JimmyTrotter smirked. “Brooklyn girls. Act like you all never been off the farm.”
We strolled down to the candy store, arm-in-arm-in-arm. My sisters and I broke our arm link apart to let the man with his dog coming toward us pass, but he didn’t. The white man whose tan shirt had a star fixed on its pocket stood in front of JimmyTrotter and us and didn’t move. His hat was like a cowboy hat with the same star pinned smack in the center.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff,” JimmyTrotter said. The girls parroted him, but I said nothing.
The white man, the sheriff, looked straight at JimmyTrotter. He didn’t return his easy smile. “Boy, what did I tell you about driving that wagon into town without a license?”
My cousin stiffened under the sheriff’s questions and rebuke and could only say, “Sorry, Sheriff Charles.”
“If you were sorry you wouldn’t be driving that vehicle down my roads until you turned sixteen.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff Charles.”
“Charles?” Vonetta asked. “Isn’t that—”
I gave her a quick “Hush,” and she sucked her teeth at me.
Fern was busy petting and hugging the bloodhound. He seemed to like it.
“Get from that dog,” the sheriff told her. “That vicious attack dog’ll chew you up and swallow you whole.”
But Fern didn’t move from the dog.
“Didn’t you hear me? That dog’s trained to attack Negroes. Now get from that dog.”
The dog looked up to Fern with eyes as sad and droopy as Caleb’s and panted for more love. I pulled Fern away from the sheriff’s dog. As sure as I looked up at that man’s face, I knew I had better.
The sheriff turned his attention back to JimmyTrotter. “You drive that vehicle back, son. But don’t let me find you behind the wheel till you’re sixteen and got a card in your wallet.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff Charles.”
“And don’t you be sneaking around driving at night, son. Lots of things happen at night to Negroes you don’t want to know about.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff Charles.”
“You driving that vehicle day or night, you already breaking the law. Nothing I can do for you if you break the law.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff Charles.”
Each time JimmyTrotter said “Yes, sir,” I felt my scalp baking. I heard Papa telling me to mind my mouth. I did what Papa said but I only grew hotter inside. The sheriff eyed me good and hard, probably knowing I was struggling to keep it in.
When the sheriff let us by, the girls still wanted their comic books and candy but I wouldn’t take anything from JimmyTrotter. If I asked him for Seventeen magazine, I’d have to keep silent about the sheriff, and I had things to say. On the ride back I decided that I’d stayed silent long enough.
“Why’d you let the Man oppress you?”
“Oppress me?” JimmyTrotter laughed, finding his old self.
“‘Yes, sir, Sheriff Charles.’”
“‘No, sir, Sheriff Charles,’” my sisters joined in.
If JimmyTrotter was embarrassed he didn’t let on. He just said, “Sheriff Charles is the law.”
“The people are the law,” I said.
“Power to the people,” they chorused.
We hit a bump. JimmyTrotter tossed his head back and laughed. “Aunt Ophelia told me about you all flying out to Oakland to be with that Cecile woman.”
“Our mother,” I said.
“And a poet,” Fern added.
Vonetta cleared her throat. “A black revolutionary poet.”
“Auntie told me all about it,” JimmyTrotter went on. “She said that Cecile got you all mixed up with the Black Panthers.” He laughed some more.
“Best summer of our lives was at the People’s Center,” I said.
“Better if we went to Disneyland like we were supposed to,” Vonetta said.
“Even better if we shook hands with Mickey and Minnie.”
“Well, keep making a fist and shouting ‘Power to the people!’ around here. Keep it up,” he warned.
I heard how JimmyTrotter meant it but Vonetta and Fern didn’t. They did what they heard and raised their fists and shouted “Power to the people!” and “Seize the time!” and “Right on!”
When we were done being loud and revolutionary we asked JimmyTrotter about the sheriff.
“Why does he have the same name as Ma Charles?”
“And the same dog?”
“And now that I think of it,” Vonetta said, “the same eyes as Big Ma.”
“That’s your blood cousin,” JimmyTrotter said. “Yours. Not mine.”
“That white man?” Vonetta asked.
“And his dog?” Fern asked.
I felt my cousin once again standing over me. Knowing more than I knew. We drove along.
“Ma Charles’s husband—your great-grandpa Henry—was kin to Sheriff Charles.”
