True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy
Her new baby doll. They placed the soft plastic and pink flannel in the little girl’s lap, and she turned her moon-shaped eyes toward them in awed gratitude. It was so perfect and so small. She trailed her fingertips along the smooth brown forehead and down into the bottom curve of the upturned nose. She gently lifted the dimpled arms and legs and then reverently placed them back. Slowly kissing the set painted mouth, she inhaled its new aroma while stroking the silken curled head and full cheeks. She circled her arms around the motionless body and squeezed, while with tightly closed eyes she waited breathlessly for the first trembling vibrations of its low, gravelly “Mama” to radiate through her breast. Her parents surrounded this annual ritual with full heavy laughter, patted the girl on the head, and returned to the other business of Christmas.
Cora Lee was an easy child to please. She asked for only this one thing each year, and although they supplied her over the years with the blocks, bicycles, books, and games they felt necessary for a growing child, she spent all of her time with her dolls—and they had to be baby dolls. She told them this with a silent rebellion the year they had decided she was now old enough for a teenaged Barbie doll; they had even sacrificed for an expensive set of foreign figurines with porcelain faces and real silk and lace mantillas, saris, and kimonos. The following week they found the dolls under her bed with the heads smashed in and the arms twisted out of their sockets.
That was when her father began to worry. Nonsense, her mother had replied. Wasn’t he always saying that she was different from their other children? Well, all children were careless with their toys, and this only proved that she was just like the rest. But the woman stared around the room, thoughtfully fingering the broken pieces of china, while her daughter’s assortment of diapered and bottled dolls stared back from their neat row with fixed smiles.
They reluctantly bowed in the face of her quiet reproach and soothed their bruised authority by giving her cheaper and cheaper baby dolls. But their laughter grew hollow and disquieting over Cora’s Christmas ritual with the plastic and flannel because her body was now growing rounded and curved. Her father quickly averted his face and busied himself with the other children during the moments that her mother would first hand her the doll from under the tree. Yet a lump still formed in his throat from the lingering glimpse of her melted gratitude for the gift of dead plastic.
He put his foot down on her thirteenth Christmas. There would be no more dolls—of any kind. Let her go play like other children her age. But she does play like other children, her mother pleaded. She had secretly watched her daughter over the years for some missing space, some faintly visible sign in her schoolwork or activities that would explain the strange Christmas ritual, but there was none. She wasn’t as bright as her brother, but her marks were a great deal better than her sister’s, and she was certainly their most obedient child. Was he going to deny her child this one thing that made her happy? He silently turned from the anger that his seeming unreasonableness fixed on his wife’s face, because there were no words for the shudder that went through his mind at the memory of the dead brown plastic resting on his daughter’s protruding breasts.
In his guilt and bewilderment he spent more money on her that Christmas than on all the other children, but they still felt the quiet reproach in her spirit as she listlessly fingered the new sweaters, camera, and portable radio.
“That’s okay, baby,” her mother whispered in her ear, “you have lots of dolls in your room.”
“But they don’t smell and feel the same as the new ones.” And the woman was startled by the depths of misery and loss reflected on the girl’s dark brown face. She quickly pushed the image away from herself and still refused to believe that there was any need to worry. And it would be many months later before she recalled that image to her consciousness. It would return to her after her youngest daughter would approach her with the news one afternoon that Cora Lee had been doing nasty with the Murphy boy behind the basement steps. And she would call her older daughter to her and hear her recount with a painful innocence that it wasn’t nasty, he had just promised to show her the thing that felt good in the dark—and it had felt good, Mother.
And she would then sadly and patiently give an explanation, long overdue, that Cora Lee mustn’t let the Murphy boy or any other boy show her the thing that felt good in the dark, because her body could now make babies and she wasn’t old enough to be a mother. Did she understand? And as she would watch the disjointed mysteries of life connect up in her daughter’s mind and hear her breathe out with enlightened wonder—“A real baby, Mother?”—the image of that Christmas would come smashing into her brain like a meat cleaver. It was then that she began to worry.
