“Shit!” Bojack yelled. “I been having that problem since before I was divorced.”
Aunt Mary and Bojack continued arguing and it took nearly five minutes to break it up. Aunt Mary eventually quieted down, but Bojack was not to be denied. He stretched out his arms, pleading.
“Y’all got to stop fooling yourselves. You know what’s going on. You read the papers, don’t you?”
“Ain’t no need to go and be making fun of nobody now,” Ethel said. “You know I can’t read much.”
“I ain’t making fun of you, Ethel. Sorry if you taken it that way. Hell, I don’t read too good neither. But what I can read is ‘Nigger Die,’ and ‘Colored Only.’ And I sho’ as shit can spell L-Y-N-C-H! I’m sorry I brought up the papers. I don’t thank we need no paper to know what our situation is in this town.”
Canaan was a beautiful place southeast of Richmond and charmingly nestled along the James River. We lived inland and on the outskirts of town, where the fields seemed to roll on forever. At any time of day, a person could look out over those fields of green, brown, and gold, and feel the beauty of nature. The days were filled with the chirping of birds and the nights with the cries of whippoorwills and crickets. In the country, Mother Nature sang you to sleep. And in town, there was such beautiful Southern architecture that people from all over Virginia and parts of North Carolina came to look.
Great Victorian mansions dotted the landscape, and beautiful eighteenth and nineteenth-century churches crowned the many hilltops. Yes, Canaan was beautiful, but Bojack was right. Negroes didn’t live in those beautiful homes. And the fields lost their beauty when you spent ten to twelve hours a day chopping weeds in them. Long hours, after which most Negroes were too tired to take time to listen to Mother Nature singing. Yes, Bojack was right about Canaan. And he was right about John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Hadn’t they been living much the same way before, during, and after his presidency?
Suddenly, the Kool-Aid wasn’t so sweet. Daddy stood and went into the kitchen. As I got up, I sensed the overwhelming despair rocking in the chairs on our porch. The silence gave me goose bumps.
I peeked through the curtains and saw my father putting more sugar in his Kool-Aid. He poured in spoonful after spoonful. I could tell he was very upset, his mind roaming elsewhere. I figured he was thinking about his job on the loading dock at the meatpacking plant, the white man who farmed his land for a fraction of the going rental fee, and the good old days when he could make a good living doing what he loved.
I carry priceless memories of Daddy kneeling in the fields, holding a handful of soil up close to his face, cherishing the deep, rich smell of freshly turned earth. Happiness for me was watching the sunrise while sitting in Daddy’s lap, both of us steering his tractor up a field. I would turn around to watch the disc harrow, the cultivator or planter break the earth, and then wave at Mark and Bullet as they ran behind the tractor. Later on, Mark would take a turn at the wheel, driving by himself, Daddy standing on the running board and guiding him along. I would keep Bullet company, puffs of dust flying from our heels as we chased the big red Massey Ferguson up and down the rows.
At noon, Mama would come by with lunch. Sometimes, it was sandwiches. Other times—my favorite times—she would bring a big watermelon, cooled by ice in a tub mostly used for baking hams.
Daddy would step down off the tractor, take the machete he always carried in the fields, and, with one dazzling swipe, split the watermelon in half. And then with a few smaller swings, he split it into little pieces, which the four of us would proceed to devour. Then Mama would leave, and we’d continue until whichever one of us wasn’t riding with Daddy was too tired to run behind the tractor. Mark or I would sit with Bullet at the end of the field and watch Daddy drive, tilling the earth, one son at his side, their silhouettes melting into the sunset.
•••
Daddy finally realized what he had done and emptied his glass into the sink. He refilled it with Kool-Aid, came back out on the porch and sat beside Mama, who was staring out over the field in front of us. In her face I could see the replaying of Bojack’s impromptu sermon. To this day, I imagine she was thinking sadly about those many incarnations of Moses who had come and gone without getting the job done. I saw her doubting that we, as a family or a race of people, would ever reach the Promised Land.
Bojack’s head drooped guiltily. The Browns simply stared at everybody, and Chauncey Mae sucked hard on her toothpick. Cozy Pitts still held a hand to her heart, looking absolutely crushed. Eugenia went over to hug her, and Rosetta sat on the floor by her mother’s feet. Mark and I looked at each other and hunched our shoulders.
