Breaking with Tradition

I bit my lip and broke my pencil in half.

After all, it's one thing to be called dumb by the bullies in school, but it's another to feel dumb around your father. I can speak and write just fine. It's just that Pa doesn't like it when I use “ain't”.

“Because it isn't good English,” he said, standing behind me, and looking down at the essay I was writing. He shook his head and sighed. I watched as he knelt and picked up the pencil halves. “And please don't take it out on your pencils. That's the fourth one that you've broken today. I don't have an endless supply of them.”

“I'm sorry, Pa,” I said. “I got a temper and I know it.” I sighed. “If only I was smart like you. Maybe then I wouldn't get so angry.”

“Don't count on it,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“If you were just smart, you'd be like a computer,” he said. “Better to control your temper, than to blame it. And you are smart, Cat.”

I made a face. “Not if you look at my grades, I'm not.”

He threw away the pencil halves, then pulled up a chair and sat next to me. “Grades aren't everything. Believe it or not, mine weren't that good. They only got better when I went to college.”

“Was that because college was easier?” I asked.

He laughed softly and shook his head. “No. It was harder. But maybe that's what I needed. Something to challenge me, make me try harder.”

“School's hard enough,” I said. “I don't need it to be any harder.”

He put his arms around me and let me sit in his lap. “And you need to stop picking fights with the bullies.”

“I don't start 'em,” I objected. “It's what they say that makes my temper flare.”

“And then the school nurse calls me, telling me that the bully has a broken nose,” he said.

“What if they deserved it?” I asked.

“Oh, Cat,” he said. “Brute force isn't always the answer.”

I laid my head against his shoulder. “Maybe not. What would you do if someone treated you that way?”

“I'd try to ignore them,” Pa said.

“And if it doesn't work?” I asked.

“You walk away from them,” he said. “Don't give in to them.”

“Maybe it's easier when you're older,” I said. “Like you are.”

He laughed softly. “Cat – I'm not that old. I'm younger than you think I am.”

“Didn't say you were old,” I said. “I said older. Older than I am.”

“You'll get that old soon enough,” Pa said. “Don't be in such a rush to get there. Life is short enough as it is.”

He looked thoughtful, and then changed the subject. He does that when he's about to talk about Ma. I could sense it. Sometimes I wish Ma were still alive.

“Let's get back to why 'ain't' isn't good English,” he said.

“But all the kids use what you call bad English,” I protested.

Pa frowned. “They shouldn't, Cat. Your teachers shouldn't allow it. They should be teaching you the proper way.” He paused. “Maybe I need to speak with them again.”

He usually only spoke to them when they complained about my poor grades. He'd have to explain to them that he wasn't that good of a student in grade school. In fact, his own father almost flunked out of school. So I guess it's kind of a tradition in our family to do poorly in grade school. Maybe one day I'd break with tradition, but I didn't expect to.

“Oh, we don't do it in any of our classes,” I said. “We do it when we're outside.”

“Don't your teachers mind?” he asked.

“I guess only if they hear us,” I said.

He sighed. “Still. It could affect how you talk and write in class. This essay for instance.” He picked it up from my desk and read it aloud.

It definitely wasn't the best essay ever. But I'd done my best. Pa didn't think so, though.

“You're going to have to edit this once you finished writing it,” he said and sighed. “Maybe I should get you a dictionary and a thesaurus for your next birthday or for next Christmas.”

He was quiet for a little while. So maybe this is a good time to clear some things up.

My full name is Catherine Esther Ngoma. But I really prefer Cat. Pa's name is Quentin Okoro Ngoma. Most people just call him “Mr. Ngoma”. Why do we have an unusual last name? It's not unusual. I like it just fine and so does Pa.

But where did “Ngoma” originally come from and why don't we have a typical American last name?

You have to go back a ways first. Pa says our ancestors originally came from West Africa. Before the Revolutionary War. Not that they had much choice in the matter. They were sold as slaves to white merchants in West Africa. Then they were put in irons and chains, and hauled across the Atlantic in overcrowded ships. Most of them died. Those that died were just dumped overboard. But those who survived had to work on plantations. They worked from dawn to dusk and lived in terrible conditions. If they didn't work hard enough, they'd get whipped. And sometimes, if the slave was female, their male owner would rape them. Probably just because he could.

