Her mother let out a cackle. “You need to think about something else, ’less you want to be walking ’round looking nappy and crazy!”
*
Belle’s husband did his part to embrace his heritage, as the neighborhood changed. Though he was very light-skinned, his acquired pimp stroll and serious kinship nod to other brothers carried the day. His hair couldn’t go “home”： it was straight as corn silk, but he began wearing brightly colored dashikis over his jeans, patterns that sang of Africa. And he was concerned about what he called “the movement,” the progress of the Black folks that they lived around.
In June, Geoff brought Belle along to his Wednesday meeting at the community center, a few blocks from their apartment. At that first meeting, the attention was on the cops, who’d grown worse since the riots.
Belle nested into Geoff’s side, trying not to fall asleep. The behavior of the police bothered her, but she was a young mother and too tired for outrage. She regarded the meeting as a sort of date with her husband. She was grateful for time away from the demands of her toddler, even if her rude, color-struck mother-in-law was the babysitter.
When Belle looked around the room, most of the women wore matching ensembles to the men’s dashikis, though their dresses hid their ankles, a length Belle couldn’t abide at barely five feet tall. The women sat in folded chairs in the back of the room and clapped their hands whenever male voices were raised. Sometimes they ejected, “That’s right! Tell it, brother!”
The single woman who voiced a lengthy opinion was Evelyn Dawson. Long-limbed, cocoa brown, and with impeccable diction, she pointed her cigarette at the podium, where Zulu Harris stood. He was the founder of the community center.
“What’re you going to do about these pig motherfuckers?” Evelyn demanded. “They are out of control!”
Belle looked at her lap, plucking nonexistent lint from her skirt. Down in her hometown, she wasn’t used to hearing folks curse in public gatherings.
“We’re working on that situation, sister,” Zulu said.
“Apparently not, my brother. Last week, one of those bastards stopped me for street-walking! Then, he felt me up! I let him know I was in law school and he didn’t even blink. So then I had to tell him my father was frat brothers with Thurgood Marshall.”
“Sister, please be patient. In the meantime, my .45 and I would be happy to escort you wherever you want to go.” There were knowing chuckles from the men, as three women in the audience cut each other glances and folded their arms in judgment. Their African cloth maxi dresses matched, and their heads were wrapped tightly in yards of the same cloth. These were Zulu’s three common-law wives, who lived with him in a four-room apartment. He’d introduced them at the beginning of the meeting, asking them to stand.
Evelyn patted the side of her huge, sculpted Afro. “Keep your gun tucked. I’m not trying to start another riot. But when are we taking these pigs to court?”
“We have to be careful before rousing attention too early,” Zulu said. “Remember what Chairman Mao said. ‘When waking a tiger, use a long stick.’”
He introduced Belle’s husband, saying, don’t be fooled by Geoff’s light skin, because he was as Black as they came. A brother, through and through, which the movement needed more of. Geoff was in his second year in medical school, and he was going to read them something encouraging.
Geoff walked up to the podium and pulled a paperback from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’m going to read a poem by the Black American poet Sterling A. Brown. It’s called ‘Strong Men.’ I like this poem very much, because it speaks to me of the hardship I’ve seen in our neighborhood, but at the same time, it encourages me.”
Belle saw folks poking each other. They didn’t care what Zulu had said: Who did this proper, white-looking boy who couldn’t even grow a real Afro think he was? She smiled when her husband cleared his throat: she knew what was coming. His voice climbed, the outraged baritone transforming him, and there was clapping, like when a preacher gave a Spirit-filled message, stomping of feet, and Belle was so proud of her husband, though her eyes were closing from exhaustion.
When the meeting ended, the folks rushed over to Geoff. How wonderful his reading had been! They raised fists or gave him the soul shake, but now that his performance was over, he turned into the modest young man that Belle had married. He dipped his head bashfully. It wasn’t his poem; he couldn’t take any credit.