In Search of Satisfaction

by J. California Cooper

  Hosanna reached for the oil with bloody hands, screaming back at Yin, “I ain’t got no way to put it in there, and the baby’s almost here!”

  “Ohhhhhhh, what is it?” Yin voice was now full of love.

  “Can’t tell yet.”

  “Don’t want no girl. Life too hard.” Then the last pain circled Yin’s body and the baby came in the midst of her last scream.

  Hosanna laughed a little laugh, “Well, well … It’s a … boy!”

  Still gasping, Yin asked, “What color is it?”

  “Like coffee and cream.”

  Yin collapsed in a spent silence, the sound of her panting the only sound in the room. Finally she raised up a little to say, “Get the knife … and the silk string there.”

  Hosanna was staring at the little, wrinkled, red and coffee-with-cream colored baby.

  Yin spoke more urgently, “The knife! What’s your name?”

  “Hosanna.”

  “Hosanna. Good. The knife.”

  “This baby is … colored.”

  Yin was concentrating on the task at hand. “What? What’s that got to do with it? Take the knife and cut the cord.”

  That done, Yin leaned back, wiping her brow. “Take those towels there and that oil and bathe him, clean him up.” Hosanna observed, “He a cute, little ole ugly thing. Just think, I have helped bring a baby into this world!”

  Yin smiled weakly, looking at Hosanna. Then Hosanna turned to her smiling and they looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment over the baby’s head—one wondering who this woman was and what she was, and the other wondering if she had made a mistake in sharing her business. Yin shook her head, thinking, “There was nothing else I could do!”

  Yin spoke first. “You have to be my friend now. You have to be a friend to my son. Our son.” Hosanna started to shake her head no. Yin continued, “He is your son, too, because you were the first person he saw. You helped him be born, you helped me, his mother. And he has no father … and … I have no friend. So he has no friend unless you agree to be our friend … and mean it.”

  Hosanna spoke as she continued stroking the baby with the oil. “I have a friend in Washington, but … I don’t have a friend here.” She smiled a big smile. “I have a family here though. You have a family? Your mother and father?”

  “They are dead. I have no friend.”

  “Yes … I’ll be your friend.”

  “And I will be your friend. Do you need a job?”

  Hosanna’s exhaustion came down on her. She had been already tired and now the birth had taken several hours. She sighed. “Not right now, but …” she brightened, “I know someone who does and she is a very good person.”

  Yin moaned, “Not Lal or Ma Mae, I hope. They talk so much and … I must keep my child a quiet secret for … awhile.”

  Hosanna handed Yin her baby and stood up. “No, her name is Ellen. Aunt Ellen. And she needs a home and some money. And some help. But she is strong and good and kind.”

  “Alright, I take your word.” Yin started to say something else but stopped herself. “Will you get her for me? Soon? Right now? I can’t get up. My body is starting to hurt again, but I can take care of that.”

  Hosanna felt like crying. She wanted to go HOME. These were not her problems. Here she had been held up so much already. Everybody needed help and she was in the middle. It was getting really dark outside. Hosanna left her wagon and walked back to find Ellen who was eating a yam baked in ashes, her head bowed, her feet wrapped in cool, wet, ragged towels. She looked surprised when she saw Hosanna. “What’s wrong, chile?”

  Hosanna stumbled into the little, leaning house and sprawled on the floor. “I got you a job … and a home. You be making money and can see bout this here house of yours.”

  “A job?”

  “A job, Aunt Ellen.”

  “A place to live? I got to live there?”

  “And eat, Aunt Ellen. Listen, I’m tired. I ain’t been home yet! I came back out here for you cause I know you need it. Now … let’s go.” She struggled up from the floor as Aunt Ellen dried her feet and pulled her old dress over her head, saying, “I ain’t got nothin else to wear. Lord, it’s a shame to go in this. They won’t want me when they see me.”

  “They’ll want you.”

  “How could you find me a job when I been lookin all the time and everbody sayin I’m too old?”

