Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

“Well, I think we’re living in a state of hypocrisy bigger than any this country has ever seen,” he started.

“Amen,” Daddy shot in, seeming surprised by his own agreement.

“And something has to be done so that we don’t sacrifice our lives just to come back still not quite American. Let’s say we are victorious overseas, what’s going to come of the next generation of Negroes here? I mean, before I defend this great nation with my life, I’d want to know that we as a people would be guaranteed full citizenship rights upon our return.”

“Exactly, exactly, now this brother has some sense. I’m going to call you Ernest Wright from now on, set you up out there on Shakespeare Park.” Daddy smiled at Renard, but it was Andrew whom he slapped on the thigh.

Renard looked up at Evelyn again, this time with gratitude. And she was proud of him; she’d expected half his speech to come out in stammers, and none of it had, and from what she could understand, it was profound; even her daddy had said so. Still she couldn’t internalize his joy; her mother’s mood alarmed her. Evelyn knew because of Mother’s concern over Renard’s preferences that she wasn’t being malicious. No, she had assessed the situation and determined there was cause for concern somewhere, but Evelyn couldn’t locate it, and that was what spooked her worst of all.

Evelyn walked Renard out that night, fighting herself to be as happy as he was.

“Did you hear it when your daddy called me son?” he asked. “He did, Evelyn, he did. I never heard that word come out like that before.”

“I knew he would like you,” Evelyn said.

“I know. I should have believed you, but I was so nervous. Imagine if he hadn’t. You’re the most important person to me. I couldn’t live if I couldn’t have your hand.” He kissed her in front of the house the way she’d always wanted, but Evelyn pulled away, feeling someone somewhere was watching her.

Once he was gone, she walked back up the porch steps. She could hear her parents arguing from the door.

“But did you see his shoes? And did you hear what he said about where he lived? Twelve brothers and sisters. Can you imagine? For our daughter? And in a house on Amelia Street the size of a shack? He’s a low-class man, Josephine. Not middle, middle I could take, I could do something with it, but low.”

Then her mother’s long silence, its heaviness breaking: “I thought that was endearing to tell you the truth. Piti a piti, zozo fait son nid . Don’t tell me we’re up so high we can’t reach our hand out to someone below us.”

“It’s not that I won’t reach my hand out, don’t you say that. You know I do more to lift our people than most. The New Orleans Urban League, the Black Savings and Loan Association, you know how many free medical exams I gave out last year alone? Do you?” As his voice lifted, her mother’s seemed to cower.

“I’m not saying you don’t.”

“I just don’t want to waste all our effort, and on what, an unlikely prospect. Think about your daddy. What would he say?”

“He would say to give a young Negro man a chance.” She paused. Then, “Not everybody gave you a warm welcome either, you know.”

“I was a doctor.”

“You were becoming a doctor just like this boy.”

He raised his voice now. “I was from a good family, you were lucky to end up with me. And I’ve done well for you and the kids.”

“That’s what I believed too.” She seemed to walk over to him then. “But I’m just saying everyone didn’t agree with my assessment.”

“Josephine, if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you just wanted her out of the house, that you didn’t care who she ended up with, as long as she was gone from here.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

“Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe you don’t want to see Evelyn come out with a better match than Ruby.”

Evelyn heard the scrape of a wood chair against linoleum, and her mother’s house shoes batting against the floor.

“You say what you want, Nelson.”

“You know I will.”

“You say what you want,” her mother repeated. “You think you know everything, but one thing you can’t know is how much I love that child. You didn’t carry her, nor did you push her out. You’re a mighty good provider, but you didn’t learn her how to eat with a spoon and tie her shoes and write her first word, and for those reasons alone you can’t know.” Her voice broke. “My love for her took over when I had her. There’s no room for anything else.”

Evelyn’s daddy’s sharper heels tapped, then stopped.

“Well, I love her too, and I won’t have her fighting her way through this life. It’s already hard enough. I won’t make it harder, I can’t. I promised myself that.”

Fall 1986

Jackie didn’t blame Terry for leaving her; mostly she just worried she would get a call one morning that he had been arrested inside some crack den, or outside it, stealing to support the habit. He was by no means a thief, but Jackie had learned the hard way that life could drag disgrace out of you.

No, she didn’t blame him, but on her bad days resentment jabbed her from the inside. Today was a bad day, she knew, because she hadn’t even turned on her Chaka Khan when she got into the car. Instead, she stared outside as she jerked her beat-up Camry out of Stately Grove. She had to keep her windows down because her air conditioner had broken a few months before in the dead of summer, and she could reach out and touch the soiled mattresses beside the dumpster if she tried. No, there was nothing stately about this apartment complex, this neighborhood. Still, she studied her surroundings while she drove in to work, forced her body to feel the potholes, let her eyes linger on the boarded-up houses, liquor stores, and bail bondsmen. Billboards dotted every corner: Nancy Reagan leaning into a black child’s face, bold white letters above her head. just say no.

At the light, Jackie even peered through her rearview at the housing projects behind her, covered in graffiti and littered with trash. There were at least ten police cars parked in the vicinity already, and residents who should have been at work seemed to guard the overgrown grass, the slumped brown brick towers. In her old neighborhood, her lawn was as fresh as first-day-of-school haircuts, and she could have slept on her sparkling green grass all night without being bothered if she wanted to. But that had been a house in New Orleans East, with patio furniture in the yard, even room for a pool once T.C. got older, and things were different now.

She felt herself exhale as she pulled onto I-10 east, reached the exit for Chef Menteur Highway, slid into the version of heaven where she and Terry had built their first home. The East had been the promised land for the black middle class. It was swampland until the ’60s when developers drained it to make room for homes. Black lawyers, doctors, bankers, and even teachers settled in the small pockets of colored housing. Then in the ’70s the white neighborhoods became fair game. It was the lawyers and doctors who integrated first, but just ten years later, her middle-class parents secured enough of a down payment to pluck the corner house on Lake Forest. It wasn’t long before she and Terry moved a few blocks away.

Now she drove down Chef, which bustled with schools and shops, beauty salons, clothing stores, Bessie’s Dog Boarding, Inez’s Beauty Supply. She turned onto Lane Avenue, a residential street with new brick houses, iron lions guarding its fronts. The neighborhood was quiet by this time, carports emptied, curtains drawn; most everybody worked, except the occasional mothers who stayed home to walk their children to school.