Untitled Document

The Color of Love (Novel excerpt)
Janet Thorning

It was a hot afternoon. The air was filled with the incessant buzzing of air conditioners mixed with desperation. When I was a child, I would go to the park and sit on a bench and watch birds flying, and before I knew it my desperation had attached itself to the wings of a bird, and was gone. So I went to the park and sat on a bench. I wasn't sitting for long when I noticed an old man walking in circles talking to himself. He reminded me of my grandfather, he did the same thing whenever he was confused about people, places, or things. So I approached him, thinking he might need my help.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“She's gone,” he said, still walking in circles.

“Who?” I asked.

“My wife,” he said.

I held his arm as we moved across the grass; back to the bench where I had been sitting. There was a Bluebird perched on the bench. When the old man saw her, he stopped and pointed. “Only God can create something that beautiful,” he said, softly.

“The first time I saw her, I knew I loved her,” he said. And I thought, no man can love a woman before he tastes her sweetness. He had to be lying. But why, why would the old man lie to me, a perfect stranger? People only lie to people they know, people that make them feel like shit. Or, maybe it was the years, maybe one night they broke into his house and stole the truth away from him.

“She was walking down the hallway of our high school,” he said, with a faraway look on his face.

“Was she pretty?” I asked.

“She was beautiful. I can't tell you just how beautiful she was.”

I was sure I had heard that line before in a movie; maybe in a book.

“Her hair was beautiful too,” he said. Then his head dropped and his eyes closed. And I thought, oh shit, the old man is dead. But seconds later, his head shot up, like a jack in the box. And then, out of the blue… “She had curves, the kind of curves a man could plant his eyes in forever.”

I envisioned a young girl, sixteen with milky skin and golden hair, shoulder- length, in a yellow satin dress, swinging her hips in a subtle; but not too subtle way.

“One day, my mother sent me to the bakery for a loaf of rye bread,” he said. “My father loved corned beef on rye.” When he said that, a childhood memory came rushing, like a tidal wave. It was about my father, and how much he loved corned beef, and how my mother used to cook it with onions and serve it on white rice every Sunday for dinner. Those were the days, the days when my mother's desire to please my father was still sweet and juicy. “Then, all of a sudden, there she was standing in front of me like an angel,” he said. A look of absolute peace washed over his face, like he had really seen an angel. “She was wearing a blue dress as blue as the sky on a warm summer day. And that's exactly how she made me feel inside, like a warm summer day.” How poetic, I thought. I'd never heard anyone describe love that way before.

He pulled a white handkerchief out of his pant pocket. And I waited for the tears, but none came. Instead, he squeezed the handkerchief, squeezed it as though it was death, the death that took his wife. I wanted to offer him some kind words, but….One night, when I was a child, my mother woke me. I could tell that something was wrong because the corners of her lips were drooping. She had come to tell me that Sally, my gold fish was dead. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,”she said. And I immediately thought, what a useless word sorry is. Sorry never makes the rain stop, never makes the sun come out; It can't even bring the dead back to life.

“Have you ever lost someone you loved?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, hoping I wouldn't have to explain how one day I came home and found my husband locked tightly between another woman's legs; and that it was my fault; and that the son of a bitch died before I could get my revenge; maybe God got it for me; and by the way, I don't believe in love anymore.

“Then you know how I feel,” he said.

I nodded my head.

“Courage is a funny thing,” he said. “Sometimes, it's impossible to find, like a four leaf clover. Have you ever found one?”

“No,” I said, pondering the relevance of a four-leaf-clover.

“Well,” he said. “When you find one, you feel great, like you can do anything.”

“Anything, I said, including asking a beautiful girl out?”

He smiled big. Then he put the handkerchief back in his pocket.

“She said yes, can you imagine,” he said, looking down at his legs. “She said yes, to a lanky boy like me.” I stopped staring at his legs, and yes they were thin, too thin. So I started searching his face and it didn't take long to find what I was looking for. It was his eyes, she must have fallen in love with his eyes.

Deep set and brown, as brown as the earth must have been when it was new. When eyes like that watch you, you know, you feel them, and you never want them to stop watching.

The alarm on my wrist watch started making, that annoying, beep, beep, beep sound. Every where, beeping, beeping, beeping. Telling us what to do-when to wake up, when to eat, when to take our pills, when to stop working, when to go to bed. When will it all stop? It's a wonder the world hasn't gone mad yet. Beep.

