WHAP! With every ounce of strength in her huge body, Ma Pearl swung her fist into Aunt Belle’s jaw and knocked her across the room. Aunt Belle crashed in the corner, scattering dust and Sears and Roebuck catalogs across the floor.
“Belle!” Monty screamed.
Sprawled on the floor, Aunt Belle moaned and rubbed her jaw. Monty rushed to her and lifted her upper body off the floor. He smoothed Aunt Belle’s hair from her face. “Baby, you all right?”
Still rubbing her jaw, Aunt Belle, with closed eyes, could only moan.
Monty stared up at Ma Pearl. “Woman, have you lost your mind?”
“Talk to yo’ girlfriend. She done lost her mind talking to me like that in my own house.”
Monty cradled Aunt Belle’s head. “I can’t believe you hit your own daughter,” he said, staring at Ma Pearl as if he wanted to do the same to her.
“Hit you, too, if you talk to me like that in my own house.”
I rushed over to Monty when I saw him struggling to get Aunt Belle to the sofa. We lifted Aunt Belle, who was still moaning, onto the sofa. “I’ll put some cold water on a towel for her face,” I said.
Ma Pearl pointed at me. “Don’t you take not one chip of ice from my icebox either. You better make do with pump water.”
At that moment Papa entered the parlor. He had washed up and changed his clothes as he prepared to eat supper. “Pearl,” he said, his brows raised, “what’s going on in here?”
“Paul, you wouldn’t believe what that gal just said to me.” Ma Pearl pointed at Aunt Belle and said, “She done called me everything but a child of God.”
“Mr. Carter,” Monty said, “I assure you that Belle was only responding to Mrs. Carter’s antagonistic ways. Under normal circumstances, there is no way she would use such fresh language in the presence of her elders.”
“Hold on a minute, son,” Papa said, his palms raised. “I’m a country boy. Speak to me with plain words.”
“Ma Pearl started it,” I said. My hands shot up to my mouth, knowing they were already too late to stop the words.
Ma Pearl stormed toward me.
But rather than Papa, Monty stopped her. “If you even think about putting your hands on this child, woman, I will deal with you myself.”
A lump rose in my throat.
Papa grabbed Ma Pearl by the shoulders. “Pearl, it’s time for you to head back to the kitchen. Rose, go get that wet towel for Baby Susta’s jaw,” he said to me.
After having subverted Ma Pearl, I knew to use the front door and walk all the way around the house to the pump rather than get water from the bucket in the kitchen. By the time I returned with the towel, Papa was sitting in his chair with his unlit tobacco-filled pipe in his mouth.
Aunt Belle was stretched out on the sofa, her head resting in Monty’s lap as he and Papa chatted. The Sears and Roebuck catalogs were, again, neatly stacked in the corner.
I handed Monty the towel, and he placed it on Aunt Belle’s jaw.
“You all right?” I asked her.
“Um-hmm,” she replied, half moaning, her words garbled. “I bith my tongue. But I’m okay. She’s beath me worth with that blat strapth of hers.”
The black strap of terror, its sting worse than that of a thousand hornets. I shivered as I recalled the many lashes I had received from it myself.
“She had no right to hit you with her fist like a man,” Monty said.
“I shouldnth sassth my mama,” Aunt Belle replied. “I was raisth bettha.”
Monty smoothed a curl from her face. “Stop trying to talk and rest that swollen jaw. Can’t have you looking like Frankenstein.”
“Donth makth me laugth,” Aunt Belle said, chuckling. “It hurths.”
“So they ain’t going to prison,” Papa said softly.
His words snapped Monty and Aunt Belle out of their banter and back to reality.
“No, sir, Mr. Carter, they’re not,” Monty said, the grimness returning to his face. “A jury of their peers found them not guilty. They get to go home, back to their families, back to being the good citizens of Mississippi that they always have been.”
Monty’s sarcasm hung in the air like thick perfume. Good citizens of Mississippi. Good citizens who had put a northern Negro in his place and sent a message to the rest of the country: Mississippi makes its own rules, and nobody can make us do otherwise, not the NAACP, not the Negro press, not even the president of the United States. We can kill all the Negroes we want. You can make us have a trial, but you can’t make us find our white citizens guilty.
