River, cross my heart

by Clarke, Breena

  After reading the note Peanut Walter handed him, Reverend Jenkins closed the record books and put on his suit coat. Jenkins paused in front of a mirror and vigorously brushed his hair. Many a man is sorry to see gray hairs pop up around his temples, but Buford Jenkins was happy to see them. With a bulbous nose that was occasionally decorated with a black-headed pustule, he was not considered a good-looking man.

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  Gray hairs helped him look dignified rather than comical. This was all to the good around white folks, especially the official ones. They liked to have someone they could talk to who could speak up for the Negro race with a suit and tie on. And in relations with whites, a colored person always needed an introduction or a tell. A colored man needed some subtlety of appearance, like gray temples or a limp, that proclaimed a mild intention.

  Bethel Jenkins, his mama, had raised no fool. Jenkins had sense enough not to wear his best suit or his best shoes down to the police station to see Michael Cronin. Clean and slightly threadbare—that was the best way to dress for talking to the white folks.

  When Jenkins arrived, Sergeant Michael Cronin told him plainly that folks weren't going to tolerate colored children getting in their swimming pool at night. He advised Reverend Jenkins to find out who they were and warn them to stay out of there. He described the perpetrators as two young girls. And the police wouldn't be responsible if something untoward happened to half-naked colored children running the streets at night.

  The general description of each of the two girls and the direction in which they'd run sounded like one of them must be Johnnie Mae Bynum. Reverend Jenkins knew he'd have to go speak to the Bynums about this matter.

  Sunday morning, the Bynum household lingered long over their breakfast. Johnnie Mae waited for her mama to give her permission to leave the table to dress for Sunday services. But Mama kept her eyes to herself and said nothing. She sipped

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  coffee and pushed her o(\ around on her plate without speaking. Aunt Ina, too, was silent, and Papa surrendered his coffee cup after a long while and went out hack to his garden. Nobody acted like he or she meant to go to church that day. Was it such a monstrous thing she'd done that they couldn't even go to church. 7

  Reverend Jenkins had called the previous evening and had spoken to Mama and Papa in the parlor. His voice had been sympathetic. He had said more than once that he understood it from the girl's point of view. He felt that having places like that pool where colored children couldn't go was shameful and plain wrong. But there wasn't anything they could do about it now. And for her own sake, she had better stay out of that pool.

  The two women sat with their Bibles in the parlor after breakfast and read silently. This time they blamed her. What she had done at the pool had caused the shame they were feeling. And her mama and papa and aunt Ina were not inclined to relieve her misery with exculpatory pats and murmurings. Their glances at her were hard. And though they didn't require her to, she felt that she must sit in the parlor with them and their Bibles and her own Bible.

  Johnnie Mae could never remember Miss Ella Bromsen coming up to the front door of their house. She always came through the backyard and scratched at the screen door like somebody they'd always known. It was the country in her, Aunt Ina said, and the fact of her Indian blood. And in the late afternoon after church services, Miss Ella Bromsen came through the backyard, exchanged courtesies with Papa, and came into the house and through to the parlor. Mama and Aunt Ina looked up, startled. Miss Ella Bromsen came into

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  the parlor carrying a brand-new broom with a handle nearly as tall as she was.

  "Sister Alice, Sister Ina Mae, we missed you at services today."

  Johnnie Mae detected a wash of shame over her mother and her aunt. They knew they'd been wallowing in their shamefacedness, and this mild rebuke caused more.

  Aunt Ina closed her Bible, popped up from her chair, and moved to offer Miss Ella a seat. "Ella, take a seat. And won't you have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake?"

  "No, ma'am, thank you. I've come to do a thing and have a word with you and Sister Alice."

  Johnnie Mae rose at the pointed look her mother gave her and went out to the kitchen.

  "Johnnie Mae, take your mother's sweeping broom and put it on the back porch," Ella called after her. Mama and Aunt Ina looked at her in surprise.