“Ma Charles married a white man?” Vonetta asked. I would have asked the same question but Vonetta was awfully quick these days. Either that, or I at least thought before letting stuff fly out of my mouth.
“Not Uncle Henry,” he said. “His daddy’s father, Rufus Charles. Back then, Master Rufus Charles.” He said it like, Don’t yawl know anything? “The Charles family owned a good deal of the cotton around here, way back then. And the slaves.”
“And the slaves? Like his own son? How can you own a member of your family?” I said. “That’s just wrong.”
“Calm down, cuz,” JimmyTrotter said. “It’s just history. Or don’t they teach that in Brooklyn?”
“Down with slavery,” I said, my fist in the air.
“Get down, slavery. Get down and stay down,” Vonetta agreed.
Fern pointed her finger as if she was commanding a dog. “Heel, slavery!”
JimmyTrotter shook his head like we were ignorant lunatics. “You know slavery’s been over a hundred years, cuz.”
I could see Vonetta counting backward in her head and on her fingers. “One hundred and four years.”
“Didn’t seem like it to me,” I sang back. “‘Yes, sir, Master Charles. No, sir, Master Charles.’”
After no one said anything, Vonetta broke the silence. “So we’re white too?”
When we neared Ma Charles’s house, Caleb was already making a ruckus. Big Ma came outside and scolded him to hush, probably because she didn’t want Elijah Lucas to step out on his porch. Fern was the first to jump out of the station wagon. She raced over to Caleb, who sniffed and licked all over her and sang his sad dog song. She threw her arms around his neck and sang with him.
JimmyTrotter gave Vonetta one of the last two milk bottles and told her not to drop it. I had the other bottle.
“Are you kidding me?” she sassed. “I’m going to have a bowl of cornflakes with milk as soon as I get inside!” Vonetta said. If she cared as much about hurting Fern’s feelings or finding her missing watch as she cared for a bowl of cereal swimming in milk, most of her problems would be solved.
To Big Ma’s consternation, Mr. Lucas stepped out on his porch and called out, “Ophelia! Ophelia!” like her name was a song. Big Ma didn’t wave to him. She waved him off, like, Stop that! I don’t think it made a difference to Mr. Lucas.
“Don’t know why he makes a big noise of himself.”
“Caleb?” Fern asked.
Big Ma seemed mad, embarrassed, and tickled all at once. She said, “Um-hmm,” but I knew she wasn’t talking about the bloodhound.
Aunt Jemima, Who?
Once we learned that our great-great-grandfather on the Charles side was owned by his father, a white man, Fern couldn’t stop looking at Big Ma. Big Ma knew Fern had something on her mind other than when she could lick the cake batter from the bowl.
“All right, Fern. What you want?”
“Big Ma,” Fern said. “May I ask you a question?”
“You can ask,” Big Ma said. “Don’t mean I’ll answer.” Our grandmother knew a tough question when she heard it sneaking
up.
“Big Ma, why you wear a wig and an Aunt Jemima rag?”
Big Ma wasn’t expecting that one. Neither was I. “Aunt Jemima, what?” She stopped stirring. “Where’s my belt?”
Instead of jumping behind me like I expected, Fern threw her head back and laughed, all teeth and her pink tongue showing. Then Big Ma laughed.
“Little rascal.”
“But why, Big Ma? Why?”
I knew what Fern was asking. She wanted to know why Big Ma covered her hair when she had nothing to hide. Her hair wasn’t too short or patchy and balding. She didn’t have sores or bumps on her scalp. And even though she insisted we fry our hair to a crisp for Sunday services, she only had to pass the hot comb once, maybe twice, through her own hair on the one day of the week she deemed was proper to wear it without the wig. These days she took to cutting her hair in the back with her dress-pattern scissors to keep it from growing. I used to think it was because she liked wigs better than her own hair or that she thought black people’s hair was bad hair. My mother felt differently about hair, which was one reason why she and Big Ma didn’t get along. Cecile let her hair grow and grow in thick, natural braids, and she stuck pencils and pens in it.
I didn’t understand Big Ma and her hair, but it would have never occurred to me to ask her about it, or ask why ours wasn’t exactly like hers. But Fern was suddenly full of questions, starting with Big Ma’s wigs, scarves, and hair.
