Silver Sparrow Read online

  The citywide science fair was held on the day of my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday. This was my own private holiday that I celebrated each year.

  My real birthday, the ninth of May, was real y my mother’s day. She made a big deal of it, forcing me to dress like a pageant queen for a special meal at the Mansion restaurant on Ponce de Leon Avenue. The waiters brought food I couldn’t identify and my mother would say, “Isn’t this nice?

  Happy birthday! You’re growing up.” Mother’s attempts to make it special for just the two of us only reminded me how isolated we were. She and James were suspicious of outsiders, worried that someone might know someone who could expose us. You know what they say about southwest Atlanta.

  On my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday, I set my alarm for 5:37 a.m., the precise minute of my birth, and shuffled a deck of playing cards. I’d heard that there was a way you could use an ordinary pinochle deck to divine the future. The first six cards I dealt were hearts, and I hoped that this meant that there was love in my future. My mother laughed and sang a chirpy Sam Cooke song about how a girl of sixteen is too young to fal in love. And I told her that I may not know what love is, but I did know what exclusivity was. Now that real y surprised her, me using that word. I learned it in school, not in English class, but in the guidance counselor’s office. Miss Rhodes was her name. I’d been sent to her because I had been caught exchanging kisses with three different boys in six weeks. “There is something to be said for exclusivity, little girl.”

  High school was difficult for me. Any guidance counselor worth her salt should have understood that something heavy and barbed was behind the hostile attitude I adopted whenever I was cal ed into her office. In my heart, I was a nice girl, and a smart one, eager to study biology. During my last year in middle school, I’d studied endlessly to pass the exam to be admitted into the math-and-science magnet. I crammed each night, memorizing the names of the noble gases and the quirks of various isotopes. I studied hard even though I was sick with fear that I would not be al owed to accept an invitation if Chaurisse decided that she wanted to go to Mays High School.

  James and Laverne lived on Lynhurst Road, just a half mile from Mays, which had just been built as the flagship high school of black Atlanta.

  Because of her zip code, Chaurisse was entitled to enrol , even if she wasn’t accepted into the magnet program. My mother’s apartment was only three miles away, but we were in the district of Therrel High, which didn’t have a magnet at al . I received my acceptance letter in June, but I had to wait another month to find out that Chaurisse was accepted to Northside High School, which specialized in the performing arts. Apparently she was somewhat gifted with woodwind instruments.

  It would be too easy to say that I rejected high school before it had a chance to reject me, but even now, when I drive down 1-285, I feel a stirring in my stomach when I see Mays High School on the right side of the expressway, not so modern now, but stil imposing against a backdrop of kudzu and pine trees. I remember how it felt to be a student there, feeling like a trespasser, afraid each day that Chaurisse would change her mind about Northside High and the piccolo, deciding instead to claim my place.

  About two weeks into the ninth grade, I decided that having a boyfriend, a real one, an exclusive one, would tether me to my school. That was the purpose of al the kissing that caused me to be banished again and again to the guidance counselor’s office.

  The reason that there were so many boys in such a short time was that I’d catch each of them passing notes to, looking at, or even talking to some other girl within days of making an overture toward me. I couldn’t bear it. I dumped them and set out again. I would give any boy a chance if he seemed interested — I felt I couldn’t afford to be particular — but again and again I was disappointed.

  Not even the nerdy boys could be trusted. Just a month before my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday, I’d gotten tangled up with Perry Hammonds. He was tal and lanky and styled his hair into a high-top fade that was always in the need of a good mow. I picked him because he liked science, just like me, and because he seemed to be too weird to have other girls to cheat with. He was in the eleventh grade and had never kissed a girl before.

  (I liked the idea of historical exclusivity.) So, while working after school on our biology practicum, I let him kiss me. What I didn’t realize was that there was a difference between opportunity to cheat and will to cheat. Perry didn’t actual y get together with another female human being during the course of our brief relationship, but I came into the practicum room to check on the germination of my project, and there was Perry, al crushed out on a substitute teacher. I knew he was serious because he had trimmed up the sides of his hair with a razor. The skin there was smooth, white, and nicked with tiny cuts.

