The Weight Of The Past What the hell? was all Lynn could think as she sat down in the living room and stared at the walls. Gaudy movie posters hung there, ragged, with tattered edges and ripped off corners where someone had taped and re-taped and then finally given up and used thumbtacks. Her mother, who worked at the theatre as a projectionist, brought them home from work, and for a reason Lynn never bothered trying to surmise, hung them up all over the house. She twisted her face into a sneer of disgust and stabbed her tongue at the Pearl Harbor poster, where Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and the girl they swapped in the movie stared into the distance dramatically from above her couch. Across the room on the opposite wall, an Ice Age poster hung, edges fresh, and still curled. From it, furry computer animated creatures stared down at her, grinning like cartoon lunatics. A frown of concentration eclipsed her face as she tried to picture the walls adorned with a few pieces of real artwork instead. Just when she began to really see it, she realized that it only made the rest of her family�s things look more like junk: two worn sofas highlighted with the occasional cigarette burn, the glass top coffee table covered in dust and dried soda, the broken television doubling as a stand for the working television. Lounging on the couch smoking a cigarette, Lynn�s mother flipped through the stations, pausing on a commercial for a cheap line of cosmetics. A dark-skinned model with stark cheekbones and a short Afro bent toward the screen, smiling as if anyone would believe she was wearing the crap they were selling. �She looks like a goddamn man with her hair like that,� her mom quipped, her own hair draped over her shoulder in fine, mouse brown waves. Lynn eyed it jealously, absently fingering the dark knot of coarse hair at the nape of her neck. �Yeah,� Lynn had replied. Thinking of the days, the hours, the weeks of her life spent ironing and pressing, relaxing and straightening her own hair, she suddenly found herself laughing at the woman. �An ugly man�, she added, relaxing away the last few inexplicable chuckles. Her father swaggered into the living room to bum a cigarette and glanced first at the screen, then at her mother. �What�s wrong with her?� he interjected in his usual blatant tone, standing over them in just his running shorts, scratching casually at the silver hair coiled on his black chest. He lifted his chin with a flick in a gesture that meant he needed a light, and her mom flipped him a Bic in the most natural of motions. Turning to Lynn, he continued, �That�s a traditional African style. Black women don�t have to try to be white to be beautiful.� Across the room Lynn saw her mother flinch ever so slightly, as if stung. A sudden rush of red bloomed on her pale cheeks, and her green eyes flashed bitter embarrassment as they turned back to the television. �I know that dad. Besides, I don�t have to try to be black or white. I already am.� Her father didn�t respond, and she wasn�t sure if he had even heard her, which was no surprise. For Lynn, speaking to her father was often like consulting an old, insane oracle. Whatever she said, his response was always to spout the wisdom of his age, and Lynn imagined he must have an infinite number of life lessons pre-packaged for his own convenience in the form of grand lectures. Lynn watched warily as he hovered, lazily lighting his cigarette and taking a puff. Exhausted by the revolving door struggle with her father over her racial identity, Lynn looked back and forth between his dark, grizzled face and her mother�s pale, ruddy one, dizzied by the absurdity of it. A creeping sense of dread settled, like a small, heavy weight in her stomach as she remembered their last conversation on the topic, only a month ago. The argument had started when her date for the prom called Lynn to cancel, his father in the background hollering, �There�s no reason you can�t find a nice girl that�s your own race�!� Tears streaking her brown cheeks, Lynn had run to the kitchen, heartbroken, to find her mother. �I don�t get it, mom, because I met his dad when he took me to that hockey game�� �He�s a goddamn asshole,� her mother had fumed, stirring a steaming pot of black eyed peas with one hand and wiping sweat from her freckled brow with the other. Face pinched into a tight-lipped grimace, she�d been about to go on when they heard her father�s voice thundering from another room. �Who is?� The stomping thud of his heavy walk grew louder as he neared the kitchen, and stepping through the doorway, he repeated, �Who�s an asshole?� �Jake�s dad won�t let him go with me,� Lynn explained, her sorrow sharpening as she looked into her father�s dark eyes and saw that there was no need to explain why. Tightness pinched the corners of her father�s mouth as he said, �Hell, its about time you learned your lesson about white boys.� �Please, Ray, this isn�t the time,� her mother had implored in a weary voice, while Lynn stood in a misery of loneliness, waiting for her father to forge wisdom from her pain. �Like hell, Lilly,� he�d snapped; then to Lynn, �You might like to call yourself mixed,� he spat the word like it was a curse, shameful, �but that�s not what whites see when they look at you. A white boy might like you just fine. He might even date you,� he stepped closer, lifting Lynn�s chin with one thick finger, smooth and dark, like oiled leather. He held her eyes with his own and finished, �But when it comes time to take you home to mama, like you found out today, you�re just another nigger.