A Treasure of Gold

by Piper Huguley

  It had been wrong to kiss Nettie—a good country girl. She would, understandably, want more from him. But he couldn’t give more without damaging himself and Goldie. He couldn’t imagine how it could hurt any more than it already did. But protection of his little daughter had to come first.

  The next day, Nettie was happy to leave the suffocating space the house had become since her family arrived. They had all opted to stay in Ruby and Adam’s brownstone. She offered to stay with Mags and Asa, but the Morsons insisted she stay with them, probably to get a closer look at her to see if she would change or grow two heads since she had shown interest in a man.

  It didn’t matter. Jay had said everything that he needed to say yesterday in the way he had left her side. Ever since then, the questions had run through her mind. Why were Jay and Goldie in her life? Was it to give her the sense of what she would miss as a woman? So she would know how to advise others?

  Much of the week, Nettie showed Em how to make breakfast, get Goldie to school and make dinner for the numbers kingpin.

  And Jay was unfailingly polite to her. How kind of him.

  He understood all too well when she said that she should take dinner with her family. Since they were in town. Goldie didn’t approve, but Jay’s hard gazes at her quieted the little girl down. The disappointment showed so clearly in Goldie’s eyes and hurt her in her chest.

  The only difference was on Saturday when he pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to her. “See you in the morning.”

  She stiffened her arm to stop jolting against him as Jay handed her the piece of metal. That’s all it was. But he still believed in her and wanted her to have the service. His interest must count for something.

  Nettie really didn’t expect most of her family to come. This was the Sunday after Easter, a time when people’s presence or omission would be more likely noted, and she didn’t want them to have to suffer any from being missed.

  She used the key Jay had given her to open the storefront. But the tables and chairs were already set up. Jay had probably seen to that yesterday before he left work. It was thoughtful of him, but she knew it didn’t mean anything.

  She got busy making coffee and put out a tray of doughnuts Ruby’s cook had made. Nettie thought that she might come—the woman had privately confessed her discomfort with the “high tone” style of Freedom Christian and she had warmed to the woman’s critique. That was precisely whom she was starting this ministry for.

  The door swung open and Goldie and Jay came through the door. Goldie came skipping over, and after Nettie kissed her, she set the little girl to putting out song sheets on the chairs—one for each person.

  “Thank you for setting up the chairs.”

  “It was no problem. Gave the fellows something to do as we finished up the week’s receipts.”

  Silence.

  She smoothed the sheets of her message up on the dais perched at the far end of the storefront. Nettie pretended to be engrossed in practicing and finessing her message, but she wasn’t.

  Jay sat on one of the sofas, looking at the song sheet. He kept smoothing his tie down, over and over, in an endearing gesture that made him look as if he was extremely uncomfortable. He was. She was.

  She cleared her throat and spoke first. “I never said how sorry I was you had to endure the Bledsoe smothering. I’m used to it, and it never came across to me before how someone else might have to take it.”

  “Used to it? What do you mean?”

  “I’m in the middle so I get it from all sides. Everyone else is paired up in the family. Mama and Daddy. Ruby and Mags. Delie and Em. Now, since they got husbands, even they pair up against me—Asa and Adam. But I pair up with the one who matters most. So I guess I’m all right.”

  “No doubt. But you don’t think that you deserve protection?”

  “Maybe. I never thought of myself as a woman who was ever going to get it. I’m fine without it.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Jay uncrossed his legs and stood up.

  “Well, if you thought that it was such a terrible thing, why did you leave?” Where had those words come from? It was not her way to be confrontational.

  “I sensed…I felt that these were family things and I was an intrusion.”

  She stepped over to him, feeling very powerful in her new Mary Jane pumps. “You’ve made my point, then. You’re my employer, not my family, and that was why you left, wasn’t it?”

  Jay said nothing once again.

  “Then that’s all I needed to know.”

  She steadied herself when she went to the corner to don her white robe. The door swung open again and Ruthie, Ruby’s cook, came through the door with her younger sisters. Her disappointment at Jay’s lack of response was helped—some—by seeing her Em and Delie there.

  “Hey, I wasn’t expecting to see you all here. Please have some of Ruthie’s delicious doughnuts and some coffee.”

  “Yeah, Mama didn’t want us to come,” Delie said, munching on a doughnut and arranging her long legs in a chair. “But when Ruthie said she was coming, we had an escort and it was okay.”

  “Someone from the family should come and support you,” Em said quietly. She and Ruby were the sisters who resembled each other the most. They were both short and petite and had big freckles across their noses. They had the lightest complexions too—Ruby’s like cream and Em’s more like a finer, midgrade maple syrup. Now that she was eighteen and not liable to grow anymore, it was clear that she and Ruby looked the most alike. However, Em was quiet and respectable, nowhere near the troublemaker that Ruby was, so it was surprising to hear this from her.

  “Thanks. I mean, thank you both.”

  “It has been so many years since we have heard you sing—that is a blessing from God I have been looking forward to.” Delie chomped on one doughnut and reached for another. “Hey, how are you, little girl?”

