I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (18 page)

Seen through the open door Dad’s Hudson sat in lonely splendor. He hadn’t left me, after all. That meant, of course, that I hadn’t been drugged. I immediately felt better. No one followed me into the yard where the late afternoon sun had tenderized the midday harshness. I decided to sit in his car and wait for him since he couldn’t have gone far. I knew he was with a woman, and the more I thought about it, it was easy to figure which one of the gay señoritas he had taken away. There had been a small neat woman with very red lips who clung to him avidly when we first arrived. I hadn’t thought of it at the time but had simply recorded her pleasure. In the car, in reflection, I played the scene back. She had been the first to rush to him, and that was when he quickly said “This is my daughter” and “She speaks Spanish.” If Dolores knew, she would crawl up in her blanket of affectations and die circumspectly. The thought of her mortification kept me company for a long time, but the sounds of music and laughter and Cisco Kid screams broke into my pleasant revengeful reveries. It was, after all, getting dark and Dad must have been beyond my reach in one of the little cabins out back. An awkward fear crept up slowly as I contemplated sitting in the car all night alone. It was a fear distantly related to the earlier panic. Terror did not engulf me wholly, but crawled along my mind like a tedious paralysis. I could roll up the windows and lock the door. I could lie down on the floor of the car and make myself small and invisible. Impossible! I tried to staunch the flood of fear. Why was I afraid of the Mexicans? After all, they had been kind to me and surely my father wouldn’t allow his daughter to be ill treated. Wouldn’t he? Would he? How could he leave me in that raunchy bar and go off with his woman? Did he care what happened to me? Not a damn, I decided, and opened the flood gates for hysteria. Once the tears began, there was no stopping them. I was to die, after all, in a Mexican dirt yard. The special person that I was, the intelligent mind that God and I had created together, was to depart this life without recognition or contribution. How pitiless were the Fates and how helpless was this poor Black girl.

I made out his shadow in the near gloom and was about to jump out and run to him when I noticed that he was being propelled by the small woman I had seen earlier and a man. He wobbled and lurched but they held him up firmly and guided his staggering toward the door of the
cantina.
Once he got inside we might never leave. I got out of the car and went to them. I asked Dad if he wouldn’t like to get into the car and rest a little. He focused enough to recognize me and answered that that was exactly what he wanted; he was a little tired and he’d like to rest before we set out for his place. He told his friends his wishes in Spanish and they steered him to the car. When I opened the front door he said No, he’d lie down on the back seat for a little while. We got him into the car and tried to arrange his long legs comfortably. He began snoring even as we tugged at him. It sounded like the beginning of a deep and long sleep, and a warning that, after all, we were to spend the night in the car, in Mexico.

I thought fast as the couple laughed and jabbered at me in incomprehensible Spanish. I had never driven a car before, but I had watched carefully and my mother was declared to be the best driver in San Francisco.
She
declared it, at least. I was superbly intelligent and had good physical coordination. Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars, why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson? I asked the Mexican man to turn the car around, again in my exquisite high school Spanish, and it took about fifteen minutes to make myself understood. The man must have asked me if I could drive, but I didn’t know the Spanish for the verb “to drive,” so I kept repeating
“Si, si”
and
“Gracias”
until he got in and headed the car toward the highway. He showed his understanding of the situation by his next action. He left the motor running. I put my foot on the accelerator and clutch, jiggled the gearshift and raised both feet. With an ominous roar we leaped out of the yard.

As we shook onto the shelf of the road the car nearly stalled and I stamped both feet again on the pedal and clutch. We made no progress and an awful amount of noise, but the motor didn’t stop. I understood then that in order to go forward I would have to lift my feet off the pedals, and if I did so abruptly the car would shake like a person with St. Vitus Dance. With that complete understanding of the principle of motor locomotion, I drove down the mountainside toward Calexico, some fifty miles away. It is hard to understand why my vivid imagination and tendency toward scariness didn’t provide me with gory scenes of bloody crashes on a
risco de Mexico.
I can only think that my every sense was concentrated on steering the bucking car.

