Family

ALSO BY J. CALIFORNIA COOPER

A Piece of Mine
Homemade Love
Some Soul to Keep
The Matter Is Life
The Wake of the Wind
The Future Has a Past

To all those of you who have encouraged and supported me. I need that.

My daughter, Paris, who lifts me with her support and love.

My sister, Shy, who actually reads my work!

Warren D. Smith, who runs hither and yon, doing things for me so I will have the peace and support to do my work.

To Temma Kaplan, Barnard College, for her large, generous kind heart full of thoughtful doings. Barbara Tatum, Barnard College, for her sweet, thoughtful kindnesses.

Amistad Bookplace of Houston, Texas. Thank you, Rosa and Denice, for all the valuable help you have given me.

To Reid Boates, and Karen and the two little sons that make Reid the most wonderful man/agent I know.

To the wonderful people of my last publisher—Michael Denneny, Michelle Hinkson, Sarah, Keith—all of them who were, and are, always so considerate and kind.

To the most wonderful new people of my new publisher, Doubleday—Sallye Leventhal, Evelyn Hubbard, Arabella, Heidi, Tina, Nancy, and others—with their encouragement, faith, and yes, thoughtful kindnesses. I hope never to let them down. Martha Levin too!

My deep abiding appreciation to Nina Mehta and her assistant, Russell Perreault, my publicists at Doubleday/Anchor, for their consistent attention to, and knowledge of, their profession and mine. They are excellent in their jobs and perfect for me. Besides being efficient, they are very considerate, kind, and quick.

Joarvonia Skipwith has been a thoughtful friend and supporter. I want to thank her.

To Jehovah God. Oh, what would I do without Him?

HISTORY. LIVED, NOT WRITTEN
, is such a thing not to understand always, but to marvel over. Time is so forever that life has many instances when you can say “Once upon a time” thousands of times in one life.

There was a time, long, long ago, when a little man, Egyptian and Greek, came floating up the Nile working on a water vessel going to upper Egypt. With him, another man of African and Italian blood was working his way home to Africa.
Upon reaching the end of the Nile, they were friends, and decided to travel on to Africa together with a caravan. They were yet poor, buying one donkey to share between them, when they started across the Sudan. I can see even now the waves of heat from the close, close sun, rising from the earth’s vast sands, enveloping them. They, in their turbans and clean, ragged robes, looking straight ahead toward their home.

Upon reaching the friend’s home and family, the little man looked and fell in love with his friend’s sister. In time, in spite of her family’s desires, they married. They moved farther down into Africa to live. They had children. After many years, their children had children. And so on and so on.

Came the time when the slave catchers came. Some of the couple’s living children were taken. Stolen, separated and taken to many lands … sold. A few lived on. They had children. These children had children by their owners and others. Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, Irish, Scottish, others. Men from lands all over the world. Until one day, near my time, a girl-child
was born who was to be my grandmother. In time, my mother was born. She lived and was sold, yet again. That is where I was to come from. Ahhh, how sad, how sad for all of us.

So, once upon another time, a long, long time ago, time didn’t mean anything to my people, exceptin it was hard times all the time. And time can look endless. That’s the time I was born.

Some people say we was born slaves … but I don’t blive that. I say I was born a free human being, but I was made a slave right after.

There was only one person in my family I knew at that time. My mother. We knew we blonged together cause she had birthed me. Didn’t know my daddy. Well, we knew him but wasn’t lowed to tell it and I couldn’t call him daddy, when I was able to talk. Didn’t have no grandmothers livin that we knew of, or nothin like that. Mama said she knew her mama had some kin in Africa somewhere, but we didn’t know where and they didn’t know nothin bout us now, nohow. See … her grandmama had been most jet black in her color. Or was it her grandmama’s mother? Anyway, I do know we did start out bein black. Just no family,
cept just us, my mother and me, and we wasn’t together too much cept in the nights and some most of them the Master of the Land came in and pushed me over and out the bed. I’d lay there on the floor with my eyes closed, suckin my thumbs til he was gone. Then she be mine again. I would rock her to sleep and myself too. I cried cause she cried. We was both tired of the life we was livin. I wasn’t nothin but a baby-child but I was still tired of things I didn’t even know what name to call em.

My mother had nine more children for the Master of the Land, but they was all sold when they got to be bout three years old by the Mistress of the Land cause they was too white and lookin like the Master of the Land. That, and the money.

See … my mama had me by a black man so she could have her a brown baby. She wouldn’t tell who my daddy was so they wouldn’t hurt him or sell him cause they hadn’t been let to do no lovin together. She said they was in love but that wasn’t lowed. They didn’t get to be in love nomore tho cause she was watched hard. And I got
punished extra lots. And I was even still his property, even if I wasn his own child!

My mama was very light cause her father had been a Master of the Land. That’s why I didn’t have no grandmother on her side cause Grandmother had killed herself rather than stay in slavery and keep on bringing more babies into the world to be made more slaves or whatever anybody wanted them to be. That’s what I hear tell she said.

Cause my mama hated white folks, she wanted a brown baby. See … my daddy being a dark-skinned man made me a tan color or whatever God would call it. But a brown slave or a white colored slave … what’s the difference? I was about twelve years old when my mama just musta decided she just couldn’t take life no more. All her babies gone cept me. (Don’t care who the daddy was, they was still her children.) And always havin to harken to the white Master of the Land and get another baby to lose out into anywhere-land, she just couldn’t take it no more. See?

The Mistress watched her husband, the Master,
hard, hard, but not hard enough to keep him in her own bed. Cause it’s a thousand excuses to be out the house on a country farm that size. And when my mama gave birth to another white baby the Mistress of the Land wouldn’t hate her husband, uh, uh, she would hate my mama more. And, this the truth. I been in that big house, cleaning or somethin like that, when white ladies be talkin and they say that “them nigger womens is sex fiends” or somethin like that and blame it all on the slave women! Just like they wasn’t slaves or that they had made them babies all by their own selves … or forced them white men!

Anyway … my mama had a hard, hard life. All day she blonged to the Mistress for the work in the big house, and in the nights
he
chose, she blonged to the Master. Didn’t have her own self no time. A somebody with a mind will surely go crazy like that cause no matter what you think, it don’t count for nothin. She didn’t have nothin of her own but me, and I blonged to them too. And I could go anytime! They told her that, often. See … my mama was pretty and that made the Mistress
hate her. And smart … that made the Master want to rule her more. They didn’t want her to have just what only she was born with. Some of the other slaves didn’t like her neither! But my mama was sweet to me.