This Side of Home (18 page)

I keep singing, even though I'm at the end of the song.

This morning Mom got a phone call from Ms. Thelma's son. He told her that Ms. Thelma passed away in her sleep last night. I haven't seen the old woman in years, but, still, my eyes burn and all I can think of is her house that is now a coffee shop. I want to go back there, to what was. I want to sit with her and listen to her remake endings to stories she could no longer remember.

I walk around the corner to Jackson Avenue and slowly make my way down the long street. I get to Daily Blend, but I don't go in. Not right away. I wait for the crowd to thin out, wait till the tables are free and the line is short. When I step into the coffee shop, I go to the counter and order tea.

“What size would you like?”

“Oh, uh, small,” I say. I pay for the tea and wait.

I had forgotten about my tears until the girl taking my order gives me a sympathetic smile and says, “This pollen is crazy, isn't it? My eyes were all messed up yesterday, too. Allergy season is upon us.”

I smile, take the mug, and sit down next to the window at the front of the house. I close my eyes, and I can almost hear Ms. Thelma, feel her. I remember her hugs. How they were just as comforting as chicken noodle soup. I remember the way she made tea. Black, with a teaspoon of honey and two squirts of lemon. I sip. Everything feels and looks so new. There are black-and-white photographs lining the wall. I stand up and walk over to take a closer look.

There is an elderly man sitting at a table next to the wall. I smile.

He nods hello.

I stand at the wall looking at the photos. The pictures are of Portland. The first one I notice is a picture of a street sign that says UNION AVENUE.

“That's what it was called 'fore they named it Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard,” the man says. He chuckles and takes a sip from his mug. “We were all up in arms 'bout them givin' such a sleazy street to an honorable man.” The man tells me about all the many stages MLK has seen—how the street used to
be a haven for car dealerships in the forties and then a strip for prostitutes in the eighties.

He stands up slowly and joins me at the wall. “And this photo right here is what I like to call Portland's Little Harlem.” He points to a picture. “This right here is Louis Armstrong with the owners of Dude Ranch; uh, this one is, uh, Pat Patterson … and
his
name is Sherman Pickett.” He turns away from the gallery and says, “I'm Mr. Washington, by the way.”

“Maya.”

“You're one of the Younger twins, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Your dad is doing good things, very good.”

“Thank you.”

We shake, and his hands feel weak and cold. Mr. Washington walks over to his table and pulls out a chair, motioning for me to join him. I sit down. “Now,” he says. “Where was I? Oh, yes, Dude Ranch.” He takes a sip of his steaming coffee and says, “Dude Ranch was Portland's premier jazz club. It brought in some of the best. Why, even Thelonious Monk played there.”

I don't know who Thelonious Monk is, but he must be someone important. I look back over at the photo. “Where is this?” I ask.

“That there is North Broadway,” he says. “You know, not too far from Williams Avenue.”

“Do you mind if I write this down?” I ask.

“Why, no. Not at all.”

I go into my bag, get my pen and notepad.

Mr. Washington takes another sip of his coffee. “Williams Ave was the heartbeat of the black community back in the forties. All kinds of performances would happen in the clubs—live jazz, tap dancers, talent shows. Yes, indeed. That's why I call it Portland's Harlem,” Mr. Washington says. “And the food. My Lord, the food. There were restaurants that stayed open all night serving that good ole bar-b-que.” Mr. Washington looks at my necklace. He leans forward and squints a little to get a good look, then says, “But I reckon you already know most of this stuff since you're wearing something like that around your neck.”

I look down at my necklace. What is he talking about? I lift it up a little. “This?”

Mr. Washington smiles. “That symbol is no ordinary bird. You know that, right?”

“No, I—it's just a necklace.”

“No, no. It's not just a necklace. That there is the Adinkra symbol from Ghana. Sankofa.”

“Sankofa?”

“It means ‘return and get it.' It's a symbol to
remind us of the importance of remembering our past,” Mr. Washington says. “And not just remembering, but taking lessons from the past and bringing it into the present in order to make progress.”

