He was nowhere to be found on that route, neither that day nor the next several, and I felt a comfort settle in the next time I chose my normal path and there he was, tree legs crossed underneath him on the yellow-green grass like a school child, reading. How he even managed to procure a whole bag of books, I didn’t ask. I guess I just assumed they were given to him by whatever rich family he worked for. His clothes were too nice, shoes too shiny, and hands too clean to work for anyone other than a rich man.
“What you reading over there?”
His head snapped down at the book like he was startled to see it sitting in his lap. “Oh! This? Well it’s just a little poetry. A Mister Paul L. Dunbar. Heard of him?” He stood hurriedly, then took a cautious step towards me, still across the road. “I’d love to read one to you, if you don’t mind my coming over there.” Delivered with that toothy smile and his squinting eyes, he held the small book up high to show the front.
“I can read just fine, thank you,” I said, sass still swimming in my eyes before my face softened at his lowered head. “But I don’t mind looking.”
And just like that, it was like he was never not there. He began walking me to and from work, taking small steps to keep his long legs from leaving me behind. We talked of the plans each of us had, him to open up his own bookstore for Negroes, and I to make the prettiest, finest dresses and sell them throughout the state to colored people and whites alike. I liked his company, settled into our routine like a perfect fitting shoe, and dreamed, always knowing his convinced, serious response: “You only need to focus your mind, find your magic inside, Charlotte, and you can do it.”
He would visit and read poetry and prose to me by candlelight, sometimes sleeping on the floor next to my bed until dawn awakened us, but most of the time slipping away into the night, never too concerned to be home by midnight to avoid the white robes. I’d get fresh peach pie from Miss Grace and we devoured it, gooey and sweet and warm on our tongues, under the big oak tree by the field where the kids played. I laughed at the stories he would make up when we got tired of reading, tales of men fifty feet tall with feet as small as mine and cotton spinners who spun themselves to the sky; ridiculous tales made even more so by this big man hopping and turning and clapping as he acted them out. Booker became my best friend under the North Carolina sun.
* * *
After any incident involving racial violence, the Negroes in our community are on high alert. We know some of the faces behind those hoods belong to the police officers, the people who are said to “protect us.” We rely on each other to watch us, we protect each other. The men, quiet ire in their eyes, carry guns on their person or set them by the door; the women don’t allow the children to play farther than twenty feet in back of the house.
A mass of flowers and written notes lays out in a neat pile on Miss Grace’s yard, a collection of tiny colorful pillows fashioned like peaches atop it, made by myself and a few other girls who looked to Miss Grace as a mother figure. I do not see Booker for several days after the fires. My stomach aches with worry wondering if he’s OK, if evil has struck his farm as well, wishing he’d show himself, come back and dazzle me with that smile.
I spend this worrisome time with the people I love, try to busy myself tending to little Elizabeth, teaching the younger children to read in the church up the hill, plaiting Essie’s thick hair over and over. If there was ever a replica of our mother, it is Essie. Her brown skin, the color of a new penny, her nose that is neither keen nor wide, but tall and sharp in profile view, her legs that just don’t seem to end, and her hair, inky black and coarse, a voluminous mountain that cannot be convinced to stop growing.
I look like Jacob, who looks like my daddy. We both inherited his deep maple skin, strong bone structure, “royal bones,” as my mother used to say with pride in her eyes, and hair that is slicked into waves deeper than the Atlantic.
I am braiding Essie’s long hair in the front of the house when Freddy Miller, a boy visiting here for the summer, walks up trying to make conversation. He is red. Wiry red hair, smooth red skin, all red. It’s said his grandfather is a mulatto, son of a slave mother and an overseer, and the red has traveled through his father’s side of the family.
“Miss Essie, Miss Charlotte, both as pretty as the sunset. How are y’all doing today?”
Essie giggles, looks up at him from her seat between my legs on the chair, and back down again quickly, her crush on Freddy made known from the first day we saw him at church with his grandfather.
“I’m well, thank you.” I say, eyes focused on the long braid I’m finishing.
“I was heading to buy some of those tasty friend green tomatoes from Mrs. Robinson. Care for one?”
“Why thank you, I’d love–”
“No, we’re just fine, thank you.” I cut Essie’s giddiness off, ignore her rolling eyes.
Freddy looks around, his wide face grasping for something else to say besides a complaint about the heat, but finally concedes and bids us a good day.
“You wasting all your good mind on that Booker character, whom I’m rightly not even sure exists, when you have Freddy right here. A northern boy at that!”
“I’ve no inclination to keep company with Freddy Miller, Essie. So you can stop that now.” My nose turns at the very thought of sharing space and time with that boy.
“OK. But one day when you’re old and raggedy and no one wants to marry you, you ain’t living with me!”
She’s been teasing me about Freddy Miller ever since he arrived here to stay the summer with his grandparents, his father’s mother and father. His father owns two barbershops up north in New York and he’s smart as a whip, but I’m not too fond of his flamboyance. It’s rather off-putting, flaunting his smarts and looks around like he’s the only black boy to ever pick up a book or inherit a decent face.
