Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel

by Oyeyemi, Helen

  We heard Dad telling someone it was an open house, and Miss Fairfax started walking up the hallway toward us. The pattern of her footsteps is pretty distinctive, elegant, just like her. I know it well from being designated lookout at school. But she turned back when she heard us talking. Others came by with covered dishes and clay pots; they didn’t speak to us, just rapped their knuckles on the open door, waved, and left notes on the kitchen table, alongside their offerings.

  (Will return to kiss thine hand at thy earliest convenience, fair maiden—Anon.

  Welcome back, Snow. Let’s catch up soon! Susie Conlin.

  Hey there, beautiful one, don’t you dare leave before you come see us—Mr. and Mrs. Murray.)

  Later in the evening we went to see what there was to eat and I was awestruck. There wasn’t an inch of space left on the tabletop, or on any of the counters; it had all been taken over by multicolored crockery. The air smelled roasted. “Uh . . . I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said, grabbing at a pile of note cards before they slipped onto the floor. But when I looked at Snow, I caught her finishing a yawn.

  “Me, either,” she said. “Isn’t it kind of everybody?” I didn’t answer her. She started reading some of the note cards with a really touched expression, but I’d caught her. She was used to being treated like this. It was nothing to her. I had a moment of hating her, or at least understanding why Mom did. Thankfully it came and went really quickly, like a dizzy spell, or a three-second blizzard. Does she know that she does this to people? Dumb question. This is something we do to her.

  1

  i don’t know who or what anybody is anymore. There are exceptions: My husband is one, and Alecto Fletcher’s another. The other day Arturo looked into my eyes and said: “Here I am, with my stupid face. Remember? The face that’s so stupid you told me you never wanted to see it again?” His hair’s thinned a lot on top, but he’s even more lionlike now that he’s all bewhiskered, and I just haven’t got a single defense against him anymore. I almost spoke about it to Webster. Ted gets cheaper and cheaper all the time; his behavior at restaurants is becoming incredible—how convenient that he falls asleep or has to use the restroom just before the bill arrives. The question “How can you love him?” could sour my friendship with Webster at this point. Because she does love Ted. Fiercely. Wives are uncanny creatures, the day is a boxing ring and we dart around the corners of it, pushing our luck with both hands. We risk becoming so commonplace to the men we’ve thrown our lots in with who can’t see us anymore, and who pat the sofa when they mean to pat our knee. That or we become so incomprehensible that it repulses our husbands, who after all can’t be expected to stomach a side dish of passionate misery at every meal, no matter how much variety there is. But husbands are uncanny too. It all seems to come from having to be each other’s anchor, bread and butter, constant calm. Emotionally speaking he and I have to remain in some fixed state where we can always be found if necessary. In the midst of arguments I should rightfully have won I’ve found myself conceding points to him because some appeal is made to this fixed place. A look, a word, a touch. How could anyone enjoy this, the possibility, necessity even, of their being called to heel in this way? It disturbs me that there’s a part of my heart or mind, or some spot where the two meet, a spot that isn’t mine because I’m a wife. This part isn’t really me at all, but a promise I made on a snowy day. A promise to stay and to be with Arturo and to be good to him, and when there’s no other way, I have to go to that promise to find my feeling for my husband. We walk the finest of foolish, foolish lines. How can Webster still love Ted? How can anybody love anybody else for more than five minutes?

  Alecto Fletcher was the only one I could tell about Charlie and Arturo—without using their names, of course. I said: “Suppose there’s a woman who’s finding that she’s only really started to love somebody now that somebody else has stopped loving her—do you think that’s real, or would you say this woman’s just trying to make the best of things?”

  Alecto picked caviar out of her teeth and said: “Well.”

  “I’m asking for a friend.”

  “Were those exact words said: ‘I no longer love you’?”

  “No.”

