“You crazy,” Vida said, unable to keep from laughing with him. She gave his hand a pretend slap. Vida screwed the top back on and handed the bottle to her brother. “But leave me out of your schemes.” She reached up and touched her neck.
Willie’s face went serious again. “Sister,” he said gravely, “I thought you might could use you a drink.”
“No,” she said, “it don’t hurt that bad.”
“No. Not that.” Willie was speaking very carefully now. “I got some news, too, Vida.”
“What’s happened?” She looked toward the front room. “Is it Daddy? He done something, ain’t he?”
“No, it ain’t Daddy.” Willie reached for her hand. “Now listen to me. While I was in New Orleans picking up a shipment, I stopped off to shoot a little craps.”
“Willie, I told you no good going to come out of that kind of living. What trouble you fell in now?”
“Just listen, Vida. There was this boy in the game, and when I told him where I was from, he said he had been through here once. Back in June, he said it was. Vida, he said he came to Delphi looking for you.”
“For me? Why. . .” Then it dawned on Vida. “Creola said there was some man come looking for me at the Grahams’. I told you about him.”
“Vida, he swear he brung a letter for you. From Rezel.”
“Rezel! Lillie Dee’s boy?” She gripped his hand tight enough to stop the flow of blood. “Oh, my Lord almighty in heaven! You got the letter, Willie? Give it to me!”
“I ain’t got it, Sister. He said he left it with the Graham boy.”
Then her eyes flared. “That damned white boy! He got my letter!”
It was everything Willie could do to keep Vida from taking off that minute to grab Johnny out of his bed and shake him senseless. She reluctantly agreed to wait until morning.
She didn’t sleep the whole night through, and by first light she had figured out where the letter had to be. She didn’t bother with breakfast or even with waking her father. Instead, she threw on her wrinkled uniform and raced up the hill toward the Grahams’. She was the only one on the road.
Halfway there, the sun had already disappeared behind a weak gray sky. A misting rain had started to fall. She had forgotten both her parasol and her hat, and the fine mist gathered on her skin into droplets that trickled down her face. She didn’t notice to mop it away.
When she arrived at the Grahams’, she didn’t bother going inside and headed straight for Johnny’s digging ground under the porch. After she’d crawled through the little door, she stopped.
At first she couldn’t see a thing. She waited there, on her hands and knees in the dirt, for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, she saw a piece of white paper that seemed to be growing out of the ground. Her heart began to race. Was that it? She crawled in that direction. There was another one. And then another. Rows and rows of scrap paper—used envelopes, grocery lists, bills, paper plate—each piece run through with a popsicle stick and stuck in a dirt mound like a sign. Dozens of them.
She plucked one out of the ground. In crayon was written the word “Daddy.” Scooping up the dirt with her hand, she found one of Mr. Floyd’s tie clips. Other signs read “Momma” and “Davie.” Frantically, she began tearing the sticks out of the ground, one after the other, reading the names, until finally Vida found the one she’d been looking for. A marker with her name drawn in black crayon. She dug down into the ground with her fingers, pulling out fistfuls of dirt until at last she saw, lying in a bread-wrapper coffin, an envelope with a neatly typed V on its face.
Vida’s first reaction was disappointment. “This can’t be from Rezel,” she told herself. “This writ with a typing machine.”
With her hands shaking like leaves, she carefully tore off the end, blew into the envelope, and fished out a single page of white stationery.
Sitting there under the house in dim morning light strained through lattice, she moved her lips to the words.
Dear V,
I’m sorry I haven’t tried to reach you before this. There are too many reasons, none of which make any difference now. Besides, I know how the white folks down there like to read the colored’s mail. I was especially afraid to send something with your name on it. After Momma passed, there was no one I could trust to send a letter to.
For years, I told myself it would be best if you knew nothing. I’m still not sure I made the right decision, but when my friend said that he was going down that way, I took the chance of him finding you or your family.
