Nigger in the Window

African American Review, Spring, 1996 by David Wright

And young Darryl could not divorce himself from this image of his stepfather. Whereas the White Councilmen would smile at Darryl and praise Jack Mitchell for how well he was raising the boy, Darryl never got the impression from folks in the Flats that he was being raised right at all. And at Fitzgerald Junior High, the Brothers his age treated Darryl as though he carried his ass just as high as Jack Mitchell did.

The "Brothers." Darryl tosses the word around in his mind, stretching a cramp out of his legs, theft squatting back down, his back bonding to the cold, white wall. "Brothers" - that word doesn't sound quite right coming out of Darryl's mouth. Never has. For awhile, Darryl used to try to say "Brothers" like his friend Two, or the other young Brothers, said it. But it always sounded forced, unnatural.

This was his mom's fault. It wasn't Jack Mitchell but his mom who raised him. She spoke like what she was and passed it on to her son. So Darryl always had to content himself with his own poor pronunciation, and, as often as possible, he avoided words that would emphasize this distinction between him and the other Blacks.

What's it called when niggers toting gifts go calling door-to-door? Father's Day in the Flats.

That's some funny joke, Darryl thinks. A feather for Kevin's cap! The real humor, though, was that White-assed Kevin was being dead-accurate and he didn't even know it.

Of the ten or so Black girls in their class, Sandra Smith'd had a baby, some said by Bobo Furman but Bobo denied it; Lawanda Copeland and Deborah Jones and her twin sister Jackie had all had babies; and Melanie Windsong had had a baby by Quinton Patterson and another by Jitterbug Johnson. By the eleventh grade! They turned sixteen, then left school and got jobs there in Fitzgerald, at the A&W or the A&P. Or they left little James or Latasha with Momma or Aunt Phyllis (Momma always helped, or Aunt Phyllis would), finished high school, and then got the jobs. These girls always seemed so much . . . older . . . to Darryl, than him or anyone else in the class for that matter. Even before they had babies. And in fact, they probably were older, inside themselves, and finally had the means to prove it on the outside. They'd been trapped in the Flats all their lives: had been born and beaten and fed and kissed there. Now they were finally free in that trap for the rest of their lives, to birth and beat and feed and kiss there. As equals, among their own.

But there were some White girls too who'd gotten pregnant. Not girls like Peggy McPherson, of course, who was a cheerleader and went out with Kevin, and who Darryl often doubted did anything. Although Lizzie Majors, who was also a cheerleader and who lived just down the street from Darryl, got pregnant. It was different, though. Just wasn't the same. It happened so much less frequently with these girls, and when it did, their Bible Belt God forgave them their sin and showed it: Lizzie Majors married in a flowing white dress, with folds and fringe, and afterwards lived happily-ever- after just down the street from Daddy in the house that he bought for her and her new husband there. Lizzie Majors was no longer a girl either, but at least she had been, and for some reason that seemed important to Darryl.