In Search of Satisfaction

by J. California Cooper

  She reached a bus stop mostly used by domestics in that area of the wealthy. When the bus came the driver let her pull and struggle with the boxes until he got tired of waiting, then he helped her lift them on the bus. That done, she sat back and smiled. People smiled back and asked her, “Where you goin with them things?” Still smiling, she said, “Home.”

  They ask, “Home up here in the city?”

  She said, “No, home down there in the country where I come from. Where my family lives.”

  One lady asked, “You sure ain’t gonna walk, draggin them boxes, is you?”

  Hosanna answered, “No mam. I’m gonna buy me a ticket and ride home in style. I ain’t walkin!” They laughed. She didn’t have to say any more. People started smiling with her and giving her information on how best to travel alone. When she got where she was to change buses, a few got off and stood with her so nobody would bother her. Even helped her get her boxes on the next bus before they went on to their jobs.

  The next stop was the train station. A man helped her get off the bus, setting her boxes on the ground because there wasn’t much of a sidewalk there. Then he hugged her and got back on the bus, waving as it drove away. Hosanna dragged her boxes again through a muddy dirt. The boxes were beginning to look kind of weak, but the rope held. She got inside the railroad station with them and parked them by an old lady, smiling as she did so, then she went to get her ticket, thinking, “Sweet Jesus! Goin home!”

  She was mad at herself when her turn came at the ticket window because she had not had sense enough to separate her money when she was at home by herself. She realized she could not take all her money out and was embarrassed until she realized she could find out how much the ticket cost, then go to the restroom and get out the right amount. She looked at the old lady sitting beside her things, and thought, “She just a old lady. Surely she ain’t gonna take my things.” Then she changed her mind, got the boxes and pulled them into the restroom with her. It was dirty and crowded. Toilet paper and towels all over the floor. She had to drag her boxes all through that then try to get them to fit in the small cubicle with her. It took her awhile, but she did it. Then it seemed like that little bell was a great big ole bell! It rang and rang and rang as she struggled with those safety pins. She finally got everything out, separated and done. Went to the toilet since she was in there anyway. Dragged her boxes back out, washed her hands, ignored the funny looks from people with raggedy, cardboard suitcases laughing at her boxes. “Hell, I’m goin home!” Hosanna thought and held her head up higher. She went back and bought her ticket, sat down and waited for HER train. When it came, a nice, smiling, old black man helped her get her boxes on and her to her seat. She sat back, still smiling, dreaming of the faces of her family she would see when she got HOME!

  She reached for her lunchbag. “Oh, oh! I have done left it somewhere!” She was a little hungry, but she didn’t care. She did not intend to spend her money. Something was telling her she was going to need every dime she had.

  Hosanna was near starving in a little while. She had not known it was as far as it was. She thought of stealing something, and she didn’t want to. But if it hadn’t been for that nice, old black man and a white lady with a baby, she might have stolen something. They didn’t have much, but they shared a few crackers, some cheese and a little tiny chicken wing. It tasted so good to her! Hosanna thought to herself about her money, “I ain’t cheap! Just thrifty! And I can’t be pullin my money out and ringing that bell all over the place.” At last, after a long, long day and a night, the train finally got to where the next stop was hers. She was so sweaty, tired, uncombed and unwashed and just plain sick of that train. She snatched her now raggedy boxes by the rope and flew off that train with tears in her eyes, she was so glad to get almost home.

  Now Hosanna didn’t know just exactly which way to go to get home because she had left when she was five years old. Naturally she had sense enough to ask the right questions and make her way. There was a war going on so nobody paid much attention to her with her boxes. She started out walking. It wasn’t hard walking to her because she was getting closer to home. What was hard was keeping the bottom of those boxes from coming apart. So besides the ticket, she spent the only money of the whole trip on a little red wagon with a pull handle, loaded it and started on down the road. Thirty-five cents. Her and her little red wagon!

  chapter

  30

  sweat soon poured from Hosanna’s face as she trudged the long, unpaved road to her home. The sun in the middle of the sky shone down relentlessly. It was only about eighty degrees, but she was not used to walking in such heat for so long. Trees bordered the road but lent little shade for any length of time. Now and again she would see snake tracks across the road. She was afraid of snakes so she looked carefully ahead. The little red wagon became heavier and heavier with each mile.

