After a long moment of quiet while the other maids traded amused looks, Missouri said, “Me and Miss Hertha been helping the Senator get ready for Miss Delia’s birthday party.”
“Miss Delia, that’s the Senator’s younger daughter, ain’t it?” Vida asked, knowing good and well it was. “The flirty one.”
“Yeah,” Sweet Pea giggled. “She be the daughter that don’t belong in a zoo. Missouri, your white lady so ugly, she has to sneak up on a mirror—”
“The Senator,” Missouri interrupted, “the Senator is inviting ever important person in the state. I ’spec the guv’nor hisself be there.”
Behind Missouri’s back, Sweet Pea placed her hands on her hips and made a “lah-de-dah” face. Vida had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
“So Miss Delia done been resurrected, huh? Praise the Lord,” Sweet Pea said with a laugh. “And everbody thinking she was murdered.”
“She got back home last week,” Creola offered. “Told y’all she took off to Memphis. And I heard she paid money to get a tattoo put on her patootie.”
“Where Miss Delia tell her daddy she been gone to?” asked Sweet Pea. “After the sheriff done searched half the county for the Senator’s poor lost lamb.”
“Nowheres,” Creola answered. “And he don’t ask. Afraid she might tell him the truth. And that girl would, too. Don’t give a hoot about what folks thinks. Been wild since she was a baby.” Creola lowered her voice. “I heared the last one she took up with was a colored boy from Tchula.”
A shared sense of unease hung over the crowd until Vida broke the tension. “What you want, Missouri, sweet tea or coffee?”
Missouri pressed her lips together into a thin taut line and smoothed her hair again. “You ain’t got nothing else? Feel like a soft drink, myself.”
Looking back into the refrigerator, Vida said, “I just mixed up some purple Kool-Aid for the boy. Reckon he won’t mind sharing.”
Johnny shot Vida a murderous look.
Seeing the reaction on Johnny’s face, Missouri smiled a tight little grin and patted her head again. “Po’ me a big glass of that Kool-Aid.” Johnny held his peace. Her time was coming. There was only one maid left to go, the craziest one of all.
No sooner had he thought this than there came a long slow creak as the screen door pulled back once more. Everyone looked up. It was the Gooseberry brothers’ maid, Maggie. Her hair was in its usual state—a squirrel’s nest of black and white bristles. Maggie walked with great difficulty, by rocking side to side, as if her legs had rusted long ago and had lost their bend. Her cotton stockings had given up their grip and bunched loosely around her ankles.
“How you doing, Maggie?”
“Ain’t it good to see you!”
“You a little down in the hindquarters today, Maggie?”
Seemingly deaf to the chorus of hellos and inquiries about her health, Maggie pulled out the last empty chair and eased herself into it.
Johnny shifted his focus to Maggie and studied her for a while. She was a gruesome sight to behold. Where her left eye should have been, there was only a shallow crater, permanently sealed shut with a ragged flap of skin. When she looked right at a person, which was rarely, she appeared to be offering a sustained wink. Mostly she kept her good eye looking down at her leathery hands in her lap.
“Maggie, you want a cup of coffee?” Vida called out.
Maggie continued kneading her hands. Vida brought the coffeepot over to Maggie and lightly touched her shoulder. Maggie jumped. Her one eye shot open as wide as a silver dollar. “That be the Lawd’s truth! Sure is!” she said emphatically, yet to no one in particular.
Vida poured Maggie a cup and eased it in front of her. Eyeing Maggie closely, Johnny tried to figure her out. Whatever she said never seemed to match what was actually going on at the time, always a hoofbeat off from the rest of the herd.
“Johnny,” Vida said, interrupting his thoughts, “you get up and gimme your seat. Go on outside and play.”
Flouting the fate of Tangle Eye by rolling his eyes at Vida, Johnny dropped down from the chair. This was his cue to go tell his mother it was time.
As Creola began a story about Miss Pearl, Johnny left through the back door, made a dash around the house, and tiptoed in through the front. He was startled to find his mother already out of her room, wearing a robe, hunched on a step halfway up the stairs, an ear cocked toward the kitchen.