  Goldie came up to her and immediately became the doughnut patrol, telling Delie she’d had enough until the others came.

  “She’s cute. This your daughter?” Delie gestured to Jay.

  “Yes she is.”

  “If you married him, Net, you would get this little one as a daughter. And everyone always thought you wouldn’t have kids. That’s awesome. And I would be your auntie. Say Auntie Delie,” Delie directed Goldie, who bristled at being told what to do.

  She shook her head at the interchange. When would Delie grow out of her brash behavior? Some part of her hoped that she never would.

  Four more people came, including Lem, and at the stroke of nine, she began her service.

  “Judgment is one quality that belongs to God. Only God can judge what matters. When we judge, we’re pointing at people. We forget there are three fingers are pointing back at ourselves. We need to reflect on what makes us imperfect vessels for his word.”

  Nettie raised her arms and began a hymn, “For His Word.” The waves of doubt that Jay had caused when they spoke this morning and what happened last night began to recede. She closed her eyes, letting the music soothe her.

  Suddenly, the sounds of a piano began to intrude on her sensibility. Her eyes flew open. Jay was there at the piano, picking out the notes of the song, matching her voice, perfectly. Strangely enough, the piano was in tune, and as she sang the chorus again and, Jay continued to join her.

  The way they sang together was mesmerizing. She couldn’t stop singing, wanting to maintain the beauty of the music, but at some point she had to.

  It was too much. Pricks of tears stung the edges of her of her eyelids as she reflected on the rarity of the music.

  When the song came to an end, Delie clapped her hands. “Amen!” she shouted, and everyone laughed and clapped with her.

  Shouts of “amen” echoed throughout the tiny storefront. Nettie blinked her eyes rapidly to avoid crying, but it didn’t work. The tea
rs spilled down her cheeks.

  Like through a looking glass, she could see what God’s plan was for her. She was at home in this newfound church home, but some part of her, a very human part, wished that Jay and Goldie could share in it with her.

  She already knew, though, the lesson that Goldie would have to struggle to learn in the coming years.

  Negro girls didn’t always get what they wanted in life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Clean. New. Different. Those were the words to describe how Jay felt after hearing Nettie sing and give her gentle message. His heart gladdened when he could play a part in helping Nettie by accompanying her on the piano. How could he come back to the storefront after that?

  He lay in his bed on Monday morning, trying to face the day ahead of him, knowing that it would be impossible to keep up the policy game. He had to get out. Now. It was a puzzle, though, to think about how to get rid of it because if he split it there might be resentments between his runners. Jay didn’t want that. He especially didn’t want Lem to stay in, and her hoped his witnessing of Nettie’s service yesterday might compel Lem to get out of the game and go back to school or something.

  He ate a piece of leftover chicken for breakfast as Goldie got ready. Now that the school break was over, he and Goldie had no time to go to the charity kitchen, so his breakfast was somewhat haphazard. Goldie would get a better meal once he dropped her off at the Morsons’ house, but cold chicken was the best he could hope for.

  Unless he asked Nettie to marry him. But given how her family had received him, that dream was less and less likely.

  He just hoped that Goldie remained above all of the hostility directed toward him, but she was such a little woman—Jay knew that it would be hard to keep everything from her for long.

  On their walk down to the Morsons, Goldie asked him, “Why don’t you come in for breakfast, Daddy?”

  “I have to get to work, remember?”

  “Yes, I know, but we used to eat breakfast together and I liked it.”

  “Well, you have to go to school now, and it’s better when you have a friend like Solly to eat breakfast with.”

  “Won’t Solly’s mother give you any breakfast?” Her eyes stayed focused on him.

  “No.”

  “That’s a shame. She seems like a nice lady. If she can’t love my Daddy, then I can’t play with Solly anymore.”

  “No, that isn’t true. She just doesn’t know me. Once she gets to know me, it’ll be better.”

  “Maybe if you went and courted Miss Nettie, asked her out to dinner or something, she might be nicer.”

  His smile split his face like a knife through butter. “Thanks, Gold. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “No problem, Daddy. Since you aren’t making any progress with Miss Nettie, I have to do all I can to help you. Don’t worry. She’ll be my Mama yet.”

  Jay coughed. His throat suddenly became dry and he swallowed hard. “You certainly sound confident, Gold.”

  “I am. I love her and she loves me and you love her. She just doesn’t know that she loves you yet, but we’ll make her see it.”

  He stood in front of the door with Goldie in hand, as he always did, and knocked. Usually, Goldie ran in and went straight back to the kitchen to eat breakfast with Solly. However, today, one of Nettie’s sisters, Emerald, he remembered, opened the door.

  “Hello,” he greeted her pleasantly. She was only slightly taller than Goldie, who took after her father in height and was a rather tall seven-year-old.

  “Hi. Yes, Mr. Evans. Nettie told me to let you know I’ll take Goldie to school and prepare your dinner tonight.”

  “Is she quitting?”

  Emerald lowered her eyes as Goldie ran past her to her real breakfast. “I guess you can say that, sir.”

