I Am Not Sidney Poitier (11 page)

“Which one are you?” she asked.

“I’m the black one,” I said.

She spat. “I had me a notion.”

We sat in silence for a while, and then I asked, “Is it just you and your little brother?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He thinks Mama just went out to de stow. But she ain’t comin’ back.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Over a year now. She run off with the scrap-metal man.”

“How long have you been blind?” I asked.

“How you know I ain’t been born thisaway?”

“I don’t. That’s why I asked.”

“I was ten year old when Mama threw a pail of lye in my face. You can see I’se all uglied up with burn scars.”

“Hardly noticeable,” I said. In fact it was difficult to see the scarring, though it was there, and it made me sad to see it.

“Mama said she couldn’t keep no man on account dey liked me, and one day she got mad and threw the lye onto me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Den she had Bobo and blamt everthin’ on him.” She seemed to look off into space, but of course she wasn’t. “How old you be?”

“I’m eighteen.”

“You young,” she said.

“I look older.”

“You sho sound older. I like the way you talk. You sound fancy.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, you don’t sound like nobody from round chere.”

“I can well imagine.”

“What dey arrest you fer?”

“Being black,” I said.

“Hmmm. I heard tell that was illegal.”

“It is in Peckerwood County, anyway,” I added. “I just want to get to Atlanta so I can forget about this place.”

“I always wanted to go to Atlanta,” Sis said. “Doan know why. Cain’t see nothin’, that fer sho.”

“Did you go to school?” I asked.

“For a while. Den Mama threw that lye into my face and I never went back. She said I was ugly and the other chilluns would laugh at me. And I couldn’t see no board or books no way. I heard one of Mama’s beaus say she dint send me ’cause she was afraid she get charged wit buse.”

“Abuse,” I corrected her.

“Abuse.”

“You don’t have to be able to see a book to read it,” I said. “You could go to school. You still could.”

“Dat’s crazy talk.”

Those words hung in the air awhile. Patrice snorted, gagged a bit, then settled back into his snoring.

“Is yer friend a good-lookin’ feller?”

“First, he’s not my friend. I don’t know. Somebody might think he looks okay. He’s looks a little like that old move star, Tony Curtis.”

“I ain’t never seen no movie,” she said.

“You haven’t missed much.”

“You got family in Atlanta?” she asked.

I shook my head and then realized the uselessness of that. “No. Sort of. No, I don’t. I used to live there.”

We sat quietly for a while, listening to Bobo and Patrice snoring in the darkness. I could see a bit of the moon through the far window.

“You think we’ll make it to Atlanta?” I asked.

“I don’t see how,” she said. For once she didn’t sound stupid or out of it. “Not on foot anyway.”

“Well, on foot is all we got,” I said, feeling rather colloquial.

“But if’n you was to jump the freight.”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“The freight train. It goes to Atlanta. And it be going real slow up the ridge. Kinda steep. I jumped on it when I was little. We rode it fer fun. We always jumped off befo’ it topped the hill.”

“Where is the train?”

“The train ain’t always there. It come by once a day going one way and at night goin’ tother.”

“Where are the tracks?”

“Across the branch, through the holler, over the hill, and round the bend. At least that where it used to be. I ain’t been there since Mama burnt out my eyes.”

“Which train goes to Atlanta? Day or night?” I felt terribly sorry for Sis, but she was making my head hurt.

“Day, I think.”

“And how far away are the tracks?”

“It’s a fir piece,” she said.

“How fir?”

“Fir nuff.”

“Is it two miles or twenty?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, which?”

“Depends on what way you go,” she said. “Any fool know that. Bobo could show you the way, I think.”

I looked over at the sleeping child. “I’m pretty sure he could. Do you think he would?”

She didn’t answer. She leaned back, her face in shadow now, and she might have gone to sleep. I looked at Patrice’s sleeping face, then over at the boy. These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place that made them was so offensive to me that all who lived there became
there.
I wondered how a little education might benefit them, but I came to the same conclusion. Well, sort of a conclusion, as I hadn’t reasoned toward it at all. I believed they were all ego, but hardly conscious. As insipid as that model of mind seemed to me, it proved useful in my surface understanding of them. And I could see that any sort of hypnosis was unlikely to work as there was no sub- or unconscious to tap into.