  Far ahead, Hosanna saw a figure resting, it seemed like, on a log or something on the side of the road. She watched the figure until she saw it was an older woman, dark of skin, large boned but rather thin for her height, with a look of weariness and patience in the tired lines of her face. Having felt so much loneliness in her own short life, Hosanna recognized or felt the aloneness of the older woman.

  Hosanna wiped the sweat from her face with her arm as she reached the woman and smiled. “Sure wish I had brought a hat.” The woman smiled back, saying, “Take mine.”

  “Oh, no, I can’t do that.”

  “Where you goin to?” the woman asked in a pleasant low voice.

  “Yoville. Home.”

  “That’s jus wher I’m goin. We can walk together and spell the hat off. I’ll wear it awhile, then you wear it awhile.”

  Hosanna smiled. “Only if you let me put your sack on my wagon and let me help you carry it.”

  The woman smiled. “I sho be glad of that! I’s tired, chile. Sit down a minute. You been to town?” She waved mosquitoes away.

  Hosanna tried to laugh, but it dwindled away in the heat. “I sure have been to town. I been to Washington, D.C.!”

  “Oh! You must’a come in on the train, I saw it comin in.”

  Hosanna wiped her brow again, enjoying the shade. “You been to town?”

  The woman shooed the same mosquitoes away again. “I been to Pittsburgh in Pencil … vania.”

  Hosanna turned to her. “Oh, you came in on the train, too. I don’t remember seeing you.”

  The woman laughed wearily. “Tha’s cause I was’n on it.”

  Hosanna still looked at her. “What you took?”

  “I walked.”

  “You walked all the way to Pittsburgh?”

  “There and back.”

  “My Lord!”

  The woman laughed softly again. “Tha’s what I say. Well, we best be gettin on our way.” They got up and adjusted the bags and boxes on the little wagon. Hosanna shook her head. “You musta walked near three, four hundred miles.”

  The woman sighed. “One step at a time. I been gone a month. Be glad to get home … if it still be there.”

  Hosanna persisted. “What possessed you to walk like that, that far?”

  They started walking—Hosanna pulled the wagon, the woman fanned with the hat then handed it to Hosanna who now refused to take it.

  “Well,” the woman continued to fan herself, some of the breeze reaching Hosanna who held her face up to it, “Well, I had a brother had a daughter. She live in Pittsburgh now, wit two childrens. Her husband dead now. My brother dead, too. I be her onliest family and she be mine. I got to look on her ever once in awhile, for my brother, you know. She poor, I’m poor, so I got to walk. Oh, she don’t know it. She think I got a train ticket. I don’t tell her no difference. Cause then, she feel bad for me … and she already got nough to feel bad bout. Two childrens and no daddy to help. I don stay long cause I don’t want to cost her nothin.”

  Hosanna nodded, “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Oh, it ain’t so bad. I’m old, but I’m strong. The Lord
helps me along. I sing to Him and I walks, one step at a time. I gets there. And now, I done got back. Be a year fore I hafta go back and see bout em.” They walked in silence a little while, each thinking their own painful thoughts. Finally the old woman spoke, “What’s your name, chile?”

  “Hosanna.”

  “Oh, your mama gave you a right pretty name. We sings that name in church. My name is Ellen. Ellen Mae Bell White. You can call me Ellen.”

  “Thank you, Miz Ellen.”

  “I be happy if you say, Aunt Ellen.”

  “I be happy too, Aunt Ellen!”

  So they met, so they walked and talked … and the time passed quickly. They spelled the hat, but Hosanna would not let Ellen pull the wagon. They had to stop often to let Ellen Mae Bell White rest her swollen, sore feet. They finally came to the outskirts of Yoville.

