Fire from the Rock (4 page)

Rachel and I had a good time today
. Mama still hasn't seen my red toenails. Some stuff you just hide. Rachel's dad wears long-sleeved shirts and a tie every day, even in summer, and sometimes it's hard for me to understand him when he speaks to me because he talks in a thick German accent. But every once in a while when the weather turns unbearably hot, he rolls up his shirtsleeves. I have seen the purple numbers tattooed on his forearm.

Sometimes Mama buys fresh beef from Mr. Zucker, and it's always marked with a large purple stamp of quality. I used to think the mark on Mr. Zucker's arm was something that had happened accidentally while he was preparing the meat. But the mark never faded and never came off. I think I was about eight when I asked him what that mark meant. Mr. Zucker said one word-Auschwitz. At the time I didn't know what that meant, but the look of despair in his eyes scared me. He never said anything else about it, and I never dared to ask.

I've heard my parents whisper about a Jewish man named Leo Frank who got lynched in Georgia a few years ago. Almost every colored family can tell a story about someone they knew who was taken out at midnight by an angry mob and hung by a rope until they died. My father rarely talks about what happened to my grandfather, but I know he was hung from an apple tree, and my dad witnessed it all. I see the leftover hurt that wraps around Daddy like a shawl.

Even teenagers can get lynched. Just two years ago a boy about my age named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. He was from Chicago, and was visiting some relatives. According to the story he bought some candy in a little store and spoke to the owner's wife with disrespect. His Mississippi friends couldn't believe this Northern boy who had so much nerve. Two days later he was dragged out of his house in the middle of the night by two men. Emmett's body was found three days later in a river with a huge piece of machinery tied around his neck. He had been beaten, shot, drowned, and tortured—one of his eyes had been gouged out.

It was in all the papers and everybody in town had an opinion. I heard some white folks say it was his fault because he should have known better, but other white folks said it was an outrage—that Mississippi folks just go too far. All the colored folks I knew were angry and scared. If a teenager from Chicago could get lynched, what chance did we have here in Arkansas? Anyway, they arrested the men who had taken him, but they were found not guilty at the trial. White folks expected that outcome. Colored folks knew not to expect better.

The thing I'll never forget about that story is that Jet magazine showed the picture of Emmett Till's dead body. His mother had insisted on having an open-casket funeral—she said she wanted the world to see what they had done to her boy. There he lay in his coffin, wearing a nice suit and tie. But that's all that was pleasant about that picture. His head was swollen and grotesque from being in the water so long. One eye was missing, one side of his head was crushed, and a hole, I guess from a bullet, distorted his nose. He didn't look like a teenager, like the good-looking boy with the cheerful smile they showed on the other page—he looked liked a monster. Mama told me it was monsters that did that to him, but it didn't help much. I remember not being able to sleep well for weeks after that. It still bothers me—now, more than ever.