The man had laughed. “Might as well tell me to not slam my dick in the door.”
Rezel went on to say she always used to dress in white. It was her trademark. Shoes, socks, dresses, and even little white bows in her hair and on her shoes. Sure sounded crazy. Rezel was kind of crazy anyway. Everybody in the pen was sure Rezel was going to end up singing the blues for drinks and chump change. But the day he got out of prison, a big-shot white lawyer was waiting for him with a job. Personal driver! Let Rezel have his old Cadillacs, like hand-me-down suits.
Crazy. Crazy like a goddamned fox. He hadn’t done bad for a boy whose momma was a plantation cook. Lillie Dee. Always crying about his momma, Lillie Dee. Southern boys and their mommas is something else.
Again he wondered what con Rezel had pulled to make that white man do for him like that. Must have promised the man something golden. Be nice to run that scam a few times in New Orleans.
It was almost dawn, and this sign said simply, HOPALACHIE COUNTY, no welcome to it. The name squirmed around in the man’s head before it finally leaped to his tongue. “Hopalachie!” he hissed. “Good goddamn.”
Now he remembered why it sounded so familiar. That was the name of the river they dragged that Chicago boy out of. And me driving in here with Illinois plates! He noticed that the air now hung heavy with the sour-sweet smell of swampland. Without thinking, he rolled up his window and nervously checked his rearview mirror.
If he turned around and took the long way to New Orleans through Arkansas, Rezel would never know a thing. Why should he risk his neck going through someplace named after a river like that? All he needed was some redneck sheriff asking him what a Yankee troublemaker was doing driving through his personal county.
Nearing the outskirts of Delphi, he told himself he would ask the first colored person he saw, and if they’d never heard of no Snow White, as far he was concerned he had done his duty. He’d drive straight out of Mississippi and never look back.
Avoiding the white neighborhoods, he took a gravel road that seemed to head down toward the river. “I bet that’s where they keep their colored folk,” he told himself. Sure enough, as he descended the hill, trudging up the road toward him came a large colored woman puffing like she was late for a mess of ham hocks.
“Hey, you! Big Momma!” he shouted out his window. “Come over here a second.”
Creola planted her fists on her hips and scowled at the man, her red freckles aglow. “Who you talking to like that? I don’t know you from jump, and if I did I’d sure nuff lie about it. You one of the ugliest sharp-faced mens I ever seen. Somebody could use that face of yours to split wood. And why you talk so funny? I know you ain’t from around here. People ’round here got some manners when they speaking to a lady.”
The man held up a hand, trying to stop the woman from making a scene. “Hold on, Momma! I didn’t mean to get you riled. I’m just ’turning a favor for a friend used to be from down here, and I’m in bad need of a little Southern hospitality is all. Sorry if I got off on a bad foot.”
“Who you know from around here?”
“The person I’m looking for is called Vida. Vida Snow. You heard the name?”
Creola eyed the man carefully. “I ain’t got time to talk with the likes of you. I’m already late for work, and Miss Pearl going to have my hide.”
“You ain’t answered my question. You heard of her or no?”
“Maybe I is and maybe I ain’t. How I know you ain’t up to no good? Why you keep looking over your shoulder? The law after you?”
“Look, Momma. It’s a simple question,” he snapped. “Do you know somebody go by the name of Vida or not? Dresses like a fuckin’ snowball. I got a message for her. It’s important, and she going to want it.”
Creola snapped her fingers. “I bet you a fat man you a friend of her brother, Willie. Or Hannah, one. You carrying a load of shine in that car?”
“Yeah, that’s it, Momma. I’m her brother’s best buddy. Now show me the way, will you?”
“Well,” Creola said, eyeing the big plush seats in the car. “I sure could use me a ride. You carry me in your big fancy car, and I show you where she be at. She don’t work but a couple houses down from my white lady.”
The man reached over and flung open the passenger door.
When they got to the Grahams’ neighborhood, Creola told the man where to turn so he could drive up behind the house. “Just climb up on that big porch and she probably be in the kitchen right this minute.” With that, Creola took off in a lope to Miss Pearl’s.
