Playing With Matches

by Carolyn Wall

  Listening to Auntie, my heart was heavy, pressed down with a sorrow I knew something about.

  “The rest of the time, we was half killin’ those birds in the chicken trailers, spinning down and down. Some folks stood all they could and tried to run away. Every time, though, he caught them and beat them bad.”

  I could not imagine how this story might end.

  But Auntie was done, and she got up off the bed. “Enough for tonight. You turn over now and go to sleep.”

  “But—you can’t just stop there.”

  “It’s my life,” she said. “And I can. Hush, now.”

  20

  The next day, the rain came. I walked home from school, watching cracks in the road fill up with water, and realized it was the first time in a long while that my eyes had seen anything.

  I could not wait for bedtime, and feared Auntie would have a change of heart and not tell more of the story. But she had begun and seemed determined to plow through.

  We lay, that night, listening to rain on the roof.

  “Where was I?” she said.

  “Chickens. And performing, and some folks running off. Oh, Auntie,” I said, bundled against her dark bulk. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Mighty scared.”

  “Did you try to run away too?”

  “Not at first, baby girl. I told you—I’d already left home, and look where it got me. Truth was, I’d run away to join the circus ’cause I didn’t want to be somebody’s maid. My sister Shookie worked in a laundry, steam in her face and bleach in her lungs. Always folding other people’s clothes. Me, I couldn’t stand to watch my daddy shine shoes, not one more day.

  “My fam’ly cried on the day I left, but I thought performing would be rich-making and fine. And if I saved my money, before long I’d be wearing diamonds and rubies. Instead, my daddy and my sister were sore ashamed. I took in money, all right, but I made myself small with what I did. Then one early mornin’, I’d had enough. I went into the trailer and apologized to those chickens.”

  I felt my eyebrows fly up.

  “Yes, ma’am. For all I’d done. For what I hadn’t done. Then I said my prayers and crept into the ringmaster’s tent and stole his whip. I beat that man within an inch of life.”

  I reached up and laid my palm against her round cheek. “He deserved it,” I said, but Auntie only looked sad.

  “He rolled on the floor and put his arms over his head and cried like a baby. I guess the rest of ’em heard, or maybe they looked in and saw, ’cause all of a sudden there was a hundred black folks pilin’ out of those tents—the cookshack, the privy, the elephant pens. I had turned ’em loose.

  “The po-lice came. They had a bullhorn and billy clubs. Said we were makin’ a public racket ’cause we was camped in a parking lot. They started swingin’ those clubs, breakin’ bones and splittin’ heads, and they hooked up fire hoses and sprayed water on us. A lot of folks slipped and fell on the paving.”

  “Were you hurt, Auntie? Was anyone?”

  I could hear wheels of remembering turning in her head.

  “Firemen tried to wash off the streets before news reporters came, and the TV people, ’cause the red blood was all mixed up with that water. Folks were wet and bleeding, and trying to figure which way to run. Another thing—somebody had turned those chickens loose. They got trampled and smashed under people’s feet.”

  I moaned and sorrowed in my heart for those birds.

  “Some black folks came rushing out of their houses and ran right into the middle of things. They tried to help—Izzie Thorne was there. Then others too—white folks—and there was a lot of screaming and crying, and fistfights broke out everywhere. That big striped tent was in rags, and—”

  “Miss Izzie Thorne?”

  Auntie nodded. “By startin’ that fiasco, I’d done everybody wrong. Them that could walk got up and ran in all directions.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Did Miss Thorne work for the circus?”

  “No. She lived down the street, and she came running out, took some in and kept us hid.”

  “What happened to the man you whipped?”

  “He was lookin’ to have me arrested. His arm was broke and some of his ribs. The po-lice drove up and down the streets. They figured anyone who didn’t live in that town was suspect, ’cause no matter what that ringmaster told ’em, the po-lice said, ‘No one woman could inflict this much hurt.’ ”

  At the corner of her mouth, Auntie grinned a little, and I grinned too.

