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never were very friendly*1 so if you hadn't gone anywhere, they wouldn't have liked you any more. I was born here, and will die here, and they've never liked me." He was resigned and without obvious sorrow;
"But, L.C., why don't you get away?"
"And what would my poppa do? I'm all he's got." He stopped me before I could answer, and went on, "Sometimes I bring home my salary and he drinks it up before I can buy food for the week. Your grandmother knows. She lets me have credit all the time."
We were nearing the Store and he kept talking as if I weren't there. I knew for sure that he was going to continue talking to himself after I was safely in my bed.
"I've thought about going to New Orleans or Dallas, but all I know is how to chop cotton, pick cotton and hoe potatoes. Even if I could save the money to take Poppa with me, where would I get work in the city? That's what happened to him, you know? After my mother died he wanted to leave the house, but where could he go? Sometimes when he's drunk two bottles of White Lightning, he talks to her. 'Reenie, I can see you standing there. How come you didn't take me with you, Reenie? I ain't got no place to go, Reenie. I want to be with you, Reenie.' And I act like I don't even hear him."
We had reached the back door of the Store. He held out his hand.
"Here, chew these Sen-sen. Sister Henderson ought not know you've been drinking. Good night, Marguerite. Take it easy."
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And he melted into the darker darkness. The following year I heard that he had blown his brains out with a shotgun on the day of his father's funeral.
17
The midmorning sun was deceitfully mild and the wind had no weight on my skin. Arkansas summer mornings have a feathering effect on stone reality.
After five days in the South my quick speech had begun to drag, and the clipped California diction (clipped in cornparison) had started to slur. I had to brace myself properly to "go downtown." In San Francisco, women dressed particularly to shop in the Geary and Market streets' big-windowed stores. Short white gloves were as essential a part of the shopping attire as girdles, which denied cleaved buttocks, and deodorant, which permitted odorless walkings up and down the steep hills.
I dressed San Francisco style for the nearly three-mile walk and proceeded through the black part of town, past the Christian Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal churches and the proud little houses that sat above their rose bushes in grassless front yards, on toward the pond and the railroad tracks which separated white town from black town. My postwar Vinylite high heels, which were see-through plastic, crunched two inches into the resisting gravel, and I
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tugged my gloves all the wa"y up to my wrist. I had won over the near-tropical inertia, and the sprightly walk, made a bit jerky by the small grabbing stones, the neat attire and the high headed position, was bound to teach the black women watching behind lace curtains how they should approach a day's downtown shopping. It would prove to the idle white women, once I reached their territory, that I knew how things should be done. And if I knew, well, didn't that mean that there were legions of Black women in other parts of the world who knew also? Up went the Black Status.
When I glided and pulled into White Town, there was a vacuum. The air had died and fallen down heavily. I looked at the white windows expecting to see curtains lose strained positions and resume their natural places. But the curtains on both sides of the street remained fixed. Then I realized that the white women were missing my halting but definitely elegant advance on their town. I then admitted my weariness, but urged my head higher and my shoulders squarer than before.
What Stamps' General Merchandise Store missed in class it made up in variety. Cheap grades of thread and chicken feed, farming implements and hair ribbons, fertilizer, shampoo, women's underwear, and B.V.D.s. Socks, face powder, school supplies and belly-wrenching laxatives were shoved on and under the shelves.
I pitied the poor storekeeper and the shop attendants. When I thought of the wide aisles of San Francisco's Emporium and the nearly heard, quiet conversations in the expensive City of Paris, I gave the store a patronizing smile.
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A young, very blond woman's mournful countenance met me in the middle of a crowded aisle. I gave her, "Good morning," and let a benign smile lift the corners of my lips.
"What can I do for you?" The thin face nodded at me like a sharp ax descending slowly. I thought, "The poor shabby dear." She didn't even form her words. Her question floated out like a hillbilly song, "Whakin I dew fer yew?"
