By La Vonda R. Staples
Saturday, August 11, 2012.
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from La Vonda R. Staples’ "A Note From Nobody: Volumes I and II"
Telling
someone to forgive and forget, when you aren't present for their
nightly parade of memories of the past, is sometimes another blow on the
back of a wounded soul. I don't know how, but I have learned to
forgive and I hope I learn this mythical thing called forgetting. The
human mind is designed to have survival tactics imprinted within higher
and lower brain functions. You learn how to walk, in part, because you
look up from your crib and see everyone walking. The images are frozen
into your mind until one day, you pull one leg to the front into a lunge
position. Your hands are on the floor. You pull the other leg forward
and now you're in a four point stance. And, somewhere in your mind,
you tell yourself that now is your time. You push off of the floor with
your hands. The first time you fall backwards. On a subsequent
attempt you might fall to the side. On still other attempts you fall
forward. But you keep trying and the victory of a moment in time is
claimed by a tiny creature. You can walk. You arrived and you studied
and you remembered and you imitated and you won. Memory is a thing which
must be honoured for its ability to be utilized before there are words
to order the thoughts. I ask if anyone ever forgets anything? Even if a
memory cannot be immediately summoned it is still there, locked away,
waiting to erupt at a visual, tactile, or olfactory prompting.
I'm
a solitary person. I do not run from company so much as I desire to be
alone. It is my natural state. I know how to amuse my own self very
well. At times, I access this memory voluntarily and at times it is an
involuntary action and it can be as pleasant as other involuntary
actions such as breathing. I like to breathe and I'm glad it's not a
thing I have to decide to do. But I really wish I could elect what
memories come to mind. One particular makes me shut the door, quickly,
so that the monster hiding in the dark does not escape to wreak havoc
upon the tentative peace I'm learning, each and every day, to keep.
I
was chosen to be the narrator of the school play when I was in the
third grade. My teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, thought I had the best speaking
voice. I could read with great fluidity and since she was the only
member of the audition panel, I was chosen. I went to rehearsals. I
told my grandma and granpa about it when I went to church. I told the
mailman and I told Mr. Johnny at the corner confectionary. I told the
principal of Toussaint L'Ouverture Elementary school, Mr. Acme Price, II
and he gave me a dollar! I experienced an ebullient state of joy over
being chosen for something important.
It
seems as if I had been in training for this honour for some time
through Easter speeches, Christmas plays, and Christmas speeches. In
those days, so long ago, children were trained in church to read aloud,
memorize Bible verses, and to speak in front of people. My granma was
very precise about words. I was reprimanded for saying, "make me
something to eat." Rather, it was, "cook me something to eat." My
granma informed me that dinner was not made, it was cooked on or in the
stove. And finally, "man don't make no food, God does." Her teaching
was the beginning of my lifelong adoration of the use of words.
I
lived with my mother, brother, and sister in a huge house in the very
mouth of the school. I told my mother about the play. It annoyed her
when I would come home late from rehearsals. I had to rush home each
day to relieve the babysitter. I think I was about ten at the time.
Had she known about the audition I would have never been allowed to
tryout (perhaps this is the beginning of my ability to hold what must be
held). It is far easier to ask forgiveness than permission. I didn't
tell her until I was picked. She was so very conscious of what was
thought of her outside the house that she was not going to have me tell
the teacher I couldn't do it. She wasn't about to tell the teacher
herself.
The
night of the performance came. There had been a rehearsal after
school. Afterwards I walked through the cold home. I crossed the
corner of Caroline and Hickory. I walked past the iron works plant.
Past Mr. Mahone's house. And then past the home which Red the
photographer shared with his mother. I walked past Mrs. Sullivan's Soul
Food Café and then I crossed over to my house at 3128 Hickory (I
learned recently that Maya Angelou had lived for a short time at 3126
Hickory. Maybe there was spirit of intertwined genius and struggle
which existed before the bricks of the two homes were set into place).
I put my key in the lock and walked into a home only incrementally
warmer than the air outside. I didn't have to call out. I knew no one
was there. It didn't even register to me that she would respond to my
night by leaving with my brother and sister. How could I know that on
this great occasion that I would be all alone?
It
was about five in the winter evening. The sun had already started to
go down. There was very little light in the house. The play was maybe
an hour, perhaps two, away from opening. There was no one to fuss over
me. No one to fix my hair. No one who had already laid out my clothes.
