Johnny stood furtively in the hall, waiting for the set to warm up before he crept past the parlor doorway and slipped upstairs. This was one of the few times during the day he could spend with his mother without fear of Vida calling out for him, trying to meddle in their business.
When he came into her room, the lights were off and the radio was on. She hardly ever went down to watch TV, and when she did, she seemed to tire quickly of all those happy families doing their best to make her laugh.
Today, the radio was playing a song without words. It was the kind of music he and his mother used to make up rhymes to as they drove fast in the Lincoln. Only now Hazel lay there quietly with her eyes closed. Without making a sound, Johnny pulled the dressing table chair to her bedside and seated himself. He stared through the filtered afternoon light at his mother.
Her hair was flattened against the sides of her head and pitifully pooched out on top from lying on it all day. Later that evening he would ask her if he could brush it for her. He looked at the arm that lay crooked on her stomach. Her skin was the same pasty white color as the china poodle that sat next to her on her nightstand, the one his father had given her for a surprise present, for no reason at all. Her fingernails were ragged and chipped, the last vestiges of polish from her failed escape about to flake away. He noticed how the bedspread rose and fell at regular intervals and knew that to be a good sign, having watched his father lean over Davie, yelling at him to breathe.
She needed to get up soon. Time was coming unloose. Countless days and hours and minutes were passing undesignated and unaccounted for, flowing into one another like little streams coursing into an unnamed river. Although Time lived in the clock, his mother was the only one who could tell Time, who could tell it what to do. Time to rise and shine. Breakfast. Dinner. Supper. Time for a story. Time for bed.
Without her, all the ticks on the clock bled together, and he couldn’t be sure the day had been done right, that some things hadn’t been forgotten and left out. He sighed. So many things to be remembered. Nobody talked about Davie anymore. He needed to be remembered so he could come back home.
His mother took in an extra-deep breath and then, forcing it out, opened her eyes. Neither of them spoke, each watching the other. His mother’s face was expressionless, and he tried to make his likewise.
Once, while out driving, his mother had pulled the car to a stop on a country road without warning. She had reached over, touched him on the shoulder, and pointed, all in a way that told him to be as still as he could. Looking along the line of her finger he saw the lone doe. For several minutes he and his mother gazed upon the deer, and the deer gazed back. The world stopped breathing. It was as if the slightest movement of the tiniest muscle would break the spell and frighten the deer back into the woods. So now, Johnny watched his mother quietly, asking nothing from her except that she keep her eyes on him, to notice that he was there.
A single tear trickled down her face. “Johnny, I wanted to be a good momma,” she whispered. “I really wanted to.”
A few moments passed, and her face went heavy with the weight of some realization. Johnny watched as she closed her lids and said sadly to herself, “Damn.”
After tiptoeing downstairs and sneaking past Vida, who was at that moment fussing at a contestant on a quiz show, he went out through the back door, catching the screen so it didn’t slam, and descended the porch steps.
The elevated porch was supported by brick pillars, and between the pillars on three sides were giant screens of crisscrossed green lattice, framing a cool patch of earth underneath. Parting the Confederate jasmine that climbed the latticework, Johnny removed a small inset wide enough for a worker who might need to get at the pipes under the house and crawled through, replacing the little latticed door snugly behind him.
Squatting down there in the dirt, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, Johnny remembered what the old colored preacher had told him earlier in the afternoon about funerals and believing in Jesus and seeing Davie again. It certainly sounded like what Brother Dear had said.
Maybe Levi Snow was crazy. After all, he had been talking to pine straw. Johnny was beginning to think that the world was chock-full of crazy grown people on the loose, seeing Jesus and preaching to pine straw and sneaking in and out of other people’s houses. To think that his mother was the one that got picked on.
Johnny took the little china poodle out of his pocket and cradled it in his palm and kissed it on the nose. “Who do you love the best?” he asked the dog. “Whose side are you on?”
