Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  “Why won’t you arrest me, huh? I’m a cripple, right? I’m no good to you, is that it?” I slowly raised my hand and my middle finger popped out like it’s been dying to all day. “Climb on this, Tarzan!”

  Isaac turned around as far as he could to try to face me with his hands behind his back. I could see his eyes bugging out at my finger. “Cool it, white sugar,” he said. “He’s right, you don’t belong here. You go on! Call David Lewis and he’ll come get you.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do!” I shouted. “No man can tell me what to do. Arrest me, too! Is it because I’m white then, is that it?” The policeman turned his back to me and walked away with Isaac. That’s when I noticed a riot had broke out around me and someone had set fire to the rag top of a hot-rodder and people were yelling “It’s gonna blow!” and I have this unexplained terror of fire and I couldn’t stay in this madhouse alone, to die, to burn in hell. I was going with Isaac All The Way. With all my limping might, I ran at the uniform and shoved him hard in his back. He tripped and almost fell to the ground, bringing Isaac with him. Isaac looked at me like I was a mad woman; I suppose I looked that way, maybe I was. “Arrest me, you racist pig,” I yelled. “I’m a nigger lover and I love this one!”

  “Alright! You asked for it!” he growled. Red in the face, he grabbed my arm with his free hand and hauled us to the first partly empty paddy wagon down the street. The first two wagons lined up were already full. All I could see were the whites of their eyes as someone lifted me up into the wagon. I had no idea so many colored people had shown up at the restaurant.

  This same pig started to close the doors to the back of the wagon but then decided to yell something first. “It’s damn un-American what you people did back there! Why don’t you go back where you came from?”

  “Hey, peace is patriotic, too,” a voice from the darkness answered. I then knew Joseph was back there somewhere. The doors slammed hard.

  There must’ve been fifty of us crammed into the jail cell, barely enough room to sit on the floor, some stood along the walls. I was given a small spot on the bottom bunk bed because they felt sorry for my bad limp. Falling from the stool had done some damage that I hadn’t noticed until we settled in the cell but I didn’t want the stares if I took the brace off. Legs from the top bunk dangled around my head. Joseph and Henry were there, too, and the three of them huddled at my feet, talking about how they wished they’d gotten more than a knuckle sandwich at the Kress lunch counter and how hungry they were for fried chicken. I love fried chicken too and we all agreed to break bread together some day.

  “We’ll go to Savannah next,” said Henry, wrapping my bandana around his bloodied hand. “They’re not so quick to arrest since half the folks there are colored registered voters.” It’s unreal how the three of them laughed so comfortably. Joseph said, “Man, you just don’t quit, do you? You cruisin’ for another bruisin’?” The raw cigarette burn on his arm looked like a red eye on his dark skin. It slowly closed a brown eyelid as it dried to a scab while we sat there all night. And, man, I swear, he never looked at it once.

  With all those souls in this hell-cell, you’d think it’d stay warm, but the concrete walls, floors, metal bars, I don’t know, but it got fucking cold. I started shivering in my thin shirtdress and I couldn’t stop. Then I started coughing and I couldn’t stop that. “What’s your tale, nightingale?” asked Henry softly, looking up at me with warm coffee eyes. (Man, that’s all I could think about, watching so many steaming cups being served and never getting one, and aren’t you supposed to get water and bread in jail?) Isaac felt my forehead and stood up and stepped over the many bodies sleeping sitting up, til he got to the metal bars. “Hey,” he called out in a loud whisper. “Anybody here?” No answer. We could only see more pukey-green concrete block walls beyond the cell. “We got us a sick baby in here, can anybody hear me?” No answer. I didn’t want to bring any attention to me and I already felt like such a drag for fazing out that I sighed in relief when he gave up and came back.

  Toward early morning, though, I was wheezing like a rubber ducky and no longer able to concentrate on their whispered plans of “jail-no-bail”. For the first time in this whole freakin’ happening, I see Isaac hacked off. He didn’t care if he woke the world. He started yelling at the bars for someone to get their asses back here right now and let this white girl out so she can get back to Annan New York and see her doctor, or they were going to have a murder on their hands. I wasn’t sure whose he was talking about.

