From the Diary of Jonas Farley Thatcher
July 2, 1942. Here is something I never would have thought could happen, but it did: Horace is now more of a pain in the neck than he was before. He can't stop telling everybody who'll listen—and a few who have tried to ignore him—how smart he was to see early on that war was coming and how to capitalize on it. He stands to make quite a lot of money, and he is very happy that he doesn't have to share it with me. He keeps saying over and over how he wanted me to partner with him and how I wouldn't do it, and how I'm missing out on a big payday. Audrey threatened not to invite him to the July 4th celebration if he didn't stop talking about his money. We discussed not having a party this year, but people wanted us to do it. They said it was more important now than ever to celebrate the U.S. of A, and I suppose that's true. One thing for sure: We won't have as much food as we did last year. Everything is hard to come by now—Horace will tell you that. There's talk of rationing, which has been happening in Europe for years now. But what is important is not how much food we have but the fellowship, and there will be plenty of that. And, best of all, Charlie Pace and me get to spend the night cooking on the Monument to Meat. Well, not all night like before because we don't have that much meat this year, mostly just chickens and half a pig that Charlie butchered up real good. We do have a lot of whiskey, though, most of it left over from Christmas, and Sam got us some fireworks, so I expect we'll make a good time of it. Happy Birthday USA!
***
– Belle City –
Ruthie
Ruth walked every day for hours, with no particular destination or reason. After she took the younger children, Jack and Nellie, to school—Thatcher walked by himself to Booker T. Washington High School—she walked because it was better than sitting at home and thinking. Of course she thought as she walked, but as there were things to see and people to talk to, sometimes even activities to engage in (she occasionally taught French to young girls at the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA and watched the tennis matches at Washington Park, and on Friday evenings she was in the Episcopal Church parking lot when the BCCCTC cars returned), she could free her mind of the dark thoughts, of wondering exactly where Mackie and Wilton were, whether they were injured or frightened, whether they were too cold or too hot, wet or hungry or dirty, whether they were still in France. That's the thought that was most destructive to her equilibrium: That her boys would not only be fighting a war, often surrounded by people who should be companions but who hated them as if they were the enemy, but could be in a place where they could not understand what was being said. At least in France, she told herself, if they met soldiers not wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, they'd understand what was being said.
Mack had stopped telling her that it didn't matter what language somebody aiming a gun at you was speaking, and he brushed aside her argument that French soldiers would not be aiming guns at American soldiers. He stopped short of calling her hysterical and made her look directly at him when he made her promise to restrict her marathon walks to the Colored side of town. "I mean it, Ruth. You got to pay enough attention to where you're going that you don't end up in trouble. Promise me."
She promised, and she meant it. It would do no good for her to get into trouble, and she didn't want to worry him. Just as she walked, he worked, usually beginning before the sun rose and working until exhaustion sent him home. Had George Tennison not been at his side, she'd have worried, but she knew that George would keep a close eye on him. She also knew that Mack had enlisted any number of their friends and neighbors to keep an eye on her. She'd even seen Big Mack following her one day, and she'd slowed down so he wouldn't get winded trying to keep up; he was too old to be playing detective.
Most days Pa walked for a while with her. A little exercise was good for him, but too much was dangerous. Because people instinctively were drawn to him, walks with Pa always were punctuated by conversations with people they passed, and more often than not, Ruthie would leave him sitting on someone's porch, sipping something or sampling fresh-baked something, and talking about everything under the sun. She had urged Pa to return to North Carolina so that Beau wouldn't be alone, but he was torn: He wanted to be with Ruthie in case news came about one of his grandsons, but he also needed to be with the son who'd already survived one war and who felt the horror of what was happening in Europe more than any one of them. Ruthie and Mack had each other and three of their children to see them through this war. Beau had no one, and that wasn't right, which is why, they said to Big Si, he should be with Beau.
"Ruthie!"
She stopped, startled, at the sound of her name yelled almost in anger. Then she saw why: Belle was running to catch up and had probably called her name several times. Ruth saw immediately that her sister-in-law had gained weight, and she was breathless when she got close enough to say, "Are you all right? Didn't you hear me calling you?"
"I'm sorry, Belle. No, I didn't hear you. I was just..." Just what? She shrugged another apology. "What are you doing over here this time of day? Is everything all right?" Now it was her turn for concern.
Belle nodded and took her arm. "Are you goin' home? Can I walk with you?"
Ruth took stock of where she was, and she was, indeed, headed home, and she thought that having Belle for company would be a nice change. Big Mack and Clara, she remembered, would have the children for tonight and would take them to church the next day. Mack wouldn't be home until who knew what time. Yes, she thought, Belle would be good and welcome company. For Pa, too.
