RECITATIF1
by
TONI MORRISON
My mother danced all night and
Roberta's was sick. That's why we were taken to Saint Bonny's. People want to put
their arms around you when you tell them you were in a shelter, but it really
wasn't bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like Bellevue.2
There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a shortage
of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from bed
to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every night and
for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as our own
permanent bed.
It didn't start out that way. The
minute I walked in and the Big Bozo introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It
was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was
something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other
race. And Mary, that's my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would
stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things
she said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta
sure did. Smell funny, I mean. So when the Big Bozo (nobody ever called her
Mrs. Itkin, just like nobody ever said Saint Bonaventure)—when she said,
"Twyla, this is Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Make each other
welcome." I said, "My mother won't like you putting me in here."
"Good," said Bozo.
"Maybe then she'll come and take you home."
How's that for mean? If Roberta
had laughed I would have killed her, but she didn't. She just walked over to
the window and stood with her back to us.
"Turn around," said the
Bozo. "Don't be rude. Now Twyla. Roberta.
When you hear a loud buzzer,
that's the call for dinner. Come down to the first floor. Any fights and no
movie." And then, just to make sure we knew what we would be missing,
"The Wizard of Ozzz."
Roberta must have thought I meant
that my mother would be mad about my being put in the shelter. Not about
rooming with her, because as soon as Bozo left she came over to me and said,
"Is your mother sick too?"
"No," I said. "She
just likes to dance all night."
"Oh," she nodded her
head and I liked the way she understood things so fast. So for the moment it
didn't matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that's
what the other kids called us sometimes. We were eight years old and got F's
all the time. Me because I couldn't remember what I read or what the teacher
said. And Roberta because she couldn't read at all and didn't even listen to
the teacher. She wasn't good at anything except jacks, at which she was a
killer: pow scoop pow scoop pow scoop.
We didn’t like each other all
that much first, but nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren't real
orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were dumped. Even the New
York City Puerto Ricans and the upstate Indians ignored us. All kinds of kids
were in there, black ones, white ones, even two Koreans. The food was good,
though. At least I thought so. Roberta hated it and left whole pieces of things
on her plate: Spam, Salisbury steak—even jello with fruit cocktail in it, and
she didn't care if I ate what she wouldn't. Mary's idea of supper was popcorn
and a can of Yoo-Hoo. Hot mashed potatoes and two weenies was like Thanksgiving
for me.
It really wasn't bad, Saint
Bonny's. The big girls on the second floor pushed us around now and then. But that was all.
They wore lipstick and eyebrow pencil and wobbled their knees while they
watched TV. Fifteen, sixteen, even, some of them were. They were put-out girls,
scared runaways most of them. Poor little girls who fought their uncles off but
looked tough to us, and mean. God did they look mean. The staff tried to keep
them separate from the younger children, but sometimes they caught us watching
them in the orchard where they played radios and danced with each other. They'd
light out after us and pull our hair or twist our arms. We were scared of them,
Roberta and me, but neither of us wanted the other one to know it. So we got a
good list of dirty names we could shout back when we ran from them through the
orchard. I used to dream a lot and almost always the orchard was there. Two
acres, four maybe, of these little apple trees. Hundreds of them. Empty and
crooked like beggar women when I first came to Saint Bonny's but fat with
flowers when I left. I don't know why I dreamt about that orchard so much.
Nothing really happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean. Just the big
girls dancing and playing the radio. Roberta and me watching. Maggie fell down
there once. The kitchen woman with legs like parentheses. And the big girls
laughed at her. We should have helped her up, I know, but we were scared of
those girls with lipstick and eyebrow pencil. Maggie couldn't talk. The kids
said she had her tongue cut out, but I think she was just born that way: mute.
She was old and sandy-colored and she worked in the kitchen. I don't know if
she was nice or not. I just remember her legs like parentheses and how she
rocked when she walked. She worked from early in the morning till two o'clock,
and if she was late, if she had too much cleaning and didn't get out till
two-fifteen or so, she'd cut through the orchard so she wouldn't miss her bus
and have to wait another hour. She wore this really stupid little hat—a kid's
hat with ear flaps—and she wasn't much taller than we were. A really awful
little hat. Even for a mute, it was dumb—dressing like a kid and never saying
anything at all.
"But what about if somebody
tries to kill her?" I used to wonder about that. "Or what if she
wants to cry? Can she cry?"
"Sure," Roberta said.