"I'd like a Simplicity pattern, please." I could afford to be courteous. I was the sophisticate. When I gave her the pattern number out of my head and saw her start at my Western accent, regained for the moment, I felt a rush of kindness for the sorrowful cracker girl. I added, "If you please."
She walked behind a counter and riffled through a few aging sewing patterns, her shoulders rounding over the drawer as if its contents were in clanger. Although she was twenty, or more likely eighteen, her stance and face spoke of an early surrender to the poverty of poor-white Southern life. There was no promise of sex in her hip span, nor flight in her thin short fingers.
"We ain't got it here. But I can put in a order to Texarkana for it for you."
She never looked up and spoke of the meager town twentyfive miles away as if she meant Istanbul.
"I would so much appreciate that." I did feel grateful and even more magnanimous.
"It'll be back in three days. You come in on Friday."
I wrote my name, Marguerite A. Johnson, without flourishes on the small pad she handed me, smiled encouragement to her and walked back into the now-serious noon
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sunshine. The heat had rendefed the roads empty of pedestrians, and it assaulted my shoulders and the top of my head as if it had been lying in wait for me.
The memory of the insensate clerk prodded me into exaggerated awareness and dignity. I had to walk home at the same sprightly clip, my arms were obliged to swing in their same rhythm, and I would not under any circumstances favor the shade trees which lined the road. My head blurred with deep pains, and the rocky path swam around me, but I kept my mind keen on the propriety of my position and finally gained the Store.
Momma asked from the cool, dark kitchen, "What'd you buy, Sister?"
I swallowed the heat-induced nausea and answered, "Nothing, Momma."
The days eased themselves around our lives like visitors in a sickroom. I hardly noticed their coming and going. Momma was as engrossed as she'd allow herself in the wonder of my son. Patting, stroking, she talked to him and never introduced in her deep voice the false humor adults tend to offer babies. He, in turn, surrendered to her. Following her from kitchen to porch to store to the backyard.
Their togetherness came to be expected. The tall and large dark-brown woman (whose movement never seemed to start or stop) was trailed one step by the pudgy little butter-yellow baby lurching, falling, now getting himself up, at moments rocking on bowed legs, then off again in the wave of Momma.
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I never saw her turn or stop to right him, but she would slow her march and resume when he was steady again.
My pattern had arrived from old exotic Texarkana. And I .?'*
dressed for the trek downtown, and checked my hair, which I'-
was straightened to within an inch of its life and greased to desperation. From within the Store, I felt the threat of the sun but walked out into the road impelled by missionary zeal.
By the time I reached the pond and Mr. Willie Williams' Dew Drop In, the plastic seemed to have melted to the exact shape of my feet, and sweat had popped through the quarter inch of Arrid in my armpits.
Mr. Williams served me a cold drink. "What you trying to do? Fry your brains?"
/> "I'm on my way to the General Merchandise Store. To pick up an order."
His smile was a two-line checkerboard of white and gold. "Be careful they don't pick you up. This sun ain't playing."
Arrogance and stupidity nudged me out of the little caf? and back on the white hot clay. I drifted under the shade trees, my face a mask of indifference. The skin of my thighs scudded like wet rubber as I walked deliberately by the alien white houses and on to my destination.
In the store the air lay heavily on the blades of two sluggish ,|
overhead fans, and a sweet, thick odor enveloped me at the ?jl
cosmetic counter. Still, I was prepared to wander the aisles until the sun forgave our sins and withdrew its vengeance. Ji
A tall saleswoman wearing a clerk's smock confronted me. I
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I tried to make room for her in the narrow corridor. I moved to my left, she moved to her right.'I right, she left, we jockeyed a moment's embarrassment and I smiled. Her long face answered with a smile. "You stand still and I'll pass you." It was not a request for cooperation. The hard mountain voice gave me an order.
To whom did she think she was speaking? Couldn't she see from my still-white though dusty gloves, my starched clothes, that I wasn't a servant to be ordered around? I had walked nearly three miles under a sun on fire and was neither gasping nor panting, but standing with the cool decorum of a great lady in the tacky, putrid store. She should have considered that.
