Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 41

I carry words around in my pocket, put them behind my eyelids, in my mind. I let words float in my mouth. I roll them around on my tongue, taste them until sounds slowly push out of my mouth. Each word is a poem.

parler . . . la verite . . . a minuit . . . regarde . . . une etoile . . . le nuage . . . fumee This new language I am dreaming, I'm beginning to understand, is soft in my mouth like small satin pillows. These words are not hard to swallow.

Once upon a time, not so long ago and not far from now, there was a black girl in Paris . . . She is lying on her back on a hard little bed with her eyes closed dreaming in French . . . The long narrow room . . . a round window at the foot of the bed . . . All the familiar things are not. A door is not a door. La porte. Love is l'amour, not an open wound. When I wake up I'll leave this place and I'll find my way back again. I'll find a word and sing it like it's the last song I'll ever sing. Josephine and jazz were here. It is a brand-new world.

My name is Eden and I'm not afraid of anything anymore.

School.

BY VERONICA CHAMBERS.

FROM Miss Black America.

The first time somebody called me a liar, I was nine years old. It was in a cla.s.sroom decorated with faded pictures of rosy-cheeked white kids with blond hair, and that did not escape my notice. Every conceivable surface-the bulletin boards, the wall above the chalkboard, the wood closet doors-were covered with the ill.u.s.trated adventures of d.i.c.k and Jane. There was only one white girl in our cla.s.s: Brenda. She had red hair just like the comic book character Brenda Starr. She swore up and down that she wasn't named after a stupid comic strip, but that's what we all called her. Brenda Starr.

Our teacher was a middle-aged white woman from Long Island. She told us that the very first day of school. "My name is Mrs. Newhouse and I'm from Long Island." She p.r.o.nounced "Long Island" in a really funny way, as if each word was chopped up into five or six squeaky syllables. I thought it was strange that she mentioned where she was from. It wasn't as if it was any place interesting like France or India. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Chong, was Cuban Chinese. We only found out about the Cuban part when some of the Puerto Rican kids in cla.s.s were making fun of her eyes and she went off on them in Spanish. We always thought her clipped, staccato tone was the way all Chinese people talked. But when she started speaking Spanish, she was like Nidia Velasquez' grandmother cursing people out her window. Mrs. Chong put one hand on her hip and one finger in the air and let loose a string of Spanish words that swiveled in her mouth as fast as her hips. It was extraordinary, like watching a normal person turn into a superhero. That's when Mrs. Chong explained that her parents were Chinese, but she'd grown up in Cuba. We knew then that she was the coolest teacher we'd ever have.

"You better watch out," the boys would say, as they roughhoused in the playground. "Mrs. Chong will do a Bruce Lee on your a.s.s. Then she'll turn around and pow, pow like Roberto Duran." Me and my girlfriends were more concerned with what Mrs. Chong had cooking in her pot. "Her kids are so lucky," Coco Garcia said, salivating into her peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich. "They can have sweet and sour pork one night and ropa vieja the next." Kenya Moore added, "They could have won ton soup and black bean soup." Brenda Starr waved away all the comparisons with an impressive air of cool. "Face it," she said, crossing her legs and swinging the top one lazily, "her kids have got it made."

So, what was so special about a teacher from Long Island compared to a Cuban Chinese? Then Mrs. Newhouse went around the room and asked every kid what their father did for a living. When she got to me, I said, "Magician." Everyone in the cla.s.s giggled. Hard of hearing or just not paying attention, she said, "Does your father play an instrument, dear?" I just shook my head. "No, Mrs. Newhouse," I said. "He's a ma-gi-cian." I made the word long and squeaky like "Long Island" so maybe she'd understand me better.

She smiled at me, a fake smile without teeth, then came over to my desk. She smelled of coffee and, on closer inspection, her red pantsuit had b.a.l.l.s of lint along the thighs. She patted me on the head. "Here's an example of a very vivid imagination at work," she said. "I bet every little boy or girl wishes their father was a magician or a circus ringmaster or a flame thrower." She chuckled, as if she'd told a very funny joke; then she skipped me, moving on to the girl in the seat behind me. I didn't say another word the whole day. I just sat there, silent and furious.

The thing is I'd already come to school that day feeling bad. The night before my mother and father had had a huge fight because there was no money to buy me a new outfit for school, much less a pencil case or a small pair of plastic scissors or any of the school supplies on the list the counselor had given us. This, I was led to believe, was my father's fault.

