Black ‘n White ‘n Red All Over

Don’t Look Behind the Curtain Little Girl

Audio narration coming soon to YouTube.

My mother tells me I’s six months old when I uttered my first word, already talkin’ before most babies could sit up straight. “It was on a Sunday,” she said. “I remember ‘cause we were leavin’ for church, an’ there was gonna be a picnic afterward to celebrate the church’s 100th anniversary. This was a big day for our congregation, but you topped ‘em all when you pointed to the top of my blouse, at three pearl buttons on my collar, an’ said ‘button,’ plain as day.”

Mama said she thought she hadn’t heard me right, but when I kept sayin’ it over an’ over, there was no denyin’ it. Button became the word of the day. My family wasn’t the only ones amazed, ‘cause I didn’t stop talkin’ about it til I fell asleep midway through Clyde’s sermon.

You’d think my next word might’ve been Mama or Daddy. It wasn’t.

Ever’ day when the school bell at the one-room schoolhouse a quarter mile away rang at 11:15 for lunch, that clang was my cue to scoot across the kitchen floor as fast as I could. My older brother an’ sisters would be crashin’ through the back door any minute, empty bellies rumblin’, wantin’ their mid-day meal.

Mama always put out a child-friendly spread: peanut butter an’ blackberry jam on thick slices of her homemade bread, or maybe ham sandwiches piled high with garden tomatoes, a fried egg, an’ Mama’s homemade sweet pickles. Lunchtime always brought ‘em home in record time. An’ there was always a sweet treat at the end—maybe applesauce cake or, if you got really lucky, Mama’s popcorn balls held together with wildflower honey. They were never disappointed.

Evelyn Lee was seven years old, an’ he knew I’d be waitin’ for him at the back door, jabberin’ with excitement, wantin’ him to pick me up. At the end of the school year, late in May of 1958, my jabberin’ turned into somethin’ more.

That day, as I scooted across the floor when the lunch-time school bell rang, I spoke my second word. “E’lyn! E’lyn! E’lyn!” I repeated. Evelyn Lee would be home any minute, an’ I couldn’t wait.

I knew he always arrived ahead of our three older siblings, an’ on that day, Mama said I wouldn’t stop singin’ his name. When he got close enough to hear me, his face broke into a wide smile. “Is she sayin’ my name, Mama?” he asked, wonderin’. Mama just stood there with her mouth hangin’ open, starin’ at me. When he asked again, she finally looked up an’ said, “I believe she is! She’s sayin’ your name!” Mama answered with a smile as big as my brother’s.

I said Mama a few days after that, an’ once I’d found my voice, it was no holds barred. By July, I was stringin’ together sentences like “Pretty kitty” an’ “I want more,” much to Mama’s amazement. From that point on, I never stopped talkin’.

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When I’s a baby, I adored my brother, but as I grew up, I wasn’t always so kind. In our home, Evelyn Lee became the scapegoat, an easy target for Daddy’s temper. An’ I became his bratty little sister. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I knew he was an easy mark. I teased him in ways I can’t take back. Oh, he got his licks in too, but I almost always had the upper hand.

I was too young to see what was happenin’, too much of a child to understand the weight he carried. Even today, I feel guilty for how I treated him, even though I loved him.

In Mama’s eyes — an’ in her heart — Evelyn Lee was loved so completely she thought it might be enough to make up for Daddy’s rejection. He wasn’t her biological son, but you’d never have known it. She loved him fiercely, as if he were her own flesh an’ blood. Well, an’ the truth is, he was.

When he left this world far too soon, it was Mama who grieved the hardest. She carried that loss with her for the rest of her life, just like I carry the lessons I learned from him — lessons that wouldn’t truly take root until long after he was gone.

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When Mama an’ Daddy sold the farm an’ near ‘bout ever’thing in it, they loaded me an’ my four older siblings into our 1950 four-door sedan. Behind us, hitched to the bumper, was a small trailer stuffed with what little was left of our life in the Ozarks. Daddy set his sights on Sunny Florida; talkin’ about it like it was the Promised Land.

With no child restraint laws back then, most of the week-long drive, I stood on the front seat, my chubby hands grippin’ the dashboard. Mama said I talked the whole way down, drivin’ ever’body half mad ‘til I finally gave ‘em some blessed peace with a rare nap. “Lord,” she’d say, shakin’ her head, “that baby talked so much, her brothers and sisters wanted me to tape her mouth shut.” Mama chuckled as she said, “I don’t think it woulda mattered. She’d talk right through the tape!”

When we finally arrived, the Florida Panhandle never felt the urge to roll out a welcome mat. She’d sooner chase you the hell out of town. With creepy crawlies, nasty briar bushes, an’ mouse sized cockroaches as her ambassadors, most people left without argument.

