Good Negress

by Verdelle, A. J.

Calvary women ordered tens of yards of purple fabric for the children from the Watkinses, months in advance of the need to start to sew. The Watkinses delivered the bolts of purple fabric in time, but the mothers whispered among themselves that the Watkinses probably went through the Jenkinses to get it. I heard them talkin about that at the church one Tuesday night.

  Patuskie proper had two stores. One close by where we all lived: that was the Watkinses’ store. And that’s where we went for most everything we got. Most a what they had was exactly what you need: flour, lard, sugar, butter, barrels of dried things. Me and Granma’am mostly exchanged for fruit and vegetables we didn’t grow; Granma’am made high, airy cakes, and so that’s what we exchanged.

  The other store was the Jenkinses’. They had more of the package things and had more relations with the stores that sent by mail. They had a bigger porch, and the walk to their store took nearly twenty minutes from where we all lived. But Granma’am did not allow me to go to the Jenkinses’.

  I helped cut. Sleeves, cuffs, half-front and wide back panels. Collars, those were too hard for me. Four trianglelike shapes, with flat tops and wide bottoms, for the skirts for the girls. Wide purple ribbon strips to sew into waistbands.

  I did not want the girls’ jobs. Rather than walk with the girls holdin banners that said CHRIST, THE OPEN DOOR, I wanted to be where my brothers belonged. I wanted to hit a big drum with sticks.

  I knew Granma’am would never let me. Still, in secret, I begged Macie’s son, Marcus Henry, to teach me. Granma’am was preoccupied with her church’s leadership and with finishin all the many children’s garments. My strategy was to stay quiet until the last possible moment, and seek the support of the Lord. If the two of us—me and the Lord—couldn’t convince Granma’am, then wouldn’t the limits of religion be shown?

  I went to the church sewing days after school. According to God’s intention, Granma’am came later. Usually, I had sixty whole minutes to practice: BOOM. BOOM, BOOM BA BOOM, BA BOOM, BOOM BA BOOM. Marcus Henry let me practice with his kit. Every day while all the shirts and skirts and plans were bein made, I hit the drum.

  Miss Macie told Granma’am before my time was up. The parade was still weeks away. I had practiced with the girls and been fitted for a skirt. Thanks to Marcus Henry, I had worn the heavy strap that wound through wires on the drum. I knew I could carry it, and I knew I would carry it. I just didn’t know how to get Granma’am to help me.

  We were makin melon pie. Somethin I concocted a rainy day in the kitchen. Granma’am always applauded my inventions and helped me get my recipes scientific.

  Granma’am said, “You want to play the drum in the parade?”

  Lord have mercy, the surprise. “Yes’m,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you mention it?” she asked me.

  “I been prayin on it,” I answered.

  Granma’am went into her bedroom and brought out one of the purple shirts for boys with longer arms. It fit me. “Macie say you got the beat down good.”

  I grinned. Granma’am discussed necessary behavior, and lowered my skirt so my draws wouldn’t show, what with the big drum and all. Granma’am paid the quarters to rent another heavy drum, and we tied purple ribbons around my cornrows at the ends. My head got plenty air.

  BOOM. BOOM, BOOM BA BOOM, BA BOOM, BOOM BA BOOM. I played all day. I marched all day. In between rest calls, I fried. I thought I would die a heat. Granma’am walked in back with the missionaries and the Willing Workers Circle. We marched round and round. I pretended I was Luke edward, who could do anything there within the wide space of my memory. He would definitely outdistance Marcus Henry and the other tall parade leader, Junior Brown. Luke edward would walk taller and faster and stronger than anybody with that old heavy drum. Luke edward could drum march from Patuskie straight to China. Luke edward could drum march for months without a stumble or an ache. He would not quit or be pulled to the side by a Willing Worker, sayin Let your breathin steady, chile. I pushed onward and onward, at one with my tall, slim, tireless, handsome boy.

  Granma’am said I did good, but she wouldn’t let me march the last two rounds. She said I needed to steady my heart.

  “You red in the face and all over, Baby Sister. You gettin exhaustion from the heat.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not,” I insisted, breathless. Anxiously, I persisted, as the parade group moved on. “Granma’am, I’m fine, can I go, can I go?” I said, “Marcus Henry and me practiced. I can finish, I can.”

