Being Clem Read online

  I looked up to see Momma smiling. “They want to move you to fourth grade.”

  “But I’m in third grade,” I told Momma, thinking maybe she forgot.

  “Yes, Clem, I know. But sometimes, people are smarter than the grade they are supposed to be in.”

  “And that’s me?” I asked her.

  “Yes, Clemson Thurber Junior, that’s you.”

  “Clemson is a very special student,” my new teacher, Miss Glynn, announced the day I walked into fourth grade. She put her arm around my shoulder and stood me in front of the class. “He has been moved from his third-grade class into our fourth grade. Let’s give Clemson a—”

  “Everyone calls me Clem,” I told her.

  She smiled down at me. “Of course. Let’s give Clem a fourth-grade welcome,” she said to the class.

  It looked to me like not one of those fourth graders heard a word Miss Glynn told them about giving me a fourth-grade welcome, because from where I stood, the looks they gave weren’t telling me to come on in. They were telling me to go back to third grade where I belonged.

  “She sure he didn’t come from first grade?” one of the girls up front whispered loud enough for me to hear.

  After that first day, when I got home, I told Momma I wanted to go back to third grade.

  “We can’t always do what’s easiest, Clem,” she told me. “Look at your daddy, and how brave he was in sacrificing for his country. Where would he be if he gave up every time he got scared?”

  Alive? I thought to myself. But just as soon as I thought it, I took it back and asked God to forgive me.

  So I thought about my daddy the second day I went back and listened to more of the “first grade” and “baby” talk. And I wondered if this was what bravery felt like, because it sure didn’t feel good.

  Miss Glynn sat me in the middle of the third row toward the back and I could barely see over the heads of the boys in front of me. But I could hear just fine, and even though now I was in fourth grade instead of third, I still thought the fourth-grade work wasn’t much harder than the third-grade work, and I still knew the answers to most of the questions Miss Glynn asked. When the first test day came around, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Hey, Professor, gimme the answer to number three.” I could see my momma’s mad face when I told her I gave out answers. But my momma wasn’t sitting in a classroom with boys twice her size tapping on her shoulder. “Fifty-two,” I whispered back.

  Just like in third grade, before I knew it, there was a chorus behind me of “Ask Clems,” and I’d have to pass back my whole doggone test to anybody who needed it.

  “Hey, Professor!” they yelled at recess, rubbing my head and patting my back, making me feel like a baby and a movie star at the same time.

  I knew that giving away answers wasn’t making my momma and daddy proud. But I also knew that being smart meant using your brain and that meant making it through fourth grade any way I could.

  THREE

  A nice Negro doctor is our landlord, and Momma says he and his wife are “good people.” We only see them on rent day when he comes to collect. Before my daddy died, you could tell when it was rent day because Momma would put on her nicest housecoat, maybe a little bit of lipstick, and when we heard the knock on the door, she would talk just as sweet as could be to Dr. Stanford. Sometimes she’d invite him in for a cup of coffee, but he’d always say, “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Thurber, I’d love to, but I’ll have to take a rain check.”

  “Why does he need to wait until it rains to have coffee?” I asked Momma. She just about bust a gut laughing when I asked that and told me it was a saying that meant “another time.” But every month he said the same thing.

  But the month after daddy died, Momma didn’t put on her nice housecoat on rent day. She didn’t even answer the door. When we heard the knock, Momma didn’t move. She put her finger to her lips, which meant we all had to be quiet and pretend we weren’t home like we sometimes did when we knew it was Mrs. Jefferson from the church who would come by right about suppertime and say she was “just passing by,” but would stay and eat up all your food if you let her and never leave even when it got late and everybody was tired.

  Momma says she’s grateful Dr. Stanford only rents to “good, hardworking families,” and we never had to live in a kitchenette apartment, all up on top of each other, sharing one bathroom with God knows how many folks.

  “There’s a lot I can abide, but I cannot abide that,” Momma told us.

