Palpitations
The joke about Florida was that a piece of New Jersey had broken loose from the eastern seaboard, drifted south, then re-attached itself to the bottom of Georgia. We thought of ourselves as being in the south, but not of the south. Yet, our town was typically southern in that it was small, slow, and segregated. Railroad tracks ran through the center of Winter Park like a mighty exclamation point — dividing east from west, and Black from White. As children, we weren't conscious of this arrangement as racist; after all, it was the 70s — the post civil-rights era, and our town served as a kind of suburb for Disney World — the "happiest place on earth." I wondered, but never asked why the Black neighborhoods seemed so ill–kept — why their neglected yards were littered with old tires and broken washing machines while our neighborhood, exclusively White and sirloin steak-fed, was full of brand new ten-speeds, our yards divided by sharply–edged lawns and coiffured hedges.
On Saturday mornings I awoke to the summer playground sounds of shouting and laughing from up and down the street. I rolled out of bed and pulled on the same pair of shorts I'd worn the day before, knowing the curb would serve as first base, the manhole cover as second. Third base would be one of the huge Live Oaks that dwelled between the curb and sidewalk. Maybe after the game we'd climb one. Up there among the long, gray Spanish moss we could peer across the rooftops of the expanding housing tracts of central Florida.
Our neighborhood was filled with young professional couples raising children. Some of us went to private schools. Almost all the kids in my school, St. Margaret Mary's, were White. Candy was the only Black girl in my class — 3A; her brother, Tracy, was in 3B. They seemed very poor, like they were sponsored into our school. Candy seemed to get along with the other girls okay, but she lacked a certain confidence — you could see it in the way she moved, head lowered, when she walked down the hallway or across the playground — arms swinging in a silly way as if to say she didn't care. And she was shy of the ball in gym; it seemed like she really didn't even want to play. Once Candy came to school with her hair braided very close to her scalp; we all paid close attention to this. We were intrigued and perplexed — it was something the White girls could never do with their hair. Candy sat in the front row and Sister Jacqueline walked right up and pressed her palms to Candy's head to feel her hair with a familiarity that seemed inappropriate to me even at that young age. Candy froze and assumed a detached stare.
Mine was the typical American broken home. Dad lived up in Washington, D.C.; mom had decided to move to Florida to get a fresh start with a new company. She ended up traveling a lot in her new job and that's when Louise moved in to take care of me and my little brother, Matt.
Louise Jackson was a retired RN. A nurse for thirty years, she had retired a bit early because of her, "heart palpitations," a decision she clearly regretted having to make. As a Black woman who had worked extra hard to make a career for herself throughout an era of overt discrimination, the stress had clearly taken a toll on her health. And so, after a serious heart attack, she had turned from the pressures of hospital work to private nursing. Occasionally she would place her hand on her chest and furl her brow.
"Mmm, mm, m, — my heart palpitations," she would mutter to herself.
She was quite attentive to Matthew, who was hyper–active — his way of dealing with the anxiety of our parents' divorce. Whenever he came home from school after an episode with a teacher or a fight with another kid she would set him on her lap in the big rocking chair in the living room and gently rock until he slowly stopped twitching.
"Louiiise." my brother would call while he looked up into her face.
"Maaathew." she would answer, soft and slow.
"Louiiise." he'd call again and again.
"Maaathew," she'd answer, never getting impatient.
Some afternoons, when I wanted to go out and play before my homework was done, Louise usually let me. She told me that sometimes while studying in nursing school she'd often take a break when she couldn't get any more into her head — she would go for a walk and eat an apple or something.
She said, "I wanted to go all the way through school with nothing but A's so that if anyone had a problem with me and checked my grades there would be no doubt. I got a B in a class once and I cried and cried. I wanted to get all A's." She looked at the stove and pressed her hand hard between her breasts.
Some Saturdays we'd go to what we called the "kiddie shows." We'd ride our bikes to the theater downtown, past our favorite and second-favorite fishing ponds with our dollar to get in and our dollar for our "prize pack." As we neared the old part of town, close to its center, the oak trees grew larger and closer together, the Spanish moss grew thicker, and the streets turned from blacktop to red, brown, and black cobble stone. Matt and I chained up our bikes and got in line. There seemed to be more Black kids than White in line that day. Downtown was close to the tracks, and to the Black neighborhoods.
Once inside, the movie was terrible, as usual — a Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller comedy that was totally inappropriate for children — most of the jokes were over our heads. The chatter among the crowd of kids steadily grew louder as we became less interested in the movie. The fun part of the kiddie shows was watching the short films before the feature, and buying the "prize packs" sold behind the counter along with the popcorn. Inside the prize pack boxes were candy, toys, and a ticket for a soda. But, not all the kids in the theater had an extra dollar for a prize pack, and some of the kids who had the extra dollar didn't have their mother with them. These kids from the affluent west side were dropped off with a fat allowance while their mothers went off to their tennis lessons or nail-doo appointments.
