Upland

The Upland that Robert Finely grew up in was totally different from the one Norman grew up in.  When Norman came to Upland, he was ten years old and Brownsville folks thought it best for him to get away from Tennessee.  They were right.  A family was found for him in Upland, Illinois where he could spend the remainder of his childhood without smelling the smoke of burning flesh.  He went to Horace Mann school.  He was teased, but Norman was big so there were only words, no fights.  His Upland was pretty barren.  The town was so small, you still had to go all the way to St. Louis to find a decent piece of barbeque.  The high school was located about a mile from his house on the southern end of town with the rest of the colored.  He liked it.  Tennessee was segregated.  This place was not.  It didn't matter how you sliced it, it was better.  He got the same books, the same uniforms, the same teachers, and the same type of education.  There was only one burger joint and they served everybody.  He went to the same drive in and ate the same fries.  There were white people who didn't like him, but all they could do was "not" like him.  They couldn't burn his house with his family in it and no one come forward.  Upland saved Norman.  He found Jesus in Upland and a sense of fairness and community.  Norman played football with the mayor's son and their was no repercussion for knocking him into the fences.  He could eat at the burger barn and not get his food from the back.  His foster family kept him protected on Bell street and his church, Shiloh Missionary Baptiste, taught him the social graces of being who he was.  No one penalized him for those green eyes.  His foster mother told him to use whatever he had to open doors for himself because he did not have any other way to get them open.  When Illinois Power started to integrate their services with black workers, Norman moved to Decatur.  They liked his softened black ways.  They liked the fact that his hair was straight enough to never master an Afro and his eyes.  It was like talking to an Irish farmer in the summertime with a glow.  Norman was their kind of black man.  Now all he had to find was a woman and he would make sure she had ........................color.

Constantine Jackson-Kerengton

She was everything that a black woman didn't want to be.  She was taller than most men.  She was darker than most colored.  Her lips were thicker, her hips were fuller and her feet were immeasurable.  She was her mother's shame and her father's spitting image.  Her sisters were small, petite, lighter and more favorable than Constantine.  Her mother was always trying to explain Constantine.  While here sisters were praised for being pretty, Constantine was praised for being smart, or witty, or inventive, but not pretty.  Her mother tried to sell her to men who would rather run from her.  They laughed at her.  They called her names and praised her sisters.  There was no place for a six foot woman.  Constantine, took up all the space that a woman was given.  Unfortunately, she was forced to borrow space from the men.  They hated it.  She looked them in the eye.  She made them uncomfortable.  She matched their strength and she was smarter.  To punish her for her towering power, they ignored her.  They did not open the door for her.  They did not carry her groceries or help her over puddles.  They did not take her to dances or on dates for that matter.  They came to her door and asked to meet her sisters.  They treated her like a man.  When she left for college life in Decatur, Illinois, everyone understood.  Constantine was going the only way that she could.  She would have to learn to take care of herself because the chances are, there would be no love and no children.  How surprised she was to see a man, six feet two, with green eyes, who wanted to carry her groceries.  She was sure that he was just wanting to know who her sisters were, but that wasn't the case.  He said that she looked like his father, but not in a bad way.  She did not look like a man, but she had the features of his father.  She wanted to ignore him, but he bought her steak dinners from the Beach House, he asked her to the church social and he opened the door.  That was enough.  Milliken could give her an education, but not a legacy.  It was enough.  She left and got married to Norman Kerengton.  They got a small apartment in Longview and within months, she was pregnant.

Norman Kerengton Sr.

He always had breathing problems.  Asthma.  His mother told him that he would outgrow it, but for now, he had to go to the hospital.  Breathing treatments were expensive, but Calvin would sell a sow for it.  It was like he was going away to college.  His whole family was seated in the waiting room hoping that Norman could come home.  When the doctor suggested a few nights in St. Mary's, mother was overcome with grief.  Father began to count dollars in his head and his siblings cried like they thought he was dying.  No one had ever had to spend the night in the infirmary.  Even mother gave birth at home.  Hospitals are places you go it your are going to die.  Mother packed Norman's best night clothes and left him with a few sandwiches and apples.  They waved goodbye longer than they had to and then walked back to their farm.  It was the last time Norman saw any of them in a recognizable form.  Calvin had talked big.  He got his children treated by the white doctor and his son was going to be treated at the hospital.  There was no colored hospital so most colored folks stayed home and died.  Not Calvin's son.  His son would get breathing treatments and live.  Calvin's children wore shoes in the summer and ate ham.  Calvin's children learned to read by age three all played an instrument.  Calvin's children had that light coloring favored by whites on the count of that passé blanc mother.  Norman, who was light bright with green eyes was welcomed at the hospital.  Most colored, back then, wouldn't be welcomed except at the back door to clean slop jars, but Norman was not threatening.  He looked like one of them and was treated like one of them.  All this animosity swirled hate on both sides and somebody decided to burn Calvin's fields.  It was a sloppy job.  The fields lay untouched, but the house was gone.  Norman stayed in the hospital while authorities decided how to tell him the price of those precious green eyes.  Black folks said the Klan did it.  White folks said his own people did it.  All he had left was his milky skin and his glowing eyes.  He had no money, no family and no trust in his community, but he had himself. 

Robert Finley

He was the seventh son in a row of six sons who all had the same mother and the same father.  He, however, did not.  He was the love child of a relationship that had absolutely no love at all.  It was two people who passed each other at a truck stop and then hoped to never see each other again.  His father was married and his mother was promised marriage.  In due season, mother left to become a preacher's wife and father went back to his own.  Robert was left in the middle of twelve children with no claim to either side.  How can you distinguish yourself from the situation you would always be associated with?  Everyone was always trying to explain Robert.  They tried to tell him that his parents loved him, but it wasn't the right time.  They tried telling him that they loved him but did not know how to love him.   They tried to explain how he was black but yet white.  They tried to explain that he was a Finely but would never be allowed to attend the family reunion.  They explained that he was a Baptiste, but would be best off staying away from Louisiana.  There was so much in his life that had to be explained.  Even in the mirror, he saw white skin with black lips and curly hair with grey eyes.  He couldn't explain it.  All he could think was that he occupied a position of uniqueness that one day would not even matter, but for now, he would have to get used to occupying this space alone.  Robert stopped trying to define himself, because God already did that.  He did not fit into the round hole and then again, he wasn't a square peg.  The place that he fit, was just that.  He did not fit and that is where he fit in.  He was an outlier.  His features had no home and his ways had no country.  Robert knew this.  He understood that to become who he wanted to become, he would first have to accept that he had to create his own space and ...............................he did.

Covet

Exodus 20:17
¹⁷ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.


I can remember a friend of mine who lived in the projects in the city.  She lived on a row with a bunch of other women similarly situated.  It was a weekly ritual for the women that they all got together and went to the Laundromat.  I can remember that this went on for years.  One day, one of the women was blessed by her husband to have a washing machine and dryer installed in their unit.  It was the small simple kind that you can hook up to the kitchen faucet.  It wasn't a big set, but it meant that she did not have to go to the Laundromat anymore.  You should have seen how her compatriots treated her.  She was immediately ousted from her peer group and branded as "bouchy".  There are some people who never have a desire for something better until they see better in and on you.  They sit in mediocrity and plan to die there until they meet someone who possesses what they always wanted.  Don't wait until you see your best friend go back to college to enroll.  Don't wait until you see your best buddy driving a nice car to get your own.  Let the beginning of your desires not be after you see it on someone else.  God is a big God and you can have what he has for you.