The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir (11 page)

“Got it.” 

Even though
I said I’d gotten it.  I was hesitant; I had no problem climbing up things, but
I was terrified of climbing down.  In this case, though, I was willing to do
anything.  The plan was fail proof, it seemed, but we had forgotten to factor
in a few crucial variables.  I was eight, and he was 10.  There was snow on the
ground, he was coming to rescue me on his bike, and we lived in different
cities.

That night,
I was in bed by ten o’clock.  Once in my room, which was the only bedroom on
the first floor, I realized I had no way of checking the time.  I waited until
I thought it was midnight, then came out of my room and headed toward the
stairs.  I glanced at the clock; it was only 10:30.  I continued to the bathroom
so as not to look suspicious to Erma Lee, who was still up watching TV.  When I
made it to the bathroom, I found the window frosted over, and it occurred to me
for the first time that I would need to wear something other than my nightgown
to make the trip.

I went back
downstairs and got into bed and wondered how I could get past Erma Lee wearing
a coat and boots.  Perhaps I could tell her I forgot something outside and then
simply walk out the front door and meet Kenny around back.  I thought about this
option even though I knew it was impossible.  I eventually dozed off and when I
awoke, it was morning.  I called Kenny to see if he had come the night before,
but Bobby said he was out with his friends.

Unaware of
our previous plot, Erma Lee and Aunt Betty agreed to let Kenny come spend a day
with me.  When he arrived, I realized that when I
was
home, we never
really played together.  Whenever the boys would go out foraging or exploring,
Aunt Betty would
make
them take me.  “Why do we have to take her?  She’s
always bawlin’ and crap!”  It was either that or, “Mom, Nancy’s been in our
stuff again!”  So on the day of our visit, we were incredibly bored. 

“Wanna go to
the park?” I asked

He nodded.

There were
some guys on the basketball court, but otherwise the park was empty.  It was
too cold to swing, or slide, or do anything, so we sat on a picnic table with
our hands shoved deep in our pockets trying to stay warm.  The guys on the
court gradually made their way in our direction.  At first I thought they would
ask Kenny to shoot hoops, but then one of them said, “What you doing here?”  I
assumed he was talking to both of us, but before we could say anything, another
one said, “Hey man, we don’t want no honkies in our park!”  Kenny grabbed my
arm, “C’mon Nancy; we’re not wanted here,” and as we rushed away, I knew that
for the first time, I wasn’t the one who wasn’t wanted. 

In times
past, it was common for me to hear, “You guys can stay, but the nigger has to
go,” or “What’s that little nigger doing here?”  I would hear this whether I
was with Aunt Betty’s boys or Aunt Katie’s girls.  On the Back Road behind Aunt
Katie’s house, a family from West Virginia had moved in.  They had a thick
southern drawl, and their talking sounded more like singing.  The kids had
promised Aunt Katie’s girls that they could come over and swim, so the four of
us put on our swimsuits and headed toward the Back Road. 

Katie’s
house faced the front avenue, and her expansive backyard went all the way back
to the road on the next block.  No one whose house faced the avenue called this
road by its proper name.  Instead, they simply called it the Back Road.  As it
was a very quiet road, it was a general gathering place for the kids in the
neighborhood.  It’s where we learned to ride our bikes, where we played
hopscotch and jump rope, and where we had foot races.  If there was any fun to
be had, the Back Road was ground zero.

As we
crossed the Back Road and reached the neighbors’ yard, the girls stood looking
at us.  The youngest, probably no more than four years old, said, “Us mama
don’t want no nigguhs swimmin’ in us pool.”  Becca, always the first one to
speak, said, “Who?  Her?  She ain’t no nigger.”

“Well what
is she then?”  The oldest girl asked.

All eyes
were on Becca, including mine, and, in what she would later describe as a
stroke of genius, she very matter-of-factly said, “She’s Mixperado.”

“Is that
like a nigguh?”

“No, it’s
more like White.”

