• • •
REGINA READ ALL THIS, thinking with each sentence she’d put the book down. But a sentence became a paragraph, which flowed on into a page, two pages, a chapter, more. She was still deep within it when the train shuddered to a halt in Richmond, Virginia, where cars were added.
They were old cars, and they were rickety. Regina, looking out, could tell this right away. A white man came up to her and handed her a new ticket. She was told, matter-of-factly, that she’d have to give up her seat, get off, move herself and her belongings to the rear. The man did not remove his hat when he spoke to her and he called her “girl,” but he did smile and he had a nice, bright, friendly smile, nothing malicious about it. Regina was not upset at first. In fact, she felt slightly ennobled. She had expected this. After all, the South and its Jim Crow laws had to start somewhere, and where better than Richmond, the seat of the old Confederacy?
She did what she was supposed to do and climbed down from the train onto the platform where her things had been off-loaded. She’d brought a lot with her. A hatbox, a makeup case, a Pullman big as a trunk. All of this in matching Hartmann brown tweed that had been given to her by Dr. Sam’s sister and her husband as a law school graduation gift.
All around her, the races fluttered like birds in separate migration, white folks toward the clean, new cars near the engine and colored folks to the dilapidation that brought up the rear. Everybody chatting away and nobody anxious or angry, at least not that Reggie could tell. She had thought she might have a problem down here with the language, with its cadence, with its various dialects, with—as Dr. Sam would say—its patois. Instead, she found she understood every word that was being said around her. It was just that none of them helped her one bit. So there she stood, like a dividing boulder, still fresh and perky in pearls, a hat, white gloves, and a ladylike suit but having not the faintest idea how she was supposed to transport herself and all she had with her from where she was to where she was supposed to be.
She, cracker-jack at hailing a cab in the city, tried calling out, “Sir!,” tried a “Here, please!” and met no response from the busy porters, or were they red caps? It didn’t matter what you called them. They were all black. While around her white folks were calling out for boys (grown black men) to help them, and the boys (grown black men) were doing just that.
A conductor cried out, “All aboard!” and she jumped.
Scared now, and frantic not to miss this train, which would be a disaster, and scolding herself—Did I really need all this?—Regina tucked her briefcase under one arm and her purse under the other. Then she juggled the makeup case and the hatbox into one hand. The hatbox fell, tumbling down onto the platform, rolling over. Oh, God, would it crash open? Would her brassieres fall out and even—heaven forbid!—her panties? In front of these people! She chased the bag down, barely catching it with a long reach that tore the strap loose on her rayon slip and dug the stays of her latex girdle into her sides.
She had grabbed the makeup case again and the hatbox and was yanking at the huge Pullman’s short leather handle, thinking she’d drag it along, when she heard a low murmur.
“Here, ma’am. Let me help you out with that.”
And there he was, a savior, a miracle materializing right beside her in the form of a Negro red cap who didn’t look up. He gathered her things, tucking them under his arms, lifting them by the handles, managing them, and he started off quickly, running almost, under the load. Regina could barely keep up with him. All around them, people were calling out—Boy, here! Boy, there!—but he kept going. And he kept his head down.
In two minutes it was over. Regina was on the train again and her luggage loaded, situated around her on the rusting tin floor at the end of the COLORED ONLY car. That’s when the red cap looked up, so close to her now that she could see his eyes, the wink in them, the brown irises the exact same color as his brown skin. For a second she thought she could see herself mirrored in them—a little thing, frightened and alone.
Regina wanted to cry, she was that thankful. But tears were an embarrassment. Where would they get her? She quickly looked down, fumbled into her purse. Searching for a tip, because this was the way, in New York, you showed you were grateful. When she glanced up again, the porter was already halfway down the platform, calling out to a stout white man, “Here, sir, let me help out you with that.” He’d left Regina clutching onto her gratitude and the galvanized steel of a railing as the train lurched forward, pulled onward by the magnet of the South.
Regina had turned back to the door with the big, flaking COLORED ONLY painted on it when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the newsboys. Her train was speeding up; had she blinked, she might have missed them. But she didn’t blink.
