Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed

by Virginia Hamilton

  Her mama’s voice had been not so much loud as it was soft-edged, and hard and strong everywhere else but the edge of it.

  “Jimmy, Jimmy,” Marva Mills began. “Put down that paper, Jimmy. You know what I’m here for. Lu called you when I went out the back door. Why come you didn’t come after us? Stop that boy of yours from doing what he was doing in the wood?”

  They had heard Uncle Jimmy’s paper when his sister Marva snatched it from his hands. “I’m talkin’ to you!”

  They all had known what Uncle Jimmy’s expression would be. Hangdog. Big was just like him. You tell him he’s wrong, he then knew it and hung his head.

  Aunt Leah was there in the kitchen, still at the table, with Bay Sister, all dressed up, on her lap. Leah hadn’t been looking at anything in particular. She had her arms around Bay Sister’s waist, holding her tight. She had snuggled Bay Sister’s neck. One of the sparkling earrings Bay Sister wore hung down the bridge of Aunt Leah’s nose. Willie Bea had seen everything. Grand was there in the kitchen, and Aunt Mattie Belle. Aunt Mattie had held a sliver of apple pie before Willie Bea’s mouth. Willie Bea had opened her mouth and gobbled the delicious, almost hot pie. Aunt Mattie gave Bay Sis a piece, too. It paid to stay close in a Sunday company kitchen. All movement and offering done in silence so they could listen to what went on in the front room. Grand had sighed heavily, but she would not get in the middle of a hot discussion between two of her children. They had all heard as much as they could, from the front room.

  Willie Bea had heard quite a lot.

  “He had pumpkins on my baby’s head,” she heard her mama say, in the front room. There was fury under the calm sound of Marva Mills’ voice. “He stole the child away from here! Big took my child downtown and bought him a pint of ice-cream. Probably rode Bay on the handlebars of his bike. And if that’s not dangerous enough—”

  “I tole him a hunnerd times not to do it no more,” Uncle Jimmy interrupted.

  “Telling’s not enough,” Sister Marva said. “Telling don’t do doodly-squat!”

  “Then Big takes my baby to the wood,” they heard her say. “Way in the wood! And all kinds of hoboes and bums travelin’ the roadways and restin’ in there.”

  “Now. Now. I keep a good watch on my wood. You know—”

  “Shut up, Jimmy. We all know you catch stray men in there, you fine them, tellin’ them if they don’t pay, you’ll take them to the sheriff. If they got but a penny, a few cents, you take it. That’s why you didn’t stop Big. There wasn’t any money in it. You don’t do anythin’ won’t turn a profit! You make me sick!”

  “Big. Big! Come in here!” Promptly, Jimmy Wing made an effort to put things right.

  “You know perfectly well, Jimmy, Big’s nowhere in this house,” Marva said.

  “Now, how I know that?” Uncle Jimmy said, pleading. “I thought he come back with you.”

  “He ran from me,” Marva said. “I turned my switch on him; I whipped his hands. I slapped his face, too. I would’ve done more, I was so mad, but my Willie Bea has better sense than I do, sometimes.”

  “You have no right to whup him,” Uncle Jimmy said peevishly.

  “I didn’t whup him. You are gonna whup him. Get up from there, Jimmy. You find Big and give him what he’s got comin’.”

  “Marva, it Sunday …” They couldn’t hear what else Uncle Jimmy had to say. Willie Bea had felt she could almost hear Gramp and Uncle Donald being quiet in the front room. Goodness. She would have hated to be in there. She knew darn well that if she’d been her mama, she wouldn’t’ve had the heart to go after Uncle Jimmy. How could you go after someone who would melt away from you, just like hot vanilla ice-cream?

  Anyway, that’s the way it happened, Willie Bea finished thinking. She hugged her knees, sitting on Gramp’s cement steps.

  Uncle Jimmy hadn’t bothered to move his car. He had cut across his field over to his house. Willie Bea didn’t know whether he had found Big and Hewitt and Little. If he had—and he probably had: he knew all of their hiding places by now—it would be Big who would get it.

  Poor Big! Let it not hurt him too much. Oh, let Little get it just once!

