River, cross my heart

by Clarke, Breena

  Miss Ella told Alice and Ina that there weren't any white-man doctors back up-country where she was raised. All the healing they did was with the plants and trees. Miss Ella's papa, Mr. Butter Bromsen, had been a root doctor up-country. Mr. Butter was nearly ninety now. He'd spent his first twenty years in slavery, and the next ten years before the war was over he was up-country with the People. He learnt all he knew about healing and root doctoring from the People, the Cherokee and Creek and others who lived up-country. Mr. Butter was blind now. Miss Ella said that he probably could cure himself of blindness, but he said he was tired of looking now anyhow. Miss Ella said she was a child oi her papa's old age so she was determined to take in all he knew.

  Johnnie Mae stood against the wall, listening. Suddenly Ina turned and asked, "Johnnie, have you been dreaming about water?"

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  "No, ma'am. I haven't," she answered.

  Ina asked. "Ella, you have something to take for the irregularity. 1 "

  "Yes, ma'am. It's hest to drink yarrow tea. You'll be regular as clockwork by the morning."

  Pearl Miller did not arrive in the sixth-grade classroom on the first day of the school year in September 1928. She didn't arrive until ten days after the first day. By that time, all the seats were assigned and everybody had staked out a clique to gossip with. Before Pearl arrived, there had been only two new faces. One was a boy whose cousin was already in the class and the other was a tiny little girl from across the bridge. This new girl, called Dumpling, lived in the shantytown on the Virginia side of Key Bridge and arrived at school with a strand of sweat beads on her forehead from the long walk.

  On school mornings, Georgetown children were pushed out of their front doors when the swarm of other school-bound youngsters appeared in their block. The eight of ten Wardleys who were still school age and lived all the way west near Georgetown University started out for school early. At each block children joined the eastward throng and kept with it until they got to school. Many of the bigger children kept on going east out of Georgetown, on across into Washington

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  city, to go to the Armstrong high school or the prestigious M Street school. Children who lived east of Wisconsin Avenue amassed at each block, too, and proceeded in a throng west to Wormley School. Excited chattering and thundering brogans signaled this throng of children wearing run-over, dog-eared leather shoes. Some children's feet pulled out of their shoes with every step. Some children's shoes were so tight that their toes curled under and came to rest on top of neighbor toes. Some oi the ill-fitting shoes were stuffed with newspapers. Some had cardboard soles, causing children to leave pieces of cardboard all along the route. Early or persistent or lucky mothers found soft leather lace-up shoes with the smooth soles of the hardly worn—and no scuffs—at the church rummage sales or got them from the white folks they worked for. Lexter Gorson, the shoe-shine man, was swamped just before school started. He rehabilitated the rummage and hand-me-down shoes by putting a high gloss on them. The recently arrived country folk quickly yielded to the decorum of the city: Shoes on the feet of all schoolchildren. All school-age children must go to school.

  Because Johnnie Mae was one of the tallest girls in the class, she was assigned a seat in the back of the classroom, near a window. Lula Lavery, who'd been Johnnie Mae's best friend the previous year, was seated nearer the middle of the room. She was mad not to be closer to Johnnie Mae and madder still that Johnnie Mae seemed unconcerned about their seat assignments. Lula turned around in her chair when all were seated and waved to Johnnie Mae. Johnnie Mae only stared back blankly.

  Though Pearl Miller was of medium height and actually a

  hair shorter than the girl seated in front of her, she was told by the teacher, Miss Elizabeth Boston, to sit across the aisle from Johnnie Mae Bynum.

  Sit was all Pearl did the first week. She sat bolt upright in her chair and placed her body directly behind the girl in front of her. She did not speak one word to anyone. She did not even answer when her name was called in the roll by Miss Boston. Johnnie Mae glanced sideways at Pearl on each of these mornings, wondering at the stock-still girl. Pearl reminded her of a field rabbit facing down a dog; hands folded on the desk, legs clamped together, head straight up on her neck, she stared directly in front of her. When the class went into the school yard for recess, Pearl walked behind Mildred Gloe. She stood alone next to a bush and spoke to no one. Johnnie Mae's three friends from the river — Lula Lavery, Hannah Jackson, and Sarey Tyler—clustered around her in a display of compassion. Johnnie Mae, however, had little to say to them and did not smile.

