Of course, that wouldn’t include Queen, who would be curled up in a ball, moaning, “Oh, Ma Pearl, I can’t go to church this morning. I got the cramps.”
I flipped my pillow to the cooler side, rolled over to face the wall, and tried to sleep. But it was no use. Everything and everybody raced through my mind, especially poor Hallelujah, who was in love with Queen, and probably with Miss Johnson, too, only because of their light complexions. Why was everybody so afraid of blackness?
Well, everybody except Aunt Belle, whom I hadn’t seen all week because of Ma Pearl and her big mouth. To be fair, I couldn’t blame Aunt Belle’s absence entirely on Ma Pearl. It was Aunt Belle herself who was too busy working on behalf of the NAACP and didn’t have time for her family.
She and Monty, along with their northern comrades, were driving all over Leflore, Sunflower, and Bolivar Counties rounding up backwoods Negroes, trying to convince them to register to vote. Didn’t she realize that Reverend George Lee and Mr. Lamar Smith, a proud colored man who fought in a war, were lying stone cold in their graves for doing the same thing? I never thought I’d agree with Ma Pearl, but now this NAACP thing was affecting my own kin, and I was afraid. I didn’t want my aunt gunned down in the prime of her life. Nor did I want her body mutilated and hanging from a tree. I wanted her at the house with us, sitting around eating good food, telling funny stories, and laughing—filling my head with dreams of what life was like up north.
My chest ached, and I wanted to go find her, snatch that little NAACP card from her black patent leather purse, and burn it before her very eyes. Like any other Negro, I wanted change too, but not at the expense of my own family.
When sleep finally came, I found myself in a dream where I was trapped inside Miss Addie’s tiny house. Her silver eyes aglow, she stood over me, swaying, and chanting, “Somp’n ’bout to happen. Somp’n ’bout to happen.”
I called for Jinx to make her stop. But Jinx was nowhere in the house. I was all alone with Miss Addie, and I had no way to escape. The walls closed in, and the little house came crumbling down upon me.
Chapter Sixteen
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
I SAT UP STRAIGHT IN MY BED, GASPING FOR AIR. My heart raced so fast I felt it would rush right out of my chest.
Sunlight filtered into the room through the thin beige curtain.
Queen was back in her bed, curled into her covers like a baby who just got over the colic and could finally sleep. Since I hadn’t heard her sneak in and hadn’t heard Slick Charlie when he crowed, the dream, which felt so short, was obviously much longer.
Exhausted from the lack of sleep and the weariness of my worries, I forced my body off the bed and to the back room to use the pot. As I sat there, I realized that the aroma of coffee seeped through the walls, but its accompaniments—the biscuits and the Sunday-morning salt pork—were missing. Nor had Ma Pearl yelled for us to rise and shine.
I felt an ache in the pit of my stomach as I crept back to my room to dress. Fred Lee was still in bed. This was unusual for a Sunday morning. I threw a housecoat on over my nightgown and headed to the kitchen. My heart leaped when I saw Aunt Belle sitting at the table. Her hands were wrapped around a cup of coffee as she stared at Ma Pearl, who sat across from her. They were both silent.
As hot as it was in our house, I suddenly felt chilled. The looks on Aunt Belle’s and Ma Pearl’s faces immediately signaled something was wrong. I wrapped my housecoat tighter around my body and hesitantly crossed the threshold into the kitchen.
Aunt Belle’s head jerked in my direction even though I hadn’t made a sound.
I’m not sure why, but the first words out of my mouth were, “Where’s Papa?”
“Papa’s with Preacher,” Ma Pearl answered briskly.
“And Monty,” Aunt Belle added. Both of their expressions were tense.
I looked from face to face, confused. My thoughts raced. It’s Sunday morning. Ma Pearl didn’t wake her troops for church. Aunt Belle is here in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a chipped white mug filled with black coffee. Yet they both say to me, “Papa’s with Preacher. And Monty.”
Something wasn’t right. “How come Papa’s with Reverend Jenkins?” I asked, my voice quivering. “Something happened at church?”
