I suppose, in the arms of my mother. I found her in her bedroom. She was curled fetal on the floor by her bed, and the whole room was suffused in a stench of musk oil. Her dress was twisted around her legs, and she was sobbing dryly, under the golden veil of her own hair. I went toward her, tiptoeing, as if approaching a bear caught in a trap. I thought she was alone, but then I glimpsed a shadow in the corner, and a woman stepped into the light. It was Linda, the Puerto Rican revolutionary. Cole and I had never liked her because she ignored us when she came over, acting as if we were a distraction from something far more important. She held a sponge in her hand and appeared to be cleaning up spilled oil. She held shards of a broken bottle in her hand. She smiled at me brightly, as if everything were fine, and said, “Your mami’s a little upset, Birdie. Why don’t you go watch television. Eh? ‘Sesame Street’?”
My mother peeked at me from under her hair and said quietly, “I must have been a sinner in my former life. I must have done something awful to deserve this.”
She slept away the remainder of the afternoon and evening—or at least that’s what Linda told me while she pattered around our kitchen barefoot, fixing me a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Linda spoke to me in a generic high voice, like a woman unused to the company of children. She was an experienced revolutionary who had been organizing marches and writing articles arguing for Puerto Rican independence much of her adult life. I asked her questions: Where were Cole and my father? How long would they be gone in Brazil? Why had everything changed? She didn’t answer any of them, but poured me more milk and said, with her eyes on my glass, “Your mother will explain later.”
I wondered what I would tell Maria at school the next day.
It was that same night, sometime past midnight, when I lay awake, listening to the sounds of the odd and ordinary. A lost mutt’s persistent whimper. Faint and fading music playing from someone’s car. A man screaming obscenities at his lover across the street.
A distant phone ringing.
The front door downstairs opening.
At some point my mother’s crying entered the symphony of night sounds, and another low voice. I thought I recognized my father, then Cole, and waited—frigid with joy and relief. It all had been a silly gag. A late April Fool’s Day prank. I bit my pillow, the sound of my own heart seeming to rock the bed in its intensity.
After a while, someone came into my room. The person pattered lightly across the floor. I could sense it was Cole from her breathing pattern, and felt her standing over me for a few minutes, watching me as I pretended to sleep. Then her hand brushed a hair out of my face, a feathery touch. I opened my eyes slightly and saw her standing there, over me, with her hair tied into a head wrap—it looked African, like Carmen would wear. She was staring at me with a kind of grieving smile, if there is such a thing, and I thought I glimpsed another, larger, figure in the background behind her. She stroked my hair back and said, palen copio mooliani. She was tucking something under the covers next to me then, and out of the corner of my eye I could see it was Golliwog, still smiling saucily, his teeth and eyes the only things visible in the blank night. She never let me or anyone else touch Golliwog. It was a sign that I should rise, hold on to her tightly, and make her tell me what was going on, but instead I lay, my body tingling slightly but unable to move—that numbness that sometimes came to me upon waking—as if tied to the bed by invisible double binds.
IT WAS STILL DARK, barely five o’clock, when I was wakened again—this time by someone pulling the blankets off me. At first I didn’t recognize my mother. She had a gash of red lipstick across her mouth, and her hair had changed colors overnight. It was now the color of pennies, and she had braided it in twin plaits that stuck stiffly out on either side of her face. There were red streaks on her face, fresh scratches raised just above her skin. As I sat up and scooted backward on the bed, she giggled at the alarmed expression on my face.
“Jeez. It’s just me, Bird.”
She touched her hair gingerly and said, “It’s henna. All natural.” She smiled so that only her mouth moved, but her eyes stayed expressionless. Then she said in a deep, almost manly, voice: “Get dressed, Bird. We gotta go.” I did what she told me to without questions. As I stumbled about in the half-darkness, throwing random articles of clothing into my duffel bag, she stood at the door with her arms folded, tapping her foot and throwing out orders: “Bring just enough for a few days. We can’t carry too much.”
“But aren’t they—? I thought I heard Cole and Papa—? Where are they?”
She looked away, at the window. Then said, “No, you must have been dreaming. They’re gone. Brazil. C’mon, now. We gotta run, baby.”
“Where’s Linda?”
She shook her head impatiently. She said Linda was gone. That it was just me and her. She paced the room and chattered on while I stuck random objects into my bag. I listened to her whispering to herself. Something about a felony and the fuzz and prison time. “I can’t believe I let them talk me into this mess. All I ever wanted was to give food and shelter. Not this shit. Hurry the hell up, Birdie. We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
I hurried to zip up my bag, taking one last look around my room.
As my mother gripped my arm and pulled me toward the door, my eye glimpsed something in the shadows—a package of some sort, wrapped in the Sunday funnies. I pulled back and asked her what it was.
She looked down and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. Your father brought that by for you. Some things he put together. But open it later, when we’re on the road and you have nothing better to do. Now, move it!”
That meant Cole and my father had been in the house that night, and that Cole had actually stood over me in the African head wrap and told me everything was going to be all right. That she had actually left Golliwog. I turned to the bed and sure enough saw his red smile peeking out from under the covers. I pulled out of my mother’s grip and ran to fetch him. I put him in the duffel bag with the rest of my belongings.
I shuffled after her down the stairs, noticing along the way the ramshackle appearance of all the rooms—overturned chairs in the kitchen; papers tossed randomly ac
ross the floor of the study; and drawers hanging open, clothes spilling out of them like intestines.
The air felt gentle with dew, and the workers of the world weren’t even awake. We drove away in the green Pinto with just a few bags and the sleep still stuck to our eyes. Beyond my window, the city appeared colorless and hushed, like footage from a black-and-white silent movie. I was silent, too, as if so many questions had left me mute, and I held the box wrapped in the Sunday funnies close to the flatness of my chest as we made our way to the edges of the city, toward the exit north.
phenotypic peek-a-boos
There was usually some logic to my mother’s lunacy. So when she told me she had thought up an “ingenious solution” to our problem of hiding, I had no choice but to believe her.
We sat across from each other at a diner in Maine. I chewed on my French toast while she played listlessly with her own food—a poached egg and toast. Since we had begun running, she had eaten with a restraint that I had never seen her use before. Now it struck me that she was moving like a thin person, with a kind of spiritless grace that resembled her own mother’s.
She had been nearly speechless since we’d left Boston, weirdly so, moving us from motel to motel in a mournful hush, seeming for the first time in her life without any desires—for words, food, love, or home. Even our unnamed destination didn’t seem to matter then, only that we moved away from the scene of this vague crime of hers. I still didn’t know exactly what the dangers were that kept us running, or, most important, why Cole and Papa had gone to Brazil, and when the decision had been made.
The package my father had left me that night of his departure was a shoe box filled with a collection of strange objects. Scrawled in magic marker on the side of the box was the word “Negrobilia.” I recognized my father’s chicken-scratch handwriting. My mother scoffed when she saw what was inside. He and Cole had clearly thrown the collection together at the last minute. It included a Black Nativity program from the Nkrumah School, a fisted pick (the smell of someone’s scalp oil still lingering in between the sharp black teeth), a black Barbie doll head, an informational tourist pamphlet on Brazil, the silver Egyptian necklace inscribed with hieroglyphics that my father had bought me at a museum so many years before, and a James Brown eight-track cassette with a faded sticker in the corner that said “Nubian Notion,” the name of the record shop on Washington Street. That, along with Cole’s Golliwog, was all that was left of them.
