Mama Hattie's Girl

by Lois Lenski

  The room became very quiet. Only the harsh sound of Old Hattie’s fast breathing could be heard.

  “I’ve had a change o’ heart,” Miss Lena went on humbly. “I confessed what I done wrong. There’s been somethin’ on my mind and heart for quite a spell. I poisoned that plum tree o’ yours. I sprinkled rat poison around its roots and poured water on. I wanted to kill it. I killed it dead, so you couldn’t sell no more plums. I ask your forgiveness now.” She hung her head in shame. Tears ran down her face.

  Old Hattie looked up and her eyes were filled with compassion. “I hate for you to have to tell me this,” she said.

  “I tell you why I done it,” said Miss Lena. “I been havin’ hard times. I used to make a good livin’ for me and my husband too, when everybody bought their groceries from me. I paid off the mortgage on my place and I gave my husband a fine funeral. I buried $400 with him. Now, everybody goes to them chain stores and super markets to save a few pennies. I got to charge more—I can’t buy cheap like them big outfits can. You was competin’ with me, sellin’ fish and plums off your front porch. You was takin’ trade away from me—that’s why I done it. Understand?”

  “Yes, Sister Lena, I understand,” said Miss Hattie, “and I forgives you. We both got to eat—but we don’t got to quarrel.” She reached out her hand and Miss Lena shook it warmly. “Let’s be friends, Sister Lena. Let’s help each other and stop quarrelin’.”

  “Amen!” said Miss Lena.

  “We’ll forgit about the plum tree,” said Mama Hattie. “It’s dead …”

  “Maybe it’ll rise again from the roots,” said Miss Lena.

  The door opened and Imogene and Lula Bell entered. Silence fell. Mama Hattie began to make light talk to bridge the awkwardness.

  “I always wanted nice fat legs.” She pulled the covers aside and looked down at hers. “When I was a little girl, they was as skinny as toothpicks. Now the flesh is fallin’ off, that doctor’s reducin’ me so fast. All my dresses will be too big, and my daughters won’t let me wear theirs …”

  “Now, Mama,” began Imogene, “if you get thin enough, you can wear any dress I got and welcome. But you’ve a long ways to go—down to size 34.”

  The two older women looked at the younger one, ready for her to say more. But what she said was not what they expected.

  “I’m leavin’ here next Friday,” said Imogene.

  The simple announcement was like a bolt of lightning hitting the small room.

  “You be?” gasped Miss Lena.

  “What you talkin’ about, chile?” asked Mama Hattie.

  “Can I go with you, Imogene?” begged Lula Bell.

  “I’ve give up my job,” said Imogene, “and Mrs. Netherton wrote me a good recommendation. I talked to Ruth last night on the phone …”

  “You done that?” asked Mama Hattie. “Without lettin’ me know?”

  “You were sound asleep,” said Imogene. “Ruth advised me to come. She said I could stay with her and Theodore and she’ll get me a good job.”

  “Who’s gonna look after your mother?” asked Miss Lena sharply.

  “I’m carryin’ Mama up north with me,” said Imogene.

  “But she’s sick in bed,” said Miss Lena.

  “Mama and the boys can come as soon as she’s able to travel,” said Imogene. “Ruth wants all of us up there. She said so on the phone.”

  “What kinda job will you git?” asked Mama Hattie.

  “Alteration work in a dress shop,” said Imogene confidently. “Same as I’ve had here, only I’ll be paid twice as much. I can make $45 or $50 a week easy. A four-room apartment will cost around $45 a month. Joe can make up to $65 a week at factory work. That way, we can get ahead a little and save some. Here, it takes all we make to barely live. I’m wastin’ my time here.”

  No one disputed her statement, so she went on.

  “The only decent thing a colored woman can do here is teach school, but I can’t qualify for that. I’d have to go to Teachers Training School and I can’t afford it. There’s only one job in this town pays over $20 a week—Lora Crane gets $25 at the Riverside Café. I always wanted to be a dressmaker and put out a sign: Dressmaking—We Strive to Please. But all I’d get for making a dress would be $2 or maybe $3 or $3.50 for a fancy one that takes all week to make. I’d like to design clothes. Mrs. Netherton says I got a knack for it. I could be a dress designer up north—not here—and make good money.”