  “That night they come pounding on Izzie Thorne’s door. She opened it like nothing had happened. She acted like she didn’t know a thing. And all the while, there I was, living in her back bedroom. I hid in the closet—so I know how you feel, Clea girl, when you slide under your bed, and you can’t come out.

  “I’d peek between the window blinds, though, and see them officers in the street. They wore helmets and had guns, and they weren’t afraid to shoot. We cowered down in those houses. My heart was broken. I saw I’d made trouble, that what I’d caused was just another riot. Accordin’ to civil rights laws, all that street fighting in the South was supposed to be over. But it wasn’t.”

  “Auntie!” I breathed. “I’m so proud of you.” And I was proud of Miss Izzie Thorne too, and understood things better now. In the years she had taught me, seeing me every day at school, it was no wonder it hurt her to look at me. “What happened after?”

  “I was real sorry I’d made Izzie unsafe. I remembered back when coloreds were ridin’ the bus to Jackson, and I wished with all my heart that I’d not joined with the circus but had gone with them, learning to fight fists with peacefulness. But now I was terrified, afraid the fighting and bloodiness had got in my bones. So I come back here. We thought our generation would see the last of the problem.” She gave an odd snort that came up from her belly.

  “Aunt Jerusha! You were like a—a freedom fighter!”

  “Everybody fights for freedom, some way.”

  “You were a part of the sit-ins?”

  “Time for that should have been long past. The point I am makin’,” she said, turning to look me in the eye, “is that it was my fault blood run in the street that day. Pride, baby girl, surely goes before a fall. Leavin’ that circus, I felt I had to do what I thought was right even though it caused wrong. And I’m guessing that’s what you did too. Oh, Clea, I’m not saying you can strike a match and make your troubles go ’way. Because, after, you got to live with it.

  “Sometimes, though—when you’ve put up with a thing until you can’t stand it no more—I know what it’s like to have to do something.”

  I’d begun to cry, fat, rubbery tears, my mouth twisted up.

  “Promise me,” she said, “you won’t strike a match again unless you’ve got to find your way in the dark.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Say, ‘I promise,’ Clea June. And keep your word to this old woman.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “And you won’t tell nobody about the circus?”

  “But—I’m proud of you. So why can’t I talk about it?”

  “ ’Cause it’s nobody’s business but mine,” she said.

  I understood, now, why Auntie had been so horrified that night, to see Claudie and me performing on the porch.

  “All right,” I said. “But, Auntie, one thing—when you got here to False River, did you stand up at First and Last Holy Word and confess? Did you say what you’d done?”

  “No,” she said softly. “I never did.”

  21

  If Auntie or Uncle knew I’d so thoroughly lost my way and couldn’t get back, they’d worry themselves sick. If Millicent Poole knew, she’d call Social Services.

  I finished the school year, kept my head down and myself to myself. Because I slept by day and lay awake at night, sometimes I dozed off in class. When the teacher prodded me, everyone laughed. I also labored to keep my eyes open during Sunday church, and on particularly bad mornings, it was
only Reverend Ollie’s bellowing and the choir’s foot stomping that kept me from sliding out of my seat and onto the floor.

  Nobody wanted to miss evening services. Not only was potluck at six o’clock, Sunday-night church was for confessing sins.

  Our church building was small. It had a double row of scarred wooden pews, a piano, a pulpit, and folding chairs for the choir. Weekly, Millicent Poole posted the numbers of the hymns we would sing, and, with the tithing envelopes, we marked those places in the hymnals while the Reverend welcomed us and prayed on and on.

  After one church supper of spoon bread and baked ham, we sat in those hard pews, fanning ourselves and waiting for the weekly confessions to begin. Before the night was over, the Reverend would spread his great arms and invite us all to the altar to confess any sins and be renewed in the faith.

  On these occasions, Millicent Poole, who was Sunday-school superintendent and sat in the front row, would rise to her feet, the better to witness our angst. In the background, the come-on-down piano music would be lower than low, the twangy notes rolling, like sin-seeking fog, among the pews. That last chorus might go on forever, calling and calling, Sinner, come home.

  When I was very young, I’d considered concocting a sin just so I could rise from my place on a Sunday night and bump knee after knee as I made my way up the aisle and into the Reverend’s embrace.

