Coffee Will Make You Black (21 page)

“Go ahead and scream,” Grandma said. “Knock yourself out.”

Mama ignored Grandma and began scooping homemade ice cream into little bowls.

“Ray, how can you talk about putting our children through college with the kind of example you're setting?”

Daddy swallowed, looking embarrassed. Grandma scowled at Mama. Kevin gave Daddy a sympathetic look. David shifted nervously like he didn't know how to react. Why couldn't she let the man eat his ice cream and cake in peace? I wondered.

“Tell your father what he should have said, Jean Eloise.”

I was quiet. I didn't feel like siding with Mama so Daddy could look bad.

David spoke up, “Dad, you should've said, ‘If I had come here ten years earlier, I would have gotten ahead quicker.'”

“That's what I said, ‘If I had come here.…'”

“No, you didn't, Dad, you said ‘If I had came …'”

“Don't you get smart with me, boy! Don't tell me what I said. I can't even open my mouth around here anymore.”

“Evelyn, this ain't no English class. You're ruining the party,” Grandma said, groaning.

“Good grammar is important. Like it or not, people judge you based on the way you speak. Now that's just the way it is.”

“Well, it's my party and nobody's here to be judged. We're here to have fun. So everybody is allowed to butcher the English language all they want to,” I declared.

“Right on!” Grandma clapped.

Daddy walked over to the cabinet and poured himself a taste.

Mama sighed.

“Happy sweet sixteen,” he said, toasting me.

So far it had been bittersweet, I thought.

Uncle Craig had picked Grandma up and taken her home. Daddy had gone out to a tavern for a nightcap. Mama and the boys had cleaned up the kitchen after the party.
Gunsmoke
had just ended. Matt Dillon had gunned down the bad guys. Me, Kevin, and David were still in front of the TV set.

Daddy staggered in the front door, singing “Happy Birthday” at the top of his lungs.

Mama came out of the bathroom in her nightgown with cold cream all over her face.

“Ray, hush up! You should be ashamed for the children to see you like this.”

Daddy ignored her. “Happy birthday, dear Jeanie, happy birthday to you!” He smiled, popping his fingers as he went down the hall.

Mama shook her head, sadly. “You see what alcohol can do to a person. Let this be a lesson to all of you. The key to getting ahead in life is not in a bottle. Mark my words.”

“Mama, is Daddy an alcoholic?”

“Of course not, Kevin. You think I would be married to an alcoholic?”

“Dad just likes to have a good time,” David explained. “Some people get happy in church, other people have a good time by drinking alcohol.”

“How old are you? How old are you? How old are you?” Daddy continued to sing loudly from the bedroom. “I'm sixteen years old, I'm sixteen years old, I'm sixteen years old, I'm sixteen years old,” he belted out.

My brothers covered their mouths to keep from laughing.

The next day I was sitting in the office of my guidance counselor, Mrs. Stuart. I'd seen her before but we'd never met. She was an attractive woman in her thirties with a caramel complexion. She wore her hair in a large afro and was a sharp dresser. I looked at the big clock on the wall. It was ten after two. Mrs. Stuart was ten minutes late. My homeroom teacher had told me that I needed to meet with her to plan my future since I had been accepted into the Junior Honor Society.

I was surprised to hear a white woman's voice.

“I'm tired of just being seen for my color.” Nurse Horn sighed and ran her fingers through her short brown hair.

I watched as the school nurse followed Mrs. Stuart into the office. I'd been down to Nurse Horn's office with cramps a few times, so we nodded at each other.

“I want to be seen as an individual too,” Nurse Horn continued. “I marched with Dr. King, I was arrested during Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Pamela, I'm not just any white person.”

“Diane, do you think you deserve a medal?” Mrs. Stuart asked, folding her arms against her rust-colored suit.

“No, I don't think that I deserve a medal. But I am tired of black people who haven't paid half as many dues making judgments about me. I want to be judged by the content of my character, like Dr. King said.”

