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Footpath passing a school, undiscovered by a nun black at her blackboard’s explanation of Vanishing Americans’ vanishing, I find myself flagged, by two not quite red rows, unfurled into grin, two white, and by one five-pointed, pale star. My lips let my teeth pledge allegiance, again, my fingers orbiting their own warmth, around this pen, as straight as Old Glory’s tall pole, but admittedly, ingloriously smaller, and, as the star descends, it draws, from Christian calendars’ precision constellations, a child—hand cramped from fisting fact onto dusty black clutching a wand, to draw him Everywhere. Though the teacher scowls us back to my dead, risen from The Trail of Tears as chalk, this day before Thanksgiving Day; a child will lead, as I finish taking my walk.

The yellow line could be seen for as long a time As the highway desired And if you fell asleep at the wheel It fulgurated in the dozing soul Like a brutal revelation That allows you not to feel In the dream’s snapshot Your brain getting smashed Against the milestone or the windshield It was an ideal line Crowned with horizontal blue That unwound day after day Like a clothesline Flags and scalps and washed-out roses Our countries our combats our wars Mingling lassitude with involuntary starts A gymnastic in disorder That sickened our hearts

Passing the shop after school, he would look up at the sign and go on, glad that his own life had to do with books. Now at night when he saw the grey in his parents’ hair and heard their talk of that day’s worries and the next: lack of orders, if orders, lack of workers, if workers, lack of goods, if there were workers and goods, lack of orders again, for the tenth time he said, “I’m going in with you: there’s more money in business.” His father answered, “Since when do you care about money? You don’t know what kind of a life you’re going into— but you have always had your own way.” He went out selling: in the morning he read the Arrival of Buyers

“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha, as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose. It was as hot as any other summer day, when she decided to run away. Folks say she made a fortune running a whorehouse in New Orleans, but others say she’s buried somewhere out west, her grave unmarked, though you can find it in the dark by the scent of jasmine and mint, but I’m getting ahead of myself. If it wasn’t for hell, we’d all be tapdancing with the devil Mama Rose used to say, but as it is, we just stand and watch, while someone else burns up before salvation. “People desire damnation, Bertha,” she said, unwrapping the rag from her head to let the sweat flow down the corn rows, plaited as tightly as the night coming down on the high and mighty on judgment day. They say she knew what was coming, because she threw some bones that morning. She bent down to pick up her rag which had fallen and when she straightened up, her yellow gal had gone down the road. “Go then,” she called out, “I didn’t want you no how.” Then she started talking to herself about how Old White John caught her milking cows. “He wrestled me to the ground and did his nastiness.” He said, “your daddy was a slave and his daddy and I’m claiming back what’s mine.” It was July. I remember fireworks going off outside. When Bertha come, so white she liked to scared me to death, I let her suckle my breast and I said, “All right, little baby, maybe I’ll love you. Maybe.” Mama Rose said she did her best, but it’s hard to raise a gal like that with everybody thinking she’s giving them the high hat, because she’s so light and got those green eyes that look right through you. She frightens people. Even men, who’re usually wanting to saddle up and ride that kind of mare, can’t abide her. They’re afraid if they try her, they’ll never be the same. The only ones willing are white. They’re watching her day and night, but they know John swore to kill any man who touched her, because lo and behold, he owns up to her. He’s proud of her. Nobody can believe it. He’s even at her baptism. He buys her cheap dresses and candy at the store. He hands it to her out the door, because she can’t go in. He won’t, he won’t stop looking at her like it’s some kind of miracle she was born looking so much like him and his people. It’s a warning, or something. “It’s evil turning back on itself,” said the preacher the Sunday cut clean through by the truth, by the living proof, as Old John stood up in church and testified to the power of God, who spoke to him that morning, telling him he was a sinner. He died that winter. Horrible suffering, they say. He had a stroke on the way to town. His car ran off the road and he drowned. They say Bertha found him. They say she ran all the way to town for the doctor, who told her, “I am not a colored doctor,” so she went and got the sheriff. He listened for a while, then he locked her in a cell. He said he knew she was guilty of something. Well, after a while, Rose went down there and I swear she nearly had a fit. “Get my daughter out here,” she said. “How can you lock up your own brother’s child?” The sheriff knew it was true, so finally he said, “You take her and don’t ever cross my path again.” When Bertha passed him on the way out, he tripped her with his foot. When she got off the floor, she said, “Every dog has its day.” From that time to this is a straight line, pointing at a girl, who doesn’t even have shoes anymore, as she runs down the road, throwing off her ragged clothes, as she goes, until she’s as naked as the day she was born. When she comes to washing hanging on the line, she grabs a fine dress and keeps on running. She’s crying and laughing at the same time. Along comes a truck that says J. GOODY on the side. The man driving stops to give her a ride. He swings the door open on the passenger side, but Bertha says, “Move over, I’ll drive.” When she asks him why he stopped, he says, “I know white trash, when I see it. You’re just like me, but you're a girl. You’re pretty. You can free yourself. All you have to do is show a little leg and some titty in the big city.” He gave her fifty cents and a wink and she started thinking she might as well turn white. She got a job waiting table in a dance hall. One night, the boss heard her singing along with the band. He said, “Why don’t you go up on stage,” and she said, “I play piano too.” He said, “Howdy do.” From then on, she made everybody pay one way, or another. She got hard. She took lovers— fathers, sons, and husbands. It didn't matter, but once in a while, she heard her mother’s voice, saying, “You made the wrong choice,” and she felt the blues and she let loose with a shout. “Lordy,” said the boss, “you sound colored.” More and more people came to hear her sing, but they kind of feared her too. They said, she was too white to sing the blues like that. It wasn’t right. One night, she got to talking with the boss. He walked round and round the office, shaking his head, saying how much he’d lose, if she stopped singing the blues. “How often can you find a treasure like mine,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder, then he said, “If I weren’t so old,” and his voice dropped off to a whisper, then he said, “I got the answer now, sweet Roberta. Go on down to the dressing room and wait.” It didn't take long. He came in and set a jar on the table. “What do I do with this?” Asked Bertha. He said, “you’re going to pass for colored.” Suddenly, she was wearing blackface. Suddenly, she was safe on the other side of the door she slammed on the past and it was standing open at last. She could come and go as she pleased and no one saw her enter, or leave. She was free, she was freed, but she didn’t feel it and she needed it to be real. She went on, though. She flowed like a river, carrying the body of a man, who had himself a nigger, because he could. She lived. She got old. She almost froze one cold spell and she got up from her sickbed and told her daughter she got during the change of life it was time to go. She sewed a note to her ragged coat. It said, “This is the granddaughter of Mama Rose.” She put fifty cents in her hand and went to stand with her at the bus stop. She would not return, but her child had earned the right to go home. When I got off the bus, a hush fell over the people waiting there. I was as white as my mother, but my eyes were gray, not green. I had hair down to my waist and braids so thick they weighed me down. Mother said, my father was a white musician from another town, who found out her secret and left her and me to keep it. Mama Rose knew me, though, blind as she was. “What color are you, gal?” She asked and I told her, “I’m as black as last night.” That's how I passed, without asking permission.