  Ella Bromsen's reputation as an odd bird was well earned. She proceeded to use the new broom she'd brought to sweep around the periphery of the parlor rug, starting in the farthest corner from where she'd come into the room. She continued around the room, swirling what little dust there was in the room and collecting it back at the spot she'd started from. She swept the few dustballs into her palm and gave them to Alice. "Sister Alice, take your troubles outside and throw them away."

  Alice looked Ella Bromsen full in the eyes. She was surely a madwoman, but she'd come with her hands open and her eyes clear. Alice closed her hands over the dust motes and went and released them over the back porch rail.

  When she came back to the parlor, Ella was sitting in a

  chair as ordinary as any Sunday caller. The tall broom leaned against the inside of the front door. When Ella left by the back door, she took the Bynums' used broom and carried it under her left armpit like a lance. She passed Johnnie Mae on the back porch and said to the girl as she passed, "Don't you give your mama no more trouble, girl."

  Alice and Ina packed Johnnie Mae's things and set out the clothes she would wear without consulting her on choices. Alice figured this would be the last time she would decide things for Johnnie Mae. She wasn't much more than a child, but she was going away like a woman. She was taking a grown person's concerns with her. Clara was gone and now Johnnie Mae was going. Would she ever come back to them as a girl?

  Alice had finally lost the argument with Willie. They had thrashed and tussled verbally in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the parlor. Willie'd insisted that Johnnie Mae had got wild, and there was nothing Alice could say to persuade him that the girl should stay. He went on and on about Johnnie Mae getting out of hand and insisted that they couldn't control her. Why, they couldn't even keep her in her bed at night! What kind of shame was she going to bring on them next? At least down home, there wouldn't be any swimming pools or bad influences. Old Man Walker would see to that!

  Willie held firm to the idea that Johnnie Mae couldn't stay in Georgetown with people knowing she'd been involved

  in the event at the pool. It she could go away for the rest of the summer, maybe this thing would he forgotten. They would tell folks that she was going south to visit her aunts. Alice countered that it wouldn't matter whether she went away or not; if people knew about the pool, they knew about the pool. Alice dictated a terse message to Old Man Walker at the Western Union office: will arrive rutherfordton tomorrow. YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER, JOHNNIE MAE BYNUM.

  Johnnie Mae had said very little in the days since the pool incident. Not only her ears but her face was burning with their fussing and fuming. She knew she'd done wrong in going out at night and breaking into the pool. She knew she'd done wrong to drag Pearl Miller into the scheme. And she was wrong to swim in the white people's pool. But nobody would be able to-convince her that swimming was wrong. And even Reverend Jenkins himself said that it was wrong for them to keep colored children from swimming in that pool. But Papa and Mama were still talking about her and all the shame she had brought down onto their heads. Mrs. Miller had even said that Johnnie Mae was a bad influence on Pearl and she forbade Pearl to have anything to do with her. The past few days, the two girls had had to sneak around to get a chance to talk to each other.

  The plans were set: Papa and Mama were going to send her by train to her grandpa's farm in North Carolina at least for the rest of the summer—maybe for the rest of her life.

  She marshaled all her reserves of pluck just to keep straight the things she must do on the train trip—hand in her
ticket, look after her bag and her lunch—and the things she must not do—talk to strangers, forget her purse or her bag or lunch or where she was to change trains or where she was to get off the train. She was quiet, calm, in control of herself as

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  she rode across town on the streetcar with her parents and aunt and baby Calvin to Union Station.

  The group walked solemnly into the waiting room at Union Station. Mr. Ernest Boston hailed them at once, in a voice that was well modulated but resonant in the cavernous room. He hurried across the room in short quick steps. Whenever Georgetown children traveled by train, Mr. Ernest Boston was sought out and asked to keep an eye on the young traveler. And Mr. Ernest Boston considered it his particular responsibility to assure the colored families that no harm would come to any child traveling on his train. Willie, Alice, and Ina were quite comfortable with delivering Johnnie Mae into his care.

  "Miss Johnnie Mae, you look so grown I wouldn't have known you if your mama wasn't with you." Mr. Ernest Boston bent toward her and smiled as if she were a tiny child needing to be comforted.

