Third Girl from the Left

by Martha Southgate

  As hard as she tried—and after a while she stopped trying—she never could remember the rest of that day. How her father found her or where they went after. How she got blisters on her feet that got so badly infected she couldn’t walk for a week. How she got scratches all over her face. What she said to her father about what had happened. The day was a hole. A hole the size of her dead mother’s skyward gaze.

  It was about two days later that she and her father went back to the remains of their home. They stood there for perhaps an hour, not speaking, the sun wounding the backs of their necks. Mildred didn’t know what her daddy was thinking. He had used only the words he needed to—words like “eat,” “sit down,” “I don’t know”—since that day. She wanted to take his hand, but she was afraid to. Then she spotted the only painting they had ever had in their home. It was a hand-tinted postcard of Leonardo’s Last Supper. Mildred knew the occasion represented, of course, but she didn’t know anything about the painter. She just loved it. Even though the colors were muddled and guessed at, she was always obscurely moved by the positions of the figures, their stern and sorrowing faces. She stepped forward, heard a black crunching under her feet, bent down, and picked up the picture. She held it gently, not wanting to damage it further. Miraculously, it was only slightly blackened on the edges. She also found the metal plate from their old Victrola, where Mama would put on Scott Joplin and they would dance together for a few minutes when their work was done. Until Mama would laugh and say, “Girl, we got to cut out all this foolishness. What would your daddy say?” And Mildred would laugh and say, “I don’t know, Mama.” And her mama, Anna Mae, would say, “He’d say we gone plumb crazy.” Then she’d smile and give Mildred the biggest hug she knew how and get ready to start dinner. Mildred picked up the plate too. Kept it. Her father said nothing. Nothing about how they were dirty or what was she going to do with that old stuff. He let her pick up what she needed. The only thing he kept was a picture of Anna Mae that he’d stuffed into his shirt the night of the shooting, as if he knew it would be all he’d have left of his wife. It curled from the sweat of his chest.

  On her wedding day, he gave Mildred the picture, along with these words: “Time you had this now. You know your mama would have been proud of you.” He looked out the window, clutching Mildred’s white-gloved hand tightly. “They no better than dogs. Killed that beautiful woman. I spent the rest of my life trying not to hate ’em. You try not to hate ’em either. But be mighty careful before you trust one of ’em. They no better than dogs.” Mildred nodded. She kept the steel plate and The Last Supper and the picture of her mother. Sometimes, once she had a family of her own, she ran her fingers over the smooth surfaces. But she couldn’t find the words to speak of what she’d seen. It was a blindness in her heart. She passed the photograph on to her boldest child. She remembered the colors: the brilliant blue sky, the black smoke, the orange flames. And she remembered the smell. Ash and burnt flesh. That she carried with her until the day she died.

  14

  IN 1954 CARMEN JONES WAS RELEASED AND DOROTHY Dandridge became the first black woman ever nominated for a best-actress Academy Award. She smiled from the cover of Life and Ebony, adorned in the finest designs, her skin the color of desire. The magazines praised her beauty and poise, her elegance and modesty. They didn’t write about the failed marriage to Harold Nicholas, the autistic daughter banished to an institution, the back doors she was forced to enter and the dining rooms she was not permitted to eat in, the pills, the sorrow that would eventually consume her. They wrote only about the exquisite surface. The week that Carmen Jones played at the Dreamland, Mildred walked to town every day while the children were in school and Johnny Lee was at work. One day, she asked a neighbor to take Angie to her afternoon kindergarten and then went to the early show and saw it twice. She didn’t tell anyone and the ticket taker figured it was none of his beeswax what she did. She sat there, barely breathing, watching the brilliant colors swirl about the frame and Dandridge sashay with the glory of the blessed through the center of the screen. Mildred cried every time she saw it. It was like being at church when everybody was singing and she couldn’t catch her breath. Like the dirt under her hands as she worked in the garden, the sun on her neck as she hung out the wash. Like the flowers by the roadside that made her long for a way to scoop the color up and keep it inside her.

  She’d learned, after that day in 1921, that there was no time for dreaming or wondering, no time for listening for the fairies only you could hear scampering across the earth around you. You had to keep moving on, had to keep yourself in check. Keep everything neat. It couldn’t keep the terror away, but it kept your hands busy and your body busy so you didn’t just lie down in your sadness and not get up. So you didn’t fall into the sky, never to return. So she gave her family what she could, gave her husband, Johnny Lee, her order and affection, her children her presence and the occasional smile. But none of them knew that she was a person who would go see Carmen Jones six times in a week and cry every time. They didn’t know about the colors. And she didn’t know how to tell them.

