Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  It is now the second week of June, and the only structures that have been freshly painted are a few sheds and one outhouse. During the jamboree, residents told Oneresta that they liked her idea but that it would take a while to gather the funds. Even with the discount, the paint is very expensive.

  Oneresta can’t disagree. She promised Chevy Platt that she would order four gallons of sea-green paint. But she has only found money enough to afford three of the four gallons she will need to paint her house. Visitors coming by the gray two-story bungalow Oneresta shares with her niece Marcelina might well remark that her property could stand a bit of color. In the front yard, two rosebushes, bordered by a circle of white gravel, have stopped blooming. And although jars of white trilliums and purple violets (the few flowers that will tolerate the rocky loam in the backyard) sit on window ledges in the kitchen and the front rooms, those plants wilted days ago.

  For the first time in weeks, however, Oneresta has not once worried about where she will get the money to buy the last gallon of house paint. Yesterday she learned that Kiendra Penncampbell, the girl sent to the Halifax hospital on Thursday with a gunshot wound, is fighting a virulent infection. Having already visited the hospital and gone shopping with Kiendra’s mother, Oneresta is now arranging a meeting of the Woods Bluff Ladies Club. Only one item is on the agenda: what to do about the incident that put Kiendra in the hospital.

  The club used to meet monthly, like the Peacoat Ladies, the Garden Club, and the Sisters of Heavenly Stars. Most of the ladies in those other clubs are from families that have been in Woods Bluff less than fifty years. The women of the ladies club are from long-back families—Higgins, Ovits, Steptoe, Tipps, Sebolt, Teakill—families that lived in Woods Bluff when Sadie Caulden’s great-grandmother convened the first meeting in 1820. Now the club meets only when there is serious business.

  “Is that a peach jam icing I see over the Jump-Up cake?” Marcelina asks Oneresta on the front porch.

  “Best fix I could think of,” Oneresta says.

  Marcelina sits down in a nearby chair, fussing with the plastic cap over her damp hair. “I guess I’ll go on over and see Rosa,” she says.

  “Why are you pestering Rosa?” Oneresta asks. “She’s got plenty to do. Why don’t you get Steppie Caulden to curl your hair?”

  “Rosa told me to come,” Marcelina says. “She’s going to do Donnita’s hair, too, before they go back to the hospital. She said pressing hair takes her mind off her daughters.”

  “We’re all worried about Kiendra. But why is Rosa worried about Donnita?”

  “Donnita isn’t taking things too well. She’s been saying her sister was pushed down the stairs after the bullet hit her. Didn’t you hear that, too?”

  “Here-say-there-say is what that is.”

  Marcelina dabs at her damp temples with a hand towel. “I heard the constable tried to touch Kiendra the wrong way. That’s why she slapped him.”

  “She slapped him?”

  “What I heard. You think it’s true?”

  “What’s thinkable’s possible. Of course the girl should have known better than to tussle with a constable.” Oneresta turns a pincushion several times, hoping her big-eye needle has not gotten lost again. “Now I’m not saying Kiendra’s to blame for what happened to her. But she shouldn’t have been at the building in the first place. Guivalier told her to stay away. This is what happens when a child doesn’t listen to her father.”

  “Or her mother.”

  From the box at her feet, Oneresta takes out a square of cloth. She lets the square glide across her arm. Two or three years earlier she scoffed at the girls selling combs or packets of flower seeds, the young men peddling lye soap, and especially that distasteful Clemmond Green, who she heard was selling numbers. But these days, with everything costing more—and with her need to set the example and complete her order for house paint—she has no choice but to start sewing again. Today’s job is a stack of handkerchiefs, silk ones to distinguish her merchandise from those coarse hats Lucille Breakstone still peddles at the baseball games.

  “Guess I’ll get going,” Marcelina says.

  Oneresta examines the square for imperfections, knowing Marcelina’s eyes are still on her. The child knows she’s too young to attend a ladies club meeting. But that hasn’t stopped her from asking. The big-eye needle is not in the pincushion, so Oneresta plucks another one. “I suppose you’re right,” she says, picking up the spool of thread from her lap. “You should get going.”

