The Darkest Child

by Delores Phillips

  Chadlow stopped at the table behind Miss Frances. He lifted a glass from her hand, sniffed the contents, then returned the glass to her. “Room needs cleaning,” he told her, as he prodded me along toward the back door.

  Footsteps and a woman’s giggle could be heard on the back porch. Chadlow shoved me aside as the door opened inward and Leona Wright stepped over the threshold. She was a heavyset woman with a nasty scar that ran along the left side of her face. It was rumored that she had been cut by another woman right here at the farmhouse. Mama had told me about it, and so had Miss Frances.According to them, Leona had won the fight, but after my beating tonight, I wondered if Chadlow’s rawhide had actually caused the scar. It was possible.

  Leona stepped into the kitchen, glanced at Chadlow, then briefly focused her attention on me. “Damn!” she said. “Y’all getting younger and younger every day. Ain’t gon’ be no business for me in a minute. Hon, ’ you ain’t nothing but a baby.”

  “Mind your own business, Leona,” Chadlow said, as he guided me by my shoulders toward the opened door.

  We had to pause again as Leona’s companion entered the room. It was Crow. He stepped past us with a fleeting glance, then took Leona by her hand and started for the parlor.

  “It’s just a scan’lous,” Leona grumbled.“Somebody need to put a foot up Rozelle’s ass.”

  My feet touched the back porch; Chadlow followed behind me and closed the door.

  fifty - four

  Beside the embankment below my mother’s house, I stood waiting for Crow, having decided that if he did not come, he was not my father.

  The car’s headlights came like cat’s eyes out of a long, murky alley—up the dark, narrow road. The passenger door swung open, and Crow’s angry, impatient voice commanded, “Get in, Tangy Mae!”

  Easing into the car, I clenched my teeth against the pain that rolled in waves from the back of my neck to the bottom of my heels. When I closed the car door, I should have felt safe, but I didn’t. I should have been able to cry, scream, do whatever I felt like doing, but I couldn’t.“Take me to Velman,” I mumbled.

  Crow drove slowly around the bend, and accelerated when he reached the smooth surface of Fife Street. “Who is Velman?” he asked, still angry. “Is that another man that’s gonna take you back out to that house? Do you need money, sugar? Do you need it that bad?”

  “No.You don’t understand, Crow.”

  “Damn right, I don’t understand. I gave you money the last time I was here. Ain’t no daughter of mine got no business out to Bo’s. If I’da known you was doing that, I’da cut your throat before I left here last time.”

  “Cut it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Cut it, Crow. It’ll be the first decent thing you’ve ever done for me.Velman, by the way, is my brother-in-law. He’d never do anything to hurt me no matter what I did.”

  Crow smacked the steering wheel with his fist, and the horn gave a short, dull beep.“I wouldn’t hurt you, either,” he said.“I just wanna know what’s going on. I’m yo’ daddy, Tangy. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  I thought a daddy would offer love instead of anger. A daddy would soothe me and tell me that everything is going to be all right.A daddy would understand that I am just a child in a grownups’ world, trying to do what I am told, trying to survive.

  “What is a daddy?” I asked. “It’s been two years since I’ve seen you, and then I had to bump into you out there wrapped around Leona Wright. Crow, you didn’t even know who I was.”

  “I ain’t perfect, Tangy. I ain’t never said I was perfect, but the minute I knew it was you, I came after you.”

  “Take me to Velman,” I pleaded. “Please, Crow, just take me to Velman.”

  He nodded his head slowly, plucked a match from his shirt pocket and placed it between his teeth.“Where this Velman live?” he asked.

  I told him.

  It was Velman who opened the door for us. Crow followed me inside, and I introduced him to my brother-in-law, then I gripped Velman’s hand.“Where’s Martha Jean?” I asked.

  “Sleep. It’s after midnight, little sister.”

  “I know,” I said, “but wake her up. I need her, Velman.”

  Crow had taken a seat on the couch, but I was still standing when Martha Jean came into the front room led by her husband.

  I stepped up to my sister, and signed, “Hurt. Help me.”

