Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  He had not expected to hear someone call out to him from the yard of a house as he drew near, so he paid little attention until the voice called out a second time, “Hey, you, In’jun Henry—don’t you hear me talkin’ to you,” the words followed immediately by a clump of dead grass and sod hitting him square in the mouth, leaving him spitting dirt and wiping the mess out of his face.

  Reuben and Teddy were in the front yard of the house, Teddy reaching down to dig another handful of grass and soil up from the yard, Reuben taking aim with his own volley—

  The rock hit Henry in the ribs hard enough to knock the breath out of him, the second, following a moment later, grazing his cheek with a stinging sensation. He tried to dodge out of the way, only to be hit in the throat with another clump of dirt and rocks, his eyes settling on Reuben and the almost-fist-sized rock now in his hand—

  “You boys git on outta here!” a heavy-set black woman was suddenly out on the porch behind them, a broom held high in her hand. “Git outta my yard ’fore I set th’ dogs on you—git!”

  She came down the board steps and out into the yard with amazing speed considering her size, taking a swing at Reuben with the broom, causing him to drop the rock as he dodged away. She caught him with the broom the second time, swatting him hard along the ribcage, and then again, barely touching him with the broomstraw the last time before he and Teddy took off running down between her house and the next, disappearing into a barking of dogs behind the structures, with the unmistakable sound of, “Goddamn nigger,” shouted back in her direction by one of the boys.

  The woman made a disgusted sound and shook her head, then turned and started back up the steps, pulling herself from one to the next as she leaned heavily on the banister, as if it were difficult now for her to make the climb. Henry saw a boy of about his age standing in the doorway watching her ascend. The boy opened the door for her as she reached the porch. He looked vaguely familiar to Henry, but Henry did not care. He looked away, feeling the hot sting of tears come into his eyes—he was not going to cry, he told himself. He was nine years old now—he was not going to cry.

  He moved back toward the edge of the street, then sat down on the ground with his back to a large tree at the edge of the woman’s yard, nursing the pain in his side where the rock had hit him. He felt the tears come no matter what he did to stop them, and he reached up to wipe them away, angry with himself that he could not keep it from happening.

  “You okay?” he heard, and he looked up to find the boy now standing over him.

  Henry looked away again, wiping at one cheek with the back of a hand, refusing to let this kid see him cry. “Yeah,” he said, the word coming out with an angry sound. He drew his knees up toward his chest, resting his crossed arms over them. The boy sat on the ground not too far away.

  “You’re Henry Sanders, ain’t you?”

  Henry nodded.

  “My name’s Isaac. My daddy’s Nathan Betts; he used to work in the mill with your daddy—”

  Still Henry did not say anything, keeping his eyes set somewhere down the road.

  “You were with your daddy one time when he was out peddlin’ baskets. You came by our house and we bought some egg baskets from you.”

  For a long moment Henry did not say anything. Finally he offered, “Ain’t your mama gonna wonder where you are?” as he pushed himself to his feet. He was hurting and he was mad and he had no intention of sitting here talking.

  “My mama’s dead,” Isaac said, his words stopping Henry.

  “I’m sorry,” Henry found himself saying, for that was what grownups said whenever somebody died. He did not know anything else to say.

  Isaac got to his feet as well. “I don’t know much about her; she died when I was born.” He considered Henry. “You wanna come in the house and clean up some before you go home? You got dirt all over you and your cheek’s bleedin’.”

  Henry reached up and touched the stinging sensation at his cheek, drawing his fingers away to find traces of both blood and dirt on them.

  “My auntie won’t mind,” Isaac said. “Come on.” He took Henry by the sleeve and drew him toward the house. The woman who had run Reuben and Teddy off was standing just inside the front door watching them as they reached the porch. Her dark eyes stayed fixed on Henry until Isaac spoke. “It was him them boys was rockin’. He needs to get cleaned up before he goes on home.” Still the woman stared at him, until she finally nodded and said:

  “If them two is got it in for you, then you cain’ be too bad.”

  Henry looked for Isaac Betts on his way home each afternoon after that. Isaac’s walk from the colored school at the edge of town usually allowed him to reach his house before Henry could pass on his way from the school he attended uptown. On the days when the weather was good, Henry often found him sitting on his front steps. They would walk together part of the way toward where Henry lived, and then usually join in whatever ball game was going on in the big empty lot at the point where the white and colored sections of town met. Reuben and Teddy at times showed up in the mix of boys, both black and white, who played ball in the afternoons, but for the most part they ignored Henry on those afternoons.

  It was during the days at school that the picking would resume.

  At times Teddy’s mother would come looking for him at the ballfield. She would yank him out of the group of boys waiting to bat, or drag him from his place out on the field, yelling all the while, “You know you’re not to supposed to play with those nigger kids—wait ’til your father finds out. You just wait.”