He came up to Essie and I after church one day, telling us all about his daddy’s shops and bragging on how a white man even let him cut his hair for him once. I wanted to remind him that his daddy is more likely to have a rope hung around his neck than ever have his hair cut by a white barber, but I reserved it for my own thoughts. I have no room for Freddy Miller. My mind is too consumed with reading with Booker, with drawing outlines of dresses that I’d make if I could afford more than scraps of fabric. I haven’t even ever kissed Booker, but he’s far more liable to achieve that than Freddy will ever be. So I let him go about his business and I go about mine. He speaks when he sees me and I offer the same courtesy, and when he tries to get me to stay and talk, I pay him no mind.
* * *
Two weeks of hot days and hotter nights pass, and then there is Booker towering at my door step after dusk, like nothing ever happened. Smiling wide, his other facial features pushing up and out to make room for all that smile.
“Charrrlotte…” He sing-songs my name, like he always does.
I only stare. I want to cry and hug and hit him and squeal and yell because he is alive, and here before me, but I can only stare.
“What… happened?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He looks down at me, his eyes expectant. He brushes past me and ducks into the room, sets his worn satchel down next to Essie’s empty bed. She chose to spend the night at Jacob’s as always, sitting with little Elizabeth.
My stare remains, my mind back on that night, and the stark difference in his eyes, so amiable and friendly now. It’s like it was a dream, like I imagined the whole thing.
“That night, with the white robes. You… and the door.”
At that he becomes serious. A line stretches across his forehead, forms two hills above his brows; it makes him look at least twice his age. “I’ve told you. You have to harness your magic, and you can do anything. It’s all here,” he taps a long finger on his temple, “and here.” His finger travels down to his chest. “You have it, Charlotte. That’s all. There’s nothing else to talk about that night, really. It’s done and you’re safe.”
Bef
ore I can process what he’s trying to tell me, his eyes light back up, and he’s talking again, on to the next thing. “Oh, I’ve been traveling. Had to go up north, saw my uncle in Detroit!” He is excited, jittery with a nervous buzz.
“What? How did you get there?”
“My uncle sent for me, I said. And Charlotte, let me tell you, you gotta go. You just have to go. There’s so much opportunity, so much life. So much freedom! Come! Come with me, we can leave tonight.” And then he’s moving around the room, grabbing items at random, gathering my life in his arms to pack.
“What? No. I can’t just leave, Booker. What about Essie, Jacob? My family is here. My life! You’re crazy.” Now he has my books, most of them gifted to me by him, diligently stacking them in a neat pile by the door.
“How can you say no to this?” His words are breathless, full of promise and anticipation. “There’s a train leaving tonight, Charlotte. My uncle has given me enough to cover us. All you have to do is pack. They can all come! Can’t they come with us?”
“We have debt here, we can’t just up and leave. Don’t you understand that? What about the crops!”
“Sure you can. You just leave.”
“Oh I’m positive you’ve just up and gone crazy now.” I clamor past his serious eyes, pick up the books he’s stacked and bring them back to my bedside.
Deflated, he puts both large hands on my arms. Holds me in his intense gaze. “OK, not tonight, but promise me. One month, we leave.”
“One month is too soon, Booker.” His excitement, usually infectious and inspiring, is simply exhausting tonight.
“One month, Charlotte. A new life, a new world. Your own dress shop. You can do that up there! They don’t treat Negroes up north like they do us down here. Don’t you wanna have… more? Don’t you want your children to have more?”
“That’s a silly question. Of course I do.”
“Well, let’s go. You can bring Jacob and Essie. You both will be university age soon, right? You can go to college as smart as you are! One month.”
I consider his words, imagine Essie in college studying English like she’s always wanted to do. “OK. I’ll go.”
I fall asleep in Booker’s arms this night. Still never having even kissed, I feel closer to him than I ever have. The intensity and conviction in his clear brown eyes convinces me that there is only yes. One month.
* * *
That is the last time I ever see Booker.
Eight days later, I return home from teaching lessons at church to a little book on the floor just inside my door. It is worn, pages faded and edges torn. A small, loose piece of paper rests within its pages, which I turn to with urgent, nervous hands. Folded inside the paper, small and neat, are bills. Money. A lot of money. Enough for the lot of us to board a train north and have extra to boot.
Tears well as I unfold the paper, see the tall, slanted handwriting I’ve come to recognize as Booker’s.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
* * *
Three weeks later, my brother frantically pounds on the door to his home, shirt dampened by sweat, clinging to his body like a garment overcome with static.
“They’re coming back,” he heaves, breathless when he enters the house. “The white robes. They’re coming back.” Sarah rushes to him, helps him to a seat at the small table, fixes him a glass of water with nervous, shaking fingers. She and I both rush to the window, relieved to see empty roads in all directions.
“But, why,” I cry, “what do they want?” I pace the cold wood floor, feel the cool under my soles and think of Booker. Wish for him to come protect me, protect us again.
