by Bette Greene
“If you don’t think a hundred ferocious Nazi prisoners arriving at the Jenkinsville depot is war news then I don’t know what is.”
On Ruth’s face was the dawning of a smile. “Got some sweetness to go with your up-to-the-second news?”
I stood up. “Maybe you oughta spend a little time telling my father and mother to serve some sweetness to me.”
“Reckon they’d listen?”
“Guess not.”
Ruth nodded her agreement. “Could you tell this old lady why you is always talking about your father when all the other young girls be talking about their daddies?”
“Well, daddies act one way and fathers act another. And anyway, I don’t happen to be a young girl. I’ve been a teenager already for two years.”
She laughed. “Oh, Honey Babe, how can you be a teenager when you is only twelve?”
“’Cause I’ve been one since I was ten. Not many people know this, Ruth, but teenage actually starts when you get two numbers to your age. See?”
I could tell that I hadn’t convinced her. “Don’t you see, ten is in reality tenteen. Now people don’t generally go around calling it tenteen cause it sounds too much like the chewing gum, but that’s the only reason.”
The smile that Ruth had been holding in suddenly broke through. “Honey, you jest all the time go round making up rules to suit yourself. I got myself two big numbers to my age and I shore ain’t no teenager.”
“Well, I can explain that. When you have two numbers to your age, you’re either teenage or after teenage. And you just happen to be after teenage, understand?”
“I thinks I’m beginning to see the light and I do ’preciate the kind explanation, little Miss Genius.”
“Make fun of me and I’ll stop talking to you.”
“Can’t good friends kid each other a little? Make each other smile?”
“I guess so. I’ve got to go to the store now.”
“Hold up a pretty minute, Patty. I want you to do me a mighty big favor only you can do.”
I tried to hide my pleasure that somebody needed a favor only I could do.
“I want you to take off them faded old shorts and put on one of them nice pretty dresses of yours.”
Sounds of my mother! “For God’s sake; why do I have to get all dressed up to go to the store? I’m coming right back.”
“Pride, Patty Babe, you gotta have pride.”
Pride. Maybe that’s it, what Ruth has. What makes her different. Keeps her from looking down at her shoes when talking with white people. Then it is all a lie what they say about her. Ruth isn’t one bit uppity. Merely prideful.
“Is that why you wear a Sunday dress to walk back and forth to work?”
“That’s right,” she said, looking pleased that I had caught on so quickly. “It’s the pride. It’s me shouting out to the world that one of God’s creatures is walking on by. You think God would like it if we went and used the Good Book for a doorstop?”
I shook my head No.
“Well, now, you think he bees liking it one bit better if one of his creatures be going round in dirty, worn-out clothes? You understands that, Patty?”
“I guess so.”
As I crossed Main Street, the heels of my sandals made slight half-moon impressions in the hot asphalt pavement and I remembered what I’d heard said about heat at noon. “Hot by noon; Hades by afternoon.” It was one reason why almost nobody was about. But then the farm folks never come in unless it’s Saturday, and the town ladies were home fixing a noonday meal for their families. My father says most weekdays you can shoot a cannon down Main Street and not hit a single living soul.
Truth of the matter is, you’d probably need two cannons ’cause the business section of Jenkinsville is T-shaped. Main Street running up and down and Front Street running crossways. Most of the really important things like our store, the Rice County National Bank, the post office, the picture show, the Sav-Mor Market, and the Victory Cafe are on Main. I passed by the Victory and read the sign painted in neat red lettering at the bottom of the plate-glass window: PLATE LUNCH 25¢. Meat & 3 Vegs.
The smell of fried ham had taken command of the air, so it was impossible to know exactly which three vegetables the Victory was serving.