That particular Saturday the crowd was especially restless. Gradually, I noticed through the general chatter of a hundred kids not listening to the movie the persistent repetition of a single phrase:
"Gimme some money! Gimme some money!"
I turned around and saw an angelic blond boy about my age nervously occupying his seat next to his little sister and staring straight ahead at the movie screen, trying to ignore the aggression. Behind them, to either side, were three Black boys — slightly older and much bigger, looming over the younger pair, demanding money, and not letting up. Their strategy was clear. Though they probably didn't plan to physically harm anyone, they would continue to demand and loom and threaten until, out of desperation for relief, the kids would hand over a dollar for a prize pack just to be left alone.
I turned back toward the screen, glad it wasn't me being accosted. I knew that if I was spotted observing the scene, my younger brother and I may well be the next target — and I knew I could not defend us. I hoped those little kids would be alright, and I wanted to somehow help them, but there was nothing I could do — and to be honest, it was better them than me. Though disturbing in the moment, the incident was soon forgotten when, suddenly, the movie became very interesting, and a comforting distraction.
Later that afternoon, my brother and I rode our bikes down to the nearest pond. We were fishing for what we called "brim" — those little pan fish that populate stagnant ponds and lakes and bite at the tiny balls of Wonder Bread we squeezed tightly onto little weighted hooks. While we waited for a bite, we could see the motionless double-lumps of alligator eyes peering over the surface of the water near the center of the lake. They never moved while we watched them, but when we looked back again, they were always in a slightly different place in the water. We caught four or five brim, then carried them home on long blue and white nylon stringers swinging from our handle-bars. We asked Louise to cook them for us. We watched her expertly slice their guts out and grind them down the garbage disposal while the last of their dwindling fishy strength quivered away.
"Does that hurt them, Louise?" I asked.
"They don't live long once you open them up." She said, as she methodically cleaned the brim. She even hummed a little, then looked at me and started to explain, "You know, they used to tell me I was a pretty good fisherman. You have to jig the line when you feel a bite — but not too hard."
Soon the smell of Crisco and pond water filled the house as the fish softly sizzled along side a few potatoes cut into thick wedges. Louise simmered some mustard greens my brother grew in the backyard in a big pot with a white square of salt pork. They had a kind of partnership going with those mustard greens. Sometimes Matt would pick a big bunch of greens for Louise and she would give him a small handful of change. She'd take them home on weekends or days off. I loved them but we only had them when Louise cooked.
Soon our fish-dinner was ready and we ate at the counter while watching television. We didn't know it tasted terrible — we swirled the fish around in a puddle of ketchup nearly as deep as the pond we pulled them out of.
"Louise?" I asked, looking up during a commercial —
"Louise, do you wish you were White?"
The look on her face made me regret my question before she even started to answer.
"I'm happy to be what God made me!" her voice started high, but quickly rose higher. "I'm happy to be what God made me — grateful to be whatever color the Good-Lord made me be. Nobody decides what color they are. God makes us what color we are!"
Louise put her hand on her chest and moved toward her chair in the kitchen. She sat down and looked at the stove.
"I'm just happy to be what the Good-Lord made me."
I looked toward the TV and stared at the screen like I had looked away at the movies that morning. I hoped her agitation with what I said would go away. I wasn't sure why it upset her so much, I just knew I'd never ask a question like that again. But most of all, I wanted her heart palpitations to stop — I wanted to help her heart.
On Monday morning I was back at school. Though the weekend was over, I never minded Mondays in third grade because Monday was P.E. day. Our gym teacher, Mrs. Clark, a small robust woman with short-cropped hair and a whistle around her neck, picked captains, then told the captains to pick the teams for kick-ball.
As the time-honored ritual played-out, the teams grew larger and the kids waiting to be picked grew fewer. I then sensed that, as the kid most afraid of the ball, Candy would be the last child picked and that something bad might happen. Finally Candy stood alone and separate from the two large teams of White children. Though the captain never actually picked her, Candy began to amble, head lowered, toward the team that ended up with her. Then the team without her started laughing. The laughing grew louder and some of the kids started pointing at the team with Candy — and they wouldn't stop. Candy squeezed her eyes shut hard and tears ran down her cheeks as she pressed her hand to her chest. Mrs. Clark put her arm around Candy who buried her face into Mrs. Clark's side as the sobs tumbled out. The kids stopped laughing. Soon, Candy stopped crying — but she didn't play kick-ball with us that day. I wanted to help her heart, but I didn't yet know how, and I don't remember her being there in the fourth grade.
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AUTHOR NOTES:
Patrick Monaghan was born in Washington DC, on February 19, 1963. Early in 1965 he teamed up with Rolling Stones rhythm guitarist Keith Richards to pen the R&B classic, "Heart of Stone." He now wishes he hadn't. In 1981 he graduated from high school and then attended art school for three semesters before he was asked to please leave. Pat is now enrolled in the MAIS program at Marylhurst University where he hopes to break every record on the swim team. Beth, his wife of 14–years, is the mother of twins. They are his.
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