The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir (10 page)

All of these
things, my mother had said, were done not because I was Black, which was never
even mentioned, but because people were jealous of me.  Of course, I believed
her.  It made perfect sense that my brilliance and beauty would drive people
mad.  However, I wouldn’t say that my mother’s explanation was purposeless. 
Because of what she told me, I wholeheartedly believed I was just a bit prettier
and smarter than everyone else.  This belief was further nurtured by Aunt
Betty’s insistence to my three cousins, “You boys should do better in school,
like Nancy.” So when I arrived in foster care, I had a very strong, if not
over-inflated, self-image. 

Other than
issues with racial identity, I was a rock-solid eight-year-old girl.  I had no
concept of racial barriers as I had no concept of race.  I’d never been taught,
like many Black children were, that I could be whatever I wanted, that I could
go to any college I wanted, that I could hold the sun in my right hand while
shaping the moon with my left.  For me, these things went without saying.  That
the world was my oyster was simply a given.  Had I suffered with self-esteem
issues, my transition into foster care, as well as into a new culture, would
likely have had a very different outcome. 

After what
seemed like an eternal afternoon with Erma Lee, the other foster children
arrived home from school.  Around five o’clock, her husband came in from work. 
When he came in the front door, the other kids rushed to greet him, calling him
Paw-paw
! 

“Hello!
Hello! Hello!”  He patted them on their heads.  Then he turned to me, “Hello,
little girl.”

“Hi.”

“What’s your
name?”

“Nancy.”

“Nassy?”

“NANCY.”

And he
repeated it under his breath a few times, “Nassy, Nassy, Nassy…”  I was annoyed
that he wasn’t pronouncing it correctly, but my annoyance gave way to
fascination; I’d never heard of anyone being called
Paw-paw
.

In the course
of an otherwise uneventful October afternoon, I had moved in with a Black
family, was told that my womanish behavior was unacceptable, and was informed,
contrary to my own unanimous opinion, that I myself am Black.

Though it
didn’t take long for me to come to terms with being Black, I had a very faulty
understanding of Black-White relations.  Because it’s not something we learned
in school, like The Boston Tea Party, I had made assumptions about the
country’s racial state of affairs.  As a 4
^th
grader, if I had to
write an essay on slavery in America, it would’ve read like this:

A long
time ago, the Blacks and Whites in America got into a war, and the Whites won. 
Therefore, the Blacks had to become their slaves. 

Then
after many generations, the government realized that slavery was wrong and
outlawed it, but the Whites wanted to keep their slaves, so they did horrible
things to Black people. 

The
government still refused to bring back slavery, and that’s why Whites hate
Blacks to this day.  The End.

But in 1977,
when I was 11 years old, all of my perceptions changed when the miniseries
Roots
[3]
came on television.  I
was astonished to learn that Blacks had not always lived in America.  “Paw-paw,
did Black people come from Africa?”

“Yeah,
where’d you think we came from?”

“I thought
we were just always here.  So we were kidnapped?”

“Kidnapped
and sold into slavery.”

“So where
were the police?”

Paw-paw is a
high-school graduate, he’s traveled the world with the military, and is very
well read, yet he struggled to answer, what seemed to me, a perfectly simple
question.  “Just watch the movie, little girl.”  So every episode, I sat
perched in front of the TV like most everyone else in our town.  Soon, rioting
broke out at the high schools.  We middle schoolers had become wary of walking
to and from school, fearing that we’d get caught up in the fray.

In the
hallways of our own school, Black and White students had begun polarizing. 
Groups huddled at lockers to talk about
Roots
, the watching of which,
for most of us, was our first introduction to the
what
and
why
of
race relations in America. 

Though it
had taken a toll on the students, it wasn’t addressed by the school
administrators.  However, Mr. Stancil, our art teacher, who himself was a Black
man, was the only teacher who brought it up in class and asked us what we
thought about the movie and the fighting at the high schools. 

