Joe Ann snapped her attention my way. She stared at me as if just noticing I was even in the room.
“Oh,” was all she said.
The moment was awkward, to say the least.
“I’ll have some coffee if it’s not too much trouble,” said Reverend Jenkins.
Hallelujah smiled my way and said, “I’ll take a cola, too.”
Miss Bertha appeared in the doorway and said to Joe Ann, “Your mama wants you.” To Reverend Jenkins she said, “I’m going to finish gathering my things.” She hurried out of the doorway before he could protest.
“Mama,” Joe Ann called as she followed Miss Bertha from the room. “Guess who’s here?”
“I know Clyde’s here, Joe Ann,” her mama called back.
“Hallelujah, too,” said Joe Ann, her voice flowing throughout the house. “And they brought a cute little girl with them.”
Hallelujah glanced at me and blushed. I guess we were both thinking the same thing. Joe Ann thought I was his girlfriend. Now I was doubly embarrassed.
“What’s her name?” I heard the mama ask. Joe Ann hurried back to the room and poked her head in the doorway.
“What’s your name?” she asked me.
“Rosa,” I replied.
Joe Ann disappeared from the doorway yelling, “Mamaaa, she said her name is Rosa.”
“Oh, that’s pretty,” came the reply.
This time Hallelujah smiled at me and said, “I told you, ‘A pretty name for a pretty girl.’”
I wanted to take one of those floral-print pillows from the sofa and toss it at him. Instead I only smiled.
The moment the nutty aroma of coffee filled the air, Reverend Jenkins joined Miss Bertha and Joe Ann’s mama in the kitchen. When Joe Ann returned with colas for Hallelujah and me, I was strolling around the room admiring their family photos.
“They’re gorgeous, aren’t they?” Joe Ann asked.
At first I thought she was being cocky, like Ophelia the Ogre. But then she added, “My daddy takes great photos. He’s a professional photographer.”
“You have a beautiful family,” I said.
Joe Ann smiled and said, “We’ll do. I guess.”
“Is this your daddy?” I asked, pointing to a man in a soldier’s uniform.
“Yes. He fought in the Second World War.” Then she pointed at a picture of a young white woman, elegantly dressed, holding a bouquet of flowers. “And that’s my mama.”
I startled. And my mouth was still hanging open when Joe Ann added, “She’s colored, not white.”
Noticing the awkwardness, Hallelujah quickly changed the subject. “Is Mr. Thomas at his studio today?”
Joe Ann rolled her eyes. “He’s always there on Saturday. You know it’s the only day of the week when folks want their pictures taken.”
My heart warmed as I imagined what it would be like to be a part of a family like Joe Ann’s. Perhaps someday I could have a family like that of my own.
The RC colas were great, and so was Joe Ann’s company. While the grownups chatted in the kitchen, she regaled Hallelujah and me with stories about her first semester in college.
She told us about when she first arrived at Tougaloo and how scared she was because she was only sixteen, and the other freshmen were eighteen, nineteen, and even twenty. She told us how she felt intimated because she was from the Delta, until she realized that students came from all parts of the state. Some of them were even children of sharecroppers, she said.
This gave me hope. Sitting and listening to Joe Ann talk about Tougaloo reminded me of something Miss Johnson had said. She said one of her cousins had attended Alcorn College only because her father wouldn’t allow her to attend Tougaloo. He said Tougaloo didn’t welcome dark-skinned Negroes, like her cousin. Yet, there I was, listening to a girl with very dark skin speak of her adventures at the college. It’s like Papa always said: “Believe little of what you hear and only half of what you see.”
I wanted to stay in Joe Ann’s presence forever. I wanted to be a part of her family. As I sat there wishing she was my older sister, a shrill sound rocked me from my daydreaming. I had heard that sound only one other time in my life—while helping Ma Pearl at the Robinsons. It was a telephone. I would be forever amazed that through a little black object connected to the wall with a cord, people could talk to one another from all the way on the other side of the country. Perhaps one day—after I had gone to college and gotten a good job—I would buy such an item for Papa, so I could talk to him from wherever I chose to live.
