Minnie and the Williams family were the only colored guests to remain for the reception, during which Lemon eyed the silver for spots. None. The china gleamed. Minnie had done her best. Even the tomato aspic with homemade mayonnaise almost tasted like something.
On the way home with her family, Ivoe thought about the small kindnesses of Susan Stark—the books given to her through the years, the skirts and dresses she had taken to Willetson and still wore. The best gift had been their last conversation. The talk with Miss Susan had the uncanny ability of strengthening her backbone. Once again she had assembled her articles from the Willetson Herald and a letter in which she spoke of her education and eagerness to write for a newspaper or to print one. Yesterday morning, before Minnie brought the news of Miss Susan’s passing, she rose early to mail the letter and those addressed to the colored Texas Freeman and other papers in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Missouri—none sealed with as much hope as the envelope bound for Kansas City.
“Far as whites go, Miss Susan wasn’t all bad,” Papa said.
“Ssth. Wasn’t all good either.”
Papa cleared his throat. “Well now, Lemon, hold on. My Good Book don’t say you got to be perfect to enter the pearly gates. What yours say?”
May-Belle chuckled. “If Alfred Stark up there and she headed that way, I know he ain’t none too pleased about it. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise when he was alive. She liable to talk him to his second death.”
At that moment Irabelle realized the feeling of loss had nothing to do with Miss Susan’s death. She pictured her clarinet on the piano stool in the parlor a half mile away. Papa said it could wait until tomorrow, but Momma meant for her to learn responsibility. “Ivoe, you go on with her,” Papa said. But Momma meant for her to learn responsibility alone: “Ivoe don’t need to go. Ivoe didn’t leave nothing.”
“Can Bunk go with me?” Without waiting, she gave a sharp whistle. Soon, Bunk arrived, wagging his tail.
Momma patted Irabelle lightly on the behind and watched her take off. “Get on back here before it gets dark.”
For weeks Irabelle had not put the instrument down except to play with the twins, only four years old but clever and funny as anything. At thirteen, she was learning to feel pride for something apart from her parents and siblings. The clarinet was hers and all her. She loved the weight of the dark shiny boxwood, the feel of the twenty-four keys that made her think of nickels, the way the bell blossomed like her mother’s flowers, even the mysterious way it had come to her six years ago.
Papa had come into her room late one night. With Ivoe away at Willetson, it took her a long time to fall asleep, so she lay there with her eyes closed but not sleeping, “playing possum.” He gave her a soft nudge. “Sit up. I know you ain’t sleep.” Whenever Papa put a match to the lantern he meant business. “You remember what I told you about that day in Snook?” His voice was shaky and cracked. “You never did tell nobody did you?” She shook her head. “A secret like that too heavy for a little girl to carry, but Papa brought you something for you to tell that secret to and any more you pick up along the way. You put your mouth to it here and when you blow it’ll talk back to you.”
For six years, she had scarcely let the clarinet out of her sight. Relieved to have it back in her possession, she could almost see her cabin when her music drew the attention of a pair of boys.
The younger boy squinted up at her, the skin on his nose and shoulders so badly peeled she had a mind to take him to her aunt to get fixed up. She asked the boy what kind of fish they had caught, but he just stared. The tall boy with hair the color of burnt hay was not as old as Ivoe, though he spoke in a deep voice.
“Play something for us,” he said.
Bunk bared his teeth and growled.
“Well, if you ain’t gonna play, give it to my brother. He might as well have it. You want it don’t you?”
The little boy nodded.
Irabelle clutched the instrument close as the older boy lurched, grabbed hold of the clarinet’s end, and gave it a hard yank. Each direction he pulled his half of the clarinet, Irabelle followed. Even when he kicked her, and she went down, her grip did not loosen. Bunk scrambled over her, stepping into her face and chest to get at the boy. She heard the hard kick, followed by Bunk’s keening. The boy swore as she bit him but pinned her arms down anyway, lowering his face close enough to kiss her. She could wrestle with Timbo for hours and never get tired; this boy felt heavy as lead. He gripped both her wrists with one hand and, with the other, drew a knife from his trouser pocket. He kissed her softly on the lips.