  "Pearl Miller," Miss Boston trilled. Pearl shifted in her seat but did not open her mouth. Johnnie Mae looked at her out of the corner of her eye.

  "Here," Johnnie Mae said. Miss Boston raised her eyes from the seating plan and wrinkled her forehead.

  "Who said that, please?" she asked sharply.

  Johnnie Mae raised her hand tentatively and said, "Ma'am?"

  "Why are you answering for Pearl Miller, please?"

  "She's here, but she won't answer," Johnnie Mae replied. As her voice trailed off, she glanced at Pearl.

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  "Pearl Miller, stand up please," Miss Boston demanded.

  The halt a minute or so it took Pearl to stand seemed like half an hour. Each child in the classroom turned completely around to stare. A few boys and girls snickered. Nothing Pearl had done or dreamed of doing had ever drawn so much attention to herself. The scrutiny of the class was sizzlingly painful. Pearl felt her skin broiling under their stares.

  Pearl Miller was dark black with smooth, glossy skin and medium brown eyes. She wore her hair cornrowed tightly, and the neat geometric pattern of the cornrows could be traced on the top of her bowed head.

  "Miss Miller," said Miss Boston, "when you are in attendance at this school you are to answer when the roll is called. Do you understand?"

  The thought hit Johnnie Mae that the girl was a mute at exactly the moment Pearl opened her lips a crack to whisper, "Yes, ma'am."

  Miss Boston's patience was fraying rapidly. If there was one thing she couldn't abide, it was a weak, mealymouthed response. "Once again, Miss Miller, with more vigor."

  The sound that next came out of Pearl was closer to a shriek. No one would have guessed there was that much wind in the girl. The class guffawed, especially the boys, who started up grunting like pigs.

  For Elizabeth Boston, the daughter of a cook and a Pullman porter, the Eleventh Commandment was "Thou shalt maintain decorum." A genuinely intelligent person with a sincere desire to impart knowledge, Miss Boston was also keenly concerned that her students learn the proper way to behave. Their learning to read and to figure were no more important, in her eyes, than their learning to control their urges to laugh,

  spit, shout, or belch. Pearl's outburst caused the teacher's slim lips to become a straight line. "Next time something above a whisper, something below a bellow, Miss Miller. Please take your seat."

  Pearl sat down stiffly and buried her head on her desk. She turned her head once to the left to stare with a cold hatred at Johnnie Mae, then quickly turned her face away when Johnnie Mae looked back. She kept her head down the rest of the morning and slipped a thumb into her mouth after everyone's attention had finally turned toward the lessons.

  Besides sucking her thumb the way Clara used to do, Pearl had the same scared-rabbit look that Clara had had. Watching her sent a shower of recollections down on Johnnie Mae. For the rest of the morning her mind raced up and down the streets o( Georgetown with the ghost of Clara. The Clara in her mind chattered and bent over to pick up blue glass medicine vials like they used to. Gathering discarded glass on the streets and in underbrush was the Bynum girls' first job. They had made their spending money in this way. Clara had been good at spotting pieces o( glass.

  This daydream was much like Johnnie Mae's nightly dreams. Strong, fragrant, tactile
dreams full of colors and sounds — full of Clara. There was a carefree abandon about the dream Clara that was different from the flesh and blood, used-to-be-earthbound Clara. The dream Clara kicked her feet up nearly to her waist when she skipped along the open field. She threw her head back and giggled with an energy that was rare for the real Clara. But this girl of the dreams was Clara for sure. She had Clara's hair, smelling like sweat and pomade. The back of her neck bore a greasy line at the end of

  a humid afternoon like Clara's. The girl's left front tooth was missing like Clara's. She imagined the girl's hand was warm and moist, the fingers wiggling like worms in Johnnie Mae's palm, like Clara's.

  When Johnnie Mae's mind returned to the classroom, she considered that the recent appearance of Pearl Miller and her resemblance to Clara were not accidental. Maybe Pearl was the ghost of Clara come back to visit. Perhaps this was why Pearl was afraid to draw attention to herself. Perhaps a ghost can't do what it's supposed to do if you pay it too much mind. Johnnie Mae resolved to wait, stand back, and watch this new girl. Maybe, if not agitated by too much notice, the ghost would reveal itself as Clara.

