Silver Sparrow (24 page)

“So the idea I had — to have my own driver one day — led me to thinking what kind of job I would need in order to have somebody to drive me.

My mama’s white people, they got their money because they owned the paper mil , and I knew I didn’t want to have nothing to do with the paper mil .

Just the smel alone was enough to run you away, no matter what the money was like. So I couldn’t think of nothing else, and it started making me depressed. Crazy as it was, I wanted to have a white man driving me around, to let him see what it feels like.” Daddy laughed. “My imagination was in overdrive. A black man having a chauffeur was crazy enough, but hiring a white man to drive? Absolutely insane. But this was my dream, and I didn’t tel nobody about it except Raleigh.”

“What did Uncle Raleigh say?

Daddy said, “You know how Raleigh is. He don’t like to argue. He just asked me if I was going to let my white driver use the front door or the back door when he showed up for work. I said I would go on and let him walk in the front. Then Raleigh asked me if maybe I could just use a real light-skinned black man to do the driving, that way it would look like I had a white driver, but I wouldn’t have to deal with al the problems that might come along with trying to boss a real white man. I laughed and told him that the only person in the world more uppity than an actual white man was a light-skinned nigger. I think that hurt his feelings, but I wasn’t talking about Raleigh. Your uncle is a special case, you know.”

I said I knew what he was talking about.

“Truth of the matter is that it was Raleigh who gave me the idea of starting my own business, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. This here is a good story and I want to tel it properly.

“I used to drive these white people around al the time. Me and Raleigh used to take turns with the job, but the white people didn’t like Raleigh al that much. So I took on the driving ful time, and Raleigh had to go over to the mil . He stank so bad coming back home, but me and Laverne never said anything to him about it. Didn’t need to, I guess. He got a nose. We waited on him to wash up before we ate dinner, but you could stil smel the mil on him.

“One day, I was driving the white lady somewhere. She was al dressed up, hat, gloves, pink lipstick drawn where lips would have been if she had any. I just let her in, closed the door behind her and set off. No radio, no nothing, me and her just riding along listening to each other breathing.

Anyway, I was driving and I saw a sign up on the left for the highway. I seen that sign a hundred times, but this time I real y saw it, and it occurred to me that I could just twist my arms a little bit, turn the steering wheel and go wherever I wanted to. That lady in the backseat wouldn’t have no choice but to come along for the ride. I started laughing then, laughing hard. I liked to choke on so much laughing. I could see the lady in the backseat looking scared, like she was trapped in the car with a crazy nigger. Al I had to do was like this here” — he rotated the steering wheel to the left, changing lanes — “and me and her would have been on the highway headed toward Hilton Head. You get it, don’t you, Chaurisse?

“It takes a lot of trust to let somebody drive you around. People don’t think about it — you should see them just hopping into taxicabs downtown, not knowing who they got behind the wheel. That’s why I don’t get in no airplanes, neither. I was having al these thoughts while I was driving the car and laughing like a loon. The white lady looked like she was going to throw up. Then I stopped laughing and try to seem like I had some sense. Al the time my mind was just working.

“I couldn’t wait to tel it to Raleigh. He had just come home from the mil . I usual y gave him his space when he got home, and not just because of how he was smel ing but because he didn’t like to be around people until he got his constitution together. But I just had to tel him. He was walking up the steps to the front of the house and he didn’t even get the doorknob turned good before I busted out with it.

“I said, ‘I don’t ever want nobody driving me around. Whoever is doing the driving is real y the one in control.’

“Raleigh looked at me like, ‘You just now figuring that out?’ Your uncle is a very intel igent man. He’s like Albert Einstein and George Washington Carver rol ed up into one. Then he said, ‘Can we talk about this after I got my bath?’

“I said ‘Okay.’ Your mama was in the kitchen frying some fish. We had been married about two years, maybe three, and she was just final y at last learning how to cook. She almost kil ed me and Raleigh both with food poisoning. Did I ever tel you that story? It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.