Aunt Belle removed her right hand from the coffee cup and extended it toward me. “Come sit down,” she said quietly.
As I entered the kitchen, a jolt of nervousness attacked my stomach. I stumbled to the chair next to Aunt Belle and sat.
She took my hand and held it in hers. Her hand was warm from the coffee. “A Negro boy is missing,” she said.
My heart beat faster. “Hallelujah?”
Aunt Belle squeezed my hand. “No, sweetie,” she said, shaking her head, looking apologetic.
“It’s one of Mose Wright’s grandboys,” Ma Pearl interjected, her tone indifferent. “Down here from Chicago.”
“Nephew, Mama,” said Aunt Belle. “It’s his nephew that’s missing.”
“Missing?” I asked. “What you mean by missing?”
“We’re not sure,” answered Aunt Belle. “Monty’s cousin in Greenwood got a call early this morning from another cousin who lives near Money. Said he heard that two white men burst into Mose Wright’s house before day this morning and took the boy. Monty insisted on going there, so I called Reverend Jenkins to go with him. When Reverend Jenkins stopped by here to let Papa know there’d be no church today, Papa offered to ride with them and insisted I stay here with Mama.” She glanced at Ma Pearl, as if the idea repulsed her.
“My Papa?” I asked.
Ma Pearl glared at Aunt Belle. “To keep this gal from runnin’ over there.”
Mose Wright? The name sounded familiar. “Ain’t that the man you asked Monty if he was kin to?” I asked Ma Pearl.
Ma Pearl pushed her chair from the table and heaved herself to a standing position. “Um-hmm,” she said. “That’s him. And I bet you any ’mount of money, that boy of his was down here stirring up trouble, jest like this gal and her boyfriend is doing,” she said, glaring at Aunt Belle. “That NAACP nonsense go’n git us all kil’t.”
Aunt Belle’s forehead wrinkled. “This has nothing to do with the NAACP, Mama. I doubt that boy was old enough to know anything about the NAACP. But I can assure you, the NAACP will not let this thing go unnoticed. It’s time somebody put a stop to all this white terror.”
Leaning forward and placing her huge hands on the edge of the table, Ma Pearl braced herself for one of her rants. She stood there, silently glaring at Aunt Belle as if she were the devil himself sitting at her kitchen table. “White terror, huh?” she said, smirking. “Chile, you ain’t see’d no white terror yet. These NAACP peoples keep coming down here interrupting these people’s way of life, these white folks liable to burn down every shack on every plantation in order to keep things the way they is round here.”
Aunt Belle stared at Ma Pearl and shook her head with pity. “Mama, haven’t you ever dreamed of something better for yourself than cleaning up after Mrs. Robinson and her children?” With one hand, she gestured around the room. “Wouldn’t you like to own a house one day? Have a kitchen with some running water and a real gas stove? And what about your grandchildren? Don’t you want something better for them?”
“That what Isabelle got up there in Saint Louis?” Ma Pearl asked. “A fancy house to call her own?” Ma Pearl snatched up her empty cup, turned on her heel, and stalked over to the stove. As she picked up the coffeepot, she chuckled. “You been in Saint Louis, what? Five years? Now, you know something?” She refilled her cup as she chuckled again. “Isabelle tell you how she got that house?”
Aunt Belle didn’t answer. She simply stared into her coffee cup, her expression somber.
“You don’t know nothing, do you, gal? That fancy house yo’ aunt got up there in Saint Louis?” Ma Pearl paused and stared at me. “I ain’t go’n say how she got that fancy house in front this chile here,” she said. “But I k
now one thang: all that living up north go’n do is teach you how to be a dirn fool.”
Tears bulged in Aunt Belle’s eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was sad or angry, but what came out of her mouth next told me she felt sorry for Ma Pearl. “Slave mentality, Mama,” she said. “These whites down here have you thinking you’re somehow less than they are because of the color of your skin.” She shook her head. “You’re not. I’m not,” she said, pointing to her chest. She glanced around the room, gesturing with her hand. “None of us are.”