“Cora, Cora Lee!” The voice echoed shrilly up the air shaft. “I told ya to stop them goddamned children from jumping over my goddamned head all the goddamned day! Now I’m gonna call the police—do you hear me? The goddamned police!” And the window banged shut.
Cora Lee sighed slowly, turned her head from her soap opera, and looked around the disheveled living room at the howling and flying bodies that were throwing dingy school books at each other, jumping off of crippled furniture, and swinging on her sagging velveteen draperies.
“Y’all stop that now,” she called out languidly. “You’re giving Miss Sophie a nervous headache, and she said she’s gonna call the cops.” No one paid her any attention, and she turned back toward the television with a sigh, absentmindedly stroking the baby on her lap. What did these people on Brewster Place want from her anyway? Always complaining. If she let the kids go outside, they made too much noise in the halls. If they played in the streets, she didn’t watch them closely enough. How could she do all that—be a hundred places at one time? It was enough just trying to keep this apartment together. Did she know little Brucie was going to climb the wall at the end of the block and fall and break his arm? The way they had carried on, you’d think she had pushed him off herself.
Bruce ran in front of the television, chasing one of his sisters and trying to hit her over the head with his dirty unraveling cast.
“Stop that, you’re messing up the picture,” she said irritably. Now the doctors were saying that his arm wasn’t mending right and she had to bring him back to have it reset. Always something—she must remember to look at the clinic card for his next appointment. Tuesday the something, she faintly recalled. She hoped it wasn’t last Tuesday, or she would have to wait forever for a new appointment.
“I just don’t know,” she sighed aloud, shifted the baby into her arms, and got up to adjust the picture and change channels. She hated it when her two favorite stories came on at the same time; it was a pain to keep switching channels between Steve’s murder trial and Jessica’s secret abortion.
A rubber ball came hurling across the room and smacked the baby on the side of the head. It began screaming, and her eyes blazed around the room for the offender.
“All right, that’s it!” she yelled, charging around the room, hitting randomly at whoever wasn’t quick enough to dodge her swinging fists. “Now just get outside—I’m sick of you. Wait! Doesn’t anyone have any homework?” She only threatened them with homework when they had pushed her to the end of her patience. She listened suspiciously to the mottled chorus of “nos” to her question, but couldn’t gather the energy to sort through the confused pile of torn notebooks that lay scattered about the floor.
“Awful strange,” she muttered darkly. “No one ever has any homework. When I was in school, we always got homework.” But they had already headed for the door, knowing she had used up her ultimate weapon against them. “And we didn’t get left back like you little dumb asses,” she called out impotently to the slamming door. It had surprised her when Maybelline had gotten left back. Her oldest daughter had always liked school, and there were never any truant notices for her in the mailbox like there were for the others. Take her to the library, the teachers had said, encourage her to read. But the younger ones had torn and marked in her library books, and they made you pay for that. She couldn’t afford to be paying for books all the time. And how was she expected to keep on top of them every minute? It was enough just trying to keep the apartment together. She underscored that thought by picking up a handful of discarded clothes and throwing them into a leaning chair. So now truant notices were coming for Maybelline, too.
“I just don’t know,” she sighed, and sat back down in front of the television. She gently examined the side of the baby’s head to see if the ball had left a mark and kissed the tiny bruise. Why couldn’t they just stay like this—so soft and easy to care for? How she had loved them this way. Taking the baby’s hand in her mouth, she sucked at the small fingers and watched it giggle and try to reach for her nose. She poked her thumb into the dimpled cheek and lifted the child onto her breast so she could stroke its finely curled hair and inhale the mingled sweetness of mineral oil and talcum powder that lay in the creases of its neck. Oh, for them to stay like this, when they could be fed from her body so there were no welfare offices to sit in all day or food stamp lines to stand on, when she alone could be their substance and their world, when there were no neighbors or teachers or social workers to answer to about their actions. They stayed where you put them and were so easy to keep clean.
