Under the Tulip Tree

by Michelle Shocklee

  A single sheet of printed paper lay on my desk. I snatched it up and stretched out on the bed, grinning. Seeing my byline in the school newspaper never ceased to please me. Mr. Snyder, my English teacher and editor of the paper, said I had a gift for storytelling. He’d encouraged me to join the small group of reporters during my sophomore year and promoted me to assistant editor this year. I dreamed of writing for Life, Collier’s, or one of the other major magazines in New York City after college, but for now my article on who stole the school’s stuffed eagle mascot would have to suffice.

  Much to my disappointment, Daddy did not come home for lunch. Mama didn’t want to drive into the city, so we ate bologna sandwiches instead of shrimp and lobster at the Maxwell House Hotel. True to Mary’s prediction, Roy met us at the hall. He was so preoccupied with greeting her that he completely neglected to wish me a happy birthday.

  Decorating went well. We were almost finished when the catering truck arrived. Mama waylaid the rotund man—I forgot his name—and issued directives to his two helpers on where to place the platters of food, the punch bowl, and a lovely five-tiered cake decorated with fresh flowers. At one point, however, I looked across the room and found Mama in an intense, whispered conversation with the man, which seemed odd. Mama wasn’t one to flirt with strange men, and although I wouldn’t necessarily call their secret conversation flirting, it made me uncomfortable.

  I walked outside and noticed the two helpers having whispered conversations of their own. When they found me watching, they went back to work, but my skin crawled, as though I should be aware of something but wasn’t.

  Mama fell quiet on the ride home. Even Mary, who wasn’t always mindful of other people’s feelings, gave me a questioning look. I indicated I didn’t know what was wrong and left it at that. At home, I bathed and dressed for the evening. I certainly could have used Dovie’s help with the tiny pearl buttons on the back of my peach-colored party dress and breathed a sigh of thanks when Mary appeared in the doorway wearing a green silk gown that made her skin look like cream.

  “Roy told me something in confidence,” she whispered, coming up behind me to fasten the buttons.

  “That usually means the other person doesn’t want you to divulge what’s being said.”

  She pinched my arm, and I squealed in pain. “I know that, but I need to tell someone. I can’t tell Mama.”

  Now she had me interested. “Go on.”

  Finished with the buttons, she sat on the edge of the bed, looking more serious than I’d ever seen her.

  I frowned. “Did Roy propose to you?” I’d be rather put out if he had, being that today was my birthday. I didn’t want anyone or anything stealing the thunder I was only allowed once a year.

  She shook her head, golden curls bouncing. “He told me something frightening.”

  I waited, my imagination already spinning a web. She rose and partially closed the door.

  “Roy’s father told his mother that Daddy’s bank is in trouble. Something about the stock market in New York.” She shrugged slim shoulders. “He said his father is very upset.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Yet even as I asked, I knew it was a silly question. Neither of us understood much about the world of finance where our father lived and breathed.

  “Roy says Daddy could lose everything.” Mary’s whisper and rounded eyes sent a chill racing up my spine. Was this what the radio announcer meant last Thursday when he spoke of a recession? “And because Roy’s father is so heavily invested in Daddy’s bank, his family might be in trouble too.”

  I stood rooted to my bedroom floor and stared at Mary’s pale face. “That’s not possible.” I tried to recall anything I’d ever heard in economics class about the stock market, but nothing surfaced. “Daddy’s banks are here, in Tennessee. They don’t have anything to do with what’s going on in New York.”

  “Then why would Roy’s daddy be worried?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  The telephone rang downstairs a short time later. I looked at the clock on my bureau. It was half past three.

  I held my breath and listened as Mama hurried to answer. Her words were indistinct, yet I couldn’t bring myself to tiptoe to the door and eavesdrop. I prayed the caller was Grandma Lorena asking for a ride to the party or Dovie wishing me a happy birthday.

  The piercing scream that rent the air a moment later told me it was neither.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1936

  The old diary lay open to the page I’d never finished.

  No one came to my sixteenth birthday party.

  It’s a selfish thing to be concerned with, considering all that is happening to so many people, my family included. Yet I can’t help but wonder if my very existence became invalidated when the world shifted that day. As though my presence on the planet no longer matters in light of such terrific loss and misery. To know that money, status, and privilege supplanted the place I’d held in my family for sixteen years set an ache in me I fear will never heal. How could it, when the evidence faces me every waking moment?

  “Are you going to see Mr. Armistead today?”

  Mama’s voice startled me. From my place on the back porch steps, I turned and found her inside the house, speaking through the screen door. The frown on her thin face made me wonder how long she’d been there, watching me. I could hide the diary I held, but what would be the point? She’d already seen it.

  I shrugged. “I suppose, but I know what his answer will be.”

  George Armistead, editor of the Nashville Banner. Six months ago I called him boss. I still didn’t understand why I’d been fired—“let go,” as Mr. Armistead liked to put it. Despite being a faithful employee since graduating high school, starting in the mail room and ending in the news office as a city reporter, I was fired on a Monday. So every Monday for the last six months I’d made my way to his smoke-filled office to beg him to rehire me. And every Monday he’d said no.

