Ordinary Hazards

Nikki would like to miss the different parts of her old house in Brooklyn but cannot because of all the “ugliness” it saw.

Nikki can finally see her father whenever she wants to.

Carol lives closer now, but Nikki doesn’t see her much, as Carol doesn’t want to be around Bernice. Nikki is thrilled when she shows up at their father’s place one day when Nikki is visiting. When they are out of earshot of their father, Nikki tells Carol about Clark. Carol is outraged but cautions Nikki against telling their father; he would kill Clark, and they don’t want to see their father in prison.

Bernice and Nikki move into a new apartment two doors down from Grandma Mac. Bernice asks Nikki to forgive her grandmother, and while Nikki resists, she sees Grandma Mac trying to make amends.

Nikki gets excited for a trip to Washington, DC with her father to visit relatives. He cancels at the last minute, and Nikki is angry and disappointed.

Nikki reflects on how she is constantly playing catch-up at school because of all the moving.

Nikki learns more about Grandma Mac, who came from a poor family down in the South and had to drop out of school early to support the family. However, intent on expanding her mind on her own, she became a voracious reader. Nikki begins to visit on her own more often, slowly opening up to her.

Grandma Mac discovers Nikki’s love for pineapples and makes pineapple upside-down cake whenever she wants to “express her love and regret” (221). It doesn’t make up for her lack of physical affection, but Nikki enjoys the cake, nevertheless.

Nikki reflects on how food is more than nourishment; one bite of baked pineapple takes her back to her grandmother’s house and her gestures of love.

Nikki is in junior high, and the new school term has already started. She pretends to have confidence in class while working overtime in the library to catch up.

Nikki likens her life to musical chairs and wonders if she will ever stay in one place for more than a few years.

Nikki lives near Harlem River now, which reminds her of the Hudson in Ossining. She buries herself in books and avoids the neighborhood bullies, wary of what her anger will lead her to do if provoked.

Nikki and her father take frequent road trips to DC, and though they never stay long, the journey is the point of it all, which she enjoys.

Nikki’s Aunt Edna makes a special, homemade applesauce whenever they visit, and Nikki learns that not all applesauce is the same. Once, Aunt Edna whispers the special ingredient in it when she thinks Nikki is asleep.

Nikki explains that she doesn’t talk about her mother much anymore because she has learned not to trust her “for more than room and board” (228). She derives the emotional support she needs from her father, sister, friends, and God, and she knows now that she is a survivor.

Nikki knows she is smart, as she gets good grades in English and enjoys the work as well. Nikki believes, and her teacher concurs, that her writing will bring her success. However, Nikki acknowledges that writing is “a lonely business” (230).

When Nikki is writing on the stoop of her house one day, a man from the neighborhood asks her about her work and claims that poetry won’t get her anywhere. An angry Nikki heads back inside, cursing the man.

Whenever Nikki reads out a poem or story to Carol, she proudly proclaims that the world will hear from Nikki someday. Nikki holds onto this pronouncement as a reminder of her potential.

Nikki meets another bespectacled, book-loving girl named Jackie in the school library one day. They become friends, and Nikki reflects on how Jackie’s belief in her took her far.

A girl named Brenda finds ways to irritate Nikki every day; Nikki warns her away each time. One day, Nikki loses her cool and beats Brenda bloody. Later, Nikki wonders what came over her.

Nikki wakes up screaming in the middle of the night for no conceivable reason, and she prays that she hasn’t inherited her mother’s mental health condition.

No one bothers Nikki at school again, but she is terrified of the power her anger has. She decides to always voice out what bothers her on the spot to avoid such outbursts of rage ever again.

Nikki mourns the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in the Freedom Summer murders during the civil rights movement.

Nikki marks the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem as the place where she discovered who she was meant to be. Her father signs her up to read at a gathering of poets when she is 13. She is nervous, but her father’s reassurance calms her down, and she reads her poem out loud to the crowd.

Nikki’s father wears a suit and tie for her junior high graduation, indicating how special the occasion is. Nikki receives a special recognition award for her writing and thinks she might burst from happiness.

Nikki is at the library, her father having blown off a planned trip to the planetarium. She met Carol at her father’s home the previous week; Carol just turned 18, has moved into a new apartment, and is doing well. Nikki told Carol about a girl named Debra she met at church, whom she is sure she is going to be good friends with.

Bernice rarely attends church with Nikki, as she is busy studying the Torah; Nikki is glad for any religion that keeps Bernice distracted and curious about faith. For herself, Convent reminds her of the church she used to attend with the Buchanans. She joins the choir, and through Debra, meets people who become like family.