Johnny was under the porch digging in the dirt when he heard the sound of footsteps above his head and then a knock on the door. “Anybody in there?” a strange voice called out.
The boy scrambled into the daylight, brushed himself off, and clambered up the steps. “Who you looking for?”
The man studied the boy for a moment. “You got a maid in there called Vida Snow?” he asked.
Johnny considered the man for a moment.
“I’m asking if she works here. You following what I’m trying to say? You got a tongue?”
Thinking the man may have come to take Vida away, Johnny decided to answer. “We got a mean ol’ colored woman claims her name is Vida.”
“Well, where is she? I got to speak to her.”
“She’s on the front porch. Waiting.”
“Waiting? Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for the sheriff.”
The man swallowed hard. “The sheriff,” he repeated, hardly believing his bad luck, “of Hopa. . .Hipo. . .Hap. . .whatever the hell this county is. That what you saying?”
Johnny pointed. “He lives next door. She waits for him every morning.”
“Merciful Jesus!” the man spat. “I done landed smack in the middle of the snake pit.” Looking around frantically, he pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and held it out to Johnny. “Take it,” he ordered.
Johnny took a step back.
The man jabbed the boy in the chest with the envelope. “You make sure she gets it, you hear? I ain’t got time to hang around and chat with no baby crackers.”
Johnny reached for it with dirty fingers. Relieved of his burden, the man flew down the steps, taking two at a time, and headed straight for his car, idling at the bottom of the hill. He took off, throwing gravel behind him.
Johnny studied the sealed envelope. There was nothing written on the outside, except where somebody had typed the single letter V. He glanced back toward the kitchen and then took the envelope under the porch. He knew he was doing a thing so bad, he could never tell anyone. Not even his mother. He would have to lie the very best he could.
And he did. When Creola came over later in the day to find out from Vida what it was Willie had sent the man for, Johnny pleaded ignorance, and in the face of all the hard looks Vida aimed at him, he stuck to his story.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A GATHERING OF MAIDS
It was early afternoon, and Hazel was fighting against the current. Johnny stood at her bedside, beckoning her upward. “Momma. They coming. Wake up.”
That’s right. Today was special. She remembered that much. Now, what was it? Something good was supposed to happen. Something she and Johnny had been waiting for. But what?
Trying to draw herself up on her elbows, Hazel only succeeded in getting knotted in the bedcovers. She gave up and fell back on the pillows. Johnny busied himself with untangling her.
“They coming today, Momma,” he whispered excitedly. “We’re going to catch them red-handed, ain’t we?”
That was it! They finally had something good on Vida. Today, after weeks of taking double doses of that woman’s medicine and meanness, Hazel Ishee Graham was going to fight back.
Over that summer of river rhythms, as the current took and then released her, from up in her bedroom Hazel had studied the cadences of her household. Floyd floated in and out, but he no longer lived in this house. His heart had drifted elsewhere. His smiles and nods
merely marked his coming and going, and meant nothing else, like Vida’s two warning knocks when delivering food and medicine.
The afternoons brought Johnny, dirty from digging under the porch and breathless with news of fresh outrages, mostly about Vida and her father. Things he wanted her to get out of bed to attend to.
Johnny complained that Levi was always sitting on his bench, preaching out of his Bible, talking to ghosts. Sometimes Hazel could hear the sound of his mower in an adjacent yard. It had a strange comforting drone, like an old woman humming church songs on some faraway porch. She couldn’t get angry at that.
No. What little spite she could muster she saved for Vida, who over the summer had remained sullen, sparing no more words than necessary to get the job done. Sometimes Hazel resisted taking the pills just to hear the voice of another woman, but she always regretted it. Vida’s words were as comforting as barbed wire. Hazel nurtured her resentment each passing day. That maid had become the living symbol of everything she had lost.