The old man's warm embrace of his daughter-in-law proved Ruthie correct, and Belle's tears were additional proof to all of them that they had indeed missed each other. It wasn't necessary to say that it was Belle who had removed herself from them, any more than it was necessary for them to admit that their judgment of Belle's activities was likely the cause of her distancing. Their togetherness in that moment was as perfect as ever. She asked for news of Mackie and Wilton, and she accepted, as they all had, that having heard nothing to the contrary of what they had said in their last letter—"they were as well as can be expected in the circumstances and a lot better off than a lot of the other men"— was good news. She asked for news of Beau and expressed her concern about him being "up there on that mountain all alone. Beau might seem to like being by hisself all the time, but he likes it as long as some one of his people is close at hand."
Pa looked at Belle as if the words she'd spoken were hanging in the air outside her mouth, able to be read. Then he nodded. "You right, Belle. Ruthie and Mack been tellin' me for months to go on back to North Car'lina to look after Beau, but 'till you said what you just said 'bout Beau likin' his loneliness just so long as he can reach out and touch me or Ruth or one of his brothers—that's the truth." He remembered what First Freeman said all those years ago about Beau preferring to make his rounds of the city alone, what Toby had told him when Beau first bought the building they shared—they'd only see Beau once a day: First thing in the morning he'd rush downstairs and into the shop and look at them, as if to make certain they were there. He thought of what he knew first hand from sharing a living space with his eldest son: As long as Beau knew that Pa would be home at the end of the day, Beau often would be away from before sunup until well after dark. He looked at Ruthie. "Will y'all drive me back up there? I been away from that boy too long."
Ruthie hugged Pa, then hugged Belle. "I wish I'd thought to say what you just said, and I am so glad you said it. Yes, Pa. We'll go tomorrow. Do you and the children want to go, Belle?"
"No, thank you." Belle inhaled deeply, and it was clear that she wanted to speak, so they waited for her. "I'm goin' back to work at the beauty salon. Ma and Helen and Catherine are gonna help me get it ready to open, and I got a barber ready to take over on...on the barbering side."
Ruth and Pa looked at her but didn't speak. They didn't need to; Belle read their expressions. Surprise, joy, confusion, and finally the question: What brought this on after so many years away? Belle tr
ied to explain, tried to answer all of their questions but found that she didn't really have the words because so much of what was happening inside her was feeling, and she'd never been good at putting her feelings into words. Ruth rescued her.
"Even with the War on, Belle, people are ready and able to get back to taking care of how they look."
Belle nodded. "Most people seem to be back to doing some kinda work. 'Course we still can't get the good-paying jobs in the factories and plants, still can't do nothin' but clean up or cook, but some kinda job is better'n no job, and while people can't buy new clothes or a new car, they can buy groceries now, and they can look nice, get their hair cut or curled, men can get a barber's shave now and again." She gave a small smile. "You know how we like to look good even if we're doin' bad. That's why people gamble, play the numbers: If they don't have but a dime, they know that's not enough to buy a haircut and a shave or a press and curl, but if they can turn that dime into two bits or a dollar, why, then—"
Suddenly an overwhelming sadness replaced the smile, tears filled her eyes, and she no longer was at Ruth and Mack's kitchen table but in some other place that was not warm and familiar. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "It was that Depression that almost killed us. That did kill Tobias. That was a terrible, terrible time. We couldn't tell y'all everything that was going on. Tobias wouldn't let me tell you. He was proud and 'shamed, both. He wanted y'all to see that he could stand up on his own two feet and take care of his own fam'ly, but he didn't want you to see what the cost was to us." She sobbed and shook, and Ruth and Pa left their chairs to embrace and enfold this woman who had returned to them. Like the prodigal, it didn't matter why she'd left, only that she had returned. But she told them why, and they wished she hadn't.
Throughout the Depression, Belle said, new and increasingly exorbitant taxes were imposed on Colored businesses. Silas told them, before he left for Chicago, that the new taxes were illegal and that collection of them could not be enforced. Toby found out that indeed individual tax collectors were illegally collecting money from Colored store and shop owners and threatening to foreclose on their properties if they didn't pay. Some of the more prosperous businesses could and did pay. Many more were forced to sign over their deeds or leases to people chosen by the tax collectors—people who then would pay the extra "tax." She and Toby paid for as long as they could, Belle said, and when they literally ran out of money, the collector for their area said there was another way they could make payment. "That's when I became a prostitute."
Ruth now wept with Belle, and Pa, in an uncharacteristic and unprecedented display of fury, threw his coffee cup across the room. The sharp sound of the shattering china startled the women. So did the rare profane invective that flew from his mouth.
"Y'all shoulda said something!" Big Si yelled. "Why didn't y'all tell somebody?"
"We couldn't," Belle said, wiping her face, blowing her nose. "Beau already had given us that building. Gave it to us. How could we turn around and ask for anything else? And we couldn't lose it. We couldn't do anything else." She sank back down into her chair, deflated. She bent over, head down between her knees, breathing deeply. Then she straightened and faced them. "Besides, if we hadda told Beau what was happening he woulda killed that tax collector. Y'all know that. And we couldn't let that happen either."