“I apologize,” I said. “But, my lunch time is over.”

“I understand,” he said, shrinking back into the bench like a disappointed child.

Manipulated, perhaps. Poor old man, how could I leave him all alone on a park bench with a blue sky turning gray. And those eyes, those brown eyes watching me.

I sat down. He smiled. I smiled back.

“I bet you were a real heart breaker, when you were young?” He blushed a little. Then turned to me and said, “When I was ten-years-old there was a little girl, Maria Trombone.”

“Was she pretty too,” I asked.

“She had a cute little face and big brown eyes. Anyway, she lived in Queens , but every weekend she would come down to Brooklyn to stay with her grandparents. Anyway, every Sunday before she left, she would leave a love letter on my porch.”

I imagined her love letter to him went like this:

Dear….

I like you. Do you like me? I think you are cute. My mother says you are cute. I want to marry you. Love Maria Trombone xxoo

I had written my fare share of love letters. Once, I wrote a love letter to Jimmy Turley, a tough looking boy who wore the same clothes to school every day: a blue t-shirt that looked like it had eaten five generations of

Turley sweat and dirt, blue jeans with holes the size of baseballs in the knees, and running shoes that were too small, you could tell by the way he kind of

walked on his tippy- toes. Some of the kids at school used to sing,

“Jimmy Turley is poor, Jimmy Turley is poor, he's so poor, he eats his snot for dinner!” But I loved him anyway. And I was going to marry him in an Anglican

church because I was Anglican. And if he wasn't, too bad. And we were going to

live in a mansion with our four children, two boys and two girls. And a big St. Bernard, named, Charlie who would fetch the morning paper and bring it to me.

All Jimmy had to do was follow the directions on the letter:

Dear Jimmy

I want you so meet me behind the portable after school. Love Karen Brown xxoo

Everything that was good but bad happened behind the portable after school. French kissing, boys touching girls, girls touching boys, boys telling lies, girls believing them. It was all good but bad.

But, Jimmy Turley never came. Years later, I found out that Jimmy Turley

was afraid of me, afraid of my light brown skin and slightly nappy hair. White boys were always afraid of me. Maybe they thought I was going to eat them; maybe I wasn't good enough; maybe my husband was right.

“Boys weren't supposed to like girls at that age,” he said. “But secretly, I liked girls, I liked Maria trombone and I liked the feeling I got from knowing she liked me.”

“What happened to Maria Trombone?”

“Well, a Sunday came and went without a letter. So the next Saturday, I went to her grandparents house and knocked on the door. When her grandmother answered, I asked if Maria could come out to play. She said, that Maria's other grandmother had taken sick so the family moved to Italy .”

“See, I was right. You were a heart breaker.”

Rain began to fall. And I waited for the old man to ask me to scoop him up and carry him to a dry spot but he didn't. So we sat in the rain, sat like carefree children. And it felt good, the rain against my skin felt cool and good.

“When I was kid,” he said, removing his glasses from his thin wet face. “My father listened to Jack Benny on the radio. Do you know who Jack Benny was?” “Yes,” I said.

Every summer, when I was a young child, my parents would make me go to Atlanta to spend time with my grandparents. I hated Atlanta and I hated my grandparents. They were old and creepy; and their house always smelt like disinfectant. And I hated the way they kissed my face like it was food and they were starving. And I hated dinner time.

At exactly, 5:15 pm , my grandmother would call me to set the table.

“Don't forget, the knives go on the right, the forks on the left,” she would say. My grandfather, who spent every day time in the garage, tinkering with old radios and television sets, would come inside. He always looked like he had been playing in dirt. Once, my grandmother asked him if he was fixing things or burying them. While my grandfather washed his hands, my grandmother stirred, chopped, tossed; and mulled over sliced bread versus rolls. I preferred the rolls because they held more butter.

At exactly, 5:30 pm , I would say grace. God is gracious, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen. At exactly, 5:31 ….

“Boy, that Jack Benny could make you laugh. Did I ever tell you about the time he played his violin?”

“Yes, grandpa. You told me a million times.”

“It was the funniest thing.”

He always pretended not to hear me so that he could stand in the middle of the kitchen with a pretend violin on his shoulder and his head slightly cocked to the side.

