by Randy Alcorn
“So am I, Grandma.” The two embraced, clinging to each other. After they talked awhile, Dani started asking her questions about her life on earth. Ruth pointed to a portal, illustrating her stories with the people, places, and events themselves.
“That’s Marse Kelly’s place, right there in Taliaferro County, Georgia. We lived in the shotgun houses, long log houses. They had three rooms, see, one behind the other. All us chillens slept in one end room, and the grown-ups, they slept in the other end room. The middle room, that was the kitchen where us cooked and et. There was five of us chillens: me and Dicey and Hamp and Annie and Shang. We wukked in the field when we was old enough, started when I was four.”
Dani was amazed at Ruth’s dialect. She had no trouble understanding her, nor did her speech send the message it might have on earth. She’d expected Ruth’s speech to be more refined than Zeke’s, but apparently Grandma had even less exposure to books and standard English than Great-Grandpa. The richness of Ruth’s voice, speaking now as it had spoken on earth, struck Dani as delightful. It was so unpolished and unsophisticated, yet so authentic, rich, and credible with Ruth’s own kind of eloquence. Perhaps, Dani thought, language reflected the unique character and history of the communicator. That explained all the languages and dialects of heaven. There was no one heavenly language, nor accent, nor grammar, nor vocabulary, just as there was no one color. Every dialect was there, each given over to the praise of Elyon.
“Us chillens slept on pallets. Them wheat straw mattresses was mostly for growed folks ’cause they was too heavy to sleep light, and they was the ones wukkin’ their fingers to the bone in the cotton pickin’s, so it was only right they got somepin’ softer. Us chillens, we could sleep on anything, and we shore enough did. Mostly slaves jus’ wukked till they died, but sometimes they’d be around as old folks, and the marses, they’d try to make ’em useful. Ol’ man Jasper, all he done was set by the fire all day wid a switch in his hand and tend the chillens whilst their mammies was wukkin’. Chillens minded better them days than now Mama, after wukkin’ all day, she’d still fix us up the best suppers in creation. See, Mama was a bird woman. When she saw a chicken, she saw dinner. When she prowled the barnyard, everything with feathers took to confessin’ their sins ’cause they had visions of bein’ dressed out by corncake, dodgers, and hoecake.” She laughed hard and long.
“Tell me about the meals,” Dani said.
“Now ain’t that jus’ like us peoples, to want to know about food?” She laughed a squeaky laugh that reminded Dani both of Obadiah and Clarence. “Well, chile, we done used to cook in the fireplace. It was one shore enough big somepin’, that fireplace, with all kinds o’ pots and skillets hangin’ round it. We’d go out bar’foots down to the river to fish, and we’d catch the biggest mess o’ fish you ever seed. We’d clean ’em and puts ’em in a pan and fries ’em in butter, and bless yo’ sweet life, Dani chile, it was sumpin’ if there ever was sumpin’.”
Dani laughed contagiously along with Ruth.
“Now, the Master, the real master I mean, the Carpenter, he caught his share o’ fish down there too. We’s had some feasts up here that make everything that was somepin’ back there seem like nothin’, and I keeps bein’ told we’s gonna has lots mo’. So I axed the Master heaps a times, it’s like a joke ’tween us now, ‘Sir, is we ever gonna have catfish fried in butter?’ And he keeps tellin’ me I’m gonna have to wait and see, and he says he’s got some surprises just for me, but he’s not gonna spoil it by tellin’ me everything now. That’s just like him, the Master. Always watchin’ out for us, always plannin’ to make what’s to come even better than what we gots now.”
“What else did you eat, Grandmother?”
“Well, back then eatin’ was somepin’ real big to us, and from watchin’ yo’ family gatherings I know that’s still true, girl. When we did the corn shuckin’ all day, we’d think about eatin’ some of that corn end of the day. And Christmas. What a time we coloreds had then! There was such doin’s and goin’s on. I’ll has to show you through the portal, but not till I tells you my stories, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind? I love it,” Dani said. “It’s part of my heritage I’ve never known.”
