by Deb Spera
Me and Retta unlatch the back of the wagon, and my girls clamber down but stay close by my side to help. When Lonnie comes out of the tent with his brother and Daddy, Mr. Coles steps up and nods at me. I do the same. He spits out his chew and wipes his mouth with his handkerchief. He’s got his hat pulled down low so I can’t see his eyes, but he’s a whole lot happier than he was this morning. When he sees Mary behind my skirts, he smiles and says, “There’s my friend, Mary.”
She stares at him, and I squeeze her shoulder ’til she remembers her manners and says hello. Mr. Coles reaches in his pocket and pulls out a nickel and offers it to her, but she shakes her head no and ducks behind my legs.
“Mary, don’t be like that,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” Alma says.
He flips it in the air, and Alma snatches it with one hand. Mr. Coles laughs and ruffles her hair. Together the men pull the ticking to the end of the wagon. Eddie reaches over and picks up his mama.
“I got you, Mother,” he says. She rests her head in the crook of his neck. He follows Mr. Coles and Lonnie as they carry the mattress into the tent to a room beyond.
Retta gives me and the girls each a bowl of hot grits and a biscuit with butter. We stand in a circle and eat by the cookstove. Alma giggles and Mary joins. What a thing, to be young, and laugh over nothing and everything all at the same time. Retta goes to wooden cabinets built alongside the back of the tent and says, “Ya’ll come here.”
She hands Alma two pieces of paper. Each says, Return to 56.
“Pin this to you and your sister, so everybody knows where you belong.”
Alma complains that she ain’t no baby, but pins the number to Mary’s back and turns so I can do the same to her. Retta tells the girls, “Every child here wears their tent number. You will, too.”
She tells them we all got a lot of hard work to do and no time to watch after them. They’ll have duties. When they ain’t working, they’ll go to Bible school and learn the books within.
“Don’t be running off alone with nobody, and I mean nobody,” she tells them. “I’ll give you a beating myself if you don’t mind, you hear?”
Mary hugs Retta around the knees, and Retta says, “I’m not playing, child.”
“They’ll mind,” I say.
She gives me a nod. “See they do.” Then says to the girls, “Ya’ll go take a look around while we get organized.”
They run off hand in hand past the Negro camp to the woods beyond. Retta hands me a glass of milk for the Missus, and I step through the tent door and onto fresh hay that’s been scattered to cover the dirt floor. It’s dark and cool in the long hallway that connects the rooms on the first floor. There’s a cross breeze that blows through. From the hallway I can see clear out to the front and beyond. The first room on the right is the Missus’s room. Eddie and Lonnie are talking, so I walk past to see the rest of the tent. Steps lead to the top floor where the men will sleep. In the middle of the last room is a dining table with ten chairs. A large wooden cupboard and countertop has been built in the corner. Cabinets and drawers are open, not yet fully filled. Inside are dishes, bowls, platters and cutlery, enough for many people.
On the porch outside sit rocking chairs, and a blue hammock is drawn between two pine trees. This porch faces ninety-eight other porches where old folks sit and watch the comings and goings of the young people. Inside the tent circle is a big meadow with pine trees dotted throughout, and inside that meadow is a tabernacle with a silver tin roof and no walls. Wood benches fill the sanctuary, enough to seat more people than I ever saw in one place. Children with numbers on their backs run everywhere. Mothers and fathers stand in the open circle to talk. People run to hug each other. Every person here’s got history but me. It is a sight to behold. I could stand here and watch all day long, but the milk I carry reminds me of my duty.
The bedroom door is still ajar when I come back to Mrs. Coles’s room, but only Lonnie is there. He worries over his mother’s pillows so I back out and wait in the hallway ’til he’s done, overhearing all he’s got to say.
“I’ve s-spoken to Berlin’s. They’re h-happy with the order.” He pauses but she says nothing. “They’re interested in the w-w-women’s wear line. I’ve worked out the sketches. Perhaps w-we can finalize the d-details while we’re here?”