Ma Pearl’s nostrils flared. “And you got a fool mentality, gal. White mens wouldn’ta took that boy for no reason. He did something.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “He did something a’right. And it’s go’n cause trouble for all the other Negroes round here. You wait and see. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times: one Negro do something, and white folks get mad at all us. Like we all is one.”
“Coloreds outnumber whites in this county, Mama,” Aunt Belle said. “We shouldn’t let them run over us like this.”
Ma Pearl strolled over to the table and set her cup down. “Us?” she asked with raised brows. “You don’t live her no mo’.” She waved her hand in the air. “You a city gal now. Coming down here in yo’ fancy car with yo’ fancy friends. Wearing fancy clothes, bringing these gals fancy clothes, trying to make them like you. White folks don’t take too lightly to niggas trying to act like them. And that’s exactly what you city niggas do—try to act like you white. Like you as good as them.”
“We are,” Aunt Belle answered tersely, her voice quaking.
Ma Pearl snorted a laugh. “You think if I dress up that sow out there in the hog pen I’m go’n let her come in here and sleep in my bed? Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “ ’Cause she still a hog, no matter how clean and dressed up she is. And niggas is still niggas, no matter how dressed up they is.”
Aunt Belle sighed. “Mama,” she said, pausing, shaking her head. “You should want something better for yourself than this.” She motioned her hand to signify not just the house, but all of Mississippi, it seemed.
Ma Pearl lumbered over to the back door and stared out through the screen. She stood there, not saying a word, only contemplating as she observed her backyard full of chickens, a few hogs, and a cow mooing in a small patch of a pasture. “Things is better than they used to be,” she said, still not turning to face Aunt Belle. “And they wouldn’t be so bad as they is if the gov’ment wadn’t trying to force the whites down here to act like the whites up north.”
“Mama, why are you so afraid of white people?”
“You ain’t see’d what I done see’d,” Ma Pearl said. She turned abruptly, nearly spilling her coffee. She stared icily at Aunt Belle. “That boy ain’t missing,” she said. “He dead. Just like every other nigga that got outta place with the white man. And ain’t nobody go’n do a dirn thing about it.”
“The NAA—”
Before Aunt Belle could finish spelling out the letters, Ma Pearl cut her off. “The NAACP can go to hell for all I care. More Negroes been kil’t since they came down here than ever before. Whites, too, if they find theyselves on the wrong side of the line. The NAACP can’t stop a Negro from being lynched, and they can’t make the sheriff put a peckerwood in jail for doing the lynching. This Miss’sippi. Ain’t nothing go’n never change.”
Chapter Seventeen
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
WITH MA PEARL’S WORDS RINGING IN MY EARS, I left the kitchen and went back to my room. I had to lie down and ease the pain throbbing in my head.
When I sighed and collapsed on my bed, Queen stirred in hers. She sat up, stretched, and asked me what time it was.
I shrugged and mumbled that it was a little after ten.
Yawning, she asked, “What’s going on? How come Ma Pearl didn’t wake us up?”
“A colored boy from Chicago is missing. White men took him from his uncle’s house in Money.”
Queen shrugged and asked, “We ain’t going to church?”
I shook my head. “Reverend Jenkins is over in Money. Papa, too.”
She sniffed the air and said, “Ma Pearl didn’t cook?”
“Queen,” I said, scowling, “a colored boy is missing. Two white men came to his uncle’s house in the middle of the night and took him.”
“That don’t mean Ma Pearl can’t cook,” she said, jumping up off the bed. “Can’t believe I got to git my own food.”
“Don’t you ever care about anybody other than yourself?”
“Niggas oughta quit acting a fool round here,” she said, yanking back the sheet in the doorframe. “Nothing I can do ’bout him missing. He probably somewhere hanging from a tree by now anyways.”
I lay on my bed, shaking. A colored boy from Chicago was missing in Mississippi, and my own cousin was too callous to care.
No. He wasn’t missing.
He had been taken.
By two white men.
And they knew exactly where he was.