"But just tears. No sounds come out."
"She can't scream?"
"Nope. Nothing."
"Can she hear?"
"I guess."
"Let's call her," I
said. And we did.
"Dummy! Dummy!" She
never turned her head.
"Bow legs! Bow legs!"
Nothing. She just rocked on, the chin straps of her baby-boy hat swaying from
side to side. I think we were wrong. I think she could hear and didn't let on.
And it shames me even now to think there was somebody in there after all who
heard us call her those names and couldn't tell on us.
We got along all right, Roberta
and me. Changed beds every night, got F's in civics and communication skills
and gym. The Bozo was disappointed in us, she said. Out of 130 of us state
cases, 90 were under twelve. Almost all were real orphans with beautiful dead
parents in the sky. We were the only ones dumped and the only ones with F's in
three classes including gym. So we got along—what with her leaving whole pieces
of things on her plate and being nice about not asking questions.
I think it was the day before
Maggie fell down that we found out our mothers were coming to visit us on the
same Sunday. We had been at the shelter twenty-eight days (Roberta twenty-eight
and a half) and this was their first visit with us. Our mothers would come at
ten o'clock in time for chapel, then lunch with us in the teachers' lounge. I
thought if my dancing mother met her sick mother it might be good for her. And
Roberta thought her sick mother would get a big bang out of a dancing one. We
got excited about it and curled each other's hair. After breakfast we sat on
the bed watching the road from the window. Roberta's socks were still wet. She
washed them the night before and put them on the radiator to dry. They hadn't,
but she put them on anyway because their tops were so pretty—scalloped in pink.
Each of us had a purple construction-paper basket that we had made in craft
class. Mine had a yellow crayon rabbit on it. Roberta's had eggs with wiggly
lines of color. Inside were cellophane grass and just the jelly beans because
I'd eaten the two marshmallow eggs they gave us. The Big Bozo came herself to
get us. Smiling she told us we looked very nice and to come downstairs. We were
so surprised by the smile we'd never seen before, neither of us moved.
"Don't you want to see your
mommies?"
I stood up first and spilled the
jelly beans all over the floor. Bozo's smile disappeared while we scrambled to
get the candy up off the floor and put it back in the grass.
She escorted us downstairs to the
first floor, where the other girls were lining up to file into the chapel. A
bunch of grown-ups stood to one side. Viewers mostly. The old biddies who
wanted servants and the fags who wanted company looking for children they might
want to adopt. Once in a while a grandmother. Almost never anybody young or
anybody whose face wouldn't scare you in the night. Because if any of the real
orphans had young relatives they wouldn't be real orphans. I saw Mary right
away. She had on those green slacks I hated and hated even more now because
didn't she know we were going to chapel? And that fur jacket with the pocket
linings so ripped she had to pull to get her hands out of them. But her face
was pretty—like always, and she smiled and waved like she was the little girl
looking for her mother—not me.
I walked slowly, trying not to
drop the jelly beans and hoping the paper handle would hold. I had to use my
last Chiclet because by the time I finished cutting everything out, all the
Elmer's was gone. I am left-handed and the scissors never worked for me. It
didn't matter, though; I might just as well have chewed the gum. Mary dropped
to her knees and grabbed me, mashing the basket, the jelly beans, and the grass
into her ratty fur jacket.
"Twyla, baby. Twyla,
baby!"
I could have killed her. Already
I heard the big girls in the orchard the next time saying, "Twyyyyyla,
baby!" But I couldn't stay mad at Mary while she was smiling and hugging
me and smelling of Lady Esther dusting powder. I wanted to stay buried in her
fur all day.
To tell the truth I forgot about
Roberta. Mary and I got in line for the traipse into chapel and I was feeling
proud because she looked so beautiful even in those ugly green slacks that made
her behind stick out. A pretty mother on earth is better than a beautiful dead
one in the sky even if she did leave you all alone to go dancing.
I felt a tap on my shoulder,
turned, and saw Roberta smiling. I smiled back, but not too much lest somebody
think this visit was the biggest thing that ever happened in my life. Then
Roberta said, "Mother, I want you to meet my roommate, Twyla. And that's Twyla's
mother."
I looked up it seemed for miles.
She was big. Bigger than any man and on her chest was the biggest cross I'd
ever seen. I swear it was six inches long each way. And in the crook of her arm
was the biggest Bible ever made.
