“Well, how come everybody make such a fuss ’bout Suzella then?”
“Well . . . Suzella’s pretty in a different way. When I was in school in Jackson, there was an Italian family lived near the school and there were three daughters in the family. Very pretty. Suzella reminds me of them. She’s got an Italian look about her. Also, you have to remember that some people are taken with her just because she does look white.”
“Why?”
“It makes her special.”
“But why?”
“Oh, it goes back a long way. We’ve been taught so long to think we’re less than anybody else, many of us have grown to believe it, in some ways if not others. And a lot of us figure the lighter we are, the better we are . . . like white people.”
“But it ain’t so.”
“No, it’s not. But that’s how some people figure.”
“Well, she may look to suit some folks, but Big Ma always says pretty is as pretty does.”
“Now just why do you bring that up?”
“’Cause if you ask me, Suzella don’t always do so pretty, and besides, she makes me so doggone mad—”
“I’ve told you I want you to be nice to her.”
“I been being nice as I can be, but when she was standing up there today talking to Stuart—”
“Stuart?” Mama stopped folding the sheet and looked sharply at me. “Not Stuart Walker?”
“Yes’m.”
“What were you doing talking with Stuart Walker?” she demanded.
“Wasn’t me. It was Suzella. I told her to come on.”
“What were they talking about?”
I knew it was not out of idle curiosity that Mama was asking. I also knew she should be told, though I wondered if I wanted her to know mainly so that Suzella could fall from her grace as she had from Christopher-John’s and Little Man’s.
“Well?”
I decided to ponder the ethics of the situation later and told her. Mama was silent when I finished, the expression on her face not quite readable. She helped me finish the sheets, then went into the house. I gave her a moment and followed, trailing her through the house to my bedroom. “I understand you ran into Stuart Walker today,” Mama was saying as I came in.
Suzella was sitting in a cushioned chair by the front window with an open book on her lap. She looked up hesitantly. “Yes . . . I did.”
“I understand, also, you led those boys to believe you’re white.”
Suzella bowed her head, allowing her hair to fall, half covering her face.
“Is that so?”
“I didn’t tell them I was white.”
“You didn’t tell them you were colored either.”
Suzella looked up, her face defiant. “Why should I? I’ve got as much white blood as colored.”
Mama eyed her sharply. “Get this through your head, Suzella. If you’ve got any colored in you, that makes you colored.”
“My mother says I’m not. She says I’m not colored.”
“That’s her problem,” Mama snapped. “My problem is seeing to it that you recognize what you are, at least as long as you’re down here.”
“Stuart didn’t question what color I am—”
“He didn’t think to question it. But let me tell you something. Once he finds out—and he will—he won’t be so polite anymore. And one other thing. He’s not going to like being fooled that way.”
“I didn’t fool him!”
“I’m not going to stand here and argue with you about it. But I am going to tell you this: You leave these white boys around here alone and don’t you let them think you’re white when you’re not.”
“Aunt Mary, I’d like to get to know Stuart—he seems nice.” Mama folded her arms and looked at the floor; even from where I stood I could feel her rising anger. “I made up my mind a long time ago that I won’t marry a colored man . . . I won’t live like my mother.”
Mama kept looking at the floor for a long time. When she did look up again, it was evident she had not managed to suppress her anger. “If your Uncle David were here, he’d probably pack you up and send you back to New York right now. Me, I’m going to give you a choice: You can do what I say and stay, or if you don’t like being with us—”
“Aunt Mary, I never meant—”
“—and you can’t follow the rules we have in this house, then you can go back to New York. Today. We’ll all miss you, but I’m not going to have trouble about this, not if I can help it. Now you think on it and let me know.” Turning from her, Mama walked brusquely from the room, passing me without ordering me back to the clothesline.
For a moment I stayed in the doorway watching Suzella, who turned to the window. I started to leave her to her misery; then thoughts of how she had acted with Stuart came rushing back and I went in. I sat on the bed across from her. “Well, you going?”
