Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (31 page)

“Of course I know what that is!” she says, for the first time raising her voice at me.

“Oh. Can you tell me then? I don’t have a clue.”

Her shoulders settle a bit and she resumes her scrubbing. I can see her from the side and she looks upset. “You’ve led a sheltered life, Miss Katy.”

“So?” I say with a mouthful of biscuit.

“So you may have trouble believing some of the things that goes on down here.”

“Does this have to do with all those scars on your arm and that badly-healed broken wrist?” I sigh. “I just don’t understand why you colored people or niggers or whatever you’re called, just can’t get along. That’s the trouble I’ve seen down here.”

She turns and gives me a glare that glazes her eyes like chocolate pudding. She pulls the biscuits away from my reach to get my attention and puts her hands on her hips. “I’ve worked for white folk a long time and I sees a lot, so don’t you go gettin’ your righteous white back up. If you don’t know of a woman in your
own
family,” she says pointing at me, “that’s been treated bad, then you’re not hearin’ close enough!”

I stand up and reach over, pulling the saucer back to my place. “Come on, Clary, tell me what eugenics means.”

“That’s a fancy word for a doctor to make a poor Negro woman sterile.” She’s still using that hateful tone but I let her.

“I’m hearing close enough now, Clary. This happened to you?”

“Yes’m, it did,” she says with resolve, as if it’s all settled to tell me. “When I was thirteen I’d done had a baby and then was told I was feeble-minded with low morals. A white social worker came to my mother and said if she agreed to sign the consent form, they wouldn’t cut her off welfare. After she signed, they cut me where babies couldn’t grow again. Then they gave away my baby so I wouldn’t try to go on welfare. I got married when I was sixteen and didn’t tell my husband for a long time. ‘Course eventually he got
suspicious and I told him the truth and he left me. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve been working here ever since.”

“Holy Mother of God,” I whisper. Eugenics sounds like something my great-uncle would do to his cows on his dairy farm, but to sterilize other people I can’t imagine. Why does government consider this more moral than birth control? At least with contraception, women can have a choice on how many children they want. “Where’s the money coming from for this, Clary? I heard today that money is the biggest problem.”

“Your friend would know that best of anyone, or at least his daddy will,” Clary says drying her hands, and with that she leaves me alone to the whole pan of biscuits.

M
an, oh, man, maybe this project isn’t such a bad idea. GB - I mean Grandmama Bess - looks all flustered tonight and won’t meet my eyes. She must’ve read my papers from last night. Like Mama said,
Be careful what you ask for
! This just tickles me to death. It’s always been such a trip to egg GB on, I don’t know why. She looms over me with that righteous white moss of hairdo twist and gives me a hard time - maybe she’s like climbing Mount Everest and I just want to brag that I conquered her. Or at least got to her and messed with her head.

So I reach for another rock hold and, with the news of the day agitating my mind, where a colored man was beaten to death in Alabama for marrying a white woman, I say to her, “GB, with all this liberal thinking you got, what’s wrong with whites marrying colored? And don’t give me that crap about birds of a feather flock together either. You said yourself that, ‘women are people too’ so don’t that smooth everybody out to the same thing? Whitening their skin would just be adding cream to the coffee, baby.”

She takes a long drink of her wine and I gotta give her credit for keeping her cool. She picks up her pen and starts writing on another umpteenth lined page like she’s the only one with a year to write about, and then pauses. She looks over at me with the same color in her eyes as that bluejean ink scrawled all over her paper. There’s not space left on there to say, ‘go to hell Jesi’.

She Speaks: “Mama came up with the line ‘women are people, too.’ Let her explain.”

What a shitty cop-out, man. GG’s head has a small tremor when she’s put on the spot and I feel sorry for her being on this one. She lays down her pen and relaxes her hands on the table, her crooked knotty fingers giving a brush here and there to leftover crumbs from din-din. “It’s not only the birds, Jesi,” she finally says. Her trembling hand flutters toward the window, her fingers making me think of branches. It’s dark out there but I get her drift. “But nature itself teaches you. Like ivy and wisteria on our arbor out there, we can’t be of the same vine, but we can grow in the same garden. It’s the way God intended.”

That’s no fun.

I pick up my pen.

So here’s the thing: I got to thinking: What My Mamas want from me is something to fight for. A cause seems to be important around these digs. But not the same cause, not like marching for Women’s Equal cause, not quite as virgin as that. But still far-out, man. Even if it is
for
a man, if you get my drift. Doesn’t matter if you don’t; I’m just writing like I was told.

But first let me say: Great-Granny Ruby (aka GG), you are The Coolest! I did what you hinted to. Wow! You’re right, The Wedding Night curled my hair into a bun, so I’m not the only one - I thought that
first time
thing was just me. Other surprises too, like Grandmama Bess had more than one husband and did you know, GG, that her first husband loved you more? Probably not – GB sure as hell hasn’t told you, not as far as I can tell. Of course, she’s The Virgin Bess, and we won’t get any good stuff from her love life. But she had to do
something
; there is Mama after all. Maybe Mama was adopted. Hah-hah. And Mama is no better; she’s acting all Annette Funicello with what she’s written so far. So what, that this William TJ is groping her. What man doesn’t grope?