And there, stuck between the Victory Cafe and the Sav-Mor Market, was our store—best in town. I liked the sign; it’s been freshly painted. Big, bold, black letters with a dash of red for emphasis:
BERGEN’S DEPARTMENT STORE
Quality Goods for the Whole Family
Shoes, Clothing, Hardware, & Variety
Standing at the piece-goods counter with my father was a salesman, probably from Memphis or Little Rock, who was removing samples of men’s dress shoes from a fitted black case. My father took a package of Tums from his freshly pressed suit coat, and as he popped one into his mouth he nodded at the salesman. “Give me the usual run of sizes in the brogue. Black only.”
I wondered if I had time to give my father the news of the prisoners. I mean, if I talked fast. Better to test the water first. “Hello,” I said, taking a step forward.
He dropped the Tums back into his pocket. “What are you doing here?”
The salesman smiled at my father. “This your daughter, Harry?”
My father’s head moved slightly.
The salesman gave me a full smile. “Well, well, what’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Patricia Ann Bergen, sir.”
“That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. Here I have something for you.” He pulled out a package of Juicy Fruit gum. The wrapper showed the soil of having lived in his pockets for a while.
“Well, thank you anyway, but you see I have this cavity,” I lied.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said as though he hadn’t heard me. “You don’t have to chew it now. Take it home.”
I took the gum, thanking him as I backed away. I eased my disappointment by telling myself how smart I was to save my story for a more appropriate time.
I looked around for my mother. She was sitting on one of the three cushioned chairs in the shoe department with Gussie Fields, who has been clerking here since even before her husband died.
“Hello,” I said, remembering to smile.
My mother said, “Hello,” and Mrs. Fields said something about how pretty my dress was.
“She’s only wearing that dress because Ruth told her to,” my mother said.
“Ruth did not tell me to wear this dress,” I said, hating the idea of being anybody’s robot. Even Ruth’s.
“What’s Ruth doing?” she asked.
“Washing the clothes.” I anticipated the next question so I just supplied the answer. “Sharon is playing in the sandpile.”
“Did Ruth give you both lunch?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Fields smiled her adult-to-child smile. “How are you enjoying your school vacation? As much as my niece, Donna Ann?”
I wondered how I could honestly answer the question. First I’d have to decide how much I was enjoying the summer—not all that much—then find out exactly how much Donna Ann Rhodes was enjoying it before trying to make an accurate comparison. Mrs. Fields’ smile began to fade. Maybe she just wanted me to say something pleasant. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
“When I was a girl,” said my mother, turning toward Mrs. Fields, “I used to drive my mother crazy with my clothes. If my dress wasn’t new or if it had the slightest little wrinkle in it I’d cry and throw myself across my bed.”
“You were just particular how you looked,” said Mrs. Fields.
“I wish Patricia would be more particular,” Mother said with sudden force. “Would you just look at that hair?”
“I don’t have a comb,” I answered.
Reaching into the side pocket of her dress, she produced a small red one. “Here. Go look in the mirror and do a good job. You know, Gussie, you’d expect two sisters to be something alike, but Patricia doesn’t care how she looks while Sha
ron is just like me.”
Didn’t Mother know I was still standing here? Couldn’t she, at the very least, do me the courtesy of talking behind my back? I walked over to the three-way mirror in the dress department, but Mother’s voice followed. “Why, before we take the girls to Memphis Sharon has to try on a dozen dresses. And that one? Puts on the first thing her hand touches. She just doesn’t care.”
I took in my reflection: “Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the homeliest of them all?”
“Wait till she gets a boyfriend,” Mrs. Fields was saying. “She’ll spend all her time fixing herself up.”
“I wish I was sure of that! Some children just seem to be born with things others aren’t. Now, take Sharon, she was never a moment’s trouble.”
If there were no mirrors or mothers I probably never would know how ugly I am. But it was all there, plain as my reflection in the glass. Skinny bones, skinny face, feet too big, and nose too long. In the mirror I could also see my mother’s profile: a high cool forehead and a slender nose that stopped where a nice nose ought to. A lot like Sharon’s. And there were the lofty cheekbones that gave mother’s face form, symmetry, and on occasion, great beauty. Sometimes I think God lavished so much beauty on her outsides that when he got around to her insides there just wasn’t much of anything left over.