When it became totally dark, I fumbled over knobs, twisting and pulling until I succeeded in finding the lights. The car slowed down as I centered on that search, and I forgot to step on the pedals, and the motor gurgled, the car pitched and the engine stopped. A bumbling sound from the back told me that Dad had fallen off the seat (I had been expecting this to happen for miles). I pulled the hand brake and carefully considered my next move. It was useless to think of asking Dad. The fall on the floor had failed to stir him, and I would be unable to do so. No car was likely to pass us—I hadn’t seen any motor vehicles since we passed the guard’s house early in the day. We were headed downhill, so I reasoned that with any luck we might coast right up to Calexico—or at least to the guard. I waited until I formulated an approach to him before releasing the brake. I would stop the car when we reached the kiosk and put on my siddity air. I would speak to him like the peasant he was. I would order him to start the car and then tip him a quarter or even a dollar from Dad’s pocket before driving on.

With my plans solidly made, I released the brake and we began coasting down the slope. I also pumped the clutch and the accelerator, hoping that the action would speed our descent, and wonder of wonders the motor started again. The Hudson went crazy on the hill. It was rebelling and would have leaped over the side of the mountain, to all our destruction, in its attempt to unseat me had I relaxed control for a single second. The challenge was exhilarating. It was me, Marguerite, against the elemental opposition. As I twisted the steering wheel and forced the accelerator to the floor I was controlling Mexico, and might and aloneness and inexperienced youth and Bailey Johnson, Sr., and death and insecurity, and even gravity.

After what seemed like one thousand and one nights of challenge the mountain began to level off and we started passing scattered lights on either side of the road. No matter what happened after that I had won. The car began to slow down as if it had been tamed and was going to give up without grace. I pumped even harder and we finally reached the guard’s box. I pulled on the hand brake and came to a stop. There would be no need for me to speak to the guard since the motor was running, but I had to wait until he looked into the car and gave me the signal to continue. He was busy talking to people in a car facing the mountain I had just conquered. The light from his hut showed him bent from the waist with his upper torso completely swallowed by the mouth of the open window. I held the car in instant readiness for the next lap of our journey. When the guard unfolded himself and stood erect I was able to see he was not the same man of the morning’s embarrassment. I was understandably taken aback at the discovery and when he saluted sharply and barked
“Pasa”
I released the brake, put both feet down and lifted them a bit too sharply. The car outran my intention. It leaped not only forward but left as well, and with a few angry spurts propelled itself onto the side of the car just pulling off. The crash of scraping metal was followed immediately by a volley of Spanish hurled at me from all directions. Again, strangely enough, fear was absent from my sensations. I wondered in this order: was I hurt, was anyone else hurt, would I go to jail, what were the Mexicans saying, and finally, had Dad awakened? I was able to answer the first and last concern promptly. Buoyed by the adrenalin that had flooded my brain as we careened down the mountainside, I had never felt better, and my father’s snores cut through the cacophony of protestations outside my window. I got out of the car, intending to ask for the
policías
, but the guard beat me to the punch. He said a few words, which were strung together like beads, but one of them was
policías.
As the people in the other car fumbled out, I tried to recover my control and said loudly and too graciously,
“Gracias, señor.”
The family, some eight or more people of every age and size, walked around me, talking heatedly and sizing me up as if I might have been a statue in a city park and they were a flock of pigeons. One said
“Joven,”
meaning I was young. I tried to see which one was so intelligent. I would direct my conversation to him or her, but they shifted positions so quickly it was impossible to make the person out. Then another suggested
“Borracho.”
Well, certainly, I must have smelled like a tequila farm, since Dad had been breathing out the liquor in noisy respirations and I had kept the windows closed against the cold night air. It wasn’t likely that I would explain that to these strangers even if I could. Which I couldn’t Someone got the idea to look into the car, and a scream brought us all up short. People—they seemed to be in the hundreds—crowded to the windows and more screams erupted. I thought for a minute that something awful might have happened. Maybe at the time of the crash … I, too, pushed to the window to see, but then I remembered the rhythmic snores, and coolly walked away. The guard must have thought he had a major crime on his hands. He made moves and sounds like “Watch her” or “Don’t let her out of your sight.” The family came back, this time not as close but more menacing, and when I was able to sort out one coherent question,
“Quién es?”
I answered dryly and with all the detachment I could summon,
“Mi padre.”
Being a people of close family ties and weekly fiestas they suddenly understood the situation. I was a poor little girl thing who was caring for my drunken father, who had stayed too long at the fair.
Pobrecita.

