Virgin Soul (5 page)

Let it out onliest in front of his wife and children

Even men with vices easier than a man of God~

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

W
e drove back from Goosey's past the Oakland Army Base, Allwood jabbering on about Vietnam, something about the count up to a million in North and South Vietnam. I was thinking about Goosey's letter, not the main part, the postscript about preacher men . . . “the hardest mens of all to live with.” I was involved with someone trying to live up to an ideal.

“Allwood, what're you talking about? There couldn't possibly be a million soldiers dead.”

“I said the U.S. dropped that many bombs on 'nam. North and South.”

“Where did a million bombs land? I thought it was a small country. Good grief, Charlie Brown.”

“You wish it was a cartoon. Once the Senate and the House passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, it's like giving LBJ a blank check to fight the war in Vietnam.”

My head hurt at the thought of all the bombs bursting in air.

“Hope that can be seen is not hope,” Goosey used to say. I had hoped for these two people who accepted my dark skin and nappy hair to meet. And my hope had manifested. I had such a compact world in my heart that was somehow completely undwarfed by the tumultuous world outside of my head.

I
wanted to clue Allwood into the rest of my people gradually. My family was a circle of all kinds of people—educators, high school dropouts, drop-dead beauties, a dentist, a mechanic, party-hearties, the serious ones, the quiet ones, talkers, gamblers, some in the mainstream, others who lived right on the edge, some who had gone over the edge. A crazy family, but Allwood was crazy too. Wouldn't crazy people recognize each other?

Whenever the family got together, my aunts called it a get. We used Uncle Pink and Aunt Patsy's big ranch-style house in East Oakland behind Castlemont High School's pool. We kids never tired of playing hide-and-go-seek, mother-may-I, and running around and around that brick-and-redwood house. When the adults got busy playing bid whist and poker we forgot about eating until they got hungry. We stopped dead in our tracks when Uncle Pink pulled up from his seat like a snorting bull and shouted “Boston, baby, bos-tun.”

That sprawling house fit my family. Pink, a gym teacher at Castlemont and assistant coach of the track team, was the unofficial welcoming committee of the family. If you got past Pink, you had a good shot at survival. Pink came in the family “with my chest out,” as he told it when he got a little tight, and, after a while, he seemed like family and Patsy, the blood relative, like the in-law. Pink presided over the weddings, funerals, and gets. He played cards the best. He raised five daughters, none of whom got pregnant before marriage, as he took pride in saying.

As we drove up, I could see my clan was out in full force for Pink's fifty-third birthday. Right in front of the driveway sat Zenobia's blush pink 1957 Studebaker.

“That belongs to my aunt Zenobia. She bought it to celebrate the integration of Central High in Little Rock,” I told Allwood.

“It looks brand new,” Allwood said, as we parked behind the Studebaker and got out. In dusk, it gleamed like Zenobia, the beauty of the family, high yellow with a straight nose and peach-colored hair. I knew she'd be the first to look Allwood over, inch by inch, right down to the roots of his not-so-kinky hair. I rang Pink's doorbell. I looked at Allwood as we stood outside the country I had grown up in and saw him anew, not a stranger, but still a foreigner to my life.

I should have been protecting Allwood from the occupying army. But all I wanted was some of Patsy's gumbo before it ran out, at which point, instead of cracking legs and sucking crabmeat, I'd be sopping juices at the bottom of the pot with a dinner roll.

Pink opened the door. Families are found people. Mine spilled from the stone-and-rock fireplace at the end of the room—relatives, babies, children, some at the long table, others at card tables, some in chairs balancing plates. Allwood looked lost. My heart started to sink; did they leave me any gumbo?

“Now, Niecy, I've heard of CP time,” Pink said. “But this is outrageous.” He lifted me off my feet.

“Oh, we had to go to San Francisco first,” I said.

“And what's in Frisco that you can't get in Oakland?” Pink said. I started to tell him, but he talked right over me. “Is that where you got this fella from?”

Pink stood back, blocking the doorway, arms folded over his chest. I was in; Allwood was out. I introduced them.

“You know we gotta see your birth certificate right off the bat,” Pink said to Allwood. Behind me, I heard the noise of forks and knives clinking on china. The smell of giblet gravy pulled at me.

Allwood, sweet that he was, actually scrounged in his pockets as if he'd find a birth certificate. Pink laughed and let him in.

“Young blood, that's our way of saying,
where the hell you from?
”

Uncle Al, Pink's baby brother, told him, “Ordinarily we don't open the door unless you have your birth certificate.” Allwood didn't get it.