Setting it gently on the ground, Johnny took a silver spoon from his pocket and began digging among the dozens of little mounds arranged in neat rows in the dirt. After he had dug his hole, he placed the dog in a bread wrapper and then laid it carefully in the grave.
“Now, stop that crying. Close your eyes and go to sleep. Jesus is gonna come by soon and get you up. And then you can come home again. I ain’t gonna forget.”
He scooped dirt over the dog with the stolen tablespoon. There were so many graves now. Johnny was having trouble remembering what was buried where. He crawled along the ground touching each grave with his finger, and as he did, he said the name of the person who had forfeited some possession to his graveyard.
Over the hammer he said, “Daddy,” and over the garnet pin he said, “Momma,” over the toy tractor, “Davie,” and “Vida” over the envelope he’d got from the man with the straight-edged face.
He went on this way until he had recalled them all. Little lost things that others would miss and consider gone forever, and only he knew how to stop their grieving. It was up to him to remember where everything was buried. This was, after all, his graveyard, and here, he was the one who measured out death, one tablespoon at a time.
“Johnny!” came Vida’s voice. “I know you up under there. Get on out right now! Got to get you cleaned up before your daddy gets here.”
The boy took another moment to finish his remembering. Then he told them all, “Good-night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TRUE STORIES
The next afternoon found Vida hurrying upstairs to make sure Hazel was set for the next hour or so. She hated being disturbed when her friends were visiting. In the bedroom the lights were off and the radio was on low. So as not to wake her, Vida gently closed the door behind her and quietly descended the stairs.
Hazel flipped opened her eyes and turned off the radio. She rose up out of bed, groggy, put on her robe, and dragged herself to the door. Carefully easing it open, she peeked out and, seeing that the coast was clear, took her listening post on the stair. By that time Johnny had tiptoed up to join her.
For Hazel, in this summer of drugs and depression, the time she spent listening to those maids carry on in her kitchen, loud talking and low-rating everybody they knew, was the only thing that kept her going. She wouldn’t miss a session for the world. Something about the way those colored women could tell it on people. It was one of the few things that did her heart good anymore.
When Vida returned to the kitchen, Creola was already telling the maids about how she had overheard her boss, Hayes Alcorn, Miss Pearl’s husband and Delia’s uncle, carrying on about a men’s club he was forming.
“That man getting crazier-actin’ every day,” Creola said. “Ever since that hoss came back by hisself, he keeps telling Miss Pearl, ‘This nigger problem done got outa hand.’”
Vida pulled out a chair for herself. “How come he already know a colored man done it? How come he know anybody done it? Ain’t even found her body yet.”
Creola shook her head. “She dead, all right. They found her pretty silk scarf dangling on a branch reaching out over that whirly pool near to Bryson’s Bayou. She probably floated all way down the Mississippi by now.”
“Well, she mighta fell off in that whirlpool by accident,” Vida suggested. “It’s slick on that bank.” She knew the spot well. It was near her father’s p
raying ground.
“Girl didn’t slip,” Missouri said, her eyes glaring at Vida. The sheriff’s maid was acting as if it were her own sister who got drowned instead of her white lady’s.
Enjoying how riled Missouri was getting, Vida became flippant. “Maybe she flung herself in there on purpose. Don’t always take a colored man to make a white woman do something crazy. They’s a dead cat on the line, if you ask me.”
The group was quiet for a moment, waiting for Vida to hang some meat on her suspicions, but she said nothing more. For now she wanted to keep the contents of the purple-and-white letter a secret. Especially with Missouri present.
“Mr. Hayes say it’s got to be a colored man done it,” Creola said. “Mr. Hayes say the colored done got above theyselves. He say we getting some dangerous ideas from the outside.”
“What kind of ideas we been getting?” Vida asked.
“Oh, about voting and integrating and sleeping with the white folks. He told Miss Pearl his little club going to take care of the colored problem once and for all. White supremer he calls hisself now.”
“Praise Jesus,” Maggie sang out. “He rule supreme.”
