A Thousand Never Evers

by Shana Burg

  And right then, the door pulls open. There’s Mrs. Tate, looking all different than usual. First, she’s got black spider splotches running from her eyes to her chin. Second, she’s not holding her son, ready to push him into my arms.

  I hear Ralphie crying like a siren inside the house. I can’t wait to kiss his tummy and make him smile.

  “Good day,” Mrs. Tate says.

  “Morning, ma’am,” Mama and me say.

  Mrs. Tate pushes open the screen door.

  My heart jumps inside me. I’m about to run inside and find Ralphie, but Mrs. Tate doesn’t step aside to let me through.

  And it’s like what I’m hearing isn’t real. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “but we can’t be using your help no more. Wouldn’t look right,” she says, and sniffles. “As you can imagine, my husband’s not very happy with me now, so I’ve got to do what I can to keep this family together.”

  Inside the house, I can hear Mr. Tate yelling. Now Ralphie cries even louder.

  Mrs. Tate glances over her shoulder, then back at us lickety-split. “I’ve got to tend to my son,” she says. “I’m sure y’all understand.”

  Understand? I’d like to, but Mrs. Tate still doesn’t know how to fix up the bottle real warm the way Ralphie likes it, not too hot to burn and not too cold to make his tummy turn.

  My insides scream. I barely hear Mama say, “Yes, ma’am. May God bless you.” I hardly feel her grab my arm and pull me down the front steps, the walk, and Honeysuckle Trail.

  While Mama and me trudge along Magnolia Row, back to our side of town, all I can see is that little boy lying in his crib, reaching out for me to pinch his nose and make him laugh. And Mama, she knows no matter how hard it hurts her to think about where the next dollar will come from, right about now it hurts me more. That’s because the day I started work for the Tates, I took that little one into my heart.

  Once we’re back at the Montgomerys’ place, Mama stirs up chocolate milk, and Uncle Bump drapes a bedsheet across the kitchen window. Then Elias joins the three of us at the kitchen table. Wouldn’t you know it, here’s my family at long last together and I can’t do anything but throw a double-duck fit. Ever since my brother told me the real story of our family, I knew the anger was inside me. But I didn’t have time to feel it. Till now.

  My lip quivers.

  Mama takes my hand. “What is it?” she asks.

  I pull my hand back from hers. “You lied,” I say. I take a sip of that chocolate milk but it goes down no better than tar.

  At long last, my brother breaks the silence. “Some say the truth sets you free and others say hate drags you down, and which one it would be for you, we never were sure,” he says.

  “You just got old enough to take this all down,” Mama says.

  And I reckon in the past few months I sure did grow old fast.

  “We noticed your new maturity,” Mama says. “You’re not a baby no more.”

  Uncle Bump grins. He’s been waiting for Mama to catch on.

  “I suppose it’s all because of that Mrs. Jacks,” Mama says.

  I take a deep breath. “Mrs. Jacks and Medgar Evers and the man from the NAACP and Martin Luther King and Elias and Ralphie and those kids who marched in Birmingham and those four girls who died there and the burning cross and our burning house and the fire inside me,” I say.

  After I deliver my sermon, I’m calm enough to drink the rest of my chocolate milk. But it’s cold as the ache in my heart. And I’ve got to confess my own little fib.

  I bite my lip and work up the guts to say it, and when I do, it comes out plain, like toast without cinnamon or butter. “I went to the picking.”

  Mama stares at the table.

  “I skipped out on school.”

  And who could believe after all Mama’s been through, she’s still got enough vinegar in her veins to get mad at me? But when she looks up from the table, I see it bubbling in her eyes. “That ain’t right. That ain’t right!” she says. “Look at this mess!”

  Sitting here spilling out all our truths really is a mess. “Sorry, Mama,” I say. I tell her I didn’t do it to hurt her. I went to the picking to stand up for us all.

  The more we run over it, the more Mama says she can understand me. “But that don’t mean I’m giving permission to disobey, you hear? You got an issue with my rules, you come to me up front, no matter how hard it might be.”

  I nod.

  “Now what’re we gonna do?” she asks. “What’re we gonna do?”