First off, the boy is fine. If you haven’t heard, soon after I left Memphis I was sent to prison for a couple of years. It was impossible for me to keep him. There was a man who was real good to me through it all and he said he would take him. He and his wife are raising him as one of their own. They love him and he has nothing to want for.
V. they are white people and the boy is passing for white. The white life is the only life he knows.
I can’t tell you where he is. It may break your heart to hear this, but you must realize that he doesn’t remember Mississippi or his short time there.
Please try to see that it is best this way. Mississippi is not a place for a colored man or boy. Pray for him and wish him the best. Let him have his chance now.
I won’t be back either. I hope you and your family are well and weathered the storm all right. I’m sorry I let you down.
Sincerely,
R.
She stared at the paper for a long time, unblinking. Then she hardened her face and said out loud, “Nosuh. Rezel didn’t writ this letter. This was writ by somebody with book learning. Reads like a teacher done it.”
She shook her head at the letter, denying what it said. “Ain’t none of it the truth. How could it be?” She had to disprove it before it killed her.
She forced herself to remember back to the last time she’d heard from Rezel, weeks after Nate’s funeral. She went over every detail of that night.
She remembered standing in the parlor of their old house, looking out of the window. It was nearly dusk and time to begin her nightly trek to Lillie Dee’s cabin. It had rained most of the day, and the low-hanging clouds threatened more, but there would be no stopping her. Even the persistent pain from the gunshot wounds couldn’t keep her from taking to the road.
“You going to get wet,” Willie warned. “Ask Daddy to carry you.”
Vida glanced over at their father, who sat in his chair in a darkened corner, fingering the links of his gold chain, the one Nate used to cling so tightly to. She looked out the window again.
“It might be lightening up some,” she said, studying the paler shade of gray on the horizon. “I be all right.” Then she whispered, “Willie, I got a good feeling about tonight.”
Willie smiled, not saying she always had a good feeling, when she left.
As she walked past his chair, Levi took no notice of Vida. Anyway, it wouldn’t do any good to ask him to drive her the five miles to Lillie Dee’s. He refused to leave the house anymore, afraid he would be absent when the Senator finally sent for him. Any hour now, any minute, word might arrive and Levi would be called into conference with the Senator, his oldest friend, the man he used to be boys with. All Levi needed was one conference and the world would be set right again.
Vida knew the truth. Levi had been out to the Columns so many times in the past two months, the Senator had sent word through Lillie Dee that if he wanted to speak to Levi, he would send for him, and to stop coming around and bothering the help.
The day after the fire, when nothing remained of his church but a pile of ashes smoldering behind a kerosened cross, rumors began to spread about how Levi must have been working with the NAACP, trying to get the vote. His deacons were quick to turn him out, forever marking him as a troublemaker bound to draw the white man’s fire wherever he showed up to preach.
Vida reached for her parasol hanging by the door and was taken by the memory of the day it had arrived, and how she and her f
ather had danced around the sun-drenched yard in a shade brought from Memphis. She turned back toward him and almost called out that she loved him, wanting only to draw the same from him.
When she saw him sitting there in his make-believe world, the words caught in her throat. Things would never be the same between them. She knew that now. Had known it since that day in the graveyard.
By the time Vida neared Lillie Dee’s place, she was limping, but it didn’t slow her down. She had learned to put her weight on the parasol like a walking stick.
Lillie Dee’s cabin sat in the darkness, back off in the field her boys had worked before they left her one at a time and headed up North. There were no lights on in the house, but Vida knew Lillie Dee was there nevertheless. She always ate her supper in the Senator’s kitchen, and later he had one of the tractor drivers take her home, where she would sit outside rocking on her porch until it was time for sleep.
Vida approached the shack and heard the sound of the rocker creaking like a rain frog in the night. She made out Lillie Dee’s silhouette on the porch. When the rocking stopped, she knew that Lillie Dee had spotted her.
Vida sucked in her breath, braving herself against the old woman’s first words. Would it be the usual discouraging greeting: “Baby, I ain’t heard one lonely word.” Or would tonight be different?
