He wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Are we gon live here?”
Archie and I look at each other. “Maybe,” I say. “It’s the best place we’ve found.”
“What about Desmond?”
“We working on that, his mama and daddy, too.”
Hawk gets up. “I’m going out back. Uncle Ray’s talking about a vegetable garden.”
Archie and I walk to the living room where he pulls out the measuring tape he carries for house hunting, starts running it along the wall, jotting down numbers. “We could put an archway right here.”
I’m starting to feel better about this house.
He say, “We could get married in Pennsylvania, did you know that?”
I shake my head meaning I didn’t know that, but he takes it the wrong way.
“Is that a no?”
“No.”
“So is it a yes?”
I nod. I can’t talk.
He tips my face back, smiles his handsome smile. “It won’t be legal in North Carolina, of course, but you and I will know.”
The kitchen door slams. Hawk and Uncle Ray come in from the backyard. I find my voice. “We getting married.”
Uncle Ray frowns. “Not around here.”
Archie say, “No, sir, in Pennsylvania. I have a cousin lives in Allentown and we can stay there.” He’s been saying “sir” to Uncle Ray since they met. I can tell how much that pleases Uncle Ray.
Hawk ask, “Would that make you my daddy for real?”
“Yes, for real.”
Hawk hasn’t had much to say about Archie since we told him last month.
“Needs a lot of work,” Archie say.
I’ve been knowing that. Peeling paint, weeds growing through cracks in the front walks, one of the back stoops sagging. There’s brown rings in the toilets, stains on the kitchen counters. Makes me itch to get to work.
We don’t have to check out the neighborhood, knowing one black family lives across the street, and we’ve seen a white man cutting grass in the next block. It’s enough that the house has what we need and we can afford it.
Archie goes to the bank, and two weeks later we tell Ray and Hawk.
“We got us a place to live,” I say.
Hawk ask, “The duplex?”
“That’s right,” say Archie. “You like it, don’t you?”
“I like the backyard. Are we getting a swing?”
“Yes, we are, soon as we move in.”
“Where’s Desmond going to live?”
I’m ready for that question. “His mama and daddy are looking at a place not too far away, same school for certain.”
“Yippee!”
I take a week of vacation to fix up the new house before we move in, and the more time I spend there the more I know how different this part of Charlotte is from Brooklyn. If I get hungry, there’s nowhere nearby I can walk to for a soda or a sandwich. I can’t look out the kitchen window and see Boyce Whitin working in his garden. There’ll be no more parades on McDowell. Pastor Polk found a new home for St. Tim’s, over near Smith, too far to walk.
There’s not a soul I know in this neighborhood nor anywhere close by. The more I think about how far I am from what I’ve always known, the worse I feel. Archie comes to pick me up and finds me sitting on the back stoop, crying, a scrub brush in my hand.
“Sweetheart,” he say as he comes through the kitchen door. “Whatever in the world is wrong?”
“We have made a big mistake.” I see the confusion on his face but I can’t stop. “I wanted a sandwich. You weren’t here and there’s no place I can walk to. Can’t even go to church if you’re working on Sunday mornings. What have we done?”
He sits on the step next to me, pulls me close. “I know, I know. I promise you it’ll be better.”
“Are you gon open a grocery on the next corner?” I sob into his shoulder. He can’t promise me anything.
* * *
I wake to hear the screen door on the front porch scraping over and over. I get my robe on and walk barefoot to the living room. There’s piles of stuff on the floor, the sofa, Uncle Ray’s chair. “What’s all this?”
Uncle Ray puts a bulging grocery bag on an end table. “Thought maybe you could tell me.”
Hawk say, “Boxes and pens and tape.” He calls to Uncle Ray, who’s gone back out. “Where’s the letter?”
Uncle Ray comes in, hands me an envelope: “To the Hawkins Family.” I open it. “I hope this will make your move a little easier, and that your new home is as nice as your old one.” It’s signed, “A friend.” I look in the envelope. Empty. “Who would do such a nice thing?”
Uncle Ray shoves aside a stack of boxes and sits on the sofa. “Beats me.” He’s tired, looks older than his seventy-six years. “Dozer showed up this morning, just sitting out there. Glad Livvie didn’t see it, would have broken her heart.”
He’s not home the next day when men arrive with a chainsaw to take out the magnolia. Something goes wrong with the motor and they have to leave. They’ll come back next week to finish. So the tree’s still there, branches across the front walk. I get one of the last blooms, keep it in a bowl of water till it turns brown, then let it go.
We’re gone before they come back for the magnolia, so Uncle Ray won’t see it come down. If the house would of broken Bibi’s heart, the tree would break his.
