Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  When Cinnamon let them in she forgot all about the new Wagner album she was playing. She only heard Billie Holiday painfully crooning “Strange Fruit.” When the trio told her what had happened, their voices falling and tumbling over each other’s, she thought of one of the images she had seen as a child in her grandmother’s book by Ida B. Wells, a black man dangling from a cursed tree with his tongue hanging from his mouth, body twisted and left unknown till the sun rose. She could still imagine the small group of coloreds letting him down with tight jaws and angry eyes. Now she must hold her children close to her bosom, for blind hate had pelted them into three centuries of pain and humiliation. She wanted to ask why, but she knew already. Jim Crow followed and mocked them, his jagged dance like their very own shadows. The KKK’s burning crosses could not be seen, yet the fires were out of control.

  Cinnamon gathered her brood, saying, “Sometimes, white folks just act like that. There’s nothing we can do about it. I am simply determined that you all have a fine education. White folks may ruin your new clothes, even find pleasure in your pain, but you’ve got to learn to get used to them and the fact that sometimes they can’t stand the sight, the very breath, of the colored folks, the Negroes, or any of us steppin’ up to claim what is rightfully ours.”

  “But Mama,” Tokyo whined from her special corner in the kitchen, “they were callin’ us niggers,” and she wept.

  Abbott coldly echoed, “Somebody should go on ahead and throw rocks at their white trash kids.”

  Exasperated, Cinnamon held her head in trembling hands, undone by her own children’s anguish and rage. Not being able to soothe them, she called Lawrence to quell this mess, to talk some sense to all of them. Hearing Abbott shouting to the walls all the wretched things he could do to torment white folks with his saxophone, she urged her husband to hurry, “I don’t care if you’ve got a class. Come home now!”

  As soon as Lawrence arrived Cinnamon rushed into his deep brown arms, grabbing on to him, as though he were an armored jeep at Little Rock. Lawrence held her close and let his fingers massage her head through her hair, rearranging the style every which way. He could feel her breathing slow as he rocked her in his arms. He wished his wife didn’t shudder so at the weight of white folks, though he understood. “Cinnamon, it’s gonna be all right. Sweetheart, believe me, we’ll weather this.”

  At that very moment they could hear Tokyo screaming, “I’m never goin’ back, never!”

  And James was right behind her saying, “They ain’t gonna hurt me no mo’, no sirree!”

  Abbott was laughing cynically, throwing a basketball against the kitchen wall, his face implacable. Entering the kitchen both Lawrence and Cinnamon caught this and held each other closer. They’d seen this look before. On the faces of Max Schmeling fans as the Brown Bomber was defeated, on the nightly news footage of Little Rock, in the press coverage of Emmett Till’s mother walking passed her son’s killers, alternately smiling and snarling at her. The hatred their son had just experienced he now wore on his own face. It was the look of hatred so deep there is no passion, like strangling a man and not breaking a sweat.

  Cinnamon abruptly jerked her head up from Lawrence. She wanted an aria of solace to grace her ears, but all that she could hear was Marion Williams and Mahalia Jackson, their voices colliding, the rhythms out of control. With a rollin’ stride and Hallelujah wig flyin’ off, Lord take my burden, she jumped up and flew toward her son with fear and rage. “Abbott! Of all times to be playing ball! You know I don’t allow ball playing in the house. Now is the time for you to be an example for your brother and sister, not act like some street hoodlum.”

  Feeling her husband’s hands on her waist, Cinnamon calmed a bit. Abbott chuckled softly in a quiet disregard and threw the ball again. Lawrence caught it mid-air and slapped the hide hard with his palm. “When your mother speaks to you, young man, you mind what she says! You hear me?” Abbott didn’t answer, but sat down hard on the kitchen stool, his legs sprawled out, his head buried under his arms.

  Everybody was in such emotional disarray, Cinnamon could only think of food. Only something inaudible, undeniable, and known could bring sanity back to her family. She could almost smell her grandma’s magical gumbo and all the other pots of the delicious stew brewed by Mayfield women way back to Ma Bette’s Sweet Tamarind time. Cinnamon looked around at her children in various degrees of shock and announced, “Hey, I’m going to the store and pick us up some things for a great big ol’ gumbo. How’s that suit you?” Tokyo and James immediately smiled. Abbott rubbed his hand over his close-cropped hair and stared straight at his father like Frankie Lymon looking at his dealer before the buy, as angry as he was hungry. Simultaneously, his parents decided to ignore him.

