“You watch yourself, Marey Lee Boylen,” my mama, Edna, must have said, but the words were garbled up around a mouthful of pins she was holding, stitching up another Christmas gift for her new beau, Toby.
“Watch yourself,” is what Mama says every night, like I am a little old kid, not almost seventeen years old and knowing full well how to watch out for myself. “Watch yourself,” she says, even though I watch out for myself better than she ever watches out for me.
I don’t tell her none of that. Everybody know better than to argue with Edna Mae Boylen.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, tugging on my gloves. I grab my handbag and close the door.
I am tired, but I walk fast out here in the cold. If I don’t get on to Young’s Diner, where I work, Mr. Young will give my job to somebody else before I can say boo. At my other job I am the house girl for Mrs. Ida Payne. I dust and scrub the floors and wash up the kitchen there all day, make the beds and do the windows. Miss Ida got one of them fancy porcelain commodes, and I wash that out, too. Today was a heavy day: Miss Ida’s friends came by for bridge, and she had a girl from the hotel come and serve. All afternoon I washed up and fetched and carried for her.
She leaves me a list: “Marey Lee, please see to the window in the guest room.” “Marey Lee, please polish the silver and my good tea things.” Miss Ida tells me I’m a smart girl. She is glad I read so well.
I am smart, smart enough to go to secretarial college, but Mama don’t have that kind of money. Daddy up and died and left Mama with nothing but two babies to raise and the farm. Mama takes in washing and mending and has ever since I can remember, but there wasn’t money enough. I had to leave high school. We have a garden, and we sell chickens, eggs, and hogs. We get by better than most, but Mama don’t see no use for more school. If I can read and do sums, she says, what else do I need?
I could save my wages and go to school, but the closest colored college is all the way in Tuskegee, and I can’t leave Mama and Josephine yet. Actually, it’s Josephine—Feen, we call her—who I can’t leave, not with Mama’s new man around the house. Sister Dials at church say every colored man in five counties know Mama got a farm on her own. All kinds of men pass through, talking ’bout, “Do a little work around the place for you, ma’am,” tryin’ to talk sweet, all the while makin’ eyes at Mama, hoping to get themselves a little land.
Mama calls the new hired man our “uncle” Toby. Mr. Toby has quick little eyes that slip around in his face. He told my baby sister, Josephine, her skin was like the color of honey, and he brought her candy every week like she was a real tiny kid when he was first here, courting Mama by being sweet to Josephine. Toby’s always looking at us, bumping into us like he can’t walk straight. Last week he told me I got hips like a boy.
Feen and me, we been through this before. Every time Mama takes up with a man, she gets forgetful of us. She play like she don’t got no kids, and he play like he’s our daddy till they get to drinking and brawling, then she runs him out. Me and Feen, we learn to stay out the way.
I told Mama she’d better watch herself, letting Mr. Toby come into the house like he is family, letting him help himself to our food and help himself to our beds. Mama slapped me in the mouth like I cursed her. You can’t tell some people nothing.
My mama’s a handsome woman. She’s tall, big-boned, and broad like all her people, and she can butcher and smoke a pig just like a man. She makes her own whiskey, sews a neat seam, goes to church every Sunday and prayer meeting on Wednesdays, and can sing like an angel. Folks all up and down Bay Slough think well of her.
Used to be that mattered. Used to be Mama cared what people think. Since Toby come, Mama giggles and laughs all the time, preening and flashing her eyes. Sister Dials at church say ain’t no fool like an old fool got her head turned by some man.
Mama say Mrs. Betty Ann Dials best mind her own business.
Mama and Daddy bought this land; my daddy didn’t do no sharecropping for nobody when he was alive, and he built this house with his own two hands and his own sweat and blood. Mama says I take after him, bein’ skinny and all, but Feen takes after Mama, with that pretty long hair and her big old eyes. Feen’s just like Mama, except she’s a big old baby. Ever since Toby come, she been fussing, cryin’ about, “Mama don’t do this no more” and “Mama don’t do that.” Mama says we got to grow up now. She says I got to take care of Feen ’cause she’s the baby. She been saying that since I was just about a baby myself.
