Oh, if I was two women instead of one, I’d keep you here, darlin’, Mama said. But there’s just the one of me still, and I can’t educate you and take care of Ray. Ray’s the baby, she explained, adding that babies needed their mamas a bushel and a peck more than half-grown boys.
Jackson studied his little brother, wondering what that fat, greedy child needed so much. As far as he could see, Ray thrived just on eating and sleeping. And Mama didn’t nurse him herself. She’d tried, but Baby Ray was born with teeth and bit while he sucked. She gave up after a week. I swear, she testified to her husband, that child could chomp the paps off a bobcat. I am havin’ no more of it. There followed a succession of wet nurses who each bore him as well as she could before making excuses and passing him along to the next young mother desperate for income. The teeth fell out within a handful of weeks, but Ray had such strong jaws the wet nurses continued to complain. He turned out likely the fastest weaned child in the county.
On January 5, 1949, Jackson entered the world of Stonewall Elementary. There were other schools closer to home, but these were either public, Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopal. The doctor hoped a private, nonaffiliated institution would keep their child safe from commonplace anti-Semitic remarks, uttered though they might be from the mouths of babes with no appreciation of their sting, a fate none of the cousins had managed to avoid completely no matter what school they attended. Missy Fine Sassaport considered her eldest son a blessed child, given his sterling health and lively interests. She was confident the darling little ladies and gentlemen who attended Stonewall, being of excellent families, their neighbors, his father’s patients, would exempt him from the usual rites of passage of the time. We do not live, she announced imperiously to her husband, her chins tilted upward and her eyes aggressively narrowed, in some Yankee factory town stuffed with Polish and Italian hooligans. We are an established family in a bedroom community of the capital of Mississippi. He will be reminded who he is, which might be a good thing, but no one will bully him on that account alone.
Nothing, however, could exempt Jackson from class prayer. In short order, he memorized the Lord’s Prayer and a handful of children’s hymns, which his mother hastened to inform him he should consider fanciful poems and ditties much like the stories in his Aesop’s Fables. As for his classmates, once they figured out he was a Jew, they were curious but respectful enough while in class, though at recess, soft-spoken, polite young boys in white shirts and red ties approached his solitary station outside the building door to ask if they could please rub his head to feel his horns. I don’t have horns, Jackson insisted, thoroughly confused. Sweet little girls in navy blue jumpers and crisp white blouses with peter pan collars asked him if he’d like to know more about Jesus. For the latter, Jackson blushed and declined, saying he was learning a lot already.
The doctor dropped his son off at school on his way to rounds every morning, so going to school went smoothly enough, but coming home alone and on foot proved a trial of major proportions. On Wednesday of his second week, he was halfway home when set upon by a clutch of ragtag children, truants and troublemakers, elder brothers of those who’d whispered Missy’s Sissy behind his back, only these preferred to call him dirty jewboy and made true their point by pelting him with mud balls. When he got home, he told Mama he fell in a puddle. He was a painfully honest creature. Prevarication destroyed his digestion. Mama kept him home on Thursday to nurse his bad stomach. Jackson felt even worse then, for it seemed he had profited through mendacity. On Friday, he determined if his tormentors appeared again he would run like holy heck at the sight of them, but they lay in wait under the cover of sidewalk shrubbery to pop out and pounce upon him, stealing his books and juggling them in the air. Sissy jewboy! they called him while he scrambled about in the street for his texts then fled, with the pack chasing him until they got winded. This time, there was no lie required to prevent Mama from discovering the truth. When he returned home, Eleanor, shucking butter beans while rocking Baby Ray’s cradle with her foot, told him Mama was preoccupied.
As it happened, that Saturday a Cousins Club picnic was held on the grounds of Uncle Jordan’s sprawling estate downriver. Cousins Club—a creation of Missy Fine Sassaport to sustain family relations in the next generation—met every other month, usually at one of the aunt’s or uncle’s homes. On special occasions, the whole crew went to restaurants if they managed to find an establishment willing to accommodate the entire noisy mess of them. Though they accepted him because he was blood, the cousins had about as much use for Jackson as the neighborhood boys. They teased him mercilessly, pulling at his longish hair, sneezing at him or spitting close to his feet then taunting him with assurances he was now infected, not just with polio, but with diphtheria and TB besides.