“Mr. Carter, you registered to vote?” Monty asked, his eyes squinting, challenging Papa.
Papa removed his pipe and shook his head no, even though he knew Monty already knew the answer to that question. “What good would it do, son?”
“Do you know why that jury was all white, Mr. Carter?”
“ ’Cause they always is,” Papa answered.
Monty grimaced. “Because there are no Negroes registered to vote in Tallahatchie County, Mr. Carter. That’s why the jury was all white.”
Papa placed his pipe back in his mouth as he considered Monty’s words. The only noise in the house at that moment was the distant clanking of pots and pans as Ma Pearl released her fury in the kitchen. Finally a hearty laugh rocked Papa’s lanky body. I had never seen him laugh so hard, not even when he occasionally read the funny pages. When he finally composed himself, he asked Monty wearily, “Young man, do you really think they woulda ’lowed a colored man in that jury box?”
“Of course not,” Monty answered. “But at least we could have made a case for it.”
“Every colored man in the county coulda been on the courthouse reg’stry as voters. Still wouldn’ta made a diff’rence,” said Papa.
“Will you even consider it, Mr. Carter?”
“Trying to git on the voting reg’ster?”
“Yes,” Monty said, nodding. “Signing up. Registering to vote.”
“Son, I have a family to provide for. Gittin’ shot down at the courthouse won’t put food on the table.”
Aunt Belle raised her head slightly. “How can anythinth chane if our people won’th voth?”
As the room went silent, I imagined Papa, aging and hunched over, walking up the courthouse steps in Greenwood. The next thing he knows, a bullet strikes him in the back. Then another. Then another. They keep hitting him, even after he has fallen and tumbled down the stairs.
“When I’m old enough, I’ll register to vote,” I said. Everyone stared at me, not saying a word. “Papa’s right. He has a family to take care of. He can’t take chances like that. It’s the young folks who have to take a stand while we can. Before we have families depending on us.”
When Monty smiled and said, “Good for you, Rose,” my heart melted. And it melted for two reasons. One, Monty was handsome and smart, and I was glad he was about to marry my favorite aunt. And two, I thought about Levi Jackson and how, simply because he wanted to vote, he was shot and killed. What if that happened to me and I never got a chance to even vote in the first place? What good was my name on some voters’ list if I was dead? Fear rose up in my throat at the thought of something so daring. Now I understood why folks were fleeing to the North rather than staying and fighting. Why die in Mississippi when you could live up north?
But everybody couldn’t leave, or wouldn’t—like Papa, who seemed to be perfectly content with living and dying in Mississippi. I had never asked him before, but that moment seemed as good as any to pose the question.
“Papa, how come you didn’t leave?”
“Mississippi is home, daughter,” he said. “I’m a farmer. I loves the land. I loves the fresh air. My animals. The cotton.”
“Do you love working for that white man living in his mansion down the road?” Monty asked, his sarcasm lingering in the air again.
“Matter of fact, I do,” said Papa. “I loved working for his daddy, too. Every white person ain’t full o’ evil, son.”
I thought about the day after Levi’s death, when I went to the Robinsons’ and Mr. Robinson was hosting a meeting for the White Citizens’ Council. From what Hallelujah had told me about the group, how they wanted to make sure the government didn’t interfere with the way things were in Mississippi, I couldn’t help but side with Monty.
“I didn’t say he was evil,” Monty said. “But you have to agree that the living conditions are unfair.”
Papa raised his brows. “Who told you life was fair? You think ’cause a man don’t live in a mansion he can’t be happy? I never go to bed hungry, son. I ain’t never went without clothes on my back. And this roof over my head don’t leak. This furniture,” he said, gesturing around the room, “I didn’t pay a dime for it, but it sets as good as anything you can git in one of them catalogs lying there on the floor.”
Monty was silent.
