Writing to Save a Life

by John Edgar Wideman

  Latreesha’s visit and Emmett Till’s murder were the same treacherous summer, each boxed in a separate set of memories and associations until it dawns on me that they shared 1955.

  Latreesha showed up in June, the summer of Big Jim and his baseball bat in the Duquesne Light Company office, summer of the three-tone green car Big Jim bought with cold cash, summer of color TV in a store window, a summer ending in September with Emmett Till dead in darkest Mississippi. The rest of my life undreamed, a life that’s much closer to over now, everything it was, is, and everything left to come, compressed into a space too small to imagine unless a name, a moment drops like a stone in a still pool and I’m the plummeting stone, the hole, the rings rippling, expanding, disappearing.

  I couldn’t get enough of Latreesha, her bright, sassy eyes, those very shapely little arms, strong and tough as a boy’s she bragged, balling up her fist with pink polish on the nails to make a muscle she dared me to squeeze. Go on, chicken . . . can’t hurt me. And sure enough that small girl wiped me out, opened my nose, broke and ate my heart during a summer that had seemed paradise the first weeks of June, my birth month. Emmett Till’s last June alive. I may have made love the first time on my birthday. It could have happened on June 10, though not likely. Wouldn’t the coincidence have been unforgettable. Let’s just say to make this a good story, it could have been that precise day, a June 10 birthday present on the fold-out sofa and I’ve simply forgotten the date like I misplace the name Latreesha sometimes. Like I couldn’t hold on to Latreesha and lost her forever. My bad habit of forgetting things, losing things, even precious things, getting worse as I grow older.

  * * *

  By the end of the summer I could pretend to laugh about Latreesha. Listen to Big Jim make fun of her in his car. He said that little peanut got the nerve to come switching her narrow fanny round here. Batting her eyes at me and I’m old enough to be her granddaddy. Sure is a pretty car, Mr. Jim. You ever give rides to people in your pretty green car, Mr. Big Jim. Women ain’t shit, boy. Just out for what they can get.

  Good to hear Big Jim say what I couldn’t say out loud, couldn’t even think inside myself. Not quite. Not yet. Not sure I really believed a word he said about Latreesha but I spent hours in that Mercury because I needed to hear it. Knew from a distance when he was inside the car because its belly dipped down closer to the street. Car’s interior, shades of green to match the exterior, smelled like Henderson’s Barbershop. Hair tonic, shaving lotion, the stinging, medicated cream Mr. Henderson or one of his sons pats on your neck when a haircut’s finished, towel snapped off your shoulders. Henderson’s what it smelled like when I sat on green leather upholstery beside Big Jim, and he riffed nonstop about every damned body, every damned thing. Stuff in the neighborhood, in the newspapers, on radio and TV. His talk like the barbershop when it’s full of men signifying and telling lies, ball game loud on the radio, quiet gimpy Clement busy pushing his broom.

  I used any excuse to go in Henderson’s and listen to the men. If no ball game on, nobody’s errand on deck to run, I’d loaf around outside with my cut buddies, our corner only a couple storefronts away from the barbershop. We couldn’t catch voices inside Henderson’s, but we could learn rhymes the old heads recited outdoors while they stood around laughing and teasing each other, or sat on boxes, or leaned back on chairs under the red letters of Henderson’s window.