Ordinarily, Jackson would not ask the cousins for anything. To do so was an invitation to trouble. But that day at Uncle Jordan’s, he was desperate. There, under the arms of an ancient red oak, he reached deep inside his trembling heart to ask advice of the boys who, until his second week at school, had been the chief tormentors of his puny existence. Blood is blood, he told himself, repeating one of Daddy’s favorite maxims, and cleared his throat. What do you all do, he asked the cousins while they chomped chicken legs and tossed the bones at one another, about the bullies that call you jewboy and the like? There followed instant silence, then the clatter of dozens of bones hitting tin plates as a generation of Sassaport males abandoned their lunch to surround him and pepper him with questions. Who you talking about? What’d they say? What’d they do? Jackson told them what happened, ending: I don’t know who they are, but I believe they are blood related to that gang that runs around the post office all day long in summer.
Mickey Moe, Aunt Beadie’s boy, was the Cousins Club leader, as he had achieved the age of eleven and was bigger than the rest. He was further fatherless, as Uncle Bernard had taken several Nazi bullets in the Ardennes. Aunt Beadie forever referred to Mickey Moe not by name but as “the man of the house” which had an effect on the child. In perfect imitation of every good old boy who ever breathed, he hitched up his pants and wrinkled his brow in an attempt at gravitas. Jackson waited for his response, admiring his every manly move. The others kept respectful silence waiting for the boy to speak. Eventually, he spit on the ground and announced: That’d be those Hicks boys and maybe some of those Turners, too. White trash, the whole lot of them. Must have got tired of harassing the Negroes. Stand up, Jackson, and come over here in the open. We need some room for this. Now, here’s what you do.
Mickey Moe stuck out his foot and planted it in a grassless spot of clay. Jackson’s eyes widened about as far as they could as he anticipated his first lesson in the art of self-defense. He gulped down the anxious tide of bile that rose to his throat at the idea of violence and made tight fists of the hands that hung by his sides. Meanwhile, the man of Aunt Beadie’s house swept his foot through the dirt in a wide arc, then tapped its starting point with the toe of his Buster Browns. This here, he said, punctuating again with his toe, is Stonewall Elementary. And over here—he tapped his toe some inches over to the left—is Walnut Street. And that leads to Hickory Hill, don’t it? Yes, indeed it does. Well now, that’s a very fine neighborhood. Nothing but people of quality from end to end. They don’t tolerate white trash lurking around. So you just walk down Walnut and then to the Hill and about over here, if you cut through Mr. Jenkins’s backyard, you can get to your own street without ever having to mix with those boys again. Although Christmastime and Eastertime, they’ll be hunting you, and you best be careful especially then. Mickey Moe brushed his hands together, then wiped them on the seat of his pants as if they and not his shoe had just diagrammed the route to safety. He ruffled Jackson’s hair under his palm and marched back to his chicken with a trail of Sassaport cousins behind.
Ok, thought Jackson, looking at his cousin’s map. It hardly seems enough, but I’ll try it. I’ll try it on Monday.
And on that day, Mickey Moe’
s advice worked a charm, and the boy himself was enshrined a hero in Jackson’s book, someone to look up to, someone to trust. Previously, Jackson felt Mickey Moe a drop of blood apart from the likes of the Hicks and Turners, but now he reveled in a newfound affection for him, sticking close by his side at all subsequent family gatherings, pestering him with whatever questions of social consequence might be troubling him, for Stonewall Elementary was a mine field of difficulties and he needed all the help he could get. Being the runt of Cousins Club was worth the price of the many jokes of which he was often the butt end, if he could glean from them strategies to manage his struts through the halls of Stonewall Elementary without a misstep that might blow him up.
