Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

As a child, Audre believes that making a mistake is the worst thing she can do. She learns her mother’s use of words is a defensive tactic against whiteness but feels that this separates her from other black people.

When Audre is In the second grade, Audre’s sisters are talking about people being “colored.”Audre asks what the word means. Phyllis explains that the nuns and priest are white, but Audre’s family iscolored. Audre replies: “’If anybody asks me what I am, I’m going to tell them I’m white same as Mommy”’ (58). Phyllis cautions her against this but cannot give Audre a reason why.

The new apartment they live in is in Washington Heights, “where Black people could begin to find overpriced apartments out of the depressed and decaying core of Harlem” (59). Two weeks later, their white, Jewish landlord commits suicide, and the students at Audre’s new school, St. Catherine’s, mock her incessantly, especially Ann Archdeacon. Audre notes that the racism she encounters is more profound at this new school. The other students make fun of Audre’s braids. The nun asks Linda to change Audre’s hairstyle, instead of scolding the racist children. When Audre tells a nun that the children make fun of her for smelling bad, the nun tells her this is because nonwhites smell different. The head of the school, a pedophilic priest who fondles little white girls, “never expected to have to take Colored kids into his school” (60).He makes Audre stay late after school to memorize Latin.

As the smartest kid in the class, Audre believes she will win class president and steals money from her parents to bribe other students into voting for her. Her mother tells her she won’t win and to not bring it up any more. Audre doesn’t win; a boy is elected president and Ann Archdeacon is vice-president, which Audre believes to be unfair. She comes home and cries, and when her mother finds her, she beats Audre, as she warned her she would. Audre says that she is mostly angry because of how unfair it is, and Linda says, “Is fair you want, look in god’s face” (63), her anger evaporating into tired sadness.

Audre’s father rarely speaks and during the war is also usually not home. Sometimes Audre takes his food to his office, carefully heating and wrapping each portion. When she does take food to his office, she is “never allowed to go upstairs, nor to enter the room where my father slept. I always wondered what mysteries occurred ‘upstairs,’ and what it was up there my parents never wanted me to see” (66). Audre kisses her father and lays out his meal, relaying messages so his eating is not interrupted. She watches him eat or reads, and sometimes he gives her pieces of his food. This moments are Audre’s most precious memories of him. She cleans up after him, kisses him goodbye, and goes home. They rarely speak, “But I remember those evenings, particularly in the springtime, as very special and satisfying times” (67).

When Audre graduates from eighth grade and Phyllis graduates from high school, the family take a trip to Washington, DC. It is Audre’s first time riding the railroad train, as the family usually travels on the cheaper milk train. Linda packs a lot of food and Audre eats almost continuously. Audre wants to go in the dining cars, but her mother makes up excuses, not mentioning that black people are not allowed in dining cars. Similarly, Audre finds out later that Phyllis was supposed to go with her class to the capital but was not allowed in the hotel they were staying in because she is black. Audre speaks about being confused by her mother’s suspicion of white people because she believes Linda looks white.

As usual, Audre has her eyes dilated during the summer, so she squints to make out the sights, wondering why DC is so hot and so white in comparison to New York. Her father suggests they stop for ice cream. The waitress tells them they can have take-out, but they can’t eat the ice cream in the store: “Straight-backed and indignant, one by one, my family and I got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged, as if we had never been Black before” (70). Audre’s parents refuse to speak on the injustice and her sisters follow suit, which infuriates Audre. Audre types an angry letter to the president concerning the whiteness of the capital.