Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  This same night after I return home from the boarding house, I’m awakened by the smell of smoke. In our robes, Clary and I find ourselves outside on the street, dazed, shivering and taking turns holding Jesi while watching the firemen put out the flames to BBCC. The three-feet high flaming white cross in the front yard they leave be, like it’s a lawn ornament. Clary seems hypnotized by the cross, mumbling prayers. Usually Jesi is comforted immediately by her but not tonight. Jesi senses Clary’s condition and screams in absolute terror.

  A fireman approaches. “We think we’ve found the culprit,” he says, holding out a blackened tool. “Do you know where this might’ve come from?”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Sorry, ma’am, of course you wouldn’t know. It’s a welder’s torch.”

  We end the night with Jesi and me in Ellen’s nursery on a small cot and Clary on a blanket pallet in Ellen’s parlor – until Jesi fusses so much that I have to take her to Clary that is. “Go ahead and sleep on the floor. See if I care,” I say, handing her over at three in the morning. I want her to snuggle with me, like I see other toddlers with their mothers, but she’s so thorny.

  “You’re coming home,” Mama announces, when I telephone her the next morning in a shaky voice and not caring if I sound grownup. “I’ll send someone down there to get you. He can get to you sooner than I can.”

  That afternoon a black Ford truck pulls up out front of Ellen’s house, with a Tennessee license plate. “I’m Jerry,” he says, taking his felt hat off at the door and bowing just enough for good old-fashioned manners. He has a full head of white hair, pulled back in a ponytail and I’ve never seen anything like him. He’s beautiful and old at the same time. I immediately want to sit at his feet and ask him about the migration of birds or something like that. At first he looks like the silent Indian Chief type and I feel like everything is going to be okay and I wonder at the same time, how does he do that? His presence fills Ellen’s parlor. But then after his cup of coffee, he spoils it by clapping his hands together and saying in a strong hillbilly accent, “Let’s fire ‘er up!” We all look at him in shock and watch his expression change from cheerful to sorrow as he realizes the implication. “My tongue twisted around my eye teeth and I couldn’t see what I was saying.” He bowed again. “Please forgive me, ma’am.”

  I shrug at the old hillbilly and mumble, Thanks, Mama.

  I don’t have much beyond some smoky-smelling clothing and I pack little, two suitcases. I had sold the furniture with the plantation house; all that old wood seemed to have grown roots there. The duplex apartment was furnished and now smoke-damaged, the office next door is destroyed. Not even Clary will come with us. “There’s other white folks I can care for, and I’m gonna stay with my sister until I finds me one” she answers coolly, like this is all my fault for “running away”. I see where Jesi gets her pigheadedness.

  Marge comes around looking so distraught and disheveled, she loses goddess-status. I’m thinking she must suspect the same group I do. It doesn’t help her age either that she’s still mourning TJ, covered head-to-foot in black, so that I take pity on her and promise that Jesi and I won’t be gone long; “just a visit with the other side”. She and Clary cry anyway and Jesi intuitively understands and I have to wrench her from Clary’s arms. I promise to write. I promise to come back. I think back to all those false promises.

  We’re heading north and out of Georgia before I can get Jesi to calm down. She basically just passes out. I miss Clary already.

  In the silence that finally settles on us, I mumble, “So how do you know my mama?”

  “It’s a long story,” he says.

  I’m too frazzled to hear a long story from a man, especially one with a hillbilly accent. I want his silent muscular profile wisely making me a path toward home. If he talks, he might slow down. No doubt Mama knows him from one of her chapters or leagues or clinics. Who cares? He gives me an odd look and I’m not sure if I said ‘who cares’ out loud or not. “Nice weather we’re having,” I say with a yawn and we’re distracted by the rain and hail. I hold hands with the passenger door and go back to sleep. Jesi lays stretched out on my lap or between us on the seat, like more luggage. She and I sleep a great deal of the trip, both exhausted from the trauma and sudden changes.

  We’re in Pennsylvania when he stops for his hundredth cup of coffee and asks, “What happened to her leg?”