  “Can I help you, little girl?” I turned my attention to a white man, an old one bent down to me, with long white hair all the way down to his shoulders that fell forward and partly hid his face. Why do Big Daddies treat me like an ankle-biter? I sent him up a glare to mind his own bees-wax but he sent back a groovy smile and kind blue eyes. Kind of softened all those wrinkles, making me homesick for GG.

  “Yeah,” I croaked, attempting a half beam to make up for my glare. “You got a peace pipe you can pass around here?”

  He raised his hand like a good television Indian. “How!” he said and gave me an open grin that made me feel warm inside. Since when did those kind have blue eyes? His weren’t even dull like a lot of old men either, but twinkling like a Santa Claus.

  The cell opened with a clang and we all looked over to see a uniform and Isaac brought him over to me. Uh-oh, the same one from yesterday; he’ll keep me here til Aquarius aligns with Mars. With Isaac’s blown up story of me at death’s door, the Indian had a pow-wow with the fuzz and told him he could take me back up to New York.

  “No, you can’t,” I called out hoarsely. This sent me into fits of coughs.

  I might as well have howled to the moon.

  “Aren’t you getting too old to be doing this crap, Jerry? Why don’t you stay home and watch the sunset?” the uniform asked.

  “You might be right, sir,” Jerry-or-whoever said, nodding solemnly like these were wise words. “Let me take this little girl home and, I promise, as the Great Spirit is my witness, you won’t see hide-nor-tail of me ever again.”

  Wasn’t anybody going to ask me? “Hey!” I reached up and tugged on Isaac’s shirt sleeve from my bed roost, trying not to get too cranked to keep the lungs settled. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know this man. Does that matter to anyone here? How does he know where I live?”

  “I may be stabbing in the dark here,” this Jerry guy said, “but I’m reckoning you live in a big white-brick house they call the Lighthouse?” And he started naming My Mamas’ names and about how old they are and really freaking me out. “If you come from Annan, New York, and you’re in this kind of pickle barrel, you could only come from one line of ladies, the strongest women I know of.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t inherit that part,” I said after another deep-throated croup.

  “They’ll be very proud of you,” he said, so kindly I had an urge to hug. “I’ll see to that.”

  I wanted to ask him, do you really think so? I had another urge to say, my heart soars like the eagle. Would he laugh? My three brown bears here sure would. But we were interrupted.

  “You two,” the uniform said, “get outta here before I change my mind.” Man, he needed new material.

  I stood slowly. “Isaac … ” I couldn’t think of anything else to say; I knew they had me.

  He touched my arm; I wanted more, like a goodbye kiss, but suicide in this land. “You go take care of yourself. I’ll be up there soon. You hear?” I nodded, not able to speak, not able to take my eyes off his Sweet, Sad Face. “You’s good people. Thanks. For everything.”

  The cop tugged at me to go then and everyone quietly parted a Red-Sea path to the cell door. Some patted my back or on top of my head as I limped out, with only the clink-clink of my shoe brace making a sound.

  Then there was a long dark hallway that seemed to go on and on into eternity. My legs got heavier and heavier walking forever … clink … clink. Suddenly there was bright sun glittering off car
s blinding me. Then it got dark. I tried to open my eyes and a car tire is eye-level. He’s leaning over me, moving hair from my face, “You fainted, honey, I’m here, hold my hand tight” … blue eyes, Blue Mountain he says. “Your mommy and mammaw will meet you up there, I’ll drive up” … to the top of the blue mountain? … a white cot … bright lights … up, up … heaven? … God, Jerry’s an angel … how can he drive up? … helicopter blades? … loud noises … a low roar … down, down … GB’s face … GG’s face … Mama’s face … you had us scared to death! … fading in and out, in and out, like bad TV reception. The trouble is not in your set.

