Betsey Brown Read Free Page A

How could this be going on in her family? What would her father have thought in his starched trolley-driving uniform? What would her poor early-passt-on mother have made of a household run in such a brazen manner?
    Greer paraded the children in file past Grandma to get their lunches and the 35¢ he left in stacks for each of them. Then he began.
    â€œBetsey, what’s the most standard of blues forms?”
    â€œTwelve-bar blues, Daddy.”
    â€œCharlie, who invented the banjo?”
    â€œAfricans who called it a banjar, Uncle Greer.”
    â€œSharon, what is the name of the President of Ghana?”
    â€œUm . . . Nkrumah, I think.”
    â€œThinking’s not good enough, a Negro has got to know. Besides, it’s Kwame Nkrumah. Margot, where is Trinidad?”
    â€œOff the coast of Venezuela, but it’s English-speaking.”
    â€œAllard.”
    Everybody turned around, realizing that Allard was nowhere to be seen. Grandma tutted to herself in the corner. At least one of the chirren wasn’t taken in by this mess. Yet if Allard was missing, he was up to something terrible. That boy just loved fires.
    â€œAllard!” Greer shouted out to the back porch, “Allard, come in this minute and put those matches down.”
    Allard let loose of the rags he’d been piling up and ran back to the house just before his father’s hand would have laid a whap, lickety-split.
    â€œAllard, you and I are going to have a talk this evening, but right now I want to know what discipline is?”
    Discipline? All the children looked at each other askance. Daddy never asked questions like that. He asked fun questions about the Negroes, or music, or foreign places where colored people ran countries all their own and on their own. “What is discipline?” Now, that wasn’t Daddy’s kinda question at all.
    Allard looked up ingenuously at his father with his shoes still untied, making little lakes around his legs, and answered: “Discipline is the hallmark of a mighty people.” Then he sat down to try to tie his shoes again.
    When Jane entered the kitchen, the line of children melted into hugs and kisses good-bye to Grandma and thanks to Daddy for the extra nickel for correctly answered questions at morning drill. No one bothered to figure where Allard got his answer from, but it must have been right cause Greer gave him five copper pennies. Jane had found time to do her nails, her hair and face, so she looked more like she was going shopping at Saks than to the segregated colored hospital to work with the crazy ones, the mad niggahs couldn’t nobody else talk to. Betsey’sword had been “psychopath” one time and she answered, “Mama’s patients, niggahs what aint got no sense,” for which she’d been sent to her room. Jane was furious. Of all of her children, Betsey should have understood it wasn’t that folks didn’t have any sense, it was that they were in pain and had so little, so very little to look forward to. Jane loved to miss the morning drill, and show up just in time for a grin from each urchin, a tidying of heads and belts, a moment to take pride in her womb’s work. Every time she turned around she was poking out again. Jane loved being pregnant and she loved her children. She loved Greer, motioning for her to get a move on.
    â€œBetsey, good luck today. Allard and Charlie, don’t play too rough. Sharon, I bet you get at least a ninety on your geography test. Margot, those are lovely ponytails you’ve made for yourself. Mama, see you later. Enjoy the TV and let me know what is going on on ‘Edge of Night,’ you hear.”
    Greer chimed in, “That’s right, Mama, take it easy and I’ll bring you something nice. You mustn’t strain yourself on accounta your heart. Take a stroll before the heat’s too much. I’m gonna bring you something nice.”
    Jane and Greer