Lillie Dee called out brightly, “I bet you a fat man that be Vida Snow coming down my path!”
Vida’s heart leaped to her throat. For the first night in weeks and weeks, Lillie Dee was glad to see her.
“Say it, Miss Lillie Dee!” Vida shouted, running the rest of the way, splashing puddles as she went. “Say you got word. You did! I can tell.”
Through the dark Vida could see Lillie Dee lift her hand. It held an envelope. Vida dropped her parasol on the porch and grabbed at the letter, letting out a shriek.
“Light the lantern there behind you and read it out loud. I couldn’t hardly tell one word from t’other. Except I’m sure it be from my boy. I knows the writing for Rezel’s name.”
Vida’s hands shook so she nearly dropped the globe. It took three matches before she got the lamp lit. As the kerosene sputtered, she fumbled with the envelope. She was so excited she couldn’t get it open. So she held it to her chest and shut her eyes tight. Vida was sick with fright.
It had been the only choice, she told herself yet again. Her father had sworn to her it was for the best. He’d said it had been God’s will, the man passing out face down in the cotton after firing off his shotgun. Never seeing what he had hit. It had been God working on the old uncle’s heart that had made him run up to where Vida lay bleeding and Nate screaming, telling her to get her baby out of the county that very night.
“Better yet,” the man had said, “get him out of the state of Mississippi.”
Even as Vida frantically searched her child’s body for wounds in the dark of the field, she could hear the panic in the uncle’s own voice. “Bury an empty grave box,” he said. “I’ll vouch the boy’s dead.” He glanced over to where his nephew lay. “I know Billy Dean. It’s the only way he ain’t going to hunt the boy down. He’s got it in his head if the Senator finds out that’s his boy. . .Well, once Billy Dean gets ahold of something, he’s bad as a snapping turtle. Won’t let go till lightning strikes him in the ass.”
The old man tried to get Vida to her feet, but she was too weak to stand. He hefted her into his arms. Trembling and bloody, she tried to read the man’s face in the moonlight.
“But girl, if you do it,” he had said, smelling of sour mash and shaking as bad as she, “you can’t never tell it. Be the end of me and you both.” He looked down at the child that clung to his pant leg. “End of your baby, too.”
That night as he tended her wounds, her father told Vida that God was giving her a second chance. Before the man had shown up with his gun, she had refused to send her baby away. Now he said they didn’t have a choice. They had to act fast. Perhaps they could ask Rezel’s help after all, her father said, since he was so determined to go up North. It would be a simple thing to sneak Nate to safety on the train. It would fool the man.
“I’ll even pay Rezel’s way,” her father had said.
“Without me?” she cried. “No!”
“It’s the only way we can save the child,” her father had said. “Rezel’s oldest brother got a family in Memphis. That’s not far. He can drop Nate off with them. They take good care of him. He be safe there. We won’t have no explaining to do.”
“No!” she cried. “I can’t let go of my baby.”
“Just for a while,” her father had pleaded. “We can go get him soon as you get healed up and I conference with the Senator. I promise.”
Vida clutched the envelope to her chest and whispered, “Oh, God, please show me the way to Nate.”
She opened the letter and then held the paper to the light. First thing she did was drop her eyes to the bottom of the page. Sure enough, there was Rezel’s name. He had finally written. The night he caught the Memphis train with Nate, Rezel had promised he would write as soon as they got to his brother Toby’s. That was so long ago.
Taking a deep breath, Vida began to decipher the wild scribble. As the words piled up, she shook her head in disbelief. Then she read the letter again.
Lillie Dee leaned forward in her rocker. “What’s it say, baby?” She waved her hand in front of her face, swooshing the night insects drawn by the light.
“Rezel say he got to Memphis.”
“Praise the Lamb!” Lillie Dee clapped her hands together. “They made it ’live out of Mississippi.”
“But, Miss Lillie Dee,” Vida said with panic rising in her voice, “they ain’t there no more.” Vida turned the envelope over and checked the postmark. It was true.