No one said a word. It was as if they had finally come to grips with the fact that someone they really loved was dead. After five years of hiding in JFK’s shadow, the truth had set in. Their savior was gone, and there was no one to look up to except for the supervisor at the plant or the taskmaster in the fields.
“Lord have mercy,” Ethel Brown muttered. “It’s a damn tough world.”
Another round of “amens” and nodding followed.
“Thangs is bad for a Negro, ain’t they?” Jim Brown asked.
“I don’t even thank we Negroes anymore,” Chauncey Mae replied. “I thank we supposed to call ourselves blacks. Anyway, you right.”
Ethel Brown’s eyes watered. She sniffed, took a deep breath, and slowly shook her head. “I been praying for most all my forty-five years. Thangs just ain’t getting no better.”
“Fuck it,” Bojack said.
“Might as well,” Jim replied. “Ain’t much a Negro—I mean, a black—can do.”
“Except play nigger and make it by. I just hate that,” Mary said.
“I know you do. That’s why you divorced me,” Bojack answered. “Said I was playing nigger. I won’t man enough. Well, I wish I coulda been there the minute when you realized you had to play that game, too. And when you realized you won’t as much a woman as you believed you was.”
Mary dropped her head.
I wished I was somewhere else. The conversation had turned into something I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t like it when the adults looked more insecure about life than me. How could I expect guidance or support from these people when I saw such uncertainty in their eyes?
My mind wandered, recalling memories that had been welded shut with pain. Bojack’s mouth was the torch that cut them open. I thought about four or five years earlier, when Mama ordered Mark and me into our room, but I sneaked out. Two white men came to the door and called for Daddy. They went outside, and Mama followed out onto the porch. I climbed up onto the sink and peeked between the kitchen curtains and saw Daddy talking to the men.
“Just because you got some land and a house don’t mean you can talk disrespectful to white people,” one of them said.
“I didn’t say nothing except I know them seeds ain’t cost that much. He was ripping me off,” Daddy said.
“That’s my daddy you talking about, boy. It’s his store. He know what it cost.”
“Man in front of me was charged less.”
The second white man said, “It’s his choice if he want to give a break to who he wants.”
“Who he wants mean white people, I guess,” Daddy replied.
“And so what if it is?”
They moved closer to Daddy, and he stepped back, which surprised me because he, like Mama, was tall and could be intimidating. At six-four, he towered above those men. He was lean and muscled, weighing close to 230 pounds. He had a broad chest and strong, wide shoulders. I remember being amazed by him on the farm, watching as he tossed hundred-pound feed bags like bags of potato chips. Yet, he was in retreat.
The first white man said, “You going on being disrespectful again.” And he started taking off his belt. Then the other white man took off his belt, and they backed Daddy up against their truck. He couldn’t run and they started whipping him like he was a misbehaving deerhound.
“Go in the house, Treeny!”
he yelled while he fended off the belts. But she froze. I couldn’t take it. My father was growing smaller in stature right before my eyes. So, I ran to my room, crawled under the covers and cried. Minutes later my parents came back into the house. I heard the door close and my father yell.
“I told you to go in the house!” he shouted at Mama.
“I was scared for you,” she replied.
“You need to mind me!”
“Augustus. I couldn’t leave you.”
“But I told you to! I told you to!”
Then there was a loud bang and a crash, which brought me out from under the covers. Mark was sitting on the edge of his bed looking concerned. It sounded like Daddy’d slammed his fist on the kitchen table. Something broke. Mama started running, and seconds later, she was standing in our bedroom looking out of breath. She closed the door and sat down on my bed. She looked at us and put her finger to her lips. It was the first time I saw her afraid of my father. Daddy was in a rage and stormed down the hall and into their bedroom. He slammed the door shut. My young heart had never suffered such a shocking blow. Daddy was like that for a week or so afterward, and the three of us spent a lot of time in the bedroom. In silence.
