The Good Negress

by A.J. Verdelle

Genres: Coming of Age; Family Life

Synopsis

“Haunting . . . To read The Good Negress is to fall under a spell, to open a window, to fly.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
Twenty years after its initial publication, The Good Negress continues to be an important part of the literary canon, as relevant and necessary as ever. Set in 1960s Detroit, the novel centers around Denise Palms, who leaves her grandmother’s home in rural Virginia to reunite with her mother, stepfather, and older brothers. As a black teenage girl, Denise is given scarce opportunity beyond cooking, cleaning, and raising her mother’s baby. But an idealistic, demanding teacher opens Denise’s eyes to a future she has never considered, and soon she begins to question the limits of the life prescribed to her.
 
With lyrical, evocative prose, A. J. Verdelle captures Denise’s journey from adolescence to womanhood as she navigates the tension between loyalty and independence, and between circumstance and desire. The Good Negress is an unforgettable debut—simultaneously the portrait of a family and a glimpse into an era of twentieth-century America.
 
Winner of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Release date: November 22, 2016

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

I KNEW I was sleepin too long. And as I have come to know myself, I think I felt her leavin, the door closin behind the belly at the end of my rope. When I did finally shake myself awake, I was at Granma’am’s house. I got out of bed, tiptoed down the hall, and peered around the door frame into the quiet front room. Nobody there, or in the front yard. I walked back toward the kitchen, and, there at the line where the floor planks got wider, I had to stop and take a look: one boiled egg, bacon, and glass of brown juice, all sittin so orderly in one place on the table. I dragged a chair over to the open window and climbed up on it. I hung my neck through the window and looked out to the backyard. Granma’am was outside in the bleachin sun, bent over, pullin tomatoes off the vines.

I stretched farther out the window to see where Mama stood. She would be standin more in the shade, havin conversation. Or maybe foldin clothes she was takin off the line. I reached farther out to see her feet underneath the long white sheets. No feet. Granma’am must have heard my elbow slip. She turned as if I called. “Well, good mornin, sleepyhead,” she said, and she was inside, the screen door slappin, before I got down off the chair.

“Hi, Granma’am. Where’s Mama?” I answered.

Granma’am had red and green and yellow-orange tomatoes stretched out in a dip in her upturned housedress. “Well, hi is you, Baby Sister? You ready for some breakfast?” She has turned her back to me before I can nod my head. One at the time, she lays the tomatoes on the wood board by the sink. Then she brushes off her dress front with her hand and goes over to the big black Vulcan stove that anchored the kitchen’s back wall. Her cotton stockings were thick, and she had them rolled down below her knees. There was a bulge on each right side, a knot she had twisted to hold her leggings up.

“Sit down to the table, Baby Sister.” My place at the table was set directly across from the stove. In time, from that place, and that kitchen, I will know all the Vulcan’s dents and injuries. I will cause some more.

Granma’am lifted warm bread across the table and onto the white plate with the yellow-green flowers round the edges. She pushed the plate closer to the egg. And then, in one of the wide chairs with beige and brown flecked vinyl seats and backs, the one to my right, Granma’am sat down. “Say your blessin, and have your breakfast, Baby Sister.” Her hand stretched out and pressed down my hair where sleep had rumpled the edges up. That was the end of the sentence.

“Where’s Mama?” I was screaming; my voice was quavery, wild, quick. I jumped up. The chair legs scraped against the kitchen floor. I stood as tall as I could on the floor. I looked directly at a face and mouth that did not move, eyes that looked surprised but ready too, somehow. The whole situation answered, with a shudder and a sucking sound: she’s gone.

I tore away from the table, my arms heavy like they was wet and wrung out. They swung very late behind my hurly-burly hurt. I upset the neat breakfast place with my wet rags for arms. Off the plate and the table went the swiped boiled egg, it landed in the chair, it rolled off onto the floor. The shell crumpled at the compact hit, and the egg rested there, displaced and on its side. The cracked pieces of shell hung together; it was that tough-but-thin inside skin. One boiled breakfast egg, preserved through the fall.

I ran out to the front yard again, in just what I had slept in and in my bare feet. I wrapped my fingers around two of the boards on the gate. I looked in one direction down the what-they-called road. I didn’t recognize the place or its colors. It had no blocks or corners or streets, no other two-families with shutters. No traffic lights, no pavement. No Detroit. Disbelief is an emotion, you know. Like an ocean and its major pulse, it can overtake you. It can blind your eyes and block your ear canals. It can knock you to a depth.

