River, cross my heart

by Clarke, Breena

  planned our the cooking and baking tor the two Thanksgiving dinners: rhe Bynums' family dinner and Alexis St. Pierre's.

  Ina looked up from cleaning the collard and mustard greens. She said, "It's hetter here. Colored can go to the hospital. You can get better help than your mama did. They've got colored doctors here. You know that ol' bastard doctor they had down home didn't care about colored."

  "Ina! Shh! What kind of thing are you saying?" Alice was surprised at the vehemence of her cousin's words.

  "Well, we're not no children. You know who I'm talking about." Ina's normally placid face became tangled with anger. 'That old drunk man that was the doctor for colored down there didn't give a damn about helping colored women to bring babies. They called him when my time came because I was having trouble. He said the reason the baby wasn't coming was 'cause he was strangulatin' on his own cord. Then he sent all the women out of the room and he reached in and brought the baby out with pincers. I've always believed that he strangled my baby himself. That old bastard hated colored people and wouldn't come to help any of the colored women bring a baby unless she was close to dead. I think he fixed me, too. I think he fixed me so Cap and I couldn't make any more babies." Ina swabbed at her eyes.

  "That was a sad time, Ina Mae," Alice said, patting her cousin on the shoulder. "I'm just not sure this is the right time for me to have another child. You know, with Clara so recently gone."

  "Alice, girl, that's not your business," Ina said, recovering herself. "That's God's business. My mama said it's the Lord who decides what is the right time to bring a baby."

  "The Lord. The Lord's the one who decides when to take them, too."

  "Yes. It's the Lord's decision no matter what we think about it. You thinking about going up Number Ten to that woman up there? It's a big risk. She could ruin you for good."

  "I thought about it."

  "Does Willie know yet?"

  "I don't think so—yet."

  u Go into it with a light heart, girl. It'll be a joy tor all o( us — you, Willie, Johnnie Mae. It'll be good tor her. It'll ease you over the loss of Clara."

  "No. It won't. That's the thing it won't do."

  "Do it for him, then. Do it to hold him. Do it to make a home."

  "There's something to be said for having one chick and putting all your energy in that one chick."

  "There's something to be said for a yardful of chicks with some as a fallback in case adversity wipe some out."

  "I want to put my heart through it? You know that lady down home that had thirteen children and lost twelve? How'd she do it? How'd she keep bringing them and putting them in the ground—bringing them and putting them down? How'd she do that? And still keep getting up herself?"

  "Some women are like brood sows. They keep bringing 'em," Ina said flatly.

  "I don't believe that. I don't believe she could keep bringing 'em and putting 'em in the ground and not think a thing about it. I don't believe it."

  What would Johnnie Mae think? Her feelings ought to be considered too. It was hard for Alice to escape the thought that putting too much responsibility on her for Clara was

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  what had caused the accident. But girls back home took care of their mama's babies. That was the way it was. The older girl was always her mother's helpmate. And here in town, the young girls cared for the younger ones while their people worked.

  Had she put too much on Johnnie Mae — stealing her childhood? Well, a colored child couldn't waste too much time on childhood, no matter what her circumstance. How was Johnnie Mae going to feel about a new baby? Maybe she'd be mad or scared about it.

  Alice recalled with a pinging in the middle of her chest how Ina Mae had boo-hooed into her apron when they'd sat around the kitchen table at Papa's house talking about Sam Logan's baby in Alice's womb. They'd cried together, then smiled. At last, Ina had said she was happy for Alice. She'd wiped Alice's cheeks and stood up to Alice's papa, taking most of his angry slaps. He crowed and cawed like a double-crossed rooster. He shouted about Alice being a whore and Ina being a whore, too, for defending Alice. All women were whores and fools! He squared off and raised his fists at little Ina, who stood a good foot shorter than him. Ina put her arms across her chest, not striking Old Man Walker and not fending off his wallops, only yelling at him to stop his raging—shaming him with saying that he had no right to harm Alice's coming child nor nobody else. He finished by calling Ina's mother a whore and Alice's mother a slattern. The women who had scrubbed and tended to his every need. Them he called whores!