  After her niece has gone, Oneresta sits a moment, unable to decide what stitch to use to edge this square. With a raised hand, she shields her eyes from the sun and looks down the hill. In Centervillage, a truck has pulled up to the bus stop where the men gather to be picked up for evening work at the sugar refinery or the cotton factory. The truck idles less than a minute before driving off, leaving two men standing.

  As Oneresta threads the needle, her eyes blur. When she closes her eyes, her nose is assaulted by the vinegary scent of the blue pines encroaching on the side yard. People thought her relatives were crazy to build this house and the one across Dempsey Road. It took backbreaking labor to put pilings into the hard rock. Digging the garden was no cakewalk either. The two houses are a testament to the Campbell brothers, who had made something of nothing. That was why it was such a loss when the influenza menace killed both brothers. When her husband died five years ago, Oneresta considered joining Marcelina in the smaller house across the road. The checks from her dead husband’s city pension were being eaten by the cost of winter coal. Money got especially tight after Marcelina’s trade school hiked its tuition. Even with Marcelina working, Oneresta is considering closing off the top floor of the house next winter and raising the rent on the house across the road.

  The aunt who left Marcelina the other house couldn’t put three stitches in a straight line. It was her uncle Bishop, a tailor, who taught her to stitch. Oneresta almost laughs thinking about Bishop, but she remembers she’s selling these scarves to assist a grieving mother. She visited the hospital yesterday with a red-and-gold scarf for Kiendra. But Windsome Taylor offered cash for it, not credit the way folks these days operate. The news from Windsome wasn’t good, so Oneresta let go of the scarf and now she is making something green for Kiendra. Isn’t green the color of epiphany or redemption? If the color green doesn’t bring Kiendra good luck, might the simple act of sewing?

  Oneresta can’t be sure. The quilt she sewed years ago for her ten-year-old grandson didn’t help him survive the day the munitions ship exploded in the basin. She was drinking then—nobody knew how much—and was napping the afternoon the boy snuck off the bluff with his friends and ended up in the North End. Judging from his injuries, the doctor said the blast must have thrown her grandson half a city block.

  Drinking hadn’t stopped Oneresta from doing the community work needed to get into the Woods Bluff Ladies Club. And now she is co-chairwoman. In the bedroom, while searching for her eyeglasses, she hears voices in the front yard. The ladies are early, she thinks, kneading the pillows on the living room sofa. That’s a good sign. Still, what deep work can they do for Kiendra? The important work is now in the hands of doctors.

  For the third time in two days, Kath Ella turns over in her bed and buries her face deep in the pillow. As with the last two times, her memory of what happened at the building in Simms Corner is hazy. She recalls a scream, the shrill shriek of a young boy. At least it sounded like a young boy. If she stays awake, some vision of what is causing the screams may come to her. But does she want to remember? She closes her eyes tighter. If she tries, maybe she can will herself to sleep again.

  She woke up thinking she heard someone tapping at her bedroom window. But the tapping must be in her head. Yesterday, when George and Shirley were visiting her bedside, she heard one of them say that Kiendra had lost a bucket of blood. If that is true, no way could Kiendra have risen from the hospital bed, let alone walked here for another visit. What Kath Ella n
eeds now is another hard sleep, like the one she fell into after arriving home, still trembling and barely audible. She remembers refusing the buttered bread and soup Shirley offered. Maybe that was a mistake. Some nourishment would have soothed the dull aches and intermittent tremors that have plagued her every time she opens her eyes. Had anyone heard her a few hours ago when she woke suddenly and screamed?

  When the tapping starts again, Kath Ella lifts her face from the pillow. Noticing a figure at the window, she almost screams again. But she realizes it is not Kiendra. It is Kiendra’s sister, Donnita.

  “I knocked at the front door,” Donnita says, raising the window higher. “Nobody answered.”

  Kath Ella sits up in the bed, listening for noises in the house. There are none. She notices that the bed she has been sleeping on is still made. And she is dressed. “How is Kiendra doing?” she says, rising.

