by Robert Ward
“I don’t know all of it. I just remember that there was a big demonstration coming up, and Gracie was one of our leaders. She had helped plan it. It was going to be downtown, and it was supposed to tie up traffic. Oh, we had quite a time making up signs and giving out assignments—who would go where and how the police would react, and what we would do if they brought in their horses—at that time they still used mounted police to break up riots. It was very scary and very exciting.”
“So that’s it,” I said.
“That’s what, sweetie?”
“That’s how Grace knew all about what the Reverend Gibson was talking about when he came over, the black movement in Mississippi, and what the police were going to do.”
“Oh, yes, she would know all about that,” Sue said. “She was like our general … right up until a few days before we had to have the actual demonstration. Then, suddenly, it happened.”
I waited as Sue collected herself.
“It was at night, and I was nervous about the demonstration the next day … so I stayed over at your grandmother’s. Rob was away in the Bahamas on a ship, and we were going to keep each other company. Well, Grace was all excited about it, answering phone calls until late at night. Then both of us were exhausted, and we went to bed. I slept in your aunt’s room, but not for long.”
“What happened?”
“I woke up out of a sound sleep. From Grace’s room I heard this terrible moaning. I was frightened out of my wits. I got up to go see what was wrong. Then I heard a terrible bloodcurdling scream. I was shaking all over. I actually thought someone had broken into the house and was attacking her. After what had happened to Rob in the union strike, I wouldn’t have put it past the owners to hire someone to murder her. I was terrified. I had never heard anything like that. Finally, I gathered up my courage and went out into the hall, and then I saw her. She was out of her bed huddled against the wall, screaming, her eyes wide open like she was seeing a ghost. I tried to wake her, but she grabbed at me, at my throat, and she was choking me…. I fought her but she was possessed. It was like she had the strength of a man three times her size. I screamed and fell back, and then Grace fell, too. Right on top of me. On my foot …”
“Your foot?” I said, stunned. “That’s how you hurt your foot?”
Sue looked down at the floor.
“As God is my witness, I would never say anything bad about Grace. She taught me when I was a child, and my father was drunk and beat me, she taught me how to read, she took me places, she opened up the world to me. She did everything for me.”
She was babbling on now, filled with guilt for telling me.
“Sue,” I said, feeling foolish and embarrassed. “It’s all right. Grace didn’t know she was hurting you.”
“No, of course she didn’t,” Sue said. “She fell on top of me, and I guess my scream and the shock of the fall woke her. She had no memory of the whole thing, and of course she was mortified when she found out what she had done. We got it bandaged up, and I went to the rally. It was a great success, too. The papers wrote us up, and it was the beginning of collective bargaining … for the dressmakers. But Grace, she didn’t go…. She stayed home alone … said she was too sick to go. Afterwards, she told me she could never be involved in politics or protests again. She was afraid for her sanity.”
“But why?” I said. “What could she have seen?”
Sue shook her head, then wrapped a ringlet around her finger.
“I don’t know. I asked her, but she said that she just didn’t have the stomach for public demonstrations anymore … that her nerves weren’t up to it. God knows, I saw evidence of that. I guess that’s the answer.”
“No,” I said. “That’s crazy. That can’t be it. Did you ever see her act like that again?”
“If you’re asking if she’s a coward, the answer is no. We were down at Ocean City once together, and there was a terrible fire…. This was ten years ago.”
“I remember. Didn’t your hotel burn?”
“That’s right. The George Washington Hotel. People were panicking everywhere, but Grace was as cool as a cucumber. She helped see people out the back way and acted like she was at a picnic. Even the firemen commented on her bravery. So whatever it is that’s haunting her, it has to be something big, something she can’t forget.”
She gave me a sly look from the side of her eyes then.
“Sue, you know, don’t you?” I said. “For God’s sake, tell me.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said. “I’m not sure of anything. Whatever it is, though, it happened before I knew her, which is her whole adult life. Maybe it happened when she was young, when she lived down in Mayo.”
“Mayo,” I said. “Down near Annapolis?”
“That’s right,” Sue said. “Grace lived down there for a while, too, in her teenage years. Maybe something happened down there. I don’t know for sure, but Grace has mentioned those years from time to time in a way that made me wonder. You know how she loves to tell stories about the past.
Well, that’s the one period I’ve always felt she kept a little bit secret. Oh, but I shouldn’t tell you that. I don’t know what I’m saying. You’d better go now, Bobby. And please don’t tell your grandmother I was talking about her. She’s my best friend in the world.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “This is between you and me.”
I walked across the room and gave Sue a kiss on the forehead. Her skin was clammy, sweaty …
She knew. I was sure of it … but she wasn’t going to tell me any more.
The next morning when I came down the steps, my grandfather stood in the living room, checking his seabag. He was dressed in his peacoat and wore his old World War II chief’s hat.
“Hi, boy. Glad you’re up,” he said. “I’m heading back to sea today.”
“Already?” I said. I hated to see him go. I had gotten closer to him than ever before, and yet there was so much more about him that I wanted to know.