  Ellen stopped, “I lives down this here road, do you ever want to find me.”

  “How far down that road?”

  “Oh, chile, I’m so close to home that don mean nothin. I guess it still my home. The rent is due.”

  Hosanna turned off the road with Ellen. “Come on, I’ll walk you there and carry your bag. You rent your house?”

  Ellen took her raggedy shoes off and let her sore feet touch the dirt which was cool because the little worn path wove through the trees. “Me and my husband was buyin, but when he died, a white man come wit some papers say I got to move or pay rent. Said I can’t keep the little house of mine what we had done worked for so long.”

  “Where the papers? You still got em?”

  “Chile, it been so long, bout fifteen years now.”

  “What the papers say?”

  “Lord, chile, I can’t read none. He say it said it ain’t my home. So … I pays rent. It’s bout to fall down, but it house the few things I got left in this here world. I wants to send the few little things blonged to my mother on up to my niece for her to have. Got to plan on how to do it.”

  “How you gonna pay the man the money if you ain’t got none?”

  “Oh, I been late befoe. They give me time. I find some piece work to do.”

  “What you gonna eat today?”

  “Oh, I blive I still got some taters and cabbage in my garden. Some onions.”

  They reached the little leaning house soon. Hosanna helped Ellen haul up water from the well and had a long cool drink. Someone had been in and gone through her few poor things, but there was nothing to take. In anger they had poured water on her bed with the homemade quilt and coarse, threadbare sheet. Hosanna got angry, but Ellen just sighed and took them out to hang up and dry. Someone had been in the garden, but she planted it to grow things in waves so there would be something always. “There be some things in there that I can eat. I’ll be full. You go on. Go on home, chile. See your famly.”

  Hosanna left, pulling her little red wagon, looking back at Miz Ellen who stood leaning against the leaning fence, waving farewell. She felt the tears in the tightening of her chest. “Life ought not to be like it is, Lord.” Then she moved her thoughts to her own home. “What will I find there?”

  Waves of emotion pulsed through Hosanna as she continued on her way, walking the rough, long, main road that went into her town. She wished that her mother would be there, there in the house. Her mama and daddy. “Oh, mama,” she moaned to herself out loud, “Oh, Mama, I’m coming home, I’m coming. Oh, my sisters, my brother, I’m coming. Home. Home.” Her tired feet hurried. The wagon was light and heavy at the same time. Tears were in her eyes. Tears of pain and happiness. Home. Home.

  the road was paved now with a black tar type of material. Soft in places from the steady heat. She passed the bank, the small market, the post office. She saw the people. She did not know them. She hurried on past the other buildings she did not even see. She passed the Befoes’ house, knowing it only by the sign over the huge gated archway. It was far back from the road down a long path. She saw three people at a distance in the yard, two grown and one young. One was a colored man. She did not know it was her brother Luke. She hurried on. Her eyes straight ahead, looking for her house, her home. The paved road became smooth gravel again. Hosanna still stared forward. She moved steadily, pass the main part of Yoville. The trees, the thickets were thicker, wilder. She came upon a very pretty white fence bordering about two acres of the road. She saw a woman in a white dress standing, bent over, at the gate. Hosanna’s pace was steady, the wagon behind her. The woman waved. Hosanna looked behind her, there was no one there. “How she waving at me?” she thought. When she reached the woman, she saw the woman had been crying. Her stomach was swollen with child. Her eyes were red and wild, the face streaked with tears. The woman shouted at Hosanna.

  “My name is Yinyang Krupt! I live here.” Yin threw her hand back over her shoulder, pointing at the house. “I need you! I need your help! I am about to give birth and I have no one! Help me! Pleeeeeease, help me!”

  Hosanna stood there helplessly, wondering what to do. She did not know anything about childbirth. “Tell me where to go.” She was breathless, “I’ll go find your midwife for you!”

