I gave him upset him, and I was glad. A puppy-dog expression replaced his annoying grin, but I didn’t care.
“Don’t you never disrespect Brother Boatwright like that again, Bride of Satan,” Mama hissed. There was a look of embarrassment on her face as she pulled me into a corner. “Sleep with me? Brother Boatwright is a man of God.” Mama turned to the old man with another smile, and continued, “Brother Boatwright, you arrived right on time. I know you know your Bible. You see the mess I got on my hands? This young’n is out of control. We don’t keep a eye on her, next time we look up, she’ll be robbin’ banks or tryin’ to shoot President Eisenhower.”
I returned to Mr. Boatwright and apologized. He smiled and tickled all three of my chins. His smile seemed empty and false. There was sweat all over his face, and it wasn’t even hot in our house. He removed a flat box of Anacin pills from his shirt pocket and rapidly gobbled up a handful.
“Ain’t it the truth, Sister Goode. I’m gwine to keep both my eyes on this girl! Praise the Lord!” he shrieked, nodding for emphasis. I jumped almost a foot off the floor. The old man and Mama laughed.
“Mama…” I started.
“He walks with Jesus so he say that sometime when he get excited,” Mama explained. I didn’t care how holy he was. The way he was looking at me, making me feel like I was something good to eat, I should have known he was up to something nasty even then. “Like I said, Brother Boatwright and the Reverend Snipes, they go waaaaaay back. He get a disability check every month from the white folks so he goin’ to he’p us pay our bills. And he just loves to dust and mop and sweep and cook.”
“You got any kids I can play with, Mr. Boatwright?” I had to force myself, but I managed a smile.
“I sure ain’t. But if I did, I declare, I’d want me a little gal just like you. You just as thick and fine as you wanna be. I bet you can pull a plow by yourself. I bet you can tear down a house by yourself!” he exclaimed, squeezing my arm.
His statements frightened me, as they would have any other lazy child. I went out of my way to get out of doing housework and any other chores, let alone something as strenuous as pulling plows and tearing down houses. He’d be the type to boss me around like I was a slave, I thought. He’d have me washing dishes, mopping, dusting—things Mama had always done while I lounged on the couch watching television and nibbling on snacks. I sensed a future filled with doom and despair.
Mama turned to me, and a serious look appeared on her face. When she folded her arms and started tapping her toe, I took a few steps back. “God led Brother Boatwright to us for a reason. In addition to providin’ you some spiritual guidance, you just now heard him agree to keep both his eyes on you while I am at work. You better mind him and do everythin’ he tell you to do. Do you hear me?” Mama snarled, stabbing me in the chest with her finger.
“Yes, Ma’am.” I sighed with defeat.
Mama then turned to the old man, and continued, “Brother Boatwright, you got my permission rightcheer and now to coldcock this numskull whenever you feel she need it.”
“OK, Sister Goode,” he said eagerly. I could smell his sour breath from a foot away. Looking into his terrible eyes, I was certain he was insane. I knew then that my life would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 2
Other than Mama, I didn’t have any other relatives in Richland, Ohio. According to her, my grandparents on both sides were dead. I had just a few other distant relatives scattered throughout the South that I had never met. The only one Mama still communicated with was her older sister Berneice, who lived in Florida, near Miami, where we had come from. When both of her parents died within weeks of one another when she was sixteen, Mama married my daddy out of desperation. After six miscarriages, she gave birth to me at thirty-four.
Mama and I looked a lot alike, but she was called pretty, I was not. We had the same high cheekbones and heart-shaped face with small nose, bow-shaped lips, lashes so long and black they belonged on a doll, and beauty mark on the right side, just above our lip. People called her beauty mark a mole. They called mine a wart. Not only was Mama light-skinned, she was slim. Just being light was enough by Black standards for her to be considered attractive. Being slim was icing on the cake. No matter how pretty I actually was, people made it clear I was too dark and too fat. My short kinky hair was a crown of thorns. Black people with dark skin were usually looked down upon by light-skinned Black people. I was certainly no exception. When a light-skinned, pretty little girl from our church died, I overheard one of the church ushers say, “too bad it wasn’t that gnome Annette.” A knife in my heart couldn’t have hurt me more.
Because of the things I’d already experienced, I could remember back to when I was three. Daddy was still around then. Like a lot of Black folks in south Florida, we didn’t have much. We lived in shacks, wore secondhand clothes, and moved often enough that we always managed to stay a few steps ahead of our bill collectors and the Klan. We bought a lot of stuff on credit that we couldn’t always pay for, like food, medicine, and every now and then a luxury item like a Christmas gift or something for one of our birthdays.
Daddy was an outspoken man who stood up in church and at political rallies and cursed the way white folks were treating us. “With God’s help, we ain’t goin’ to put up with Jim Crow the rest of our lives!” he used to shout, standing on a podium waving our shabby Bible. News about his arrogance always reached the Klan, and he received veiled threats too often for his comfort. That’s the main reason we roamed around like gypsies. I remember a very close call one night. While we were attending a revival somebody threw a firebomb in the front window of our house. We got home just in time to grab the shopping bags and battered suitcases we kept our belongings in. That same night we hid in a church member’s barn until Daddy arranged for somebody to drive us to a safer part of town, where we stayed in another shack until we had to flee again.
Daddy was a migrant laborer and worked in the nearby fields six days a week. Mama cleaned and cooked for rich white folks in Miami two days a week. The year was 1954, and segregation was a way of life. “I ain’t about to set in the back of nobody’s bus,” Mama often said. Mama didn’t even bother trying to ride in cabs, so we usually walked or hitched a ride on somebody’s mule-wagon to her jobs and everywhere else we went. She would prepare us a few sandwiches, usually sweet potato or baloney, and we would leave the house early in the morning right after Daddy did. Those walks were long and hard, and even though the Florida sand was soft, my feet developed calluses that remained with me for years.
I liked going to work with Mama. It made me feel grown-up and important. Rather than stand around all day waiting for Mama to finish her duties, I earned a few cents for myself doing odd jobs, like walking and bathing a dog or baby-sitting some old person. My favorite responsibility was sitting on the front porch of a large red house with an elderly Italian woman. Her name was Rosa Piaz and she was more than a hundred years old. Her daddy had owned slaves, and her mind was so far gone she thought I was one. “Go get me some goobers, Spooky,” she used to tell me. I’d sneak into the house for goobers and whatever else I could find to nibble on. My job was to fan her and empty her spittoon. She dipped a lot of snuff, so I was forever running around emptying spit. When nobody was looking, the old woman and I threw rocks at moving cars. When I made her mad, like the time I couldn’t find any more rocks for us to throw, she threatened, “You lazy heifer! I ought to sell you to one of them cane jockeys—make a field hand outta you!” When she made me mad I waited until she went to sleep, then I pinched her flabby neck. I knew the woman was senile, so I just hid my face and laughed every time she threatened to have me sold. A minute later, we’d be friends again, chasing some of the kids in the fancy white neighborhood where Miss Rosa lived with switches. One time Mama caught us. She grabbed my arm and shook me so hard my whole body ached. “Girl, Miss Rosa can do whatever she want. She white. But you can’t be messin’ with no white kids!” Mama and Daddy had me believing we were as good as anybody else, so it confused me when I got scolded for sassing or upsetting somebody white.
Every time I got comfortable in a particular situation, we moved and I had to start all over again. Our rootless existence