  Henry knew that Reuben’s parents would never think to look for him here. Reuben’s mother was too involved with her church group and her charity work, and his father was too busy trying to pretend he still had a job. Jacob Knott had not worked for more than a year now, but he still got up and dressed in a suit each morning. He still drove his car downtown and had coffee at the Main Street Restaurant, and then he sat there all day. Sometimes Henry walked by the restaurant after school in the evenings just to see him inside in his suit and tie. Henry had heard people say the Knotts were living off their savings, and that the savings were close to gone now. Folks said Mr. Knott was too proud to go to the relief people, or to accept a job on the WPA—considering how Reuben and Teddy talked about the job Henry’s father had on the Beautification Project, Henry could well understand that Mr. Knott might feel that way. They called Janson a “leaf raker,” and more often than not called Henry “reliefer,” when they were not calling him “In’jun Henry.”

  Sometimes Henry found himself wishing that his father wore suits and had coffee at the Main Street Restaurant all day. That way no one would poke fun at him.

  Reuben and Teddy and other boys like them made going to school each day the closest thing to hell that Henry could imagine. They loved to get him in the middle whenever they were playing dodgeball, giving them the greatest pleasure in trying to knock him senseless with the ball, bruising him up so badly several times that he was black and blue for days afterward. They would collapse his knees out from under him if they could get behind him in line, bending into the crooks of his knees and sending him to the ground, and had shoved him down the front steps of the school twice by doing it in the afternoons just as they were leaving, then running off before he could get to his feet and lay hold on either one of them.

  No matter what they did to him physically, though, they knew nothing would get to him as much as the things they might say:

  “Hey, reliefer!”

  “Hey, In’jun Henry, why don’t you do us a war dance!”

  “Hey, Henry—why’s your daddy th’ only Holy-Rollin’ In’jun on the WPA?—’cause they cain’t stand t’ smell but one?”

  “Hey, Henry, you like niggers or somethin’—you’re always hangin’ aroun’ that nigger, Isaac—”

  “Hey, reliefer, your daddy ain’t nothin’ but a leaf raker. M
y daddy says he could get a real job if he tried—”

  Even the grownups made him feel out of place. The new school year began with lessons about how white people had civilized the Indians. That was a far cry from the stories his father told him, of how the Cherokees had been rounded up at gunpoint and marched west, causing many to die. After the lessons in school, Henry felt that everyone was staring at him, because he knew in many ways he looked more Cherokee than white.

  He tried—but only once—to tell his teacher the stories his father had taught him.

  “That’s all nonsense,” Mrs. Chappell said, staring down at him sharply from where she stood erasing the blackboard with harsh, jerking motions, her arms jutting outward into sharp elbows, and the bun on the back of her head bobbing up and down with each movement. Henry felt small and dismissed at her side, for, though he was tall for his now ten years, the teacher was much taller by far, taller, in fact, than any woman Henry had ever known. “The Indians were nothing but savages before white people came to this country,” she said, disapproval for the subject in every line of her angular body. “Your Cherokees couldn’t read or write either one, and they knew nothing of God. They ought to have been grateful for all they were given—”

  Henry wanted to tell her that the Cherokee had their own written language, from an alphabet invented by a man who was half-Cherokee and half-white, just like Henry’s father. He stared at Mrs. Chappell, remembering instead the story his father had told of how his grandmother had her mouth washed out with soap in school for speaking Cherokee and not English, and, somehow, he knew a little of how she must have felt.

  He had hoped the new school year would be better, but it turned out to be much the same as the last. By December of 1938, he had gotten into more fights with Reuben or Teddy or someone else in their crowd than he had in much of the previous year. There had already been two fights just within that first week of December, the most recent of which had left Henry with a black eye. He had taken a paddling for that fight, but, still, when Reuben had shoved him up against the wall in the classroom this morning, Henry had been unable to keep himself from shoving back. Mrs. Chappell had broken up the scuffle before a fight could break out, and Henry had had to stay after school. He could not understand how she could never miss whatever it was that he did, but never once saw what the other boys had done that had made him react.

  “I don’t care if he shoved you first,” she told him that day, standing behind him as she made him write ‘I will not fight’ on the blackboards over and over again. “You had no business shoving him back.”

  He left the school that afternoon long after all the other kids had gone home, having been made to erase and then wash the blackboards before the scarecrowish Mrs. Chappell was finished with him. He thought Reuben and Teddy had left with the rush of others, but they were waiting for him on the low wall near the front of the school, directly along the path that Henry would have to take to go home. Henry did not hesitate, even though he knew what would happen.

  “You have to do a rain dance to get the water to wash the blackboards, reliefer?” Teddy asked.

  “Hey, Henry, I hear they’re putting your father off the WPA,” Reuben said, a grin on his face. “They say he’s too lazy even for government work.” He waited, and Henry knew he was waiting only for him to react.

  When Henry said nothing, he continued on.

  “They’re makin’ a rule not to let any more damn In’jun’s on the WPA, and then they’re gonna run him and you and them little squaw sisters of yours out of town—and your mama, too. I heard tell she ain’t nothin’ but a whore anyway, to have laid with a damn—”

  Henry was on him before he had time to think about what he was doing. He hit Reuben hard in the face with his books, and then went after Teddy for good measure, grabbing him hard around the middle and shoving him into Reuben, sending them both sprawling to the ground. Reuben was back on his feet in seconds, hitting Henry hard in the mouth, leaving him tasting blood and reeling backwards as Teddy laid into him, too.