“Well, we’d has cake of all sorts, all kinds of geese and wild game. We’d eat lightbread, pecans, dried peaches, and apples. Had stores of everything we raised— corn and peas and cane and taters and goobers. Et hominy grits and red-eye gravy. And what vittles we had on Christmas! We’d roast those taters in the ashes—nothin’ like that. And we’d talk about Jesus and tell the stories from the Good Book. And when I was little, no one knowed nothin’ about Santa Claus, never heard o’ him till after the war. Christmas was jus’ Jesus back then, and that’s all you wanted. We brung out the fiddles and guitars, and I was plenty biggity myself and liked to cut a step or two.”
Dani laughed, putting her arms around Ruth, as the two watched her dancing through the portal.
“I’d dance bar’foot usually ’cause shoes was the worstest trouble them days. They jus’ never seemed to fits. When I gots up here I asked my Jesus, ‘Could you tell me one thing? Am I gonna ever again has to put up wid shoes that don’t fits, ’cause if I is jus’ tell me right now, straight out. I can take it.’ He just laughed and laughed and promised me, ‘Never again, Ruthie, never again.’”
Dani saw through the portal Ruth first as a child, then as a young mother with her slave family. As she watched, she saw the children sick one night.
“How did you care for a sick family? It must have been hard without modern medicines.”
“My mammy, the first thing she always done for sore throat was to make us up a tea of red oak bark with alum. In the springtime, scurvy grass tea cleant us out. There was all sorts of remedies for miseries they don’t even has no more. The po’ little chillens would tote hoes bigger than they was, and they little black hands and legs bleeding where they was scratched by the brambledy weeds. But our mamas and daddies would care for us, make up some medicines from roots and such, and paste ’em on us. Some folkses hung the left hind foot of a mole on a string round their babies’ necks to make ’em teethe easier, but not Mama. She said that was plain foolishness.
“Ol’ Marse Kelley, James Kelley—not his son Donald, who was a right stupid man—ol’ James Kelley now he was somepin’, that man, all the time hasin’ them ‘portant mens up at the big house, talkin’ ’bout the business of this and the business of that. There was bankers and lawyers and pol’ticians and all these mens that thought they was mo’ important than the angel Gabriel, and I’s sorry to say there’s not many of ’em even made it to this world.”
“Did you ever learn how to read, Grandma Ruth?”
“Heavens no, chile, what you think I used to be back then, white or sumpin’?” She laughed. “There wasn’t no schoolin’ for none of us negroes. We wasn’t no eddicated people, that fo’ shore. And the marses, lots of ’em would whips you if dey caught you tryin’ to read. Them days we was taught to be more scairt of books than snakes.”
“Your father learned to read,” Dani said, looking at Zeke.
“Yes, he did. Some of them negroes learned to read without the marse knowin’, includin’ my daddy, Zeke. He’s a fine talkin’ man, now ain’t he? But I was separated from him too early. Didn’t gets to know him for long in that old world, but I sure has here. I’s so proud of him.”
Ruth, glowing with respect, reached out her hand to Zeke’s beaming face. Dani wondered how many slave families were united here and how many relationships uprooted on earth had now blossomed.
“One of the first things I learned when I got to heaven was how to read, and guess who taught me. My daddy Zeke! I been readin’ ever since. After the war I went to a farm where I’d heard Daddy’d been buried. They said he’d tried to escape on the railroad and a kind footwasher gave him a Christian burial. We couldn’t find his grave though—somebody’d dug it up ’cause it was next to white graves and they said that was wrong
. I cried ’cause I didn’t know where he was buried, but I looked up to heaven and said, ‘Someday I’s gonna see you again, Daddy’ And sixty years later when I left that world for this one, the first face I sees, after the Master himself, says to me, ‘It’s someday now, darlin’,’ and he throws his arms around me and picks me up and I realize who it is and I cries out, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’”
Dani watched as daughter and father gazed into each other’s eyes, reliving the joy of their reunion as if it were this very moment, speaking volumes to each other without saying a word.