  “Well,” says Elias, “I’m thinking of going to Hattiesburg to help with the Freedom Vote. I can finish up high school there.”

  I picture the map on the wall. My state, Mississippi, and my capital, Jackson. And beneath it, I see Hattiesburg. “That place is south of Jackson, clear across the state!” I say. My lip quivers again, but this time I don’t put up my hand to hide it. I don’t mind Elias knowing I hate for him to go.

  “Just for a while,” he says. “Thousands of us are gonna prove that if the court clerks would let Negroes register, we would. We’re gonna hold a pretend election. We’re calling it the Freedom Vote.”

  I see how Elias, he’s not all tore up about where he’s got to go. I can see by the look in his eyes, he’s already left Kuckachoo. It’s no longer home.

  “I reckon we’ll always be running,” Uncle Bump says.

  Then Mama puts her hand over mine. “I’m just not sure we belong here,” she says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Here, in Kuckachoo,” she says. “Maybe we ought to go.”

  It’s hard to breathe let alone speak, but somehow I find the words. “West Thunder Creek Junior High School,” I say. “I need to stay there.”

  “But we can’t stay here in this county,” Mama says gentle.

  Uncle Bump leans forward. “Your mama wants you to be free to be what you can in this world,” he says. “As for me, the law says I’m free, but since when do white folks look to the law to tell what’s right?”

  “Your uncle and brother ain’t safe here no more,” Mama says. “They need to get out of town.”

  And I don’t call Flapjack. He knows I need him. He jumps through the window onto my lap. I stroke his back and wet him with my tears.

  Mama, Uncle Bump, and Elias look at each other, not knowing what to say next. So I take Flapjack in my arms and head down the hall to Delilah’s room, where her parents are letting her catch up on sleep while they visit cousins down the road in Jigsaw. I pull her out of bed. I tell her she doesn’t need to wear a dress. Some jeans and a T-shirt will do.

  After Delilah pulls on her clothes, I lead her to the window before she gets a chance to start fussing in front of her handheld mirror. And even though it’s not the middle of the night, and even though we could just walk right out the front door, we sneak out. It’s tradition, and besides, it might be the very last time.

  While we wander down to the bayou, Flapjack weaves round my calves and I tell Delilah everything—about Mrs. Tate and Ralphie and Elias and what all Mama said.

  And I can’t believe it, but soon as we get there, she sits right down on the dirt. “Now how am I supposed to get on?” she asks.

  I hate to think of leaving Delilah at all, but thinking about leaving her back here with Cool Breeze is even worse. I know she’ll hold his hand, they’ll stroll by the bayou, and one day, they’ll get married.

  “I’ll take the bus to see you wherever you go,” she says.

  Just speaking one word is harder than lifting a boulder.

  “Bus?” I ask.

  “Wait here,” she says, and runs off.

  I hold Flapjack on my lap and stare across the water, where I once feared my brother drowned. I see how the cypress roots twist above the surface, and I wonder what turns my new life will take. I used to think I couldn’t go on without Elias but I did. Then I lost Uncle Bump for a short time that felt like forever. Now I’ll have to create a new life without Delilah. And without Mrs. Jacks. And I can’t
help but think it isn’t fair. Why can’t I ever have everyone I love with me at the same time? Why does life only work in pieces, like a puzzle that’s never whole?

  When Delilah runs back, she’s out of breath. She pushes a sack from the Corner Store into my arms. I peek inside it and see the colors of her gift.

  “You sure?” I ask.

  She nods, but in her eyes I see she’s drowning in questions of her own, questions she’ll never ask out loud: What if I can’t find another friend to love me like you? What if I never get to model in New York City? What if I’ve got to raise my children to clean clothes for white folk right here in Kuckachoo?

  So we sit without talking, the way we did the night Elias was gone too long. But this time I hang my arm over her shoulders, and we stay like that for hours till we’re both so hungry we drag ourselves back.

  While we walk, the sweet times wash through me. I remember Elias pitching his baseball down the lane to whoever would catch. I see Mama embroidering stars and suns on the sheets. I hear Uncle Bump playing his raggedy harmonica tunes.