She’d spend hours washing, pressing, and folding the miniature clothes, blankets, and sheets. The left-hand corner of her bedroom which held the white wooden crib and dresser was dusted and mopped religiously. As she got on her hands and knees to wash the molding under the crib, the red and black sign in the clinic glared into her mind—GERMS ARE YOUR BABY’S ENEMIES—and she was constantly alert for any of them hidden in that left-hand corner. No, when her babies slept she made sure they went unmolested by those things painted on that clinic poster. There was no place for them to hide on that brown body that was bathed and oiled twice a day, or in the folds of the pastel flannel and percales that she personally scrubbed and sterilized, or between the bristles of the hair brushes that were boiled each week and replaced each month. She couldn’t bear the thought of those ugly red things creeping into the soft, fragrant curls that she now buried her nose into.
She wondered at the change in the fine silky strands that moved with the slightest force of her breath and raised to tickle her nostrils when she inhaled. In a few years they would grow tight and kinky and rough. She’d hate to touch them then, because the child would cry when she yanked the comb through its matted hair. And she would have to drag them from under the bed or out of closets and have to thump them on the head constantly to get them to sit still while she combed their hair. And if she didn’t, there would now be neighbors and teachers and a motley assortment of relatives to complain about the linty, gnarled hair of the babies who had grown beyond the world of her lap, growing wild-eyed and dumb, coming home filthy from the streets with rough corduroy, khaki, and denim that tattered faster than she could mend, and with mouthfuls of rotten teeth, and scraped limbs, and torn school books, and those damned truant notices in her mailbox—dumb, just plain dumb.
“Are you gonna be a dumb-ass too?” she cooed at the baby. “No, not Mama’s baby. You’re not gonna be like them.”
There was no reason for them being like that—so difficult. She had gone to school until her sophomore year, when she had her first baby. And in those days you had to leave high school if you were pregnant. She had intended to go back, but the babies just seemed to keep coming—always welcome until they changed, and then she just didn’t understand them.
Don’t understand you, Cora Lee, just don’t understand you. Having all them babies year after year by God knows who. Only Sammy and Maybelline got the same father. Daughter, what’s wrong with you? Sis, what’s wrong with you? Case number 6348, what’s wrong with you?
What was wrong with them? If they behaved better, people wouldn’t always be on her back. Maybe Sammy and Maybelline’s father would have stayed longer. She had really liked him. His gold-capped teeth and glass eye had fascinated her, and she had almost learned to cope with his peculiar ways. A pot of burnt rice would mean a fractured jaw, or a wet bathroom floor a loose tooth, but that had been their fault for keeping her so tied up she couldn’t keep the house straight. But she still carried the scar under her left eye because of a baby’s crying, and you couldn’t stop a baby from crying. Babies had to cry sometimes, and so Sammy and Maybelline’s father had to go. And then there was Brucie’s father, who had promised to marry her and take her off Welfare, but who went out for a carton of milk and never came back. And then only the shadows—who came in the night and showed her the thing that felt good in the dark, and often left before the children awakened, which was so much better—there was no more waiting for a carton of milk that never came and no more bruised eyes because of a baby’s crying. The thing that felt good in the dark would sometimes bring the new babies, and that’s all she cared to know, since the shadows would often lie about their last names or their jobs or about not having wives. She had stopped listening, stopped caring to know. It was too much trouble, and it didn’t matter because she had her babies. And shadows didn’t give you fractured jaws or bruised eyes, there was no time for all that—in the dark—before the children awakened.
She turned her head toward the door and sighed when she heard the knock. Now what? It couldn’t be the kids, once they were out she had to go down and scrape them from the streets unless they got too cold or hungry. Did that cranky old woman really call the cops? She opened the door and faced a tall pretty young girl with beaded hair, holding a struggling and cursing Sammy by the collar and a stack of papers in the other arm. The other children littered the hallway and stairs to watch their brother’s ordeal.
“Mama, I ain’t done nothing. Tell this shit face; I ain’t done nothing.”
“What a way to talk.” She snatched him and flung him into the apartment. “Missy, I’m sorry. Did he steal something from you? He’s always taking things and I’ve beat him about it but he still won’t stop. I’ve told the little dumb-ass the teachers have threatened to send him to reform school.” She turned toward her son. “Do you hear that—reform school, you little…”
“No, wait, you’ve got it all wrong—it’s not that!” The girl shifted the papers in her arm uncomfortably. “He was downstairs eating out of one of the garbage cans and I thought you oughta know because, well, he might be hungry or something.”