  “No. Hardly anybody ever says it like that, do they? They simply become unkind. Look—for some people love is like a king they swear allegiance to. That kind of person has to be released from one bond before they can begin to forge another. All very conventional behavior, but fiercely interior convention. I’m not trying to imply that such people are wise or that they impress me—I’m one of them, and it’s probably the most futile form of integrity going. But if it’s a side dish to other forms of integrity, then it’s all right. And there are worse scenarios, Boy.”

  “Worse scenarios than what?”

  “Than love not beginning on time, of course.”

  All right, I don’t know what or who anybody is anymore except for Arturo, Alecto, and Clara and John Baxter. Clara and John are a fine couple and that’s all there is to it. They put an impenetrable barrier of good manners up against some of Olivia’s more insulting inquiries, but didn’t bow their heads to pray when grace was said. As we all sat around that table together, Gerald putting away heavy-duty quantities of turkey and stuffing so he didn’t have to talk, Vivian clearly wanting to show some warmth toward her sister but ending up just squeaking platitudes at her, John attempting to drink away the feeling of being pretty damn unwelcome, Agnes keeping Snow’s left hand prisoner so that the girl had to alternate between use of her knife and use of her fork, as I sat there with that family of mine I reassessed Olivia as a fellow nonswerver. She stood by the decisions she’d taken with Clara because there was nowhere else for her to stand. Clara has a good heart, but goodness is independent from gentleness. Had Olivia exposed a chink in her armor there could’ve been a bloodbath. Quite rightly so, I guess. That old woman treats my Bird as coldly as she can get away with, stopping just short of making Arturo lose his temper. But the sight and sound of her acting out all that hostility . . . I couldn’t sit next to that without wanting to try to shield her somehow. I don’t know, just so she could rest for a moment before picking up her battle-ax again. Olivia was young when she sent Clara away, young and probably so brutal that Gerald thought it was better for the child to grow up in Biloxi than stay home and be stepped on. If that’s what Gerald thought, who’s to say he wasn’t right about that? Olivia had raised Vivian, and there Vivian was, a thirty-eight-year-old attorney-at-law who should have had enough poise to keep her from gaping when her brother-in-law told her some of the things he used to do for youthful kicks. John Baxter used to follow middle-aged white ladies down deserted streets at night, walking faster as they walked faster, slowing down if a witness appeared. He found their fear of him hilarious and sad. One woman begged him to leave her alone and tried to make him take her purse. Another woman turned around, walked toward him, put her hand on his arm, and whispered, “How much?” That took the thrill out of the game, and he stopped playing it. Clara, Arturo, and I were the only ones who laughed at that. Snow said, “Uncle John,” in a tiny, distressed voice. It was pretty effective, the gasp of distress combined with the white dress and the ardent glance and the shadowy hair all loose around her face.

  “I don’t get it,” Bird said. I told her I’d explain later, and she answered: “No, you won’t.” She nudged me and pointed her chin in Gerald’s direction. My usually amiable father-in-law had stopped chewing and was just holding his food in his mouth. He looked revolted by John and everything John said. But then Gerald had been eating too much.

  “Emmett Till,” he said, suddenly. “Emmett Till did what he did just one time. Livia, what is it he did . . . right, he whistled. He was a Northerner and he didn’t know any better. So he whistled at a Mississippi white woman. She didn’t like that, so fetched her gun. But she didn’t have to use it; she had a husband and a brother-in-law, real men who were
n’t afraid to take on a fourteen-year-old boy. You saw what they did to Emmett Till. You saw the boy’s face. Agnes, you cried and said he looked melted—”

  (Fourteen years old. So close to Bird’s age. Too close.)

  Olivia gave Gerald’s sleeve a brisk tug, to remind him he was in mixed company and that people were trying to eat. He lowered his voice a little: “But you, John Baxter, you know that the men who killed Emmett Till didn’t do a single second of jail time on account of that murder. And you, a Kentucky man yourself, not even a Northerner . . . you say you scared white women for fun. Didn’t you value your life? Didn’t you see that if the authorities didn’t give a damn about you, you had to give that much more of a damn about yourself? I don’t know what you think of me, and I don’t much care, but I’ll thank you not to sit at my table and brag about your stupidity.”