  Perhaps I overreacted. Maybe this is what my father was talking about when he warned me to stay away from emotion and al of its messy extremes. But I couldn’t get over Perry. While he was running errands for the substitute teacher, a ful y grown woman who would never kiss him in the band room, I used an eyedropper to add bleach to his tanks of brine shrimp. I didn’t put in enough to kil al the ugly little creatures, but just enough to confuse his research. My mother had been right. I was a precocious child. A bitter woman at age fourteen.

  A little bit of justice was meted out. Perry’s project failed to qualify for the citywide fair, and I was tapped to go. My work, “The Effects of Acid Rain on the Germination of Some Selected Seeds,” would represent the ninth-grade class of the Benjamin E. Mays Academy for Math and Science.

  Perry moped in the practicum room as the magnet director encased my project in Bubble Wrap to get ready for my big day. “I just don’t understand it,” he said, thinking of his brine shrimp and maybe thinking a little bit about me and why I wouldn’t talk to him anymore. I didn’t say anything, although I think it would have given me some satisfaction to explain myself. But I lived in a world where you could never want what you wanted out in the open.

  MY SESSION WITH the judges was not chal enging. They seemed mostly concerned with whether or not I had done the work myself, trying to confuse me by quizzing me about the procedure for blending chemicals. They didn’t even ask me what I thought about the issue of acid rain and whether I thought it was going to destroy the whole world.

  Irritated, I tossed my hair around while answering the questions. Girls my age would hem me up in the bathroom for flaunting my excel ent head of hair, but the men on the committee fidgeted in their chairs as I shifted my curls from one shoulder to the other. Against my mother’s advice, I had applied a coat of liquid eyeliner, electric blue, to the pink rim above my lower lashes. It burned like crazy, but I just wet my lips and tried to look bored as tears leaked from my irritated and iridescent eyes.

  One of the judges, a heavyset man with processed hair, said, “How did a pretty girl like you get so interested in science?”

  The woman judge said, “Michael, that’s out of line.”

  The other male judge said, “Michael, that’s a misdemeanor.”

  I said, “I care about acid rain. It’s going to destroy the world.” The three judges exchanged glares while I pul ed on my rabbit-fur jacket.

  “Nice coat,” the woman judge said.

  “My daddy won it for me in a poker game,” I told them, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands.

  I knew I wasn’t going to win a gold key. I could tel by the way that the judges looked at one another as I was leaving the smal room. I searched the hal way for my sponsor, but she was nowhere to be found. The civic center was swarming with kids, al excited about the competition. Everyone from Mays High had to wear baby blue and gold shirts. I wore mine, as it was the only way I could participate, but I kept my rabbit-fur jacket buttoned and belted even though the building was warm.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see the woman judge.

  “You put together a good project,” she said. “But you real y need to work on the way that you prese
nt yourself.”

  I raised my penciled eyebrows.

  “Don’t get defensive, dear,” she said. “I am tel ing you this for your own good. Woman to woman.”

  I didn’t say anything. She gave my coat a little pat as though it were a pet and then she walked away.

  I went out and stood in front of the civic center, holding a pencil to my mouth as though it were a cigarette. It was a goofy habit, a little tic I had picked up from James. He was always taking short breaks from whatever he was doing to smoke one of his Kools. Even though my mother let him smoke in the house, he sometimes stepped outside to light up, and I often went with him, standing on the patio and watching him hold the match behind his cupped hands. When he did it, it was like the only thing that was happening in the world was taking place just inches in front of his face.

  It was November and freezing already. Spending my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday this way couldn’t have been a good sign for the year to come.