  Here we have two bedrooms, the bigger one for Clarisse and Annette. The smaller one with the window looking down on the street is the one that used to be for me and Momma and Daddy. But after Daddy died, Momma took a quilt and pillow and started sleeping out in the front room on the couch and never came back. Now it’s just a bedroom for me. And we have two big windows in the parlor that light up the front room in the mornings like a lightbulb, and a kitchen big enough for a table plus an icebox.

  Just when we stopped seeing Dr. Stanford on rent day, I started seeing letters for Momma pushed under the door. I saw the first envelope pushed under the door with Momma’s name written on the front early one morning on my way to the bathroom. I stopped and picked it up off the floor and put it on the kitchen table.

  When I came in for breakfast, the letter was gone. “Did you see the letter I left on the table?” I asked Momma. She shook her head, quiet. “Was it from your secret admirer?” I asked, smiling. I once read in one of Clarisse’s romance magazines that boys sometimes slipped girls love letters if they really liked them but were too afraid to tell them.

  “No, Clem, it was definitely not a secret admirer,” Momma said in her tired voice. So I stopped asking and stopped smiling. I realized asking about a secret admirer probably made her sad thinking about Daddy.

  When the second letter came, I left it in the same place and this time, I didn’t ask any more about it.

  Now other letters started coming too, and Clarisse let me know they were not from secret admirers.

  “Bill collectors,” she said, shaking her head and flipping through the mail one day when Momma wasn’t home, like she was the daddy who was paying bills.

  Momma had been looking for work for weeks, leaving the apartment early in the morning, all dressed up pretty with her hair fixed nice, wearing her church heels and shiny red lipstick. When Daddy was in the navy, Momma worked two days a week in the Emmanuel Baptist Church office typing up Sunday service programs and bulletins for Reverend Maynard. It was just her “spending money” job, she called it, and with the money Daddy sent home to Momma every month to pay our rent and bills, we had enough. Momma told us the U.S. government sent out a letter to every family of every soldier who died at Port Chicago, apologizing and telling them that they would make sure they were taken care of. That they would send them a check to “compensate” for their loss. Momma rolled her eyes when she said the word compensate, like it was a word the U.S. government made up. I didn’t really know what that word meant, but I could tell by the way Momma said it that it had something to do with the government making a mistake by having the hundreds of Negro enlisted men load ammunition onto the ships without training them like they did the white soldiers who did it before them. And then when an accident happened, blowing up everyone in sight, blaming it on the Negro soldiers instead of the white officers in charge. All the money in the world can’t make you forget about that. And how do you forget about your daddy dying because you have a check? Momma looked like she believed a check was coming about as much as she believed in the tooth fairy. So we had to go on living every day without waiting for “compensation.”

  With Daddy gone and just the little bit from her widow pension, and Momma not waiting on the compensation from Daddy’s accident, Momma spent every day trying to find a secretary job like the one she has at the church. She got up early in the morning to take the el train all the way to the downtown Chicago office buildings where they hire for the secretary pool. And she said she had to smile ext
ra pretty at white folks who probably threw away her application just as soon as she turned to walk out the door. Everybody knows can’t no one tell whether a Negro or white woman types a letter, or makes an appointment or answers the phone, but Momma says that don’t mean they want Negroes working in their offices. She says she has twice as much training as most of those white secretaries and could probably do twice the work too.

  Now instead of two days a week, Momma was going to need to work the whole week to help pay the bills Daddy’s money used to pay.

  Every day Momma came home sweaty, with her lipstick nearly gone and her feet hurting, with no job. Made me go to bed thinking about if we were going to have to move to one of those kitchenette apartments with one room and share a bathroom with strangers.

  “Can you work more days at the church?” I heard Annette asking Momma one night, while she took Momma’s feet in her hands to rub the soreness out.

  “Reverend Maynard said he could maybe give me one more day, but that’s just not going to be enough. I’ll figure something out, honey. Go on to bed,” Momma told her.

  I could hear the tired in my momma’s voice all the way to my room.

