Virgin Soul (9 page)

It came to me as I spoke that Allwood had scooped me up, the same way my father must have done in the doctor's office, with indignation and love. When we went back in, we scarfed the rest of the pie. While Wish and Allwood were eating the corners, zeroing in on the crust and sauce and shreds of roasted cheese left, I made dessert. We sang along to “Put on a Happy Face.”

“Here's how to have your whipped cream on top,” I said, slicing the Twinkie lengthwise and inserting the sliced strawberries, one by one, between the cake and the white cream.

“Where did you get this recipe?” Allwood asked, and that got us going, cracking up. I was the first one to keel over, passed out—like a light. They must have put my legs up. When I woke up they were out, on the floor, on the pillows from the daybed. I sat up in the dark, listening to them breathe. How strange to feel so comfortable with two men sleeping at my feet. I tried to pick it apart. When I colored as a kid I had a hard time staying in the lines. I'd color the wolf periwinkle along with the sky, or give the wolf a carnation pink tongue pink teeth pink legs pink forest. In this unlikely, unexpected cocoon, I felt safe.

*   *   *

I
knew I was becoming militant. I just didn't know if I wanted to become
a
militant. Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, the protesters, the sit-in demonstrators down south were my heroes. I loved them from a distance and on paper. But the militants I met, mostly the guys on the soapbox on Grove Street, were harsh and abrasive and condescending to everyone, not just white people. And they made people do things. They had the power to make people quit school and read a thousand books. They could make someone go cut her hair off. They stopped traffic on busy city streets and directed willing souls to go to Cuba, to Africa, to the Deep South, to dangerous places where they might not make it back. I didn't want that kind of power over people. I just wanted it over myself.

O
nce I got rid of my roaches, I let Allwood hold political education classes in my apartment. We went through Chairman Mao's little red book, Chairman Frantz Fanon, Chairmen Marx and Engels, Chairman W. E. B. Du Bois, Chairman Herbert Aptheker, Chairman Carter G. Woodson, chairman, chairman, chairman, so many chairmen and I only had a few chairs. My job was grand poobah of the bathroom, the vacuum, the seating arrangements, bringing kitchen chairs into the living room if my beat-up sofa wasn't enough.

I made myself another job: cook. Every Tuesday morning I figured out something to cook for the four to six people who showed up, or sometimes only Allwood and the cook. Tamale pie, red beans and rice, stewed chicken over rice, macaroni and cheese with canned tuna. Once only the cook herself showed her face. So I ate all by myself. But most of the time, somebody came knocking on the door around 7:00
P.M
.

One of the last Tuesdays of the whole semester I was unprepared for what happened except that, imitating Goosey, I had filled a ten-quart stew pot with black-eyed peas, neck bones, and rice. At least it looked like Goosey's. I did my best to get it looking like it was supposed to. People showed up by 7:30, CP time. Cool. We dialogued until 7:45, when who should come strutting in like he owned the place but Abner. I barely spoke. He sidled up to me like he had never threatened me in the cafeteria.

But I was in no way prepared then for who came in after snaky Abner: Michelle Stubbs. She and I had graduated Castlemont High School together. She was a superbourgie. What was she doing at a PE class? I thought she was away at a black school like Howard or Fisk. Instead, here she was with Abner, practically bound to his wrist. I couldn't see it unless he was hustling her. I simply couldn't see the two of them together. She was Miss Ultra Bourgie. She had everything—a daddy with a title (Dr. Stubbs), parents with a home in the hills, long straight white people hair—everything except she was dark. Not dark like me, not that dark, but darker than a paper bag. In her world, she was dark. I knew she hadn't turned into a black militant simply because she was darker than what was allowable in her social circle. Not Michelle, who drove a T-Bird like Natalie Wood in high school. Some things just don't happen. Allwood began to pass around a new pamphlet that everybody examined with great curiosity.

By 8:00, everybody was engrossed in the pamphlet, Allwood was lecturing on it, and I couldn't concentrate because Michelle and Abner were sending each other eyeball telegrams. What was going on with them? I finally saw the pamphlet. I looked at the first page not really thinking about it. Then my eyes focused and I had to keep myself from screaming,
This scares me to death
. A salty, spitty fear rushed into my mouth. The picture was frightening.

“The good brother Williams was run out of North Carolina by the KKK,” Allwood was saying. “And you know why?”

“Yeah,” Abner said. How did he know? Had he studied this pamphlet already? He annoyed me every time he opened his mouth.

“No, tell me why,” I said.

