Boaz Brown (37 page)

I wanted to call Stelson, just to say good morning and see if he was up. I wanted to hear his voice and listen to him tell me something good.
Stelson, Stelson, Stelson.
I wondered if he had dreams, if he dreamed in color or black and white. I wondered if he drank coffee first thing in the morning. I wondered when he worked out and when he prayed. I wondered how he cleaned his feet. Then I started wondering if he wore boxers or pajamas or anything at all to bed.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
It was way past time for me to get to my prayer closet.

I thanked God for everything that had recently happened: Grandmomma Smith’s peaceful passing, seeing my family members again, and the wonderful thing with Stelson.

Then I went to the Word and meditated on a section of Psalm 119. In the last few minutes, I prayed for my family. I also prayed for strength to make it through the day so I could come back home and take a nap. I knew I had a long week ahead of me with the funeral, hosting my brother when he got in, and whatever mess the devil might bring me at work. And the fact that Stelson would be gone wasn’t making
it
any better.

Lord, I need Your strength and wisdom to make it through this week.

Just before I left for church, Jonathan called to let me know that he’d be flying in for the services on Wednesday.

I got to the sanctuary just in time to praise with the saints. It felt so good to be thanking and praising God for what I knew he was about to do with my family and in my life.

Pastor, with the help of the musicians, got us settled in our seats. This Sunday it was all us. No need to recognize visitors. Shannon had been noticeably absent since our crossing in the restroom, and brother Paul sat alone every week on the third pew from the drum set. I just hoped his next visitor truly loved him for who he was.

After church, I turned my cell phone on to check my messages. My mother had called. “Shondra, everybody is over at your Grandmomma Smith’s house, but I’m at the house, getting ready to make a few calls and get to the grocery store so I can start getting food ready for the wake Wednesday night and the meal Thursday. Why don’t you come on over, and we can get busy working on this together, hear?”

I felt funny going over there, like a schoolchild wondering if the teacher had called home. I wasn’t in the house a full minute before Momma started pouncing all over me. She zeroed in on me like state-of-the-art radar.

“What’s the matter, Shondra? You sure actin’ funny.”

“Momma, I just got in the house.” I set my purse and keys down on the kitchen table and poured myself a glass of orange juice. “Yes, love, it’s so nice to see you again.”

“Is
it
about that white man that brought you to Grandmomma Smith’s? Isn’t he the one on the refrigerator door?” she asked, still not convinced.

I nodded. “He’s a man I met on my job.” I had to be creative in how I told my mother the part of the truth I wanted her to know at that moment.

“He works with you?” She followed me to the table.

“Not really. He’s an engineer.”

“Uh-huh.” She walked back to the counter. “LaShondra, is there something you need to tell me?” She’d read me, and I knew there was no turning back.

Give me the words, Lord.
“Momma, Stelson and I are dating.”

She stopped chopping onions and turned abruptly to look at me. Her face filled with confusion, and I immediately regretted the blunt way I’d told her. Then again, there really isn’t any other way to say such things.

Momma walked away from the counter and fell into a chair at the table. Her fleshy arm plopped down on the kitchen table, causing the pepper shaker to topple over and sprinkle a square inch of seasoning.

“So, you’re dating a white man, huh? After all we did for you.” Then she squinted her eyes, trying to make sure that there was no trace of humor in my face. I started praying in my Spirit.
Lord, please send love. Please send it now.

“But I really like him. He’s a good man.”

She was still looking at me upside my head.

“Momma, it’s about more than Stelson, though. I... I’m learning so much. It’s time for us to stop spreading all this hate in the name of black pride and for the sake of preserving our history—or whatever we think we’re doing by not accepting other people.”

“That’s easy for you to say, missy. It is so easy for this generation to forget its roots.” Her neck and index finger worked hard to stress her message. “You never had those books that said
used
in big black capital letters when you were in elementary school. You never went in through the back door of a restaurant and paid with the same green money as the white customers, but you couldn’t eat inside. You never drank from a nasty old water fountain that said
colored.
You never had little white boys throwing rocks at you ‘cause you went into a whites-only store. You didn’t go through that, Shondra!

“Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for you to come in here and tell me what’s got to change. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout what it felt like to be treated so badly. That
hurt
like nothin’ you could ever imagine. That hurt to the bone!”

She rose and stood over me with her hand on her heart, breathing heavily, wanting me to understand the pain she’d lived with. Her face contorted with anger, anguish. She waited for me to say something. And when I couldn’t, she walked away and stood by the window, looking for an answer, I supposed. “That’s what I thought. You
don’t
understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what it means to have been treated the way you were treated forty years ago,” I told her. “But—”

“It ain’t just about forty years ago, missy. Oh, no, don’t fool yourself. It’s still going on.” She laughed bleakly.

“I know that. But, Momma, you’re not just a person. You’re a child of God. We have to see this for what it is.”

“And what is it? What is the world according to LaShondra Monique Smith?” She sat down again quaintly and folded her arms across her chest.

I thought about Stelson and how much I liked him. I wished Momma could have known that Stelson was good people. “I just know it’s not right to judge people by the color of their skin—no matter what it is.”