We moved a couple days ago, and I’m getting to know the new place. Don’t think of it as home, not yet, but it does have some advantages, like two bathrooms, two yards, and two fireplaces, more room than I ever thought I’d have. No more mildew. Pretty curtains, wallpaper, new sinks and toilets. Archie’s bookcases are along the wall on either side of the new door, full from top to bottom. The furnishings from Brown Street look tired here, but Archie say let’s take one thing at a time.
We are close enough to walk to the new cemetery where Bibi is buried. After we finish unpacking, we go visit her, taking roses to put on her grave. This is the first time we’ve seen her marker: LIVINIA BELLE GLOVER HAWKINS, 1884–1965. OUR BIBI.
We head down the street toward home, Hawk and Archie in front, Uncle Ray and me walking along behind. Hawk’s gon be tall like Archie, already my height and not quite twelve.
After supper Uncle Ray and I sit on one porch, Archie and Hawk on the other. I’m in the rocker from Brown Street, Uncle Ray in his straight chair, puffing on his pipe. The air is damp, a light rain falling.
A car comes down the street, slow. I close my eyes and listen to the swishing of tires on wet pavement. Sounds like Little Sugar.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For thirty-two years Laurel Goldman has helped me find my way through several novels; thanks to her and to members of our Thursday morning writing group: Mia Bray, Claire Locke, Betty Palmerton, Maureen Sladen, Cat Warren, Fabienne Worth, and the late Lucinda Paris. John Manuel, Carter Perry, and Eve Rizzo helped with early drafts.
My number one researcher is my number two child, Teresa Colleen Faw. Reesy brought me treasure-troves: the Brooklyn Oral History Project and the digital collections at the J. Murray Atkins Library, both at UNC-Charlotte. She also found an abundance of contemporaneous planning commission minutes and news stories on the “renewal”—read: destruction—of Brooklyn.
One book was a major resource: Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875–1975. My thanks to the author, Thomas W. Hanchett, PhD, who also gave me last-minute editorial assistance.
Roderick Kevin Donald, PhD—Tribal Archaeologist for the Colville Reservation in Washington State and family friend since he was a boy of sixteen—was a rich source of knowledge about old graveyards.
My appreciation to: Kelly Wooten, at Perkins Library, Duke University. Marilyn Schuster, at J. Murray Atkins Library at UNC-Charlotte. Leon Gill, for feedback that changed Loraylee’s voice. Friends in Atlanta: Jackie and Jeffrey Tony, for help with courtroom details, and David Bottomly, for correcting an evidentiary scene. Brandon Lunsford, Uni
versity Archivist, James B. Duke Memorial Library, Johnson C. Smith University. Shelia Bumgarner and Tom Cole, librarians at the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. Dr. Vernon M. Herron, for his scholarship and a thick folder of documents about Brooklyn. Ellen Weig for help with researching urban renewal. Elizabeth Woodman, editor of Eno Publications, Hillsborough, NC, for including the first chapter of my novel in 27 Views of Charlotte: The Queen City in Prose & Poetry. Pat French, who got Jean-Michel out of the house for countless hikes on Occoneechee Mountain. William Droegemueller, MD, who understood my need to be away from the green journal office on Thursday mornings for twelve years. My agent, Robert Guinsler, and my editor, John Scognamiglio, for their continued belief in me. Cliff Staton, for explaining writers’ notes and relieving me of the burden of sticking to the facts. Friends at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Hillsborough for everlasting encouragement. Mickey Reed for bringing Shumi to chase balls outside my office window as I sweated blood over the final edits.
Kathryn Frye, an invaluable Charlotte contact, is active in preserving the history of Second Ward and Brooklyn; she introduced me to Vermelle Ely, Leon Gill, Vernon Herron, Vivian Ross Nivens, Ruth Sloane, and Robert Parks (who twice tolerated my presence at the Second Ward & West Charlotte Men’s Breakfast Club). Kathryn also took me to the Charlotte Historic District Commission to meet with John Howard and Wanda Birmingham; I could not have written an accurate depiction of the old Brooklyn without their 1953 Sanborn maps.
J. R. McHone, dear friend, water brother, wherever you are now, your early encouragement enriched me. I will never not miss you.
* * *
My love and gratitude to Susan and George Devine, sister and brother-in-law, for Susie’s great edits and for time-outs on Sugar Mountain. My family sustains me: Jackson Faw, Reese Faw (Chappy, Rainey, and Brian Hull), and Scott Pharr.
And, as always, Jean-Michel, husband, friend, mentor, editor, a man who knows how to make me laugh and knows intuitively when that’s vital. Tu es ma lumière du soleil.
Please turn the page for a very special Q&A with Anna Jean Mayhew!
Q. What was the driving force that compelled you to write this novel?
A. I’m a native Charlottean; while I was aware that Brooklyn disappeared in the 1960s, it was decades before I realized the consequences of its destruction. (Similarly, when I was working on my first novel, The Dry Grass of August, things I witnessed as a teenager came to have a greater impact with time.)
