All the Days Past, All the Days to Come

by Mildred D. Taylor

  Later, Stacey and I went with Morris to Canada. Morris told Moe about plans for the rebuilding of Great Faith. Moe was somber as he listened, knowing he could never be a part of it. Morris, reading Moe’s mind, slapped his eldest brother on the shoulder.

  “One of these days, Moe, you’re going to get a fair hearing from up here. One day you’ll be able to come home.”

  Moe didn’t respond. His look said it all.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When I had taken my leave from the firm, it was understood that I would return. I had committed to that. Also, I was committed to seeing Guy again. There was so much unresolved between us. By the beginning of 1962, Guy was back in the office, and by the spring he was fully recovered and working full-time. That he had gone to Mississippi and had put his life on the line made me care for him even more, but what he had done had not made things easier for us. Mama and Papa were both aware of why he had come to Mississippi. They knew I was the reason. They admired Guy and respected him, but that didn’t change their minds about my having a relationship with him. Just like Stacey, they were unrelenting in their thinking. Any union with Guy, even if it were a legal one through marriage, would mean betrayal as far as they were concerned. I tried again to explain that to Guy. “I can’t go against them in this, Guy. I just can’t do it. I’m not tough enough or brave enough.”

  Guy shook his head and was momentarily silent. “You’d be brave enough if you loved me enough.”

  Now it was I who was silent. Maybe that was so.

  “What do I need to do, Cassie?” We were in his office. He walked over to the window and looked out. He sighed heavily. “I don’t know how else to show you I’m up to whatever we would have to face. I’ve gone into the heartland of Mississippi, seen your life and felt its brutality. What else can I do?”

  I stared at his back. Guy turned from the window to look at me. “What?”

  And I answered, “Nothing.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It was over, and we both knew it. I had never loved Guy the way I had loved Flynn. If I had, maybe despite the racial divide, I would have stayed with him. If Guy had been colored, most likely I would have stayed with him. But neither was the case. Guy had been in my life for so long and had become so ingrained in it through some of the toughest and loneliest times. The thought of losing him broke my heart, but there was no path for us. Guy wanted me to commit to him, but in the world in which I lived, my commitment had to be to my family. It had to be to my race. Before the summer came, I quit the firm, left Boston, and moved to Toledo.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I planned to stay in Toledo only for a short time until I could figure out the next steps in my life. Lawyer Tate gave space to me in his office, but it was up to me to get my own cases. I had some money saved from my years of working in Boston and I figured that would last me through the year. By that time, I hoped I could move on, although I didn’t know to where. In the meanwhile, I stayed with Dee and Stacey. They had three bedrooms, one of which was used as a guest room, but I chose instead to live in the attic.

  The attic was a great space.

  The two fully finished rooms were quite spacious and there was plenty of natural light throughout the day. I furnished the rooms with used furniture. The space was warm and comfortable and gave me privacy. I paid Stacey and Dee a small rent, chipped in for living expenses, helped with the housework, and we were back to living as a family.

  Shortly after my return to Toledo, I went to visit Moe. I went alone. Moe looked fine, but there was something in his voice that told me he was worn out by all the uncertainty in his life. “I’m tired, Cassie,” he said. “I’m just tired, sick of worrying about being found. Sick of worrying about Mississippi getting me back down there. They do, I’m as good as dead.”

  I studied my old friend for a few moments before I responded. “What can I tell you, Moe? I can’t say I know how you feel, because this arrest warrant and extradition aren’t hanging over my head. But I can tell you that I know something close to how you feel. You, Stacey, and me—Little Willie too—we’ve been in this thing from the beginning, from that day back in Strawberry.”

  Moe heaved a sigh and looked away from me. “You know it wears on me, Cassie. Every day I think about Troy and the fact that what I did caused his death. I feel real bad about that, sorry for it, Lord knows.” He paused, then turned back to me. “What was I thinking, Cassie? I keep wondering, what was I thinking? If I’d just let those Aames boys rub my head like they done Clarence, we all could’ve gotten out of there and all this wouldn’t be happening. I could be walking free.”

  “Walking free? Really? You think you could’ve?” I shook my head. “You know as well as I do, Moe, you couldn’t live with yourself if you hadn’t stood up. I admire you for standing up. If Stacey had been out there with you instead of over to Mr. Jamison’s office, he would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Good thing he wasn’t,” said Moe. “I wouldn’t want anybody else to be in my shoes.”

  “Well, plenty are, and you know it. Maybe not fighting arrest and extradition, but going through the same hell every day, getting all bloodied up and going to jail just for wanting to be treated like a human being. Just for trying to have the same rights as these white people.”

  “You think I’m feeling sorry for myself?”

  “Aren’t you? Course now, everybody’s allowed a ‘poor, poor pitiful me’ day every now and again. I know I take mine about once a month.”

  Moe laughed. “Cassie, you always could cheer me up.”

  “Good,” I said. “But I wasn’t trying to cheer you up. It’s just the truth.”

