Midnight Without a Moon

by Linda Williams Jackson

  Aunt Belle picked up the card and placed it back in her purse. “I’m not a fool, Mama.”

  Ma Pearl stared hard at Aunt Belle. “You is a fool. All y’all fools,” she said, motioning toward the sofa at the three Saint Louis spectators.

  Their eyes bucked.

  “Mrs. Carter, I assure—”

  With a pudgy pointed finger, Ma Pearl cut off Monty. “You got her into this, didn’t you?”

  “Monty didn’t get me into anything, Mama,” said Aunt Belle. “I’m a grown woman. I make my own choices.”

  “Stupid choices,” Ma Pearl said. “Messing with them folks won’t do nothing but get a Negro kil’t. Where was they when L. B. Turner ’n’em run Albert’s boy off the road and shot him?” She paused for an answer, then said, “They sho’ wadn’t here to stop ’em.”

  “So they know who did it,” said Monty.

  Ma Pearl was dumbfounded. She had put her own foot in her mouth, as she liked to claim about other people.

  Monty pressed on. “If they know who did it, why won’t the sheriff do anything?” He looked from Ma Pearl to Papa and back again. “Why wouldn’t his family allow NAACP involvement?”

  When nobody answered Monty, my chest tightened. I wanted the sour conversation to stop. Aunt Belle’s coming home was the highlight of my summer. Now Ma Pearl was about to ruin it. But before I could open my mouth and risk getting a backhand slap from Ma Pearl, Fred Lee opened his.

  “What do them letters stand for?” he asked, his voice timid.

  Everybody stared at him as if his skin had suddenly turned white and his hair blond.

  After a moment Monty displayed all thirty-two of his gleaming white teeth. “NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” he said. “The organization was formed in 1909 to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”

  He sounded like my teacher Miss Johnson reading from the history text. Poor Aunt Belle. She was about to marry a walking, talking Encyclopedia Britannica.

  “One of our biggest concerns now is to eliminate these Jim Crow laws in states like Mississippi,” he continued, “and to prevent decent young colored men like yourself from swinging from a tree with a rope around your neck.”

  Ophelia the Ogre’s eyes popped.

  “Or getting shot in the head for wanting to vote, like Levi Jackson,” said Aunt Belle, cutting her eyes at Ma Pearl.

  Ma Pearl bolted up from her chair and charged at Aunt Belle. “Git outta my house with that crazy nonsense,” she said. She towered over Aunt Belle and pointed toward the door. “Go on back to Saint Louis with that crazy aunt of yours.”

  The Saint Louis spectators looked as if they’d get up and run any minute.

  Monty draped his arm around Aunt Belle’s shoulders and pulled her closer. With new assurance, Aunt Belle stared hard at Ma Pearl, unmoved by her threat. “I came to visit my family,” she said, her voice calm and steady, “and I won’t leave until my vacation is over.”

  Ma Pearl planted thick fists on her thick hips. “You won’t be bringing that mess up in my house,” she said. “You ain’t go’n git me run off this place. Everybody can’t run up north.”

  Papa stood up and put a hand on Ma Pearl’s broad shoulder. “Have a seat, Pearl,” he said quietly.

  Luckily, the tension broke for a moment when Ophelia wiggled in her seat and asked where the toilet was.

  Ma Pearl’s head jerked toward me. “Show that gal where the toilet at.”

  The toilet. The toilet! My mind raced. The toilet was outside. I stared at Ophelia in her fancy beige suit and wondered whether she knew that as well.

  After a gulp, I waved her toward the door and said, “Follow me.”

  Though her outfit was dainty, her walk certainly wasn’t. Big-boned Ophelia looked like a man in women’s clothing. And she had a voice to match.

  Still, I was jealous. Especially as the sophisticated scent of her perfume filled the air around us as we strode through the meager surroundings I knew as home. After walking through the front room with the rundown furniture, Grandma Mandy’s room with its mothball mustiness, and the kitchen with its antiquated woodstove and icebox, I felt about as proud as a barren hen. By the time we reached the back porch, I was wishing I had simply walked around the outside of our little unpainted house instead.

