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Momma related times without end, and without any show of emotion, how Uncle Willie had been dropped when he was three years old by a woman who was minding him. She seemed to hold no rancor against the babysitter, nor for her just God who allowed the accident. She felt it necessary to explain over and over again to those who knew the story by heart that he wasn't “born that way.”
Only once in all the years of trying not to watch him, I saw him pretend to himself and others that he wasn't lame.
in the only Negro store in Stamps.
Not only did I not feel any loyalty to my own father, I figured that if I had been Uncle Willie's child I would have received much better treatment.
He must have tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame.
He was my first white love.
But it was Shakespeare who said, “When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.” It was a state with which I felt myself most familiar.
Until I was thirteen and left Arkansas for good, the Store was my favorite place to
If on Judgment Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear.
It was fortunate that the “boys” didn't ride into our yard that evening and insist that Momma open the Store. They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him. He moaned the whole night through as if he had, in fact, been guilty of some heinous crime.
The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you).
In later years they change faces, places and maybe races,
My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.
But at least twice yearly Momma would feel that as children we should have fresh meat included in our diets. We were then given money—pennies, nickels and dimes entrusted to Bailey-and sent to town to buy liver.
I remember never believing that whites were really real.
I looked at the items that weren't on display. I knew, for instance, that white men wore shorts, as Uncle Willie did, and that they had an opening for taking out their “things” and peeing, and that white women's breasts weren't built into their dresses, as some people said, because I saw their brassieres in the baskets. But I couldn't force myself to think of them as people.
Whitefolks couldn't be people because their feet were too small, their skin too white and see-throughy, and they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did—they walked on their heels like horses.
“Thou shall not be dirty” and “Thou shall not be impudent” were the two commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation.
But Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.
Everyone I knew respected these customary laws, except for the powhitetrash children.
They called my uncle by his first name and ordered him around the Store. He, to my crying shame, obeyed them in his limping dip-straight-dip fashion.
her. But the tall one, who was almost a woman,
The slick pubic hair made a brown triangle where her legs came together.
Her face was a brown moon that shone on me. She was beautiful. Something had happened out there, which I couldn't completely understand, but I could see that she was happy.
didn't think that was so bad, but Bailey explained that Mr. Washington was probably “doing it” to her. He said that although “it” was bad just about everybody in the world did it to somebody, but no one else was supposed to know that. And once, we found out about a man who had been killed by whitefolks and thrown into the pond. Bailey said the man's things had been cut off and put in his pocket and he had been shot in the head, all because the whitefolks said he did “it” to a white woman.
Momma had married three times: Mr. Johnson, my grandfather, who left her around the turn of the century with two small sons to raise; Mr. Henderson, of whom I know nothing at all (Momma never answered questions directly put to her on any subject except religion); then finally Mr. Murphy. I saw him a fleeting once.
saw only her power and strength. She was taller than any woman in my personal world, and her hands were so large they could span my head from ear to ear. Her voice was soft only because she chose to keep it so. In church, when she was called upon to sing, she seemed to pull out plugs from behind her jaws and the huge, almost rough sound would pour over the listeners and throb in the air.
Momma intended to teach Bailey and me to use the paths of life that she and her generation and all the Negroes gone before had found, and found to be safe ones. She didn't cotton to the idea that whitefolks could be talked to at all without risking one's life. And certainly they couldn't be spoken to insolently.
Didn't she stand up to “them” year after year? Wasn't she the only Negro woman in Stamps referred to once as Mrs.?
who owned a store in that village would also turn out to be colored. The whites tickled their funny bones with the incident for a long time, and the Negroes thought it proved the worth and majesty of my grandmother.
I couldn't understand whites and where they got the right to spend money so lavishly. Of course, I knew God was white too, but no one could have made me believe he was prejudiced. My grandmother had more money than all the powhitetrash. We owned land and houses, but each day Bailey and I were cautioned, “Waste not, want not.”
The country had been in the throes of the Depression for two years before the Negroes in Stamps knew
think that everyone thought that the Depression, like everything else, was for the whitefolks, so it had nothing to do with them.
Negro community realized that the Depression, at least, did not discriminate.
One Christmas we received gifts from our mother and father, who lived separately in a heaven called California,
Maybe she had just been angry at something we had done, but was forgiving us and would send for us soon.
And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.
His voice rang like a metal dipper hitting a bucket and he spoke English. Proper English, like the school principal, and even better.
milled around and he strutted, throwing ers and errers all over the place and under the sad eyes of Uncle Willie.
kissing sounds of the tires on the pavement and the steady moan of the motor.
He sounded more like a white man than a Negro.
Our father left St. Louis a few days later for California, and I was neither glad nor sorry. He was a stranger, and if he chose to leave us with a stranger, it was all of one piece.
Grandmother Baxter was a quadroon or an octoroon, or in any case she was nearly white.
We learned to say “Yes” and “No” rather than “Yes, ma'am,” and “No, ma'am.”
I sneaked away to Robin Hood's forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed every
asleep again. But I awoke to a pressure, a strange feeling on my left leg. It was too soft to be a hand, and it wasn't the touch of clothes. Whatever it was, I hadn't encountered the sensation in all the years of sleeping with Momma. It didn't move, and I was too startled to. I turned my head a little to the left to see if Mr. Freeman was awake and gone, but his eyes were open and both hands were above the cover. I knew, as if I had always known, it was his “thing” on my leg.
Mr. Freeman pulled me to him, and put his hand between my legs. He didn't hurt, but Momma had drilled into my head: “Keep your legs closed, and don't let nobody see your pocketbook.”
Finally he was quiet, and then came the nice part. He held me so softly that I wished he wouldn't ever let me go. I felt at home. From the way he was holding me I knew he'd never let me go or let anything bad ever happen to me. This was probably my real father and we had found each other at last. But then he rolled over, leaving me in a wet place and stood
“Get up. You peed in the bed.” He poured water on the wet spot, and it did look like my mattress on many mornings.
“Ritie, you love Bailey?” He sat down on the bed and I came close, hoping. “Yes.” He was bending down, pulling on his socks, and his back was so large and friendly I wanted to rest my head on it. “If you ever tell anybody what we did, I'll have to kill Bailey.” What had we done? We? Obviously he didn't mean my peeing in the bed. I didn't understand and didn't dare ask him. It had something to do with his holding me. But there was no chance to ask Bailey either, because that would be telling what we had done. The thought that he might kill Bailey stunned me.