Instantly,
the class was in full debate.  “My dad said it was your own fault that you were
slaves because other Africans are the ones who sold you to the Whites,” one of
the White kids said.  “If your own people hadn’t sold you, you never would’ve
been slaves.”

Mr. Stancil
said, “That’s not altogether true.  There were indeed some Africans that helped
the Whites, but the Whites would’ve kidnapped Africans with or without their
help.” 

I raised my
hand.  Perhaps Mr. Stancil could explain why the police had allowed this
grand-scale kidnapping.  As I sat with my arm in the air, one of the Black boys
said, “What do you know about it, and what are you anyway, some kind of Puerto
Rican?”  A White girl with whom I walked to school and who knew a bit about my
background, quickly replied, “No, her mom is White.”

“Oh, so
you’re one of them!”  The boy said as he pointed to a group of White students. 
I said the first logical thing that came to mind, which after I said it didn’t
seem logical at all.  “My mom would never own slaves!”  The entire classroom
was quiet, and then the boy waved me off and muttered, “Man, shut up!”  And just
that quickly, the attention was off me and once again on the debate.

As we walked
home from school, I asked Bernie why she’d said that about my mother. 
“Because,” she said, “that kid called you a Puerto Rican; I didn’t want people
thinking you were a Spic.” 

We were 11
years old, and though
Roots
opened us up to some of our history, we were
still clueless, innocent children attempting to put together a puzzle of a
million razor-edged pieces.  When everything was said and done, the Black kids
held onto the one, solid thing that they understood.  They wanted retribution
for Kunta’s foot.

After
Roots
I thought a lot more about my own family.  When I thought about White people, I
hadn’t made the leap of considering my family among them, but I wondered how
much Aunt Betty knew about slavery or if my cousins knew about it.  I wondered
if they had known all along that I was Black.  I wondered if they themselves
didn’t like Blacks.  I wondered if my being Black was the reason I had to leave
home.

After just a
few months with Erma Lee, I had grown weary of my new life.  I missed my mother
and the spontaneity of our lives, how we’d squeeze a trip to the museum and to
the zoo into the same day, how we’d go swimming in the old quarry, even though
the posting clearly warned, “No Swimming!”  I missed zooming about town in our
maroon Corvair convertible wearing matching head scarves and sunglasses.  I
missed eating on the go, Red Rooster for breakfast and Burch’s on Ridge Road
for lunch.  “That’s no way to raise a child,” Aunt Betty would say.  But
regardless of her free spirit, my mother had the makings of a good homemaker
hidden somewhere inside of her, and she had books upon books of S&H Green
Stamps to prove it.

I missed
Sundays at Aunt Katie’s, steaks grilled in the fireplace, foil-wrapped potatoes
baking in the open coals, salad with homemade buttermilk dressing, and two
plates—one at each end of the table—filled with green onions, cucumbers,
tomatoes, and radishes.  I missed Uncle Rosco’s workshop and the smell of leather
and freshly shaven wood, varnish and warm glue, and the sounds of his power saw
and nail gun.  I missed roasting marshmallows over a bonfire in the backyard on
chilly fall nights.  I missed the Back Road.

At Erma
Lee’s, life was redundant: “Change outta your school clothes.  Help me peel
these potatoes.  Run down stairs and get the roaster from ‘neath the stairs. 
Go to Chris’ and get me a can of Clabber Girl and a bag of meal.  Hurry back so
you can get your lesson
[4]
. 
Hurry up and eat so we can get to church.”  And every quiet moment in between
was filled with the sound of her voice drilling me about life, how I had to be
strong and make something of myself.  “The Whites don’t want you, and the
Blacks won’t accept you.  You always gon’ be caught in the middle, too much of
one or not enough of the other.”  I had to be somebody, she would say.  “Make
your own way so you don’t have to depend on nobody for nothing.”  She would say
these things, and her words would rest in my bosom like lead. 

