Heads of the Colored People

by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

  Marjorie and Alex had discussed this very scenario earlier in the week, to prepare Marjorie to handle her stress in places where she was likely to lose—and historically had lost—her temper. These lines are long and the setup stupid, Marjorie thought, and I am still going to sit here and hold my peace. I have already been mean to a little kid, and I can’t change that.

  • • •

  HER FIRST FOUR weeks of therapy were much more cut and dry than Marjorie expected. She had yet to cry or break down, and though Alex seemed relaxed, she gave Marjorie new homework to practice in between each appointment. The replacement of “but” with “and” had started to help, Marjorie could admit after the first week, as had the introduction of an acronym, WAIT, in the second.

  • • •

  “THE POINT IS that we want to calm you down with the pause, so you feel the anger and then proceed wisely,” Alex said.

  • • •

  MARJORIE TRIED WAIT at the grocery store and felt a little like a robot, acting from a program instead of her emotions, but she didn’t cuss anyone out, even under her breath. Alex’s worksheets were not altogether unlike the scripts Marjorie used at work to de-escalate conflict with angry customers, and there was something comforting in the canned process, the shortcuts.

  Yet—and—in anticipation of the weekly appointments, Marjorie found herself thinking about what she did not want to say to her therapist, rehearsing safe topics to replace the troubling memories that had begun to resurface, thoughts of Mother Lydia and Coryn, and of the many scars on her arms and their corresponding internal wounds. Marjorie did not want Alex—nonjudgmental or not—to know that some of her volatility was because so many people did not like or respect her and that some of her volunteer work was perhaps penance for sins she had committed. She did not want Alex to know that her drama with her foster sister Coryn resulted partly from Coryn’s lingering anger about something Marjorie did. She did not want Alex to know that she had slept with Coryn’s husband, Charles Stampton, for years after he married Coryn, and that sometimes, even this morning on the way to the DMV, Marjorie still, albeit briefly, missed him.

  • • •

  MARJORIE’S BLOOD SUGAR was running low and her adrenaline high in anticipation of the continued wait. She yawned in her chair, cold from the overcompensating air conditioner, mildly angry at the discomfort. The AC’s assault on her body temperature irritated her. She fished around inside her purse for a peppermint or butterscotch candy and found none. Everything was setting out to steal her joy. “Not today, Satan,” she whispered. She hadn’t slept well as it was; that was part of the problem. The neighbors, as usual, had hosted a loud party, to which they failed to invite her—perhaps out of racism, perhaps sexism, perhaps out of some anti-Christian sentiment, or perhaps because of Marjorie’s yelling match with them seven weeks ago about another party—and she spent the night tossing in bed, listening to the percussive bass line of their music, trying to guess what song it was. It all sounded like New Order or possibly Depeche Mode, but it could have been something new that she’d never heard, since she’d stopped listening to secular music in 1999, except for when she was with Charles.

  There were so many people trying to do music now, music that you could barely understand, let alone tolerate. Sometimes the students at the university played their music so loudly you could hear it through their headphones. Marjorie was known for calling right out from her counter in the bursar’s office, “Any music that I can hear from your personal device will prevent you from moving through this line.” The ones who could hear her would turn it right down, and the ones who couldn’t hear her initial threat heard her once she got on the PA system.

  Just this morning on Marjorie’s way to the DMV, a black twentysomething drove up next to her in a tiny Honda Civic, blaring loud rap music in the new whiny style with his windows down. Even in the unbearable August heat, Marjorie kept her car windows rolled partially down to cut through the condensation of the air conditioner, which made the car too cold. Marjorie was forced to roll her own windows back up because of the invasive music, and she did so with a glare at the young man, who laughed and bobbed his head as the bass still blared but more faintly. It all reminded her of a sounding brass, clanging cymbals. Later in the ride, two other cars cut her off, preventing her from switching into the left lane for an important turn. A stop sign reminded her of her acronym, WAIT, but she was already fuming by then and had to repent for her aggressive use of both middle fingers.