  As soon as we turn onto Kuckachoo Lane, we can’t believe our eyes. The electricity’s come on! Lights are flickering on and off inside the homes. We’re so excited, we run all the way to the Montgomerys’ place. I’ve got to admit, I have a pang in my chest because today’s the day I would’ve been able to watch my television set if it hadn’t been kicked in and burned up, and if Uncle Bump had been able to find an antenna for the roof.

  But soon as we get inside, I forget all about my television. Much as I’d like to watch a few shows, some things are more important. There’s Uncle Bump, Mama, and Elias, still sitting round the Montgomerys’ kitchen table where I left them. They’re not jumping for joy about the electricity.

  Delilah takes one look and says, “I’ma see ’bout Cool Breeze.” Then she slips back out the door, leaving Flapjack and me in the kitchen to hear our fate.

  Once I sit down, Uncle Bump lays out the plan. “Maybe tempers will calm,” he says. “In the meantime, I’ll head to Hattiesburg with Elias and try to find work. I’ma send my money home.”

  Me? I’m sadder than a sunburned billy goat.

  But then Mama says, “You’ll finish up seventh grade at County Colored.”

  And I’m gladder than an escaped farm hog.

  And I’m about to tell Mama for the four thousandth time, but I don’t have to because Elias and Uncle Bump say it for me: “It’s West Thunder Creek Junior High School!”

  “You’ll finish the school year there. Then we’ll find a way to be together,” Mama says. “Meantime, the Montgomerys are kind enough to let us stay on their couch.”

  The kitchen light shines down on all our faces. And I reckon everything looks bright, the same way it does when you leave a dark house and crash into the blazing sun.

  All afternoon, Mama, Elias, Uncle Bump, and me sit round that kitchen table making our plans and hashing over every detail of the trial. Even though parts of our talk are nothing but ugly, I’m warmed up the way all of us are at long last together.

  Mama sets a bowl of purple hull peas in the middle of the table. We’re all reaching in, helping ourselves, when she says, “Who knows where the next bushel will come from?” She grabs a fistful of peas and rolls them down her tongue like bowling balls. “That Mudge, he’s crooked as a barrel of fishhooks,” she says.

  Then Mama really lets loose. “Sure that man hid you, Elias. Sure he saved you from that barking hound when you was hiding in the Corner Store freezer, but don’t be fooled. I bet if you got close enough to him, you wouldn’t hear no thump, thump beneath that pinstripe suit. Just the kaching, kaching of his cash register. If he didn’t have a good use for you, he would’ve let you die in that freezer while that hound barked outside it till kingdom come. Mr. Mudge knew if he sent you down to work his stockroom in Muscadine County—”

  I reckon someone knocked my head against the floorboard.

  “Mr. Mudge hid you?” I ask.

  Elias glares at Mama.

  “Sure did, that man,” Mama says. “Took your brother out the Corner Store freezer, defrosted him, and put him to work as nothing but an indentured servant. That’s right. An indentured servant! Your brother lived and breathed in that Muscadine County stockroom, day and night, eating only from Mr. Mudge’s extra supply, no cornbread, no nothin’. The only company he kept was his Bible. And go on, tell her,” Mama says.

  Here Mr. Mudge saved my brother’s life, and what did I do? I turned him in. Now I can’t help it. I’m bawling a river.

  My brother’s mouth hangs open. And one thing’s clear: Elias didn’t want Mama to say a word.

  “See, Mama?” Elias says. “Look what you did!”

  Elias says he wasn’t going to tell me because he didn’t want me to feel bad. He says turning up the evidence was the right thing to do, the only way to save Uncle Bump.

  But I’m not so sure.

  “She’s grown-up now,” Mama tells Elias. She throws another set of peas down her throat. “Don’t go feeling too bad for her.”

  As usual, Uncle Bump watches us, takes it all in.

  Then Mama turns to me. “Addie Ann Pickett, you’re a regular hero,” she says. “Don’t you forget it. You saved your uncle’s life. That Mr. Mudge! Your brother gave him the message to deliver to us so we wouldn’t worry, so we’d know he was alive. Did we ever see that note? Nope.” Her eyes narrow.