“Screech! Screech! Screech! Then the audience started laughing and booing at the same time. You should have seen him. Jack Benny got this look on his face, like he hadn't used the toilet in a week. I laughed so hard, I nearly pissed my pants. Isn't that the funniest thing,” he always said, holding his belly and laughing. When my grandfather sat down to eat, he was always still laughing. Laughing and chewing. And chunks of food would leap out of his mouth like they were trying to commit suicide only they always landed on my plate, alive. But not for long because my grandmother always made me eat every spec of food on my plate.

“We don't waste food around here,” she would say.

The Jack Benny jokes usually ended at around 7:00 pm . That was when my grandmother told my grandfather to go and take a nap, and she meant it. While he napped, my grandmother walked around the house, just walked. She seemed to be searching, searching for the pieces of herself that she had left in the bedrooms, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the dining room, in the living room, in the dirty laundry, in her husband, and me when I was there.

My grandfather usually napped until 8:00 pm . When he woke up he always did two things: fished his dentures out of a tall flowery glass of old water; and played Billie Holiday records. He loved Billie Holiday. Sometimes, I think he loved her more than he loved his wife.

He would sit in his ready to be buried lazy boy with his eyes closed and legs wide open. And when he was feeling the music, really feeling it in his soul, his upper body would sway from side to side. Sometimes, he would snap his fingers. Sometimes, he would get the dirty little boy smile on his face. And my grandmother would see it and kick him on his bad foot.

I was there, the night it happened, the night my grandfather got the bad foot. It was late at night, past my bed time when the phone rang. It was Blacky Black my grandfather's best friend.

Blacky Black was a snake of a man. Every time he came to the house, I ran upstairs to my room and closed the door. But that didn't stop him. He always slithered up and in anyway. And he always said the same thing, when he opened the door. “Girl, let me see how big you are.” I wanted to kick him in his balls. I knew it would hurt. I knew it would make him stop. But I didn't. He always put his hand on my head, like he cared, but he didn't. My head was just a means to an end, the end being my ass. He always rubbed it in a circular motion, and he talked while he was doing it too. “Yes, this is nice, real nice.”

That night, Blacky Black had talked my grandfather into going to the bar with him. My grandfather said, that he and Blacky Black were sitting on bar stools when a big white man hollered, “niggers go home.” My grandfather said that he stood up like a proud black man. “You should of seen me,” my grandfather said, proudly. “I was moving like Mohamed Ali, and then pow, I socked him right in the nose. I socked him so hard, I lost my balance.”

“What happened to Blacky,” my grandmother asked.

“The son of a bitch ran away,” my grandfather said.

I don't think my grandfather felt the kick my grandmother gave him because he never flinched. He never said anything either, not even, damn you woman, which he always said loud enough for everyone to hear; except my grandmother. When the record was finished, my grandfather always opened his eyes as if he were opening them for the first time. And he always had this look on his face, like his time with Billie was good, real good.

At exactly, 9:00 pm , my grandfather would call me to sit on the porch. I hated that old porch. It moaned and groaned and creaked like an old man making love. And my grandfather's rocking chair, it was old to. Old on old, equals hell. I hated the crickets. There were millions of them lurking in the trees, in the tall grass, under the porch, on the porch; in my dreams, devouring my body while I was still alive. And I hated what sounded like centuries of phlegm erupting in my grandfather's throat, every time he cleared it, and he always cleared it, at night, on the porch, just before he told me a story. And his stories were always about the adventures of a great slave named, Bomani.

Bomani was born in Africa . He lived there in a small village with his father, mother, and sister. One night, after splitting coconuts all day under the blazing sun, Bomani fell asleep under a Baobab tree. He was dreaming about a lion stalking him when he was awakened by his sister screaming. When he got inside the hut he found a white man chopping his mother and father up with a machete; and another white man, raping his sister. His sister saw him and screamed, “run Bomani, run for your life.” But Bomani didn't run, instead he picked up a long stick to beat the white men with.

Days later, Bomani woke up in the gut of a ship. It was dark; and the air was thick with pain. He felt it. He smelt it. Blood mixed with tears. Tears mixed with death. There were others too. They were weeping and praying. Dear God, deliver us from this evil. He recognized one of the voices praying. It was uncle Kato, his mother's younger brother.

“Uncle Kato, is that you, Bomani asked.

“Yes, Bomani. It is me.”

“Uncle Kato, why are we here?”

You see, Bomani was only a boy. Ten years-old. And he didn't know what slavery was.

“Bomani, we are slaves now,” his uncle said.