“He sure do, Maggie. ’Cept we ain’t talking about Jesus right now.” Creola was growing angry. “We talking about a little no-assed varmit calling his own puny self supreme. Mr. Hayes is foaming at the mouth about some colored preacher named King over in Alabama. Said he done outfoxed the bus company and the whole town of Montgomery. He say Mississippi going to be next.”
“Colored man do that?” Vida asked. “How?”
“He got all the colored folks together and told them to stay off them buses till they could ride up front like first-class citizens.”
“Sure!” Sweet Pea squealed. “I read about it in one of them colored papers from Chicago somebody was passing round at One Wing Hannah’s. But it wasn’t no man who got it started. It was a colored woman done it.”
“Goodness gracious!” Creola said. “If Mr. Hayes knew that, he sure nuff have a duck fit.”
“Her name Rosa somebody. Parks, I think,” Sweet Pea continued. “She riding back home from work on the bus and wouldn’t let go her seat to a white man. Say she was too tired to move.”
“That what she say? Too tired to move?” Creola started laughing as if that was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She began singing the words like a gospel song. “Too tired. Too tired to move. Law! Law! Too tired to move.” She laughed harder, setting her mighty breasts to wobbling.
Sweet Pea and Vida broke up, too. Maggie mouthed the words, but didn’t seem to recognize the tune.
“Um-hmm!” Creola said, wiping her eyes. “I know how Rosie feels. Bone weary. Ain’t that something? So that’s what started it all. Rosie not getting up off her feet.”
“Rosa,” Sweet Pea corrected. “Hauled her off to jail for it.”
“Thank you, Lord!” Maggie sang out, sounding as if she thought the more colored folks in jail the better.
“Rosie a maid?” Vida asked.
“Rosa, I believe her name was,” Sweet Pea said. “No. Weren’t no maid. I believe it said she sewed clothes.”
“Law, Law,” Creola chuckled to herself. “That’s what we sure nuff need around here. Somebody too tired to move for the white man. Maybe Rosie come here, you reckon? We throw together a club like Miss Pearl and her white lady friends. League, they call theyselves. I ’spect we can be a league just as good as they can.”
Sweet Pea slapped her hands together. “Yes ma’am. We can be Rosa’s League of Uppity Colored Maids!”
“We ain’t got no buses,” Missouri said flatly.
“That ain’t the point,” Vida snapped. She wasn’t in any mood to hear Missouri take up for the white man today. “Somebody need to teach the white folks in this town a lesson or two. Can’t keep messing with us the way they do.”
“Who been messing with you?” Missouri challenged.
Vida bit her tongue.
Creola answered for her. “That boss of yours, for one. Sheriff been tearing up every colored house in Hopalachie County looking for who drownded Miss Delia. How many white doors you ’spec he busted down?”
“The sheriff doing his job,” Missouri said. “What he was elected to do.”
Creola stomped her foot, rattling the dishes and sloshing the coffee out of the cups. “I sure didn’t elect him. I can’t even vote in this county.”
Vida had never seen Creola this upset before. Her face freckles were glowing as bright as lit cigarettes on the inhale.
“What you want to vote for?” Missouri spat. “What you care which white man get elected?”
Vida couldn’t help but smile, seeing Missouri tempt her fate with Creola this way.
The large woman shifted her bulk and then leaned in toward Missouri, getting right in her face. “I tell you how come me to care. My baby niece only just turned fourteen and I seen the way that man is looking at her. I can tell he ready to go back to his old habits. If I gets the vote, your sneaky-eyed, bony-assed, fork-dicked boss sure be out of a job.”
Missouri’s face swelled up like a biscuit in a hot oven. “Voting is the white man’s business,” she said, clenching her teeth. “Ain’t no colored preacher or no uppity girl from Alabama named Rosie or Rosa neither one going to make it otherwise. All they do is leave a mess everybody else has to live in.” While they all shot her furious looks, Missouri continued to lecture them righteously, “We need to keep our minds on the Lord, not on the vote. The Good Book says, ‘Pay honor to God.’”
“And everything else to the white man,” Vida snapped.