We got a tin roof, not no tar paper like the real poor folks have. My daddy built us four rooms and a privy, and Mama taught us to keep it neat, like we got pride. We got a garden growing corn and beans, but we don’t try to put in no tobacco nor cotton like Daddy would, seeing as we ain’t got no man around but Toby, and I hope he’ll be movin’ on real soon.
I wish I remembered my daddy. Aunt Shirley, Mama’s sister, is the only family we got, and she is up in northern parts. All we got around here is these “uncles,” and not a one of them’s no good, always bossin’ us like they’re the man of the family, talking about, “Girl, get me a plate a this or a glass a that,” trying to eat up all the food and lay around. Don’t none of ’em do a lick of work, and Mama just can’t see what’s right in front of her.
Josephine’s in eighth grade, and if she can keep herself together, she’ll graduate high school and get on up out of here. She could be a nurse or maybe even a teacher. For myself, I got plans—deep plans. One of these days, I am going to be gone. One of these days, I am going to shake free of Mama, Miss Ida, and this whole town. I’m going to get out of here, and I won’t look back.
With the money I’m earning at Young’s, maybe someday I can go to secretarial school and live in a city. In a city, they got movies and jazz clubs and places colored folks see and be seen. Up north they got writers and poets and folks who don’t just work all day every day like we do down here. See, Mama thinks her girls are only looking to buy lipstick and talk to fast boys, but she’s wrong—I aim to do more than that someday. One of these days, I’m going to get up out of little old Bay Slough, Alabama, for sure. I’ve just got to wait on Josephine, and then both of us be gone.
The bus is already at the stop when I get there, the driver slouched against its side, lighting up a nasty cigar. I nod to him, then step on, sliding in my token, and walk down the narrow aisle toward the back.
A man with a newspaper climbs onto the bus and deposits his fare. He slumps down, reading. Probably war news, which is all anybody ever hears since those Japs fired on Pearl Harbor. I hope they don’t start that mess here in Bay Slough.
Two old women climb the bus steps, chatting, followed by a girl in a red quilted car coat and feathered felt hat, carrying a suitcase. Her brows are arched like Rita Hayworth’s over big old green eyes and her lips flame red like store-bought cherries. She looks like a movie star going on a vacation to someplace like California.
The biddies put in their nickels, click, click. The movie star don’t put a token in the till but strides halfway down the aisle, collapsing into a seat like someone cut her legs out from under her. I blink, a little surprised that she isn’t going to get up and pay her fare. She sees me, but her eyes slide over me like I’m not there.
I turn away, look at my reflection in the window, my stomach clenching just a little. Somebody don’t pay, there’s going to be trouble. There is going to be some trouble.
The bus creaks in protest as the big-bellied driver climbs aboard. I hear the clink of the change as he checks the till, but my body still jerks a little when he speaks to me.
“Girl. You put a token in?”
“Yes, sir.” I sit up.
The man grunts and checks the till again. “We’re short.” He looks pointedly at me, his small dark eyes like bullet holes in the fat white plaster wall of his face.
The old women continue talking, chattering like a pen full of hens. The man turns a page in his paper. The girl with the lipstick yawns and looks bored.
&nbs
p; “Well?”
“Sir, I put my token in,” I say, my eyes straying unwillingly to the girl in the hat.
“And I don’t see it here.”
“I—I put it in when I got on.” I twist my hands in my lap.
“Maybe you just thought you did.” The driver says his words real slow as if he were speaking to a small child or a fool. “I don’t see it here, and we’re short, so either you pay up or you walk.”
I swallow. I reach for my purse. That girl got rocks in her head if she think I am going to pay for her.
“No, sir, I paid. I ride this bus every night. I always pay you.”
The driver looks aggravated. “Girl,” he begins.
“Oh, here.” The girl in the red coat sighs. “Let’s don’t hold up the bus all night.” She thrusts her hand into her coin purse, drawing out her token.
“Now, miss, you don’t have to do that.” The driver sounds all sugary and oily.
“Let’s just go,” she snaps.
“Why, thank you very much,” the driver says politely. With a sharp glance at me, he heads toward the front of the bus.