“Momma, they all here!” he whispered. “Let’s go!”
“I’m trying to hear,” she shushed him. “Now they low-rating Miss Pearl.”
“But. . .”
Hazel shushed him again. “Maybe they’ll do Hertha next.” She was enjoying this more than radio.
Disappointed that their plans had obviously changed, Johnny took a place next to Hazel where he could keep an eye on both the maids and his mother.
Creola was sitting hunched over Miss Pearl’s dishpan, shelling Miss Pearl’s butter beans and badmouthing the woman she worked for. “Well, you all know how Christian my white lady believes she is.” Creola dropped a handful of hulls in a paper sack Vida had set by her feet.
“What you say!” Sweet Pea said with a laugh. “Miss Pearl think she so sweet, she stays out of the rain less she melts.”
Out of the blue Maggie exclaimed, “Praise Jesus!” like she was in church.
Smiling affectionately at her, Creola went ahead with her story. “Last week Miss Pearl come traipsing in the house and took a perfectly good chair and busted it with a hammer. I asked her, ‘What you doing, Miss Pearl?’ She say, ‘If you has to know, Creola, I’m busting up this here chair so Mr. Ramphree from the hardware store can fix it.’ That what she told me. As my word is my bond.”
“That woman is crazy!”
“Sure nuff is!”
Missouri, who was always up for defending the white folks, seemed doubtful. “Now, why she be busting up her own chair? That don’t make sense.”
“I told you it was curiousome,” Creola said. “Know what she say when I ask her how come?”
“Tell it, sister!” Sweet Pea whooped. “You done started something now.”
“Well, seems while Miss Pearl was downtown on her way to the beauty parlor, she passes the hardware store. Some gentleman think she was going inside so he hold open the door for her. Miss Pearl too nice to tell the man he be wrong and she didn’t have no business in that store, that she was on her way to get her hair fluffed out. No ma’am, she don’t tell him that. So she say, ‘Thankee very much,’ and walks on in the hardware store.”
Vida and Sweet Pea both told Creola to “hush up,” which Johnny knew meant just the opposite to colored people.
“You ain’t heard it yet!” Creola dropped another handful of hulls into the sack. “When Mr. Ramphree sees Miss Pearl in his store, he ask her if he kin help her find something. She don’t want to be ugly and tell the man she come traipsing into his store by mistake, so she lies and say she got a broke chair and was looking for some nails and glue.”
“Bless her own dear self,” Maggie intoned sweetly, rocking her head back and forth, probably lost in a story all her own. Missouri frowned at her.
“Well, that Mr. Ramphree thinks she so sweet, he say he’ll be glad to come by and fix up her chair.”
Vida slapped her leg. “No ma’am, she didn’t!”
“Yes ma’am she did,” Creola said with a laugh. “Instead of saying ‘No thankee,’ like somebody with the sense God gave a billy goat, she go straight home and busts up a chair so the poor man would find something to fix when he got there.” Throwing her head back, Creola raised both arms to the ceiling and shouted, “Law, Law! I told you that woman was a pure-dee mess.”
Maggie looked up with her good eye and saw Vida and Sweet Pea bent over with laughter. Judging the story to be over, she nodded her head vigorously. “Uh-huh. That’s right. Sure is.”
Johnny thought he heard something behind him and was amazed to see his mother
with her hand over her mouth. Had she really laughed?
Missouri shushed everybody. Her ear was cocked toward the stairhall. “I thought I heared something stirring.” Both Johnny and his mother froze.
Vida, who was wiping her eyes from laughing so hard, reassured them. “All you probably heard was Miss Hazel’s radio. She ain’t coming out of her room before suppertime. We got the kitchen to our own selves. I told y’all who was boss in this house.”
Again Johnny looked at his mother. The muscle in her jaw was jumping. Otherwise she was still.
“Now?” he mouthed. But she shook her head no.
Sweet Pea fished a couple of ice cubes from her glass and twisted them tightly in her handkerchief. “You right about that Miss Pearl. She tries to act so nice it be scary.” She daubed her throat with her ice pack. “Every time that Miss Pearl comes visiting my white lady, she bound to sneak back to the kitchen and hand me some trashy love story she done read.”