She turned. “What?”
“You going? Mama said she’s leaving it up to you.”
Her eyes stayed on me. “Be honest, Cassie. You’d like for me to leave, wouldn’t you?”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t cry none.”
“I asked you once why you didn’t like me and you wouldn’t tell me. Maybe you can tell me now.”
“Well, long as you the one brought it up . . . How you ’spect somebody to be liking you when you going ’round here thinking you better’n they are?”
“Cassie, I don’t think that.”
“Well, I’d like to know what you call it then! ’Round here talking ’bout you ain’t colored. Ain’t nothing wrong with being colored!”
“I never said there was.” But she looked away as she said so.
“And another thing,” I said, deciding to lay it all out for her as long as I was letting her have it, “I ain’t one to be appreciating somebody going ’round here always being nice and grinning in folks’ face, when they don’t think no better of ’em than not to even mention they kin to ’em.”
“I . . . I’m sorry about that, Cassie.”
“All you had to do was open your mouth and say, These here are my cousins and I’m staying with them.’ That’s all.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Uh-huh. Well, sorry don’t make it right.”
She looked at me and shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand all right,” I coldly assured her.
“No, you don’t.” She got up and looked out the window. “If you heard what Aunt Mary said to me, then you heard what I said to her. I meant what I said about not marrying a colored man. My mother did and it’s just brought her a lot of misery.”
“I guess so, she white,” I replied unsympathetically.
“That was her choice . . . then. But she’s told me over and over, ‘Suzella, you can pass. Do it.’” She turned suddenly to look at me. “Do you know what it’s like when people think you’re white? You can do just about anything, Cassie. Sometimes Mother and I go to some of the better beaches, just the two of us, and the boys are so nice to me—”
“White boys?”
“There are no colored boys at those beaches,” she answered pointedly.
“What ’bout your father? Don’t he ever go with y’all?”
She looked back out the window. “We don’t go many places together, the three of us. People stare and both my parents feel uncomfortable about it.”
“What about you?”
She didn’t answer. “Usually I go places with my mother. Where we live are all colored people, but when we just get on a bus and go to another part of town, there’s not any staring . . . and we’re accepted.”
“Well, you like being white so much, I guess you’ll be glad to get on back to New York then.”
She sat again and, kicking off her shoes, tucked her legs under her. She was very quiet. I got up. “Cassie, you’re very lucky. You know that?”
“What?”
“I mean . . . you’ve got family. And friends. At home, people don’t come visiting like
they do here. My mother’s a saleswoman at a five and ten and she has friends there, but she never invites them home. She doesn’t accept their invitations to visit either. Daddy’s friends, they’re all colored, and every now and then they come by, but they always feel uncomfortable with Mother there . . . so there’s just the three of us most times. It’s different here.”
I studied her. “What ’bout your friends?”
She was silent a long minute. “All my friends are at school. . . . I go to a Catholic school outside the neighborhood. Mother says that schooling is my way out.”
“How come your folks still together, your mother hate it so much?”
Suzella looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “They love each other.”
“Oh,” I said, though it didn’t seem much like love to me.
She sat awhile longer, then got up and put her shoes back on. “I guess I’d better find Aunt Mary.”
“To tell her you going?”
“No . . . my father wants me to stay longer. Maybe even start school here.”
“What!”
“I want to stay myself if I can get lessons sent from my school in New York.”
“Lord,” I sighed, afraid we would never be rid of her now. “I don’t see why.”
Her eyes met mine before she turned away. “I know,” she said.
The next morning at Bible class, Moe said, “Joe Billy Montier come by the house last night asking ’bout Suzella.”
“What!” cried Little Willie, who had practically appointed himself Suzella’s personal bodyguard.
Stacey’s brow furrowed. “What he say?”
Moe glanced across the field, where Suzella was talking to several girls her own age. “He made like he was comin’ ’bout farm business, but it was her he really wanted to find out about. Pierceson was with him. Said he’d seen her on the road and wanted to know ’bout her. Said she was with Cassie and them and he was wondering if I knew who she was staying with.”