It was a crazy statement, not a question, even if it came out like one. Being dumbfounded was the best response. Anger meant the boy was too many generations removed from the country. If they joked back or matched it—that never happened. They don't make them like that anymore, as my uncles said. Pink and Uncle Boy-Boy said a different kind of water in the soil sends a different kind of blood to the brain—young blood.

From across the room, Uncle Boy-Boy took one look at Allwood and began moving toward us. He asked in that voice that carried thirty feet, “This your new potato head?”

I didn't find it offensive, but Allwood sent Uncle Boy-Boy live voltage, which did not penetrate.

“I thought your father was long gone,” Allwood said, looking at my uncle. Uncle Boy-Boy and I have the same straight line of eyebrow that I tweezed out, the same red tint to our dark brown skin, and the same fifty-two-tooth smile.

I introduced them. “This is my father's younger brother. He and my aunt raised me.”

“Go get your young man a plate before it's all gone,” Uncle Boy-Boy said, as he shook Allwood's hand. That was all I needed.

“And don't forget my sweet potato bread,” Zenobia called after me. Zenobia made more delicacies from the sweet potato than George Washington Carver dreamed for the peanut. I headed for the kitchen, but I could hear them starting in on Allwood. I heard someone ask him if he was a hippie. I looked back to see how much discomfort was showing on his face. He was smiling. Wait, just wait.

Clovese, Aunt Ola's sister, stood guard over the food. “Where you pick up that heiny man?”

“Did you guys leave some gumbo in the pot for me?” was all I could answer.

“You fucking him?” She ladled out a serving of the thick brown stew over rice, put it aside, and began to ladle out a second one.

“How you wake up your shoe-shine face next to some yellow dog?”

I couldn't wait. I added filé to one of the bowls and took a bite. The shrimp and rice in my mouth made me delirious.

“Not me,” Clovese said.

“Clovese,” I said, going next for the smothered chicken and ignoring her comments. “Is the chow-chow hot or is it hot?”

“It's steaming. What else is chow-chow supposed to be?” she said, spooning a taste next to the spot of black-eyed peas and neck bones over rice. I could taste the cold and spicy chow-chow of cabbage-carrots-tomatoes-peppers next to the heat of the peas and neck bones already. I needed ice water for the thought of it.

“I wouldn't want to wake my black face up next to a yellow man. No, lordie,” Clovese said, pouring ice water for me. We were the darkest women in the family. Had been allies since I came into the world when she was a teenager. She used her mouth to defy the taunt:
If you're white, you're all right; if you're yellow, it's mellow; if you're brown, stick around; but if you're black, get back.

“I'm fixing a plate for him,” I said to her. Clovese drew back.

“You into this Negro?” she asked me.

When I shrugged, she said, “Well, excuse me, Niecy.”

It's not a crime
, I wanted to shout. Instead I put down my plate and began fixing Allwood's. “He doesn't eat pork, Clovese,” I said.

“He young. What does it matter?” She ladled the turnip and mustard greens from the pot onto his plate.

“A lot of people don't eat pork anymore. You know. The teachings of Elijah Muhammad. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad?”

“You mean that Muslim shit?”

“Clovese, come on.”

“Come on nothing. Negroes jump on any bandwagon going by. What if he tell you to stop eating? Period? You gon do that? All because of some little old man in Timbuktu? Negroes got to use common sense. If your grandpeople hadn't eaten that pig, ain't a one of us be alive today. Did the honorable Mr. So-and-So tell you that?” As she talked, she loaded Allwood's plate with red beans and rice, greens, piccalilli, smothered chicken, creamed cauliflower, salad, and homemade rolls, everything that was on my plate except the peas.

She started to put that on but I stopped her. “No pork. For real.”

“This is beef neck bones. From the cow. You ain't the only one into something better,” she said. She came from behind the table for her hug. As she embraced me, I held my head back.

“Clovese, are you going to bite me?”

“Are you my niece?” She bit my cheek, holding it between her lips for a warm second. That was Clovese's trademark. “Don't let no man use you for a piss pot, hear me?”

I headed back for Allwood, passing dessert on my way: pineapple upside-down cake, pecan pie, and fried apple turnovers. Next to the desserts was a roll of wax paper for carrying a plate home instead of trying to make it into the Guinness right there.

“Give in and get up,” Pink was saying. He was telling Allwood and everybody around him about his stroke. I handed Allwood his plate, assuring him there was no pork on it. Pink never ran out of ways to tell his story. Tonight he was telling it third person.

“Pink had fallen, with his big fat black self, on the kitchen floor and having a hard time getting up. So hard that I thought he couldn't. So my dear wife Patsy called for help, but the ambulance never come. Now here I am living in this house that a white man used to own, working a job that the white man says a Negro is not supposed to do. So why I think he'd send me an ambulance? But I did. And it never came. And there I am on the floor and can't get back up.”