  Miss Boston had put Pearl Miller next to Johnnie Mae, of all the people in the classroom. Was there a plan here? Church folks were always fond of speaking about God's plan. Well, it could be that this was a perfect example. But there was a disturbing thought that Johnnie Mae could never quite sort out. Were haints and ghosts and spirits of the dead sent from God, or were they agents of the Devil? And if they were agents of the Devil, wasn't it dangerous to have anything to do with them? Pearl didn't look like an agent of the Devil. But she did have Clara's demeanor and posture of neediness.

  Some weeks went by without a word from Pearl but "yes, ma'am" when her name was called. Each day she was neatly dressed and her hair was tightly cornrowed with oil glistening in the parts. She sat in her scared-rabbit posture and slipped her thumb in her mouth from time to time. Johnnie Mae

  observed her patiently. Content to bide her time, she waited to see what the haint—for she truly believed now that Pearl was a haint, a bona fide haint—would do.

  Pearl Miller's reputation as a crybaby was enhanced nearly every day by a fit oi weeping during recess. She stubbornly refused to socialize with any of the other students, even after a delegation of girls approached her. They ringed around her, chattering and trying to pull her into a game of hopscotch or Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack. Pearl looked down at her toes and tried not to stick her thumb in her mouth. After a few attempts to draw her out, the delegation gave up and started calling her Sugar Tit. Johnnie Mae stood back from all of this, watching and waiting.

  Boys like to pinch and pluck a target and draw their victim into full-scale conflict. They lose interest quickly, though, if all the victim does is stand and cry. Girls like to gang up on a victim too, but they enjoy it most if the victim never fights back but just keeps on crying and meekly submitting to torture. So among the girls in the sixth-grade class, it got to be a good game to figure out ways to make Pearl Miller cry.

  At the southernmost end of the recess yard, the roots of an aged tree had rearranged a section of the hastily constructed outer stone wall around the school property. The tree's upper branches spread halfway across the yard and provided shade to three quarters of it. At its base, the tree was split into two large sections, with ugly irregular roots running outward above the ground. The strong lower branches had for years, even before the school was built, been used as a sitting place. Smack in the center of the tree's broad trunk was a knothole bigger than a human head. This knothole had been tarred over repeatedly but the tree had simply kept metamorphosing until it was diffi-

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  cult to know what material was tree and what man-made. Growing in the center of the knothole was a toadstool as big as a king-size flapjack, tan-colored and terraced.

  Mildred Gloe told everyone that her mother said toadstools were poisonous. So she dared each girl in the class to lick the toadstool at the center of the knothole. Each girl stepped up to the knothole, made an elaborate display of facial contortions, and stuck her tongue out. Most missed the toadstool by a mile but passed muster for at least marching up and aiming their face in its direction. Johnnie Mae, not believing that any toadstool was poisonous, stepped up and raked her tongue across it real good. She didn't see the point in it, though. What could licking a toadstool prove?

  After everyone else had had a turn, Pearl Miller still stood back. Mildred and some others decided that they would have to force Pearl to lick the toadstool. With some ceremony two girls grasped Pearl under the arms and led her to the knothole. To the delight of her torturers, Pearl started to cry buckets. She stood in front of the tree looking miserable, tears streaming down her face. A chant of "Lick it, lick it!" started and grew loud.

  Johnnie Mae had trouble deciding who was silliest: Mildred and the other tormentors or the worthless crybaby Pearl Miller. Just as Mildred Gloe began to push Pearl's head toward the hole, Johnnie Mae churned her way through the crowd, put her arm around Pearl's shoulder, and pulled the pitiful, crying girl away from the group. For good measure, she socked Mildred Gloe in the middle of her back. Mildred, a garden-variety bully, had no comeback to this.

  Like Pearl, Sarey Tyler was regularly teased and taunted too. But she defied her torturers. Though often ridiculed about

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  her unkempt hair, Sarey didn't shed a single tear. She simply rolled her eyes and tossed her shoulders when they said her head looked like a rat's nest.

  Sarey's yellow skin would have given her high status among the girls, but her head of hair diminished its value. "That's a whole lot of yellow gone to waste" is what Tiny Sham's mother said about Sarey. And Tiny repeated it to any and everybody in the school yard.

