I Am Not Sidney Poitier Read Online Free Page A

well,” Betty said. “Not Sidney is quite smart.”
    “He’s got his mother’s brains. Have you ever had one of those itches in your ear that you have to scratch with your tongue inside your mouth? In fact that’s the only way to get to it.”
    Though I had a boy’s crush on Betty, I knew that I was but eleven and that all the brains and money in the world wouldn’t make her kiss me. I in fact had a kind of crush on Ted as well, and so I found that what I really wanted was for the two of them to kiss. So, I tried to Fesmerize them. I couldn’t stare them into submission at the same time and decided to begin with Ted, as I remembered that I might have had earlier success with Betty during the sandwich incident and so chose to save her for last. I raised my left brow and sharpened, then leveled my penetrating gaze at Ted. He stared back at me for a while with an expression that could only be called
quizzical,
and I thought that I might have been making some headway until he said,
    “Nu’ott, what’s wrong with your eye?”
    “He does that sometimes,” Betty said. “I think it’s gas.”
    “That doesn’t look good.”
    A less persistent person, or a saner one, might have stopped at that point, but I gave it another push.
    “Looks like the boy’s gonna pop. Nu’ott, you all right?”
    I gave up. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
    “Funny little episode you had there.”
    “Just thinking,” I said.
    “Okay, well, I’m going to talk to a man about a German shepherd dog. They’re great dogs. I especially like the way they walk, all slung low like that. You’re in charge, Betty.” He said that, then leaned over and gave Betty a kiss on the cheek before exiting the room.
    Betty was taken by surprise, but hardly offended.
    I was more confused than ever. Had my Fesmered suggestion been received and, more importantly, processed? Was I in fact responsible for that unexpected, unseemly, and glaringly inappropriate action? I was left not knowing if I had succeeded or failed, a state worse than failure itself.
    “He kissed you,” I said to Betty.
    “Oh, that wasn’t a kiss. That was what we call a peck.”
    “Why do you think he kissed you?”
    “It was a peck, Not Sidney.”
    I let the matter rest, though I was no wiser or more percipient for my experiment or for having witnessed the event that I might or might not have caused. The only thing that was clear was that Ted and Betty now believed there was something wrong with me. I suppose I could have likened my new tool to a sort of psychological Swiss Army knife, as I said before, but to continue the metaphor, I could never know whether I was opening the scissors, saw blade, corkscrew, or leather awl, or whether it would open at all.

    No one was more surprised than I when Ted invited Betty to join Jane, himself, and me on a sailing day-trip, except perhaps Betty, who surprised herself into a silk sundress and equally inappropriate wedge-soled sandals and onto a bus to St. Simons Island. Jane was glamorous and aloof, attributes that I imagined fed each other. From behind her oversized dark sunglasses she addressed me politely and warmly, pronouncing my name as she had learned it from Ted,
Nu’ott.
She received Betty politely yet somewhat less warmly, as she was baffled by the presence of the chubby tutor in the silk wraparound. Joining us also was a niece of Jane’s, daughter of her brother, a freckled girl about my age named Wanda Fonda who took an immediate, intense, and indefatigable shine to me.
    It was sunny, but there were some clouds drifting around, and it was almost cool. It was cool enough that big goose bumps formed on Betty’s hefty thighs that were continually in view because of the attack of wind at her dress, despite her hands busily clutching fabric. Betty looked sorely out of place as she stepped aboard the
Channel Seventeen,
and I’m certain she felt that way as well, more so after Jane peeled off her raw linen trousers and white linen shirt,