At the far side of the trailer Marcelina looks up at a bedroom window. If there were a face peeking out through the grimy panes, she doubts she would recognize it. Years ago she had written down the information on the plaque at the back of the trailer in case the family took off with the unit still owing back rent. But after her family home burned down and the city claimed the land, what reason did she have to keep up with the trailer?
At the front of the trailer, Bradford has his arm outstretched, showing his open cell phone. “You expect me to read the writing on that tiny screen?” Marcelina says. “What does it say?”
“It says that the trailer was rented to a man named Bartholomew Eatten. Do you know him?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know where he might be?”
“I could make a phone call to try to locate him.”
When Bradford offers his phone, Marcelina shakes her head. She’s too embarrassed to ask how to operate the thing and, besides, she doesn’t want Bradford listening in on her conversation. “You need to keep your phone open in case the mayor calls,” she says. “I’ll make a call from the office.” The facilities department’s office building looks like a rustic structure in a Canadian national park. At one of the desks, Marcelina lifts the phone receiver, perplexed. She knew the busted water main at 920 Gottingen had forced Bartholomew Eatten and his father, Jessup, to vacate their apartment. But the last she heard, Jessup Eatten was residing with relatives, and Bartholomew was renting at the Battleship Inn. In a blue moon, Bartholomew might stop by the bluff to help chop weeds in the cemetery. But she cannot imagine he would store any of his possessions on the bluff. Not out there with those strangers.
“Bartholomew did use the trailer for storage,” the woman on the phone tells Marcelina. “He had to put a double lock on the door to keep those Trailerheads from bothering his property.”
“Where’s Bartholomew now?”
“Don’t know.”
“Is that the truth?”
“If I knew where he was, I would say.”
“Tell him to come see me at my house,” Marcelina says. “Tell him that if he knows what’s good for him, he’d better show up.”
Marcelina hangs up the phone not certain she believes any of what she has just heard. In the small bathroom she washes the stink of the trailer off her hands, thinking she ought to have admonished the young woman for using the term Trailerheads. She is a community worker after all, trying to bring people together, peddling the notion that we are all the same. Accepting talk like that doesn’t help that work.
The bluff community now comprises ten trailers, eleven if you count the empty green-and-white one-bedroom shell sitting on the facilities lot. That trailer has changed occupants many times since Marcelina dealt with the family that first dragged it onto the bluff. She leaves the bathroom unable to think of a single family out there now that she knows well. And, these days, given how often the evening news shows the flashing lights of constable cars parked out on the bluff, she must agree that sometimes the term Trailerheads has merit.
Former residents of Africaville say the trouble in the trailer park goes back to the years those colored men boarded the trains in Mississippi and Alabama, arriving in Glace Bay with little more than their thin coats and thick country voices. Marcelina’s relatives say that if the men had watched their money better or gotten more learning, the families now living in the trailers might have remained in Glace Bay after the mines closed.
Marcelina could not agree more. True, some Glace Bay families do own houses across the basin or down the coast. And few would deny that one or two Southerners—Chevy Platt and the Wilson boys from Georgia—had moved from Glace Bay and done well in Nova Scotia. But two or three up-and-comers do not make up for the failures of a hundred shiftless.
Bradford is not waiting in front of the facilities building when Marcelina comes out. Looking in the direction of the warehouse, she can see that he has reached the entrance. But who is the woman with him? When Bradford and the woman turn to see Marcelina heading toward them, they disappear inside the warehouse.
Marcelina picks up her pace. She could not make out the face of the woman, but she recognized the light-blue business suit. No doubt the woman wore it when she accompanied candidate Jonathan Maryse on several of his visits to prominent black churches in the area. Bradford said access to the warehouse was restricted until the mayor arrived, Marcelina recalls as she nears the entrance. But somehow Eva Cannon is getting a peek? Access when Maryse became mayor was what Eva Cannon wanted. And now she is getting it.
