New Novel Exerpt, Taken From Chapter 2

© 2010 Knight Media Group
My life growing up wasn’t that different than other colored boys coming up in New Orleans in the 40’s. My mother worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy white family, the Caskgill Family. The Caskgill’s lived in a large plantation house just up the road a ways from our house. Our house, which was left to my Mama by my Grandmother when she passed in ’41, was just like every other house on my street. The houses were really just clapboard shacks, all painted neutral colors, usually white, and had only 3 rooms: a bedroom, a bathroom and a living/dining/kitchen combo. These houses, which were still occupied only by colored folks, used to be the slave quarters back when the Caskgill house was a working plantation.
The houses were given as gifts to the slaves who chose to stay on and work the sugar fields after the Thirteenth Amendment. My great Grandfather was one of those that stayed, as, having been taken from his real family at the age of six, had nowhere else to go. So our family had been here for generations. It was a good location as well, with town, the river, and the main house where Mama worked all only a fifteen to twenty minute walk in either direction. This made it easy for me to go help mama at work after school, and still check in and keep an eye on my brothers… I was the oldest of 3 kids, so even at a young age, it was commonplace to see me changing diapers, feeding, carrying and even spanking the boys when I had to.
Now mama had worked for the Caskgill family since she was a young girl, and worked from sunup to sundown, so my days were usually filled with housework. I got up before the sunlight, got dressed and went out back to the chicken pens to gather eggs. I actually loved this time in the mornings, because even over the smell of the chickens, if the wind was blowing right, you could smell the sweet scent of the sugar cane in the fields at the main house, and as an 8 year old boy, I loved that smell more than anything else. Then, when I had that done, I would wake Mama up for work.
Most of the time I would make our breakfast, which usually consisted of the eggs I just gathered and fried, and buttered hominy. Mama sometimes made breakfast if she didn’t drink too much the night before, but it wasn’t often. We would eat breakfast, talking about what our day was going to be like, laughing and joking…smiling. My Mama’s smile was the thing that I treasured most in the world; the light in her eyes when she smiled at me, and I felt so loved, and so needed. That light was always gone in the evenings, when her whiskey glass was half empty and those beautiful brown eyes were glazed and dull.
After breakfast, I would clean the dishes and dress the twins. Mama would head off to work, and me, the twins and the other neighborhood kids would head off to the small 3 room colored school that sat over by the river.
After school I would take the twins home, feed them, and walk them over to Miss Becky’s house down the street, and she would keep an eye on them while I went to help Mama at work. She usually just wanted me to bring in supplies from the big storage shed, or help fold laundry. When it would get about dark, we would say goodnight to the other staff members and Mama would walk me home. After work, the twins and I would usually play in the living room or the yard with toy trucks or jacks given to Mama for us by the Church. Mama and Miss Becky would sit on the porch talking, drinking whiskey and singing along to the tunes on the radio. Back then, life was pretty mundane and routine. Even though we didn’t have a lot, and Mama, when she was drunk, would call me names and blame me for running off the twin’s father, I was still very content.
That all changed when I met Julien Caskgill.
Now I had been helping mama up at the Caskgill house for as long as I could remember, but I had never actually met any of them. The old man, Roosevelt Caskgill had come into the kitchen once to fire one of the maids, but Mama pushed me behind her legs, and if the old man noticed me, he didn’t show it. The servant’s kitchen, which is where Mama spent most of her time, and the only part of the house I had ever been in, was in a far corner at the back of the house, and was rarely visited by the white people that lived there.
One afternoon in the spring of ’54, I must’ve been about twelve at the time, I had finished bringing up supplies for Mama, and decided to go play down by the creek that ran along the edge of the Caskgill’s property, close to the woods. I often played in or next to the creek because it was secluded enough that I couldn’t be seen by anyone, but close enough to the house that I could hear Mama yell if she needed me. I had never seen anyone else at the creek, but there was a shaky old bridge going across the water, as well as a tire swing hanging from a large branch in one of the huge oak trees, so I always assumed someone came there when I wasn’t around.
I was digging down into a crawfish hole, trying to find one of the little guys to play with when I heard a light rustling in the bushes on the bank behind me. I turned sharply, and was surprised to find a boy, slightly bigger than me in size, with short blonde hair and hazel eyes, dressed in nothing but a pair of overalls, no shirt and no shoes. Before I could say anything, he spoke:
“Who are you?” he asked in a demanding tone, his eyes squinting tightly, as though they were concentrating on the tiniest speck on my shirt. His body was positioned in a very defensive posture, with one leg slightly in front of the other, and arms tensed at his side, fists clenched. He looked serious…and very uncomfortable. The thought of this made me uncomfortable, and so I stood upright and backed a few steps away in silence.