Clarence awoke suddenly. The red digits told him 3:37 A.M. He heard someone working stealthily on the front-door lock. He got up and grabbed Jake’s twelve-gauge shotgun from the closet, fumbling in the dark for the box of double-aught shells. He popped in five of them by feel, just as he’d practiced. He knew if he had to shoot it, he’d destroy half the house. But even if the intruder managed to shoot Clarence, he’d make sure he wouldn’t get back up to take on the rest of the family. One shot from the gauge, and no liberal judge would help this criminal. He’d be lawn fertilizer.
Clarence sneaked carefully out of the bedroom where his sister and niece had been killed, barrel out in front of him, pointing slightly upward. He rounded the corner from the bedroom to the hallway, to the fringes of the living room. He hesitated a moment before rounding the next corner. He heard the front door quietly open.
“Who’s there?” he yelled, pumping the shotgun with the quick sliding motion, then applying slight pressure to the trigger. Geneva heard both voice and weapon and screamed from the bedroom. “Clarence!”
The shrill sound of her scream tightened his trigger finger another millimeter. He felt the trigger pushing back against him, inviting him to squeeze just a little harder. He heard the footfalls stop and a slight groan maybe four feet away in the darkness. He pointed the gun at what he figured was chest level.
“Stop where you are or you’re dead,” Clarence yelled.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
He held the gun steady at the voice.
“Who are you?” Clarence demanded.
“It’s me.”
“Ty? What the…?”
Ty said nothing. Clarence lowered the gun and rushed to a light switch.
“What you think you’re doin’, boy? You almost got your head blown off!” Clarence’s voice squealed with adrenaline. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? I ought to…”
Suddenly he heard the frightened whimper of a fourteen-year-old boy. He laid down the shotgun and put his arms around Ty. They hugged in the stillness, now joined by Geneva, she under Clarence’s right arm, Ty under his left. Clarence reached his hands to each of their faces. He could feel hot tears flooding both hands.
“Jess has a column idea,” Winston told Clarence. “I thought it was pretty good.”
The old curmudgeon opinion page editor rarely thought any idea was good, even coming from the managing editor, so Clarence listened attentively.
“White kids attending mostly black schools.”
“Hmm. Interesting,” Clarence said. “We’ve done blacks and other minorities at white schools. This would show how white kids respond to being the minority, huh? Probably just like black kids.”
“Probably. But maybe we’ll learn something.”
“Good. I like it. How about I call the principal at Jefferson? What’s his name, Fielding? Yeah, Jay Fielding. Maybe they can help me recruit some volunteers for the interviews.”
“Yeah. Then better contact their families for permission. Can’t be too careful these days.”
“I’ll get on it.”
Clarence went back to his desk and called Mr. Fielding, who’d always struck him as the kind of black educator the cities needed more of. Compassionate, yet firm and disciplined.
“Sounds like an interesting idea, Mr. Abernathy” Fielding said. “How about I talk to our junior and senior English teachers? They could pass out a sign-up sheet in class, and we’ll get you some volunteers. All right?”
“Great. Thanks for your help.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll have my secretary call you back in a day or two. You can come interview them on campus, if you want to.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“Oh, you’ve talked with our vice principal about Tyrone, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. Is there another problem?”
“Just more of the same. Doesn’t seem like he wants to be here. I’d encourage you to spend some time with him, establish open communication.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
What am I going to do with that kid?
Clarence walked into the Tab’s multicultural committee meeting, in the big glass-enclosed editorial office.
“Well, if it isn’t Clarence Incognegro.” The voice with the dismissive tone belonged to Jeremy, a light-skinned black who was arts and entertainment department editor. “Just heard one the other day that made me think of you. What do they call a black man at a conservative dinner?”
“What? Smart?”
