The Gold Cadillac (2 page)

“Is this your business?” she asked.

“Well, I just think you ought to be nice to Daddy. I think you ought to ride in that car with him! It’d sure make him happy.”

“I think you ought to go to sleep,” she said and turned out the light.

Later I heard her arguing with my father. “We’re supposed to be saving for a house!” she said.

“We’ve already got a house!” said my father.

“But you said you wanted a house in a better neighborhood. I thought that’s what we both said!”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Well, you have a mighty funny way of saving for it, then. Your brothers are saving for houses of their own and you don’t see them out buying new cars every year!”

“We’ll still get the house, Dee. That’s a promise!”

“Not with new Cadillacs we won’t!” said my mother and then she said a very loud good night and all was quiet.

The next day was Sunday and everybody figured that my mother would be sure to give in and ride in the Cadillac. After all, the family always went to church together on Sunday. But she didn’t give in. What was worse she wouldn’t let Wilma and me ride in the Cadillac either. She took us each by the hand, walked past the Cadillac where my father stood waiting and headed on toward the church, three blocks away. I was really mad at her now. I had been looking forward to driving up to the church in that gold Cadillac and having everybody see.

On most Sunday afternoons during the summertime, my mother, my father, Wilma, and I would go for a ride. Sometimes we just rode around the city and visited friends and family. Sometimes we made short trips over to Chicago or Peoria or Detroit to see relatives there or to Cleveland where we had relatives too, but we could also see the Cleveland Indians play. Sometimes we joined our aunts and uncles and drove in a caravan out to the park or to the beach. At the park or the beach Wilma and I would run and play. My mother and my aunts would spread a picnic and my father and my uncles would shine their cars.

But on this Sunday afternoon my mother refused to ride anywhere. She told Wilma and me that we could go. So we left her alone in the big, empty house, and the family cars, led by the gold Cadillac, headed for the park. For a while I played and had a good time, but then I stopped playing and went to sit with my father. Despite his laughter he seemed sad to me. I think he was missing my mother as much as I was.

That evening my father took my mother to dinner down at the corner café. They walked. Wilma and I stayed at the house chasing fireflies in the backyard. My aunts and uncles sat in the yard and on the porch, talking and laughing about the day and watching us. It was a soft summer’s evening, the kind that came every day and was expected. The smell of charcoal and of barbecue drifting from up the block, the sound of laughter and music and talk drifting from yard to yard were all a part of it. Soon one of my uncles joined Wilma and me in our chase of fireflies and when my mother and father came home we were at it still. My mother and father watched us for a while, while everybody else watched them to see if my father would take out the Cadillac and if my mother would slide in beside him to take a ride. But it soon became evident that the dinner had not changed my mother’s mind. She still refused to ride in the Cadillac. I just couldn’t understand her objection to it.

Though my mother didn’t like the Cadillac, everybody else in the neighborhood certainly did. That meant quite a few folks too, since we lived on a very busy block. On one corner was a grocery store, a cleaner’s, and a gas station. Across the street was a beauty shop and a fish market, and down the street was a bar, another grocery store, the Dixie Theater, the café, and a drugstore. There were always people strolling to or from one of these places and because our house was right in the middle of the block just about everybody had to pass our house and the gold Cadillac. Sometimes people took in the Cadillac as they walked, their heads turning for a longer look as they passed. Then there were people who just outright stopped and took a good look before continuing on their way. I was proud to say that car belonged to my family. I felt mighty important as people called to me as I ran down the street. “’Ey, ’lois! How’s
that Cadillac, girl? Riding fine?” I told my mother how much everybody liked that car. She was not impressed and made no comment.

Since just about everybody on the block knew everybody else, most folks knew that my mother wouldn’t ride in the Cadillac. Because of that, my father took a lot of good-natured kidding from the men. My mother got kidded too as the women said if she didn’t ride in that car, maybe some other woman would. And everybody laughed about it and began to bet on who would give in first, my mother or my father. But then my father said he was going to drive the car south into Mississippi to visit my grandparents and everybody stopped laughing.

My uncles stopped.

So did my aunts.

Everybody.

“Look here, Wilbert,” said one of my uncles, “it’s too dangerous. It’s like putting a loaded gun to your head.”

“I paid good money for that car,” said my father. “That gives me a right to drive it where I please. Even down to Mississippi.”

My uncles argued with him and tried to talk him out of driving the car south. So did my aunts and so did the neighbors, Mr. LeRoy, Mr. Courtland, and Mr. Pondexter. They said it was a dangerous thing, a mighty dangerous thing, for a black man to drive an expensive car into the rural South.