“I was just burning up with my new way of thinking. Raleigh was taking his sweet time washing up. He’s not like that now, but he used to be a pretty nigger when we was younger, rubbing baby oil on his arms to make the hair lie down. Stuff like that. So by the time he got his pretty self ready, I had already told it to your mama and she didn’t seem to be moved by what I had to say.

“Final y we sat down at the table to eat. Your mama was stil into religion back then, so we said grace and ‘Jesus Wept.’ Raleigh reached for a piece of fish, and I couldn’t hold back any longer.

“‘You didn’t tel me what you think of my idea.’

“Raleigh said, ‘What idea?’

“‘My idea that when you are driving the car, you are always the boss. Did you ever think of that?’

“‘The boss is the one that pays you,’ Raleigh said.

“‘But every time they get in the car with me, they are putting their life in my hands.’

“‘That’s true,’ your mama said.”

Daddy laughed and hit his hand on steering wheel. “When we were young, your mama was ‘Yes, baby’ this, ‘Yes, baby’ that.” He laughed again.

“Those were some good days. We struggled, but those sure was some good days.

“Raleigh said, ‘The boss is the one who owns the car.’

“And just like that, it clicked: I needed to own myself a car and let people hire me to drive them around.

“I can’t say those other two were ready to hop on board. I mean, we al knew we wanted something else out of life. Your mama was doing white people’s laundry, didn’t have her high school diploma. Me and Raleigh had our diplomas, but neither one of us had the kind of job you could be proud of. It was, what? ’Sixty? ’Sixty-two? Something like that. We were young and ready to break out into the world. Raleigh had his eye on going to col ege. He didn’t know how he was going to get there, but he wanted it so bad, he was thinking about the army. I said, ‘Man, are you crazy?’ He lucky he didn’t get drafted. So I saved up some money, and Miss Bunny gave me what she had. Raleigh and Laverne gave me their pennies, too.

They both had other plans for their money, but I knew this was going to be the ticket. If things went the way I needed them to go, there would be money later for beauty school and col ege. I bought the first car. That Plymouth. It wasn’t nice like this here Lincoln, but I kept it clean and even crammed a little flavored pil ow under the seat. Your mama stuffed it with cinnamon sticks and other nice-smel ing things; she even sewed some embroidery on it.

“I started driving colored people around, not the wel -off folks, because who would pay money to hire a car that wasn’t as good as the one you have in your driveway? People hired me especial y on occasions like funerals, weddings, things like that. After a couple years, I gave your mama and Miss Bunny their money back. I told Raleigh I was prepared to return his investment — I had it for him in a brown envelope, looked al official and everything. I said, ‘Raleigh, here you go, every penny back, with interest. I got it for you right here, or we can make a deal, a partnership, save up for another car and go into business together. Fifty-fifty.’

“The rest, like they say, is history.”

17

TIME AND A HALF

IN THE EIGHTIES, you could stil smoke in restaurants but only in the smoking section. I don’t smoke, wil never smoke. I even refuse to date smokers because their ashtray kisses remind me too much of my father. Stil , I feel a little pang of sympathy when I see a no smoking sign. The diagonal slash seems heartless, cruel even. My daddy took the ban personal y, said it reminded him too much of Mississippi, but he laughed it off with the same sad joke. “Just when they took down al the signs that said ‘No Coloreds,’ they had to come up with a new way to keep me out. Ain’t that right, Raleigh?” Then Uncle Raleigh would say, “If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”

“I know that’s right,” I would chime in, thinking not of the smoking bans but of the slew of Sweet Sixteen parties that year. My mother, who had been doing hair for more than fifteen years, had never seen anything like it. Daddy thought it had something to do with Ronald Reagan. Although no self-respecting black person would cast a vote for that joker, Daddy had to admit that the man had a way about him that was infectious. “Carter was a good man, but he didn’t exactly make you want to go out and hire a limousine for your kid’s birthday party. What do you think, Buttercup?”