  Clara laid her knife and fork down, and placed her hands in her lap. She and John made a painfully obvious point of not looking at each other. They seemed more embarrassed for Gerald than insulted on their own behalves. Arturo said: “Now wait a minute, Dad—” but John shook his head. “Your pa was just speaking his mind. I wasn’t bragging, Mr. Whitman. It didn’t matter too much whether I was deliberately following them or whether I just happened to be going their way, those women would’ve been just as scared regardless, so why not make a joke out of it? I guess I had some form of death wish, and I knew just how little anyone who looks like me has to do to get killed. I saw the face that Emmett Till was left with. I want you to know that I wasn’t bragging.”

  Clara had shifted her chair so that her shoulder rested against John’s, but she still didn’t look at him. The two of them kept right on facing Gerald, who muttered something about John still needing to take more time to think before he spoke.

  I’d hoped that Bird was too busy reciting Spanish poetry to her father to overhear that particular exchange, but the kid dashed those hopes of mine by suddenly asking me if I had a pen. I said I didn’t, and that there was to be no leaving the table in search of one, either. I know I can’t keep my daughter from tracking down that picture of Emmett Till’s remains lying in their casket—Mia will probably show it to her, if nobody else will—but I can make it harder for Bird’s grief to begin. I doubt she’ll believe that I share it; not at first, maybe not for a while. It’s been thirteen years since the murder, but for Bird the news would be minutes old. I’ve tried to tell her a few things I’ve figured out, but I can see that she doesn’t get what I’m saying, it’s like I’m just bothering her, all she hears is mumbling. The three things I know:

  First, I’m with Bird in any Them versus Us situation she or anyone cares to name.

  Second, it’s not whiteness itself that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things—fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too . . . I’m still of two minds about that.

  Third, we beat Them (and spare ourselves a lot of tedium and terror) by declining to worship.

  Bird needs time. I hope I’ll remember thinking this if she ever comes to disbelieve that I love her. No revelation is immediate, not if it’s real. I feel that more and more.

  When it was time for each of us to say what we were thankful for, Agnes thanked Clara and John for taking such good care of Snow “for us.”

  Clara didn’t raise her voice, but the aftermath was just as if she’d yelled and smashed her wineglass. “For you? We did it for Snow.”

  Bird nodded at her. She’s growing up into a huntress, every line in her clear and strong. She got her eyes from me, and when I talk, she dissects me with my own gaze. That’s gratitude for you. Her first period came, and she called me into the bathroom. She was sitting on the can with her knees pressed together and her underpants in her hand, and she showed me the blood with an expression that asked me how she could possibly be expected to tolerate this level of inconvenience. I remembered her at six years old; she came home from her first day at elementary school and wanted to know who she could speak to about not having to go there anymore. She was sure that there was some official type who took you off the school register if you just went to them and explained that you didn’t like it. I wouldn’t have minded a tender mother-daughter moment in which I reassured us both that she was still my little girl, but in reality I had to say “Welcome to womanhood” quite assertively, maybe even aggressively, for fear she wouldn’t accept it otherwise. I’m leaving it to Arturo to give her the talk about fooling around with boys and waiting until she’s sure that the boy respects her. Louis is well brought up and their friendship strikes me as genuine, but he’s older than she is, and his friends set each other stupid dares. Those knuckleheads think they invented pig Latin. About three years ago Arturo got wistful about not having a son. I told him we could look into adopting a boy and he said: “Let me ask you something, Boy. Where do you get the balls to bluff the way you do?”

  At the dinner table John began to tell another story from the good old days (this one had a carefully edited sound to it), but Bird reached across the table and pushed the edge of Vivian’s dinner plate with her fork. “What’s that in your cranberry sauce?”

  Vivian hurriedly stabbed at the subject of Bird’s inquiry with her fork and flipped it into a paper napkin, but Clara declared: “Hair.”