She knew who they were by the cotton satchels they carried, by the megaphone one had by his side. Boys like this were everywhere in New York.
There were five of them—three whites, two black, all hunkered together at a deserted end of the station, their papers forgotten, their hands and their arms flapping furiously, shooting craps. A shout of laughter, and a black boy clapped a white one on the back. Regina winced. She’d thought there’d be a fight for sure over this, or maybe even a lynching, but there wasn’t. Only a white man, a conductor, it looked like, put his hands on his hips and shouted, “Y’all . . .” Regina couldn’t hear more than that, but immediately all the boys stopped their playing, picked up their papers, ran off in different directions. Once they separated, they didn’t look back. Regina stood, clutching onto the rattling door, stared at them, frowning but intent, like you might look at a mirage or a vision, watching until they disappeared.
• • •
ONCE PAST RICHMOND, the land itself grew darker and richer. And blacker and blacker, black people everywhere. Not just in their own place, a separate place, like what she had expected, but everyplace. There didn’t seem a place where there was one without the other. She’d be looking at some black people and see a white person walk by in the background or, looking at a group of whites, she’d catch the shadow of a black—and there seemed to be just as many black people as there were white. Sometimes there were more. This was nothing at all like Harlem, Manhattan, New York itself, where the races rarely mingled—a place that Regina always thought of as a slow, smoldering white candle with a burning black wick. She tried but could not think of a metaphor for this new land, which was, after all, part and parcel of her own land. But it was too early, the juxtaposition of this life still too new.
Sometimes, Regina thought, she was farther from New York than the trains and then the Bonnie Blue bus could possibly have taken her. Even the air was different, the way it wrapped itself around her when she stepped out onto the platform at some small-town station, the way its dense, lush moisture seeped through her pores. And the fragrance of it! And the color! All the mixture of shades and gradations that shimmered through, and that wasn’t just skin color but included skin color along with everything else. Regina thought about all of this as she sat on hard train benches, as she remembered that red cap at Richmond, as she read through M. P. Calhoun’s book once again, as she stole the picture of Joe Howard Wilson and his daddy out of her pocket to study it. As she stared out upon the land, first with interest and then with growing anticipation, through cracked train windows and then cracked bus windows in the COLORED ONLY sections of both. As she took in the South for the first time through a mottling of grit and of dirt.
• • •
ONE FULL DAY AND A HALF after leaving New York City, Regina got to her feet on the Bonnie Blue Line interstate bus. She picked up her pillow, a ruffled and smocked pink-satin dainty, from the hard wooden seat. For the tenth time in as many hours she thanked God for Thurgood Marshall, who had told her to bring it. She gathered up her gloves, her hat, her briefcase, and her pocketbook. She smoothed down the wool of her skirt. Once all this was done, she started the long walk that led from the back of the
bus to the way out at the front.
She still carried the snapshot of Joe Howard Wilson and his daddy, Willie Willie, in the pocket of her suit jacket. The suit was a new one, brown, not the gray she had worn to the office on Saturday, but she had transferred the picture from that jacket pocket to this one. She hadn’t shown it to Thurgood, hadn’t shown it to anyone. It was her secret, and she wanted the picture handy. She liked looking at it. Why? She couldn’t say.
A small Negro child dressed in patched overalls maneuvered her bags out, one by one, from deep within the underbelly of the bus. He was huffing. This time Regina had her change handy. When she handed over a bright, shiny quarter, he smiled.
It was colder here than what she’d left behind in New York. A few degrees, but she felt them and they surprised her. Wasn’t the South supposed to be warmer than the North? She pulled her jacket tighter, put her gloved hands in its pockets, felt the picture. She teetered a bit on the high heels of her alligator pumps as the parking lot’s gravel gave way a little beneath them. She looked around. Men, maybe six of them, sat still as a tableau near the splintery ticket window of the unpainted depot. White men. Regina kept track of them out of the corner of her eye. Ida Jane always said, “You got to watch white folks every single minute.” Regina had been doing just that for all of her life.
