Floyd was to drive Miss Lula to Greenwood Station, and I would accompany her on the platform.
Floyd remained in the grumbling pickup as he awaited us, turning a disinterested glance away from the Missus and her pathetic attempt at sympathy as we approached the car door. Floyd would not give her the pleasure, his eyes stayed on some lump of cotton that inched across the road as the thump of luggage hit the flatbed and the passenger side swung open. The interior cabin filled with light but was dark once more as the door closed.
Floyd placed the gearshift into first. He remembered each turn toward the station by blind sight, a combing of catacombs inside his pressed mind that, with great skill, he navigated thoroughly and alone. We sat in prickly silence as the Missus stewed and Floyd fumed. The silence lingered for the duration of the drive as we peered through the expanse of bug-splattered windshields. Floyd then stopped the truck and said not a parting word to the Missus as I gathered her things and we moved to the platform.
It’s funny how a train sounds if it is not wanted. It carries with it no awareness of its hulking presence or the sharp scrape of metal during those slight turns through the countryside. It makes not that shushing sound that children love, achieving to impress no one. It is invisible and carries not the weight one would give a passing stranger who has little to distinguish himself from the person to his left or right. It is, indeed, unnoticeable. That this woman of fine descent, who had all the life left of an infant born to the care of seventy servants, had heard nothing of its approach, saw no car or coach or occupants as they scurried along the platform at Greenwood Station just after the screech in the dead of night, says it all. With sad eyes she surveyed a note scribbled on wadded paper from some purchase she’d made a long time ago, indulging her fancy in rereading the not-so-legible script as she imagined the hand that had scribbled it, for that hand and its handsome owner would not leave the safety of her thoughts the entire afternoon and subsequent journey from Greenwood to Memphis and on to Little Rock, she would later tell me, and that says it all.
I had seen the two together, not just that afternoon of her birthday but several times during that three-week period before the Missus’s departure for Little Rock, when her spirit was at its lowest. I daresay they were friends, even though that simple notion was frightening in and of itself. They’d walked like lovers through the paths and in those wooded areas that kept private their secret affair, finding use for all those nooks and crannies just beyond the fields that stretched into the forests, although they had not yet shared a single kiss between them, as far as I could see. Still, they laughed with great frequency, although never too long, as even that bit of happiness was met by the Missus’s own wretchedness that precluded her from ever straying too far. Mr. Kern remained true to his nature too, tiring of her moods and paying no more attention to her dealings, which left her with ample time to scurry off amongst the wild columbines and irises of the far fields, finding some quiet place where she could be alone with Jesse and they could talk and whisper and behave like adolescents away from the prying eyes of adults. Part of her must have enjoyed his youth, the invincibility he possessed that came with having his entire life stretched before him and the possibilities that awaited his every footstep and how endless it all seemed, that even in a young black boy it was still present.
Although she’d been given the world, during these times together she still wanted more, more lingering stares, more tempting hands at each other’s sides, more gut feelings of want and reciprocation of love. Yet, as always in this life, there were those moments that pulled them apart, when finding heaven was not so easy and running away from this Dixie life was an impossible task, as the afternoon was not so long amongst the turnip flowers as they would’ve wanted. So, Jesse would merely scribble some note where the Missus could find it and once again be pleased as she cradled it to her chest like some silly schoolgirl unaware of the world and its schemes. I watched her do this every day and reported these sightings to Floyd, who had already spoken to the boy, yet Jesse continued his actions. And so, on this night, I would inform Silva, I told myself, as I was to have dinner at her home after we’d both been granted the night off by Mr. Kern by virtue of his wife’s departure.