That's how our branch of the family here in America started. Pa did some research and found out that we probably came from Nigeria. There aren't any photos or paintings, but it's a good bet that our ancestress was probably really pretty. Because, from the plantation records, he learned that she didn't work in the cotton fields. She lived and worked inside the plantation owner's house. And I guess one day he decided to rape her. Probably never told her “Sorry”. He owned her, so he could do whatever he liked with her. I bet he just put his clothes back on and went off whistling. She probably sat there, crying, wishing she was dead. I can't imagine what it was like before her baby was born. I'm just surprised that she was allowed to keep it and raise it. Maybe her owner already had his eye on another female slave and forgot about our ancestress.

Records about slaves are rarely complete. Mainly how many, which gender, age. That sort of thing. Our ancestress, though, didn't want to stay a slave. She kept trying to escape. Eventually she succeeded, making it to one of the free states. She reached a farm owned by people who were abolitionist (that means they were anti-slavery) and they took her in, along with her baby. They were really nice. They even hid her from armed Southern raiding parties looking for escaped slaves.

One of her descendants worked on the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves get to the North and freedom. Have you heard of her? Probably not. She wasn't one of the famous ones. But she did her job, no matter how dangerous it was. One of her sons even fought at Gettysburg on the Union side, and he said he was there when Lincoln gave his Address.

It didn't mean that slavery had really ended. But it was first big step toward abolishing slavery with an amendment to the Constitution. Of course, in the South, slavery never really ended after the Civil War. They just called it different things. But basically it was still slavery. Even the years of protest marches and the eventual signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1965 didn't cure all the problems. But they helped.

“So, Cat, do you think you'll be able to write your essay in good English?” he finally asked.

I nodded. “Pa, do people ever make fun of you? Do they call you names because of your skin color?”

He looked puzzled. “Why would they?”

I touched my left arm. My skin is a real pretty shade of brown. Pa's skin was the same shade of brown, but I think it looked better on him.

“Oh,” he said. “Are the bullies insulting you about it again?”

I nodded. “They stop for awhile, and then – when teachers stop fussing – they start up again. Usually not near any of the teachers.”

“And you fight back,” he said.

I nodded. “But if I don't, it doesn't make it any better, Pa. They just won't stop. So why should I act as if that's okay with me? Because it ain't. Sorry. Isn't. It's not my fault that I'm not pale. I like being brown. I like that you are, too.”

He made a face and sighed. “Prejudice is something that will never truly go away here in America. It just goes underground sometimes, only to come back into public view again later on.”

“Did you get bullied when you were in school?” I asked.

He nodded. “Many times.”

“Did you fight back?” I asked.

“Not with my fists,” Pa said. “I used my brains instead. I realized that I couldn't fight my way away from prejudice. I told myself that if I did better in school that might help get me into a good college. The bullies wouldn't be able to follow me there. Their grades were too poor.”

“Worse than mine?” I asked.

He laughed softly and nodded. “Much worse.”

“And you did real well in college,” I said.

“Really well,” he corrected me. “Please say it the correct way, Cat.”

I sighed. “And here you are, doing really well.”

“You don't want to end up like the bullies, do you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, Pa.”

“It's almost dinnertime,” he said. “I'll get it started. When you're done with your essay, bring it downstairs and let me read it. I'll help you edit it, but I won't help you write it.”

I nodded.

He hugged me, let me slide off of his lap, and then stood up.

“And you won't talk with my teachers?” I asked, hopefully.

“I think I'd better,” he said. “But we won't discuss your grades. Deal?”

I nodded again. “Deal.”

“See you downstairs,” he said.

I got most of the essay written by dinnertime. It wasn't hard. I just had to separate my brains from my temper is all. Easier said than done.

What was I writing about? Slavery. You see, my U.S. History teacher, Mr. Hansen, gave us a list of subjects we could choose from. I couldn't go into much depth, though, because I only had about three thousand words to work with. But I did the best I could.

Pa read the essay while he ate. He nodded here, shook his head there. When he finished, he looked at me. “You didn't discuss the Quakers and their anti-slavery views, Cat.”

“If I had more room, I would've,” I said. “It's funny – at first I thought that three thousand words would be too much. But it wasn't enough after all.”

“Which is where editing comes in,” he said. “So – shall we begin?”

I nodded, not exactly looking forward to it.

“Originally prisoners captured in wars between tribes and kingdoms in West Africa were enslaved by their captors,” Pa said. “That went on for a long time. Until one day, foreign merchants arrived, and the chiefs and kings realized that they could sell their prisoners to the foreign merchants. The money they earned could be used to buy things for themselves or their tribes and kingdoms.”

