Disgruntled: A Novel Page 2

  * * *

  Kenya had no aunts or uncles or cousins; she didn’t go to family barbecues or reunions. But there were the Seven Days, a group Kenya’s parents had started with their friends. The name came from something in Song of Solomon, one of the few books both Sheila and Johnbrown loved. In Song of Solomon, there was a group of black men who killed a white person for every black person they’d heard of being killed by a white person. If the black person had been killed on a Monday, the Monday man undertook the revenge, killing a roughly equivalent white person, say, a little girl, in a roughly equivalent fashion. Just as they were about to strike the blow, they would say, “Your Day has come.”

  (“Don’t talk to her about that, Johnbrown,” Kenya’s mother said when her father told Kenya this story, his eyes glinting with mischief.

  (“This doesn’t scare Kenya. Wait, you scared, Monkey?”

  (“No,” she lied. Your Day has come, she would sometimes say to herself in the dark of her bedroom, shivering with delicious terror.)

  Provided she had washed up and put on her pajamas, Kenya was allowed to sit in on Seven Days meetings at her parents’ house, which usually happened two Saturday nights a month. She loved the feeling of being in a crowded living room, which, with its boarded windows, low-wattage lamps, and huge plants, felt both cramped and cozy. She listened or dozed on her mother’s shoulder, sometimes not waking up until the next morning in her own bed.

  Kenya’s parents and their friends did not kill anyone. Each of them devoted a day in their week to doing something for “the community.” Kenya’s father went to welfare and Social Security offices to advocate for women with crying children, frail seniors, people who were a little slow—anybody who needed help navigating piles of paperwork. He annoyed employees, most of whom were also black, by passing out mimeographed flyers about asserting civil rights in a hostile bureaucracy.

  After she’d graduated college, Sheila had sworn off all contact with Richard Allen; too depressing, she’d said. As a Seven Day, she went back once a week. Johnbrown was the one who pushed her, going on about how much Sheila would have liked to meet a beautiful professional black woman like herself when she’d been a girl. (“I would have loved that,” Sheila said, “especially if that woman would have bought me some new clothes.”)

  On her day, she knocked on doors and gave out books the library was getting rid of and made lists of repairs, for which she harassed the Housing Authority. Sometimes she would round up a group of women and children to ride downtown with her and press their demands in person. For a brief time, because Johnbrown’s idea of her as a mentor did appeal to her, she also tried to make friends with some of the teenage girls—especially the ones with small children. She invited them to come to the library and take out children’s books to read to their kids. This didn’t last, though. “I don’t understand them,” she admitted to Johnbrown. “I lived there but I was never a girl like that.” Something told Kenya not to ask what she meant.

  Yaya, who worked as an accountant for the city, was Kenya’s mother’s best friend. Her Seven Days contribution was using personal and sick days to volunteer at the large, shabby childcare facility where her “triflin’” sister worked. Yaya read to the children and bullied the teachers into turning off the soap operas they watched on the television sets designated for Sesame Street. Kenya knew from her own mother that only a certain kind of black woman watched soap operas, and she knew this because in those pre-VCR days, her mother hid from Yaya the fact that she breathlessly read summaries of The Young and the Restless in the daily newspaper and scheduled days off around watching it.

  Yaya’s large and mostly silent husband, Alfred, who delivered mail, did home repairs for struggling single mothers. Johnbrown’s college friend Robert, who had a law degree but worked in a health food store, gave legal advice. Earl, a Vietnam veteran taking divinity night classes who quietly continued to refer to God when others invoked the Creator, operated a mobile ministry that moved from corner to corner of Southwest Philly, delivering boys to the Church of the Advocate. He believed that liberation theology would keep them out of prison and out of the army.

  Nate Camden, who insisted on being called “Brother” Camden, was Kenya’s least favorite Seven Day. A short, pudgy psychology professor at Temple University, he always came to meetings with red eyes and wearing the same faded black sweatshirt and pants.

  (“You shouldn’t judge folks like that, Monkey,” Johnbrown said when Kenya asked if he ever changed his clothes.