“You two luv birds through yapping?” Patrice said.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was tryin’.”

“How is your back?”

I didn’t know why I was asking. I certainly didn’t care. Now that we were no longer chained together, there was no reason for us to remain together, except that Bobo probably would not take me to the train tracks, but he would lead the way for Patrice. I needed Bobo and therefore I needed Patrice, that was my conclusion, with a
therefore
and everything.

“I’m in treemundus pain. So, what was you and Sis talkin’ ’bout?”

“I thought you were awake,” I said.

“You was keepin’ me awake. There’s a difference. And I heard y’all, but I tweren’t listenin’.”

“Another interesting distinction.”

“So, what she say?”

“She said there’s a freight train to Atlanta that runs near here.”

“Where?”

“That’s the problem. We need Bobo to show us how to get there.”

“And I ain’t goin’ do it, less’n y’all take us to Atlanta wit y’all,” said Sis, sitting up and bringing her face back into the moonlight through the window.

“Ain’t happenin’, Sis,” Patrice said.

“Then y’all on yo own.” She crossed her arms on her chest and stuck out her chin in defiance.

“Well, naw, Sis, there ain’t no reason to be all like dat,” Patrice said. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. “I bet a purty gal like you got so many beaus round chere that you really don’t want to leave.”

“Ain’t no beaus and you can stop yer sweet talkin’. We’s going to Atlanta wit y’all or nobody goes.”

“I don’t want to argue,” I said, “and I don’t much care who hops the train with me. I just want to get on and get out of this hellhole. Bobo, what time does the eastbound train go by?”

“About dusk. If we leave at dawn we’ll jus’ make it.”

I leaned back and closed my eyes again. “We’ll need our rest,” I said. “I’ll need mine anyway.”

I slept a dreamless sleep this time, but I awoke to the nightmare of Patrice and Sis having sex in the cot. Across the room Bobo was eating cold beans out of the pot on the stove. I covered my ears to block out the grunting and moaning. Luckily the noise was short lived, and soon they were both snoring. I tried to repress my humanitarian thoughts of helping the poor blind girl find a school so she could learn to read.

At first light I was standing out in the yard, happy for the sun to be coming up, happy to be out of the beans-, sweat-, and sex-stinking confines of the cabin. Then Patrice walked out with Sis dressed in a fresh tattered calico dress. Their faces appeared even more vacant than before.

“Ain’t it a beautiful mornin’, Potay?” he said.

“I cain’t even see and I know it beautiful,” Sis said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’s in luv,” Patrice said.

I shook my head. “And?” But I knew what was coming and then it came.

“Sis and Bobo is comin’ wit me to Atlanta,” Patrice said.

Bobo stepped out of the house and stood by them. He pulled at his sister’s sleeve.

“That’s great. Congratulations.” And it kept coming.

“Since you know folks there, we was thinking maybe you’d let us stay wit you fer a little while, til I get on my feet, ya know?”

“Are you crazy?” As I asked the question, to which I of course knew the answer, I remembered that I needed the boy to lead me to the tracks.

The hounds howled in the distance. The sound was chilling.

“If them is Jubal Jeter’s dawgs, they gone be on y’all real fast,” Bobo said. “Dem dawgs is mean, too.”

“I’ll do what I can to help,” I said.

“See, Bobo,” Sis said. “I told you, Potay be a good nigger.”

I looked at the three of them, standing there against the backdrop of that cabin like an Andy Warhol parody of
American Gothic,
residents of a cul-de-sac at the end of Tobacco Road.

It was just sunrise, and the air was already hot and sticky. As parched as I was I refused to drink any water from the well. I could only guess how many rodents had fallen into it to drown and decompose. Neither was I hungry enough to consume just one more bean or rock-hard piece of bread. The hounds called and they sounded closer.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Before we could leave, Sis and Bobo grabbed a few things, and Patrice had an idea to throw the dogs off our trail. He covered the ground with black pepper and every other seasoning he could find in the house.