The guard, the father and one or two small children began the herculean job of waking Dad. I watched coolly as the remaining people paraded, making figure eights around me and their badly bruised automobile. The two men shook and tugged and pulled while the children jumped up and down on my father’s chest. I credit the children’s action for the success of the effort. Bailey Johnson, Sr., woke up in Spanish.
“Qué tiene? Qué pasa? Qué quiere?”
Anyone else would have asked, “Where am I?” Obviously, this was a common Mexican experience. When I saw he was fairly lucid I went to the car, calmly pushed the people away, and said from the haughty level of one who has successfully brought to heel a marauding car and negotiated a sneaky mountain, “Dad, there’s been an accident.” He recognized me by degrees and became my pre-Mexican-fiesta father.

“An accident, huh? Er, who was at fault? You, Marguerite? Errer was it you?”

It would have been futile to tell him of my mastering his car and driving it nearly fifty miles. I didn’t expect or even need, now, his approbation.

“Yes, Dad, I ran into a car.”

He still hadn’t sat up completely, so he couldn’t know where we were. But from the floor where he rested, as if that was the logical place to be, he said, “In the glove compartment. The insurance papers. Get them and er give them to the police, and then come back.”

The guard stuck his head in the other door before I could form a scathing but polite response. He asked Dad to get out of the car. Never at a loss, my father reached in the glove compartment, and took out the folded papers and the half bottle of liquor he had left there earlier. He gave the guard one of his pinch-backed laughs, and descended, by joints, from the car. Once on the ground he towered over the angry people. He took a quick reading of his location and the situation, and then put his arm around the other driver’s shoulder. He kindly, not in the least condescendingly, bent to speak to the guard, and the three men walked into the hut. Within easy minutes, laughter burst from the shack and the crisis was over, but so was the enjoyment.

Dad shook hands with all the men, patted the children and smiled winsomely at the women. Then, and without looking at the damaged cars, he eased himself behind the steering wheel. He called me to get in, and as if he had not been helplessly drunk a half hour earlier, he drove unerringly toward home. He said he didn’t know I could drive, and how did I like his car? I was angry that he had recovered so quickly and felt let down that he didn’t appreciate the greatness of my achievement. So I answered yes to both the statement and the question. Before we reached the border he rolled down the window, and the fresh air, which was welcome, was uncomfortably cold. He told me to get his jacket from the back seat and put it on. We drove into the city in a cold and private silence.

31

Dolores was sitting, it seemed, in the same place as the night before. Her pose was so similar it was hard to believe she had gone to sleep, eaten breakfast or even patted her firm hairdo. Dad said sportily, “Hello, kid,” and walked toward the bathroom. I greeted her: “Hello, Dolores” (we had long dropped the pretense of familial relationship). She responded, briefly but politely, and threaded her attention through the eye of her needle. She was now prudently making cute kitchen curtains, which would soon starchily oppose the wind. Having nothing more to say, I went to my room. Within minutes an argument ensued in the living area that was as audible to me as if the separating walls were muslin sheets.

“Bailey, you’ve let your children come between us.”

“Kid, you’re too sensitive. The children, er, my children, can’t come between us, unless you let them.”

“How can I stop it?”—she was crying—“They’re doing it.” Then she said, “You gave your daughter your jacket.”

“Was I supposed to let her freeze to death? Is that what you’d like, kid?” He laughed. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“Bailey, you know I wanted to like your children, but they …” She couldn’t bring herself to describe us.

“Why the hell don’t you say what you mean? You’re a pretentious little bitch, aren’t you? That’s what Marguerite called you, and she’s right.”

I shivered to think how that revelation would add to her iceberg of hate for me.

“Marguerite can go to hell, Bailey Johnson. I’m marrying you, I don’t want to marry your children.”

“More pity for you, you unlucky sow. I am going out. Goodnight.”

The front door slammed. Dolores cried quietly and broke the piteous whimpers with sniffles and a few dainty nose blows into her handkerchief.

In my room, I thought my father was mean and cruel. He had enjoyed his Mexican holiday, and still was unable to proffer a bit of kindness to the woman who had waited patiently, busying herself with housewifely duties. I was certain that she knew he’d been drinking, and she must have noticed that although we were away over twelve hours, we hadn’t brought one tortilla into the house.

