Blackberry Days of Summer

by Ruth P. Watson

  I gazed off into the woods. “It’s been more than a month. I think this is their season to travel. I hope that he writes soon.”

  Minnie kept her hands folded in her lap. Every time I looked at her she smiled, despite the fact that her husband was never far away. He was always watching Minnie, making her uncomfortable, stealing her joy.

  “See, Ma? Carrie is wo’kin’.”

  “Anna Mae, don’t start with me. You’s got plenty to do ’round here. I done told you that.”

  “Yeah. Watch yo’ mouth, gal,” her daddy commented, and gave her a stern look.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He reminded me of a woman from when I was ten or eleven years old. Mrs. Paige, a regular churchgoer, was always watching Momma. At times she would turn her back or look the other way whenever she was in Momma’s presence. And Momma never made eye contact with her. Something about Mrs. Paige got to Momma, made her fidgety. She was around Momma’s age and built similar. Petite, with shoulder-length hair and dark skin, overall an attractive lady. She was also bold. She wore cherry-colored lipstick and an excessive amount of rouge. At one of the many church gatherings where Momma and some of the other ladies served the food, I heard someone say, “She look better without all of that.”

  “Mae Lou, you are the best cook ’round here,” the reverend said after he’d tasted Momma’s homemade dressing and giblet gravy.

  “Thanks, Reverend, but we all some good cooks today.”

  Mrs. Paige didn’t like what she heard. “Well, what about my cooking, Reverend? I can cook, too. You act like Mae Lou is the only cook in this church, and I’m getting tired of hearing her name all the dern time.”

  Some of the other women turned their heads and kept piling food on the plates, ignoring the comment.

  “Well, you right. You can cook, too, Mrs. Paige,” the reverend said, and then turned to walk away. Some of the other sisters giggled. One reached over and whispered in another’s ear, “This is some mess here, girl.”

  Everyone knew that Momma was the best cook around.

  “Why are you leaving? Did I hit a nerve, Reverend?” Mrs. Paige asked sharply.

  Momma kept on stirring her homemade peach punch.

  “No, I’m hungry,” he replied, and kept on going.

  Then Mrs. Paige walked over to Momma and got right in her face. Momma retreated two steps backward, almost tripping over a chair.

  Momma finally said, “Mrs. Paige, you’s and me are ’bout to come unbenefited if you don’t move. Now I suggest you haul tail out of my way so I can get by.”

  All of the sisters stood there waiting for one of them to back down. Finally, Mrs. Paige moved aside. Momma set a cup of punch on the table and took her hand. Mrs. Paige tried to pull back, but Momma had a strong grip on her arm.

  “We need to go outside. I ain’t gonna say the wrong thang in church.”

  Mrs. Paige’s eyes opened wide. The coldness eased as Momma coaxed her to the front of the small church. The ladies around the table grinned and whispered.

  I stood listening.

  “Now, let me tell you one thang. We all bring food to this place, ’cluding you. We gonna respect each other.”

  “Wait a minute, Mae Lou.” Mrs. Paige shook loose from Momma’s grip and pointed her finger.

  “No, you listen. I know you got a thing for my husband, but he chose me. For years you done talked about me and been jealous of me and it’s time to stop. You’s a married woman; leave my husband be.”

  “He chose the wrong one. Don’t no man want a woman as holy as you.”

  “My husband does.”

  Raindrops had begun to fall. Mrs. Paige held a hand-fan over her head as Momma turned and walked back in the church. “Don’t make me lose my religion up in here.” Then the clouds roared and opened up; it thundered and melodious rain beat down for a good thirty minutes.

  That was the most Momma had said to one person in a long time. Then she went right back to serving food and even instructed me to take a cup of punch to Mrs. Paige, who accepted with her head lowered.

  Before I left, I helped Anna do some of her chores. We carried water in the house and filled up the big kettle sitting on the wood-burning stove. We walked to the spring and gathered some drinking water for the night. Her brothers stood around with their hands in their pockets as they watched us carry the water back to the house. None of them bothered to help us.

