Shorty shrugged. “Overheard a coupla teachers talkin’ ’bout it when Hill kicked me out the classroom yesterday.”
“I remember reading that in the last magazine that Hallelujah let me borrow. Dr. Howard said that we would only take so much before we start to fight back.”
“He right,” Shorty said. “And you know what happen in a war?”
I swallowed and said, “People die.”
Shorty frowned. “And I’m go’n do my best to make sho’ I ain’t one o’ the dead ones.”
“You still haven’t said what you need me for,” I said. “I don’t plan on shooting anyone. And I sure don’t want to die anytime soon.”
“I don’ need you to fight. I need you to be smart. I need you to keep me in the know. Tell me what’s goin’ on. Tell me what all these NAACP peoples talkin’ ’bout. What they plan on doin’.”
“What makes you think I have all this information?”
“You friends with Lil’ Jenkins.”
“So?”
Shorty sneered. “I don’ care what you say. Colored folks like them Jenkinses class theyselves. But they see somethin’ in you.” He nodded and added, “I see it too.”
Before I could respond, the side door to the school swung open. Fred Lee, book satchel in hand, stepped outside, shielding his face from what was left of the sunshine with his free hand.
“My brother’s finished,” I said. “We gotta go home. You still giving us a ride?”
“Yeah,” Shorty said, his face set as if he was now sorry he’d mentioned it.
I still hadn’t asked him anything about my daddy. “We can finish talking on the way,” I said. “We live eight miles out. You can drop us off at the seventh mile. We’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Shorty shook his head. “Cain’t talk with yo’ brother in the truck. Don’t know who side he on.”
“Side?” I asked. “He’s colored. What side you think he’s on?”
Shorty snorted. “Lotta us on the wrong side—tryin’ to stay in good with the whites.”
“Fred Lee ain’t like that,” I said. My voice was sure but my heart wasn’t. How was I supposed to know whose side my brother was on? I supposed none of us would really know that answer until the time came, until we were tested.
“And if he on our side,” Shorty said, “is he on the marchin’ side, or is he on the fightin’ side?”
When Fred Lee approached us, we stopped talking. “Ready to go?” I asked him.
“Been ready,” he answered, glaring at Shorty.
“Shorty’s giving us a ride.” I pointed my thumb toward the raggedy black truck.
Fred Lee stared at it as if he doubted it would get us out of the schoolyard.
“It run,” Shorty said.
“I know it do,” Fred Lee answered. “You drove it here.”
I touched Shorty’s arm and whispered, “You wouldn’t happen to have any money, would you?”
“Lil’ bit,” Shorty answered, looking confused. Without asking questions but with his forehead creased in one, he fished around in his pants pocket—which sounded like it held many keys—and found some coins. He dropped three quarters into my outstretched hand. “That’s all I have.”
My face lit up. “This is good enough!”
Shorty frowned. “Didn’t know I was go’n hafta pay you.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “The money’s to keep me and my brother from getting in trouble with our grandma.”
Shorty shook his head. He looked even more confused.
Chapter Eight
Friday, November 11
IF SHORTY’S TRUCK HADN’T BROKEN DOWN, WE WOULD have made it home at a decent time. But since Shorty’s truck did break down, Fred Lee and I ended up walking nearly five miles instead of one. By the time we reached the front yard, the sun was setting and Ma Pearl was waiting for us on the porch. The black strap of terror, the thick leather strap she used for discipline, swung threateningly from her right hand.
“Where the devil y’all been?” she yelled from the porch.
I was exhausted from the walk, but I hurried along anyway. Poor Fred Lee. Not only had he walked five miles, but he had also cleaned Mrs. Washington’s classroom. Even the sight of the black strap of terror couldn’t give him the energy to walk faster.
I climbed up the steps and said, “Me and Fred Lee had to clean Mrs. Washington’s classroom. We missed our ride with Uncle Ollie. Didn’t Queen tell you?”
Ma Pearl frowned down at me. “She pay you?”