“And what’d you tell him?” said Stacey.
“Nothin’ ’ceptin’ she was your cousin and—”
“You told him that!” I cried.
“Yeah . . .”
“Oh, Lord.”
Moe looked puzzled, as he had a right to be. “Joe Billy, he looked real funny about it too. Then Pierceson laughed and said something ’bout ‘Wait till Stuart get a-hold of this!’”
Stacey, looking uneasy, glanced over at me. He knew what Suzella had done now. Everybody at the house knew. “Don’t be looking at me,” I told him, still vexed with him for not listening to me in the first place. “She your cousin.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Moe.
Stacey shook his head. “Misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“My foot,” I mumbled.
“Lord,” said Little Willie, “them scounds take a liking to Suzella, I’m gonna have to bust some heads ’round here! Stacey, you better tell your cousin not to be messin’ with them. Don’t want her in the same kinda mess Jacey in. Them scounds—”
Moe cut a disapproving glance at Little Willie, who faltered and grew quiet. An awkward silence followed. Stacey glanced from one to the other. “What kinda mess?”
“Ah, man—” started Little Willie.
“I said what kinda mess!”
Little Willie looked at Moe.
“Come on! Tell me!”
“Man,” said Little Willie, “ain’t you seen her?”
“She been sick the last few weeks—you know that. Went up to her house a couple of times, but her mama say she can’t see nobody. She up and around now?”
“Yeah . . . seen her yesterday.”
Stacey looked anxiously out around the schoolyard. “You seen her this morning? She here?”
“Wouldn’t hardly think so. That girl—”
“Stacey, you better come on with us,” Moe said quietly. “There’s somethin’ you gonna have to know anyway.” His eyes were on me as he spoke.
“Well, what is it?” I demanded.
Both Little Willie and Moe ignored my question as they walked away with Stacey between them. I started after them, but Moe said, “Cassie, we gotta talk to Stacey alone, okay?”
It wasn’t okay, but since I didn’t have much choice, I stopped. I watched them cross the playing field to the edge of the forest on the other side. For several moments they stood there. Then Stacey waved his hand in an angry gesture and started away. Little Willie and Moe grabbed him and talked some more, but he pulled away again and stalked into the forest. Little Willie started after him, but Moe stopped him, and after another glance at the forest the two came back across the field as the bell for Bible classes began to ring.
“You going in?”
I looked around. Alma Scott, who could be quite civil when Mary Lou Wellever wasn’t around, was standing beside me.
“Yeah . . . I guess.” Absently, I walked over to the church with her.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
I turned to her. “You seen Jacey Peters lately?”
“Yeah, couple of days ago.”
“There anything the matter with her?”
Alma looked surprised. “Jacey Peters? You kiddin’?”
I stared at her blankly.
“Cassie, don’t ya know? Jacey Peters ’bout to have a baby. Folks say it could be any of them white boys and Jacey herself say it’s Stuart’s. She’s this big already.” Alma held out her hands to indicate how advanced Jacey was.
We walked on, Alma continuing to talk, but I wasn’t listening. I felt bad for Jacey. That she was pregnant was bad enough; that the father was Stuart Walker, a white boy, was total disaster. Had the father been black, Mr. Peters could have seen to it that the boy married Jacey and Jacey’s future could have been saved, but with a white boy there was no recourse. All the shotguns in the world gave Mr. Peters no power where a white boy was concerned.
Stacey stayed in the forest until the bell rang dismissing the classes, and as he walked home in an angry silence, I said nothing to him about Jacey. But after supper when I found him standing alone on the back porch, I told him that I knew. He said nothing, just stood there, rage lining his face, his eyes on the horizon.
“Heard Stuart’s the father.”
Still he said nothing.
I reached out to comfort him. “I’m jus’ real sorry. I know how much you call yourself likin’ her.”
“Like to kill him.”
“What?”