  "Don't let that man keep you from your life," Ina had said to Alice after Old Man Walker had finally stopped spouting off. "He's got no right to do it. Don't let him ruin your life."

  After meeting the stone wall of the two women's implacability, Old Man Walker had turned his anger on Sam Logan instead. The bad-mouthing had spread like molasses—slowly but surely miring everything in its path. Old Man Walker talked to Cal Jackson for the first time in ten years. Soon Sam Logan wasn't able to get a day's work on anybody's place within ten or twenty miles. Finally, Sam had cut his losses and taken off. He left for Indian country, folks said, and had never seen his daughter. He'd never seen Alice again either.

  Johnnie Mae came into the kitchen, greeted her mother and aunt, and noted the conspiratorial looks on their faces. Clearly, they'd been discussing something before she entered the room that they considered too adult for her to hear. She passed through and out to the toilet.

  When she returned, Johnnie Mae saw her mother thrust her arm into the turkey's cavity. Alice scraped her hand around inside and pulled out the entrails that were still attached to the bird. It was an indelicate procedure and her face changed from the determined neutrality of busy to disgust. When she brought out her hand, it was holding a round, amber, gelatinous glob.

  "Mercy," Mama said. "He told me this was a torn. I called myself buying a torn. This thing is a hen. Ina, this bird's got an egg in it."

  "What say?"

  "I say, this bird has got an egg in it. There's an egg with no shell up inside it," Alice exclaimed. It was still too early for sunlight and the coal oil lamps threw shadows up on the walls. With her hair tied back in a scarf, Alice looked like a sorceress, holding the incompletely formed egg in her hand.

  "Something about that takes away my taste for turkey,"

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  Ina said as she deftly used the nail of her right thumh to slit the collard leaves from their tough veins. She screwed up her

  face. "1 always prefer a torn turkev."

  "Oh, Ina, don't he foolish," Alice said "The hird is for eating. There's nothing to an egg being inside it."

  "Well, you were the one going on ahout the egg. Could he a funny kind of omen or something."

  "For a churchgoing Christian woman, you pav plenty ot attention to heathen spells and signs."

  "I'm talking ahout the power of nature. Better wash that thing out good with vinegar. Who'd you get that hird from?"

  "I always wash my turkey good. As long as it's tender, I'll have no quarrel."

  "In my experience, toms are the most tender."

  Though Alexis St. Pierre had promised to hire out for parties, she had worked on Alice in her sweetly charming way to get her to agree to cook and serve the holiday dinner. She'd pleaded, "Douglas's old school chum and his wite are coming and I dare not trust the dinner to some slacker." Appearance being so important, it was politic for Douglas St. Pierre to seem prosperous for his guests. Alexis wanted ham and turkev and yeast rolls and sparkling crystal and pumpkin pies and a maid.

  To bribe Alice, Alexis St. Pierre had ottered to pav for the Bvnums' turkev, too. Because of the steep prices ot the birds, the Bvnums and Ina Carson had not had a turkev tor Thanksgiving since Cap died. The very enterprising Cap Carson could always manage a bird. One year, he'd even gone all the way back home to Marabel for one and brought it back on the train in a wooden crate. He'd come
through Union Station like Moses down from the mountain with the turkey's ugly head sticking through the slats of the crate.

  Because of the agreement between Alice and Mrs. St. Pierre, Johnnie Mae and her mother had gone down to the market stalls on M Street for two fresh-killed turkeys. The fat things, some with white feathers, some with gray, had been crammed in large pens. Alice had moved between the pens, examining the general condition of the birds. Every now and then, one turkey would hop up and flap its wings. After she'd skirted the outside of the pens, scrutinizing the birds, Alice had raised her hand to catch the eye of the man selling. She pointed to one white-feathered bird that looked to be the right size and then another one that looked the same size. The man, who had a thick head and neck—a true bullet head— had waded into the pen and grabbed up Alice's choices by their wings. There'd been a faint snapping sound as the wing joints were broken. Grinning, the man held the birds up for Alice to examine closely. Johnnie Mae had watched her mother place her palms across the breasts of the birds and spread her fingers in order to measure the width of them. She'd pinched and prodded them a bit too, feeling for ample flesh.