  On this night, however, Miss Shookie was the first to stand, one hand on her hat and the other on her daughter. As they stumbled by, Bitsy’s swollen eyes slid to mine, and a terrible heat rose in my neck. God help me, this had nothing to do with the fire set at Mama’s. This was new. I was guilty of tattling.

  Miss Shookie led her daughter to the altar.

  Millicent Poole popped out of her seat. The Reverend spoke softly to Bitsy—Miss Shookie not missing a word—and he flagged Miz Bishop to let up on the chorus the twelfth time around.

  “Dear hearts,” the Best Reverend said to us all, “our own Bitsy Lovemore has come forward this evening to confess her sins. Lift your voices, and make a joyful noise.”

  The congregation shook off their surprise, and a few hallelujahs wavered off the walls. Miss Shookie yanked at her girdle and straightened her dress.

  Poor Bitsy. She was bland of face with a walrus body, and nobody liked her.

  The night before, the heat had been sweltering. Under our willow, where Auntie was pouring cold pop for the grown-ups, Cousin Bitsy mumbled that she was going for a walk. A stroll, she called it. She did this often, and I thought it odd that a girl of her size, whose only exercise was to bend both elbows at the table, would choose to walk anywhere.

  I followed her, for the purpose of spying. Maybe a hundred yards along the road, she stepped into the field and waited while a flashlight beam bobbled through the grass. In a clearing of old cornstalks, a prison-guard uniform was already being shed. Bitsy rucked up her dress, and shadow fell into shadow as she and the fellow went to rolling and grunting on the ground. When it was over, and they were both breathing hard, Bitsy got to her feet, caught me watching, and snarled, “Brush the goddamn grass offa me.”

  I said, “I’m going to tell.”

  “Christ! Just get the straw out of my hair.” She pulled down her dress and stepped into her drawers.

  But I didn’t tell—not right away. All through last night, I savored the secret.

  I wondered if any boy would ever want me the way the Farm guards apparently wanted Bitsy. Would any boy be interested at all? Would they call me on the phone or take me to the movies or hold my hand? Probably not.

  Folks would remember my mama, and word would go around that I was free—or maybe they could pay me. They would chant their songs about me—the next Clarice—and write my name on bathroom walls.

  Today, at our Sunday noon meal, I opened my mouth and announced that this morning in church, all of First and Last Holy Word had been able to see through Bitsy’s dress. These astonishing words fell on the dishes, on the tablecloth, and in my lap. Thereafter, it was hard for us all to concentrate on our barbecued ribs with Uncle Cunny’s family-recipe sauce. All but Uncle eyed Bitsy’s chest.

  “Law,” Miss Shookie said, rolling her eyes to heaven and looking shamed. “I do right by this girl eight days a week.”

  Across the table, Auntie got over the shock and took to studying Bitsy with narrowed eyes. “Sister, your daughter is no more girl than I am.”

  Indeed she was not. Guided by the devil, and making things worse, I proceeded to recount last night’s tale of the naked prison guard, how the grass had broken and lay flat beneath them. How Bitsy had come up with straw in her hair and her underpants in her hand.

  Uncle Cunny pushed back his chair, saying he’d just finish his cake outside.

  At first nobody said anything about Bitsy’s nakedness in the field. Then Auntie loudly announced that Lord, Lord, it was time her niece wore foundation garments, and she’d just loan her some till her mama could get her to the Big Woman’s Store over in Slidell.

  Now Miss Shookie was double-offended. “I have you to know, my baby girl is wearin’ a slip!”

  “A half-slip!” said Auntie.

  Miss Shookie squeezed her eyes tight and moaned and wailed, “Oh, no, Jesus!” and keened and clutched her midsection. “Lordy, I can’t afford no brassieres for this big girl.”

  Dinner was over. I followed them all into Auntie’s bedroom, which was right off the kitchen and boasting a polished bureau, a treadle sewing machine, shelves crammed with antiques, and a high bed with a knobby chenille bedspread. Auntie rummaged in her drawer and came up with an undergarment the size of industrial machinery.

