In the middle of all that heat, a breeze picked up. The threadbare sheets and pillowcases Ma Pearl had hung on the line that morning flapped and snapped in the wind. It made me think maybe God was smiling at me instead of frowning. And maybe he’d send old Gabe down with a few clouds and some wind for the afternoon chopping time.
When we climbed the steps to the back porch, the scent of pinto beans hit my nose. I should’ve been tired of beans, seeing that we ate them nearly every day, but Ma Pearl didn’t fix beans the way other folks fixed them. She simmered hers with tomatoes, brown sugar, onions, and green peppers because that’s how Mrs. Robinson liked them. She had seen the recipe in Better Homes and Gardens and had Ma Pearl fix her beans that way ever since.
After washing my hands with the lye soap in the basin of water sitting on the porch, I hurried and kicked off my dusty shoes and left them at the back door. Hallelujah did the same. As soon as we walked through the screen door and saw Queen sitting at the table, I swear I heard Hallelujah’s knees knock together. He stammered when he spoke. “A-afternoon, Queen. Y-you look lovely today.”
Queen, with her straight black hair pulled high in a ponytail like some movie star, didn’t even acknowledge Hallelujah. She sat at the table with one dainty hand wrapped around a Mason jar filled with iced tea and the other flipping through a Sears and Roebuck catalog, as if she had money.
Her sleeveless red and white checkered dress clung to her curves like gold on a ring. And she wore enough rouge and red lipstick to put a harlot to shame. If I had dressed like that, Ma Pearl would’ve laid an egg.
When Hallelujah spoke to her a second time, she stopped midflip and turned up her nose. She stood, sneered, and said, “Go to hell, Clyde Bernard Jenkins the Turd.”
Satisfied that she had sufficiently insulted Hallelujah, she picked up her iced tea, snatched up the catalog, and switched on out of the kitchen, that smirk still plastered on her ugly face.
Hallelujah shrugged as if he didn’t care, but I saw that hint of red come back to his cheeks. I felt heat rise in my own face too. It made me want to slap Queen straight on into the next week. Just because she was almost sixteen didn’t mean she could damn the preacher’s son to hell and call him a turd.
Queen didn’t return to the kitchen until all of us field hands—me, Fred Lee, Mr. Albert, Fish, and Adam—had washed up and were seated at the table. Her face was pinched up worse than the edge of a pie crust as she sat on the bench next to the open window. Ma Pearl never let anybody else sit away from the table.
When Papa came in and took his place at the head of the table, he smiled and asked Hallelujah, “How’s Preacher?”
“Just fine, Mr. Carter,” Hallelujah answered.
Papa reached for the jug and poured himself some tea. “Gettin’ his sermon ready for Sunday?” he asked.
Hallelujah nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Papa squinted at him. “It any good?”
Hallelujah fidgeted for a moment, then lowered his eyes and muttered, “It’s a real killer, sir.”
We all laughed, even Mr. Albert, Fish, and Adam, despite the grief that hung on their faces like veils.
Amid the laughter, Ma Pearl brought a huge pot of beans and set it in the middle of the table. Whatever we didn’t eat at dinnertime, we’d have again for supper that evening.
When Ma Pearl took the top off the pot, the first thing I saw were little slimy pods of green floating on top. Before I knew it, I gasped and opened my big mouth. “Ma Pearl, you put okra in the beans?” I crossed my arms and huffed. “You know I hate okra.”
When Ma Pearl frowned, I knew what was coming next. I cringed and felt the sting before her heavy hand even reached my face. Whap!
I tumbled backwards, toppled the chair, and landed on the wood floor.
Ma Pearl stormed to the other side of the table and stood directly over me. Glaring down, she crossed her arms over her generous bosom and said, “Beggars shouldn’t be so choosy.”
With both palms soothing my stinging face, I muttered a choked, “Sorry, Ma Pearl.”
Tears raced down my face as I slowly rose from my sprawled position on the floor. I wanted to get up and run, but Ma Pearl might’ve thrown a skillet at my head if I had left that kitchen.
As I righted my chair and sat, I didn’t dare look up. I knew everybody at that table shared my shame. They clamped their mouths shut and stared at their hands.