“Oh,” Cora Lee seemed relieved, “I know he does that.” She saw the girl’s eyes widen slightly in disbelief. “He’s looking for sweets. The dentist at the clinic said all his teeth are rotten so I won’t give him anything sweet and he searches through garbage cans for them. I tried to make him stop but you can’t be everywhere at once. I figure once he gets sick enough from that filthy habit, he’ll stop by himself.”
The girl was still staring at her. Cora went on, “Believe me, my kids get plenty to eat. I got two full books of food stamps I haven’t used yet. I don’t know why I bother to cook; they just mess over their food—always eating that damned candy. But I had to stop Sammy because the doctors said his gums were infected and I didn’t want that spreading to the baby.” Why was this girl looking at her so strangely? She probably thought she was lying. Sammy was really gonna get it for embarrassing her like this. “I was just about to cook dinner when you came to the door,” she lied. She still had two more stories to watch before forcing herself to face the greasy sinkful of day-old dishes and pots that had to be cleared away before making dinner. “Okay, y’all,” she called over the girl’s shoulder, “come on in the house, it’s almost time to eat.”
Howls of protest and disbelief followed in the wake of her words and she ran out in the hall behind the retreating footsteps. “I said get your ass in this house!” she yelled. “Or you gonna be damned sorry!” The unaccustomed force in her voice stunned them into a reluctant obedience. They sulked past her into the apartment with a series of sucking teeth and “we never eat this earlys” that were not lost on the girl.
Cora smiled triumphantly at the girl and let out a long sigh. “You see what I mean—they’re terrible. I just don’t know.”
“Yes,” the girl looked down uneasily at her papers, “it must be difficult with so many. I’m sorry I had to meet you like this but I was coming by anyway.” She looked up and slipped into a practiced monologue. “I’m Kiswana Browne and I live up on the sixth floor. I’m trying to start a tenants’ association on this block. You know, all of these buildings are owned by one man and if we really pull together, we can put pressure on him to start fixing this place up. Once we get the association rolling we can even stage a rent strike and do the repairs ourselves. I’d like you to check off on this sheet all the things that are wrong with your apartment and then I’m going to take these forms and file them at the housing court.”
Cora Lee listened to Kiswana’s musical, clipped accent, looked at the designer jeans and striped silk blouse, and was surprised she had said that she lived in this building. What was she doing on a street like Brewster? She couldn’t have been here very long or she would know there was nothing you could do about the way things were. That white man didn’t care about what a bunch of black folks had to say, and these people weren’t gonna stick together no way. They were too busy running around complaining, trying to make trouble for her instead of the landlord. It’s a shame she’s wasting her time because she seems like a nice girl.
“There’s plenty wrong with this place, but this ain’t gonna do no good.”
“It will if we can get enough people to sign these forms. I’ve already been through four of the buildings and the response is really great. We’ll be having our first meeting this Saturday at noon.”
“I just don’t know,” Cora sighed and looked around her apartment. Kiswana openly followed her gaze and Cora Lee answered what she saw reflected in the girl’s face. “You know, you can’t keep nothing nice with these kids tearing up all the time. My sister gave me that living room set only six months ago and it was practically new.”
“No, I know what you mean,” Kiswana said a little too quickly as her eyes passed over the garbage spilling out of the kitchen can.
“You got kids then?”
“No, but my brother has two and he says they can really be a handful at times.”
“Well, I got a lot more than that so you can imagine the hell I go through.”
Kiswana jumped as they heard a loud crash and a scream coming from the corner of the room. Cora Lee turned around placidly and without moving called to the child tangled in the fallen curtain rods and drapery. “You happy now, Dorian? Huh? I told ya a million times to stop swinging on my curtains, so good for you!”
Kiswana pushed past her and went toward the screaming child. “Maybe he’s hurt his head.”
“Naw, he’s always falling from something. He’s got a head like a rock.” Cora followed her to examine her curtains and see if they were torn. “He’s just like his father—all those West Indians got hard heads.” Well, at least, I guess he was West Indian, she thought, he had some kind of accent. “This curtain rod’s totally gone.” She glared down at the child Kiswana was cradling. “And I got no more money to replace it, so these drapes can just stay down for all I care.”