Just the night before, my mother had been yelling about how my father was "no better than a child." Standing in the living room wearing a blue and green tie-dyed T-shirt and a pair of white jeans, she was beautiful, mad as she was. I thought she looked like a Charlie's Angel, a black Charlie's Angel. Her shoulder-length hair had been pressed to bone straightness and she wore it flipped back like Jayne Kennedy.

"Some sort of magician you are, Teddo," she screamed, ripping up pictures of my father's head shot. "Why don't you pull some motherf.u.c.king food out of your hat? Why don't you make some money appear, Magic Man?"

My father closed the paper he had been reading, then walked over to the stereo. "You're so small-minded," he said, clamping the bulky headset over his ears. "You've got such a f.u.c.king small mind. Can't you see that I'm trying to do something amazing with my life?"

My mother was on him in ten seconds, ripping two b.u.t.tons off of his silk print shirt and pounding on his chest. "Amazing? You want to do something amazing?" she screamed. "Provide for your f.u.c.king child. Live up to your f.u.c.king responsibilities." He shrugged her off of him with one strong swoop of his arms. "This is a new shirt, man," he muttered to no one in particular.

My mother stumbled from my father's push but quickly got to her feet. She cut her eyes at my father, tossing him a long hard glare that would have been considered an invitation to rumble on any street corner in the city. But my father refused to take the bait, humming along to music only he could hear. "Come on, Angela," my mother said, leading me out of the living room. My hand felt small in her hand and in her anger, she clenched her long nails into my palm. I didn't care. She was my angel. My Charlie's Angel.

We were living in the South Bronx, in a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment that had love beads and s.h.a.g carpeting in every room. Even the bathroom was carpeted. As we walked back toward my tiny bedroom, I squeezed the carpet with my toes and willed myself not to cry. This was the first time I would not have a new dress for the first day of school. I understood the reason, but that didn't hold back the tears. There was no money. There was never any money. But it had never bothered me. Now I felt caught. For the first time, ever, I was drafted into the vicious no-money war my parents constantly battled. It felt terrible. Like playing a game of hot potato and having the cootie-contaminated object glued to your hands.

By the time we reached my room, I was quietly sobbing. I sat on the bed and my mother knelt in front of me. Her cocoa face glistened around the edges like a halo, where she'd combed her baby hair down with Vaseline. She pulled my face close to hers as if for a kiss and said, "I am so sorry. There's nothing I hate more than to see you go without. But I had no choice this month. Either I bought your clothes or paid the rent and I couldn't have us out on the street."

The notion of being out on the street was no idle threat. We'd lived in three apartments in as many years, and all around our Bronx neighborhood there was evidence of eviction sofas, like new, abandoned on the sidewalk, dining room tables left behind when somebody took all the chairs. Sometimes, after it rained, I saw family photographs and copies of birth certificates floating like paper sailboats in the street toward the gutter.

Mommy had grown up running from the bill collectors and the repo man. They would be in the middle of watching a favorite show-Laugh In or something silly-and the bell would ring and a guy would come in and take the TV. One day, she came home from school and found all of the contents of her apartment on the sidewalk and the neighbors making off with all of her stuff-her dolls, her clothes, even a bag of her barrettes. "Girls I knew," Mommy had said, her teeth clenched as if those stolen baby dolls had been real babies. "Girls who had been to my house, played with my toys, just took them. As if without four walls around them, our stuff was not our stuff. I never want you to go through something like that. Never."

Mommy told the story again as I cried my greedy new-dress tears, then she stood and opened my closet door. "It's a brand-new school, Angela," she said in a cheerleader's voice that I didn't believe. "n.o.body's ever seen any of your clothes. Just make do for now, sweetie. First of the month, I'll buy you a new dress and new shoes."

I didn't want to hear it, and looked away at the poster on my wall of my namesake. Angela Davis' bright brown eyes were flashing and her lips were slightly open, but serious, as if she was about to say something powerful. I knew what Angela Davis would think of a little girl who cried for new clothes. I wiped my tears and hugged Mommy around the waist.

"Pick a dress," she said, kissing me on the forehead. "I'll iron it and it will look like new, I swear."

I stood up and reached for the outfit we both knew I'd choose. It was a pink peasant blouse with a pair of pink bell bottoms to match.

In the kitchen, Mommy gave me a purple notebook with stars and a new purple pen. "No book bag yet," she said. "But we'll get you one to match your coat." She looked outside and held her hand through the window-a human weather vane. "Thank G.o.d it's been warm 'cause you need a new coat, too."

I hadn't slept well the night before I'd met my new teacher, Mrs. Newhouse from Long Island. I'd been feeling nervous about the new school and on edge because my back-to-school clothes were really back-to-last-year clothes. I'd been feeling small and she made me feel smaller. So since she'd already said I was a liar, I went home and I told a lie.

