第1章
Candy
I n my memory’s sketch of early childhood, drawn by an artist of the impressionist school, there is one image that stands out above the rest—which when called forth is preceded by the mouth-watering aroma of pancake syrup warming in a skillet and the crackling, bubbling sounds of the syrup transforming magically into homemade pull candy. Then she comes into view, the real, real pretty woman who stands at the stove, making this magic just for me.
Or at least, that’s how it feels to a boy of three years old. There is another wonderful smell that accompanies her prence as she turns, smiling right in my direction, as she steps clor to where I stand in the middle of the kitchen—waiting eagerly next to my sister, ven-year-old Ophelia, and two of the other children, Rufus and Pookie, who live in this hou. As she slips the cooling candy off the wooden spoon, pulling and breaking it into pieces that she brings and places in my outstretched hand, as she watches me happily gobbling up the tasty sweetness, her wonderful fragrance is there again. Not perfume or anything floral or spicy—it’s just a clean, warm, good smell that wraps around me like a Superman cape, making me feel strong, special, and loved—even if I don’t have words for tho concepts yet.
Though I don’t know who she is, I n a familiarity about her, not only becau she has come before and made candy in this same fashion, but also becau of how she looks at me—like she’s talking to me from her eyes, saying, You remember me, don’t you?
At this point in childhood, and for most of the first five years of my life, the map of my world was broken strictly into two territories—the familiar and the unknown. The happy, safe zone of the familiar was very small, often a shifting dot on the map, while the unknown was vast, terrifying, and constant.
What I did know by the age of three or four was that Ophelia was my older sister and best friend, and also that we were treated with kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, the adults who hou we lived in. What I didn’t know was that the Robinsons’ hou was a foster home, or what that meant. Our situation—where our real parents were and why we didn’t live with them, or why we sometimes did live with uncles and aunts and cousins—was as mysterious as the situations of the other foster children living at the Robinsons’.
What mattered most was that I had a sister who looked out for me, and I had Rufus and Pookie and the other boys to follow outside for fun and mischief. All that was familiar, the backyard and the rest of the block, was safe turf where we could run and play games like tag, kick-the-can, and hide-and-ek, even after dark. That is, except, for the hou two doors down from the Robinsons.
winpos公务员考试参考书Every time we pasd it I had to almost look the other way, just knowing the old white woman who lived there might suddenly appear and put an evil cur on me—becau, according to Ophelia and everyone el in the neighborhood, the old woman was a witch.
When Ophelia and I pasd by the hou together once and I confesd that I was scared of the witch, my sister said, “I ain’t scared,” and to prove it she walked right into the front yard and grabbed a handful of cherries off the woman’s cherry tree.
Ophelia ate tho cherries with a smile. But within the week I was in the Robinsons’ hou when here came Ophelia, racing up the steps and stumbling inside, panting and holding her ven-year-old chest, describing how the witch had caught her stealing cherries and grabbed her arm, cackling, “I’m gonna get you!”
Scared to death as she was now, Ophelia soon decided that since she had escaped an untimely death once, she might as well go back to stealing cherries. Even so, she made me promi to avoid the strange woman’s hou. “Now, remember,” Ophelia warned, “when you walk by, if you e her on the porch, don’t you look at her and never say nuthin’ to her, even if she calls you by name.”
I didn’t have to promi becau I knew that nothing and no one could ever make me do that. But I
was still haunted by nightmares so real that I could have sworn I actually snuck into her hou and found mylf in the middle of a dark, creepy room where I was surrounded by an army of cats, rearing up on their back legs, baring their claws and fangs. The nightmares were so inten that for the longest time I had an irrational fear and dislike of cats. At the same time, I was not entirely convinced that this old woman was in fact a witch. Maybe she was just different. Since I’d never en any white people other than her, I figured they might all be like that.
Then again, becau my big sister was my only resource for explaining all that was unknown, I believed her and accepted her explanations. But as I pieced together fragments of information about our family over the years, mainly from Ophelia and also from some of our uncles and aunts, I found the answers much harder to grasp.报考公务员流程
毕业生电影插曲How the real pretty woman who came to make the candy fit into the puzzle, I was never told, but something old and wi inside me knew that she was important. Maybe it was how she emed to pay special attention to me, even though she was just as nice to Ophelia and the other kids, or maybe it was how she and I emed to have a cret way of talking without words. In our
unspoken conversation, I understood her to be saying that eing me happy made her even happier,
savvy翻译and so somewhere in my cells, that became my first job in life—to make her feel as good as she made me feel. Intuitively, I also understood who she was, in spite of never being told, and there is a moment of recognition that comes during one of her visits—as I watch her at the stove and make obrvations that will be reinforced in years to come.
More than pretty, she is beautiful, a stop-you-in-your-tracks-turn-around-and-look-twice beautiful. Not tall at five-four, but with a stature of nobility that makes her appear much taller, she is light brown–skinned but not too light—almost the color of the rich maple syrup she stirs and heats into candy. She has supernaturally strong fingernails—capable of breaking an apple in half, bare-handed, something that few women or men can do and something that impress me for life. She has a stylish way of dressing—the color burgundy and paisley print dress stand out—with a scarf or shawl thrown over her shoulder to give her a feminine, flowing look. The brightness of color and the flowing layers of fabric give her an appearance I would later describe as Afro-centric.
But the features that most capture her beauty are her expressive eyes and her amazing smile. Then and later, I liken that smile to opening a refrigerator at night. You open up that door—smile— and the light fills up the room. Even on tho nights ahead when the refrigerator contains nothing but a lightbulb and ice water, her smile and the memory of her smile are all the comforts I need.
