Cinderella

You remember the place...the cartoons on the wall, the orange metaphysical carpeting. The coffee and the counter.Of course, you weren't there and neither was I really...just sort of watching from on top of some pregnant woman's stomach. She kept knocking into the ketchup bottles on her way to and from the tables...bathroom, table, bathroom.

You wouldn't remember Albert either, the mathematician who would only drink the first cup from a pot (shiny Bunn machine) and only then, if you filled his cup to the brim, a pathetic meniscus. He followed me all the way over to the place on the other side of the main drag when Sambo's closed down, to Coco's. He'd offer me rides home after the bar rush. How he hated prostitution and all. It was acceptable of course until I noticed the plates from Corvalis. Wasn't the Green River up there somewhere? Beside the point I imagine.

To make a short story long it ought to be mentioned about the Black Family who used to frequent the Lyric once in a while. Not for Camelot but for things like Car Wash and Young Frankenstein. I never actually saw them there, too small to notice (I was) but I knew that they existed, the Love Family. There he is, Leon Love waiting by his Chevy Nova for Cinda. Cinda of the Michals family, the Ozarkians. They had the long house just across the ditch, an old mortuary. We'd go over there to visit Rinda, the gangliest of the girls: Rinda, Linda, Brenda, Minda, Glenda and of course, their brother Jim. Wanda Michals sure was fertile. I suppose all Ozarkians are and I suppose Cinda and Leon were a source of holy consternation. Not as much so as Mitzy the Pekinese bitch that ripped my sole from heel to toe when I ran down the ladder and across the low brow living room. We'd been peeking into the attic trying to see the fancy old coffin up there. Again, all beside the point.

There wasn't any coffin up there, just a big old box.

In about 1976 or 77 a strange thing happened in the village. Two hundred gospel singers in pleated skirts and bobby socks moved out onto a ranch in Miracle Valley. Of course the men wore Bible Thumper outfits: thin ties and small collars, dark slacks with perfect creases. I imagine they were about half and half, male and female. All I knew was that the legs on the girls against their pastel skirts reminded me of curtains at night. Carol told me she couldn't be my friend anymore because I was white. This was near the choir room and we were the only sopranoes. Then it was all about Jimmy Judd and Chuck Eads and some bomb that went off in someone's lap on their way to Sorry Vista. That's about all I know save for the memory of how it all looked on National TV. No one could see me back there near the choir room with Carol and her looking nervous as hell.

Anyways, as I always say when I'm remembering something funny.

Sunday afternoons were always dead at Sambos. Jenni was already on her bike heading home. She held a monopoly on breakfast and would pocket a hundred bucks to my twenty every single day, even though I was poor AND pregnant. Sundays though, she'd do a hundred and fifty. Just because she'd lapse into one of those mini comas of hers and start scribbling all over the order for bacon and eggs. All because she was sick. She could have taken Dilantin but she was afraid she'd give her nonexistant kids birth defects. Hmph.

So one day I came around the corner, my favorite corner where I'd just poured a very tall, very cold glass of restaurant milk. Can't say poured really when you talk about a milk lever...it's more like a mechanical milking machine and froths from the huge silicon bags just like the milk is coming out of a teet. I came around that corner, scanned the empty booths lit by a four o'clock Phoenix sun through the mini-blinds and saw them pulling and pushing on the door, eight of them. Well dressed. Very black. Not just black but very black. So black that all I could see was the big orchids on their dresses.

They seated themselves, no need for uppity behavior at a Little Black Sambos and I suppose they thought they'd save the poor pregnant waitress a few steps. Even picked up their own menus.

So to make this story about the Michals, the Loves and Carol a bit shorter I'll cut to the chase. It isn't about the artwork here...it's about the curious nature of being Black. Of seeing Black for the first time. Of Niggeritis which we'll get to later if it's not lost.

The ordering started. At that time, 1981 or 82 did I say? You could order fried chicken at Little Black Sambos. Not only could you order it, but you could split it up any way you liked. Four pieces...wings, legs, backs (if one was so inclined), breasts, necks (stretching the truth here). So I got the first four orders and waited on four more before asking the question, the hundred dollar question. Four more orders of fried chicken. I wasn't thinking about Fried Chicken really, nor had I ever been told about Watermelon. I just wasn't told at all. We were Blue Eyed Mexicans down on the Arizona-Mexico border. So I asked:

"Do you want all white or black..er...brown...er dark...meat?"

The words just floated into the center of that booth like a bunch of flower petals.

Stunned Black Silence.

Bright White Teeth.

Curtains Against Night.

Boy, did they ever start laughing. Not one at a time but like a choir. Laughed and laughed and laughed.

A hundred dollar tip. After certain apologies. I suppose they understood. I didn't have to explain like Jenni did all the time about her Petit Mal.

They knew mine was a Grand.