  “You sit right here and wait,” she ordered. “The rest a the chillun will be back and you can play some more.”

  She left me with the rented drum on the church green. Luke edward’s image burnt away in the heat. So what if I was out a breath? I had been in this much heat before, all summer every year. Granma’am went inside the church to get the cool drinks ready, and she sent a baby boy out with some punch for me. He asked me if he could beat my drum, and I let him. Everything was over, anyway.

  HAROLD GRAYSON’S FORD made tracks in the dirt outside our yard at six a.m. I was dressed and ready like I’d been taught.

  I waited in our front room, which we called the parlor. Granma’am was in the kitchen. Once a week on Saturdays, I took a whisk broom to the two chairs and the couch, that Granma’am called a divan—by mistake, I found out. Margarete had come one time and said it was a couch, so even though Granma’am called it a divan, I took the whisk broom to the couch and chairs. Also on Saturdays, I wiped Granma’am’s little coffee table so the top shined, and the wood pieces that crossed from leg to leg didn’t show no dust in the corners. I took a wet rag to the curtains, and swiped the dust that collected in the folds. And the pencil that usually ended up on top a the little desk that sat by the front door, I took and put back inside the desk where me and Granma’am kept a few pencils and pens and the paper and envelopes for the letters she would have me write.

  I had cleaned the parlor on Tuesday this week, since I was leavin on Thursday. While I sat there waitin for young Harold Grayson, I looked for somethin else to clean. Maybe there was somethin I had missed. I saw him drive up, get out, and push shut his car door. Dog, it was a heavy, final sound. He walked up the path in our little yard, his shoes squared carefully against the ground, so that mostly his soles made contact, and no dust rose.

  Granma’am heard the car door close from way in the back of the house where she was. She got up from the table: her chair scraped back—not too hard, and not too far. I waited, but she didn’t come up front, so I greeted Harold Grayson myself. Unwrapped the thin wire from its nail, pushed open the shut screen, cleared my throat and said, “Mornin, Harold, how you?” Then I turned sideways to let him by.

  “Good morning, Neesey,” he nearly sang. He waltzed into the clean parlor and put a little kiss on my right cheek. I am tall for my age, and he is a slight man, so he doesn’t have to stoop too low. “How you feeling? You all ready to go?” He is cheerful with his questions. His voice, it was usual. You can tell he is unstampeded, not trampled like I am by the miles and years ahead.

  I asked him: You want breakfast? You want coffee? You need to use the water? “No, no thank you, Neesey,” he said, three times.

  Granma’am’s house shoes flap slow down the hall. Me and Harold Grayson both look in her direction. She stops before she gets into the room. The small grip we had packed was right where she stood. Both Granma’am and the grip solemn like caskets.

  “Hello, Harold, hi is things?” There is fatigue in her voice. She made an effort to beat it back. Her housedress is weighed down by her hands in the pockets.

  “We are all fine, Mother Dambridge.” Harold Grayson intones, minister style, when he talks. He also speaks for many people at once. He walks over, places a kiss on Granma’am’s cheek. Now Harold Grayson and Granma’am both stand with the grip. I am anchored by the screen and by apprehension of the highest order.

  “Come on back here, Harold, lemme show you what I packed.”

  Granma’am has ordered the fo
od on the table. Half the three chickens we fried last night, some biscuits she spoon-stirred this morning, a few apples and pears, two bananas. Three or four Mason jars with water, mint tea, and coffee. The hot coffee jars have pieces of wood spoon in the bottom to keep the glass from breaking.

  They talk. I hear them through a fog of standing still. Enough, how long, when? Margarete. Sad, Neesey, new pants, five dollars. Car, yes, brand new. You blessed.

  I hear a peace in what they say that I simply can’t accept. Their quiet, measured words do not match my agitation. I know I’m not serene like them; I fold my lips together, determining what to do. Carefully, like religion, I wrap the thin wire back around the nail, fastening Granma’am’s screen door.

  Me and Granma’am had not slept, and so we could hardly stand up by this time in the day. What we had done was to try without saying to stretch those last days of my living there with her. As if we could stave off my future, canning pickles, baking pies. Granma’am rustles a paper bag in the kitchen, and I hear it. I know exactly what she does. A pain big as watermelon ruptures in my throat. Sprouts choking vines, that wring my neck of courage. I went right ahead: choking, I sobbed, standing by myself at the door.