  “Watch your step,” I said as we descended the steps from the porch, warning her not so much about the steps, but about the drops of chicken poop scattered throughout the backyard.

  Ophelia fanned herself with her hand as we walked the path to the toilet. Her makeup had begun to glisten with sweat. “It’s so hot down here,” she said. “How do you stand it?”

  “It ain’t hot in Saint Louis?” I asked.

  “Not this hot,” she said, wiping sweat off her forehead.

  Before we even reached the toilet, its odor attacked the air and wiped out the sweet scent of Ophelia’s perfume. She wrinkled her nose. “Good God, that thing stinks,” she said.

  “It’s a toilet,” I said. “It’s supposed to stink.”

  Ophelia laughed a throaty laugh. She pointed at our outdoor toilet and said, “That nasty thing is not a toilet. A toilet is inside a house. A toilet gets flushed after it’s used. And it smells like pine after we clean it.” She laughed again and said, “That filthy thing is an outhouse.”

  I balled my right hand into a fist. But I quickly mustered all the strength I could find to relax it before it slammed into Ophelia the Ogre’s ugly face.

  While she stood there laughing, her face uglier than it was before, I unhooked the latch and yanked open the toilet door. “Go ahead. Use it.”

  She covered her nose with her hand. “I don’t have to use it. I just wanted to see what it looked like.”

  I planted my hands on my hips and gave her a dirty look. “You had me walk out here in this heat for nothing?”

  Still shielding her nose from the stench, Ophelia nodded and said, “I’ve heard about these things, and I wanted to see one for myself.”

  After that, I really wanted to punch her in that big ugly nose she was guarding. Instead, I slammed the toilet door, hooked the latch in place, and stormed back toward the house. I couldn’t believe I was missing important conversation in the parlor just to show some ungrateful northern spectator what an outside toilet looked like.

  While I had been outside giving city Ophelia an education on country living, someone had been out to Aunt Belle’s car and returned with two large shopping bags.

  “Since your birthday is coming up,” Aunt Belle said to Queen, “and you’re turning sixteen, I thought pantsuits would be perfect for you. Especially with the way you’ve filled out.”

  Pantsuits! Aunt Belle brought us pantsuits! Just like the fancy one Ophelia was wearing.

  When Aunt Belle began pulling the bright-colored outfits out of the bag, Queen squealed. “I’ll be the only girl in school with pantsuits from the city,” she said, beaming.

  “Probably the only girl in pantsuits at all,” Aunt Belle added.

  Papa cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. But Ma Pearl threw up her hands and cried, “Lawd, if that NAACP mess don’t git y’all sent straight to hell, wearin’ them pantses sho’ will.”

  Aunt Belle handed the two bags to Queen. “Here. I don’t need to pull them all out in front of everybody. Take these on to the back and try ’em on.”

  When she handed the bags to and directed her statement at Queen, and Queen only, my heart stopped beating for a few seconds, then started back up again. Seeing all the fashionable pantsuits she had brought for Queen, I thought it was only right to ask her if she brought me anything. Maybe someone had neglected to bring them from the car.

  “Did you bring me anything?” I asked.

  Aunt Belle’s head jerked up, and she eyed me strangely. Then she looked at Ma Pearl. Then back at me. “Rose Lee, honey, Mama said
you wouldn’t be needing any school clothes.” She looked at Ma Pearl again, her mouth slightly open.

  Ma Pearl nodded. “That’s right. She ain’t going back to school.”

  My chest tightened as “What?” slipped quietly from my lips.

  “You heard me,” Ma Pearl said. “You won’t be going to no school. You finished seventh grade. That’s more’n you need already.”

  “Ma Pearl—”

  “What you need mo’ schooling for?” She narrowed her eyes. “You strong. You can work with yo’ hands. And Papa go’n need you to pick cotton anyway, with Albert ’n’em gone.”

  My heart pounding, I turned to Papa. “Can’t you get somebody else to help with the cotton? What about Slow John?”

  Ma Pearl’s eyes bucked. “That fool? He ain’t go’n work for nobody.”

  Monty, with an expression just as perplexed as mine, chimed in. “This child’s absence from school is only until the cotton has been picked, correct?”