  “You ever think, Cassie, how our lives would’ve been if you’d taken a chance on me, maybe married me even without having the same feelings for me as I had for you? We would have been good together. We come from the same place, have a lot of the same memories. We know each other.”

  “Yes, we do know each other, Moe. Maybe too well. No sense in looking back at what-ifs. It’s done now.”

  “You’re right,” Moe said with resignation. “It is done.” Then he looked at me hard, a long, dwelling look. “I’ve thrown my life away, Cassie.”

  “You haven’t thrown your life away, Moe—”

  “And I’m alone.”

  “You’re not alone. You’ve got your family and you’ve got us. You’ve got Myrtis.”

  Moe scoffed. “She won’t even move here to be with me. Says she needs to stay in Detroit, be with her family there. I don’t fault her for that. She feels about her family like I do about mine.” Moe looked away, then again to me. “Myrtis is putting in for divorce. She said she can’t live her life like this.”

  “Ah, Moe . . .”

  “There were times I felt alone in Detroit, but I always had all of you nearby, then I had Morris and later on Myrtis. Now I don’t have any of you.”

  “That’s not so, Moe. We’re still here for you.”

  Moe looked at me for a long moment. “Sometimes, Cassie, I think I ought to just take my chances and go see my family. Hertesene’s dead, who knows who’s next?” Moe sighed and looked away. “You know there were seven of us children when Mama died. Course Morris had just been born and my daddy was beside himself in grief and worrying about all of us and how he was going to make it. I was thinking along with Levis and Maynard and Hertesene, maybe he’d take himself another wife, but he never did. Instead he just kept on going, trying to make the crops each year on Montier’s place, and when Aunt Josephine and Uncle Homer up and died within a couple months of each other, Daddy took their four little boys in too. They became brothers to us and we called them that, but I saw Daddy wear down, making himself sick working so hard trying to take care of everybody. Me being the eldest, I figured I needed to do whatever I could to help him keep that place going and t
ake care of all the younguns.”

  “Well, you did that, Moe, and you went to school. Lot of boys wouldn’t have.”

  Moe grinned. “Yeah, I wanted my education, and Daddy wanted me to have it too. Insisted on it even when I said I’d stay on at the house to help do the work instead of going. He told me, ‘You get yourself on to school, boy, ’fore I lay a whip on you!’ And you know how long it took to walk those roads to Great Faith and back.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Course, like Stacey, I never did finish school. Stacey went on to Jim Hill in Jackson for a year, but I decided to stay on with Daddy to help him, things were so bad. And you know how things turned out after that.”

  I nodded.

  “Cassie, I want to see my daddy again. I want to see my daddy before he’s gone.”

  I reached over and laid my hand over Moe’s, but said nothing else, and Moe just looked at me in silence.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The summer of 1962 turned out to be a hot one. National news broadcasts from CBS, NBC and ABC reported church burnings in Georgia and sit-ins in North Carolina. Since the beginning of the year, there had been demonstrations in Georgia and Louisiana. There were demonstrations, boycotts, and sit-ins all along the Eastern seaboard from Maryland to Florida as protesters attempted to integrate white establishments. There were demonstrations in the North as well. The whole country was heaving with unrest and we all felt it. The sit-ins, the freedom rides, the boycotts—every single act of civil disobedience was bringing attention to all the injustices black people endured daily. In some states, high-pressure water hoses were used to disperse the demonstrators, as were police dogs and tear gas. Each time there was a protest, the hammer of white law slammed down even harder to keep the old line of segregation and bigotry intact. In Mississippi, it was commonly known that the white Citizens’ Council, which had been formed to prevent integration of the schools, worked hand in hand with the mayor of Jackson and with the governor and state legislature to prevent all integration. Television programs that promoted integration were not aired, and physical violence was always threatened against blacks who participated in any protests.

  News about the battle for equality came daily, not only from the national broadcast networks but also from our local colored newspapers, from NAACP publications, and from Jet and Ebony, national magazines published by and about people of color. News also came from our churches, from people who were greatly involved in the movement and went around speaking to church congregations and Negro civic groups, raising money for the cause and arousing our communities to action. What was happening around the country was uniting Negroes as a people, and making us proud. News also came directly from down home. Mama wrote weekly in her long letters of what was happening there. She cautioned us to be forever vigilant, both in Toledo and certainly when we ventured back to Mississippi. It was a troubling time and a dangerous time and she worried for all of us.

  News came too about a new group rising. They were known as the Black Muslims. Unlike the peaceful protesters around the country, the Black Muslims wanted nothing to do with white people and advocated total separation of the races, as well as a separate state to be governed by blacks. Their leader and founder, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, had organized the religious group in the 1930s, but most black folks had never heard of them until now. Few of us knew either that long ago in Africa, before our ancestors were snatched away, captured and thrown onto slave ships to the Americas, many of them had been Muslims. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslims’ most vocal minister, Malcolm X, taught us that.