“Uh-huh,” Creola said. “She got herself into a racy storybook club. When one of them books comes in the mail she runs and hides it so Mr. Hayes don’t see. She gives them to you just to get them out the house. And who you going to tell?”
“What you saying! She say she gives me them books ’cause I went to the eighth grade and don’t hardly never say ‘ain’t.’ And she say she approves how I straightening myself out by giving up the mens and getting respectable work.” Sweet Pea shook her head. “I read them ever one and they all the same. About some weak-kneed white woman waiting for a big strong man to come along and pull her butt out of trouble. Miss Pearl say, ‘Sweet Pea. It’s so nice to know some of our colored can turn themselves around and aspire to life’s loftier pursuits.’”
“You sounding like her now!” exclaimed Creola.
“What I want to say is, ‘Why, thank you kindly, Miss Pearl, but if what you calling the lofty pursuits is counting on a man to rescue your pasty white ass, you can keep your books. I’ll carry myself down to One Wing Hannah’s and punch in some Bessie Smith records on the Seeburg. That’s one lady who know what a man is good for. If Bessie’s man ain’t home by suppertime, she be moved on to the next pair of britches by breakfast.”
“Uh-huh!” Creola agreed. “When the men go hunting, the womens can go fishing.” She hooted at herself.
Vida laughed at Creola. “What you know about that? You been with the same man for thirty years.”
Sweet Pea whistled. “Never met a man worth thirty years. Whoo-ee!”
Missouri patted the bun on the back of her head and sniffed at Sweet Pea’s common talk. “If you so down on men, how come you always seem to be knee-deep in a fresh supply?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I enjoys a man’s company. But if his company turns bad, then out the door he goes. You can’t do that if you counting on love to pay the rent. I pays the way for my own dear self.” Shaking her head, Sweet Pea crunched a piece of ice. “Nothing worse than having to abide bad company.”
“Praise the Lawd,” Maggie said in a low whisper. She appeared to be nodding off.
Vida tried to steer the conversation back to the Senator and his family. “What was y’all saying about Miss Delia a while back? About her being crazy and running off to Memphis?”
“All them women in that family is crazy,” Sweet Pea said. “Starting with Miss Pearl and ending with Miss Delia. Ever time that girl go missing, which is about once a month, it’s katy-bar-the-door and hide your purties, ’cause the sheriff ain’t long behind.”
“What you mean, hide my purties?”
Creola nodded at Vida. “That’s right. You ain’t been here long enough. You don’t know about the little show the Senator puts on ever time his girl gets a wild hair to take off and mess around.” Creola, having seen all this many times before, told Vida that the Senator would right away get in a terrible state, convinced some ungrateful colored man had done his daughter harm. Next he would ride his son-in-law the sheriff until he did something official.
“He sending the fox after the hen,” Sweet Pea said under her breath.
“The fact of business is,” Creola continued with a chuckle, “everbody in Delphi know that Miss Delia going to come home by her own self. Probably after sneaking off up to Memphis and alley-cattin’ with some man. They say she like the white trash the best.” She lowered her voice and said guardedly, “Colored boys, too.”
Then, like a wet dog, Creola shook her head furiously to throw off the sweat from her mop of red hair. Everybody ducked. “How be ever, you can’t tell the Senator that,” she said, pushing back the limp strands of her hair with both hands. “No, Lord! Both them girls—Hertha and that Delia—is the apples in his eyes. Can’t do no evil. So he tell the sheriff, ‘Boy, you better get your ass in high gear and do something about my little princess now.’” Creola whooped and stamped her foot. “And you should see that man move that skinny butt of his. Lord!”
Vida wasn’t laughing. “I still ain’t seeing what that got to do with hiding my purties.”
“That’s the part I’m up to now.” Creola took a loud slurp of coffee. “To keep his job, the sheriff got to prove to the Senator he doing his job, so he put on these house-to-house searches. Except they ever one start and end in Tarbottom. He go down there and poke through a few of our houses. Stalling the Senator till Miss Delia drags her own dear self home.”