CHAPTER 13
Floyd restarted the loud monster that had never quite cooled since our drive to the station. The ignition clicked then stopped, bringing all types of curses from Floyd’s lips as he climbed from the truck and filled the radiator with water from a jug in the back. He allowed the hood to slam as he tossed the jug back into the flatbed and offered similar curses, mostly toward the Missus, whom he blamed for us having to travel so far. The rumble of the engine started once more as the headlights peeled from the windows of the station. With the Missus safely aboard her train, we now headed to Silva’s home down by Route 82, just adjacent to the jailhouse, that place you never wanted to be, especially as a negro in the South. My cousin Levi could sure tell you that, if he still had breath in his body. Floyd would not stay for dinner, only offering to return to drive me home that evening. He still did not trust Silva and urged me not to as well, though he later conceded that women were of a different nature than men and, as such, our friendship made sense to him.
Silva’s home sat at the end of a dead-end street, a small neighborhood of clustered shacks longer than they were wide, all lined up beside each other like battered soldiers in formation, where at the end was a black-owned grocery whose exterior showed the charred edges from previous fires.
“That white paint turn gray long time ago,” Floyd said as we arrived. “Never stood a chance wit’ what they did to it. Mostly the smoke got to it, but had no life after all them times. Why folk won’t let that place stand, I don’t know.”
Floyd fussed until Silva met me at the door, her hair worn down in observance of her day off, her face the loveliest I’d seen it as, outside of that home, she could now smile and show glimpses into her true character. She took hold of my arm and guided me inside the house, waving a pleasant goodbye to Floyd, who mumbled something under his breath as he drove away. Inside the living room sat Jesse with a bowl of knickknacks, his eyes about the size of half-dollars when I entered.
“Miss Bernie!” he said in shock, immediately dropping the bowl to the ground, which saw those items fall in every imaginable direction.
“It’s good to see you too, Jesse,” I replied.
He sank in his chair, a weight upon him like that of bricks stacked upon his shoulders. He appeared sickly as he showed a look of desperation, panic, and surrender all in one turn of his upper lip.
“It’s good to see you too, Miss,” he finally said, standing from his seat to welcome me properly and indeed clean up that mess. “Mama didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“Last-minute plans often work that way,” I said, finding a seat near him on the sofa where I rested my legs from that cramped ride. “I’m sure there’s lots she doesn’t tell you. Kids nowadays wanna know everything.”
Silva laughed as she returned from the kitchen with a plate of sweet rolls before dinner.
“They think they grown,” Silva said. “Especially the little one.”
It was at that moment that a voice called out from behind me, low and refined, saying my name with an ease that rolled from the tongue as if the person somehow knew me and was accustomed to using that shortened name I went by. I turned and standing there some eight inches taller was Fletcher, smartly dressed and looking just as handsome as he did when he was a boy. It was amazing how fast children could grow, as if they were just waiting for our heads to turn that they might shoot up some ten feet taller and lose their childish ways. His voice was deeper too, his hands a tool for work now as he reached out to me.
“Fletcher!” I exclaimed.
“Miss Bernie!” he called out with the same excitement in his voice, his words a low bellow that never quite emerged until that last syllable when they finally sounded l
ouder than any other words in the room.
His embrace was kind and his linger a side effect only of those stifled memories that could come crashing down at any moment, and indeed all at once, from the mere sight of a familiar face and the thoughts of where one saw it last. For I’m sure at that moment Fletcher recalled that large plantation out amongst the rye grass and wild iris of Leflore County, that smell from their bitter shucks that stung his nose on cool mornings when they’d arrive for work in the fields, the whites of those cotton bolls still fat in his hands as he filled his sacks with the soft buds out there amongst the endless powder. And no matter how he felt about it now, that place and its memories and that negro calling were still a part of him, those scars just as deep today as they were only a year ago. For, truly, no one grows out of it, not the pain of childhood or that lesson into who we are—not the fear it deals or that constant curse of waiting to get out, attempting to progress toward some semblance of your true purpose, regardless of that heaviness right there in the pit of your heart, a bottomless torture that repeats for an eternity as that mere act alone causes us to push and pull and never truly free ourselves of that previous person, place, or thing that has brought us harm.