  Minnie hugged me as she’d done the first time we met. This time I could embrace her just as tightly. I didn’t want her to worry about me coming to visit; she already had enough on her mind. After hearing my story from Ginny, I’d forgiven her. Yet, during quiet moments, the thoughts of neglect and abuse danced around inside my head and it saddened me. I wondered why she’d given me away instead of dropping the husband she had clung to so closely.

  CHAPTER 23

  CARRIE

  I barely made it to the night chamber pot. My food came right up. I was so weak I had to grab the bedpost to keep from falling. My head was spinning. Ginny had been sick and the last thing I wanted was her virus. I cleaned up and went out to do my morning chores. Momma persuaded me to eat my breakfast, but my stomach would not let me. The sight of food made my mouth water, sending burning sour fumes back in my throat. I ran back into my bedroom and upchucked again before leaving for work. After, I washed my face and took the pot outside to empty it in the outhouse.

  When I came back in the door, Momma asked, “Why can’t you hold yo’ food down?”

  I lied, as usual. “Mrs. Gaines has been sick. I think that I have whatever she has. I’ll be all right, though.” In truth, Ginny had come down with something, said her stomach was upset, and I knew I’d contacted whatever she had.

  “Well, you need to eat something. A dose of soda and vinegar water will settle yo’ stomach.”

  It worked, and I felt better during the day.

  There was a letter on my bed from Simon when I returned home. I quickly pushed my bed up against the door and opened the letter. He wrote that he would not be home until Christmas. Inside the envelope was a bracelet adorned with pearls. I had never seen anything so beautiful. He signed the letter, Keep this as a token of my love.

  I put the bracelet on. It was the first piece of jewelry I’d ever received.

  “I hope I can last in this house until Christmas,” I murmured. The only good thing about the summer was John being home. His presence had kept Mr. Camm in check. I didn’t take any risks, though. I made sure that I watched my back and kept a weapon around, in case I needed it. I had a big stick behind my bedroom door and another under my bed. I also stored a kitchen fork under my pillow. The next time he tried anything, he was going to die.

  In my diary, I wrote, Ginny reminds me so much of Mrs. Gaines. Every time I visit her she is sitting in the same place. She is always elated about receiving a visitor.

  “Lord knows I was hoping that you came by today,” she said as soon as I walked up on her porch the next day.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m okay. S’pose I’m used to seeing ya. Now, what did Minnie do with them apples?”

  “She gave everybody around there an apple and then she peeled the rest to cook for dinner.”

  “I’m sho’ glad that she used them. Minnie and her chirren ought to come down here. There are plenty on the ground. They need to be picked ’fore they go to waste. I got too many fo’ jest me. And Lord knows she got some greedy little chirren running ’round there like heathens.”

  “It’s a lot of ’em.”

  “She need to keep her legs closed. I ain’t against chirren, but she can hardly feed ’em. And her husband is about as smart as a piece of wood.”

  It was hot that evening and I was sweating profusely. The breeze circulating through the trees was subtle. The leaves swayed, and still I was burning up.

  Ginny told a story about Mr. Camm’s family. He had lost his mother at a young age. She said his momma was a hardworking church lady.
But he was raised by his drinking father. His father was no good and told his children they were sorry pieces of shit.

  Mr. Camm had started out differently, moving to Washington and finding work, but since his return to Jefferson, he’d taken on some of the same ways as his father. Instability chief among them. And the work he’d done in Washington went by the wayside once he’d made it back to the country. Now he had nice-looking and self-sufficient women to provide for all of his needs.

  “That was ’xactly how he noticed Mae Lou,” Ginny said. “He’d only been ’tending the chu’ch for about a year prior to knowing her. She was always busy. Ev’ry chu’ch outing and ev’ry fourth Sunday, she was doing something. Cooking, ushering, cleaning the chu’ch yard. She was perfect for him. She reminded him of his mother. She could do it all.”