  She nodded, and I turned my back to her. Over my shoulder I said, “Velman, help me get this shirt off.”

  “What’s that on it?” he asked.

  “Blood.”

  He helped me remove the shirt and the blouse beneath it. Slowly, carefully, he peeled away the bandages, then profanities rapidly spilled from his lips.“Damn! Shit! What the hell . . .? I’m gonna call Mushy.”

  “Why do you think Mushy is the answer to everything?” I calmly asked.

  “Because you do.You always have.”

  I shook my head.“No. I think you’re the answer to everything. That’s why I’m here and not over on Echo Road.”

  “Well, I’m not, little sister. I’m not the answer to anything. I don’t know what to do wit’ yo’ back. It looks like . . .”

  I closed my eyes and braced myself, but words failed him.When I opened my eyes, Martha Jean was standing in front of me. Her hands were raised in a gesture of helplessness, and tears rolled from her eyes.

  “What?” she signed.“What, Tangy?”

  “Help me.”

  On the couch behind me, Crow was stuck in a single phrase. “Oh, my God, sugar! Oh, my God, sugar!”

  Velman gave me three aspirins and a glass of water. I swallowed the pills, then lay on the floor where Martha Jean could properly clean my back. Martha Jean tended my wounds with a care and gentleness Miss Frances did not possess. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Miss Frances. But I believed her bandages, torn from discolored sheets, were contaminated with sin and decay.

  Velman squatted on the floor beside Martha Jean. He didn’t touch me, but as he watched his wife work on my back, he said, “You need to see a doctor, little sister.”

  “No,” I answered, “I need sleep.”

  “You shoulda been sleep hours ago,” he said angrily.“This stuff ’s gotta stop.You can’t keep going through this.You oughta be home, asleep, wit’ no reason in the world to be scared and beat up. It’s after midnight.”

  “That a hint?” Crow barked, when obviously it was not intended to be.

  Velman rose from his crouched position beside me, taking my comfort away.“Nah, man,” he said, “it ain’t no goddamn hint. I ain’t got to hint in my own house. If I want you outta here, I’ll just tell you to get yo’ ass out.”

  “Bad little nigger, ain’t you?” Crow snarled. “If you so bad, and you suppose to care so much about my daughter, tell me how come she all messed up.”

  “Maybe ’cause she ain’t never had no daddy to help her out,” Velman retorted.

  “Please!” I groaned.“Please, don’t argue.” Flat on my belly with my head resting on folded arms, I could not see them, could only imagine their frustration and anger. “Please!”

  There was silence in the room, except for the dribble of water as Martha Jean wrung out the cloth she was using.Velman finally came back to squat on the floor beside me, but tension lingered in the air, as stifling as August humidity.

  “How was Detroit, Crow?” I asked, hoping that his reply would transport us away from Pakersfield, away from the wounds on my back, away from the bloody water in Martha Jean’s basin.

  “I never made it to Detroit,” Crow snapped. “I been in Pittsburgh. Shoulda stayed there.”

  Martha Jean’s cloth touched a spot on my back that caused me to howl with pain. It was so severe that I scooted away from her and sat upright on the sheet.

  “I’m calling Mushy, ”Velman said, alarmed.

  He started for the telephone, but Crow shot him a scornful look, and said, “This how you handle business, man? You gotta
call for a woman?”

  Velman stopped, turned to face Crow.“Hey, man,” he said, “this ain’t my business. Ain’t nobody pimping my daughter all over Triacy County. And I got two daughters. But I’m man enough to stay put and see about mine. Let’s hear you say that.And while you running all over the place, from Detroit to Pittsburgh or wherever the hell you go, do you sleep on a bed? Your daughter been sleeping on a floor all her life. My daughter’s in there in a bed. So don’t you talk to me ’bout no business, motherfucka.And while you sitting there trying to be mad about something, you oughta be taking her to a doctor.”

  It seemed to me that Crow did not move, but he must have. In the blink of an eye he was off the couch, around the coffee table, and standing over Velman with an opened switchblade gleaming in his grip.

  “No!” I screamed, then half crawling, half stumbling, I threw my body between the two men—my heart, my father.