I wanted to cover
my ears because none of what she said made any sense to me.  It made my throat
ache, and I would tear up even though I tried not to.  “I ain’t fussin’ at
you,” she’d say.  “I’m tryin’ to prepare you to make it in this world.”  For a
Black woman born in Arkansas in 1925, armed only with a third-grade education,
preparation
was, perhaps, the only way she knew to save a little girl caught in three lines
of crossfire.

More than
anything, though, I wanted to go home; I missed the structure Aunt Betty provided:
breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, TV time and play time, bath time and
bedtime.  I wanted to sit at her dinner table where the madness and laughter
would often sneak in and tickle us silly. 

At Erma
Lee’s, the children wouldn’t dare attempt a full on discussion with the adults…
at the dinner table or anywhere else.  Such a thing was disgraceful.  I had
already been chastised on several occasions, “Get on out of here… done told you
‘bout sittin’ up under grown folks!”  But I had come from a home where children
and adults communicated and mingled with ease; we’d sit at the table and gab,
argue and laugh until we were empty. 

During one
such dinner at Aunt Betty’s, I’d sat down at the table with an extremely loose
front tooth.  Earlier that day, Kenny and I had tried every conceivable way to
pull the stubborn tooth.  By the time we were done, it was hanging by a single
chunk of gum tissue.  Over dinner, as Kenny explained everything he’d tried to
get the tooth out, Stevey yelled, “Shut up already with the tooth!”  As I
chewed, the tooth finally snapped off.  I felt with the tip of my tongue, and
sure enough it was gone. Then I flashed Stevey, who was sitting directly across
from me, a bloody, toothless grin.  Pandemonium ensued.

Aunt Betty
told me to go and spit out the food, but I couldn’t because my tooth was in it
somewhere, and I needed it for the tooth fairy, which was the whole reason we
were trying to get the tooth out in the first place.  So she had me spit the
food out in her hand, and she dug through it with her finger until she found
the little ivory money-maker. 

Meanwhile,
Stevey was leaning over the back of his chair retching, Kenny and Bobby were in
stitches, and her husband Ed was grinning as if he were watching something on
TV.  I can guarantee with all certainty that this never would’ve happened at
Erma Lee’s dinner table… but I desperately needed it to.

I had
gathered the nerve to tell Erma Lee that I didn’t want to live with her
anymore.  “I just want to go back home.”

“Baby, if
they wanted you at home, they never would’ve brought you to me.”

“But I don’t
like it here.”

“I know you
don’t, but do you think you can break and run every time you don’t like where
you are?”  As she talked, I could feel the heaviness settling over me, my
throat tightening, my eyes filling with tears.  “Life don’t work that way. 
Sometime it’s gon’ get so tough, oooh-weee!  But you gotta make do until you
can do better.  You gon’ have to learn to like it here.  I ain’t gon’ misuse
you and ain’t gon’ let nobody else misuse you.”  And after filling my head with
yet another life lesson, she dismissed the entire situation.

Her life
lessons were burdensome.  I didn’t want to hear about this future life that was
lying in wait with its fists balled.  I didn’t want to know about fighting and
surviving.  Instead, I wanted to go sledding and Christmas shopping; I wanted
to wrap presents, bake cookies, and build a snowman in Aunt Katie’s backyard; I
wanted to hang my wet mittens over her fireplace and thaw my frozen, pink toes
by the fire.

  Unwilling
to concede, I called my cousin Kenny and told him I wanted to come home.  We
agreed that there was only one solution: he had to come rescue me.  At his
direction, I counted the windows, marked the locations of the front and back doors;
I described the façade of the house and the location of the driveway. 

When he
called back and I was giving him the information, he told me to talk slowly
because he was making a diagram. 
This is really it;
I thought
.  I’m
going home
.  Based on the specifics I had given him, he’d decided I
should come out of the bathroom window, which was on the second floor.  The
window opened to a flat part of the roof that abutted an apple tree in the
backyard.  “At the stroke of midnight, out the bathroom window and down the
tree… got it?”