  Donnita is only four years older than Kiendra. But today she looks much older than twenty-two. Her freshly pressed hair has rows of large stiff curls, yet to be combed out. She seems to be thinking over her answer. “Rosa and Guivalier say she is resting.”

  “That’s all they said. What happened to her?”

  Donnita looks at Kath Ella with eyes that suggest she hasn’t been getting adequate sleep.

  “You were there,” she says, a bit sharp. “Don’t you know?”

  Kath Ella shakes her head.

  “The girls are having a meeting,” Donnita says. “Us girls need to talk about a few things.”

  “I don’t feel up to going to a meeting today,” Kath Ella says.

  “Not today. Monday. We’re meeting at the Bowl.”

  “The Bowl is where the boys congregate.”

  “Girls can go there, too.”

  “Not if they want any peace.”

  Kath Ella moves to the window as a car groans down the hill. Eventually the vehicle will pass the Bowl. Dusty in summer, the Bowl is covered in the fall and winter by mud that can sometimes be treacherous. Last year Clem Sasser’s dog was chasing a woodchuck across the Bowl when both dog and woodchuck slid into a deep crack in the rocks. Buddy Taylor had the idea of lowering a gunnysack. To everyone’s surprise, the dog climbed right inside.

  “The boys say they are going to collect money,” Donnita says.

  “What for?”

  “To buy firecrackers. They want to throw a party for Kiendra when she gets out of the hospital.”

  Kath Ella frowns.

  “Don’t bring that face,” Donnita says. “Kiendra likes firecrackers.”

  “Yes, but the constables don’t. Nobody is going to give those boys money for firecrackers. The boys ought to have learned a lesson from the time they nearly burned down the schoolhouse. Remember that?”

  “The neighbors might give the girls some money.” Donnita sets a tall cylindrical tin on the window ledge. On it are the words OTTAWA’S BEST BUTTER COOKIES and below them a picture of a horse covered in a plaid stable blanket. “At the meeting on Monday we’ll decide what to buy for Kiendra. It will be something nice. After the meeting, us girls are going to the hospital. Can you come?”

  “I have to go to work on Monday.”

  Donnita reaches out her arm and presents her wrist, pretty brown and not scarred like Kiendra’s. “My sister is missing the bracelet you gave her,” she says. “Her boyfriend broke into the building in Simms Corner looking for it.”

  “I doubt he’ll find it.”

  Donnita looks as though she is about to leave the window. Instead she places a hand on the ledge. “Are you afraid one of the girls will say something smart to you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that Kiendra wouldn’t have gotten shot if she had not come up from Wells Bridge to see you. I heard one of the girls already said that.” Looking mildly angry, Donnita stiffens her body and looks at Kath Ella, as if knowing her words hurt. Recognizing that Kath Ella is too weak to manage a response, she slackens her shoulders and lowers her eyes to the tin can. “Of course, if I hear that at the meeting on Monday,” she says, “I will point out that Kiendra came up here to see Buddy Taylor. And to see about getting a ticket to the T-House concert at the China Tavern.”

  Donnita’s last words give Kath Ella a bit of strength and now she wants to respond. But as she is gathering words, Donnita jumps down from her perch and disappears toward the front of the house.

  Later in the afternoon, Oneresta is putting the last stitches on another scarf when the Reverend Clifford Steptoe and Hezekiah Eatten walk through her front gate. Both men mount the porch steps brazenly, like owners come round to collect late rent.

  “Warm today,” Oneresta says, putting her thimble aside.

  The men sit down.

  “Sunshine’s a blessing, sister,” Reverend Steptoe says.

  Hezekiah, the darker of the two men, nods and opens the copy of the Colored Freeman that was lying in the chair. Not wearing his eyeglasses, he scans the paper as if content to let Reverend Steptoe lead the interrogation. Heavy and round-chested, Reverend Steptoe talks with a deep, half-hoarse voice Oneresta had once found appealing. “Sent word for you yesterday,” he says. “Why didn’t you come see me?”

