“Then you know why we’re here,” Aunt Belle said. “The White Citizens’ Council uses those scare tactics to keep Negroes from registering to vote. They know that if colored people voted, the South would lose its fight to keep Jim Crow laws intact.”
“They ain’t just scaring people, Aunt Belle. They’re killing them,” I said. “Levi is dead. Lamar Smith is dead. Reverend Lee is dead. And for all we know, that boy from Chicago—Mr. Mose Wright’s nephew—could be dead. And like Ma Pearl said, we don’t know what he did to make those white men angry enough to take him from his uncle’s house.”
Aunt Belle’s expression grew dark. “Well, I assure you it wasn’t registering to vote. The boy is fourteen and from Chicago. And for all we know, he didn’t do anything. It wouldn’t be the first time these crackers lynched a colored man just because they felt like it.”
I grabbed my chest. “You think he was lynched?”
Aunt Belle shook her head. “No, no, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” She looked away, but not before I saw the tears in her eyes.
“Aunt Belle,” I said quietly, “do you think he’s dead?”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Let’s not think that way, okay?”
I nodded, but the thought lingered in my mind like a bad dream. I didn’t know the boy from Chicago, but I knew my own little brother. And I would want to die myself if something happened to him, especially if he was taken in the middle of the night by white men.
Aunt Belle turned back to me and said, “Come here.” She embraced me and held me tight. “I know you’re scared. This is a hard place to live in, and it’s a hard time to live here as well. But you’ve got to be brave. We’re in a war. And there has never been a war fought where everyone lived. Some folks will have to die.”
My body shook. “But I don’t want that somebody to be you,” I said. “Can’t you just stop? Can’t you just go back to Saint Louis? Why do you have to risk your life just so colored people in the South will vote?”
Aunt Belle pulled away and held me by my shoulders. “When I first left for Saint Louis, I swore I would never set foot in Mississippi again,” she said. “Then I came back to visit, and I saw the plight of my people. It broke my heart. Once I met Monty and learned so much about our history from him, I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to come back and help my people.”
I shook my head and muttered, “I don’t wanna be here. I wanna leave. Go to Chicago. Saint Louis. Anywhere. As long as it ain’t the South.”
“And you will,” Aunt Belle said. “When you’re old enough.”
“What about now? Why can’t you take me back with you when you leave next week?”
Aunt Belle shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Her forehead creased. “Besides the fact that Mama won’t let you leave?”
I didn’t answer.
Aunt Belle sighed and said, “I can’t. I just can’t right now, because I didn’t come down here to take you back to Saint Louis, so I’m not prepared to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I said, my voice pleading. “I know how to take care of myself. I can cook and clean and do anything a grown person can do.”
With solemn eyes, Aunt Belle simply shook her head and said, “I’m so sorry, Rose. But I just can’t right now. That’s not why I came.”
Aunt Belle’s words closed in and crushed me, just the way Miss Addie’s shack had crushed me in my nightmare. And at that moment I wished the nightmare had been true. I would have preferred being buried under the rubble of Miss Addie’s fallen shack than sitting there holding the ruins of my crushed dreams.
Chapter Eighteen
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
AFTER AUNT BELLE LEFT MY ROOM, I SLEPT FOR HOURS. And I didn’t care if Ma Pearl got mad at me. She could have come in and beat me with that black strap of hers, and I wouldn’t have cared. Aunt Belle had disappointed me so badly that I didn’t really care if I just suffocated in my hot room. The air was thick and muggy from what I assumed was middle-of-the-afternoon heat. I had no idea what time it was, but Queen’s bed was made. Not neatly, but made, nonetheless. Since we didn’t have church, she was probably already gone to visit her mama and her six siblings, which she occasionally did on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, although it was more like babysitting while Aunt Clara Jean went from house to house gossiping.