  Martha Jean had eased toward the center of confusion. She stood next to Velman with a hand on his arm and a quizzical expression on her face.Velman touched her hand, patted it softly, then retreated toward his bedroom.

  “Shit,” Crow hissed, as he folded the switchblade and slipped it into his pants pocket.“You gon’ stay here, sugar?”

  My voice was shaky when I answered him. “No. I have to get home to Laura.”

  “Well, I’ll wait for you out in the car. Hurry up and get dressed.”

  Once Crow was out of the house, Martha Jean did not ask me about the confrontation. She simply spun me around and began to heap salve onto my wounds. She did it in a hasty fashion with none of her earlier tenderness. I assumed she was anxious to get to Velman, to comfort her man.

  I was wearing one of Velman’s shirts over fresh bandages when I climbed into Crow’s idling vehicle. Crow shifted gears and sped away from the curb. “You want me to take you to a doctor tonight?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “I just want to go home and go to sleep.”

  As we crossed the railroad tracks in town, Crow leaned toward me, so close I could smell the tip of the fresh match he was chewing.“ Out at Bo’s, who was that man, sugar?” he asked.

  “Chadlow. He’s the law in this county.”

  “He’s a dead man.”

  fifty - five

  The school year began with more turmoil than Triacy County had ever known.The integration of Pakersfield High by five students last year had caused a minor ruckus, but nothing in comparison to the large-scale warfare of the second year, with the addition of two dozen Negro students.The Pakersfield Herald called it “an invasion of Negroes,” but in our communities, it was called a step toward equal rights. By the end of the first week of school, seven Negro students and twelve adults had been arrested. There were injuries on both sides, and Wallace, though not a student anywhere, was right in the thick of it all. His picture appeared on the front page of the newspaper. In the picture, Wallace, with an angry scowl on his face, was brandishing a baseball bat, although his target had been conveniently left out of the shot.

  Hysteria ruled the county. It spilled over to Plymouth where a night raid resulted in broken windows at our school, and manure heaped across the walkway leading to the main door. Some speculated it was the work of a few young whites, but I didn’t agree because Negro students were being chased home from school by grown men in cars and pickup trucks.We stopped going to school and once again stayed away from town, fearful of what might happen.

  Finally, it was decided that all schools in Triacy County would close down for one week while meetings were held to determine a course of action. On that Saturday, Reverend Nelson stood beside Mr. Hewitt, our principal, and bitterly announced to the congregation that desegregation in Triacy County had been temporarily suspended. All Negro students would return to the Plymouth School.

  “Separate but equal will be the Triacy County motto for as long as we allow it,” Reverend Nelson said.“I don’t agree with it, and I’m sure most of you don’t, either, but I’m asking you today for just a little more patience. Now, I know you’re all aware of the town meetings we’ve been attending all week, and there were some things said in those meetings that angered me, and probably would have angered most of you. After a while, I had to stop listening and start praying. You know, when you’re talking to God, you can’t hear all the evil that sinners around you are talking. If you don’t believe me, try prayer for yourself. It’s a wonderful thing. I’m gonna turn this particular meeting over to Mr. Hewitt, but before I sit down, I just want to say to you the same thing I said at the town meeting. Before we can hope to have even one drop of harmony in this desegregation process, those ‘white only’ signs must come down. How can we expect black and white children to get along at school when they can’t even drink from the same water fountains where God’s water flows freely?”

  We applauded our agreement as Reverend Nelson took his seat and Mr.Hewitt stepped up to the podium. He unrolled his speech and began to read.

  “We are all aware of the May, 1954, Supreme Court decision that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional,” he read.“Therefore, an unconstitutional deed is being perpetrated by the Board of Education and the elected officials of this county.”

  People who had never set foot in the Solid Rock Baptist Church before were crowded in.They filled every pew and every inch of standing space. My mother was not one of them, but Crow sat beside me.We had listened intently to the words of the reverend, and now we were trying to concentrate on Mr.Hewitt’s speech.