  "You all don't need to worry. I'll look after her till we get to Raleigh and then I'll hand her over to Mr. Sam Gray and he'll get her to your folks in Rutherfordton. We'll drink a glass of milk in Richmond after we change trains and we'll ride in style all the way. Many a child younger than you rides the train by themselves. You're looking glum, Johnnie Mae. Cheer up. When this train leaves the station, it's going to eat up the tracks. We'll be there before you know it."

  It was expected that she would smile appreciatively toward Mr. Ernest Boston. And she did so, though her face felt as if it would dissolve into mush. She did not want to cry. Though how on earth was she going to help herself when it was time to board the train and leave them all? She wanted to grab hold o( baby Calvin and bury her head in his warm, fat stomach. She knew if she did this he would giggle uncontrol-

  lably and this would make her feel better. Mama was carrying a large cardboard box tied up with string that contained Johnnie Mae's lunch. Papa was carrying the suitcase that had her clothes, and Aunt Ina was huffing and puffing under the burden of Calvin's solid bulk. Nobody had said anything all the whole way across town on the streetcar.

  Truth to tell, Alice had a feeling that Willie was regretting this decision but was too much a rooster to admit it. She had been thinking about how she might maneuver him into being able to change his mind. But time was running out. Sending Johnnie Mae back home seemed to her like walking backward. What had they come to Washington for if not to get better for Johnnie Mae and Clara? But Clara was gone. And there was Calvin now. What good was it going to do to send Johnnie Mae away from them when they especially needed her now to care for Calvin?

  After Mr. Ernest Boston had left them to their good-byes and had pointed out where to get on the train, the Bynum family stood in silence. The Roman soldiers standing at attention around the periphery of the lobby's vaulted ceiling respected their silence, their heads slightly bowed and their bodies still. All around the group, people hurried past to reach their trains. If the angel Gabriel had blown the last great blast on his trumpet, the Bynums and Ina Carson would not have moved. Only Calvin wiggled and twisted in Aunt Ina's arms. They were stopped in the middle of Union Station, considering how to proceed.

  Alice plunked the lunchbox down on the floor at her feet, set her jaw, and wrenched and tugged at her hat, changing its placement and then resettling it in its original place. "You can't send my baby off down south," she blurted at her

  husband. He looked up and saw a furious determination on her face and rocked back on his heels. "You can't separate my babies and my heart. You're a man, but you're only one man. I've got a say in what happens to the child out of my body and I say that she stays or I go with her. I'll take this boy, too. I'll raise them out of my pocket if I have to, but I won't be separated from them!"

  Ina Carson drew herself up at her cousin's words. And though she didn't mix in, you could tell what side of the stream she was on. She thrust Calvin's fat, wiggling body into Alice's arms.

  "What the matter with you women? You crazy or some-thing? What kind of thing are you talking now?" Willie sputtered and his eyes bulged in alarm. And though he was not entirely ready to give up his pique, he was relieved that things had begun to take a turn. Johnnie Mae had to be controlled somehow. And if they couldn't do it, maybe it would be better to send her back south before something bad happened. But maybe they shouldn't go off half-cocked. They did need her for taking care of the baby. And if the women were going to act this way . . . "What kind of example you setting for this girl? You raisin' your voice at me in this public place!"

  Alice stood straight and stared at him without reply. She had provoked him and was letting him carry on in the full knowledge that the storm had, in fact, passed. They were going to be able to go back home together.

  Willie snorted and harumphed at his wife and rolled his eyes, but gradually calmed. Alice had given him a way out of this tangle, but he was still not content with things. This swimming! This was the thing that seemed to be the cause of the trouble. It seemed like with this swimming Johnnie Mae

  had got to feeling that she could do whatever she liked. That wasn't no way for a young girl to hehave. Willie stood for a time with his hat in his hands. He stared at the marble floor of the station. Looking at him, one would have thought he was reading auguries in the highly buffed stone.

  Johnnie Mae, who'd had her eyes averted to the floor, looked up to see a short, dark figure standing off a ways, looking intently at her. She thought it must be Pearl Miller and got ashamed that she'd not said a proper good-bye to Pearl. It was Pearl standing there. Pearl had come to beg her not to go. Pearl was her best friend and she had come down to beg Johnnie Mae's parents to let her stay.