“I think it’s
Dynasty.
Everybody wants to be Alexis.”

“Even black folks?” said Uncle Raleigh.

“Everybody,” I said. “Even Diahann Carrol herself.”

“What about Bil Cosby? You don’t think people want to be high on the hog like the Cosbys?”

“Bil Cosby makes you want to buy a hundred-dol ar sweater,” I said.

“Wel ,” said Uncle Raleigh. “I’l admit that I enjoy a nice cardigan, but in general, I am a simple man with simple taste.” He waved his arm to take in our environment, his cigarette making a ghostly trail.

We were at IHOP on North Avenue, kil ing time while Ruth Nicole Elizabeth Grant was having her Sweet Sixteen at the Hilton downtown. Her parents went al out, requesting the limo, the Town Car, and an attendant — which was me. Al I had to do was be on hand in case somebody needed a tissue or breath mints on the ride. Tucked in my canvas pack was a handy bottle of club soda in case someone spil ed something on their clothes and a barrel brush in case there was a Shirley Temple back there that needed twirling. I never had to dab a stain from a dress, although curls always could use a little tending to. For the most part, I was getting paid six dol ars an hour just to ride around. We were even on the clock sitting up in IHOP eating pigs in a blanket.

Uncle Raleigh and Daddy both wore their dress uniforms, but they left the jackets in the car. They horsed around like boys as they sucked down cup after cup of thin coffee, loosened up with cream and sugar. Sitting on opposite sides of the booth, they often looked up at one another and grinned. I always alternated my seat when I went out with the two of them. I don’t know that they ever noticed, but it wasn’t right that Uncle Raleigh should have to be alone al the time.

Women at the Pink Fox wondered aloud why Uncle Raleigh was stil available, and I knew at least three ladies who would be more than happy to do something about it. Uncle Raleigh didn’t come around the salon much, and neither did my daddy. (My mama says it’s just that they don’t want to see where pretty comes from.) Uncle Raleigh kept his visits short and sweet. When he entered the shop, delivering a package or something, the ladies who were already curled and looking pretty flirted outrageously while the ones who were wet and stil nappy hid behind their
Ebony
magazines, taking interested peeks over the tops of the glossy pages. Uncle Raleigh, knowing his role, complimented everyone, including Mama and me, before leaving with a tip of his hat.

Once he was gone, the speculation began in earnest. They ran through the respectable options first. Had he been hurt by a woman so now he was gun-shy? Was he married to the limo company? Lord have mercy, had he been to Vietnam? (At this point, the conversation could get pretty intense depending on the age of the women getting their hair done. It was always a brother-in-law that they talked about having been driven crazy by that war. It was never a husband or, thankyoujesus, a son.) The romantics wondered if maybe Uncle Raleigh had a woman but for some reason —

like maybe she was the mayor’s wife — he had to keep it secret.

Mama denied al these theories. “He’s set in his ways,” she’d say, or “He’s just waiting to meet the right person.” Sometimes one woman would be brave enough to ask the question that was on everyone’s mind. The asker was either the oldest or youngest person in the shop. “He’s not funny, is he, Verne?”

Mama said no, that wasn’t it at al .

The truth was that Uncle Raleigh wasn’t real y a bachelor. He had us.

Mama told me once, on a Monday, while she was working in my relaxer, that she had seen Uncle Raleigh with a woman before. The woman was dark-skinned, real y dark, like Cicely Tyson, but with hair for days. I had seen the woman, too, but I couldn’t say anything. It was just before Jamal graduated, before I figured out that you can be safe and sorry at the same time. Jamal and I were at Adams Park, in the middle of a school day. We didn’t have anywhere else to go — my mama operated a business out of my house and his mother (as she told anybody that would sit stil and listen) “didn’t have to work,” so she was home al day. So we were stuck with public places. He was eager to get back to the car, which he had parked in a discreet spot near a bank of pine trees. I said that I wanted to play on the swings for a while. It was a lie, I didn’t care anything about the swings, but I wanted him to coax me back to the car, for him to say how much he had missed me al day in school, for him to thril me by pressing my hand to the front of his jeans, for him to say that he worried that he was going to bust the zipper just by loving me so much. I was going to ride the swing, flashing him when the air flipped my skirt until he had to say, “Chaurisse, I am crazy about you.”