I wrote that down. “Weren't the original merchants from Holland?”

He nodded. “But they were just the tip of the iceberg. It was the rebirth of slavery, after it had mostly ceased to exist after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15^th Century.”

“I guess in their eyes as long as the slaves weren't white like the people in Europe,” I said, “they were treated as property. Their owners could do anything to them.”

“You should write that down,” he said.

“I already did in my first draft,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Let's continue. Not everyone tolerated slavery. Groups like the Quakers were always opposed to it. And there were others. Like John Brown, who, with his sons, fought a battle with Union soldiers in Harper's Ferry in what used to be western Virginia.”

“Did they win the battle?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Brown and his sons died in it.”

“You'd think that churches would've been anti-slavery,” I said.

“Some preached that slavery was a good thing,” Pa said. “Some preached that it was evil.”

“I wonder if it would've ever ended if it weren't for the Civil War,” I said.

“Maybe not,” he said.

“Maybe someone should write an essay about what if the South had won that war,” I suggested.

“You could,” he said with a smile.

I shook my head. “Uh uh. One essay at a time is enough for me.”

“Maybe when you're older,” Pa said. “You wrote about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?”

I nodded. “And about the Reconstruction in the South, and how that ended. And then the continuation of segregation until protests in the 1940s and 1950s began. Rosa Parks wasn't the first to protest. There were others before her.”

He nodded. “And after her, the protest marchers were attacked again and again. The ones who weren't killed were sometimes sent back to northern states by bus, in the hopes that it would stop the protests. It didn't. Even after Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, things still got really bad sometimes. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968, for example, and the riots that followed it.”

All this time, I was writing down what we both said.

“But even today,” I said, “some people seem to think a return to the days of white-dominated segregation would be a good thing. How can they think that?”

“Because they and their parents felt superior,” he said. “They could look down their noses at the non-whites and treat them any way they wanted to. Including lynching them.”

I flinched when he said “lynching”. It was a word that we almost never used at home.

“Is that why you went to law school, Pa?” I asked.

He nodded. “I was inspired by the fictional Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I wanted to help those who couldn't afford help. I wanted to be their voice. The voice of truth, justice, and decency. It's not always easy, though.”

Pa read what I wrote. “That's a much better essay, Cat.”

“You helped,” I said. “Maybe more than you meant to. I won't tell my teacher, Mr. Hansen, though.”

He smiled. “Do you just turn it in?”

“Actually, we have to read it out loud to the entire class,” I said.

“Would it be all right if I was there on that day?” he asked.

I nodded. “More than all right.”

I admit I was more than a little nervous when the day the essays had to be read aloud arrived. Pa drove me to school. When we arrived, we walked to the school's front doorway. I could see the bullies, but they were staying away this time. Maybe because they didn't expect to see Pa at my side.

U.S. History was my first class after lunch. Which was convenient for Pa. He could be there when I read my essay aloud, and then he could leave for work. He'd already told his boss that he needed the morning off and why. I guess his boss was okay with it.

Thankfully I wasn't the first student called to read their essay aloud. I was the eighth one. I stood up from my desk and walked to the front of the class. I took a deep breath and turned around. I looked at everyone, including Mr. Hansen and Pa. Then Mr. Hansen nodded at me.

I read my essay, speaking as clearly as I could.

The class was quiet the entire time. And when I finished, they stayed quiet. But then someone stood up and started clapping. It wasn't Pa or Mr. Hansen. It was one of my classmates. Jimbo, I think. Then the others joined in, one after the other, until finally Pa and Mr. Hansen joined in.

You have to understand that I was usually ignored by most of my classmates. But not today. Today was a break with tradition. No one in my family had ever gotten a response like this. Not even Pa when he was in law school.

“And that,” Mr. Hansen said, coming toward me and standing beside me, “is the level of quality that I always knew you could reach, Ms. Ngoma. A+.”

Which was another break in tradition for me. I'd never gotten a better grade than C+ in U.S. History. An A+! Talk about being over the Moon!

Pa looked so pleased and proud. He came over to me and hugged me. “Well done, Cat. Well done.” Then he looked at his wristwatch. “I have to leave. I'll see you at home, after work. Take care.”

I nodded.

He waved as he hurried out of the classroom and I waved back.

You know? I'm actually thinking about going to law school when I'm old enough. I think Pa would like that. And I think Atticus Finch would've liked it, too.