River, cross my heart

by Clarke, Breena

  Ina's shoat had come honestly, with a pretty, soft skin that she rubbed down with salt and pepper. It came up out of the ground that Thursday morning with its flesh crisp brown and barely clinging to the bone and smelling like backwoods Carolina.

  Johnnie Mae saved the biggest onion in the pile for last. It was the size of a softball, with a thick, brown-striped skin. Under the shiny skin were two halves joined with a line be-tween the two halves and the hint of another skin. Mama noticed Johnnie Mae's change of rhythm and looked down at the girl's hands to see what she was looking at.

  "That onion you're peeling — let me see it," she demanded. Johnnie Mae looked up, puzzled, and held out the onion for her mother to see. Mama's nose turned up into a hard wrinkle. "Put it down. Put it in the garbage. That's no good."

  For the life of her, Johnnie Mae couldn't see what was wrong with the thing. She'd been careful to root out any soft-spotted ones. This one was firm and certainly had a sweet pungent sting. "What's the matter, Mama?"

  "That's a double-sided onion," Alice continued. "That's bad luck. Throw it out. Don't ever use a double-sided onion,

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  Johnnie. It's bad luck. Don't even finish peeling it. They say a double-sided onion will divide your house against itself."

  Johnnie Mae snickered as she let the onion fall into the pan of garbage scraps. It never ceased to amaze her how many odd things a person had to remember simply to get through the day. Things that had to be remembered because they weren't set down in any book she'd ever seen and certainly weren't taught in school. If you spilled salt you had to quickly throw some over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck. Never sweep dirt in a circle, but out toward the door—and never from the doorstep in. Don't touch the milk pitcher when you've got your monthly, or the milk will curdle.

  The list of things not to do when you had your monthly was so long and arcane that Johnnie Mae began to think that most were made up to keep a woman from doing anything at all. And all the grown women—she was one now, though except for this one messy, stinking, achy thing, she didn't feel like it—spent their time figuring if it was coming soon or late or not coming at all. And for all the figuring and wondering, they were all reluctant to speak out plainly about it. When they talked about their monthly, it was in croaking whispers through dissimulating lips.

  The annual Mount Zion Church picnic was the largest social gathering of black Georgetowners. All kinds of public and private plans were being made. Some men were running over in their minds which big rock they'd tie a watermelon to so that the cool creek water would bathe it and chill it for after the heavy food was eaten. Ca'line Brown's parlor was busy with folks slipping in for a bottle of home brew.

  At sunrise on the morning of the picnic, members of the Elks Club gathered at the P Street beach to stake out the spot

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  where they would set up a huge pot of coffee over an open fire. Members came hauling firewood from all over Georgetown. Mr. Pud Allen even went up Conduit Road to get hickory wood because he so loved the smell of hickory burning under boiling coffee.

  By noon most of the family groups had found a good spot to spread out their baskets, and teams had been chosen for baseball and horseshoes. Johnnie Mae's favorite picnic game was the three-legged race, but she'd made herself scarce and hadn't been chosen for a team.

  After she helped her mama get settled in a good picnic spot, Pearl left her exchanging pleasantries with Dr. Hiawatha Parmalee and his wife. "Your Pearl is coming up to be a nice-looking young lady, Sister Hattie," Mrs. Parmalee said, once "hello" and "how do" had passed back and forth among the three. "Praise God, she's got all my looks now. And some of her papa's, too," Pearl heard her mother say as she walked off. Hattie Miller had, by dint of conscientious attendance at church services and women's auxiliary meetings, become well thought of at Mount Zion Church.

  Pearl wove in and out of clumps of people, looking for Johnnie Mae. She found her finally, off by herself at the edge of the creek, sitting on a boulder. Pearl dropped down beside Johnnie Mae and waited for her to acknowledge her presence. Behind them was the laughing and shouting of the picnickers and in front of them was a merry splashing and sloshing of water over rocks.