“They ain’t? Where is they?”
“They couldn’t find Toby. They in Chicargo.”
“Chicargo,” Lillie Dee said to herself. “Cold-sounding word.”
Vida went through the letter yet again.
“Chicargo,” Lillie Dee repeated. “Where that be at, exactly?”
Like a stone falling through water, Vida slid down against the wall to the porch floor. Her leg burned as if aflame. To quiet the pain, she tried to recall the map that hung in the front of her classroom. The one with greens and blues and yellows she ignored year after year, when it was not important to know where any place in the world was, except home.
She shook her head hopelessly. “I don’t know where it be at. Maybe on the other end of the river. Maybe clear on the other side of the Promised Land.”
Vida wasn’t aware of how long she sat there under the porch, amid Johnny’s graves. She didn’t even notice when Floyd walked out the kitchen door and descended the steps to his truck parked between the house and the dry-docked Lincoln.
At some point, she told herself she should be grateful. “Least he’s still alive,” she said without conviction. “That’s something.”
Yet she also knew that he was alive to some white woman. A white woman he was now calling Momma. He didn’t know Vida at all.
“And if he ever do see me,” she thought, “who he going to see? A nigger, is who.” She breathed in and forced out the breath, her shoulders caving in on the exhale, as if all at once feeling the cumulative strain of eight years of waiting without word.
“I’m dead to my boy,” she said bitterly, staring at the letter. “Worse than dead. He one of them now. Nate, you ain’t never going to want me for your momma.”
Later, inside the Grahams’ kitchen, Vida sat trancelike, staring at the letter spread out on the table before her. She only moved to touch her throat. This morning she had even forgotten about Hazel’s pills.
The kitchen had grown steadily darker with the weather, and she hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. As the thunder began to rumble outside, her only response was to clasp her hands and lay them on top of the letter. The unlit kitchen rapidly filled with shadows.
She looked up. T
here was the boy, wearing his pajamas and sleep still in his eyes. He stood there, a grave look on his face, considering her carefully. Knotting his brows, he asked, “What’s the matter? Why’s your dress so dirty?”
She gave him a searing look. In a bloodless tone she said, “I been up under the house. You want to guess what I found?”
Johnny’s eyes cut down to the letter and then back up at Vida. He took off in a frantic dash for the bathroom. Before he could get the door closed, Vida was on him. She pushed back hard, knocking Johnny to the floor.
She yanked him up by the waist and hauled him under her arm as if he were a sack of cornmeal, his legs flailing in the air. She plopped him standing up in the tub. Then she grabbed him by the wrist.
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” he shouted.
“Stand still or I’ll shake you like a ’simmon tree.” He tried to pull away from her, and she yanked him viciously.
“Momma! Momma!” he yelled.
Vida turned on the faucet and a loud rush of water splattered into the tub, drowning out his screams.
“Go ahead and holler your head off,” Vida shouted. “She ain’t going to hear you. She ain’t going to do nothing to save her little white boy. You and me both knows that. Now who you going to tell it to?” She scalded him with her eyes. “You going to tell it to the sheriff agin?”
She gripped his wrist tighter and reached for the bar of soap. “You know what they do to bad little boys with dirty, lying mouths, don’t you?”
“Leave me alone. Nigger!” he shouted.
That did it. Vida flung the bar of soap against the tile wall. It hit with a thwack and then splashed into the tub. “Damn it, Nate!” she screamed, “Shut your goddamned mouth!”
“I ain’t Nate!” Johnny screamed back. “I’m Johnny Earl Graham. Big letter J! Little letters o! h! n! n! y! That’s who I am. Don’t you people call me Nate no more!”
It was as if somebody had slapped Vida across the face. Her mouth still agape, she stared at Johnny long and hard. His breathing was furious, his bottom lip quivered, and his little fists were clenched. In a voice strangled with a murderous rage, he seethed, “And you better leave my momma alone or I’m gonna kill you.”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 23
