Tayari Jones: Silver Sparrow

The art teacher approached me from behind. “Now, who are these people you’ve drawn so beautiful y?”

Charmed, I smiled up at her. “My family. My daddy has two wifes and two girls.”

Cocking her head, she said, “I see.”

I didn’t think much more about it. I was stil enjoying the memory of the way she pronounced beautifully. To this day, when I hear anyone say that word, I feel loved. At the end of the month, I brought al of my drawings home in a cardboard folder. James opened up his wal et, which he kept plump with two-dol ar bil s to reward me for my schoolwork. I saved the portrait, my masterpiece, for last, being as it was so beautiful y drawn and everything.

My father picked the page up from the table and held it close to his face like he was looking for a coded message. Mother stood behind me, crossed her arms over my chest, and bent to place a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s okay,” she said.

“Did you tel your teacher who was in the picture?” James said.

I nodded slowly, the whole time thinking that I probably should lie, although I wasn’t quite sure why.

“James,” Mother said, “let’s not make a molehil into a mountain. She’s just a child.”

“Gwen,” he said, “this is important. Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to take her out behind the woodshed.” Then he chuckled, but my mother didn’t laugh.

“Al she did was draw a picture. Kids draw pictures.”

“Go on in the kitchen, Gwen,” James said. “Let me talk to my daughter.”

My mother said, “Why can’t I stay in here? She’s my daughter, too.”

“You are with her al the time. You tel me I don’t spend enough time talking to her. So now let me talk.”

Mother hesitated and then released me. “She’s just a little kid, James. She doesn’t even know the ins and outs yet.”

“Trust me,” James said.

She left the room, but I don’t know that she trusted him not to say something that would leave me wounded and broken-winged for life. I could see it in her face. When she was upset she moved her jaw around invisible gum. At night, I could hear her in her room, grinding her teeth in her sleep.

The sound was like gravel under car wheels.

“Dana, come here.” James was wearing a navy chauffeur’s uniform. His hat must have been in the car, but I could see the ridged mark across his forehead where the hatband usual y rested. “Come closer,” he said.

I hesitated, looking to the space in the doorway where Mother had disappeared.

“Dana,” he said, “you’re not afraid of me, are you? You’re not scared of your own father, are you?”

His voice sounded mournful, but I took it as a dare. “No, sir,” I said, taking a bold step forward.

“Don’t cal me sir, Dana. I’m not your boss. When you say that, it makes me feel like an overseer.”

I shrugged. Mother told me that I should always cal him sir. With a sudden motion, he reached out for me and lifted me up on his lap. He spoke to me with both of our faces looking outward, so I couldn’t see his expression.

“Dana, I can’t have you making drawings like the one you made for your art class. I can’t have you doing things like that. What goes on in this house between your mother and me is grown people’s business. I love you. You are my baby girl, and I love you, and I love your mama. But what we do in this house has to be a secret, okay?”

“I didn’t even draw this house.”

James sighed and bounced me on his lap a little bit. “What happens in my life, in my world, doesn’t have anything to do with you. You can’t tel your teacher that your daddy has another wife. You can’t tel your teacher that my name is James Witherspoon. Atlanta ain’t nothing but a country town, and everyone knows everybody.”

“Your other wife and your other girl is a secret?” I asked him.

He put me down from his lap, so we could look each other in the face. “No. You’ve got it the wrong way around. Dana, you are the one that’s a secret.”

Then he patted me on the head and tugged one of my braids. With a wink he pul ed out his bil fold and separated three two-dol ar bil s from the stack. He handed them over to me and I clamped them in my palm.

“Aren’t you going to put them in your pocket?”

“Yes, sir.”

And for once, he didn’t tel me not to cal him that.

James took me by the hand and we walked down the hal way to the kitchen for dinner. I closed my eyes on the short walk because I didn’t like the wal paper in the hal way. It was beige with a burgundy pattern. When it had started peeling at the edges, I was accused of picking at the seams. I denied it over and over again, but Mother reported me to James on his weekly visit. He took off his belt and swatted me around the legs and up on my backside, which seemed to satisfy something in my mother.

In the kitchen my mother placed the bowls and plates on the glass table in silence. She wore her favorite apron that James brought back from New Orleans. On the front was a drawing of a crawfish holding a spatula aloft and a caption: DON’T MAKE ME POISON YOUR FOOD! James took his place at the head of the table and polished the water spots from his fork with his napkin. “I didn’t lay a hand on her; I didn’t even raise my voice. Did I?”

“No, sir.” And this was entirely the truth, but I felt different than I had just a few minutes before when I’d pul ed my drawing out of its sleeve. My skin stayed the same while this difference snuck in through a pore and attached itself to whatever brittle part forms my center. You are the secret. He’d said it with a smile, touching the tip of my nose with the pad of his finger.

My mother came around and picked me up under my arms and sat me on the stack of phone books in my chair. She kissed my cheek and fixed a plate with salmon croquettes, a spoon of green beans, and corn.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded.

James ate his meal, spooning honey onto a dinner rol when my mother said there would be no dessert. He drank a big glass of Coke.

“Don’t eat too much,” my mother said. “You’l have to eat again in a little while.”

“I’m always happy to eat your food, Gwen. I’m always happy to sit at your table.”

I don’t know how I decided that my missing teeth were the problem, but I devised a plan to slide a folded piece of paper behind my top teeth to camouflage the pink space in the center of my smile. I was inspired by James, actual y, who once told me how he put cardboard in his shoes when he was little to make up for the holes in the soles. The paper was soggy and the blue lines ran with my saliva.

Mother caught me in the middle of this process. She walked into my room and lay across my twin bed with its purple checked spread. She liked to do this, just lie across my bed while I played with my toys or colored in my notebooks, watching me like I was a television show. She always smel ed good, like flowery perfume, and sometimes like my father’s cigarettes.

“What are you doing, Petunia?”

“Don’t cal me Petunia,” I said, partial y because I didn’t like the name and partial y because I wanted to see if I could talk with the paper in my mouth. “Petunia is the name of a pig.”

“Petunia is a flower,” my mother said. “A pretty one.”

“It’s Porky Pig’s girlfriend.”

“That’s meant to be a joke, a pretty name for a pig, you see?”

“A joke is supposed to be funny.”

“It is funny. You are just in a bad mood. What’re you doing with the paper?”

“I’m trying to put my teeth back,” I said, while trying to rearrange the sodden wad.