� Now, standing above her, casting the shadow of his disapproval, he continued gravely, �Straight hair is just a white standard of beauty, girl, don�t you know that? Afros look natural on black women.� Despite her frustration, Lynn couldn�t help but admire the way his tone chiseled opinion into fact. �That�s right,� he went on as he strode to the 12-pack of Pepsi lying near the door, ripped the carton open, reached in, and cracked open a can. �We had the right idea in the 60�s when we picked out our afros and said �fuck the whites��� As he went on, Lynn watched the glowing tip of his cigarette bob between his lips and tried not to notice her mother�s pale form, huddled against the dingy cushions of the couch, cowering from her father�s harsh words. The room grew murky, filling with the stinging haze of second-hand smoke. As a habit, Lynn filtered the smoggy air through the cotton of her tee shirt, ducking her head down and pulling the neckline up to cover her mouth and nose. Lynn found herself thinking of one day, back when she was a little Girl Scout, decked out all in green, sash scattered with badges. During a meeting at her troop leader Cathy�s house, they�d had to break into groups and write down a peer pressure situation, then act out the proper way to handle it. After each group handed in what they had written, Lynn watched as Cathy took the papers into the kitchen to read through them quickly, stopping as she scanned the last one. Suddenly, her eyes widened and her face twitched, as if embarrassed. As Cathy crumpled the paper and tossed it into the garbage, she never noticed Lynn watching her curiously, standing still among all the girls bouncing around in her peripheral vision. Lynn, realizing she hadn�t been seen, ran to the trash and smoothed out the wrinkled ball of paper, expecting to find the sheet covered in profanity, or dirty drawings, or some other bit of little girl naughtiness. Instead, the paper was blank except for one neat sentence near the top: You�re black and nobody likes you. Cold pain rose from her stomach then, clenching fingers around her heart, freezing her mind around those six words, scrawling them into her memory. After balling up the paper and returning it to the trash, just the way she�d found it, Lynn went back to join her group until the meeting was over, and then never returned. At nine years old, Lynn had been unable to face the other girls, never knowing which group had written the message that could have only been for her. She thought about her biggest crush in middle school; a �bad boy�, but never to her. How she used to admire the way he was always perfectly coordinated, with his baggy jeans and XXL football jerseys that he wore for the colors, not the team, a matching ball cap cocked sideways atop a mass of black dreadlocks. The two of them would walk together at night after everyone else�s parents had already called them inside, and sometimes they would hold hands without saying anything at all. On foggy nights they would sit on the pool steps after curfew, hidden until the mist cleared and the cops chased them home, the streetlights floating above them like ghostly UFO�s. Once, he�d tried to kiss her innocently, just on the cheek, but she�d stopped him to ask, �Do you want me to be your girlfriend?� because in middle school a kiss on the cheek was serious business. Even five years later, Lynn could feel her throat tighten as she recalled the way he dropped his eyes first, then her hand. �I want to,� he�d whispered, clearly embarrassed by something, and thinking he was worried about her answer she�d quickly added, �I will, if you want.� He stepped back. �It�s my dad,� he answered. �He already told me to leave you alone�� He paused to take a breath. Then, seeing the question on her face, he mumbled, ��he doesn�t trust white folks.� Lynn surfaced from the depths of memory in time to hear, ��what I got for carryin� my black ass into a cowboy bar with a white woman�� Her father was reciting one of his old barroom stories, a vivid adventure in which he narrowly escaped a pack of wild drunken rednecks as they chased him from a western bar in Arizona back in the 70�s. No matter how many times he told it, he always told it well, and Lynn could feel the tension building as he described the scene: smoke and country music hanging in the dry air, menacing white faces under wide-brimmed cowboy hats turning to whisper offense at the sight of her father dancing with her mother. The final violent scene provided a satisfying climax when her father, a dozen booted feet galloping after him in a whirlwind of dust and raised voices, fled with her mother amidst a flurry of gunshots and thrown rocks. Drama aside, Lynn found the story particularly entertaining, because when her father told it, he always made sure to include the hillbilly one-liners they used, like �Why don�t you go back where you came from?� and �Keep your hands off our white women!� and �Fucking nigger!� �Ray!� her mother burst, shooting him a look of annoyance, �what do your old stories have to do with anything?