I hold the necklace in my hand. I can't believe that all this time I'd been carrying something so meaningful with me every day. I say the word in my head a few times. San-ko-fa. Sankofa, sankofa. I write it down.

Mr. Washington stands and goes back to the wall. “Maya, right?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Let's go back and get it.” He points to another photograph. An area shot of the Albina neighborhood. Mr. Washington points to where Emanuel Hospital is. “When Emanuel first expanded, those of us living in the area protested it. Got tired of them moving us out.” He tells me that in the seventies hundreds of homes were destroyed so that the hospital could expand. “An urban renewal project, they called it. Displaced a lot of families. Most of us black, you know.” Mr. Washington sits back down at the table.

I sit across from him and sip my tea, which is cold now.

“And it wasn't the first time the city tried to break us up. In the fifties it was them building that Memorial
Coliseum and in the sixties, I-5. Every decade, it's something. Been that way since the Vanport flood. You know about the flood, yes?”

“I know there was a flood that destroyed an area where a lot of black people lived.”

“That's all that's left of the story, huh?” Mr. Washington leans in to the table. “A lot of blacks migrated to Portland during World War II because there were a lot of jobs in the shipyards. Vanport was a temporary settlement for war workers and their families,” he says. “In 1948 the Columbia River flooded Vanport. I believe they say seventeen thousand people were left homeless—most of us black.” Mr. Washington shakes his head at the memory. “Before the flood actually happened, Portland's Housing Authority told the people everything would be fine, that they'd be warned if necessary. But nothing was fine. That levee that the government built, it broke, and a ten-foot wall of water washed the city away. Now, where were blacks supposed to go after that? Why, in 1940 there was roughly, oh, about eighteen hundred blacks in Oregon. I'm told by '48 there was close to fifteen thousand. Portland didn't know what to do with us.”

I can't believe I've never heard any of this. Not even from Dad.

Mr. Washington looks out the window, then back at me. “And after the war, we couldn't get no work,
couldn't buy no homes. We were banned from whole neighborhoods.” He leans back in his chair. The history-book man takes one last sip of his coffee, turning the cup all the way up to get the last drop. He laughs to himself at a joke only he knows and says, “But then Berry came on the scene. You know about Bill Berry, don't you?”

I try to think fast. I know the name, I know the name. Just when it comes to me, Mr. Washington says, “He was the president of the Urban League. They called him here from New York, thinking he'd come and help them solve their Negro problem. Wanted him to convince us to leave, get the blacks who had come to work in the shipyards to go back to wherever we were from. But Berry had another plan.”

Mr. Washington takes out a handkerchief to wipe his nose. “He used to say to them white folks, ‘You can't have it both ways. Can't call us lazy but on the other hand won't let us work.'” He closes his eyes and pauses, and I wonder if he can hear these words as he tells them to me. “He'd say, ‘If you arrange it so they don't have jobs, then you are setting up a system where you will have to support them.' That's what he'd tell 'em. He'd say, ‘They either gonna steal or beg, so your options are to give them an opportunity to work and earn their rightful wage or support them.'”

Mr. Washington laughs loud and long. “And you
know, some people heard him. They got it, and they started hiring us and housing us, but many of them paid for it—whites who treated black folk friendly weren't too popular. Not everyone wanted blacks to thrive here.”

“I never knew this kind of thing existed in Portland,” I say.

“Fear exists everywhere,” he tells me. “There are always man-made borders—seen and unseen—to keep certain folk in or out. Like the Laurelhurst pillars.”

“The stone pillars by the park?”

“They built that section of the city to be homes for the high class. Restrictions were put on that side of town.”

“What do you mean?”

“The sale of alcohol was prohibited, there couldn't be any apartments, and no homes were to be sold to the Chinese or Japanese or black folk.” Mr. Washington's voice gets real serious, real stern. “Now I've never known there to be a restriction on the selling of alcohol where the black folk live. What you think that means?”

