All the Days Past, All the Days to Come

by Mildred D. Taylor

  “Holding her own,” Stacey said.

  Then Papa smiled, as if letting Little Willie in on a secret. “Eyes opened today . . . and she smiled.”

  “You don’t say! Ain’t that something!” exclaimed Little Willie.

  Inside, Big Ma had supper waiting. After hearing our good news about Mama’s progress, Big Ma let out a “Praise the Lord!” then told us about all the folks who had stopped by asking about Mama. “Pastor was here. Stayed more’n two hours with me. We had us a houseful and a houseful of prayer. That’s what’s goin’ to see us through. Prayer. Prayer and faith in the Lord.” Then Big Ma turned to Little Willie. “Now, you joinin’ us for supper, Willie.” She said that more as a command than an invitation.

  “Yes, ma’am, sure am,” agreed Little Willie. “I done told Dora when I left home not to be holdin’ supper on me. Figured to be here, and all of us had a lotta catching up to do.”

  Big Ma nodded with approval. “Good you told her that. Dora’s a fine, understanding girl.”

  “She had to be to marry Little Willie here,” teased Stacey.

  “Can’t argue with you there!” laughed Little Willie. Dora, Little Willie, the boys, and I had all grown up together, and Little Willie had married Dora as soon as he was drafted into service.

  “Well, y’all wash on up now,” ordered Big Ma, turning back to her kitchen. “Supper’s ready for the table.”

  “I’ll help you, Big Ma,” I volunteered.

  “Just wash on up, girl,” Big Ma said. “You can help me with these here dishes after. Right now, though, don’t need no help puttin’ this food on the table. Go on with the boys now.” I did as I was told. No matter how old I got, or how old Big Ma got, there could be no arguing with my grandmother.

  By the time the boys and I had washed with well water stored in buckets hanging from hooks on the back porch and gone back inside, kerosene lamps were lit and set on the table. The dining area was small in comparison to the Dorr Street house. The table filled most of the space. On one side of the room were two pantry cabinets. There the dishes and any desserts were kept. Next to the pantries, a door led into the boys’ room. At each end of the dining room was an opening, one with the door leading into Mama and Papa’s room, the center of the house that served as our family gathering place, while the other opening had no door and led into the tiny kitchen dominated by the wood-burning stove.

  On the other side of the table, windows lined the wall. Beyond the windows were the back porch and the backyard, where the chickens and rooster, the peacocks and guinea hens roamed freely during the day, and beyond the yard, the garden, and beyond the garden, the orchard filled with fruit trees planted by Big Ma and Grandpa Paul-Edward long ago. The smokehouse and the outhouse were out there too. At each end of the table was a chair. Papa sat at one end, Big Ma at the other with ready access to her kitchen. Chairs also lined the table along the pantry side, allowing just enough walking space for a body to pass between the cabinets and the table. On the window side of the table there was a backless bench. That was where the boys and I sat for meals growing up. The room was small but the table had always been full, laden with Big Ma’s good cooking. Once we were all seated, we held hands and praised God for His blessings, for keeping Mama in His care, for bringing us all safely home.

  Then we ate.

  Big Ma had cooked spareribs brought from the smokehouse and served with black-eyed peas, cornbread, and candied sweet potatoes, along with cha-cha, a mix of pickled tomatoes, peppers, and onions preserved last summer. For dessert, there was peach cobbler made with peaches canned in the fall. It was good home cooking like only Big Ma could prepare, and despite the reason for our coming home it felt good to be here.

  “So, how long y’all plannin’ on stayin’?” asked Little Willie after gulping down his clabbered milk. “Be here for next Sunday services? Reverend Stalnaker’s preaching.”

  “Don’t know yet,” Stacey said. “Got to get back soon as we can. Course, everything depends on how Mama’s doing. Doctor told us she’s not out of the woods yet. In any case, expect to be here least until the end of the week.”

  “I’ll be here longer than that,” I said. “Mama’ll need me when she comes home.”