I nodded and opened my hand to show her the three quarters.
Her eyes bucked. “Whooweee! That heffa pay better’n Miz Robinson.” She snatched the coins from my hand, then turned and stormed into the house without another word of correction.
Relieved to have that black strap out of my presence, I let out a puff of air.
Fred Lee approached me from behind and said, “I ain’t go’n do that no mo’.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
Even in the cool evening air, my brother was sweating. And I felt rotten about what I had done. I had lied to Uncle Ollie, my aunt Clara Jean’s husband and Queen’s stepdaddy, telling him we didn’t need a ride home. I had lied to Mrs. Washington, though she detected it. I had lied to Ma Pearl, even though it wasn’t the first time, and I knew it wouldn’t it be the last. And I had risked my brother getting a beating just so I could meet up with Shorty Cooper and listen to him rant about killing white people. On top of all that, I didn’t get to ask him a thing about my daddy.
I touched Fred Lee’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged my hand away and stormed across the porch. “Jest don’t do it no mo’,” he said, opening the screen door. “You shouldn’t be meetin’ up with boys like that anyway. You might end up like Queen.”
My jaw dropped. But before I could utter a word, Fred Lee disappeared into the house, allowing the screen door to slam shut in my face.
End up like Queen? Tears sprang to my eyes. How could Fred Lee think something like that about me? I slumped down in one of the rickety chairs on the porch and allowed my book satchel to hit the floor with a thud. I would never sneak around with a boy like Queen had done. I cared too much about myself to get into that kind of trouble.
I didn’t care that it would be dark in a few minutes and I would be left to sit alone in the night air. I didn’t care that I hadn’t eaten since noon—and then only a biscuit—and my stomach ached for food. Nor did I care that the sweet scent of Aunt Ruthie’s cinnamon and sugar coated sweet potatoes floated from the kitchen to the porch. All I cared about was how my brother felt about me.
I picked up my history book from the porch and opened it in my lap. The white man’s history is what Shorty had called it.
In seventh grade our teacher, Miss Johnson, had told us about a former slave named Frederick Douglass. She said that after Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, he became a great speaker and even a writer. I couldn’t imagine a colored man writing books during a time when colored people weren’t allowed to learn how to read and write, but according to Miss Johnson, Frederick Douglass wrote three of them. She said that even folks back then found it hard to believe that he had once been a slave because they, like Mrs. Robinson’s friends, thought colored people were incapable of learning.
I flipped through my history book and searched for information on Frederick Douglass. None could be found. As a matter of fact, Shorty was right. There was nothing in the book about colored people except that we had been enslaved by white folks.
I slammed the book shut, then flung it across the porch. And just as quickly as I had thrown it, I raced to the edge of the porch to retrieve it. “Don’t disrespect nothing the white folks gives you,” Papa always said. And I guess that included those raggedy textbooks they gave us for school.
Darkness set in quickly, and I knew I had to go inside the house. But little Abigail, Aunt Ruthie’s one-year-old, had started her nightly screaming. And this tim
e it was a suspected ear infection, seeing that she held her ear when she cried. The noise echoed from the living room and onto the porch.
If I hadn’t written Aunt Belle that foolish letter, rather than sitting on that leaning porch, shivering in the November air, I could be in Saint Louis living in the fancy house she shared with Great-Aunt Isabelle. I could be a fancy city girl like Ophelia the Ogre, who came down to Mississippi with Aunt Belle and Monty over the summer. I still remember the fancy pantsuit she wore, and I could still smell the sweetness of her perfume when I showed her the way to the toilet outside—even though she didn’t actually have to use it! She only wanted to make fun of country people like me.
But that could have been me. I could have been like Ophelia the Ogre, if only I hadn’t tried to be brave and decide to stay in Mississippi and claim my rights as a citizen. Now I was stuck in a war. A war I didn’t ask for—a war I wasn’t sure I knew how to fight.