  I’m fine now, copasetic, Mama said, but she’s a lousy liar. My writing’s sloppy and I’m writing fast because they won’t give me much time before they put this freaking plastic tent over my bed. “Cool. I’m finally going on a camping trip,” I tell the nurse through my oxygen mask. I sound raspy and there’s that rubber ducky sound again. Hard to hold a pen, hard to breathe. No one is smiling; sure would be nice to see some nice white teeth and hear his laughter … where are you?

  We arrive at the gravesite and I simply cannot believe that our free-spirited Jesi is closed up in that box. I can’t bear it. I can’t. Mama is the one making the most sense, in just “zoning out” as Jesi would call it. I wish I could do the same. I’m so tired of being durable, but like any old shoe, I need mending. Doesn’t anyone see that?

  But what if Mama doesn’t get her mind back? I can’t bear to think of it.

  Who can face this cruel reality? I’ll tell you who. Katy. Jesi’s own mother. I do not understand her. When we received news of Jesi’s death, she fell to the floor of the hospital waiting room like a spiraling leaf and has been as brittle ever since. But not a tear to spare. No, not one drop. I had stopped reading her chapters after she had revealed why she hadn’t originally opened the birth control clinic. She lacked commitment and drive.

  But then I read more - what if I lose her too? I was going to bury our chapters with Jesi. So many secrets revealed. But I went back and took the stack of papers back out. I knew that Jesi had been reading them, as well as Katy. Just as I had hoped they would. Didn’t they think I would’ve removed the chapters from the locked wardrobe otherwise? We needed an understanding of each other and I thought this project the best way. I wanted to understand Mama and Jere’s love for each other and what had really happened between them that would warrant my belief in their wrong-doing. I find out that I’m the one wrong. I wanted to know what happened to Katy while in Georgia. She came back a changed woman and rarely has left the house since, and I had secretly blamed myself for pushing the birth control clinic. I find out how wrong I was. I wanted to know what was going on in Jesi’s mind and where she was disappearing to, sex and drugs being my worst fear. Again I was terribly wrong. In the process I found my writing very therapeutic in telling my own truth. Now I’m considering putting it together for public consumption. I haven’t decided – yet I can envision the cover: a medieval-looking tapestry of four armored women marching through their different eras, colorful threads linking past to present, on a background of deep green ivy, branched out yet intertwined at intervals, all growing from the same root.

  It’s inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. This is not the ending I had planned. If only a writer could bring the dead back and make it a happy ending with just pen and paper.

  Here am I, the cold one, the “Mount Everest”, crying my eyes out. The only one. Can someone explain the sense of it all? I must make some sense of this or I will surely go mad. I so much want to tell Jesi I didn’t mean to be cold, that I really cared.

  The night of her death, a nurse handed me papers with Jesi’s handwriting scrawled across like she had written this on a bumpy bus ride. I rushed home to find her remaining chapters stuffed into her night table drawer. What I realized came too late. I take full responsibility for not being more in tune with Jesi’s needs, her mama’s needs, and for harboring accusations toward my own mama.

  Where is the love, man? Jesi had the right question there but I’m so damned upset with the rest of us Mamas for not having the answers. We thought ourselves above her and her substandard rebellion. Now I see she’s no better or worse – just one of our kind wanting to have the freedom to choose.

  Overwhelmed by the public sobbing around me, I walk away and up a small knoll. I look back down on the group circled around the hole in the earth, Jesi’s coffin suspended above to give us one last chance at farewell. I see this hole as a gap in my chest, where my heart used to be. I had grown one and lost it during my year of awakening. Jesi had been the heart to us all, the one who felt the most, the one who suffered the most, the one who shocked the most, and now such a vibrant life is to be buried like so many memories, harshly exposing my own one-dimensional life.

  After all my struggles, why would one of my own choose civil rights instead? I’ve pushed Jesi too hard, is that it? What else could she do but break and fly off in a different direction? Perhaps she’s smarter than I am; perhaps she saw the futility of my life. Frankly I’m tired of pushing for the Equal Rights Amendment. After forty years in draft, this ERA continues to be non-ratified. What is this all about, this life of mine? If not for women’s rights, then for what? And if not for Jesi and her offspring, why go on fighting? I will not write another letter, attend another meeting! No more arguing, no more debate!