“It’ll take ’em awhile to sneeze dat out,” he said. He giggled. “I wish I could be here to see when dey do.”

Finally, we set off, Bobo leading the way, struggling with his oversized rucksack and a brown paper bag. Sis and Patrice followed after, each carrying a worn leather valise as she held his hand for guidance. A bad situation no matter how one looked at it, unless of course you were blind and in fact they all were, and perhaps I as well. I noticed the sad detail that Sis’s shoes did not match. Both boots were black and worn, but the heel of one was at least a half-inch higher than the other and so she limped. I brought up the rear. I carried the boy’s twenty-two rifle, mainly so no one else would, but a bit of thinking made me realize how quickly the presence of that weapon in my hands could get me killed, so I tossed it into the brush just after we crossed the creek.

The sun cooked us as we dragged ourselves up and down hills. Patrice helped Sis over fallen logs and over puddles, and I imagined I saw some tenderness there. Perhaps I did. Then we came to the tracks. Bobo assured us that we had made it with a couple of hours to spare, so we found some shade and rested.

“Will you help me find one of dem schools?” Sis asked me.

“Sho he will,” Patrice said.

“And I kin go to school, too?” Bobo asked.

“You sho kin,” Patrice said. He leaned his head back and looked up at the clouds. “What I wouldn’t give fer a drank.”

“I got a bottle in my suitcase,” Sis said. “Thought it might come in handy.” She opened the leather bag and pulled out a mason jar with a lid. It was filled with a clear liquid.

“Well, dang it to mercy, I knowed I loved you all along,” Patrice said. He took the jar, unscrewed the lid, and took a whiff. “Lawdy, that smells fine, finer than frog’s hair.” He took a swig and coughed. “Here, honey, have a bite.”

Sis took a long drink and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She handed the jar to Bobo and he did the same. Bobo gave the jar back to Patrice. I was thoroughly and absolutely disgusted, yet somehow not surprised at all.

Patrice pushed the jar toward me, but I waved it off. I watched them drink themselves unconscious, and I realized that it didn’t matter where they were, they would never be going anywhere.

The train’s whistle blew. It was coming and I was the only one awake. I did not wake them. The locomotive passed, and I walked to the tracks. Just as Sis had said, the train was moving very slowly up the grade. I found an empty boxcar and easily climbed into it. Alone. I left them sleeping there where they belonged, with one another.

I didn’t want to believe, nor could I imagine, that Ted was manipulating the crosshairs of the planchette to make the Ouija Board answer my questions in a particular way, but it was the only viable explanation. To my sad question “Will I be stuck in Atlanta forever?” the board said, “Could be.” To my panicked “Am I crazy,” it was similarly noncommittal, saying, “Perhaps.” And finally to my offhanded question, “Was I really in utero for twenty-four months?” it was irritatingly and aggravatingly more definite, giving the response “Without a doubt.”

Ted and I were sitting on the edges of lounge chairs by the pool. Jane was steadily swimming laps, her large feet and long legs propelling her slinky red-bikinied body.

“You know where the name of the Ouija Board comes from, Nu’ott?” Ted asked. “It’s from the French and German words for yes. Could just have easily been called the
non-nein.
Of course that’s just one theory. There are probably many. I find it simply strange that the skin they pack sausages in is edible. Edgar Cayce thought they were dangerous.”

“Sausages?”

“No, Ouija Boards. Why would Edgar Cayce care about sausages? Maybe he did. He was a weird dude. And sausages are everywhere.” Ted looked at his bare feet at the end of his chinos. “Let me ask it a question. Why can’t the Democrats come up with decent slogans?”

“I think that might be a long answer,” I said.

“My point exactly. Republicans run around chanting ‘America, love it or leave it’ and ‘Freedom isn’t free.’ ”

“The board can’t handle that,” I said.

“We ought to market a better one. Pigs are really smart, you know.”