But Queen? Without even looking, I knew her lips were curled up in a grin.
Ma Pearl finally dropped her hands to her sides and stomped back over to the stove. She snatched up a pan of cornbread and threw it on the table with a clank. “If you don’t like my cooking,” she said, scowling, “try catching a train to Chicago and see what yo’ mammy got on the stove.”
I wiped my face with my shirtsleeve and choked back fresh tears.
“Rose Lee,” Papa said gently.
I didn’t answer him, and I wouldn’t look up.
Papa’s voice was stern but kind. “Rose Lee,” he said, “when you lay down on your bed last night, was your belly crying for food?”
I muttered, “No, sir.”
“Then thank the good Lord for this food. Not everybody in this world has some.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I bowed my head and said as quietly as possible, “God in heaven, thank you for this food. Please let it satisfy my belly so I won’t go hungry. Amen.”
Except for Ma Pearl’s angry breathing, the kitchen was silent. Tears blurred my vision, but I could see well enough to swallow my shame, pick up my plate, and ladle a good helping of beans onto it. To appease Ma Pearl, I made sure I included one, and only one, pod of slimy green okra. I just prayed they were all gone from that miserable pot come suppertime that evening.
Chapter Seven
SATURDAY, JULY 30
I WAS TEN YEARS OLD WHEN I ATTENDED MY FIRST FUNERAL. It was the funeral of what I thought was a very old woman. She had long white hair surrounding a wrinkled black face, and the undertaker had shaped that face into an awful frown. The woman’s name was Mrs. Vergene Miller, and she left behind thirteen children, all full grown. And with the way the undertaker had molded that frown on her face, I couldn’t help but wonder if she ruled her children with an iron fist, the way Ma Pearl ruled hers.
But what stood out most and made me remember Miss Vergene’s funeral was not her white hair or her frowning face; it was her thirteen children and the way those children, especially her eight sons, wept and wailed and fell out on the floor in a dead faint as they cried out for their mama.
Before that day, I had never seen men cry. And every time they cried out “Maa-maa,” I cried too, because I knew what it was like not being able to see your mama every day. I cried so hard that I had bruises under my eyes for seven days.
So that Saturday morning, as I sat packed in a pew at Little Ebenezer Baptist Church, I stared at the black casket that held Levi Jackson’s dead body and I didn’t even try to hold back my tears. Every time one of Mr. Albert’s sons cried out, “Lord, why they kill my brother?” I thought about Fred Lee and how I would wail too if somebody killed him.
The air was putrid with perfume and perspiration. All around me, people fell backwards on the wooden pews, wailing and weeping. Levi’s mama, Mrs. Flo-Etta Jackson, or Miss Etta, as everyone called her, stood at the end of my pew. She wore her white usher’s uniform and her thick-soled white shoes. As head of the ushers’ board, she took her job seriously, standing at her post even at the funeral of one of her own. Nevertheless, tears rolled down her round cheeks and onto the collar of her white dress as she used one hand to fan mourners and the other to distribute tissues, not bothering to wipe her own tears, even though they flowed heavily enough to flood the church floorboards.
“Gawd has called one of his angels home,” the flat-nosed Reverend E. D. Blake bellowed from the pulpit. “Too soon, some might say. But Gawd says right on time. For his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts not our thoughts.”
Tearful “amens” rose from the congregation, as if what Reverend Blake had said was the truth. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear such nonsense coming from him. He, like Papa and Mr. Albert, was the kind of Negro who stayed in his place, which was probably why Mr. Albert chose to have Levi’s funeral at Little Ebenezer Baptist Church rather than at our church, Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. He knew that Reverend Jenkins wouldn’t have been afraid to speak the truth about how Levi died.
God didn’t call Levi home, I wanted to shout at Reverend Blake. A white man’s bullet did. But I couldn’t shout that any more than I could shout “Hallelujah!”—because there was no proof that it was a white man’s bullet that killed Levi. Only the word of disgruntled Negroes who, according to a group called the White Citizens’ Council, wanted to stir up trouble in Mississippi.