  “You look prettier than Lena Horne,” I told her every morning before she left. Not just to make her feel better, but because she did.

  “Thank you, Clem, but it’s going to take a lot more than Lena Horne and a college degree to get a secretary job in Chicago,” she said, smiling tired.

  She asked our neighbor Mrs. Marshall to keep an eye on us while she was out looking, and Mrs. Marshall did her best but she’s almost as old as Methuselah and fell asleep on the couch almost as soon as Momma closed the door. I knew if Momma walked in the door at the end of the day and her face was pinched up tight, not to ask how it went looking for a job, and not to start messing with Clarisse, just sit quiet until Momma got right. But one day, Momma came home and told us she got a job that she was starting on Monday morning, but her face was still pinched up tight.

  “You did it, Momma.” I went right over to hug her good, but she turned away.

  “Not now, Clem,” she said.

  One thing I could always count on from my momma, even on the days when she was in her quiet moods or looking like she was half-asleep, was the way I could always make her happy just by hugging her or holding her hand like Annette or Clarisse couldn’t. They always said I was her favorite, and I always pretended like it wasn’t true, but it was. At least it sure felt like it.

  Momma was quiet at supper, and I could barely eat thinking if I couldn’t make my momma happy, there must really be something wrong. Maybe my momma was sick and was gonna die too. Maybe Clarisse and Annette were sick and were gonna die. Those were about the worst things I could think of. I watched Momma close all through dinner, checking to see if she looked sick. She looked about the same, but I didn’t know if she was just trying to look strong to keep it from me. After she washed up the dishes, dried and put them away, and she still didn’t want nothing to do with me, I went into my room and laid on my bed. Clarisse called me a baby nearly every day. And I know crying doesn’t make anybody a baby, but I couldn’t stop the tears from coming then. I cried so hard I didn’t hear the knocking and didn’t hear Annette walk in. When I opened my eyes, she was looking down at me.

  “You okay, Clem?”

  I had snot running out my nose, and I had to wipe it on my bedsheet.

  “Is Momma going to die?”

  Annette looked at me like I was crazy. “No. Of course not,” she said.

  “Are you or Clarisse going to die?” I asked her.

  “Clem, no one is dying,” Annette told me. “Momma is just upset is all.”

  “About being sick?”

  “Move over,” she said, shoving me to the side while she laid down next to me. That made me cry some more. “C’mon, Clem,” she told me, and I could tell from her voice that that meant to stop my crying, and stop acting like a baby, so I stopped.

  “She’s feeling sad,” Annette told me.

  “About me?” I asked her.

  “Now why would Momma be sad about her little Clem?” Annette asked.

  “You sound like Clarisse when you talk like that,” I told her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But no, she ain’t sick, and she ain’t sad about you. She’s sad ’cause she has to work a job she don’t want to work.”

  I turned on my side to look at her. Annette doesn’t talk nearly as much as me and Clarisse. Some days Annette don’t say much at all, but I think that while we’re fussing and talking, Annette must be watching and listening. “How do you know that?” I asked her.

  She turned on her side and looked at me. She smiled the same tired smile Momma does when she doesn’t feel like explaining something that shouldn’t need explaining.

  “Because I know, Clem.”

  “You sure she’s not mad at me?” I asked her.

  She smiled big now. “How could anyone be mad at our little Clem?”

  FOUR

  The first day my momma started her new job was the second time I saw her cry. I came in the kitchen and her hands were laid flat on the ironing board and her shoulders were up around her neck. “Momma?”

  She turned then, trying to smile. She took a handkerchief out of her housecoat and started dabbing at her eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked her. I could see clear as day she was crying and sniffing, but I was wanting her to be okay, so I asked hoping she’d tell me a lie. And she did.

  “Yes, Clem, I’m fine. Your eggs are on the stove, honey.” The Japanese could drop another of those bombs in the middle of Michigan Avenue and my mother would say, “Don’t forget to eat your toast, baby.”

