newspapers and heard the commentaries from the white newscasters. But my point of view was never aired. I didn’t want the violence but I was tired of policemen stopping me just for walking down the street. I hated the destruction of property and life, but what good was law and order if it meant I was supposed to ignore the fact that our children were treated like little hoodlums and whores? My patience was as thin as a Liberty dime, but still I stayed in my house to protect my makeshift family. That’s what brought me to tears. But how could I say all of that to a ten-year-old girl?
“I was sad because the people didn’t understand each other,” I said. “That’s why people fight.”
“Why?” Feather asked. She leaned her head against my jaw and all the pain released.
“Because they don’t know what it’s like to be in the other man’s skin,” I said.
“I’m hungry, Daddy,” Feather said, and I knew I had found the right words.
“Hi, baby,” Bonnie Shay said.
I leaned back and looked up, like a child, and saw her upside- down image. She looked down on us with eyes that took me away from America to a place where music was part of talking and walking and even breath.
Her skin was as dark as mine and her smile knew a happiness I craved. She squatted down and put her arms around Feather and me. Bonnie was the only woman I had known in my adulthood who could make me feel like a child in the presence of maternal love. I leaned back against her and closed my eyes. I’m a big man, weighing one ninety, but her work as a stewardess had prepared her to deal with heavy objects.
Feather sighed and Jesus came over to beam down on us like the sun on his own ancient homeland. For a moment there I almost forgot about the smoldering slums and Nola Payne’s cold body laid up in a white room under lock and key.
BONNIE AND I had a deal that I’d always make dinner on the day she returned from a transatlantic flight. I made glazed oxtails and collard greens with cornbread and tapioca pudding. It took fifty-seven minutes for me to do it all from scratch. That’s how you can tell who’s a good cook: by his speed and timing. There are a lot of men, both white and black, who call themselves gourmet cooks. They only work once a month or so and then they make only one dish. Those men have no idea what the real art of cooking is.
A real cook comes home not knowing what’s in the icebox because he doesn’t know who has eaten what since the last time he looked. You have to be fast on your feet making a balanced meal that has got to be on the table no more than five minutes after your brood gets hungry. And everything should be ready at the same time. I’d like to see these weekend gourmets come up with something new and tasty five days a week on a budget that some housewives get.
I didn’t get any complaints at the dinner table. It was nice to have everybody there. Bonnie was gone at least one week out of four on her European and African routes with Air France. Jesus spent all day every day either working at the Captain’s Reef supermarket in Venice or sailing along the coast. Most nights he spent with friends on the shore. To have all four of us there together felt like a blessing, even though I am not a religious man.
“Dad?” Jesus said.
“Uh-huh.”
“What is Vietnam?”
“It’s a country.”
“But who’s fighting them?”
“They’re having an internal disagreement,” I said. “People in the north want to have it one way and the people in the south want it another.”
“Which one is right?”
When Jesus dropped out of school I made him promise to read every day and then to talk to me about what he’d read. That carried over into us discussing newspaper articles almost every morning. We had skipped that morning because I left for the office early, so he kept his discussion for the dinner table.
“Johnson says it’s the south that’s right. I really couldn’t say.”
“Does Juice have to go over there and fight the Veemanams, Daddy?” Feather asked.
“I hope not, honey. I really do hope not.”
8
Jesus and Feather were both in bed by eight. She because it was her bedtime and he because he worked so hard. Bonnie and I stretched out on the couch in front of the TV and got reacquainted.
“It sounds so terrible,” she was saying. She had her back against the arm of the sofa and her bare feet in my lap.
“What?”
“The fighting and the violence,” she said.
“I guess.”
“What do you mean, you guess?”
“It’s hot and people are mad,” I said. “They’ve been mad since they were babies.”
“But it’s stupid to attack just anybody because of their skin.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It sure is.”
“Then why don’t you think it’s terrible? I was so frightened for you and the children when I was away.”
I began to massage the joint under her big toe. She always relaxed when I did that.
But Bonnie pulled the foot away.