“I got it, Mama,” Joe Ann called.
The phone was in the hallway. And when Joe Ann left to answer it, Hallelujah turned to me and said, “I’m gonna work a little harder so I can finish high school early and go to college.”
“She seems so grown-up,” I said. “I can’t believe she’s only sixteen.”
Hallelujah laughed. “Sixteen going on sixty, as your grandpa would say.”
“Mr. Jenkins, it’s for you!” we heard Joe Ann call from the hallway.
“Why would your daddy get a call here?” I asked Hallelujah.
He shrugged. “He never leaves Stillwater without letting at least two people know where he’s going, in case someone needs to get in touch with him. Or in case something happens to him on the road, especially with the way things are now.”
It seemed less than a minute passed from the time we heard Joe Ann inform Reverend Jenkins of his telephone call and the scream that came from the kitchen.
“Lord, no!” Joe Ann’s mama screamed.
Chapter Nineteen
Saturday, December 3
WHEN REVEREND JENKINS ENTERED THE ROOM, he had the same look on his face as the day he announced the shooting of Gus Courts. Before he said a word, I knew it had happened again. Another Negro in Mississippi had been shot.
“We need to head over to Glendora,” Reverend Jenkins said to Hallelujah. Then he stared at me, as if he faced a dilemma. “We need to get you home first.”
“What’s wrong?” Hallelujah asked.
“There’s been a shooting in Glendora. A service station attendant. They say he was shot by one of J. W. Milam’s friends. It was Milam’s car he was driving.”
Hallelujah and I sucked in air at the same time. “Milam!” he cried. “He just got away with killing Emmett Till!”
Fear rushed to my bones. I felt so cold, it seemed my blood stopped flowing. “They just shot Gus Courts,” I said quietly. “Two shootings. Only a week apart.”
It’s a good thing I was sitting, else I would have crumpled to the floor. Someone who was a friend of J. W. Milam had just shot another Negro. Did he think it was okay to shoot a Negro because Milam got away with murder? Or had whites in the Delta simply gone mad?
Reverend Jenkins slumped in a chair. Hallelujah rushed to him and placed his arm around his shoulders. When he dropped his face into his palms, I prayed he wouldn’t cry again.
With his head swaying from side to side, he half spoke, half moaned. “The killing has got to stop.”
Hallelujah’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. “What happened this time?”
What happened this time? The words bounced around in my head. The killing of Negroes had become so common that “this time” was now part of the conversation, as if to indicate there would be a “next time.”
“Clinton Melton,” said Reverend Jenkins. “His name was Clinton Melton. He pumped gas in the man’s car. There was some kind of mix-up in the amount he pumped and the amount the man requested. The man became enraged and threatened to get his shotgun and come back and shoot Clinton. Which is exactly what he did. In full view of many witnesses. Including the white gas station owner.”
Slowly, Hallelujah removed his arm from around Reverend Jenkins’s shoulders and stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. He stormed over to the wall and dropped his face forward into it. His moan was so long and anguished that I realized he’d stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep from banging
the wall.
I, too, wanted to bang on something. Another Negro in Mississippi had been shot and killed by a white person in broad daylight. Again there were witnesses. Again there would probably be no punishment.
As scared as I was about Shorty’s idea of violence for violence, I was beginning to feel that white folks might stop their reign of terror if they knew what it felt like to be the victim of terror themselves.
When Miss Bertha came into the room and announced that she was ready, Reverend Jenkins glared at her and said, “You’re not going. You’re staying here. Where it’s safe.”
Miss Bertha frowned and planted her hands on her hips. “Those people don’t scare me.”
Well, they scared me. And I would’ve given anything to trade places with Miss Bertha. I would have gladly stayed in Mound Bayou, at Joe Ann’s house, in her stead.