I looked at Allwood, to see if he liked the food. He was giving Pink a look that said he thought he was ignorant. But he was eating more than he had ever eaten of anything I had cooked for him, which wasn't saying much. I relaxed and started to grease.

“So Pink,” Pink continued, “hungry for Aunt Pat's Sunday dinner, asked Pat to serve him his dinner on the floor. And you know what my wife told me? As sure as you born, Pat said, ‘Absolutely not. Give in and get up.'”

This was the cue for anybody with two cents to jump in. Aunt Ola Ray gave it a religious slant, “And, hallelujah, Pat said, ‘Give in and get up.'” Zenobia flavored hers with self-respect: “Patsy couldn't do it. She told Pink ‘Give in and get up.'” Uncle Boy-Boy said, “Off your knees, brotherman.”

Allwood muttered under his breath to me, as I showed him where the bathroom was, “Your family is so bourgie.” To me, bourgie means straining up to be bourgeois. “My family,” I growled, “who have all worked very hard to get what they have are, for your information, fun loving, loud, argumentative, boastful, food loving, proud, and,” as an addendum, “they don't like to eat at restaurants. The women cook.” I don't know where that came from; they ate out on occasion.

When I got back in the room, everybody was beginning to line up next to the phone for Buddy's call. We each got to shout at Boy-Boy's pride, his son the doctor.

“My son Buddy is serving in the Philippines right now,” Aunt Ola said to Allwood.

Pink corrected her without condescension. “Not the Philippines, Ola. Vietnam.”

“Well, over there,” Aunt Ola said. “On a ship. A duty ship.”

“Boy's not on a ship or we couldn't talk with him,” Pink said.

“Well, where is he, then?”

“Danang.” Pink repeated it, as if he saw it.

Allwood repeated the word as if it was unbelievable,
Danang, Danang
. “Your cousin's in Danang, and you didn't tell me?”

I said, “I thought he went to Hawaii.”

Uncle Boy-Boy talked from the phone. “He's in the trenches.”

“I don't think so,” Allwood said, his voice low but clear in the excitement. It was the first time all evening that he didn't look uneasy. “Medical doctors can't carry weapons. Geneva Convention.” Pink had heard him.

“How's he going to protect himself if he don't have a weapon?” Pink said.

I began to help with the cleanup when Uncle Boy-Boy announced, “Buddy wants to speak to Ruby Boogers.”

“Ruby Boogers, Ruby Boogers,” the kids began to chant. When I got my nose pierced, I bought a ruby nose ring, and my nose had gotten infected. Buddy had instructed me on what to do and named me Ruby Boogers. By the time I healed I had lost interest in wearing it. The family never let me live it down.

“Ruby Boogers with rings in her nose and bells on her toes,” the kids sang louder.

I took the phone. “Dr. Bud?”

“Yeah. Is this the booger queen?” he said, laughing in his Bugs Bunny–Bela Lugosi way. “Still raising hell, Ruby Boogers?”

Me, the hell-raiser? Buddy was wicked: “I'll pass gas on your pillow if you don't give me your Popsicle
.
” Many nights I slept without a pillow. When I took the phone, my voice cracked.

“Come back soon, you hear me, Buddy?” I said. When I handed the receiver to Uncle Al, I felt something strange and tight in my throat. I looked out the picture window. Somewhere between gets I had become a grown-up.

As I sat with the adults, I noticed the army green canvas strips on Allwood's combat boots from the Army-Navy store. They looked rough next to the flats, pumps, Oxfords, Florsheims, and slip-ons from Monkie Ward's, Karl's, and J. C. Penney's. All evening I had wavered, thinking Allwood wouldn't fit in and hoping he might, no way would he like my people and maybe he would. Art Linkletter settled it. I never knew how Ola would get into Art Linkletter, but she took great pleasure in finding a way to put this story into any conversation with someone new. And since she couldn't cook, Art Linkletter was her way of redeeming herself, of contributing to everyone's edification.

She'd use whatever lead-in she could—the television, a child saying a curse word, the latest crime in the neighborhood. I was gorging on upside-down cake when she started.

“Did you watch Art Linkletter's show
Kids Say the Darndest Things
, where he called little children from the audience to the microphone?”

Allwood nodded. He didn't know where she was going. The rest of us did.

“He asked them, ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?' And each little one said very plain and clear, ‘I want to be an engineer. . . . I want to be a spaceman. . . . I want to be a this or a that.'” Each time she told it Aunt Ola interchanged the professions. Stockbroker, nuclear scientist, the president, anything unattainable for a black man. But she always finished with “a this or a that.”