High Cotton (17 page)
Authors: Darryl Pinckney
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #African American
A burned-out church that resembled the hull of a sunken ship was a milepost. Grandfather loved to discipline himself, and so rode into town and walked back, counting the steps, impressed by his own moxie. The bridge was near and soon he would cross the expressionless Charles, joggers and gulls flying by; soon he would be on Massachusetts Avenue again, back with the falafel trucks parked in front of M.I.T. Boston was an agreeable refuge for a man who had been an exile all his life.
“One of the Adams girls lives in the dormitory next to mine.”
“The Quincy Adamses?”
The stately Philco radio in its burnished cabinet was a great comfort, though the vintage tubes had long since given out. He had the address of a shop where he could buy them, but he put off calling from day to day. Grandfather thought most radio commentators were idiots anyway and those with a little sense were liars. Mostly, we watched television.
My aunt had given him a large television set equipped with
a battery-operated remote control. He said it reminded him of a motorcycle. Grandfather didn’t like to admit how entertained he was by it. He pretended that he let the television run, as if he were humoring the faces on the screen. But he looked forward to evenings of new situation comedies, as the magazines called them, “recorded live on tape before a studio audience”—a phrase he very much liked because of its jingle quality.
a battery-operated remote control. He said it reminded him of a motorcycle. Grandfather didn’t like to admit how entertained he was by it. He pretended that he let the television run, as if he were humoring the faces on the screen. But he looked forward to evenings of new situation comedies, as the magazines called them, “recorded live on tape before a studio audience”—a phrase he very much liked because of its jingle quality.
These shows were quite marvelous to him, especially the ones aimed at the “minority audience.” No more yes, Mr. Benny, no, Mr. Benny. It was the dawn of
Sanford and Son,
starring Redd Foxx, a clever sinner whose “party records,” Grandfather said, more than one fool had wasted his time preaching against. He also watched
The Jeffersons
and his wonderful pulpit tenor sang along as the credits rolled up the screen. “We finally got a piece of the pie!”
Sanford and Son,
starring Redd Foxx, a clever sinner whose “party records,” Grandfather said, more than one fool had wasted his time preaching against. He also watched
The Jeffersons
and his wonderful pulpit tenor sang along as the credits rolled up the screen. “We finally got a piece of the pie!”
He reminded me of students who enrolled in that most notorious of “gut classes,” the History of Television. They’d tell their parents to shut up, they were doing their homework, and turn up the sound of
Star Trek,
which they were very serious about decoding, in the French tradition. As a student of the “higher biblical scholarship,” Grandfather examined the premises of these popular television shows about blacks as if they were mistranslations from the original Greek.
Star Trek,
which they were very serious about decoding, in the French tradition. As a student of the “higher biblical scholarship,” Grandfather examined the premises of these popular television shows about blacks as if they were mistranslations from the original Greek.
“George Jefferson has made more money dry-cleaning skirts and jackets than the Chrysler Corporation has made building sedans. That, as we say, confounds historical truth.”
Grandfather also liked documentaries—Vietnam, the pollution of Lake Erie, the problems of juvenile offenders, the life cycle of sea horses. He had an insatiable appetite for filmed moments of historical importance and never tired of seeing Haile Selassie address the League of Nations, Jesse Owens cross the finish line, or the motorcade pass on its way to the Texas School Book Depository.
Some stretching, hazy days must have been spent nodding over interpretations of the Psalms, browsing through
Masterpieces of Religious Verse
, underlining Homer Smith, or copying out passages from Volume X of Buttrick’s
The Interpreter’s Bible
. Index cards were covered with his graceful script and neatly arranged across the scratched table according to category. These cards were destined to join stacks of others in boxes under his bed. His research.
Masterpieces of Religious Verse
, underlining Homer Smith, or copying out passages from Volume X of Buttrick’s
The Interpreter’s Bible
. Index cards were covered with his graceful script and neatly arranged across the scratched table according to category. These cards were destined to join stacks of others in boxes under his bed. His research.
Sometimes Grandfather came upon a forgotten book such as Georgia Douglas Johnson’s
Bronze
and a geyser of remembered scenes erupted into the quiet evening—Memorial Hall, Holden Chapel, the black All-American halfback Fritz Pollard, the beloved English teacher Benjamin Crocker Clough, the hated campus humor magazine,
The Brown Jug.
But Cambridge and Providence were more and more confused in his voyages into the past. Thayer Hall was transplanted to the ice above Narragansett Bay. These lapses startled him, made him trust himself less, made me think about what was bearing down on him with the irreversible movement of a glacier. He penned reflective letters to alumni magazines that were never printed.
Bronze
and a geyser of remembered scenes erupted into the quiet evening—Memorial Hall, Holden Chapel, the black All-American halfback Fritz Pollard, the beloved English teacher Benjamin Crocker Clough, the hated campus humor magazine,
The Brown Jug.
