Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel

by Oyeyemi, Helen

  “Olivia,” I said. “Look at Bird. Look at her.” I drew the baby blanket down a little so that Olivia could really see her. But the woman just wouldn’t look, and it broke my heart.

  “Every now and then there’d be a colored cleaning lady in there, in the White Only restroom, I mean, scrubbing a washbasin that nobody was using right then. And she’d look at me and know, and I’d look at her. They didn’t do anything or say anything, those cleaning ladies, but for hours and hours afterward I’d just want to pull all my skin right off my body. So I said to Gerald: We’ve got to go north, let people take us how they take us, then we won’t feel like we’re betraying anybody. But it’s the same thing over here. Same thing, only no signs. The places you go to, do you see colored people there? Let me answer that for you. You see them rarely, if at all. You’re trying to remember, but the truth is they don’t exist for you. You go to the opera house and the only colored person you see is the stagehand, scattering sawdust or rice powder or whatever it is that stops the dancers slipping . . . folks would look at him pretty hard if he was sitting in the audience, they’d wonder what he was up to, what he was trying to be, but being there to keep the dancers from slipping is a better reason for him to be there, he’s working, so nobody notices him but me. Listen, I love that Grand Theater down in Worcester and I love all that dancing I see there, been there at least once a year for the past . . . oh, how old is that son of mine . . . for the past thirty-seven years or so. Almost forty years! But sometimes right in the middle of the second act my vision darkens just like a lantern shade’s been thrown over it, and the dancers are colored, every shade, from bronze to tar, and every hand touching strings in the orchestra is colored too, and the tops of their heads are woollier than sheep, and the roses in my lap, the ones I throw to the prima ballerina at the end, even the petals of those roses are black, burnt black. And then I think, Well, it’s out, the truth is out . . .”

  She glanced at Bird. “This one’s dark like my eldest, Clara. See if Clara will take her.”

  —

  i said i didn’t care that Bird was colored. I said that to Mia, and to Webster, and to Mrs. Fletcher, who replied: “That’s the spirit. Keep saying it until it’s true.”

  Nothing got past Mrs. Fletcher. It’s true that it was hard. Olivia and Gerald attended Bird’s christening, and Gerald kissed her, but Olivia didn’t. And it was hard to take Bird for walks, pushing her stroller around town, and watch people’s faces when they saw her. I saw them deciding that if Arturo meant to claim her as his daughter then they weren’t going to contradict him. Once I passed Sidonie and Merveille, deep in conversation, the daughter pushing her mother’s wheelchair, and I almost escaped them, but Merveille instructed Sidonie to bring her up to the stroller so she could bless the baby. Merveille invited me to coffee when she found out I’d lied about being Sidonie’s teacher, and it was excruciatingly awkward for the first half hour or so. I felt sick about having lied to her; there are people it’s a bad idea to tell the truth to, but never Merveille. She didn’t have to set me at ease—not by any means—but she did, by telling me about her grudging respect for Olivia Whitman. She said Olivia’s “masquerade” had been ugly, but that she couldn’t help but appreciate a woman with sangfroid. “Let us say that means ‘cold blood.’ No—nerve is what she has. Nerve.” It turns out Olivia respects Merveille Fairfax too, because of the stink she raised over a decade ago about Flax Hill’s colored children having to go to a separate school when it was their right by law to be educated alongside their white peers. Apparently Merva got up a letter-writing campaign, The Boston Globe ran an editorial piece about the situation, and the school board gave in under the pressure. Olivia said most people weren’t overtly against joining the schools, more people than she expected were in favor of it, but a few called Merva bad names in the street and asked her if she thought her daughter was too smart for the colored school. And Merva smiled and said: “Every single child in this town is too smart for the colored school.” That put her on Olivia’s list of people not to trifle with.

  I looked at the sky while Sidonie and Merveille gasped and cooed over Bird, so I didn’t see their expressions. But when they finally let me go on my way, Sidonie put her hand on my shoulder, and that hurt me all the way home.

