Lying on her back, watching the sun begin to sink behind the pines that ringed the lake, Big Sister began to feel like someone other than, different from, her usual oppressed self. She found herself immersed in a memory whose energy seemed about to suck her out, permanently, from her former life of gloom. This felt very strange. And yet, and this occurred to her for the first time: Something odd like this always happens to me when I spend time with Little Sister! She was remembering the day that she had had a different experience, from all the earlier ones, of Uncle Loaf and Auntie Putt-Putt.
She was eighteen, a young woman, and about to go off to school, several small towns over, to learn to be a veterinarian. She was dressed in a green plaid jumper, a crisp white blouse with a pointed collar, and her first pair of high-heel patent-leather slippers, which she wore with stylish Red Fox stockings. Her hair was waved away from her face and reached a kind of crest on top. She wore gold earrings and a necklace she’d received from her current boyfriend. The one she would have married if she’d had sense. She had liberally anointed herself with a cheap, bright-smelling perfume.
For years they had not really said much beyond “Howdy,” or “How you?” To which the answer was, invariably, “Oh, tolerable. You?” They did not go beyond these preliminaries now. Big Sister settled herself, not behind Uncle Loaf’s chair, as she’d done as a child, but beside him, in a chair identical to his own. He sat as usual, leaning backward against the wall in a wooden chair near the water shelf, which Big Sister noticed had recently been repaired. The last time she had visited, the nails had been coming loose, and the shelf, under its gallon bucket of water, sagged. She noticed that the railing of the porch had also been straightened where it bulged near the steps, and the steps themselves strengthened.
Auntie Putt-Putt came out of the kitchen, crossed the porch in front of them carrying a basket. She wore a large round straw hat, a faded yellow print dress made from feed sacks, and an ancient pair of sneakers without backs, so that her heels looked hard and gray as she walked down the steps and toward the garden.
Then, and Big Sister could not believe her eyes, Uncle Loaf brought his chair down onto the porch floor with a plop, went into his private room, the “front room,” and returned wearing his own large straw hat, washed thin and very faded khaki shorts (for he had fought in World War I and returned home “shell-shocked,” a word that everyone in the family used in discussing or describing him, but the meaning of which no one knew) and a soft white cotton shirt. On his arm he also carried a basket made of white oak strips, with a broad curved handle the color of his deep brown skin. He moved quietly and calmly down the steps toward the garden and his wife, Big Sister following, on her toes, protecting her shoes against the scraping rocks, wood chips and chicken doo-doo. Surprised. Flabbergasted. Wondering. Unbelieving. What was this? It was as if the quiet oak tree in the yard had suddenly shaken itself and begun to meander down the road.
Big Sister stood in the shade of the corncrib’s overhang, watching. Auntie Putt-Putt did not seem to notice anything different. Nor did Uncle Loaf. Their goal was to collect the tomatoes that she sold to the local store, where they got their kerosene. Uncle Loaf started on a row next to Auntie Putt-Putt’s but coming from the opposite direction. So that, as Big Sister watched in wonderment, forgotten by these two old people in their green universe hidden from the world, they met, but still did not acknowledge each other’s presence, or the fact that a miracle had occurred. They stood a moment, swaying, their backs against their hands, shifted their baskets, and continued serenely along their separate rows.
When Big Sister was leaving them, they sent tomatoes to her family. Still Uncle Loaf said nothing, and, for once, Auntie Putt-Putt seemed out of ancient family gossip. Uncle Loaf went to his room and returned with a handful of silver dollars. He handed them to Big Sister. “Far away,” he said. They did not kiss her. They had never kissed her. They were people of the hug. Their hug, reserved, as they were, was the circle of the world known so far, the rounded silence of their hidden universe. And she had walked out of their embrace, free at last.
Recalling this day now, as she lay once again beside Little Sister, who had fallen asleep, Big Sister began to feel health, balance of spirit and soul return to her. She saw that she too had been seen as someone deserving of getting away. Not Little Sister alone. She too had been supported. Not just frightened and burdened down with other people’s children and horrible tales of woe. She too had been helped.