We each sat around the living room with our rolls and tea, Fletcher settling into stories of his summer in Jackson and the people he’d met. According to Silva, he was worse than “this one over here,” she said, pointing to Jesse who hid his face behind his hands and, in silence, bade me not to speak.
It wasn’t until we’d each had our fill of stories and laughter that Silva led us to the kitchen table, showing the way through a home that, although overflowing with affection, still sat as a sparse collection of rusted items not numerous enough to give that home sufficient warmth or character. Their poverty was evident, the emptiness beginning in the living room where only one sofa and chair dressed the room. A coffee table sat in the middle and a cabinet in the corner, a wooden cupboard simple in design and construction adorned the hallway, with family photos displayed on top, and the kitchen sat as an open space with merely a table and chair—the other chairs being carried from the outside by the boys who wiped them clean before sitting on them.
Dinner was no surprise, given Silva’s usual meals at the Kern house, and it was just as good. Jesse sat quietly while Fletcher, although grown-up in appearance, rattled on as a child would, leading Silva to end those discussions each time he went on too long. He was still just as innocent, glimpses of that young boy recognizable in his large eyes and feral smile, his gaze staying on anyone who would give him praise. Yet when he spoke, his tone was not that of a child, that tenor sounding as if he merely mimed some adult nearby. He was no longer the young boy in the stables. He was a man now, with a voice that didn’t belong to the boy at all; it belonged to Mr. Kern.
“They gave me my own room down there, too,” Fletcher continued as we ate.
“He ain’t been there since he was little,” Silva interceded. “Ain’t seen his cousins since he was like four or five.”
“Everyone kept calling me ‘light-skinned brotha,’ ” he said proudly. “Marshmallow, too.”
“He think he handsome now,” Silva joked, winking at the boy who smiled back. “I told him he goin’ ta get darker; just look at his ears. They were the first thing to turn when he was little.”
“It ain’t happened yet,” Fletcher said, clearly still waiting for it to occur.
Who knows how many people in her family knew her secret, but one thing for certain was that her boys did not, the little one even now still uncertain as to why he looked so different than everyone around him, even willing to give up that perceived beauty that came with lighter skin just so he’d look the same.
“I joined the rally down there, too,” Fletcher said.
“That’s the first thing he says to me when he come home,” Silva spat, her words a condemnation. “All this time, and he still don’t know how to talk.”
It was in her eyes, that fear and fire, that anguish that only a mother knows from the emptiness of her womb and now her arms. Lord knows I had placed these thoughts far from my mind, that hearing them made it even more difficult to bear.
Fletcher shrugged his shoulders.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with it,” he said.
“I see you’ve outgrown your britches,” I said to him. “You got a larger pair of shoes and somehow think you’re wiser.”
“Miss Bernie, you don’t understand,” he said. “Mama did it once.”
Fletcher’s glance in Silva’s direction was stopped by her wall of reproach. His eyes lowered to the floor, yet no amount of sneaker gazing could evade Silva’s stare. He was changing and she knew it—that awkward age where innocence bears a lonely pot, those vines of change hidden behind the shades of adulthood, although they would soon require a larger area to grow. Yet still he was unwise and didn’t know it, stuck within that ignorance or recklessness that often sat betwixt childhood and adulthood.
He looked to me and smiled daringly.
“We have to,” he said.
“Fletcher!” I chided.
“Miss Bernie, it’s what anyone would do,” he said.
“Still, that’s no way to walk in the door. Miss Silva worried sick about you, and you come home talking like that.”
“But—” he started.
“But nothing,” I said. “You been gone off to the city, and they missed you like crazy. And you don’t even think to ask how they’re doing or tell them you love them.”
“They know I love them,” he said.
“Then act like it. Your mission means nothing, son, if you don’t take care of home. You take care of the people you love and the rest will fall into place.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he finally said, still that wide-eyed boy with sticks in his hands and curiosity in his heart.