  The creek was gently conversational—a gaggle of happy voices. The words were indistinct, but the sound was of a group happily talking and enjoying their exchange. The people at the picnic behind them on the grassy knoll of the

  P Street beach were also happily enjoying one another's company. Johnnie Mae imagined them talking among themselves and not including her. All were part of a confederacy of adults talking about grown people's things and not including her or any of the babies. And Pearl was now part o them. Pearl, who used to be a scared rabbit who wouldn't make a sound, was now up among them talking about things in a code of womanly dissembling.

  That day Pearl's mood had been bright until she came upon Johnnie Mae. She was now more successful socially, having won the friendship of a few more of the girls at school. It was through Johnnie Mae that she'd acquired these friends and Pearl felt she owed her a special Loyalty. But today, a day when all o{ Georgetown was lighthearted and playful, Johnnie Mae was moping and shying away from the activities. Pearl was afraid that sitting on rocks with water all around was having a saddening effect on her. Perhaps that was what was making her sulky.

  "What's wrong, Johnnie Mae?" Pearl, tired of the silence on a day when all else and whosoever was laughing and giggling, asked tentatively.

  "NothinV she said. The kind of "nothing" that begs "Ask me and ask me again till I tell you."

  "Somethin' 's the matter. I can tell."

  "Nothin."

  "Somethin' 's the matter. What's the matter?"

  It took a couple oi sputtery tries before Johnnie Mae managed to tell Pearl that she'd finally got her monthly.

  "Is that all? Johnnie Mae, you're craiy," she said in the exasperating way she had recently acquired. Pearl was suddenly so womanly that even' comment she made sounded like smug

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  pity. She was smug because she'd got her monthly a few months ago and was now quite used to it.

  After an hour or so on the boulder in the sun, the two girls succumbed to the lure of fried chicken and potato salad. Like the other young people, they circulated the picnic grounds and took plates of food at every family grouping they passed. At the bake-sale table, each bought a piece of cake for a penny and relished choosing a slice of cake other than her mama's. Pearl's mother's lemon cake was completely gone any-way and Alice Bynum's chocolate layer cake was down to the last crumpling slice. Mabel Dockery's mother was the cake slicer and was installed in a chair at one end of the long table on which the cakes were placed. Her fat arms didn't rise from her sides as she cut the cakes, and between each slice, they came to rest across her wide middle.

  Talk around the cake stand was all about whether it was proper for Dr. Tyler to be so openly enamored of Miss Gladys Perryman with his wife dead only three months. Johnnie Mae was surprised at the way Pearl had got all the salient facts of the big scandal and expressed the opinion that Miss Gladys Perryman was the prettiest woman in Georgetown. Gladys Perryman was not the only woman at the picnic with a parasol, but she was the only one whose parasol exactly matched the soft, bright yellow of her dress. The dress hugged her slim figure more closely than some of the talkers thought was proper, but all agreed that she cut a lovely swath while promenading on the arm of Dr. Tyler. Sarey Tyler, wearing a close-cropped head of shiny curls just like Gladys Perryman's, followed behind the couple, absorbing what was left of the admiring glances bestowed on the two. Gladys Perryman had established herself quite firmly in Georgetown. She was a fixture

  m cultural functions sponsored by the Heliotrope Circle and at the numerous social club functions held at Monticello House. And now there was talk that she would soon open a proper beauty shop in a storefront on P Street.

  Pearl Miller, never
much for running and jumping, had of late become a real stick-in-the-mud. She shook her head at Johnnie Mae's urgings to cavort. Racing headlong up the hill toward P Street and calling out over her shoulder for Pearl to follow, Johnnie Mae looked back to see an expression of polite indulgence about the girl's eyes. The kind of look any grownup would turn on a too-playful child. Pearl's steps were measured and suddenly graceful. And she strove mightily to imitate the elegant swoop-and-dip gait that Gladys Perryman accomplished so effortlessly. Johnnie Mae was puzzled at the change and couldn't suppress the feeling that she and Pearl had parted company and were now on different sides of a divide. When Pearl reached the top of the hill breathing hard, Johnnie Mae smiled.