As she thought of this, and turned to Little Sister to tell her how that last day of her childhood had been, she noticed that though usually so cheery and confident, she had started, in her sleep, to weep.
“Ah, wake up, Little Sister, it’s not as bad as all that!” Big Sister said gently, shaking her.
And true to her irritating self, Little Sister, tears still rolling off the side of her chin, opened her eyes and endeavored to smile.
“Oh, cut it out,” said Big Sister. “I see those tears!”
“You do?” said Little Sister, surprised.
“Yes!” said Big Sister emphatically.
More tears appeared instantly in Little Sister’s eyes. She began to sob, much as she had when she was a child. She cried, leaning against Big Sister’s shoulder, until there were no tears left. And sure enough, soon she was smiling for real, because she was with her Big Sister, after all, and they were celebrating the close of a very happy day.
GROWING OUT
Growing Out
And then there was the night Anne realized she had outgrown the woman she was. It was Jason’s birthday, and he had brought a bag of magic mushrooms.
How much do you weigh? he asked. One hundred and thirty pounds? Well then, you should have—this much. And he put several stems and a cap into an earthen dish. Magic mushrooms! She thought of Aldous Huxley, who had eaten them, and of Carlos Castaneda, who must have eaten lots of them. She thought, for some reason, of Julius Lester. Perhaps because he used to read Huxley over WBAI radio when she still lived in New York, and she had gone out and bought lots of Huxley, and had been bored. She never found the fascinating insights in Huxley’s work that Lester had. Well, maybe Huxley’s words had sounded profound in Lester’s voice? A deep, black-rich voice. Not at all like Jason’s. Jason’s voice was light, almost high. When he deepened it deliberately, while striking a mock super-blackman pose, they both laughed, it was so absurd. There was in it a tentativeness, a gentleness, that moved her. So she cooked the lamb chops she had prepared (vegetarianism not yet having entered her life) while nibbling on the mushrooms. Alive to the vibes and smells in her kitchen, and to the sunset that was reflected off the trees near the patio.
He loved the light as the sun was setting. The angle of the sun to the earth was changed. No longer perpendicular, or even on a slant. But seeming to shine upward, from beneath the earth, somehow. And it was limpid and golden. And she felt, with the music of Spanish guitars coming now from the adjoining living room, a kind of thankfulness that she felt more and more strongly these days—now that she had recognized God in Nature, and had given in to love, and she was happy, happy! And so she chewed all of the magic mushrooms—surprised how like mushrooms they tasted, and she turned frequently, for no reason except that she loved him utterly, to embrace him.
They were alone. The children at: goat farm, other parent, on an overnight with friends. And it was a good thing.
First they ate. Then she sang happy birthday to Jason as he smiled and blushed. Rising from the small wooden table, and clearing her throat theatrically, she also presented him with a poem. Her first “occasional” poem that spoke of their life together. Its struggles. Its adventuresome times, both high and low. The lamb had been tender and delicious, the broccoli crisp. The wine that followed, a Simi chablis they’d bought directly from the winery on one of their country visits, chilled and perky. After dinner, they felt they might dare to watch a TV special on the Old Apollo up in Harlem. How it had been in its heyday. She saw again h
ow black people had looked to her in the Fifties: sweet and hopeful and bright, in clothes and hair that made you laugh. She remembered them that way: innocent.
A few of the stars were even then on the drugs that would eventually kill them. But not the ones she loved. Well, Frankie Lymon (“Why do fools fall in love?”) was almost the only one to OD on heroin, she thought, but there were probably others. She had been in high school in Georgia when the young singer died; like all her female classmates, she had idolized Lymon (who must have been all of fifteen years old) and had endlessly fantasized about him.