The neighbor
girls conferred among themselves, but the oldest girl finally concluded, “I
don’t think Mama will stand for it.”

Becca said,
“Well if she can’t swim, then we can’t swim.”  In all of this, there wasn’t any
anger or animosity; we were simply trying to work our way through this
impediment to an afternoon of fun.  The oldest girl asked, “You guys wanna just
do something else then?”  A bit sullen, we all agreed.  As we walked back to
the house to change out of our swimsuits, Becca turned to me and said, “Look
kid, from now on, if anybody asks, you’re Mixperado.  You got that?”  Being Mixperado
turned out to be a good thing because even though it didn’t get me into their
pool, it did get me into the good graces of these southern kids who sang when
they talked.

Now Kenny
was in the same predicament.  In the few short months that I had been with Erma
Lee, it seemed I knew all about Black and White and what it meant to be either,
and both.  But Kenny, although older than I, was just an innocent kid, and as
clueless as I had been when I’d first come.  Realizing this, I felt so grown up
and wise in the ways of the world.  He still thought we were the same, and even
though we really were, that’s not how the world saw us.  I understood it, but I
didn’t have the heart to explain it to him.  If I had been thinking, I would’ve
come to his defense like Becca had come to mine.  “Who? Him?  He ain’t no
honkey; he’s Mixperado.”  Anyhow, I don’t think it would’ve flown.

Later, when
Aunt Betty came to pick him up, I felt a sense of desperation.  He was leaving,
and we’d let the whole day slip by.  We hadn’t made any new plans to get me
home; we hadn’t even discussed our failed attempt. 

I walked
with the two of them out to the car, and when Kenny got in he asked, “Mom, why
can’t Nancy come home?”  And I waited for her answer, hoping she’d say, “Nancy,
get your things.”  Instead, she said, “This
is
Nancy’s home.  She lives
here
now.”  And so I stayed and grew up right there with Erma Lee and Paw-paw and
the barrage of foster children that would come and go. 

I was a bit
of an oddity in the foster home.  The other children had been taken from their
parents because of abuse or neglect.  I was voluntarily given up.  Even so,
Aunt Betty remained very much involved, and one of the conditions of my
placement was that she have unrestricted access to me.  So, unlike the other
children, I maintained full contact with my family.  As such, I never really
saw myself as a foster child even though I was living in a foster home with
many foster children.

Almost
immediately after being placed with the Daniels, there was talk of adoption. 
The caseworker was the first to bring it up on one of her routine visits. 
“Nancy, how would you like to be adopted?”  My answer was an emphatic, “No!” 
Being adopted meant I would no longer be my mother’s daughter.  It meant they
would change my name.  I was so strongly against it that when the caseworker
began insisting that adoption would be the best thing for me, I became
hysterical.  Erma Lee demanded that they drop the subject.  “If she don’t want
it, leave her alone.”  Later she asked me why I was against being adopted.

“Because I
already have a mother.”

“Honey, your
mama is gone.”

“But what if
she comes back and I belong to someone else?  What if she can’t find me because
I have a different name?”

“Your mama
is dead, baby, and she ain’t comin’ back.”

I was the
one who’d called for help the night my mother died.  I saw them put her on a
stretcher, and I went with her to the hospital.  I watched Aunt Betty come
undone when the doctor came out to talk to her.  I watched the nurses with whom
my mother worked cry and hug each other.  I remember the doctor kneeling in
front of me, telling me I was a very smart and brave girl.  I was there when
Aunt Betty picked out my mother’s casket.  With my own eyes I saw her dressed
in lavender lying in that same casket.  With my own hands I felt her chilled
skin as I placed in her hand a note I’d written, but the more I understood why
our lives had been so difficult, I was even more convinced that my mother, in
spite of everything I’d seen, had simply gone away for a while. 