  Oh, she jumped in bed

  Pulled the covers over her head

  And said I could not find her

  Said yes I shall you silly gal

  And jumped in bed behind her

  She grabbed my goose

  Wouldn’t turn it loose

  Stuck it in her

  Coffee grounder

  Feel the egg

  Running down her leg

  She know damn well

  I found her

  No way was I about to repeat those kinds of toasts to my father. No way I’d tattle on the nasty talk in Big Jim’s car. Big Jim did most of the talking. In the dark that smelled like Old Spice and Watkins hair oil I did the listening. Thought all the time about Latreesha, but I couldn’t say out loud how good it felt to hug that girl my mother tagged fast. I wanted to brag to somebody about copping pussy at barely fourteen. Didn’t dare, because deep down I knew dumb luck was the only reason I copped and if I hoped to get that lucky ever again in life, best keep my mouth shut. My Latreesha story turned pretty pitiful, pretty quick, anyway. So good once, then so much hurt, shame, disappointment. Day after day I tried to figure out what I’d done wrong. Meanwhile I listened to Big Jim laugh at everybody’s bonehead doings and ugly mugs and funky underwear. Watched Big Jim scowl when he said fuck those motherfucking evil white folks at Duquesne Light. Everybody’s business in Big Jim’s mouth like it’s his job to drive the streets all day and spy on people so he could park his fancy car in the evening on the colored end of Copeland and sit at the curb until a boy like me with nothing better to do comes along and climbs in to hear all the bullshit Big Jim collected. A lonely, lovesick boy ready to sit and listen all night if he didn’t have to be home before ten.

  Latreesha. How could I forget her. I didn’t. More like I filed her. Buried Latreesha’s file. Afraid to put the pieces of that summer of ’55 together. To make of it what. The summer I fell crazy in love before summer hardly got started. The summer that ends with the picture of a dead colored boy’s face too terrible to look at.

  * * *

  Summer of a punch that landed my father in jail overnight. Your father’s not hurt, my mother said. He’s fine, they told me. Cut Jim Saunders up pretty bad, they said. Police took them both. Big Jim to the emergency room. Your daddy down to the precinct. One of the men said, Don’t worry. Your husband be home this evening, tomorrow afternoon the latest. Big Jim bloody but ain’t hurt bad, he told me. Said too much blubber on Jim before you get down to anything you could hurt bad. Said cops couldn’t care less about two niggers fighting in the street. You know the cops. Put your husband in a cell to cool off. Couldn’t really call it much of a fight, they told me. More like your father had decided to give Big Jim Saunders a whipping. You know your father’s good with his hands from that little bit of boxing he used to do.

  I can see my father shadowboxing. Whomp. Whomp. Punches in flurries. Punches too close for comfort graze air inches from my face, my mother’s face. Louis Till. Bip. Bip. Bippiddy-bip. Weaves and bobs, turns Big Jim in circles, then sidesteps and an uppercut. Whomp. All the air flies out Big Jim’s soft gut. My father marked him. Split his lip. Bloody nose. Eye swole up. Big Jim never had a chance. Bloody mess in a minute. Like the bull after a bullfighter wears his big ass out.

  What could I say to my father about Mr. Big Jim’s car. Problem was my father had needed to ask. Something about his fourteen-year-old son in a car at night with Big Jim my father could not trust. I heard distrust in my father’s voice and never exactly trusted him again.

  Hated him, the daddy I loved, when he told Rakhim, Don’t plea-bargain. Don’t admit you did something you didn’t do. Tell the truth, Son. They can take a lot of things from you, but don’t let them steal the truth. I know you didn’t shoot that white boy, Rakhim. In my heart I know it sure as I’m standing here. Sure as I’m your father and black. Don’t let them make you say you did that crime they say you did. Tell the truth, Son. Lawyer we got you a good lawyer. No case, he says. Nothing on you, Rakhim, unless you give them something.

  And Rakhim, poor, unlucky Rakhim, said no plea bargain and does the time to disprove your point, Daddy. Oh, my good black man, Daddy. Lover man, loser man, Oh, my good, honest, cheating father. The dead victim was white, Daddy. Witness said a black man shot him. That’s everything they needed to lock up my brother or me or you forever. You knew it better than me. Why don’t you ever listen to anybody once you make up your stubborn mind. Once your pride orders you what to do. All that fine, mean pride, Daddy. All the mean years they put Rakhim away.

  Why did you have to act like you kno
w everything about judges, courts, law, just cause you’re black and the cops tossed your belligerent ass in jail overnight a couple of times.

  No, Daddy. Big Jim didn’t try to touch me.