“So the sheriff going to walk right in my house one day?” Vida asked.
“What you mean? Probably already has,” Sweet Pea said. “He mostly go when nobody’s home. And he’s bad to pick up things that don’t be his. Trifling things. Can’t be worth nothing to him. But, to some poor colored person it is.”
Creola frowned. “Last year he stole the locket my little niece give me for my birthday.”
“Why he do that?” Vida asked.
Creola shrugged her shoulders and picked up a swatter lying on the table and waved it at her face. “Why white people do anything they do? ’Cause they can, I reckon.”
Again Johnny looked up at his mother. What was she waiting for?
A heavy silence fell over the group, until Missouri spoke up with a sputter. “You all ain’t nothing but a bunch of gossiping ol’ hens. Sheriff Brister ain’t no man to be disrespecting. The sheriff chosen by a wise God who knows when the people need a firm hand.”
“Don’t blame God for that man,” Creola shot back. “He married Miss Hertha, is how come he the high sheriff. The Senator’s money what keep him running for office. And Miss Hertha’s uglies keep him running after anysomebody with a tail to switch.” Creola shook her head. “Say when he was a young’un, he went after colored girls. I hear he done moved on from that. Thanks the Lord for small favors.” She winked at Sweet Pea, who looked away too quickly, none too anxious for Missouri to know about her times in the woods with the sheriff.
The comment also hit Vida hard, and she made an effort not to show it. She turned her attention to Missouri, trying to be nice. “I bet you part of that family, ain’t you, Missouri? I seen how they always making admirations over you.”
Missouri glanced at Vida suspiciously. “They do good by me. If you pay respect, you gets respect.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Vida said. “I bet you know everthing that goes on in that house.”
“I reckon. What you rooting around for?”
“Nothing mostly,” Vida said, trying to affect only mild interest. “Only something I been meaning to ask you.”
“Like what?”
“Like what become of that ol’ uncle used to be his deputy?”
“Humph!” Missouri sniffed. “That ol’ fool? Sheriff run him off years ago.”
“Did?” Vida refilled Missouri’s glass. “Now ain’t that something? How come he went and done that to kin? Sounds cold.”
“Sheriff got good reasons, I’m sure. Anyway, ain’t none of your business. Best kept in the family,” Missouri said, letting everyone know that included her.
Glancing up at the chicken clock,
Creola said, “Look at the time in that bird’s gizzard.” She caught hold of the table and hoisted her massive bulk vertical. “I reckon I best be getting back to Miss Pearl. She wake up from her beauty nap and find me gone missing, she be some mad. She liable to turn out the hounds.”
The rest of the group followed suit and rose from their chairs.
Sweet Pea lifted her grocery bag from the counter and then stamped her foot. “Mercy! I plum forgot Miss Cilly be looking for her dish soap and I been gone all this time. She going to raise sand at me.”
Vida disappeared into the pantry and returned with a new bottle of Lux. “Here, take this,” she said, handing out Hazel’s soap. “We got us plenty.”
Johnny shot a glance at his mother. Surely that would set her off. They were stealing right from under her nose. But she sat there. If he didn’t know any better, he would say she seemed pleased that they’d said all those mean things about white people.
The boy watched as the little club headed for the door. After almost an hour of gossiping and grunting and waggling their heads at each other, and the one with the scary eye mumbling and humming to herself, they exited the kitchen one by one.
His mother had let them go. Scot-free. She had them dead to rights, and now they had escaped. He looked at her and watched disappointedly as she carefully drew herself up and turned back toward her room. He became frightened. Why was she letting Vida win?
Chapter Twenty-Six
MISSING THINGS
No matter how many times she had been here, she was never prepared for the gloom the house exuded. Inside, it was darker than the Grahams’, and cooler, almost tomblike. The furniture was ponderous and grave. Latched shutters behind silk damask drapes, their golden rope tiebacks loosened, both kept out the afternoon sunlight and kept in that morning’s run of the air conditioner. The ceilings were higher, probably fourteen feet, and although the rooms were densely furnished, the house eerily echoed the slightest sound. It seemed to repeat even the galloping of Vida’s heart.
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 17
