“Well, you remember what I’ve always told you, Dee-Dee.” That’s what my mama calls me, and I hate it. “You can have any shade of a man as long as he’s black.”
She has a million sayings just like that one. I should write them all down and call the book Things My Mama Says That Make Absolutely No Kind of Sense to Anyone But Her. The title would barely fit on the cover, leaving only a little room for my full name: Diane Denise “Dee-Dee” “Nisi” Anderson.
And though I tell her that Roanoke is 30 percent black, she’s convinced I’m living in Caucasian-land.
“I’m more open-minded than that, Mama,” I had told her, though I’m not as open-minded as I want to be. Roanoke is, well, Southern, despite its location on the map just east of West Virginia. Folks frown on mixing salt and pepper people around here.
“As long as you have a black man up in there in that open mind, I don’t care.”
“That’s not what having an open mind is all about, Mama.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.”
“It is to me.”
But you’re wrong! I had wanted to shout. “Mama, that’s not it at all.”
“Well, you tell me what you think having an open mind is all about.”
“Okay, you see, you have to be willing to accept anyone into your life, regardless of race. That was what Maya Angelou was all about. That was what Dr. King was saying when—”
“Don’t you bring Dr. King into it!”
Mama has had some, well, issues about Dr. King ever since she found out he wasn’t faithful to his wife. We can’t talk about Bill Cosby, Magic Johnson, or Jesse Jackson anymore either. Oh, and Kobe Bryant, too, but I mentioned Kobe once, and all Mama said was, “Those Asians took over baseball, and now they’re taking over the NBA.” My mama, who lives in basketball-hysterical Indiana, knows next to nothing about Hoosier Hysteria or the Pacers.
“Mama, you know what I look like.”
“I look at your picture all the time, and it’s like looking in a mirror.”
Not. I’ve got Daddy’s skinny face, which doesn’t quite fit the rest of my…let’s say healthy, twenty-five-year-old body, and though Mama’s body only jumps out in front (Mama’s got a bad case of “no ass at all”), my body jumps out only in back. I’m not flat in front. I’m just not “well-rounded.”
“Mama, I’m plain.” With a train. A caboose. And though I walk the stacks at least half of the time I work, I will never be able to uncouple that caboose.
“As soon as you have a husband and a baby, you’ll get some titties to match your behind.”
And Mama’s a churchwoman. Forty-three years she’s been a member of her church, and she’s the only woman I know who says “titties” like it’s any other word like “chair” or “kitchen.” She even points out other women’s chests sometimes, saying, “That woman over there has some tig ol’ bitties”—as if anyone listening can’t figure out what she really means.
Yeah, she embarrasses me sometimes.
“Mama, come on. I’m too plain for any decent-looking black man to notice me.” Not that I’ve been trying, and not that any decent-looking black men ever come into the library just to meet me. “But I’ve got just enough…exoticness”—is that even a word?—“to attract any—”
“Don’t you say ‘white man,’ because you know I won’t have that. Not since that Bobby and you in the seventh grade.”
Which was thirteen years ago. It was my first sock hop, an in-school dance, you know, all sweaty palms, red hair bows, not enough lotion on my elbows and knees, and Bobby, who was plain and quiet like me was the only one to ask me to dance, and I really wanted to dance, so…I danced with him. That was it. One dance to some old El De-barge song, something like “Love Me in a Special Way.” Our hands kept slipping off each other because of the sweat, and neither of us looked the other in the eye. He had an ashy nose. Not that I remember much about it—
Okay, it was a turning point in my life. I can’t deny it.
There I was, plain, flat as a board, just brown enough to be called black, the beginnings of my caboose slowing me down, and I was totally ignored by every black boy in the gym because I didn’t have titties. Or a weave. Or make-up. Or fingernails. Or bicycle shorts. What was that all about anyway? Hey, everybody, look at the veins in my butt! And the only boy in the room who consciously made a decision to think I was good enough for him was a white boy named Bobby. I wonder where Bobby is now. I hope he’s not a doctor with those sweaty hands of his.
“Mama, that was so long ago.”
“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” Mama had said. “The shame of it all. Getting told on Easter Sunday by Imogene Blakeney, of all people, that my youngest daughter was bumping and grinding with a white boy in plain view in public. It was a shame.”
“We weren’t bumpin’ and grindin’, Mama.” I’m starting to drop all my gs whenever I talk, and I’ve only been in Roanoke for a year. I refuse, however, to use the phrases “might could” or “How you doin’?”
Mama had growled. “Like I said then, and I’ll say it to you now. You should have danced by yourself before you danced with any white boy any time, any place.”
And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’ve been dancing with myself. It isn’t so bad. I’m on my own, have my own place, my own car, my own bills, and my own savings and checking accounts. The only time it isn’t fun being independent is late at night, especially if there aren’t any C batteries in the house.
And Mama will never know about any of that.
Her Baptist heart couldn’t take it. The shame of that. She’d probably find out right before another Easter service or something, and Mrs. Imogene “Couldn’t-Hit-a-Note-if-You-Hit-Her-with-a-Hammer” Blakeney would be screeching it all over the sanctuary. I know Mama has only gotten her “pleasuring,” as she calls it, from Daddy, my uniquely handsome, skinny-faced, shovel-handed, wide-footed, gap-toothed Daddy. They make a cute couple, but I doubt Daddy would ever buy Mama C batteries for anything but a flashlight.
“Now your sister…”
As soon as Mama had mentioned Reesie, I had tuned her completely out. Reesie is my older, supposedly wiser, African sister, who has only made babies (three and counting) with African boys since she was fifteen. And Mama never had any shame about any of that. None at all. I danced vertically with a white boy once, and Mama was ashamed. Reesie has danced horizontally with three different black boys, and Mama’s proud as she can be.
If that isn’t dysfunctional and worthy of an entire segment of Oprah, I don’t know what is.
And Reesie, who I have no respect left for, once told me, “They found you by the side of the road, Nisi.” After Mama had straightened that lie out, Reesie told me, “They were gonna adopt a puppy, and they adopted you instead.” I have too much of Daddy in my face to be adopted, but sometimes I wonder if they switched my mama at birth or something.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mama.” I had yawned. “I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Out, Mama.” As in, out of the living room to the kitchen to get a slice of orange cake left over from the library Christmas party.
She had sighed. “I still don’t know why you had to move so far away.”
“Roanoke is where my job is, Mama.” And Indianapolis