  Willie Bea sat there, rocking back and forth, listening to sounds coming through the screens of the close, Sunday-cooking house. Surveying the whole scene before her. Her own house, which was quiet, although her mama and Bay Brother were inside. After Uncle Jimmy, her mama had gone back home. The Dayton road was quiet. It might stay empty of automobiles for long periods on Sunday. All homes prepared the Sunday meal about this time. Even the farmers who must harvest through the night would break for Sunday supper. Willie Bea let the wonder smells of food cooking surround her and make her mouth water. Once she closed her eyes in order to separate turkey aroma from cranberry, pumpkin pie from candied sweet potatoes. Sitting still like that, breathing the smells, her empty stomach churned.

  Haven’t had a thing all day but some of Papa’s black coffee. My, I forgot to eat my toast and bacon!

  It didn’t matter now that she’d forgotten her breakfast. For all at once she spied something gleaming, something white, way off down the road. Almost hidden by surrounding trees, she studied that glimpse of white a moment. She cupped her hands around her eyes to see better.

  “Yes. Yes!” she whispered and leaped from the porch. Willie Bea was across the road in a flash. She needn’t look down the road now. But she did, couldn’t help herself. And then she saw that rolling gait, that man, white shirt and dark blue pants; shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Carrying his suit jacket, and the weather had turned cool. Still, he would not roll his sleeves down. When she saw the light of her life in the gleaming, starched white shirt, she sped inside her house.

  She wouldn’t tell her mama, not yet. Willie Bea heard her mama in the kitchen. Very quietly, she closed the screen and turned right, where the stairs began behind the front door. She took the stairs two at a time, making no sound in her bare feet. She knew where to walk on the stairs so as not to cause them to creak.

  She went into the west bedroom, which she shared with Bay and Bay Sis. There was her brother asleep in his crib. The crib had three slatted wood sides. The fourth side was pushed up against the wall. And it was missing its wood slats. Bay could get out of the crib any time he wanted simply by planting his feet against the wall and pushing. The crib would roll away every time, and Bay would climb out.

  Now, Willie Bea saw that her brother was asleep. But he was fretful in his sleep, making slight moaning sounds.

  He’ll wake up any minute, Willie Bea thought.

  She knelt down beside the double bed she shared with her sister and felt underneath. Found four shoes and chose the larger pair that were her own.

  She pulled out the Mary Janes that had her stockings bunched inside. The shoes were black patent leather with just one strap across the instep. Her sister had shoes exactly like her own, only smaller. They were the best shoes Willie Bea and her sister owned. They were allowed to wear them on Sundays and when company came. But they wore them only at dinnertime, or to church. They never wore them while running around in the grass or in the fields. Bare feet were fine for that type of play.

  Hurriedly, Willie Bea pulled on her brown stockings, smoothing them up to her knees, and slipped on her shoes. Rushed from the house as quietly as she had come inside. Down the road she looked, and hurried toward the figure making its certain way toward her. The man was still too far away for her to see his face clearly. But she didn’t have to see his face to know who he was.

  Papa!

  How could she not recognize that walk and the way he carried his jacket just so over one arm?

  Mr. Jason Mills, my papa!

  Her papa had one bandy leg. It was his right leg. While the figure of him was straight and tall, that one bandy leg was bowed out from the high thigh every time he took a step. It was his only flaw. Not really a flaw. It was the reason Willie Bea could recognize him. And his white shirt. The shirt moved beside the low,
mostly bare branches a certain way, in the rhythm of the bandy leg. It seemed to roll a bit from side to side.

  She saw now that the arm that carried the jacket also carried the Sunday paper pressed against her papa’s chest. In the other hand, her papa swung a large berry bucket.

  Ohhhh! thought Willie Bea, for she knew what must be in the bucket.

  What kind? Jason Mills must’ve stopped downtown. The grocery would be closed. But he would knock on the grocer’s side door, as folks did every Sunday and ask, “Newby, what’d you have left?”

  And Newby Bishop, the grocer, might say, “I got a little chocolate. I got some strawberry. But all the vanilla is gone, Jason.”

  “That’s all right,” her papa would tell Newby. “The kids don’t care. Just give me what you got.”

