The Grace of Silence (7 page)

I ALWAYS WONDER HOW
a young man could go through his early life with a nickname like “Honey.” That’s what everyone called my father in Birmingham. Honey. Though, to get it right you had to let the first syllable hang a bit: “Hu-uh-nee.” It seemed too sweet a name for a young man unless he was a blues singer or a boxer. Dad was neither. He was the second youngest of six sons from the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. Anyone who questioned his nickname would quickly have to confront a rambunctious fraternity. All of the Norris men were tall, thin, and talkative—quick with a punch line and, if necessary, even quicker with a sharp left hook. You had to deal with all of them if you tried to take one on. And you had to have a thick skin and a keen wit to run with the Norris boys. They teased and ribbed and challenged one another constantly. They called it signifyin’. They’d talk about the size of your girlfriend’s behind and expect you to laugh. They’d crack on your clothing or your eyeglasses or your skin tone and then wait, with antic anticipation, for you to swat it right back with another wisecrack. And there always was another one: “Man, where’d you get them shoes? Don’t you know that Santa’s been callin’ ’cause he wants his boots back!”

The ribbing could go on and on for hours, and it usually did. And when it went one step too far with a joke about a wife or, worse, somebody’s mama, that was when my father would step up and talk down the offended party. “C’mon now … you know we’re just playing. You got to signify to qualify and,
man, you more than qualified. You hung right in there,” Belvin would say, draping his arm around the shoulder of the aggrieved fellow to steer him away from the front porch, away from his brothers shaking with laughter while celebrating their verbal dexterity. Dad would keep that fellow moving along, away from the snickering and merriment. All the while, he’d be looking over his shoulder to shush his brothers, quietly sharing in the pride of the takedown. Dad was always a bit of a square, and it took extra effort for him to riff like a hep cat. “Man, you got to shake it off,” he’d say. “We’re just havin’ fun. You know the story. We all get a cut, we all
get
cut. Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.”

A clan of six, the Norris brothers were thick as thieves yet devoted as apostles to an inviolate creed: good times allowed only after a day’s hard work. They were very much their father’s sons.

My grandfather had worked in the steel mills and the coal mines until age forced him to retire, after which he occupied himself with neighborhood odd jobs. My grandmother Fannie worked too, as a nurse’s aide, logging a short shift after she put her sons to bed. Belvin and Fannie were savers and strivers. They stood out in Ensley because they owned their own home and managed to keep new cars in the garage. Grandpa Belvin turned those cars into a business, shuttling people to and fro for money. For years, though, he refused to drive to church on Sunday mornings, a custom some neighbors believed he adopted from the city’s large Orthodox Jewish population. Jewish merchants ran most of Birmingham’s department stores and nearly all the shops in Ensley. For the Orthodox, driving on the Sabbath is taboo because starting an engine is akin to lighting a fire; the Torah forbids kindling a fire on the holy day of rest.

Grandpa Belvin was tickled by the rumor and never did much to quell it. But his sons knew the real reason he didn’t
drive on Sunday. He liked to walk the half mile to church with his wife, Fannie, by his side and his six sons in single file behind him like sentries. More than the deed to the house, or the car in the driveway, or the windup mantel clock or upright Zenith radio, more than the three black suits he owned (two more than most men on his block), my grandfather treasured this ritual of walking with his family to church.

In my mind’s eye I can see Belvin and Fannie leading their sons to the First Baptist Church on Avenue G, nodding at neighbors, walking slowly but with purpose in the Alabama heat, gently waving fans glued to Popsicle sticks. I see my grandfather, one hand in his pocket, the other intertwined with his wife’s. And I see six boys ambling behind them, all with slightly knock-kneed gaits, poking and elbowing each other as they secretly pass mints and chewing gum back and forth. The scene is easy to imagine, for on two occasions, the boys returned to First Baptist to bury their parents. As often happens at funerals, children revert to their earliest family roles. The jokester. The pacifist. The cheapskate. There they were, middle-aged men, each with one of Grandma Fannie’s lace hankies in his breast pocket, passing Chiclets and breath spray around. They stood in the church vestibule, joshing with one another about their expanding waistlines and receding hairlines, signifyin’ before assuming their pallbearer duties. Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying.