“I’m tired of letting them push us around,” Miss Bertha said. “I own a store. And I intend to run it. Besides, where are our people shopping in my absence?” She raised an eyebrow and said, “Danny Ray Martin’s? You know how he likes to cheat the old folks.”
Reverend Jenkins threw up his hands. “Clinton Melton was shot for no reason, Bertha. He wasn’t involved with the NAACP. He wasn’t rounding up people to register to vote. He didn’t even make an advance toward one of their precious women, for God’s sake. He was killed because his killer knew he could get away with it, just like his friend J. W. Milam got away with murder.
“Gus Courts was shot and almost killed because his killer knew he could get away with it, just like Reverend Lee’s and Lamar Smith’s killers got away with it. No one is going to do a darned thing about the slaughtering of Negroes in Mississippi. And if something happens to you, I swear upon my father’s grave that I will take the law into my own hands.”
I flinched.
Even Reverend Jenkins considered returning violence for violence if something happened to his family. How could people like Papa keep claiming to have peace at a time like this? If nothing else, like Shorty said, we needed to be armed and ready to protect our own.
Miss Bertha stared Reverend Jenkins straight in the eyes and said, “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.’ Aren’t those the words we live by, Clyde? Are they not the words our father left with us before he died?”
“You’re not a preacher,” Reverend Jenkins said.
“But the Lord has anointed me to serve the poor and brokenhearted, just as he anointed you,” replied Miss Bertha.
Reverend Jenkins shook his head. “Sis,” he pleaded. “Look at what an angry white man just did—shot a colored man right in front of a service station full of people, without the least bit of concern about the law. You know why?”
Miss Bertha, of course, didn’t answer, as she knew the question was what Miss Johnson would call rhetorical.
“Because there is no law in Mississippi that protects Negroes from being killed. We have laws that protect wild animals, but none that protect a colored person.
“You’re safe here,” Reverend Jenkins said. “White folks won’t come here starting trouble. They know better.”
Miss Bertha shook her head. “I’m not some wild game that these people can hunt. I won’t hide like a scared rabbit.” She stared at Hallelujah. “Put my things in the trunk,” she said. “I’m going home.”
Chapter Twenty
Sunday, December 4
FROM THE DOORWAY OF OUR BEDROOM, MA PEARL CRIED, “Rise and shine, saints!”
Church was the last place I wanted to be that morning. I was tired of church. Tired of trying to be good. Tired of listening to Reverend Jenkins compare the Israelites to Negroes. Tired of hearing him talk about how God delivered them from Pharaoh and led them to the Promise Land. Tired of hearing him talk about how if God did it before, he could do it again. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Negro would soon see deliverance. The Negro wasn’t seeing anything but bullets soaring toward them.
I had fallen asleep trembling the night before, thinking about that man Clinton Melton. He did nothing to whoever shot him. He wasn’t trying to change things in the South. He wasn’t one of those brave Negroes, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Or maybe he was. Maybe just living in the South was like walking through that valley. Shorty was right. In Mississippi you never knew what could get you killed.
Clinton Melton had done nothing but pump gas into the man’s car. So what if he heard him wrong and didn’t pump the right amount? Was that a reason to kill him? But he didn’t need a reason. He was one of J. W. Milam’s friends, actually one of his workers, according to what Reverend Jenkins later found out. And if his boss man could get away with kidnapping, beating, and shooting a fourteen-year-old colored boy, then why couldn’t he get away with shooting one for pumping too much gas into his tank?
“Rose Lee! Git up, gal! You too, Queen! Ain’t none o’ y’all sleepin’ in this moan’n. Every last one o’ ya gittin’ outta here t’day.”
I moaned but didn’t move. Let her get her black strap. I didn’t care. She could beat me until I turned blue, but I wasn’t setting foot in another church. Jesus wasn’t doing a thing to protect colored people in Mississippi, so I wasn’t thinking about going to his house and worshiping him, his Father, nor their Holy Ghost.
Queen stirred. Then she sighed and said, “Ma Pearl, I’m too sick.”