  Mama Hattie could not say a word. She sank back on her pillows.

  “Am I goin’ too? Up north?” gasped Lula Bell.

  “Sure, honey.” Imogene put her arm around her daughter. “You and I are leaving this little ole town next Friday and we’re never coming back again. I’m sick of this place. We’re going where there’s a chance to make something of ourselves.”

  “Next Friday?” gasped Mama Hattie. “Did you say next Friday? It’s bad luck to start a journey on Friday.”

  “Oh Mama,” laughed Imogene; “I’m not superstitious like you.”

  Suddenly her mother sat bolt upright in bed. The full import of the news had sunk in. “You takin’ my little girl away from me?” she demanded.

  Lula Bell looked from her mother to her grandmother.

  “Are we goin’ away and leave Mama Hattie here?” she cried. Imogene did not answer. Lula Bell’s heart sank. She felt she ought to be happy, but she wasn’t at all. Now that Heaven on earth was within—reach, she wasn’t sure she wanted it. The security of her small peaceful world was shattered. She felt like a plant cut off from its roots and thrown on a dust heap.

  “What you gonna do with this house?” asked Miss Lena bluntly.

  Imogene looked at her sick mother. “Mama will sell it,” she said. “She’s wanted to buy a place up north ever since she spent the summer in Jersey with Ruth three years ago. She liked it up there. We can live with Ruth for a while at first.”

  Lena Patton rose from her chair and stood up with her sternest look on her face.

  “Sister Hattie’s got no business goin’ up north,” she snapped. “She oughta stay right here and keep her own house. You can’t live right in other people’s houses, even if it’s your own daughter’s. Of course it’s none of my business …”

  “That’s right, Miss Lena,” retorted Imogene. “This is our business, not yours. That’s what I don’t like about a little place like this. My business becomes everybody’s business. A person can’t call her soul her own.”

  “Then I may as well be goin’ right now,” replied Miss Lena. “But I’ll jest say one more word. Your mother and I have been friends since long before you were born. Sister Hattie’s got good friends here to help her in time o’ need. That’s better than livin’ among strangers in a big wicked city. The devil’s waitin’ there to grab all that big money you’re gonna make.”

  “Friends!” cried Imogene. “A bunch of old women who spend all their time gossiping about us and playing mean tricks on us. How about that plum tree?”

  “Imogene! Chile—that’s over now!” protested Mama Hattie feebly.

  Miss Lena looked down at the woman on the bed. “You goin’ up north, Sister Hattie, with this crazy girl o’ yours?”

  Old Hattie did not answer at once.

  “I’ll have to … think it over,” she said slowly. “Come again to see me, Sister Lena. I won’t never go back on my old friends.”

  “I will. Good-by.”

  The next morning Lula Bell ran outdoors to tell the news to the children. Geneva and Josephine and Floradell were up in the chinaberry tree, picking berries.

  “We’re gonna boil ’em and make beads,” they said. “They’re ripe now.”

  “Who wants ole chineyberry beads?” cried Lula Bell. “I’m gonna buy me purty glass beads at the dime store up north.”

  “Up north?” cried Geneva. “You’s crazy.”

  “I’m goin’ up north next Friday!” announced Lula Bell.

  The three girls slid down the tree quickly. They c
rowded around Lula Bell to hear her plans. It all sounded wonderful as she told them. It grew better and better as she talked. The Hobbs and Pearson children came close to hear. Several boys listened too.

  “We’ll have a beautiful house with a steeple on top,” said Lula Bell, “and a big wide yard like a park, with statues in it. All around the outside will be a hedge of camellia bushes, sweeter’n any flower in the world. We’ll dance on the green grass in our bare feet, pick pink camellias and put them in our hair. Then we’ll go in the big beautiful house and have a feast …”

  “Phooey!” cried James Henry Thorpe. “She’s makin’ all that up. It ain’t true at all.”

  “When my Aunt Jenny went to live in Brooklyn,” said Floradell, “she didn’t live in no park. An elevated train track went right by her house. Each time a train went past, it shook the house to pieces. Every three minutes a train went past, day and night. She couldn’t get no sleep. It purely drove her crazy.”