  Since I was hidden behind a white pil ar, I went al the way and ground out my little golf pencil on the heel of my penny loafer. Commingled with the noise of cars zipping down Piedmont Avenue, was the sound of mewing. Peeking out from behind the pil ar, what did I see? Chaurisse Witherspoon standing right in front of the glass doors, crying like her heart was breaking.

  I wasn’t exactly shocked to encounter her at the civic center. Al the public schools sent a few students to the fair. As my mother would say,

  “People are going to see people.” So the sight of her wasn’t what had me al discombobulated. The thing that set off twitches at the corner of my mouth was the fact that Chaurisse was wearing a waist-length rabbit fur, too.

  Shivering behind the column, I tried to think of a story that would let me believe that my father hadn’t lied to me when he gave me the coat. Why James would go to so much trouble to deceive me this way? It wasn’t like I hadn’t known al my life that I wasn’t his main daughter. If he had just admitted to buying the damn jacket in a store, I would have been prepared, in a way, for the possibility that there was one for Chaurisse, too. Why had he burst into my home in the middle of the night, letting me believe that he had seen this coat on the poker table, spread over a pile of chips, and thought of me, and only me?

  It’s funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury. I thought about my father kissing my cheek with his rum breath. I thought about the guidance counselor and her smug talk about exclusivity. And who was the female judge to tel me anything about the way I handled myself? I looked out again at Chaurisse. The coat looked terrible on her, as it was my size, not hers. She couldn’t even button it up around her round middle.

  I emerged from behind the pil ar stil woozy with rage, but I only planned to look at Chaurisse. I was just going to fil my eyes with her as I walked through the double doors. This was al I had in mind. Who would believe me, but this was al I had planned to do. No talking, no touching, just a good look.

  This, I now know, is how people go crazy and do things they regret. Look at the woman who almost kil ed Al Green. I am sure she cooked those grits, ful y intending to eat them for breakfast. Then he did something that set her off. After that, she probably picked up the pot, just to scare him a little bit. Next thing she knew and the boiling grits were al over his face. There was a name for that kind of thing. “Crime of passion.” It meant that it wasn’t your fault.

  Chaurisse stood in front of the civic center looking anxiously toward Piedmont Road, bouncing on the bal s of her feet. She had quit crying but was sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She looked over her shoulder and said, “Hi.”

  I said hi back, while taking in the details of the jacket. It was the very same garment, right down to the crystal buttons on the sleeves. This was my sister. As I understood from biology, we should have fifty percent of the same genes. I took her in, searching for something common between us.

  James was al over her face, from her narrow lips to her mannish chin. I looked so much like my mother that it seemed that James had wil ed even his genetic material to leave no traces. I stared hard until I found something that proved that we were kin — stray flecks of pigmentation on the whites of her eyes. My own eyes showed the very same imperfection.

  I must have lingered a little too long, because Chaurisse felt the need to explain herself. “I left my graphs at home. I’m so stupid.”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just the science fair.”

  Chaurisse shrugged back and said, “I worked hard on my project.”

  Then a black Lincoln with tinted windows pul ed up to the curb. I fondled the golf pencil in my pocket as Chaurisse clasped her hands in front of her. The driver of the car blew the horn with a reassuring little toot. My pulse quickened, and I was warm inside my coat despite the winter weather.

  My scalp tingled underneath my hair. I guess I knew on some level that it was only a matter of time before James discovered that my mother and I had not abided by the stern order to “stay away from my family.” But who would have thought it was to happen like this, utterly by accident? My heart flopped around in my chest, and I felt my blood racing through my body. In a way, I was glad that it was happening like this, that James and I could discover each other’s deception at the same time. I only wished that my mother had been there.

  My intention was to stand brave and defiant. I wouldn’t say a word; I’d just stand beside my sister wearing an identical coat, letting spectacle do al the talking. Maybe his words would bal up in his windpipe and choke him to death. I was so furious that I didn’t know that I was scared, but my body knew, and when the door to the Lincoln opened, my frightened neck turned my face away.

