Booker T & Them: A Blues

Interlude 2

Interlude two 01 Harris text.indd 29 12/13/11 11:25 AM A Delineation in Alice’s Wonderland; & an Infrequent, Imagined Nightmare Alice Roosevelt, 17, will, if allowed, crawl, like a still clawed cat, onto her daddy’s lap. Motherless child, anxious for a good time to show off her knowledge, folds her napkin. Alice Roosevelt (1884–1980 ), TR’s eldest. What are they doing at Tuskegee, Alice wonders? Are they like your children? What songs do they sing & do you let them dance? Questions with 2 faces, one, of wise wonder, for him, the other, its tongue stuck out, for her daddy. 2 days old when her mother died. Her father lit out for the territory, was a ghost during her leg-brace-bound early years, grieved on some lone prair-re, recasting himself to no longer need nestling of mother, wife, or child, but to be brethren with the picturesque, the bold, the fearless breed of his race who forged forward, cut trails, led the white advance. Her father, with power to wage wars & bust trusts, beams enthralled. She is a problem solvable by strict restraint & proper supervision, but daddy will skin no switch, give her no taste of domestic policy with his lickin’ stick. Does not raise his voice, counsel restraint, or shorten the bridle to rein her in, who fancies herself “allergic to discipline.” 01 Harris text.indd 30 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 31 ) Announces she, a home-schooled, 10 o’clock scholar, read his book. No. Yes. “. . . born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia . . .” The Story of My Life and Work, by Booker T. Washington, “with over Half a Hundred Full-Page Photos and Halftone Engravings and Drawings” by Frank Beard, published 1900. Yes. Tells her he is working on a revision, Up from Slavery. He must send her a copy. Promises. But that is not the end of it. To prove she has done her homework, unsolicited, unrestrained, reenacts his story. Delineates, through recitation, mime, dance, & tableaux, his life quoting “just another little nigger”; whitewashing race matters, spotlights fortitude (self-will): his long walk to Tuskegee; book learning; brickmaking , building: McKinley’s visit; on she goes, center of attention, Alice Blue, performing, BT knows, to lighten her (wispy) burden of boredom & blahs. In need-feed self-reinvention, watching, furtive as a thief, for her father’s disproving approval, as she, strutting back & forth, mimes speeches given: his first at Hampton; & most recent—casting down his bucket in Atlanta; choreographed separate fingers of a hand; as she, before her father’s eyes, & in her mind, shifts from who she is, through who she isn’t, toward who she wishes to be, him—at 17, & in a dress, huntress/discoverer of a wellspring of Brahmin to bohemian unruliness (of the dewy sort to stir discomfort in her daddy, dowagers, & other crème). Stalking through, as far as she knows, vestal terrain, but in BT’s view is merely miner/punter— 01 Harris text.indd 31 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 32 ) picking & spading in the darkness of her ignorance & intent from the lode of his life; hauling drams of re-cast meaning to fuel the dustup in a teacup of her (flimsy) Up from Privilege insubordination. BT pictures a pre-show minstrel with smudge pot, facing a mirror, smoothing blacked palms about a darkening countenance. The Bull Moose, in that light, reduced to the twin glint ovals of his pince-nez lens, laughing, high pitched as a sherry-tipsy matron, brashly satisfied. BT thinks, The things you have to do to do the things you have to do. Watches, shamming interest in her ineptitude. Watches, as if he is addled by its shimmer & sold on the face value of her implied conspiratorial kinship. He is not amused by her hackneyed, Minstrel-tradition portrayal, the naïveté of her presumptions, or the audacity of her bamboozling miscalculations about his life & work. Her imperfect understanding evidences no true interest in his character, save to blacken it. & though its face is softer tinged than true minstrelsies’ visual raunch, its intent is seditious still. Being the President’s daughter & not some grimenecked exile with olde worlde broagh, patois, or pidgin tied to his tongue, does not cast it new & improved, but, yet another way they’ve found to steal his scuttle for to haul their ashes in, haul their ashes in. 01 Harris text.indd 32 12/13/11 11:25 AM [3.15...