“Be still,” he said, drawing the tip of the blade along her cheek. Only his brother would know he kissed the most beautiful girl in Burleson County, but the scar would be a constant reminder. A mere prick was all he intended but the girl beneath him writhed more than a snake and jerked her head in the opposite direction, carrying the blade an unintended distance.
Ruby clay puddles where her blood met the dirt road scared the boys off. The wetness of her cheek and a crimson hand made her scream. Bunk’s nose was cool against her arm, where he started to lick as she felt around for the clarinet. There was pain in her knee when she tried to stand.
As she drew near the faint cry, May-Belle made out the long braids of her great-niece in a crumpled heap. With so much blood she could not tell what had been done. The blouse was torn; the skirt bore a bloody hole; one bruised leg jutted out awkwardly. She pressed against the leg to make sure it was not broken: “Hold on.” She hooked her arms under Irabelle’s, pulled her to her feet, and started for Lemon’s.
From the front porch, Ivoe’s voice could be heard high and frail: “Momma, I can’t hold her. I can’t—” Ennis came through the door to a scene he did not understand—a moving table, arms and legs flailing in the air. Blood had dripped onto the floor. Lemon and Ivoe tried to hold Irabelle, whose pain lent her surprising strength. May-Belle had something in her hand.
“Can’t you do nothing besides stand there?” Lemon shouted.
He changed places with his wife, his big hands firmly placed on Irabelle’s shoulders, pinning her to the table.
Between the sobs and wails of his wife and eldest girl and May-Belle, Irabelle screamed a mercy roll call: “I-voe, please . . . tell them to stop . . . Momma it hurts . . . Papa help me.” Blood squirted from the gash in their child’s face that ran from the side of her nose across the plateau of her cheek as May-Belle guided a needle into its soft pliant flesh.
The tea of valerian and licorice root finally took its toll on Irabelle.
Ennis left her to sleep and found Lemon scrubbing the stain on the kitchen table. She had done her best, and now in the midst of a soft cry that jabbed at his heart, she complained that the blood would not lift from the wood.
.
As she looked at the handsome couple, a queer thought entered Ivoe’s mind. Any colored person seeing her parents on the street today would know something serious had happened, because the only time Negroes dressed this fine in Little Tunis was for a funeral, or to solicit the help of a white person. In this case, both were true. Something had died inside of her sister. Ivoe saw the evidence late at night when she turned up the lantern to dab at the pus that seeped from the coarse black thread woven across Irabelle’s face. Now, watching Momma size the knot in Papa’s tie, Ivoe was seized by a pang of hopelessness. Even if the young perpetrators were identified, she was certain nothing would be done. She handed the written description of the boys to her mother and was about to ask her what she planned to say when Irabelle appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes were red-rimmed and moist as she drew a shuddering breath. “Can’t Papa stay with me?”
At half past eight on Sunday morning, Ivoe and Lemon set out for the sheriff’s, where Ivoe’s face was known on account of the errands she ran for the Enterprise.
The deputy inquired as to the nature of Ivoe’s visit in a frie
ndly manner. She stated that they wished to file a report. Three and a half hours later, during which time the heat allowed only the most necessary motion, the sheriff emerged to take his lunch.
“I don’t know if the deputy told you . . . We are here to report a horrible—” Ivoe began.
“Ain’t this the gal that makes and sells them jams?”
“Yes, sir. This is my mother. Leila Williams.”
“Now what’s that you say—something done happened over at the newspaper?”
“Nothing’s wrong at the paper, sir. It’s my sister—”
“Sir, my child, she ain’t nothing but thirteen and two boys—”
The sheriff cut in front of Lemon for the fountain, where he took his time drawing long sips of water.
