Almost Crimson (7 page)

Sandra glanced back toward the door as the group exited. She was tall and narrow, with pocked skin the color of sweet tea.

“That's just my study group,” Sandra said. “I don't really have friends here.”

Carla raised her eyebrows. “Really? You seem to keep pretty busy to me.”

Sandra laughed. “Yes, I suppose I do. Got to stay in the mix if I'm gonna keep up with the flavor.”

Carla nodded, amused by Sandra's wit. From the one-sided phone conversations Carla could hear from the dorm hallway and listening to Sandra talk herself through her studies each morning, Carla knew her roommate to be intense, comical, charismatic, and domineering. There were always women, black and white, waving into their room at Sandra if their door was open. Based on the array of handbills and pamphlets Carla would often glimpse on her roommate's bed, Sandra was clearly an even blend of style and substance. Still, Carla assessed Sandra to be likeable and outgoing, but deliberately unknowable. She thought of her roommate as one of the black holes she studied in science, undetectable but capable of coercing all matter of light, energy, and mass into its gravity.

“I almost didn't recognize you without your headscarf and housecoat,” Sandra said, stopping beside Carla.

Carla felt her face heat and reflexively pulled her notebooks closer to her chest.

“Oh, I'm sorry, sister,” Sandra said, nudging Carla's arm with hers. “I was only poking fun. I have a whole bag of head rags, and the only reason I don't wear my housecoat is because it has a huge rip in the ass.”

Carla smiled as her neck and cheeks cooled.

“What are you doing?” Sandra said, turning her head to peer at the index cards on top of Carla's notebooks.

“Oh,” Carla said, suddenly more embarrassed and less brave about her project. “I was—um—thinking about joining a bridge game.”

Sandra kept her eyes on Carla, expectant. When Carla didn't laugh or wink, Sandra straightened and gave a small nod.

“I never learned to play bridge,” Sandra said simply.

“It was my aunt's favorite game. She never found anyone to play with after—” Carla caught herself. “Until I got big enough to do the computations. We played two-handed games all the time.”

“She's gone, your aunt?” Sandra asked.

“Yes,” Carla said, clearing her throat. “When I was fifteen.”

“What about your mother?”

“When I was five.”

Sandra was quiet. Carla could tell she was deciding whether to continue. “It's a long, morbid story,” Carla offered, with a weak smile. “It's me and my Uncle John now.”

Sandra returned Carla's smile and reached out one hand to cup her roommate's shoulder. “You've both been in very good hands.” Sandra pointed her eyes skyward. Carla's heart was full. She was warm with thoughts of Aunt Margaret.

Walking back to their dorm, Sandra told Carla about her own family back in Rockford; huge, loving, religious, and from whom she couldn't wait to get away.

“They might call me their rebel child,” Sandra said, sitting cross-legged on her bed. Carla's short legs were tucked beneath her, and her nightgown and housecoat were pulled over her knees and feet.

“You don't agree?” Carla asked. “You're not the rebel child?”

Sandra twisted curlers into her hair and paused. “I wore my white gloves to church on Sundays. Snapped beans on Saturdays. Said ‘Yes ma'am' and ‘No ma'am.' Brushed my teeth. Real dangerous stuff.”

Carla laughed.

“I've always been well behaved,” Sandra said, and Carla noted the smear of disdain across the words. “Thinking for myself has been the problem. Wanting more than a husband and babies has been the problem. Wanting to be a part of this revolution has been the problem.”

“Revolution?” Carla asked. “In Rockford?” Her nightgown had become suddenly warm and itchy. Carla had heard this line of discussion devolve quickly on Sunday afternoons after service, young men home for the weekend squaring with older brothers and uncles in their church suits.

Sandra pointed a curler in Carla's direction. “Exactly!” she said. “Since no one is burning crosses in our front yard, my family wants to act like what's happening in Chicago and Detroit and Oakland doesn't apply to us. They think they're safe because they're quiet. I'm not interested in a scared, quiet life.”

Carla shifted on her bed. She recalled herself nodding with the congregation as her own pastor had barked an entire sermon about blacks steering clear of trouble. God, he'd said, would command what would happen to His children, not protestors, looters, or so-called street soldiers with sinfully rebellious souls.