  Yin bent over with another pain. “I don’t have no damn midwife! I meant to go away to have my baby. But it’s coming too early! I didn’t have any chance to go! I need help now! Don’t want no midwife. I’ll pay you! Come in here and help me. Right now! Please, please, please.” Her voice broke as another pain took her body.

  Hosanna turned her wagon into the gate entrance with a bewildered, tired sigh. “Well, you better get in the house. You don’t want to have it out here on the road. I think I know somebody who can help us.” She thought of Aunt Ellen and her rent.

  “No!” Yin’s voice startled Hosanna, coming back so sharply. “No, no, no! I don’t want anybody from around here!”

  “I’m from around here.” She led Yin to the house.

  “I’ve never seen you. And, and you’re colored.”

  Hosanna could not understand what Yin meant. She continued to support Yin while pulling the red wagon behind her.

  Yin gasped, stopping her already slow walk. The back of her gown was wet. “Listen, I don’t know what I was going to do, I thought I could do it alone. I’m frightened, scared. But you are here now. God must have sent you. Oh, listen to me, I’m going crazy. But I need a friend. We have to become friends right away, right now! I have to trust you. Are you kin to Miz Lal? Or Miz Mae, or Minna?”

  “No, not as I know of.” They were getting closer to the house.

  “Good. Minna cooks for the Befoes. I don’t want anyone, you hear me? ANYone to know about my baby until I am ready. You hear me?! I’ll pay you!” Yin was wildly distraught.

  Hosanna was tired. “Lady, I got enough in my life now to worry about. I don’t need your problems, too!”

  Yin nodded, “Okay, alright. Help me in the house, in to my room. I have put water on already.”

  Hosanna helped her up the steps and into the house. “Lady, I haven’t said I can stay and do nothing for you. I’ll go get somebody. I want to go home.” Yin pointed upstairs, toward her bedroom. They kept moving.

  When they reached the bedroom, Yin ran to a beautiful chest of drawers and snatched it open. She had placed fifty dollars there earlier, separate from where she hid her money in the house. “Here! Here is some money. Whoever you are, you need it. Ain’t you ever had any family who needed you?” Her anxiety made her revert to the speech of Josephus days.

  Hosanna looked bewildered but remembered her mother’s childbirth tragedy. Yin pressed on. “Well, I need you. Now. As God is my witness, though why he should be I don’t know. I will pay you another fifty dollars when we are finished. Girl, I know that’s a lot of money! Take it!” She thrust the money into Hosanna’s hesitant hands. “Now … I already put the water on.” She bent and held her stomach as the next pain took her. Her voice was getting weaker, strained. “But, please, help me.” She screamed from the pain and fell onto her bed.

  Yin had put out towels and sheets.
When Hosanna returned, Yin raised her head and said, “I read everything I think we will need. There’s a knife and some scissors for the cord and some oil for to rub me with, down there. For the baby to come easier.” She pointed. Hosanna backed up and frowned. Yin screamed at her. “You can do it if you’re a woman!”

  “I’m a child,” Hosanna almost whimpered.

  “You colored, you’re a woman!”

  “I’m a woman.” Hosanna’s voice was stronger.

  Yin gasped and nearly screamed again from the last pain. The pains were coming quicker now, more often. She opened her legs wide and placed her hands on her belly, said, “Now, come on, my baby, I’m ready.” She gave Hosanna a small, pitiful smile. “You ready?” Hosanna nodded and began to like the able, young woman. She smiled back, “I’m ready.”

  Yin sweated, swore, tossed and nearly squeezed Hosanna’s hands off. Hosanna sweated and cried from exhaustion and ran for more water, more everything Yin called for. She blanched and hesitated at rubbing the oil “down there,” but she did it. Hosanna marveled at the baby’s head showing. She admired Yin even more. Yin’s lips were bleeding from being bitten, but she kept her consciousness, her wits. Then the baby came out, slowly but steadily. Yin screamed, “I don’t want to tear myself! Gotdammit, I’m too young! More oil.”