A Piece of Mine

by J. California Cooper

  So Smitty left, but before he was out the door completely Charlie said, standing in the doorway like it was his, “Smitty, I am interested in Della and she is my friend, so if I leave it ain’t so you can do whatever you want to her. Don’t hurt her, don’t touch her, because I will know about it!” Smitty left mumbling to hisself that wasn’t nobody gonna do nothin to him!

  Now, all the time I been knowing Della, she always said how Smitty didn’t remember no birthday presents or Valentines day or nothing, she always gave him things, but when Smitty came back he was dressed up and had a bag of candy in his right hand and some flowers in his left hand. But he came in fussing, “Ain’t you gon offer me no dinner or cake or nothin? Are you just gonna give some to that Charles that don’t want nothin but to go to bed with you? Then he gon be gone, just like he done all them other women I done heard of!” Della jumped up and went to get some cake and don’t you think Smitty didn’t take heart from that! “Sure,” she said, “I got plenty cake. You want some coffee?” Smitty leaned back, smiling, “Yes, I would like some coffee, too!”

  As he ate the cake, Della was quiet but he talked a lot about how well he was doing. “And I been thinking bout takin a trip, like a vacation!” Della sighed, he went on talking, “Maybe putting some money in this house to make it look a little better!” Della looked around the room and nodded. He smiled and went on “Might even go-head and try to get one of my own!” Della’s eyes opened wide and she said “It must be nice to own your own house!” That encouraged him, his chest came out and he decided to play his ace card and hit Della with something that would wake her up and make her realize she didn’t want to lose him!

  “Della,” he said, serious-like in a new deep voice, as he wiped the last cake crumb from the saucer with his finger, “Della, we gon have to do something … now … or I’m going to get a divorce!” The room was real quiet while Della stared at Smitty, her man for so long.

  “You done found somebody else you love, Smitty?”

  He laughed. “No, I don’t want none of these women that keep running after me! They worry me to death!” He flecked off a speck from his pants as he waited for her to cry out “I don’t want no divorce Smitty!” But she didn’t. She just sat there staring down at the floor and pretty soon tears came slowly down her cheeks. Smitty saw this and felt his point was won. He stood up and stuck his chest out saying, “Well Della, we can’t go on like this … I’m a man!” Della looked up and the tears stopped and dried. “I need a woman! and if it’s gonna be you then say so, if it ain’t, then I better get on bout my business and …(he leaned toward her) get my divorce!” He waited a moment for her to say the words that would give him his old good life back, but there was only silence, Della looking at the floor again. He straightened up and looked around the home toward the bedroom where he really wanted to go and lay his big pride down. He tried to think of a way to stretch his visit out, but had played his ace too soon, so he cleared his throat and gave himself the next invitation. “I’ll be by in a few days to get your answer and I’m gonna come with my bags, Della!” It was said almost like a question.

  Della started crying and he went to put his arms around her and rub on her back. “Della, you know I’m your man, now act like you got some sense girl and cut out all this dating and stuff! You my wife and you lucky and he lucky I didn’t kick ass this day!” She stepped back from his arms. He continued, “Go wash your face and go to bed, no more company tonight! I’ll be back in a few days, Friday, with my bags and get your life back together again cause you acting like a fool!” (Sometimes I wonder about people.) She let him kiss her and then led him to the door and he left feeling good about being a man about the whole thing.

  Della didn’t sleep much that night and got up saying she “might as well get this over with” and went down town and got a lawyer and filed for a divorce, which takes 30 days in this town, then came home and moved most of her stuff in my house. When Friday came she went over and sat on a chair right in front of the door and waited for Smitty. He came grinning in with his suitcase without knocking and she handed him the papers saying, “This what you want Smitty, if you want it, it must be right! But I like married life so I’m gonna be marrying up with Charles when this is final. I done moved so here is your house … now, I’ll be going!!” He cussed her again but didn’t try to hit her and he told her “I don’t want this house, ain’t nothin’ in it!” She left first, then he did and the next day she moved all her stuff back in it!

  She was true to her word. When the divorce was final, the marriage plans was made. I wondered about all that so I ask her, “Don’t you think you rushin into one marriage after another?” She always takes her time to answer. “No …,” she said, “I really done learned a lot. I have learned in these few months when I been workin on a job and workin this stuff out with Smitty. I know bout cookin and not havin to cook. I know about a peaceful house when you alone in it … havin your own money or waiting for somebody to bring you some … and sleepin alone, or with a husband! My life ain’t never gonna be like it was before … ever again! But … I like havin a husband, I want a man of my own!” So the marriage plans went on.

  I was just sitting at home sewing and wondering about people when about two days before the little wedding, Della came running and screaming over to my house, tears streaming down, she was what you call hyster . .rical! She couldn’t say a word, just screaming “Smitty,” so I followed her over to her house. Smitty was hanging from that same rafter he was always going to hang Della from, looked like he had kicked the chair over. Me, I believe it was an accident and that chair fell over. I think he was either trying to fix it so Della would catch him in time to stop him and realize she loved him, or he was fixin it for her and the chair fell over! Anyway, he was hanging there dead. I took her home and called Charles and he took care of everything, like a man. She didn’t have to do anything except sign some papers for the insurance. She wanted to put the wedding off but Charles wouldn’t have none of that!! And all those rangements made too!!