  Little Willie acknowledged that would be the case and reached for another helping of the candied sweet potatoes. “So, how are things up north? Time I followed y’all up there?”

  Stacey smiled at the thought. “Wouldn’t hardly recommend it right now. Lots of layoffs with all the soldiers returning. Production for Army supplies has pretty much stopped and it’s hard to get work. Fact is, I’m laid off.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “All of us working part-time jobs to put food on the table, make ends meet.”

  Little Willie was thoughtful. “Well, one thing ’bout being here is long as I got ground under my feet for farmin’ and growing the food for me and my family, leastways I know we won’t go hungry.”

  “That’s a fact,” Stacey agreed.

  “And what ’bout that scound’ Moe?” asked Little Willie. “He laid off too?”

  “He’s all right,” Stacey replied. “Got laid off but he was lucky enough to get another small job that keeps him going.”

  “Good to hear that. No trouble from the law here?”

  “Well, did hear there’s a white fella from down here working at the factory where I worked and he’s been talking about my connection to Moe, but that’s about it. Police questioned Cassie and me, but we told them we hadn’t seen Moe.”

  Big Ma frowned. “Hope that don’t get y’all into trouble.”

  “Don’t think it will, Big Ma,” I said. “We talked to them for just a few minutes months ago and they haven’t been around since.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” said Papa. “Y’all be careful up there.”

  “Yeah, be real careful,” Little Willie warned, echoing Papa’s words. “That law’s got a long arm. Boy better watch hisself.” Little Willie grew thoughtful. “Sometimes, it don’t hardly seem real that trip we took up to Memphis with that boy to get him outta here. Took him up there to that train, come back, and here we was in a war! Lord have mercy! Ain’t never gonna forget that weekend!”

  “Don’t think any of us will,” confirmed Stacey.

  “Wasn’t long after that, Uncle Sam done called us all up. ’Member, Stacey, we got our notice the same time, went to the medical exam together. You sure was lucky, Stacey, getting that fever when you gone to those cane fields. Wish I had gone with you and Moe, gotten it too, ’cause I sure wasn’t ready to go to that war.”

  “Who was?” questioned Christopher-John.

  “Sho ’nough gave us plenty of worry ’bout all you boys,” said Big Ma.

  “Well, gave my family worry too,” admitted Little Willie, “and I tell y’all, it was a scary thing. Got trained at Fort Hood, Texas, same as most other boys from round here unless they got sent to Camp Shelby. ’Cept for that trip up to Memphis, that was the only time I’d been out of Mississippi. Later on, after we done been deployed, heard Christopher-John and Man got called up.” Little Willie laughed. “Lord have mercy! Jus’ to think we was over there in Europe fightin’ white folks!”

  “Should have been fighting them over here,” Clayton Chester sullenly interjected.

  “That’s the truth,” agreed Little Willie with a sober face; then he brightened. “Couldn’t believe when I seen both y’all over in France after Patton’s Army come through. Just couldn’t believe, so far away from home, and we all meet up. Y’all sure was a sight for these here sore eyes!”

  “Felt the same,” admitted Christopher-John.

  “You know who else I seen over there?” asked Little Willie. He gave none of us a chance to answer as he blurted out, “That white boy, Jeremy Simms!”

  Stacey turned to Little Willie. “You did?”

  “Sure
did. Just heard a few days ago, though, he got kilt over there.”

  We all stopped eating. None of us had heard this news. I looked across at Stacey. Jeremy Simms had befriended him, had befriended all the boys and me while we were growing up. It was an odd thing. Jeremy was a white boy whose family were tenant farmers, whose family had less than we did. His father was Charlie Simms and his cousins were Statler, Leon, and Troy Aames, all of whom, because they were white, thought themselves superior to every black person. All that family did, except Jeremy. From the time he was a child until he was a young man, Jeremy had reached out to us. We had never understood why. Right before the war, he had risked all and had taken Moe, hidden in the back of his father’s truck, all the way to Jackson. Jeremy had lost his family because of it.