  “Mama,” Elias says real gentle, “Mr. Mudge likely took the note so I wouldn’t worry about y’all worrying about me. Didn’t think of it at the time but now I reckon he had no intention to deliver it, because if the wrong person got hold of it, he’d get charged with harboring a fugitive.”

  “Whatever that means,” Mama says.

  Then she turns back to me. “It was early afternoon, day of the garden picking. Your brother happened to overhear Mr. Mudge talking to a truck driver who came to fill the Muscadine County stockroom. The driver had just made a delivery to the Corner Store here in Kuckachoo, where he got an earful ’bout the whole mess. When the driver got to the new shop, he passed on the news ’bout the butter bean fiasco, how Bump Dawson was to blame for everything.

  “Soon as the driver unloaded his goods, Mr. Mudge took off in his truck. Now we all know he was hightailing it back to Kuckachoo to bury the seed sacks. Meantime, your brother placed a call to the NAACP from the shop phone. Said we needed a lawyer. Then he stole some coins out of the register and caught the first bus down the highway.”

  “I didn’t steal, Mama,” Elias says.

  “You didn’t steal enough!” Mama says back. “So far as I’m concerned, that man owes you a whole drawerful of money.”

  “At least he bought Elias new sneakers,” I say.

  But that sends Mama wild. “Yeah!” she says. “New sneakers so your brother could work himself to the bone in his stockroom!”

  Elias shakes his head like Mama doesn’t understand anything.

  “Course, your brother couldn’t take the bus straight into Kuckachoo in broad daylight, so those sneakers came in mighty handy when he got off all the way over in Laknahatchie County and came running home through fields and back roads. Seventeen miles on foot! Could’ve been shot dead on the way too! That Mudge knew full well…”

  Mama’s worked herself into a dither, so I put my hand on hers. And I can feel by the way her fingers soften under mine, I do it at the exact right time, just like someone fetching would. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We’re all here. We’re still a family.”

  “You’re right about that,” Uncle Bump says.

  “You are,” Mama agrees.

  But Elias stares past us. He’s got that distant look in his eyes, the same look he had after Medgar Evers died.

  CHAPTER 34

  November 3, 1963

  I know Elias would be proud to see me walking down Magnolia Row beside Delilah, my shoulders thrown back just like hers. Now that the whole truth has come out about the will, there’s a meeti
ng at Old Man Adams’s place to figure out what to plant on the land. They put this meeting on a Sunday afternoon so none of us have to miss school or work.

  Of course, Flapjack’s right here, weaving round my ankles. I wish the rest of my family could come to the big house too. But Mama doesn’t want any part of this garden, so she’s staying home to rest. She says it’ll take her a year to recover from the trial. It’s a good thing First Baptist has taken up a collection for us, because she hasn’t even gone out to look for work yet. And Elias and Uncle Bump left for Hattiesburg last week, so they’re not here either. Before they went, Mama gave Uncle Bump back his gold pocket watch to sell for cash so he can start over.

  I’ve sworn to Mama I won’t tell anyone where they’ve gone, but Mama didn’t have to make me swear. On the Negro side of town, we all know my brother’s heart is beating stronger than ever. Lately, whenever Bessie sees me, she winks like we’re sharing the best secret in the world. But across the tracks, white folks are bumfuzzled. They’re gossiping he might be alive. And me? I can’t do anything better than pretend the rumor’s nothing but a fool’s wish soaked with my tears.

  So even though I’m here without Mama, Elias, or Uncle Bump, I’m still full of celebration, because at long last this garden’s ours to share. And while I head down Magnolia Row, Delilah can’t stop saying how fetching I look. I’m wearing the gift she gave me. “Turn round,” she tells me again, and again I spin so she can see the yellow iris that runs down the back of my orange dress.

  Then Delilah spots Cool Breeze in the mix of neighbors crossing town. “Come on, slowpoke!” she yells, and I run after her.

  We never do catch up to him, but that’s okay, because I’ve been seeing plenty of Cool Breeze. I’ve even had the chance to study his dimples close-up. That’s because ever since my books burned up in the fire, Bernice shares hers with me at school, and Cool Breeze shares with me at home. So every single night, we do reading and math together at his house. Too bad about the electricity coming back on, because truth be told, I don’t mind sitting beside him in the lantern light.