  “We are being asked to take a huge step backwards in our struggle for fairness, ”Mr. Hewitt said, “but this is only a short-term setback. I regret having to say this, but the time is not right for this movement in Triacy County. Aggression on our part can only make a bad situation worse. What the town council has proposed is the completion of the new school here in Plymouth. The way things stand, it is the best possible solution.”

  An angry din rose from the pews, and I waited for a Junior Fess or a Hambone to rush up to the podium to set my principal straight, but no one moved. Beside me, Crow lowered his chin to his chest and slowly shook his head.

  “Sugar,” he said, “stand up and ask that nigger if he got that shit from them pissant rednecks.”

  “No!” I protested.“You ask him.”

  “I can’t bring attention to myself, and anyway you know how to ask it better than me.”

  For a moment, I just sat there staring at Crow, but as the crowd’s disgruntlement subsided, I rose from my seat. Before I could open my mouth, though, someone else in the church said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hewitt, but was that a decision agreed on by everybody? I mean, did you, the reverend, Deacon Hall, everybody agree?”

  Mr.Hewitt looked out over the gathering and nodded his head. “It was the decision of the majority,” he answered solemnly, then rolled his papers and abandoned his speech. “This is their condition for the release of nineteen Negroes being held in the county jail. I’ll listen to any one of you who is willing to sacrifice them for a hope. I, for one, am not willing.”

  He waited to see if anyone would step forward to protest.As we left the church, Crow leaned down and mumbled in my ear, “This a messed-up town. Shoulda been called Passivefield.”

  Crow remained in Pakersfield, rooming with Melvin and Dorothy Tate. He had made the healing of my wounds a priority. Every day he would pick me up from home or school and take me to Mushy on Echo Road, or to Martha Jean on Motten Street, so that my sisters could treat the gashes on my back. For my sake, Crow and Velman had formed a fragile bond.

  Mama knew Crow was in town because I had told her, and because he pacified her with monetary tidbits brought by me or Laura. Once or twice, she had seen his car when he came to pick me up, but she had not gone down to the road to talk with him, and he had not gone up to the house to talk with her.He wanted to, though. I could tell by the way he stared past me and up toward the porch each time he came to Penyon Road.

  One afternoon at Skeeter’s
house, after Martha Jean was done putting fresh bandages on my back, Crow said, “I don’t guess you been too happy, sugar. I don’t understand yo’mama.The Rozelle I knew was always laughing and full of fun, just like yo’ sister, Mushy. I loved Rozelle once, but she wanted herself a man with light skin and good hair. I know this ain’t got nothing to do with you, but I’d give my right arm if I could go back and change some things.”

  I signed to Martha Jean that once upon a time Crow had been in love with Mama. Martha Jean didn’t even smile, just gave him a pitying glance.

  “I swear, for the last few weeks, I been trying to understand this shit,” Crow said. “I don’t understand it. I ain’t never heard of no mama doing the kinda things y’all say Rozelle do.”

  Crow was obsessed with Mama. He watched our house at night. He didn’t know that I knew, but I did. Sometimes, late at night, I would see his car parked in weeds at the turn of the bend. I don’t think Mama was aware that she was being spied on. She wouldn’t have liked it.

  Laura was sitting on the floor playing with Mary Ann and Valerie. Mary Ann could walk now, and she kept moving little blocks from one area of the floor to another. She was teasing Laura by offering the blocks, then taking them away. Laura managed to divide her attention evenly between the sisters. She cradled Valerie and cooed to her; she switched blocks with Mary Ann and giggled with her.

  I still thought of it as Skeeter’s house, although it was now occupied only by the Coopers. Skeeter had moved in with Miss Shirley right after Valerie was born. He had done it out of love for his nephew;Velman was easy to love.They were all easy to love. As I watched Mary Ann shift her blocks around, I felt the serenity of the house. Martha Jean also appeared relaxed as she watched her daughter toddle about, but Crow, insensitive to our need, obsessed about Rozelle, until, lo and behold, he talked her up.

  She drew our attention by scratching on the screen door, then without invitation, she opened the door and stepped into the room. “I knew you was here, Crow,” she said. “I been waiting on you to come up to the house to see me.What’s taking you so long?”