Raymond's Run
by Toni Cade Bambara
I don’t have much work to do around the house like some girls. My mother does
that. And I don’t have to earn my pocket money by hustling; George runs errands
for the big boys and sells Christmas cards. And anything else that’s got to get
done, my father does. All I have to do in life is mind my brother Raymond, which
is enough.
Sometimes I slip and say my little brother Raymond. But as any fool can see he’s
much bigger and he’s older too. But a lot of people call him my little brother
cause he needs looking after cause he’s not quite right. And a lot of smart
mouths got lots to say about that too, especially when George was minding him.
But now, if anybody has anything to say to Raymond, anything to say about his
big head, they have to come by me. And I don’t play the dozens or believe in
standing around with somebody in my face doing a lot of talking. I much rather
just knock you down and take my chances even if I am a little girl with skinny
arms and a squeaky voice, which is how I got the name Squeaky. And if things get
too rough, I run. And as anybody can tell you, I’m the fastest thing on two
feet.
There is no track meet that I don’t win the first-place medal. I used to win the
twenty-yard dash when I was a little kid in kindergarten. Nowadays, it’s the
fifty-yard dash. And tomorrow I’m subject to run the quarter-meter relay all by
myself and come in first, second, and third. The big kids call me Mercury cause
I’m the swiftest thing in the neighborhood. Everybody knows that—except two
people who know better, my father and me. He can beat me to Amsterdam Avenue
with me having a two-fire-hydrant headstart and him running with his hands in
his pockets and whistling. But that’s private information. Cause can you imagine
some thirty-five-year-old man stuffing himself into PAL shorts to race little
kids? So as far as everyone’s concerned, I’m the fastest and that goes for
Gretchen, too, who has put out the tale that she is going to win the first-place
medal this year. Ridiculous. In the second place, she’s got short legs. In the
third place, she’s got freckles. In the first place, no one can beat me and
that’s all there is to it.
I’m standing on the corner admiring the weather and about to take a stroll down
Broadway so I can practice my breathing exercises, and I’ve got Raymond walking
on the inside close to the buildings, cause he’s subject to fits of fantasy and
starts thinking he’s a circus performer and that the curb is a tightrope strung
high in the air. And sometimes after a rain he likes to step down off his
tightrope right into the gutter and slosh around getting his shoes and cuffs
wet. Then I get hit when I get home. Or sometimes if you don’t watch him he’ll
dash across traffic to the island in the middle of Broadway and give the pigeons
a fit. Then I have to go behind him apologizing to all the old people sitting
around trying to get some sun and getting all upset with the pigeons fluttering
around them, scattering their newspapers and upsetting the waxpaper lunches in
their laps. So I keep Raymond on the inside of me, and he plays like he’s
driving a stage coach which is OK by me so long as he doesn’t run me over or
interrupt my breathing exercises, which I have to do on account of I’m serious
about my running, and I don’t care who knows it.
Now some people like to act like things come easy to them,
won’t let on that they practice. Not me. I’ll high-prance down 34th Street like
a rodeo pony to keep my knees strong even if it does get my mother uptight so
that she walks ahead like she’s not with me, don’t know me, is all by herself on
a shopping trip, and I am somebody else’s crazy child. Now you take Cynthia
Procter for instance. She’s just the opposite. If there’s a test tomorrow,
she’ll say something like, “Oh, I guess I’ll play handball this afternoon and
watch television tonight,” just to let you know she ain’t thinking about the
test. Or like last week when she won the spelling bee for the millionth time, “A
good thing you got ‘receive,’ Squeaky, cause I would have got it wrong. I
completely forgot about the spelling bee.” And she’ll clutch the lace on her
blouse like it was a narrow escape. Oh, brother. But of course when I pass her
house on my early morning trots around the block, she is practicing the scales
on the piano over and over and over and over. Then in music class she always
lets herself get bumped around so she falls accidentally on purpose onto the
piano stool and is so surprised to find herself sitting there that she decides
just for fun to try out the ole keys. And what do you know—Chopin’s waltzes just
spring out of her fingertips and she’s the most surprised thing in the world. A
regular prodigy. I could kill people like that. I stay up all night studying the
words for the spelling bee. And you can see me any time of day practicing
running. I never walk if I can trot, and shame on Raymond if he can’t keep up.