When I returned with the comb my mother pulled a stray hair from its teeth before sliding it back into her pocket. “Wonder if Ellie Mae would have time for me?” she said.
Walking to the wall phone, she fluffed her hair into place as she gave the crank a couple of turns. “Mary, please ring up M’Lady Beauty Parlor in Wynne City.... No, I don’t have the number,” she said, resting her arm on the Rice County telephone directory.
“Mother, did you hear about the POWs?” I asked. “A bunch of them just came in by train.”
“I don’t know why they don’t keep them over in Europe where they belong. It’s dangerous having those criminals a mile from town.” Her head shifted back to the speaker. “Hello, is this Ellie Mae? ... Do you know who this is? ... Well, Ellie Mae, I can be in Wynne City in about fifteen minutes. Do you think you could take me right away? ... Just a wash and set and one of your nice color rinses. ... Oh, fine, see you in a few minutes.”
Actually, and I’ve told her this, her hair looks its very best just before she goes to the beauty parlor. By the time they finish with her it’s tight and unreal, like the hair on a department store manikin.
I watched her tear off a strip of adding-machine tape and write, “$5 Pearl,” before exchanging her scribbled note for a fresh five-dollar bill.
As my mother carefully applied her make-up in front of the three-way mirror, Mrs. Burton Benn came into the store looking as though she was on an important mission. A step away from my mother she halted. “Mrs. Bergen,” she said, in the same tone that she must use when calling her Sunday-school class together, “I have something to say.”
My mother smiled. “What can I do for you today, Mrs. Benn?”
“It’s about your Nigra!” said Mrs. Benn.
“Ruth?” answered my mother as though she weren’t completely sure of the name.
“Yes, Ruth! After supper last night the Reverend told me that I ought to leave the dishes and get right over to the Sav-Mor Market, take advantage of the marked down hamburg. Well,” she said, making the word sound important. “Your Ruth, that uppity Nigra, sees me making a bee-line for the meat counter and she practically breaks out in a run to get there first. She tells Gene, ‘Give me the rest of that hamburg.’” Mrs. Benn’s voice sounded like a white woman trying to imitate a colored one. “Now, you just tell me what’s a darky gonna do with two pounds of hamburg? All she wanted was to keep me from getting any and that’s the truth!”
“Oh,” said my mother, sounding genuinely grieved. “She’s probably eaten it by now.”
“I don’t want that meat!”
“What do you want?” asked my mother, confused.
“To teach her a lesson. I want you to fire her!”
I watched my mother gently shake her head No. She’s getting ready to tell off Mrs. Benn, I thought. She’s going to tell her how good and kind Ruth is—how much we love her, Sharon and me. “I just can’t fire Ruth,” she apologized. “She’s the best cook and house cleaner we’ve ever had.”
In the shoe department my father sat alone, his lean body half-hidden behind the open pages of the afternoon Memphis Press Scimitar.
“I came here specially to tell you,” I began, wishing that Ruth could hear all my sweetness, “about the Nazis that came into Jenkinsville on the eleven thirty train.”
He turned from the paper. “What about them?”
I felt like an actress who finally gets her big chance, but just at the moment the spotlights expose her she remembers that she has neglected to learn her lines. “Well,” I said, “there was a whole bunch of them. They were about as big and mean-looking as anybody could be.”
His eyes went back to the Press Scimitar.
“Well, aren’t you interested in the really exciting thing that happened?”
“What happened?”
Some people say that God strikes down a liar—Boom! I decided to risk it. “One of the prisoners tried to escape.”
A wrinkle of genuine interest came slicing between his neat black eyebrows. “You mean, after they got off the train?”
“Yes, sir. As soon as he stepped off the train, I noticed that his head started moving around, so right away I became suspicious. I guess the guard noticed it too because he came right up behind him and said, ‘Make one move and I’ll blow your brains out.’ Just like that. ‘I’ll blow your brains out.’”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, sir, that’s all.”
“Then let me read my paper in peace.”