  Johnnie Mae got tired of feeling like a baby around Pearl and walked off from her. Pearl had fallen in with a group o{ girls from their class and was jabbering and trading tales. The conversation got most animated when Charlie Edward Hughes was brought up.

  Everybody and his brother was at the picnic and all seemed intimately involved with someone. Johnnie Mae felt excluded. Why, her mother had even said that Johnnie Mae need not bother to look after little Calvin today. And right now her mother was holding court with Calvin on the grass, surrounded by cooing women and a particularly talkative Aunt Ina. They were all acting like they'd never even seen a baby before. Miss Ruby Tilson, amiable but as plain as a

  muddy-brown wren, was babbling nonsense words to Calvin. For his part, the baby was sitting up on Mama's lap as if he were the king of England. Everybody was having a bright time.

  As soon as she let loose in her mind her annoyance at the baby and her mother and all the other cackling women, Johnnie Mae felt ashamed. Maybe it was a good idea for her to stay away from Calvin. Maybe he was safer if she wasn't responsible for him. Over the few months since Calvin had come, she had questioned herself and considered that her parents and Aunt Ina and maybe some of the neighbor folks might think she wasn't responsible enough to look out for a baby. She had been trusted with Clara and Clara had drowned. Was Calvin going to be safe with her? She made up her mind that she was going to look out for Calvin. Be a stalwart guardian, but at a distance. She was going to let her mother have her baby to herself. She loved him—truly did. He was soft and helpless now, and sweet-smelling. He was a happy, gurgling baby. And when all of them were sitting around the stove in the kitchen and wiggling their fingers at him and baby-talking him, Johnnie Mae was happy and comfortable, too. But Calvin was precious to them. He was Papa's precious dream child and Mama's consolation baby. And Aunt Ina shared him. He meant so much to all of them that Johnnie Mae was leery of being too close to him and maybe putting him in jeopardy. It was on account of them. It was because she didn't want them to lose Calvin the way Clara had been lost—lost because of her.

  Johnnie Mae meandered back down to a boulder at the edge of Rock Creek. She sat down and pulled at weeds that

  were holding on like forty, taking pleasure in yanking them up brutally. Her hand closed over the tops of the hlossoms and crushed them and tugged them out.

  "You thinking about swimming, Johnnie Mae?" The voice was friendly and slightly joking. He was gently pulling her leg, like he always did. Charlie Hughes had the pleasantest manner of any man she'd ever known.

  For the children who came to his swimming classes at the Francis pool, Charlie Hughes was the first adult that they didn't have a prescribed code of behavior toward. He wasn't one of them. He was older and more worldly, a student at Howard University. But though he was an adult, there wasn't a stiff distance between him and the children. When he came upon Johnnie Mae, Charlie had been circulating through the picnic crowd. A big picnic like this reminded him of big church picnics they had in his hometown, Valdosta, Georgia. It was a welcome change from his meals at the university. He had eaten, by this time, four heaping plates of food, one piece of cake, and one piece of pie. The muscles in his stomach were worn out from digesting and he simply wanted to sit and give his stomach some rest. He was looking for a quiet sitting place when he came upon Johnnie Mae with her face looking like a mud fence.

  "Oh," she said, turning her head with a snap.

  He climbed onto the rock she was sitting on and lowered himself down beside her. "You had enough of the picnic? I ate so much my stomach is worn out. Did you have some of the watermelon? They're cutting it up back there."

  "No, I'm just sitting here." She disliked the babyish sound of her own voice. But he had surprised her and she hadn't had

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  time to plan out a conversation or pitch her voice to a more mature tone. And looking at Charlie was distracting. All of the girls agreed that he was the best-looking man ever born.

  "You look like you've got a lot on your mind, Johnnie Mae," he said. He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out next to her on the boulder like a snake sunning itself after dinner.

  "No. I don't know. No." She stumbled over her words. She could have told him volumes because she did have a lot on her mind. But it was impossible to summon up the words. She wanted to say something, though. She would certainly lose his attention if she didn't hold up her end of the conversation. He'd have to be thinking she was a dolt by now.