  Marjorie was only thirty-seven, but she felt older than her peers; some of them would say she felt better than them, too. But that wasn’t true. If anything, she felt inferior for all the many ways she failed at keeping herself unspotted from the world. Marjorie had said the sinner’s prayer at age four and rededicated her life to Christ again and again along the way: at fourteen, when she took up smoking; at seventeen, when she lost her virginity; at twenty-two, after a four-year “wild” bender at college; and at thirty-five, when she repented for her six-year affair with Charles Stampton. And she repented regularly for some of her ongoing thoughts, for the times when alone in her bed she still thought of Charles and wanted to touch the places that he used to.

  “Do your friends know how hard you are on yourself or how much you care about what other people think?” Alex had asked just last week during their session. “Because it seems like your Christianity offers you grace, but you don’t seem to ever offer any to yourself.”

  Marjorie almost told her about Coryn and Charles then, but she decided against it. Instead she said quietly, “I’m just trying to keep my hands clean, day by day. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, and I’ve asked for forgiveness, but I feel like I can’t stop doing them.”

  “And,” Alex said, “and you feel like you can’t stop doing them.”

  • • •

  ONE DMV TELLER’S line moved particularly slowly, and judging from the paperwork in the hands of the people queuing there, Marjorie guessed it was one of the license renewal lines. She could barely see the teller because she was so short, but Marjorie could see that once people got to her, they appeared to be making a lot of unnecessary small talk. She hoped she wouldn’t get stuck with that teller. Marjorie shook her head. She did occasionally make small talk with the students who came to the bursar’s office, but nothing that would hold everyone up like this.

  The boy in the hoodie and his mother were called into a line, and remembering her grimace, Marjorie felt a little bad. She tried to smile at him, but he frowned and tucked his face into his mother’s arm. People could be so unforgiving. It would serve Coryn well to forgive, just as Marjorie had when Coryn tried to have her excommunicated from the church. Such petty nonsense. The Church of God in Christ didn’t even practice excommunication. Coryn was remarried now anyway, and without Marjorie’s interventions, she never would have known that Charles was a cheater. It was not as though Coryn were blameless herself.

  Coryn, Marjorie, and Marjorie’s half-sister Latrice had grown up together as foster sisters under the care of Mother Lydia, a fine church lady from all external appearances but an uneven guardian. Mother Lydia made sure all three girls and her two foster sons were well dressed and fed—though in exchange they had to help with the sewing and cooking and grocery shopping. Her temper was frightening. Coryn, light-skinned and two years younger than Marjorie, with hair that was almost honey brown, was Mother Lydia’s favorite, Latrice her alternate, Marjorie her scapegoat. Once, Coryn had stolen twelve dollars from Mother Lydia’s purse and smiled innocently as Marjorie took the fall. Coryn had sneaked out of the house multiple times during their teen years, and Marjorie got the flack.

  “You gotta watch out for your sisters, girl,” Mother Lydia had said, “because who do you even have besides me and them? Don’t nobody else want you.”

  Marjorie still bore the scars of Mother Lydia’s cigarette burns up and down her arms and on the backs of her legs.

  Mother Lydia would sometimes say to
Marjorie, pulling her face close to hers, “You remind me of somebody I don’t like, and I can’t figure out who it is.” She never burned her after such speeches, the words searing enough. Marjorie would retreat to the bathroom to examine her round eyes and round face, her small breasts, the marks on her arms, but she could never figure out what Mother Lydia despised in her appearance. On Sundays Mother Lydia was all, “Praise the Lord,” and “I’m blessed.” Someone in the church must have suspected something was wrong in that house, but if they did, they never let on, and Marjorie was sure—from patchy memories—that whatever Mother Lydia rescued her from was worse than what she gave her.