Dorian had stopped crying and was feeling the colorful beads attached to Kiswana’s braids.
“Leave her hair alone and get up and go in the other room.”
Kiswana looked up at Cora alarmed. “There’s a big knot coming up on the side of his head; maybe we should take him…”
“It’ll go down,” Cora said and went to the couch and picked up the baby. Kiswana was still holding Dorian and made no attempt to hide the disapproval on her face. “Look,” Cora Lee said, “if I ran to the hospital every time one of these kids bumps their head or scrapes their knee, I’d spend the rest of my life in those emergency rooms. You just don’t know—they’re wild and disgusting and there’s nothing you can do!” She rocked the baby energetically as if the motions of her body could build up a wall against the girl’s silent condemnation.
Dorian tried to snatch one of the beads twisted in Kiswana’s hair and she cried out in pain as he jumped from her lap with the end of a braid clenched in his fist. “Son-of-a…!” flew out of her mouth before she stopped herself and bit on her lip.
“See what I mean?” Cora almost smiled gratefully at Dorian as he raced around the door into the other room.
“You know,” Kiswana got off her knees and brushed the dust from her jeans, “they’re probably that way from being cramped up in this apartment all the time. Kids need space to move around in.”
“There’s plenty of room in that school yard for them to play, but will they go to school? No. And the last time I let them go to the park somebody gave Sammy a reefer and when my mother found it in his pocket, I caught hell for that. So what am I supposed to do? I gotta keep them away from there or I’ll end up with a bunch of junkies on my hands.”
She saw out of the corner of her eye that Another World was going off. Aw shit! Now she wouldn’t know until Monday if Rachel had divorced Mack because he’d become impotent after getting caught in that earthquake. Why didn’t this girl just go home and stop minding her business.
“Look, I have your paper and I’ll look it over, okay? But I got a million things to do right now so you can come back for it some other time.” She knew she was being rude, but there were only three commercials left before The Doctors started.
“Oh, sure, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to keep you. You know, I wasn’t trying to tell you how to raise your children or anything. It’s just that…” She involuntarily glanced around the living room again.
“Yeah, I know,” Cora said with one eye on the television, “it’s just that I’m busy right now. You see, I got to get up…”
“And cook dinner,” Kiswana said sadly.
“Yeah, right—dinner.” And she went to open the door.
Kiswana seemed reluctant to move. “You know, there’s a lot of good things that go on in the park too.” She pulled a leaflet out of her pocketbook. “My boyfriend’s gotten a grant from the city and he’s putting on a black production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this weekend. Maybe you could come and bring the children,” she offered, barely hopeful.
Cora looked begrudgingly at the flyer. “Abshu Ben-Jamal Productions,” she mouthed slowly. “Hey, I know him—a big, dark fellow. Didn’t he have a traveling puppet show last summer?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Kiswana smiled.
“Came around here with a truck or something and little dancing African dolls. I remember; the kids talked about it for weeks.”
“You see,” Kiswana hurried on encouraged, “they love things like that. Why don’t you bring them tomorrow night?”
“I don’t know,” Cora sighed and looked at the leaflet. “This stuff here—Shakespeare and all that. It’ll be too deep for them and they’ll start acting up and embarrassing me in front of all those people.”
“Oh, no—they’ll love it,” Kiswana insisted. “It’s going to be funny and colorful and he’s brought it up to date. There’s music and dancing—he’s going to have the actors do the Hustle around a maypole—and they slap each other five and all sorts of stuff like that. And it’ll have fairies—all kids like stories with fairies and things in them; even if they don’t understand every word, it’ll be great for them. Please, try to come.”
“Well, I’ll see. Saturday is pretty busy for me. I have to clean up the baby’s things and do the wash. Then there’s so many of them to get ready. I don’t know; I’ll try.”
“Look, I’m not doing much tomorrow. After the tenants’ meeting, I’ll come by early and help you with the kids. Then we can all go together. Okay? It’ll be fun.”