"No, you stand still and I'll pass around you," I cornmanded.
The amazement which leaped upon her face was quickly pushed aside by anger. "What's your name? Where you from?"
A repetition of "You stand still and I'll pass around you" was ready on my tongue, when the pale woman who had taken my order slack-butted down the aisle toward us. The familiar face brought back the sympathy I had felt for her and I explained the tall woman into limbo with "Excuse me, here comes my salesgirl."
The dark-haired woman turned quickly and saw her colleague approach. She put herself between us, and her voice rasped out in the quiet store: "Who is this?"
Her head jerked back to indicate me. "Is this that sassy Ruby Lee you was telling me about?"
9]
The clerk lifted her chin and glanced at me, then swirled to the older woman. "Naw, this ain't her." She flipped the pages of a pad in her hand and continued, "This one's Margaret or Marjorie or something like that."
Her head eased up again and she looked across centuries at me. "How do you pronounce your name, gal? Speak up."
In that moment I became rootless, nameless, pastless. The two white blurs buoyed before me.
"Speak up," she said. "What's your name?"
I clenched my reason and forced their faces into focus. "My name"-here I drew myself up through the unrevenged slavery -"is Miss Johnson. If you have occasion to use my name, which I seriously doubt, I advise you to address me as Miss Johnson. For if I need to allude to your pitiful selves, I shall call you Miss Idiot, Miss Stupid, Miss Fool or whatever name a luckless fate has dumped upon you."
The women became remote even as I watched them. They seemed actually to float away from me down the aisle; and from watching their distant faces, I knew they were having trouble believing in the fact of me.
"And where I'm from is no concern of yours, but rather where you're going. I'll slap you into the middle of next week if you even dare to open your mouths again. Now, take that filthy pattern and stick it you-know-where."
As I strode between the two women I was sheathed in satisfaction. There had been so few critical times when my actions met my approval that now I congratulated myself. I had got them told and told correctly. I pictured the two women's mouths still open in amazement. The road was less rocky and
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the sun's strength was weakened By my pleasure. Congratulations were in order. j '
There was no need to stop at Mr. Williams' for a refreshing drink. I was as cool as a fountain inside as I headed home.
Momma stood on the porch facing the road. Her arms hung at her sides and she made no motions with her head. Yet something was wrong. Tension had distorted the statue straightness and caused her to lean leftward. I stopped patting myself on the back and ran to the Store.
When I reached the one-step porch, I looked up in her face. "Momma, what's the matter?"
Worry had forced a deep line down either side of her nostrils past her stiffly held lips.
"What's wrong?"
"Mr. Coleman's granddaughter, Miss fune, just called from the General Merchandise Store." Her voice quaked a little. "She said you was downtown showing out."
So that's how they described my triumph to her. I decided to explain and let her share in the glory. I began, "It was the principle of the thing, Momma-"
I didn't even see the hand rising, and suddenly it had swung down hard against my cheek.
"Here's your principle, young miss."
I felt the sting on my skin and the deep ache in my head. The greatest hurt was that she didn't ask to hear my side.
"Momma, it was a principle." My left ear was clogged, but I heard my own voice fuzzily.
The hand didn't surprise me the second time, but the same logic which told me I was right at the white store told me I
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was no less right in front of Momma. I couldn't allow myself to duck the blow. The backhand swing came down on my right cheek.
"Here's your principle." Her voice had a far-away-tunnel sound.
"It was a principle, Momma." Tears poured down my burning face, and ache backed up in my throat.
The hand came again and again each time I mumbled "principle," and I found myself in the soft dust in front of the porch. I didn't want to move. I never wanted to get up again.
She stepped off the porch and caught my arms. "Get up. Stand up, I say."
Her voice never allowed disobedience. I stood, and looked at her face. It glistened as if she had just dashed a pan of water over her head.