“Hey, I said who are you?” He asked again, slightly louder than before.
“My name’s Tarrance, Tarrance Washington” I said. Now that I had introduced myself, I took a few steps back towards the boy to extend my arm for a handshake. Only now he was the one backing away.
He spoke again, “Well what are you doing here? This is my daddy’s land.”
The question made me nervous, as though I had been caught doing something wrong, though I couldn’t think for the life of me what that may have been. I said “I’m here with my Mama, Lizzie. She works up at the house, in the kitchen. I just come down here to catch crawfish.”
“Oh,” he said, “I’m Julien. I never saw anyone else here before.” He paused for a moment, and then added “Especially never seen no colored kids here before.”
There was a long, awkward silence as we both just glanced around the woods, not sure of what to say next. I noticed how messy his blonde curls were. I also noticed how dirty his feet were. He wasn’t at all like I expected a rich white boy to look like; he looked more like the other boys down by my house. I decided immediately that I liked him. I thought he was pretty. I finally broke the silence by asking “Hey, do you like to fish?”
“Course I do,” He said, his tone of voice and facial expression relaxing, “me and my dad go all the time. Your dad ever take you fishing’”?
“Naw, my daddy left, been ‘bout 8 years now. I don’t even really remember him.” I said, “but mama says I look just like him though.”
“Oh damn, man,” he said, “I’m real sorry.”
I was both surprised and amused by how easily he’d used a swear word, and I started to laugh.
“What you laughing at”? He asked, with the sun glaring from behind him so bright I almost couldn’t tell he was grinning.
“Sorry,” I said, “you just kinda funny, cussing’ like that.”
Then he started to laugh with me, and I don’t know why we laughed as hard as we did, but we were rolling. It was as though we had known each other our whole lives. After we stopped laughing so hard and got our composure, Julien asked me “Hey, you wanna go fishing? I got poles.”
“I don’t know man,” I hesitated, “Mama gets real mad at me if I ain’t close when she calls me.”
Julien’s expression changed from optimistic to annoyed, and he said firmly “So? My daddy’d get mad at me if he knew I was playing with a colored boy, but we ain’t got nothing else to do…besides, we just going a little ways down the creek, I’m sure you can still hear your mama if she calls you.”
I thought better of it at first, but he did seem real nice, and it was nice to finally have a friend my own age, so I decided to go with him, and just listen real carefully for Mama. “Okay then, let’s go!”
And that was the beginning of mine and Julien’s friendship. We started off as fishing buddies, meeting at the creek almost every day after my work with Mama was done. We would fish, build forts and play war, play hide and seek, and just do what normal adolescent boys did. We talked about girls, school, our parents, typical things. We were best friends, and spending time with Julien quickly became the thing I enjoyed most in life.
There were no boundaries between Julien and me. I told him about Mama’s drinking, and the way she blamed me for everything that went wrong in her life. He told me about his father’s affairs with his numerous mistresses, and the way his Mama cried herself to sleep, alone, after he would beat her. In those days, there was still a huge divide between blacks and whites in New Orleans, and most of the country still, for that matter. But even though our bond had to be a secret amongst ourselves, it was still very strong, and very real.
There was also a physical attraction between us. We didn’t understand it then, and it would be years later before either one of us would acknowledge it, but even at that early age, it was definitely there. I knew for sure that the feelings were mutual the first time we said “I love you.”
It was the summer of 1958, and me and Julien had spent the day putting the finishing touches on a tree house we had built. Now we were both about fifteen, which was too old, really, to be building tree houses, but we didn’t get to be friends until we were 12, so we figured we had a lot of catching up to do. And the tree house was great. It had an old twin bed his parents were throwing out, blankets, oil lamps, a battery operated radio, the works. We were both at an age where we were experimenting with things like cigarettes and such, so the tree house provided privacy. While we were finishing up for the day, I told Julien I needed to go see if Mama needed me, and that I would be back later. I ran up to the house at the entrance to the back kitchen and asked for Mama. One of the other maids told me she had left early, which was very strange.
I headed up the dirt road towards home, and a strong feeling of dread came over me. I began to feel very sick to my stomach and my knees got rubbery. Had she been yelling for me? Did something happen to the twins and I wasn’t there? Just as I tried to shake the thoughts from my head, I saw the twins playing in the front yard. Then I noticed Mama sitting on the porch in her rocker, whiskey glass beside her and belt in her hand. I wanted desperately to turn and run, but my body wouldn’t let me. \
As I inched closer to the steps I tried to avoid eye contact. I hoped that maybe I could go straight inside without getting hit. Maybe the belt was for the twins and if I just kept my mouth shut she wouldn’t notice me.