I’d heard of the White Citizens’ Council from Hallelujah, but three days after Levi’s death I got the chance to hear from them with my own ears. That Wednesday, Ma Pearl sent me to Mrs. Robinson’s to pick up a bag of her older son Sam’s old clothes for Fred Lee. I was supposed to go by at twelve, during my break. Instead I left the field early and went by around a quarter before noon. Four cars were parked in front of the Robinsons’ house. All four of them belonged not to Mr. Robinson but to other white landowners and businessmen. While I waited at the back door, I heard Mr. Robinson and the other men, who were sitting in the dining room and ranting about what the Citizens’ Council must do to protect the rights of white folks. And one of those things was not to let that group, the National Association for the “Agitation” of Colored People—the NAACP—contaminate the good colored citizens of Leflore County. When Mrs. Robinson returned with the bag of clothes and realized I could hear everything being said in the dining room, her face turned as red as a tomato. She practically shoved me out the door after handing me the clothes.
So I was not surprised when the NAACP tried to get involved after Levi’s death and Mr. Albert told them to let it be. “The boy’s already dead,” he said. “Stirring up trouble for other Negroes won’t bring him back.”
Just thinking about it made me shiver. For if it had been Fred Lee lying in that casket dressed in a cheap brown suit donated by Mr. Robinson himself, Papa might’ve said the same thing.
“Peace over power” is what he always said.
“How can a man have peace if the fear of death is always at his back?” I asked him.
He said he’d learned to do like Paul the Apostle and be content in whatever state he was in.
I’ll be content, I said to myself, when the state I’m in is no longer Mississippi.
After someone died, it normally took colored folks a good two weeks before they had a funeral, seeing how they had to gather up enough money to pay the undertaker and everybody else. But Levi’s funeral happened quickly, in less than a week, as Mr. Robinson paid for the funeral.
I was already annoyed by the way folks acted as if Levi had simply died in his sleep, but when Louvenia Smith, also known as Miss Doll, began belting out “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” I became even more annoyed. A self-appointed funeral singer (and Ma Pearl’s personal friend), she sang a solo at every funeral she attended, whether the family asked her to or not. Back in her younger days, she had been a great singer, I was told. Now she was way past her prime, and her voice had faded significantly, but the kind folks in Stillwater didn’t have the heart to tell her so.
“‘I looked over Jordan,’” she croaked, “‘and what did I see?’” She moaned. “‘A band of angels comin’ after me …’”
And with that, Miss Etta hit the floor with a thud.
A gasp escaped from the crowd, followed by a hush, as Sister Jenny Louise Harris stopped banging on her out-of-tune piano.
Within seconds, Miss Etta was surrounded by a flurry of white uniforms.
“Scoot over!” a male usher ordered our row.
We practically piled on top of one another as we moved over to make room. On the count of three, four ushers hoisted Miss Etta up and onto the pew. The pew creaked.
Did I mention that Miss Etta was about the size of Ma Pearl?
Chapter Eight
SATURDAY, JULY 30
SHE KNEW DIRN WELL SHE COULDN’T SERVE AT HER own boy’s fune’,” Ma Pearl said as she dropped large spoons of chicken dressing on plates as mourners passed through the assembly line in Miss Etta’s cramped kitchen. Once served, most of them headed straight on out the back door to feast under the shade trees as they fanned away flies. I was surprised they held the repast at the Jacksons’ anyway, seeing that theirs was one of the smallest and most dilapidated houses on Mr. Robinson’s land. But it seemed that all the colored people in Stillwater and the other small communities in Leflore County were assembled there that day.
As usual during a repast, each family had brought their own plates, cups, and utensils, along with a large pot or pan of some food item to share with everyone else. Ma Pearl had brought a pan of dressing and a pan of fried chicken.
Miss Doll—who was anything but—frowned as she slapped creamed potatoes next to the chicken dressing. “If it’d been my boy,” she said, “they wouldn’ta been able to keep me outta that casket. Shame how they ack’n like nothing happened. Like that boy just died from somp’n natra.” She tapped the spoon against the side of the pan to rid it of stuck-on potatoes. “Wadn’t his time,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t care what Rev’ren Blake say. Wadn’t his time.”