“Mr. Robinson never done me no wrong, son,” Papa said quietly. “Neither his father. They were both good to me.”
Aunt Belle threw in her garbled two cents. “They oughth thue be. Everythinth they own is becauth of Negroes workin’ them fieldths.”
“Daughter, I ain’t complaining,” Papa said. “This is where the good Lord saw fit for Paul Elias Carter to be born, right here in Stillwater, Mississippi. He knowed I’d love the land before I was even here. He shaped me in my mother’s womb and fitted me to farm. And with that I’m happy. With that I’m content. Ain’t no shame in serving others.”
When nobody said anything else, Papa continued. “The minute I saw you,” he said to Aunt Belle, smiling, “I knowed you’d be like Isabelle. That’s why I wanted to call you Belle. Isabelle was never happy with the land. She hated the outdoors. She hated the fields. She wouldn’t even plant a garden or go fishin’. She loved taking care of the house. But she always wanted one of her own. A big one. The first chance she got, she caught that train to Saint Louis and took a job housekeeping for that old white man after his wife died. When he died, his chi’ren give that house to Isabelle. She made herself a living by opening that house up and serving others.”
Aunt Belle’s face hardened. “Doesth Mama know thath?”
Papa nodded. “She know.”
“Humph,” Aunt Belle said with a grunt.
This land is your land. This land is my land. Maybe that’s why the ninth-grade teacher wanted the class to do a patriotic play and sing that song. Perhaps she, like Papa, considered Mississippi home. This land was her land as much as it was any white person’s land. Mississippi. This land was my land too. And I had a right not to let anybody chase me away from it the way they had done Mama and Mr. Pete. All that land. And he sold it to rent something called an apartment.
A battle raged within me. What if I remained in Mississippi and never became more than a field worker or some white woman’s maid? What if I never finished school? I admired Papa for his strength. For his contentment. But I couldn’t emulate it. I knew I could never be happy living in a shack on some white man’s cotton plantation. Nor could I be happy living in a town where I had to look down at the ground whenever I saw a white person approaching. I couldn’t be happy living in a place where I was made to feel less than human. Either things had to change in Mississippi, or I had to leave it. Someday.
“What about me, Papa?” I asked. “What did you think when I was born?”
A smile spread across Papa’s face. But before he could speak, Aunt Belle chimed in. “I rememberth when thu were born,” she said, smiling.
Monty patted her hand and said, “Rest that jaw, baby.”
“Soon as old Addie left the room, Belle ran in there to see you. You was as pink as you could be,” Papa said, laughing. “Belle begged Anna Mae to call you Rose.”
“You did?” I asked Aunt Belle.
She nodded and said, “Rotha. I called you Rotha.”
“Rosa?” I asked.
Aunt Belle smiled and nodded.
“How did it get to be Rose?” I asked.
“Pearl,” Papa answered briskly. “She said Rosa wadn’t a real name.” He paused and chuckled. “Old Addie wrote Rosa on the birth record anyway,” he said, “no matter how many times Pearl told her your name was Rose.”
“She still calls me that,” I said. “Hallelujah, too.”
“Rosa,” Monty piped in. “It’s Italian. Comes from Rose of Viterbo, a saint from Italy. But the name also means ‘dew.’”
“Like the stuff on the grass in the morning?” I asked.
Monty nodded. “Like the dew in the morning, gently refreshing the earth. The bearers of this name tend to want to analyze and understand the world. They search for deeper truths than simply what’s on the surface.” He winked at me and said, “Rosa. I like that. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, right?”
I smiled. Maybe having a walking, talking Encyclopedia Britannica as an uncle wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Monty turned to Papa. “Mr. Carter, why isn’t this girl in school?”
Papa fumbled for words. He removed his pipe from his mouth and, staring at the ceiling, scratched his chin, which I doubted even itched.
During the past three weeks, while I watched Queen and Fred Lee rise and dress for school and I dressed for the field, I had wondered the same thing: Why wasn’t Papa fighting for my right to be in school? Why was he allowing Ma Pearl to force me to settle for only a seventh-grade education when he himself had regarded education important enough to teach himself to read and write? I had asked him about it only once, and he’d replied that I was where I was needed most. It turned out he had the same reply for Monty.