  Yes, it was hard. Snow would place a finger on each of Bird’s palms and raise her little hands up when they closed into fists. She’d say: “I’m your best friend, Bird.” Bird seemed to understand and believe this, and her eyes searched for her sister when she was away. Bird adored Snow; everybody adored Snow and her daintiness. Snow’s beauty is all the more precious to Olivia and Agnes because it’s a trick. When whites look at her, they don’t get whatever fleeting, ugly impressions so many of us get when we see a colored girl—we don’t see a colored girl standing there. The joke’s on us. Olivia just laps up the reactions Snow gets: From this I can only make inferences about Olivia’s childhood and begin to measure the difference between being seen as colored and being seen as Snow. What can I do for my daughter? One day soon a wall will come up between us, and I won’t be able to follow her behind it.

  Every word Snow said, every little gesture of hers made me want to shake her. Arturo told her I was just tired. It was true that I was up at whatever hour Bird chose. I rarely let him go to her instead. He got good at changing her diaper really fast, before I really noticed what he was doing. “You think I’m gonna let you tell her I never helped out?” he said. Our daughter suckled so slowly, with the sucked-in cheeks of a wine-tasting expert. I’d nod over her while she fed, slipping in and out of sleep.

  “Snow is not as wonderful as everybody thinks she is,” I said to Mia on the telephone, and my reflection smiled bitterly at me.

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing yet. But I’m wise to her.”

  Bird was napping in her crib, and I had to whisper so as not to wake her.

  After a tense silence, Mia said: “I think you just need to rest, Boy.”

  When I was pregnant and Olivia and I were still friendly, she told me that this would be the part of my life that brought me closer to my mother than ever, that this would be the time I felt what my mother had felt for me. Was this it? I’m learning that loving that kid as much as I do means that in some way we’re still not separate. I’m hungry when she’s hungry, and the cold hits me the same way it hits her, it makes me that much clumsier in scrambling to get us what we need.

  I began to have dreams that made the ones I’d had about the rat catcher look like tea at the Ritz. I’d fall asleep and discover that I was Bird, my own little Bird. Snow being my big sister, that’s the bad dream. I’m the smaller girl and Snow has her arm around me, and she’s like a rose with a touch of dusk, so abundantly beautiful that it feels contagious—we’re touching, so . . .

  “I’m your best friend, Bird,” Snow keeps saying, and it’s a hall of mirrors we’re walking down, and I don’t look the way I feel, I hate the mirrors but it’s okay as long as I just keep looking at her. She’s laughing. She’s my best friend. There her arm is, around me, but the mirrors say I’m alone, that I haven’t got a sister, and Snow thinks it’s hilarious. I have to get away from her, there’s this terrible emptiness in the way she smiles and the words she keeps saying, I have to get away from her.

  I don’t set too much store by dreams, but it’s probably unwise to ignore this kind. These are the kind of dreams that show you you’re not doing so well, that you haven’t accepted what you thought you’d accepted, that you’re a mess, lying there like you’ve been hit by a bus, your heart and mind standing over you tutting and trying to figure out what even happened, never mind fixing it. This doesn’t feel like my life, it feels like somebody else’s. I’m standing here holding somebody else’s life for them, trying to keep it steady while it bobs up and down like a ferocious balloon. Make this little girl let me go—I don’t know if I want her. Can’t I start over?

 
The snake bracelet Arturo gave me lies in its box for now, but soon I’ll be ready to wear it again. I’ve missed the feel of cold scales around my wrist. I can’t discount the possibility that the bracelet’s been molding me into the wearer it wants. There was an afternoon that I raised my hand to Snow, fully intending to swat her like a fly. She’d asked me if she could lift Bird out of her crib and walk around with her. She’d asked this a few times, and I’d told her no. She was too small and too clumsy to walk around with a baby. I didn’t tell her this; I just said no. Snow said she’d be very careful. She said please please please please. She leaned over Bird’s crib and pressed the side of her face against the side of her sister’s face as if showcasing the contrast between their features, and she gave me a look of radiant, innocent virtue that made my skin crawl. Somehow it was spontaneous and calculated at exactly the same time. My hand came up to knock that look off her face, and I think if she’d looked fearful or piteous or anything like that I’d probably have hit her. I was gray-skinned with exhaustion, fat around the middle, my eyes were smaller than the bags beneath them, and Snow’s daintiness grew day by day, to menacing proportions. I would’ve hit her and decided it was self-defense. I wouldn’t have seen the rat catcher (or the snake bracelet) in my actions until much later. But Snow noted that split-second jerk of my arm with an expression that mixed incomprehension and curiosity—she had no idea what I was about to do, but she had a feeling it was going to be new to her and therefore interesting—I settled my hand on the nearest crib post and spoke to her gently: Your sister’s sleepy, Snow. Go play outside. She left, looking back at me, still curious. Maybe there is no Snow, but only the work of smoke and mirrors. The Whitmans need someone to love, and have found too much to hate in each other, and so this lifelike little projection walks around and around a reel, untouchable.