Inside the warehouse, the trailer’s contents have been laid out on the concrete floor in two long rows. Bradford and Eva are already up the far row, so Marcelina heads down the nearest. There are stacks of mattresses, several kitchen tables, two sofas, six televisions, a stack of portable radios, and two refrigerators. Nothing looks familiar.
By the time Marcelina heads along the second row, Bradford has moved to a side door, where he stands with his cell phone to his ear. “Carbide,” Eva says when Marcelina catches up to her. “That’s the nasty smell.”
“It’s nice that you know that,” Marcelina says. “But I figured Bradford let you in here because he thought you might know who owns these items. Do you?”
Eva moves her bangs out of her eyes and adjusts the thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses that frame her light-brown face. “I don’t know who owns the trailer,” she says. “But whoever moved it downtown may have been angry about the eviction notices.”
“What eviction notices?”
“The ones the city sent to every house on the bluff.”
“If the city was sending out eviction notices I would have heard about it,” Marcelina says. “I doubt what you’re saying is true.”
Eva hands Marcelina an envelope and, without waiting for her to read the letter inside, continues up the row in a clatter of heels on concrete. Moments later, realizing that she has walked by several items without checking them out, she takes a few steps back. It was rude to walk off leaving Marcelina looking shocked and confused. But it feels good to have done so. When has anyone ever gotten a bit of juicy community gossip before Marcelina Higgins-Pitts? Bradford had also looked stunned when she told him about the eviction notices. Of course, he could have been pretending.
Neither Bradford nor Marcelina has the proper respect for the people living in the trailers, Eva believes. Perhaps they might, had they come to know the community as she did during the months before she started dental school, when she lived in her aunt’s trailer. Last year, when she suggested to her boss that the dental practice offer free teeth cleanings to children living on the bluff, she had no idea the activity would yield such useful community information. This morning, when a young mother who brought her child in for an exam mentioned the eviction notices, Eva knew she had to call Bradford. She had planned to make the call as soon as she finished the exam. He did not have to call Marcelina Higgins-Pitts.
Eva feels she has expressed plenty of gratitude to Marcelina for helping her find her first apartment in Halifax. But two years ago, after she was elected president of the minority business coalition, she was hurt to hear that Marcelina was telling people that the girl from Glace Bay was getting too large for her skirts. A worse indignity was the apathy Marcelina displayed last year as Eva attempted to get her aunt’s housing application moving. It took months of nagging to get Marcelina even to make a telephone call to check on the application. And by the time an approval letter for a city apartment was shoved under the door of the trailer, Eva’s aunt had been dead for two weeks.
“It’s a shame about these eviction notices,” Marcelina says, handing Eva back the envelope.
“It is more than a shame,” Eva says. “It’s criminal. Some of these people have been living on the bluff for years.”
“Nothing’s permanent.”
“An apartment in the building in Simms Corner would be permanent enough.”
Getting no response f
rom Marcelina, Eva resumes her inspection of the mining equipment. “I saw a man demonstrate a contraption like that at a county exposition when I was a girl,” she says, pointing to an item lying on a paint-spattered tarp. “It’s spring-loaded. It launches things into hard-to-reach crevices.”
“One of the teenagers was messing with one of these out on the bluff a few months ago,” Marcelina says. “Hit a man in the chest and sent him to the hospital. Those teenagers from the bluff are nothing but trouble.”
Eva frowns. “The owner should not have been keeping dangerous equipment in the trailer.”
“I don’t think Bartholomew owns any mining gear,” Marcelina says.
“Did he drag the trailer downtown?”
“I doubt it. Bartholomew is too old for that kind of foolishness.”
A facilities clerk approaches and says that Bradford would like to meet them outside in the parking lot. Marcelina steps off first.