Both my hopefulness and my faith in my mother went flat. I felt so completely betrayed.

After many choked breaths, I collapsed at the gate. Left by Mama second and by Daddy first, now I was sent away. My behind on the dirt was naked, and the soil wasn’t dry or rich. It wasn’t grainy or rocky under my skin. It wasn’t cold, but grass wasn’t growin. It was in between everything, that’s how ordinary it was. Ordinary, just ordinary dirt.

When I finally started to see again I noticed that the dirt in the yard had been raked. Overtop of the lines of rake teeth were two crazy curvy paths. My dashing feet—yesterday in shoes and today without. Down the middle of all that dashing hurly-girly were two other lines. The little small ovals of my mother’s high heels. I stayed there and looked hard a while, my mouth hanging open, my tongue drying off.

I had this tantrum at Granma’am’s front gate, where I had run to to look for my mother. This was my down home coming-out scene, a slow motion moment when I got left where Mama grew up, in history. This was when the years started to yawn. I opened my mouth wide, and I roared. Anybody could hear knew I was there. I stomped, and I wailed. Some people walked by, nobody I knew, and since I wasn’t seeing so well at that moment, it all went by me, their slowing and staring and shared looks with my granma’am.

She stood behind me, calm as her age, in the yard near the front of the house.

I wanted to take to bed, in the spirit of my mama, but Granma’am’s ideas did not allow that. Granma’am didn’t rush me to be happy, but she didn’t permit no aimless layin round. She let me sleep until the sun was high up in the middle a mornin, as she was prone to say. I got up about eight, and then I helped her with things.

First, we made dinner. We washed and seasoned meat, cut up onions, cooked vegetables. We set out ingredients for a cake or pie so they would warm while we cooked. We mixed dessert last, and put it in the oven or the icebox to set.

We had breakfast sometime in the midst of all this. Granma’am would heat up milk for me, and pour a little taste a her coffee in it. Then after breakfast, while I did the dishes, Granma’am would start to fry or roast, whatever the day’s meat called for. Seemed like I washed dishes all morning. Time the first set a dishes was done, Granma’am would have flour or cornmeal all over some others, and she would need the table cleared in order to roll out her dough.

I came to like bein in the kitchen with her. Anywhere else in the house, I was by myself. We talked as much as any two strangers, one who knows and knows she knows, and the other who is young.

“Hi you feelin this mornin, Baby Sister?”

“Fine, Granma’am.”

“You ain’t got nothin else to say this mornin, Baby Sister?”

“How you, Granma’am?”

“I’m jes fine, thank you for astin.”

“YOU EVER MADE a pumpkin bread?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“You ever ate pumpkin bread?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“You like pumpkin?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“You ever had it?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“Then you cain’t say you don’t like it, now can you?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“What else you got to say besides no, Baby Sister?”

“Nothin, Granma’am.”

“WE GONE COOK the pumpkin first. You know how to peel it?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“Here, lemme show you. Look in that second tray there and hand me one a those lil short knives.”

“THIS HERE KNIFE is dull. Go out back and sharpen it on that rock by the door. You know how?”

“No, Granma’am.”

“Here, lemme show you.” Her hollow screen door slapped shut behind us. She stoops down to the rock, and I sit and watch. She shows me how to slice the knife, one side at the time, against the rough stone. It is a white–gray rock; it has edges and a few points. It is almost big as my head, and so I know this rock will not be moved. It will stay right where it is. I wonder how many years it’s been there.

Granma’am watches me slice the knife once or twice, then she goes back in. “Fi’teen times both sides,” she says, “and den bring y’knife on in.”

The little knife wasn’t much bigger than my hand. Had a dark brown wood handle. “A parin knife,” Granma’am said it’s called.

“NOW, FIRST YOU cut de pumpkin in half downa middle.” Granma’am used a much bigger knife. The round little pumpkin divided in one swipe.

“And then you scoop out de seeds and de stringy part. You watchin, Baby Sister?”

“Yes, Granma’am.”

“And then you take and cut the flesh in whatever kinda pieces you want, but small enough so it’ll boil in good time. Like this here.” She held up a neat, orange cube.

My turn. I swiped at the pumpkin flesh, stabbed it, broke it apart, used her parin knife like a pick. Granma’am stood and watched me and told me to keep my fingers out from under that knife. Since she was gone look, and not correct me, I went right ahead and mauled her pumpkin.