After Belle became their regular payment to the tax collector, Tobias changed. He treated her like it was her fault, Belle said, even as she was helping him implement their plan to close the barber and beauty businesses that fronted on the sidewalk and open the gambling parlor upstairs at the back of the building. They'd been open less than a week when the first cop showed up demanding payment. Toby had agreed to pay him weekly if he got rid of the tax collector, which he did. "I didn't have to be a 'ho anymore, but by that time I'd lost my husband. He already was drinking a lot—I think he's the only one of you Thatchers to ever take a drink of whiskey—but then somebody introduced him to the dope and that was that. I had to learn the gambling business and—" she smiled broadly, "I was good at it. I got a real head for numbers. And after what happened with that tax man, I swore no man would ever take advantage of me again, so I ran a tight ship. Lots of people thought that with Toby the way he was, they could run over me. They found out different. All but one of 'em, and he didn't run over me as much as I laid down."
As long as Tobias was alive, Belle convinced herself that she was not alone, that she had a husband and her children had a father, and she needed this belief to hold on to because by this time, she believed that she had no family. She saw her mother and sisters only if she sought them out because, like the Thatchers, they were disappointed if not disgusted by how she was earning a living. Angered by that response, Belle convinced herself that she didn't care what anyone thought, that she didn't need anyone but herself to take care of herself. Into this mind-set strolled Freddie Lee Durham, the man who is Angel's father. Belle said she fell hard but got up quickly when she realized that Freddie expected her to spend money on him, to take care of him, expected that he would live in her house and eat her food. This in the house where her children lived. She ran home to her mother who, Belle said, called Catherine and Helen and the three women appeared at Belle's door early on a Sunday morning. They awakened Mr. Durham, helped him into his clothes, helped him pack, helped him to the front door and out to the street, where "Ma told him she'd shoot him if her ever came back, and she pulled a pistol out of her purse and fired it. I didn't know Ma even had a gun. I bet ol' Freddie is still runnin'."
"Your Ma is not one to take a lot of foolishness," Pa said appreciatively.
"My Ma is my savior, and I don't know why it took me so long to see that."
"You see it now," Pa said, "and that's what counts."
"She cried when I told her I wanted to stop the gambling stuff and open up my shop again. She's been helping me every day, her and Cat and Helen."
"What can we do to help, Belle?" Ruth asked.
"You know we'll do anything we can," Pa said.
Belle raised her hands. "I don't need no money, if that's what you're askin'. That's one thing I got a lot of, no thanks to Freddie Durham who thought I was gonna spend it all on him. But if I could borrow Miz Hill, I sure would appreciate it, and I'll pay her whatever y'all pay her."
Ruth nodded. The trip to North Carolina and back would take several days. "I'll ask her, but if it's all right with her, it's fine with me."
"One more thing," Belle said. "And if y'all don't like it, I understand, but I'd like to make Angel's name Thatcher. I want her to be a part of this family like the other children. I want her to call you auntie and you grandpa. But mostly I don't want her to know that her ma was such a big fool. I don't regret that child, but I do regret how I got her. I don't want the child to feel like a bastard. She don't deserve that."
Big Si's response was immediate. "No, she don't, and just like we'll always think on you as a Thatcher, we'll think on that child the same way: Angel Thatcher."
"Her name's not really Angel," Belle said. "That's just what I called her before I knew what a devil her pa was. Her name is Emma, after my Ma."
Pa and Ruthie smiled widely. They liked the name Emma much better.
The grand re-opening of BELLE'S BEAUTY AND BARBER SALON took place the week before Thanksgiving in order to, Belle said, "put the idea of bein' thankful for lookin' good in people's heads." It was a strategy that worked. The event took place on a Monday evening, normally the day the shop would be closed. Belle hung balloons out front and inside; she'd hung colored streamers and more balloons. She also served tea and cookies, which earned her enough good will, it seemed, that those who knew about her stint running a gambling house were willing to forget it.
As Ruth surveyed the crowd, she noticed that the appearance of abject poverty that marked the Depression had been replaced by a more genteel poverty, the kind that was commonplace before the hard times set in. She didn't see a single pair of pants held up wi
th rope or string, not a single pair of shoe flaps held together with tape or rope, not a single dress or skirt hemmed with straight pins or purse straps held with safety pins. Most of the trouser legs and suit jackets and dresses and skirts were shiny from use and wear, and certainly no one wore the fashion of the day, but all were clean and pressed. With one exception: Belle's new barber. The man looked like a picture from a magazine—like Duke Ellington or Count Basie. She watched the response of the women to him, and, in that moment, she caught Belle's eye and gave her a wide smile: Hiring this man was a stroke of genius. Women could not sit in his chair, but they'd come to the shop, sit in Belle's chair, and watch him. Perhaps a few of the single women might warrant a dinner invitation. She leaned in and whispered her thoughts to Mack, who threw his head back and laughed out loud.
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