“So you have a bad feeling?”
I leaned back and rested on the windshield, my arms folded behind my head. The night was clear, and stars blanketed the sky. The air was muggy and smelled of cotton, and I actually felt like taking a nap right there on the hood of Reverend Jenkins’s car. Unfortunately, my friend wanted to talk.
Hallelujah leaned back and rested against the windshield as well. He sighed. “At first I was all excited about what’s been happening this week. Preacher Mose being brave enough to point out the killers in court. Mrs. Till coming down here and all. And man, Willie Reed having the nerve to actually sit in a Mississippi courtroom and say he saw white men take a Negro into a barn and then heard a beating … that was something.”
I raised up and rested on my right elbow. I stared at him. “So what’s your problem?”
Hallelujah sighed again. “What’s gonna happen if these two white men are found guilty?”
“They’ll rot in jail,” I said as I again rested my head against the windshield. A smile stretched across my face. Two white men could go to prison for killing a Negro. In Mississippi. If that could happen, anything was possible.
“And what if they don’t?” Hallelujah asked. “What if the jury says they’re not guilty?”
I shot up on my elbow again. “How can a jury find them not guilty? Two people testified they heard the beating. Willie Reed saw J. W. Milam with the boy. Ain’t that what everybody’s been saying? That he witnessed it?”
Hallelujah stared at the sky, but he didn’t answer me.
After what seemed like forever, he finally said, “Imagine this, Rosa.” He turned to me and said, “Lean back, close your eyes, and imagine this.”
I did as I was told.
“Now, I know you can’t stand Queen,” he said. “But imagine if Queen did something really horrible, and you knew she needed to be punished. But imagine the punishment coming from Miss Sweet, someone you can’t stand even more.”
“Hey,” I said, my eyes popping open. “Stop judging my feelings about my kinfolk.”
Hallelujah shrugged. “Not judging. Just telling the truth. I know you don’t like Queen, but I know Miss Sweet plagues you even more. Am I right?” he asked, his brows raised.
I laughed. “I don’t know where you’re going with all this, but if Ma Pearl beat Queen for any reason, folks would hear me laughing all the way to Chicago.”
“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best example. Let’s see,” he said, tapping his finger to his lips.
I exhaled loudly to let him know I was annoyed.
He sprang up on his elbows and asked, “You know what Preacher said Sheriff Strider told the press?”
“I have no idea,” I answered, a bit exasperated with him speaking in riddles.
“He said we don’t have any trouble down here until some Southern niggers go up north and the NAACP talks to ’em and they come back home. He said if they’d keep their noses and mouths outta our business, folks in Mississippi would be able to do more in enforcing the laws.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and said, “Stop speaking in parables and just tell me what you’re trying to say.”
“What I’m saying is white folks aren’t gonna convict their own because of outsiders interfering. You do know that every lawyer in Sumner is defending those two murderers, don’t you?”
“Nope. Didn’t know that.”
“They’re teaming up against us, Rosa.”
“Of course they are. Haven’t they always?”
“My aunt Bertha went to Sumner the week before the trial. You know what she saw when she went inside a few stores?”
I didn’t answer.
“Money jars on the counters. She said from what she heard, every store in town was collecting money to help defend those killers.”
My heart took a dive. “Our people are teaming up too,” I said, trying to remain hopeful. “Look at all the folks down here watching the trial. Aunt Belle closed her shop to come down here. She’s losing money. Everybody’s doing what they can to help push them to a guilty verdict.”
“It won’t be enough,” Hallelujah said dryly.
“Since when did you become Mr. Gloom and Doom?”
“When I realized we’re up against a powerful system.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” he said, holding a finger up for each point he made, “we have five lawyers defending those murderers. We have every white person in Leflore and Tallahatchie Counties with their threatening eyes glued to the jury, daring them to side with those rabble-rousers called the NAACP and convict two of their own. And we have an all-white male jury. Of course we both know that neither women nor coloreds could be on the jury anyway. But that’s beside the point.”