Mary, simple-minded as ever,
grinned and tried to yank her hand out of the pocket with the raggedy lining—to
shake hands, I guess. Roberta's mother looked down at me and then looked down
at Mary too. She didn't say anything, just grabbed Roberta with her Bible-free
hand and stepped out of line, walking quickly to the rear of it. Mary was still
grinning because she's not too swift when it comes to what's really going on.
Then this light bulb goes off in her head and she says "That bitch!"
really loud and us almost in the chapel now. Organ music whining; the Bonny
Angels singing sweetly. Everybody in the world turned around to look. And Mary
would have kept it up—kept calling names if I hadn't squeezed her hand as hard
as I could. That helped a little, but she still twitched and crossed and
uncrossed her legs all through service. Even groaned a couple of times. Why did
I think she would come there and act right? Slacks. No hat like the
grandmothers and viewers, and groaning all the while. When we stood for hymns
she kept her mouth shut. Wouldn't even look at the words on the page. She
actually reached in her purse for a mirror to check her lipstick. All I could
think of was that she really needed to be killed. The sermon lasted a year, and
I knew the real orphans were looking smug again.
We were supposed to have lunch in
the teachers' lounge, but Mary didn't bring anything, so we picked fur and
cellophane grass off the mashed jelly beans and ate them. I could have killed
her. I sneaked a look at Roberta. Her mother had brought chicken legs and ham
sandwiches and oranges and a whole box of chocolate-covered grahams. Roberta
drank milk from a thermos while her mother read the Bible to her.
Things are not right. The wrong
food is always with the wrong people. Maybe that's why I got into waitress work
later—to match. up the right people with the right food. Roberta just let those
chicken legs sit there, but she did bring a stack of grahams up to me later
when the visit was over. I think she was sorry that her mother would not shake
my mother's hand. And I liked that and I liked the fact that she didn't say a
word about Mary groaning all the way through the service and not bringing any
lunch.
Roberta left in May when the
apple trees were heavy and white. On her last day we went to the orchard to
watch the big girls smoke and dance by the radio. It didn't matter that they
said, "Twyyyyyla, baby." We sat on the ground and breathed. Lady
Esther. Apple blossoms. I still go soft when I smell one or the other. Roberta
was going home. The big cross and the big Bible was coming to get her and she
seemed sort of glad and sort of not. I thought I would die in that room of four
beds without her and I knew Bozo had plans to move some other dumped kid in
there with me. Roberta promised to write every day, which was really sweet of
her because she couldn't read a lick so how could she write anybody. I would
have drawn pictures and sent them to her but she never gave me her address.
Little by little she faded. Her wet socks with the pink scalloped tops and her
big serious-looking eyes—that's all I could catch when I tried to bring her to
mind.
I was working behind the counter
at the Howard Johnson's on the Thruway just before the Kingston exit. Not a bad
job. Kind of a long ride from Newburgh,3 but okay once I got there. Mine was the
second night shift—eleven to seven. Very light until a Greyhound checked in for
breakfast around six-thirty. At that hour the sun was all the way clear of the
hills behind the restaurant. The place looked better at night—more like
shelter—but I loved it when the sun broke in, even if it did show all the
cracks in the vinyl and the speckled floor looked dirty no matter what the mop
boy did.
It was August and a bus crowd was
just unloading. They would stand around a long while: going to the john, and
looking at gifts and junk-for-sale machines, reluctant to sit down so soon.
Even to eat. I was trying to fill the coffee pots and get them all situated on
the electric burners when I saw her. She was sitting in a booth smoking a
cigarette with two guys smothered in head and facial hair. Her own hair was so
big and wild I could hardly see her face. But the eyes. I would know them
anywhere. She had on a powder-blue halter and shorts outfit and earrings the
size of bracelets. Talk about lipstick and eyebrow pencil. She made the big
girls look like nuns. I couldn't get off the counter until seven o'clock, but I
kept watching the booth in case they got up to leave before that. My
replacement was on time for a change, so I counted and stacked my receipts as
fast as I could and signed off. I walked over to the booth, smiling and
wondering if she would remember me. Or even if she wanted to remember me. Maybe
she didn't want to be reminded of Saint Bonny's or to have anybody know she was
ever there. I know I never talked about it to anybody.
I put my hands in my apron
pockets and leaned against the back of the booth facing them.
"Roberta? Roberta
Fisk?"
She looked up. "Yeah?"
"Twyla."
She squinted for a second and
then said, "Wow."
"Remember me?"