As I looked into what had happened to those who lived in Brooklyn, I learned some hard facts about urban renewal. Yes, there was blight in that neighborhood. I have no way to disprove the statistics put out by the planning commission to justify destroying Brooklyn, but in numerous photos used by the commission at the time (1957–1967), I could find none depicting that it was also a thriving area of middle-class Blacks—doctors, lawyers, teachers, businesspeople. Yet such photos were available in other sources, and I relied heavily on interviews and oral histories of residents of Brooklyn.
In an exploration of the word blight I found two distinctly different meanings; in a 1936 edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition, the third definition is: “that which frustrates one’s plans or withers one’s hopes.” Then, in 2017, the third definition is: “an ugly, neglected, or run-down condition of an urban area.” It would seem that decades of urban renewal affected the dictionary.
Q. Was there a cemetery in Brooklyn that was demolished, with bodies dug up and moved to other graveyards?
A. No. Pinewood Cemetery for African Americans was established in 1853 near Fourth Ward in downtown (about a mile from Brooklyn); until 1969 a fence separated it from Elmwood Cemetery, which was Whites only. I found a story about a “lost” graveyard behind Myers Park Country Club in a wealthy area of Charlotte; human remains were discovered when foundations were dug for a new development in the mid-1980s, where an AME Zion church once stood. That led me to read about old graveyards—particularly those where slaves were buried—and to look into what would happen if a cemetery got in the way of urban renewal. I imagined a graveyard behind St. Timothy’s, and for the purposes of the drama such a burial ground would create, I chose to fictionalize, to disregard the fact that there was no cemetery in Brooklyn.
Q. Did you know the Brooklyn neighborhood before urban renewal wiped it out?
A. Only slightly. When I was a girl, my mother took me with her when she got her shoes repaired by Reuben McKissick, whose shop was located at 419 E. Second St., where Tyler’s Shoe Repair is in the novel. Mama often bought flowers from a woman who sold them in a street stall somewhere in Brooklyn. Daddy bought ice from an ice house on McDowell (the inspiration for Jackson’s Ice House in Dry Grass), and I loved going there with him. My older sister and I went to several parades on McDowell Street. As detailed in the Brooklyn Area map at the front of the book, many places where things happen in the novel existed before urban renewal, such as Myers Street School, Queen City Pharmacy, Brevard Street Library, and the tunnel under Independence Blvd. Most of them are long gone, with notable exceptions like the Mecklenburg County Courthouse and Independence Square.
Q. Are you still in the same writing group you joined in 1987?
A. Yes, and without their support I doubt I would have finished either novel. Sometimes that support is what you’d expect, editorial, but they also give me the sort of therapy that comes with any long relationship. Recently, toward the conclusion of Tomorrow’s Bread, I suffered a crisis of faith, a sort of “So what?” reaction whenever I thought about the book. The group didn’t tell me not to feel that way; instead they reassured me that every writer—and I suppose every artist in any medium—feels that way at one time or another. My wise and wonderful colleagues saved the day again!
Q. Your first novel took eighteen years to write; how long did it take you to write this one?
A. I began working on it in about 2012 and finished in May 2017, so a little over five years. That’s progress, I guess. I did find the second one to be a little easier to write.
Q. You’re what, seventy-nine now? Are you working on a third novel?
A. Yes. No. Maybe.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
TOMORROW’S BREAD
Anna Jean Mayhew
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Anna Jean Mayhew’s Tomorrow’s Bread !
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. There are three narrative voices in Tomorrow’s Bread; one is first person and the other two are third. Did the different narrative voices affect how you perceived the characters?
2. Many of the characters have a missing or absent parent. Why do you think the author chose such a family structure?
3. Because of laws against miscegenation, Loraylee had to conceal her relationship with Mr. Griffin, but why did she wait until Hawk was eleven to tell him about his father?
4. Senility in an aging relative is common for many of us. Was Bibi’s progressive dotage accurately portrayed?
5. Which of the major characters—Loraylee, Eben, and Persy—was most important for you, and why?
6. The magnolia in the front yard of Loraylee’s house on Brown Street weaves in and out of the story. What is the significance or symbolism of that tree?
7. Was it realistic for you that White patrons would have availed themselves of services like Tyler’s Shoe Repair and Roberta Stokes, the seamstress?
8. When you first saw the title Tomorrow’s Bread, what did it suggest? After reading the novel, does the title have a different meaning for you?
9. What was your favorite chapter?
10. Which character changed the most in the novel? The least?
11. If you had an opportunity to talk with one of the characters, which one would you choose?
12. Jonny No Age apparently is beaten to death because he’s gay. Were you surprised that homosexuality was so disliked and feared in the 1960s? D
o you think the same thing would happen today?
13. Was the conclusion of the novel believable? Satisfactory?
14. How do you imagine Loraylee and her family would be doing today, fifty-plus years later?
Tomorrow's Bread Page 24