“You still ain’t said nothin’ about white folks. Slavery Ku Klux Klan. Lynchin’, beatin’, stabbin’, lyin’, cheatin’ stole everything from us and never give us a dime for it!’

She was angry now, as if she were arguing against the whole world.

I didn’t have time to go all into a history lesson, so I asked her one question, slowly, one word at a time. “Who came here to steal, kill, and destroy?”

“The enemy, of course. So are you saying white folks are the enemy, ‘cause if you are, I might agree with you on that one. That’s what Malcolm X used to say.”

“The enemy is a master at deception. Momma, I know we can’t change the past. History is history. What happened happened, and people are hurt because of it. But that is the way of the world. We don’t follow that way. You taught me so yourself.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and let out a long Lord-where-did-I-go-wrong?

Breathe.

“All I’m asking you to do is get to know Stelson. You know me. You know what kind of person I am. You know you raised me right and you taught me all about love. Do you think I would be dating Stelson if he wasn’t all that? This is new for all of us, but God’s love is stronger than anything. Please give him a chance. That’s all I’m asking.”

Still no response.

“You know that W-W-J-D bracelet you bought me last year for Christmas?”

She nodded.

“Well, we are going to have to think in those terms. Jesus was conscious of people’s backgrounds, but he never let those stereotypes interfere with the love and kindness and respect He showed everyone—Jews or Gentiles.

“We’ve got a lot of good black leaders, good black organizations, good black this and good black that. And there is nothing wrong with helping those that need it most. But if your heart is fixed on hate and fear and prejudice, there is a problem, and we’re not doing what Jesus would do.”

I gave my whole platform as she looked at me in amazement. I felt as though I was telling my mother that she had been wrong, in so many words, but I knew I had to tell her. The same as I had told myself.

“You know, Momma, if this family hadn’t been harboring so much hate and prejudice to begin with, I wouldn’t have been so afraid to introduce him to everyone.”

“Well,” she sighed again, “it’s gonna take God almighty to help your father get over this one.”

“What about you, Momma?”

She looked away, the ornery smirk ebbing from her face. “God’s already been dealin’ with me about this. I knew something was comin’ down the line—just didn’t know what. I can get through it. But I don’t know about your father. You’re puttin’ us all in a bad position.”

“I think he’ll be all right, Momma.” I was optimistic.

She looked at me again, as though contemplating some weighty matter. She tapped her fingers on the table; rhythmic, methodical—sounded like a horse galloping in the distance.

Now I knew there was something unsaid.

“LaShondra, this thing is much deeper with your father than it is with me. There’s a lot that happened. A lot more you don’t know about.” She wrung her fingers now.

“What? What happened?”

“Well. . .“ She hesitated again. “Your father never talks about it. He only told me the story once, right when we started courtin’, so I’d know if anybody ever said somethin’ about it. And I think he told Jonathan once, right before he went into the service. I really shouldn’t be talking about it to you now.”

She looked away from me. “But I will, ‘cause I think you need to understand where your father is coming from.” Her eyes dashed between me and the window. “You know, your daddy is a very smart man, LaShondra. He was the valedictorian of his high school class.”

My eyes widened. “I didn’t know.”

“Yes. Your father had dreams. He had things he wanted to do with his life. He used to read all kinds of books, learning everything he could to get ready for his life. You know he still reads the entire newspaper every morning. And you know your daddy is good with math, too—’specially money. Ooh, your daddy can take a nickel and by the time he’s done with it, it’ll be a dime. That man is something else.” She laughed as she spoke of him.

“Well, his last year in high school, 1958, he was getting set and ready to go to Harley College on a work detail. He wanted to be a banker.”

“Daddy was going to Harley?”

“Yep. Finest black college in all of Texas.” A proud smile came across her face.

“What’s a work detail?”

“That’s when you agree to work to pay for college— mow the grass, tend the hogs, work in the kitchen, whatever you got to do.

“Well, I wasn’t dating him back then, but I’d heard about Jonathan Smith. All the girls said he was the smoothest black thing in Ellerson. He was at all the dances and all the get-togethers, and he was always surrounded by a bunch of girls, like he was some kind of movie star. He was the smartest, best thing going as far as we all knew.

“By then they had put your daddy in the papers and everything, and black people were starting to get a little afraid ‘cause we knew every time a black person start doin’ good, white folks start gettin’ mad. When they see black kids doin’ better than their kids, they can’t take it. Grandmomma Smith told your daddy to keep his nose clean and just get off to college without trouble. But trouble came lookin’ for him.

“It all happened one afternoon when your daddy was out with a few of his buddies, riding around in a ‘57 pickup that Frederick Evans’s daddy had bought used. It wasn’t much, but it was more than a lot of white folks in Ellerson had. Your daddy and his friends were out just having fun, doing their last things before getting ready to go off to college. They drove all through downtown Ellerson, and into some of the parts of town that they didn’t have no business.

“Well, your daddy had to use the restroom, and his buddy Fredrick Evans told him they couldn’t stop, ‘cause they was in the wrong part of town. Your daddy couldn’t hold it no longer, so they pulled over between two quiet-looking buildings and he did his business and hurried up and hopped back on the back of the truck. And soon as he sat back down, he looked up into one of those buildings and saw a white woman looking down at him. She’d seen what he’d done.