Allwood looked at me like he was telling me that nouns are people, places, and things. “Because he armed himself.”

Oh. Elementary. I should have figured that one out. At the bottom of the pamphlet was the legend
PUBLISHED IN CUBA AS A PRIVATE PUBLICATION
. Above that was a poem from Robert F. Williams, one line of which struck me: “a soulful dream exploded at the end of a lyncher's rope.”

“Why does it seem like we have to avow violence? It seems like we should disavow violence.” Michelle talked for the first time but the same way she did in high school, adding a whine to the last syllable of her words.

“It doesn't seem like it,” Allwood said. “We do.”

“But whyyyyyy?” she asked, dragging out
why
till kingdom come.

“This is whyyyy,” he said, pointing to the pamphlet, mimicking her voice. He had her read aloud from it.

Not only do we support the righttttt of our brothers of Vietnam to defend themselves against the armed aggressionnnnn, repressionnnnn and tyranny of US imperialism and its running doooogs, but we wish to thank our brothers for the splendid examples they are giving us.

The whine was killing Allwood.

He stopped her and read it himself.

After almost 200 years of inhuman bondage and shameful dehumanization under the present US Government, our meek and passive people, like our brothers of Vietnam, Cuba, the Congo, Mozambique and throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, are beginning to cast off the imperialist-inspired curse of turn-the-other-cheekism. Yes, on the very mainland of Neo-colonialism our oppressed people are turning the streets of racist and imperialist America into battlegrounds of resistance. More than any other people in the world, our people understand the savage and beastly nature of barbaric Yankeeism. We know the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the evil government of our beloved country.

The words inspired the males greatly. They cheered and repeated the catchphrases—“turn-the-other-cheekism,” “battlegrounds of resistance,” “barbaric Yankeeism”
—
as if they were the equivalent of “Go team!”

“Is the brother talking about West Oakland or is he not?” Abner said.

“No, he's not. He's talking bout the Fillmore, if I'm not mistaken,” Allwood said.

“Hold up. He's talking about East Palo Alto, ain't he?”

“I don't think the downtrodden and oppressed people in Richmond would agree. I don't think they would agree with you one bit.”

I knew they were starting on a riff that could go up and down the state. I got up and added my bit. “I can see Brother Williams is talking about downtrodden and oppressed people everywhere.” It being 8:15, I went to the kitchen to heat up the food. Michelle came in to talk. She pulled in close and whispered without the whine.

“We've been going together for two weeks.”

I was so shocked I dropped my spoon in the pot. In her regular voice she said, “You better get the spoon before it melts away-ay.”

I fished and she went back to the whisper. “I am in love with him.”

I stirred briskly. She went on with her whispering. “I know. It's out there. A friend who is his friend introduced us at Black Friday.”

She went to Week of the Angry Arts–West? Poetry, a LeRoi Jones play, music, dance. And I missed it because of work. Shit.

“I didn't know if I would like him. Then we got to talking, and he told me about the drowning.” My ears perked up.

“What drowning?”

“You know, when those students fell through the ice on the senior outing. When we were in high school.” I stopped stirring.

“Oh, that.” What could he have told her that would have popped the cork off the bottle? I mean, all he did was save his own ass.

“He told me about Allwood and him being down there. And how Allwood made it up to the top first. But Abner, my baby, was almost a goner. But he managed to pull himself up along with this girl who was nearly dead.”

“Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” I said this to the pot, because she wasn't even listening. She was pouring this fiction in my ear, I mean pouring, like out of a box of Morton's salt.

“They tried to make him a hero and give him an award but he wouldn't let them. He said he wanted to forget it, it was too scary.”

She stopped whispering. “That man got me, girl-ll.” She took the spoon and tasted for me.

I was speechless. Not thoughtless or mindless, just devoid of the power of speech. Niggas! I could kill them both. Cockhounds! And cockhounds too lazy to make up their own line. Deliver my black ass.

“It needs some salt. And do you have any garlic powder?” I showed her my spice shelf. She proceeded, with her bourgie ass, to intervene. A little vinegar. Some cayenne. A little thickening with flour. Between us, we put our foot off into some black-eyed peas.

Later, I couldn't decide whether to tell Allwood and mess up my come fantasy. I decided not to. While we were doing it, I saw the girl floating, like a buoy, toward the surface of the lake. Only her eyes were open and blinking as she struggled and kicked her own way up. I felt strong when I fixed it like that, like I controlled the borders, the way into and out of the room, all by myself. I came even bigger.