  But she could tell Charlie wasn't thinking she was addled. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn't. He was reclining there, just taking it easy, being companionable. She thought how lucky she was to be sitting next to him. Pearl was going to be jealous. His placid face had no smirks. It was a wide expanse of amiability.

  "You know, you're a good swimmer, Johnnie Mae. You've got a lot of native ability. You like swimming?"

  Well, he must be asking this just to be polite. Everybody that knew her knew she loved to swim. Her papa said she'd have webbed feet if she kept up swimming every chance she got. And Aunt Ina had said that maybe this wild swimming behavior should stop, now that she was becoming a grown woman. She answered him with a "yes" that was so tentative it made him laugh at her. And she had wanted so much to act mature and hold his interest.

  "Oh, I think you like it more than that. I've seen you in the water and I think you like it a lot."

  Johnnie Mae and Charlie Hughes sat on their rock for the longest time without talking. The sun, though it was not yet ready to set, had begun creeping its way behind clouds. The sky was light, but the bright yellow had turned pearlescent. The picnickers' voices had begun to soften and lethargy descended on the crowd. Groups of people sat around on the grass, resting themselves and picking food out of their teeth. Johnnie Mae stretched and looked back toward the P Street beach. The bright sun had wearied her eyes and they were now, in the lower light, only hazily focused. Out of this haze, she caught sight of her mother threading through the crowd. Mama walked alone among the people and appeared to be looking for someone. Seen from a distance, woven in among the others, she stood out like a fancy button on a drab coat. Johnnie Mae studied her mother and was fascinated with the knowledge that her mother had not seen her. Who was she looking for? Maybe somebody had walked off with her precious Calvin. The thought struck Johnnie Mae like a hammer. Suppose somebody had walked off with Calvin and her mother was desperately trying to find him? She didn't look frantic, though, only concerned. But Johnnie Mae thought that perhaps at this distance she couldn't see the worry lines in her mother's face. From where she sat, her mother's forehead was like her cheeks and the skin on her arms. It was soft like pudding. But she knew this was just an illusion—a trick of the distance and the waning light and the heat. Her mother's brow was always slightly furrowed. With her there was always a concern. She saw her mother stop and chat amiably with a person here and there. But she soon broke away and strained to see around the milling groups. Though observing her mother unobserved was thrilling, a stinging feeling in

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  her guts spoiled the pleasure. What if something had happened? She sprang up from the rock and said, '"Bye" to Charlie. He chuckled as she leapt onto the bank and ran off toward her mother. A feeling of being
small, being nearly helpless and liking it, came over her. On the bank, she lost sight of her mother as she tried to see over the heads of the crowd. The crowd had absorbed her fully and Johnnie Mae's eye followed every yellow dress—there were a great many that day. At last, she saw the nape of her mother's neck above the white collar of her flowered yellow dress. She jostled her way through small clumps of people that stood between them and came up behind her. She tapped her mama's shoulder and said, "Hey!" Mama swirled around and her frown turned to a smile and back to a frown when she saw Johnnie Mae. "Where've you been so long? We've been looking for you." So it wasn't Calvin they were worried about. They'd been wondering where she was. They were looking for her. It had not occurred to her until that moment that her mother might be looking for her. She had thought that as long as she could see her mother —feel her mother—scent her mother—she was within the sphere of her mother's influence. Her mother would know where she was. And she had not known until now that she could take herself out of this sphere of mother's love and control. She could take herself away from her mother and her mother would be puzzled and would not know where she was. It takes a child who is well loved a long time to figure out that she can leave her mother's house just by walking away.

  Alice looked at her daughter standing on the diving tower at the Francis pool. The girl looked so teeny up there. This change oi thinking was odd. Johnnie Mae had seemed all grown and nearly gone for months. And now, up on the tower, she seemed a tiny little chick. The fear Alice had of water came over her. She had never been tested by river or stream or swimming pool. She had always had a little fear of water, even of her papa's stream back home.