  (Sheila snorted. “Well, is she allowed to judge the smell of his one outfit? I sure do.”)

  But that wasn’t the only problem with Brother Camden. It was that he seemed to want to “get in Kenya’s world.” He badgered her for watching The Muppet Show. (“Where are the black Muppets?”) Another time he said that the Now and Laters she was eating, which were a special treat, had killed male rats and made the females sterile.

  (“You mean clean?” asked Kenya.

  (“Enough, Camden,” said her mom.

  (“Well, she shouldn’t be eating that crap,” said Johnbrown. “You ever see that kind of candy in a white neighborhood store? They trying to poison us.”)

  And so of course it was Brother Camden who suggested that Kenya officially become a Seven Day by taking on a repugnant task. He had come early for a meeting, and while he’d appeared to be deep into one of his homemade-looking books, making low noises and scribbling notes, it seemed he had also been listening to Kenya talk to Sheila about an unfortunate boy in her fourth-grade class named Duvall. When it was his turn to report on what he’d done that week, he said, “I think maybe Sister Kenya should befriend Brother Duvall for her first act as a Day.”

  “But—” Kenya said, looking at her father, who seemed distracted. His week as a Day had gone badly; he had argued with the security guard at the welfare office, who’d told him to get a real job. (“After you,” Johnbrown had said, taking off before the guard called the police.)

  “But,” Kenya said again, “I can’t just…”

  “Yes?” said Sheila.

  “Duvall talks slow and he eats his tuna fish sandwich with his mouth open and you can see little balls of bread! Even Mrs. Preston is mean to him,” Kenya said, immediately realizing her mistake.

  “We all have a purpose, young sister,” said Brother Camden, fixing her with one of his beady eyes. The other floated in space.

  “Brother, I don’t know that it’s your job to assign Kenya a purpose. But, Kenya, that sounds like all the more reason,” said Sheila, while Johnbrown nodded vigorously.

  Kenya’s favorite Day was Cindalou Waters, a pale dumpling of a woman from North Carolina who had only recently joined the group. Cindalou was the first black person Kenya had met with freckles; she also had what Kenya was forbidden to refer to as “good hair,” too soft to hold an Afro. Where Brother Camden smelled faintly homeless, Cindalou came into the living room on those Saturday nights in a delightful cloud of strawberry scent, saying “Hi y’all doin’?” and pronouncing everything “wunnnnduhful.”

  Sheila had met Cindalou at the library, where she’d come nearly every week for months, checking out all of the history books about black people that she could carry away. Cindalou was somewhat of an exotic for Kenya’s mother. Sheila didn’t have family in the South, had not spent the requisite summers down there with cousins that the rest of her generation reminisced about. Even Johnbrown had stories about mean chickens in Georgia and his great-uncle-with-a-shotgun. Sheila had only a secret love for Gone With the Wind, of which no amount of race pride reeducation could cure her; she had Gone With the Wind and a soft spot for Cindalou Waters.

  Kenya could tell that Johnbrown, on the other hand, did not seem to care for Cindalou. His face would often fall flat when she spoke, or else he would wear a tight smile. Kenya wondered if it was because she was so light-skinned. Despite being a greenish-tan color himself, with slanted eyes that ignorant black people admiringly called “chinky,” and per
haps because of his parents, his views about fair-skinned black folks were firm. (Once Kenya had asked him what he would be if he couldn’t be black and he had said, “Light-skinned.”)

  “Why doesn’t Baba like Cindalou?” Kenya asked her mother one day as they were driving to school, a few months after Cindalou had joined the Days.

  “What makes you think he doesn’t like her?” Sheila asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kenya said, trying to put her feeling into words. The ride was short and they were already in front of the tall school building with grated windows, the schoolyard full of running, screaming children who made Kenya want to go home and crawl under the bed.

  Suddenly Sheila said, “I’ll level with you. Your father does not care for Cindalou.”

  Kenya tried not to act excited, but she loved it when her mother “leveled with her.” It did not happen often.

  “Why not? Why doesn’t he like her?”

  “Well,” said her mother over the sputtering idle of the car, “you know, a lot of men don’t like you to have your own friends. Even good men.”