After a moment of brooding, and after little Abigail quieted her screams, I finally gathered up my books and headed inside. Immediately upon entering the bedroom I shared with Queen, my left hand clenched into a fist.
Queen, who sat on her bed with Abigail bouncing on her knee, sneered at me and said, “Look what the cat drug in.”
Though I wanted to take my fist and knock her into the middle of December, I was at least glad she knew how to quiet a fussy child. I squinted meanly at her and said, “Did you give Ma Pearl my message about cleaning up Mrs. Washington’s classroom?”
Queen scowled. “What you think?”
“I think you didn’t.”
“Why should I lie for you?”
“Who said I was lying?”
Queen smirked. “I know a lie when I hear one.”
“You should,” I said, smirking right back at her. “Since you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and bit you on the nose.”
“You better watch yo’self, little girl. Wouldn’t want them lies to come bite you on the butt.”
“Like yours did?” I said, my brows raised.
“Don’t worry ’bout me. I’m grown.”
“You wanna be, but you ain’t. Having a baby don’t make you grown. It just means you’re stupid.”
Queen frowned and glared at me from head to toe. “Look who calling somebody stupid. You think I don’t know you met that ol’ black-as-night Shorty Cooper under a tree after school?”
My body felt like ice water had been tossed on it.
Before I bothered asking, she answered what I was thinking. “Ollie was late. But he showed up just in time.” She smirked and said, “At least my baby won’t be black as the ace of spades and dumber than a rock.”
I felt like throwing up. I slumped down on the bed. “It wasn’t like that,” I murmured.
“Um-hmm,” she said, sneering. “That’s what they all say.”
“I ain’t having nobody’s baby,” I said, my teeth clenched. If it hadn’t been for Abigail cooing in her lap, I would have pounced like a cat and clawed out Queen’s eyes.
Queen fluttered her eyelids and sang, “Rose and Shorty sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-I—”
I didn’t care that Abigail was on her knee, I hopped off my bed, lunged at Queen, and knocked her to the floor.
Both she and Abigail screamed so loud Ma Pearl came storming to our room.
Chapter Nine
Wednesday, November 16
FIVE DAYS AFTER MY LEGS RECEIVED SEVEN LASHES from Ma Pearl’s black strap of terror, they were still sore. And so was I. I was sore at Ma Pearl for not bothering to ask questions when she flew into the room swinging that strap with all her might, yelling at Queen and me that we were too old to be carrying on and making all that racket. Though she yelled at both of us, my legs were the only ones she aimed for with the discipline. Two lashes came immediately without any questions asked, then another five followed when Queen “explained” why we were arguing in the first place.
“She met a boy after school!” she cried, pointing at me.
When I tried to explain, even pointing out that Shorty was my cousin on my daddy’s side, the force of the strap seemed to intensify. With each lash, Ma Pearl reminded me that I was not allowed to stay after school for any reason, especially not to meet a so-called cousin. Then, after sufficiently tanning my hide as she put it, she got Fred Lee, too, for having a part in my lie.
As I sat in church that Wednesday night, I tried to block all that out of my mind and listen to the lesson offered by Reverend Jenkins. He read from the book of Isaiah. It was a message about Jerusalem and the Jews, of course, but he compared it to the South and the Negroes.
And they shall build houses, and inhabit them. . . . They shall not build and another inhabit. “How many of y’all would love to have a house like the white man’s whose place you live on?” Reverend Jenkins asked.
I wanted badly to raise my hand high and wave it like some of the others, but Ma Pearl was already glaring at me from the corner of her eye.
. . . and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. . . . they shall not plant, and another eat. Reverend Jenkins stared directly at Papa as he asked, “Brothers, wouldn’t you like to sell that cotton you care for so tenderly every summer and put that money in a bank account for your own children’s inheritance?”