“If you're black you don't have to march to pay dues, Diane. You pay dues just by breathing.” Mrs. Stuart glanced at me. “Jean, sorry to have kept you waiting. I'll be with you as soon as I can.”

“That's okay, I'm not in any rush.”

“Pamela, how can things ever change if we don't get to know each other as people? What did we march for anyway?”

“I marched with Dr. King too, Diane. And I didn't march just so that black folks and white folks could be bosom buddies. I marched for equal opportunity and justice.”

“Well, as long as the black teachers sit at one end of the teachers' lunchroom and the white teachers sit at the other end, what's the difference between today and the fifties? We may as well go back to separate but equal.”

“Look, it was separate but it was never equal. Was it, Jean?”

I shook my head, remembering the picture of the two water fountains in my Afro-American History book.

“White people have made it quite clear that they don't want to live next door to us. Haven't they, Jean?”

I nodded.

“
Some
white people. I don't appreciate being lumped together with all white people, Pamela.”

Mrs. Stuart continued, “All it takes is for one black family to move into a neighborhood, and the F
OR
S
ALE
signs go up so fast it makes your head spin. And white folks have made it crystal clear that they don't want their children to go to school with us. Haven't they, Jean?”

“That's true,” I agreed. Nurse Horn looked at me with her soft gray eyes. I didn't have anything against her, but the truth was the truth. What else could I say?

“
Some
white people, Pamela.”

“Like Jesse Jackson says, ‘It's not the bus. It's us!' So no wonder we need to separate to figure out who we are as black people. How much rejection can you expect people to take? Right, Jean?”

“Right,” I answered. I mean, Mrs. Stuart had a point.

“So does that mean if I see you sitting with black teachers at a table and I join you, you will pretend I'm not there again?”

“When I taught at a white school over on the Northwest side, I had to sit alone. I had to eat alone … no one gave me the time of day. Sometimes I felt like I was invisible.”

“Is that how you want me to feel?”

“Look, Diane, if you come into the teacher's room and I'm alone, you can join me. Otherwise, wait for an invitation, okay?”

“I'm supposed to forget you're black on one hand and then, on the other hand, I'm never supposed to forget you're black. Is that it?”

“That's what we have to do. Isn't that so, Jean?”

For an odd moment, Nurse Horn and I exchanged glances.

chapter 19

I grabbed a handful of junk out of the locker next to mine. It had been vacant since the beginning of the school year. A tall stranger, wearing a navy pea coat, stood in front of the locker holding a briefcase and a combination lock.

“I'm sorry, I didn't know it had been assigned to anybody. I guess I'll never get the Good Housekeeping seal.”

“That's okay.” He smiled. He was cute; he looked like Jermaine of the Jackson Five. Fine as he wanted to be with his bronze skin and big 'fro.

“Hey, haven't I seen you before?”

I smiled. “Aren't you supposed to ask me what my sign is, instead?”

“No jive, I'm being for real. It's your eyes, they're so pretty, I know I've seen you before.”

“Well, it's possible. This
is
my third year here, I
am
a junior.”

“I'm new, I just transferred in. I'm a senior. My name's Sean.”

“You're a senior,” I repeated respectfully.

He nodded.

“Where did you transfer from?”

“Leo High School.”

“That's a Catholic boys' school.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Sean frowned.

“Why did you transfer your senior year? That must really be hard.”

Sean shrugged.

“So, how come you're starting over a month into the semester?” I asked.

“I went back to Leo and I just realized it wasn't my bag. I didn't want to be around nothing but dudes, and besides, I was tired of the whole Catholic trip. I'm ready to have some fun this year.” Sean smiled.

“Won't you have to go to confession?”

“Hell no! I'm not Catholic.”

“What were you doing in a Catholic school then?”

“Lots of black folks who aren't Catholic send their kids to Catholic schools.”

“That's true, my old friends Melody and Linda go to Mercy High School and neither of them are Catholic. They go to Faith A.M.E. just like I do.”

“I know who you are now! You denied me!”

“Denied you! Denied you what?” First I thought Sean was jive, now I wondered if he was crazy. Although he didn't look “off,” you never could be sure.