The fact was that even if he hadn’t been Jewish or his mama’s pet, his classmates would have considered him an alien creature, as Missy Fine Sassaport’s instruction of him proved contrary to the curriculum approved by the state of Mississippi. His reading was advanced, he knew where Bavaria was, and he could read music as long as it wasn’t very complex. Otherwise, he proved either ignorant or wrong. His manner of writing letters was full of embellished loops and curlicues that Missy Fine Sassaport had taught him to form, because she thought it would make the task of writing more fun for him. His teacher found it impossible to read. He could count up to one hundred, add, and subtract, but had never attempted to write figures. The concept of fractions was as foreign as Babylon to him. After the first few weeks, weeks of constant embarrassment and correction, Jackson decided to accept the assessment of his classmates and teacher. He was, undeniably, stupid. He was, undeniably, alien. He would never fit in. He would never have friends.
The only bright spot in the vast field of darkness spread out before Jackson until he could achieve the far-off summer, when at least he could remain at home all day, far from the classmates who ignored him, occurred damn close to it in mid-April. That was the day Daddy decided Baby Ray was not developing properly. He’s too fat, he told Mama in Jackson’s presence, he’s nearin’ nine month old and he just got strong enough to roll. ‘Til now, he hasn’t even tried. He don’t babble. His mouth is too lazy to do anything but suck. He’s way behind schedule there. I’ve heard no attempts at vocalization coming from that child, Missy, nothing but grunts. Mama disagreed. His eyes follow me wherever I go, she offered as proof of Baby Ray’s alertness, and I know when he approves and when he does not of my actions. He understands everything I say. Daddy turned his back on her. So does the sheriff’s dog, he muttered, but only Jackson heard him. By now, Mama was crying. Daddy sighed and went to comfort her. As usual, his blunt verbal outburst was followed by clumsy concession. Missy, darlin’, he said with his arms around her from behind. Baby Ray may turn out the sweetest, most sensitive child, beloved by all. I’m just saying he’s another one not about to follow in his daddy’s footsteps. You’ll have to give me more.
It was a joke accompanied by a nip on the back of the neck and a trill of chuckles, but his humor was not appreciated. Missy Fine Sassaport erupted into her legendary denial of physical stamina to accommodate the expansion of the clan and huffed into the kitchen where for three months she laid exclusive claim to the ice chest, the oven, and Sukie’s cot. What made this a bright spot in Jackson’s annus horribilis was the realization that Ray was defective, a dunce, more stupid than he. Mama might have abandoned him, but she’d quit Ray, also. As far as Jackson was concerned, his own abandonment was a misunderstanding, a mistake, but that fat, immobile stranger deserved it.
In the brief span that stretched from April to July, a tiny patch of time given the course of a life in full, a mere season in the green years that everyone forgets, two important things happened. Number one was that Baby Ray perked up. He gurgled and stood, his reflexes turned quick. Since he screamed for all he was worth until Mama came out of the kitchen to soothe him, Daddy decided he hadn’t really been slow before, just supremely spoiled. Number two was that Jackson first experienced a wound of injustice while he watched Mama give over entirely to wailing Baby Ray what few tender moments she dispensed daily to her family before she re-disappeared into the kitchen, a formerly warm, convivial spot that had overnight grown a lock on its door, the rude click of which terrified him. If he’d not been terrified also of blood and death for most of the past year, he might have strangled Baby Ray in his crib for being a devil, for sucking the life from their mother. Five minutes with the greedy brat and she was too exhausted for anything else. Jackson had no explanation for her apparent preference of her tormentor over him, he had infrequent acquaintance with concepts of guilt and none at all with depression. He only knew that he did not like Baby Ray, hated how his arrival had transformed his cozy, closed-off world, and could not conceive of loving him, especially in the dopey big-brother way he’d been told for nine months he surely would. On the contrary, his most entertaining pastime was imagining a variety of accidental deaths for Baby Ray, some swift, some slow, depending on his mood.