I felt sorry and even a little guilty. I had enjoyed myself, too. I had been eating
chicharrones
while she probably sat praying for his safe return. I had defeated a ear and a mountain as she pondered over my father’s fidelity. There was nothing fair or kind about the treatment, so I decided to go out and console her. The idea of spreading mercy, indiscriminately, or, to be more correct, spreading it on someone I really didn’t care about, enraptured me. I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful. I stood in the center of the floor but Dolores never looked up. She worked the thread through the flowered cloth as if she were sewing the torn ends of her life together. I said, in my Florence Nightingale voice, “Dolores, I don’t mean to come between you and Dad. I wish you’d believe me.” There, it was done. My good deed balanced the rest of the day.

With her head still bent she said, “No one was speaking to you, Marguerite. It is rude to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.”

Surely she wasn’t so dumb as to think these paper walls were made of marble. I let just the tiniest shred of impudence enter my voice. “I’ve never eavesdropped in my life. A deaf person would have been hard put not to hear what you said. I thought I’d tell you that I have no interest in coming between you and my father. That’s all.”

My mission had failed and succeeded. She refused to be pacified, but I had shown myself in a favorable and Christian light. I turned to go.

“No, that’s not all.” She looked up. Her face was puffy and her eyes swollen red. “Why don’t you go back to your mother? If you’ve got one.” Her tone was so subdued she might have been telling me to cook a pot of rice. If I’ve got one? Well, I’d tell her.

“I’ve got one and she’s worlds better than you, prettier, too, and intelligent and—”

“And”—her voice keened to a point—“she’s a whore.” Maybe if I had been older, or had had my mother longer, or understood Dolores’ frustration more deeply, my response would not have been so violent. I know that the awful accusation struck not so much at my filial love as at the foundation of my new existence. If there was a chance of truth in the charge, I would not be able to live, to continue to live with Mother, and I so wanted to.

I walked to Dolores, enraged at the threat. “I’m going to slap you for that, you silly old bitch.” I warned her and I slapped her. She was out of the chair like a flea, and before I could jump back she had her arms around me. Her hair was under my chin and she wrapped her arms, it seemed two or three times, around my waist. I had to push her shoulders with all my strength to unlock the octopus hold. Neither of us made a sound until I finally shoved her back onto the sofa. Then she started screaming. Silly old fool. What did she expect if she called my mother a whore? I walked out of the house. On the steps I felt something wet on my arm and looked down to find blood. Her screams still sailed through the evening air like skipping stones, but I was bleeding. I looked carefully on my arm, but there was no cut. I put my arm back to my waist and it brought fresh blood as I pulled it away. I
was
cut. Before I could fully understand, or comprehend enough to respond, Dolores opened the door, screaming still, and upon seeing me, instead of slamming the door she ran like a mad woman down the stairs. I saw a hammer in her hand, and without wondering if I would be able to take it from her, I fled. Dad’s car sat in a yard twice in one day offering magnificent refuge. I jumped in, rolled up the windows and locked the door. Dolores flitted around the car, screaming like a banshee, her face bedizened with fury.

Daddy Bailey and the neighbors he was visiting responded to the screams and crowded around her. She shouted that I had jumped on her and tried to kill her and Bailey had better not bring me back in the house. I sat in the car, feeling the blood slip down to my buttocks as the people quieted and cooled her rage. My father motioned to me to open the window, and when I did he said he would take Dolores inside but I should stay in the car. He would be back to attend to me.

The events of the day swarmed over me and made my breathing difficult. After all the decisive victories of the day my life was to end in sticky death. If Dad stayed a very long time in the house, I was too afraid to go to the door and ask for him, and besides, my feminine training would not allow me to walk two steps with blood on my dress. As I had always feared, no, known, the trials had been for nothing. (The dread of futility has been my lifelong plague.) Excitement, apprehension, release and anger had drained me of mobility. I waited for Fate, the string puller, to dictate my movements.

My father came down the steps in a few minutes and angrily slammed into the car. He sat in a corner of blood and I gave no warning. He must have been pondering what to do with me when he felt the damp on his trousers.

“What the hell is this?” He hunched himself up on a hip and brushed the pants. His hand showed red in the porch’s cast-off light. “What is this, Marguerite?”