Years before air conditionin’ an’ interstate highways, sightseers would stand in awe of the beaches an’ marvel at sand so white it looked like snow. But this wasn’t a place for the faint of heart an’ most visitors never stayed long enough to unpack.

My folks, though, came from good Iowa farm stock. Whatever hardships this place threw at ‘em didn’t scare ‘em one bit.

A few months after our arrival, in the spring of 1959, I met Barbara. Speakin’ in lengthy sentences, able to convey fairly complex ideas for a child of just sixteen months. For those who’d never heard a baby talk, it was a little freakish, but I’s oblivious to this peculiarity. I talked all the time. Barbara did not.

She was seven months older’n me, though at the time that meant nothin’. An’ while it may be hard to believe, I can clearly recall the day we met. Our mothers stood on our front porch, talkin’ over our heads, while Barbara eyeballed me in silence. As she stared, I babbled an’ chattered wonderin’ why she had nothin’ to say.

It was excitin’ to finally meet someone who could look me in the eye, a potential playmate. Lookin’ back now, I realize Barbara wasn’t anticipatin’ any fun at all.

As the adults got acquainted, Barbara stood behind her mother grippin’ the hem of her skirt, alternatin’ between expressions of fear, anger, an’ wonder. Mostly she just frowned at me with squinty eyes an’ a crunched-up forehead. Her nose was runnin’ with nasty green snot, slimy fresh an’ hours-old crusty. Smeared from one side of her face to the other, I can only guess that somebody had tried to wipe her nose an’ clean her face. Even as a toddler I knew somethin’ wasn’t right.

But I’s even more baffled by her total refusal to speak. I’s perplexed by her silence an’ after they left our front porch, I looked up at Mama an’ asked, “Why don’t that girl talk?”

None of us had any idea that Barbara would soon be keepin’ a deep, dark, ugly secret. An’ once she did learn to talk, she’d quickly learn to keep her god damned mouth shut. The skeletons she kept locked away behind those sad, angry eyes wouldn’t come spillin’ out until years later. But standin’ on the porch, all I could think was, “Girl, use your words!”

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The 1960’s blew in on Superman’s cape with the election of a beautiful young man destined to change the world an’ bring a nation to its knees. John F. Kennedy gave us a vision for a future filled with hope, a promise of peace too powerful to ignore. We longed for somethin’ better, an’ we’s all pulled in by the beauty of his face an’ the glory of his message. But the wind his words blew in on was full of change an’ upheaval. As much as we wanted things to get better, nobody wanted to deal with the mess it made.

Throwin’ the door wide open to The New Frontier, he gave voice to an open secret: the practice of injustice an’ inequality, long accepted an’ encouraged by good, upstandin’ Americans, had to be stopped. When that darin’ voice was silenced, another one, more seasoned an’ street wise, stood up to take its place.

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society offered “a hand up, not a handout.” It made first cuts through the fallow ground of racism an’ classism, buildin’ inroads out of poverty for the forgotten elderly, for unwanted children, overworked laborers, an’ the oppressed workin’ poor. It offered a way to escape the clutches of abuse an’ injustice. At least that was the plan.

The English Invasion roared into town not long after. Rock an’ Roll’s mad love affair with rhythm an’ blues, an’ gospel an’ swing, gave birth to a full-blown music genre all its own. Teenagers everywhere stopped givin’ their hearts to Jesus an’ gave ‘em to Rock ‘n Roll instead, while their parents hearts nearly failed for fear of what it all meant. Rebellion, drugs, an’ somethin’ hippies called free love piled on, an’ before long, even the language had to change.

New words an’ phrases were risin’ up ever’ day. Dictionaries couldn’t keep up. Generation gap, civil disobedience, black power, peaceful protest, along with feminist, hippie an’ groovy found their way into the lexicon. Meanwhile, words like joint, pigs, an’ bread, took on new meanin’ altogether. Our vocabulary was expandin’ as our world was implodin’. We’s leavin’ behind the shallows of the good old days, jumpin’ straight into the deep end of the pool of debauchery.

An’ if you believed the protests from Hard Scrabble pulpits, it was clear. We were all headed straight to hell in a hand basket.

That’s the way life was lived in the Deep South, a small world where the status quo was sacred, an’ messin’ with the rules was a threat to be hunted down an’ strung up from the nearest tree. Words could be a dangerous thing in a world where book burnin’ an’ rock-n-roll record smashin’ parties were not uncommon.

My vocabulary was growin’ by the day. I loved learnin’ an’ I loved words. Winter had turned to spring an’ John Kennedy had been president six short months when I learned to say the word nigger.