“Not much those folks hate more’n to see a northern Negro coming down there in a fine car,” said Mr. Pondexter. “They see those Ohio license plates, they’ll figure you coming down uppity, trying to lord your fine car over them!”

I listened, but I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why they didn’t want my father to drive that car south. It was his.

“Listen to Pondexter, Wilbert!” cried another uncle. “We might’ve fought a war to free people overseas, but we’re not free here! Man, those white folks down south’ll lynch you soon’s look at you. You know that!”

Wilma and I looked at each other. Neither one of us knew what
lynch
meant, but the word sent a shiver through us. We held each other’s hand.

My father was silent, then he said: “All my life I’ve had to be heedful of what white folks thought. Well, I’m tired of that. I worked hard for everything I got. Got it honest, too. Now I got that Cadillac because I liked it and because it meant something to me that somebody like me from Mississippi could go and buy it. It’s my car, I paid for it, and I’m driving it south.”

My mother, who had said nothing through all this, now stood. “Then the girls and I’ll be going too,” she said.

“No!” said my father.

My mother only looked at him and went off to the kitchen.

My father shook his head. It seemed he didn’t want us to go. My uncles looked at each other, then at my father. “You set on doing this, we’ll all go,” they said. “That way we can watch out for each other.” My father took a moment and nodded. Then my aunts got up and went off to their kitchens too.

All the next day my aunts and my mother cooked and the house was filled with delicious smells. They fried chicken and baked hams and cakes and sweet potato pies and mixed potato salad. They filled jugs with water and punch and
coffee. Then they packed everything in huge picnic baskets along with bread and boiled eggs, oranges and apples, plates and napkins, spoons and forks and cups. They placed all that food on the back seats of the cars. It was like a grand, grand picnic we were going on, and Wilma and I were mighty excited. We could hardly wait to start.

My father, my mother, Wilma, and I got into the Cadillac. My uncles, my aunts, my cousins got into the Ford, the Buick, and the Chevrolet, and we rolled off in our caravan headed south. Though my mother was finally riding in the Cadillac, she had no praise for it. In fact, she said nothing about it at all. She still seemed upset and since she still seemed to feel the same about the car, I wondered why she had insisted upon making this trip with my father.

We left the city of Toledo behind, drove through Bowling Green and down through the Ohio countryside of farms and small towns, through Dayton and Cincinnati, and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. On the other side of the river my father stopped the car and looked back at Wilma and me and said, “Now from here on, whenever we stop and there’re white people around, I don’t want either one of you to say a word.
Not one word!
Your mother and I’ll do all the talking. That understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Wilma and I both said, though we didn’t truly understand why.

My father nodded, looked at my mother and started the car again. We rolled on, down Highway 25 and through the bluegrass hills of Kentucky. Soon we began to see signs. Signs that read:
WHITE ONLY, COLORED NOT ALLOWED
. Hours later, we left the Bluegrass State and crossed into Tennessee. Now we saw even more of the signs saying:
WHITE ONLY, COLORED NOT ALLOWED
. We saw the signs above water fountains and in restaurant windows. We saw them in ice cream parlors and at hamburger stands. We saw them in front of hotels and motels, and on the restroom doors of filling stations. I didn’t like the signs. I felt as if I were in a foreign land.

I couldn’t understand why the signs were there and I asked my father what the signs meant. He said they meant we couldn’t drink from the water fountains. He said they meant we couldn’t stop to sleep in the motels. He said they meant we couldn’t stop to eat in the restaurants. I
looked at the grand picnic basket I had been enjoying so much. Now I understood why my mother had packed it. Suddenly the picnic did not seem so grand.

Finally we reached Memphis. We got there at a bad time. Traffic was heavy and we got separated from the rest of the family. We tried to find them but it was no use. We had to go on alone. We reached the Mississippi state line and soon after we heard a police siren. A police car came up behind us. My father slowed the Cadillac, then stopped. Two white policemen got out of their car. They eyeballed the Cadillac and told my father to get out.

“Whose car is this, boy?” they asked.

I saw anger in my father’s eyes. “It’s mine,” he said.

“You’re a liar,” said one of the policemen. “You stole this car.”

“Turn around, put your hands on top of that car and spread eagle,” said the other policeman.

My father did as he was told. They searched him and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand either why they had called my father a liar and didn’t believe that the Cadillac was his. I wanted to ask but I remembered my father’s warning not to say a word and I obeyed that warning.