  I pulled up a chair and ate my eggs while me and my momma pretended she was just fine. She took out a gray dress from a bag and put some starch on the white collar and pressed it with the hot iron so it was as stiff as a board. Then she sprayed water on the dress and pressed each part, the puffy sleeves, the pleated skirt, real slow.

  “You have to wear that to your new job?” I asked her with my mouth full of eggs.

  My momma didn’t turn around. So I asked again.

  “Momma?”

  I stopped eating.

  I walked to the ironing board and stood in front of Momma and watched her ironing the same part of the dress again and again.

  “Momma, that’s already pressed good,” I told her.

  “Go sit down, Clem,” she said.

  “But Momm—”

  “Go sit down,” she said, her voice almost as sharp as Clarisse’s. She was still pressing the same spot. I didn’t move.

  I put my hand on hers and could feel the wet steam making both our hands wet as she kept moving the iron back and forth. She started ironing faster, wiping her eyes at the same time.

  I dried my hand on my pants, left the kitchen, and went straight to Clarisse and Annette’s room.

  Clarisse was sitting up in bed taking the rollers out of her hair. I didn’t like to mess with her too early in the morning, so I went to Annette’s bed even though she was still sleeping.

  “Get out of here, Clem!” Clarisse yelled before I closed the door to their room behind me.

  “Something’s wrong with Momma,” I said, standing over Annette, trying to shake her awake. I knew trying to wake up Annette could take a while, so I pinched her arm to hurry it up.

  “What’s wrong, baby boy?” Clarisse started in on me. “Mommy didn’t warm your milk this morning?”

  I tried again with Annette. Finally, she opened her eyes.

  “Clem?” she said, her eyes half-open. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why do you all baby him so much?” Clarisse yelled.

  “Something’s wrong with Momma,” I told Annette. “Come see.” I pulled Annette to her feet and we walked to the kitchen. Momma hadn’t moved from the ironing board.

  “Momma, you okay?” Annette asked her real sweet.

  “There’s eggs on the stove,” Momma said.<
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  Annette looked at me and shrugged.

  I acted out ironing with my hands and pointed at Momma.

  Annette stood and watched.

  “Momma, you finished pressing that uniform,” she said, and went over to take the iron. But Momma held it up high, almost over her head. Annette stepped back quick.

  “Momma, be careful!”

  Clarisse walked in. “What’s going on?”

  “I think Momma needs to sit down for a minute,” Annette told her, not taking her eyes off Momma.

  Clarisse looked from Annette to Momma. From Momma to me. From me to the iron spitting out steam. From the iron to Momma. She took three steps and took the iron from Momma’s hand, put it down on the ironing board, and sat Momma down in a chair at the table while me and Annette stood watching.

  If the navy ever needs women soldiers to fight along with the men, Clarisse will be the first one I’ll sign up.

  “Here, Momma, take a sip of your coffee.” Clarisse put Momma’s coffee cup to her lips, but Momma turned her head. Clarisse looked at Momma sideways.

  Clarisse still had half the curlers in the back of her head, and I could see through her worn-out flowered nightgown. On any other day, I would have had about a million and one jokes, but today, I couldn’t think of one. She sat down across from Momma. Me and Annette stood behind her.

  “Momma,” Clarisse said to Momma like she was talking to a child.

  Momma looked up at her.

  “Momma, they’re expecting you at work today.”

  “I know that, Clarisse.” Momma sounded so tired.

  “Your uniform is all ironed, and it’s time to get dressed.”

  “I know that, Clarisse.”

  Hearing Momma repeat the same words over and over made the eggs in my stomach start bubbling around.

  “Do you want me to help you get dressed?”

  “Now why would I want you to help me get dressed?” Momma asked like it was Clarisse that wasn’t right in the head.

  Clarisse turned and looked at us. Annette shrugged.

  “Well, okay then. Let’s all get a move on,” Clarisse said. “Clem, could you get your dusty behind dressed, please?” she added, pretending it was just any regular day.