“Fern Gaither,” Big Ma said. “What do I look like I’m doing?”
“Stirring cake batter.”
“That’s right. Stirring. Now, suppose you took a big bite of lemon pound cake only to find more of your Big Ma’s hair in it than lemon frosting?”
Fern knew when she was being outfoxed and wouldn’t stand for it. “That’s not what I mean, Big Ma. I want to know why you cover your own hair all the time. Except on Sundays. Then you only wear your Sunday hat with the feather.”
“Because,” Big Ma said, “no one needs to know my family business.”
“You mean about your father’s—”
“Never mind about my father’s people and what’s underneath this wig and scarf. Just you never mind! All you have to do is keep your hair clean, braided, and out of the cake batter.” She went on stirring and muttering, and telling Fern to stop asking about things no one needs to know or there would be no cake for her.
Bambi’s Mother
I could smell the smoke of something cooking while we were still in the woods making our way over to Miss Trotter’s. I hoped no one noticed it until we were actually there, but Vonetta asked, “What’s that?”
“Smells good!” Fern said—then quickly added, “And bad.”
“Sure does,” I agreed, pretending it was a mystery when I knew what was happening over at Miss Trotter’s. I just didn’t want Fern to start crying and pulling my arm for us to turn back to Ma Charles’s house. We were here already and I didn’t want to stay on our side of the creek. There was nothing to do at Big Ma’s than watch the chickens fight over a cricket.
Miss Trotter and JimmyTrotter had a skinned deer roasting on a spit. JimmyTrotter cranked the handle to the spit and the deer turned around and around under a pit of burning coals. As we drew near, Fern, now close to me, close like she used to be, began to buckle at the knee. She was crying.
“Cut it out, baby,” Vonetta said.
Fern wasn’t up to fighting back. I could feel her folding into me.
“You cut it out,” I told Vonetta. “She’s your sister. Act like it.”
Miss Trotter caught sight of us and waved. “Just in time for barbecue!” Both Miss Trotter and Ma Charles called any meat roasting in an outdoor fire “barbecue,” when barbecue to us was sauce from the grocery store or sweet and spicy red dust on potato chips.
“No, no, no,” Fern meowed into me. She tried to pull me backward. I pulled her forward. “Come on, Fern. You don’t have to look at it. You can stay behind me.” And of course Vonetta said, “Come on, baby.” As much as I hated Vonetta’s meanness, her taunting was enough to prop Fern up and move her feet forward just to show Vonetta she wasn’t a baby. Fern grabbed a fistful of my top and stayed close to me.
The doneness of the animal going around and around said it had been cooking for a while. JimmyTrotter cut off pieces from the deer and put them in a pan and Miss Trotter salted the pieces. She had already been eating the barbecue.
“Come on, girls,” Miss Trotter said. “Come and get a treat.”
Vonetta, eager to please, grabbed a piece of meat and bit into it. She chewed and yummed like the actress that she was.
Fern cried out, “That’s no treat! That’s Bambi’s mother!”
JimmyTrotter started to tell his great-grandmother who Bambi was, but she put her hand up to him. “I know who Bambi’s mother is. A make-believe deer in the pictures. You see, young’n, I know. Now get over here. Come on.”
But Fern wouldn’t move.
“You,” my great-aunt said to me. “Let go of that girl.” Although it was the other way around, Ferns fists wrapped around the bottom of my top, I loosened Fern’s grip on my clothes and pushed her forward. “I don’t bite children,” she told Fern. “But I’ll give ’em a taste of the hickory switch if they’re bad.” She meant to jolly Fern. Vonetta, who wasn’t receiving any attention, rolled her eyes.
“Bambi is make-believe. This is a real deer. God-given to these woods to run about and breed.”
“Aunt Miss Trotter, God doesn’t want us to kill,” Fern said. “We surely shall not!”
Fern said it the way Big Ma would have been proud of, although Big Ma wouldn’t have appreciated that Fern talked back to Miss Trotter. Ma Charles, on the other hand, would have cackled and shaken her tambourine.
“God don’t want us to kill each other, young’n,” Miss Trotter said.
“Fern,” my baby sister corrected. “God don’t want us to kill each other, Fern.”
Miss Trotter turned to JimmyTrotter. “Boy, get me the biggest hickory switch you can find.”