My body was stiff, and my head ached. Too much sleep. My body wasn’t used to sleeping past sunrise. I got up and stumbled through Fred Lee’s room, hoping someone was kind enough to have left me a basin of water so I could wash my face. There was none. I’d have to go outside to the pump and get my own. But at least someone, obviously Fred Lee, not Queen, had emptied the pot of the previous night’s contents. One less chore for the day.
On my way to the kitchen, I couldn’t help noticing the voices coming from the parlor, which was to the right of the front room. The voices belonged to Papa, Ma Pearl, Aunt Belle, and Monty. They were talking about the missing boy.
In the front room was a large rectangular mirror that Ma Pearl had gotten from Mrs. Robinson. Though the mirror was cracked straight down the middle, it still served its purpose of showing reflections—twice. It hung on the wall next to a large picture of a longhaired, smiling Jesus—also courtesy of Mrs. Robinson. Through the mirror I could see Papa perched in his chair, directing his attention toward the settee, where I assumed Aunt Belle and Monty sat.
“I knowed he did something,” I heard Ma Pearl say.
Standing on tiptoe, I could see that she was sitting in the chair next to the window, her arms folded defiantly across her bosom.
“Since when did speaking to a woman become a crime?” asked Aunt Belle, her tone icy.
“Any fool know it’s a crime when you is colored and the woman is white,” retorted Ma Pearl. “That boy oughta knowed better.” She paused, then said, “His mama oughta taught him better.”
“The boy is fourteen, Mrs. Carter,” said Monty. “He was born and raised up north. Things are different there. Negro youths and white youths attend the same schools even, so it’s only natural the boy would assume a few words to the woman wouldn’t harm anything. He was probably only being polite.”
“Things ain’t no different up north,” Ma Pearl said. “Y’all jest fool yo’selves into thinking they is. Colored is colored, and white is white. I don’t care where you run to. Chicago. Saint Louis. Detroit. It’s all the same. You a fool if you think they ain’t. They jest ain’t got the signs posted, is all.”
“Mose’s boys said his nephew didn’t say a word to the woman, as far as they know,” Papa said. “It’s her white word against his colored one.”
“But he did whistle when she came out of the store, according to one of the boys,” said Monty.
In the mirror, I saw Papa shaking his head. “Po’ Mose,” he said. “If them boys would’ve told him ’bout the boy doing the whistling, he could’ve been ready. He could’ve sent him on back to Chicago, or at least he would’ve had his shotgun ready. He wouldn’t’ve let them come in his house like that and walk ’way with his kin. He wouldn’t’ve,” he said, shaking his head. “I know Mose. He wouldn’t’ve just let ’em take that boy like that.”
Papa himself had two shotguns. I wondered if he had them loaded and ready. Many Negroes, according to Papa, had armed themselves with shotguns and pistols. But I’d never heard of one using them to defend himself against a white man. It seemed the only folks Negroes shot were one another. Sometimes in self-defense, and sometimes just out of plain anger.
“And that boy’s poor mama,” Aunt Belle said quietly. “Lord, she must be some kind of sick with worry.”
“Imagine how Mose felt when he had to call her,” said Papa.
Ma Pearl threw in her nickel’s worth. “If the boy’s mama was so worried, she woulda kept him up there in Chicago. Any fool know Mississippi ain’t no place for quick-tongued niggas.”
Unfazed, Ma Pearl answered curtly, “And you jest plain stupid. And disrespectful. And you can git the devil on outta my house.” She glowered at Monty and swung her thick arm toward the direction of the door.
I heard the settee creak as Monty stood.
“Sit down, son,” Papa said. “I wear the pants in this house.” To Ma Pearl he said, “Pearl, I’ve had enough of yo’ nonsense. Mr. Bryant and his brother had no right to come in Mose’s house like that in the middle of the night and take what didn’t belong to them. No right at all,” he said, shaking his head. “Mose is tore to pieces over this, and his wife done up and left too. Said she wasn’t coming back. Never setting a foot in that house again.”
How I secretly wished Ma Pearl would do the same!