“Rose is where I needs her most right now,” he said. But then he added, “She’ll go to school, soon as the harvest is in.”
My eyebrows shot up. “I will?”
Papa nodded and said, “You will.”
“I won’t have to stay home and help Ma Pearl?”
Papa shook his head. “Pearl’ll be a’right. The good Lawd’ll send her the help she need.”
Tears rushed to my eyes. I was going to school when the cotton was picked. I might be late starting, but at least I was going. I wanted to rush to Papa and hug him. But that was something I’d never done before, and I knew I was too old to start. So I simply whispered a choked “Thank you.”
But Monty sat up straight on the sofa. “Mr. Carter, on my many drives throughout this county, I’ve seen plenty of Negro men who could take Rose’s place in that field. These men have nothing better to do than play checkers in front of a country store.”
Papa placed his pipe back in his mouth. “Them mens expects to be paid.”
“Then pay them,” Monty said.
Papa glared at Monty. “I already hired all the extras I could afford. I can’t hire no mo’.”
“But why Rose and not Fred Lee and Queen?” asked Monty. “Wouldn’t you have harvested faster with the extra help?”
“Because Rose is apt,” Papa said. “She don’t need no school to learn. She’ll find a way to get her learning, just like Belle did. Queen and Fret’Lee don’t have them kind of smarts. If I keep them outta school even for the harvest, they’d soon give up. They’d accept that way of life. But not Rose. She know how to make a way outta no way.” Papa’s expression brightened a bit when he said, “Even now she’ll catch up and outrun every child in that school.”
“But why now?” asked Monty. “Why have you suddenly decided she should go when the cotton is picked?”
Papa scowled and said, “ ’Cause a Negro without proper schooling ain’t nothing to the white man but a nigger.”
Smiling, Monty turned to me and said, “I hear you’ve been considering a fresh start.”
I gave him a questioning stare.
“Saint Louis?” he answered, his brows raised.
“I …” was all I could say before the words jumbled up in my mouth and refused to come out. I glanced at Aunt Belle. Like Monty, she was smiling.
“Belle and I have been talking,” Monty said. “She tol
d me about your conversation when we were here a few weeks ago.”
“Our … conversation,” I stammered, glancing from Monty to Aunt Belle, then back again.
“I gaith whath you askth me thome thought,” Aunt Belle said.
Monty patted her on the knee, reminding her to rest her jaw. “The last time we were here,” he said to me, “we weren’t prepared to take you back. But after giving your request some thought and talking it over,” he said as he glanced lovingly at Aunt Belle, “we’d love to have you in Saint Louis.” He nodded at Papa and said, “That is, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Carter.”
My heart raced. I should have been smiling, leaping for joy at Monty’s words, but instead, my stomach churned with nervousness. Since the day Mr. Pete took Mama away in his train of a car, I had wanted nothing more than to go with them. To live a life up north. A life I could experience only from the way colored people from up north dressed, from the way they talked, even down to the way they laughed—which was vastly different from the way things were for colored people in the South. I couldn’t believe the door to that good life was suddenly standing open before me. Monty and Aunt Belle were asking me, Rose Lee Carter, to go back to Saint Louis with them.
Like me, Papa seemed to have lost his ability to speak. He sat there, his expression unreadable, staring at Monty. When he didn’t respond after what seemed to be more than a minute, Monty spoke. “We’ll of course wait till after the harvest, if you’d like.” He smiled at me and said, “What do you say to the first week of November, Rose?”
Good thing I was sitting, else I would have hit the floor. Not only were my knees weak, but my whole body seemed to have melted like warmed butter. Here was my chance to leave Mississippi, and my emotions were in a whirlwind. Especially when I saw the look in Papa’s eyes. It was the same look of defeat that held Aunt Belle captive when Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were set free from the charge of murdering Emmett Till.
“Papa,” I said softly. “You want me to go?”
Midnight Without a Moon Page 18