Mommy was at work. Daddy was in the kitchen, making an omelet. It was three o'clock and he was still in his pajamas, which meant he didn't have a show, tonight, which meant there was no work.

"How was your first day at school, princess?" he asked in a sweet tone that told me he was sorry for fighting with Mommy the night before. When Daddy was feeling guilty, there was always sweet talk to spare. He'd be calling her Miss Black America and his dark-chocolate honey as soon as she got home. He'd offer to fix dinner and light candles and put on Teddy Pendergra.s.s as soon as I went to bed. I knew the drill.

"It was terrible," I said, pouting for effect. "Not to mention, the teacher was talking about you."

"About me?" Daddy said, whipping around from the hot stove. "What did she say about me?"

For all his skillful hustling, Daddy was easier to play than a game of three-card monte. All you had to do was make him the star of the story-good or bad-and he got right involved.

"The teacher asked us what our fathers did for a living," I said, pausing dramatically. "And when I told her that my father was a magician, she rolled her eyes. She said, 'There's no such thing as a black magician.'"

"She said what?" Daddy growled ferociously. I had thought about pretending she'd said that there was no such thing as a n.i.g.g.e.r magician, but I figured that would be laying it on a bit thick. Always keep your con simple. Daddy had taught me that.

"She said she'd never heard of a black magician," I repeated. "Then she asked me if I hadn't meant musician and she asked me what instrument you played."

Daddy was livid. "Why we always got to sing and dance?" he fumed. Then he went off on a rant, barking like a mad dog. "It's not enough to be a talent like Bojangles. Got to sing 'Good Ship Lollypop' with Shirley Temple. You listen to me! It's not a 'good' ship unless white people are on it. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin hanging out are just a couple of nice guys. Put a black man in with them and all of a sudden, it's the Rat Pack. Always got to be something negative with black people . . ."

"Daddy, the stove," I said, as the skillet began to smoke.

"In the cowboy films, the good guy wears white and the bad guy wears black," he continued.

"Daddy! Your omelet's burning."

He turned around and turned off the flame. "So because it's black, I'm not supposed to eat it?" he said with a grin, then sat down and ate every last burned bite.

The next day, Daddy walked me to school. Although it was eight o'clock in the morning, he was dressed in a black tuxedo, complete with top hat and tails. I felt slightly silly walking down the street with him. On each block, people peeked out of doorways and windows to stare. But I was more happy than embarra.s.sed because I knew that my teacher was going to get it. Daddy was going to give her a tongue-lashing she'd never forget.

Which is exactly what he didn't do. After introducing himself to Mrs. Newhouse, Daddy said, "I understand that this is Career Day at school."

Mrs. Newhouse, dressed in a teal pantsuit identical to the one she'd worn the day before, went slightly green herself. "There's been a mistake, Mr. Brown. Today is not Career Day."

"It isn't?" Daddy said, shooting me a quizzical look. "That's what Angela told me." I was seated in the fifth seat of the third row and began silently willing myself and my chair to disappear.

"Well," Daddy said, cheerfully, "since I came all this way, would you mind terribly if I showed the kids some tricks?"

All the students began to clap. Three or four of the girls, the ones that I'd already designated as the snotty bunch, shot me winning smiles. They were sweet, "be my best friend/sign my slam book/make fortune-tellers with me" smiles and I ignored them, unsure that Daddy's spell would last past the minute he walked out the door.

"Actually, Mr. Brown, I'm afraid we don't have time for magic tricks," Mrs. Newhouse said, reaching out for a folder on her desk. "The Board of Ed has laid out a very strict lesson plan. Lots of learning to do, you know." She said this last sentence with a bit of a lilt, like a character in a musical.

Daddy reached his arm around Mrs. Newhouse's head, just past her jet-black modified beehive. "I won't argue with that," he said. "My great-granddaddy always told me that if you pour your wealth into your head, you will always be rich."

Mrs. Newhouse smiled her toothless smile and looked pointedly at the door. Daddy began to walk away, then turned around. "My dear Mrs. Newhouse," he said, in a faint British accent designed to flatter, "I need to use the payphone on my way out. A smart teacher like you, with a head full of knowledge, could probably spare some change." Then he pulled a quarter out of her ear and she gave a little gasp. The kids in cla.s.s sat up on the edge of their seats. She'd asked Daddy to leave, she'd said there was no time for tricks, but he'd gone ahead and whipped a little something on her anyway.