“I wanna know why my mama lef me here!” I crossed my arms hard cross my chest.

“Lay dat knife down, Neesey, fore you cut y’self.”

I had let the pumpkin go abruptly, so it teetered between us on its ridges and curves. I put the parin knife down beside it, which stopped the sway, and I crossed my arms again.

“Baby Sister,” she started, “everybody cain’t know why bout everything alla time. Ain’t no reason why, lease none that matter a bit right now. Now lissen, y’mama lef you down here wid me. And that’s because you gone be fine, right down here wid me.” She took a breath and went right on. “I raised y’mama. All she know bout raisin is on account a what I taught her. So you gone get the same raisin whether you home here wid me or up in Detroit wid y’mama. You gone be all right, little pumpkin, don’t you worry y’self.”

I didn’t say a thing at first, didn’t look at her, and didn’t uncross my arms. I tested the tear ducts, but thanks to all the sleep I’d had, and all the days that had passed, they were dry as the dirt in the yard.

“I wanna go home,” I whined.

MY MAMA AND me, we had been down home at Granma’am’s most a two weeks, which was a long time. Mama went out to see people and took me with her, and we had fun. But when her and Granma’am were in the house together, Lord have mercy, I was the meat on the plate. They looked at me and around me. Wanted to see how the light blue shift look on, wanted to see the mud cups I made, wanted me inside until the storm let up, wanted me outside to get some fresh air, wanted me to stay near the house now, wanted me to come back in now, wanted me to rest now, wanted me to listen now, wanted me too, wanted me.

I liked their attention, mostly, although it would have been better each one by herself. There was too much “we” in them this time; it made me nervous. They kept me too close, and they asked too many questions. They looked at each other over my head. They didn’t answer me much. I could almost feel their plannin, but not a word to me.

“YOU CAIN’T GO home,” Granma’am answered. And then after she picked up the parin knife and started again to cut the pumpkin, she went on, “And Neesey, I done told you, you home right here.”

In the face of that pronouncement, I ran back to the bedroom where I had slept. It had been my mama’s room when she was young. I leaped across the bed and buried my head. I just wailed into the bedclothes since I was all cried out.

Granma’am didn’t call or come after me. The time passing got to be way too long, so I got up and went back to the kitchen. Didn’t have one tear track to show, but I didn’t care. I wanted company.

The pumpkin and the parin knife waited on the table. Same few pieces cut as when I had left. Granma’am stood workin at the sink, and she didn’t turn around when I came in. I stood in the doorway until she spoke to me.

“Neesey, I know you upset. I know how lonesome you feelin, cause when I came here wid my husband James, I didn’t know nobody. Wasn’t a animal in this state would recognize me. But you let Granmama tell you somethin. The best way to make y’self feel better is to get y’hands to workin. When you put y’hands on somethin and make it somethin else, that will heal you lower places than you cry from. We be jes fine down here us two. Time might come when you like it.

“Now I lef that pumpkin on the table for you. You go on and cut it up. And watch y’hands. That knife is jes the right size, so ain’t no need a you cuttin y’self.”

I couldn’t make any other decision then. I was too far from any other body I knew. I had got tired of my new bedroom and the front-inside-the-fence, so I went dry-eyed to the table, and I did what she said.

I HAVE TWO brothers: David and Luke edward. David is my oldest brother. By the time I get back to Detroit, he’s nineteen. He was fourteen when I left. Luke edward, my brother closest to me, is two years behind David.

We used to all go down home together in the summers. But when Mama dropped me off, it was fall, not summer. And David and Luke edward stopped coming regular, that very year. So, I didn’t see my brothers much in the four or five years before I left Granma’am and went back to Detroit. But even I knew about those years, the teenage ones. Years like riots, when boys groan and strain and struggle and grind their teeth in the effort to pass to men.

The young and hopeful in them both seemed to have given way, the way thriving succumbs to flames.

I tried to do what Granma’am had said, get my hands to workin.

BIG JIM—MARGARETE’S new husband—was a big house of a man. Since this was the first time I had seen him, I looked as close at him as I could. I only stopped cause Margarete said stop starin. His feet crossed five or six of the slats on Margarete’s front room floor. His hands seemed big as plates.

