Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams-Garcia Page B

disgusted.
    Even though Ma Charles was thoroughly entertained, she said, “Don’t let her tell those stories about her people. How they brought my grandfather into the tribe as one oftheir own. When she tells that story be respectful because that is my handiwork in you.”
    To that, Big Ma said, “ Your handiwork in my grandkids? It’s all I can do to wash and wring the Brooklyn and Oakland out of them and keep them good proper Negroes—”
    Then Fern said, “Black and proud,” and Big Ma said, “Eat your food.”
    Ma Charles agreed. “Eat your food, Rickets”—her new name for Fern because she wouldn’t eat the food that puts meat on bones—“and you,” she said to Vonetta, “nod and say, ‘Yes ma’am, Miss Trotter,’ because she likes to hear that. Miss Trotter. The Lord knows she paid everything she got to be called Miss Trotter, so call her that. But you’re old enough to know the truth, daughter.”
    I figured when Ma Charles didn’t have a name handy, she called any woman or girl younger than herself “daughter.”
    â€œYou’re old enough, and since we are telling it, we will tell it all.”
    â€œA mercy, Lord.”
    â€œThey took in my grandfather, a runaway from the cotton fields. He was about ten. At that time, there was trouble down in Eufaula. War with the last of the Creek. She didn’t tell you this part of the history, did she? Hmph. When the last of them was defeated, the governor made the Indians march west to Oklahoma and Texas, and Augustus marched with them. He married the Indiangirl, all right, according to their ways when he became a man. Sixteen. Seventeen. She bore eleven of his children over twenty years. Some look more Indian. Some look more colored. Each time one was born, her father said, ‘See how my daughter increases our wealth?’ Hmp.” Ma Charles spat in the house without anything coming out and Big Ma called for a mercy. “My father was the second to the last boy. Don’t let her tell you how Indian he was—he looked just as colored as his pa.
    â€œQuiet as it’s kept, Indians got good money for their colored. Good money. There came a time when my grandmother’s brothers sold my grandfather and four of his colored children into the very cotton fields he freed himself from.”
    â€œCan they do that?” I asked.
    â€œWhat do they teach you in school?” she asked. “They did that. This is history I’m telling you. The real history she won’t tell you.”
    â€œIndians wouldn’t do that,” I said. “The Indians were oppressed like us. They wouldn’t collaborate with the Man.”
    Big Ma said, “Delphine, I know your father spoke to you girls about using that Black Panther language down here.”
    â€œHe surely did, Big Ma.”
    â€œI know he did,” Big Ma said to Fern. “Because he doesn’t want me to have to ship you back to him in a pine box.”
    At the moment I didn’t care about what Pa told us. I couldn’t believe what Ma Charles said about the Indians. I wouldn’t believe it. “They sold black people?”
    She nodded like this was common knowledge. “Sold some. Kept some. The woolly-haired colored ones were the first to go. I know it because my father done seen it with his own eyes. Seen his father tied up like a mule and his sisters and brothers led away. Seen it when he was but ten or eleven. His mother hid him because his hair was more wool than straight. But he still had seen it all. How his mother fell to the ground begging her brothers and uncles. So when she tells you they were a happy clan, say, ‘Yes, ma’am, Miss Trotter,’ like I showed you how. Don’t call her a liar to her face. The Lord doesn’t love a disrespectful child. She is old and she is kin. But I am equal to her in years. I pulled her pigtails in Miss