Mr. Washington leans back in his chair. “But we had help. You know, every struggle has allies. Ah, let's see, Russell, uh, Russell Payton, a white civil rights leader, and then there was Hatfield—the
governor in, oh, I think it was '59 and well into the sixties. Yes, yes, we have had and still have allies,” he says.

The coffee shop is getting crowded again, and people are walking around looking for tables to sit at. “I guess we should be neighborly and let someone else have a turn,” Mr. Washington says. He crumples his napkin and backs away from the table.

“Thank you for talking to me,” I say.

We stand, push our chairs in, and take our mugs to the rack for dirty dishes. “You're welcome,” he says. “You look just like your mother,” he tells me. “Tell Yvette and Thomas that I said hello, okay?”

As we walk to the door, Mr. Washington says, “It's important to know the story. Your story. Keep asking questions. Make folk tell you.”

“I will.”

We walk out of the door, onto Jackson Avenue, and go opposite ways. I turn quickly, and call out to him. “Mr. Washington, how do you feel about this?” I point out at the block, the traffic, the shops and galleries.

“Most of these folk are just good people trying to make a livin', I suppose. If having them here means more stop signs and handicapped-accessible sidewalks, then so be it. Those of us black folk who do own our homes, who aren't itching to sell, have seen
the value of our property rise. It's not all bad. Nothing ever is,” Mr. Washington says. “Now, just looking at it from a business standpoint—they need us and we need them. They need us to come in to their stores, and we need them to come out into the community and get involved.”

Cars drive by looking for spaces to park. A long line of cyclists ride, single file, down the bike lane. “Thanks again for talking with me,” I say.

“Anytime. Anytime. When you want some more, just come on by. I get my cup of joe once a day,” he tells me. “You have a good day now, you hear?” Mr. Washington walks away.

I go back into the coffee shop, ask to speak to the owner. She wipes her hands on her apron and shakes my hand. “Hi, I'm Mandy. How can I help you?”

“I'm Maya. I'm here representing Richmond High School,” I tell her. “I'd like to invite you to participate in our block party. Do you have a moment to talk?”

Essence is over, and we are wasting a Sunday by eating every kind of junk food in the house and watching a marathon of the most depressing made-for-TV movies ever. A commercial comes on for the beauty school that's downtown.

“Turn that up!” Essence sits up on the bed, grabs a pen from my nightstand, and writes the number down on one of the pages of her hair magazine. “I've been meaning to look them up. I'm thinking about applying there.”

“Why?” I ask. Like I don't know the answer.

“Maya, I'm not going to Spelman, okay? It's not going to work.”

“You don't know that it's not going to work out,” I say.

“I don't have money for a school like that. Plus, I want to do hair. Doesn't it make sense to go to a school that's going to help me do what I want to do?”

“Is that all you want to do? Style hair?” I don't mean to belittle her.

“What are you trying to say?” Essence closes her magazine and tosses it across the bed.

I think about Mr. Washington and everything he told me, think about how he called Williams Avenue Portland's Harlem, and I wonder if it could ever be that again. “If you want to do hair for a living, that's fine. But at least take business classes so you own your own shop and don't just work in one.”

“Maybe I want to ‘just do hair'!” Essence shouts.

“But think of what you could do. You could own the hair salon. Make it a spa, make it upscale. I mean, maybe one day you could open your own place over here and instead of all these white people taking over and buying up everything, another black business could start. That's all I'm saying, you know?”

Essence starts gathering her stuff. “I'm not like you, Maya, with all your big dreams about changing the world. I'm simple. I just want to be regular. I just want a decent job, to get married, have a few kids, enjoy life. I can do that without Spelman.” She starts to walk out but then turns and adds, “I've wanted a lot of things. I wanted to be the first person in my
family to not just go to college, but graduate and then go on and get my master's, and even a PhD.” Essence gets lost in her memories and smiles to herself. “Imagine me, a black girl from Northeast Portland getting a PhD.” She stops smiling and now her voice is sad, almost angry. “You are right, I had lots of goals. Remember how bad I wanted my mom to be sober? I wanted that real bad. But I learned that just 'cause you want something don't mean it's going to happen.”