He was brand new to me, and for a much longer time than I was new to him. He got to know me pretty quick, mostly through the food I cooked. Ain’t much food cain’t show you bout people. In three or four weeks time, I had made enough meals to index. So, me and Big Jim got to the place where he might say when he left the house, “Neesey, I put three dollars on the table for you to go down and get some neckbones and whatever you want to cook alongside.” He would close the door behind that remark, and that was how I would know what he wanted to have for dinner. I might ask Margarete what else I should fix, and in the beginning she would tell me. Later, after she finds out how good a cook I am, she just says, “Neesey, you the one like to cook, just get what you want. It’ll be good, Jim’ll be happy.” So that’s how I got to the place where when I left for school in the morning, I would take whatever money Big Jim left on the table, and then on the way home, I would stop at the butcher and get what I thought best. I made all the meals.

ONCE THERE IS a Wednesday night when David will be somewhere celebrating. It is Serena’s sister’s birthday, and David is going with Serena to have cake and ice cream. Serena is David’s girlfriend, and Serena’s sister is in her twenties.

Big Jim and Margarete are going to a card party with his friends. Big Jim says on his way out the door that they will all be out this evening and that maybe I want to get some potted meat for dinner.

“Who gone be out?” I ask him. He stands at the front table collecting his keys and his pocket change.

“Me and your mother, and David is going to Serena’s.”

“Luke edward gone be home?” I want to know.

“Your guess good as mine,” he says, and he goes on out the door.

Why would he think Luke edward would want potted meat? And why would he think I want potted meat either? I know Big Jim does not plan for Luke edward’s feeding. Luke edward, though, is my brother, and Big Jim is just the boss.

BIG JIM COMES to complain about how I cook meat. He says I cook like a old woman, somebody been cookin twenty years. That was the good part. He complains I make my meat too soft. I do put gravy on almost everything.

Now, gravy is not easy to make. Plenty people—good cooks too—cain’t make good gravy. Fact, when I first started to cook in Margarete’s kitchen, I had forgot how to make gravy. It was a sign a my homesickness for Granma’am and Patuskie, I decided. Nobody knew it but me. And Luke edward.

“Luke edward, you like gravy?” I ask him this one day when he got up. He was sittin dressed up at the table with sleep still in his eyes, and I was standin at the sink lookin at cabbage leaves for worms.

“Yeah,” he said, drinkin his coffee.

“I don’t see how you drink that coffee, been sittin here three hours,” I said to him. And that was so. Either me or Big Jim or David made a big pot a coffee early, when we got up. Actually they got up before me, but not because I was sleep. I just didn’t much like to run into those two—David or Big Jim—while they was so dedicated to gettin ready. They both had to go all the way cross town to work. To get there on time, so early in the day, they made some fast turns round the house. So I let them have all the mornin space. I usually just stayed on my cot where I was out the way and tried to think good things until they left. In the first months while I was tryina get my own routine, I prayed: Lord, let it be all right. Lord, don’t let me get mad. Lord, help me feel better. Granma’am, send for me.

Luke edward don’t care about drinkin old coffee, which probly was not a good sign for his opinion bout my gravy. I ask him do he know how to make gravy, and he say no. I told him I forgot how, and he ask me if I forgot since last night.

He talkin bout that juice I served over them meatballs. I said, “Luke edward, that juice I poured over them meatballs wasn’t no gravy.”

“Tasted fine to me,” and he start to pick sleep out his eyes.

BIG JIM SAY he like his meat crisp. He say, “People don’t always want gravy, Neesey. For example, like on steak. Now, you grill some onion on top a the steak,” he say, “now, that’s good.”

Me and Granma’am don’t eat no steak nohow, I am thinkin. Margarete is lookin straight at me while her husband sayin all this. She sees I have raised my hand to my lip and started to pull on it; I’m feelin disapproved of. She tells me, “Don’t worry, Neesey, all the food is good.” Big Jim acts like he ain’t complainin and puts in, “Yeah, all the food is good.” They see me not especially likin it that they say they don’t like the food I cook. Seem to me wasn’t much cookin goin on before, since if Margarete cooked a meat, she figured she had done somethin. She figured she had done enough. She seemed to feel that each one could get their own bread and mayonnaise. Least I cooked a vegetable and some rice or somethin to go under my gravy I made. Granma’am said that I’m a good little cook, and that I should do my best in Margarete’s kitchen, that that would be the best help to Margarete, that that would let her get off her feet some.