  “My mama wouldn’t live in no place like that,” said Lula Bell.

  “My mama’s Cousin Jim and his wife in Chicago has to walk up four flights of stairs to their apartment,” said Josephine. “My mama’s Cousin Jim’s wife got water on the knee from walkin’ up all them stairsteps.”

  “My mama wouldn’t live in no place like that,” said Lula Bell.

  “Gee!” cried Floradell. “You’ll be the first girl on Hibiscus Street to go up north.”

  “I wish I could go along,” said Geneva. “I wanta be a nurse …”

  “My mama …” began Lula Bell again.

  “Your mama ain’t livin’ with your daddy,” said James Henry suddenly.

  “We’re gonna live with him,” said Lula Bell. “That’s why we’re goin’ up north.”

  “Your daddy run away from your mama,” said James Henry. “That’s why she had to go to work at Miz Netherton’s dress shop. She didn’t have no man to provide for her.”

  “He didn’t neither,” said Lula Bell. “He went up north to git a good job. To git a good job, I tell you!”

  “To git away from that fightin’ mama o’ yours!” retorted James Henry. “She beat him up—that’s why he run away!”

  Suddenly Lula Bell saw red. Her temper flared and she rushed at James Henry. She pounded him with her fists. She kicked him as hard as she could. “That ain’t so! That ain’t so!” she screamed at the top of her voice.

  “It’s the truth and you know it!” insisted James Henry, backing away.

  When Lula Bell kept on coming after him, he turned and gave her a blow that knocked her to her knees. Then he went off, whistling. The children gathered close around Lula Bell. Geneva and Floradell helped her to her feet. She felt bruised and shaken. But what hurt her most was not physical pain—but the pain of the boy’s words. All her boastful pleasure in being the only girl on Hibiscus Street to go up north was gone. Whimpering and sore at heart, she ran quickly home.

  Aunty Irene and her children had gone to their home across town for the day, so the house was quiet and peaceful. Mama Hattie had gotten up. She was sitting in the platform rocker, listening to the radio. The girl flung herself on her grandmother and sobbed out her story.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, baby, as far as I know it,” said Mama Hattie. “Your mama did have a quarrel with your daddy, ’cause he wouldn’t git a job. He jest set around here doin’ nothin’ all day long. Said there wasn’t no job in this town fit for a decent man. When your mama told him to go where he could get a decent job, he jest up and left like she told him to. He got a job up north, then there was a strike and he got laid off. Imogene says he’s workin’ again, and it’s steady work. That’s why she wants to go up there and be with him. He needs you both.”

  “We’re gonna live with my daddy?” cried Lula Bell, happily.

  “Soon as your mama and daddy can git an apartment, you’ll all be together,” said Mama Hattie. “Tain’t right for families to be broke up.”

  “You want me to go?”

  It was a searching question. The old woman looked at the girl with all the love and yearning in her heart. She knew she had a real sacrifice to make.

  “You ought to be with your mama and daddy,” she said.

  Suddenly Lula Bell was filled with happiness. All her former uneasiness over her father’s absence, all the hurt of James Henry’s hateful taunts faded away. She would see and live with her daddy again.

  She looked up at her grandmother fondly. “And you’ll be comin’ up to stay with us too,” she said.

  Mama Hattie smiled but did not answer. She took the girl by the hand. “Listen, honey, lemme tell you somethin’. You shouldn’t git in a fight with James Henry or any other boy or girl. You got to control that hot temper of yours or it’ll git you in trouble—bad trouble. When anybody riles you, jest answer ’em peaceable. Or better still, jest turn your back and walk away. Don’t you bother nobody. Don’t you pick a fight with nobody. Then you’ll git along O. K.”

  “I gotta fight for my rights, Mama Hattie,” said Lula Bell.

  “Fightin’ don’t help,” said her grandmother. “The more you fight, the more you gotta fight. One wrong don’t make a right.”

  “James Henry was stronger’n me. He knocked me down,” said Lula Bell.

  “When I was a little girl,” said Mama Hattie, “I was mean too, and I used to fight like you do. But when I got grown and had children, I asked the Lord to cut that temper out, and He did. I got down on my knees and prayed. The Lord can do anything. He changed me into a good woman.”