"Sure. Hey. Wow."
"It's been a while," I
said, and gave a smile to the two hairy guys.
"Yeah. Wow. You work
here?"
"Yeah," I said. "I
live in Newburgh."
"Newburgh? No kidding?"
She laughed then a private laugh that included the guys but only the guys, and
they laughed with her. What could I do but laugh too and wonder why I was
standing there with my knees showing out from under that uniform. Without
looking I could see the blue and white triangle on my head, my hair shapeless
in a net, my ankles thick in white oxfords. Nothing could have been less sheer
than my stockings. There was this silence that came down right after I laughed.
A silence it was her turn to fill up. With introductions, maybe, to her
boyfriends or an invitation to sit down and have a Coke. Instead she lit a
cigarette off the one she'd just finished and said, "We're on our way to
the Coast. He's got an appointment with Hendrix." She gestured casually
toward the boy next to her.
"Hendrix? Fantastic," I
said. "Really fantastic. What's she doing now?" Roberta coughed on
her cigarette and the two guys rolled their eyes up at the ceiling.
"Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix, ass-hole.
He's only the biggest—Oh, wow. Forget it."
I was dismissed without anyone
saying goodbye, so I thought I would do it for her.
"How's your mother?" I
asked. Her grin cracked her whole face. She swallowed. "Fine," she
said. "How's yours?"
"Pretty as a picture,"
I said and turned away. The backs of my knees were damp. Howard Johnson's
really was a dump in the sunlight.
James is as comfortable as a
house slipper. He liked my cooking and I liked his big loud family. They have
lived in Newburgh all of their lives and talk about it the way people do who
have always known a home. His grand-mother is a porch swing older than his
father and when they talk about streets and avenues and buildings they call
them names they no longer have. They still call the A & P4 Rico's because
it stands on property once a mom and pop store owned by Mr. Rico. And they call
the new community college Town Hall because it once was. My mother-in-law puts
up jelly and cucumbers and buys butter wrapped in cloth from a dairy. James and
his father talk about fishing and baseball and I can see them all together on
the Hudson in a raggedy skiff. Half the population of Newburgh is on welfare
now, but to my husband's family it was still some upstate paradise of a time
long past. A time of ice houses and vegetable wagons, coal furnaces and
children weeding gardens. When our son was born my mother-in-law gave me the
crib blanket that had been hers.
But the town they remembered had
changed. Something quick was in the air. Magnificent old houses, so ruined they
had become shelter for squatters and rent risks, were bought and renovated.
Smart IBM5 people moved out of their suburbs back into the city and put
shutters up and herb gardens in their backyards. A brochure came in the mail
announcing the opening of a Food Emporium. Gourmet food it said—and listed
items the rich IBM crowd would want. It was located in a new mall at the edge
of town and I drove out to shop there one day—just to see. It was late in June.
After the tulips were gone and the Queen Elizabeth roses were open everywhere.
I trailed my cart along the aisle tossing in smoked oysters and Robert’s sauce
and things I knew would sit in my cupboard for years. Only when I found some
Klondike ice cream bars did I feel less guilty about spending James's fireman's
salary so foolishly. My father-in-law ate them with the same gusto little
Joseph did.
Waiting in the check-out line I
heard a voice say, "Twyla!"
The classical music piped over
the aisles had affected me and the woman leaning toward me was dressed to kill.
Diamonds on her hand, a smart white summer dress. "I'm Mrs. Benson,"
I said.
"Ho. Ho. The Big Bozo,"
she sang.
For a split second I didn't know
what she was talking about. She had a bunch of asparagus and two cartons of
fancy water.
"Roberta!"
"Right."
"For heaven's sake.
Roberta."
"You look great," she
said.
"So do you. Where are you?
Here? In Newburgh?" "Yes. Over in Annandale."
I was opening my mouth to say
more when the cashier called my attention to her empty counter.
"Meet you outside."
Roberta pointed her finger and went into the express line.
I placed the groceries and kept
myself from glancing around to check Roberta's progress. I remembered Howard
Johnson's and looking for a chance to speak only to be greeted with a stingy
"wow." But she was waiting for me and her huge hair was sleek now,
smooth around a small, nicely shaped head. Shoes, dress, everything lovely and
summery and rich. I was dying to know what happened to her, how she got from
Jimi Hendrix to Annandale, a neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives.
Easy, I thought. Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world.
"How long," I asked
her. "How long have you been here?"