“But what about Willie Reed’s testimony? He saw them. And he heard them.”
Hallelujah shook his head. “Won’t matter.”
I pointed toward the church. Even while Reverend Jenkins was preaching, folks were still waving and shouting. “Your daddy is a smart man,” I said. “If he didn’t think we were gonna win, he wouldn’t be in there stirring up the crowd.”
Hallelujah stared at the illuminated windows of Greater Mount Zion for so long it was as if he were in a trance. We could hear Reverend Jenkins, but we couldn’t decipher his words. Whatever they were, they were words of hope. Yet what Hallelujah was saying made sense, as if this whole trial were just for show. Emmett Till had been dead for less than a month, but the trial for his killers was almost over. One more day, Friday, September 23. From what Aunt Belle had told me, there would be something called closing arguments; then the jury would make a decision. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach as I watched all those people celebrate something that might not happen.
“Preacher knows,” Hallelujah finally said, his voice low.
“Knows what?”
“That those killers won’t go to prison.”
“Then why is he in there making people shout?”
“He’s not stirring them up over what he thinks might happen tomorrow. He’s trying to get them ready for the future.”
“Riddles,” I said, exhaling. “Talk to me straight. I’m not a philosopher like you. I don’t even go to school anymore.”
“Things are gonna change, Rosa. If Mose Wright and Willie Reed can stand in a courtroom and tell on white people, maybe people will be braver.”
“These people,” I said, gesturing toward the church. I fell back on the windshield and took a breath. “I doubt it.”
“Only time will tell,” Hallelujah said quietly.
“Did he ever want to be anything else other than a preacher and a teacher?”
“Preacher?” Hallelujah asked, his brows raised. He thought for a moment, then sighed. “He had dreams of going up north, he told me once. But that was when he had a wife. I don’t know if he’s ever wanted to be anything more than a preacher and a teacher, though. He sells the insurance policies for the extra, but he says colored folks don’t realize they need life insurance just like white folks do.”
“You think he ever wanted to be a lawyer?”
Hallelujah glanced toward the church. “Nah. He doesn’t care too much for arguing. Just teaching and preaching.”
“You think Mr. Evers might get to be one?”
“A lawyer?” said Hallelujah. “Sure, if he can ever get into a law school.”
“I wonder why people like Mr. Evers don’t just leave Mississippi,” I said as I thought about how much I wished I could leave. “Folks like him and that doctor in Mound Bayou could just pack up like Mr. Pete did and go. They could go anywhere they want. Instead, they’re here. Fighting for rights.”
Hallelujah sighed. “Preacher said it wouldn’t be good if everybody left. Imagine what this place would be like if everybody who could just up and went?”
I leaned back and stared at the sky. “Stars can’t shine without darkness,” I said.
“What?”
“Stars can’t shine without darkness
.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know where the words came from. But seeing those bright stars reflecting against that black sky, I thought about how my great-aunt Isabelle once brought this little boy from Saint Louis to Mississippi for the first time. He was surprised to see stars. He’d never seen a star in his life. He said Saint Louis didn’t have stars. Aunt Isabelle corrected him and said the stars couldn’t be seen in the city at night because of all the lights. The stars shine perfectly in Stillwater, especially out in the country, because there’s no light dimming their brightness.”
“And you accuse me of talking in riddles,” Hallelujah said, raising up on his elbow.
“I still don’t know what it means,” I said. “It just popped into my head as I was looking at the sky.”
“Let me know when you figure it out.”
“Well, it won’t be tonight,” I said, leaping off the hood of the car. “I’ve gotta get back inside before Ma Pearl realizes how long I’ve been gone.”
“Wait,” Hallelujah said. “I think I know what it means.”
“What?” I asked, eager to know what he thought my strange utterance meant.
“Stars can’t shine without darkness,” Hallelujah repeated. “You’ve got to have some darkness to know what light is. If every Negro who could leave packed up and left, the struggle wouldn’t be the same.”
I frowned, indicating that I still didn’t understand.