  “C’mon, Tokyo,” Cinnamon coaxed, looking for an ally, “let’s you and me run to the store ’fore it gets too late. Let’s leave the men here to set things up, all right?” Tokyo jumped at the chance to go with her mother and away from the dense tension in the room. Without looking at anyone, Cinnamon bustled her only girl out of the apartment. When they boarded the crowded elevator, Tokyo wiggled her way to the back through her neighbors with their laundry and their dogs until she could go no further. Huddled in the corner, she wished she could simply vanish.

  The grown-ups somberly nodded to Cinnamon. “Was a terrible thing those white folks did to those chirren today,” said Mrs. Weathers. “Already on the news.”

  Mr. Hubert shook his head grimly. “Now, we are in the very gospel itself. White folks actin’ like ravin’ maniacs, goin ta hurt the chil’ren so. Jesus say, ‘And now a child shall lead them.’ Yes Lord, we gotta praise those lil chil’ren for standin’ up to ’em.”

  Tokyo listened intently. She had thought that she and her brothers had embarrassed their parents, but now these adults were singing their praises. None of it made any sense. She sighed to herself and clutched her mother’s hand.

  At the co-op supermarket, Tokyo watched her mother wordlessly roam the produce section picking the best okra, tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, and celery, then sniffing at the spice jars of clove and filé powder. “Hmm. No tamarind, well, we’ll have to make do.” In the meat section, Tokyo broke the silence. “Mama, did you hear what those grown-ups were saying about us?”

  Cinnamon kept rolling their cart and smiled. “I do believe they were praising you and your brothers. They think, just like I do, that you all were mighty courageous this morning.”

  As her mother pointed to the sausage preferred, Tokyo could almost taste her Grandma El’s gumbo simmering in the pot, but at the sound of the butcher whacking at the row of short ribs, Tokyo reeled back on her heels and saw fear toddle round through the blood on the butcher’s floor, the clap of the meat cleaver striking the bone reminding her of the tomatoes hitting the windows of her bus. Tokyo lifted her head finally, and followed her mother over to the seafood section. She watched curiously as Cinnamon hummed along with an Elvis Presley tune on the supermarket sound system. “Why are you singing with that poor white trash, Mama?”

  Cinnamon tried to look irked, saying, “Tokyo, we don’t talk about people like that. White people actin’ ugly at your school doesn’t make ’em all ugly, and trash is garbage, not people.”

  The child was not pleased with that response.

  “Besides,” Cinnamon softened, “it seems like Mr. Elvis Presley didn’t hear much but Negro music when he was growing up. Sometimes I just hum with him to let him know whatever kind of ‘King’ he may be, his blue suede shoes can’t just walk away without stuff. If he can sing our music, I suppose I gotta right to sing along with him.”

  Tokyo thought for a minute, figuring her mother made sense in an odd sort of way.

  Once Cinnamon and Tokyo arrived home, the whole family pitched in to clean and chop what the two had bought for dinner, all layin’ on their hands. Pretty soon, the meats and fishes, vegetables and seasonings all heated up together to make a savory magnolia and gardenia Southern night rise up
out of Chicago. For generations, the Mayfield women could bring scents to soothe and nurture the same way they handled music. Like a vigorously blossoming orchid, fragile but fiercely alive, the gumbo pot bubbled and simmered, undulating colors of green, pink, bright red, and white in a thick russet-hued roux. Like a grandma rocking a child back and forth, the exotic aroma of Cinn’s famous okra gumbo brought the whole family’s temperament back to equanimity. With one bite everyone’s mood lightened and their faces shone. Cinn and Lawrence glanced around the table. The varied chocolate and caramel tones that were their children brought proud and romantic smiles to their faces. Yes, it had been a turbulent day, but that’s all it had been, a day.