  If looks really had the ability to kill, Monty would have died instantly with the way Ma Pearl stared at him. “This ain’t yo’ bizness,” she said. “This between me and mines. If I say she got all the school’n she need, then she got all the school’n she need. Seventh grade. That’s way mor’n I ever got. When she finish the pick’n, she can help me out round the house.”

  Tears stung my eyes. And a pressure filled my head so quickly that it felt as if it could explode. Plenty of folks who worked in the fields kept their children out of school until the harvest was over, but Ma Pearl was talking foolishness if she expected me to quit school altogether. I had no choice but to speak up. “Miss Johnson said I was one of the smartest students at the school,” I said, my voice shaking. “She said I could even go all the way to college if I wanted to. I can’t quit school. That would be a waste.”

  Ma Pearl grunted. “Waste?” she said, her brows raised. “What’s a waste is a strong gal like you goin’ to school ’stead o’ work’n like you should be. You thirteen. Too old for school.” She sniffed and added, “Besides, what that lil’ foolish teacher know? College ain’t free. So how a po’ Negro like you s’posed to go?”

  My eyes met Papa’s. “Can’t you find somebody else to help pick the cotton?” I pleaded.

  “I said you ain’t goin’ back. Cotton or no cotton,” Ma Pearl interjected. “I need you here at this house takin’ some o’ the load off me ’stead o’ runnin’ up there to that school gittin’ too smart for yo’ own good.”

  Monty gestured toward Fred Lee and Queen. “What about these two?”

  Ma Pearl’s nostrils flared. “Don’t try to tell me how to raise my grandchi’ren.”

  “Papa,” I pleaded again, my voice cracking.

  “We’ll talk about this later, Rose Lee,” he said quietly.

  I was so lost in my misery, I hadn’t concerned myself with what Aunt Belle’s friends might have been thinking until they began to shift nervously on the sofa. When I saw how they stared at me with pity, my tears crested and flooded down my cheeks. Ma Pearl had not only crushed my spirit. She had also totally humiliated me in the presence of the sophisticated Saint Louis spectators.

  Chapter Twelve

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  WHILE REVEREND JENKINS READ FROM THE BOOK OF ISAIAH, I removed a scrap of paper from my Bible, took a pencil from behind my ear, and scribbled a note to Hallelujah: “Ma Pearl said I can’t go back to school.”

  Shock raced across Hallelujah’s face. What? he mouthed. He removed a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled on my note. He handed it back to me.

  “Has she lost her mind?” the note read.

  I pushed back a chuckle. Laughing was not allowed in church, especially on Wednesday nights, and especially while Reverend Jenkins was reading. We had only begun having Wednesday night services since the beginning of the year. We were Baptist, and Baptist folks usually went to church only on Sunday.

  All. Day. Long.

  But Reverend Jenkins had made a covenant with the Lord that year and promised to be holier, like the folks at the Church of God in Christ. So he added Wednesday nights to the torture of our church attendance.

  Reverend Jenkins’s voice boomed from the pulpit: “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’”

  I snapped to attention. The preacher always seemed to say just the right words at just the right time. That was exactly what I felt like: a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep before my shearer. And I couldn’t even open my mouth to defend myself.

  I responded to Hallelujah: “She lost her mind a long time ago.”

  “Queen, too?” Hallelujah wrote back.

  When I first read the note, I giggled, imagining he meant Queen had lost her mind like Ma Pearl. Of course, in my opinion, she had. But I scribbled back, “No. Queen gets to go.”

  Hallelujah mouthed, What? He lowered his head and wrote.

  I suppressed a smile when I read “The way she hates school!!!”

  I wrote back, “Don’t be surprised if she drops out at 16.”

  “What did Mr. Carter say?” Hallelujah wrote.

  The scrap of paper was out of space, so I flipped through my Bible—​the Bible Reverend Jenkins had given me for my twelfth birthday—​for another. I scribbled, “He said we’d talk about it later.”

  “When?” wrote Hallelujah.

  I shrugged and wrote, “Don’t know. It’s been 3 days already.”