Daddy lifted a large "Reading Is Fundamental" coffee cup off of Mrs. Newhouse's desk and held it up to her head. "You've poured so much knowledge, so much wealth, into your head, that you're a positive gold mine." He did the slot machine trick then, cranking Mrs. Newhouse's arm up and down as quarter after quarter fell out of her ear and into the cup.

The kids began to cheer and even Mrs. Newhouse let loose a giggle. "I have to say," she said, in a whispery tone that bordered on flirtatious, "that is really astounding. I think we can spare the time for one or two tricks more."

Daddy took out a large envelope, five notebook-size playing cards, and a piece of black photographic paper. He displayed each card slowly. On one card, there was a plus symbol; on another card, there was a square; on the third card, there was a circle; on the fourth card, there was a series of wavy lines, and on the last card, there was a star.

He turned his back to the cla.s.s and asked Mrs. Newhouse to shuffle the cards. She did and handed the large cards back to Daddy, carefully with two hands as if she was afraid they might fall.

Daddy smiled at the cla.s.s. "Since I'm taking up some of your important cla.s.s time, I thought we'd do a review of basic mathematics."

He knelt down and placed three cards on the floor, then he asked, "Ladies and gentleman, how many cards on the floor?"

Everyone cried out, "Three!"

He stood up again. "That leaves how many cards in my hand?"

All the kids shouted out "Two!"

"Now what I'm about to show you moves out of the realm of math and into the realm of physics," Daddy continued. His smile, ever-present, glowed as if he was born to smile and was perfectly content at all times. I sat at my desk, remembering his fight with Mommy-the way he'd shrugged her off like a fly that bothered him. His face then had been so cold, so disgusted. He is a million men, I thought. He sheds emotions like skin.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call mind over matter," he said. Daddy knew that kids loved to be called "ladies and gentlemen." It made them feel grown-up and was just a little bit distracting and kept their mind off the mechanics of the trick. "I'm going to put these two cards face to face and put this magical black photographic paper between them. I'm going to place the whole thing in this envelope and then I want the lovely Mrs. Newhouse to take the envelope to the other side of the room."

Mrs. Newhouse took the envelope and practically skipped over to the little library in the back of the room.

"Now you won't believe what you're about to see," Daddy said. "A year from now, you may not even remember exactly what you saw. But I want you to remember this-mind over matter."

Daddy took off his long tuxedo coat and rolled up his sleeves. He closed his eyes and placed a finger on each temple. Then he began to hum. A few moments later, he announced, "I'm in harmony with those cards. It doesn't matter what they were when I put them in because I imprinted my will on that photographic paper. I have changed the cards!"

In a confident, almost slow-motion stroll, Daddy began to walk up and down the aisles between our desks. He looked each child in the face, pausing suspiciously, to gaze longer at certain kids. When he had made eye contact with every student in the room, including me, he asked, "How many of you believe that I can guess which two cards Mrs. Newhouse is holding in her hand?"

About half the kids held up their hands. "This is a tough crowd, Angela," Daddy said, winking at me. Then he asked again for a show of hands again.

He walked over to a boy named Charlie, the biggest kid in the room. Charlie had jet-black skin and a permanent scowl. He was the kind of kid that was genetically destined to be the cla.s.s bully. "What's your name, son?" Daddy asked.

Charlie told him.

Daddy perched on the edge of Charlie's desk. "You don't believe I can guess those two cards," he said.

"Nope," Charlie answered.

"Well, how about I make you a deal?" Daddy purred. "I'm going to take a guess and if I'm wrong, I'll kill myself."

Everyone in the room, including Mrs. Newhouse, looked horrified. But Daddy wasn't finished. He stood up and, as he walked toward the front of the cla.s.sroom, he added, "However, if I kill myself, I'll do it by starvation." He winked at Charlie. "I don't know if you'll want to wait around."

Everybody laughed. Mrs. Newhouse let out a sigh of relief. Then Daddy p.r.o.nounced, "You are holding the square and the wavy lines, Mrs. Newhouse."

And of course, she was. "House rules," as Daddy would say. The con man always wins.

Daddy stayed until the lunch bell rang. When he took his final bow, the entire cla.s.s gave him a standing ovation.

In the cafeteria, I was surrounded by kids. Not just the ones in my cla.s.s, but fifth and sixth graders who'd heard about Daddy's performance. They had a million questions, questions that just begged for me to lie some more. For the first time, it looked like I might actually be popular-old clothes and all. They wanted to know if I'd ever met Doug Henning. I said yes. They wanted to know if we had a magic carpet at home. I said yes. They wanted to know if we had a magic rabbit. I said yes. They asked if I knew the secrets behind Daddy's tricks. "Of course," I said, feigning boredom. The truth was I knew some of the devices-hidden compartments, rubber thumbs big enough to squeeze handkerchiefs in, dummy hats and newspapers that were quickly swapped for the real thing. But I couldn't do magic-not even a simple "pick a card, any card" deck trick.