“This ain’t the time to blame nobody ’bout how they raised they chi’ren,” said Papa. “This is the time to pull together. To help. To pray that the boy is returned safe.”
Ma Pearl grunted but otherwise remained silent. Papa might not have been a man with an imposing stature, but when he spoke sternly, even Ma Pearl listened.
“Maybe he’s lost somewhere,” said Aunt Belle. “Maybe they just scared him and let him go, so maybe he wandered off in the woods somewhere and can’t find his way back to Preacher Wright’s house.”
I thought about nine-year-old Obadiah Malone running through the woods to get away from Ricky Turner. When his daddy found him, he had passed out. What if this boy was lying somewhere in the woods, passed out from the loss of blood or dehydrated from the heat? Being from Chicago, surely he wouldn’t know how to find his way through the woods.
“You believe that lie, baby?” asked Monty. “You believe two white men would force a Negro from his bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night, have a little chat with him, and then let him go?”
The room grew quiet.
“We can hope,” Papa finally said.
Ma Pearl shifted in her chair. “You say Mr. Bryant was one of the mens that took the boy?”
“That’s what Mose say,” Papa answered. “Said he wanted to talk to the boy from Chicago. The one that did all that talk up at his sto’.”
“And a big bald-head one was the other man?” asked Ma Pearl.
“Um-hmm,” said Papa. “Mose say he was the one with the pistol. Said he walked through the house like he owned it. Yelled at anybody that woke up to go back to sleep. Threatened Mose. Told him if he wanted to live to see sixty-five, he best forget his face.” With a sigh, Papa dropped his head. “Mose say he’ll never forget that face.”
“I heard of Bryant. And the bald-head one sound like his brother. Milam,” Ma Pearl said brusquely. “Lawd, I hope it ain’t J. W. I believe he the man Doll say her nephew work for in Glendora. She say he one o’ the meanest white mens in Mississippi. Meaner than a bear caught in a beehive. Fought in the war. Learnt how to beat mens to death with his pistol.”
The room was quiet again. My legs grew weak from standing on my toes to peer into the parlor through the cracked mirror. I needed to go get water so I could wash up. But I couldn’t move. My curiosity kept my ears glued to the parlor and my eyes on that mirror.
Finally Ma Pearl spoke. “Y’all know that boy dead.”
“Mama!” Aunt Belle snapped.
“They might as well be looking for a body ’stead o’ waiting for the boy to show up at the front do’,” Ma Pearl said. “If Big Milam is the one that got a holt of him, he dead.”
What if Ma Pearl was right? What if the boy was dead while everybody was waiting for him to show up at the house? What if Miss Addie was right about something bad about to happen in Mississippi? What if colored folks were about to start getting killed for any old reason and regardless of their age?
Reverend George Lee in May.
Levi Jackson in July.
That old man Lamar Smith in the middle of August.
And now a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago might be dead too? And August hadn’t even ended.
My head spun, and I no longer felt like going to the kitchen to warm up water for washing. I no longer felt like doing anything but crawling back into bed and hiding my head under the pillow. I had to do something to block out the horrible thoughts swirling through my head.
September
Chapter Nineteen
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
WHEN I WAS ALMOST TEN AND REALIZED THAT GOD wasn’t going to lighten my skin any more than he was going to let the moon rule the day, I began to wonder what it was like to be white. More specifically, I used to wonder what I would be like if I were white. Would I be nice like old Mrs. Jamison, whose husband owned a clothing store uptown? It was rumored that she allowed her colored maid to enter her house through the front door as well as eat with her at the dining room table. The only time Ma Pearl got to see Mrs. Robinson’s front door was when she had to answer it. Or would I be spiteful like Ricky Turner and chase Negroes off the road with my pickup just for the fun of it? I always figured I would be a nice white person, that I wouldn’t hate Negroes or mistreat them. But maybe that was because I was a Negro and knew what it felt like to be mistreated simply because my skin was brown. And among my own people, I also knew what it felt like to be shunned simply because my skin was too brown.