Missouri smiled her tight little grin at Vida. “We could all take a lesson from Vida’s daddy,” Missouri said. “Sheriff say he used to be a biggety preacher out in the county till he got hisself mixed up in this voting mess. Course y’all see how he do more yard work than preaching nowadays.” Looking quite satisfied, Missouri puckered her lips and took a noisy sip of coffee.
There followed a charged silence. Vida knew they were looking for her to say something in his defense, but she kept quiet. What could she say? “You wrong about that; Daddy was a white man’s nigger like you, Missouri”? Explain how he had curried favor with white folks, thinking he would have him an angel when he needed it?
Then Vida smiled. She knew how to get even with Missouri. Thinking again of the letter she’d found at the sheriff’s house, she said, “I bet I know who Miss Delia was carrying on with.”
Before Vida could tell her theory on the matter, Sweet Pea piped up. “You mean it’s true? Here I was thinking it was crazy talk.”
Vida was confused. Had Sweet Pea heard about Delia and the sheriff? “You know?” she asked.
“About Mr. Floyd and Miss Delia? Sure! I heard some old drunk down at Hannah’s talking about how they seed the two of them out at Friar’s Point. Being mighty close, they was.”
Up on the stair, Hazel’s shoulders slumped. Johnny looked up at her. “Momma,” Johnny whispered, “are they talking about Daddy?”
Hazel didn’t answer. She didn’t even breathe. Slowly she rose up from the stair, went back into her room, and closed the door behind her, shutting Johnny out.
Johnny looked back down the stairs. These women had hurt his mother. It was all Vida’s fault. If his mother wasn’t going to get rid of her, he would have to. And he knew how to make it happen. Just as soon as the sheriff got home.
Chapter Thirty
THE CITIZENS’ COUNCIL
Back at the dealership, Floyd stubbed out his unsmoked cigarette and slowly got up from his desk, clicked off the light, and pulled the blinds so Hollis couldn’t see him. Standing there alone in his darkened office, Floyd took a handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his eyes, then blew his nose. He needed to be alone for a few minutes to pull himself together.
Settling behind his desk again, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He had to get his attitude right. Get back on top of things. After all, attitude determines altitude.
Floyd blew his nose again and dropped his head down on the desk. He tapped his forehead against the laminated surface. “I’m a winner. I’m a winner. I’m a winner.”
He had just got over losing Delia, and now it looked as if he would have to start all over again. Two days ago, after he had got his attitude back on track, Brother Dear had called, saying Delia had been drowned. It almost killed him this time, imagining her lithe body floating face down, her blond hair a silky net for leaves and twigs and river trash.
Only Wednesday, she had been standing right here in his office, smiling at him, tossing back her hair in that free and easy way of hers, eyes bluer than they had a right to be. For a moment he thought he could detect a whiff of her perfume and hear her silvery laughter.
No matter how hard he tried to push Delia into the past where she belonged, she refused to budge. He tried muttering his favorite motivational sayings, but his guilty mind would have none of it and countered by churning out dire prospects for his future. It occurred to him that he was probably one of the last people to have seen Delia alive. That would make him a suspect.
And wasn’t he a witness of sorts? Delia had told him directly that her boyfriend had threatened her life, surely crucial information the sheriff would want to know. He had promised her he would tell if anything happened. Yet how could Floyd explain to the sheriff where he got that little piece of news without revealing his own lusting heart?
Oh, my God! he thought, as he began mixing and matching facts in his head. There was that phone call from Hayes Alcorn, about a meeting at the barbershop. He’d said it was important and had to do with the future of Hopalachie County, and he needed Floyd’s help. The sheriff and some others town leaders were going to be there. Maybe it wasn’t a meeting at all. They were setting him up for an arrest! That was it. It was a trap. They were going to surprise him so there wouldn’t be a scene.
It might not be such a bad idea to leave a little early, drive around town and collect himself. Maybe arrive at the barbershop before Hayes started up the meeting. That way he could get a sense of the crowd. Not that he had anything to be worried about.
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 20