I spent part of every summer in Alabama from when I was in swaddling clothes until I entered junior high. When I turned five years old, my parents began sending me by myself. I would fly unaccompanied, and they would drive down to meet me two or three weeks later. It was complicated travel; the airlines had names that aligned with a compass: Northwest out of Minneapolis to Atlanta, then a flight on Southern Airways for the
last leg to Birmingham. While the bombings and racial tumult at the time may have prevented us from going to certain parts of town, the chaos could not keep us away from Birmingham.

“You got off the train. You went to the black neighborhoods and you kept your butt in the black neighborhoods until it was time to go home,” my mother said. Whenever we ventured downtown, we’d always map out a route so that we’d know exactly where to find colored restrooms in case someone couldn’t hold their water. And when we visited relatives in the country, there was always a coffee can in the trunk.

Until recently, I never understood how much of Alabama lives in me. I always identify myself as Minnesotan. But the spirit of Ensley resides in my soul. The rock-solid sense of community. The way everyone on the street claimed you as their own. The safe harbor on every porch along the block. Neighbors who went out of their way to talk to each other every day, saying, “C’mon up here, girl, and have a cool drink” or “Why don’t you sit down and snap some peas with me?” or “I got the Braves game on the radio, want to sit for a spell?”

I sensed more communal love raining down on me in Ensley than at any other time in my life. Maybe it was a childhood illusion, but back in Alabama, I felt as if everywhere you turned someone cheered you on—and not just family members. Everybody was in the same boat, rowing in the same direction, determined to get somewhere better fast.

The irony is that when so many of us got there, the community bonds began to fray. A generation that had championed pioneers—the first professional black baseball player, the first black Supreme Court justice, the first black city council member, the first black this or that—knew all too well, in the early days of integration, that only a chosen few would get to the top.

As universities and law firms tiptoed toward diversity, only a handful of slots would be available to blacks. So parents who’d publicly championed black progress in general would secretly
kneel in prayer at night, begging the Lord to let their children be among the lucky few. “Let opportunities rain on all our children, but please, Lord, if they’re only taking one at the law or medical school, or just one in the National Honor Society or at the recital, please, Lord, let it be my baby.”

Ensley was cocoonlike, and I would have spent almost all my time in the neighborhood if not for my grandfather. After he retired, he deputized me to join him on his daily errands. Grandpa was a huge man. Very tall. Very dark. Very proud. A former steelworker who wore suits every day after he stopped working at the mill, he’d tell us, “Dress for where you’re going.” I’m not sure he ever got there, but I guess his dark suit and skinny tie signaled where his grandkids were headed.

He drove a big car. Really big. Shiny and dark, with doors that opened at the middle of each side—suicide doors, as they were called. They made it easier to load people and cargo. This was important, because Grandpa rode “jitney.” You see, few people had sedans in Ensley then. My grandfather, a lifelong saver, had waited until he could buy a very big car with cash, not simply for enjoyment but to help him earn money during his retirement. He drove people to and from the grocery store or the doctor or wherever they had to go. This was called riding jitney.

During my summer stays in Birmingham, my grandfather usually carried me into town with him on trips to Bruno’s, the big grocery store. I would have to get dressed up for the day in a starchy little pinafore and patent leather shoes. And since this was before the days of car seats, I would sit next to him in the massive front seat, the two of us in what most people would call Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Some days, when we parked the car and walked into the business district, my grandfather would be approached by men in work uniforms. They lived in a
section across a creek that I later learned was home to Irish and Italian families. They always looked rumpled. They had dirt on their faces, and their hair always seemed wet. They called my grandfather “boy” and “nigrah,” which was supposed to be slightly less offensive and confrontational than
nigger
. Slightly.

