Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  walk a little longer

  By I. L. Williams

  The colored people of this community are still exercising common sense and demonstrating the enviable quality of self-respect. There are forty thousand Negroes in Austin, and we believe we are safe in saying that the streetcar companies do not haul one hundred of them in the course of a week. We are purchasing buggies, carts, horses and mules; and in cases where we are not able to purchase any of these things we are taking the time to walk.

  The Negroes of this city are more united in efforts to discourage “Jim-Crowism” than they have ever been against any project of any kind. Men, women, and children are fully determined that we will not ride until the Union Transportation Company, a Negro business enterprise that came into existence for the purpose of affording relief, has turned loose the motor cars for our accommodation. Five of these cars are now on the road, and as soon as the patronage warrants it as many more will be purchased. The Willetson woman who rides on the “Jim Crow” streetcar for any purpose after these motor cars have been pressed into service is, to all intents and purposes, an enemy to her race.

  We desire to live peaceably with our white neighbors. They have passed the law creating the “Jim Crow” section. We do not wish to violate the law, and we are certain that we will not violate it if we stay off the cars. Most of the streetcar conductors have no respect for women; they delight to insult and make attempts to humiliate us. Many streetcar conductors feel that, because they are white, they have the right to assault women. There has been trouble of this kind already. We do not wish for more.

  The Herald admonishes Willetson women to stay off the cars by all means. The motor cars will arrive in a few days; the Negroes will be afforded the relief that we so much desire, and we will all be further removed from the possibility of insults and friction, on account of the iniquitous “Jim Crow” law. In view of such relief, we can afford to walk a little longer.

  “Excellent,” Ona said of the article. “I wouldn’t change a word of it! And that reminds me . . . I have something for you.” She reached into her bag for the May 1876 issue of the Austin Gold Dollar. The newspaper, yellow from age but still legible, had thrived for four years in the Wheatville area of the city. After the death of an elderly neighbor, Ona had acquired several copies found in the neighbor’s possessions. Ivoe drew the paper up to her face, inhaled deeply, and laughed.

  In a flash, Ona glimpsed an image of the child Ivoe had been. Strong affection tumbled forth. Her arm brushed against Ivoe’s as she moved her chair closer, pointing out every aspect of the paper she had analyzed. The plainest typeface had been chosen. Extra space had been inserted between each single letter—“to decrease reading difficulty but also to encourage the illiterate.” Editor Jacob Fontaine focused his journal on the needs of freed slaves: advice for reestablishing family ties, education, moral and religious discipline, and racial justice. She was most touched by the brief editorial on the front page. A twenty-year separation from family, caused by slavery, had ended in rich symbolism when the paper’s founder received a gold dollar from his sister at their reunion.

  Side by side, Ivoe tried to ignore the pull of blouse fabric against Miss Durden’s bosom. She studied the beautiful slender hands turning the pages, suppressed the urge to cover a hand with her own. The impulse to confess how she had thought of the teacher every day, often multiple times and with great pleasure, perched on the tip of her tongue. She feigned incredible interest in the newspaper. Repeatedly leaning into the teacher made her feel warm and sweet like the inside of a favorite room filled by a butterscotch sun.

  As Ivoe prepared to leave the printing shed, Ona seized the moment to share an opportunity she could recommend to no other student.

  “The University of Texas is once again opening a few spaces for colored students to attend a journalism camp this summer. In previous years, one or two students from Willetson were accepted. You should apply.”

  Ivoe smiled before a look of doubt took hold. “My parents were hardly able to make up the difference of my scholarship. We can’t afford any extra schooling.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We will take up a collection among Willetson faculty if you are accepted. If that doesn’t solve it, I will solicit the clubwomen. To live with dignity and also find work that brings a little joy is almost impossible, but something tells me that you, Ivoe, specialize in the wholly impossible.” Noting the nervous look on the girl’s face, Ona reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “On our best day none of us truly knows how great our potential is. We are so much more than the selves we doubt.”

  “I wish I had the courage you have.”