Once, after dinner, Hazel had thought she heard the sound of strange voices, muffled laughter, and the clatter of china. She put it down to the dreaming. That is, until Johnny told her about what Vida was up to—having her maid friends over for coffee, using the house as a break room for the neighborhood domestic help. The more Hazel heard about that, the more riled she got. Vida knew Hazel was helpless to stop her, and she was rubbing it in Hazel’s face. Like dancing on her grave. Well, today they would be dancing to a different tune. Johnny had learned that after dinnertime, the whole raft of them were coming over to drink up her coffee.
“When they do,” she had promised Johnny, “we’ll go storming into the kitchen like Jesus into the temple and drive out that gang of thieves.” With right on her side, Hazel was going to show that heartless girl who was the real boss in this house.
“Johnny, you go on downstairs and watch,” she whispered. “When they all get here and Vida starts passing out my groceries, you come and get me.”
Johnny innocently situated himself at the yellow dinette table, practicing his alphabet on the back of the electric bill. He could feel Vida looking over at him from where she stood at the sink, finishing up the dinner dishes.
“What you writing on?” she asked over her shoulder. “The light company ain’t going to ’preshate you marking up they bill. You might be writing something that makes them people cut off the ’lectricity.”
Johnny didn’t bother to answer as he drew the big letter V.
“You going to have them ABCs writ on everything in this house before school even starts. Anyways, why you fretting so about it? You not ’spected to know nothing yet.”
Ignoring her babbling, Johnny cut his eyes toward the porch. He hoped he had understood right about today being the day. He heard the clinking of china as Vida gathered the coffee cups and lined them up on the counter.
“Are them ol’ women coming over here directly?”
“That’s right. You got something to say about that?”
Johnny looked up at the kitchen clock in the shape of a large yellow chicken. “How many minutes are they going to stay in my kitchen?”
“Till they gets up and walks out the door, be my guess.” Vida turned around toward Johnny. “What you staring at? You can’t tell time.”
“Can’t tell it what?” Johnny asked.
“I’m saying you can’t read no clock.”
Johnny rolled his eyes. He knew that.
After disappearing into the pantry, Vida returned with a can of Luzianne. It had a picture of a smiling colored woman pouring a cup of coffee. Johnny wondered why his father couldn’t find a nice maid like that.
Vida broke off the little metal key, fit the tab into the slot, and coiled it around the top of the can, cutting away the lid. A thick smoky smell escaped into the kitchen.
“That’s a new can of coffee, ain’t it?” Johnny asked, grinding the dot on the little letter i.
“Yessuh, I believe it is. Seeing I just opened it.”
“I guess coffee costs my daddy a lot of money, don’t it?” He looked up at her innocently. “I was only asking.”
She was still squinting. “What’s your problem now?”
He tried to hold her stare but finally exhaled, to show how exasperating she was, and then turned back to his work. He knew what his problem was—her and that squinty ol’ face. She was going to get hers real soon.
A few minutes later the screen swung open with a screech and there stood Creola filling up the doorway and flinging a shadow over the whole kitchen. She was wearing a starched white maid’s uniform similar to Vida’s, only a hundred times as large. Under one meaty arm she toted an enamel dishpan.
“Come on in!” Vida called out as she stood by the counter, waiting for the coffee to finish perking. “Plop yourself down and rest a minute.”
Creola set the dishpan on the table and pulled out the chair next to Johnny. She squatted down partway and then, after waggling both hands behind her to locate the chair and center it, dropped into the seat with a groan. Johnny grimaced when he saw those poor chrome legs flare outward. These women would surely wreck his mother’s kitchen. He sneaked a look down the hallway and smiled. Not too much longer.
Creola glanced over at Johnny’s work and beamed. “Look at all them purty letters! What you doing there, Mister John? You writin’ the guv’ner? Tell him Creola say ‘How do.’” She winked at Vida. “And while you at it, ask him to let my ol’ man out of jail for Saddity night. He can have him back first light Monday morning when I’m done with him.” Slapping her huge thigh, Creola burst out laughing at herself.
Johnny held up his printing for her to see. “I’m practicing my ABCs. I’m going to school in Septober.” He cut his eyes over at Vida, to see if she noticed how nice he could be to somebody who was nice to him first.