I stood beside them, as silent as a stump as I made sure that each person in the line received one, and only one, piece of Ma Pearl’s famous fried chicken.
“Humph,” Ma Pearl said. “That boy was a fool. That’s what got him kil’t.”
Miss Doll’s face tightened. “They didn’t hafta shoot him. Coulda jest warned him like they did Say-rah’s boy. You see how he got on outta here the next day. Caught the first bus to Memphis.”
Ma Pearl snorted. “Memphis ain’t no better. They killin’ niggas up there, too.” She gave me an evil look and said, “I bet’ not catch one of mine going down to the courthouse talk’n ’bout vot’n. They wouldn’t hafta wor’ ’bout the white man. I’d kill ’em with my own two hands.”
Miss Doll dipped the spoon into the mountain of potatoes and scooped up a helping. “I still don’t like how they ack like the boy just died from somp’n natra. He was shot,” she said bluntly. “How else they ’splain the bullet hole in his head?”
“If you ast me,” Ma Pearl said, “he already had a hole in his head. A whole lotta stupid.”
Miss Doll chortled. “Sweet, you sho’ is crazy.”
“Not half as crazy as these young folks,” Ma Pearl said. “I ain’t too happy ’bout the way things is myself. But they better than they used to be. And they sho’ ain’t worth gittin’ shot over.”
Miss Doll sighed. “Nah, they ain’t,” she said, shaking her head. “They sho’ ain’t.”
Ma Pearl groaned. “My name ain’t Jesus, and I ain’t ’bout to be nobody’s sacrificial lamb and find myself hanging from no dirn tree.”
I doubt there’s a tree limb in all of Mississippi strong enough to hold you, I said to myself.
“What’s so funny?” Ma Pearl said when she caught me grinning.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Then wipe that grin off yo’ face, ’fore I do it for you,” she said. “You jest left a fune’, not a dirn wedding.”
I pressed my lips together and concentrated on the chicken. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Miss Doll. She, too, was trying hard not to grin. I could only wonder what she might have been thinking.
“Psst,” came a soft voice from the back door. I turned and saw Hallelujah beckoning me with his finger.
“Can you come outside for a minute?” he whispered.
I poked a chicken thigh with a fork and slid it onto the next person’s plate. The chicken pan was still half full, so I asked Miss Doll to cover for me wh
ile I talked to Hallelujah.
As we slipped out the back door, my nose rejoiced. I was glad to be out of the Jackson house, which always smelled like day-old cabbage and musty feet.
Unlike our house, the Jacksons’ house was surrounded by trees instead of cotton fields. As the yard was congested with people picnicking on blankets in the shade, Hallelujah and I went for a walk in the wooded area out back.
Mr. Robinson, it seemed, owned half the land in Stillwater, plus land dotted throughout the county. What he didn’t use for farming, he built shanties on and rented them to colored people at exorbitant rates. His wooded land, he used for lumbering. There were plenty of stumps in these woods, where trees had lost their lives for the shacks Mr. Robinson built.
We walked away from the house until we could no longer hear the whispered chatter of voices—some mournful, some confused, but all angry, either at the white men who killed Levi or at Levi himself for getting killed.
We sat together on a wide stump, and Hallelujah placed a newspaper on my lap.
When I saw the picture and the headline, I screamed and flung the paper as far away from me as I could. My stomach did somersaults as Hallelujah retrieved the paper from the trunk of a nearby tree.
He thrust the paper into my face and said in the deepest voice he could muster, “Read it!”
“No!” I said, shielding my eyes with my hands. My body trembled, and sweat poured down my sides. I didn’t have to see the paper again. Its headline, PREACHER’S MOUTH SHOT OFF, would be seared in my mind forever, along with the gruesome picture of Reverend George W. Lee with his face sewn up like Frankenstein.
As if loaded down by a heavy weight, Hallelujah dropped his body next to me on the stump. He sighed loudly and said, “I promised Preacher I’d never show you this.” He paused and stared back at the cluster of mourners congregated around the Jacksons’ yard. “But after seeing how people reacted about Levi’s death, like it’s not a big deal, I had to share it with somebody.” He extended the paper toward me. “You need to know the truth, Rosa.”
Midnight Without a Moon Page 5