I’s six months shy of my fourth birthday. It was May in Florida an’ it was hot. My father an’ I’s diggin’ through a can of mixed nuts. He was teachin’ me how to identify each one, an’ in a very inside-out, upside-down sort of way, this is one of my best memories of him. I don’t have that many.

I picked up the biggest nut in the can an’ took a bite. He told me it was called a Brazil Nut but the name he liked best was Nigger Toes. I asked him why he called it that an’ he said, “Well, just look at it. Don’t that look like a nigger toe to you?”

I had no idea what a nigger toe was. I had no idea what that word even meant. Yes, I knew what a toe was, but what’s a nigger? When I asked him, he just laughed an’ said, “Black folks are niggers, girl. Don’t you know that?”

I tried to repeat what he said, but when “Digger Toes” tumbled through my 3-year-old lips, he laughed even harder. “You need some practice,” he said. So, I sat there with him, eatin’ nuts an’ learnin’ how to properly say the word nigger.

Later, when I ran into the house sayin’ it over an’ over, rejoicin’ in my accomplishment, the look of horror on my mother’s face told me right away that somethin’ was wrong.

“Wally Faye, where did you hear that word?!”

“Daddy taught me.”

“What?! He did not!”

“Oh, yes he did.”

“Well, don’t say it again. It’s not nice.”

“Well, Daddy thinks it’s funny.”

Mama sighed, stared at me for a long moment, an’ then knelt down in front of me.

“That word means somethin’ bad to some people, an’ if you say it, you’ll hurt their feelings. Don’t say it anymore, OK?”

“What people?  Why will it hurt their feelings? What are you talkin’ ‘bout, Mama?”

“It’s a mean name that some people use when they talk about black people. Just promise me you won’t ever say it again.”

I wasn’t always so willin’ to accommodate my mother’s wishes. The fire of rebellion an’ the promise of power that I felt when I had her over the coals—however, fleetin’ it might be—often led me to repeat the offense over an’ over just to prove I could. But this time was different. I saw somethin’ in my mother’s expression that doused that fire, an’ I gave in to her request.

“Ok. I promise.”

I’s confused. If it’s such a bad word, why’d Daddy teach me how to say it? Somebody wasn’t tellin’ the truth an’ I knew the fault had to lie in one of my parents. My three-year-old gut told me it was probably Daddy.

*

Months later, just before Christmas, my mother an’ I walked into our family doctor’s office an’ found out it was prime time to be sick. Nearly everyone in town was either sittin’ or standin’ right there in the middle of Dr. Mixson’s waitin’ room. As we stepped through the door, me holdin’ Mama’s hand, I groaned at the sight, ever’ single chair was filled.

This had happened before, so after signin’ in at the desk, our next task was findin’ a place to stand along the wall.

Now, I’s sick. Really sick. Fever. Sore throat. Congested chest, an’ a cough that sounded like a barkin’ dog. It took all of three seconds for me to grow even more weary an’ impatient.

At that age, I looked up at ever’thing, because ever’thing was bigger‘n me, taller’n me, an’ way outta my reach. But on this day, somethin’ extraordinary happened when I stopped lookin’ up an’ decided to look sideways. Just off to my left, I saw a small room where a few people were sittin’ among a lot of empty chairs. I wondered why so many people were standin’ up out here when they could be sittin’ down in there.

Above the door to my personal, magical paradise, there was a sign.

Now, my mother had been teachin’ me to read. It couldn’t have been easy, but she had her eye on the prize. Teach me to read, an’ I’d spend hours with my head in a book instead of linin’ her pathway with requests for attention an’ demands for help. She was a smart woman.

Lookin’ at that sign, I saw the first letter was C an’ the last one was D. I knew those letters. I’d seen ‘em in books an’ practiced sayin’ ‘em with my mother. I kept lookin’, tryin’ to sound out the shapes.

There was a L in the middle an’ a R toward the end. I worked hard, silently shapin’ my tongue around the consonants an’ glidin’ over the vowels, linin’ each letter up in my head, slowly soundin’ it out.

“Co—Col—Color!”

“Wait a minute,” I thought, “I know this word!”

Then, loud enough for the whole room to hear, I said, “COLORED! Mama! It says COLORED! What does it mean? Can we go in there? Can we sit in the COLORED room? Do they color in there? I don’t feel good enough to color, but I wanna sit down.”

My sudden outburst must have been shockin’ ‘cause the whole room went silent. Mama knelt down, an’ makin’ an effort to keep our conversation private (too late for that now), she whispered in my ear, “That room is for black people only. Some people call ‘em colored. That’s where they wait to see the doctor.”