And was still doing it when she heard one bird call, and then another. She didn’t have the faintest idea what kind of birds they were, but she thought the sound they made was wonderful, trebly and rich and alive. But where were they? When she looked up, there was a circling of lush green trees, radiating off in every direction, as far as her eye could see, with no break in them. The trees, thick and close, rising darkly on low hills, and mapping a forest. Regina wondered if this was the place, or something like it, that had stirred M. P. Calhoun to write her book. The thought made her shiver, and she wondered what Mary Pickett must be like, living in this spot that must be so Southern, and yet smelled of pitch pine and loam, was cuddled by hills and not planed into fields of cotton, was cold and not warm. Regina reached up with her gloved hand and brushed away a swarm of gnats from her face. When she brought her hand down again, she saw the lone Negro man.
Mr. Willie Willie.
She recognized him from that snapshot safe in her pocket, from the smile that irradiated him as he looked over at his uniformed son. He was grinning that way now, with a rascal’s face full of mischief, shaking his head. Looking at her and at the same time tossing something into the sky, a small bright something that caught at the light. Regina decided he must already have figured her for the New York lawyer, and realized that this lawyer was not the anticipated Thurgood Marshall. But she had expected that. She took a deep breath, ready to face up to the displeasure she knew would be coming once people realized she was here and Thurgood was not, and marched over to Willie Willie with her hand stuck out.
He came toward her, across the small gravel patch where the bus had stopped, where its engine had started to rattle and settle, looking like a man who wanted to be introduced.
Impressive, she thought, dark-skinned, clean-shaven, trim and small. And old, much older than he looked in the snapshot, and changed from it, too, from that time. But even as he drew nearer, Regina couldn’t make out just exactly what it was that was different about him. How could she recognize him as one man but know he was now another?
Maybe, for one thing, he had dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform, not the overalls he had on in the picture. If she looked closely enough, Regina imagined she could see herself reflected in the smooth, sharp lines of its gray stiffness. Her mother, Ida Jane, had once told her that you could tell a lot about a man by the way he closed up his shirt, by whether he buttoned it right to the top or not, by the way his pants were creased, and by the way his clothes hung straight or they didn’t. Regina wondered what Willie Willie’s sharp folds and lined-up, buttoned-up buttons were telling her now.
Crack!
Something snapped behind her, a brisk, hollow, no-nonsense sound. Automatically, Regina, the smile still on her face, turned back to it, toward the depot and the men lounging against its dilapidated walls. She saw the knife right away. She saw the white man holding it. He was talking to the driver of her bus, both of them looking over at her, not even pretending not to, the driver whispering something in the man’s ear. He was sitting under a bare electric bulb, the light from it shining into his thick gold hair, brightening every strand of it, making it look as thick and luscious as a summer wheat field. A young man, she thought, too young to be wasting his life whittling wood on a bus depot porch, which was what he was doing. Her eye traveled from the man to the knife in his hand. It looked like a bowie, but then again, she had to admit, all knives that weren’t near a kitchen looked like bowies to her. She was no expert. Her personal experience of them was limited to matinee Westerns at the Roxie. Shavings from the wood fell like delicate tracings onto the rough planks of the flooring, into the rusted can that lay toppled by his side, onto his tight blue jeans. Blue jeans were workman’s clothes, loose and baggy. Regina had never seen them fitted close to a man’s body until now.
He was staring at her. There were a good twenty feet of gravel lot between them. She was too far away to see the color of his eyes, but she knew they were lasers, and she felt those eyes watch her in the same level way she knew her own were watching him. She did not like white men, was frightened of them, really. It was smart to be frightened of white men. Still, she continued to stare.
Willie Willie said, “You the lawyer?”
She whirled back to him. He had taken off his uniform cap and held it in his hand.
Reggie nodded. “Regina Mary Robichard.”
Someone snickered behind her. Low, but she heard it. Was meant to hear it, at least that’s what she thought.
“R. M. Robichard, Esquire,” Willie Willie said. “Can’t forget that last part. Miss Mary Pickett read it off to me from that telegram you sent down here—or maybe it was Thurgood Marshall sent it down here—saying when the lawyer would come.” He made a great show of looking around. “Miss Mary Pickett was expecting a him. And, truth told, a Thurgood Marshall him at that. She’s gonna pitch quite a fit when she sees she got herself a her.” His eyes twinkled. “That your stuff? I’m Willie Willie.”