I hadn’t said it, but I’m certain Ted knew it. I felt like a failure. I had set out on my own and had come back with my pathetic tail between my legs. Actually, I was more than a little bit lucky to have come back with a tail at all, much less one unbothered by my unseemly Peckerwood County–work-farm brethren. Failure might have been too strong a term only because I hadn’t had any real goals when I set out. That finally was my awakening, my revelation from that brief and both eye-opening and eye-closing experience, that I, sadly, had no direction in life, and my new mission became to discover some mission.

“You could go to college,” Ted said.

I shrugged. “I’m a high school dropout.”

“With scads of money, my friend, with scads of money.”

That was true, and I knew just what he meant, which in itself might have been evidence enough that I didn’t need a university. However, at last, I was large enough in stature to not be pushed around physically, and suddenly I wanted, for whatever reasons, to be near people my own age, most especially women. Even as I thought it I knew I was being naïve. People had never treated me well, and I had no reason to expect they would change just because I was bigger.

“Definitely,” Ted said. “College would be great for you. A time for searching and growth, for exposure to new and uninteresting subjects. I think that they should be called tax cells instead of brackets.”

My first letter to the so-called development office of Morehouse College offering them a bit of a portion of a scad of my wealth yielded no response. The second letter was actually mailed back to me with my name and signature circled and
ha ha
written in red ink beside it. I hated using Ted’s pull, but he insisted, and so he wrote to them, introduced me, and slightly more than suggested that I could be talked into being loose with my dough. I got a call from a woman named Gladys Feet, and she wanted very much to buy me lunch. I agreed to meet her at a restaurant downtown.

I arrived at the restaurant first and sat at the table to wait, with my doubts. I had had to go around the barn, as my mother would have said, just to try to offer these folks money. I watched as the hostess pointed me out and saw the reaction on Gladys Feet’s face. Gladys Feet was an average-looking woman in all respects, dressed in an average navy blue business suit with a white blouse, but she wore extremely high stiletto heels. The heels made her look like an actor in a corporate porn film. She smiled as she approached and I stood. “Mr. Poitier,” she greeted me.

“Hello, Ms. Feet,” I said with a remarkably straight face.

She sat. She was a bit flustered. “I can’t get over how much you look like Sidney Poitier. A young Sidney Poitier.”

“More every day, it seems,” I said.

“So, let me first say how pleased we are to discover your interest in Morehouse. It’s so rewarding to me personally to meet interesting people wanting to contribute to the education of talented black men.”

Her speech put me off a bit, and as she slickly spouted the words I realized that my scads of money gave me a considerable amount of power. A seemingly simple notion, but one that I had either been too stupid to acknowledge or too stubborn to accept. I cut right to the heart of the matter. “Ms. Feet, I am a high school dropout. I want to go to college, and I’m willing to buy my way in.”

“I see. Well … ”

I interrupted her. “Three hundred thousand toward anything you need, no questions, no strings. If I flunk out, the money is still yours. If I quit, the money is still yours. If I receive the stellar education you advertise, well, just remember that I have a lot more money.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Gladys Feet said.

“Say I’ll be admitted in the fall.” I was speaking with a confidence that I didn’t quite recognize and certainly didn’t feel was justified. I was somewhat saddened by the knowledge that the confidence derived from my wealth or, more precisely, the awareness of my wealth.

“I don’t have the power to … ”

“Three hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Gladys Feet left the table, and I ordered another cola. And as promised she was back quickly, a smile on her face, smoothing her skirt before she sat.

“Welcome to Morehouse,” she said.

“Just like that?”

“Done. Tell me, is your name really Not?”

“Not Sidney,” I corrected her.

“Not Sidney.”

“That’s what my mother named me.”

“It’s quite an interesting name.”

“If you say so.”

“May I ask, is your father Sidney Poitier?”

“No.” I answered quite definitely, but the fact of the matter is I was not quite definite; I did not know. I had no reason to suspect that Sidney Poitier was my father, but I also had no idea who my father was. I knew nothing about the man, whether he was a man or a basting syringe. Nothing. I’d asked my mother a couple of times during my short years with her about him, but her answers were either so vague and confusing as to be useless or no answer at all. Once after dinner, as we sat in front of the television watching an
Adventures of Superman
rerun, I asked, “Was my father handsome?”

