Part 41 (1/2)

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-s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p Lollypop' with s.h.i.+rley Temple. You listen to me! It's not a 'good' s.h.i.+p 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-las.h.i.+ng 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.