  “You’re the best woman in the whole wide world,” said Lula Bell.

  “Git down on your knees, chile, and we’ll ask Him to help you,” said Mama Hattie. “My knees is too stiff, I can’t git down with you.”

  The girl knelt and bowed her head. Her grandmother prayed hard and long. Then she began to sing and the girl joined in:

  “‘Down on my knee,

  Down on my knee,

  When trouble arrive,

  When trouble arrive,

  I talk to Jesus,

  I talk to Jesus

  Beyond the sky.

  He promise me

  He hear my cry,

  And I’m gonna tell Him

  All my troubles—

  Down on my knee …’”

  The next four days were the most disturbed Lula Bell had ever known. Back and forth the arguments waged, with Imogene always on the defensive. It was the beginning of a long period of unrest for Lula Bell. Hibiscus Street was upset because one of its settled families was about to uproot itself. Neighbors came in and argued. Those who had been loudest in their praises of conditions up north, began now to tell of unpleasant experiences of their kinfolk. It was upsetting even to Old Hattie herself.

  “I may stay right here,” said the old woman. “I may not go at all.”

  “Now, Mama,” began Imogene, “I thought everything was settled.

  “I ain’t never said I’d go,” replied her mother. “I ain’t made up my mind. You’ve jest made it up for me, or—you think you have.”

  When Miss Annie Sue came over, Miss Hattie said, “I been feelin’ bad all week, ever since Imogene said she was goin’. I’m all confuddled. My mind is goin’ like this—” she made circles with her hand. “What I’m scared of—it’s goin’ to be too hot up there. Here, there’s always a cool breeze.”

  “It’s as hot as the bad place up there, they tells me,” said Miss Annie Sue. “The summers fries you to a crisp.”

  “If I sell the house,” Miss Hattie went on, “I don’t know what to do with the furniture. If I rent the house furnished, all my furniture will git broke up. It would be cheaper to ship the furniture than to buy new up there. The motor transport man wants $50 down before he’ll even touch it. I ain’t got $.50 to give him.”

  “Who you sellin’ the house to?” asked Miss Annie Sue.

  “To anybody who will pay me $5000 for it,” said Miss Hattie. “I might take less if I could git it in cash.”r />
  “You ain’t found a buyer then?”

  “I ain’t even looked for one,” said Miss Hattie. “It’s my home.”

  “You want $5000 for this ole rattletrap house?” snorted Miss Annie Sue. “Nobody will pay you that if they’re in their right mind.”

  “Imogene says they will,” said Miss Hattie. “She seems to know.”

  “First you git it, then you take it up there and lose it all in six months,” warned Miss Annie Sue. “Then where’ll you be at?”

  “I’d hang onto it and buy me an apartment in Jersey with it,” said Miss Hattie, “near where Ruth lives. She says I can git a place for $4000 easy. I’d have the rest to live on. If I keep up my insurance, there’ll be enough to bury me.”

  Things came to a head on Tuesday. Imogene and her mother had a hot argument inside the back bedroom with the door closed tight. But the window on the east side was open, near where Lula Bell and Geneva were playing. They had brought out their dolls for the first time in many months, and were playing house. Lula Bell heard it all.

  “Deed it over to you?” cried Old Hattie. “To one daughter, and forgit the other three and my two boys? No, chile, I can’t do that.”

  Lula Bell could tell from Imogene’s voice that she was very angry. “I got to git the money some way,” she said. “This house is falling to pieces. You deed the place to me, and I’ll sell it and use the money to git us a nice place up north. I promise you I’ll take care of you till the end of your days. I promise!”

  “Yes—you promise!” snorted Miss Hattie. “How’ll you give me my medicine and cook my meals and bathe my back when you’re out workin’ every day? You’re gonna be a fancy dressmaker. You’ll never nurse your mother when she’s sick and old. I tell you what I’ll do. If you and Joe want to settle down here and live peaceable, you can build you a little home on that fifty feet at the back of this lot. I’ll deed that strip to you after you got your home built. But not this lot and not this house.”

  Imogene stormed and raged, but could not shake her mother’s determination. “You’re the hard-headedest woman in the world!” she cried.