“I'm a little scared of it all,” Carla admitted, looking down at the buttons on her gown.

“It's not all your fault,” Sandra said. “They want us to be afraid.”

“Who?” Carla asked.

“The oppressors.”

“Our families?” Carla asked, curling her face in confusion.

Sandra sucked her teeth. “Naw, girl. The White Man.”

Carla looked toward the closed door of their room, one pulse of panic ripping through her. She was quiet for a moment.

“I know a lot of decent white people,” she finally said.

“So do I,” Sandra replied, “but they're outnumbered by the treacherous ones who are trying to destroy our communities.”

“How do you know what they're trying to do?”

“I read the papers, watch the news.”

“So do I,” Carla said, now agitated. “I read stories every day about Negroes trying to make a change by breaking the law. I don't see how that's supposed to solve anything. It certainly isn't making things any better.”

“See? This is the kind of propaganda I'm talking about!” Sandra said, bounding from her bed to Carla's. She leaned in close and Carla could smell her toothpaste and hair grease. “First of all, sister, we're Black, not Negroes. Second, they're not going to put pictures in the paper about our tutoring programs and food drives, only when we get arrested for protecting our communities from crooked cops. No one talks about falsified records, or buildings getting set on fire by government officials, or the CIA orchestrating the assassination of Malcolm X and, now, Dr. King—”

“What are you talking about?” Carla exclaimed. Sandra's hands had worked themselves into two spinning flurries while she raged.

Sandra calmed her hands and leaned against the wall, regarding Carla. Her tone was controlled and gentle when she spoke again. “We're in a war, Carla,” she said. “The sooner we all start acting like that, the sooner Black people in the country can expect some peace.”

Carla was quiet for a long moment, conflicted by her resistance to Sandra's ideas and embarrassed by her own naiveté. Carla's relatives had lived on the same stretch of land since her Aunt Rosie had unloaded her things from Arkansas in the forties. Dozens of other families filled in the young landscape at the edge of Decatur's new city with similar jigsaw houses and handmade road signs. It never occurred to Carla that her neighbors were all Black for any reason other than choosing to live together after clapping the red clay from their roots.

Listening to Sandra talk, Carla felt a small seed of understanding begin to split and yawn open inside her.

“What if this is just the way things are?” Carla asked, her voice small. She was surprised by the sob trying to push through her words.

“When something is fundamentally wrong,” Sandra replied gently, “it doesn't matter how long it's been going on.”

The morning birds had begun to chirp and peal outside. The girls had been talking all night, but would need to get at least a nap before heading into their classes that day. Carla had a few more questions.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I wanted to attend Chicago State, but my parents wanted me as far from the ‘unrest' as possible,” Sandra said with disgust. “And let's make it a women's college for good measure!”

The young women laughed, wearily now.

“What would you do if you were in Chicago?” Carla asked.

“I have no idea,” Sandra admitted, looking young and vulnerable to Carla for the first time. “I just know I would be involved. I wouldn't be tiptoeing around in bobby socks and saddle shoes trying to pretend the struggle isn't real.”

Carla stole a glance at the saddle shoes lined in front of her bureau. Sandra followed her eyes and the two young women exploded in laughter.

“I'm sorry, sister,” Sandra said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I got on a roll.”

They commented on the hour and the fading darkness and the classes they could not miss that day. Before sleep pulled her into the stillness of her blankets, CeCe asked one more question.

“What if you only know one way to be?”

“Sister, what you are and what you can become are two different stories.”

TWELVE

UNZIP

 

 

CECE DIDN'T TALK MUCH ABOUT camp. Ms. Petrie's polite inquiries withered along their ride from the yellow bus's drop-off to CeCe's apartment. Her mother had been home for a week and looked forward to seeing her, according to Ms. Petrie, the newest social worker.

CeCe insisted Ms. Petrie didn't need to walk her in. CeCe hefted her duffel bag from the trunk and waddled through the lobby and onto the courtyard, and then wedged her swollen duffel bag through their apartment door.