  “Hair?” Gerald said, and Vivian looked ready to die. A couple more sizeable clumps fell onto her turkey as her fingers fluttered nervously around her glossy beehive hairdo, and Arturo and I gazed at each other with dread. For my part I was sure this drastic shedding signaled a serious illness, and my memory suddenly opened up an uncomfortable index of all the occasions upon which I hadn’t shown her the kindness she deserved.

  Olivia was unimpressed. “What is the meaning of this, Vivian?”

  Vivian scraped more hair into her napkin, forced a laugh, and said: “Sorry, Mama—I think it’s the lye. Too strong, or too regularly applied, something like that. But I’m fine”—she glanced at Arturo and reached around the back of Snow’s chair to squeeze his arm—“I’m fine.”

  “You always did overdo things, Vivian.” Olivia gestured to Agnes to pass down the wine carafe, but Clara handed the wine to her mother herself, saying: “You always did preach about hair. So tell us, what did Viv overdo? Was she supposed to pass as white, but only just? Was she supposed to come top of her class every time, but only just?”

  Olivia very calmly began to remind Clara that we were having a family dinner and that it was unpleasant for everybody when people spoke out of turn, but Vivian took a gulp of wine, rallied, and said: “No, Mama. I want to know. What did I overdo? It’s more than what Clara says. I could go on and on . . .”

  Gerald cleared his throat. “That’s enough. You listen to me. All your mama and I wanted was for our children to make some kind of difference in people’s lives. To serve justice, to teach, to do good—Clara, this includes you. Circumstances—we—well. We’ve tried hard to make it easier for you to do those things without people slamming doors in your faces.”

  Arturo sighed and said tonelessly: “Thank you.” Gerald turned in his son’s direction with a look of puzzled appeal, but Clara spoke first: “Can you really mean it, Pa, that all folks have to do is look the part? Does Viv get no credit at all from you for working damn hard and being good at what she does, plain and simple?” Her tone wasn’t aggressive, more idly inquisitive, and she didn’t look her father in the eye, but stared at the square of floral wallpaper above his head, clearly not expecting great things of the halting answer he began to give her.

  Olivia leaned forward and snapped: “For God’s sake, wake up from your dream world, Clara. You go and find out how many colored women are pulling down the salary that Vivian is, and we’ll talk about this again.”

  John began nodding. “You know she’s got a point there, Clara.”

  Olivia half smiled at him and Clara half frowned at him and h
e said: “Not that passing is the way.”

  “That statement would carry far greater weight with me if it had come from someone who stood even a remote chance of passing,” Olivia said.

  (From the moment Clara had first spoken up, Agnes Miller had been sadly humming “Sinner Man,” of all songs. Oh, sinner man . . . where you gonna run to? Arturo asked her to cut it out and she said: “Cut what out?”

  “The humming, Agnes. The humming,” Arturo told her. “We don’t need it right now.”

  She stopped, bewildered. “Who was that humming? I didn’t like it, either. Oh . . . I see . . . you’re sure it was me . . . ? I’m so sorry.”)

  Olivia looked across the table at Vivian, who’d tied a scarf around her head. “I see now that you must do what you want, Vivian. Stop keeping your hair tidy, if that’s what you think is damaging it—I’ve never had any trouble in that area, but as I say, do what you want to do. I’m your mother and God knows I’d rather have you well than sick. Do you understand?”

  Everybody kept still. I’d become aware of my neck swiveling as I looked at each person who spoke. This watchfulness was partly selfish, I was anticipating an episode of plate hurling and wanted to be sure I wasn’t caught in the crossfire. Snow and Bird hadn’t moved their heads much—it was their gaze that had been traveling from person to person, on opposite sides of the table. But if my daughter and her sister had noticed each other’s expressions, they might’ve been surprised to find that they both looked exactly like Judgment Day.

  Vivian walked around the table to her mother’s seat and shyly submitted to being kissed on the forehead. There was also a whispered recital of pet names I never knew she had. Agnes piped up: “I hear they’re beginning to say that black is beautiful now.”

  Olivia gave her friend a deeply cynical look and said: “We’ll see. Would anyone like some more of these potatoes? They’re very good, Clara.”