She replied, “Some might say yes.”

“Was he smart?” I asked.

She stared at the television. “Why is it that after all the bullets have bounced off Superman’s chest, he then ducks when the villain throws the empty gun at him?”

I looked at the television and wondered, knowing also that my quest for some detail about my history had been again thwarted, albeit with a very good question. I never pressed terribly hard, thinking that someday the story would surface, but then she died.

I looked up to see Gladys Feet staring at my face.

“The resemblance is remarkable, uncanny,” she said. I believe she caught on that she was making me decidedly uncomfortable. She changed the subject. “So, what is it you plan to study?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said. “Psychology maybe or philosophy. I don’t know. I want an education, that’s pretty much it.” I sounded so much like a student. I liked it. “I don’t even know how I can decide what to study until I have that.”

“That’s a very clearheaded way to approach it,” she said.

“Don’t be patronizing,” I said. “I’m giving you money and that’s what matters to Morehouse. Perhaps I’ll get an education, perhaps not. That’s up to me. But don’t be patronizing.”

“I apologize.”

“You needn’t be sorry. It’s your job to be that way.”

“How old are you?” she asked in a way that suggested she was making a comment rather than looking for an answer.

“I’m eighteen years old. Nineteen, if you choose to count my extra year in the womb.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m eighteen,” I said.

She shook her head. “You seem wise beyond your years.”

She was being patronizing again, but I let it go. It was obvious she couldn’t help herself. I wondered if there was a name for her condition. She wasn’t exactly kissing my ass and she wasn’t exactly flirting with me, but with a little shove she’d have shit on her nose and I’d have a date. Perhaps she was not precisely doing anything. Perhaps each and every one of her moves and gestures was approximate. Perhaps she was smarter than I thought, smarter than me. After all, she was collecting three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars from me.

“May I ask you a question?”

I wanted to inform her that she just had, but I nodded instead.

“How much money
do
you have?”

“I don’t know. It changes daily. Hourly, I’m told.”

“I see.” She tugged at her collar as if a little hot.

“One other thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t want anyone to know about my gift to the school.”

“Okay. That’s a simple matter.”

Autumn approached with more heat than most of the summer had served up—nasty, humid, searing heat that made it impossible for one to remain dry. At least I couldn’t seem to remain anything but soaked with perspiration. It was September and I was a college student, a sweat-drenched college student, a fact that didn’t seem to matter as the first thing I learned was that I was as much of an outcast at the university as I had been in high school, only that here instead of beating and teasing me, they simply ignored me. I could have made my first day a little easier had I just once beforehand visited the campus. Then I might have at least had an inkling where one or two buildings might be, but no, I stayed away, reading and thinking. The latter activity, I was certain, would finally be my downfall. Downfall sounds a bit melodramatic or even vain, certainly romantic, as if I believed I occupied or expected to achieve some station, but the fact was I believed thinking or overthinking finally would not serve me well, if at all. Perhaps it’s not even thinking I’m talking about, but pondering or wondering or stewing or whatever the hell I’m doing right here.

I managed to register for all my classes, just as all the other freshmen so managed and, I assumed, without much less surprise than I. It was a complicated matter that might or might not have had a computer involved. My classes were what one would expect, predictable survey courses, composition, and a rudimentary introduction to calculus. I decided to try to get into an upper-division English course titled the Philosophy of Nonsense taught by some guy named Percival Everett. I needed his signature to add the course, and so I went to his office. I found his door open and before I tapped on the jamb to announce myself I saw that the room was lousy with sports equipment, basketballs, inflated and not, tennis and squash rackets, a hockey stick, a baseball bat, a baseball glove on his desk, and a pair of boxing gloves hanging on the wall between portrait drawings of James Joyce and Terry McMillan. There was a photograph of another man high on the wall above the others. I knocked.