  Ona looked unflinchingly into Ivoe’s eyes. “You will have it when you need it. It’s in your character.”

  .

  For weeks Berdis had looked for Ivoe in their love and saw her nowhere in it. Ivoe had attended only one recital the whole school year and had arrived late to her final concert. While others celebrated graduation, she had failed to pull Ivoe away from the newspaper, or keep her from running to Miss Durden with drafts of the journalism camp application. Not even promised trips to their creek distracted. Now, standing in the doorway of the printing shed, she felt foolish for leaving her last music lesson early. The old hen knew how to keep Ivoe by her side. She watched Miss Durden lean across the table to brush her thumb against the ink smudged on Ivoe’s cheek and draw Ivoe’s face close to whisper in her ear—something that made Ivoe break into peals of laughter. Without waiting for Ivoe to collect herself, Miss Durden announced her return that evening to celebrate their last publication for Willetson, nodding to Berdis on her way out.

  Ivoe smiled to herself, tempted to swap her article for the comical story Miss Durden had just shared. Last week a meeting had convened at New Hope Baptist Church. Maps were disseminated, marking stations along each beautiful tree-shaded avenue in Austin’s exclusive Hyde Park, where deeds prohibited Negroes from renting or buying property. Hackmen received notice to feed their horses a generous dose of alfalfa mash and Epsom salts. Those who drove foals and stallions were especially encouraged to participate since their drays defecated twice as much as mares. Draymen were advised to assemble in pairs outside of businesses. Directions ended with: “Pray for rain!”

  On a typical spring day the sun would dry out the mounds as quickly as they were laid. The following morning’s shower started as a drizzle, but by the time draymen were in place, the clouds had burst. Residents watched in horror as manure—kept fresh by the rain—flecked their neighborhood. Patients from the nearby State Lunatic Asylum were agitated by the odor and doctors feared facility unrest. More than a hundred policemen were deployed to the malodorous scene yet no arrests were made. Where would they put the horses? Handed a ticket by an officer at the Hyde Park Presbyterian Church, an Avenue B drayman uttered a now-famous line: “Been paying a poll tax since 1902. A shit tax this one time won’t kill me.”

  Now, as Ivoe worked on her final Herald issue, she amused herself with befitting headlines:

  “Locust Swarms Migrate to Heavenly Hyde Park—Attracted by Manure Mounds!”

  “Colored Dray Horses Shit-Out White Residents!”

  “Shit! Shit! And More Shit for Wealthy Hyde Parkers, Cries the Colored Hackman!”

  She was laughing to herself when she felt a hand on her back.

  “Finished soon? We don’t want to be late,” Berdis said in an upbeat tone that disguised her sulkiness.

  Ivoe read her watch—a quarter past noon. She had planned to be finished in time to attend the picnic but now felt rushed and resentful. The typesetting of her article and several others lay ahead. She wanted to tell Berdis that the issue was taking longer than anticipated and—her speech rehearsal ended as Berdis sat down beside her, cupping her chin in her hand.

  “One more hour,” Ivoe snapped. In the last few months she had grown irritated by Berdis’s insistence
that they do all things together and be all things for each other. “Maybe two. Really, you shouldn’t miss it. Go without me—Bird . . . wait!” She lurched to her feet, envelope in hand. “I hardly deserve to be in your good graces but my application has to be mailed today and I’ll be here . . . who knows how long.”

  “Of course.” Fabricating a necessary trip to the post office, Berdis pocketed the two cents. On her way to the picnic, she threw the envelope in the trash.

  The mailbox lid slammed shut. Ivoe waved to the postman in hope that he had delivered a letter from Austin. For two weeks she had awaited news of her camp acceptance. Agitation pushed against her optimism: in haste she had miswritten the address, or Berdis had forgotten to mail it. She found no envelope in the mailbox, only a bundle of last week’s Enterprise from Miss Susan. She settled back on the porch with the stack of papers.