Sometimes they’d ask him who he “thought” he was, driving a big car and dressing like a preacher. They would follow us, barking and sneering and spitting on the sidewalk. They would step in front of us now and then to block our way. My grandfather said little. He knew the men by name. I remember that he would sometimes tell them to give his regards to their parents or ask after someone he used to work with at the mills. This would often get the men to back off, allowing us to continue on our way—a man with hands the size of mitts holding on to an overdressed child.

I now wonder whether the little girl in the lace socks and patent leather shoes was invited along for the ride to provide Grandpa with a measure of protection from Birmingham hostility. I can’t imagine putting my own kids into a similar situation, dressing them up as armor for their grandparents. I ran this by Mom, wanting her to say, “You’re crazy” or “Your imagination is running away with you.” But instead she allowed, “We lived in different times. People did what they had to do.” To get by, people had to rely on their wits and control their emotions.

My father used to joke that he and his five brothers, both in looks and temperament, seemed to fall in line with Snow White’s seven dwarfs, except Dopey. “There are no dumb folks in my household,” my grandfather used to say. If you spent any time at all in the little wooden bungalow on Avenue G you would have heard Belvin Norris Sr. assert as much time and again, as if praying or making a promise. He might say it
proudly, or spit it out like a stern warning to underscore a command, as in: “Boy, you better figure out how to fix that broken faucet so the eight people in this house can get washed in time for church.” Silence, then: “I may not know much, but I know one thing. There are no dumb folks in my household.” Grandpa Belvin repeated this so often that, if the little Birmingham bungalow had housed a business, the sign out front most likely would have read,
GREAT FOOD. GOOD PEOPLE. NO DUMMIES
.

As I grew older I began to understand my dad’s joke about the seven dwarfs. Dopey aside, the personalities of these six black sons of Birmingham seemed to correspond to those of Snow White’s little friends. Sylvester, the oldest, would be Sneezy. He was the eccentric, always dabbing at his face with a white hanky as he sketched out music and poetry in a little notebook. Louis would be Sleepy, though all his brothers called him Nip, even though they knew it was a derogatory term, because the deep slant of his eyes made him look slightly Asian. Simpson was Grumpy because he often was grumpy. He was hot-tempered, hardworking, and tightly wound. When he laughed, only his eyes would smile. His chin remained tight—the sign of a man who never let his guard down; though he could be an absolute softie around kids. In contrast, Woodrow had an impish grin all his life, even when his skin wrinkled and his hair turned gray. The name Bashful suits him best. Doc? That would be Joe Nathan, the youngest and smartest of the bunch, who never let you forget it. My father, Belvin, would naturally be Happy, for his perennially upbeat disposition.

Until the end of his life, Dad was an infernally cheerful man, always smiling, always trying to make others feel at ease. I am now ashamed to say that there were times when his demeanor made me uneasy, moments when he would smile at, and joke with, salespeople or waitresses who had shown disdain or disrespect. His manner may have suited him well for his job as a
window clerk at the post office, but to a kid raised in the sock-it-to-me seventies, his penchant to please struck me as submissive. Only here’s the thing: years later, I now see the same trait in myself, and it no longer makes me cringe in quite the same way, for I now understand that his aversion to conflict and his compulsive need for calm are what got us through the roughest patches in our lives. What I did not understand until recently is that it also got him through his own darkest days.

I HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION
that when people start a sentence with “You know,” they’re trying to take the edge off unsettling news. Think about it. All those times you’ve heard “You know, I hate to tell you this” or “You know, this relationship has not been working out.” Or even “You know, I love you.” “You know” suggests a seed of doubt; maybe you don’t really know, after all. I was certainly in the dark when Uncle Joe surprised me over breakfast one morning a few years ago. Joe Nathan Norris is my father’s only surviving brother. He was supposed to be called Jonathan, but someone got it wrong on his birth certificate. These days he likes to call himself “the Last of the Mohicans” or “the Last Man Standing”—dignified titles that hint at the loneliness of a man who has too quickly run out of brothers to call when he needs advice or has news he wants to share.