“Like to jus’ snap his neck with my bare hands. Him and every other cracker ’round here.”
“Boy, you know you can’t—”
He stepped from the porch and quickly crossed the yard to the garden gate and headed toward the pasture. I stepped down to follow, but the kitchen door opened and Mama said, “Let him go, Cassie.”
I looked back at her. “You know?”
She nodded.
“He talk to you about it?”
She didn’t answer right away. “No. This is something he’d talk to your father about . . . if he were here.”
“Well, how’d you find out then?”
“News like this always travels fast, Cassie. You’ll find out as you grow older that people like to pass bad news.”
“Mama, what’s gonna happen to Jacey?”
Mama stepped out farther onto the porch and leaned against a post. “I can’t really say. Maybe she’ll meet a nice young man who’ll love her and won’t care about a white man’s child. Maybe she’ll have to struggle through life alone. One thing though. It’s gonna be hard on that child being part of two worlds, maybe wanting to belong to the white one and having to belong to this one.”
“It’s like that for Suzella too, ain’t it?”
“Well, it’s not easy for her. It’s not easy for anybody being both black and white. You and I, we have only one world and we know which one it is. The world’s a tough place for mostly everybody, but for colored people it’s even tougher. People caught in the middle like Suze
lla, who could most likely pass, sometimes decide to do just that. And I can’t really say I can blame them.”
“Mama, if you looked white, would you pass?”
Mama puckered her lips, thinking; finally she shook her head. “No, my sweet child, I wouldn’t. I love the people in this black world I’m in too much.” She waited a moment. “What about you?”
I too thought on it. “No, ma’am, I don’t ’spect so. But I tell ya one thing. Them white folks give us the same things they got, seem to me folks wouldn’t even hafta be wondering ’bout passing at all.”
Mama’s eyes settled on me and she smiled. “Did I ever tell you what a smart young person you are?” I smiled back, pleased, then we both looked out to the pasture. My thoughts were on Jacey and her baby. They were on Suzella too. I still didn’t like her and didn’t intend to like her, but somehow Jacey’s having this baby made me feel just a little bit for her somehow. Not much, but a little.
* * *
It was late when the dogs started barking and Dubé and Russell came hammering at the door waking us up. They sat before the fireplace, Dubé saying nothing, Russell telling us that they had just seen the house where the union men stayed set afire. “You know I was going over there with Dubé,” Russell said. “Well, when me and Dubé got over there late this afternoon, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Moses and another colored fella and two more white union men was there. Dubé, he told ’em I was interested in the union and they seemed real pleased to talk to me ’bout it. Offered us coffee and we sat on into the night talkin’. Then ’bout nine o’clock, me and Dubé, we decided we better get on home and we left, but ’fore we got to the road we seen headlights coming down the road real fast. We didn’t like the look of it, so we jumped off in the bushes.”
“Was—was they night men?” I asked.
Mama looked back at me, but didn’t say anything. Russell shook his head. “Don’t know ’xactly who they was. They wasn’t masked or nothin’. Jus’ got outa them cars and set that place afire . . . burned it down.”
“Lord, no,” moaned Big Ma.
“What ’bout the union men?” said Mr. Morrison, who had come up as soon as the dogs had started barking. “Wheeler and Moses and the rest? They get out?”
“Believe they did, ’cause I heard one of them burners yell something ’bout folks slipping out the back door and a bunch of ’em took off after ’em hollering ’bout there wasn’t gonna be no socialist union down in here. That’s when Dubé and me decided we better slip off, but we couldn’t much risk the road ’cause they had a car goin’ ’long it slow, seeing if anybody was on it. We stayed ’long the creek till we couldn’t hear ’em no more, then after that we waited a long time ’fore comin’ out, ’fraid they was playin’ possum. Finally, we slipped out, coming ’long the edge of the woods. We was gonna try and make it home, but we seen lights again and we decided we best get inside somewheres. Y’all’s place was the closest we could think of. Y’all don’t mind, we figure to stay here a while ’fore going on.”
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