  A series of shrill barks pierced the quiet, sending Bunk to the edge of the porch to gaze ahead and growl. A hundred yards from the iron fence and a team of bloodhounds, a curious construction had held her attention for days. The structure was too small for a work shed and lacked ventilation for a chicken coop. Today they had painted and closed the entrance to the big black box that, according to Papa, was eight by ten feet. A search for a clue in every paper on her lap turned up nothing.

  James Williams’s family and other neighbors once lived across the road. Now a look in that direction made Ivoe think of a mouthful of bad teeth, gaps where cabins used to be. From the clipping Momma had sent to her at school, she had envisioned a crude prison built of rough lumber like the one-room county jail in Starkville. But in the distance was a crenellated castle, the grandest building in Burleson County. A round turret with a conical roof encircled by a pressed metal cornice gave the prison a fairy-tale air. The jailer’s family residence occupied the ground floor; the second and third stories contained the infirmary and cells for 280 inmates. According to a member of Old Elam, a deliveryman who transported dry goods to the prison and claimed to have received a tour, a trapdoor was included on the third floor, to be used as a hanging gallows.

  .

  Ivoe despaired at the fact that Little Tunis’s only point of interest was the prison. Choices for social interaction that expanded the mind were few: a sewing circle or the juke, where Timbo claimed drinking too much corn likker imparted as much wisdom as any Willetson teacher. In her first week home, she had tried the Hagar Sewing Circle, but found the conversation unbearable. According to the circle, the only places a woman ever heard or felt anything worthwhile were during prayer or in the bedroom. They were a chorus with only two notes—men and church—but the life she envisioned did not hinge on these things. She craved the company of women who read and talked about books, knew music other than the spirituals; women who aspired to go to Paris—France, not Texas. Her idea to start a literary society like that Miss Durden belonged to mostly fell on deaf ears; its sole recipient was Miss Stokes, with whom she exchanged views regularly. Her common complaint: their embarrassing reliance on a few scriptures and a hymn. They were too content to moan and gasp and call on Jesus while colored people in Austin protested and formed fraternal organizations to aid themselves in the struggle for rights and protection. How many conversations had she suffered where a woman shared a problem only to silence her solutions with: “I’ll put it in God’s hands.” “If Jesus don’t fix it, it’ll stay broke.” Or her favorite: “If it’s the Lord’s will,” as if they had no will of their own. She didn’t know which was worse—blind faith or the sanguine thinking of Sister Brown, who was just biding her time on earth because she would reap her true rewards in heaven. It didn’t matter that Mr. Brown beat her and frightened his children half to death. Worse yet were the ones who loved to tell you how good God was while they made do with as little as one could imagine. Colored religion was the white man’s most clever tactic yet. A new form of Uncle Tomming. It burned Ivoe up. Lord, woe is me—instead of pulling together and doing something to change the course of their lives, like colored Austin and their boycott.

  There had been no way of knowing the trouble that a rigorous education brings. Her ideas had nowhere to go in Little Tunis. She mourned Willetson and Miss Durden, who had been from day one both pin and cushion. When would she—where would she—ever encounter someone who knew how to prod her and the precise moment and manner of necessary help? She longed for laughter with the teacher. Ona Durden’s laugh hit you like the Galveston Giant in a match against Joe Jeannette. If sitting when struck by something comical, she would slap her thigh, the table, any surface. If standing when something funny struck, she bent her knees a little, as if about to dance, and pitched forward, rocking back on her heels. Either way, a warm golden sound, shrill around the edges, wailed from her throat like a trumpet. Her eyes lit up and she covered her mouth, embarrassed for taking all the joy out of the room though her laugh returned it tenfold.

  .

  The wild scrawl on the envelope jolted Ivoe.

  South-By-God, Texas, Near Matamoros, Mexico

  June 30, 1907

  Dear Ivoe,

  On the trip to Louisiana I had the most wonderful fortune of meeting my husband. I have never known a colored man like him. He is completely uninterested in owning anything. With hands more beautiful than my own, he is very opposed to physical labor. He plans to see the world in his capacity as a manager to the finest musicians. I am the first musician he will attend to. Exactly what it means to have myself attended to I will devise shortly. He promises that I will play in all the great concert halls in the world, starting in Mexico City. Let us hope the Negro is better treated there.