Her mother sat at the kitchen table. There was her coffee mug. There was her sweater. There was her quiet. CeCe turned to lock the door behind her. The metal click of the deadbolt shot through their silence, its authority usually clanging against every surface. This time, CeCe only heard a dull thud beneath the rattle and pulse in her head.

Her emancipation from Camp Onondaga was a bittersweet celebration, as CeCe began to inventory all that awaited her at home. CeCe thought of her mother, swallowed by their bed. She thought of milk spoiling in the fridge. Envelopes overflowing in their mail slot. The apartment manager would fuss again about the mailbox. He would also wonder about the rent. When her mother had stopped getting out of bed last year, the apartment manager had showed CeCe which envelope to open and have her mother scribble across the back. When CeCe started returning the endorsed check, the manager deducted their rent and returned the remaining cash.

When CeCe turned away from the locked door, she was surprised to see her mother standing at the kitchen table, not sitting, making eye contact with her. Her mother even wore the outline of a smile. CeCe eyed her mother as she maneuvered around the coffee table to drop her duffel bag. She walked across the room to hug her mother and then open the refrigerator door.

 

CeCe spent the first few days home assessing bills and the cupboards, washing and hanging laundry, making daily trips to the library. Her mother didn't ask many questions about camp, just kept her eyes on CeCe with that ill-fitting grin.

At the end of the week, before grabbing her tote bag and heading out to catch the bus for her library retreat, the phone rang. The rare clamor filled their small apartment, making them jump. CeCe lifted the receiver. It was Ms. Petrie. CeCe wished she were at the bus stop already.

“I wanted to make sure you and your mom were all set for tomorrow,” Ms. Petrie said.

“Tomorrow?”

Ms. Petrie sighed into the phone and chirped, “So glad I called.”

CeCe listened as the social worker described the therapy series her mother had been committed to attending for the next six months. She would need to catch the bus to a counselor whose office was across town.

“He's really one of the best to deal with her type of, um, issues,” Ms. Petrie said. “Are you excited about your part?”

“What part?”

“I know you've been a big girl for a long time but, legally, we can't have you stay at the apartment alone for more than thirty minutes,” Mrs. Petrie said. “So, instead of making you sit in the waiting room of the therapist's office, we were able to get you free piano lessons at a studio down the hall.”

CeCe knew she was supposed to return Ms. Petrie's excitement, but there were too many other, darker emotions waiting in queue. CeCe felt the sludge filling her skull. She wanted this woman's voice out of her ear.

“What if I don't go?” CeCe asked.

“I'm sorry; you have to go. Otherwise, I could get in big trouble with my supervisor,” she said, “and your mother could get arrested for endangerment.”

CeCe was quiet. Her neck grew hot as she gripped the receiver. She wrote down the address and called the transit office for the bus routes. She heard her mother in the bedroom, adjusting herself on the mattress, and felt a headache pressing against her ears and the backs of her eyeballs. CeCe slammed the front door when she left.

 

“Let's go, Mama,” CeCe said, standing in the doorway of their bedroom. Her mother had been moving in circles, smoothing the blanket, slipping on her shoes, straightening the stacks of papers on the dresser. “We can't miss the Kennedy bus.”

Two bus transfers and an hour later, they arrived at a strip mall in the Birchdale neighborhood, a small enclave on the far-east end of the city. The property was modern and clean, with a video store, dry cleaners, and other small businesses. Between the insurance office and the shoe store, a nondescript glass door led to an upstairs maze of boxy, wood-paneled office spaces. A directory sign pointed to the music school at one end of the hallway and Dr. Carroll Harper at the other.

CeCe's piano lesson started thirty minutes later than her mother's session, though they would finish at the same time. CeCe walked with her mother to the doctor's office. A scent of spiced apples greeted them inside. The waiting area was small. There were four cushioned banquet chairs and another closed door with a wooden sign hung from a thick, orange ribbon: “In session. Please have a seat.”

CeCe and her mother took a seat on each wall. Her mother closed her eyes. CeCe examined the room. In the center of the space, a coffee table had magazines and a bowl filled with large wooden balls and spirals. A small bookshelf, painted orange, offered playing cards, an incomplete set of encyclopedia books, and a basket of toddler's toys. Eight black-and-white photographs of trees and forest glens dotted the room, each image held in place with cream-and-orange matting. CeCe recognized these pictures were the only items in Dr. Harper's waiting room that had not come from a thrift store.

