Willie T., five, was playing train with a row of bricks tied on a string. Booger and Gaynelle, twins of eight, were fishing for jackworms—poking a blade of grass down each hole and jerking up the tiny dragon-like insects. Lula and Willene and Buzz, aged twelve, nine, and thirteen, were engaged in a game of squat tag under, the fig trees. They were not paying much attention to their queer-colored youngest sister, though from time to time she glanced at them wistfully.
Willie T. it was who happened to look up and see the bird clumsily winging along overhead in the clear June sky. He pointed, not greatly interested.
“Look at dat ole shypoke!” Snatching up a stick, he aimed it at the flapping target, closed one eye, and shouted: “Bang! Bang! Bah-loom!” in imitation of Cap’m Jim’s rifle. The bird flew on.
The other children glanced up idly. Only the little albino, lonesome and longing for attention, feigned interest in this byplay. Squinting eagerly up at the distant bird, she pointed the old chicken foot with which she was playing, and trebled in mimicry of her brother: “Bang, bang! Boom!”
And a weird, incredible thing happened.
The shypoke, flapping along, wavered suddenly, one wing drooping. With a lurching fluttering motion it veered—then fell like a plummet, striking the ground not three yards from where the little girl sat.
Willie T. stared. The bird was dead. There was blood on its feathers.
IN A stunned, silent, wide-eyed group Mattie’s other children backed away from their ghostly sister. She blinked at them, her pinkish eyes squinting painfully in the sunlight.
“Bang-bang...” Seven Sisters repeated in a hopeful undertone.
There was a shuffle of running feet. Her lower lip quivered when she saw that she had been left alone.
She was always alone after that, partly because the other children shunned her, and partly because she could not see well enough to run after them. She had developed a peculiar squint, holding her tow-head to one side, slit-eyed, upper lip drawn back to show her oddly pointed little teeth. For a “seven-sister,” she tripped over things and hurt herself twice as often as her brothers and sisters who were not gifted with supernatural powers.
“Cap’m Jim, on a flying visit to the plantation one Sunday, had noticed the way the child kept always to the shadowy places.
“Weak eyes,” he pronounced. “Typical of albinos. Have to get her some special glasses...” He sighed, mentally adding up. His vanishing bank account. “Oh, well—time enough when she starts to school. Though, Lord help the little thing at recess!”
That preference for shadow was given another connotation by dark-skinned observers.
“Dah! Ain’t I done tole you?” Aunt Fan was triumphant. “See jes’ like a cat in de dark, but can’t see hardly nothin’ in de daytime. Yes sirree—she a plain-out, hard-down conjure woman, and I knowed hit de first time I sot eyes on her!” By this time, the lone screech-owl which had attracted Seven Sisters’ birth had become seven screech-owls, hovering in a ring around the cabin to demand Mattie’s soul in return, for the new baby’s “Power.”
This “Power” mystified Seven Sisters, though she did not doubt that she had. it. Clarabelle and Dody had told her so, ever since she could understand words. Now, a thin too-quiet child of six, she accepted the fact, as simply and sadly as one flight accept having been born with an interesting club-foot But because it was the only way in which she could attract attention— half fear, half respect—the little albino drew on her imagination, and did not herself know where fact ended and fancy began.
The other children jeered at her but were frankly envious. The elders laughed and remarked that nobody but ig’nant country niggers” believed in conjures any more.
Secretly they came to her by night, and hissed at her window, and proffered silver in return for her magic Seven Sisters never saw any of the money, however, as the business was always transacted through Clarabelle or Dody.
Some of the things they wanted were incomprehensible to her at first. Mojoes— tiny bags of doth that might contain anything at all, plus the one thing only she possessed: “the Power.”
In Atlanta, in Birmingham, and Memphis, especially in Harlem, a good one might sell for as much as ten dollars. These, according to whatever words the conjurer mumbled over them, were able to perform all sorts of miracles for the wearer—from restoring the affection of a bored mate to insuring luck in the numbers game.
Seven Sisters, with the precodty of all outcasts, caught the idea early. Like the little girls who started the witch-scare in
Salem, she felt pains and saw apparitions for the bug-eyed approval of kin and neighbors. She made up words and mumbled them on every occasion, squinting weirdly and impressively. She hummed tuneless little chants, in the eerie rhythm of all darkies. She memorized the better-known household “conjures”; such as, burying three hairs from the end of a hound’s tail under the front steps to keep him from straying. With ready wit she invented new ones, then forgot them and supplied others on call.