  Your Bird

  A sense of despair overcame Ivoe that had little to do with the marriage. Soon audiences in foreign countries would hear Berdis play while further study—let alone a career—in journalism eluded her. She had no clue how or where to begin the life Willetson had prepared her to lead. She was stuck and lonely while Berdis was on her way to becoming a woman of the world, making good on their graduation vow to each other to walk in silk attire and have silver to spare.

  A week had passed since Miss Durden’s disappointing news: she had appealed to the university to consider a second application from Ivoe but her recommendation was not enough. Still, the teacher’s letter had ended on a note of encouragement:

  . . . Austinites boycotted so effectively that notices were sent to all the colored churches notifying us that we may ride in any portion of the car we desire. The Statesman reported on the rescinded ordinance (enclosed). It should not be forgotten that the defeat of the “Jim Crow” car bill was aided in no small part by your articles. You may have arrived at Willetson a Little Tunis girl but you departed a race woman.

  Off to water my rhodies—so beautiful you almost have to lie down on the ground when you pass them.

  Carry on . . .

  Ona

  .

  Crinkled lavender blossoms rained on Ivoe along the wooden sidewalk of Main Street. At Planters & Merchants Bank, a well-dressed man alighted his carriage as a distant rumble changed to a passing roar and, finally, to the low hum of the twenty-mile railroad transporting cotton-filled locomotives to Houston. In the spinning wheel shop, a carpenter emptied a box of spokes on a table while heaps of laundry awaited folding by the colored maid at the boardinghouse. Behind the Church of the Epiphany wild rye, blown by a rare morning breeze, hovered over three fallen peaches as Ivoe stepped inside the office of the Starkville Enterprise. She stood, unnoticed, at the first desk, thinking of Miss Durden’s recent letter—she should assert herself but not clamor for opportunity. Too much clamoring might drive it away, like a person you love too much and put at a distance.

  “Ma’am, I am here to see about a job,” Ivoe said.

  Edna Standish, secretary and wife to the paper’s owner, wondered where the girl before her had gotten the notion that the newspaper was hiring—and a colored person at that?
Before she could ask, Ivoe handed her a letter of reference, several clippings from the Herald, and a recent essay in response to A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools, Judge Albion Tourgée’s fictional retelling of his experiences in the South during Reconstruction. Pluck and graceful carriage earned her an invitation to sit down while Mrs. Standish read the fancy scrawl over fine stationery. Zilpha Stokes hadn’t changed. The voice that championed her students on signs posted around town after the colored school burned down years ago—the same voice that compelled her to donate newspapers—now spoke to her from the page in elaborate detail about the virtues of Miss Ivoe Williams. She’d have to wage an unnecessary battle with her husband, but the girl spoke well enough. If she was as clever as the teacher claimed, or as she herself evidently believed, what harm could it do?

  “Errands . . . and some of the unpleasant duties the office requires. The pay certainly won’t give you bragging rights.”

  Unlike many newspapers that sprung up to advance a politician’s campaign then dissolved after Election Day, the Starkville Enterprise had longevity and a steady pool of subscribers. For a small-town paper, its reputation shone like polished silver on account of solid news coverage and editorials reprinted in the Caldwell Post and the Bryan Daily News. Ivoe’s duties with the press that held the distinction of “oldest democratic newspaper” in Central East Texas belied its progressive beliefs on equality between the races. (She filed papers, answered telephones, complied with any thankless task.) A newspaper founded on the republican ideals of Lincoln and Douglass might’ve been a better fit, yet she felt kindled by the office chatter, the buzz of fast typing, the clatter of the press machines beneath rattling floorboards. She relished hauling heavy boxes, or any chore that brought her to the lift, where she could hear the pages humming off the press bed. She pushed the call button, waited until Wendell, the colored lift operator, loaded the freight and reversed its direction, driving up a gust of ink-scented air that reminded her of Willetson.