Surprisingly, Papa nodded slightly. Ma Pearl rolled her eyes so hard at him that it’s a wonder they didn’t fall off her face. I didn’t know if it was out of respect for Reverend Jenkins or if he really had a desire to have money in the bank like Mr. Robinson, but Papa’s face brightened a bit at Reverend Jenkins’s words. He always talked about being like the apostle Paul and content in whatever state he was in—whether he was poor or whether he was rich. I know I thought it was unfair that all the poor people worked the land while the landowner received all the profits. But did Papa?
. . . for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. “The time is coming,” Reverend Jenkins said, “when a Negro will no longer build a magnificent house just so another can reside there, the way our enslaved ancestors did. The time is coming,” he said, “when God’s elect shall enjoy the work of their own hands.”
I didn’t know where he was going with any of this, but I pictured the ancient oak in our front yard. It was twisted in every way imaginable, its long roots snaking almost to the house. That tree had to be older than Miss Addie, and she was nearly 102! In my mind, I couldn’t imagine a day when a Negro in Mississippi wouldn’t have to chop and pick cotton for a white man. But there was something in Reverend Jenkins’s eyes that night. A fire. Not like the fire that Shorty wanted to set. But a spark that would shine brighter than a star. A spark that could change a people, a nation.
“The time is ripe for change,” Reverend Jenkins said. “And we can’t just sit around and allow the northern Negro to force that change. We’ve got to stand up for our own rights in the South.”
He sounded like Shorty, whose words I couldn’t get to leave my mind. I hadn’t talked to him since Friday, because he hadn’t been back to school. Even though field work kept him behind in school, the fact that for days he simply didn’t show up probably contributed to his failure even more.
I knew he wanted to talk about a revolution, but I wanted to talk to him about my daddy, to see whether he knew anything about him. I myself knew very little. I had only seen him once, when I was barely two years old. And at thirteen, I, of course, couldn’t remember what he looked like. Ma Pearl said I looked like him. But it’s hard to know what you look like when you rarely get to see yourself in a mirror. Perhaps if Shorty knew my daddy, I could get to meet him somehow.
But for now, on this Wednesday night, I needed desperately to talk to Hallelujah, to share with him what Shorty had said. Since Sunday he had been avoiding me. I suspected that somehow word had gotten to him that I had met up with Shorty on Friday.
Each time I glanced at him, I caught him staring. Then he would quickly
look away. I was sitting too far away from him to pass a note. My only option was to wait until the lesson was over and catch up with him at the fellowship table in the back, where platters of teacakes and hoop cheese and a couple of gallons of sweet tea awaited us.
Reverend Jenkins read a few more scriptures, then began talking about how Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and how, in the same way, Harriet Tubman had helped many slaves escape to freedom in the North.
“We don’t need a Moses,” he said. “Instead we need a Joshua. We need someone who will help us fight the giants in this land. We’re not trying to escape. We are trying to conquer.”
“Conquer” sounded too much like fighting to me. Real fighting. The kind Shorty was talking about. Surely a man as mild as Reverend Jenkins was not speaking of fighting.
As soon as the last word of the benediction had rolled off Reverend Jenkins’s tongue, I was by Hallelujah’s side—heading him off before he reached the fellowship table.
“Hey,” I said, sidling up to him.
“Hey,” he answered back. He barely looked my way.
My feelings were hurt, but I wasn’t about to let him just saunter on over to that table and start talking to other people without saying another word to me. I yanked his arm and pulled him toward the door instead.
“Walk outside with me,” I said.
Other young people had already stepped outside into the crisp night air. They loitered around the church and chatted about anything and everything except Reverend Jenkins’s message. Normally, I would have done the same thing. But this time I not only wanted to know why Hallelujah seemed to be upset with me, but I also wanted to know about this fight Reverend Jenkins spoke of. Was it a figurative fight? Or a literal one?
“Would I be correct if I said you’ve been avoiding me?” I asked.
We stopped right at the bottom of the church steps and stood under the soft glow of the light on the tiny porch. Hallelujah, leaning on the porch post, crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t answer me.
“Shorty’s my cousin,” I said, my voice strained.
A Sky Full of Stars Page 5