But of course he does, cause if he hangs back someone’s liable to walk up to him
and get smart, or take his allowance from him, or ask him where he got that
great big pumpkin head. People are so stupid sometimes.
So I’m strolling down Broadway breathing out and breathing in on counts of
seven, which is my lucky number, and here comes Gretchen and her sidekicks: Mary
Louise, who used to be a friend of mine when she first moved to Harlem from
Baltimore and got beat up by everybody till I took up for her on account of her
mother and my mother used to sing in the same choir when they were young girls,
but people ain’t grateful, so now she hangs out with the new girl Gretchen and
talks about me like a dog; and Rosie, who is as fat as I am skinny and has a big
mouth where Raymond is concerned and is too stupid to know that there is not a
big deal of difference between herself and Raymond and that she can’t afford to
throw stones. So they are steady coming up Broadway and I see right away that
it’s going to be one of those Dodge City scenes cause the street ain’t that big
and they’re close to the buildings just as we are. First I think I’ll step into
the candy store and look over the new comics and let them pass. But that’s
chicken and I’ve got a reputation to consider. So then I think I’ll just walk
straight on through them or even over them if necessary. But as they get to me,
they slow down. I’m ready to fight, cause like I said I don’t feature a whole
lot of chit-chat, I much prefer to just knock you down right from the jump and
save everybody a lotta precious time.
“You signing up for the May Day races?” smiles Mary Louise, only it’s not a
smile at all. A dumb question like that doesn’t deserve an answer. Besides,
there’s just me and Gretchen standing there really, so no use wasting my breath
talking to shadows.
“I don’t think you’re going to win this time,” says Rosie, trying to signify
with her hands on her hips all salty, completely forgetting that I have whupped
her behind many times for less salt than that.
“I always win cause I’m the best,” I say straight at Gretchen who is, as far
as I’m concerned, the only one talking in this ventrilo-quist-dummy routine.
Gretchen smiles, but it’s not a smile, and I’m thinking that girls never really
smile at each other because they don’t know how and don’t want to know how and
there’s probably no one to teach us how, cause grown-up girls don’t know either.
Then they all look at Raymond who has just brought his mule team to a
standstill. And they’re about to see what trouble they can get into through
him.
“What grade you in now, Raymond?”
“You got anything to say to my brother, you say it to me, Mary Louise Williams
of Raggedy Town, Baltimore.”
“What are you, his mother?” sasses Rosie.
“That’s right, Fatso. And the next word out of anybody and I’ll be their
mother too.” So they just stand there and Gretchen shifts from one leg to the
other and so do they. Then Gretchen puts her hands on her hips and is about to
say something with her freckle-face self but doesn’t. Then she walks around me
looking me up and down but keeps walking up Broadway, and her sidekicks follow
her. So me and Raymond smile at each other and he says, “Gidyap” to his team and
I continue with my breathing exercises, strolling down Broadway toward the ice
man on 145th with not a care in the world cause I am Miss Quicksilver herself.
I take my time getting to the park on May Day because the track meet is the last
thing on the program. The biggest thing on the program is the May Pole dancing,
which I can do without, thank you, even if my mother thinks it’s a shame I don’t
take part and act like a girl for a change. You’d think my mother’d be grateful
not to have to make me a white organdy dress with a big satin sash and buy me
new white baby-doll shoes that can’t be taken out of the box till the big day.
You’d think she’d be glad her daughter ain’t out there prancing around a May
Pole getting the new clothes all dirty and sweaty and trying to act like a fairy
or a flower or whatever you’re supposed to be when you should be trying to be
yourself, whatever that is, which is, as far as I am concerned, a poor black
girl who really can’t afford to buy shoes and a new dress you only wear once a
lifetime cause it won’t fit next year.