� Lynn looked up in time to watch the ash drop from the tip of her cigarette into the sticky puddle of dried soda on the table. �Old stories, huh? These stories are her heritage, Lilly, hell, being black is all about these stories, the real stories they ain�t gonna teach in school. How else is she gonna learn the way the world is�� He rambled on, his voice driven up and down with a pulse of intensity. Thinking of school, Lynn slipped back six months in her mind, to her first semester as a high school senior. On the day of the senior assembly, having forgotten to sign up for a seat with her friends, Lynn had found herself standing in the back of the packed auditorium, searching hopelessly for an empty seat. She�d finally resigned to stand, dropping her books and leaning against the wall with a sigh. The air had thrummed with the sounds of shuffling papers and feet, as restless teens waited for the assembly to commence. As the principal mounted the steps to climb onto the stage, silence fell, and Lynn watched a paper ball sail overhead, streaking from the back of the room where the vast majority of the students, almost exclusively black, were seated. She traced its arc as it rose, flying toward the front rows, where the much smaller cluster of white students sat, and finally fell, bouncing off the head of a white boy sitting there. Lynn would never forget the way it had set her on fire inside, the disembodied words �goddamn niggers�, echoing in the assembly hall, an idiot�s angry whisper. She could remember watching as the body of black students rose from their seats and crashed down upon the white students like a dark wave of rage, pounding. Most of all, she could remember the triumph that rose, like hot laughter, from her heart into her throat where it stuck, choking her, refusing to be swallowed. She could still see herself running through the halls, scared for her white friends, scared of her black friends, hating them all because in the end, though she could never choose sides, others would always choose for her. When she�d come home early that afternoon, her nerves buzzing, she was surprised to find her father home early as well. �Your mother heard about the riot from another parent at work and called me to come home to check on you� he explained when she stumbled, panting, through the front door. �Dad,� she�d started, �it was blacks against whites and everybody was fighting and trashing everything, and �� She stopped on the verge of tears, lost in remembering the way black students had swarmed through the halls, picking off the white kids one by one, hitting them and trampling them, and slamming them into lockers and trashcans. Her father�s eyebrows drew down, and he stared at her with a brooding look of concern. �Go on,� he�d prompted firmly. Lynn let out a breath she hadn�t known she was holding and answered anxiously, �The black kids herded all the white kids up, just like animals or something, and chased them to the Main Office. So, the white kids were banging on the glass, begging to be let inside, but the principle and everybody in the office had locked the doors, and they weren�t letting anybody in, so they all just pretty much had to stand there and take it until the cops came. There was no where for them to go.� She stopped, breathless, waiting for a chance she hadn�t known she wanted until that very moment: a chance to share a story of her own, to share something with her father, even if it was only pain. She could remember watching, puzzled, as her father�s face broke out into a slow, wide grin that made him seem younger and happier and more at ease than she�d ever known him to be. He chuckled, and after a few moments the chuckle rolled into a deep laugh that had him coughing, choking on the last few puffs of a spent cigarette. Lynn didn�t understand at first, and then all of a sudden she did. He was laughing at the white kids, running to the Office, banging on the windows in futility, fleeing from a sea of storming black faces and crushing black fists and feet. He was laughing, and they were screaming into the glass, muted. �Ha! Damn! They wouldn�t even let them in the office! Ha!� he�d chortled, slapping his knee. And then he�d reached down and dropped the smoking butt of his cigarette into an ashtray on the coffee table. He straightened, turning to walk away, and there was pain for Lynn then, because she realized that he wasn�t going to ask her anything more. Lynn remained on the couch, half listening to her father�s lecturing tones until at last he abruptly walked out of the room, his reflection wavering across the glass table top as he passed by. A moment later her mother shot her an absently apologetic glance, Sorry you had to sit through that, it read. Drawing her knees up to her chin, Lynn stared around the room and imagined that the walls, and the posters, and the entire smoky, shabby world she lived in was tumbling down on her, a crushing avalanche. She lay down, closing her eyes, and imagined that she could still hear her father�s laughter, bursting, cruel and thoughtless, so much like her own had been earlier. She was sorry for her laughter then, but it never crossed her mind to tell her father that. Instead she thought of all her father�s stories, about how he always laughed when he told them, and how they must weigh him down. Weeping silently, she lay there, imagining her own story, needing it to be real, solid, but the more she tried, the more it flew apart, reduced to a tangle of fractured childhood memories�a broken mirror, and in it her face. She imagined she was a plant without roots, tossed about at the mercy of the wind, a lonely tumbleweed, and after some time, all imaginings faded to black as the stillness of sleep crept over her, heavy, but not so heavy as the weight of her father�s past, or her own.
Copyright © 2005 Diana Blizzard |