  I understood perfectly.

  “So I bet as soon as he hurd ’bout Mr. Robert’s dying, he scoped out Mae Lou,” Ginny added.

  Ginny stared at me all of a sudden in a way that made me uneasy.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You ain’t with child, is ya?”

  “No, Ginny, why did you ask me that?” I brushed down the side of my dress with my hands and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Chile, I done had six chirren of my own, and I know what it look like when a woman ’specting. You got that glow. Yo’ skin is simply pretty. Most women with chile is real pretty at furst.”

  I had to let that settle before I could respond. “Ginny, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry ’bout what? You with child or ain’t you?”

  My heart started to race. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me, but I was ashamed. I didn’t want her to look down at me, even though it seemed as if all my high hopes were beginning to fade.

  “It must be a coincidence,” I struggled to say.

  She finally looked away. “I ain’t too big on words, but you sho’ got that look.”

  “I’m not having a baby,” I said.

  “Okay, you ought to know. Now you ’member this, if you’s need to talk to me about it, I’ll be right here.” Then she leaned back in the rocker and started to rock.

  Did she hear what I just said? I thought. She’s a stubborn old woman.

  Yet her suggestion continued to gnaw at me.

  Was it possible Mr. Camm had made me pregnant? I told myself that it could not be. I can’t be that way, I can’t be that way, I thought, trying to forget what Ginny had said.

  I’d heard him in the house, but I hadn’t seen his face more than twice in the past two months. One of those times, the end of a long day, I’d stared him down in the kitchen. The other time was pretty much the same thing. Either I came home too late to eat with the family or I wouldn’t eat. I could not stand to see his face.

  Now, for the first time since the rape, I gazed at him with dark and evil eyes similar to his own. The rape had changed me in so many ways.

  “You hypocrite,” I mumbled to myself. He was standing in the kitchen with Momma, acting as if he was a dedicated husband, helping her set the table.

  “Are you eating at the table with us tonight?” Momma asked sarcastically. As I said, for two months, I had managed to avoid eating with them.

  “I’m really not hungry right now. I’ll probably eat later,” I said.

  Momma frowned. “Well, everything is nice and hot now.”

  I was hungry. My stomach had been growling all day. But I’d have to convince myself that Mr. Camm didn’t exist to even consider eating with them. I would do anything for Momma, but I couldn’t bear the sight of him. But again, I was angry and hurt at the same time. As Momma started serving the plates, John walked in through the kitchen door. I immediately felt the tension lifting. Having John at the table would make it so much easier for me.

  “Okay, Momma, I might as well eat now,” I said. And her disapproval subsided.

  I ignored Mr. Camm the entire meal. The conversation centered on my work and John’s reluctant summer work for the Fergusons.

  “I am going to make sure that I don’t spend my life working for no white person. There is no way that I could do this type of work for a living,” John said. “I want to use my mind, not my hands, to make money.”

  “Me either,” I said, even though working with Mrs. Gaines was the best thing that could have happened to me. I could tell that Mr. Camm was just as uncomfortable with me sitting at the table as I was with him. He didn’t say much. Guilt was written all over his scrawny face. When I summoned the courage to finally look at him, he quickly lowered his head. A stream of sweat slid down the side of his face. I studied his beady eyes, quivering lips, and receding hairline. He must have been deathly afraid that I would bring up what he’d done to me.

  “Well, I hope that both of you will go to college and get a better job than either of us,” Momma commented. Mr. Camm shook his head agreeably, then blotted his forehead with a napkin. John and I glanced at one another with narrowed eyes. Neither my brother nor I cared about Mr. Camm or his nod of support for Momma’s thought.

  After I finished the dishes and swept the floor, Mr. Camm came into the kitchen. He got some water and stood on the other side of the room, gawking at me and licking his lips. Then he put his hand on his crotch. “You better keep yo’ mouth closed,” he whispered and grinned.