I
had missed angry arts week because of work, and I had to study for zoology. But I wasn't going to miss Stokely Carmichael. My cousin Corliss met me in downtown Berkeley, and we caught the UC shuttle to the Greek Theatre. Walking up the steep ramp, we could hear Stokely's distinctive West Indian accent broadcasting across the stadium:

It's a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West.

We were perspiring our asses off to get inside. They had to hold a Black Power conference on the hottest day of 1966. Even so, it was mostly white students and hippies. I didn't care. I had been reading about Stokely and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for weeks. SNCC. You had to squinch your nose just to say it—“Snick.” When we got in, we saw Students for a Democratic Society banners and flyers all around. SDS, SDS, SDS all around, no SNCC. The sign on the podium he stood behind read
BLACK POWER AND ITS CHALLENGES
in big bold letters
.

“Why is SDS sponsoring this?” Corliss asked.

“Maybe they're paying! Shut the jabber, Corliss. He's talking.”

In 1968 I'm going to run for president of the United States. I just can't make it 'cause I wasn't born in the United States. That's the only thing holding me back.

He kept calling us the Pepsi generation, even though the vendor was sold out of Pepsi. All anybody was drinking was orange Nehi. He was as intellectual as the Fair Play for Cuba orators on Grove Street. But there was a violent thrill floating through the stadium like lightning even though the skies were powder blue and the white clouds seemed suspended. I couldn't figure if the thrill was Stokely Carmichael or my imagination.

The question is, how can you build political institutions that will begin to meet the needs of Oakland, California? And the needs of Oakland, California, are not one thousand policemen with submachine guns.

He was giving Oakland a nod, like when the famous gospel singer inserts the local church's name in the song. I was shouting
Pow-uh
a lot. It was fun. A girl on the other side of the stadium kept shouting back
Black Power, Black Power
, real proper but still a black voice. We started answering each other. Then other voices in the crowd would answer both of us. Stokely started recognizing our two black voices in the crowd, pushing his black fist my way, then her way. Some people were getting irritated at this call-and-response, I could tell, but it felt good.

The question is, Can we find white people who are going to have the courage to go into white communities and start organizing them? Can we find them? Are they here and are they willing to do that?

He was spanking the crowd with the Black Power paddle. It was thrilling but scary, like he was creating Frankensteins. Three hours zipped by like twenty minutes. It took forever to get out of the stadium. I was still chanting
Pow-uh
when Corliss spotted the girl who had been chanting with me.

“There's your twin, Niecy,” she said with sarcasm.

I was shocked. My call-and-response was a high-yellow regular from Snookie's, an ultrabourgie who had never looked my way, much less spoken. She had let her hair go back. She waved and kept chanting with me until we got lost in the crowd.

I
had long since evicted my roaches when Corliss came to see my apartment. She looked around it. “This is cute. I thought it would look like a motel. It's not bad.”

Something inside me pleaded with Corliss not to talk like Aunt Ola with the don'ts: “Don't wear red; you're too dark.” “Don't date until you're finished with your formal education.” “Don't let a man use you for a piss pot.” “Purse your lips when you're not talking to make them smaller
.
”
How Buddy came from Aunt Ola is one of the world's great mysteries.

“Put nice underwear on, Niecy,” Corliss said. “Mother sent me to get you to San Leandro to get our bridesmaids' dresses. You're in Bud's wedding.”

“But Aunt Ola doesn't like my hair.”

“She'll never change. It's the way she was raised.”

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

W
e parked near the stores on East 14th Street in downtown San Leandro; the shopkeepers came out to watch us, their stares like spotlights. We had crossed a forbidden zone.

“Do they think it's an NAACP protest?” I said. Corliss glanced at them and kept on going. She was used to it, being the only black at Lone Mountain College on the hill in the city.

“Forget them,” she said.

“Corliss, I can't believe you said that.”

“Crackers don't intimidate me anymore,” Corliss said.

Anymore?
The first time I visited her, her dorm room was down the hall from Bob Hope's daughter and across from some maharaja's niece. Corliss's hair had looked like she had washed it and forgotten to straighten it. Her white roomies had given her a Toni Home Perm, which white girls used to get a permanent wave. It wasn't for our kinky hair. It had burned her scalp and messed up her hair. “Nothing's wrong, it'll grow back
,
” she said when she showed me her burned scalp before we saw a movie on campus,
Last Year at Marienbad
, which I hated, especially when she and her friends discussed it afterward in French. Worse than not understanding it at all, my three semesters of French allowed me to understand snatches of the movie and the conversation. Corliss wanting to be what she wasn't infuriated me even more.