I’ve been groped, I’ve been … well, before I go ruining my reputation, I’m going to excuse myself from this table like someone else I know, and write more in my private den. But I’m going to keep these next pages to myself until I read more of the others.

I’m not feeling so low-down, now that I know some secrets.

And ...

The less I feel like the dumb cripple around here, the more I’ll talk.

And …

The more I take in, the more I’ll give out.

It’s the Way of Life, man.

So here’s The Truth of Isaac: Last summer I’m sitting in Civics class. You can talk about anything in Mr. Jones’ classroom. He has long shiny brown hair all the way down past his ears in this beatnik way, and he likes to have group discussions about local government, what our civic duties are, and how we should get involved. He’d almost preach this in class, but he’d do it in a slow, we’ve-got-all-day way and the way he’d saunter back and forth in front of the chalkboard with a bit of a hunched back, was mesmerizing to me (plus his family is rich since his grandfather owns the textile mill and don’t people listen more to a rich man, thinking money buys brains?). He also had big blue eyes that showed us the red-eye when he was smoking dope. He was So Cool and I was so In Love.

He asked us one day to picture how we see ourselves in our microcosmic world. Was our world at home a democracy, where we have a vote in decisions? Or more of a monarch, where one person rules? Or could it be a theocracy, ruled by religious beliefs?

I snickered, which got his attention. “Miss Pickering?”

“Where’s the Matriarch in this?” I asked. Everyone laughed because who doesn’t know about the Lighthouse?

“Well, the matriarch is a
female
ruler in more of a
social
system,” Mr. Jones said. “What we’re talking about here is a more powerful political system, a balance of struggles on he who has the power.” He walked past me where I always sat in the front row to stay closer to him, and he squeezed my shoulder.

“Then mine’s a monarch with a queen,” I said.

“Yeah, well that’s the only way a chick will get power of this country,” Tyler said, and Florence, his steady, giggled. She and her striped
shirtdress and matching head kerchief and long straight legs. I hear they do IT in the park. Who cares what they think?

“Let the Mob rule,” Bobby said. He’s one of The Hoods, always looking for a fight.

“That’s ochlocracy,” Mr. Jones said.

“Another name is mobocracy. But if the mob rules, it’s worse than anarchy because you still have rules, but the rules change based on the mood of the leader, and what if he’s in a bad mood?”

“Then we cream ‘em,” said Bobby. We all laughed.

“Or you lynch them,” said a voice from the desk directly behind me. The room got quiet.

I turned to see all eyes on Isaac Cosman. He stared back at me.

I’d never seen a colored person up close before and I’d never heard this one speak before; he’s new to summer school and I’m making up a class I flunked when in the hospital last year. He looked older than I thought they should look for a student but what did I know? Only what I’d seen on television, with cameras more and more on Negroes-in-the-South getting water-sprayed in the streets, drinking from fountains labeled “Colored”, entering doors that said “Colored Only” and I thought the “Colored” signs were all messed up because everyone looked black and white on television.

“Go on,” I whispered.

“We’re supposed to be a democracy, but we can’t be at home, because we’re angry and poor and take it out on each other. We can’t be in our country, because we take away the rights of an entire race. Which is why we’re angry and poor, and it goes in a circle you see. We’re angry at home because my father was lynched in Georgia when I was a little boy and my mother raised five children by herself. ‘Jesus was lynched,’ she said. ‘He too, hung from a tree, so your dad is in good company up in heaven.’ We moved to New York to get away from having to drink from a separate water fountain. It’s not that I minded being separate, but I did mind that my water fountain was dirtier and didn’t work half the time. I don’t mind being separate; I mind being less. But to run away does no good. My mother is still a washerwoman for the white people. Like Martin Luther King said,
‘we take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes’. We can’t seem to live up to democracy. But do we fight? King says no. He says force begets force. So no mobocracy, no monarchy. No race or sex should rule the rest.”

He said all that to me, our eyes never wavering from each other. You could’ve heard a tear drop in the room, it was so quiet. His voice, man, his voice … there was a sweet tender melody in there, slow and distinct. I’m hooked and would’ve slow-danced with him right there.

I turned back around to see what Mr. Jones thought about this. He had meandered back up front. He was nodding, nodding, kind of staring at Isaac but not really looking, and then he tucked his hair behind his ear and resumed his teaching as if Isaac hadn’t said a word. It was the first time I was sorry I’d lost my virginity to that man.

This was the last day of school and I didn’t play kiss-up after class and hover around Mr. Jones, hoping for some attention, a promise, a hurried rendezvous. Instead I walked out with a group so he couldn’t discreetly wave me over, but I felt his eyes burn my ass.