Sunshine in the Delta: A Novel

by Erica M. Sandifer

  Now that I mention Miss Mildred again, I can tell you this: She was a strange lady who always wore nurse outfits, like the outfits they wear at the hospital. The only thing ’bout it was that she wasn’t no damn nurse. I thought she was just slap crazy. I guess maybe she was comfortable in it. She always wore her hair in them big curls, which added to the overall feeling of calmness and peace she gave off. As for my Uncle Willie, he and my daddy worked, played, and lived—and even died—as the best friends that they always were. Like night and day to my own father, Uncle Willie was the one with good common sense. He didn’t do all the stupid stuff like Jabo did; but only God can judge, I reckon.

  They did do they share of dirty work together, though. Don’t be fooled, now. I never said Uncle Willie was no angel either. Uncle Willie made and sold moonshine right out of the family’s house at night. My folks was sharecroppers, so we wasn’t just dirt poor, but hell, we was poor enough. My daddy and Willie had a plumbing business, and they worked together all day, and walked home from the houses to save gas. They always skipped death some kinda way back in them times. Out there in Money—shoot—if a white person caught a black boy out roaming in the fields, they would catch ’em and toss ’em over in that Tallahatchie River for ’em to drown. I know that river has to be reeking with at least one million haints. In fact, that’s the very same river they threw Emmett Till in when I was three, which was right down the road from my mama’s house.

  Back in the day, countless black boys lost they lives to that river. Some of ’em knew how to swim, but even some of the ones who did swim out got shot the very minute they made it to the bank. Yet in a strange kinda way, Uncle Willie or Jabo somehow managed to escape the many assaults that happened post-bonds of slavery. Our family was protected by the master’s gentle touch. Sometimes I think we was angels ourselves, sent out on assignment to understand the plight of some suffering, delta souls. Willie was always havin’ to save Jabo’s hind from some kinda self-inflicted drama.

  One night we was all over to Big Mama’s, and we heard Jabo drivin’ some un-record speed, pull up in the family car and slam the door. Carrie went over to the house to check on him since he always drunk, and she found Jabo in a drunken stupor, in bed with a great big ole, four-hundred-pound woman. My mama wouldn’t want me to say this, but they was gettin’ it on, and hitting the headboard hard against the wall. Now in the natural order of thangs, Carrie should have been giving Jabo a good old-fashioned, but instead, Jabo was tryna jump on her! Somehow she got away.

  Uncle Willie felt sorry for the poor fat lady, and took her back to Greenwood. The lady must’ve forgotten her size 28 drawers, so Carrie grabbed them panties with a stick and told us to take ’em to the back and burn ’em up. Carrie looked at me, and we ran in the backyard and lit a match to them thangs. We could have just passed out from that smell. They burned up in the night sky, and we just laughed until our laughter crushed the hurt that had worn lines in Carrie’s dark face, until she, too, laughed real big.

  Chapter 5

  I was born December 13, 1951, and named Neeyla Jean Sandifer, but I go by the name Miss Neeyla Jean, or Marie. I had to have been a mistake, since I said that my heathen-actin’ parents was not in no shape to be havin’ no babies, yet they managed to have eight of us. Not long after I came, Carrie was stuffed up with another baby. My li’l brother, Archibald, was two years younger than I was. Can you believe that I started babysittin’ when I was only three? Well, I did. By the time I turned seven, I was watchin’ over four babies, and when I turned eight, I was dipping snuff, just like my Big Mama. I can still remember the first day I tried it. Big Mama left her Bitter Garret box of snuff out in the open in her room, and I tried a hit at it—I wondered all the time why anybody would wanna put pulverized powder in their bottom lip. That stuff made me so dizzy that my head took a deep swoon, but I been dipping ever since. My mama Carrie was a dipper, too. I was bound to be a dipper; somehow it ran through the family branches.

  My baby brother, Davis Ray, who came along three years before I gave birth to my own daughter, hung on to my skirt tail like I was gon’ run off and leave him. He was the last baby my mama had. The most spoiled baby I ever raised of my mama’s babies. I guess he knew he was the baby, and he took great satisfaction in relishing every moment of it.