  They got married and she moved into her new home. It’s been a year or so now and they seem happy and peaceful and Della is gainin her weight back, up to 200 pounds and just as happy as she can be. Sometimes when she gets to thinking bout Smitty, she says “I still blieve if I had been there, he wouldn’t have done that. He would have used me instead and we’d all be alive today!” I tell her, “Better for that fool to accidentally kill hisself like a fool than for you to be a fool and let him kill you!” Sometimes I wonder bout Della!!

  Color Me Real

  IT DOES not matter what year it was or where, it would have been just as terrible and tragic at any time. Minna, a 13 year-old child, was seduced by a grown white man her mother worked for. She had a man child that he never recognized. A year later she had a girl child by the same seducer. It would seem strange and suspect, this second child, except that money, that old cross, was almost nonexistent in the child-mother’s family and she was trying to get money for food from the babies’ father and he gave it to her “on condition”. Minna was in need. Her whole family was hungry. Her last intention was to sell her body, but the whole world knows what can happen to the best intentions in a mother’s mind when it comes to her hungry child, a hungry, sickly grandmother, brothers and sisters lining the cold hearth and empty cupboard. An empty coal bin results in a cold stove. Few things are worse than four or five hungry people alternately staring at and looking away from the others that hold no answers, only needs.

  By rights, money was owed them by this particular white man for work done for him, but he had decided to hold off paying. His intent was to have Minna again. After the first time he had seduced her he thought she would cease holding off in her child-like fear and come sleep in his cold lonely bed, but she did not. So he added hatred to his lust for her. He made his plan and did not pay Minna’s mother, nor Minna for helping her, the cooking and cleaning pay for two months. He locked his cupboard and coal bin and everything else the
y could use or sell, then sat back, picking his teeth and belching after his dinner. He ate at the little greasy “Addies Eats” diner and gave them just enough for one person to eat and sat and watched them fix it so they would have none in his absence. He watched them grow nervous, hungry and afraid, but he did not see the anger. I don’t know why. His power blinded him, I guess.

  He kept them there, working, by saying his money was held up and he would be getting it any day now and would pay. They knew he lied, at least they thought so, but what could they do? The judge and the sheriff were white. So Minna was forced to take her baby boy over to him to ask for help. Money she had already earned. He tied the little boy gently to a wicker chair. The white-skinned child with his own face was his child, he thought, as he finished tying him and patted him on the head. He then lay Minna down on the bed and rode her all morning into the afternoon. The baby, tired from crying, had fallen asleep, head hanging over the ropes tied around him by his father, his gasping breaths jerking his little body as he slept, crying out now and again without even waking up. The second baby, a girl named Era, was born nine months later. During that nine months the sickly grandmother moved out into the woods she knew so well and picked her herbs and roots and puttered over them silently and somehow they found their way into the white man’s house and somehow he became blind which was soon followed, somehow, by impotency. But they, Minna’s family, were kind to him. They continued to care for him and they never had to wait for their money again because they had to do everything for him that involved money. They never cheated him, but he never cheated them again either. He tried to get a wife once, so he could get rid of them. He suspected something, but could not be sure of what. No white woman wanted a blind, impotent husband though, so he remained single and they remained to take care of him in his time of need.

  Time passed and the children were growing. Minna worked in the schoolhouse in exchange for letting her children sit in the back of the room to get a general education, and insisted they go even with all the taunts, teasings and insults they received there from the other children. An older brown-skinned playmate, George, was companion and protector to Era. He lived up the road and was never far from her, going to and from school.

  When Era was about 17 years old, George said he would marry her, but she really didn’t see George. Her brother had been running off and coming back home for the past two or three years bringing tales of a bigger and better life. One day while cleaning her father’s room, Era went into a box of his cash kept under his mattress and took $400. Packing her few things in a cardboard box, she got George, now working, to drive her to town and left on the bus that came through town headed for New York, checked into the YWCA and signed up for secretarial school. She had a plan in mind. When she had graduated, near the top of her class, she moved on to Idlewild, where, her brother had told her, the rich men were idle and the women were wild!

  Era was a good-looking woman and she chose to pass for white because it would make her way easier, and she planned to get ahead in life and get a wealthy husband to take care of her. She loved her family at home and planned to send them things and be good to them, but her greatest fear was of being as hungry as she had been at some times in her life. She remembered doing without the smallest things that sometimes make a big difference in daily life.

  Well, Era got a job at a brokerage firm and in two years or so had married one of the clients there. He was not rich but he was on his way. She couldn’t invite her mother and family to the wedding. She wrote them about it!