“Been long enough. Got a good ship. Heading down to the Gulf of Mexico. Be gone a month or so.”
“What are you hauling?” I asked, watching him stick his rain boots into the bag.
“Rubber and tin,” he said. “On the way back, we’ll be carrying cotton.”
I smiled at him, and I felt pride swell inside of me. My grandfather did things that were essential to life. And for all his faults he was truly a man, something I doubted I’d ever be.
I walked over and gave him a hug, which he returned, rubbing his grizzled beard next to my soft cheek.
“I want you to promise me something,” he said.
“Just name it,” I said, with a certainty that I didn’t come close to feeling. “Take care of your grandmother,” he said. “Keep an eye on her.”
“Okay,” I said, laughing. “But I think you and I both know that she can pretty well take care of herself.”
“Usually,” he said. “But not always. She sometimes gets in over her head, trying to save the whole damned world, which, believe it or not, doesn’t always appreciate it.”
I laughed again, and this time he did as well.
“Some folks are better left on their own,” he said.
But this time he wasn’t laughing. And there was a faraway look in his eye. I had the distinct impression he was about to tell me something, something crucial about himself, maybe about Grace, but suddenly there was a car horn outside the house.
“That’s Terry Banks,” he said. “Gotta get rolling. You keep working and be brave now. You hear me?”
I felt a flush of deep embarrassment when he said that, but I managed a smile and a nod. I watched him heading down the steps, bowlegged, wobbling, his big forearms straining with the seabag thrown over his shoulder, his peacoat collar turned up around his short, powerful neck.
From the shotgun seat he looked up at me and gave a little wave, then he was gone. I promised myself once more that when it came time to act again, I would call on the spirit of my gran
dfather and that no matter what happened I’d always protect Grace.
My mother, Grace, and my aunt Ida Louise at an interracial picnic in the late fifties
T hat afternoon when I got home from school it was unseasonably warm, and Grace was sitting out on the porch, on the old metal glider, reading.
When she saw me, she put the book facedown. It was almost as though she didn’t want me to see it.
“Reading a novel?” I said.
“Not this time,” she said. “Nonfiction.”
Slowly, she turned the book over. I was surprised to find an English travel guide.
“Planning a trip?” I said.
She smiled a guilty smile.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Well, you ought to be,” a voice said.
I turned around to find the Reverend Brooks coming through the door. He was carrying a glass of iced tea, which he gave to Grace.
“You ought to be very proud of your grandmother,” he said to me. “She’s a remarkable lady.”
“I am,” I said.
“Especially since she’s going to be the new representative from the Women’s Council to the new Methodist Church Board. As soon as the election is held next month, that is.”
“That’s great,” I said, but my voice didn’t carry much conviction. I looked over at Grace.
“When did all this happen?”
“Oh, it’s been in the works for a while,” Dr. Brooks said, but I felt that he was answering because she didn’t want to. I frowned, felt confused. She cleared her throat and looked at me.
“Well, I didn’t say anything about it, honey, because its not really a certainty yet. After all, there’s another person who’s running for the position, too. Annette Swain.”
“Annette Swain?” I said. “How could anyone even consider voting for her over you?”
“Well, she has her followers,” Grace said.
“But, fortunately, probably not enough of them,” Dr. Brooks said. “So, young man, Grace will undoubtedly get the position. It’s a very important position in the church. She’ll help set the agenda for the foreseeable future … and the job has a few nice perks, too. Tell him, Grace.”
My grandmother smiled and looked at me.
“Well, the church’s international meeting is going to be held in London, England, this year,” she said. “And whoever gets the job gets to … go … to represent the Eastern Regional Council for a week.”
I could feel a huge smile breaking across my face.
“But that’s fantastic!” I said. “You’ve always wanted to go there. You can visit the places in Dickens … see Big Ben, the Tower of London. Nobody deserves it more than you do, Gracie.”
I gave her a hug, and for a second the thought of her realizing her lifelong dream made me so happy that nothing else mattered. But as I held her, Grace’s body stiffened, and when I looked at her, her eyes were troubled.
“That’s really great,” I said again. “When will you know for sure?”
“In three or four weeks.” She looked down at the porch floor. “Well, we’ve got a lot to discuss, Bobby. Maybe you’d better go in and get some of your schoolwork done.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Nice to see you, Dr. Brooks.”
“You, too, Bob,” he said.
I went inside and started to head upstairs to my room. But I was thirsty and remembered the iced tea in the kitchen.
I walked through the kitchen and beyond to the pantry. I poured some iced tea into a jelly tumbler with black-eyed Susans painted on it.
I went back into the living room and started to go upstairs, but then for some reason I sat down in the living room, just beyond the screen window. Without half-trying I could hear Grace and Dr. Brooks’s conversation, and though I felt guilty being an eavesdropper, I couldn’t resist listening in.
“Grace,” the Reverend Brooks said. “I want you to come and make a speech to the assembly of churches soon. Kind of a position paper telling them what direction we want our church to go in.”
“I see,” my grandmother said. “When would this be?”