  “You just have to be a grandmother … or a Aunt Ellen. You ain’t too old for that. And you can use some of all that love you got in your heart right here at home, widout walking all the way to Pittsburgh. Lawd, all my good english I learned is gone to shit. I’m tired.”

  Aunt Ellen was dressed with a bulging, tied handkerchief in her hand. “I’m ready now.”

  Hosanna took Aunt Ellen to Yin, who was trying to feed the baby and kept falling asleep from exhaustion. The baby wanted to sleep, too. Yin was so happy to see Aunt Ellen, she cried and laughed at the same time. “I’ve got inside water. You take you a bath and wash that dress. Put my robe on, and then come get the baby. I’ve got to get some sleep and some food in me when I wake up.” There was a neatly wrapped package, tied. Yin pointed to it. “That has to go out to be burned, please.”

  Hosanna was looking at the baby, “What you going to name the baby?”

  Yin smiled, “Joseph Richard Befoe Krupt.”

  And so the little baby, with frowning face and waving his tiny hands, was crowned with two names he would never, hopefully, understand. Joseph was after his grandfather, Josephus. The other two were after a fortune.

  Satan just smiled and went on because there was too much love and friendship in the room. He does not like those things at all. He had looked at the baby, though. It was going to be in a nice situation for problems. Then … Satan laughed at Yin.

  chapter

  31

  the little house Hosanna was so desperately trying to get to was the house Bessel had lived in, Ruth had been born in, Joel had married into, all their children had been born in. The same house Hosanna had been taken from so many young, sad years ago still stood sheltering Luke, Lettie and Lovey and was the house Hosanna’s feet could not get to fast enough. The house sat back from the road. A few trees on the west side shielded it from the afternoon sun, while a garden kept for the purpose of feeding those that lived within grew around the house for an acre or so. Luke was a good gardener and Lovey, even on her knees, helped. Lettie worked there in her time off from the regular jobs she tried to keep to bring needed money into the house.

  The family was happy being together and holding on to their parents’ land, but individually they were each sad.

  Lettie did housecleaning and child-care work. From her early youth, and she was still young in years, she had worked with Luke to keep themselves a home and a family. Luke took over his father’s work at the Befoes as a gardener and horse-handler helper, even as young as he had been. He had tried hard to make his farm pay, but, little by little, they worked less land each year as the profits were too small and they did not want to have to borrow from those who loaned and could never be completely paid back. Those who, in the end, took the land. So they did outside work and kept the taxes paid and bought little necessities as they could. There was no money to waste on anything they wanted. They could only have some of what they needed.

  There was a school, built by the Befoes years ago. They said you could come there, colored or white, but they discouraged you if you were colored. Not just by sitting you in the back of the room, but by ignoring you. There were never enough books to go around. Old books the class no longer used, you could have. So some of the colored population, if they wanted to learn, took the books, if possible, and went home to try to teach themselves and their families. It was usually given up in a few years as the demand for money to survive became more important than a book or school.

  No industry came into Yoville. The Befoes did not want it there. It would have meant jobs for the poor. Having no jobs gave the Befoes
more control over the people there. Black, white and Indian. The Befoes provided most of the jobs. Cooks, cleaners and farm labor. They had their choice of all the help they needed themselves.

  Lovey was willing to do anything to help her brother and sister, and tried, but her legs were useless and she had to walk on her knees. The flesh of her knees was hard and calloused from her efforts to work in the field. Even the rags she bound them with didn’t help much; they were always coming loose and were already mostly ragged from the beginning of their use. But she tried.

  Lovey had tried to go to the school, which was just up and across the road from their house. She didn’t ask anyone, she wanted to surprise them. She got up, got dressed and started out on the first day of school. She was excited and happy, thinking, “Readin and writin! Somethin in my life. I know I can do it!” She was seven years old at the time. She dressed in her only good dress, handed down, already old. She had washed and ironed it on a cloth on the floor two weeks before. Her knee rags, too. She wrapped her knees in the clean cloths. She had no socks, but it was still kinda summer, she could go barefooted. Luke and Lettie were already gone. Her little soul was happy, her heart was light as she picked up her pencil—she had no tablet—and struggled down the steps to the ground.