  “Henry Sanders, stop it! Stop it this instant!” Henry could hear Mrs. Chappell yelling as she ran toward them, but he did not care. He was in trouble already, but he would finish this fight.

  The other two boys seemed to back off immediately, just trying to fend him away now. Mrs. Chappell pulled Henry away, grabbing him by an ear and twisting it hard.

  “Henry Sanders, I’ve told you—” He was hauled about to face her, giving in to the painful grip on his ear. “And, you boys, I know you know better.” She turned on Reuben and Teddy, now looking remarkably innocent.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Reuben said. “We were just sitting here—”

  “Yeah, he started it,” Teddy said.

  “Did you Henry?”

  The ear she held in her grasp hurt like hell—but Henry would not whine or try to wriggle away. He looked at Reuben and Teddy, who were grinning at him now that Mrs. Chappell’s back was turned to them.

  “I—”

  “Did you?” she demanded, yanking on his ear for emphasis, and making him bite his tongue to keep from crying out.

  “Course he did—see, he won’t say nothing—”

  Henry found he could not speak—he would not make excuses as Reuben and Teddy were doing. He glared up at the teacher the best he could from the position she held his head in by her painful grip on his ear, trying to keep a look of defiance on his face.

  She forgot the other boys altogether with the look he gave her and jerked him forward, toward the school building. He half walked, half ran, to keep up with her, convinced his ear would separate from his head at any moment—he was in trouble, and he knew it. But, he was always in trouble. And he knew the whipping he was about to get would be nothing compared to the one he would get from his pa when he reached home.

  Elise was often angry with her son, and only slightly less often exasperated with him. He never seemed to listen, but to do whatever he took into his head, no matter the consequences.

  She walked beside him the next afternoon as they left the school building—just like his father, she kept thinking. He’s just like his father, with that same temper that would be apt to do most anything. But, unlike Janson, Henry held little control over his temper—more like Alfred, she amended, feeling chilled at the thought of Henry’s temper being more like that of the brother who had died attempting to defend her reputation so many years before.

  Janson had given Henry a whipping with his belt the night before, as soon as he saw the note sent home by Henry’s teacher, but Henry had not cried, and he still would not say what the fight had been about.

  Henry walked beside her in angry silence, his dark brows lowered. He was furious that his mother had promised Mrs. Chappell that there would be no more fights, and angrier still that she had apologized for his having gotten into this one—she could read it on his face, and he reminded her even more strongly of Janson. He looked so much like his father anyway, with the same black hair and features, and the green eyes, the pride in his bearing, the injured dignity of the uplifted chin. He had said nothing while she talked to his teacher, just watched the two, refusing to sit down as he stood with his head held high, meeting her eyes with anger in his own over her promise and her words of apology.

  He had spoken few words to her since her talk with Mrs. Chappell. His pride had been insulted by her words, as it had been insulted the day before by whatever the two boys had said or done—his pride and his temper. Elise was afraid that one or the other would be her son’s undoing.

  “Henry, I meant what I said to Mrs. Chappell. There will be no more fights; do you hear me?”

  “Yes’m, I hear you.” He did not turn or lift his head to meet her eyes, but just walked beside her, staring straight ahead. His voice was even, showing no emotion.

  “Henry—”

  “You said no more fights.”

  S
he looked at him for a moment. He was getting so tall, and almost ten-and-a-half—God, could it have been ten and a half years ago? She was getting older, almost 28—that wasn’t old, but Henry could certainly make her feel as if she were old. She sighed and shook her head. “Don’t try to get around me, Henry Sanders—I mean there had better be no more fights. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “And?”

  “There won’t be no more—any more—fights—”

  She allowed herself to feel a moment’s relief. If nothing else, her son was honest. If he said no more fights, then—

  “There won’t be any more fights, as long as nobody says what they said to me again—” He continued to look straight ahead.

  “Henry—” She stopped where they were on the sidewalk and put a hand on his shoulder, bringing his eyes to her. He met her gaze without blinking, his head held proud, but with no defiance—he spoke his mind, and to him there was no defiance in that. “Mrs. Chappell said that if you get into one more fight, you will be out of school. She was not joking—did you think she was joking?”

  “No, mam.”

  “Well, if—”

  “But, if they say the same thing to me again—”

  “Henry—” She looked at him, exasperated, and then sighed—stubborn and pigheaded, just like Janson. “What did they say?”

  He met her eyes for a long moment, not speaking.

  “Henry—”

  Still, he would not speak, but just looked at her instead with Janson’s green eyes. Just a year ago he would have told her what had been said. Here in town he was growing increasingly silent. She tried to imagine what the boys’ insults had been about—his clothes, his friendship with Isaac Betts, his Cherokee heritage—but she was beginning to wonder now if there was not more to it. What did boys tease and aggravate each other about? Girls? Their backgrounds? Their family? Their speech and manner of dress? She did not know, but she wondered, seeing it trapped somehow within her son.