I already heard more than I should. I back away and head to the end of the hallway. Lonnie is a good son. He didn’t want his mama to come to Camp. There was a fight about it in the front foyer of the main house this morning. Me and the girls could hear the yelling from where we sat waiting in the back of the wagon. By then everybody else was gone. Only we were left with the hired man Mr. Coles paid to drive. The girls and me sat along the back by the ticking already filled and ready, but when it came time to go, Lonnie said he didn’t think it was good for his mother to be moved. He sputtered through his argument best he could, but Mr. Coles got mad.
“I’ll decide what’s best for my wife,” he hollered.
Eddie tried to calm him. “Daddy, why don’t we bring her on Saturday? It’ll be best for everybody.”
“I said no,” Mr. Coles shouted. “She’s coming with us.”
Through the door I saw him get in Lonnie’s face and yell, “Go fetch your mother.”
But Lonnie wouldn’t back down. He stood eye to eye with Mr. Coles and refused. Then I heard the crack of a hand on flesh, and Lonnie ran out the front door and down the steps with a red handprint on his face. Mr. Coles didn’t come after him, but by and by Eddie came down the steps and out the door carrying his mother.
“You’re making it worse for yourself,” Eddie said to his brother as he placed the Missus on the mattress.
“Don’t care,” Lonnie said.
“We’ll see you at Camp, Mother,” Eddie said after covering her with a blanket. Mrs. Coles was asleep, or so it seemed. She’s got a mighty strong will, so it’s hard to say if she was pretending or not.
“Let’s go,” he said to Lonnie. “Daddy’s waiting.”
“I’ll drive her m-myself,” Lonnie said, taking the reins from the hired man.
“Your funeral,” Eddie said and shut the back of the wagon with a thud.
When Mr. Coles passed us in the automobile, neither man looked at the other. For the first thirty minutes Lonnie didn’t take his eyes off the road. I sat in the back by the end of the wagon propped up by the bundle of things we brought with us. Retta said we wouldn’t need a whole lot, so I carried only some bedclothes, blankets and Mama’s gun. At one stop Lonnie turned to look back at me and patted the seat beside him, so I climbed up next to him.
I’m brought back to the present when Lonnie comes up behind me and says, “Thank you for your help with m-my m-mother.” I tell him he is welcome. He opens his mouth to say something more, but thinks better of it, then turns and walks out the back of the tent.
“They’re all gone now,” I tell the Missus as I sit next to her on the bed.
She opens her eyes. I give her the milk and she drinks it quick, spilling some down her face. I hold my apron under her chin to catch the spill. When she is done I ask her if she wants to get cleaned up and she nods her head yes. I put her in a diaper for the trip and am glad I did when I feel the wetness. She’s grown too weak to walk to the toilet.
“I’ll be back,” I tell her, and run to the kitchen to deposit the glass and get a clean diaper.
“She talking yet?” Retta asks.
“No.”
“I guess that’s that.”
“Guess so.”
When Retta hired me as nurse, all I did for the two days before we left was sit by the Missus’s side. She never said a word, like her lips were stitched together from the inside. She looked at me confused ’til I reminded her of who I was. Mr. Coles come in every once in a while to look at her. Every time he came she pretended to sleep. When he’d leave she’d
look around the room ’til she found me. Then she’d relax and settle. On the day before we left, she patted the bed beside her, and I went and sat. She patted the pillow until I laid my head down. I never felt anything so soft. She stared at me like I was a question she was looking for an answer to, studied every piece of my face and moved the hair from it when it fell sideways. I guess I fell asleep after that ’cause when I woke it was late afternoon, she was asleep and both of us were covered with a blanket.
Outside there’s so much hollering and laughter I feel like we are in the middle of a state fair. All this commotion is nothing new for the Missus. She’s used to the big life. I push her dress up, unclasp the diaper and lift her hips to get it out from under her and drop it to the straw. I feel a presence in the doorway, but before I turn to see who is there I quick pull her dress down. The jingle of his pocket change tells me who I will find before I turn to see Mr. Coles in the doorway.