Aw dammit! She could hear the opening music to The Doctors. Anything to get rid of this girl. “Okay, I’ll bring them, but you don’t have to stop by. I’ll manage alone; I’m used to it.”
“No, I want to. It’s no problem.”
“Yeah, but they’ll just show off if you’re here. It’ll be easier if I get them ready myself.” She swung the door open.
“Okay, then I’ll wait and stop by for you on my way out. How about six-thirty so we can get good seats?”
“Yeah, all right—six-thirty.” And she opened the door a little wider.
Kiswana was elated and she cooed at the baby, “Hear that, sweetie? You’re going to a play.” She stroked the child under the chin. “She’s a fine little thing. What’s her name?”
Her attentions to the baby bought her a few more minutes of Cora Lee’s time. “Sonya Marie,” she said and proudly hoisted the child up to be admired.
“She looks just like you.” Kiswana took the baby and tickled her nose with the end of one of her braids.
“It’s a shame you ain’t got none of your own. You’re good with kids.”
“I don’t have a husband, yet,” Kiswana answered automatically, watching the baby laugh.
“So, neither do I.” Cora shrugged her shoulders.
Kiswana looked up and added quickly, “Well, someday, maybe, but right now all I have is a studio.”
“Babies don’t take up much space. You just bring in a crib and a little chest and you’re all set,” Cora beamed.
“But babies grow up,” Kiswana said softly and handed the child back to Cora with a puzzled smile.
Cora Lee shut the door and sat back down in front of the television, but Maggie’s battle with the rare blood disease she’d contracted in Guatemala flickered by unnoticed. There was no longer any comfort in stroking the child on her lap. Kiswana’s perfume, lingering in the air mixed with the odor of stale food and old dust, left her unsettled and she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. After a few restless moments, she laid the baby on the couch and went over to the stack of albums she kept on a corner table. She slowly flipped through the expensive studio poses of her babies. Dorian, Brucie, Sammy, Maybelline—Dierdre and Daphane (how pleased she had been that year to have two come at once). Her babies—all her babies—stared back at her, petrified under the yellowing plastic. She must get Sonya’s pictures taken before it was too late.
She looked at the hanging draperies, the broken furniture, the piles of litter in her living room. That girl probably thought that she was a bad mother. But she loved her babies! Her babies—her…She began to go through the albums again—Shakespeare, humph. Her class had gone to see Shakespeare when she was in junior high. She stared into Maybelline’s brown, infant eyes—We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep—Where had that come from? Had the teacher made them memorize that from the play, “The Temple,” or something it was called. She had loved school; she always went to school—not like them. Why didn’t her babies go to school? She shook her head confusedly. No, babies didn’t go to school. Sonya was her baby and she was too little for school. Sonya was never any trouble. Sonya…
But babies grow up
She slammed the album shut. That girl probably thought she didn’t want to take her children to that play. Why shouldn’t they go? It would be good for them. They needed things like Shakespeare and all that. They would do better in school and stop being so bad. They’d grow up to be like her sister and brother. Her brother had a good job in the post office and her sister lived in Linden Hills. She should have told that girl that—her sister was married to a man with his own business and a big house in Linden Hills. That would have shown her—coming in here with her fancy jeans and silk blouse, saying she was a bad mother. Yeah, she’d have her babies ready tomorrow.
Cora Lee went and turned off the television and decided to start dinner early after all.
“Why we gotta take a bath—Grandma’s coming over?”
“No, you’re going to a play.” Cora Lee was changing the water in the tub for the third shift of children.
“I don’t wanna go to no play,” Dorian protested.
“Yes, you do,” she said, stripping him and throwing him into the sudsy water. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay in that tub.” She went through the door to find Brucie.
“Dierdre, you can’t wear those socks—they got holes in them.”
“But I always wear these to school.”
“Well, you’re not wearing them like that tonight—give ’em to me!” She took the socks from the girl, dragged Brucie into the tub, and went in search of a needle and thread.