JimmyTrotter kept basting and salting the meat.
We ate the smoky venison meat except Fern, who ate a piece of bread. Miss Trotter waited for Fern to ask for more to eat but Fern never asked.
Miss Trotter said to Fern, “This animal made an offering to us all and you won’t take it. Shame on you.”
Fern shrugged.
“This animal gave us her meat. We’ll share it with neighbors. And what we don’t eat, we’ll freeze for when there’s nothing. She doesn’t have much fat to her but she gave us her bones and hide. If it were a nice buck, I’d make good use of his horns. Everything the animal gives us is useful.”
Fern thought long and hard like she was at her desk figuring out homework. It would have been nice if she’d said, “Yes, Aunt Miss Trotter.”
Instead, she said, “Wish we could give it all back to her, Aunt Miss Trotter. Surely do.”
That evening Miss Trotter filled a tin pan with sliced venison and wrapped it tightly, placing it in Vonetta’s hands to carry. “Take this to your great-granny. She’d surely like to have it. But you don’t have to tell her I shot it with Daddy’s rifle. No. Don’t tell her that. But if you need to tell her something, tell her I brought the doe down with one shot and cleaned out all the buckshot myself. That is, if she’s worried about buckshot.”
“I’ll carry it,” I said, reaching to take the pan from Vonetta.
“No, no,” Miss Trotter said. “My dear one can carry it. She’s strong and eats all of her food.”
Her words were meant to make Fern feel badly, but Fern was in her world, humming and clapping. Almost the way Cecile did when she worked out her poems.
With the pan in her hands, Vonetta curtsied and we started back through the woods and over the creek. Vonetta’s politeness lasted only until we were out of Miss Trotter’s sight, and then she taunted Fern with the pan of cooked meat. I grabbed the pan out of Vonetta’s hand with a swift yank. It was a good thing Mis
s Trotter had wrapped that pan well. I heard “I hate you, Delphine” all the way home, but I didn’t care. Vonetta had to learn how to be a better sister to Fern, and I was going to teach her.
Vonetta pulled out all the stops and told Ma Charles almost word for word about how Miss Trotter shot the deer with her father’s rifle and cleaned out the buckshot. I knew Miss Trotter threw in that bit about her father’s rifle to rub salt in Ma Charles’s heart. That Slim Jim Trotter left his rifle with Miss Trotter’s mother and not hers. That it was probably true that Slim Jim Trotter spent more nights over the creek with Miss Trotter and her mother than here with Great-great-grandmother Livonia and Ma Charles when she was a little girl. But Slim Jim Trotter did make the chair Ma Charles sat in, and that was something.
If Miss Trotter had rubbed salt in Ma Charles’s heart, our great-grandmother didn’t let on. In fact, she clapped her hands and rubbed them together in anticipation when Big Ma unwrapped the meat.
“The Lord’s working on Miss Trotter,” Ma Charles said. “Let’s eat.”
When we sat down at the table, Fern said to Big Ma, “Why does Delphine get to say the dinner prayer? I can say it.”
Uncle Darnell didn’t have school that night and was seated at the table for supper. He winked at Fern.
Big Ma thought Bible school was “working on” Fern and that Fern had caught the spirit. Big Ma’s face brightened and she said, “Bless your heart, Fern. Go on. Bless this table.”
Fern cleared her throat, clasped her hands together, and lifted her turtle head high out of its shell.
Sorry, Chicken
Sorry, Deer
Sorry, Ham
Sorry, Cow
Sorry, Lamb
Chops are better
On a puppet
Or the lamb
They came from.
Baaaaaa—
But you can say
Amen.
Uncle Darnell said, “Amen,” and snapped his fingers beatnik style, and I followed suit, adding a “Baaaaa” to my “Amen.” Vonetta almost joined us but then stopped herself, refusing to take part in anything having to do with our uncle.
“The Lord’s not pleased,” Big Ma scolded. She pointed to Fern, who was proud of her protest poem disguised as our dinnertime prayer. “And you! Your head’s swelling up—trying to act like your no-mothering mother—while the rest of you stays puny because you won’t do right and eat what the Lord gave you. Mark my words. He won’t let you grow if you can’t offer Him a proper thanksgiving.”
Gone Crazy in Alabama Page 9