I was wrong.
As I reached the top step I heard Mama ask “Where you been?”
“Mama, I…”
For the life of me I didn’t know what to say. Before I could think of a response, she was out of her rocking chair and the belt was coming at me full force, landing a blow to my back that sent me reeling forward. I ran through the door and fell, curling into a ball, and I could feel the leather slicing my skin, over and over. The pain was so bad I stopped breathing for a moment, just as Mama grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. We just stood there for a moment, my eyes searching Mama’s face for the reason why I was in trouble, Mama’s eyes searching the room for the ashtray to put her cigarette out. I took the sleeve of my shirt and began wiping the blood off my arms.
Mama put her cigarette out and began to speak.” It seems you got too much free time on your hands. Don’t have enough chores to keep you busy, got you disappearing every time I turn around.”
“Mama, I was just…”
“Shut it up, boy!” She screamed. “I think it’s high time you got a job. I need help ‘round here. Instead of running off all the time, you could be making up for how you ruined my life. Ain’t got no man around helping, all cause you a crybaby. Don’t know man want a sissy to raise, so you gonna be a man. You gonna go out in the morning and find some work, hear?”
“Yes ma’am” I sobbed. I was dizzy, nearly blinded with pain. Mama started speaking again, but I just kept nodding my head in agreement to whatever she was saying, too light headed to understand. She started pacing back and forth, and I came out of my daze when I heard her say that I was to quit school so I could work full time.
“Please mama, I can’t quit school, I just can’t!” I cried, “I’m starting high school in three weeks…I could graduate and I…”
“YOU WILL DO AS I SAY!” She interrupted with a scream. “You don’t need to go to school, we need money! What you need school for? You never gonna be nobody anyway, you just like your daddy was, dumb and good for shit! You gonna help me out around here and that’s that.”
“Mama I can…” I began.
She hit me again, this time across my shoulder with an old broken broom handle she kept beside the stove. I fell sideways, landing on my right elbow, as she kept beating me on my left side with the broom handle. I raised my head and saw the twins standing in the doorway looking frightened. I cried out for them to run, to go get help, but they appeared frozen.
I don’t know how long she beat me, maybe no more than a few minutes, but I know that I didn’t pass out until she was tired and had gone back to her whiskey.
When I awoke I noticed that it had gotten dark. I laid there on the kitchen floor for a while, unable or unwilling to move. I could feel my shirt getting stiff as my blood dried into the fabric. I looked around the room and saw no movement, but I could still hear mama’s music on the front porch, and the sounds of the twins playing in the front yard.
I slowly sat up and saw that my arms and legs were gashed open in several places, and I could feel that my head and back were in the same condition. I began to cry again, not from the physical pain, but because of the lies. Last time she swore it wouldn’t happen again. She also swore the time before that.
I stood up and nearly fell back down, but I maintained my balance and slowly, hesitantly walked over to the window and peered out. I could see mama’s silhouette in her rocker, but no movement. I was still crying, though now it had escalated to the point where I could hardly catch my breath. I had to leave. I carefully tiptoed out the doorway, slowly making my way across the porch and down the steps without ever taking my eyes off mama.
As soon as I felt both my feet hit the grass, without thinking, I turned and started to run. With tears and wind stinging my swollen face, I ran as hard and fast as I could down the dark dirt road. I had nowhere to go but I ran anyway, because I couldn’t stop. Suddenly I thought of the tree house. I quickly turned and cut through the woods, and eventually made my way to the creek, and followed it towards the tree house. I saw the oil lamp still on through the crooked window and I could make out Julien’s silhouette. I started to turn and go back. I was too embarrassed to let him see me like this, and I definitely didn’t want him to see me cry. But before I could move, his face turned towards me and he yelled down:
“Hey man! I was wondering if you were coming back. I was about to smoke this cig without ya!”
I cleared my throat and replied “Sorry man, I got tied up at home.”
I was about to tell him I had to go when he yelled “Hold up man, I’m coming down”.
It seemed like an eternity waiting for Julian to climb down the makeshift ladder, and I was scared to death of what he would say when he saw me; of what he would think of me. When he finally reached the bottom and turned to face me, his face froze. He stood there silently and motionless, and I studied his face, trying to read his thoughts. I kept waiting for him to speak, but it was as if he had no words. And neither did I. Instead, he just stepped towards me, reached out his arms and pulled me close to him. He held me tight to his body, his hand stroking the back of my head gently, and for the first time in a long time, I felt completely at ease. I felt peaceful.

© 2010 Knight Media Group