I was once a strawberry in a Hansel and Gretel pageant when I was in nursery
school and didn’t have no better sense than to dance on tiptoe with my arms in a
circle over my head doing umbrella steps and being a perfect fool just so my
mother and father could come dressed up and clap. You’d think they’d know better
than to encourage that kind of nonsense. I am not a strawberry. I do not dance
on my toes. I run. That is what I am all about. So I always come late to the May
Day program, just in time to get my number pinned on and lay in the grass till
they announce the fifty-yard dash.
I put Raymond in the little swings, which is a tight squeeze this year and will
be impossible next year. Then I look around for Mr. Pearson, who pins the
numbers on. I’m really looking for Gretchen if you want to know the truth, but
she’s not around. The park is jam-packed. Parents in hats and corsages and
breast-pocket handkerchiefs peeking up. Kids in white dresses and light-blue
suits. The parkees unfolding chairs and chasing the rowdy kids from Lenox as if
they had no right to be there. The big guys with their caps on backwards,
leaning against the fence swirling the basketballs on the tips of their fingers,
waiting for all these crazy people to clear out the park so they can play. Most
of the kids in my class are carrying bass drums and glockenspiels and flutes.
You’d think they’d put in a few bongos or something for real like that.
Then here comes Mr. Pearson with his clipboard and his cards and pencils and
whistles and safety pins and fifty million other things he’s always dropping all
over the place with his clumsy self. He sticks out in a crowd because he’s on
stilts. We used to call him Jack and the Beanstalk to get him mad. But I’m the
only one that can outrun him and get away, and I’m too grown for that silliness
now.
“Well, Squeaky,” he says, checking my name off the list and handing me number
seven and two pins. And I’m thinking he’s got no right to call me Squeaky, if I
can’t call him Beanstalk.
“Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker,” I correct him and tell him to write it down on
his board.
“Well, Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker, going to give someone else a break this
year?” I squint at him real hard to see if he is seriously thinking I should
lose the race on purpose just to give someone else a break. “Only six girls
running this time,” he continues, shaking his head sadly like it’s my fault all
of New York didn’t turn out in sneakers. “That new girl should give you a run
for your money.” He looks around the park for Gretchen like a periscope in a
submarine movie. “Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if you were . . . to ahhh . .
.”
I give him such a look he couldn’t finish putting that idea into words.
Grown-ups got a lot of nerve sometimes. I pin number seven to myself and stomp
away, I’m so burnt. And I go straight for the track and stretch out on the grass
while the band winds up with “Oh, the Monkey Wrapped His Tail Around the Flag
Pole,” which my teacher calls by some other name. The man on the loudspeaker is
calling everyone over to the track and I’m on my back looking at the sky, trying
to pretend I’m in the country, but I can’t, because even grass in the city feels
hard as sidewalk, and there’s just no pretending you are anywhere but in a
“concrete jungle” as my grandfather says.
The twenty-yard dash takes all of two minutes cause most of the little kids
don’t know no better than to run off the track or run the wrong way or run smack
into the fence and fall down and cry. One little kid, though, has got the good
sense to run straight for the white ribbon up ahead so he wins. Then the
second-graders line up for the thirty-yard dash and I don’t even bother to turn
my head to watch cause Raphael Perez always wins. He wins before he even begins
by psyching the runners, telling them they’re going to trip on their shoelaces
and fall on their faces or lose their shorts or something, which he doesn’t
really have to do since he is very fast, almost as fast as I am. After that is
the forty-yard dash which I used to run when I was in first grade. Raymond is
hollering from the swings cause he knows I’m about to do my thing cause the man
on the loudspeaker has just announced the fifty-yard dash, although he might
just as well be giving a recipe for angel food cake cause you can hardly make
out what he’s sayin for the static. I get up and slip off my sweat pants and
then I see Gretchen standing at the starting line, kicking her legs out like a
pro. Then as I get into place I see that ole Raymond is on line on the other
side of the fence, bending down with his fingers on the ground just like he knew
what he was doing. I was going to yell at him but then I didn’t. It burns up
your energy to holler.