I had just settled my hips on the swing and used my tiptoes to push back a few paces when I saw my uncle and his lady friend. Uncle Raleigh and I looked right into each other’s faces. My hand floated up to my nose, the way it did when I was afraid. Uncle Raleigh cocked his head like dogs do when they’re confused. Jamal turned to see what I was looking at and Uncle Raleigh’s lady friend did the same. We were, al four of us, caught up in something, but at the time, I couldn’t say exactly what. Then Uncle Raleigh put his finger to his lips like a watchful librarian.

He never brought his girlfriend around to the house and I never asked. It was simple courtesy, real y, one of the rules of our house. We were a polite family back then. For example, on this Saturday night, no one asked me why I wasn’t invited to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s Sweet Sixteen, although we lived in the same neighborhood, had belonged to the same Brownie troop, and our mothers took the same dance class at the YWCA.

Not only that, but I’d been to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s parties in the past, and my mother always made sure I gave her a good gift. Just last year, I presented her with three fluted add-a-beads — fourteen karat. The previous parties had al been held in her big backyard or in their nice finished basement. Her Sweet Sixteen was to be an elaborate catered situation, which was different. Her parents had to pay a specific amount for each guest. If you were going, you had to RSVP, and rumor had it there was a wait list.

Uncle Raleigh struck a match and lit the cigarette dangling from his thin lips. “You want some of this, Jim-Bo?” he said, offering the burning stick to my dad, who leaned his cigarette into the flame.

I asked the waitress for a refil on my Diet Coke.

“Get a regular Coke,” Daddy said, looping his arm around my shoulder.

“Too many calories,” I said.

“Why you and your mama are so hung up on this weight thing? Don’t nobody but a dog want a bone.”

“And even he wants some meat on it,” Uncle Raleigh said.

They laughed and kept eating.

“What time is it?” I asked, with a flip of my hair.

My dad frowned. He didn’t care for my augmented look. He said it was because I didn’t need it.

“It’s only ten thirty. The event is scheduled to go until midnight,” Uncle Raleigh said.

“It’s a big deal, this party,” I said. “Mama did the hair. Ruth Nicole Elizabeth, her mama, her best friend. We worked on them al day.”

We did, and it had been a pretty miserable afternoon. To her credit, Ruth Nicole Elizabeth never said the word
party
while I basted her head. She didn’t even complain when I tugged too hard at a tangle behind her ears, removing the soft strands at the root. We final y got them out of the shop at 4:30 p.m. They went home to slip into their “after-five attire” and I went upstairs to put on my blue-and-white so I could go work with Daddy and Uncle Raleigh. For the record, I did own an afterfive dress. It was lavender, with asymmetric tiers and a sweetheart neck, junior size 13. My daddy brought it home late one night; he won it in a poker game.

Even though we were flush straight through spring, my mama was never in a good mood getting people ready for formals. You wouldn’t know it from watching her, but that’s cal ed being a professional. She would be al smiles six weeks later when the girls gave her wal et-sized photos of themselves dressed in
Gone with the Wind
hoopskirts; above the shampoo bowl hung a corkboard just for these displays. But when we final y closed down the shop, she flopped in her chair with a tiredness that was more than just one day’s exhaustion. “The money is good, but I don’t envy Raleigh and James. Driving those girls around and cal ing them ma’am! Sixteen years old. Help me, Jesus. It wil be prom season before you know it.”

“YOUR MAMA is looking at things al the wrong way,” Daddy said, slicing into his sausages. “Twenty years ago, none of this would be possible.

Your mama can’t see good news when it is staring her right in the face.”