  Kenya thought about that as she walked into the schoolyard, where the classes were lining up. She was so wrapped up in the riddle of it—that her father, who had Robert and Earl and his wino philosophers, would deny Sheila Cindalou—that she walked right over to Fatima McCullers when she called out to her. She didn’t notice until it was too late that Fatima was huddled with L’Tisha, as if plotting some meanness. Aliyah, the white-looking Sudanese girl, often their audience, stood there as well in one of her oddly formal dresses, pink with a white sash.

  Kenya walked over, careful not to trip over her feet. “What?” she said, putting a hand on her hip.

  L’Tisha took her traditional morning Blow Pop out of her mouth and said something so quietly that Kenya couldn’t make it out.

  “Huh?” she said, trying to sound more snotty than confused.

  L’Tisha spoke again, saying something that sounded like “boogeddy-boo.” Fatima and Aliyah elbowed each other and laughed. Nearby, Kenya could see Duvall trying to curry favor with some of the cooler boys in the class, showing them some small metal object, surely last year’s prized Christmas present.

  “I can’t hear you,” Kenya said, trying not to whine. She scanned the yard for Charlena, who was nowhere to be found, worrying that she would not have a line partner.

  “I thought you understood African!” L’Tisha yelled. Aliyah clapped her hands while Fatima held her belly and emitted a fake laugh. Duvall giggled. In that moment, the most Kenya could do as a Day was to not kick him in the stomach.

  * * *

  Every day of that grim week L’Tisha was nearby, muttering “boogeddy-boo.” And so, as was often the case, the Seven Days meeting was the thing Kenya most looked forward to. On Saturday night, Kenya washed up quickly after dinner and hovered by the windows, waiting for everyone to arrive.

  Yaya and Alfred came first, bearing a bottle of wine for the libation and Alfred’s personal six-pack of beer, which he only occasionally shared.

  “Hey, Good People,” said Yaya on her way into the kitchen to see Sheila. Alfred quietly muttered something to Kenya that sounded like Hunchwa but seemed to be “Hello.”

  “Ho!” said Johnbrown. He fought with one of Sheila’s massive hanging plants to rifle through the records on the shelf underneath it. He liked to play music as the Days were arriving. Tonight it was a howling jazz record, ironically titled Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe.

  “Baba, that was terrible,” Kenya said when it ended. Finally the Days had all gathered and she was tucked between Cindalou and Sheila on the scratchy plaid love seat, which had been Sheila’s mother’s only piece of living room furniture back in the projects.

  “I’m gonna have to agree,” said Cindalou. “I’m gonna have to say that is the opposite of music.”

  “Well, what I’m gonna have to say is…” began Johnbrown with a thin smile.

  “Oh, here we go,” said Yaya. She sat on the arm of the easy chair where Alfred sat, while the other men, Earl, Robert, and Brother Camden, sat on the large couch, trying their best not to touch one another. Johnbrown preferred to stand, sometimes pacing, sometimes lean-sitting on the radiator.

  “We ain’t even done the libation yet,” said Sheila.

  “I take it back,” said Cindalou.

  Johnbrown opened and closed his mouth; he seemed chastened by the missed opportunity to give a lecture.

  “From the Creator, for the martyrs,” Robert said.

  Anyone could start the meeting by intoning the libation. Robert, who liked to move things along, often did. Sheila always opened and poured the glass of wine. Now she passed it around. Each—except Kenya—drank from it and poured it into a bowl that was passed along as well.

  “From the Creator, for Malcolm X,” said Sheila.

  “From the Creator, for George Jackson,” said Yaya.

  Denmark Vesey, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, Nat Turner. Everyone had a favorite martyr; most were names Kenya had known since she was very small. Most of the people named were black, but Yaya liked to mention “the white John Brown” when she was in a certain kind of mood. Brother Camden also sometimes broke tradition by mentioning what he called Indigenous Peoples.

  “From the Creator, for Geronimo,” he said tonight.

  “From the Creator, for Martin Luther King,” said Cindalou.

  A deflated-ball disapproval sound left Kenya’s father’s mouth.