  The sun that streamed in from the east-facing windows made it difficult for Johnnie Mae to read the features of the figure. Was she smiling? Was she mad at Johnnie Mae for not saying a proper good-bye? In fact, all that could be discerned was that it was the figure of a girl. Yet there was something askew. The girl was not standing so far distant that her features should have appeared so muddy. But they were muddy. There was no other girl it could have been. Yet she actually looked too childlike to be Pearl. Johnnie Mae puzzled: it had to be Pearl, but it couldn't be. Pearl would not have worn the ribbon in her hair attached to the very end of her plait. Pearl would not have had the little white ankle socks. Pearl would have called out or smiled or come closer.

  Johnnie Mae broke the spell of silence that had the Bynums and Ina Carson frozen in a tableau. She called out "Hey!" and started toward the girl, who turned and ran toward the revolving brass doors leading out of Union Station.

  In the earliest hours of daylight, the breeze off the Potomac carries the fragrances of wild places upriver and the flora that inhabit them. Air comes down from these places, stoops low over Rock Creek, and blows back across Georgetown, bringing along a scent that has no name other than morning.

  Johnnie Mae sat before a pile of onions blowing short breaths between her lips. She wanted to sigh, to expel a long, slow chestful of air. But sighing annoyed her mother so. Mama disapproved oi it as a behavior for young girls. She never sighed herself and she never let one of Johnnie Mae's sighs go unnoticed. "Sighing will age you," she said now, going back into a closet of aphorisms and mother-wit mumbo jumbo. Now isn't that the silliest thing, Johnnie Mae thought, hoping her mother wouldn't be able to read these impudent thoughts on her forehead. Mama continued, "You see, you turn that sigh into a yawn and it'll clear you out. A yawn will give you strength to get started again. A sigh leaves you down with nowhere to go. Then you have to wait for your second wind." Johnnie Mae cultivated her puff-puffing.

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  The work o( fixing extra-large portions of potato salad, bean salad, fried chicken, and all the required summer picnic foods was boring. Johnnie Mae handled the mountain of onions ass
igned to her competently, pulling their skins off quickly. She dabbed her eyes and blinked, but skinned and cut the onions deftly. Mama peeled from a pile of hot white potatoes and supervised Johnnie Mae. The two worked along qui-etly. Johnnie Mae shifted her hips to settle herself on the chair. The unaccustomed cloths between her legs were chafing her. Alice glanced up without moving her head to study the girl slyly. She hadn't said much. Didn't ask any questions about starting her monthly.

  For many years, the last Thursday before Labor Day had been the traditional day for the Mount Zion Church picnic under the P Street bridge. Spread out along the P Street beach, it was the biggest social event of the summer. Women who cooked for a living five or six days a week had been up much of the night preparing the picnic and were up again at sunrise. Cakes were made the day before, chicken fried early in the morning, and potato salad mixed and cooled. Daughters had strict instructions for assembling and cleaning and being ready.

  A full two days before the picnic, Ina Carson had buried a skinless young pig in a brick-lined pit in her backyard, covered it with basil and sage, and built a slow-burning wood fire atop it, just like Cap used to do. Carolina-slippin'-and-hidin'-buried-in-the-ground roasted shoat had been one of his favorite dishes. Cap used to say that the fact that his daddy had risked the road gang or even his life in stealing the shoat from Cal Jackson when stores were low made it taste extra good. His daddy did this when he and all the kids and Cap's mam

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  had got tired of the wild taste of game. Daddy Carson roasted the shoat really slow for five days or so. He tended it all by himself, guarding the fire and stoking it. Not wanting to risk anybody else's life but his own, he wouldn't even hint as to where he had it stashed. When it was done he'd haul it to their table. And when they were done eating it, Daddy Car-son buried the bones in an iron chest under the cabin to foil Cal Jackson's dogs, which people liked to say had the power of augury and could find a missing bone before it was lost.