"You think 'cause you've been to California these crazy people won't kill you? You think them lunatic cracker boys won't try to catch you in the road and violate you? You think because of your all-fired principle some of the men won't feel like putting their white sheets on and riding over here to stir up trouble? You do, you're wrong. Ain't nothing to protect you and us except the good Lord and some miles. I packed you and the baby's things, and Brother Wilson is coming to drive you to Louisville."
That afternoon I climbed into a horse-drawn wagon, and took my baby from Momma's arms. The baby cried as we pulled away, and Momma and Uncle Willie stood waving and crying good-bye.
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Momma's intent to protect me had caused her to hit me in the face, a thing she had never done, and to send me away to where she thought I'd be safe. So again", the South and I had parted and again I was headed for the cool gray hills of San Francisco. I raged on the train that white stupidity could so dictate my movements and looked unsheathed daggers at every white face I saw.
If the tables could have turned at that instant, I would gladly have consigned every white person living and the millions dead to a hell where the devil was blacker than their fears of blackness and more cruel than forced starvation. But, powerless, I spent the time on the train entertaining the baby when I thought of it, and wondering if I would be met by a warrant for my arrest when I returned to California.
The city didn't even know I had been away, and Mother took me and the baby to a room in her new fourteen-room house as if I had just returned from a long-intended holiday.
I found a job as a short-order cook in a tiny greasy spoon. The men who ate there were defeated leftovers from the nowclosed war plants. They slouched into the fifth-rate dingy diner hugging their distress.
The job paid very little and the atmosphere of despair that never lifted depress
ed me. I left the restaurant each afternoon feeling that the rancid cooking oil and the old men's
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sadness had seeped into my pores and were crawling through my body.
One afternoon I went into a record shop across the street from the diner and found a woman who was friendly and warm behind the counter. She was white and thirtyish, and didn't condescend to either my color or my youth. When I told her that I liked blues, she pulled out some old Columbia Blue Labels. I said that I also liked jazz, and she suggested recent Charlie "Bird" Parker releases. I let the music wash away the odors and moods of the restaurant, and I left the shop with more records than I could afford. I had agreed with her that I should start collecting the Dial records featuring Bird, Max Roach, Al Haig, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and others who she said were going to be the "masters." Each payday I kept out enough money to pay my own way at Mother's, and spent the rest on records and books.
Mother was unhappy that my job made me unhappy. She always knew her "daughter had great potential" and was determined that if she had anything to do with it, I was going to realize it.
Weeks later she and I sat in the dining room and picked and poked through the classifieds for my future.
I was nearly nineteen, had a baby, responsibilities and no real profession. I could cook Creole and was a fast, friendly cocktail waitress. Also I was qualified as an absentee madam, but I somehow felt that I simply had not yet "found out my niche" (I had just discovered that phrase and yo-yo'ed it around with frequent and gay abandon).
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"Private secretary. If you could type faft enough and do shorthand." Mother was serious. Her pretty face was lined with concentration. "Telephone operator, pays pretty good."
I reminded her that we'd already been through that.
"Key punch. Stenographer. You need training, baby."
She looked at me spot on and added, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well."
I didn't dare remind her that everything I had done had been well done.
"What is Alice doing? What about Jean Mae, and the twins? What are they all doing? Going to college?" Her voice and round black eyes worried me for answers.
Jean Mae, the neighborhood's sepia Betty Grable, had a job hopping cars at a popular drive-in. I hardly had the face, figure or sexuality to be taken in at that restaurant. Alice could be seen nightly whistling down Post Street and up Sutter, her young walk exaggerated, her thin voice insinuating the lone sailor into following three paces behind her to the nearest transient hotel.
The twins married twins, which seemed as appalling to me as streetwalking. I felt there was a closet incest about the whole thing.
The small percentage of classmates who went on to college had become unbearably stuck-up and boring. So I found no inspiration among my peers.
"Companion, Chauffeurette." That I could do. I immediately set a film to flickering on my mind screen. In a snappy uniform, no cap, gray serge and British walker shoes, I drove a man around who was the spitting image of Lionel Barry-