And so these
two theories, the one that was true and the one I wanted to be true, coexisted
in my mind.  When I was happy and thought about one day seeing my mother again,
I always thought about seeing her in heaven, but when I was heartbroken, I
imagined her living in some distant country, working and saving money so that
she could one day come for me.  Erma Lee would not let them ask me about
adoption after that. 

Although I’d
refused adoption, I couldn’t ignore the reality of my situation.  I was in a
new place and completely unaccustomed to the way things were done.  I quickly
learned that my fear of being Black had been completely unfounded.  All the
cruelty I had expected to befall me now that I was Black had actually already
occurred when I was with my mother; I simply hadn’t known my Blackness had been
the cause. 

Since I’d
moved in with the Daniels, no one called me nigger, I didn’t have to worry
about vicious neighbors, and the police were never called to the house, except
on the rare occasion a birth mother would come and try to take her child.  However,
being at ease with my Blackness was only the beginning of understanding my new
culture, and the touchstone of this new culture was the interconnectedness of
the Black community.

Of course,
most families are proud of their identities and cultures.  For Blacks, however,
it’s not the family unit itself that’s praised as much as the Black community
as a whole.  Everyone belongs to and has an obligation to the whole.  What’s
your name?  Who’s your people?  Where are your people from?  These three
questions were asked routinely by Blacks meeting other Blacks. 

I’ve been
told that this practice came about after the abolition of slavery.  Once the
slaves were freed, their primary goal was to find their family members that had
been sold to other plantations, so when they came across other Blacks, they
started dropping names.  This type of name dropping is very much alive today,
especially among the older generation.  It’s a beautiful and lingering need to
gather back that which was scattered. 

I saw
Paw-paw do this on countless occasions.  He always used Erma Lee’s side of the
family when he dropped names because like most Black families, hers had come
from the south.  He seemed to take such pride in the fact that his own family
wasn’t from the south and when asked, he’d rattle it off as if it were one
word.  “I’m from SpringfieldIllinoisLandOfLincoln!”

“Who’s your
people?”  He’d ask some unwitting soul he’d come across at the Post Office or
grocery store.

“Broadnax,
most of us.”

“What about
Page, y’all have any Pages?”

“Now that
sounds familiar. I think we got some Pages down in Gulfport.”

“How ’bout
in Arkansas?  My wife’s from Augusta.”

“We got
people in Arkansas, but Page don’t ring a bell.”

“What about
Lovelace?”

“Oh, now we
sho got some Lovelaces.  My cousin was married to a Lovelace that worked down
in the rail yard just outside of Searcy.”

“Joe
Lovelace?”

“That sounds
‘bout right.”

“That’s my
wife’s uncle.”

“Sho nuff?”

And from
there, the union would be sealed with laughs and hearty handshakes.  Then
Paw-paw would go home and say to Erma Lee, “Guess who I saw at the Post
Office.”  Seldom did these episodes ever end without everyone somehow being
related or connected in some way, and if someone seemed to not have family,
that person was gathered in and would soon show up at Sunday dinners and family
functions because everybody had to belong to somebody.

And it
wasn’t always necessary for names to match up exactly.  I found this out one
day as I walked home from school and was beckoned by a woman sitting on her
porch. “Hey sweety, who’s your people?

“Daniels.”

“Daniels?  Don’t
believe I know no Daniels.  How ‘bout Darby, you know any Darbys?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You sho look
to me like a Darby.”

And when I
insisted that I didn’t know any Darbys, she called for backup.   

“Fay, step
out here a minute.  Don’t this chile look to be one of them Darbys?”

The lady
looked me up and down and said, “Yes, Lawd!  Look at the hips on her, made up
just like them folks.”

“I knew she was
one of them Darby gals.  You’s a Darby, sugar.  We know all your peoples from
way back.”

And quite
content that they had found a
place
for me, they sent me on my way with
a message, “Tell your mama Sister Effie and Sister Fay Lee said, ‘Praise the
Lord.’”

And just
like that, I was a Darby simply because it was important for these two women to
identify me and make sure I had a place within the Great Family.