  They had a good life for several years. Then, while on a two-day shopping trip in New York, Era got sick and left her friends to come home. When she arrived, she found her husband in her bed with a black woman! Her husband admired her tolerance and understanding attitude toward the black woman and offered her to share, but both black women refused the offer. The black woman was sent away in a cab.

  Era was silent and thoughtful because she was hurt. She had loved her husband.

  To make a long story short, when they were getting into the freshly cleaned bed, he held Era and kissed her through her tears and made many declarations of love, true love, deepest love … and said he didn’t know what it was about black women that he liked so much. Just always had! But that they would never compare to her and so on and on. Era let her logic carry her away and she told him, “If what you really want is a black woman, then you have one. I am a black woman.” He stared at her a few moments then laughed and told her she didn’t have to go that far! Era got up and got pictures her mother had sent her over the years, saying, “This is my mother.” She smiled at him and the photos. He snatched the photographs and stared at them until he dropped them to the floor. When he turned to her his fist came with him and he beat the wife, a moment ago he had loved truly, deeply. He refused to have a black woman for a wife so he settled some money on her in the divorce and she left the years she had made a life there, behind her, and flew home to her mother.

  Her mother, Minna, still lived in the broken-down little house. Grandmama was dead and gone. Brother was home at the time but living with a woman at the woman’s home. The first thing Era did was buy her mother a better house closer in to the little town and they made a home of it. She stayed there about a year. George had already moved to town and had his own business as a gardener. He had remained single and was taking care of his mother.

  Now, Era was a simple uncomplicated woman, born and raised around growing things and animals, trees and space. These things still pleased her, so George would take her to work with him sometimes to break the monotony for her, but still she didn’t really see him. He worked with her in her own yard and it became one of the best. George loved his work and his flowers blossomed in all the wealthier white folks’ yards. He was reliable and smiled a lot. They liked that, so he prospered. Era took pleasure also in reading to her mother and dressing her in good clothes. She did her hair and gave her facials for fun.

  As Minna improved in looks and confidence, several older gentlemen, who at first came to look upon Era, began to turn their faces to this quiet, shy woman who hadn’t had much of anything. Not friends, laughter or male companionship. Minna blossomed and soon became attached to one pleasant man, Arthur. Era stayed until her mother’s first and only wedding. The only bad part of the day was when brother beat his black woman after the wedding reception. Later, when he took Era to the station to leave, she stood on the train steps and asked him if he thought he was white, and if that was why he beat his darker-hued wife whom he said he loved? And why didn’t he marry her? Because of his daddy? “Well,” she continued (before he could answer, because the train was pulling out), “that white man who raped our mama was not just a white man, he was a child molesting, raping, ignorant, slimy, cruel bastard … who died alone! Is that who you think you are?”

  “At least I ain’t try’n to pass for white!” he hollered back at her as the train was gathering a little speed.

  “No!” she shouted back at him, “You tryin to pass for a man!” Then the train was too far away to answer her so they watched each other until the track curved and they could not.

  Era chose Chicago this time and after becoming settled, finding work, looked around for something “meaningful” to do. She volunteered to help in a political campaign for a black man. The headquarters was always full of many people including lawyers and other politicians. Some bringing something to give, some coming to get something. Now Era was black, and that was that in her mind. However, quite a few men took her to be white. Consequently she had quite a few lunch dates, which she thought was normal. One in particular, Reggie, began to show up when he didn’t have to be there. He often told her, “You are my kind of woman!” Which goes to show you everybody can take the same set of words and all go off in their own direction as to what those words mean! Dinner dates were soon added to lunch dates; then cocktails and dancing.

  Reggie liked all the attention Era got, the admiring glances from the other lawy
ers and professional men. Since it is rather obvious to you he was rather shallow, it will stand to reason if I tell you he soon proposed. One night he had the ring, the license, the car and the gas and he drove a few counties away, convincing Era all the way of his love for her and how far they would go together. She married him because she thought he was not exactly a fly-by-nighter. He was part of a good law firm, had a nice home (where the bar was filled but the pantry empty), and a boat. The marriage went pretty well the first year or two. But Era discovered her black husband thought she was white, and it seemed so important to him she didn’t tell him the truth right then and later it became harder to tell. But here was another man, a black man, she could not take home to her mother … yet.

  The decision was made one night when he had the fellows, those who had white wives, over to his house for cocktails and the conversation came naturally around to the kind of women black women were. Era was a little tired of going into the kitchen or getting busy somewhere else when these conversations came up, so she just listened and thought. She knew from conversations with the white wives that most of them felt superior to their black men and one of their fantasies was to picture them, during lovemaking, as slaves; the black skin glistening on the white skin helped multiple orgasms along. So when the black men ridiculed their own black women, saying, among other things, “Black women are not ready, never had been ready and it would take 10,000 more years before the sister would begin to get ready,” the white women smiled, because they knew it was against the rules to laugh out loud at black women in these meetings in front of the other black brothers. But they moved to the kitchen or bedroom and, passing each other, the thrill in their hearts showed in their eyes as they looked at each other.