  I rub my eyes irritably. I’d scarcely woken from a short nightmare of searching for something unknown and running through fire trying to find it. I hesitate and keep to myself, Could be the cousin who raped me, and then continue out loud, “Could be from lying on my stomach in my job at the shipyard, could be the fibers from the welding torch, could be the magic potion, could be the wrath of God for my wicked sins. I’ve thought about it over and over, to the point that I don’t want to think about it any longer. Mama will know what to do.” I wonder to myself, Why am I protecting TJ?

  He merely nods as if he’s heard it all. “Your mommy and mam-maw will take good care of both of you.” Only a fleeting thought, I wonder how he knows that.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, like I had cared enough to ask him a question. “Now that your mammaw and mommy have done their work and women have got their basic rights, I’m giving civil rights their due attention. We sure got a lot of poor colored people in Tennessee who get a raw deal and every time one so much as complains or steps out of line, in come the KKK and shut him up for good …” and on he rambles, not seeming to notice that I’d become deaf-mute and attached to the passenger door. I doze off and on.

  Late in the night we at last stop in front of the Lighthouse – for the first time I notice it looks a bit rickety, like it’s in competition with me to see who falls first. Looks like every light is on, Mama’s way of saying Welcome Home. I want to run back in to its safe womb and never leave again. I didn’t do so good out there on my own.

  Jerry stares at the house, his hands motionless on the steering wheel, his body so still, his eyes distant, to the point that I’m thinking he’s listening for crunching leaves or a breaking stick, like he’s stalking deer. I don’t like the idea of him doing that to my home-place.

  “Thank you for a safe trip home!” I say as gaily as possible. That should scare the deer away.

  “Win-na-de-ya-ho,” he says softly but he’s not looking at me.

  Another old coot talking gibberish. I roll my eyes, gather up Jesi, and leave him in the truck without invitation. I decide to tell Mama he didn’t want to come in. “Leave my suitcases on the sidewalk,” I say above Jesi’s whimpers.

  I’m writing this from the hospital. Long story. I’ll get to it. First, here’s what I wrote on the bus trip down to Nashville.

  February 26, 1964: Isaac and I are on a Greyhound and will be traveling all night. Here we sit, heading to a sit-in.

  “Sit-in will be easy with your leg and all,” Isaac said, as we took our seat at the front of the Greyhound. “Now we both will be even.”

  “Even?”

  “Yeah, we’ll both have a handicap.” He pointed to his skin. “Where we’re going, my skin keeps me from doing a lot.” I wonder again how old he is. There’s something older about him, like his mannerisms and white shirt and tie, but it’s hard to tell; his brown skin is clear and his forehead is as smooth as fudge.

  “Did I ever tell you how old I am?” he asked. Yeah, he does that all the time – reading my mind, I mean. “I’m forty-four.”

  “Groovy,” I answered. Forty-four? Holy Shit!

  “Did I ever tell you that I’ve slept in your house?”

  “Did we sleep together? Slip me some acid and now I don’t remember?”

  “You weren’t born yet. I was only two years old. Your grandpa brought me and my family up here. After my dad was lynched. We stayed at the Lighthouse for a few days until my uncle and my mother got themselves jobs. Your grandpa helped there too. They still talk about it and drive me by your house and tell me never to f
orget about the good white people, no matter how bad it gets. I can remember wetting the bed there and getting whipped for it and I can remember that winding staircase and me sliding down those wooden stairs bumpity-bump in my pajamas. We moved to the colored section of town where I quit school and went back to Savannah looking for my roots. I found out they’re actually in the small town right outside Savannah called Pickerville. Ever heard of it?”

  “Only on my birth certificate,” I said, thinking how cool that he knows my birth place, but not surprised; he flips me out in knowing more about me than I do. Mama and GB would look all upset when I brought up anything about my birth, like it was JFK’s assassination or something. So then out of nowhere GB said she’d work something out to where I’d know all about where I came from. Thanks to GG telling me where the key is to their chapters, now I know more than I want to know. I sure as hell ain’t telling Isaac about that.