I said with a coldness that would have done him proud, “I’ve been cut.”

“What do you mean, cut?”

It only lasted a precious minute, but I managed once to see my father perplexed.

“Cut.” It was so delicious. I didn’t mind draining away into the plaid seat cushions.

“When? By whom?”

Daddy, even in a critical moment, wouldn’t say “By who?”

“Dolores cut me.” The economy of words showed my contempt for them all.

“How badly?”

I would have reminded him that I was no doctor and therefore was ill equipped to do a thorough examination, but impudence would have diminished my lead.

“I don’t know.”

He put the car in gear, smoothly, and I enviously realized that although I had driven his car I didn’t know how to drive.

I thought we were en route to an emergency hospital, and so with serenity I made plans for my death and will. As I faded into time’s dateless night, I would say to the doctor, “The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on …” and my soul would escape gracefully. Bailey was to have my books, my Lester Young records and my love from the next world. I had groggily surrendered myself to oblivion when the car stopped.

Dad said, “O.K., kid, errer let’s go.”

We were in a strange driveway, and even before I got out of the car he was on the steps of a typical southern California ranch-type house. The doorbell chimed, and he beckoned me up the steps. When the door opened he signaled me to stand outside. After all, I was dripping, and I could see the living room was carpeted. Dad went in but didn’t quite close the door, and a few minutes later a woman called to me in a whisper from the side of the house. I followed her into a recreation room, and she asked me where I was hurt. She was quiet and her concern seemed sincere. I pulled off my dress and we both looked into the open flesh on my side. She was as pleased as I was disappointed that the edges of the wound had begun to clot. She washed witch hazel over the rupture and taped me tightly with extra-long Band-Aids. Then we went into the living room. Dad shook hands with the man he’d been talking to and thanked my emergency nurse and we left.

In the car he explained that the couple were his friends and he had asked the wife to look at me. He said he told her if the laceration wasn’t too deep he would be grateful if she treated it. Otherwise he’d have to take me to a hospital. Could I imagine the scandal if people found out that his, Bailey Johnson’s, daughter had been cut by his lady friend? He was after all a Mason, an Elk, a naval dietician and the first Negro deacon in the Lutheran church. No Negro in the city would be able to hold his head up if our misfortune became common knowledge. While the lady (I never knew her name) dressed my wound he had telephoned other friends and made arrangements for me to spend the night with them. At another strange trailer, in yet another mobile park, I was taken in and given night clothes and a bed. Dad said he’d see me around noon the next day.

I went to bed and slept as if my death wish had come true. In the morning neither the empty and unfamiliar surroundings nor the stiffness of my side bothered me. I made and ate a big breakfast and sat down with a slick magazine to wait for Dad.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

When my father came, with a jacket thrown over the striped cotton uniform he wore as a naval dietician, he asked how I felt, gave me a dollar and a half and a kiss, and said he’d drop by late in the evening. He laughed as usual. Nervous?

Alone, I imagined the owners returning to find me in their house, and realized that I didn’t even remember what they looked like. How could I bear their contempt or their pity? If I disappeared Dad would be relieved, not to mention Dolores. I hesitated nearly too long. What would I do? Did I have the nerve to commit suicide? If I jumped in the ocean wouldn’t I come up all bloated like the man Bailey saw in Stamps? The thought of my brother made me pause. What would he do? I waited a patience and another patience and then he ordered me to leave. But don’t kill yourself. You can always do that if things get bad enough.

I made a few tuna sandwiches, lumpy with pickles, put a Band-Aid supply in my pocket, counted my money (I had over three dollars plus some Mexican coins) and walked out. When I heard the door slam I knew the decision had jelled. I had no key and nothing on earth would induce me to stand around until Dad’s friends returned to pityingly let me back in.

Now that I was out free, I set to thinking of my future. The obvious solution to my homelessness concerned me only briefly. I could go home to Mother, but I couldn’t. I could never succeed in shielding the gash in my side from her. She was too perceptive not to notice the crusty Band-Aids and my favoring the wound. And if I failed to hide the wound we were certain to experience another scene of violence. I thought of poor Mr. Freeman, and the guilt which lined my heart, even after all those years, was a nagging passenger in my mind.