  Certainly Marjorie had forgiven Mother Lydia and Coryn for these wounds, even Latrice, who married young and moved three counties away. Latrice, still married and a teacher now, hadn’t spoken to Marjorie since the scandal with Coryn and Charles. Marjorie could have easily brought up the lingering rumors about Coryn, about her son Londyn’s questionable paternity and the “spiritual retreat” where Coryn had “assisted” Pastor Bevis while First Lady Bevis was caring for her mother in Oakland. But she didn’t. And while Marjorie knew Charles was married to Coryn when she became involved with him, she didn’t date him out of any vengeful spirit toward Coryn, she was sure, at first. But when Charles whispered—his stubble against her ear—that he loved Marjorie’s personality, her hips, and the way she moved them, Marjorie couldn’t help but feel victorious. She hadn’t set out to hurt Coryn; Charles simply liked her better—she fulfilled his needs—just as Mother Lydia had seen something in Coryn that she preferred. These things happened sometimes.

  Anyway, Coryn won. She was happily remarried to a man who had legally adopted her son Londyn. Marjorie had only her work, both voluntary and paid—and the anticipated veneration for that work—and occasionally Jessica to keep her busy. Charles fled town after the scandal, after Coryn filed for divorce. Marjorie sometimes feared, especially now that her values were back intact, that she would never find love beyond the Lord.

  It might be good for her to talk some of this over with Alex, at least the Mother Lydia parts. Though the burn marks that covered her arms had long healed, sometimes the scars still hurt, and because of Marjorie’s self-flagellation they seemed to be living, growing things that reinflamed all the time. Marjorie didn’t want to see the marks or give anyone the opportunity to ask about them, so she kept them covered. But as Alex said about concealing feelings, the long sleeves didn’t take the pain away.

  • • •

  DESPITE HER SLEEVES, Marjorie wished she had brought a sweater into the DMV. She was freezing, and according to the monitors mounted on the wall, she still had a while to wait.

  “Freaking incompetent,” a man grumbled as he passed her on his way out of the building. “All this time, and now you tell me I have the wrong form.” He yelled back to the tellers, “Thanks for nothing,” and stormed out of the building. The space momentarily went silent before it filled with small gasps of pleasure and incredulity at the man’s speech. Marjorie had read a study somewhere about why DMVs and banks and similar spaces were known for horrible customer service. It concluded that where the job is low in status but high in power, the customer service will suffer the most. The more discontented the workers, the more discontented the customers. She’d read another story about a man who came to the DMV to pay a $3,000 bill, and in the ultimate act of passive aggression, did so with 300,000 unrolled pennies, distributed in five wheelbarrows carted in with the help of his friends. These kinds of things were the reason why people went postal, employees and customers alike.

  Marjorie could understand this in part. The students who came into the bursar’s office were often furious before they even got in her line, panicked that their financial aid had not been processed properly or irritated at what they perceived as discrepancies on their accounts. Marjorie’s training had taught her how to defuse these conflicts: (1) listen (avoid the word “but”); (2) acknowledge the problem (“Yes, that must be tough”); (3) provide assurance (“I understand, and I can help you”); and (4) even apologize for things that weren’t her fault if it calmed the situation.

  With some of the ruder students, however, Marjorie practiced what she called retributive finance, smiling her way through their transactions, following the four-step process for de-escalation, and then making certain errors after the students left, to pay them back for bad attitudes or terse conversation. She instinctively felt both guilty and justified for doing this. Her supervisor questioned her once about one of these “errors,” and from then on Marjorie staggered her payback just enough to continue undetected. But she felt worse, over time, for making these vindictive adjustments rather than waiting on divine retribution. Her conscience was quicker now to ping her with a twinge of guilt than ever before. Marjorie, for instance, would never hook up with Charles or any married man now. She took this and all the twinges as signs of her continued sanctification, because as Pastor Bevis said, “You get saved once, and that’s forever, but sanctification—becoming holy, living right day by day—that’s a process, and we’re all in that process.” Marjorie’s process for getting over Charles involved a lot of prayer and digging her nails into her own arms.