  HAROLD GRAYSON COMES back down the hall, talking about how he’s looking forward to the pound cake, Mother Dambridge. Before I see his whole body again, I see his hand go round the handle of my grip, and then the grip leaves a shuddering white space where it had been on the floor.

  Granma’am follows Harold, and I move abruptly away from the door. I move because Harold wants to go out. I move wanting to stay in. Granma’am and I look at each other across the room, around Harold’s head, overtop of his citified industry. The sun had started to bake the chill off the air, and just as I was worried it might, Granma’am’s bottom lip quivered some. I had stifled the noise of my floodgates opening, but so what? My face was swollen and running with emergency.

  Harold Grayson says to the room and the morning, “I’ll let you two say goodbye.” He walks out with the pound cake and the chicken and my grip. Granma’am presses my face into her housedress. It is peach. I wipe my tears on her shoulder, and her fingers drum lightly on my scalp.

  Granma’am asks me where is my pocketbook, and in her one hand she has something folded ticket-size. Abandoned in the corner of the chair where I had waited was a black pocket book, gold clasp. A grandmother’s old bag, probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the forties. A real combination with my traveling pants. I walk over to the chair, wipe my face on my sweater sleeve, and get the half-empty thing. I open its wide mouth to Granma’am, and look absent of mind down into the yawn it makes. Granma’am lifts my chin up with her finger and dictates: this is for your brother Luke, and this is for David. She unfolds one, then another, crisp ten-dollar bill. You tell Luke I said, and my mind half closes, I want him to get himself something clean. I won’t say this to Luke, and maybe Granma’am knows I won’t. It doesn’t matter; she says something like it whenever she calls his name. Just like I know, Luke edward knows, that what Granma’am wants for him is clean.

  There is a twenty-dollar bill for me, which is a fortune. And a small Ball jar of oil to help Margarete have the new baby. It has been steeped in rose petals for more years than I know and is wrapped in wax paper and some plastic, squeezed airless by rubber bands.

  Granma’am involves herself closely, from a distance, in the birth of Margarete’s children. Especially the girls. She sent the oil to help bring Clara, and as family story has it, she sent her oil to bring me on too. Both my father and Big Jim wanted girls. Once I heard the story told, controversy surrounded my making. What does this mean? Rub this on, and it will help you have the girl you want? It was the stuff of wonderment, like the wood bars on my crib.

  Girl me, little me, late baby me, oil baby, me baby me in a jar. Sleep baby quiet, baby me in a cage. Did they carry me up from the country? Some old folk remembrance, some small and sapling seed, held carefully, wrapped in newspaper? Did I ride on the celebrated mortician’s lap? Was there sheet cotton or was paper screwed down and puffed out like a skirt between my oil and my air? And when the oil lapped from jarring, did I wail that early, there in the back with the shoe boxes packed with fried chicken, napkins, and chocolate cake? What did Mr. Harold Grayson Senior do with me? When he emptied his shoe box, did he sit me down on the floor, covet me, corner me, anchor me between his two new wingtips, black, special, hard-earned for mortician school? Did he drop the crispy greasy crumbs of disappearing chicken legs onto my Mason lid? Small, neat plinks. Did I hear this noise of feeding? Was I sad to leave the warm and making hands of my Granma’am, to be let loose from the compost heap, her store of power? Was I sad to leave the country? Is that where I was born? Am I my grandmother’s child? Am I a child of potion? Am I a child of folklore, or family crisis, some need for gender balancing? Maybe some need to keep my father? And who is my father too, is he Buddy my daddy, or is he some country man whose lasting seed my Grandma’am could pickle till it got to Detroit? Maybe a man prone to girls, maybe Mr. Howell Jones or Mr. Harold Grayson Senior or maybe his brother who looks nothing like him. Are my brothers really brothers to me, or am I sister to bay leaf and scorched root of cayenne?