  I had never known Papa to lie to me. But that’s exactly what I had begun to fear he’d done. I couldn’t believe he had sided with Ma Pearl to keep me out of school.

  Hallelujah wrote, “You think Preacher could talk to Miss Sweet?”

  I didn’t want to tell Hallelujah what Ma Pearl really thought of his daddy. “That boy ain’t nothing but a educated fool,” she’d say of Reverend Jenkins. “Can’t preach worth a lick. Now, Reverend E. D. Blake over at Little Ebenezer, that’s a preacher.”

  Reverend E. D. Blake wouldn’t know a Holy Scripture if it came and sat at the table with him and offered him supper, I wanted to tell her.

  I wrote back, “She’s made up her mind.”

  “Can he talk to Mr. Carter?” wrote Hallelujah.

  I groaned slightly and scribbled, “He won’t even talk to me!”

  “Still got 2 weeks. Maybe he’s still thinking about it,” wrote Hallelujah.

  Two weeks. What if Papa said no? What if I really was forced to quit school with only a seventh-grade education? That was worse than my aunts. At least they all made it through eighth grade. And my poor mama, only sixth. But at least she was pretty enough to have a man like Mr. Pete want to marry her. But I wasn’t pretty like Mama, so I wasn’t expecting someone like Mr. Pete to whisk me off to the courthouse and marry me—​then take me off to Chicago so our children could go to those good schools they bragged about. And I certainly wouldn’t have the opportunity to get myself educated like Aunt Belle. Because I didn’t have the grit to defy Ma Pearl the way she had.

  My chest tightened as I wrote, “How will I ever leave Mississippi if I can’t get an education?”

  Hallelujah frowned and wrote back, “You will get an education.”

  “How do you know?” I wrote.

  Hallelujah sighed and scribbled. Then he smiled and handed me the note. It read “Just pray. Have faith. God will make a way.”

  “Stop sounding like a preacher!” I wrote back.

  Hallelujah grinned at my note. He loved it when he sounded like a preacher, even though he didn’t want to be one. “I wanna be a surgeon like Dr. T.R.M. Howard in Mound Bayou,” he often said. “And I’m gonna be the first Negro to attend that new medical school Ole Miss opened in Jackson.”

  I didn’t really care at that point to be the first Negro to do anything. I just wanted to be the first person in my family to graduate from high school.

  Hallelujah handed me the not
e again. “Can Miss Johnson talk to Miss Sweet?”

  I wrote back, “She thinks Miss Johnson is stupid.”

  Hallelujah wrote, “I think she’s cute.”

  I smiled and wrote, “She’s a grown woman. You’re a boy.”

  With a sly grin and raised brows, Hallelujah scribbled, “So?”

  I wrote, “What do you know? You think catfish-eyed Queen is cute.”

  Hallelujah blushed, lowered his head, and scribbled on the paper: “Stop passing notes in church.”

  And I did. I was out of paper.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT REVEREND JENKINS forcing us to go to church on Wednesday night was that he fed us afterward. Well, we fed ourselves. Every family brought something to share with everybody else. Like a repast. Except no one had died, unless you count the Holy Ghost, who was killed the minute he set foot in Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

  During the night I realized that I had drunk way too much of Miss Doll’s sweet tea. This time Queen wouldn’t be the only one peeing up the pot through the night.

  The pot was kept in a tiny room off the side of Fred Lee’s room. For some reason it was called the back room, even though it was actually on the side of the house. The room served as our indoor toilet, without the proper plumbing, of course. Besides keeping the pot in there for nighttime use, the back room was also where we took our daily wash-ups and twice-a-week baths in a number-three tin tub.

  I made my way into the dark room and gently waved my hand before me until I hit the string that hung from the light bulb in the ceiling. Strangely, this pretend-it’s-a-bathroom was the only room in the house with electricity. Mr. Robinson, promising Papa that he would convert the room so that it had an actual toilet, with indoor plumbing, had wired the room for lights first but never got around to getting the plumbing put in. But at least we could see without having to light a kerosene lamp when we needed to use the pot at night. Too bad the only privacy was the double sheets hanging in the doorway.