  There were light gray clouds in the sky when she left for school, a great big smile on her face. She trudged to the road, shooing her friend, the dog Pap, to go back, to stay home. Pap curled his tail beneath him. He was not used to her leaving him behind. He sat and watched her make her slow way to the road and then across it.

  The road was a little rocky, as country roads are where the colored people live, and the knee wraps began to unravel. She looked down at them, but her heart was too full to stop now. Across the road, she walked the quarter mile or so to the little school house where, she thought as she walked, “The whites maybe sit up front, but I could sit in the back. I want to go. I am goin!”

  The sky grew darker, but she was almost there now. “Only a little ways more,” she said out loud to herself. Then the first drops spattered on her pretty cheeks, then a few more. Then more. She trudged on. The dress she had ironed so painstakingly was getting wet. Lovey wanted to cry because she could not run. She thought, “Never mind that, I’m goin to learn to read! Books and things!”

  The rain was heavier now. One knee rag had come loose and was wet and dragging behind her. She could not stop to fix it, she was already too wet and the rain was coming down harder. She finally reached the school, slowing down, tired from her efforts to hurry. Her dress clung to her little body. Her pretty hair was stuck to her face and neck, sparkling with the water. The mixture of mud and clay clung in lumps to her knees and her hands from trying to grab the tail of the rags as she walked. The children were already inside when she got to the school door. Lovey struggled up the steps to the red door.

  Somehow, her heart was still thrilling as her hand reached eagerly for the handle to open the door to her little life. The handle turned and she opened the door and the whole class turned their heads to see who was late and looked at her. For a moment, the room was hushed. Then the blue-eyed teacher gasped, “Oh! Oh, my!” The teacher rushed over to Lovey who was about to say, “I’m alright, I’m here,” smiling because she thought that the reason the teacher gasped was because she was wet from the rain. But the teacher said, “Oh, my dear, my goodness! You can’t come in here with all that mud on you! Look at you! Wipe your … You have to leave that mud … and those filthy rags! Outside!”

  Still holding the handle of the red door, Lovey looked up into the teacher’s face. Water dripping from the little face and body, the rags surrounding her legs on the floor. The teacher’s words did not penetrate. “I am at school!” was in Lovey’s wet smile. Then somehow, she felt the tone and did not let loose the door or move forward. The teacher reached to remove Lovey’s hand from the handle and pressed her own hand to Lovey’s chest, pushing her backward, back into the rain, while with her other hand she waved Lovey out. When Lovey did not seem to understand, or move, the teacher pressed Lovey harder, it became a push. “You must go out now, little girl, you can’t come here wet like that.”

  Lovey looked down at herself and saw the clinging dress and the bungled rags. She thought, “I’ll let em dry. I’ll fix em. What that got to do with school?” She forgot to say it out loud, she was looking with longing and joy into the other children’s faces. Lovey moved forward, dragging the rags. The teacher pressed harder and snatched the door from Lovey’s hand. “Go home, little girl! Go home to your mother! She should not have sent you here without consulting me! We have no place for crippled people here! And you can’t bring dogs!”

  Lovey looked around and there was Pap, standing in the rain. She wanted to cry. She wanted to remove the hand from her chest and go in to the bright, warm room with the books on the desks. The children in the class were giggling and even laughing at her.

  An Indian girl of twelve years or so got up from her seat way in the back of the room, went to the cloak room then came to the red door. She placed a hand on Lovey’s shoulder and removed the hand of the teacher from Lovey’s chest and said, “I’ll take her home, Miss Small, I think I know where she lives.” Miss Small was relieved as she held her own throat with her lily white hand, “Well, then, good. Tell her mother she can not come here.”

  Lovey spoke up, “I don’t have no mother. I want to come to school myself.”

  The teacher waved them out the door. “Well … well, thank you … ahhhh …” The teacher did not remember the girl’s name.