  "Are they toms?" Alice had asked the man pointedly.

  "These is all toms — lots of breast meat — big drums — sweet meat," the bullet-headed man said. His hairless face had two tiny eyes out of all proportion to his head.

  "I'll have them," Alice'd said.

  He laughed. "Yes, ma'am. These is good ones, too."

  He'd put the neck of one of Alice's turkeys in a vise and the bird flapped futilely as the man brought his ax down on its neck. Then he killed the next. Blood ran from a sluice carved into the chopping block down into a pan near his feet. A dog that had watched the man's every move skulked forward on its

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  belly and waited near his ankle to ^rah each turkey's severed head when it fell.

  Johnnie Mae and her mother arrived at the St. Pierres' at about eight o'clock and met Alexis's frantic face at the kitchen door. Both were wearing long black skirts and long white starched bib aprons.

  "Well, at last. I thought you'd never arrive," Alexis said.

  Knowing there was plenty enough time for the job and not wanting to waste any of it, Mama brushed past Alexis into the kitchen. "Good morning, Miz St. Pierre," she said.

  "Good morning, Miz St. Pierre." Johnnie Mae echoed her mother and followed her inside.

  Alexis wrapped her peach-colored dressing gown tighter about her and sighed audibly. "Good morning."

  No one person could do all this — she knew that. It was barely going to get done by the three of them. Alexis felt suddenly easier about it now that Alice and company were here and suddenly peeved at herself for sinking into this dependency. She couldn't do all the housekeeping and hostessing by herself. Nobody could. But she didn't feel comfortable having the colored woman — and now her daughter — into everything. Still, Alice's presence in the house meant there was going to be little to worry about that day. Alice hadn't turned her face toward Alexis when she entered the kitchen. A blind man could see she wasn't happy to be there today. But she had come. That was important. She had come.

  Alice knew that Alexis would be the dancing dog today. Though she always talked about "my Douglas" in honeyed, adoring tones, Alice knew that Alexis was uncomfortable when her husband was in the house. She was jittery around him. She found it difficult to sit a chair with him in the room

  and constantly popped up to fetch one thing and another or check on things that needed no checking.

  Douglas St. Pierre was taller and slimmer than the white men Alice had seen around Marabel. Those men were all broader, less sinewy than Douglas, and more florid. They were mostly men who worked outside and ranged in color from swarthy to lobster-red. She remembered none as milk-white as Douglas, who had an office job in the government and didn't get out much into the sun.

  Douglas St. Pierre's school chum was tall, like him, and slender. The two men embraced at the front door with a lot of helloing and harumphing while they shook hands, a secretive gesture that looked like they were rummaging in each other's pockets. The school chum's wife stood behind him in the doorway and looked at the men sweetly, not seeming to mind that they ignored her completely.

  Suddenly recollecting her duties—she, too, was watching the men's ritual handshake—Alexis crossed toward the wife, grasped her elbow, and relieved her of her coat. It had been arranged that Johnnie Mae would follow Alexis unobtrusively and take the guests' coats as Alexis handed them to her.

  Johnnie Mae managed to haul the two guests' coats into the anteroom, where she'd been directed to place them on the chaise. The wife's was a full-length mink coat as dark as coffee and more silky than anything Johnnie Mae had ever felt. Hearing a gentle clacking of pans in the kitchen and the excited tittering of Alexis in the parlor, Johnnie Mae knew she had at least a split second to leap onto the coat and burrow her face down into it.

  "Better leave that alone an J see it your mother needs help," he said gentlv, quietly. The words stung Johnnie Mae like a slap. Her cheeks became warm with shame as if she actually had been slapped. How could she have let herself get caught by Douglas St. Pierre doing such a babyish thing? He stood in the doorway betraying no amusement as Johnnie Mae smoothed the rumpled coat and her own clothes, then slipped past him out the door. It she had known the language of Douglas St. Pierre's moods and expressions, she would have known he was amused at her antic, as he was often amused at the foibles ot women. Johnnie Mae was little different, in his c from Alexis. To him, females could hardly help the silliness of their nature—little matter their age or color.