The children followed her bewildering behavior with freshly combed and brushed heads. They had never seen their mother so active. The feeling had begun after breakfast when she took their plates from the table, washed and stacked them, and swept the kitchen floor before moving into the living room to leave it dusted and in some semblance of order, and then on to the bedrooms, where she had even changed their sheets—there was something in the air. It felt like Christmas or a visit from their grandparents, but neither of these was happening, so they exchanged troubled glances and moved cautiously about with only token protests to the stranger who had awakened them that morning.
Cora sorted feverishly through their clothes—washing, pressing, and mending. She couldn’t believe they were in such a state. Trouser legs were ankle-high or frayed to distraction, dresses were ripped from the waist and unraveled at the hem, socks were missing entire toes or heels—when had all this happened? She patched and fussed, meshed and mated outfits until she was finally satisfied with the neatly buttoned bodies she assembled before her. She lined up the scoured faces, carefully parted hair, and oiled arms and legs on the couch, and forbid them to move.
When she opened the door for Kiswana, the girl was touched as she sensed the amount of effort that must have gone into the array of roughly patched trousers, ill-fitting shirts, and unevenly hemmed dresses that the woman proudly presented to her. She smiled warmly into Cora Lee’s eyes. “Well, I see we’re all set. Let’s go.” She took the two smallest hands in hers and they all trooped down the steps.
Cora flanked the group like a successful drill sergeant, and she made a point of personally addressing each neighbor that was standing on the stoop and along the outside railing, ignoring the openly surprised stares as they emerged from the building. Where could she be going with all them kids? The welfare office wasn’t open. She was greeted with the friendly caution that women hold toward unmarried women who repeatedly have children—since they aren’t having them by their own husbands, there is always the possibility they are having them by yours.
Mattie was coming up the block, wheeling a heavy shopping cart.
“Hi, Miss Mattie,” Cora called out warmly. She sincerely liked Mattie because unlike the others, Mattie never found the time to do jury duty on other people’s lives.
“Why, hello y’all. My don’t we look nice. Where you going?”
“To the park—for Shakespeare.” Cora emphasized the last word, extending her smile into a semicircle that covered the other listening ears.
“That’s right nice. This the new baby? Ain’t she pretty. You gonna have to stop this soon, Cora. You got a full load now,” Mattie chided lightly.
“I know, Miss Mattie,” Cora sighed. “But how you gonna stop?”
“Same way you started, child—only in reverse.” The three women laughed.
“Sammy, help Miss Mattie up the steps with that cart and then meet us at the end of the alley.” They were approaching the six-foot alley that lay between Mattie’s building and the wall on Brewster Place.
“Naw, I can manage. I don’t want him walking in that alley alone; it’s getting dark. C. C. Baker and all them low-lifes be hanging around there, smoking that dope. I done called the police on ’em a hundred times, but they won’t come for that.”
Mattie and Kiswana spoke a few minutes about the new tenants’ association getting the city to fence off the alley, and then the group moved on. They approached the park and then followed the huge red arrows painted under the green and black letters—A Midsummer Night’s Dream—toward the center. Cora had come to the park prepared. She had a leather strap folded up in her bag and she placed herself in the middle of the row with the children seated on both sides of her so no one would be beyond the reach of her arm. Kiswana sat on the end, holding Sonya. They weren’t going to cut up and embarrass her in front of these people. They would sit still and get this Shakespeare thing if she had to break their backs.
She looked around and didn’t recognize anyone from Brewster so the blacks here probably came from Linden Hills, and over half of the people filtering in were white. This must really be something if they were coming. She straightened up on the rough bench, poked Brucie and Dorian, who were sitting on either side of her, and threw invisible threats to the left and right at the others. There would be no fidgeting and jumping up—show these people that they were used to things like this. She uncurled Bruce’s collar and motioned to Daphane to close her legs and pull down her dress.
The evening light had turned into the color of faded navy blue blankets when the spotlights came on. Cora couldn’t understand what the actors were saying, but she had never heard black people use such fine-sounding words, and they really seemed to know what they were talking about—no one was forgetting the lines or anything. She looked to see if she would have to sneak her strap out of her bag, but the children were surprisingly still, except for Dorian, and she only had to jab him twice because when they changed the set for the forest scenes, even he was awed. That girl was right—it was simply beautiful. Huge papier-mache flora hung in varying shades of green splendor among sequin-dusted branches and rocks. The fairy people were dressed in gold and lavender gauze with satin trimming that glimmered under the colored spotlight. And the Lucite crowns worn on stage split the floodlights into a multitude of dancing, elongated diamonds.