  Many of the Black Muslims changed their last name to a simple “X” to eradicate the taint of white slave owners whose last names so many of us carried. They lived by a strict religious code, the men always wearing suits, the women dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, with their heads covered. They were a disciplined people organizing their own businesses. They set a good example for black folks, but they advocated a militant stance that made white folks even more uneasy than did the peaceful protesters who were demonstrating daily. The fiery Malcolm X did not hold back feelings about white people, calling them “white devils” and warning them that they had better deal with the nonviolent blacks, because dealing with groups like the Black Muslims would not offer the same peaceful alternative. Much of what the Black Muslims said made sense and many were drawn to the group. But most black people still held on to the promise of America, and continued to fight nonviolently for the end of segregation.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  So much was happening, and each time a new event arose, news that took over the headlines, I wanted to call Guy and talk about it. I was accustomed to talking to him about everything, speaking to him several times each day, and I missed that. I wanted to talk to him about Moe’s situation, about what was happening in the country and in the world, about what was happening in my life, about my cases. I wanted to talk to him about the little things that were going on in the church and in the neighborhood and in my family. I just wanted to talk to Guy, but I resisted calling him. I had to learn to do without him, as I learned to do without Flynn. There was no other choice for me.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  August. Hot and sweltering. It was time for revival.

  We would all be going home, including Uncle Hammer—but without Aunt Loretta, who said Mississippi had seen the last of her in the heat of an August summer. I was the first to arrive. Mama and Big Ma had asked me to come a few days early to help with the cooking. Mama, as a professional lady, had never cared that much for cooking. Her days and evenings had always been devoted to teaching her students and preparing for the next day of studies. Besides, she had Big Ma, and Big Ma, no matter how old she got, still loved to cook. In addition, the kitchen had always been Big Ma’s domain, and even though Big Ma had signed the land over to Papa and Uncle Hammer many years ago, she still proclaimed the kitchen as her own and declared that it would be until the day she was gone. Although Big Ma allowed others in from time to time, she was totally the boss of the kitchen and she let everybody know it. Now in her nineties, her sight failing and her movements slower, her mind was as sharp as ever and her hold on the kitchen stronger still, but she knew when to ask for help and wasn’t too proud to do it.

  “Now, your mama’s got to make a speech coming up during the revival,” Big Ma said as I sat at the table, cooling myself with some freshly made lemonade, “so she’s got her hands full workin’ on that. ’Sides, she ain’t never been much hand in the kitchen anyways.”

  I smiled, knowing that was true.

  “So, you and me, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m here, Big Ma. You know, though, Dee, Becka, and Rachel all are cooking something to bring.”

  “Course I know that. But they can only bring so much that ain’t gonna spoil on the way down here. Told them to bring cakes and pies and such, maybe some of them rolls they make so good. Rest, we’ll cook up here.”

  “There’s a lot of us to feed.”

  “Girl, don’t you think I know that? Already got some of the food ready.” Big Ma rattled off a list of meats smoked and ready for the stove. “We’ll get your papa to take care of a couple of them chickens so we can roast them for dressing and cook with dumplings. Course, I don’t want to ask your papa to do too much though. He ain’t been feeling quite hisself lately.”

  I put down my lemonade. “What do you mean, Big Ma?”

  Big Ma waved her hand in dismissal, as if waving away a fly. “Ah, ain’t nothin’ much. You know your papa, girl. Strong as a bull. Just comin’ down with a cold or some such. He’ll be all right. Now, what was I sayin’? Ah, yeah, the chickens. We’ll fry up some for Saturday so we’ll have something ready for the boys and their families to eat when they get here.” Big Ma had thought of everything. She always did whe
n it came to preparing food for the revival.

  Big Ma let me rest the remainder of my first day home, but the next day she had me up before dawn. After the morning chores and before the sun settled in to overheat the land, Big Ma, Mama, and I went to the garden, where we gathered collard greens, turnip greens, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, squash, and other vegetables for the coming days of cooking. Once the vegetables were gathered, Mama went back to working on her speech and Big Ma and I spent the next days in the kitchen. We cooked a lot, sweated a lot, laughed and talked a lot, but by Saturday, when the rest of the family began to arrive, we had all the food prepared, from turnip greens mixed with collards and onions and chunks of ham hocks to roasted chicken and cornbread dressing, as well as chicken and dumplings and desserts of coconut, pecan, and sweet potato pies and cobblers, both sweet potato and blueberry. As much of the food as we could, we jammed into the refrigerator; the rest we put in storage boxes filled with ice Papa had brought. As when I had been a child, I could hardly wait for Revival Sunday and all the good eating to begin.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  On Sunday morning the grounds of Great Faith Church were overflowing. We got there early. It seemed everybody who had moved on to the cities of Jackson or Memphis and beyond had decided to come home. Everybody knew it was a time of change and everybody wanted to be home. Also, we were rebuilding the church and everyone wanted to be a part of it. As many people as possible packed into the old school building where most of us had once been students. Walls had been removed to open up the space, but still more space was needed for all the people. Papa, as a deacon, had his work cut out for him. He and the other eleven deacons took care of trying to get as many people as possible seated in the building. As the elderly arrived, they helped them in and, as was the custom, every young, able-bodied person gave up his or her seat without being asked. This is just what folks did. It was understood.