But Cambridge and Providence were more and more confused in his voyages into the past. Thayer Hall was transplanted to the ice above Narragansett Bay. These lapses startled him, made him trust himself less, made me think about what was bearing down on him with the irreversible movement of a glacier. He penned reflective letters to alumni magazines that were never printed.
“Is your memory infallible?” he used to demand of me.
“Of course not.”
“Well, mine is.”
Age, more than anyone or anyplace, had humbled him. He was where I always picture him, not in church, but at the sink, carefully rolling up the blue sleeves of a tattered dressing gown, a birthday present, but from whom or when he couldn’t say anymore, a man who against the tide of things unsaid could only lower his head and notice his hands’ conspiracies. He sang as his trembling fingers reddened in the hot water. Dusk spread over the window, orange and gray.
“I can’t find your great-granddaddy’s pocket watch. Good one, too. I thought it was in this drawer. I wanted to give it to you.”
“You keep it, you may need it.”
“No, I won’t. Where I’m going all I’ll need is a skillet.”
Grandfather was writing his memoirs. Perhaps that was why he had tried to bring my visit to a close with a meaningful, departing gift. The working title was “Looking for Home.” The stories crawled forth from the marriage of two dark lips. He had written most of these memoirs and yet they scarcely amounted to one hundred pages, even with a generous number of quotes from Browning, Cowper, Ezekiel. His long life was making for a short book.
He treasured his own life of profound circumspection, dignity, repression, and disappointment, but the chapter he planned to call “Retirement and Reflections” interrupted the work. He could not write it. He meant his chronicle to be instructive, uplifting. It was a sermon, much like any other he had prepared during his half-century as a minister. Those thoughts that would make his gentle audience, his parishioners, himself uncomfortable were suppressed, evaded, and here, the redeeming power of the heavens was unsatisfactory.
“I am a traveling man, trying to make heaven my home.” So, God’s in His heaven—all’s right with the world? Grandfather had never offered “all’s right.” He knew the real story and loved the imagined one. That was the wilderness in him, which kept the monotone from setting in. He had no intention of “catching misery.”
He talked about the scalding effort of “writing up life.” Another generation was out there, busily piling up stones. He, too, was preoccupied. “Good things come to those who wait. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Therefore, allow six to eight
weeks for delivery.” His pride was like that of a man who, dismissed by friends because of his predictability, his regularity of habit, has a reckless affair, as if to say, “Look at me, I’m up to something.”
weeks for delivery.” His pride was like that of a man who, dismissed by friends because of his predictability, his regularity of habit, has a reckless affair, as if to say, “Look at me, I’m up to something.”
At the table, rolling a pencil in his palms, switching on a lamp, untying the string that held a folder of brown sermons, yellow notes, and a reconciliation of voices—he was, then, most like a man put out to pasture, fighting the wish to travel and be known.
In the night a battered satchel waited, filled with canceled checks, stamped telephone bills, unused subscription forms, torn receipts, irrelevant bank statements, prescriptions, and old deeds of sale. Grandfather got up from the sheets that had soaked up years of restlessness. Barefoot, he felt his way and took the key to the satchel from its hiding place under an oval rug. He spread the grainy pieces of paper over the kitchen table, added and added again the columns of acres and dollars, rubbed the stubble on his chin, inspected signatures until dawn entered like a nurse.
Sometime later, Uncle Ulysses died. One moment he was trying to pump new insulation into his basement walls and the next he had fallen. I hurried up to Boston—not for the funeral, but to be on the scene—with the same coarse expectations of racial spectacle that first drove me down to 125th Street, as if an assembly of old-timers, of elderly relatives at a wake, would stand as a substitute for Harlem, as if their tongues could do what its bad corners had not—lead backward, either into history or into a sense of belonging.
I looked forward to the wake in Uncle Ulysses’s house, which smelled perpetually of the dry cleaner’s carbon tetrachloride and stood high on a hill with a view of bus stops in one of the satellite towns around Boston. I’d never been to a wake. I imagined men worn out by bluster, women keeping themselves together by concentrating on pulp swimming in the lemonade, youngsters
with ears sticking out of new haircuts like sugar-bowl handles. Cousin Aszerine, Cousin Airedale, Cousin Salonia—the weird names were like countries I used to make lists of. “This is Pooky.” And Pooky would turn out to be a huge man in his sixties.
with ears sticking out of new haircuts like sugar-bowl handles. Cousin Aszerine, Cousin Airedale, Cousin Salonia—the weird names were like countries I used to make lists of. “This is Pooky.” And Pooky would turn out to be a huge man in his sixties.
Upstairs, around the table of condoling hams, I thought the old women, whose authority smoothly canceled that of my mother and father, would gossip, tell another version of that funeral in 1962 in Philadelphia when Uncle Dirt’s brother and sister missed the burial because neither trusted the other not to make off with the nonexistent stash of Confederate gold pieces. They’d torn up the dead sibling’s yard and house in their treasure hunt, and drunken Aunt Bunny had searched everywhere, including the laundry chute, in which she’d got stuck until the fire department came.
