Read Online Virgin Soul by Judy Juanita - Free Book Online Page A

knew how Ola would get into Art Linkletter, but she took great pleasure in finding a way to put this story into any conversation with someone new. And since she couldn’t cook, Art Linkletter was her way of redeeming herself, of contributing to everyone’s edification.
    She’d use whatever lead-in she could—the television, a child saying a curse word, the latest crime in the neighborhood. I was gorging on upside-down cake when she started.
    â€œDid you watch Art Linkletter’s show
Kids Say the Darndest Things
, where he called little children from the audience to the microphone?”
    Allwood nodded. He didn’t know where she was going. The rest of us did.
    â€œHe asked them, ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’ And each little one said very plain and clear, ‘I want to be an engineer. . . . I want to be a spaceman. . . . I want to be a this or a that.’” Each time she told it Aunt Ola interchanged the professions. Stockbroker, nuclear scientist, the president, anything unattainable for a black man. But she always finished with “a this or a that.”
    â€œMr. Linkletter called a little black boy up to the microphone, ‘And what would
you
like to be?’
    â€œThe little black boy didn’t hesitate a bit. ‘I want to be a white man.’ So Mr. Linkletter said, ‘Well, why would you want to be a white man when you grow up?’ And the little black boy said, ‘Cuz my momma said niggers ain’t shit.’”
    As usual the adults hooted. The kids, who had filtered back in, laughed at the laughter. The adolescents shrugged, because the whole routine was so old.
    Aunt Ola Ray continued as always. “The little boy couldn’t understand why the crowd was going mad. The network cut Art Linkletter off the air. Cut him off.” She sliced the air with her hand to show how fast. “When they came back on, they had changed the subject. But millions of people had seen it. Millions.”
    Aunt Ola paused. It was pause-worthy. Millions had heard colored folk speak our piece through the mouth of this one little boy. Forget Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall and Marian Anderson. All the struggles for equality, justice, and redress of grievances. My family might have been absurdly profound or profoundly absurd, but bourgie? Never.
    Allwood didn’t laugh, but nobody noticed. They were laughing too hard. Why was it so appealing? Was it like an inoculation? You’d never get it once they stuck the joke in your bloodstream? Was it so ludicrous as to be a basic untruth? Was it comforting to the adults that children took them so literally? Was it assuring to the adolescents that adults were not to be taken literally? Did Allwood lack humor?
    As we sat there and the evening wound down and folks started to leave, Uncle Al, Pink’s youngest brother, started talking to Allwood and suddenly said, “You have a brother drive an AC Transit?”
    â€œThat’s my father,” Allwood answered.
    Allwood’s father a city bus driver? I had never asked him about his father’s job.
    â€œYou swear, man? You and him, you look like brothers,” Al said, holding his youngest, Renee, barely four years old.
    Uncle Al turned to her. “This here is Shakespeare’s son. Shakespeare is his daddy. Remember Shakespeare, our bus driver?”
    She nodded her head shyly, looking at Allwood with recognition.
    â€œMan, I have listened to that cat blow for days. Your poppa is a heavy dude. The college kids on that route nicknamed him Shakespeare.” The more Uncle Al talked, the more some kind of light came into Allwood’s face.
    â€œYeah, he’s a Shakespeare nut. Goes to all the plays in the park and the little theaters,” Allwood said, as he rubbed and stroked his beard. “He dragged us when we were kids.”
    â€œYou know something?” Uncle Al said. “When finals and