  The monitor announced Marjorie’s turn to approach the fingerprinting line, and she stood up. There were fourteen people ahead of her now, and it was just her burden to be called into the line of the lady who was making small talk with each customer, holding everyone up. Yes, Marjorie could understand why people went postal. She didn’t condone it, but she could understand the man’s fit as he stormed out of the DMV, could understand the desire to bring pennies, even respond violently—not that she would. But she understood the impulse.

  Marjorie moved up in the line. It was shrinking much more quickly than she expected, but the anticipation of having to wait in two additional lines after this one dulled her contentment. She had already run through WAIT twice in her mind on the way to the DMV. Now that she had been there for over an hour, she did not feel like practicing her skills. And it still bothered her, the way Jessica had gotten off the phone so quickly this morning. Marjorie couldn’t understand the difficulties in all her relationships; with Coryn, yes, but why was Jessica also pulling away? On the day she suggested therapy, Jessica had said something like, “You don’t want to grow old alone, do you, Marjorie?” Yes, her circle had shrunk, but it had never been large to begin with. As Mother Lydia said, whom did Marjorie have besides her sisters, who hated her? Where exactly was the Lord taking Marjorie, and was it somewhere so grand that it really couldn’t accommodate any lasting love? Or was she, as Jessica thought, the problem? Was she really that volatile, Mother-Lydia-volatile?

  And how could Marjorie tell her therapist not only of her affair, but also that it was not she, who, in holy wisdom, broke up with Charles, but he who rejected her, choosing Coryn over Marjorie once Coryn confronted him about the years-long relationship? Charles’s rejection only solidified Marjorie’s fear that there was something broken and ugly in her and irreparably so.

  Maybe part of the reason Marjorie couldn’t fully receive grace was that she didn’t find the concept altogether fair. Why shouldn’t some people be paid worse for their sins than others? Wasn’t a child abuser much less forgivable than, say, a jaywalker or an adulteress? If sin was sin, why did Coryn, who also had an affair of her own and who stole from Mother Lydia and was promiscuous in every way, have so many of the things Marjorie wanted while Marjorie had so little to show for her thirty-seven years on earth and her thirty-three years of sanctification? Why did people like Coryn and Jessica—and even Latrice, who was born of the same biological mother and into the same circumstances—have it all, the marriages, the careers, the families, while Marjorie only got to be the cleanup woman with the burn marks? Yes, she was angry. Why shouldn’t she be? And in the line, the weight of all this started to overwhelm her. She might at any moment faint or cry uncontrollably.

  Marjorie stood at the front of the line now. T
he attendant, a brunette woman, smiled into Marjorie’s face, the white collar of her shirt crisp and fragrant with fabric softener. Her nameplate said KELLY. She was downright perky, and this additional irritant Marjorie could not tolerate.

  “Here to get fingerprinted, ma’am?” Kelly smiled. “I’ll take that,” she said, reaching for Marjorie’s form. “The weather’s supposed to be nicer tomorrow.” She wore a purple glove on one hand. She grabbed Marjorie’s thumb, manipulated it, and dipped it into the ink and onto the paper.

  “I’d like to speak to a manager,” Marjorie said as Kelly pressed her forefingers down.

  Kelly smiled, confused, then noting Marjorie’s facial expression, said, “Come again?”

  “Your manager,” Marjorie repeated. “I’d like to talk to a manager about the service in this place.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am. I can get a manager,” Kelly said. “Can you tell me what the issue is so I can relay it accurately?”

  It was as though she were reading from a script or an acronym on customer-conflict resolution, and that made Marjorie angrier. Kelly should speak to her like a real person, not a hypothetical scenario from a training manual. If anyone knew and understood these tactics, Marjorie did.

  “I just said: the service,” Marjorie raised her voice and looked behind her at the others in line for their corroboration, but no one would meet her eyes. She turned back to Kelly, lifted her hands in exasperation, and waited, watched her feelings, acknowledged her anger and sadness, imagined her options, noted the black ink all over her fingers, the many ways her heart and hands were still dirty, her sanctification stagnated, her plan to keep calm today thwarted, how her friends and even Charles were justified in their departures, the sad account she would give before the Lord.