That from toys to tools, that vigor had reared inside him and would eventually lead him away, just as it did every child, leaving Silva to pray like every black mother during those times. This simple prayer saying, “Dear Master, let Your grace be upon this house on this day. Teach my children to pray, Lord, and keep them in Your will. Deliver them from those wicked ways and all those who would mean them harm. Save them from the hands of man and give them Your peace. Grant them access to Your kingdom, Lord, and allow them a full life. That they would know who and whose they are. If it be Your will, let it be so.”
Seated beside Fletcher with her eyes already in mourning, I knew Silva prayed this prayer and that her heart sat painfully aware that the battles she’d fought now belonged to her children, and she cursed all those things that killed the dreams she had for them.
It was not in Jesse’s nature to be so meek yet he was a frightful thing at present, his mouth a burial place where words seemingly came to die. He did not utter a single sound that entire meal other than his hesitant bites of food, which in truth were nothing substantial enough to fill his stomach and would surely see him in the kitchen for a late-night snack after I’d left. Jesse found me just as I’d pulled Silva aside at the kitchen counter.
He took my arm and spun me so forcibly that it garnered the immediate attention of both Silva and Fletcher who stood nearby.
“Jesse!” Silva admonished as the boy’s grip remained upon my wrist.
“Miss Bernie gotta see this before she go,” he insisted.
“Jesse, you ain’t old enough to have company,” Silva said. “Now stay outta grown folks’ business and go on now.”
“It’s real quick, Mama,” he pleaded.
“Jesse, you heards me,” Silva warned.
The two stared for a minute. Jesse then squeezed my hand, and I felt the tension in his fingers quiver like the glint in his eyes. I nodded that it was okay then followed him into the living room where we sat, seeing Silva’s eyes stayed on us.
“Miss Bernie,” he spoke softly, his voice nearly
a whisper, “I wanna explain.”
He settled further on the sofa with his hands at his side and his eyes a timid shell as he looked back to ensure the sounds of Silva and Fletcher continued before he said another word.
“You see, I don’t love that woman, and she don’t love me,” he said. “I was just being good to her. I hope you understand.”
“And you think she needs you to be good to her?” I said. “She’s a white woman, Jesse! She doesn’t need anything from you. That, I hope you understand.”
“Well, I just give her attention,” he said innocently. “And she comes to me for it.”
“And you don’t turn her away either, do you?” I accused him.
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Then you’re both wrong.”
Jesse stared as if he somehow watched all those times they’d been together now displayed before him, finally opening his mouth to speak once he’d viewed enough of his shame that he could bear it no longer and needed to confess.
“See, she first came to me on her birthday,” he said. “I was working in the downstairs bathroom, and she said she need help upstairs. When we went into her bedroom, she just start crying. She told me not to leave her and just to stand beside her so that no one else could see. She said she was sad about Elizabeth. And I told her I remembered her and how Elizabeth and Fletcher used to play when they were little. She told me she hates to think of that time, and when I asked her why, she say she didn’t wanna talk about it and there was no need bringing it up, and so I didn’t make her. She swore there was no need to.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then I saw her again after her family left for Little Rock. She seemed so sad again, crying about them leaving and saying how alone she felt in that house. She said Mr. Kern don’t love her and that she wishes she had someone to love. She said he took the only thing she ever had when Elizabeth died. Then she took me inside the kitchen when no one was there, and I thought she was gonna kiss me or something, but she didn’t. She just stand there holding my hand and saying how she was gonna make Mr. Kern pay, that he was gonna be sorry for what he did. We didn’t meet for a few days after that. She just stayed up in her room crying, but she found me on that third day and asked if I would walk with her because she was scared to go out alone with the workers out there, you know. I didn’t know what else to do, and so I did it. We walked around the fields, out by the east road, and then down by the swamps, close to the Yazoo. She just talked, and I listened. That’s all she ever wanted.”
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