  This spiteful comment didn't particularly faze Sarey. She had heard it before—and worse. Folks who knew her mother rarely hid their surprise when they saw Sarey's hair. Sarey, the daughter of a light, bright, damn-near-white woman with straight, silky hair, had a headful of cockleburs and tangles she'd inherited from her father. It was a shame! It was tragic! It was the most unfortunate set of circumstances imaginable!

  Looking at the top of Pearl Miller's braided head was a fascinating exercise when Miss Boston was drilling the new spelling words or rhythmically beating out the times tables on the edge of her desk. Some days the braids started around Pearl's head in a spiral that culminated in a neatly twisted topknot. Other days her hair was parted down the exact middle of her head with the cornrows proceeding down the sides, linking up along the cir-cumference and ending in plaits at the back.

  One afternoon during spelling lessons, Johnnie Mae noticed that one of the braids at the back of Pearl's head had begun to creep loose. The rubber band, twisted at its end, had fallen onto the collar of Pearl's blouse. All the rest of her hair remained perfectly neat. Pearl's hair reminded Johnnie Mae of Clara's hair: bushy, and brushed and combed and twisted into

  braids that only eternal vigilance prevented from coming loose all day. The whole afternoon Johnnie Mae stared at the loosened braid on Pearl's head.

  When the class rose and gathered their papers at the end of the day, Johnnie Mae felt an impulse to touch the bushy, loosened plait on Pearl's head. Clara's plaits had been Johnnie Mae's obligation. In fact, of all the duties she had helping her mother with "the baby," the plaiting had been the most pleasurable. Having the authority to pull Clara's head back firmly and order her to hold still was part of Johnnie Mae's big-sister prerogative. Brushing the hair back from Clara's hairline, sectioning it, braiding overhand, daubing oil in the parts and along the hairline, massaging it in to shine, attaching a ribbon for Sunday or a rubber band for everyday, gave Johnnie Mae a feeling of being the boss. Clara's mouth would turn down in a pout until Johnnie Mae spun her around and demanded that she look at herself and see what a beautiful, neat job had been done. Days when she was in a magnanimous mood, Johnnie Mae would let Clara c
limb a box behind her and brush and comb her own hair, which was long and like the bristles on a stiff paintbrush. Mama and Aunt Ina said it was Indian hair— a strong, energetic head of hair that flattened along her head when Indian sage pomade was vigorously brushed into it.

  Johnnie Mae put her hand gently on Pearl's collar. "You're losing your rubber band," she said.

  Pearl jumped at the touch and snapped her head around. She felt along her collar anxiously.

  "Your plait came loose. Let me fix it for you," Johnnie Mae said with gentle authority. The voice she used was one she'd used with Clara. All the other students pushed past Johnnie Mae and Pearl, who stood frozen, staring at each

  other in the aisle. Pearl finally turned obediently, and Johnnie Mae began plaiting the loose braid by first unraveling it further, then making it back up to match the other. She finished plaiting and reattached the rubber band at the end of the braid. Pearl faced Johnnie Mae and lifted her chin farther than Johnnie Mae had ever seen her do. She said, with a small smile, "Thank you. Thanking you warmly." The girl sounded curiously like an old woman, which made Johnnie Mae chuckle. But the voice Pearl now used was friendly.

  As Halloween approached, Johnnie Mae was sure her bona fide haint, Pearl Miller, would reveal herself. She made up her mind to keep an eye on Pearl to see how a haint might act on Halloween. Except that she was tiresomely, unnaturally timid, Pearl seemed like anybody else. But on Halloween night, some-thing might happen that would reveal her true nature.

  It occurred to Johnnie Mae that a real spirit might not come out on such an obvious night as Halloween. Perhaps she had to lay low with all of the foolishness going on. This didn't seem to jibe, though, with Pearl's timidity, or even Clara's. If Pearl was the spirit of Clara come again she ought to act pretty much like the real Clara. And Clara was not cunning. Clara loved Halloween. Clara had stuck to Johnnie Mae like glue as they roamed with the other children through the streets of Georgetown. And Johnnie Mae had held tight to Clara's hand because, in all the hoopla and confusion, it would have been easy for a little girl like Clara to get lost. Oi course, Johnnie Mae didn't know much about the dead—how they behaved, if they "behaved" at all. Were they just gone