“I’ll just be a minute more,” I tell him.
“Go on,” he says. “Don’t mind me.”
He aims to stand there with the door wide open while I clean his wife. I do it quick as I can, and when I am done, he unstraps his gun and hangs it on the peg by the far side of the bed, then sits to pull off his shoes. The Missus grabs my hand and holds tight. Mr. Coles strips to his undershirt, then climbs on the bed beside his wife. She rolls away from him. Mr. Coles puts both hands behind his head and says to me, “Close the door behind you.”
34
Retta
It’s a dark dawn when I come out of my room off the side of the tent. I’ve slept in this room for Camp like my mama before me and her mama before her since I can remember. Our blood runs through this week as sure as any other person who comes here, but I never set foot—not once—on the yard and never prayed in the pews. What was, was, and what is, is. I play my part like the rest of them.
Some kitchens got their fires already lit, but I’m moving slow. There’s an autumn fog that lies thick and low over the land, the ghost of summer. Watching folks move through all that white makes it seem like they’re half people, spirits on the earth. Like legless folks in fog, there is a piece of me missing. No matter how much I try not to worry for Odell, I can’t push him from my mind. I’m shook from my melancholy state when I hear a child shout, “Chickadee, chickadee, where you gonna be?”
I know that phrase. That’s the game we played—me, Odell and Esther. One of us would close our eyes and the other two would run and hide. I still hear my Esther’s voice counting to ten against the fig tree—me and Odell fighting for the same hiding space. She wanted to play all the time, even in the dark. Dark never did scare that child. She’d turn and yell, “Chickadee, chickadee, where you gonna be?” then run into the black of night.
I catch sight of a Negro girl running around the backside of tent 62. Her dress flutters behind. I spin around to see who she is playin’ with, but I don’t see nobody. My heart comes up so fast in my throat it almost jumps from my mouth. I race six places down to the tent from ours and ask the girl at the stove, still half asleep moving through her morning chores, who the child was. She jumps like she done something wrong and says she didn’t see nothin’, then picks up the hot handle of the kettle with her bare hand and drops it with a bang back to the stove.
“Fetch me some water,” I say, and she runs to the pitcher watchin’ me the whole time.
“Where’s Selma at?” I ask after I drink what she’s poured.
“She ain’t here yet. She’s got babies to feed.”
“You tell her, Oretta from tent 56 come by to ask her something.”
I walk around the side of the tent to check for the girl myself, but nobody’s there. What you doing, old woman? I ask myself. You ain’t nothin’ but a damn fool. That’s one of Selma’s girls. The bugle plays its wake-up call as I walk back to our tent. I lean against the wall to look out at the Negro camp. Ain’t nothin’ out of place, but what kind of child plays games outside in the dark of morning? Now I’m on the lookout.
All morning my heart’s been skippin’ beats—runnin’, trying to catch up to something. I’m behind in my chores. Edna comes up from the wagon tying her apron about her waist. A boy I’ve seen hanging ’round the backfield since we got here crosses the road and runs up beside her, talking as he comes. He’s a full head smaller, but he don’t pay no mind, just flaps his jaws anyhow. Edna stops and opens her mouth to tell him something, but he don’t take a breath. She looks around to see if her mama’s coming, but it’s me she finds. When she sees the stove ain’t lit, she hightails it away so fast the boy don’t have time to think.
When Edna gets the fire started I sit again, can’t be helped, and by the time the men come down to do their morning business, she’s got the coffee brewed and biscuits laid out in the fire to cook. I am moving some by then, but my head is so light it don’t feel attached to my body. I have to stop now and again just to steady myself. I need my husband. One by one the men come from the outhouse, Eddie, Lonnie and Mr. Coles, stopping like they always do for coffee. They stand away from the stove so Edna can work. I lay out the milk and sugar. None of them talk much in the mornings. Been that way for as long as I can remember. Takes them ’til noon to work up the energy.