Lemon thought it was very likely she might faint before getting her story out. “Yesterday my youngest child, Irabelle Williams, was on her way home after retrieving her clarinet from the Starks’ house. She was minding her own business and along come these two boys who wanted to take her clarinet. They asked her for it, and when she wouldn’t give it to them they—they cut her. They cut her face from here to here.” She drew up a finger and demonstrated on her right cheek the design of the gash.
“Where did she get a clarinet from?”
“My husband, sir. My husband give it to her years ago.”
“And where did he get it from?”
Ivoe tried to quell her anger by clearing her throat.
“Can’t rightly say. You know my Ennis. He smiths around here and yonder—in Snook and Bryan. Sometimes he don’t get paid proper. Meaning, he don’t always get cash. Some folks barters with him. I figure Ennis got the clarinet the same way.”
“You say your gal refuse to let the boys see it?”
“No, sir. They didn’t ask to see it. They tried to take it from her. We have a description of the boys right here.”
Lemon riffled in her pocketbook.
“Now, you said it was two boys?”
“Yes.”
“Must be a mighty strong gal you got to be fighting off two boys.” The sheriff chuckled. “What you feeding her?”
“She didn’t fight them, sir. They cut her.”
“Well now, it’s terrible how these youngsters fool around. They ain’t meant no harm. Seem to me that gal of yours ain’t telling the full-out truth. She was probably acting high and mighty ’cause she had something two white boys ain’t got.”
“No, sir. Irabelle was walking with the dog . . . and they come up on her. And they cut her.”
“For the trouble this gone bring on you, you be better off if you just get the girl another clarinet.”
“They didn’t take the clarinet. After the boy cut her he and the other one took off.”
Indignation showed on the sheriff’s face and his growing impatience was heard. “If y’all got the clarinet what can I do for you?”
“You saying it’s all right to just go around cutting folks? I know that ain’t what you saying. We appreciate if you find these boys.”
This was an uppity Negress. “And do what with them?”
Ivoe tried to hold her mother’s hand but Momma jerked away and cut her a hateful look. At home, in Little Tunis, even in Miss Susan’s house, her mother was a mountain of a woman, strong and brave. Only once had she seen her mother wilt—for a minute—when Timbo was ill and Miss Susan expected her to cook for her husband’s funeral. She had expected her mother to cave under Susan’s demand, when all of a sudden Momma grew ten feet tall. This time was different. The law hefted more weight. Her mother was slivered by injustice.
“I reckon it ain’t for me to say.”
The sheriff poured the cup of his hand around Lemon’s elbow and led her to the door. His voice had a tense edge.
“A lot of folk come here thinking we can find this one and that one. Had one fellow come to say somebody stole his wagon. And you know what he asked me to do? He asked me to find them and punish them. I told him—a white man—just like I’m telling you. We here to protect but we ain’t in the finding business.”
Lemon took the sheriff’s hand from her arm. “I come here to report a crime and ain’t taking another step till there’s a writ account of what’s been done to my child.”
They waited until six o’clock that evening, when the sheriff invited them to spend the night in a cell because he had to get home to supper.
.
Distracted from every chore at home and the newspaper, Ivoe thought incessantly about the incident at the sheriff’s office. Two weeks of hard regret (she should’ve reminded her sister about the clarinet during the repast, she should’ve accompanied Irabelle on her walk to the Starks) had passed when a box arrived from Ona Durden.
She opened the letter and smiled because it was a long one, funny from the start, warm and charming to the end.
In the best possible way she felt chastened by the one-line note attached to her gift—“If purpose was a snake it would’ve bitten you by now”—and thought of it as she struck a key on the secondhand Underwood typewriter, smaller than a picnic basket. The scar on her sister’s face and the hatred surrounding it flickered in the fire of her soul as she typed. Who could they blame? The Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, the Knights of the White Camelia, the White Line? Not even—their young sons now terrorized with impunity. In the blink of an eye her family had been changed because a white boy wanted something he could not have. Papa was short on patience and plum out of language, cussing at the slightest irritation or dead silent. His silence created a void not even Momma could breach. She tried to talk to him, drawing in a deep breath as if her words required extra force to reach him, but Papa would shake his head or walk away before she finished. When the words fell back into Momma, her chest jumped a little like during a hiccup, or like a child who, at the end of a heaving cry, sucks in his hurt and humiliation. An odd sight to see, such a proud woman taking sips of air to quell the rage that swelled inside of her. Who could blame Momma or Papa? General Granger had issued the proclamation nearly half a century ago, but so-called free colored lives were still up for grabs, with no real claim to safety, no judicial ear to whom they might cry.