True, most of these tricks had, at one time or another, been subtly suggested by Aunt Fan or Clarabelle as the proper procedure for a “seven-sister.” But the little albino, pleased and excited by any substitute for affection, threw herself into the part—a pale wistful Shirley Temple in the role of Cybele.
She wanted to be admired, however. She did not want to be feared.
But even Clarabelle, who loved her in the skittish way one might grow to love a pet snake, gave her a wide berth after the inrident of the stomach ache.
IT HAPPENED, one sultry August day when Dody came stumbling into the cabin, drunker than usuaT’and in a nasty mood.
“Whah dat low-down triflin’ Seb’m Sister?” he bellowed. “Whah she at? I’m gwine wear de hide off’n her back—takin’ dat four-bit piece from Ole .Man Wilson for a huntin’ mojo! Hidin’ it fum her poole pappy what feed her! Whah she at?... Young-un, you come out fum under dat table! I sees you!”
The other children, gnawing pork chop bones beside the fireplace—thanks to the sale of a “health mojo” purported to contain the infallible John the Conqueror root —stirred uneasily. In this mood Dody was apt to throw things at anyone within range. But it appeared that Seven Sisters, quaking under the table, was the main object of his. Wrath tonight.
“Come on out, you heah me?” Dody snarled, grabbing up a stick of lightwood from the hearth and advancing toward the culprit. “I’m gwine whup you good! Stealin’ my four-bit...”
”I... done lost it, Pappy...” Seven Sisters’ childish treble was drowned out by his bellow of rage. “Don’t whup me! I drapped it in de field. I couldn’ see whereat I drapped it—I’ll go git it.
“Now you’s lyin’ to me!” Dody roared,’ waving his club. “Come on out! I’ll learn you...” The other pickaninnies, fascinated, stopped gnawing their chop bones for an instant to watch, their greasy black faces gleaming in the firelight. Dody jerked the table aside. Seven Sisters cringed. Then: “Don’t you hit me wid no stick!” the frightened child shrilled. “I’ll put a hod-doo on you! I’ll . .
Dody lunged, and fell over the table. His stick whistled dangerously close to the child’s tow-head.
The next moment Dody was groaning with pain, doubled over, hugging his stomach. Sweat stood out on his black face. He stared at his weirdly white daughter: backed away, thick lips trembling. Seven Sisters made a dive through the open door and out into the friendly night.
Cap’n Jim happened to be at the Place that day; it was a Sunday. He rushed Dody to the nearest city in his car. Appendicitis, Cap’m Jim called it, to the man at the hospital. He and Miss Ruth had a good laugh over Dody’s version of the attack.
But after that, Clarabelle stopped giving her little albino sister a playful spank when she was naughty. No one would touch her, even in fun.
“I done tole you!” Aunt Fan intoned. “Do, Moses! Puttin’ a hoodoo on she own pappy! Dat ole Sab’m Sister, she jes’ born to trouble! She bad!”
For more than a
week thereafter, Seven Sisters hid in the woods, creeping out only to sneak food from the kitchen. She was deeply frightened. So frightened that when Cap’m Jim came to bring Dody back from the hospital, she ran from him like a wild creature. If she had not tripped over a log and knocked the breath from her slight body, he would never have caught her.
DR. SAUNDERS helped her up and held her gently by the shoulders, marveling anew at her negroid features and cotton-white hair and skin. Her single garment, a faded dress which had not been changed for eight days, hung half off one shoulder, torn and filthy. She was trembling all over, squinting up at him with white-lashed pinkish eyes dilated by terror.
“Now, now, child,”’ the tall bossman was saying, in a tone as gentle as the grip of his hands. “What have those fools been telling you? That it’s your fault about Dody’s appendix? Well, Heaven help us!” He threw back his head, laughing, but stopped when he saw how it frightened his small captive. “Why, don’t be scared. Cap’n Jim won’t hurt you. Look here—I’ve got a present for you! Don’t let the other young-uns get hold of it, you hear? Just hide it and play with it all by yourself, because it’s yours.”