  Bv three p.m., Douglas St. Pierre had poured so many glasses of wine that Alexis's head was light. At rive after three, Johnnie Mae was sent into the parlor to whisper to Alexis discreetly that the rolls would be compromised if dinner was delayed much longer.

  At three forty-five, dinner was served. The dining table was anchored at one end bv a large ham that was scored, stuck with cloves, and drizzled with syrup. At the other end was the large roast turkey with stuffing. Alexis wanted the table to be groaning. Douglas's school chum must see how well things were for him, so there was enough food on the table for ten people. The two slim men and the two slender women were dwarfed by the array oi dishes: candied sweets, mashed white potatoes, tmv green peas, corn pudding, stewed tomatoes, cranberry sauce, and yeast rolls.

  In the kitchen, Mama fixed two biscuits with sausages and put two cups of coffee at the edge oi the kitchen table. She pushed a sandwich toward Johnnie Mae. "Don't spoil your

  dinner," she commanded her, knowing she was surely hungry with the working and the smells of the food.

  Alice was anxious not to spoil the Thanksgiving dinner with Willie and Ina and all o( them around the table. The big holidays — the feasting holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter — these were the times when she missed her papa's house in Carolina. Alexis St. Pierre thought she had a table groaning! That woman had never seen the table of a man who loves to hunt, who has three sons and three daughters and a wife younger than himself and a few milk cows and hogs and chickens and bursting sacks o{ cornmeal and a cupboard full of preserves and pickles and headcheese.

  Johnnie Mae and her mother left Alexis's house when all the dishes except for the dessert things were washed and put away. Alexis St. Pierre left her guests still eating the Martha Washington cake and came into the kitchen. She insisted that Alice take the ham, as well as the leftover rolls and cakes and pies. Why, there was still more than half of a Virginia ham!

  As they headed down Wisconsin Avenue, Johnnie Mae trailed her mother, pulling the loaded wagon. At P Street, Mama stopped in the middle of the cobblestoned street for a moment and looked down into Johnnie Mae's face. She took the girl's hands, put her fingertips against her lips lightly, and kissed them. Alice stood a moment and enjoyed the smell o{ food and bleach on her daughter's soft fingers. Johnnie Mae's fingers were still soft despite doing
grown-ups' work. They were still a child's hands. But not a baby's—no longer a baby's hands — Lord, no! She stood a moment, mourning for the baby child who was fast going away, and then thinking herself a silly woman to moon about a child who won't stay a baby.

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  The only way for a baby to stay a baby is to die, and each day of a child's life marks the death of the day before — a day the mother mourns.

  Releasing Johnnie Mae's hand and falling into step beside her, Alice continued down to O Street. She felt an oddness down in her vitals—some kind of a fluttering feeling. She was thinking about the coming child and she felt ashamed of herself in Johnnie Mae's presence. She felt a little ashamed that having Johnnie Mae might not be enough.

  Alice paused for a moment on the top step of their house. Exhausted, she reached down to catch a second wind. She called out to Willie and Ina as she and Johnnie Mae came through the door.

  Ina's intentions were as pure as daylight. Alice knew that and Alice knew that she couldn't possibly have managed to have a Thanksgiving dinner for her own family and cook and serve for the St. Pierres if it hadn't been for Ina. But coming into her kitchen and seeing Ina bustling about, basting the turkey and turning out biscuits onto a pan for baking, gave her a small, unhappy feeling. This feeling was so small and spiteful that it didn't have a name, and in a good person's soul it wouldn't last very long or do much damage. It was the small feeling that had to do with not quite knowing who she was in her own kitchen. Ina moved aside quickly, handed Alice an apron, and exclaimed over the extras Alice and Johnnie Mae had brought from the St. Pierres'.

  This act — this giving-back to the wife and mother control of her own domain — was thought by Ina, and not disputed by any of the other southern women, to be her due. If the colored woman couldn't claim much of her own in the world abroad, at least her kitchen was her legally sanctioned