Ivoe wrote with a fervor she had never known, drawing lines through superfluous sentences, consulting a history book, until she held her despair in two pages. On the final read-through, she struck the word judgment and wrote in justice. In the margin beside the last two two paragraphs she drew question marks, before placing the essay in an envelope bound for Austin.
.
At the sound of her sister sleeping, Ivoe left the bed and dressed. She grabbed the lantern and the envelope from Austin. Ona’s suggestions had improved the work, yet it was the five-word message at the top of the page (“Find a way to publish!”) that had kept Ivoe’s mind in the devil’s workshop. In the kitchen, she patted Bunk’s head and whispered for him to lie back down. A quiet tussle with the door and a leap across the creaky porch landed her in the yard. She turned the lantern up. No one from Little Tunis would be stirring at this hour.
The other plan, to be carried out in the light of day, would have cost two people their jobs. She had seen how she might approach the lift operator with her essay and a forged note that gave explicit directions for the compositor to make space and include her article in the morning edition. Discovery of their crime would bring on their fury and prompt her firing. The white compositor would be at another paper within a week, but what would happen to the lift operator? Fact or fiction, reputation of distrust made it impossible for a colored man to secure work. Of the two plans she had chosen right.
For the last two years Edna Standish had entrusted her with a key to the office. Usually, Ivoe arrived at the office at 7:30 A.M. to check the basket for instructions on early-morning errands. On choreless days, she answered the telephone, took orders for advertisements, read old issues—once
as far back as the winter of 1898. Not a word about the lynchings of Junior and James Williams Sr., but plenty of letters to the editor adumbrated their deaths all the same. A Starkville businessman expressed dissatisfaction with James’s lumber business, more lucrative than any in Burleson County. Under Local News, the schoolhouse fire that same year had earned two short lines: “Negro school catches fire. Teacher to establish night school at Old Elam.” A thousand days of waking up too early was going to amount to something. Neither the sheriff nor his deputy had used a drop of ink about Irabelle in their “reports,” but they were all going to read about it just the same.
Ivoe knew the exact number of steps from the top of Main Street to the newspaper office but turned the flame high to prevent suspicion. A passerby might wonder at a colored person’s confident walk in the dark, as if she were embarked on a long-planned robbery. Should anyone stop her, she was armed with a lie: Mrs. Standish had sent word that she check on the presses because someone had called to complain of strange noises emanating from the office. Alone on the street, she hurried the lock as punitive scenarios flashed before her—arrest, jail, and worse. In the basement, bundled and stacked on dollies near the freight elevator, the morning paper awaited delivery. She glanced at the clock. At five thirty, the printer would arrive to press two thousand copies of the noon edition. She had less than three hours.
At the composing table she pored over the dummies, mock-ups of story and advertisement placement. She knew better than to tamper with the front page. Letters to the editor were too short. Spacing for an article on Bryan County’s prison farm on page three came in at six hundred words. Perfect. Unlike Willetson, where she type-casted by hand, she had no stick to fill with letters, no column line to pad out or justify, only the level and the keyboard. Four years had gone by since she last sat at a linotype. She stared at the fifteen columns, remembering finger placement: the index finger of the left hand typed s and a; the second finger typed e and t; the third pressed the large space bar; and so on. Ona Durden’s reprimands rang clear: “Forearms parallel to thighs . . .” Fingers that rested on the keys caused letters to drop into the machine, a costly mistake. Two hours of slow, deft keystrokes and the new page three dummy held her column.
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