  CAREFUL WITH GRANMA’AM’S treasures, I clasp the bag and hang it in the corner my elbow makes. I look straight into Granma’am’s face, which I hardly ever do. Her mouth is a little open; time has caught her in surprise. I am shocked too now that this morning and the car and the end of us is here. Her hair and eyebrows are blond gray and sienna brown, and she has two strands of long hair in her chin. Her nose is respectable, a round-point survivor of pinching in her youth. She has instructed me to rub the baby’s nose, firm between my fingers, at least until she’s three. This baby will be a girl, Granma’am has decided. I should rub the nose, though, Granma’am has directed, boy or girl, either. I will remember to do this, because if the child’s nose is wide or flat, I will be blamed.

  Granma’am’s skin flirts with her age; she is deft with plants and oils, and so her cheeks and neck and eyelids droop but are not cracked. She has an old woman’s moustache.

  I am bold enough today, this morning, to look dead into her eyes. She is wracked by this rip in the fabric. Her eyes, the whites of them, are reduced to burlap. The seeing parts of them are dark with experience and gloom. Only a minute can pass with me glaring this way, but Granma’am allows me, knowing. I etch a picture for my memory with this stare; I have to get the edges right. I try to draw her thinning eyebrows and her medium-brown skin. The lines of her nose are close together, since she has that nice nose, pointed up. And then the gray-flecked moustache hair on her lip, and how her cheeks hang just so slightly. All this I try to draw on the plates at the back of my eyes. A place where I can turn in and look at the picture I have drawn of Granma’am to take with me.

  But when I get to the backs of my eyes to record my memory while I am still in it, I find that the well of all feeling is there. The drawing pad is not firm, but water. And water that is rising from the well. The water rising is warm, not cool, the color is gray-clear and holds nothing. Nothing that I try to draw, and nothing that I try to hold, either. Finally, when I am almost desperate enough to run from this, not run forward, but back somewhere, Granma’am tries to grin away a sob. It wins; I hold her choking, me choking; we cry.

  I lay my forehead on her shoulder, and breathe in through what little space is left in my nose. My last inhale of Granma’am’s smell: Oxydol, and the hair pomade, and her snuff from all the many uses of her tin and her handkerchief, in the years I had known her, and before that. Newly free in my travelling pants, and held into obedience by Granma’am’s straight back, I lift my right leg, like I might double over, which I felt like I might do. This relieves the pressure, but still I feel like howling. Quiet, I hold on. Lift the one leg, again and again, in the rhythm, I presume, of my fear.

  “We done said everything, Baby Girl. Now you go on.” Granma’am pushes me on to my next
. It felt like the forward press of a plow, me in the harness, and the ground looking nothing but bald and flat in front of me, the harvest far away. I balanced myself. From her pocket she pulled out a small Bible; more money stuck out from its leaves. For if you have a emergency, she told me, and she pressed the Testament inside my palm.

  “Iss cool,” she said abruptly, and turned back toward the room that for six years had been mine and, for torrid, hopeful years before that, had belonged to my mother Margarete. “I think you better take your coat, just in case. You can give it away when you get to Detroit.” And back she came with my too-small blue coat; she had it stretched out from her body cause her arm wasn’t bent. The flap of her feet against her house shoes made me think about this movement: Granma’am walking back and forth to give me things. She is not the person who should bear the gifts. But of course what did I have right then but my leaving, and all the years of taking that I’d spent. I wished, like David, that I had built trellises, then at least a piece of wood would be left. Or, I wished that I was going, to come back summers; then there’d be the promise of the growing months. As it was, here was Granma’am carrying things to me, and all the things I’d made were cooked, eaten, disappeared, and by Sunday, new dust would lay on all the furniture.

  Polite Harold Grayson had not started the car.

  I hugged Granma’am again, snapped her arm to bending, pressed the coat between us. Whispered to the folds in her neck that I didn’t want to go. Laid my head down on her shoulder again. She let me rest it a last minute or two, then again:

  “We done said everything, Baby Sister.” She patted the back of my head, then she swiveled me on my own feet, and pushed me by my shoulder blades toward the front door.

  I made my way to the car, and got in. Harold Grayson started his brand new engine. He didn’t move for a moment, but I held my head down. My tears fell in dollops from my eyes to my lap and stained my pants with fury about this leaving again. The car moved a teeny bit, but I did not. Harold Grayson said, “Neesey, you should wave bye-bye.” I looked up through the window, my last look at our house. Granma’am was standing on the warm side of the screen. Her face was muddied by the black net between us, and when she saw me look up, she came clear out. Everything above my shoulder blades threatened. My tears betrayed me.