Hallelujah pointed at the church. “Your aunt in there … she owns a beauty shop, right?”
I nodded.
“What if she had stayed here, in Mississippi, and opened a shop?”
“White folks would find a way to sabotage it, like they do your aunt Bertha’s store, perhaps?”
Hallelujah nodded. “Perhaps. But I’m willing to bet,” he said, staring intently toward the illuminated windows of the church, “if she had been able to open a shop here, in a place where our people are shunned and oppressed, it would have made her feel even more accomplished than she already does.”
“Stars shine brighter in the darkness,” I said quietly.
Hallelujah crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Dreams have more meaning when you have to fight for them,” he said. “That’s why folks like my father choose to stay. They know they have a right to be here, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make those rights equal.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
WHEN I WAS LITTLE, WATCHING A TEENAGE AUNT BELLE grow into womanhood, I thought she was the toughest, bravest person I knew. Papa was certainly right about her having grit. Unlike Mama and the rest of my aunts, Aunt Belle was never afraid of Ma Pearl. Aunt Ruthie told me once that she had the same opportunity as Aunt Belle—to go to Saint Louis and become a beautician. She said every time Great-Aunt Isabelle came to Mississippi, Aunt Ruthie would do her hair. And every time, Great-Aunt Isabelle would say to Ma Pearl, “Sweet, you need to let me take this girl back to Saint Louis. I’ll send her to beauty school so she can get licensed to do hair and make a decent living for herself. She won’t need much training with all the talent she already got.” And every time, Ma Pearl refused, even when Great-Aunt Isabelle suggested allowing Aunt Ruthie to be trained as a chef rather than a beautician. But the vocation didn’t really matter. Aunt Ruthie said that Ma Pearl was too suspicious of Great-Aunt Isabelle, convincing herself that her spinster sister-in-law made her money running a brothel rather than a boarding house.
“She ain’t go’n take my daughter to the city and ruin her,” Ma Pearl had said.
So Aunt Ruthie ended up marrying Slow John instead and became a punching bag rather than a beautician, a chef, or “ruined.”
When Great-Aunt Isabelle saw the same talent in Aunt Belle, she asked Ma Pearl again to let her take the child back to Saint Louis with her. Again, Ma Pearl said no. At age nineteen, Aunt Belle—who had hidden away half the money she earned caring for various white women’s children and ironing the shirts of various white women’s husbands—packed her bags and caught a train to Saint Louis without Ma Pearl’s blessings. Yes, Aunt Belle had grit. Which is why I was so surprised to see her sitting, doubled over on the sofa in the parlor, her head in Monty’s lap, sobbing so hard that her body quaked.
Monty, rubbing her back, looked as if he, too, might cry any minute.
The trial for the two white men who had killed Emmett Till was over. And just as Hallelujah had predicted, the jury had set them free.
For as long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the looks on Aunt Belle’s and Monty’s faces when they walked through the front door. It was as if they had returned from a funeral. In a sense, I guess it could’ve been considered a funeral, seeing how hope had died that day.
“It was all a farce,” Aunt Belle said, her voice choked and garbled with tears. “The whole trial was just for show. They never planned to convict those men.”
Monty said nothing. With his eyes cast downward, he only nodded and rubbed her back.
Aunt Belle raised her head and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Did you see them kissing? Did you see that evil devil and his wife stand right there in front of a camera and lock their faces together for all the world to see? Like they were having a private moment in their own bedroom?”
Monty sniffed back a sob and answered hoarsely, “Yeah, baby. I saw.”
“If anybody did any flirting in that store,” Aunt Belle said, her teeth clenched, “it was probably that little tramp herself.”
“Calm down, baby,” Monty told her. “Don’t make yourself sick over this.”
“I’m not making myself sick. That mockery of a trial just made me sick.” She sniffed and said, “And those two murderers smoking cigars like they just had babies? Disgusting.”
“Cheering and clapping like they had won an election,” Monty said icily.