  My younger sister Eloise was a special baby. We had to pay more attention to her ever since Uncle Sammy down in Greenwood made a mistake and dropped her on her head when she was just two months, and that had messed her up for life. Her right arm was twisted a li’l bit after the fall on the fireplace hearth. She was next to the baby, born a year before Davis. Eloise might have been crippled, but she surely was a looker, with nice, thick, black hair that to this day curls around the edges. Eloise’s golden-yellow skin made her one of the prettiest babies I had ever seen.

  More importantly, I cannot forget my sister Luella, who came before my brother Oscar. Luella—God rest her soul—was my mama’s second daughter, who used to help me change diapers when she got old enough. She was always so mature. She was a bit homely, but had a nice, sincere, Mona-Lisa smile. That’s what I loved most ’bout her; she’s been gon’ for over twenty years after her health failed due to lupus. I can still see her smile, which was like the sun, warming all thangs in its path and beyond.

  Rufus, Oscar, Johnny Boy, and Archibald were my younger, middle brothers. They gave me the most headaches. Them boys would barely listen to me unless I threatened to put Big Mama on ’em, but I loved them with every inch of me. Archibald and Rufus were the older brothers, then Oscar, and, of course, Davis was my baby. Luella, Eloise, and I were the girls, with Eloise bein’ the youngest. We all came at some odd times. Carrie and Jabo did not have any special order to have us in. Well, they just had us. Carrie was a baby factory, seemed like. If she had one more baby, I was gon’ have to retire.

  Chapter 6

  And to talk ’bout the house we lived in? Spooky as can be. I remember one night. It was ’bout one in the morning. Archibald, Carrie, and I was layin’ in the bed, talkin’, with the lights off. Then all of a sudden a spoon hit the floor in the kitchen. Everyone heard it. We jumped up and ran in the kitchen and turned the light on, but wasn’t nothin’ there. Nothin’. What’s even more scary, is that spot in the front room on the floor. Carrie was on her hands and knees at least two times a week, for two years, scrubbing, tryna get that spot off the floor. It went nowhere. I would hear Jabo talkin’ ’bout how this house used to be a juke joint where a man got killed. Somebody stabbed the man to death ’bout a dice game, and that’s the spot where it happened.

  Every time it rained, it turned a bright red color. The spot would never come up, and one other night, Carrie, Eloise, Rufus, and I was in the bed, fallin’ to sleep. I looked up and saw a man starin’ in the window. I blinked, and he was still standin’ there. He wouldn’t move for nothin’, not even when the cars passed by. He didn’t even consider budging. When I looked closer, it looked more like a silhouette, like the shape of a man with a brimmed hat on. When I woke Carrie up to look, he was gone. Old folk say them haints was real, and I believed it. They always use to bother with us for some reason. I wasn’t scared, though, ’cause I knew not to be.

  They was over there in Big Mama’s house, too. I remember one day we was so hungry, playin’ over in Big Mama’s backyard. We just knew we was finna eat a super-soul-food fiesta. We heard Big Mama in there, makin’ a fire in the kitchen at the stove. We heard it, yet when we looked out the door, all of a sudden there came Big Mama, walkin’ from the fields. It was impossible; we’d heard her in the kitchen. That ain’t even all of it!

  Another time I woke up over in the middle of the night, havin’ to pee like a race horse. I went outside and stooped my tail by the side of our back porch where we all peed at when we didn’t wanna go all the way to the outhouse. Soon as I could get my drawers down, I looked up, and there I saw a man standin’ next to a big tree with his head slumped over, like it was hangin’ from a rope or so
methin’. I ran back in the house as fast as I could, and didn’t pee til the next morning. Maybe it was a curse on our family ’cause we all could see and hear them haints.

  Big Mama never slept in the dark. She always slept with the light on. She always use to say that them babies born with veils over they eyes could see dead people, and I believed it. She was born with one over hers. One time Big Mama sat us down and told us a ghost story ’bout when she was a li’l girl. She said that she was walkin’ home from school late one evening with some kids. She knew they heard some more footsteps, and when they looked around, they didn’t see anybody. Big Mama said they took off runnin’, and here come this voice out of nowhere, sayin’, “Ain’t we runnin’?” Big Mama said she ain’t stop runnin’ til she got home.

