I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett Page A

cravat, his camel top hat, his oiled hair graying at the temples just below the brim. Bond was not nearly as tall as me, but he carried himself entirely erect, as if he had been constructed anew for the day.
    “I have a bid of five thousand dollars from Mister Hamish Bond,” the auctioneer sang. “Five thousand dollars. Do I hear any other bids? Five thousand once. Twice. Sold to Hamish Bond.”
    The woman looked liked every other mulatto in New Orleans, but Bond paid for her and took her back to his place in the Quarter. I arrived a couple of hours later to find myself standing in the kitchen, hearing about the new acquisition from the last high-yellow object of affection, Michelle.
    She moved around the kitchen in a long dress, a scarf around her head. Her dark eyes blazed. She moved with some grace, but not much. “Raz-ru,” she said, pointing at the ceiling. “She’s up there right now, in that room that used to be mine. And I have to wait on her, treat her with respect and deference.”
    The cook, another young mulatto woman, said, “The way we used to have to treat you.”
    “Shut up, Dolly,” Michelle said. “No one asked you.”
    “I have to treat her like she’s more than nothing while he tiptoes around her like she’s made of glass or some such, like she’s white like he is. Why did I fall from favor, Raz-ru? He used to treat me like that. Why no more? Did he drill deep enough to strike black, and now he needs a new well?”
    “And he’ll need a new well again,” I said.
    Dolly came over, a big wooden spoon in her hand, talking like the voodun princess she was, “Might be the last well he get.” She stirred the air with her spoon. “It’s comin’. Change be comin’. It’s in the air. Soon, Master Hamish won’t be having his yellow cookies.”
    “Dolly, go about your business!” Michelle said. “Take the tea up to that … that new one.”
    Michelle watched Dolly leave. “Samantha Moon, that’s her name. She was living high and mighty up in Virginia, thinking she was white, and then the truth came back to roost. She got to live free for a long spell and she ought to be happy about that, but she doesn’t believe she is what she is. I would also feel sorry for her except that she had those free years that I didn’t have. I’m beginning to think the only difference between being black and being white is that if you’re white you just don’t know about your blood, you’re dumb to your blood, ignorant about that one drop. White people fear that one drop like we fear the rope.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Yes, but they also love that one drop. Like the way Bond loved you and will love her. Fleetingly.” I studied her face. “Tell me, do you really love that man?”
    “He is so kind.” Her face did a dreamlike thing, it became long, then fat and I had to think to fix it and I was not sure it was ever the same.
    “The devil is often kind. He controls with his kindness. His darkies collect and sing him praises for his kindness. They huddle together and parade like a single creature behind that wagon he calls kindness. He kills with his kindness.”
    “You ask me why I love him,” Michelle said, her dead-doll eyes locked on mine. “Why do you hate him so?”
    “You don’t need to ask that.” I realized I was still holding my hat in my hands. I was nervous because I had no place to go. “So, this woman upstairs, who has been dragged from her home, sold on the block, she cannot accept her blood?”
    “Cannot and will not, Raz-ru.”
    “She may soon wish that her blood will accept her.”
    “She will not,” she said.
    “Then she is more than a fool. She is stupid.”
    And in the dream, the words felt strange in my mouth, the faces seemed in soft focus, no hard edges, no sharp contrasts, except that rage burned inside me, my not so much feeling it as knowing it. The slaves irritated me with their love of singing. Michelle irritated me with her love of Bond. I irritated myself with