The year before would have seen a difference of dessert and fjord. My
granma had gone and taken the sun. I was on my own. I shaped rather
than combed my long coarse, thick hair into place on top of my head. It
was still the seventies and an afro puff was entirely acceptable. I
stuck a barrette on each side of my head. I put on my cleanest pair of
socks and underwear. I put on the dress I had word three years earlier
at my aunt's wedding. A pink maxi dress with a hood. It fit. My
grandma had taken her complete bounty. My cheeks were no longer so
round that they obscured my vision when I smiled and my collarbones were
visible at all times. The formal dress of a seven year old still fit
although it was no longer a maxi.
I
had been making notes, through the time of rehearsal, on the pieces of
white thick paper which all pantyhose were wrapped around my mother
queen-sized panty hose. I gathered these notes. Put on my scuffed
shoes. Walked out of the cold into the cold and headed back towards the
school. There were refreshments back stage, Mrs. Schmitt had assured
us before we left. She was a White woman from Canada but she knew our
situation. She knew many of us went home to stare into an empty lit
white space wishing that there was any old thing to eat.
At
school I sat and read for about an hour. When I read a book everything
outside vanished. I was in the world of the writer and it was far more
pleasurable than any day's reality. The big kids were in charge of
backstage activities. A girl with a headband wrapped around her afro
took me by the hand and guided me to my position at stage left. The
curtain rose and I smiled. My smile was met with a mouse squeak at
laughter. I knew it was over my clothes and hair. I went on with the
smile and I spoke. I heard someone say, "she talk white." And then
there was another sentence of rudeness from the front row, "she always
be talkin' like that." Mr. Price heard it too. He stopped it. The
play went on. For an hour I recalled my lines from memory. My toe
nails were happy. My follicles were over the moon. And the tips of my
ears were very pleased.
Backstage
I ate more cookies. I drank more punch. I picked up my coat and my
notes and walked home. They were there. No one asked me anything. I
went to bed cocooned in the night.
The
next day at school brought back whispers of the first few moments of
the play with great volubility and loquacity. No one spoke to me on the
playground. They spoke about me around me. I felt the tears well up
and I went to stand under an awning by myself. A few boys walked up
with a small kindergarten girl. I remember her. I can't forget her.
She had good hair, big eyes, and a perfectly round face. One boy spoke
to her and then he spoke to me, "go and hit her dead in the stomach,"
"you better not hit her back or we all gon' kick your ass." The little
girl changed from angel to demon. She relished her work. She stepped
forward to hit me. I pivoted. She tried again, this time a slap. I
blocked it. She attempted one more time and I pivoted in the opposite
direction. The bell rang. The crowds which gathered for the execution
of my sentence for the crime of talking white was to be denied.
I
went through the day and didn't think about the little girl. What was
an attempted beating juxtaposed with the weekly beatings I received at
home? And after school I walked home, alone as I always did to the
infrequent music of children walking behind me talking about me but not
to me. When I got to my house one boy came running up from behind. At
the same second he punched his fist through the air and it connected
between my eyes. It would have connected with my eyes had I not been
wearing glasses. Everyone laughed and dispersed. The proper talking
girl had once again been humiliated in exchange for the honors she
received. I had been knocked off of my pedestal physically. I got to
my knees, found my door key, and walked into the house with my broken
glasses in my hand. When my mother arrived I received more blows. And
later on, with no tears in my eyes, I found some grey tape and repaired
my glasses. Knowing, instinctively, that there would be more ridicule
in the morning.
Over
the years I have seen the names of those boys in the crime papers of
St. Louis. One was sentenced to death and another was sentenced to
life. I don't know what happened to the third one or any of the other
followers. What's more is I don't care what happened to them. They do
not occupy the active space of my memory. I do remember Mr. Price, the
third grade, I still use the British spellings Mrs. Schmidt passively
taught me. She encouraged my writing with Mr. Price and his successor
Mr. Boyd. When third grade ended I mourned her as she left the left
L'Ouverture to teach in another place.
I
cannot close the door on the bad memories as I would no longer have the
ability to access the compassion and kindness which proceeded and
followed. I do not have the ability to forget that moment of standing
on that stage and using the experience for the rest of my life. Human
animals remember as an act of self-preservation, to recognize good as
well as evil if an appearance should be repeated. So I will remember
the sound of those voices pronouncing my speech as white. I will
remember how I got up not knowing if another punch or kick was to
follow. I will remember what it felt like to walk into a cold house and
look into an empty refrigerator as those moments may come again. I may
have to do as I did that day in December: go on.
La Vonda Staples is an adjunct professor of African American history. She has taught children and adults alike. She blogs at www.lavondastaples.com