"A year. I got married to a
man who lives here. And you, you're married too, right? Benson, you said."
"Yeah. James Benson."
"And is he nice?"
"Oh, is he nice?"
"Well, is he?"
Roberta's eyes were steady as though she really meant the question and wanted
an answer.
"He's wonderful, Roberta.
Wonderful."
"So you're happy."
"Very."
"That's good," she said
and nodded her head. "I always hoped you'd be happy. Any kids? I know you
have kids."
"One. A boy. How about
you?"
"Four."
"Four?"
She laughed. "Step kids.
He's a widower."
"Oh."
"Got a minute? Let's have a
coffee."
I thought about the Klondikes
melting and the inconvenience of going as all the way to my car and putting the
bags in the trunk. Served me right for buying all that stuff I didn't need.
Roberta was ahead of me.
"Put them in my car. It's
right here."
And then I saw the dark blue
limousine.
"You married a
Chinaman?"
"No," she laughed.
"He's the driver."
"Oh, my. If the Big Bozo
could see you now."
We both giggled. Really giggled.
Suddenly, in just a pulse beat, twenty years disappeared and all of it came
rushing back. The big girls (whom we called gar girls—Roberta's misheard word
for the evil stone faces described in a civics class) there dancing in the
orchard, the ploppy mashed potatoes, the double weenies, the Spam with
pineapple. We went into the coffee shop holding on to one another and I tried
to think why we were glad to see each other this time and not before. Once,
twelve years ago, we passed like strangers. A black girl and a white girl
meeting in a Howard Johnson's on the road and having nothing to say. One in a
blue and white triangle waitress hat—the other on her way to see Hendrix. Now
we were behaving like sisters separated for much too long. Those four short
months were nothing in time. Maybe it was the thing itself. Just being there,
together. Two little girls who knew what nobody else in the world knew—how not
to ask questions. How to believe what had to be believed. There was politeness
in that reluctance and generosity as well. Is your mother sick too? No, she
dances all night. Oh—and an understanding nod.
We sat in a booth by the window
and fell into recollection like veterans. "Did you ever learn to
read?"
"Watch." She picked up
the menu. "Special of the day. Cream of corn
soup. Entrées. Two dots and a
wriggly line. Quiche. Chef salad, scallops ..."
I was laughing and applauding
when the waitress came up.
"Remember the Easter
baskets?"
"And how we tried to
introduce them?"
"Your mother with that cross
like two telephone poles."
"And yours with those tight
slacks."
We laughed so loudly heads turned
and made the laughter harder to
suppress.
"What happened to the Jimi
Hendrix date?"
Roberta made a blow-out sound
with her lips.
"When he died I thought
about you."
"Oh, you heard about him
finally?"
"Finally. Come on, I was a
small-town country waitress."
"And I was a small-town
country dropout. God, were we wild. I still don't know how I got out of there
alive."
"But you did."
"I did. I really did. Now
I'm Mrs. Kenneth Norton."
"Sounds like a
mouthful."
"It is."
"Servants and all?"
Roberta held up two fingers.
"Oww! What does he do?"
"Computers and stuff. What
do I know?"
"I don't remember a hell of
a lot from those days, but Lord, Saint Bonny's its is as clear as daylight.
Remember Maggie? The day she fell down and those gar girls laughed at
her?"
Roberta looked up from her salad
and stared at me. "Maggie didn't fall," she said.
"Yes, she did. You
remember."
"No, Twyla. They knocked her
down. Those girls pushed her down and tore her clothes. In the orchard."
"I don't—that's not what
happened."
"Sure it is. In the orchard.
Remember how scared we were?" "Wait a minute. I don't remember any of
that."
"And Bozo was fired."
"You're crazy. She was there
when I left. You left before me." "I went back. You weren't there
when they fired Bozo."
"What?"
"Twice. Once for a year when
I was about ten, another for two months
when I was fourteen. That's when
I ran away."
"You ran away from Saint
Bonny's?"
"I had to. What do you want?
Me dancing in that orchard?" "Are you sure about Maggie?"
"Of course I'm sure. You've
blocked it, Twyla. It happened. Those girls had behavior problems, you
know."
"Didn't they, though. But
why can't I remember the Maggie thing?" "Believe me. It happened. And
we were there."
"Who did you room with when
you went back?" I asked her as if I would know her. The Maggie thing was
troubling me.
"Creeps. They tickled
themselves in the night."