Nikki finds high school a breeze, except for math. She receives an “A+” on a story and is excited to share it with Bernice, but Bernice simply remarks, “Writers are a dime a dozen” (246). Fighting tears, Nikki heads to Debra’s, whose mother, Willie Mae, welcomes Nikki in and hears out what happened. Willie Mae hugs Nikki and reassures her that she is extremely talented.

Nikki reflects on Bernice’s dual nature, which led her to always be kind and helpful to neighbors or co-workers in need. Nikki reflects on Bernice’s “redirected affections” away from Carol and her because they were family and not strangers.

Bernice is back in Bellevue, having stopped taking her medication and having slipped back into alcohol use. Nikki is home alone and prays that they don’t move again once Bernice is back out.

Nikki goes to church on Sundays, desperate for hope to brave her home life.

In February, Malcolm X is shot and killed in the Audubon Ballroom, and Nikki feels numb and cold.

Nikki curses having to do algebraic equations.

Nikki’s teacher rejects the poem she writes for her earth science class and asks her to turn in a proper report on seismic activity.

Nikki and Carol attend their father’s chamber group’s performance at Carnegie Hall, and it is Nikki’s turn to reassure her nervous father.

A jazz club named Smalls Paradise opens up, the first in the area owned by a Black man. Nikki and her father go to dinner there and watch Carol perform brilliantly on stage.

Nikki attends her first art exhibition with her father. The works are by Black painters; Tom Feelings is her favorite, but Nikki is awed by them all.

Nikki’s father takes her to the Copacabana for a celebration of Lorraine Hansberry. She sees a man swarmed by adoring crowds there, and her father tells her he is a famous author. Nikki comes away from the hours-long gala with the revelation that “not all stars in the firmament / were white” (260).

Grandma Mac, who has a great sense of style, takes Nikki shopping at Garment District. Nikki feels beautiful in the clothes her grandmother helps pick out and buys.

Nikki reflects on her friends, Debra and Gail. Debra was her best friend, and Gail the most talented writer she has known. The trio spend an entire afternoon one day dressing up and posing for Gail’s boyfriend, an aspiring photographer looking to build his portfolio; the resultant photographs are “Portraits / of joy” (263).

Nikki and Bernice move to the Bronx by Nikki’s second year of high school. Nikki refuses to change schools again, and Bernice doesn’t argue. All her subjects, except math, are fairly unchallenging, so Nikki is surprised to receive a “B” on her first English assignment. When she confronts her new English teacher, Mrs. Wexler, about it, the latter tells her that the assignment would have brought anyone else a top grade. However, Nikki, clearly being a talented writer, needs to apply her full potential in class if she is to earn an “A.”

Nikki goes to Debra’s father Doll’s salon for a free haircut. She asks him to give her a close crop like the singer Miriam Makeba, whom her father loves. Nikki comes away looking like “a skinny black boy with a buzz cut, / ready to join the Marines” (268).

Nikki and Debra laugh together about her new, unfortunate haircut.

Nikki’s father gifts her a book about the Mali Empire for her 15th birthday.

Nikki reflects on how her years in and out of foster care have left her without enough childhood photographs or similar other proof of her existence throughout the years.

Nikki contemplates joining the Black Panther Party.

Debra has a boyfriend. Nikki doesn’t welcome the prospect of having a boyfriend, unable to stomach the thought of anyone touching her. She tells Debra about Clark, and Debra wonders how Nikki can still believe in God. Nikki reflects on how her belief is the only thing that has kept her alive and out of prison.

Nikki feels God telling her to let her anger go so that it doesn’t get in the way of her dreams.

Nikki’s father introduces her to Roger Furnam, a New York theater director, through whom Nikki falls in love with the stage. She attends audition after audition, dreaming of becoming a “writer/actress” one day.

Nikki’s father takes her to performance by Les Ballet Africains. Mesmerized by the Black ballerinas, Nikki decides that she will one day be a “writer/actress/dancer” (275).

Nikki runs into one of Bernice’s acquaintances, who asks her what she wants to be when she grows up; Nikki states that she will be the first Black “writer/actress/dancer/singer” (276), not knowing that Maya Angelou had already done this. The older woman opines that Nikki ought to pick one. Nikki tells her father this. He reassures her that she has enough time to explore everything that interests her; it will all be helpful for when she eventually decides her specialty.

Nikki’s father, Carol, Debra, Debra’s mother, and Mrs. Wexler all say that Nikki can be whatever she wants. She believes them and not everyone else who says otherwise.