  I picked up the butcher knife. “You better leave me alone.”

  “I ain’t scared of you.”

  “You better be,” I said, and stared him down.

  Instead of going back to his bedroom, he went into the front room. I stood watching as he gazed out the window at the full moon. After a minute, he noticed me watching but didn’t grin in response as he sat down on the Davenport and put his head between his elbows and massaged the temples on the side of his head. His hands trembled.

  After sitting there for a few minutes, he fell asleep and snored in the chair until the next morning.

  I slid the bed against my bedroom door and pulled out my diary and started to write about the day. The implication of being pregnant worried me, so I counted the days. My journal was also my calendar. And I made a mark to signify the beginning of my cycle. My jaws tightened when I realized I’d actually skipped a couple of months. I crawled in the bed like a baby and hugged my pillow.

  After a few days, I managed to put the notion behind me and focus on the money I needed to make in order to get away from Jefferson County. I had saved up nearly ten dollars. It was enough to buy a bus ticket to Richmond or Washington, D.C. and have a little money left over.

  That’s what I would do, I decided. I would run away and find Simon. I would tell him everything.

  CHAPTER 24

  PEARL

  The old folks might have said that I was a slick woman. I could slide in and out of places as easy as an oiled hinge. I had started a new routine with Herman and it was working like clockwork. When Willie got dressed in overhauls and turned-over boots and put his red handkerchief in his back pocket, I rolled over in the bed. I knew the daywork cutting down trees and clearing land for white folk would keep Willie occupied way into the evening hours. Some days I was saddened he had chosen living in the country over the city and the promised government job for returning soldiers. I got dressed and headed out the house as if I had a job, which, considering my color and the times, would have been slaving in a white woman’s kitchen or cleaning her house, while her husband pinned me against the floor at every opportunity.

  “You are acting like a damn slut,” my momma said as soon as I stepped foot into the kitchen. At my age, living with my parents had been a difficult challenge. Going to bed early and waking even before the cock crowed was something I found hard to get used to. I resented it even more than some because I was a nightclub singer at heart. The night was my time.

  “Momma, what are you talking about?” I said and picked up the old tin coffee percolator she’d made coffee in for as long as I could remember. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kit
chen table.

  She stood over me, pointing her chubby finger in my face. “You’re sleeping with two mens. You might have three, for all I know,” she yelled.

  “I’m a city girl.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You a damn slut, that what you is,” she repeated. “Going out here every day while yo’ husband is working hard like a dog. You ought to be ashamed of yo’self. You are acting like someone with no home training.”

  I gaped at her. “I’m not going out with any man. I like to be around different types of peoples for a change. Plus, I do work at the joint. I’m a singer, if you can remember.”

  “You are a woman in her thirties chasing men and acting like a damn fool. That’s what you is.”

  Her anger roared through her voice. She was barely five feet tall, yet she seemed to tower over me.

  “I’m not chasing a man, Momma. I want to live my life and have a good time. This is the twenties, not slavery days. We stopped answering to the master,” I said sarcastically.

  A vein protruded at her temple. “Listen, when you came back here, I thought Willie had been abusing ya up there in Washington. You came to my door with a bruise on yo’ eye, looking like someone had treated you wrong, and ya said it had nothing to do with another man. Now I know the truth.” She threw her arms up in despair. “I thought you’d gotten over telling stories. What have the city done to you?”

  “Oh, Momma, please, everything isn’t about a man. I want to live my life. Is that all right with you?”

  “Most women yo’ age is married with a family. Yo’ daddy would be so disappointed if he knew what you’ve been up to around here.”

  “See, that’s why I know I need to get out of here. Everything is so domestic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not like the women around here, spending all of the day cooking, cleaning, minding a garden, serving a man, and getting up at the crack of dawn to empty a chamber pot…”

  “Chamber pot?”

  “A slop bucket, Momma.”

  “Now ya think you’re better than ev’rybody else.”