  “I don’t know why you put yourself through that humiliation each week. If the man hasn’t rehired you by now, he isn’t going to. Something else will come along. Something that better suits you.”

  Her words, meant to encourage, only grated. I wished Mama would, just once, kick and scream and complain with the rest of us. I wasn’t sure which was worse: my mother’s continued pretense that everything was fine or my father’s wallowing in a whiskey bottle.

  I tucked the book under my arm and stood. “Mrs. Davis asked me to help her hang wallpaper next week. She said she’d pay me ten dollars.”

  Mama’s eyes widened. “Sissy Davis? Oh, Rena, I hope you told her you didn’t need the money.”

  “Why would I tell her that? I do need the money. We need the money. Lots of people are out of work, Mama. There’s no shame in accepting help when help is offered.”

  My tone was far from respectful, considering to whom I was speaking, but I wouldn’t amend it. I was sick of ignoring the fact that our family was broke and broken. Mama thought asking Mr. Armistead for a job was humiliating. Had she forgotten the humiliation of learning my own father severely mismanaged thousands of dollars belonging to his customers? When he didn’t come home at his usual time the day of the stock market crash, we’d feared the worst. It was the only time I could recall Mama letting herself sink down into the pit of despair. He eventually banged on the front door at three o’clock in the morning. Mama, Mary, and I silently watched him stumble inside without a word of explanation about the crash, the bank’s fate, or his whereabouts all evening—although the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke gave us the answer to that question. He locked himself in the study with a bottle of bourbon, and that’s where he’d spent most of the past seven years.

  “Sissy Davis is one of my dearest friends. I won’t have my daughter performing manual labor for her.”

  So many words flew to my lips. I stopped them all from escaping. I’d come to the recent conclusion that Mama
’s sanity was tied to her determination to act as though all was well in the Leland household. Of course, most of Nashville knew it wasn’t. People who’d once been considered friends turned away and whispered when we ventured beyond the house. To make ends meet, Mama took a job at a sewing shop in a neighborhood where she was certain her friends wouldn’t see her. That was, if one could still call the women she used to associate with friends. Most of their husbands had lost money in my father’s bank failure, and although they didn’t blame Mama, they weren’t completely forgiving either.

  “Mrs. Davis simply needs help, Mama. She enjoys decorating her home herself.” I stomped up the steps and faced her through the screen. “I’m not too keen on manual labor myself, but I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  After a moment, she conceded. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to help a friend with her decorating. Sissy does have excellent taste. You can learn about the latest trends in decorating while you’re there.”

  Leave it to Mama to put a positive turn on hanging wallpaper.

  I joined her inside. A glance toward the study revealed a closed door. I hadn’t seen Dad in three days. Mama took food to him when she got home from work in the evenings, but despite being home nearly all day together, he and I rarely spoke. Not because I didn’t have plenty to say to him, but because I realized shortly after my sixteenth birthday that he somehow linked me to the stock market crash. As though the date on my birth certificate served as a painful reminder of the day he lost everything. He retreated from my world and barred me from his, with a whiskey bottle between us.

  “I’ll stop at the library after I see Mr. Armistead. Some new job listings might’ve been posted over the weekend.” Odds were there weren’t any, but I enjoyed going to the cool, quiet building to think without the scrutiny of my mother or the indifference of my father looming over me.

  Mama opened a high cabinet and took down a soup can. She turned it over and removed the false bottom. A wadded-up handkerchief was stuffed inside, and she unwrapped it to reveal dozens of coins and some dollar bills. I’d seen her do this a hundred times or more in the past seven years, yet it still struck me as one of the saddest things I’d ever witnessed. A banker’s wife hiding money from her husband in a soup can.

  She handed me two nickels for the streetcar. “I won’t be home until late. Mrs. Watkins needs me to help with inventory.”

  I nodded, if only to cover the awkwardness that always stood between us when she mentioned her job. I still found it difficult to accept my mother working in a sewing shop. Before the crash—that was how I measured time: before and after the crash—I’d never seen Mama sew anything, not even a loose button. How she’d managed to find this job, I didn’t know, but she’d been there over four years now. Her meager wages kept food on the table, although she had to hide the money so Dad wouldn’t take it and buy liquor. Somehow, he managed to get his hands on alcohol anyway. Even during Prohibition, he was rarely without bootleg bottles.

  The morning was sunshiny and cool, which made the three-block walk to catch the streetcar pleasant. Gone were the days when my parents drove the latest cars. An old 1925 Ford sat in the garage behind the house, covered with dust, its tires flat. Fuel cost too much, as did repairs and upkeep. I wasn’t certain the thing even ran anymore. Grandma Lorena owned a car and used it from time to time, but I didn’t like to trouble her if I could take the streetcar.

  The Banner’s offices were located in Printers Alley, a street teeming with publishers and the city’s two largest newspapers. I missed coming downtown each day, feeling a part of the city’s lifeblood and flow. Nashville’s business district hummed with activity, although I noticed men’s suits were more threadbare and fewer vehicles clogged streets in desperate need of repair. Our city, like the rest of the country, was feeling the effects of the depressed economy, yet folks valiantly met each day head-on with the determination to get back to normal.