“In two weeks,” he said. “Frankly, it’s very important. The truth is that though your record of service to First Methodist is superior to anyone’s, you’re not quite as well known to the governing body as we might like.”
“You mean as well known as Annette?”
“Yes, frankly,” Dr. Brooks said. “She’s had certain social advantages.” My grandmother laughed.
“Annette’s done very well, hasn’t she? Well, that’s nothing. I can be a snob, too, because I had a private tutor.”
“You did?” Dr. Brooks said. “When? I thought you left school in the ninth grade.”
“That’s right, I did,” my grandmother said. “But my mother worked as a seamstress at Greif and Brothers down on Redwood Street. It was a terrible job, sixteen-hour days, terrible working conditions … and she still had to bring piecework home to make enough for my family to live. My father worked at a better place, the Woodberry Mills. Eventually he got my mother a job there. We made more money, about sixty dollars a week at our best time. A union was started, the Textile Workers Union, and unlike some of the other owners in our town, the Garlands, who owned the mills, were fairly enlightened. As leaders of the union my father and mother got to know Mrs. Garland, the owner’s wife. She came to our house and talked with us. She really had an interest in working people.
“Then one day my father had an accident at the mill. He was out of work for some time, and I was forced to go to work, but Mrs. Garland felt so bad about it, she got her husband to hire tutors once a week. I met with this woman, Caroline Wright. She was wonderful. She knew Mozart, she knew books, and she saw right away that I wanted to learn. She was the one who got me into reading real books, to listening to classical music. She took me and three other kids to the Baltimore Symphony for the first time.”
“You were very fortunate,” Dr. Brooks said, “but you were also the kind of person who took advantage of your breaks.”
“It was my mother who was very smart. She was the one who pushed the idea of the tutor with the owner’s wife.”
I saw the Reverend Brooks get up from his chair then, and I sank down in my own. I was shocked to learn how close Grace had come to being completely uneducated, how much she and her parents had to struggle just to move our family this far along.
I felt giddy with knowledge and I would have gotten up right then and gone upstairs, but what the minister said next kept me glued to my seat:
“You know, Grace, your mother’s and father’s struggles are a wonderful tale. They were very smart people because they completely maximized their situation. Other people would have just been happy to make more money, but your mother saw that you could aspire to a greater world, the world of culture, and perhaps, who knows for sure, she even thought you might be able to move in that world someday.”
“Actually, I do know,” my grandmother said. “She always said that she hoped that I could go to college, be somebody. But that was beyond her powers, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, and a pity,” Dr. Brooks said, still pacing. “But just the same, now you have a real chance to get your ideas across. You can make your mark in the church and by that make a real difference in people’s lives.”
Though what he was saying was entirely positive and optimistic, there was a querulous tone to his voice. My grandmother must have sensed it, too, because she said nothing.
“But with this new power, this new sense of freedom, comes responsibility, Grace. A person entrusted with a position of political power must rein in his or her wilder and more radical impulses sometimes to achieve steady but smaller gains. Believe me, I know how frustrating that can be. When I started as a young minister, I wanted to make wholesale changes, changes I’d dreamed about for years, but I realized after some painful setbacks that such things aren’t entirely possible. Not to resort to clichés, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
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He stopped speaking and sat down. There was a long silence, then my grandmother spoke.
“What exactly do you mean?” she said.
“I think you know what I mean, Grace,” the minister said. “We’ve talked about this matter before.”
“No,” Grace said. “I’m not sure I do. Why don’t you say it straight out?”
There was another long silence, interrupted by the Reverend Brooks clearing his throat.
“I’m talking about this recurrent rumor I’ve heard that you’re meeting with the Reverend Gibson and his band of radicals. That you’ve … you’ve thrown in your lot with them.”
My grandmother gave an anguished, frustrated, and slightly mocking laugh.
“You make it sound as though I’ve joined John Brown’s gang or become a cohort of Nat Turner,” my grandmother said. “Reverend Gibson is a Methodist minister and is completely devoted to nonviolent change. And besides, I’ve promised him nothing.”
“I know exactly what he’s devoted to,” Dr. Brooks said. “He’s devoted to self-promotion, to upsetting established traditions in the crudest possible way. He’s a loud, overbearing fraud who would cast aside anyone who disagrees with his own agenda. This is not the kind of man we want to be involved with, Grace. Oh, I admit, he has a crude kind of animal charm, and if you are out of sorts, he can sound persuasive, but believe you me he is not a solid man. Not at all. And you, in this delicate transitional time, can ill afford to become a foot soldier in his little army.”
“His army?” my grandmother said, and her anguish was palpable. “I really don’t think you understand what he’s about. You’ve misjudged him and his movement, which is an arm of Dr. King’s … not some radical, fly-by-night …”
Dr. Brooks was up again, and as he turned toward the window, I shrank down.
“Don’t lecture me, Grace. I know the man, and I know his ambitions. He wants to be on the city council, he would like someday—and ask around if you doubt this—he wants to be mayor of Baltimore.”
“So?” my grandmother said. “Weren’t you and I just extolling the virtue of large ambitions? Or does that only apply to white people?”