There she goes, Eva thinks, watching Marcelina near the side door, the woman who is always eager to convince everyone that only she can get to the bottom of any trouble that involves a black Haligonian. But Marcelina didn’t know about the eviction notices. Her days as a well-connected community leader are definitely on the wane.
Well, good riddance, Eva thinks, slipping the folded envelope into the pocket of her suit jacket. And good riddance to the trash Marcelina and her neighbors have been talking about the current residents of the bluff. The fact is the trouble on the bluff sprang up long before the trailers arrived. One could count on one hand the number of Glace Bay families living on the bluff during 1968, the year the Halifax Herald wrote weekly articles saying the community was plagued by filth, overcrowding, and petty crime. The trouble did not start with the families whose grandfathers came to Canada from the United States aboard the mining company trains. The eyesore that Africaville became began when those Jamaicans—or were they from Trinidad or Haiti?—landed in Halifax in the 1800s. When the mines of Cape Breton closed down, at least the Glace Bay families had the sense to leave a place that wasn’t working for them. Years before Africaville was demolished, young activists talked big about heading to the so-called ancestral town of Halifaxship. Big talk, but where was the action? Back then, Sierra Leone was probably no worse for a black person than Canada. Parents in Africaville had the opportunity to help their sons and daughters take the village on Woods Bluff home to Africa. Why didn’t they?
The mayor has postponed his trip to Ottawa,” Bradford says when Eva arrives at his black SUV, where he waits with Marcelina. “He’s on his way back from the airport.”
“Because of the trouble on the bluff?” Eva asks.
Bradford nods.
“This is quite a mystery,” Eva says.
“Not a tough one though,” Marcelina says. “It’s just a matter of time before we know who owns the belongings.”
“What about the person who dragged the trailer downtown?” Eva says. “You say this man Bartholomew didn’t do it. Well, who did?”
While Marcelina thinks, Eva steps closer to Bradford. “If the mayor has any more questions, he can call me,” she says. “I’ll relay any info to Marcelina.”
“Why would the mayor call you,” Marcelina says to Eva, “when he can call me directly?”
Eva folds her arms with a slight smile. “It’s too bad Miss Oneresta is no longer living and working for the community,” she says. “She would have had all this mess sorted out hours ago.”
Bradford climbs into the SUV, and Marcelina steps to the open car door. “Which one of us is the mayor going to call on this matter?” she asks Bradford. “Me or this woman who knows so little about the city?”
“I’ll have the mayor call you,” Bradford says to Marcelina, “but only if you promise to be open to talking with him about the cemetery lawsuit.”
“You can forget that,” Marcelina says.
But then Marcelina steals a glance at Eva, who stands looking smug and confident. Her comment moments ago still stings. The nerve of this gal thinking she knows anything about the work of Marcelina’s aunt Oneresta. Marcelina thinks another long while before she turns to Bradford with a reluctant nod. “All right,” she says. “I’ll discuss the cemetery with the mayor.”
Bradford looks back and forth between Eva and Marcelina and then gives Eva a disappointed look. “Marcelina can probably get to whoever owns the trailer before you can,” he says, reaching for the door handle. “I think it’s better if the mayor calls her about this matter.”
Putting Eva in her place at the facilities parking lot was a necessary task, Marcelina tells herself back at her home in Simms Corner. But why then does the victory feel so hollow?
She wonders if she was convincing earlier when she told the chief of staff that she could find Bartholomew Eatten. She had declared with such confidence that Bartholomew never lived in a trailer out on the bluff. But is that the truth?
She’s at her kitchen sink, washing her hands again, and the warm soapy water reminds her of how often she washed her hands during the visits she and Steppie Caulden made out to the bluff years ago to tend to Rosa Penncampbell. With every new snowstorm that winter, Rosa seemed to get sicker. Yet she refused to go back to the hospital. On the last trip Marcelina made to the Penncampbells’ house, she saw Bartholomew Eatten standing on Dempsey Road. She tried to see if anyone else was on the road with him. But the end of Rosa’s porch that would have afforded a better view was in bad shape and had been cordoned off. Bartholomew was probably there getting the news that Rosa had died earlier in the day. His mother had died the year before. Thank goodness Mrs. Eatten had not lived to see the mess her son was becoming with all the drugs he was taking. The man was in such bad shape that he missed his mother’s funeral. What is he into now? Marcelina wonders, as she watches Bartholomew get out of a car idling in her driveway.