“Why didn't you hot-comb their hair? See how they'd like their hair all burned to a crisp.”

She had cried. “I thought,
It can't hurt, my hair's not that bad
. Now I'm imprisoned by my hair.”

In San Leandro, Corliss and I walked into the bridal shop, past the rude stares. It was mirror, mirror, everywhere; the salesladies' made-up faces the color of starch, the gowns and mannequins like so many frosted white wedding cakes. And there we were, in those mirrors, with our beige, brown, and very brown selves, making the mirrors go mocha mad. The salesladies looked asphyxiated, as if breathing around us might make them mocha too.

The two mothers, Andrea's mother and Aunt Ola Ray, were making a big fuss over gowns. There were six bridesmaids, all of us different body types. When Andrea came out in her wedding gown, everyone hushed. She walked out where we could see the train behind her. As they all began to ooh and aah, I had the funniest feeling, like I was going to throw up. I kept trying to look at Andrea and my stomach kept turning. I looked instead at the mirrored Andrea and I saw all of us in a jumble: me, orphan me, the darkest one there as usual; the white ladies; my aunt; the mannequins staring frostily at the invisible men for whom all this was done; the bride in her everyday bra with the straps showing where her gown went off her shoulders; the tan line on Andrea's yellow chest and her peachier-colored arms. I thought of the earnest, hardworking, dirt-poor colored people in the South getting hosed and beaten up and chased by dogs in the pictures in
Life
and
Time
and
Newsweek
so that we could do this. Every single black man who had gotten lynched and every woman who had been raped by Mister Charlie had caused the white bitch of justice to finally tip her scales in our favor. For this.

I was sickened. I felt defeated, but inside of this feeling of defeat, I felt something else. A snap like a rubber band. At that moment, when Andrea walked around in her gown, a door flew open. All of a sudden I felt like I was walking above all of these people. Something changed all over—my feet, head, and solar plexus. I felt like Buddy. Like the way he could walk past Aunt Ola fussing at Uncle Boy-Boy for cleaning his eyeglasses in her dishwater, as if they were kids and he was the parent. I felt that cool, at that moment, unbound.

We began to try on our gowns, raspberry sheaths. When I looked in the mirror, I saw myself, the others, and burst out laughing. The pinched-in waist made my small bust look like it was swimming in the top of the sheath. Corliss with her long straightened hair and big bosoms also looked ridiculous. We couldn't even get hers zipped up the back.

“These dresses are made for white women, with no bazooms and no behinds,” Corliss muttered. “Stop laughing at me, Niecy. You look like a Zulu warrior stuck in Queen Elizabeth's garden frock.”

“This whole wedding is for whites. Colored people not allowed except for janitors,” I muttered back at her. The other girls were fussing over their gowns like they liked them, which was tomfoolery as far as I was concerned. Aunt Ola Ray came over to us, mad as she could be. She started poking her fingers around our waists and talking low and hard.

“I want you girls to stop laughing like hyenas. Stop showing your color. We may be the first Negroes to spend this kind of money here. We're the ones who have to make the good first impression so they'll treat the rest like human beings. So straighten up and fly right. Both of you.”

She walked away. I straightened up dramatically and made a flying motion with my arms. Corliss tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't. We howled. Aunt Ola Ray turned around and gave us a long look.

The six of us marched in front of the mirrors, and the ladies, black and white, looked at us, and I got the exact door-flying-open feeling again. The dresses and the colors of our skins made for a raspberry and brown and white sundae in the mirrors. I saw myself peeing in the I. Magnin elevator. I heard Stokely in his SNCC overalls at the Greek Theatre calling the crowd the Pepsi generation. I saw myself jumping up and down shouting and him saying grandly, “It's a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West.” And I stood there in San Leandro, in a raspberry sheath made for an expectant and entitled white woman with a flat tush and small tits, understanding that this place was my Deep South. We didn't have Bull Connor's attack dogs coming at our throats or his minions hosing us down. We weren't being beaten by the KKK in plain sight of his police officers. But we were breaking barriers just the same. Our six inches of progress moved us all closer to the finish line.

Without trying, I had found out how to be cool. Stand still, show up, and be out of your body and into your mind at the same time. Thank you, Corliss. Thank you, Aunt Ola Ray. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you, white salesladies. Thank you, I. Magnin. Thank you,
Time
,
Life
, and
Newsweek
. Thank you, Stokely. And thanks to the lynched and the lynchers and the marchers and the marched on. I had the answer.