  A Sunday morning at the Edwards house. Mildred bustles around the stove, stirring oatmeal, shifting sizzling bacon. Unlike many women on their side of the tracks in the 1950s, Mildred neither has to take in washing nor go out to clean or cook for a white family. Johnny Lee is the only black pharmacist in Tulsa. He studied and saved and suffered to get there. But he’s there. His prosperous family shows that he’s there. The children are seated. Otis, Jolene, and Angela. Ten-year-old Otis seems suited to where he was born. He is serious and quiet, an average student, handsome and stolid. He has a beautiful smile and large hands that he will grow into. Jolene is eight. Her favorite thing to do is to play house with her dolls and help her mama out in the kitchen. She is always bossing around the other children, much to their annoyance. It’s important to her that things are done correctly. She once cried for an hour and a half over a B on a spelling test, the first grade below an A she ever got. Angela is five, in kindergarten, and in love with the world. Her hair ribbons are always untied, her knees are always dirty. She wants a witness to all she says, does, and thinks. She never stops talking. Mildred’s ears ring with it, the sweet maddening chimes. “Mama, Miss Arthur says that I can be line leader on Monday.” “Mama, when will I have homework?” “Mama, you gonna sing in church today?” Mama, Mama, Mama.

  Mildred makes distracted affirmative noises toward her. They are trying to get to church, always an ordeal. The neat braids to be made, getting Angela into her stiff white dress and then getting her not to spill anything on it for the half an hour before they go. Making herself presentable. Answering Johnny Lee’s questions about where his tie was. Her head was aswirl with detail. Finding everything and herding them out the door, clucking and fussing like a hen. Johnny Lee walked behind her after closing the door. “Lord, woman, we gonna make it in plenty of time.”

  “Just barely.”

  “Well, the Lord will wait on us.” He grinned. “Really, Millie, we gon’ be all right. You don’t need to take on so.”

  Mildred sighed and didn’t answer. Angela ran pell-mell ahead of them, kicking up dust. “Angie, don’t you get your good dress dirty!” Mildred yelled. Then sighed again. “That child like to kill me. Just can’t keep nothing nice.”

  “Well, you know how she is. Just got to do what she want to do. She been like that ever since she was born,” said Johnny Lee.

  “I know. I just hate to see her come into church all dusty.”

  “Well, the Lord won’t mind. Maybe you could let it go too.” He looked at her, steadylike. Mildred didn’t know what to say and they were just about at the church anyway. So she didn’t say anything.

  Pastor Tyson was in fine form that day. Mildred let his voice roll over her like a river. What she liked best about church was the chance to sing. She poured everything in her into each hymn, letting the words buoy her up. She didn’t have a particularly good voice. But she loved to si
ng. Just like her mother had.

  After church, folks stood in little knots talking, heads inclining toward one another and then away. The children pelted around, happy to be free in the warm spring air. The women’s voices were like music.

  “Pastor Tyson surely preached the word today, didn’t he?”

  “He sure did. Lifted me right up”

  “Well, it’s some folks around here could use some lifting. You hear about that old Della down off of Archer?”

  “What about her?”

  “She ain’t fed them kids in more than a week. City come in and took ’em away. They puttin’ ’em all with different families.”

  “Mm-mm-mm. Some folks just don’t know how to do.”

  Mildred cut in. “Well, you know she ain’t got no man to help her and what’s she got . . . six kids?” She ventured a little laugh. “Seem like you might just forget to feed ’em sometime.” Shocked looks. “Oh, not really, I know you got to feed your children, but you know them kids must have just run her ’bout out her mind. Kids can be more than a notion. Y’all know that.”

  The sisters looked at her, no rueful smiles of acknowledgment on their faces. Then Constance, the most upright of them, spoke. “Children are the Lord’s blessings.”

  Mildred felt chastised. “I know . . . but sometimes I just get so tired. You know. Don’t you? I ain’t saying Della was right but—”

  “Well, Millie, you got to just take it to the Lord, then. Lean on His arm. Just like Della should have done. He don’t never give us more than we can bear. And folks around here would have helped out.”

  Mildred sighed. “I know that’s right, sister.” Johnny Lee came up to her, nodded to the ladies, and said, “Millie, I’ma run over to A.J.’s and take a look at this old heap of his. He need some help getting it running. You be all right, huh?” He kissed her on the cheek and walked off. She took her leave of the ladies, wishing for the thousandth time that she had one true friend among them. She took Angela’s hand, called to Otis and Jolene, and headed home. Angela was fretful on the walk home. She was angry at having had to leave off playing with her friends and she cried, her voice piercing and sullen, for the whole long walk. Her feet scuffed up little clouds of dust. Otis followed a few feet behind, talking quietly to himself, and Jolene walked along, for all the world looking like a smaller version of the righteous Sister Constance. Mildred didn’t speak to any of them. She didn’t let go of Angie’s hand but nearly dragged her along. Her own eyes stung, but her pace didn’t slacken. There was still Sunday supper to get, some mending to do, quiet Sunday chores. Her head was pounding. Once inside, she helped the children change out of their meeting clothes and told all three of them to get on outside. Once they were gone, she sat stiffly on the edge of the bed she shared with Johnny Lee, her legs pressed tightly together. Then, suddenly, as though slapped by a giant hand, she was howling, crying, hysterical. A wind tore through her heart. The only words in her head were I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, I never should have had these children. Never should have married this man. I can’t be nobody’s mama. She sobbed and moaned and gasped like that for a long time, the happy shouts of her son and daughters floating in through the window. But outside, no one heard her cries. When she was done sobbing, there was still Sunday supper to get. And she was still alone.