A chime sounded on the other side of the closed door, followed by rustling, movement, and a murmur of voices coming closer to the door. CeCe looked to her mother. Her eyes were still closed, but CeCe saw her mother force a nervous swallow. The office door pushed open, releasing a heavy woman with long red hair, her face ashen and blotched from crying. CeCe looked down as she passed.

“You must be Carla,” croaked a man's voice. CeCe looked up again to see a short round man standing in the doorway. He was bald on top with a ring of white hair around his head and a full beard. CeCe half expected her mother's new psychologist to appear in a white lab coat and, perhaps, a bow tie. Instead, he wore jeans, Docksides and a button-down striped oxford. He reminded CeCe of a science teacher.

“And you must be Crimson—wait—CeCe, is it?”

CeCe nodded as Dr. Harper came closer to shake her hand and then her mother's. Dr. Harper gestured for her mother to follow him and moved aside for her passing.

“I promise to take excellent care of her,” he said to CeCe before pulling his office door closed.

CeCe poked through the magazines, but there were only news, camping, and home decor. She took out her library book to read. After a few minutes, CeCe realized there wasn't a clock anywhere. She knew she wasn't allowed to interrupt Dr. Harper, but didn't want to be late for her piano lesson. Begrudgingly, CeCe gathered her book and her tote bag and left the office for Claire McKissick's School of Music.

CeCe pushed open the door at the opposite end of the hallway and found a similar setup as Dr. Harper's office, with a second door separating the “waiting” from the “working.” CeCe took a seat in the plastic molded chairs. Instead of pastoral photography, these walls were covered in autographed photos of an elegant woman posing with an assortment of people. Famous musicians, CeCe presumed. Claire McKissick, she was certain.

She could hear muted instructions behind the closed door and someone mashing the keys. CeCe pulled out her book again, blocking out the wailing piano noise. Tuning out the world was one of CeCe's favorite perks of reading. A half hour had passed before she knew it and the door flew open. A large black woman came charging out, in mid-bellow.

“ . . . And the next time we come here and you don't know those keys, that's yo' ass. You hear me? I'm not payin' all this money for you to come here and piss around with this woman's time! How many times . . . ”

She was like a passing storm, not even noticing CeCe sitting there. The target of her rant came coasting behind. She was a thin, dark-complexioned girl with tight bangs and a ponytail on top of her head. The girl mm-hmmed and uh-huhed as she trailed the barking woman, but made a mocking cross-eyed face as she passed by CeCe. CeCe clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from squealing. Finally. She was not alone in the world of misfit mothers.

Every week, the girl and her mother left Claire McKissick's School of Music this way. CeCe would constrict the giggle squirming in her chest as soon as the rehearsal room door flew open and the mother's voice would invade the waiting area. CeCe kept her head in her book, waiting for the precise half-second when the girl would unzip her blank expression to flash a bucky beaver face or another cross-eyed smile. CeCe would squeeze shut her eyes to keep from exploding with laughter.

The girls' Saturday antics carried them through the start of a new school year, frozen dinner trays for Thanksgiving, and an early winter snow. On a particularly cold morning, the girl did not make a face. She followed her bellowing mother, as usual, but stopped to face CeCe before pulling up the hood on her coat.

“You dropped your magazine,” the girl said, with a bit more volume than the small room required. Puzzled, CeCe followed the girl's gaze down to the
Right On!
magazine dropped on the floor. CeCe looked down at the magazine and then up, into the mouth of the girl's mother. She had turned back to make sure none of her fussing, neck swiveling, or ultimatums were being missed.

CeCe looked back to the girl. “Thank you,” she said, also with a stage voice.

As the girl and her mother's voice retreated down the hall, CeCe held the magazine in her lap. Randy, Jermaine, and Janet Jackson looked back at her. Handwritten on little Janet's forehead read, “Open to page
1
6
.” CeCe did and found a folded sheet of lined paper. CeCe opened it and felt everything inside her breathe.