Toni Morrison
Recitatif
My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick. That's why we were
taken to St. 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. 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 every said St. 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 loudbuzzer, 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 Oz.
"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 at 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, St. 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. Goddid 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 St. 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 hata
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 statecases, 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 no tasking 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 prettyscalloped
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
tout 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, but okay once I got there. Mine was the second night shifteleven
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 shelterbut
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-forsale
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 booths, 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 St. 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 downright 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, asshole. 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
grandmother 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 & P 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 IBM 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.
It railed 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 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 onto 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 waitresshat-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. Entrees. 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.
"Ow! 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, St. Bonny's 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 St. 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 tome,
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 gearshift 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 backgroundAND
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 assembledprotesting
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 tum when we would face each other. Still, I
couldn't tell whether she saw meand 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 Right 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 St. 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."
"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 paperbells 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?"
1983