Every time, just before I take off in a race, I always feel like I’m in a
dream, the kind of dream you have when you’re sick with fever and feel all hot
and weightless. I dream I’m flying over a sandy beach in the early morning sun,
kissing the leaves of the trees as I fly by. And there’s always the smell of
apples, just like in the country when I was little and used to think I was a
choo-choo train, running through the fields of corn and chugging up the hill to
the orchard. And all the time I’m dreaming this, I get lighter and lighter until
I’m flying over the beach again, getting blown through the sky like a feather
that weighs nothing at all. But once I spread my fingers in the dirt and crouch
over the Get on Your Mark, the dream goes and I am solid again and am telling
myself, Squeaky you must win, you must win, you are the fastest thing in the
world, you can even beat your father up Amsterdam if you really try. And then I
feel my weight coming back just behind my knees then down to my feet then into
the earth and the pistol shot explodes in my blood and I am off and weightless
again, flying past the other runners, my arms pumping up and down and the whole
world is quiet except for the crunch as I zoom over the gravel in the track. I
glance to my left and there is no one. To the right, a blurred Gretchen, who’s
got her chin jutting out as if it would win the race all by itself. And on the
other side of the fence is Raymond with his arms down to his side and the palms
tucked up behind him, running in his very own style, and it’s the first time I
ever saw that and I almost stop to watch my brother Raymond on his first run.
But the white ribbon is bouncing toward me and I tear past it, racing into the
distance till my feet with a mind of their own start digging up footfuls of dirt
and brake me short. Then all the kids standing on the side pile on me, banging
me on the back and slapping my head with their May Day programs, for I have won
again and everybody on 151st Street can walk tall for another year.
“In first place . . .” the man on the loudspeaker is clear as a bell now. But
then he pauses and the loudspeaker starts to whine. Then static. And I lean down
to catch my breath and here comes Gretchen walking back, for she’s overshot the
finish line too, huffing and puffing with her hands on her hips taking it slow,
breathing in steady time like a real pro and I sort of like her a little for the
first time. “In first place . . .” and then three or four voices get all mixed
up on the loudspeaker and I dig my sneaker into the grass and stare at Gretchen
who’s staring back, we both wondering just who did win. I can hear old Beanstalk
arguing with the man on the loudspeaker and then a few others running their
mouths about what the stopwatches say. Then I hear Raymond yanking at the fence
to call me and I wave to shush him, but he keeps rattling the fence like a
gorilla in a cage like in them gorilla movies, but then like a dancer or
something he starts climbing up nice and easy but very fast. And it occurs to
me, watching how smoothly he climbs hand over hand and remembering how he looked
running with his arms down to his side and with the wind pulling his mouth back
and his teeth showing and all, it occurred to me that Raymond would make a very
fine runner. Doesn’t he always keep up with me on my trots? And he surely knows
how to breathe in counts of seven cause he’s always doing it at the dinner
table, which drives my brother George up the wall. And I’m smiling to beat the
band cause if I’ve lost this race, or if me and Gretchen tied, or even if I’ve
won, I can always retire as a runner and begin a whole new career as a coach
with Raymond as my champion. After all, with a little more study I can beat
Cynthia and her phony self at the spelling bee. And if I bugged my mother, I
could get piano lessons and become a star. And I have a big rep as the baddest
thing around. And I’ve got a roomful of ribbons and medals and awards. But what
has Raymond got to call his own?
So I stand there with my new plans, laughing out loud by this time as Raymond
jumps down from the fence and runs over with his teeth showing and his arms down
to the side, which no one before him has quite mastered as a running style. And
by the time he comes over I’m jumping up and down so glad to see him—my brother
Raymond, a great runner in the family tradition. But of course everyone thinks
I’m jumping up and down because the men on the loudspeaker have finally gotten
themselves together and compared notes and are announcing “In first place—Miss
Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker.” (Dig that.) “In second place—Miss Gretchen P.
Lewis.” And I look over at Gretchen wondering what the “P” stands for. And I
smile. Cause she’s good, no doubt about it. Maybe she’d like to help me coach
Raymond; she obviously is serious about running, as any fool can see. And she
nods to congratulate me and then she smiles. And I smile. We stand there with
this big smile of respect between us. It’s about as real a smile as girls can do
for each other, considering we don’t practice real smiling every day, you know,
cause maybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of
something honest and worthy of respect . . . you know . . . like being people.
THE END