Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (32 page)

I was bent over at my locker, cursing my new leg brace and the blister it had rubbed onto my leg when patched jeans came into view … a sweatshirt that read NAACP … Isaac’s face. I straightened up but with my short height – I don’t reach five feet – he still looked like the Jolly Green Giant. My height is where I related to his “I mind being less”.

“Ho, ho, ho,” I said, deep down like the Jolly Green commercial.

Something about his round brown eyes locked me in, deep, searching, as if trying to see what color my soul was. “Come with me to the March on Washington,” he said. “For jobs and freedom. A group of us are taking a chartered bus down. We’ll hear Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan.”

My head was full by the time we arrived in D.C. and began the long walk toward the Washington Monument and on to the Lincoln Memorial. Six of Isaac’s school cronies, two of us white – and hey, I admit that I was relieved to see another white – sat in the back of the bus with the other colored folk. I trusted Isaac for some unknown reason and thankfully he sat next to me, but I hadn’t thought this out further than a school field trip and Dylan being there at the end. Economic slavery, racial segregation, discrimination, police brutality, they talked about it all, while I secretly worried about the lie I told Mama about spending the day and overnight with a girlfriend. (My Mamas think that I can’t do anything for myself, even refusing to let me work outside the Lighthouse. What else could I do, man, except steal money from your purses for the trip?)

It really wasn’t a march as I’d feared would be like My Mamas had marched in, but a far-out flow among the masses of what seemed to be everyone in the U.S. – I couldn’t have turned around to go back if I wanted to. Halfway along the concrete pond between the monument and memorial, I had to take a break. I stepped out and reached for a tree as if reaching for the shore. I motioned for the rest of them to go on, each holding signs demanding integrated schools and decent housing (they didn’t give me a sign, and for once I was glad to be treated differently). Isaac lingered but I pushed him back out into the swarm. I don’t cry in front of anyone. This trip was the first thing I’d done on my own but this was like jumping into the middle of a massive river and suddenly realizing I need to learn how to swim.

I leaned against the tree, hiked up my long skirt, and took off my leg brace and its connecting shoe. Its sole is five inches higher than my other shoe to make my left leg the same length as my right and under this August sun, it weighed a freaking thousand pounds of humid heat. I massaged around the blister that just wasn’t healing and that I just wasn’t going to tell Mama about. I hate that worried look in one eye, and that here-you-go-again look in her other eye. She doesn’t mean to, and no one knows that better than me, but it’s like, I don’t know, man, like she sees a demon in me.

Without the peoples’ squeeze, I could breathe again. I could mellow out while they sang
“We shall overcome … We shall all be free … We shall live in peace …”
and I knew what they were singing about, this sense of being unburdened. I held my leg brace and believed if I dropped it, my body would become weightless and I’d float above this tree and see it all. I imagined I hovered above Bob Dylan and then I wished I was chained to the ground with Isaac as Dylan sang,
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack/Shoot in the back/With his fist in a clinch/To hang and to lynch/To hide ‘neath the hood/To kill with no pain/Like a dog on a chain/He ain’t got no name/But it ain’t him to blame/He’s only a pawn in their game.
I sat on the ground rocking, singing, hearing voices and music, near and distantly amplified, watching with my mind’s eye, until darkness and Isaac came.

Back at the ranch, my Mamas are acting more queer. They’re dragging me into heated discussions over their TV show,
Wagon Train
. After years, the show has moved from Wednesday night to Monday, and on a different station, and they’re bummed out. You’d think their husbands had left them. They’re crowded into the TV room that used to be the ‘back parlor’, la-de-da. They’re dividing the movie star hunks between them: GG gets Bill Hawks because she likes his Indian name and she always, always makes a big deal about rooting for the Indians; GB goes for the dashing scouts, Flint and Coop, claiming they’re the cowboy version of a reporter; and the blond dollbaby Scott Miller is supposed to be Mama’s but she complains that he says too little and shoots off his gun too much, and besides she doesn’t like blonds anymore (whatever “anymore” means). GB says, “Take Charlie, the cook, then. You both make bad coffee.” They want me to take Barnaby but
he’s just a kid
,
GB
, I argue, heavy on the “
GB”
part, because, like GB, Mama hates,
hates
me using initials for names.

Out of boredom, I rile them up by saying,
why not the Bonanza boys
?
The Cartwrights are fine-as-wine for us four of a kind
. GG could have
the papa, Ben. I’d give the eldest son, Adam, to GB, and – “Oh no you don’t!” Mama cuts in loudly, lighting a cigarette and throwing her arms around like someone gave her a bum deal, saying she’s not taking no Fat Cat like Hoss, what am I,
crazy
?

“It’s just like you to want that hotheaded Little Joe,” she said, pointing her two fingers at me, the cigarette in-between scattering ashes. “Besides, these guys are dangerous for women. Every woman they’ve loved has been either murdered or died of disease.”