  “You mean you and me were born at the same place?” Isaac asked, giving me his first grin of the day. “I knew you lived at the Lighthouse; that’s why I sat behind you in Civics class. Did I tell you that I came back up north to finally get my high school diploma? We got more in common than we thought, white sugar!”

  More in common than he knew; I still don’t have my diploma. A Goof maybe, but I’m a hip Goof.

  So we’re heading south and the further down we go, the further back in the bus we sit. When we change buses in Kentucky, we go to the last row. “I got dibs on this here seat,” he says with a weak chuckle.

  “Why?” I asked stupidly.

  “Cause I want no trouble,” he answered as he flops down, hard, like someone pushed him.

  “We could pretend we’re back in the Passion Pit,” I teased, referring to his name for parking in the back row of the drive-in movie.

  He looked out the window, saying nothing. Out there was getting hotter and hotter, and darker and darker. Okay, it’s getting night time but you get my drift.

  “Are we driving into hell or something?” I asked, trying to lighten him up.

  No smile. He looked out the window some more. He’s not frosted but he’s not happy either. “Very, very close,” he finally answered, so softly I lean in to hear him. “So close, you can smell the smoke. And at night, if you’re real quiet, you can hear the cries.” And then he begins reciting a cool poem that he tells me later is called “Silhouette” by Langston Hughes:

  Southern gentle lady

  Do not swoon

  They’ve just hung a black man

  In the light of the moon

  They’ve hung a black man

  To the roadside tree

  In that dark of the moon

  For the world to see

  How Dixie protects

  Its white womanhood

  Southern gentle lady

  Be good!

  Be good!

  I look out the bus window into the black night and the whole thing gives me goose bumps. What’s odder than what he’s saying is how he’s saying it. He’s mumbling now and speaking faster, like he doesn’t want anyone to overhear, and he doesn’t want anyone to stop him. This tall straight proud man loses his posture, too, and stops looking me in the eye. But the thing most far out is, he’s replacing “Yeah, man” with “Yes, sir”. He’s freaking me out to where yesterday I would’ve kidded around with something like, You wanna be my slave? Like maybe my sex slave? But today I’m afraid he’d go ape. He’s probably going to go ape-shit over me even saying “ape”.

  It’s morning when we get off the bus in Nashville and the day just gets freakier from there. Two colored men met us at the bus station and called me a “righteous babe” and Isaac got some of his confidence back and introduced them as “old room mates” and they all laughed like that’s a good joke. Not So Funny when I pieced together that their living arrangement was at the Parchman State Prison. They called themselves Freedom Riders in those days. “Doesn’t sound so free to me,” I said uneasily and they laughed easily. They mentioned some sort of clan and how this clan set fire to a bus the Freedom Riders were riding in, like they were talking about a Sunday drive. “Weren’t you scared, man?” One of them, Joseph, placed his large brown hand on my shoulder and answered, “I used to go to Martin Luther King’s church and he preached that there is some evil in the best of us and some good in the worst of us. When you look at everybody that way, you don’t get so scared.”

  We walked to the bus terminal lunch counter, where a sign was posted stating, We Serve Only White Trade Here. I turned to walk away and Isaac asked where I was going? “Somewhere where we all can eat,” I said. The three of them laughed again, jolly laughter and I wondered why colored people have such nice white teeth. “Get with it, righteous babe!” Henry said.

  They sat casually at the counter and I said, “That’s cool,” like we do this all the time. The waitress behind the counter didn’t look so cool. “Everything’s copasetic,” I said to her. “I’m Goldilocks and this is the three bears and we would like some porridge please.” She pretended like we weren’t even there. Isaac put his finger to his lips to me and I clammed.

  We sat there for an hour until I got so hungry watching her bring burgers and fries to other customers. “You need to eat,” Isaac whispered to me. “I want you to stay here and me and the other two will go out on the street. Order some sandwiches and bring them out, okay?” He laid two dollars on the counter.

  As soon as they left, the waitress brought me a menu. “My mother has polio and that’s the only reason I’m serving you. You better find you a new batch of friends, people of your own kind, if you’re staying here in this town.” She shook her head, kind of like a mother who sees her child misbehaving.