  In the middle of another night of mirror dreams I got up and checked on Bird, who seemed to be having herself a highly satisfactory sleep; she was smacking her lips. Next I went into the bathroom, where I turned on both taps and held on to the edge of the sink with a feeling of terror. I didn’t switch on any lights. It didn’t seem impossible for the rat catcher to be right behind me, ready to dunk my head into the water and hold it down until I drowned this time.

  I heard myself saying I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. But I was saying that only to divert my attention from what I was about to do.

  I washed my face, then went into the parlor, picked up the phone, and tried Clara Baxter’s number. This time she answered immediately, which threw me a little bit. I mean, I gave the operator her number, and the next thing I knew Clara said, “Hello?”

  “Hello, Clara. This is Boy—you sent me some flowers a while ago, and—”

  “Hello, Boy. How are you?” Her voice was clear and gentle, and it sounded to me as if she was smiling.

  “I’m fine, Clara. Thank you for the flowers,” I said. Then I held my hand over the receiver and tried to finish crying without making any noise.

  “How’s the little girl? Arturo told me her name’s Bird. It’s a pretty name.”

  She waited for me to answer, then she said: “Don’t you worry ’bout a thing, Boy. When Bird starts eating solid food, you bring her over here. She can stay with me. I won’t blame you. No one will blame you, and you can come visit her whenever you want.”

  “Clara.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your mother sent you away?”

  “Yes, she sent me to Mississippi, to live with my aunt Effie.”

  “And you’re not . . . you’re not mad at her?”

  “No, Boy. I don’t like her much, but I’m not mad at her. Aunt Effie did right by me. And now I’m living how I want to live. Wouldn’t have been able to do that under Ma’s thumb, don’t you know. You didn’t have a mother yourself, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And you’re all right, aren’t you? We turn out all right.”

  (Do we?)

  “Let Bird start on solid food before you come see me,” Clara said. “And don’t be too hard on Arturo. He doesn’t mean any harm, couldn’t do any if he tried.”

  “I want you to take Snow,” I said. “Just for a little while. Please.”

  —

  just for a little while. Just for a little while. It was Arturo who took her to Boston. She was wearing a straw boater and had her pockets stuffed full of cookies, just as she had the first time I ever saw her. She gave Bird three hundred kisses and said: “That oughta hold ya ’til I’m home again.” Agnes Miller took ill; I knew it was because Snow was going away from her. She waved her handkerchief from her bedroom window by way of saying farewell. Up until then I hadn’t realized she lived in Olivia and Gerald’s house, that a room in that house was all she had to call home.

  I was the last one she hugged before she jumped into the car with her father.

  “See you next week,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Next week.”

  Snow is not the fairest of them all. And the sooner she and Olivia and all the rest of them understand that, the better. Still, I’d snuck Julia’s records into the kid’s luggage because I didn’t want to leave her with nothing.

  1

  lately I’ve become the kind of girl who likes to think on paper, settle down with a notepad and a decent pen and an aniseed jawbreaker so big that my back teeth clasp around it as if it were a long-lost part of my skull they’re welcoming home. When I’m older, I’ll be a reporter like Aunt Mia, who isn’t really my aunt in any biological sense, but is much closer to my idea of an aunt than my dad’s sister is. I can usually get Aunt Mia to splash a little wine into my orange juice when Mom’s not around. And she’s not exactly a chore to look at. I’ve observed reactions to her on the street. Women look at her and get this happy “What a waste” expression on their faces, like the sight of her is making them feel good about themselves but also they think someone ought to give her some beauty tips. Aunt Mia wears flat shoes and really practical tortoiseshell hair slides and slacks and blouses in clashing colors; it can get pretty extreme. You think hmmm, could be a story there. She was an ordinary librarian, innocent of any crime, but one day she fell into a giant paint box and has been on the run from the fashion police ever since . . .

