Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  He tried to get control of his tongue so he could say the right words. He had to speak. He had to say something out loud on this occasion. For himself, he had to speak, to make the words get round the stone in his throat. God would take his voice away if he didn’t say the words.

  Here came the last coffin. Everybody crying, all the faces glazed with tears. The crowd was swaying in grief with a sound that must be an ocean sound.

  Edmund made himself swallow. He would swallow three times, he decided, then his tongue would be loosed and his lips would shape words. He was sick and weak, but he managed it. He could hear his high child’s voice even if nobody else could: “Good-bye, Cynthia. Good-bye, Carole. Good-bye, Denise. Good-bye, Addie.”

  He watched the three coffins borne high passing over the crowd, coffins like boats on water, to the hearses. Hinged on the side, the big doors at the ends of the black hearses were swung wide open, waiting.

  He had spoken in a little voice, but he’d done it. He’d said their names.

  Edmund’s Memoir: I Begin Work and Study

  WHEN I CAME BACK TO BIRMINGHAM, ESTABLISHED AND grown-up, from Seattle, which is about as far away from Birmingham as you can go and still be in the United States, I came at the invitation of the Birmingham Public Library to speak as an author about my book Religion: The Relief to Racism, published at the turn of the millennium, A.D. 2000. It happened at the time of my return that one of the men who had likely bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was on trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse, which is right next door to the Birmingham Public Library, host of the book festival.

  At the trial, I saw the elderly parents of Denise McNair and the now middle-aged sister of Addie Mae Collins. No matter the outcome of this trial, I thought, no human justice can ever offer recompense for what they lost. There may have been other family members there in the courtroom; they were the only ones I recognized. Decades had passed, but still these people remembered and suffered. I had a book in my hand that I myself had penned, but seeing them made me want to write another sort of book, one that was less abstract and theoretical, one that was more personal, about what it was like to be a black child growing up in Birmingham.

  I wanted it to be a happy story, at least in part, and not just dwell on the pain of that time. I looked around at the other people attending that trial as I pondered the idea of a memoir. There were a lot of sympathetic white people there. I felt sure Birmingham had changed. Maybe I could write about family life and community: how it was for us, emphasize the positive. How my friends and I sometimes played baseball with the white boys—Bubba and John and all them. Pookie and George, the Greek boy. Whether I finish this memoir or not remains to be seen, but after I went back to my hotel room I began the words that follow.

  By the way, my hotel, a completely integrated facility, was just across the street from the once-segregated library close to Richard Arrington Street, named for the first black mayor of Birmingham. Yes, the city did change. There was death, but there was rebirth. There was the seed of equality sown in pain, but there has been and continues to be the harvest. This hotel is named the Tutwiler, but it used to be the Ridgely apartments. The old Tutwiler was foolishly imploded—not a racist bombing, but destruction of the heritage of the city in the name of progress.

  DESPITE THE PLEAS of our leaders after the deaths of the four girls, groups of angry people congregated, and more deaths followed. Black people, that is, were killed, one boy by the police, another by white Eagle Scouts. I myself got hurt, but it had nothing to do with those deaths. Still, when I look back at it, I see my little injury as a turning point.

  One evening that September before the bombing, Mama called for me to come stand beside her. She was sitting beside the little coal fire in a straight-back chair. She wasn’t doing anything, hadn’t been doing anything, just sitting, staring into the fire with her knees spread apart, one hand on each knee. She sat straight and strong as a man, and I admired her. Suddenly she asked, though I’m sure she knew the answer, “Edmund-Skeet-baby, how old are you?”

  It wasn’t my place to question her question, so I just dutifully answered her. “I seven, Mama.”

  “Come here, baby.” She put her big arm around me, and I put my skinny child’s arm across her shoulders.

  “Skeet, you can’t be six or seven no more. You was old enough to demonstrate, wasn’t you? You eight.”

  “Why, Mama?” I asked her in a soft voice. I wasn’t surprised at all. It was nearly bedtime, and I was drowsy. It was like a dream, and of course you can be any age in a dream. In church sometimes I would enter just such a drowsy, hypnotic phase. I remember looking into Mama’s scalp and at the skin of her forehead and the top of her ear. She was telling me I must say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” I must not be afraid. But I had missed out on what she said was going to happen.

  I was nearly hypnotized, standing close to my strong, low-spoken mother, staring into the little gully in her ear that ran down into a hole into her head. Inside that hole was Mama. If I could make myself small, I could just slide down that hole and live inside Mama’s head. I hadn’t thought of being afraid.