Settling back against Jason’s warmth on the cushy sofa, across from the TV, she now saw how the show tried to exalt the man (in the person of Lou Rawls) higher than the two main women singers, Gladys Knight and Natalie Cole. And how he seemed to be singing from his throat only, while looking off seductively into space, and how the women, very graciously, attempted to be less, but could not quite manage it. No matter how low they sat, or how much the script called for them to look up to him, or how calmly they tolerated his vacant “seductive” gaze that just grazed their vivid faces, they could not make themselves less powerful or smaller than he was. Gladys Knight was actually funny trying to hide herself, her talent, her force. Finally, she and Natalie Cole (who seemed ashamed of her black, Fifties-looking father, with his thoroughly conquered hair, and showed only the briefest glimpses of him on old film clips) stole the show away from him. And did it without ever rising, physically, to his level. They were “ladies,” after all, and so the script required them to remain seated the whole time. So that their triumph, gracious to the end, was that much more amazing. Anne began to laugh, and then to cry, at his emptiness (a voice in a human box, she thought), so apparent on the screen. And then Ben Vereen, who always seemed to be Tomming to her, came on, acting the role of black genius forced to deal with arrogant Jewish impresarios, and she forgave him for wanting to dance so much that he appeared to suffer, willingly, the condescension of white patrons. Because of course he was probably no more willing than Bert Williams, a half century before him, had been, or any of the other early singers and dancers. She recalled his role as “Chicken George” in Roots as being self-loving, but was he in fact self-loving in real life? That he might be mattered to her. Then Flip Wilson came on in blackface—with Nipsy Russell. Both so outrageous. She finally understood something about blackface. That it could be funny. But not the way white people had done it, to make fun of blacks. It was funny only when it made fun of human gullibility, human frailty and craziness—as blacks had used it among themselves. On closer look, she saw that Flip had somehow managed to put on a black face over a white face which was over his own brown face. Blue eyes looked out, stupid and immense.
She cried, looking at the men who now stepped up to the microphone: the Mighty Clouds of Joy. So much expansiveness, so much lightness, expressed in the name they gave themselves, she thought. Every one of them so heavy, too. They would all have been so perfectly at home with a dish of pork chops, greens, candied yams. So at home, also, with the spirit they sang to and for. They were real, earthy, generous-hearted, scarred and puffy-eyed, singing for Jesus. And she loved them because they remained who they were through it all.
The tears would well up, sometimes just as she was laughing. For instance, it amused her that Natalie Cole might consider herself less funny-looking than her father. And not just Natalie Cole, but, it seemed to Anne, that this was a common delusion of black people, or maybe of people in general; that we look less funny than our parents did. However, with our high unemployment, our high infant mortalities, our uneducated young, our drug-infested youth and adults, our pathetic schools, our laughable national leadership, our oppression by greedy and racist people, we are just as funny-looking as our parents. We might even be funnier-looking because there is so much less hope, and it is so much later in the day.
Jason held her, stroked her back, and she felt his strong heartbeat under his cheek. They’d forgotten magic mushrooms had this effect on her: tears and laughter, perfectly mixed. Or perhaps they did not care. She did not. She actually loved tears, once she was in the release of shedding them, because she knew laughter was just beneath them.
After being exhausted by the show, they listened to music. She said: Let’s hear some Billie Holiday—and put on a tape. But right away she felt the change: the first song was something about “When my man quit me, you know I felt so sad.” The next one was about a beating. Her man, beating her. She and Jason exchanged looks. Dismayed. Let’s hear something else, quick, he said.
Anne was puzzled. I used to love this music, she cried. Remember how we played it that month in the country? How I used to play it when we were apart? “I must have that man.” Well, said Jason, we loved Lester Young, too, and he still sounds okay. But Billie’s bringing me down. Me, too, she agreed.
Then she knew who would not bring them down because she would not bring herself down: Bessie Smith.
Soon she and Jason were lying comfortably snuggled together, reminding each other in whispers of Bessie’s exploits with her male and female lovers: jumping out of windows, being chased out of town, doors broken in, almost being run over by a car. Her husband Jack never quite catching up with her. Laughing, enjoying her spirit, they sang merrily along with her, her rich broad country accent making them snort with glee. They played the songs they particularly liked over and over.