“Well, they won all right. They certainly left me feeling defeated.”
Defeated. That’s what we were. Every last Negro, not just in Mississippi, but in the nation. Even the northern Negroes, with their entourage of cameras and notebooks, NAACP leaders and prominent members, congressmen and dignitaries, couldn’t defeat the Jim Crow ways of Mississippi.
It made my heart sick to see Aunt Belle so broken and to see so many people’s hopes crushed. Aunt Belle had lost money while she was down here that additional two weeks. Monty, who had already used up all his vacation when he came with Aunt Belle in August, took time off without pay. He even said he risked losing his job. How many others, I wondered, had lost time and money for this trial, only to hear a Mississippi jury say, “Not guilty.”
“Less than an hour,” Aunt Belle whispered. “It took them less than an hour to come back out and tell that lie.”
“One hour and eight minutes, to be exact,” Monty said. He then added, in a southern drawl, “‘And that’s ’cause we stopped to drink sody pop. If we hadna been thusty, we coulda been done in a few minutes.’”
At Monty’s joke, Aunt Belle chuckled like a sad clown. “Did those fools really believe the NAACP would dig up a corpse and put it in the river?”
“Of course they didn’t,” Monty said. “You heard the attorney: ‘Every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to set these men free in the face of this preshuh. Yoah ancestahs would absolutely turn over in their graves if you don’t set these boys loose. We have got to use our legal system to protect our God-given freedoms.’”
Monty’s rendition of the trial in a southern accent obviously calmed Aunt Belle’s nerves a bit. She sat up and wiped her face with a handkerchief instead of her hand. “Well, their Anglo-Saxon ancestors are about to do a lot of turning now, because Negroes are not about to let this thing rest. Those two might have gotten away with murder, but things are about to change in Mississippi.”
“Not just Mississippi,” said Monty, “but the South.”
“Something’s about to
happen,” I whispered.
“What?” Aunt Belle asked.
“Something’s about to happen,” I said, louder. “That’s what Miss Addie kept saying.”
“Miss Addie, the old midwife?” asked Aunt Belle.
I nodded. “She said something was about to shake up Mississippi.”
“Humph,” Aunt Belle said, her expression questioning. “Maybe that old woman really does have a sixth sense after all.”
“Well, whether the old lady is a soothsayer or not,” said Monty, “something’s gotta change.”
“You ain’t even from here,” Ma Pearl blurted out as she stormed into the parlor, wiping her hands on a dishrag. “Why you care so much about what Mississippi do?”
Monty nodded at Ma Pearl. “And a good afternoon to you too, Mrs. Carter.”
Ma Pearl snorted. “Northern and uppity is what you is, boy. Folks like you is the reason them peckerwoods is walking free rat now.”
Monty pointed at his chest and said, “It’s because of folks like me that there was ever a trial in the first place.”
“You dirn right,” Ma Pearl said, undaunted. “If that lil’ uppity Chicago boy hadn’t been up in that sto’ running his mouth, he would be with his mama ’stead of in a grave.”
“Lord Jesus, have mercy!” Aunt Belle said. She threw up her hands. “Let me get out of this crazy woman’s house before I start to hate her.”
Ma Pearl, her face like flint, her hands in fists, leaned toward Aunt Belle. “If you cain’t take the truth, go on back up there where you run off to in the first place. I ain’t never ast you to come back to my house. You the one keep running back this way.”
Both Monty and Aunt Belle seemed to spring from the sofa at the same time. But Aunt Belle faced down Ma Pearl. “We’ll be more than happy to get out of this hellhole,” she said. “I don’t know why I’ve wasted so much time here in the first place. Mississippi will never change because of Negroes like you, Mama. You’re the same kind of Negro that helped those two men kidnap and kill Emmett Till. Won’t even register and exercise your right to vote. So in love with that white woman that she ain’t even got to wipe her own behind. Before her stuff even hits the toilet, you there waiting with a wad of tissue in your hand to take care of it for her.”
Midnight Without a Moon Page 17