  Stacey’s eyes were downcast. He said nothing.

  Big Ma shook her head sadly. “I’m sho sorry to hear that. I recall, that boy mostly tried to do right by us.”

  “Well, war,” said Papa, “it don’t make a difference ’bout a man’s color when it comes to a bullet.”

  “Took my boys,” said Big Ma softly, then was quiet. We all were. Both Papa’s oldest brothers, Uncle Mitchell and Uncle Kevin, had been killed in the First World War.

  “Well, least it’s over now,” said Little Willie, breaking the silence. “Now all we’ve got to do is keep ourselves alive down here without upsetting these white folks.”

  “Maybe we need to upset them,” I said.

  All eyes turned to me and Clayton Chester said, “It’s about time we did.” No one at the table disputed that. “They made us fight in that war and the war’s won, now they expect us to go back to the way things were before the war. Well, I for one can’t do that.”

  “We shouldn’t have to,” added Christopher-John. “It’s high time things changed.”

  “Well, that’ll be a long time comin’,” predicted Big Ma, “’cause I don’t believe things ever gonna change down here. All these long years I been on this earth, things been the same. If change ever come, I won’t live to see it. Maybe none of us will.”

  We all looked at Big Ma, afraid she was right.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  After the dishes were done, I sat alone on the front porch swing. It was a chilly evening but I welcomed the chill against my face as I pulled my coat around me and looked out upon the land. It was almost dark, but I could see the roll of the long sloping lawn to the road below and across the road to the forest of long-needle pines. To the west of the lawn was the driveway and to the west of that, pasture land. To the east of the lawn was the land where the cotton had grown, land fallow now in the days before spring. Beyond the field the land rose to the hillside boasting the grand oak that marked our boundary with the Granger plantation, which dominated most of the area north toward Strawberry. The once-owner of the land, Harlan Granger, was now dead, but the Granger family still prevailed and many in our Great Faith community still sharecropped on Granger land. I looked out at the field where a fire had once raged between the boundaries of our land and the Granger plantation, a fire that had destroyed our cotton crop, but had saved the life of a black boy, Stacey’s friend T.J. Avery. I kept staring out across the land until all grew dark around me, then as kerosene lamps were lit in the front rooms, I went back into the house.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The boys and I stayed on throughout the week, visiting Mama every day, and each day she seemed better. She spoke a little and we were greatly encouraged. By Thursday, Mama was much improved and the doctor was talking about letting her come home early in the next week. He said it had been a relatively mild stroke and that Mama being young still, her body was otherwise strong and she should fully recover with no lasting side effects. There was some paralysis in her right arm extending from her shoulder into her hand, but with exercises and time, she would have the full use of her arm and hand again. She was to get plenty of rest and not take on anything strenuous for some time. With that good news, the boys planned to head back north as soon as Mama was home. Before leaving, Stacey wanted to go see Dee’s family. He had promised Dee. I decided to go with him.

  Early on Friday morning the two of us headed farther south toward Brookhaven. It was more than a two-hour drive. As we neared the Davis place, passing over rough backcountry roads, people were working in the fields. It was now April. It was planting time. When the people in the fields saw the big northern car, they stopped what they were doing to gaze at us, saw we were colored too, then gave big, friendly smiles and waved. Stacey honked the horn and we waved back. This was one of the good things about being home. All colored folks were a part of this life; none of us were strangers. We all lived under the same rules, no matter what our individual circumstances, and we all had to abide by them. Those rules and our color bound us together.

  Like us, the Davises owned land. They were a significant family. It was even said that Dee’s grandfather had served in the short-lived Mississippi legislature during Reconstruction. We passed several small houses and more people working the fields; they all were Davises. Dee’s grandparents had had fourteen children and many of those children and their families continued to live on the land. The Davises stared, then waved as the others had, and we continued on our way to the main house. The Davis house was ranch in style, long and one-story with unpainted plank-board siding and a sizeable porch that connected the three sections of the house. At one end of the house lived Dee’s mother, stepfather, and her fifteen-year-old brother, Zell. At the other end were Dee’s uncle and his wife and their eight children, and in the middle section was Dee’s grandmother, Big Ma Davis. Dee’s grandfather, like Grandpa Paul-Edward, had passed long ago. All of the Davises not in the fields poured from the house to greet us. They all had questions about Dee and the babies and about Mama, when we told them why we had come south.