I have started sleeping here now; with Essie back in class each day I find it comforting to be around people. I rest easier with the smell of Jacob’s work boots polluting the air, mixing with the soft smell of baby Elizabeth’s untainted newness. I don’t even mind Essie’s long arms swatting against my shoulder, my face, when she shifts in her sleep during the night.
“They think I’ve been stealing from the mill,” he says, face stone, jaws clenched tight.
At this Sarah’s dark body is crumpled on the floor, crying. She knows, just like Jacob and I know, what it means when a Negro is accused of a crime. He’s guilty, whether he did it or not.
* * *
“Charlotte, come in here for a moment, will you.” Mrs. Davidson is a portly woman, her love for pork cooked every kind of way most likely the cause, and has a kind face. My mother was Mrs. Davidson’s personal seamstress before she died, and I grew up watching her make dresses within an inch of alteration just by looking at a woman’s body, she was so skilled with a needle and thread. Mrs. Davidson said she was the only one who could get a dress fit to right over her bosom the first time around. She took me in to replace my mother after the first fire. I still can’t measure by sight like my mom, but my lines are just as nice.
I leave my sew station she’s set up in her home for me, a small table in the laundry room, and walk into the kitchen where she’s eating a lunch of boiled pork sausage cut into squares.
“I’m sorry, darling, but we won’t be needing you here anymore.” She avoids looking at me completely, just turns her head in my general direction, plays nervously with the spoon in her pea soup. This has to do with Jacob, I feel it in the air, this tension making her display nervous habits I’ve never seen before.
My eyes become ice, let her know that I know this is nothing but her mean old husband, convinced in his prejudice that my brother did something he did not. “That’s fine, Ma’am. It’s been my pleasure.” I offer a slight smile and make my exit, her still sitting there, pea soup on her bib and pity in her eyes, and I almost feel bad for her.
* * *
“We have to leave. Tonight,” I tell Essie and Jacob when I get home, both packed for the train leaving in the morning. It’s not hard to convince them. Everyone is packed by 8 p.m., and we have an hour to get to the station. Our neighbor John has agreed to take us for a rather handsome fee that I am more than happy to pay.
The night is balmy, September arriving with a breeze that offers reprieve from the particularly scorching summer. Relief thins the air as we load our things, our books, the lone photo we have of our parents, one my father had taken when Jacob was just six and I was no bigger than Elizabeth. We gather as much food as we can carry for the long trip. I send thoughts to Booker, thank him again for this amazing gift.
The small wagon has just begun its journey when we hear that familiar rumbling. The entire neighborhood is empty save for us, as the word has reached ears throughout the community that Jacob is a wanted man.
I’ve been waiting for this.
Resolve settles in my spirit, a coolness seeping into my bones as I turn in my seat, focus on the road, the field, in the direction of the sound. It gains momentum, grows louder as they near, sounds like a hundred ancient trees collapsing in defeat behind us. I tell John to stop, to let me off the wagon. When he refuses, I fling myself off, roll along the gravel until I am standing again, facing the robed army.
There, with the wailing and pleading of my family for me to return to the wagon behind me and the thunderous roar of fifty angry white men before me, I see only the road, the field, and orange. My eyes narrow, focused as Booker’s that night in my small room, and I feel the ground nearly trembling beneath my feet. My heart is a drum on fire, and still the coolness, the breeze like a slow fan floods my arteries, settles in my chest.
And then.
The earth listens. Miraculously a thick trail of beautiful, brilliant orange erupts from the swaying grass, from the pebbled dirt road, neat and straight between me and the angry
mob. It snatches across, blazing left and right as far as I can see. The men halt, clumsily fall over themselves with fear and bewilderment as the flames begin to grow and change colors, become long ropes of blinding, hot, white. Tails of white form every few yards, reach out to them like tongues. I see the glowing fear in their eyes and keep my stare, dare them to come closer. They bumble, turn and flee, tumble backwards on horses, fall into flames of pure white, perish to dust before my eyes.
I know at this moment what Booker meant. I know now, that this is his goodbye.
* * *
Detroit is nothing like Charlotte.
A bustling, smart city, rich with people and tall, tall buildings. We arrive with uncontainable joy. The money lasts; seems each time I unfold a bill, another shows up between the thin pages of the old book Booker left. We are able to rent the upper floor of a home, and Jacob takes a job at an automobile factory. It is not easy by any means. Our skin is still black, and there are many who do not want us here, on their streets, in their neighborhoods, at their jobs. But we smile in the face of it all, because it is… better.
I’ve settled into a life in the north now, finding work as a seamstress in a textile factory, with wages I am saving to create dresses I will sell in my own dress shop soon. Life is better, still.
That is when I see him.
Two years after leaving, when the smell of the wind in North Carolina is no longer in every inhalation, and I do not remember the cool soil under my feet nor the exact path to Mrs. Davidson’s home, I see him. Plain as the cold day we are in, a tall, gangly man with a big, toothy smile. He stands across the road, buying a newspaper from a small black boy manning a local stand, black overcoat accompanying his ever present leather satchel and shiny shoes. I march over to him, awestruck, tears gathering to cloud my eyesight.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 38