  “Off with that dress, girl. Shookie, you should be ashamed, lettin’ your child’s titties hang loose. It’s no wonder the men’s been looking through and worse. Now, you put your arms in here, girl, that’s right, go on.” Auntie lifted and pushed and worked the straps, and pretty soon she had both Bitsy’s arms going in the right directions.

  “Now,” she said, “bend over so’s we can get you tucked in. That’s how they do in fine department stores.”

  “Sister!” said Miss Shookie. “What obscenities you doin’ to my baby girl?”

  “What you already should have!” My aunt fumed and grunted. “I ain’t the first what’s had my hands on these things.”

  And with more heaving and molding on Auntie’s part, and several snaps and protesting womps of elastic—along with whistling from between Bitsy’s big teeth—I witnessed the holstering of Bitsy into Auntie’s brassiere with the heavy-duty stitching. Auntie, inserting her knee in Bitsy’s back, proceeded to fasten the six hooks and eyes.

  “Oh, Lord Jesus,” wailed Miss Shookie, hunched on the bed with her hands to her face. “My baby girl is gone and growed up!”

  And here came the misery, and down fell the tears, Miss Shookie alternately flapping her hands and weeping into the hem of her own hiked-up skirt.

  Auntie said, “Baby, my ass. Bitsy needs to confess her sins, that’s what.”

  So now here we were—some fifty people at Sunday-night service, each holier than the next and waiting to hear what Bitsy Lovemore had done.

  She put her hands together, one over the other, like she was fixing to sing. Then she got right to it. “I been loose,” she said.

  Her mama gave her one of those uh-huh looks.

  Bitsy took in air and let it out of her cheeks. “I been wrestlin’ the gents and gettin’ down on the ground. Ain’t had no bed.” Her voice carried, wistful. “We do it however we finds a way.”

  Miss Shookie backed off by one sanctified step, pulled a fan from her purse, and cooled herself mightily. The congregation went into fits of shuffling while I wandered in a land between horror and wonder.

  I, after all, was guilty of far more sin than Bitsy was.

  And I wondered what it was like to be her, just now, if she cared what we thought, if wearing a bra hurt. Bitsy pinched her see-through skirt. Her face was bland and fat and shiny. “If y
’all are wonderin’ who fornicated me—”

  She turned to the choir. “That one and that.”

  Two pimply-faced boys ducked into their collars.

  “And him in the back—”

  I swear she sent death rays over the congregation. “The Oaty brothers had their way with me, and the manager at the Ninety-Nine Cent Store. Miz Sherrard’s old pappy—oh, and two of those Maytubby boys.”

  And still more—the high school gym teacher, three guards from the prison, the mailman in False River, on and on.

  When Miss Shookie’s knees looked weak and bendy, and she was close to buckling under her daughter’s load of sin, Reverend Ollie guided them both to a seat, raced through the benediction, and sent the rest of us home. Auntie made me wait outside while she and Miss Shookie conversed with the Reverend.

  On the way to her car, Miz Millicent Poole clasped my wrist in her bird-bone fingers. “Just you wait, girlie,” she said. “Your turn is comin’.”

  On the way home, there was a great sighing and a muffling of words. Miss Shookie drove. Then she paced the length of our parlor and kitchen, and wept and had to be comforted. Again I had made everything wrong, and nothing could be righted.

  When they were taking their leave, and Miss Shookie was rummaging for her car keys, Bitsy came by me.

  “You don’t know, girl,” she said. “You ain’t ever gonna know.”

  “Know what?” I asked.

  “What it’s like to be somethin’ nobody wants.”

  22

  Years have passed.

  Last night in the rearview mirror, Luz looked like a refugee—sharp cheekbones, round glasses with black frames, green eyes, and no fat to speak of on her bones. She wears her hair in pigtails.

  She and I laid Harry on the backseat of my Honda in a nest of shirts and jeans, and tucked his blue woolly around him.

  “You okay, honey?” I said.

  My daughter nodded and said disjointedly, “Harry has trauma, Mom. Mental suffering. Pain.” At eleven, Luz is our dictionary.