  I heard Chaurisse cal out, “Mama! Did you find it?”

  I looked just in time to see my sister clap her hands together like a seal.

  Chaurisse’s mother, Laverne, was nothing like my mother. She was round like her daughter and had that sort of let-go look that beauticians have on their days off. Her red-dyed hair was pul ed back and fastened with a plain rubber band. A T-shirt that had probably been black at one time, was tucked into what looked to be a pair of pretty satin pajama pants. She seemed relaxed, sil y even, as she waved the orange folder over her head.

  She did what she did without thinking it over first.

  “You mean this folder?” she said. “What’s it worth to you? I was going to take it to the flea market and sel it.”

  “Mama,” Chaurisse said, “you are embarrassing me.” And then she sort of angled her head in my direction.

  “Hel o,” Laverne said. “You got yourself a nice coat. You girls are matching.”

  I nodded. Laverne wasn’t pretty or showy in the way that my mother was, but she seemed more motherly to me. Her hands looked like they were born to make sandwiches. Not that my own mother didn’t take care of me. She laid out my clothes each night until I was in the fifth grade but never looked quite at home doing it. There was always the feeling that she was doing me a favor. Laverne was the kind of mother you never had to say thank you to.

  “My father gave me this coat,” I said.

  “Mine, too,” Chaurisse said. She reached out and stroked my sleeve and her touch was charged.

  Twisting away from my sister, I said, “He won it for me in a poker game.” I said this to Laverne and it sounded like a question.

  With a little slackness in the jaw, Laverne said, “Come again?”

  I didn’t say anything, because I knew that she’d heard me, and I could tel that what I said meant something to her. Her face creased and she looked a little less plump and satisfied. To my mind she always looked like a baby that had just been fed, ful of milk and content.

  Laverne said to Chaurisse, “Okay, kiddo. Good luck. I got to run errands.”

  Chaurisse said, “Okay, thank you,” and ran toward the building.

  I stayed out front until Laverne got back into the Lincoln. I couldn’t see her face thro
ugh the tinted glass, but I could imagine it, her looking at me and my coat. She knew that this moment was important; I had seen it in the set of her mouth as she got back in the car. I turned away, not wanting her to memorize my face just yet. This was just the beginning. Some things were inevitable. You’d have to be a fool to think otherwise.

  4

  GRAND GESTURE

  MY MOTHER HAS PROPOSED marriage to two men in her life. The first was Clarence, the undertaker’s son. On the evening of the Sadie Hawkins dance in 1966, Clarence asked my mother if she would go to Paschal’s hotel with him. “If it’s good enough for Dr. King, it’s good enough for us.” He laughed when he said it, which Mother didn’t like so much. Although everyone knew that Dr. King, Andy Young, and that whole Morehouse crowd frequented Paschal’s restaurant for its legendary fried chicken, Clarence was talking about what went on upstairs in the narrow rooms behind the blackout curtains.

  “It’s a joke, Gwen,” Clarence said.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

  “We’ve been going out serious like this for two years,” Clarence said.

  “I know.”

  “So it’s a special night.”

  My mother looked at him, so handsome in his blue suit, always blue, never black. Black was for his working hours, when he hovered behind his father, as the undertaker’s understudy. Her pale yel ow frock with puffed sleeves and an empire waist had seemed elegant on the pattern envelope.

  She didn’t care much for the finished product, but having spent too much time tracing the pattern and reinforcing buttonholes, she couldn’t just throw it away because of a puckered neckline and an unflattering cut.

  Shifting her eyes, she noticed a red carnation on the car seat beside Clarence. “You lost your boutonniere.” She picked it up and pul ed the hat pin from his lapel and busied herself reattaching the flower. On the radio, Smokey Robinson complained that “a taste of honey is worse than none at al .”

  Clarence grabbed her wrist, not too hard, not like a threat, but firm. “I already paid for the room.”