At first Cora took her cues from the people around her and laughed when they did, but as the play gained momentum the evident slapstick quality in the situation drew its own humor. The fairy man had done something to the eyes of these people and everyone seemed to be chasing everyone else. First, that girl in brown liked that man and Cora laughed naturally as he hit and kicked her to keep her from following him because he was after the girl in white who was in love with someone else again. But after the fairy man messed with their eyes, the whole thing turned upside down and no one knew what was going on—not even the people in the play.
That fairy queen looked just like Maybelline. Maybelline could be doing this some day—standing on a stage, wearing pretty clothes, and saying fine things. That girl had probably gone to college for that. But Maybelline could go to college—she liked school.
“Mama,” Brucie whispered, “am I gonna look like that? Is that what a dumb-ass looks like when it grows up?”
The character, Bottom, was prancing on the stage, wearing an ass’s head.
Cora felt the guilt lining her mouth seep down to form a lump in her throat. “No, baby.” She stroked his head. “Mama won’t let you look like that.”
“But isn’t that man a dumb-ass, too? Don’t they look…”
“Shhh, we’ll talk about it later.”
The next scene was blurred in front of her. Maybelline used to like school—why had she stopped? The image of the torn library books and unanswered truant notices replaced the tears in her eyes as they quietly rolled down her face. School would be over in a few weeks. but all this truant nonsense had to stop. She would get up and walk them there personally if she had to—and summer school. How long had the teachers been saying that they needed summer school? And she would check homework—every night. And P.T.A. Sonya wouldn’t be little forever—she’d have no more excuses for missing those meetings in the evening. Junior high; high school; college—none of them stayed little forever. And then on to good jobs in insurance companies and the post office, even doctors or lawyers. Yes, that’s what would happen to her babies.
The play was approaching its last act, and all the people seemed to have thought they were sleeping. I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was…In the last scene the cast invited the audience to come up on stage and join them in the wedding dance that was played to rock music. The children wanted to jump up and join them, but Cora held them back. “No, no, next time!” she said, not wanting their clothes to be seen under the bright lights. The participants from the audience sat down crosslegged on the stage and the little fairy man pranced between them:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream…
Cora applauded until her hands tingled, and felt a strange sense of emptiness now that it was over. Oh, if they would only do it again. She let the children jump around their seats and dance to the music that continued after the play was over. Cora went down the row to Kiswana and grabbed her hand.
“Thanks so much—it was wonderful.”
Kiswana was slightly taken aback by this burst of emotion from the woman. “I knew you’d like it, and see how good the kids were.”
“Oh, yes, it was great. I’m gonna bring them back again.”
“Well, if things work out, he’s planning to produce another one next year.”
“We’ll be here,” Cora said emphatically, taking the baby from Kiswana. “Was she too much?”
“No, she’s precious. Look, I’m not going back right now. I want to run and congratulate Abshu. You’ll be okay?”
“Sure, and please tell him I thought it was wonderful.”
“I will. See you later.”
Cora and her family moved home through the moist summer night, and she smiled as the children chattered and tried to imitate some of the antics they had seen.
“Mama,” Sammy pulled on her arm, “Shakespeare’s black?”
“Not yet,” she said softly, remembering she had beaten him for writing the rhymes on her bathroom walls.
The long walk had tired them so there were few protests about going to bed. No one questioned it when she sponged them down and put them each into bed with a kiss—this had been a night of wonders. Cora Lee took their clothes, folded them, and put them away.
She then went through her apartment, turning off the lights and breathing in hopeful echoes of order and peace that lay in the clean house. She entered her bedroom in the dark and the shadow, who had let himself in with his key, moved in the bed. He didn’t ask where they had been and she didn’t care to tell him. She went over and silently peeked in the crib at her sleeping daughter and let out a long sigh. Then she turned and firmly folded her evening like gold and lavender gauze deep within the creases of her dreams, and let her clothes drop to the floor.