Hallelujah once showed me a copy of Jet magazine that had an article called “The Most Beautiful Women in Negro Society.” On the cover was a woman labeled “Pretty Detroit Socialite.” She looked as white as Mrs. Robinson.
Hallelujah, twelve years old at the time, cooed and clucked over her, claiming that he’d marry a pretty woman just like that one day. I didn’t see one picture of a woman with dark skin among those listed as “the most beautiful women in Negro society.”
Also in Jet I saw an advertisement for a product that could make my skin light. After that, I started bleaching my skin with the stuff Aunt Clara Jean used to keep her complexion “even.” Every time I went to her house, I’d sneak into her bedroom, grab the jar of Nadinola Bleaching Cream from her dresser, then smear the cream all over my face. The label read “Lightens skin fast!” and “Results guaranteed!” I’d return home thinking that in no time at all, my skin would be pretty and caramel like the rest of the women in my family, with the exception of Aunt Ruthie. Of course, just like the prayer, the cream didn’t work, as it had to be used daily in order to see results.
A lot of good the cream would have done anyway, seeing how much time I spent in the sun, chopping and picking cotton. That’s where I was supposed to be that morning. Instead, I was somewhere I wasn’t even allowed: Ma Pearl and Papa’s bedroom. I should have been in the field picking cotton, but I just couldn’t go. I couldn’t take it a third day in a row, especially knowing I wouldn’t get to go to school the next week when everyone else went.
Heavy-hearted doesn’t begin to describe what I was feeling that morning. Since the Chicago boy was still missing, so was Aunt Belle. She and Monty were riding all over the Delta in search of any signs of the boy and in search of answers as to how something like that could have happened. I couldn’t believe she cared more about someone she had never met than she did about her own family. She had only a few days left before she returned to Saint Louis, and she couldn’t bother spending them with us.
That morning, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. So, like my wanna-be-a-movie-star cousin Queen, I faked an illness. Not cramps, but a summer cold. The dry, hacking cough and sneezing were easy to conjure with a little help from a black‑pepper‑filled handkerchief, but the fever was a bit harder to fake. Sitting close to the woodstove helped, though.
As I stood before Ma Pearl’s dresser and
studied my reflection in the clouded mirror, I felt as black as a crow and uglier than a mule. The room was dark because of the thick curtains Ma Pearl had made to block out the sunlight, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing the frightening figure before me. My bony shoulders jutted out from the sleeveless croker-sack dress. And my shapeless arms were so skinny it’s a wonder I was able to even work the pump long enough to fill a bucket with water.
I stared at my reflection and felt guilty for wishing I were more like Queen. Despite her ugly catfish eyes, her light complexion and long hair still made her attractive. And she was shaped just right, like the women in Jet, who showed no shame when displaying their perfect bodies in what looked like nothing more than bras and bloomers.
With Ma Pearl at Mrs. Robinson’s and Queen still sound asleep, I knew it would be safe to slip my dress off for a second and see what I looked like in my bra and bloomers. I knew I’d look nothing like the models in the magazine, but something in the back of my mind made me wonder. Why I turned the radio on for this occasion, I will never know. But I did. I turned the dial several times to quiet down the static; then the music came through.
Nat King Cole. “Unforgettable.” While listening to the crooning, I slipped my dress over my head and let it drop to the floor. But after I wiggled out of my dingy white slip, I cringed at the sight in the mirror.
A skinny, furless bear. That’s what I looked like. Tall. Brown. Skinny. Like a bear who forgot to wake from hibernation and starved through three winters. A vision that was certainly not unforgettable.
When the song ended, I placed one hand on my hip and the other behind my head. Tilting my hip to the side, I pretended I was posing for Jet magazine. I whispered at my reflection, “Rose Lee Carter, pretty Chicago socialite.” Yes. Chicago. That’s where I would go. Forget Saint Louis. I would have to find a way to make my mama love me enough to return for me and Fred Lee so she could raise us right along with Li’ Man and Sugar.
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