What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day... by Pearl Cleage

Author:Pearl Cleage
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780061807176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Yes,” I said, but I felt myself tearing up again, scared that if I told him, he’d pull away. Scared of how much I didn’t want that to happen.

“Do you want to tell me now?”

“I thought I did, but . . .” I stopped that one prequaver, but barely. What the hell was the problem? We were only going to be friends, right?

“Maybe you’ve had enough excitement for one day. Tell me another time. I’m not going anywhere.” And he smiled that smile. “I’m home, remember?”

I nodded. “I better go.”

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger. My grandmother used to say that, too.”

“Too late for me to be a stranger,” I said, trying to keep it light as I headed back to Joyce’s. “You saw me in my pigtails.”

“But that was another life,” he said. “All this stuff here is brand-new.”

• 11

the last of the Sewing Circus finally straggled home around midnight, arms full of sleeping toddlers and hearts full of revolution. Joyce was ecstatic. She got no drop-off in membership moving the group to the house, and being under siege brought out the best in them. Aretha, whose sociology class was studying the sixties, suggested picketing Sunday morning service, which Joyce thought was too confrontational. Tomika offered to kick the Reverend Mrs.’ ample ass, which Joyce confessed did appeal to her, but which she rejected as inappropriate behavior between black women.

Finally Joyce suggested that each Sewing Circus member express her feelings individually to the Good Reverend after church on Sunday. When they met next week, everybody could report on what they had said and what he had said before determining their next step. They thought that was a great idea, even though they probably didn’t suspect that it was Joyce’s way of getting them used to the idea of articulating their outrage to the people they allowed to control so much of their lives.

“If they can get in the Rev’s face,” Joyce said, “pretty soon they’ll be able to talk back at the food stamp office and be indignant at the Welfare Department, and from there? Sky’s the limit!”

Joyce flopped down on the couch, exhilarated and exhausted, and looked at me to share the excitement, but the truth was, I had hardly heard a word she said. I wanted to know why Eddie had been in jail. I asked Joyce if she knew.

“Of course,” she said.

“Why?”

“Ask him.”

Typical Joyce. “It isn’t anything really terrible, is it?”

“The worst,” she said.

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too.” She looked at me. “He won’t mind if you ask him. He probably thinks I’ve already told you anyway.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Joyce took a minute before she answered me. “Sometimes I meet people who already know what happened to Mitch because somebody told them about it. They’ve already had a chance to hear it, and picture it, and have whatever reaction they’re going to have to it. So when we get introduced, they think they know something about me, when all they know is a bunch of details.

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