I sag against the seat, breathing hard. Does that driver think I’m gonna say, “Thank you kindly,” to the woman for finally paying her own fare? I glare at the back of her stylish head. What is wrong with white folks anyway? The driver catches my glance in his rearview mirror. I look down and stay very, very still.
Don’t get uppity, Marey Lee.
I am almost late to work with that nonsense and run to tie on my oversized apron to begin the task I most dread: draining fat. Mr. Young collects pork fat in old tomato cans like it was gold. It isn’t just the families of the sharecroppers and poor whites who are scrimping and saving and planting victory gardens anymore. It’s everybody; even folks like Miss Ida say times is tough. Mr. Young uses fat to flavor greens. Don’t hardly anyone use more than a little meat.
The clatter and the routine of the kitchen at Young’s calm me down some. Our cook, Samuel, is hollering out orders and flipping hash like his life depends on it. Betty King, an older woman from over Anniston way, is white up to her elbows, slapping down biscuits and turning them into the oven. Every once in a while, one of the other girls breezes into the back to grab some coffee. Mr. Young got no colored waiters, but we wash up and, if there’s a rush, bus tables. “Order up,” Samuel bellows, and slaps a plate of pork and greens on the deck. I slosh the last of the fat from the pan and wrestle it into the sink.
It is eleven-thirty when I scrape down the last pot and throw my weight behind the mop to wipe up the floor. Young leaves our wages in his office every week, and I pick up my $1.75. Mama don’t understand why I got to go out and take up another job when I work enough at Miss Ida’s, but I ain’t trying to be nobody’s house girl for the rest of my life. I aim to have something of my own someday, even if it takes all my blood, sweat, and tears.
“You ready?” Samuel jams his cap down on his head. I nod and stumble out to his truck. I climb up into the back, watching out for splinters, and pull my hat down around my ears. Samuel drops off Betty and me every night so we don’t have to wait on the bus. Back there in the wind, my face aches, but I am glad to miss the bus tonight.
I can hear the air pushing out my sister’s throat, wet and heavy in a silent keening. Josephine cries like a five-year-old, and she is near fourteen.
“You crying?”
There is nothing but the wet sound of Josephine’s snuffling breaths.
“Feen, what is the matter with you?”
The floor creaks in the hallway outside our room.
I roll my eyes. Sure, I love her, but sometimes the girl ain’t nothing but an aggravation. Feen cries at the drop of a hat. Always jerkin’ and jumpin’, scared of her own shadow.
The floor creaks a little more, then the knob rattles. Now I understand why Feen is crying. Toby. Like a bad wolf. All teeth and tongue and eyes.
“You scared of the dark, Feen? You know that’s all that’s out there. Dark. Anything else I got something for.” I raise my voice a little, letting Toby know I know he is out there.
Toby got his nerve anyway, walking around this house at night. He got Mama doing for him, sewing up his shirts, doing his wash like he ain’t the hired man. Sister Dials think he tryin’ to be our new daddy. I ain’t studying on having no new daddy around here just yet.
Josephine draws in a shaky breath. “Just had a dream,” she mutters. “Nothing wrong.”
“Go to sleep, then. You got school, and I got to put up with Miss Ida in the morning.”
There is a listening silence.
“I can’t go to sleep,” she whispers. “He still there!”
“I’m up,” I say.
“What are you gonna do?”
“Shut up, Feen. Go to sleep.”
There are some long moments of silence before I hear the floor creak again. Toby went on, but it was a little while before I let my stomach loose itself. He didn’t call my bluff tonight, but what if he had? It is time to make a plan.
3.
then
Tonight, while Mama was listening to the radio with Feen and Toby, I took the hatchet to the whetstone out back and sharpened it.
Sundays are always the best day of the week. Sundays, me and Feen get up early, slop the hogs, and collect the eggs. We go with Mama to the African Methodist Episcopal church on Fourth Street. We wear our good hats. We step down the road, looking this way and that, seeing and being seen. On Sundays, the whole world is fine.
Even Josephine starched up a little this Sunday. Not only is it three weeks till Thanksgiving, yesterday Toby made some talk about how he had to see about his mother, so he had to get out of town. You should have seen the smile on that girl’s face. Toby up and left just after dark.
