She lived in a blue house. The house had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The house leaned toward the ground and where the floorboards touched the earth they rotted. She was Sherrie, and my best friend.
I lived across the street in the yellow house up high on the knoll. It was a Gothic antique. It had five bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a dining room a kitchen and two bathrooms.l The house stood there a long time,it had secrets. Behind a panel under the stairs; runaway slaves hid for the day on their way up north along the Mississippi. My parents belonged in that house.
They lived next door and along the cul-de-sac in single story bungalows. Their houses had enough bedrooms, big televisions and kitchens filled with gadgets, cigarette smoke and empty coke bottles. They were the neighbors.
It was the mid 1960's, and the civil rights movement was going strong. Tensions and hatred between blacks and whites were fierce. I was unaware, I was seven and the outside world was not in. I had my friend, she was Sherrie and we played whenever we could, mostly at my house because her mom's boyfriend worked nights and slept all day. Sometimes I would play with them, the neighbor kids, but they were tough and yelled and sometimes swore.
My mom took my brother, sister and I to see a movie at a church. We sat on folding chairs, uncomfortable and tired. I jumped when Boo Radley saved Scout. The movie was To Kill a Mockingbird, and I didn't get it.
One summer day, Sherrie was in the city at her grandma's and I played with them. The sun had come out after a rain shower, or maybe we had used the sprinkler. The mud on my feet turned my flip-flops brown. They pointed and yelled, "Nigger lover, even your skin is turning black". I yelled back, "I am NOT" and ran inside. The outside world was creeping in.
Sometimes, Sherrie's mom would call us up, "Can one of you walk Sherrie to the store?" I'd put on my cowboy boots before I left the house. On those hot sultry days of summer, when everyone is bored and cranky, they would taunt us and throw rocks. My boots gave me courage and were weapon material. They had power, and I could yell "Go away or I'll kick you!" We'd reach the store, buy the milk or bread or can of beans, and walk the long way home. The outside world crept in.
I'd do anything for Sherrie, even though I was scared. She was my friend, and she was black.
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I just went looking for an old blog in my blogroll, alexis', but she's taken it down. She grew up down south and had an interesting piece about race relations you might have liked. I just wrote and asked if I could get back in.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm trying to think of a book from the early fifties--by David Goodis or Charles Willeford--that ends pretty much the way this one does.
This is not a surprise ending. It's been earned and is a culmination, not a trick. Those are compliments, because I loathe surprise then-i-woke-up sorts of unfair surprises. This, as I say, has been earned.
If you did research, it's well-hidden, and that's a compliment too because nothing is as dreary as potted history tricked out in memoir drag: "Then the summer of '69: Chappaquiddick, Woodstock, Vietnam, burning cities! I watched it all on our new color tv!"
I like the modesty throughout. That very flat and deceptive opening. Your insistence on that blue reminds me of WC Williams 'Red Wheelbarrow':
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
And, by the way, the fact that your stuff is reminding me of so many other things is also a compliment. Have to post this now and come back for a second bite because I've just about filled the comment box.
If something of yours reminds me of something else, if there are echoes, resonances, that has to be good because the writer is tapping the reader's mind to help float the writing.
ReplyDeleteNotice how that first sentence sets up a young girl's mind with those simple sentences--well, of course you notice! Slick.
I'd capitalize 'Neighbors' wherever it appears and use it instead of 'they' sometimes in order to clarify that Neighbors were everywhere, not just next door, and everywhere the same.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI did not do any research for this piece that I submitted. I actually had started on a different direction which I did look up some information on, but kept coming back to this one. My summer with Sherrie was an astounding summer, and we still write each other. I think of her in that blue Mansfield sided house, and see her now as a wife of a diplomat! A lot can happen.