The Black Woman by Toni Cade Bambara

Author:Toni Cade Bambara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 1970-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

I Fell Off the Roof One Day (A View of the Black University) *

Nikki Giovanni

Up in baby land playing house one day I fell off the roof and into my earth mother’s lap. I didn’t have anything else to do nor any other place to go so I decided to stay here and see what the game was. As I think about it, I would have liked to go back to baby land where my friends and true family lived, but I didn’t know how. So we both began to try to make the best of it. Not that my earth mother was all that cruel; sometimes I even heard her say it hurt her more than it hurt me when she had to discipline me; but we both know, or at least I learned to accept her version of it, that I needed discipline—for my own good. I think a lot of people all over the world are being disciplined “for their own good.” Many many people have fallen from baby land into new families. I guess that’s the hard part of being an adult—you not only have to discipline yourself but other people. I would imagine “responsibility” would be the best word.

I’ve often wondered who should be responsible. In the big white book there is a question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I think if Black people had written it it would have said, “Am I not my brother’s keeper?” I think we understand brotherhood better than the average responsible adult. Responsibility is one of those ten-dollar words tossed around as lightly as love and free sex. Think about that—free sex! Nothing is free these days and certainly not sex. Funny how white folks use words. I have always liked words—they seem like a good way to tell people what you want and what you don’t want. There are other ways, but I just have this weakness for words. I never understood why a soldier was not called a murderer, though; or why science is not considered antisocial; or why bail isn’t called ransom; or why Clairol doesn’t ask, “Is she or isn’t she”? I never understood why. I think school is important.

My grandmother lived in the South. They never spoke of neighborhood schools in the South‘cause all kinds of people could live in one neighborhood. In the North they did, however. The whole concept makes a lot of sense to me ‘cause you just wouldn’t want your little five-year-old running all across town to a school. In the South they just said plainly, “We don’t want no niggers in these schools.” And all you could really say was “ Any niggers … it’s any niggers … a double negative makes a positive.” That’s all you could really say, logically speaking. But in the North they said, “We want all people to attend schools in their neighborhoods.” Which meant they didn’t want no niggers in their schools. That’s called de facto segregation. What the trick is, we are

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