She wanted to say, I’d know you anywhere. But didn’t.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wilson.” And she was; relieved, too. Regina took off her glove and held out her hand.
“I’m no Wilson—my son’s the only Wilson,” said Willie Willie as he took it. His own hand was rough and warm as it enveloped hers. “But I am the one who changed his name to a real patronymic.” He looked slyly over at Regina as his tongue rolled, syllabic, through the word. Regina barely knew its meaning, and she wondered who had taught it to Mr. Willie Willie.
“It was the judge,” he said.
Regina, embarrassed, thought for a second she’d spoken aloud but then changed her mind as Willie Willie continued, “He arranged the changing himself and took me over to the courthouse to do it.”
“The judge?”
“Judge Calhoun. Miss Mary Pickett’s ex-daddy. ‘Ex’ now because he’s been such a long time dead. Those your things there?”
She nodded.
He nodded with her.
“Looks to me like you’re planning a stay.”
“It depends,” said Regina, all business now, and anxious to get started because there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. “Mr. Marshall sent me down to begin a preliminary investigation. That seems to be what Miss Calhoun wanted, what you wanted. I’ve got a couple of weeks, that’s all. After that—I guess Mr. Marshall will decide.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with you coming. Let me make that clear from the beginning. All this here”—he made a wide gesture that took her in, along with her luggage—“all this was Miss Mary Pickett’s idea. One I i
magine she’ll be regretting soon enough.”
“Then why did she ask us to come?”
Willie Willie seemed to consider. “Probably because she thought you wouldn’t come. Not really. Thurgood Marshall, all the way to Revere, Mississippi? And him all busy, as he is? That wasn’t likely. Still, at least she could say she did her best.”
“Her best?”
“She read it out to me,” he said. “That letter. Sent me over to the post office with it, made me mail it myself so I’d know it’d gone out.”
He hadn’t answered her question, so Regina insisted. “But why? Why would that matter?”
“I imagine she wanted to keep me happy,” he said after a while. “To keep me quiet. To keep me . . .”
Regina waited, but there was nothing more after that.
Willie Willie strolled over, hoisted up her bags, and carried them back as easily as the red cap had carried them in Richmond. When she offered to help him, he brushed her aside. Instinctively, she knew this was about her, his wanting to help her, but it was also about the men on the depot porch. They had stopped what they were doing, their checker games, their whittling, to stare at him, saying nothing to one another, all movement suspended. Watching him. Just as the young blond one still watched her. And, like her, Willie Willie stared right back at them, passing much closer to that little porch than he needed to, than perhaps he had a right to do. Above them another bright sign, FILL UP AT BILLUPS—ALL YOU CAN EAT SATURDAYS, BEST FOOD IN TOWN, flickered to sudden electrified life.
Willie Willie walked past Regina, standing straight, not appearing to be winded by his load. Without a word, she fell in step beside him. She was relieved that he was here, that she was safe beside him. She turned away from the others, didn’t look back.
“Miss Mary Pickett got a room for you at the Queen City Hotel, or at least she got that room for Thurgood Marshall.” His voice rose up in marvelous imitation. “‘Stay dressed up in your uniform now, Willie Willie. Take that Thurgood Marshall over to the Queen City. Tell him we can meet together tomorrow. Tell him what to expect’—as though Thurgood Marshall don’t know what to expect in Mississippi.” Willie Willie shook his head. “But she won’t want to be putting you there once she sees you and knows you’re a lady. That wouldn’t be right, since she’s the one asked you here. Maybe I should just carry you straight on over to the home place first. See what she wants to do.” He gave Regina a sharp, quick glance. “Not many lady lawyers down here, at least not white ones. No colored ones at all that I know of. Barely any colored men. Tom Raspberry, maybe—but that’s a whole ’nother story. For him, lawyering’s something he makes up as he goes along.”
The Secret of Magic Page 7