The little albino stopped trembling. Gingerly she took the proffered box and gaped at the treasure inside. A doll-baby a foot high! With real hair, red hair, and eyes that opened and shut. When she turned it over, it gave a thin cry: “Ma-ma!” Seven Sisters giggled.
The cap’m chuckled. “Oh, I don’t reckon you want this old doll-baby,” he made a pretense of taking it back, eyes twinkling. The child clutched at it. “You do? Well, then, what do you say?” Seven Sisters ducked her head shyly. “I don’ care,” she whispered—polite rural South for “Thank you!” Dr. Saunders chuckled again. “That’s a good girl.” He stood up; gave her a careless pat. Then he strode off toward the Place, frowning over his own problems— not the least of which was mother-in-law trouble.
He and Ruth and their two boys had been so happy in their touch-and-go way. Then his wife’s mother, a forthright lady from Oklahoma, had descended upon them and decided to run their lives with a new efficiency. With her customary dispatch she had found a buyer for the old Saunders plantation, and was now raging at her slipshod son’s reluctance to sell.
Even Cap’m Jim had to admit that the price was half again as much as the property was worth. Besides, his practice in Chattanooga had been dwindling of late. A mother-in-law could point out such matters so vividly... !
Seven Sisters blinked after his retreating back. Keeping to the shade of the pine coppice, she followed the tall white man a little way, the doll squeezed tightly against her soiled blue-gingham dress. Cap’m Jim waved at someone, who met him in the orchard—a pretty red – headed woman. They went on to the house together, arms about each other’s waists. Seven Sisters watched them until they were out of sight.
Thereafter she listened attentively whenever Dody or Clary spoke of the Cap’m. She grew to love anyone that he loved, and to hate anyone that he hated, with a doglike loyalty. In her child’s mind, Good became personified as Dr. Saunders, and Evil as either the sheriff or Old Miz Beecher.
It was common knowledge about the mother-in-law trouble. Clarabelle, who cooked all year round for the Saunderses now, had passed along every word of the quarrel.
“Us’ll git turnt out like white-trash if’n de Cap’m sell de Place,” Dody mourned. “Dat old Miz Beecher! Do, Law! Dat ole oman means as a cottonmouth! She don’ care what happen to us niggers, nor nobody. Miss Ruth sho don’t take after her none. I wisht she’d fall down de steps and bus’ her brains out, so she wouldn’t plague de Cap’m no more! If’n he don’ sell come Thursday, Thanksgiving she gwine jes’ make his life mis’able!”
Seven Sisters listened, huddled apart from her black kin in a shadowy corner of the cabin. Her little heart began to beat rapidly as a mad idea crept into her tow-head. Without a sound, she slipped out into the frosty night of mid-November.
There was a thing Aunt Fan had hinted to her one day—or rather, to Clarabelle within her hearing, since no one ever spoke directly to a seven-sister in idle conversation. Something about a... a graven image. There was even, Aunt Fan said, a passage about it in the Good Book, warning all Christians to steer clear of the matter.
But Seven Sisters was not a Christian. She had never been baptized in the creek like the rest of Dody’s brood. Nothing hindered the plan. And... it sounded remarkably simple.
“... whatever you does to de image, you does to de one you names it!” Aunt Fan’s solemn words came back to her clearly.. “Jes’ wrop somep’m around it what dey wears next to dey skin—don’t make no never-mind what hit is. And dat’s de conjure! Eh, Law, I seed a conjure man. Do dat when I was married up wid my first husband. And de ‘oman he conjure drap daid as a doornail dat same winter.... And dey do say as how hit were a big black cat got in de room whah dey was settin’ up wid de corp. Hit jump up on de bed and go to yowlin’ like ole Satan his-self! Yes sirree, dat’s de Lawd’s truth like I’m tellin’ you!”
Seven Sisters, picking her way easily through the dark, slipped into the pine coppice. After a moment, heart pound-ing, she dug up something from under a pile of leaves. A faint sound issued from it, causing her to start violently—”Mama!”
LIKE a small white ghost, the child then ran through the peach orchard.
The Place, dark now since Cap’m Jim had gone back to Chattanooga, loomed just ahead. Seven Sisters found what she was looking for, under the steps of the isolated kitchen—an old piece of silk nightgown that she had seen Miss Ruth’s mother herself give Clarabelle as a polish-ing rag for the flat silver... The older girl had used it and flung it under the kitchen steps. Seven Sisters retrieved it now furtively, and padded swiftly back through the orchard.