英语智力题When the recognition occurs exactly, I don’t recall, except that it takes place somewhere in my fourth year, maybe after she hands me a piece of candy, in an instant when at last I can respond to that look she has been giving me and reassure her with my own look— Of cour I remember you, you’re my momma!
country* * *
Ours was a family of crets. Over the years, I heard only parts of my mother’s saga, told to me by a variety of sources, so that the understanding that eventually emerged was of a kind of Cinderella story—without the fairy godmother and the part at the end where she marries the prince and they all live happily ever after. The oldest and only daughter of the four surviving children born to parents Archie and Ophelia Gardner, Bettye Jean came into this world in 1928, in Little Rock, Arkansas, but was raid in Depression-era, dirt-poor, rural Louisiana—somewhere near the town of Rayville, population five hundred. With the trials of poverty and racism, life wasn’t easy for the Gardners. Bettye and her brother Archie— who cried grown-man tears when he recalled what it was like walking the long, dusty country roads to school in the thirties and forties in Rayville—had to keep their heads up as white children rode by in hor-drawn wagons or on horback, looking down at the two of them, pointing, calling them “niggers,” and spitting on them.
Yet, in spite of hard times and hateful ignorance, Bettye’s childhood was relatively stable and very loving. Adored by her three younger brothers—Archie Jr., Willie, and Henry—she was, in fact, a golden girl of promi, a star student who finished third in her class when she graduated from Rayville Colored High School in 1946. But her dreams quickly unraveled the moment it was time to go off to college and pursue her calling as an educator, starting with the devastating sudden death of her mother. Like Cinderella, while she was still in mourning, almost overnight her father remarried, leaving Bettye to cope with a domineering stepmother—who went by the ironic nickname of Little Mama—and a new t of competitive stepsiblings. Just at a time when Bettye Jean was depending on the financial support from her father to go to college, Little Mama saw to it that the money went to her own daughter, Eddie Lee—who had graduated in the same class as Bettye but wasn’t among the top students.
Rather than giving up, even though her heart was broken by her father’s refusal to help, Bettye found work as a substitute teacher while she put herlf through beauty school. But once again, when she needed financial assistance from her father to pay for her state licensing fees, he said no.
With all the talent, brilliance, and beauty that had been naturally bestowed on Bettye Jean Gardner, she had apparently drawn an unlucky card when it came to men—most of whom emed destined to
disappoint her, starting with her own daddy. There was Samuel Salter, a married schoolteacher who profesd his love for her and his plan to leave his wife, but who must have changed his mind when she became pregnant. True to form, her daddy and Little Mama were no help. They let it be known that she had embarrasd them enough by being single at age twenty-two, but for her to be an old maid and an unwed mother was too much shame for them to bear. On the grounds, they put her out.
Thus began my mother’s four-year trek to Milwaukee, where all three of her brothers had ttled. Along the way she gave birth to my sister—named Ophelia for her beloved mother—before crossing paths with a tall, dark, handsome stranger during a trip back to Louisiana. His name was Thomas Turner, a married man who swept Bettye Jean off her feet either romantically or by force. The result was me, Christopher Paul Gardner, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on February 9, 1954—the same year, auspiciously, that school gregation was ruled in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In keeping with other family mysteries, my father was a figment of the vast unknown throughout my childhood. His name was mentioned only once or twice. It probably would have bothered me much more if I weren’t so occupied trying to get to the bottom of other more pressing questions, especially
the how-when-where-why my smart, strong, beautiful mother ever became entangled with Freddie Triplett.
Tall and dark, but not exactly handsome—at times he bore a strong remblance to Sonny Liston—Freddie had the demeanor of some ill-begotten cross between a pit bull and Godzilla. At six-two, 280 pounds, he did have a stature and brawn that some women found attractive. Whatever
it was that first caught her attention must have been a redeeming side of him that later vanished. Or maybe, as I’d wonder in my youthful imagination, my mother was tricked by a magic spell into thinking that he was one of tho frog princes. After all, the other men who looked good had not turned out to be dependable; maybe she thought Freddie was the opposite—a man who looked dangerous but was kind and tender underneath his disgui. If that was the ca, and she believed in the fairy tale that her kiss would turn the frog into a prince, she was sadly mistaken. In fact, he turned out to be many times more dangerous than he looked, especially after that first kiss, and after he decided she was his.
No one ever laid out the quence of events that led to my mother being procuted and imprisoned for alleged welfare fraud. It started out with an anonymous tip, apparently, that somehow she was a
danger to society becau she was earning money at a job—to feed and care for her two children (Ophelia and me) and a third on the way (my sister Sharon)—and was receiving assistance at the same time. That anonymous tip had come from Freddie, a man willing to do or say anything to have her locked up for three years becau she had committed the crime of trying to leave his sorry ass.
It was becau of Freddie’s actions in having her nt away that Ophelia and I spent tho three years either in foster care or with extended family members. Yet we never knew why or when changes in our living situation would take place.
Just as no one told me that it was my mother who came to make candy and visit us at the foster home under special, supervid leave from prison, no explanation accompanied our move when Ophelia and I went to stay with my Uncle Archie and his wife Clara, or TT as we all called her. Way back in Louisiana, the entire Gardner family must have signed an oath of crecy becau rious questions about the past were almost always shrugged off, a policy my mother may have instituted out of her dislike for discussing anything unpleasant.
Later on in my adolescence there was one occasion when I presd her about just who my father was and why he wasn’t in my life. Moms gave me one of her aring looks, the kind that got me to be quiet real fast.
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“But . . .” I tried to protest.
goofyShe shook her head no, unwilling to open up.
“Why?”
“Well, becau the past is the past,” Moms said firmly. Seeing my frustration, she sighed but still insisted, “Ain’t nothing you can do about it.” She put a stop to my questions, wistfully remarking, “Things happen.” And that was all there was to it.
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