My ears were itching and I wanted
to go home suddenly. This was all very well but she couldn't just comb her
hair, wash her face and pretend everything was hunky-dory. After the Howard
Johnson's snub. And no apology. Nothing.
"Were you on dope or what
that time at Howard Johnson's?" I tried to make my voice sound friendlier
than I felt.
"Maybe, a little. I never
did drugs much. Why?"
"I don't know; you acted
sort of like you didn't want to know me then." "Oh, Twyla, you know
how it was in those days: black—white. You know how everything was."
But I didn't know. I thought it
was just the opposite. Busloads of blacks and whites came into Howard Johnson's
together. They roamed together then: students, musicians, lovers, protesters.
You got to see everything at Howard Johnson's and blacks were very friendly
with whites in those days.
But sitting there with nothing on
my plate but two hard tomato wedges wondering about the melting Klondikes it
seemed childish remembering the slight. We went to her car, and with the help
of the driver, got my stuff into my station wagon.
"We'll keep in touch this
time," she said.
"Sure," I said.
"Sure. Give me a call."
"I will," she said, and
then just as I was sliding behind the wheel, she leaned into the window.
"By the way. Your mother. Did she ever stop dancing?"
I shook my head. "No.
Never."
Roberta nodded.
"And yours? Did she ever get
well?"
She smiled a tiny sad smile.
"No. She never did. Look, call me, okay?"
"Okay," I said, but I
knew I wouldn't. Roberta had messed up my past somehow with that business about
Maggie. I wouldn't forget a thing like that. Would I?
Strife came to us that fall. At
least that's what the paper called it. Strife. Racial strife. The word made me
think of a bird—a big shrieking bird out of 1,000,000,000 B.C. Flapping its
wings and cawing. Its eye with no lid always bearing down on you. All day it
screeched and at night it slept on the rooftops. It woke you in the morning and
from the Today show to the eleven o'clock news it kept you an awful company. I
couldn't figure it out from one day to the next. I knew I was supposed to feel
something strong, but I didn't know what, and James wasn't any help. Joseph was
on the list of kids to be transferred from the junior high school to another
one at some far-out-of-the-way place and I thought it was a good thing until I
heard it was a bad thing. I mean I didn't know. All the schools seemed dumps to
me, and the fact that one was nicer looking didn't hold much weight. But the
papers were full of it and then the kids began to get jumpy. In August, mind
you. Schools weren't even open yet. I thought Joseph might be frightened to go
over there, but he didn't seem scared so I forgot about it, until I found
myself driving along Hudson Street out there by the school they were trying to
integrate and saw a line of women marching. And who do you suppose was in line,
big as life, holding a sign in front of her bigger than her mother's cross?
MOTHERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO! it said.
I drove on, and then changed my
mind. I circled the block, slowed down, and honked my horn.
Roberta looked over and when she
saw me she waved. I didn't wave back, but I didn't move either. She handed her
sign to another woman and came over to where I was parked.
"Hi."
"What are you doing?"
"Picketing. What's it look like?"
"What for?"
What do you mean. 'What for?'
They want to take my kids and send them out of the neighborhood. They don't
want to go."
"So what if they go to
another school? My boy's being bussed too, and I don't mind. Why should
you?"
"It's not about us, Twyla.
Me and you. It's about our kids."
"What's more us than
that?"
"Well, it is a free
country."
"Not yet, but it will
be."
"What the hell does that
mean? I'm not doing anything to you." "You really think that?"
"I know it."
"I wonder what made me think
you were different."
"I wonder what made me think
you were different."
"Look at them," I said.
"Just look. Who do they think they are? Swarming all over the place like
they own it. And now they think they can decide where my child goes to school.
Look at them, Roberta. They're Bozos."
Roberta turned around and looked
at the women. Almost all of them were standing still now, waiting. Some were
even edging toward us. Roberta looked at me out of some refrigerator behind her
eyes. "No, they're not. They're just mothers."
"And what am I? Swiss
cheese?"
"I used to curl your
hair."
"I hated your hands in my
hair."
The women were moving. Our faces
looked mean to them of course and they looked as though they could not wait to
throw themselves in front of a police car, or better yet, into my car and drag
me away by my ankles. Now they surrounded my car and gently, gently began to
rock it. I swayed back and forth like a sideways yo-yo. Automatically I reached
for Roberta, like the old days in the orchard when they saw us watching them
and we had to get out of there, and if one of us fell the other pulled her up
and if one of us was caught the other stayed to kick and scratch, and neither
would leave the other behind. My arm shot out of the car window but no
receiving hand was there. Roberta was looking at me sway from side to side in
the car and her face was still. My purse slid from the car seat down under the
dashboard. The four policemen who had been drinking Tab in their car finally
got the message and strolled over, forcing their way through the women.
