Read Online The Color of Water by James McBride - Free Book Online

more than he cleaned his own trousers, and he had it ready for anyone who tried to fool with his money. He trusted no one. He thought black folks were always trying to steal from him. He’d sit my mother next to the door and say in Yiddish, “Watch the
shvartses.”
He was robbing these folks blind, charging them a hundred percent markup on his cheap goods, and he was worried about them stealing from him
!
    I was always worried that Tateh’s gun would go off and accidentally kill him while he was cleaning it. Although I was afraid of him, I didn’t want anything to happen to him. We had a neighbor, Mrs. Brown, a white woman who had a puffed-up middle finger from some infection she had gotten—in those days, folks got infections and lost their fingers and teeth like it was lunch. In fact, my mother and father both had false teeth. My mother got ‘em first, and later ol’ Tateh, he snuck off and got him a pair. He barked an order at me one day, something like, “Pick up those soap bars,” and I looked in his mouth and saw a brand-new set of white chompers. I said to myself, “I knew he was sounding funny.” Anyhow, Mrs. Brown was one of the few white folks in Suffolk that was nice to me. She had a daughter named Marilyn and a son named Simon. Simon was an alcoholic who used to come teetering home at night. He got killed by a drunk who climbed onto his porch and drove a knife down his neck. Marilyn, she worked downtown and her boss was cleaning his pistol in his office and accidentally shot himself to death, and Marilyn had to step over his body to get out of there. That shook her up bad, and it shook me up too, because Tateh was always cleaning his gun, and if it went
off and accidentally killed him I sure wasn’t gonna step over his body to get out. I’d jump out the window first and he’d have to lay there and gather flies till somebody else got him. I never did like dead people and I never did like guns. That’s why I never let my children play with toy guns
.
    But in those days, people used guns to hunt and live. This was the thirties, the depression, and folks were poor and they used guns and fishing rods to survive. If you got sick, God help you because you just died. Tuberculosis and double pneumonia were raging in those days, and Mameh had a great fear one of her kids would catch that, because in Europe one of her brothers died in a flu epidemic. But after we got that store going we made money and could afford a doctor. Black folks, our customers, they’d come into the store and buy BC powder, fill up on that, that was their doctor. That was the old powder you bought and took like aspirin. It was a brand name. BC powder. It cost twenty-five cents and came in a little blue-and-white packet. Folks said it made them feel better and pepped them up. Of course it had cocaine in it back then, but folks didn’t know that. They’d take BC for any ailment. In fact, if somebody came in buying too much of it for his wife or child, you got concerned, because somebody taking that much BC was mighty sick and probably dying. Folks got sick and died back in them days like it was a new dance coming out. Plop! Dead as a doornail
.
    I wish some of these black kids today could see how the black folks in Suffolk lived then. Lord, you wouldn’t believe it. Shacks with no running water, no foundations, no bathrooms, outhouses. No paved roads, no electricity. Sometimes Mameh and I would walk down those dirt roads
behind the store and so many of those roads dead-ended into woods. That’s how life was for blacks down there. A dead end
.
    They didn’t complain about it. Who would they complain to? The cops? The cops wouldn’t ride back there, you crazy? They were scared to or didn’t want to. But what always struck me about black folks was that every Sunday they’d get dressed up so clean for church I wouldn’t recognize them. I liked that. They