  She noticed him first the following Saturday under the triangular awning of the Dreamland. She’d heard that there was a new projectionist down there. Eddie Jones, who had been the one to shut off the film the night of the burning and tell folks they better head on out, had died after many long years in that small room in the dark. Especially after the riot, he kept to himself. No one ever hardly saw him in the daylight. But this new man stood outside, leaning against the front of the theater, long legs braced to prop him up, his face turned up to the sun as folks filed into the theater. He held a cigarette in one slim hand. He happened to lower his head and open his eyes just as Mildred, Otis, Jolene, and Angie walked up to the theater.

  The old Dreamland had not survived the burning, but the new one was built in 1929. People still came, as regular as rain, but just walking across the threshold was no longer a magnificent experience. In the old Dreamland lobby, the carpet hushed beneath your feet, the chandelier sparkled overhead, there was never a crumb on the floor or the smell of oil anywhere. Now there were fluorescent lights and a glass candy case that marred the open, generous space, and the replacement carpet wasn’t replaced often enough. Though it was vacuumed regularly, it held onto just the least little bit of the grit from people’s shoes and the kernels of dropped popcorn. Just enough to make it begin to feel run-down. But they still had the pictures. There were different stars now, different stories, but they were still such a joy to Mildred, her salvation. She went every weekend with the children—Johnny Lee had little interest, though he went once in a very great while. Paid their money and sat in the warmly gathered dark, looking at Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and Marlon Brando and John Wayne and Judy Garland. Always white people. Sometimes there was Lena Horne, smoothed against a pole, her face bearing no traces of pain. And there was Dandridge. But mostly these beautiful others. The children knew to be quiet during the pictures. They grew to like these times. Their mother seemed content at last.

  It was right that she met William at the Dreamland. It was there that good things in her life happened. He tipped his hat ever so slightly as she guided the children in. His skin was a warm, dark brown. His cheekbones so smooth and angled that it looked as though he spent time in the morning polishing them. His eyes were like no man’s she’d ever seen; they were true, true black and so kind. In that minute between them, she had the oddest feeling that he was seeing something about her that no one else had ever seen. He looked at her face for a long moment and then smiled. He did not look at the children, the way most people did. Nor did he say anything about their goodness or beauty. He just looked at her. Mildred swore she heard her heart beat, just once, in her chest. She nodded and led her children into the picture show. Katharine Hepburn today. Her favorite.

  Not long after this, she was out hanging wash on a Monday. The children were at school. The sun was out and the air was quiet. Something calm had been in her since early that morning. Her hair had been braided up under a scarf, but it had gotten so hot that she took it off and now her hair slowly came unraveled. She shoved rumply wisps out of her eyes as she hung the heavy, damp sheets and overalls. She was singing quietly to herself—“His eye is on the sparrow”—and not thinking anything in particular. All of a sudden, a man’s voice, a sweet tenor, joined hers, causing her to start and drop the sheet she’d been trying to hang. A short shriek escaped her: “Who is that?” She bent to pick up the sheet and found herself looking up into the black eyes that had studied her so just the other day. He was smiling, looking right at her.

  “Sorry, Miz Edwards, it’s only me, William. William Henderson from down to the Dreamland. You sounded so lovely I just had to join in.”

  “Well, you scared me ’bout half to death.” He looked at her so intently that she suddenly felt very aware of her hair all awry, the wet sheet heavy in her hands where she’d gathered it up. “What you doing out here anyway?”

  “On my way to work. Here, let me help you with that.” He hopped the fence in one nimble movement and took one end of the sheet from her. She’d never seen a man touch a piece of laundry in her entire life. He took some clothespins from her and said, “Well, go on. You do your end.” She did, then picked up her scarf, lying forgotten on the ground, and tied it back over her hair as quick as she could. “Thank you. I . . . thanks.”

  “Happy to do it, ma’am.” He stood, looking at her, until she felt she had to speak.

  “Can I offer you some lemonade or something, Mr. Henderson?”

  “I’d greatly admire that. You know what else?”

  “What?” she said.

  “I think we’re gonna be friends. So I think it might be all right if we were
on a first-name basis. That is, if it’s all right with you . . . , Mildred.” His eyes never left her while he said this last. Mildred’s face grew hot as she said, “I think that would be all right . . . , William.” This man hadn’t even lived in town a month, come from somewhere back east. New York City, folks said. And here he was talking to her like this. How’d he even know her name? Must have been asking folks. So fresh. Anybody would have said he was being fresh. Why didn’t she mind?

  “Good. Then where’s that lemonade?” He followed her up to the house as she went and got it but waited outside politely as she brought him a glass, then went back in to get one for herself. He was already drinking by the time she came out, one foot resting on the front step. She stood behind the screen door, watching the muscles in his throat. When he finished, he looked straight at her and said, “Whyn’t I help you finish up all this wash and you come on down to the Dreamland with me? I gotta open up.” His voice as soft as baby’s hair after a bath. What could she say? The kids were all gone to school, the house straight, Johnny Lee down to the drugstore on the other side of town. She opened the door. “You really want to help me finish up?” she said.