  So the women who pass Aunt Mia get a little extra pep to their step, but the men look at her the way I might look at a hot fudge sundae in the hours between lunch and dinner. You know, when you’re not sure if it’s a good idea to go ahead—you’re interested beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you wonder if it might turn out to be a little too much for you. Men seem to realize that Aunt Mia’s already making the most of herself. She and Aunt Viv are probably just as smart as each other, but Aunt Mia’s a lot more educational to be around than Aunt Viv, or she’s more my kind of educational.

  Something about Aunt Viv is all curled up at the edges, like—I’ll die if she ever sees this, but she won’t, she won’t—like a piece of old bread. I’m mean. Dad’s warned me about it; I know the risk I run when I find fault with people more often than I look for something to appreciate. It’s like having grit in your eye; you see less and less of the real person standing right in front of you and more and more of the grit in your eye. I get the message. I’ve noticed that she doesn’t keep trying to test his vocabulary, though, so I feel like it’s easy for him not to get cranky with her. Also The Ed Sullivan Show isn’t one of Dad’s favorite TV shows, so when Aunt Viv drops by on a Sunday to watch it with us, it’s not Dad’s parade she’s raining on. Her face whenever the Supremes come on . . . she’ll try to be girlish and sing along but her eyes say SOS SOS it’s an alien invasion. Aunt Viv with her fingers patting away at her super-straight hair, like she’s trying to wake it up or calm it down or show it off or hide it or who knows . . . I guess she tries her best to look out for me, but I’ve got better things to do than be precious about my complexio
n. Aunt Viv says it’s not so much a matter of making improvements, it’s more to do with stopping things from getting worse. But I can’t sit in the shade on a fine day, not when the sun wants me. It’s too much like playing hard to get, which I’ve heard all about and don’t believe in at all.

  Aunt Viv lives alone and is always saying how much it suits her, even when no one was even talking about that. She had a fiancé but he abandoned her; she doesn’t know that I know a man ever fell in love with her. Gee-Ma Agnes says he broke the engagement off because of me. Apparently Aunt Viv’s fiancé had no idea she was colored until I was born, then he saw me and said: “Wait a minute . . .”

  I don’t buy it. Aunt Viv wouldn’t speak to me at all if that was true; she’d be the way Grammy Olivia is with me. Grammy Olivia sometimes smiles at me by accident, like when she’s just turned away from somebody else who’s made her laugh and her eyes fall on me before she’s done smiling. Otherwise I get nothing from her. I remember being very small, or her being tall enough for me to expect to see a crown of clouds on her head when I looked up at her—and I made her a daisy-chain bracelet. I put it in her hand and she said “Thank you” and left it on the coffee table, but I picked it up and presented it to her all over again. The second time she held the bracelet over her wrist without letting it touch her skin, as if it looked cheap to her and she didn’t want to put it on in case it gave her a rash. Then she said something to my mother. That’s Grammy Olivia, a voice above my head, not even speaking to me, saying: “She gets darker and darker every day.” Mom didn’t answer, but she pushed me a little behind her, somehow managing to hug me at the same time. A backward hug is the only way I can think of it, Mom putting herself between me and Grammy Olivia. I’m reconsidering. Aunt Viv may have had a lily-livered fiancé after all. If so, then Dad’s right about her, and Aunt Viv’s strength is in not blaming me. Another thing that happened a little while after I was born was that Mr. Clarke at the butcher’s started giving Grammy Olivia extra little bits of cheap meat she hadn’t ordered. Ham hocks and chitterlings. “I guess he figures Livia knows how to cook ’em up real good,” Gee-Ma says, cackling so much she can hardly speak. “Not our Livia.” Mr. Clarke’s just trying to be nice, but Aunt Olivia separates the little bag from the rest of her order and gives it to the housemaid who comes in twice a week, makes her take it home with her, ignoring Gee-Pa Gerald’s “Been too long since I tasted chitlins . . .”