Thirty-Eight #3
“Children, it’s enough now,” she says. “They’re arresting colored people by the hundreds. I can’t have you going to jail. And God forbid, I don’t want you dying out there.”
“I’d rather die here than in Vietnam,” Rudy says.
“I’d rather that you stay alive.”
“I agree,” I say to Clément. “I know this is important. You’ve already been part of it. Let’s just stay together, keep an eye on the news, see what happens tonight.”
But we lose the fight. The boys leave, Elizabeth, too, and Al and Lionel go with them.
Soon it’s just Nathalie and Ginny and Adele and me again.
We sit for a little while, not cooking or cleaning or watching the news.
Adele says, “Remember how Maman told me I undid a century’s worth of progress for the family when I married Al?
She told me I was selfish. Those things she used to say about Rudy, about keeping him out of the sun. ”
“It was horrible.”
“How could she care about something so shallow?” Nathalie asks. “I mean I understand this country. But still, it’s wrong. Who wouldn’t love Uncle Al?”
“It is wrong,” I say.
Nathalie goes into her old room, stays there for a long time. When she emerges again later, she turns off the television, midbroadcast. “Am I colored?” she asks. The three of us stare at her. “I’m serious,” she says. “Ginny has a darker complexion than I do.”
I shift my weight on the sofa, looking at her. Sea-green eyes. Fair with a smattering of freckles. Dark-brown hair, just barely wavy, sun-lightened at the tips. I say, “You don’t look colored, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I know how I look. How I look is the reason I can’t be out there with my own brother and my own cousins fighting for my community.”
Ginny says, “Your brother, your cousins, your community. You’re answering your own question. Aren’t you?”
“But what if I know who I am but the world can’t see it?” I smile. “What?” she says. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just, that’s my life, too.
I understand you completely. That’s all.
” She’s worked up, her hands in fists. I say, “You wouldn’t have been born in LA if your mother wasn’t colored.
If she were white, she and Bill would have gotten married back in New Orleans and led a completely different life.
And when Delphine agreed to pass as white here …
She could get away with it, but it took a lot from her.
Because it was a denial, a concealment of who she was.
Whether you look colored or not, Delphine’s who gave birth to you, and she’s colored whether she looks it or not.
It’s part of who you are. Why you’re here, in LA, living the life you have. ”
That night, when the group of them gets home, they sit us down and tell us that a twenty-one-year-old colored man named Leon Posey died.
He’d stepped outside a barbershop to see the commotion when the police began shooting.
“For all the news is saying about us,” Clément says, “how savagely Negroes are beating white people, how lawless we are, here’s the first death.
A colored man at the hands of the LAPD.”
Lionel’s been solemn, stationed by the door. After a time, he takes the spot on the sofa next to Ginny and says, “Loitering. Drunkenness. Suspicious character. Being dangerous—whatever the hell that means.”
“What is this?” Ginny asks.
“Reasons for my arrests. From back home.” He rubs his forehead, laces his fingers together.
“I know the mood’s already heavy tonight.
But do y’all mind if I continue?” Everyone nods, tells him to go ahead.
“No honest means of employment. Suspicions of robbery. Take note it’s only suspicions.
As far as I know, no one was actually robbed.
Gambling with cards for money. That one really happened, I’ll give them that.
Disturbing the peace. No clue how, but the good officer said it so it must be true.
There was a time…” He falters. Clears his throat.
“There was a time when I thought for sure I was going to die by the hands of the police.”
We’re silent, listening. Ginny rests her hand on his back.
“Let’s all take a moment for young Leon Posey,” Lionel says. “May he rest in peace.”
Nathalie says, “Should we sing something, Rudy?” And together they sing “Ave Maria,” their harmonies filling the house.
When they’re finished, Adele says, “None of you are to go out onto the streets until it’s over. Al, you hear me? Lionel? Kids? Desmond, even you.”
An extended, pregnant moment. And then Al says, “I agree. We’ll lie low now.
” And Saturday goes by, and Sunday, the streets bloodied with more people shot dead, the phone ringing with news from friends, the television screen covered in smoldering buildings and white men with helmets and guns and badges and colored men and women, at times triumphant, at times handcuffed, filing into police buses, and the sky is still thick with smoke, still the wrong colors, gray on black on red, until, finally, it’s over.