I remembered my father before he lost the ability to farm our land. I used to sit beside him at the dinner table. After he ate, he always rested his elbows on either side of his plate and lowered his chin onto interwoven hands, a proud man surveying his own. I would stare at the long, tough, well-defined muscles in his arms. His biceps seemed as big as my head. He would turn to me, laughing about this or that with the confidence of a Greek god. And I would say to myself, That’s my daddy!
But that June night, after Bojack’s rant, I saw a man who looked beaten and tired. Who was confused as to why it had been so easy for them to take his manhood from him before he could gather himself together enough to put up a fight.
The remarks about racism that I’d heard from Mama Jennie and other adults for years suddenly felt real. Now, I fully understood why little white kids could get away with spitting on me when I wasn’t even allowed to spit on my own brother. And why my adult mother would have to say “Yes ma’am” to a little white girl that just called her a nigger.
I cried inside that night on the porch as I had aloud the day I saw my father beaten. I closed my eyes, and inside I felt my fists flying in an uncontrollable rage, beating the world and its indignities to a pulp. But when I opened my eyes, there was the world again, smiling and sticking out its tongue.
Bojack was right; we knew our true situation in Canaan, but at that moment I hated him for compelling us to face up to it.
“Well,” Aunt Mary said to Bojack. “Now you done ruined our night and made our life seem like it ain’t for shit.”
“Watch your mouth, Mary. I done heard enough cussing for one night. Y’all do remember there is children here, don’t you?” Mama said.
“This ain’t no time for manners, Treeny. It’s time for this ex-husband of mine to tell us what we supposed to do, since he so God-almighty smart. And why don’t you take them damn glasses off so we can argue eye to eye? I want to see what kinda disgust you got for me.”
Bojack was sweating but recalcitrant. He calmly took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. When he spoke, he ignored Aunt Mary’s comment about the sunglasses.
“I don’t know what y’all all mad at me for. I just done what somebody oughta done for you years ago,” he said.
“You ain’t doing nothing but raising a whole lotta Cain for nothing,” Chauncey Mae said. “You crazy old fool.”
“She right,” Ethel Brown said. “You just like to upset folks.”
Bojack emptied his glass with one swallow, then turned his gaze toward us children.
“I look at myself,” he said, “and I’m sad. I woulda liked to been somebody in my life. I didn’t want to spend it all being the nothing I am. A lot of it’s my fault, but some of it I blames my mama and my daddy for. They didn’t tell me I could be something. In fact, they went entirely the other direction. They didn’t want me to be somebody, and I tell you why. ’Cause if I grew up to be somebody, then I woulda passed them by, and they couldn’t bear to thank I could get more out of life than they did. When some folks’ children do better than they did, they feel jealous of they kids when they ought to be happy.”
“Bojack, what is it you trying to say?” Mama asked.
“That we got to do something about us as a people in Canaan. We got ourselves a complex as big as Augustus’ farm out yonder. We don’t thank we nothing, so we be nothing, and we pass that on to our children. I’m saying I wish somebody had told me I could get a education. Look at Eliza Blizzard. She got a education, and she making white folks sit up and listen to her.”
Aunt Mary nodded quickly, smiled, and pointed a finger at Bojack. It was like she had figured out some great mystery. “I saw that woman’s car at your house. You having a thang with her?”
Everybody laughed at how jealous Aunt Mary seemed all of a sudden. She looked a little embarrassed because since she’d divorced Bojack, she tried to give the impression that she never thought about him one way or another. But now it seemed she’d been watching his house and was envious of Eliza Blizzard, the imposing, fiery principal of the Negro high school. It was a nice break from the tension.
Then Jim Brown spoke up. “I thank Eliza Blizzard is crazy. In the paper all the time calling herself a black spokesperson. She ain’t speak for me!”
“Me neither,” Ethel said.
“Somebody ought to say something for us,” Bojack said.
Up until this point, we children had been quiet. But the subject of Eliza Blizzard was so hot it could make everyone burst out in opinion. Rosetta Jones stepped up to Bojack, stomping her feet into position and slapping her hands against herself.
“Lord, watch out!” Chauncey Mae said proudly. “My little girl done put her hands on her imagination. She mean bidness now.”
“Imagination” was what Chauncey Mae called her daughter’s hips—as in she was so skinny, she had to imagine that she had them.
