Read Online The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris - Free Book Online

more intensely, I might have also heard a gossamer whisper: the flowers, speaking for my father, saying to his neighbors, “I belong.”

5
Alabama
    I ALWAYS WONDER HOW a young man could go through his early life with a nickname like “Honey.” That’s what everyone called my father in Birmingham. Honey. Though, to get it right you had to let the first syllable hang a bit: “Hu-uh-nee.” It seemed too sweet a name for a young man unless he was a blues singer or a boxer. Dad was neither. He was the second youngest of six sons from the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. Anyone who questioned his nickname would quickly have to confront a rambunctious fraternity. All of the Norris men were tall, thin, and talkative—quick with a punch line and, if necessary, even quicker with a sharp left hook. You had to deal with all of them if you tried to take one on. And you had to have a thick skin and a keen wit to run with the Norris boys. They teased and ribbed and challenged one another constantly. They called it signifyin’. They’d talk about the size of your girlfriend’s behind and expect you to laugh. They’d crack on your clothing or your eyeglasses or your skin tone and then wait, with antic anticipation, for you to swat it right back with another wisecrack. And there always was another one: “Man, where’d you get them shoes? Don’t you know that Santa’s been callin’ ’cause he wants his boots back!”
    The ribbing could go on and on for hours, and it usually did. And when it went one step too far with a joke about a wife or, worse, somebody’s mama, that was when my father would step up and talk down the offended party. “C’mon now … you know we’re just playing. You got to signify to qualify and,man, you more than qualified. You hung right in there,” Belvin would say, draping his arm around the shoulder of the aggrieved fellow to steer him away from the front porch, away from his brothers shaking with laughter while celebrating their verbal dexterity. Dad would keep that fellow moving along, away from the snickering and merriment. All the while, he’d be looking over his shoulder to shush his brothers, quietly sharing in the pride of the takedown. Dad was always a bit of a square, and it took extra effort for him to riff like a hep cat. “Man, you got to shake it off,” he’d say. “We’re just havin’ fun. You know the story. We all get a cut, we all
get
cut. Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.”
    A clan of six, the Norris brothers were thick as thieves yet devoted as apostles to an inviolate creed: good times allowed only after a day’s hard work. They were very much their father’s sons.
    My grandfather had worked in the steel mills and the coal mines until age forced him to retire, after which he occupied himself with neighborhood odd jobs. My grandmother Fannie worked too, as a nurse’s aide, logging a short shift after she put her sons to bed. Belvin and Fannie were savers and strivers. They stood out in Ensley because they owned their own home and managed to keep new cars in the garage. Grandpa Belvin turned those cars into a business, shuttling people to and fro for money. For years, though, he refused to drive to church on Sunday mornings, a custom some neighbors believed he adopted from the city’s large Orthodox Jewish population. Jewish merchants ran most of Birmingham’s department stores and nearly all the shops in Ensley. For the Orthodox, driving on the Sabbath is taboo because starting an engine is akin to lighting a fire; the Torah forbids kindling a fire on the holy day of rest.
    Grandpa Belvin was tickled by the rumor and never did much to quell it. But his sons knew the real reason he didn’tdrive on Sunday. He liked to walk the half mile to church with his wife, Fannie, by his side and his six sons in single file behind him like sentries. More than the deed to the house, or the car in the driveway, or the windup mantel clock or upright Zenith