—on my seventy-ninth birthday Nobody in the widow’s household ever celebrated anniversaries. In the secrecy of my room I would not admit I cared that my friends were given parties. Before I left town for school my birthday went up in smoke in a fire at City Hall that gutted the Department of Vital Statistics. If it weren’t for a census report of a five-year-old White Male sharing my mother’s address at the Green Street tenement in Worcester I’d have no documentary proof that I exist. You are the first, my dear, to bully me into these festive occasions. Sometimes, you say, I wear an abstracted look that drives you up the wall, as though it signified distress or disaffection. Don’t take it so to heart. Maybe I enjoy not-being as much as being who I am. Maybe it’s time for me to practice growing old. The way I look at it, I’m passing through a phase: gradually I’m changing to a word. Whatever you choose to claim of me is always yours; nothing is truly mine except my name. I only borrowed this dust.

I’m eating a little supper by the bright window. The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn. Outside my door, the quiet roads lead, after a short walk, to open fields. I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows how many women are eating now. My body is calm: labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too. Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive, but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone. I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them. A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things. A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still, in its true place, just like my body is still. All things become islands before my senses, which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence. All things in this darkness—I can know all of them, just as I know that blood flows in my veins. The plain is a great flowing of water through plants, a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone, lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins with each living thing that this plain provides. The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star struggles in emptiness, far from all foods, from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself, it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone, my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.

[Supposed to be written by one at the point of death] Give me my scallop shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope’s true gage, And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage. Blood must be my body’s balmer, No other balm will there be given, Whilst my soul, like a white palmer, Travels to the land of heaven; Over the silver mountains, Where spring the nectar fountains; And there I’ll kiss The bowl of bliss, And drink my eternal fill On every milken hill. My soul will be a-dry before, But after it will ne’er thirst more; And by the happy blissful way More peaceful pilgrims I shall see, That have shook off their gowns of clay, And go apparelled fresh like me. I’ll bring them first To slake their thirst, And then to taste those nectar suckets, At the clear wells Where sweetness dwells, Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets. And when our bottles and all we Are fill’d with immortality, Then the holy paths we’ll travel, Strew’d with rubies thick as gravel, Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors, High walls of coral, and pearl bowers. From thence to heaven’s bribeless hall Where no corrupted voices brawl, No conscience molten into gold, Nor forg’d accusers bought and sold, No cause deferr’d, nor vain-spent journey, For there Christ is the king’s attorney, Who pleads for all without degrees, And he hath angels, but no fees. When the grand twelve million jury Of our sins and sinful fury, ’Gainst our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then we live. Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader, Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder, Thou movest salvation even for alms, Not with a bribed lawyer’s palms. And this is my eternal plea To him that made heaven, earth, and sea, Seeing my flesh must die so soon, And want a head to dine next noon, Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread, Set on my soul an everlasting head. Then am I ready, like a palmer fit, To tread those blest paths which before I writ.

Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the Rocks, Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow Rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing Madrigals. And I will make thee beds of Roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty Lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw and Ivy buds, With Coral clasps and Amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love. The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my love.

The passions that we fought with and subdued Never quite die. In some maimed serpent’s coil They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate That power was once our torture and our lord.

I use a trick to teach students how to avoid passive voice. Circle the verbs. Imagine inserting “by zombies” after each one. Have the words been claimed by the flesh-hungry undead? If so, passive voice. I wonder if these sixth graders will recollect, on summer vacation, as they stretch their legs on the way home from Yellowstone or Yosemite and the byway’s historical marker beckons them to the site of an Indian village— Where trouble was brewing. Where,after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter. Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred. Where most were women and children. Riveted bramble of passive verbs etched in wood— stripped hands breaking up from the dry ground to pinch the meat of their young red tongues.