Quietly, firmly they spoke. "Okay, ladies. Back in line or off the
streets."
Some of them went away willingly;
others had to be urged away from the car doors and the hood. Roberta didn't
move. She was looking steadily at me. I was fumbling to turn on the ignition,
which wouldn't catch because the gear-shift was still in drive. The seats of
the car were a mess because the swaying had thrown my grocery coupons all over
it and my purse was sprawled on the floor.
Maybe I am different now, Twyla.
But you're not. You're the same little state kid who kicked a poor old black
lady when she was down on the ground. You kicked a black lady and you have the
nerve to call me a bigot."
The coupons were everywhere and
the guts of my purse were bunched under the dashboard. What was she saying?
Black? Maggie wasn't black.
"She wasn't black," I
said.
"Like hell she wasn't, and
you kicked her. We both did. You kicked a black lady who couldn't even
scream."
"Liar!"
"You're the liar! Why don't
you just go on home and leave us alone, huh?"
She turned away and I skidded
away from the curb.
The next morning I went into the
garage and cut the side out of the carton our portable TV had come in. It
wasn't nearly big enough, but after a while I had a decent sign: red
spray-painted letters on a white background—AND SO DO CHILDREN ****. I meant
just to go down to the school and tack it up somewhere so those cows on the
picket line across the street could see it, but when I got there, some ten or so
others had already assembled—protesting the cows across the street. Police
permits and everything. I got in line and we strutted in time on our side while
Roberta's group strutted on theirs. That first day we were all dignified,
pretending the other side didn't exist. The second day there was name calling
and finger gestures. But that was about all. People changed signs from time to
time, but Roberta never did and neither did I. Actually my sign didn't make
sense without Roberta's. "And so do children what?" one of the women
on my side asked me. Have rights, I said, as though it was obvious.
Roberta didn't acknowledge my
presence in any way and I got to thinking maybe she didn't know I was there. I
began to pace myself in the line, jostling people one minute and lagging behind
the next, so Roberta and I could reach the end of our respective lines at the
same time and there would be a moment in our turn when we would face each
other. Still, I couldn't tell whether she saw me and knew my sign was for her.
The next day I went early before we were scheduled to assemble. I waited until
she got there before I exposed my new creation. As soon as she hoisted her
MOTHERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO I began to wave my new one, which said, HOW WOULD YOU
KNOW? I know she saw that one, but I had gotten addicted now. My signs got
crazier each day, and the women on my side decided that I was a kook. They
couldn't make heads or tails out of my brilliant screaming posters.
I brought a painted sign in
queenly red with huge black letters that said, Is YOUR MOTHER WELL? Roberta
took her lunch break and didn't come back for the rest of the day or any day
after. Two days later I stopped going too and couldn't have been missed because
nobody understood my signs anyway.
It was a nasty six weeks. Classes
were suspended and Joseph didn't go to anybody's school until October. The
children—everybody's children—soon got bored with that extended vacation they
thought was going to be so great. They looked at TV until their eyes flattened.
I spent a couple of mornings tutoring my son, as the other mothers said we
should. Twice I opened a text from last year that he had never turned in. Twice
he yawned in my face. Other mothers organized living room sessions so the kids
would keep up. None of the kids could concentrate so they drifted back to The
Price Is Right6 and The Brady Bunch. When the school finally opened there were
fights once or twice and some sirens roared through the streets every once in a
while. There were a lot of photographers from Albany. And just when ABC was
about to send up a news crew, the kids settled down like nothing in the world
had happened. Joseph hung my How WOULD YOU KNOW? sign in his bedroom. I don't
know what became of AND so DO CHILDREN ****. I think my father-in-law cleaned some
fish on it. He was always puttering around in our garage. Each of his five
children lived in Newburgh and he acted as though he had five extra homes.