  * * *

  Latreesha, Big Jim, my father, the Tills gone. Too late now. I’m still hurting and angry anyway. Rakhim was only three or four years old the summer of 1955. How old will he be when they finally let him come home. Mercy, parole boards call it. Mercy to release him after a lifetime in prison. I’m afraid the board will wait until the tumor in his neck big as an orange. How many months out before the tumor strangles him.

  * * *

  Where are you, Latreesha. I’ve never forgotten you. How could I. Your devilish eyes. Silky smooth skin light and bright as my mother’s. I’ll never forget tugging down the elastic waistband of your madras Bermuda shorts. Slowly, slowly. Afraid to go too fast. Afraid if I take too long poof, you’ll be gone. Sofa bed empty. Me left alone with Grandma’s snores bumpty-bump-bumptedy stumbling down the stairs.

  You were the first, Latreesha. I’d never seen a real girl up close that way before. Only white women in magazines in Henderson’s. Of course, I haven’t forgotten. Remember inch by inch. You raised your hips, kicked your legs to help me get you naked. I didn’t want to miss anything. Scared I’d do it wrong. Could hear my heart thump. Yours. Could you hear mine. Did you feel my heat, my heart like I felt yours. You touched me. Sweet, gentle touches. You sucked in your breath then slowly let it go. Breath, like words whispered in my ear. Your touches were words, too.

  Where have you been all this time. All these years and years since. First love. Buster of my thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy’s cherry that Emmett Till summer I thought I’d become a man then quickly became a boy again. Then a dead boy.

  I undressed you slow motion and rushed into you. Patience gone. Cool fled. I couldn’t stop. You twisted. Jerked away. We left a tiny puddle on my grandmother’s sofa.

  Trying to go slow, but everything was over fast. Telltale scent afterwards. Would your father smell it when he got home from work. I hadn’t been close to the ocean yet, so had no memories of it to help me place the odor. I thought Vicks VapoRub, deli pickles floating in brine.

  Once back in our clothes we gave the sofa’s plastic cover a good scrub with a dishrag and paper towels from your father’s neater than a pin kitchen where he fixed and ate his solitary meals before you arrived. No female company allowed in my church lady grandmother’s house until you came along that summer to help out your father and escape bad Harlem streets, bad Harlem boys. I scrubbed and scrubbed. Worried your father or my busybody grandmother would see a stain and tattle to my mother. Poor Grandma, always sickly after Eugene didn’t come home after the war. So blind if a bullfrog squatting on the sofa she wouldn’t see it unless it croaked. What did we do with the incriminating evidence, those wads of crumpled paper towel, guilty dishcloth. Did we throw away the dishrag with the paper. I don’t remember, but I do recall every inch by inch of you. How fine you were. How good it felt to lie next to you Latreesha. I wanted everybody in the world to know, but back then I couldn’t tell a soul. Certainly not my father, most certainly not my mother. Not my loudmouth, teasing crew or fat, grinning Jim Saunders either. Big Jim the busybody, gossipy, rhino-sized man who paid cash for a brand-new three-tone Merc and claimed he knew you, spoke with you, but whether he did, Latreesha, or not, he didn’t need to hear every little detail of a fourteen-year-old boy and thirteen-year-old girl kissing, hugging, getting it on in the dark.

  I was the one who needed dark. You didn’t ask me to turn off the lamp beside the sofa, did you. I’m the one said, Better not unfold the sofa. I’m the one killed the light, even though I yearned to see you top to toes. Toes painted the same fast pink as your fingernails. I turned off the lamp because I didn’t want you to see too much of me. My scrawny chest, bony arms, big feet with no socks in stinky sneakers, raggedy, gray drawers under my hoop shorts.

  You knew a lot more about boys than I knew about girls. Harlem wise about everything. Your tight jeans rode low on your hips like I’d seen only white boys in movies wear them. You stopped me when I tried to remove your T-shirt. Huh-uh. No, no, mister. Leave it be. Saving my titties for my husband. Punched my shoulder with the heel of your hand as you twisted out from under me. You crazy, boy. No rubber. No. No. No. Don’t you know no better.