“No. Keynote speaker.” Jeremy slapped his thigh, accompanied by several guffaws from the five others at the table.
“That’s pretty funny, Jeremy. At least you thought so. Okay, I got one for you. What do they call a forty-five-year-old liberal with a teenage daughter?”
Jeremy shrugged.
“A conservative.”
“And you know what they call a liberal who’s just gotten mugged?” Clarence asked.
“Let me guess. A conservative.”
“You’re catchin’ on, Jeremy. There’s hope for you yet. Next election I’ll get you an Alan Keyes bumper sticker to paste over your faded Jesse Jackson!”
Three more people walked in, one of them Jess Foley, who as managing editor chaired this meeting. “Okay, gang, let’s get down to business,” Jess said. “We have a letter here from Matt Engstrom, over in Metro. It concerns last week’s diversity training seminar. All of us were there, right? Okay, here’s what Matt has to say:
I appreciate and agree with the Trib’s continued efforts to understand and respect minorities. However, at the diversity training session last Thursday the speaker made continuous attacks on the character and credibility of white males. I don’t consider myself defensive, but the cumulative effect of these references took a toll on me. Here are just two examples. I took notes and I believe I got both of them word for word.
“Being born a white male in America is like being born on third base and imagining you’ve hit a triple.” And, “White men have so long enjoyed being in the position of power and privilege that they resent having to compete with women and minorities.”
That’s painting with an awfully broad brush. Seems as if we’re teaching people to assume white men are always jerks. My thought is this—if color and gender shouldn’t matter, why don’t we stop kicking around white males?
“Okay” Jess said. “I think Matt deserves a reply. Comments?”
“I agree with what the speaker said,” Myra volunteered.
“Engstrom’s just being defensive. Both quotes are right on target,” Jeremy said. “If you ask me, they didn’t go far enough.”
Everyone looked at Clarence, ready for his comeback. He just sat there, looking preoccupied.
“Clarence, I assume you have an opinion on this?” Jess said, looking concerned, as if Clarence’s failure to start an argument suggested he might be seriously ill.
“I confess there’s something else on my mind today,” Clarence said.
“Something we can help you with?” Jess said.
“Well, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this. I guess it’s time to tell you this committee has helped change my mind on something. This is going to be a surprise, I suppose, but…well, you’ve moved me over to a pro-choice position.”
“What?” Looks of shock and disbelief spread around the table. Clarence didn’t sound as if he was joking.
“I’ve decided it’s a civil rig
hts issue. I believe a person has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body. It’s none of our business what choice she makes. We have no right to impose our morals on others. Whether I personally like someone’s choices or not is irrelevant. She should have the freedom to make her own choices.”
“Clarence, I’m shocked. But really pleased,” Pamela said.
“Well, it hasn’t been easy to change, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. I guess I’m just tired of being anti-choice. I want to be more tolerant.”
“Wow. Are you considering a column on this?” Peter Sallont asked.
“Well, I’ve thought about it. But I was asked not to do any more columns on abortion, remember? So I better not.”
“Well, I imagine this would be an exception,” Peter said.
“Do you think so?” Clarence asked.
“Definitely,” Myra said.
“Clarence…,” Jess measured his words, “are you shooting straight with us?”
“Of course. I do feel a little embarrassed I’ve been so blind. I mean, people have the right to do what they want with their own bodies—it seems so obvious now.” They sat there staring. “Yeah,” Clarence went on, “and that’s why I’ve also finally realized now that every man has the right to rape a woman if that’s his choice.”
Several gasps didn’t keep Clarence from continuing. “After all, it’s his body, and we don’t have the right to tell him what to do with it. He’s free to choose, and it’s none of our business what choice he makes. We have no right to impose our morals on him. Whether I personally like the choice of rape or not, he should have the freedom to make his own choices. Now, I’m not saying I’m pro-rape, mind you, just pro-choice about rape. So, do you really think I should do a column on this? Maybe I will.”
The committee members stared at him, displaying everything from outrage to extreme disappointment.