  But they did care. They would take what was given, but they cared a lot about the kinds of ice-cream their papa brought home for a special Sunday supper. Bay loved vanilla. Bay Sis loved chocolate. Willie Bea and her mama were partial to strawberry.

  She hurried along the side of the road toward her papa. Waving the whole time.

  Why won’t he wave back to me? she wondered. And knew why. Well, he might rumple his suit jacket over his arm. And he’s got that berry bucket in the other hand.

  She kept waving and skipping. When he was no more then twenty feet from her, Willie Bea stopped.

  Oh, he was the nicest-looking man! Her papa. His hair had grown silver all along the edges of his temples. He had dark brown hair that wasn’t too short, and it was gray, a just-right gray along the sides. He had a big, pleasant face and it smiled often. He had laugh lines around his eyes. He tried never to look worried around his children. Jason Mills worked seven days a week making fancy desserts for a restaurant nine miles away. He was happy to have work in these times. Her mama called what her papa made at the restaurant fancy deserts just for a laugh. Her papa hitched rides to work and from work every day. Hardly a day passed that he didn’t get a ride soon from motor cars and trucks going and coming on the main roadway on the other side of town. Each day he got up at six and was home by three or three-thirty, having made all of the deserts that were needed.

  The desserts he made were not like what came out of Grand Wing’s kitchen or even Willie Bea’s own kitchen. Her papa made cakes with icing and curlicues like nothing Willie Bea had ever seen before. Grand said you had to have equipment to bake fancy like her papa. And only the best restaurants had such equipment.

  Uncle Jimmy thought it was a side-splitter that a grown man spent his time baking, and double-boiling chocolate sauce. He and Little often laughed about it. Uncle Donald never said much about what his sister’s husband did besides farming and keeping hogs. But when the subject came up, he and Gramp, too, kind of played with their watch bobs.

  They believe it’s sissy work, Willie Bea thought now. But I know better.

  Then her father was there, bending over her, surrounding her with his kind self. Oh, the scent of him! Willie Bea got a whiff of what she suspected was his Burma Shave. She closed her eyes and his face brushed her face.

  “Willie Beatrime,” he said softly. “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t come to meet me every Sunday.”

  “Yeah, Papa?” she said. “Really?” She was so pleased to be needed.

  “Some Sundays I’m so fed up with walking, I don’t think I’m goin’ to make it. But then, what I see standin’ so still way down the road?”

  “Me!” she exclaimed.

  “And no other better than you,” her papa said.

  She took his suit jacket and the newspaper. That way, her papa could put his arm around her shoulder. He did this, patting her a moment. She walked with him, closely with him. And his arm around her was heavy, somewhat, but it was good.

  “Mostly everybody’s over home,” she told her papa. “Grand and Aunt Mattie Belle and Aunt Lu and Mama, cookin’ up a storm.”

  “A thunderstorm?” he said, acting shocked.

  Willie Bea laughed. “Papa, you know what I mean!”

  “A hail storm, this time of year?”

  “Papa, stop it now.” She giggled up at him. “I mean, they are cookin’ real good food, too.”

  “I bet they are, too,” he said. “And Gramp and Uncle Donald and Jimmy in the front room—highballs and papers.”

  “How’d you know that, Papa?” she asked.

  “If they not harvestin’, they have to be sittin’ in the front room.”

  When he looked down at his daughter again, she looked serious. “What else?” he asked.

  “Aunt Leah is here,” she told. “And guess what? Aunt Leah figured my vibrations.”

  “Your what?” said her papa.

  “My vibration numbers,” Willie Bea said. “My vital number is three and my lucky number combination is one-two-three.”

  “That and a penny will get you a sweet,” said her papa. He smiled on Willie Bea. “What else?” he said again.

  “Bay Sis got Aunt Leah first,” Willie Bea said peevishly. “Sittin’ on Aunt Leah’s lap. All made up and with a diamond necklace and diamond earrings. Shoot, I don’t care.”

  “You all do make over Leah so!” her papa said, shaking his head. “You just wait till Christmas. Then it will all even out.”

  “Really?” said Willie Bea. “Oh, I can’t wait!” But she would have to wait. And she did feel better knowing that by Christmas she would have diamonds, too.

  “What else?” asked her papa.