  You scared me, Latreesha. I thought I had hurt you. Or maybe you had changed your mind. Truth is, I didn’t think. I was gone. So full of myself I exploded. Too late then to do anything but try and figure out what happened while I’d been away.

  Before we tidied up the mess, while we were still side by side, half-naked in the dark on Grandma’s plastic-wrapped sofa, neither of us said a word. I thought maybe you were upset. Then you sat up quickly, scrambled over me like enough of this foolishness and you wanted to put on your clothes. You scooted, bumped me out of your way as you got up, and I had to drop my hand to the floor to keep from rolling off the edge. Next thing I know, you lean down, give my penis a kiss, a quick peck more like a touch than a kiss but it made my whole body shiver. I hoped you missed the sticky spot and wondered if I should kiss you down where you kissed me. Wondered if kissing your lips after they touched my private part would be like kissing it myself.

  You snuggled down with me again after you’d used the bathroom, shut up my dumb questions, my worries with your tongue searching for mine inside my mouth. All those dumb questions, and here’s another for you. Or a couple, I guess. On this first visit after so many years, is it strange for me to ask, Latreesha, strange for me to think you might know the answer. Did Emmett Till ever get a chance to make love.

  II

  * * *

  THE FILE

  The policy of the War department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has proven satisfactory over a long period of years, and to make changes now would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation for national defense. It is the opinion of the War Department that no experiments should be tried with the organizational set up of these units at this crucial time.

  (DRAFT OF U.S. MILITARY’S PLAN OF INTEGRATION, SENT TO PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND SIGNED BY HIM INTO LAW)

  All men are cautioned to treat [colored soldiers] with respect but not to cultivate friendship with them.

  Under this printed poster, a handwritten note: For the best interest of everyone, stay completely away from them.

  (POSTED ON BARRACKS DOOR, FORT HOOD, TEXAS)

  From an initial wave of tens of thousands of colored men who volunteered for military duty at the outset of World War II, only a few were inducted immediately into the armed services. Over three hundred thousand colored volunteers drifted in limbo as late as February 1943 while the War Department debated if it wanted them, if colored troops were worth the trouble, and what to do with them if they became armed forces personnel. Louis Till was an exception, a lucky one snapped up in 1942 for active duty as soon as he enlisted.

  * * *

  From Smithsonian magazine’s April 2011 issue commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s first shot, I learned that slaves had manned the oars of a launch bearing representatives of the newly created Confederacy on a mission to offer Federal troops safe passage from Fort Sumter, a fort the Federals occupied illegally according to the delegation in the launch, since the fort in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor and South Carolina had declared itself part of a new, sovereign nation. The rambunctious, rebellious south unable to avert war or start war without strong-backed Negroes to propel its delegates across Charleston harbor, delegates bearing an ultimatum for Fort Sumter’s commanding officer.

  Tell your boss, Mr. Lincoln, he best leave us and our Negroes be. Everything will be just fine and dandy if you yankees go back where you belong and we’ll stay down here where we belong and youall can do what you please with your Negroes and we’ll do as w
e please with ours.

  * * *

  April 1861. The South Carolina sky is the color of a scowl, color of a howl. I cross between shore and island, the boat I’m in plying water salty as a wound. Deep silence broken only by bright feathers of water drip-dripping from the tips of oars when they are lifted and we glide with the current, drifting so we don’t approach too swiftly, too presumptuously the gun ports staring down on us from Fort Sumter’s stone ramparts. Six rowing, four riding, which makes ten in the launch. Plus me. Stop. Ten What. Not ten southern gentlemen. Not ten slaves. Ten constituted by units of what. A question not even a bloody, bloody civil war resolves. Ten a muddling of kinds. Muddling of races. Ten a fiction. Like my presence in the boat. So let’s just say four delegates on a dire mission ride their property, and six pieces of property ride the delegates from Charleston harbor to Fort Sumter aboard a launch flying a white flag.