  The Walkers drifted into a Jackie Wilson, Billy Eckstine smooth defiance. Then Smokey Robinson for the kids. Cinnamon succumbed to their pleas, “No opera!” She, too, had had enough of Europe today. She settled on Count Basie in white tails and Duke Ellington’s sensual orchestrations, his “Daybreak Express” leading the Walker children off to bed. With a new Art Blakey cut wailing from the front room, Lawrence closed the evening with one of his professorial overviews. “This, the music of our forebears, has survived everything, and because it exists, it tells us that we can survive anything. Jump back slavery! Jim Crow better lay low! Today we welcome the Walker children to the Movement. Be ready for school tomorrow,” he hollered down the hallway after them, “the bus will be here at seven o’clock.”

  Lawrence saw his youngest son, James, still huddled by his bedroom door. James had his hands over his ears as if he couldn’t hear the music or didn’t want to, as if he would shut out not only the music but his father’s words. Thinking how he might embolden the child’s spirit for the next day, Lawrence walked quietly toward his son, but when he reached to touch James’s shoulder, the boy ran away. Lawrence remembered very distinctly telling his children, “All of you are children in the battle for your race. No matter what those white folks try to do to you, you’ll show them they can’t stop us.” He wondered what had not gotten through to James. “What’s the matter, son?”

  James stood still for a minute, then broke down in tears and finally sprawled on the floor screaming and kicking. “Daddy, I don’t want to be colored anymore, never, never again! Daddy, I want to be white . . . I wanna be white!” he pleaded until exhausted.

  Lawrence gently lifted his son off the hardwood floor and carried him to his bed. “So you want to be a little white boy, do you?”

  James nodded his head an emphatic and tearful yes.

  Tenderly Lawrence caressed his son, saying, “Hmm, that would mean I couldn’t be your father anymore. And we would have to find you another mother, of course. Abbott and Tokyo wouldn’t be your brother and sister anymore either.”

  James looked astonished. “We could all be white, Daddy. If we all turn white, then we wouldn’t have to lose anybody.”

  Lawrence heard Gene Ammons vaguely in the background and told his son that he wasn’t sure the rest of the family ever thought about being white.

  “Daddy, I hadn’t either, not until this morning. I swear, Daddy, it’s the Lord’s honest truth. But all those people cursing at us and all the time shouting ‘Niggah this’ and ‘Niggah that.’ Next thing you know there’ll be shooting and lynching, Daddy.”

  Lawrence hugged his son, not really sure how to express himself, but he said soberly, “Do you honestly want to be like those people and scare and injure nice Negro children like you and your sister and brother?”

  James shook his head.

  “Do you want to hurt other little colored children, like you were hurt today?”

  James shook his head no again.

  “You know, I think you’re one of the finest Negro boys I’ve ever known. And your mother and I love you so much just the way you are. For all that you are and because you are. Why, if you became white, you would be someone else and we would miss our little colored child for the rest of our lives.” As Lawrence hummed an old Pearl Bailey blues, James fell asleep faster than Ella Fitzgerald scats.

  Neither the tribulations of integration they faced that whole autumn, nor the freezing lake winds that followed, were allowed to hamper the Walkers’ Christmas holidays. The children had wrapped fruitcakes and special letters for all their family down south. The apartment smelled of cloves and Jack Daniel’s as Cinnamon cooked for their grown-up friends and Lawrence played bartender. The adults danced to Brook Benton and Johnny Mathis, sometimes Ruth Brown or Big Mama Thornton, depending on how high they got. Abbott, Toyko, and James made themselves comfortable way in the dark of the longest hallway, mimicking the grown-ups, making believe which instrument each would play on which song. Abbott always had a tenor horn in his hands, his fingers feverishly pouncing upon imaginary keys not unlike Dexter Gordon. Tokyo played at warbling notes like Dinah Washington and teasing the ivories like Hazel Scott. James fell languidly over his knees banging out drum beats as though Mongo Santamaría himself had settled in his body.

  Eventually the adults turned to doo-wop and the sounds that enticed them to do the dances their children had vainly tried to teach them. “This is how you do the mashed potatuhs,” Lawrence joked and proceeded to embarrass both his wife and children. From Lee Andrews and the Hearts to the Flamingos and the Olympics, the Walker home was, as they say, jumpin’. The children didn’t miss a moment of their mother, the opera aficionado, flinging her lithe body the same way most colored women did. They fell over themselves laughing until they fell over themselves sleeping. Cinnamon and Lawrence began untangling their offspring from one another to put them to bed safely and then went to their own bedroom to finish that dance.