If you follow Main past Front Street, the road continues even though the pavement ends. I stood at the corner looking down the narrow dirt road towards Nigger Bottoms, wishing to be black for a while so that I could enter into the other Jenkinsville. By the side of the road two women stood. Nearby, a scrawny rooster chased a large speckled hen. The bigger of the women pointed to the hysterical hen before leaning her head close to the ear of her friend. Suddenly their heads fell back and the high notes of their laughter carried all the way up to Front Street.
The thought came to me that even from a distance people dislike being watched. I moved on down Front Street to Mr. Matthew Hawkes’ run-down drugstore. People say the aspirin old Matty sells has been on the shelf so long that it gives more headaches than it could ever take away.
Next to Hawkes’s drugstore is Cook Brothers’ Furniture and Appliances. Then comes a secondhand-clothing store which never had a sign saying what its name is. After that is Mr. J.G. Jackson’s cotton gin office, and the office and printing press of Mr. Quentin Blakey’s Rice County Gazette.
And right next to the Gazette’s office is something interesting. I mean, you wouldn’t exactly think it was interesting because there’s nothing there now besides a vacant building with a Coca-Cola advertisement and a sign that says THE CHU LEE GROCERY CO. Well, Mr. Lee—everybody called him “the Chink”—was the first merchant to open every morning and the very last to close. Maybe that was because of him and Mrs. Lee living in the back of the store, so convenient and all.
What happened I don’t exactly understand. One day he was doing business just like always, and the next day without so much as a going-out-of-business sale he had taken his groceries and left. I guess it happens; people get sick or find better opportunities elsewhere.
But why would there be this hole, bigger than a football, right through the plate-glass window? At first I thought maybe the moving men hadn’t been careful when they were carting things out, but when I looked inside the empty store there was all this glass lying around the floor, so the window just had to be broken from the outside.
I would have forgotten all about it except for what I happened to hear Mr. J
.G. Jackson say to my father. “Our boys at Pearl Harbor would have got a lot of laughs at the farewell party we gave the Chink.” Then Mr. Jackson laughed and my father gave a weak laugh, too, as though his heart wasn’t really in it but still he wanted to keep the respect of so important a man as Mr. J.G. Jackson.
Later, when I asked my father what Mr. Jackson meant by that, he told me that I was never in my life to mention it again. All I know is that if Mr. Lee had been Japanese, then it might have made more sense. Anyway, there’s probably a simple logical explanation. It couldn’t be what I think.
2. Swimming the Mississippi
IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK Sunday morning when my father came back from doing his bookwork at the store and asked, just as nice as you please, if we were all ready to go to Memphis. Like he didn’t mind at all. My mother dearly loves “to go home” again. And Sharon likes playing with our little cousins, Diane and Jerry. Me? Sometimes Grandpa and I discuss the important things that are happening in the world. We both, for example, think President Roosevelt is a very great man. I talk a lot with Grandma too, but she’s always asking me questions: Am I gaining any weight?—not really. How am I doing at school?—I make a lot of Cs. Then she gets around to the hardest question of all: Do I have a lot of friends?—I guess so.
But even with the questions Grandma and Grandpa are nice, so I’ve never understood exactly why my father disliked them so much.
I think the problem may have started when he married my mother, and Grandpa didn’t give him a job in his real estate business, S. Fried & Sons. Now, my father is always saying that he’d rather starve than have to work for Grandpa and his brothers-in-law, but I think he resented it all the same. Because the company is big enough not only for Grandpa and his two sons but for two of Grandpa’s nephews and even the outsider, Bernard Kaplan, who runs the insurance end of things.
Considering the trouble my father had with his own parents, it’s really sad that he doesn’t have in-laws he can love. Even now, he never ever mentions his own mother. I don’t remember Grandma Bergen as being mean, but I was only about Sharon’s age when she died, so I don’t know for sure. About the only sure thing I remember is her hair, which was auburn like mine. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed that. Uncle Max, my father’s oldest brother, says my hair, my eyes, and even “my way” remind him of her.