  “Well, that isn’t acceptable to me. No one told me anything about it.”

  “I’m telling you now, sir.”

  Rage boiled through his blood. “No fault with you, Miss Emerald, but when someone quits a job with me, they need to do it in person,” He shouted over Emerald’s shoulder into the house. He knew that Nettie could hear him. “That way I can plan what is best for my daughter.”

  “Everyone thinks this is best right now.”

  “Well, I don’t. Nettie, you need to come down here and tell me to my face you don’t want us. Nettie!”

  Suddenly Ruby Morson appeared alongside of Emerald and drew her out of the doorway. “Really, Mr. Evans, is all of this yelling necessary first thing in the morning?”

  “It is if your sister is quitting her job and doesn’t have the guts to tell me to my face.”

  “Is it necessary?” Ruby’s facial features did not betray one hint of emotion. “You will have someone to perform your domestic needs. It just will not be Nettie.”

  “Maybe Nettie is who I want.”

  “Well, that will not be possible for now. She has other tasks that she has to attend to, and we have seen to what you need. Good day.”

  The hurt seared through Jay like a burn. When had she become such a part of his soul?

  The heavy door closed in his face and the painful gesture made him more determined than ever.

  This would be the biggest moment of his life. Unless he married Nettie, then that would be the biggest moment. Or one of them. He stood in front of his runners in his best-cut dark-brown suit.

  “I’m out of policy. I’m taking bids on who wants the business.”

  The runners had gathered, ready to go on their morning excursions, and they turned to one another for comfort, like lost children. He held up a hand.

  “This is still my storefront, but I’m out. You all can find someplace else to run policy, but it won’t be here.”

  “What?” Lem was incredulous. “That lady preacher is good, but…” He swore and Jay took him by the lapels.

  “That’s enough. You’re young enough to live another kind of life and you should. Come out with me. You can still get schooling or learn a trade.”

  “So I can go back and forth like a stooge? Man, you can’t leave. What about us?”

  “He’s been weak since he got shot back in March,” Archie told the assembly. “You should have seen this coming.”

  “It’s that holy dame,” Matt, his driver, said. “Taking her out to that country house—I knew it. You doing this for her?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “He don’t have to say it. I know.” Matt leered in a way that Jay didn’t like. “I would be giving up my manhood and to a woman who looked as fine as she does.”

  He was ready to put down Lem’s lapels and pick up Matt’s, but refrained from doing so. “If one of you wants to buy me out, I’m ready to hear what you have to say.”

  Silence.

  “No one?”

  “You could split it,” Archie suggested.

  “No thanks. I know you would kill these two for their share if I did that.”

  The atmosphere in the room tensed. “Looks like you can’t run away, Boss. You are stuck with us,” Lem tried to joke to alleviate the mood.

  “Think again. I’m not going down to the bank today.”

  “Then the white people will come take it over,” Archie spit out.

  “Yep,” He agreed quickly. He knew that was an alternative they wanted to avoid.

  “I’ll buy it,” Lem said.

  They all faced him with their mouths open in shock.

  “You don’t have it.”

  “I do. If you go down to the bank with me today, I’ll buy you out.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I’ve stayed in cheap boardinghouses, and did nothing but put aside my cuts. I got it.”

  “I ain’t taking orders from him,” Archie growled.

  “No one saying you got to, old
man.” Lem gestured toward the door. “Get out.”

  Without hesitation, Archie did just that and Matt followed close behind him.

  Jay and Lem had to drive themselves down to the bank. Within the space of two hours after they came back from the bank, the policy game had changed hands to young Lem, just twenty-one years old. And he was out.

  He did not feel good about it since he wanted Lem to go to school, but he was not in the position to tell a man, no matter how young of a grown man he was, what he should do. He had underestimated Lem for more than eighteen months and Jay could not help but feel a measure of some pride that the youngster had learned so well from him.

  “Where are you going to run it?”

  “The boardinghouse parlor for now. It’ll have to do until I find another place.” Jay took Lem to the boardinghouse and they shook hands. The storefront was Jay’s property and would remain empty until he figured out what to do with it or it changed hands in some way.

  “Take care,” He shouted out after the young man.

  When Lem got out of the car, he was free.

  He took care to turn the car around and he headed back to Doc Morson’s place, determined to have his say about Nettie’s life.

  It was too much for Nettie. She couldn’t watch Emerald pack a basket and get ready to go to Jay’s house to do what she was supposed to do. “I need to take a walk. I’ll bring you the key when I come back.”

  Emerald viewed her sister with a serious face. “Will you be okay?”

  “Of course. I’m just going to run down to the mercantile. I feel like a Moxie.”

  Emerald sat in a chair in the parlor and opened a fashion magazine, her favorite kind of reading. “I’ll wait here.”

  She slipped out with just a few dimes in her pocket. She didn’t really want a soda, but just needed to be free a few minutes, out of the clutches of her family. She was happy to see them all, but she did not like the way they had come in to take over her life. They had to understand. She enjoyed her routine.

  Now, it was time for Goldie to get out of school and she would go to pick her up, as she did every day.