What I wanted to tell them was it's more complicated than you think. Sure, it helps to be a magician's daughter. I've got a few ins. But let's say your mother is Patti LaBelle and you can carry a note. You still have to do more than sing. You have to wear those crazy outfits and sport that fabulous hair. You have to know how to dance and how to work an audience. You have to know how to banter and how to wink and how to make a room hot when everyone is just sitting there, staring, as frozen as a gla.s.s of ice cubes. You have to be fearless and larger than life. Otherwise, you're just another church mouse singing in the glee club or the Sunday choir. It's like that with magic, I wanted to say. The tricks are the easy part. The things my father does that make him amazing? That's what's magic.

Ghost Story.

BY VICTOR D. LAVALLE.

FROM Slapboxing with Jesus.

Move anywhere, when you're from the Bronx, you're of the Bronx, it doesn't shed. The buildings are medium height: schools, factories, projects. It's not Manhattan, where everything's so tall you can't forget you're in a city; in the Bronx you can see the sky, it's not blotted out. The place isn't standing or on its back, the whole borough lies on its side. And when the wind goes through there, you can't kid yourself-there are voices.

I was at war and I was in love. Of both, the second was harder to hide, there was evidence. Like beside my bed, a three-liter bottle, almost full. I rolled from under my covers, spun off the cap, pulled down my pants, held myself to the hole and let go.

Besides me and the bottle, my room had a bed, some clothes hanging in the closet, books spread out across the floor. Somewhere in that pile of texts and manifestos were two papers I had to turn in if I ever wanted to be a college graduate.

Cocoa was in the next room, snoring and farting. I listened to him, all his sounds were music.

I finished, pulled up my sweatpants and closed the bottle; inside, the stuff was so clear you could hold it to one eye and read a message magnified on the other side. I religiously removed the label from this one like I had all the others, so when I put it at the bottom of the closet with them, in formation (two rows of three), I could check how they went from dark to lighter to this one, sheer as a pane of gla.s.s; each was like a revision-with the new incarnation you're getting closer and closer to that uncluttered truth you might be hunting privately. I would show them all to a woman I loved, one I could trust; that had been tried three times already-the two stupid ones had asked me to empty them and change my life, the smart one had dressed right then and walked out. This was my proof, their intolerance, that people hate the body. But me, I was in love.

Cocoa and I had grown up poor and I was the stupid one; I believed that's how we were supposed to stay. That's why, when I saw him on the train two months before, with his girl, Helena, her stomach all fat with his seed, I didn't leave him alone. I walked right over. I was at war, too, and needed the help.

She'd looked up before he did; the express cut corners and I fooled myself into thinking she was glad to see me. "Hey Sammy," she forced out. Cocoa was working, I was sure of that; she was rocking three new gold fronts on her bottom teeth.

I asked, "You going to be a mommy?"

Started telling me how many months along she was but I'd stopped listening; soon she wasn't talking. Her jewelry disappeared behind her closed mouth. Cocoa hugged me tight like when we were fourteen: me and him coming out of the c.r.a.p church on the corner of 163rd, the one with neon-bright red bricks, the painted sign on the door, misspelling the most important word ("cherch"). It was when his mother died, quick, and we were leaving the ceremony, behind us the thirty more people who'd cared to come. It had been a nice day so fellas were hanging out in crews everywhere and despite them Cocoa hadn't been able to hide his crying like his father and uncles had. I put my hand on his shoulder, patted it hard like men do, but it wasn't enough. So I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged, on the corner, like even his pops would never care: publicly. When Dorice walked by I didn't stop and she probably thought we looked gay; still, I didn't force him back and try to catch up to her. And Cocoa? He didn't push me away, he leaned closer. He hugged me like that when I saw him on the train, like there was a death nearby. He looked right at me.

"We need to chill again," I said.

The way Cocoa grinned, it was like I'd given him cash. He was small, but he had the kind of smile it takes two or three generations of good breeding to grow; the one descendants of the Mayflower had after four centuries of feeding themselves fruit I'd never get my lips around (the kind where fresh means just picked, not just brought out for display). It was a good smile that made people trust him, think he was going places. Helena touched his leg, but he brushed her back, saying, "I'm just getting his number."

I watched Helena's back curl like it would when the stomach got grander, the baby inside pushing out its little legs like it might kick a hole; as she sank I told Cocoa my number and he gave me his; he was living with Helena and her family, back in the Bronx.