  I brought the food wrapped in wax paper out to the boys and they’re all laughing again. “What gives?” I asked. “Goldilocks, I thought I’d lose it back there,” answered Henry. “The three bears? You are a trip!” and they cracked up again.

  We scarfed our tuna sandwiches down on the way to Kress 5&10. “We gotta keep moving if we want to start a movement,” Henry said. They tell me they’re all members of the NAACP and they’re opposing segregation at restaurants through nonviolent direct action. They tell me they hope I’m not here for kicks. They tell me I’m not “hep” but I will be when this day is over. They ask Isaac if we’re jacketed and he says I’m his white sugar to sweeten his bitter coffee and he gives me a wink. “That sounds easier on the ear than zebra,” says Henry and they all chuckle and shake their heads.

  At the Kress lunch counter, it looks like the sit-in is in gear ‘cause there sat other colored folks at the counter. Isaac whispered to me that I could sit on the end of the counter if I wanted to, to stay out of line of any danger, so naturally I chose to sit between him and Henry. All of us sat calmly, all the men decked out in white shirts and ties, and me in my shirtdress from Christmas, looking like we were going to church next. People started coming up behind us and saying shitty comments about niggers and nigger lovers but I followed Isaac’s lead and we never turned around to acknowledge them. In the mirror across from us, I could see a few of the taller flakes standing behind us, some greasers who had combed their hair into duck tails or wore flat-tops, and acting Elvis-cocky.

  Isaac ordered coffee and we got the same eyeball that the waitress at the terminal counter threw us – and nothing else. We sat for four hours like that while the mob behind us thickened and I could feel the anger creeping down my back like molasses. Come to find out, it wasn’t molasses but cream. I’m about to freak out, so I put my hand over my mouth and turned to Isaac only to watch in horror as salt, mustard and ketchup were dumped on my three bears’ afro hair. They continued looking ahead, chins jutted out, mouths firmly shut, Joseph looking so sad. Isaac whispered, “These are probably local clan members. Don’t sweat it. Remember: Nonviolent resistance.” Sitting like that, our backs were to the wall – if you get my drift – and with nowhere to go, man, it was a bummer.

  Isaac didn’t set me up for
this sort of bullshit hostility but hey, it’s probably my fault since I was bragging about how I came from three women who fought in revolutions. I claimed I came ready as Superman but I sure as hell wasn’t geared up for the cigarette someone put out on Joseph’s arm. Joseph flinched, Joseph broke out in a sweat but Joseph was one badass in being able to take that and not lose it. It was all I could do not to turn around and give the asshole back there the bird.

  “Maybe we should book it,” said Isaac to Joseph. He was chewing on his lip.

  “Tomorrow it’s McCrory’s lunch counter,” Joseph said with a feeble smile.

  No sooner than he said that, I saw caps and uniforms in the mirror and heard whistles blowing and someone yelled out, “The Fuzz!” and it all turned to mayhem.

  I swear to Buddha, I’ve never seen anything like it – police pigs grabbing colored men off their stools and beating them with clubs. White racists spitting and yelling, like this is a legal dog fight. Someone grabbed my bandana I had wrapped around my hair and my cool choker I had beaded myself and dragged me off my stool. When I tripped over my bum leg and fell to the floor, the group around me noticed my brace and I heard, “She’s a cripple, man, leave her alone.” I crawled between pants, peggers, all straight legs, to the front of the place and huddled in the corner, shaking. I looked out the plate glass window and saw them handcuffing Isaac and I jumped to attention and pushed my way outside.

  “Why are you arresting him,” I shouted above the roar. “He’s done nothing wrong! We were just sitting in there!”

  “Disturbing the peace, breaking segregation laws, disorderly conduct, you name it, miss, we can pin it on him.” The pig looked me up and down, like he was drawing designs on me, and finally said, “You don’t belong here. Now get outta here before I change my mind.” He jerked hard at Isaac’s cuffed hands and I saw Isaac grimace. His lip was bleeding and he had a large bump on his forehead. So damn unfair!