She opens the door to find the car gone and Bartholomew sitting on her front steps. “I heard you’ve been asking after me,” he says.
“Is that your gear they took out of the trailer downtown?” Marcelina asks.
“Half of it is,” Bartholomew says.
“And the rest?”
Bartholomew shifts on the steps, watching the traffic. His shirt is clean but wrinkled and his pants are faded. With his face unshaven, he looks every bit like a man on the other side of fifty. “The other crap belonged to the fellow renting the other half of the trailer,” he says. “I go in through the front door. He goes in through the back.”
“Who is the other fella?”
“Don’t know his name. Only met him once. We were both at the trailer a few weeks ago. Somebody had been trying to jimmy the padlocks. I phoned the constable, but I could tell he wasn’t listening.”
“That’s not a reason to run the trailer down to city hall.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Who did then?”
“I’d put money on it being one of those Trailerheads.”
“If I was you, I’d get downtown and tell the constable that.”
“It’s what I plan.”
Marcelina opens the door wider and steps out onto the landing. “Have you eaten?”
“A hard roll this morning.”
“I can fix that.”
In her kitchen Marcelina stands a moment feeling the cool air drift out of the open refrigerator. She heard recently that Bartholomew was still using drugs. In the time it takes to make a sandwich, she could summon a constable. She might do that but first she wants to find out what drew Bartholomew back to the bluff. Surely not the memory of the neighbors he knew as a child. By the time he was a teenager, his parents had moved away.
On the way out front with the sandwich, Marcelina pauses to pick up an envelope with an invitation to this year’s remembrance picnic. Last year, she had told a group of angry attendees not to lose a night’s sleep worrying about whether the cemetery, that last piece of Africaville, would be there next year. Was it wise to have spoken with that much bluster about
a fight whose outcome she cannot guarantee?
“I would have sent you this by post,” Marcelina says on the steps, where she hands Bartholomew the invitation. “But I didn’t have your address.”
“I might just show up this year,” Bartholomew says. “Bring the little gal I’m spending time with.”
While he takes a bite of the sandwich, Marcelina notices the soft-sided hat resting on his knee. It reminds her of the elderly men who used to gather on Saturday afternoons in front of the Africaville post office, discussing past events few of them remembered the same way.
“Did you see the note I stuck into the envelope with the invitation,” Marcelina inquires, “asking for volunteers to help tidy up the cemetery?”
“I do like passing the cemetery when I am out there,” Bartholomew says. “I could help clean up the area. But nobody has asked.”
“Well, now I am asking,” Marcelina says. “My husband could help, too.”
“What about you?”
While considering Bartholomew’s question, Marcelina notices a flock of swallows alighting on the crown of an old oak. Birds like those have nested in the trees on this street for over a century—and will long after Marcelina is gone. She wants the cemetery to survive. But she also must accept that it may not. What would be wise is to show her old neighbors that she appreciates the place now. “Pretty soon I’m going to have plenty of time on my hands,” Marcelina says. “I guess I could get my hands dirty doing some different work on the bluff.”
The New New Confederates
Jackson, Mississippi, April 1992
As a descendant of persons buried in Basinview Baptist cemetery, Warner promised the lawyers helping the Friends of the Cemetery fight the city that he would be in Halifax this week to give a deposition for the case going to the appeals court. But more pressing matters have brought him to Jackson: a possible decision by the governor of Mississippi to pardon his great-grandmother Zera.
Africaville Page 31