“I don’t care how much that old biddy talk about equal education,” she shouted at Bojack. “I ain’t going to no school with no honky children.”
“You ought to want to,” Bojack said.
The adults gasped.
“For real,” he said. “They got all the best books and school equipment. You can use that stuff to get ahead, just like they be doing.”
“Listen to this fool!” Daddy stood and yelled at Bojack. “He thanks that if we read they books, we gone get where they got.”
“Ah, come on, Augustus. I ain’t that big a fool, and I ain’t said that. You might not get where they get, but you can get somewhere. Somewhere further than you can get by not reading ’em.”
“Bojack, boy, you is a fool. Ain’t got good sense enough to pour piss out a boot!” Chauncey Mae huffed.
“Why would I want to?” Bojack said. “You the fool that got the piss in the boot in the first place! Tell me which one of us is crazy?”
“What you crying about, Cozy?” Mama said.
Cozy Pitts’ face was streaked with tears. “Everywhere I go, white people cause a stink, and they ain’t even got to be in the room with you.”
“A little discussion ain’t never hurt nobody, Cozy,” Bojack said.
“Y’all ain’t discussing. That white devil got y’all yelling at each other. Divide and conquer! Ain’t that what they say?” Cozy’s body shook, and her wig slipped. She adjusted it, the tears drying in little rivulets on her cheeks.
“Tell it like it is, girl,” Aunt Mary said.
“Yeah,” Eugenia said. “Taliferro say he gone kill him some white folks before it’s all over.”
“Bojack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Jim Brown said. “Way you talking tonight, we ain’t good enough for your hind parts. Seem like to me, you’d rather your ass be white. Saying all that terrible shit about your mama and daddy.”
> “Right on!” Chauncey Mae said. “Ain’t you got no respect, Negro?”
“You should ask my parents and other folks if they ain’t got no respect for the lives of they children,” Bojack replied. “I’ll give you a example. Look at all the names of the children in this town. Rayfield Jones. He and his wife name they son Macho. Mason Johnson and his wife name they son Geronimo after the Indian. He ain’t no Indian boy. How a colored boy like him suppose to make it in this life with a name like Geronimo or Macho? White folks ain’t gone do nothing but laugh at ’em. Seem like to me, that ain’t doing nothing but giving they children a death sentence. Putting ’em ten feet behind before the race even starts. Maybe somewhere in the back of they minds, they don’t know what they doing, but they sho’ nuff making sure they children don’t do no better than them.”
Bojack kept coming up with good points, but no one wanted to give him credit. They just got their backs up and refused to see the logic.
Aunt Mary spoke up. “We better change the subject before I lose my religion and say something I might regret.”
Once again silence overtook the group. No one seemed to be able to look at anyone else. Mama was in her favorite wicker rocker, and it creaked against the floorboards. Jim and Ethel Brown slid the glider back and forth on its base. When Mama’s rocker wasn’t creaking, the glider was. I heard Chauncey Mae sucking on her toothpick, crickets in the background, and hogs snorting around out in the pens. The situation overwhelmed me, and I wanted to get away. But it would have been rude to just walk off the porch, even if nobody was talking.
I got out of my chair. Bullet woke up, went over to Mark’s feet, and lay down again. I continued to the far end of the porch and caught another fly. I pulled off its wings and put it on the screen in front of Mantis, but Mantis took wing and flew to another part of the porch. I guess he’d had his fill, or maybe the conversation made him lose his appetite.
So I stood by the screen and looked out over the field. I could not take my mind off what Bojack had said. I turned and looked at my family and our guests sitting quietly on the porch, and I thought about their situation. Bojack was right. They were always complaining about their lives, but they did nothing to escape or to help their children escape. Even though I was only ten years old, it hit me hard and moved something in me to hear a grown man admit that he was sad about his life. He had nothing to show for it, and nothing to be happy about. It jarred me and made me realize that I shouldn’t—better yet, couldn’t end up that way. I couldn’t bear to look at my life stretched out before me like a long, empty highway and know that forty years later, I’d be standing in the same spot, looking at the same view. The soles of my shoes would be worn through, but I would have traveled nowhere.
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 3
