Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

Bobo said, “One of ’em’s a nigga.”

“Which one, Bobo?” Sis asked.

“Da black one.”

“Which one dat be?”

The cuff fell away from Patrice’s wrist, and he set to work on mine. He said, “I the white one.”

“Which one is you?”

“This one.”

My cuff came off, and I stood and walked across the room, grabbing the rifle from the table as I did. “I’m the black one, and I’m over here,” I said. “That should clear things up.”

Patrice tried to stand up, but let out a yell and fell backward. “What’s wrong?” Sis asked.

“It’s his back,” I said. “I think he’s hurt pretty bad. Here, help me get him to a bed.”

We put him on a cot surrounded by piled clothes. I looked down at him, helpless there, and I resolved to leave him in the morning. Somehow he read that intention in my face and said, “If’n you does, I’ll sho nuff tell where you headed.” With that, exhaustion took him, and he fell asleep.

“Is you really black?” Sis asked me.

“He sho am,” Bobo said.

“My great-grandpappy used to have him some slaves,” the blind woman said. “They say he owned a plantation.”

“How nice for him,” I said. I felt myself growing sleepy. “Listen, I’m just going to sit over here and close my eyes for a bit.” I held the rifle cradled against my chest and drifted.

My dream spiraled like all things spiral: life, reflection, desire toward some truth, but never aimed directly at it. The year was 1861. Somehow I knew that and somehow I knew that I was in New Orleans, though I had never been there and certainly hadn’t been there in the nineteenth century. Though it was only March, the air was wet and hot, wetter than air should be, hotter than air should be. My clothes, my clothes were magnificent. I was dressed in a canary yellow frock suit, fitted at my trim waist and just a little snug across my chest. My shirt was white and crisp in spite of the humidity, and I realized that for some reason I was not perspiring like those around me. People watched me, I believed, with some admiration and some respect and perhaps fear. The yellow of my suit made my dark brown skin seem smooth in the bright sun. Other slaves wore tattered work clothes as they labored loading and unloading cargo. The ship’s captain, with whom I was dealing, was wrapped in drab attire, as was the white dock foreman, a short, fat man in a vest. They all called me Raz-ru, and I heard a black man refer to me behind my back as the claw.

“That does it, Raz-ru,” the captain said, handing me a copy of the shipping bill. “Tell me, will we ever see Mr. Bond down here again? Or are you taking over everything?”

“Maybe,” I said, intentionally leaving it unclear about which question I was answering. “Maybe.”

As I walked away from the docks a black man named Jason joined me. I greeted him by name. He was taller than I, very slender, and his voice was unusually high pitched.

“They says the war is comin’, Raz-ru. They says we gonna be free men,” Jason said.

“Who is they?” I asked.

“Everybody.”

I stopped and looked him in the eyes. “I hope it’s true. I believe it is true. Are you ready for it?”

“I’m ready.”

“Good man. Stay ready.”

Then I was wandering with less ease, but more than I would have expected, through a crowd of white men, ugly faces, some with tobacco-stained chins, some dressed in finery. I was in an auction hall, and the merchandise was slaves. The item on the block was a man about my size, built very much like me, square jawed like me. The auctioneer barked out his attributes, said he was as strong as an ox, could lift and run all day and didn’t mind the heat or the humidity. He then gestured, and the man ran back and forth through the aisle, the muscles of his back rippling, his head down. The first bids were called out, and I heard fifty, then seventy-five, but I didn’t hear what price he finally fetched.

A sudden hush fell upon the room as what looked very much like a white woman was pushed onto the block. But she couldn’t have been white because she was on the block. In New Orleans there were hundreds like her, but this woman wore the clothes of a so-called lady, and by that I mean that she was dressed from the waist up as well as below, given a respect that any other slave could never have expected. She stood with her back straight, her chin out, defiant. All the slaves behind the block came together as if a choir and then, as a choir, sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” their voices soft, mellow, round, their gaze a collective one, dumb and lost.

“I have here a high-, high-yellow bitch of good lines,” the auctioneer called. “Her good white blood is evident, but I can guarantee her hot and steamy nigger disposition. From her hips you can see she’s probably not much for breedin’, but she’s great for rehearsin’. Her skin might be white, but she bleeds black. A fine luxury purchase for the discriminating gentleman.”

Before the bidding began, a familiar voice rang out, offering five thousand dollars. It was the voice of the man who owned me. Hamish Bond stepped forward, dashing and comfortable in his camel dress coat, his tightly cinched green cravat, his camel top hat, his oiled hair graying at the temples just below the brim. Bond was not nearly as tall as me, but he carried himself entirely erect, as if he had been constructed anew for the day.

“I have a bid of five thousand dollars from Mister Hamish Bond,” the auctioneer sang. “Five thousand dollars. Do I hear any other bids? Five thousand once. Twice. Sold to Hamish Bond.”

The woman looked liked every other mulatto in New Orleans, but Bond paid for her and took her back to his place in the Quarter. I arrived a couple of hours later to find myself standing in the kitchen, hearing about the new acquisition from the last high-yellow object of affection, Michelle.

She moved around the kitchen in a long dress, a scarf around her head. Her dark eyes blazed. She moved with some grace, but not much. “Raz-ru,” she said, pointing at the ceiling. “She’s up there right now, in that room that used to be mine. And I have to wait on her, treat her with respect and deference.”

The cook, another young mulatto woman, said, “The way we used to have to treat you.”

“Shut up, Dolly,” Michelle said. “No one asked you.”

“I have to treat her like she’s more than nothing while he tiptoes around her like she’s made of glass or some such, like she’s white like he is. Why did I fall from favor, Raz-ru? He used to treat me like that. Why no more? Did he drill deep enough to strike black, and now he needs a new well?”

“And he’ll need a new well again,” I said.

Dolly came over, a big wooden spoon in her hand, talking like the voodun princess she was, “Might be the last well he get.” She stirred the air with her spoon. “It’s comin’. Change be comin’. It’s in the air. Soon, Master Hamish won’t be having his yellow cookies.”

“Dolly, go about your business!” Michelle said. “Take the tea up to that … that new one.”

Michelle watched Dolly leave. “Samantha Moon, that’s her name. She was living high and mighty up in Virginia, thinking she was white, and then the truth came back to roost. She got to live free for a long spell and she ought to be happy about that, but she doesn’t believe she is what she is. I would also feel sorry for her except that she had those free years that I didn’t have. I’m beginning to think the only difference between being black and being white is that if you’re white you just don’t know about your blood, you’re dumb to your blood, ignorant about that one drop. White people fear that one drop like we fear the rope.”