“How much you think a party like that would cost?” Uncle Raleigh asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Four thousand? Five?” Daddy said. “But I am just talking out the side of my neck. I don’t know nothing about this kind of thing. You ever want a party like this, Buttercup?”

“It’s too late for me to have a Sweet Sixteen, Daddy. I’m seventeen already.”

“You could have a Sweet Eighteen.”

“Doesn’t exist,” I said.

“Graduation party?” Daddy suggested.

“Not my speed.”

Uncle Raleigh said, “I was thinking about for Laverne.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This kind of stuff gets on her nerves. She turned so many spiral curls last week that she had to wear a brace on her wrist.”

“It’s different,” Daddy said. “It’s different being the guest of honor.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She isn’t real y like that.”

“Maybe she is,” Uncle Raleigh said.

“She’s not,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

“We’ve been knowing Laverne a lot longer than you,” Daddy added, and together they chuckled.

“She hates fancy parties,” I said. “I’m with her al the time. I know how much she hates them.”

Uncle Raleigh said, “By my calculation, it’s coming up on the twentieth anniversary of the Pink Fox.”

“There you go,” Daddy said.

They smiled at each other and turned their faces to me. There was no chal enging them.

“We’l tel her it’s your idea,” said Raleigh

“I thought it was supposed to be a surprise party,” I said.

“She won’t like that,” Daddy said.

“Verne does not like surprises.”

“That’s the truth,” Daddy said.

And there was no arguing. They had been knowing Laverne a lot longer than me. And with the matter settled, they went on to other topics. To Uncle Raleigh, Daddy said, “We could probably make some good money if we could bring back the photography angle to the business.”

Uncle Raleigh poured a little puddle of raspberry syrup on his plate and dunked the tines of his fork. “Nope, Jim-Bo. No. No. No.”

“How come?” I said. “You like taking pictures. Teenage girls like having their picture taken. Their parents like spending money. Seems like a good deal al around.”

“I don’t want to take prom pictures,” Uncle Raleigh said. “I want to be evocative.”

Daddy said, “Evock in your spare time. Think about it, man. People are going to col ege next year.”

By
people,
he meant me.

“Where do you want to go to school?” Uncle Raleigh asked.

“I’m thinking about Mount Holyoke,” I said.

My father and my uncle looked at each other. “You d-d-don’t say,” said Daddy.

“It’s stil early,” Uncle Raleigh said, more to my father than to me. “It’s stil early.”

AFTER WE PAID the check, we headed back to the Hilton. Daddy sent me in at eleven thirty to see if things were winding down. On the ride up to the twenty-third floor, I straightened my col ar and smoothed the accordion wrinkles from my skirt. The bul et-shaped elevator was glass, al owing me a ful view of Atlanta. The door opened and I looked around for the Magnolia Room. It took a couple trips up and down the carpeted hal way before I ran into Mr. Grant, Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s dad. Tiny comb tracks made roadways in his Bil y Dee waves.

“Witherspoon!” he said, after patting down the pockets of his brain, trying to remember my first name. “I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair down.”

“Hel o, Mr. Grant. I just came up to see how things are coming along.”

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said. “Go on in and fix yourself a plate.”

“Oh no, sir,” I said, tugging at my hem. “I’m working tonight.”

“Don’t be sil y,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. Mr. Grant smel ed nice, like good cologne and cognac. I knew that I smel ed like fried food and cigarettes.

“You are such a pretty girl. Such a young lady.” He kissed me on the top of my head and gave me a little squeeze around the tops of my arms.

“Go on in. Enjoy yourself.”

He opened the door of the Magnolia Room, leaving me no choice but to step inside. For a moment, I was queasy with a wave of déjà vu, as this was the setting of one of my nightmares. In the dream, I walk into a fancy party. Everyone else is dressed for prom, but I am fat and wearing a two-piece bathing suit. My stomach sags over the leopard-print bikini and I am afraid to raise my arms because everyone wil see that I haven’t shaved.