“I was Jesus Christ!”

Sean was definitely off, I thought. I started to back away from him.

“Come back, Peter. You were my disciple.”

“Oh.” I smiled, a light finally going on in my head. The Easter play. “I remember you too, Sean! It's just that the last time that I saw you, you were carrying a cardboard cross and you had ketchup dripping down your face.”

“That's right. ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,'” Sean said.

“Before the cock crows three times, I will have denied him,” I recited.

“You didn't stumble once, even back then.”

“My mother said that me and you were the only ones up there who enunciated.” I laughed.

“I remember now, all the girls wanted to be Jesus's mother or Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. But you volunteered to play Peter. That took guts.”

“I was looking for a challenge. Neither of the Marys had much of a speaking part.”

“You were great.”

“Thanks. My mother made my costume. Two robes, the outer one was striped and the other one was solid maroon. She even made a turban out of the striped material.”

“You were lucky to have a mother who would buy material and make a costume just for a Sunday-school play.”

I remembered that all of the other kids had been draped in things like sheets, towels, bathrobes, and bird-cage covers. “I guess I was sort of lucky. So are you coming back to Faith?” I asked.

“We're United Methodists now. My uncle's church.”

“Oh.”

“By the way, what is your name? And your sign, while you're at it.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Jean, but you can call me Stevie.”

“That's right, I remember now.”

“And I'm a Libra.” I smiled.

“I'm a Gemini. Hey, you're not hooked up with anybody, are you?”

“No, not really.” I flashed on Roland for a minute, but I reminded myself that we were just friends. He'd never made a move or anything.

“Good then, let's say we go get a milkshake after school is over?”

“Well …”

“Come on, don't deny me this time,” Sean smiled.

“All right,” I agreed. I'd always been a sucker for dimples. Besides, my birthday wish might come true, I thought.

I had been rolling around in my underwear on the cot like a wild woman. Now I wrapped myself around the hot-water bottle and held it like a baby. Thanks to it and my Midol tablets, cramps were no longer kicking my ass. Throwing up had made me feel better, too. I remembered that Tyrone had promised to make a stink bomb in chemistry lab this afternoon. I couldn't wait to see the look on Mr. Eversly's face.

I sat up and blinked in the November sunshine that poured into the school nurse's sorry office. Nurse Horn was bent over her desk reading something, so I checked out the posters on the tired green walls. I studied the four food groups and yawned at the picture of the Red Cross nurse with the silly smile on her face. The posters got old quick.

So I started thumbing through a fashion magazine. Nurse Horn wasn't skinny or glamorous like the ladies in the pictures, but she wasn't fat, and she was attractive in her own way. She wore her hair short, not so short that she looked like she was about to go into the. Marines, but probably too short for most men's tastes. I wondered if Nurse Horn would've found a husband by now if she wore her hair longer. She was pretty old not to be married; she looked every day of twenty-five, as Mama would say.

“How's the patient?” Nurse Horn turned around, smiling.

“She'll live, I guess.”

“You guess? You seem a whole lot better.”

“Yeah, I was seriously considering a sex-change operation.”

“You'd have to go to California for that.”

Nurse Horn walked toward me, and I noticed for the first time that she wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe instead of her nurse's uniform. She felt my forehead like my mother did, first with the back of her hand and then with her palm.

“Jean, you'll be fine.”

“How come you're in a bathrobe? What happened to your uniform?” I asked, pointing to the white dress draped over the heater.

“Oh, Crystal Jones vomited on me this morning.”

I made a face. “Yuck!”

“All in a day's work. I keep this robe handy for just such emergencies.”

“Crystal Jones threw up on you this morning. Morning … morning sickness,” I whispered excitedly.

Nurse Horn raised her eyebrows like she knew she'd let the cat out of the bag.

“I didn't say that.” She tried to pretend like I was totally off base. “And I shouldn't have mentioned Crystal's name to you at all.” Nurse Horn let out a sigh as she shook the thermometer down and walked toward her desk.