Bomani and the others were taken to Mississippi and sold to white men. The white man that bought Bomani owned a cotton plantation. Bomani picked cotton, day and night, night and day. He picked cotton until his fingers bled and when they bled his master lashed him on the back with a piece of wood until his blood flowed like a river.

But Bomani was always a brave boy. Once, he roared at an elephant and it ran away. One night, when Bomani's master was sleeping, Bomani used a nail he had found to break free from his shackles. Then he freed other slaves.

My grandfather said that if I looked real hard through my bedroom window, looked out into the night, I would see them, Bomani and the slaves he freed, jumping with their arms in the air, jumping and singing, and laughing all at once.

When my grandfather finished telling me a story, he sang:

Wade in the water

Wade in the water children

Wade in the water

Don't you know that

God's gonna trouble the water

Don't you know that

God's gonna trouble the water

He always sang that song. And even though I didn't want to admit to myself, I loved it; and I loved the quiet look on my grandfather's face every time he sang it; and I loved the way my grandmother stood still on the other side of the screen door listening and enjoying; and I loved what it meant for me, for half of me. Freedom. Halleluiah. Freedom.

My grandfather loved telling Jack Benny jokes, loved telling stories, loved telling the truth. One afternoon, while my grandmother sat on her bed humming church songs and knitting, my grandfather sat me down at the kitchen table and said, “Karen, now I know your momma's gonna be mad at me for telling you this, but black folks and white folks should never procreate.”

“Grandpa, what do you mean?”

“I mean that black folks should never marry white folks and have children. It's confusing, for everyone,” he said.

“But, mommy married daddy, and they had me,” I said, slightly confused, slightly angry.

“Well, your momma just didn't understand, didn't want to understand. But one day she will, one day you will.”

“Does that mean you don't love me grandpa?”

“Of course, I love you,” he said. “but….” My grandfather didn't finish saying what he wanted to because my grandmother came into the kitchen screaming and waving her fists in the air.

“Now, don't you be telling her all that nonsense. The lord gave you a mouth, but I can sew it shut!” My grandfather got up from the table and shuffled outside. He always shuffled outside when my grandmother was mad at him. Once, I asked him why, and he pulled an old brown tooth out of his pocket. “You see this tooth,” he said. “Your grandma knocked it out of my mouth with her fist because I said something about her sister she didn't like. Besides, leaving for a while is always better than staying.”

When, I was nine, my father left my mother. Everyone knew he was cheating on her. I knew. The neighbors knew. The Chinese man who owned the convenience store down the street knew. My mother used to confide in him all the time. She would send me to the back of the store for a jug of milk. I hated milk; milk in the morning, milk in the afternoon, milk in the evening, milk, milk and more milk. I could hear my mother whispering, it was always about how he came home late last night, and she knew he wasn't at work because she called; and he smelt like drug store perfume; and his underwear smelt like cheap sex, and that he was probably fucking prostitutes, and now she was going to find a man to fuck to.

I finally understood what my grandfather was trying to telling me that day. A white man can never truly love a black woman, and a black woman can never truly love a white man. It's impossible given their histories, one a slave master, the other a slave. And the children, the poor children, wandering, forever wandering in search of an identity, only there are two identities, two identities that will never be compatible. Because one will always be superior to the other. But that identity will never be accepted by society because it is not pure.

“My father bought a chair and named it , Jack Benny,” the old man said. “It was one of those fancy chairs with intricate carvings. Anyway, whenever Jack Benny was coming on the radio, he would sit in his fancy chair dressed to the nines with an unlit pipe in his mouth.”

“Unlit?”

“Yes, he hated the taste of tobacco, but he liked the way the pipe made him look, like he was sophisticated.

“Our first date, I still remember it,” he said, smiling. “It was on a Saturday, I remember because my father couldn't stop talking about the Jack Benny special that was going to be on the radio that night, a two hour special. He was in such a good mood, the only thing he told me to do that day was rake the leaves, and I raked them up in no time.”

“I guess you were excited about your date?”

“Excited, no not excited.” He paused for a moment to think. “I've got it!” he said. “I felt mighty, yes mighty!”

“Like Superman?”

“Like Superman in love,” he said.

The rain had dwindled to a light sprinkle. And the sound of birds chirping had filled the air. The worms which had been basking in the rain were now retreating back into the wet cool earth. Some made it, some didn't.

Janet Thorning is a writer from Ontario, Canada.