  Every time I heard that phrase, I silently asked myself if we’d ever see normal again. What was normal anyway? It had only been seven years since the crash, but the life I’d lived then seemed to belong to someone else.

  Mr. Armistead’s office sat at the back of a noisy room filled with desks. Several reporters looked up from their typewriters as I entered, nodded at me, and went back to work. No doubt they’d guessed long ago what my weekly visits were about, but I trusted Mr. A. not to divulge the details of my begging sessions, which was what I’d dubbed them. He might not be the most compassionate person in town, but he was no gossip.

  He saw me coming through the glass window that separated his office from the larger newsroom. His thick graying brows folded over the black rim of his glasses. “Leland.” His gruff greeting never changed. Smoke swirled from an ashtray on his messy desk where a stub of cigar rested.

  “Good morning, Mr. Armistead. How are you today?” I put on my brightest smile even though I knew he wasn’t fooled. He might be as old as most grandfathers, but he was no pushover.

  “Same as I am every Monday. Behind schedule and in need of a front-page story.” He continued to shuffle papers and act busy.

  I stepped into the room. “You know I’d love to help with that.”

  He nodded without looking up. “And you know why you can’t.”

  My smile drooped. Yes, I knew. The crash. The failing economy. Money. Money. Money. The failures of other people had dictated my future for too long, yet what choice did I have?

  After a long moment, the question I’d avoided the past six months resurfaced in my mind. I feared his answer, which was why I had yet to verbalize it, but perhaps it was time to know the truth and move on.

  With a deep breath, I plunged forward. “Mr. A., if things were different and you were able to hire staff again, would you rehire me?”

  His hands paused over the mess that was his desk.

  My stomach clenched. Now I’d gone and done it. I’d handed him the perfect opportunity to get rid of me once and for all.

  Yet when he finally looked up, it was with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. Sympathetic, I suppose, which seemed out of place on the hard-nosed newspaperman.

  “I would, kid.”

  Three simple words, but oh, how they lightened the heaviness in my heart.

  I smiled again, satisfied. “Thanks, Mr. A.” I turned to leave.

  “Kid, wait.”

  My heart skipped with hope. Had my boldness changed his mind?

  He dug through piles of paper until he found the one he sought and handed it to me. “This came in the other day. Maybe you should take a look into it.”

  A quick glance revealed it was typed on letterhead from a government agency called the Works Progress Administration. I looked back to Mr. A. “What is it?”

  He jabbed a fat finger at the paper in my hand. “Read it, Leland. It’s a job. A writing job.”

  A writing job? My interest piqued. However, the more I read, the more confused I grew. When I reached the end of the brief missive, I met his gaze. “I don’t understand.”

  He huffed. “The WPA is Roosevelt’s baby. It’s his idea of providing jobs for folks out of work. Writers, as you are well aware, are among the unemployed. Under the umbrella of the WPA, they’ve created something called the Federal Writers’ Project. That letter states they need writers here in Nashville to do interviews. You’re a reporter with experience. No reason you shouldn’t get the job.”

  I glanced back to the typewritten words. “But it says something about former slaves.”

  “Yeah, that’s who’s being interviewed. To preserve their stories or something of that nature.”

  I was sure my expression revealed too much because Mr. Armistead sat back in his chair and narrowed his gaze on me. “I never thought of you as the type to care about the color of a person’s skin, Leland.”

  “I don’t.” Dovie had been one of the dearest people in my world before it all fell apart.

  “So why not do this?” He indicated th
e letter again. “They’ll pay twenty dollars a week. All you have to do is spend an hour or two with each interviewee, type up your notes, and turn them in to the WPA office. Sounds like easy money to me.”

  It did sound like easy money, and yet . . .

  “I’ll think about it,” I finally said.

  Mr. A. shrugged and returned his attention to the chaos on his desk. “Suit yourself, but this opportunity won’t last long. Plenty of writers are willing to do the job if you aren’t.”

  I left his office with the letter tucked in my purse and frustration rooted in my mind. I needed the job, but to interview former slaves? My ancestors had owned slaves. Shouldn’t that disqualify me from the position?

  The job posting board at the library held a small number of new handwritten cards, but they required experience I didn’t possess. As restless as I felt, sitting in the quiet solitude of the big building didn’t appeal today. I needed to walk. And think. I left the building and headed in the direction of home.

  Questions poured from my brain. Why would the government care about preserving the stories of former slaves? Wasn’t it the government who created the very laws that had kept people in bondage for over two centuries? Surely there were more important issues to write about. With so many people suffering these days, no one even thought about slavery anymore. The War between the States happened when Grandma Lorena was a small child, over seventy years ago.

  But twenty dollars a week was more money than I’d made at any of the odd jobs I’d taken over the past six months. Even with occasional help from Grandma Lorena, who survived the stock market crash surprisingly well, I knew we were in terrible financial shape. Mama never verbalized how destitute we actually were, but I’d seen the bankruptcy papers she’d hidden in her bedroom bureau shortly after the crash. I hadn’t meant to see them, but I was putting away laundry and there they were, plain as day.