Wade in the Water

What’s white people? I’m blind. Never seen the color white in my life. Or the color black, blue, or gray for that matter. To a blind man, color means nothing. My ma used to tell me that the world is like a glorious set of watercolor paints laid out in a hand crafted palette. Sure wish I could see what that is. She made is sound special. The only things I can see are bad people, good people, and those in between. The bad ones you can easily avoid, but those in between people are the worst because you never know when they’ll help you up and when they’ll kick you in the teeth. So ask me instead if I hate people, and I will tell you that some are deserving of hate and others not.

Are we going to do the right thing, or we going to let fear take over?

If one sat back and made someone else do all the work for free, who was the lazy one?

You said we shouldn't judge people by their color and that there are only good people and bad people and those in between.

God made us all beautiful, but it was the slave owners who messed it all up by having all those coffee, cookie crumble, caramel, milky, yellow, and tan babies and then treating those lighter ones better than the deep dark ones.

The real question is why were they racist?

I now knew why God had made us in such ordinary colors like black, brown, and white, unlike the greens of the grass, the blues of the oceans and sky, and the rainbow colors of birds and insects. He wanted us to look outside, at his paintings, not at ourselves. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone thought like that? If the only color we saw was the array of colors outside in the world and not on our skins.

Then, one day, it seemed that all the problems of the Civil Rights times came walking right up to our front doors, jolting us awake, and forcing us to remember. While time had marched on, some people were still the same.

You need to love yourself first, Ella. DOn't go searching for love in other people's eyes until you love yourself first. You come from somewhere beautiful.

I'm afraid for Ray. These young ones aren't afraid of anything. They know about what happened during the height of the movement, but they can't feel it. Knowing it and living it are two different things. It's history to them. They don't know what we've seen. Can you imagine what would happen if that lady got it in her head to call the police on some pretext or other? Why, they would sweep through this place, arresting all our boys and men over the age of thirteen. Remember the killing of those three boys turning out to vote? Remember Emmett Till?

One night, not long after signing over his inheritance, Nate said something to a customer that I overheard and would never forget. He said that he'd finally realized that he had never been the puppeteer, controlling his own destiny. Instead, he now realized that black people were just puppets on strings. The strings were so long that they reached far above them - so far out of their vision that they never saw or knew who the puppet masters were. He only knew that when they yanked at the strings and said to dance, he had no choice but to dance.

I could never imagine them weeping and hollering and fainting, because I knew only black folk did that. Surely we were the only ones to feel the pain deep down in our marrow so that it had to come forth, spewing up in moans and groans and chants, till we felt better. I wondered how they kept their pain all twisted and knotted up inside, like a corked bottle.

I looked past the bloodied face I saw in the mirror, taking in my midnight-black skin that was shades darker than any person's I knew in Ricksville, my generous mouth, and my wide nose, so different from the rest of my family. How odd it felt to be looking at myself with someone else's eyes. It was then I understood what Ma felt towards me. And it was there, in that bathroom, staring into my face, that I realized the only person I had ever really hated was me.

Didn't I tell you? They all turn. He done beat the very devil into here.

Ella, let me give you a piece of advice. You feel too much, and everything you feel is right there on that face of yours. It's in your voice. You've got to close that face of yours or people will keep hurting you. Put on a skin of toughness and hide yourself. You know, like a crab.

How plain the world would be if it were only painted in brown, black, and white.

The words stung. Hurt as though a thousand bees had descended on me.

The sky was crying, big fat dollops of wet that clung to my braids, my nose, and everywhere else they could.

I wondered if the words I loved so much could ever be enough to make me feel safe.

Sometimes not showing fear scares away a bully.

I was the sin that she couldn't wash out.

How come white people have all this?” I pondered. Nate had said, “It was just plain and simple, the early bird gets the worm. Those who came before had weapons and swept out everybody else and got all the best stuff. That’s it. Plain and simple. They had swept it all up and folded their arms and had everyone else do the work.