  “Been busy.”

  “Busy going downtown, I hear. Talking to white folks.”

  “We ladies decided to go downtown a few times, yes.”

  Seeing the men exchange glances, Oneresta puts aside her cloth and goes inside for iced tea. In the kitchen she stabs at the block of ice with a pick, trying to decide how to handle these men. Aside from the fight the two had years ago, when Hezekiah threatened to marry the reverend’s ex-girlfriend, they’ve been thick as syrup since childhood. Neither seems pleased that she is butting in with regard to matters concerning Kiendra. No doubt they will give her another lecture about what their fathers have done for Woods Bluff, how an Eatten and a Steptoe got city officials to supply wood to build a bigger church. But men from other families did the work of building the church. Bettie Ovits’s savings paid for the new pulpit and pews. Why isn’t her name on the front plaque along with that of Hezekiah’s grandfather?

  On the porch, after filling two glasses, Oneresta leaves them on the tray for the men to serve themselves. “Mrs. Klacafee agrees that tossing a brick ought not get a young woman shot,” Oneresta says, picking up her sewing again. “She says somebody in Halifax will pay for Kiendra’s hospital bills, even if it has to be her.”

  “Not all bank checks promised from downtown get written,” Reverend Steptoe says. He takes a long drink of tea. “Don’t you think this is something the men ought to handle?”

  “Whatcha doing to handle matters?”

  “We talked to the head constable,” Reverend Steptoe says. “Told the mayor we feel Guivalier ought to get compensated. The mayor listened.”

  “Yes, but did he hear?”

  “Plain as rain. And if the mayor keeps hearing, maybe we can get us electricity at the elementary and secondary school. The houses, too. And we’re going to get a water line out here. Leave it to us, Sister Higgins.”

  “You gonna get the dump moved, too?”

  “Anything’s possible. Our fathers believed that.”

  Hezekiah Eatten finally reaches for a glass of iced tea. He got his broad shoulders from his mother, who used to stand over Oneresta and the other students doing summing and subtraction on those rough-hewn benches in the old church. Who knows where he got the long face or sharp chin.

  “Want you ladies to butt out of things,” Hezekiah says. “Let the men handle matters.”

  “Right now all I’m doing is helping Rosa,” Oneresta says. “Don’t have time for butting in.”

  The men exchange glances again. Then, as if to lay the matter to rest, each drains his glass. Hezekiah rattles the ice in his glass, but Oneresta does not rise to pour more tea. Last year, for the first time, she didn’t vote for Hezekiah to become co-chair of the community board. She wanted pigheaded Samuel Ovits, or even Raymond Griffin, someone who still lived in
Woods Bluff. Hezekiah was elected by two votes, one probably from Marcelina. That girl never could be depended on to do what she was told. Watching the men reach for their hats, Oneresta realizes she forgot the lemon slices. Ordinarily she would apologize for the oversight, but right now she feels no compunction to do so.

  Half an hour after the men have gone, Marcelina returns. “Back so soon?” Oneresta says. “And why isn’t your hair pressed?”

  “When I got there, Rosa and Donnita were fighting about what to do with the money some of the girls have already collected. Donnita has it, but when Rosa asked for it, Donnita tried to hit her.”

  “I don’t believe a word of that. The girls just started collecting. Steppie Caulden didn’t have that much money in the tin she carried when she came by here.”

  “Yes, but down in Centervillage, she had several of the proprietors in tears. Bound to have gotten more than a nickel or two there.”

  Oneresta shakes her head. “That girl tried to hit her mother? She’s lost her mind now, too. Just like her sister.”

  In the shed in the backyard, the interior structure is sound, but the front is riddled with bruises from years of enduring too many harsh Nova Scotia winters. Even on the interior of the front door, the nail heads are bleeding little ferric currents down ashen and pitted planks.

  But the floor planks, with the wonderful etchings on the ends, are still in good shape. They easily support the heavy worktable in the corner, where Shirley, in an old dress and straw hat, is binding bunches of onions with twine.