I have said what Big Jim thinks about the meat. And I have said Luke edward don’t half know juice from gravy. Well, Margarete has remarks too: she think I cook too many greens. She say it take some craziness to slave so hard over somethin that cook way down like that. You start out with a bushel, she say, and end up with a quart.

I believe in greens. Every Sunday I clean and cook five pounds, for Sunday dinner and the week. It takes good eyes and some dedication to cook greens. Maybe that’s what Margarete tryina talk about, the dedication part. I felt like I was doin best for the family, cookin greens regular, especially for Margarete. If you gone have a baby, you need to eat greens.

I thought maybe the taste bothered her, so I put in okra one time. Some people cook they greens that way. Margarete said she wasn’t complainin about eatin the greens, she just wasn’t gone cook none herself. She said she hate okra. So then I went back to plain greens.

I did stop short a makin gravy every meal. Well, truth is, I stopped short a soakin the meat. I continued to make gravy every night I had meat to go with it, but I mostly kept the gravy in a pot on the side. While I was adjustin my habits to fit Margarete’s house, I had to wonder why it is that I prefer to have gravy, even if it just sits in a pot on the stove. Me and Granma’am ate plenty leftovers, soft and soaked in gravy. Granma’am had got to the place where her teeth wasn’t so strong or so many anymore, so maybe we specialized in soft food to go easy on what few teeth she had left. We ate all our food in gravy, or mashed in butter, or slow-cooked.

THE GREENS AND gravy are only two problems I have with the meals. Breakfast is the third problem, especially after the baby. And then again after Luke edward has gone and David has moved. I don’t want to make breakfast for just Big Jim because that is Margarete’s job, I decided. Big Jim don’t want gravy, but he do want breakfast. Well, whether I make breakfast just depends. Every Saturday I cain’t bring myself to make breakfast, because if I make breakfast, other things happen. First off, I don’t get no schoolwork done until half the day is passed. And second, the scrapple or the bacon smell gets both the boys up, and that means that right away I need more breakfast than what’s already cooked. And sometimes Big Jim has the nerve to not want what I make: a few scrambled eggs, some toast from the loaf, some slab bacon. I think that’s a real good breakfast! But Big Jim has learned that I can make biscuits and that I know how to keep the lumps out a hominy grits. So he wants biscuits and grits, and for a while, while I was still confused about refusin to be cookin all this breakfast, he took to bringin the breakfast meat he wanted home with him from work on Friday nights. He would bring enough meat for both Saturday and Sunday, and I would make sure to add enough—fried potatoes, stewed apples, biscuits or breakfast cake—so that it fed everybody. But like I said, his Saturday and Sunday special breakfasts seem work for Margarete to do.

Lucky for me I had stopped with so much on the breakfast on the weekends, anyway, once the baby was born, and before Luke edward left. So Big Jim cain’t say that I don’t make breakfast for him because I am mad about him runnin Luke edward away. I stopped makin breakfast because I need that time to take care a his and Margarete’s baby.

If I did all the things they got accustomed to, and did all the things their baby needs too, then I would be mad all the time. And with me mad all the time, I would be teachin the baby all about bein mad, before she could even talk. That would not be good. So I give the baby a full breakfast, a bottle, and a washrag bath afterwards. And I let the grown folks in the house get breakfast for themselves.

Saturdays, after breakfast time, about ten, Big Jim goes out to meet his buddies. I don’t know what they do, but he will stay out until the evenin, when Margarete comes home from the shop where she works.

ME AND MAMA have always had a time with the men and the meals and what they want to eat and do. It used to be my job to get the boys in the house. At dinnertime, dark, when it was time to change activities. This started when they were little and so was I. Many a day I would stand ten minutes, and holler their names out the window. Not a bobbin brown head would come runnin. I would get on Mama’s nerves with all that, and then Mama would send me out to the schoolyard, where I would chase them down. I been walkin to the schoolyard by myself since I was four years old. I would call their names from our front door until I got right up to where all the boys would be, playin ball. David, Luke ed-ward. Da-vid, Luke ed-ward. DA-VID, LUKE ED-WARD.

“Don’t you hear me callin you David? Luke edward, why ain’t you answerin me?” I would not start to ask questions until I was a foot, at most, away from either one. I might stomp my feet, for effect.

They would keep playin, like I wasn’t talkin. I would tug on their coats and pretend like I could dra. . .