Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

together.”
    A few days later I agreed to allow Tosh to take Clyde out alone. They came to the store as I was leaving and Clyde was full of his afternoon.
    “We rode on the cable cars and went to Fisherman's Wharf. I'm going to be a ship's captain or a cable car conductor.” His eyes jumped like targets in a game of marbles. “Mr. Angelos is going to take me to the zoo next week. I'm going to feed the animals. I might become a lion tamer.” He examined my face and added, “He said I could.”
    Although Tosh had said nothing romantic to me, I realized that through my son he was courting me as surely as Abelard courted Héloïse. I couldn't let him know I knew. The knowledge had to remain inside me, unrevealed, or I would have to make a decision, and that decision had been made for me by the centuries of slavery, the violation of my people, the violence of whites. Anger and guilt decided before my birth that Black was Black and White was White and although the two might share sex, they must never exchange love. But the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.
    Tosh grew up in a Greek community, where even Italians were considered foreign. His contact with Blacks had been restricted to the Negro sailors on his base and the music of the bebop originators.
    I would never forget the slavery tales, or my Southern past, where all whites, including the poor and ignorant, had the right to speak rudely to and even physically abuse any Negro they met. I knew the ugliness of white prejudice. Obviously there was no common ground on which Tosh and I might meet.
    I began to await his visits to the shop with an eagerness held in close control. We went to parks, the beach and dinners together. He loved W.C. Fields and adored Mae West, and the three of us howled our laughter into the quiet dark air of art movie houses.
    One night, after I had put my son to bed, we sat having coffee in the large kitchen. He asked me if I could read fortunes and put his hand in mine.
    I said, “Of course, you are going to be a great musician and be very wealthy and live a long, rich life.” I laid his hand on the table, palm open.
    He asked, “Do you see where I'm going to be married?”
    I was thrust through with disappointment. While I hadn't ever seen him in the “my husband” role, his attention had been a balm for my loneliness. Now he was saying he was planning marriage. Some childhood sweetheart would arrive on the scene. I would be expected to be kind to her, and gracious.
    I looked at the shadowy lines in his hand and spitefully said, “Your love line is very faint. I don't see a happy marriage in your future.”
    He caught my hand and squeezed it. “I am going to be married, and I'm going to marry you.”
    The sounds refused to come together and convey meaning. I am going to marry you. He had to be talking about me, since he was addressing me, yet the two words “you” and “marry” had never been said to me before.
    Even after I accepted the content of his statement, I found nothing to say.
    “A white man? A poor white man? How can you even consider it?” Disbelief struggled across her face. My mother's diamond winked at me as her hand flew about in the air. “A white man without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.”
    She was famous for temperamental explosions but she had never been angry enough at me to hurl her full thunderbolt of rage. Now, when I told her of Tosh's proposal, she was accelerating from an “ing bing” (her phrase for a minor riot) to a full-out tantrum. With alarming speed her pretty butter-colored face became tight and reddened.
    “Think of your life. You're young. What's going to happen to you?”
    I hoped not much more than had happened already. At three years old I had been sent by train from California to Arkansas, accompanied only by my four-year-old brother; raped at seven and returned to