  I begin pacing, my arms folded around me against the cold winds. One gust catches my head scarf like a sail and I watch helplessly as it takes to the air.

  But wait! Why am I bickering about the ERA? Jesi lost her life for her cause! Can I not give more of my life for both my cause and hers? So that she does not die in vain? And so that my life has not been wasted? I must make sense of it all. I must or I will surely lose my mind.

  I know what I will do: I’ll table this at tomorrow’s meeting of the National Woman’s Party and discuss this personally with Alice Paul. The draft Civil Rights bill is going in front of the Senate this very year and now is the time to push gender inclusion. If the front door’s locked, go around back.

  I hear singing. I stop and look down there.

  Prayer has ended and people are walking away. Remaining are mostly Uncle Jesse’s sons and grandchildren and Aunt Opal’s children and grandchildren. They alone can make a crowd and Jesi would have loved to see them. Yet Jesi’s colored friend, Isaac, remains with my family and has brought his guitar from the church. He’s singing Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. Wasn’t it enough that he had sung Dylan’s song, Don’t think twice, it’s alright at the church? How inappropriate. He hadn’t asked permission to perform and who would want to hear such rebel trash? Yes, the two world wars took lives, but they saved many more. Jesi’s generation doesn’t understand! I start back down to ask him to stop, when I hear other voices join in, The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.

  What draws my attention more so is, from a distance I see a man walking across the field toward the graveyard. His walk, like a graceful long stride, is vaguely familiar, but his head of white hair and stooped shoulders are not. As he nears the group from the side, I see something all too familiar: a pony tail. This could only be one man.

  I hurry down the slope, thinking he’s looking for me but when I call his name, he doesn’t seem to hear but keeps searching, peering into people’s faces. When he sees Katy he halts. He touches her shoulder and she stops singing and backs away, giving him an impatient frown.

  “Miss Katy, I came as fast as I could drive after they put her on the helicopter but then my truck broke down and there weren’t a gas filling station for miles.” He still has that low tenderness in his deep voice that makes you feel like no one else matters to him.

  Suddenly recognition sparks and she asks, “You’re Jerry, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am and I’m so sorry I couldn’t have done more. She was such a brave little girl.”

  Mama’s back is to us as she f
aces the coffin, shoulders and head down, her pocketbook hanging limp from her hand. I see her head jolt upon hearing his voice. Her trembling liver-spotted hand touches her throat.

  “Now I know who you are!” Katy turns completely to give him her full attention, and for the first time I notice she’s not wearing her heavy make-up and thick eyeliner. Her pallor highlights the deep circles under her eyes. She looks beautifully pure to me. “This isn’t the first time you’ve come to our rescue so there’s no need to apologize.” I’m pleased to see her eyes finally fill with tears and flow down her face.

  “I’m so relieved to see you again and thank you,” she continues. “Jesi spoke of her guardian angel but the description could only be the Jerry who brought us back up north when she was a baby. If anyone should apologize, it’s me. To think what could’ve happened if you hadn’t been in that jail cell. If she had died there, away from home–” She pauses and grasps his wrinkled hand, holding it between her own. She was giving affection to a man!

  “She hung in there with the toughest of ‘em,” Jere said. “And me not knowing who she was until her colored boy tried to get help.”

  Mama had slowly turned around while he spoke, her hand still at her throat, her eyes as glazed as blue marble.

  “Jeremiah?” Mama asks hoarsely, incredulously, as if expecting him to say no. I know I expected such an answer.

  He turns to his side and sees her for the first time. “Ruby?” He looks visibly shaken as he touches her cheek. “Ruby. You are a sight for sore eyes.”

  She wraps her arms slowly around his waist, closes her eyes against his chest and holds on, beginning to weep. “She’s gone, Jeremiah, our Jesi’s gone.” It’s a sudden painful cry but I’m immensely relieved to hear Mama’s old self again.

  He stands motionless for a moment, his arms at his side. Then he seems to fold himself around her, his arms about her thick winter coat, and pressing his cheek to the top of her head, he rocks slightly, side to side.