Jason ruffled her short, curly hair.
It’s butch, he said, but I like it.
It is? You do?
Anne ran to look at her face in the mirror. Yes. She saw what he meant. She went to the full-length wall mirror. There she was: blue jeans, silk blouse open to her breasts, barefoot and short-haired. Butch.
She ran back into the living room, took him in her arms and laid her tongue deep in his mouth.
She had told him that she had loved and still loved a woman. But that she loved him more, and so she was with him. Perhaps a day will come when you love her more, he said. Perhaps so, she thought. But could she really be happy with someone named Jerri?
Why is it that so many lesbians have boys’ names? She’d asked Jerri, one evening in her new apartment in Brooklyn, shortly after she’d left her husband, Phillip.
Do many lesbians have boys’ names? Jerri asked. She was on the floor beside the stereo, picking out yet another Phoebe Snow album.
Yes, said Anne, then stopped short, and laughed. I suddenly wonder if Anne might not be short for Andrew.
Could be, said Jerri. Every man plans first for a son.
Jerri was the most beautiful woman Anne had seen since it had dawned on her that a woman might also be made love to, deeply kissed. Large, soft dark eyes that missed nothing, perfect skin (not perfect, Jerri would protest, I got my share of pimples like everyone else), a lovely mouth, both vulnerable and strong. She was utterly “butch.” Never wore skirts (Anne agreed she would look odd in them), short hair, the works. She fixed cars for a living. They had met because one morning Anne’s car wouldn’t start, and she’d called “Mechanical Women, Car Specialists.” Jerri and her lover/partner, Maude, had arrived, as Phillip stood on the stoop, briefcase in hand, on his way to the office.
I hope you know what you’re doing, he’d said. Not judgmental. He really hoped it.
Men make me feel so dumb, she’d groaned, standing there with the women. I go in with the car and they ignore me for as long as there are other men bringing in their cars; then when they finally get to me, you’d think nobody else’s car ever broke down. And they call me honey. Which is worse than being ignored.
Well you did have the car towed in for service when it was only out of gas, said Phillip.
And you and those male mechanics will never forget it! she said.
The two women mechanics, after checking under the hood and muttering to each other, had placed themselves on large wood trays with wheels and swooshed themselves under her car. In a matter of minutes they had it going.
Phillip smi
led down at the three of them and the three of them smiled up (the machanics bored, businesslike; she archly, tickled) and she felt herself across a line from him.
We can do it! she thought.
Later Jerri told her that she and her lover, Maude, had thought she was a nerd.
I was so proud of you all, she said, walking over to the stereo, putting on the record Jerri handed up. And you were so beautiful, I couldn’t believe it. I was brought up to think all beautiful women have long hair, you know. She laughed. And that you have to wear clingy dresses and delicate little shoes. And you never, never know anything about cars beyond how to drive them.
You fell in love with competence, said Jerri, with a shrug. That’s why women like you fall in love with men. If women were as competent as men you wouldn’t give men a second look. Not even a first.
No kidding, said Anne.
No kidding, Jerri had said, giving her a kiss. Competent as anything.
Conscious Birth
Black women are being murdered in Boston, Massachusetts.
White women are being murdered in California.
Native American women are being murdered in New Mexico.
Hispanic women are being murdered in New York.
Chicana women are being murdered in Texas.
All of us are being attacked because we are women, and no one really cares about us but us.
Let us understand this, and stop expecting the same Patriarchy that is killing us to help save our lives. Refuse the role of victim! Create a new role and identity as fighters for Our Life!
I send you my love, and my support, and my strong clenched fist.
In Sisterhood,
Anne Gray
She sent off this letter to a women’s group in Kentucky. A woman, met at one of her lectures, had written asking for a statement of support. Saying “Bucolic Lexington” was now experiencing attacks on women “epidemically.”