Downstairs, something of that generation-bonding barbershop camaraderie would circulate among the men in the remodeled basement. “Our father who sits in Washington, whatever be thy name. You took me off Chesterfields and put me on Gold Grain.” As a boy, when I wandered among my father’s friends, I heard, between talk about the cornucopia of FHA loans, voter registration, and relaxed credit terms, about Foggy Bottom in Atlanta, Chicago, Paddy’s Bottom in my hometown. Every town had a Bottom, every Negro had a story with a Bottom in it.
Men and women would meet again in the living room, under the dispensation of a shared “sadidiness”—an Old Country expression for narcissism—as if they constituted an endangered genus. The line would go something like: She may cheat at cards, but she’s family; he may be a crook, but he’s family; she may be in the CIA, but she’s family, he may be a drunk, but he’s our drunk. My elderly relatives could call their New Orleans connections a bunch of French-speaking niggers. I, however, hadn’t earned the privilege. And yet for all the tearful, laughing embraces what this woman had hated about this man in 1925 would never change. She would never forget
his refusal to pay the five-cent fare to have a tooth extracted.
his refusal to pay the five-cent fare to have a tooth extracted.
I hadn’t known Uncle Ulysses, except as Grandfather’s congruent hypothesis, so to speak. I couldn’t even say what he looked like. His most distinguishing feature was his stomach. It cast his shoes in shadow, a symbol of well-being from the days when blacks didn’t think any more than anyone else about high blood pressure.
Uncle Ulysses gave the impression of concentric circles, a brown snowman. His head was very large, a fact that made him sensitive about Grandfather’s passion for hats. Perhaps he had suffered as a student when the cephalic index was taken seriously. I was told that when the medics attempted to resuscitate him, his stomach grew monstrous with air, and Aunt Odetta, remembering his girlish vigilance about keeping himself covered at all times, interfered with the wires and pads to pull his shirt over his bloated paunch.
He called me “Cotton Chopper,” which I never liked. It sounded, to my ten-year-old ears, too Southern, that is to say, too Negro. He knew that I didn’t like it, but that never stopped him. Though Uncle Ulysses was known as parsimonious with words, reserved, given to elaborate sentence structures to avoid the overly assertive pronoun I, he was a bully. He used to demonstrate pressure points and judo holds on me. He talked about chickens eating the weak among them, asked if I meant seriously to imply that I had never enjoyed wringing a chicken’s neck.
He imposed an insane frugality on Aunt Odetta. The first time I ever saw a lock on a telephone was in their house. It was as odd a sight as women who diet by having their mouths wired shut. He doled out his coiled, aggressive, bullying facts to his forever-assenting, grown-up son, while Aunt Odetta cooked and cooked: “Did you know onions were first grown in Mongolia?” He was fussy, down to the toothpicks he liked—the minty kind.
The family had a theory. Uncle Ulysses worked all his life at
a paper company. He entered as a stock boy in the 1920s and was retired some fifty years later, at not much higher than a stock boy’s salary, though he was spoken of as practically running the whole company. Some said he hadn’t been “right” since the trenches. Others disagreed, saying he’d been well behind the lines with the rolling kitchens. That’s the way it was with the past: live long enough and you could massage the facts.
a paper company. He entered as a stock boy in the 1920s and was retired some fifty years later, at not much higher than a stock boy’s salary, though he was spoken of as practically running the whole company. Some said he hadn’t been “right” since the trenches. Others disagreed, saying he’d been well behind the lines with the rolling kitchens. That’s the way it was with the past: live long enough and you could massage the facts.
I remembered his fragile glass cabinet, which held intriguing French coins, a bolo knife, a copy of Moss’s
Private’s Manual,
and two intensely cherished German pike helmets. I had some idea that it was a memorial to an earlier version of himself, before his entombment in the back office of the paper company. Classroom editions of books like Storm’s
Immensee
with his name thickly written in black ink along with the forgivably pompous “Universitas Bostoniensis” had the poignancy of faded snapshots of total strangers.
Private’s Manual,
and two intensely cherished German pike helmets. I had some idea that it was a memorial to an earlier version of himself, before his entombment in the back office of the paper company. Classroom editions of books like Storm’s
Immensee
with his name thickly written in black ink along with the forgivably pompous “Universitas Bostoniensis” had the poignancy of faded snapshots of total strangers.
It was possible to connect Uncle Ulysses with the vulnerability of colored regiments that marched with broomsticks, which made people laugh. There weren’t enough uniforms, so most of them had to wear clothes that blended in. His father, Old Esau, didn’t think much of the army because the ranks of officers were closed.
Old Esau didn’t think much of Woodrow Wilson either. Just as Uncle Ulysses had remained a Baptist, as firmly in place as one of the decayed concrete lions on the steps of the Holy Zion Fired Baptist Church, he also had stayed with the GOP. I held over from my childhood the notion that Negroes, even rich, light-skinned ones, were supposed to be Democrats. Uncle Ulysses was suspicious of Negro magazines, Model Cities programs, quotas, Harlem, James Brown. He never “bought black” in his life.
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