  Chapter 7

  One day, Big Mama was just a callin’ me! “Marie!, I know you gettin’ tired of them chirrun laughin’ at you down at Mildred Lou’s. Them kids keeps a pressed head. Come on, here. Heat that stove so you can get a pressin’.”

  I hated when Big Mama did my hair. She never showed any mercy. My hair was big and bushy and wasn’t all nappy like most kids, but I went for days without combing it, and boy would that stuff tangle. I would get my hair washed and slapped in four plaits. That’s the way I liked it, ’cause it was so hot outside. Big Mama was gon’ be havin’ company, so she wanted my hair done, and she wanted it done then. We always got excited when people came out to the house. They didn’t come often, but when they did we all got dressed up like we was goin’ to church.

  “Get that white dress off those lines out there, Marie. It needs pressin’, too.”

  I wore the same dress every time. I called it my “white-woman-on-the-town” get–up. Whenever I wore it I felt real good. I felt like I was a real lady in it. Big Mama gave me that dress from when she was a girl. It was a li’l big on me, but it was just perfect. After Big Mama was done styling my hair, it would hang past my shoulders in jaunty, silky curls. I used to pretend like my daddy was a white man when my hair was pressed. Seein’ how soft it was, well, my daddy could have been a white man.

  Jabo and Carrie’s hair were as coarse as steel wool. But my grandma, Ms. Louise Coleman, had hair like silk. When she brushed it, it curled up in locks like a black-lady Curly Sue. When I was a li’l girl, I would always ask her how her hair got so good like that, and why my hair had to be pressed. She told me that her mama was a full-blooded Indian. Say she came from an Indian tribe down in Sturgis, and her name was America. I would always ask her if I could meet her, and why I ain’t never see her since my grandma never told me her mama was dead. She ain’t never told me much more.

  Then I heard Carrie and Mildred talkin’ one day when I was around ten. They was talkin’ ’bout how Big Mama was the ugly sister. All of her sisters was yellow bones with that pretty hair, and she was the dark one. They said one day Big Mama hit one of her sisters over the head with a big rock. She struck out runnin’ and never looked back. Hell, I guess she stopped runnin’ when she got to Money, since that’s where she is to this day.

  I dressed my sisters up like dolls, and my brothers wore penny shirts and slacks. Big Mama put all of us in a room and told us to stay there until she got back. She went to threatenin’ us on how she was gon’ beat the livin’ daylights out of us if we did nothin’ to embarrass her. I didn’t know who these people were who were comin’ out to our house, demanding us to act a certain way, but we knew better. We knew not to embarrass Big Mama. I could hear the car comin’ down the road before I could see it, and there I went, lookin’ out the window all anxious, wonderin’ who was comin’ this time.

  Finally, the car got closer, and there was two white ladies in a brand new, fancy, white car. Now what white folks doin’ comin’ down here? I thought to myself. I was the only person I could say that to, ’cause if I asked Big Mama I was sure to get slapped. I heard Big Mama comin’ back down the hall to get us, so I snatched myself out that window so fast on account that if she saw me, I was gon’ get it for bein’ nosey.

  “Y’all, come on. Come sit at this table and say hi to these nice ladies, and be nice,” Big Mama said.

  I stared at the back of Big Mama’s head with a mean look. I wanted to know what these white ladies came to our house for. I made sure them chirrun stayed in place, so I made Luella watch the kids at the table so I could go spy. Big Mama and the ladies were in the kitchen talkin’, so I tried to put my ear up to the door so I could hear what they was talkin’ ’bout. They was talkin’ real low. The more I tried to hear, the less I could. So I eased my way back to the table. Soon afterwards they came out the kitchen, drinkin’ lemonade out of some nice china. We couldn’t never touch that china.

  They must have been some real important ladies, I reckon. Humph. Them there ladies ain’t said a word to us the whole time they had they dusty, rude asses there. They smiled a li’l bit, but that didn’t impress me none. I didn’t know much ’bout white folks. I just knew if you said somethin’ they didn’t like, they had the right to kill you, so I kept my mouth closed. Big Mama took the ladies all around the house. We was so quiet; we was just lookin’. Even Davis was quiet. We just wanted to know what was goin’ on.

  Them ladies didn’t stay long after they’d looked all around our house, bein’ nosey. Nosin’ all up in our business. I was itchin’ to know what they came for, so after them ladies left I got the guts to ask.