  Savoring Eddie Jefferson’s languid sensual vocals over Coleman Hawkins’s husky sax, Lawrence began undressing with no particular haste. Cinnamon caught her husband in the midst of his crooning and giggled out loud while she bounced on their bed. Lawrence looked askance at his wife’s taunting and flirting, her thinking to get him all hot and bothered. “Well, now you know how I feel when you’re up here by the mirror being all of Tina Turner and then some.”

  “My sweet thing, if you want to be Bo Diddley, I most surely am your guitar.”

  As they lay across the bed, Cinnamon wrapped her arms round her husband, feeling his weight and warmth. She thanked the Lord again that he’d come home unscathed from the war, giving her a chance to discover how much she loved him. How precious his life was to her! When she lost her ability to sing, he had stood by her through the sorrow and anger. The emptiness had been filled with love and laughter and three rambunctious children. At the same time Lawrence hoped his wife understood that while he couldn’t play a horn or a piano like most of her family, he had tried to surround her with creativity. Works by Negro artists: Richmond Barthé, Jacob Lawrence, Lois Maillou Jones, Charles White, and Elizabeth Catlett. Music from Cuba, Brazil, and India. He would read to her a sonnet from Shakespeare or in French from Senghor’s “Poèmes Perdu.” True, she had founded a Chicago branch of the Negro Opera Company, which performed at local society clubs, and she offered private instruction it seemed to any aspirant who knocked on her door, but she missed her own voice. He knew that. Still, to him, Cinnamon’s music was never lost. It lingered in the way she walked and laughed and smelled, in how she loved. She was every woman Ellington ever composed for, every lady Prez ever serenaded, every girl Smokey ever crooned to. Even if he couldn’t give her that one thing she craved, “Everything, you’re my everything,” he whispered in her ear. Fervently embracing, their bodies melted into a jazz-laced adagio.

  As they grew older, the Walker children developed their own idiosyncratic musical obsessions. Tokyo belted out every blues and R&B song she could lay her hands on, from Bessie Smith to Aretha Franklin. Often, she would dip out of her Presbyterian Sunday school and sneak over to a Baptist storefront, where she could wail until her hair came loose. James, when he wasn’t reading Baldwin or Yerby, caught himself dabbling with chords on the piano. Abbott was rarely seen; the young teen was n
ow both the treasure and bane of old blues men come up from Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama, he and his high school cohorts challenging the older fellows with what they called the Chicago sound. In the big brassy, funky new sound, Abbott’s screeching saxophone was a standout. “Bring it to me, youngblood!”

  All was well with the Walker family, but Chicago’s desegregation issues remained unresolved and there were rumblings all over the South. Lawrence and Cinnamon were constantly going to NAACP, CORE, and SCLC meetings and taking the family to rallies. They waited with hearts pounding for the next syllable from Martin Luther King’s lips. The Negro people were preparing themselves for a struggle that Denmark Vesey and John Brown never dreamed possible. The adamant sounds of Coltrane beat against the wind. Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln set the pace for the determined steps of the colored marching anywhere they’d been swindled, lynched, tarred and feathered, or seen their house burnt to the ground. Archie Shepp propelled the songs of the freedom brigades with his wildly lyrical horn, his voice and words indefatigable. All this quivered and roamed the blood of the Walker family as they reflected Sunny Murray’s skillful brushes and cymbals, leading the Negro people to James Weldon Johnson’s roaring seas of “let earth and heaven ring.” Liberty was a taste on the very tongues of the colored, their appetite for freedom unquenchable. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round, turn me round, turn me round/ Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round . . .” echoed at the all-white lunch counters and general stores, in polling booths and on campus steps, and through the televisions of the world. Couldn’t a livin’ soul escape what Alain Locke prophesied some forty years before. “The New Negro” had become a people suddenly turned Black with Power, embodied in the symbols of a clenched fist and the crouched stance of a panther. “We Insist!” they said.