While they stir in the milk and sugar, Mr. Coles says to his boys, “I need you both at the supper table tonight. The mayor of Charleston and his aldermen are coming. The governor is looking to build a road from Charleston straight through to the next state, and the mayor will carry influence. We need Branchville to be a part of that road.”
“Why?” Eddie asks.
“They build that road across a piece of our land, we got prime real estate for business, any kind of business. That’s good money for us.”
I watch them from the corner of my eye while I crack open the eggs.
“I’ve got to w-work l-late,” Lonnie says.
“No, you’ll be here alongside your brother and me. You understand?”
“The Circle m-means m-money for us, too, Father,” Lonnie says.
“Get your head out of your ass, boy,” Mr. Coles says. “The Sewing Circle supplements the land, not the other way around. That’s seed money. Even your mother understands that.”
Lonnie clamps his mouth shut and turns his back on his daddy to go sit inside with his mama. Mr. Coles shakes his head with disgust. I whip the eggs to scramble and lay the bacon fat in the skillet to melt.
“Why do you need him to come?” Eddie asks.
Mr. Coles sighs and puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
“Son,” he says, “all I have will be yours one day. I want men of power to understand who the Coles men are. You will be dealing with them long after I’m gone.”
Eddie puffs with pride. After all these years he still wants his daddy’s love, still wants to believe in the man.
“He’ll be here,” Eddie says. “He just hates to be social.”
Eddie lays down his cup and gives me a kiss on the cheek and goes inside to join his brother. Mr. Coles is headed out of the kitchen when Alma and Mary come walking hand in hand up from the wagon for their breakfast. He stops and watches as they come through the tent, still rubbing sleep from their eyes. They sit on the bench behind me while I work at the stove.
“How many for supper?” I ask Mr. Coles. “Miss Annie always tells me how many I got to cook for.”
He looks at the bottom of his cup and says, “Eight.” He finishes what’s left of his coffee and lays it on the shelf by the door. Before he disappears inside he lays one hand on Alma’s head. She looks up but by then he’s gone. I give Edna the spoon, and she finishes the eggs so I can sit down.
In the four days since we got here Mr. Coles ain’t told me nothin’ about dinner guests. I’ve had to guess every night. Used to be this tent slept twelve to fifteen people, and I always knew how much to make. Now we’ve got so much left over, I got to repurpose
it for the next day. These girls never had so much to eat in their lives. Gertrude comes up from Miss Annie’s room with a full glass of milk and gives it to Alma and Mary to share.
“If she stopped taking liquids, that’s that,” I say.
She shakes her head and says, “Seems like somebody ought to be able to do something for her.”
“Can’t nobody do for her what she won’t do for herself.”
Edna dishes up breakfast on the plates. Mary and Alma finish the milk meant for Miss Annie and wipe their mouths on their sleeves.
“You got his pudding?” I ask Edna.
“Yes, ma’am. I got it. It’s fine, too. I took a little taste this morning to make sure, and it’s just as good as yesterday. How does sausage get better every day? I never had food like that before.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without your help, Edna,” I say.
She laughs but I don’t.
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “You got yourself a hardworkin’ girl here, Gertrude.”
Gertrude smiles at her daughter, and for the second time today Edna’s got nothing to say. There might be hope for this girl yet.
We got four hens need cleaned and fried by tonight. Gertrude’s so fast she plucks one chicken to my half. She makes me sit while Edna and Alma work on the beans, rice and corn. Mary measures her crochet against her mother’s shoulders; it’s shawl length now.
“Alma,” I say, “you count how many layers of corn shucks are on them cobs and tell us so we know what kind of winter we’re gonna have.”
“There’s eight on this one, but weren’t no more than four on the others.”
“I guess the corn can’t make up its mind what’s coming.”
“Guess not.”
Edna pours the beans into the pot that’s boiling the ham hock and onion.
Off in the distance a banjo plays “Froggie Went a-Courtin’.” Some old boy’s been playing that thing all day long, and now I can’t get the damn song out of my head.