Nikki’s father takes her to see his favorite film, Black Orpheus, at the Brooklyn theatre. He falls asleep midway through. Nikki asks him why he had taken her there if he couldn’t stay awake. He claims it was important for her to see “all there was of black beauty / and music and magic in the world” (280) to inspire her writing.

Nikki’s father takes her to meet the writer John Oliver Killens, and Nikki gets her copy of Black Man’s Burden autographed by him.

Nikki’s father introduces her to the National Memorial African Bookstore, commonly known as Michaux’s. She is awed by its vast collection, all by authors from the African diaspora, and spends more than an hour there. As she leaves, she vows that her books will be part of Michaux’s collection someday.

Nikki spends a rainy weekend with her father, doing nothing at all.

Nikki’s father introduces her to books like Invisible Man, Native Son, No Longer at Ease, and Black Man’s Burden, which make her angry but also show her the power of writing.

Nikki is emotionally distanced from Bernice, who is just a roommate to her now.

Nikki hears her father practice for his travels with an orchestra through the summer. She resolves to ask him if she can tag along next year.

Nikki is unable to sleep on the night before Easter. She then receives a call with news that her father has been in a terrible car accident. Nikki rushes to the emergency care, where her father lies bandaged, bruised, and hooked up to tubes. Stunned and tearless, Nikki and Carol cling to each other.

Nikki hopes for her father’s recovery for weeks, but he keeps slipping away. Five weeks in, the extent of his brain damage is revealed, and Carol and Nikki hope he has a quick and painless death. One morning, Bernice promises Nikki’s father that if he survives this, they will give their relationship another try, and Nikki wonders why some people wait too long for things. In the sixth week, Nikki’s father passes away.

Nikki wonders about why her father, who often got sleepy behind the wheel, was driving so late at night on this occasion. She presses her cousin Isabel, who finally reveals that he didn’t want to break his promise to Nikki that he would see her on Easter morning. Isabel reassures Nikki that her father’s death is not her fault and that he was an adult who made his own choices; nevertheless, Nikki feels guilty.

Bernice starts drinking again. Mrs. Wexler asks Nikki how she is doing, and Nikki only shrugs in response, not voicing her wish that it had been her mother who died instead of her father.

Nikki is unable to process the news of an unmanned spaceship headed for the moon because of her grief.

Mrs. Wexler slips a novel into Nikki’s book-bag one day. It is Another Country by James Baldwin, and Nikki recognizes the man from Copacabana in the author photo.

Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet inspires Nikki and keeps her going through the darkness.

Bernice descends into mental instability again, and Nikki prays again that she hasn’t inherited her mother’s mental health condition.

Mrs. Wexler encourages Nikki to focus on her academics and her future, irrespective of what is going on with Bernice.

Nikki misses a homework assignment. Mrs. Wexler calls her into her office and reassures her that this, too, shall pass. Nikki knows that Mrs. Wexler is a Holocaust survivor, and so she believes her.

Mixed in with the intensity of grief over her father’s loss is also Nikki’s relief that he is free from pain. She imagines him playing his violin in heaven.

Nikki reads a chapter on death in The Prophet and wonders whether her father is dancing in heaven.

Nikki finds the last Christmas gift her father gave her—a pair of white ice skates—and caresses them lovingly.

Nikki reflects on the places that memories hide and how they are lured out again. She watches ice dancers on TV, thinks of her father’s gifts, and calls a friend, who reminds her of a happy time when she and Debra skated together at Wollman Rink in Central Park.

Nikki sits in the pews long after the church service ends, contemplating her father’s death; Debra slides in beside her. Debra has never rushed her grieving, and so Nikki feels comfortable crying in her company.

Nikki returns home from a neighborhood basketball game to find all her notebooks missing. A drunk Bernice reveals that she threw them in the trash along with the rest of the clutter in the house. Nikki is furious and almost drawn to hit her mother but remembers in time that Bernice is not well. However, she knows she cannot stay here any longer. She furiously packs her things, prays for an answer, and remembers Carol. She calls her sister, telling her she is moving in.

Nikki drops by Mrs. Wexler’s office and tells her about moving in with Carol, as well as how Bernice is back in hospital. Mrs. Wexler is encouraging of Nikki’s new circumstances and asks her what kind of books she wants to eventually write. Nikki thinks about all the experiences she has had so far, good and bad, and decides that she wants to write about the darkness, but also about the light: “That place of light—it’s not always easy / to get to, but it’s there” (311).

A year after moving in with Carol, Nikki attends a celebration of Malcolm X’s life. James Baldwin is a speaker at the event, and Nikki approaches him after, requesting for him to take a look at her work. After he reads her poetry, Baldwin gives Nikki his name and number, asking her to call him; she does.