Maybe now you can see what a drag it is and why it’s so cool that Isaac telephones me just then. Mama hands me the phone with one eyebrow up. “Don’t talk long; you need to go to bed.
The Feminine Mystique
is on your nightstand.” Of course I say nothing and turn my back to her to
kiss my ass
.

Isaac says he thinks he’s found something I can do that won’t require marching. Right now I’d agree to march to Vietnam. But then I remember the Washington D.C. march. I stammer into the mouth piece in memory of how I’d leaned heavily on him to get back to the buses lined along the streets, inching along, dragging the walk out. Coupled with that the two-hour search for me in the dusk, when Isaac couldn’t quite remember where I’d dropped off. The day ended in us missing the bus and sleeping on park benches because motels were full and
hey, let’s be honest
, Isaac said,
what motel is going to let colored people stay where white people are
? It’s a bad cold from then on that I’m still having trouble shaking.

Anyway, I want to make it up to him: “Sign me up,” I say. He says, “OK” and pretends to hang up. “No, no!” I yelp, laughing, coughing. “Hey, man, you can’t do this to me. What did I just sign up for?”

“A sit-in,” he says. He explains that he’s become a member of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. They’re arranging a sit-in at the local Woolworths to protest lunch counter segregation in southern Woolworths and other stores. All I have to do is “sit-in” at the lunch counter with a small sign while others picket outside.

My sign reads, “Uphold democracy! Stay out of segregated stores!” Easy-peasy. Isaac and I sit there for four hours with no
trouble, getting all the free cokes we can drink, waitresses behind the counter giving me quick, nervous smiles.

“Rehearsal for the Big Sit-In,” Isaac informs me as we sip through straws with downcast eyes. He looks so distinguished; all the colored boys who came to protest do, in their white shirts and ties. He reads Yeats poetry to me,
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away
(I made him repeat that one over and over, since I’m hiding these pages I’m writing in my bedroom for awhile). The Annan Newspaper takes pictures and that’s how My Mamas find out. It’s like no other family member had ever been in the paper before. Yeah, right. They give me more hassle than anyone could at Woolworths. Except: As I limped stiffly away from counter, I cringe; not for the bad sore on my leg but because of the whispered
Nigger lover
from a booth.

I
climbed down from the wagon bench with Jesse’s last words ringing in my ears.
I won’t stand for you being treated badly. If I see you sleeping outside again, I’ll do more than give ol’ Robert a punch. Let this be a warning!
He handed me my basket from the wagon, tipped his hat to me and rode off, without once glancing at the house.

The door opened then, cries of “Mama, Mama!” came tumbling out with the children.

I ran to meet them halfway, my arms open wide. “My babies!” I cried. I had never spent the night away from them before and after two long days they looked older already. They came headlong into me, forcing me to lose my balance and fall onto the grass. We shouted, laughed and tickled each other.

“Children,” Robert called from the verandah. “Would you and your mother stop making such a public display?”

I had made a muddle of my welcome already, and hadn’t yet even spoken to him.

I stood up quickly, brushing my skirt off. With twelve-year old Victor and eight-year old Jonathan in hand, and Bess and Pearl towing behind, I walked up the verandah steps to the door where Robert remained standing. I felt happy to see him and a warm hug would’ve been nice … but his eyes ... how could I get them from the color of mud back to chocolate drops again?

He and the children obviously needed cleaning; that would be the first thing.

“Robert?” My voice sounded soft and tentative, pleading.

He stepped aside to let me in. The parlor was cluttered with newspapers and dishes. To my left I spotted dirty dishes on the dining room table.

I reached down to Bess and felt her forehead for fever. Cool as a cucumber. “Bess, how are you feeling?”

“Better now, Mama. Last night I wasn’t feeling well at all and I asked Papa to get you home to look after me. You would know what to do.” She looked up with eyes that longed for affection.

Pearl clung to my skirt, as did the boys. I stooped down and hugged all four again. I looked up at Robert, knowing he saw in my eyes the same longing I saw in the eyes of Bess. He watched us closely, yet staying a distance apart. He cleared his throat and finally looked away, hands in his pockets.

I straightened up and timidly approached him, my ducklings walking in step behind me. I tiptoed and gave him a lingering kiss on the cheek. I noticed the slight bruise on his jaw. Jesse would be pleased with himself.

“And how are you feeling, Robert?”

“Very well, thank you,” he answered, nodding. He wouldn’t meet my eyes at such a close range. He cleared his throat again. “I’m going to the shop now. Someone had to stay home with the children since you, er … well, at any rate, I’ll be home at suppertime.” He looked down at the children, blinking a few times. “Perhaps with something fresh from the bakery for dessert.”

Amid the claps and cheers from the children, I sent a warm smile up to him. He was being extravagant! Bess wasn’t ill. Bess knew it. Robert knew it. They all wanted me home and they were each showing it in their own way. Tonight I would prepare the best supper ever, starting with the chicken from the farm. Make it festive. And top it off with a shop-baked dessert! Extravagant indeed!