Fear gripped me and wouldn’t let go. What if Queen was right? What if he was hanging somewhere from a tree? It wasn’t as if we hadn’t heard plenty of stories like that before. What kind of place was I living in, where white men could just walk into the house of a colored person and take away his kin? What if it had been Fred Lee? Would Papa have just let him go? Or would he have put up a fight?
At the thought, a sick feeling invaded my stomach. Papa might not have fought.
When the sheet hanging in the doorframe of the bedroom moved and I saw that the hand moving it wore a diamond engagement ring, I shut my eyes and pretended to sleep.
“You didn’t go to sleep that fast,” said Aunt Belle.
I didn’t answer.
“I see your eyes moving under your lids. And your breathing is all wrong. You ain’t asleep, Rose Lee.”
I opened my eyes and stared at Aunt Belle standing in the doorway.
“You okay?” she asked.
Though she smiled, worry crisscrossed her face. I wanted to smile back at her and tell her I was okay, but my emotions wouldn’t allow me. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how angry I was at her. She had been in Mississippi for a whole week, and I had seen her only once—on the day she arrived. The day when all she could talk about was the NAACP and what needed to change in Mississippi, and not a word about what life was like for her up north. The day she brought fancy pantsuits for Queen and none for me. The day she allowed Ma Pearl to humiliate me in front of all her sophisticated Saint Louis friends and didn’t utter a word in my defense.
I turned my eyes from her and stared at the ceiling. Even now, she wasn’t really in that room to see me. She only wanted to know how I was feeling about what was going on around me. It took a missing Chicago boy just to get her to the house. And that’s only because Papa took her place and forced her to stay with Ma Pearl.
Without an invitation, she entered the room and sat on Queen’s bed. “Sorry I haven’t been around much,” she said, sighing.
Much? You haven’t been around at all, I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t say anything. I was no longer a brokenhearted seven-year-old whose head she could fill with dreams from a Sears and Roebuck catalog. I was a thirteen-year-old who finally realized that when black birds flew north, they outgrew the ones they left in the South. Unless the ones they left were old enough to vote. Then they came back and asked them to risk their lives by registering. And for what? To be gunned down before they could even set foot in the courthouse?
Ma Pearl was probably right. The boy from Chicago was probably stirring up trouble just like Aunt Belle and Monty were doing. Without my permission, words suddenly flew out of my mouth. “Don’t you care if you die or not?”
“What?” Aunt Belle asked, as if my words had startled her.
I sat up on the bed and faced her. “Don’t you care about dying?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“Of course I care about dying. W
e all care,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we should shrink back and not fight for our rights.”
“You have your rights. Nobody is gonna kill you for voting in Saint Louis like they did Levi Jackson or that old man Lamar Smith.”
“But that’s why we’re here.”
I turned my face from her and said, “I thought you were here to visit your family. That’s what you told Ma Pearl. And that’s what you’ve been doing for the past few years, visiting family, not rounding up people to register to vote.”
Aunt Belle came and sat beside me on my bed. “Things have changed, Rose. Do you know what Brown versus Board of Education means?”
I nodded. “The Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in the state of Kansas.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Belle said. “And soon it will happen all over the country.” She shifted her weight on the bed and asked, “Do you know what the White Citizens’ Council is?”
Again I nodded. “Hallelujah told me about them.”
“That group formed right here in the Delta, in Indianola, not too far from Stillwater. They formed shortly after the Supreme Court passed down their ruling. Their membership spread like fire throughout the South. They want to make sure the government doesn’t force integration on the South the way it had to do in Kansas.”
“They’re in more than one state?”
Aunt Belle nodded. “Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana. They’re all over the South.”
I told her about what I heard at the Robinsons’ a few days after Levi’s death, how I heard Mr. Robinson himself say they had to put a stop to the NAACP, calling them the National Association for the Agitation of Colored People. “Mr. Robinson even threatened Papa and Ma Pearl that he’d throw them off his place if they got involved with the NAACP.”
Midnight Without a Moon Page 10