  “Big Mama, what them sweet white ladies come visit us for? Why they was lookin’ over the house like they was gon’ take it?”

  “Neeyla Jean, ain’t nobody gon’ take this house. You fourteen now. Time I start lettin’ you know what’s goin’ on around here. Them ladies was from Greenwood. They was lookin’ for some help, but I turned ’em down. I ain’t gon’ die nobody slave, and you ain’t either.”

  I reckoned it didn’t matter. I was just hopin’ they didn’t come back.

  Chapter 8

  Back when I was ’bout eight, I remember some white men who used to deliver the newspaper by the house, callin’ me to the car. I almost went to the car, but somethin’ stopped me. He was waving a dollar, asking me to see my panties. To this day, I’m thankful that Archibald, my brother next to me, really stopped me. He called my name just in time. The driver sped off and they never came back. I thank God, ’cause I probably wouldn’t be here to tell this story.

  Big Mama went to Chicago that winter, so thangs wasn’t so easy for me. I had the kids down to Carrie’s house, and her and Jabo was fightin’ like crazy. Maybe he was really tryna beat her up all the time, ’cause sometimes she was mean as hell. I loved my mama, but sometimes I felt like she deserved some of them licks. It’s like she had all them kids just to put ’em off on me. I didn’t have no regrets, though, ’cause I loved all of ’em with all my heart. I don’t guess Big Mama trusted me enough to let me keep the house while she was gone, so we was stuck—until one day Carrie told us to pack some thangs, that we was goin’ to stay with Uncle Sammy for a week or two.

  I was excited ’cause we got to be right in town and around some other kids our own ages. My cousins Reena and Poe were a set of twins and a few years older than me. I always wanted to hang out with ’em, but I had children to tend to. That same day we got to town, my cousins started tellin’ me ’bout a carnival that was comin’ to town just for the colored folks. I wanted to go so bad. It was comin’ in a week, so I had time to find me somethin’ to wear and get my hair pressed.

  Time was winding down, and I really didn’t have nobody to keep those kids but Luella. I kinda trusted her, but I know how Luella would often get side tracked. I couldn’t miss this, so I let Luella watch the kids that day. Spring was right around the corner and it was a warmer winter day. I found me some high-waisted, black cigarette pants, and a chiffon, cream, sleeveless blouse. Reena had tons of clothes, so I shopped in her closet. Reena was real smart. She graduated from Greenwood High and got a scholarship to Rust College down in Holly Springs. I always hoped she would go-and-get from d
own here. Reena was always the prissy cousin. She loved makeup and relaxing her hair in curlers. She was real pretty, too. My cousin Poe was a rough neck. He didn’t finish high school, with his dumb ass. Really, he was smart as a whip. Could have been a doctor or somethin’, but that Negro always wanna run the streets behind all the girls in town.

  Reena insisted on doin’ my hair and makeup. Took her so long! I could barely keep still.

  “Gettin’ all that shit in my eye!” I squealed.

  “Keep still, gal. I’m almost done. I’ma make you a superstar!” Reena went on ranting. Took her every bit of two hours, but when she was done, I was lookin’ like Miss Diana Ross herself. I never seen myself so pretty before; never wore makeup a day in my life.

  “You look like one of the magazine girls on Jet, Marie!” Luella screamed out. I couldn’t do nothin’ but blush. Finally, I had put all that thick hair to use. Reena had my head lookin’ like a big wig was sittin’ on it, but it was all mine.

  “Luella, watch close eyes on them boys. They some bad li’l Negroes.”

  “Alright, Marie, I promise.”

  I snuck out the house through the back so them boys wouldn’t hear me leave and start giving Luella a hard time. I felt like a city girl on the loose. Boy, I was uptown with my cousin, and I was gon’ live my life. Me and Reena ran down the alley back behind some houses that cut through to downtown. She knew all the shortcuts. I could hear the music gettin’ louder and louder the closer we got to the festival. I was smelling popcorn and funnel cakes a mile away. We crept in through the back ’cause we ain’t have no money. Thank God nobody saw us ’cause they was gon’ kick our asses out with our fancy clothes on.

  Reena jumped over the fence first, giving me a hand over. Reena had them long legs. I was a li’l shorter than her, so I didn’t land so well.