  “Well,” she said. “Big. He did it again.”

  Her papa was silent. She looked up at him and he was staring grimly down the road. “Papa, Big would never hurt Bay Brother,” she said.

  “Don’t ever say never,” he said absently.

  “But he wouldn’t,” she said. “Big wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

  “Oh, not intentionally, I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean, by accident. There’s only one thing to do, because Big and the rest of you are so sure—too sure.”

  “I’m not lyin’,” Willie Bea said. “Big can’t miss. He never has.”

  “He can miss. You must understand that. He can,” her papa said. “Anyone can. Just like you and Little can fall from Uncle Jimmy’s high beam.”

  Willie Bea was so shocked, she couldn’t move. Her papa knew!

  Gently, her papa urged her forward with a slight pressure of his hand on her shoulder.

  “You think I don’t know what my girl is doing? You think I wasn’t a young’un once myself?” he said. “I would be some kind of father if I didn’t worry over you and your sister and brother. If I didn’t foresee all of the danger there can be for you out in this countryside.”

  Willie Bea hung her head.

  “There’s danger enough in this ole world without you makin’ some more,” he said gently. “Willie Bea.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Before your mama finds out.”

  “What?” she whispered.

  “No more. You’re not to walk that high beam ever again. If you were to fall, you could be killed. And you can fall. Don’t ever think you can’t.”

  “I never have,” Willie Bea said softly.

  Her papa sighed, patting her.

  “Well, think on this, then. You know how smaller ones will follow their older brothers and sisters—what if Bay Sis decided to follow you and Little? One time she tries it by herself. What then?”

  Willie Bea was silent. She hadn’t thought of that. Of course her sister might follow. Even Bay Brother was known to follow after Willie Bea.

  After a moment Willie Bea nodded. She did understand. But giving up the high beam was hard to do.

  “I want a promise,” her papa said.

  They were close to home now. Just a corner more and walking to the house was all the farther they had to go.

  Why couldn’t home be that much closer? she wondered. Then maybe I wouldn’t have to say.

  She could feel her papa’s gaze on her. She imagined the gaze made her hea
d and neck, her back grow hot. His hand on her shoulder grew heavier.

  When she looked at him, his face was stern, closed. It was as if a large, empty space had come between them.

  She looked away. “I promise,” she said. And her heart was heavy. For how could she keep from walking the high beam? It was always there, waiting for her.

  “Take this bucket over home,” he told her. “You lookin’ nice today, Willie Bea,” he added, releasing her.

  “Thank you,” she said. She felt heavy and dull inside. She gave her papa his jacket and paper.

  Her mama came out of the house to greet her husband. She came near the road, standing on the path that led to the house.

  “Miz Marva,” her papa said.

  “Jason,” her mama said.

  “Had a good day,” he said, folding her mama close.

  Willie Bea hurried over home to have Grand put the melting ice-cream on ice in the icebox. Willie Bea’s family had a refrigerator that ran on electricity. But Grand would have nothing but her icebox. And it was true, there was no better treat than a chunk of ice. Wrap it in a piece of newspaper and hold it in your hand. And you, slurping the melt on a hot day.

  The berry bucket full of ice-cream was covered with wax paper and had a metal lid over that. It was still cold on the sides. Willie Bea got it over home before all the ice-cream melted.

  We’ll be eatin’ in just a while, now that Papa’s home.

  Good desert, she thought. Nothing fancy. She put the pledge she had made her papa out of her mind.

  5

  There were ten at the big table in the dining room. Bay Brother got to eat with the grown folks. He sat in a high chair next to Marva, his mama.

  “Kingsley, baby, you want some sweet yams? Look how he growin’ on my candied yams!” Grand Wing was saying.

  Willie Bea could hear the talk from the dining room when she paid attention. It was as if she were eating in there with all the grown folks. But most of the time she liked being in the kitchen at the round table. In the kitchen, the food was close at hand. There were still green beans in one pot and baked corn in a glass oven-dish. Any time Willie Bea needed another helping of anything, she would scoot back her chair and take a step or two. Get whatever she wanted. Take a hot roll right out of the oven, too. And churned butter from a crock in the icebox. Everything right at hand.