He’ll be back. But now I’m ready.
Last night before dinner, I made Feen slop the hogs, and I got the eggs myself, so Feen could stop crying about that setting hen that pecked her. I went into the henhouse, and Toby was there so fast I dropped my basket. He put his arm ’cross my throat and pushed me against the wall. He tried to reach down and pinch my privates, but I fought him like he was the devil. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” isn’t that what the Book say? The chickens got riled and started cluckin’ and Mama hollered I better stop fooling around out there. Toby sucked his teeth and grinned at me.
Mama uses the hatchet to take the heads off the chickens after she wrings their necks. It ain’t big, but it’s sharp like it’s stropped. Last night, I slid it up under my bed.
Now I’m ready.
At Bible study this Sunday, I heard tell that one of Saphira Watkins’s boys is leavin’ for the navy. Now she’s braggin’ that her boy’s gonna “see the world” before he settles down. That Sister Watkins just about always got something to say. Mama says most likely her boy’s gonna see a mop and a bucket to swab the deck, and that’s all. At services, Reverend Morgan preached a sermon all about the prophet Deborah and how she prophesied to the general Barak that a woman would slay the evil tyrant Sisera, that the Lord would bring about His plan through the powerless and not the general and his army. Then, just like she said, Sisera ran away from the battle and came to Jael to sleep in her tent, then Jael nailed his head to the floor with a tent peg. What God says, He does—ain’t that the truth? Then little Ananias Caldwell sang with the choir. Now, that boy has got a sweet voice. He might be famous someday. I’m gonna say I knew him when.
We came home for Sunday dinner, it being First Sunday and all. Mama made some corn bread to go with our beans, and she fried up a chicken, even though she was fussed that she couldn’t find that hatchet. I scraped out some fatback for the corn bread, and it was good, good. Mama made us save half the chicken for Toby. She hopes he’ll be back on Monday.
He’ll be back. But now I’m ready.
Then Mama took a little rest with her bourbon, and Feen and me went to sew quilts for the needy with the Dials girls. While we was sewing, Sist
er Dials announced we having a Christmas social next Sunday. Sundays are always the best days of the week.
Monday, Miss Ida’s daughter, Beatrice, is home from her ladies’ college, talking about she’s going to Daytona Beach to join the U.S. Army. Now, this is a women’s army, she tells Miss Ida. She’s gonna be working with women to free up a man for the fight. It’s her duty, she says. Well, sir, Miss Ida sure pitched a fit, said no daughter of hers was going to join no women’s army like she ain’t got no breeding.
“You know what kind of women they have there, Bébé,” Miss Ida says, twisting up her face like she gone crazy. She still calls Miss Beatrice by her baby name.
Miss Bébé says it don’t matter what kind of girls they got there, but Miss Ida shouted her down, talking about, “No child of mine!” Sent her from the table, too, like she was no more grown than a child. Miss Bébé blubbed worse than Feen, up there crying about how Miss Ida don’t never let her do anything. She told me I should go, though, and she could go with me. Said all you gotta be is one hundred pounds or over, free of responsibilities, and twenty years old. Even Miss Bébé knows I am not hardly no twenty, but she says Mama wouldn’t have to do nothing but sign and I could still go. Miss Bébé says she just knows my mama wouldn’t hold me back from doing my “duty.”
I ask her if colored girls going, and Miss Bébé said yeah, yeah, colored girls are going.
Huh. I’ll just bet they got colored girls there. Got to have someone wash up and cook and fetch and carry for the women’s army, same as for the men’s.
Feen got put in charge of the Sunday school Christmas play. She’s been working every day after school, making robes for the Virgin Mary and sitting up working the treadle on the sewing machine all evening till I get home. Mama’s been getting on her about how she’s strainin’ her eyes inside sewing all the time and she better get up and feed the chickens and not get too prideful about sewing for her play. Feen feed the chickens, all right, but she do it so early they haven’t gone to roost, now. She do it real quick and get back inside, like she scared of the dark. Feen stay in the house right next to Mama, but she don’t go to bed now till she see me home. She don’t say nothing, but since Toby been back, she’s been crying every night.
Mare's War Page 2