Deep in the pine coppice, lighted only by the filtered ..light of a quarter moon, she sat down cross-legged. For a long time she stared at the lovely thing Cap’m Jim had given her, the only thing that had ever been truly her own. The hair was so soft, the glass eyes so friendly. But now the doll had taken on a new personality, a hated one. Seven Sisters glared at it, shivering a little.
Then, deftly, she tied the silk rag about its china neck, and stood up.
“Ole Miz Beecher—you’s ole Miz Beecher!” she Kissed with careful emphasis; then clarified, against all mistake, to whatever dark pointed ears might be listening: “Miss Ruth’s mama. Cap’m Jim’s wife’s mama. Dat’s who you is, doll; you heah me? Ole Miz Beecher... !”
With a fierce motion she banged the poppet hard against a tree trunk. The china head broke off and rolled at her bare -feet.
“Ma-ma!” wailed the headless body, accusingly.
Seven Sisters dropped it as though it were red-hot. She backed away, rubbing her hands on her dress like an infant Lady Macbeth, and shuddering in the Indian summer chill. Panting, shaken, she turned and ran back to the cabin.
But she paused in the half-open door.
Excited activity was going on inside. Aunt Fan was there, puffing with importance and fumbling for her box of snuff. Dody was shouting questions, wringing his big hands. Clarabelle, Ressie, and the others were milling about like a flock of chickens, clucking and squawking in chorus.
“...and de phome call say for you to clean up de fambly lot on de south hill,” Aunt Fan made herself heard shrilly. “She gwine be buried fum de Place like Miss Addie...”
“Oh, Lawsy! Ain’t it awful?” This from Ressie:
“Sho is, honey,’’Aunt Fan agreed complacently. “I don’t reckon de Cap’m ’ll ever be de same, hit was so awful. I don’t reckon he care what become of de Place, nor nothin’, he so cut up about hit.”
“Lawd he’p us!” Dody shouted for a fifth time. “When it happen? How come?” “I done tole you,” Aunt Fan repeated, relishing the drama of her words. “Truck run slap into ’em. She was plumb flang out’n de car. Cap’m wont even scratched up. But it broke her pore neck...” The child in the doorway caught her breath sharply. The conjure had worked! So soon?
A little knot of nausea gathered in her stomach, in memory of the china head rolling against her bare foot. Then an angry thought came.
“Aunt Fan— Cap’m ain’t gwine bury dat ole ’oman in de fambly lot, is he?” Seven Sisters piped above the chatter. “Not dat ole Miz Beecher... !”
The excited group barely glanced at her, impatient of the interruption.
“Miz Beecher?” Aunt Fan grunted.
“Law, chile, hit ain’t ole Miz Beecher what got killt. Hit was Miss Ruth . . The aged negress went on with her narrative, dwelling on the details with relish. “And de man tole Marse Joe Andrews over de phome... Eh, Law; he say. De Cap’m jes’ set dah by she bed and hold she hand. Don’t cry nor nothin’. Jes’ set dah and stare, like he daid, too.....”
Seven Sisters heard no more. A sound like falling timber roared in her ears. Through it, dimly, she thought she heard a screech-owl’s quavering cry — eerie, mocking, malicious.
SHE turned and ran. Ran, blindly sobbing. Cap’m Jim’s Miss Ruth! She had forgotten Miss Ruth’s hair was red, exactly like the doll’s. And . .. that soiled bit of nightgown might not have been old Miz Beecher’s at all, but Miss Ruth’s. Cap’m Jim’s Miss Ruth...
Beyond the cornfield the black woods opened up to receive the small ghostly figure, running like an animal in pain; running nowhere, anywhere, into the chill autumn night.
Sawbriars tore dark scratches in her dead-white skin, but Seven Sisters did not feel them. She ran, careening into tree trunks and fighting through scuppernong vines, until the salt taste of blood came into her mouth. Twice she fell and lay in the damp leaves for a long time, her thin shoulders racked with sobs.
“Oh, Cap’m! Cap’m Jim... I... I didn’t go to do it!’’ she whimpered aloud once. “I didn’ mean to! I didn’-—hones I didn’...”
Half in Shadow Page 14