  It was a warm day and after a huge meal served by Dee’s mother, we sat on the porch, and soon many of the folks we had passed as we drove to the house came walking up the red road. Many of them were barefoot. Mostly, the children were shy of us, but all welcomed us with open arms and big hugs. As the afternoon wore on, long-legged, barefooted teenage Davis boys and Zell came from the fields. They sat on the porch railing and on the steps and stared in awe at Stacey’s shiny new Mercury and talked with wonder about the North and their dreams of going there. They asked questions about what Toledo was like, questions about jobs and opportunities. Stacey told them about the layoffs and that life could be hard there too. Zell and the cousins listened intently to all Stacey said, but still clung to their visions of the North. They all talked about going north one day, and when Big Ma Davis asked Stacey if her grandsons could stay with him and Dee if they came, Stacey looked around the porch and into the yard at all the Davises gathered, eyes on him, and he said, “Well, long as Dee and I can keep our house and we have room, all our family’s welcomed into it.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It was late afternoon as Stacey and I drove through Strawberry, headed for Jackson. We planned to visit Mama, then spend the night with Ola and his family at the Everett Street house. Traffic was heavy. As always, we drove slowly, obeying all the signs, all the lights. A red light stopped us right across from the courthouse and a voice called out to us. On the other side of the street was Mr. Wade Jamison. “Stacey Logan! Cassie!” he called. With a briefcase in one hand, he waved us over with the other. “Come to my office!”

  Stacey touched the brim of his hat in greeting and nodded as the light changed and Mr. Jamison walked on to his office down the street. Stacey found a parking space and we joined Mr. Jamison, waiting for us at his office door. He held out his hand to each of us. “Good to see you! Good to see you!” he said, shaking our hands. “Come on in.” He ushered us to some leather chairs near his desk and sat in one himself. Mr. Jamison was a gray-haired man in his late sixties. We had known him all o
ur lives. He smiled. “Haven’t seen you since you went north.”

  “Yes, sir, it’s been a while,” Stacey acknowledged.

  “So, when did you come home?”

  “Early Sunday,” Stacey replied.

  “Well, how’s everyone at your place? Haven’t been out that way in some time.”

  “Not so well.” Stacey glanced at me. “That’s why Cassie and I are home. Christopher-John and Clayton Chester are here too. Mama had a stroke last week. She’s in the hospital in Jackson. We’re on our way to see her now.”

  Mr. Jamison leaned forward. “How is she?” he asked softly. He looked from Stacey to me.

  “She’s doing better,” I said. “Doctor said she’ll be fine, full recovery.”

  Mr. Jamison sat back. “I’m glad to hear that. She’s a fine lady, your mother.” He nodded in affirmation to that and took up his pipe. As always, his words were genuine and so was his concern. From the time Stacey and I were children we had known of Mr. Wade Jamison and his sincerity. Back when I was nine years old, Mama had organized the colored people of our community to stop shopping at the local Wallace store owned and run by whites. Mama had been fired from Great Faith School because of the boycott. She had organized the boycott because the Wallaces had set fire to Mr. Sam Berry, a black man. The Wallaces had never been arrested, had never even been charged for the burning, and Mama was determined that we as colored people would not support men who had done such a thing. She proposed that we buy all our goods from the stores in Vicksburg instead. That is when Mr. Wade Jamison stepped in. He came to see us and said, if Mama would permit it, he would back the people boycotting the Wallace store. Papa, since he was a boy, had known Mr. Wade Jamison, and Big Ma had known Mr. Wade Jamison since he was a boy. Wade Jamison was the only white person in Mississippi we all trusted.