  “Johnbrown,” warned Sheila.

  “I’m sorry, sister,” he said to Cindalou. “Pay me no mind.”

  “Did I say something wrong?” she said.

  “JB, I’m not sure I ever understood what your problem with the brother was,” said Earl. “He spoke out against the war. He spoke up for workers’ rights.”

  “I just feel like … a martyr with a McDonald’s commercial?” said Johnbrown. Kenya could tell he was trying to seem calmer than he was. Johnbrown could get very excited about the topic of Martin Luther King and how overrated he was. Kenya noticed that Martin Luther King, Jr., was the only one of the martyrs she had learned about in school.

  “That’s not his fault,” said Sheila. “He’s not in the commercial. And the reason is that he got shot to death minding his own business.”

  “Maybe we should move on,” Johnbrown said.

  Cindalou hadn’t said anything. Now she eyed Johnbrown, her lips twisted slightly. “Should I say somebody else?”

  “Girl, don’t you listen to this nonsense,” said Sheila. “Just pass that glass over here.” The two women grinned at each other over Kenya’s head. (Still, after that meeting, Cindalou stuck to Medgar Evers.)

  Johnbrown liked to keep everyone guessing with the martyrs he himself named, and he also liked to do his offering last. That way he could begin the meeting with a long story about a democratically elected Latin American president that the CIA had secretly murdered, or a black scientist who’d died on the steps of a segregated hospital.

  At the same meeting where Cindalou ventured King, Johnbrown mentioned his favorite martyr.

  “From the Creator, for Julian Carlton,” he said.

  “Now, who is that?” murmured Cindalou.

  It was then that Kenya realized she didn’t know who he was either. His name had been coming up for some time but had run in with the other ones whose deeds had been animatedly explained to her. Now she steeled herself to follow the intricacies of a story involving the Michigan State Police or FBI task forces.

  “What, you mean you don’t know the name of Frank Lloyd Wright’s butler?” asked Sheila, rolling her eyes.

  “That doesn’t make his sacrifice any less,” said Johnbrown, “that he was a butler. In fact it makes it more.”

  “Brother, go on and tell us your gruesome story again,” said Yaya.

  “So this was a brother from Barbados,” said Kenya’s father. “He turned up in Wisconsin in … 1904, to work for this famous white architect, pr
obably the most famous American architect. Obviously after slavery, but in terms of the way black servants were being treated … anyway, he went to work for this white man in the middle of nowhere, this guy who everybody thought was a genius, who was, of course, incredibly arrogant. He was so arrogant that he left his wife and five kids—”

  “That’s the worst part of this whole story to me,” said Sheila.

  “And five kids,” Johnbrown repeated, “and he built this house to live with his mistress, who also ran off from her husband with her kids. Anyway, one day the architect was out of town and the mistress, who probably treated him like crap, fired the brother. I mean, in those days you could only imagine why he was getting fired. I mean, even today some of these insane mammers I work for—” Mammers was Johnbrown’s substitute, Kenya knew, for motherfucker (which she sometimes whispered to herself on the toilet, to see if the sky would fall).

  “So he got fired and then he killed everybody,” finished Sheila.

  “How did he kill them?” asked Kenya. They all turned to her as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  Johnbrown looked at her. “He set the house on fire and then stood in the main doorway with an ax in case anyone tried to escape.”

  “You mean he chopped them up?” Kenya said. She saw her mother looking at her father. He looked back.

  “Yes,” he said to Kenya.

  “And what happened to him?” Yaya asked. “Did Wright’s wife give him a medal?”

  “Well, it’s confusing. He tried to drink acid, but it didn’t kill him. And then he supposedly died of malnutrition in prison. My guess is they beat him to death.”

  “And this was better than integration?” said Cindalou, who had been listening with wide eyes.

  “First of all,” said Johnbrown with a dramatic sigh, “folks act like King did everything on his own, when you got your Bayard Rustin and Fannie Lou Hamer and a bunch of other nameless folks who made all of that happen. And second of all, as someone who grew up with white people, I’m not convinced that desegregation is the answer to our problems.”