“I told you, ain’t no Septober,” Vida corrected. “They be a September. They be a October. Ain’t never been no Septober.”
“Well, ain’t you a big boy!” Creola exclaimed brightly. She grabbed the corners of her apron and fanned her face. She made sure to include Johnny in the breeze, too. “Hardly bigger than a porch baby and can already cipher. You sure nuff going to be teacher’s pet.”
The screen door sounded again as Vida unplugged the percolator. “Just in time for coffee,” she called out.
“Lawdamercy! It’s so hot I’m bleeding to death!” exclaimed Sweet Pea. Beads of perspiration glistened on her smooth face. In her arms she carried a grocery sack from the Jitney Jungle. Sweet Pea let out a high laugh. “Y’all, I saw Misery coming up the lane from the sheriff’s house, and I swear that woman don’t sweat. She cool as a cuke.” She placed a hand beside her mouth as if she were going to whisper but didn’t. “I guess them high-toned niggers ain’t got no sweat holes.” Glancing out into the yard with a contrite look, she said, “I better mind myself. She tell her boss on me, he haul my butt off to jail.”
“Won’t be the first time he haul your butt somewheres,” Vida said under her breath. When Sweet Pea shot her a look, Vida asked innocently, “You want coffee, Sweet Pea?”
She gave Vida a forgiving smile. “It might be better if you had something cold to drank. It be uphill from the store, and I run the whole way.” Checking the chicken-shaped clock, she said, “I can’t stay too long today. Miss Cilly be ’specting me back with her groceries.” She set the bag on the counter.
Vida opened the refrigerator. “We got some sweet tea left from dinnertime. Got some orange juice.”
“Ice tea hit the spot.”
“Well, stand there in front of the fan, and I’ll pour you some.”
Johnny watched as Vida cracked open a tray of ice and fixed a glass for Sweet Pea. Now she was giving away his mother’s tea, too. It was a good thing his momma was going to put a stop to it today. If Vida’s club got any bigger, pretty soon they wouldn’t have anything left in the house.
Sweet Pea drained half the glass in one gulp. Smacking her li
ps she exclaimed, “Y’all, it’s hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch!”
“Now, I reckon that be hot!” Creola giggled as she wedged the dishpan into the valley between her massive thighs.
Pushing back a strand of her shiny black hair, Sweet Pea said, “Yessuh! It be as hot as a one-legged ho’ in—”
“Mind the boy, Sweet Pea,” Vida interrupted. “Ain’t nothing he don’t remember.”
“Oops,” she said, “I clean forgot he was there.”
Sweet Pea leaned over the fan that sat whirring on the counter. Johnny peeked out the corner of his eyes as she stretched open the top of her uniform, aiming the breeze down her bosom. Noticing him staring, Sweet Pea winked at Johnny. “How you doing, precious?”
Johnny snapped his eyes back down toward the table and pretended to be writing. Whenever Sweet Pea spoke to Johnny he blushed, finding it impossible to speak. He had never seen anybody such as her. Brassy and big-hipped. She always wore shiny red earbobs as big as moon pies and her dress hugged tight every curving and rising of her body. He preferred to watch her when she wasn’t looking.
“Cat got your tongue, baby?” She fluttered her eyes at him.
“That boy be ciphering up a fog,” Creola said. “Ain’t got time for no womens fussing over him.”
While Sweet Pea continued to flirt with Johnny, the door silently opened and closed, and before anyone knew it, a bony, light-skinned woman was standing among them, looking around the kitchen with her nose up. When her eyes lit on Sweet Pea, she sniffed once and then sat down at the table without speaking.
“How you, Missouri?” Vida asked, cutting her eyes at Sweet Pea, warning her to behave.
Missouri ironed out the lap of her crisp uniform with the flat of her hand. “I swear I ain’t had a minute to sit till now. We been working night and day getting things ready out at the Columns.” Then she fell silent, as if waiting for someone to ask her what exactly she had been doing at the Senator’s, and while she waited she ran her hand over the top of her head to smooth out her fine white hair, though it was pulled back as tight as a snare drum.
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 16