His attitude improved when Mama at last returned to her family. Full of grits, satisfied she’d made her point, weary perhaps of a life devoted to pots and pans and dishes and cutlery and the things that disappeared too quickly from them, she emerged from the kitchen one day and never returned again except on holidays. At last, she took note of her firstborn, saw immediately his loneliness, and devised remedies. You’re pale as a widow’s cheeks, boy, she told him. You need fresh air. Now, I’d love to go out and play with you, like we used to do, you know I would, but Baby Ray needs me here. So I want you to be a good boy and play every day with Big Bokay’s grandson, Li’l Bokay, instead. For your health, darlin’. His granddaddy’s bringing him by today. He’s going to take you fishing. You’ve never done that before, have you? Well, he’s a big boy, ten years old, and he’ll teach you things, just like Mama. Won’t that be fun?
Jackson wasn’t sure of that, but his mind was excited by the prospect of having a playmate, especially an older boy. The knowledge that his companion was a Negro tinged events with mystery and heightened his anticipation. Everything Jackson knew about race up ‘til then, he knew on a subliminal level from the social cues around him. He saw that blacks and whites were intimately related, dependent on one another, sensed that each was aware of that fact, aware of an economic contract of uneasy peace between them, and after spending all their long workdays together, rejoiced in spending off time free from each others’ race and its burdens at last. Jackson knew the staff of his home and Daddy’s office well. He knew the man who packed their groceries, both the man who swept up the bank and the woman whose job it was to perpetually polish its abundance of brass knobs, lamps, and the balustrade that graced its marble staircase, knew them well enough to call them by name. He knew instinctively not to use Mr. or Miss before their given names when he addressed them as he was taught to address white people. He knew by sight the black children who popped in and out of their mothers’ skirts at Sassaport Bakery and the older ones who spent most of their days at the banks of the Pearl making mischief. He could not imagine a world without black people. Yet if he knew a name to go with a small round dark face that was not of Eleanor’s, Sukie’s, or Big Bokay’s families, it was rare, a social accident. There were, of course, no black children at his school. The Negro school was on the other side of town, through the woods and past the hollow, where those who did not live in an employer’s home or at the back of a store lived for the most part on heir’s property without electricity or indoor plumbing. When Jackson and Mama took nature walks, during which she taught him the names of trees and what berries he could safely eat, they always stuck to their end of the woods and never ventured onto that opposite side, epicenter of the unknown and undiscussed. That summer everything changed. His adventure that summer was the adventure of Li’l Bokay. In his memory it shone like the golden apples of Diana, a treasure so pure and irresistible even a virgin pursued by a horde of men would stop to marvel at its beauty.
Jackson enjoyed celebrating his youthful friendship with L’il Bokay yea
rs later when he entertained the Yankee civil rights crowd at college the year they all got ready to march down to DC. Accustomed to hearing him declaim in class, they accepted his bona fides as a political liberal and expected to get the real deal when they inquired with varying degrees of subtlety what was it really like to grow up Jewish in the deep South, in such a community that would murder him if given an excuse. Had he ever had a cross burned on his front lawn? Had he ever been inside a Negro home down there? Sitting in an espresso café in New Haven, he told them alright, exaggerating his silken drawl, dropping his final consonants and elongating his vowels more than usual, the better to captivate them.
Missy Fine Sassaport’s efforts had not been in vain. Jackson made quite the picture, despite his wardrobe, which would have appalled her. In those days, he had a preference for worn-out Jimmy Dean-style blue jeans, pegged at the bottom. His shoes were usually black leather boots with motorcycle straps. Mama would agree wholeheartedly that his demeanor was completely charming, he had the gallant’s touch of self-deprecation. The way he sat, the way he gestured, would have been suitable in the parlors of kings. Three seasons a year his Yale colors were knotted around his neck in the form of a wool scarf knit for him by a coed who’d captured his attention for six months in his first year. He wore it ascot-style over dark turtlenecks and often wore a navy blue blazer over all, as his terms at Stonewall Elementary and Stonewall High had given him a fondness for such. In those days, he had a pencil-thin mustache, black as the forest of wild hair on his head. For a time he’d considered sprouting a goatee as well, but in the end considered additional facial hair too theatrical a statement. He didn’t need it. He’d dropped into this sea of ambitious, competitive sharks like an eagle skimming its surface. Women liked him. Men asked his opinion. He had never been so happy. In other words, he took on the mantle of Southern raconteur with the vivid grace Mama had instilled in him, having the good fortune to find the role in vogue.
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