  “Little Wisdom is my name,” the girl said as she turned Lovey around. Lovey was still looking back at the seated children who were laughing at her, with a mixture of desire and pain on her small, wet face. She looked back until the door closed loudly, sharply in her face, then she stared down at her legs. Little Wisdom pulled gently on her hand, “Come on, little girl, I’m a take you back home to your house.”

  Lovey answered softly through the rain, “But I want to read.”

  Little Wisdom pulled her gently, knowing the pain that must be in Lovey’s knees. “Come on, I’ll carry you.” She lifted Lovey, placing wet clothes and rags against her own well-worn but clean dress also carefully prepared for school, though prepared by her mother who believed in education by the white man if you were ever going to beat him at his own game. The mother had had to fight for Little Wisdom, a girl, to go to school. But the mother won, so Little Wisdom got to go to school.

  Little Wisdom trudged through the mud and clay of the school yard, then across the road. Pap followed, his head down as if in sorrow. Then Lovey said, “Me and Pap can go on from here. I’m already wet. You go on … back … to school.”

  Little Wisdom put the girl down. The rain was letting up. She asked, “You want me to come and teach you how to read?”

  Now I don’t know if you have ever seen love in anyone’s eyes stare out at you, but Lovey looked at Little Wisdom with all the love in the world. All the gratitude Little Wisdom would see in her life for a long, long time. Little Wisdom smiled from her inner warmth and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Lovey.”

  “My name is Wise Flower, but I just say Little Wisdom because it is easier for people to take. My family lives in the hills over there on the other side of the river. I cross it in my canoe every morning. I’ll come to you, Lovey. I’ll come when I can.” Little Wisdom thought of a book she could steal. “I’ll bring you a book, too! From Miss Small. It will be easy to find you. I will find you.” She had been going to school without a book ever since she started two years ago, but she would steal one for Lovey.

  Lovey hugged her and Little Wisdom turned back to the school. “I’m goin in, wet as I am!” She ran on her way. Lovey decided to run, she tried, her little legs slapping the earth beneath her, Pap trotting at her side.

  Back at home, Lovey cried as she took off and washed her dress and the rags, standing in her little hand-me-down panties, pinned so they
would stay up. She would cry awhile, then laugh a little, thinking about her love of Little Wisdom and learning to read. Pap laying not far from her knees, slapping his tail on the floor happily when Lovey was laughing. He wasn’t often allowed in the house until snow was on the ground, so he was happy. Happy, until Lovey cried, then his tail stopped wagging and waited until she smiled again, then it wagged and slapped the floor again and again … and again.

  Lovey never told Luke or Lettie about all that had happened to her. Though they finally heard about it, they never talked about it. But when Little Wisdom came, they treated her like a most welcome member of their family. Luke brought books from the Befoes that Richlene gave him when she heard. Young as she was, Little Wisdom began to fall in love with Luke because he was so kind and generous. Always giving her a chicken or something from the garden to take home. Luke did not really see Little Wisdom at that time, she was not a woman to him. He did go over to the hills to go fishing or hunting with her brother and uncles. He liked that and it saved money for food. He would not kill what he did not intend to eat.

  Lettie took the opportunity to learn to read and count a little, too, when she was home. This is how their life went. Accepting the bad and the good of life. Satan never bothered with them. They were already sad.

  Hosanna had sent small sums of money home to them now and again. The money always coming in the time of need, no matter when it came. They had small Christmasses. Only church for Easter. But if a holiday was about food, they had plenty. The old chicken house that had belonged to Ruth was full of chickens they kept more for laying than eating.

  They were satisfied together, but unsatisfied and lonely in each of their own lives apart. They loved each other but did not know what to do with life. What COULD they do with life? They were already working with every tool they had.

  chapter

  32

  on this night, Hosanna finally left Yin’s and was making her way home at last, pulling her little red wagon filled with her boxes, bringing her hope, pain, need, anger and loneliness and love in it, too. She walked down the main road, looking through the darkness all around her, searching for her home, that little house she had left but remembered so well.