“Gal, you five months. You ain’t got no moan’n sickness. Git up!”
Queen began to weep.
Ma Pearl stormed into the room and snatched the covers off her bed. “Git up ’fo I beat the devil outta you.”
She turned and did the same to my bed, giving me the same warning.
I complied by sitting up on the side of the bed.
Queen curled into a ball and wept harder. “Ma Pearl, I’m too ’shamed to go to church.”
“You shoulda thought o’ that ‘fo you went and got yo’self in trouble. Now git up.”
Queen buried her face in her pillow and yelled, “I ain’t goin’. I ain’t never goin’ to church again. And I ain’t goin’ back to school.”
Ma Pearl stormed from the room.
“Queen, please,” I said. “Just get up. Don’t make her use that strap on you.” Even though I initially thought I was bold enough to take it, I didn’t want it again after the beating I got because of meeting Shorty Cooper, nor did I want a repeat of the beating Ma Pearl had given Queen the night she caught her sneaking out. Ma Pearl could be ruthless with that strap. As horrible as it was that Queen was in trouble, I didn’t want to see any harm come to her or the baby she was carrying.
“I’m so sick of her!” Queen yelled. “She ain’t nothin’ but a bully. A big, tall, ugly bully. And I hate her. And I hate Papa for lettin’ her treat us like this.”
“Us?” I asked, pointing at myself. “Before you got in trouble, she used to treat you exactly like the name she gave you—Queen. I’m the one she always treated like I was no better than hog slop.”
Queen snorted, as if to say, “You ain’t.”
“Well, do what you want to,” I said, leaping off the bed. “But I’m not getting a beating on a Sunday morning.”
I might have been mad at Jesus for letting colored folks get killed in Mississippi, and I knew I stood a chance of a fire-and-brimstone damnation for my blasphemy. But at the moment it was Ma Pearl who was a threat with flesh and bones. So I chose sulking at church over a beating and sulking at church.
“Hand me them covers,” Queen said.
“Get ’em yourself,” I said.
She groaned, then reached down and pulled her covers off the floor. She wrapped herself in them and snuggled into a ball. “She don’t wanna hurt my pretty baby,” she said smugly. “So she ain’t go’n beat me.”
I rol
led my eyes and said, “She already did.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Monday, December 5
JUST AS SHE HAD DONE WITH CHURCH, QUEEN REFUSED to get up for school. She had dropped out.
Thankfully, Uncle Ollie was kind enough to continue giving Fred Lee and me a ride whether his stepdaughter—the queen—attended school or not. Otherwise, we would have faced the predicament of many other colored children. We would have had to walk the eight miles to and from school.
I expected Hallelujah to be waiting for me outside Miss Hill’s classroom like he always was. Instead, he was inside the classroom. And from the noise flowing into the hallway, it seemed he had started another ruckus.
I walked in to find Hallelujah and two other eighth grade students, Barbara and her cousin Dorothy—the two who had defended him after he left Miss Hill’s class—sitting atop the desks, their faces wild with excitement. Hallelujah was talking loudly and waving his arms wildly. When he saw me enter the room, he leaped up from the desk and rushed toward me.
He grabbed my wrists, causing the strap of my book satchel to slide down my arm.
“Rosa! It’s happening!” he said.
“What’s happening?” I asked. I glanced from face to face.
“Dr. Howard did it!” Hallelujah exclaimed, his face glowing. “He incited the people to take a stand.”
“Can I at least sit down?” I said, annoyed.
I didn’t know what people he was talking about, nor did I care. I didn’t want to hear anything else about Dr. Howard or his speeches. Dr. Howard and his speeches weren’t keeping Negroes from getting shot in Mississippi.
Hallelujah stared at his hands gripping my wrists. “Oh, sorry,” he said, releasing his grip. But he beamed again and said, “I’m just so excited.” Grinning, he sat in the desk next to mine.
I glanced from face to smiling face. “So what’s all this commotion about?” I asked.
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