I couldn't help looking for
Roberta when Joseph graduated from high school, but I didn't see her. It didn't
trouble me much what she had said to me in the car. I mean the kicking part. I
know I didn't do that, I couldn't do that. But I was puzzled by her telling me
Maggie was black. When I thought about it I actually couldn't be certain. She
wasn't pitch-black, I knew, or I would have remembered that. What I remember
was the kiddie hat, and the semicircle legs. I tried to reassure myself about
the race thing for a long time until it dawned on me that the truth was already
there, and Roberta knew it. I didn't kick her; I didn't join in with the gar
girls and kick that lady, but I sure did want to. We watched and never tried to
help her and never called for help. Maggie was my dancing mother. Deaf, I
thought, and dumb. Nobody inside. Nobody who would hear you if you cried in the
night. Nobody who could tell you anything important that you could use.
Rocking, dancing, swaying as she walked. And when the gar girls pushed her
down, and started roughhousing, I knew she wouldn't scream, couldn't—just like
me—and I was glad about that.
We decided not to have a tree,
because Christmas would be at my mother-in-law's house, so why have a tree at
both places? Joseph was at SUNY New Paltz and we had to economize, we said. But
at the last minute, I changed my mind. Nothing could be that bad. So I rushed
around town looking for a tree, something small but wide. By the time I found a
place, it was snowing and very late. I dawdled like it was the most important
purchase in the world and the tree man was fed up with me. Finally I chose one
and had it tied onto the trunk of the car. I drove away slowly because the sand
trucks were not out yet and the streets could be murder at the beginning of a
snowfall. Downtown the streets were wide and rather empty except for a cluster
of people coming out of the Newburgh Hotel. The one hotel in town that wasn't
built out of cardboard and Plexiglas. A party, probably. The men huddled in the
snow were dressed in tails and the women had on furs. Shiny things glittered
from underneath their coats. It made me tired to look at them. Tired, tired,
tired. On the next corner was a small diner with loops and loops of paper bells
in the window. I stopped the car and went in. Just for a cup of coffee and
twenty minutes of peace before I went home and tried to finish everything
before Christmas Eve.
"Twyla?"
There she was. In a silvery
evening gown and dark fur coat. A man and another woman were with her, the man
fumbling for change to put in the cigarette machine. The woman was humming and
tapping on the counter with her fingernails. They all looked a little bit
drunk.
"Well. It's you."
"How are you?"
I shrugged. "Pretty good.
Frazzled. Christmas and all."
"Regular?" called the
woman from the counter.
"Fine," Roberta called
back and then, "Wait for me in the car."
She slipped into the booth beside
me. "I have to tell you something, Twyla. I made up my mind if I ever saw
you again, I'd tell you."
"I'd just as soon not hear
anything, Roberta. It doesn't matter now, anyway."
"No," she said.
"Not about that."
"Don't be long," said
the woman. She carried two regulars to go and the man peeled his cigarette pack
as they left.
"It's about Saint Bonny's
and Maggie."
"Oh, please."
"Listen to me. I really did
think she was black. I didn't make that up.
I really thought so. But now I
can't be sure. I just remember her as old, so old. And because she couldn't
talk—well, you know, I thought she was crazy. She'd been brought up in an
institution like my mother was and like I thought I would be too. And you were
right. We didn't kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them. But, well, I wanted
to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it, too. You and me, but
that's not true. And I don't want you to carry that around. It was just that I
wanted to do it so bad that day—wanting to is doing it."
Her eyes were watery from the
drinks she'd had, I guess. I know it's that way with me. One glass of wine and
I start bawling over the littlest thing. "We were kids, Roberta."
"Yeah. Yeah. I know, just
kids."
"Eight."
"And lonely."
"Scared, too."
She wiped her cheeks with the
heel of her hand and smiled. "Well, that's all I wanted to say."
I nodded and couldn't think of
any way to fill the silence that went from the diner past the paper bells on
out into the snow. It was heavy now. I thought I'd better wait for the sand
trucks before starting home.
"Thanks, Roberta."
"Sure."
"Did I tell you? My mother,
she never did stop dancing."
"Yes. You told me. And mine,
she never got well." Roberta lifted her hands from the tabletop and
covered her face with her palms. When she took them away she really was crying.
"Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?"
1. In classical music
such as opera, a vocal passage that is sung in a speech like manner.
2. Large New York City hospital
best known for its psychiatric wards.
3. City on the Hudson
River north of New York City.
4. Supermarket, part of
a chain originally known as The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.
5. The International
Business Machine Corporation, which had its executive headquarters in
Poughkeepsie, New York.
6. Television game show
popular in the 1970s. The Brady Bunch: television sitcom popular in the 1970s.
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