The gears in my head were spinnin’ at lightnin’ speed. “I thought you said they’s called nigger? They’re called COLORED? Is that a bad name, too, Mama? Like nigger?”

The expression on Mama’s face was priceless, although I couldn’t recognize its value at the time. As I revisit that cold winter day, I can appreciate the look of sheer horror that registered when those words spewed outta my mouth. There’s somethin’ especially terrifyin’ when one of the innocents in your midst holds a mirror up to your own prejudice.

All this talk of black ‘n white had turned Mama’s face red all over.

Mama let go a deep sigh an’ said, “We aren’t allowed to go in there.”

I can’t miss the irony of her answer now: we aren’t allowed to go in there. I wonder now if she thought ‘bout what she was sayin’ then. Did she use those words on purpose, or were they just the first ones that came to mind?

Still whisperin’ in my ear where only I could hear, she said, “It’s for COLORED people. Remember baby, we don’t say that other word.”

My response was not a whisper—far from it. I spoke loudly an’ clearly as only a 4-year-old can: “Mama, that’s stupid.”

“Wally Faye!” She hissed.  I’d just breached another communication-castle wall. “You know we never say that word.”

Stupid was one of only two swear words I was aware of at this age. Idiot was the other, but I thought stupid was worthy of use in this situation.

I sighed, feelin’ like the whole point of my request had totally been missed. But bein’ the stubborn, strong-willed child I was, I ignored my need to apologize for sayin’ the word stupid, an’ bulldozed onward.

“I wanna go sit by that lady in the COLORED room. I wanna sit down. I’m tired! Let’s go in there. Let’s pretend we’re allowed an’ just do it. Can we pretend we’re colored?”

In our home, pretendin’ was practically an art form, highly praised an’ encouraged. Mama had four other children an’ worked a part-time job as a waitress until she an’ Daddy opened their own restaurant. She rarely had time to play, so she often suggested that all I had to do to entertain myself was pretend.

It was natural for me to make the suggestion. I’s sure it’d work.

A lovely elderly black woman was smilin’ in my direction. She could hear ever’thing I’s sayin’ an’ the look on her face was dazzlin’. But it wasn’t just her smile, or the shape of her face, or the dress she wore that drew me in.

Somethin’ unseen was movin’ in waves all around her; somethin’ was risin’ up an’ out of her leapin’ for joy, callin’ my name.

My mother stood up an’ looked around the room. She towered over me here in the shallows, but out there in the deep water we could see eye to eye, an’ suddenly she grew to an even greater stature as she humbled herself, bent down one more time an’ said softly, “Yes, baby. We can pretend. We’ll be COLORED today.”

I darted in an’ found a chair next to the beautiful lady in the COLORED room. She talked to me an’ it was glorious. I’s so happy, I nearly forgot how sick I was. I can imagine my mother watchin’ us, wonderin’ if she’d done the right thing. There were a lot of people out in the other room watchin’ us too, the same people who patronized the Parkmore Restaurant where Mama worked. People who would someday frequent the restaurant my parents would manage. These were the people who made it possible for my Mama to barely pay the bills. This risky business of findin’ a place to sit could have ended very badly.

Whatever illness had taken hold of our community an’ brought us all together in this unlikely place of reconciliation was a messenger of peace that day. We’s all sick, an’ somehow that made us all equals. Labels that had been set in cement for centuries were bein’ broken up an’ remolded like dime store silly putty. That mornin’ our black an’ white world had shape-shifted into livin’ color, an’ we could finally begin to see each other for who we really were.

So, for a few hours on a cold winter mornin’ in Milton, Florida in 1961, we joined our hearts in silent agreement, choosin’ to erase the boundary lines that separated us for no good reason except the color of our skin.

When we found a seat in the COLORED room, several others standin’ along the wall decided to join us. When we all sat down with my lovely new friend, the world did not end, an’ the sky did not fall.

I’s too young to know how rare this moment was or to recognize the truth that had been revealed. I’s too little to see that other point of view; I hadn’t learned the rules of racism yet. But I’d made a friend that day, an’ now she was pattin’ my head. Before it was all over, I’d lay my fevered brow on her knee while she stroked my hair, an act that never failed to put me to sleep.

I don’t remember anything else about that day at the doctor’s office. I’m sure we’s called in an’ examined but that part escapes me now. What I do recall, what I will never forget, is the lesson I learned.

Isn’t it funny how the people who were meant to be excluded an’ ostracized were the very ones who on that day, had the best seats in the house? They were comfortably seated in the space labeled “COLORED”, while others, who thought themselves so much better, stood for hours in the “Whites Only” waitin’ room.

Audio narration coming soon to YouTube.