  “Boss-man,” she went on, “Mr. Stoner at the Stoner Grocery need a boy to work—straightening and picking up—in the grocery. Jus’ down the street. He say he want a boy ten year old, but I say I got a boy—he ain’t but eight. And he say for me to bring you up next Saturday.”

  I leaned close to Mama. My mind was quiet and blank. Unquestioning. Patient.

  Mama murmured, “That right, Skeet.”

  Then she went on to explain the lies I was to tell: that I was in the second grade, that I had failed once because I couldn’t read too good. Truth was, I’d never been to school at all, except Sunday school. She said Charles, my older brother, had just learned mischief at school, and she’d keep me sweet at home. Still, I’d demonstrated. Now she was telling me to look smart, but not to say anything at all that I could help. For three hours’ work on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Stoner would give me fifty cents. Mama herself would come after me and collect the money.

  WHEN SHE TOOK ME to the store, I remember staring down hard at the floor so I wouldn’t have to look at Mr. Stoner, my first boss. Later, I would have my own enterprise by becoming a shoeshine boy. Mr. Stoner’s pants legs had a sharp crease in them that scared me.

  “He’s not use to white folks close up,” my mama said, but it was his sharp pants as much as his white face that frightened me.

  “But, Marie, there are going to be white people all around him here.”

  Mr. Stoner’s shoes were as shiny as plastic. Suddenly, right before my eyes, floated a green lollipop. In a white hand. A green lollipop wrapped up in cellophane. For me.

  Mr. Stoner put his hand on my shoulder and guided me toward the produce. I held the lollipop in front of me like a traffic light: green, go.

  The produce man said, “Why, he’s no bigger than a tadpole. Come here, boy, and I’ll introduce you to the artichokes.”

  I DIDN’T CONSIDER my work to be real work. Real work was at the blast furnaces where my paw worked stoking coal. Real work was on top of the church, roofing. Black men working. Sometimes today I wonder if being a minister or writing a book is real work because it isn’t what my people meant by work—manual labor—when I was a boy.

  Well, one evening shortly after the bombing, I’d been watching men roofing the little neighborhood church—not Bethel; that was too hard to get to except for special occasions when Reverend Shuttlesworth came down from Cincinnati—and I went outside again to play hide-and-seek around the lumber and the stacks of roofing, and I stepped on a long, rusty nail. My friends made a packsaddle for me and carried me to the house, the nail and wood block still dangling from my foot. I liked being carried like a king, but when Mama saw me, she grabbed me, ran to the rocking chair, held me close and shrieked, “Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  The neighbor women came quickly, and Mrs. Little pulled the nail out in a slow,
agonizing stretching motion. The blood dripped on the floor, and Mama and I bawled together as though I’d been crucified.

  “You hush this cryin’,” they said to Mama.

  “I’m gonna call Mr. Stoner,” Mama announced.

  Mrs. Watson, gray-haired and skinny, presented a brown bottle. “I already got the peroxide,” she said.

  “We will take care of Edmund,” Mrs. Little said, so prissy.

  But Mama was already stepping over the spots of my blood on the linoleum, going out the door to borrow a telephone.

  They put me on the bed. Mrs. Watson gave my sister, Margaret Rose, a cloth soaked in peroxide to press against my puncture. Then they left me with my siblings, and we four waited for our mother’s return. I could see Margaret Rose was scared. She started taking off my other shoe.

  “Not supposed to wear any shoes in bed,” she said.

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  Margaret Rose and I tried to believe in the little household rules that would make home safe and orderly.

  She hesitated, and then she said, “I know.”

  When Mama came back, heavy and fast, up the steps and in the door, she ordered Margaret Rose, “Get under the bed and fetch me out my good shoes.”

  Margaret Rose just stood there, waiting for Mama to explain.

  But Mama wasn’t about to explain to any eight-year-old: “Move, girl!”

  Margaret Rose moved.

  Then Mama told us that Mr. Stoner was going to drive up to the doorstep and take me and her to the Emergency. Margaret Rose was to sit with the younguns.

  Mama put a jacket on me and went to stand on the porch. Big boy that I was, standing, she gathered me up in her arms as though I were light as laundry. It was good dark now, but finally we saw the lights from Mr. Stoner’s car bobbing up and down as the car carefully dipped in and out of potholes.

  When she put me in the backseat, Mr. Stoner said, “Well, Skeet, fella, so you stepped on a nail?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Hurt much?”

  “No sir.”

  “What’s the best way to get up the road, Marie?” She started explaining, but he interrupted her to add, “You did right to call me. Lockjaw’s no joke.”

  And so I was taken to the Emergency Room and given a tetanus shot. I thought Mr. Stoner a kind man. When my foot healed, Mr. Stoner bought me a pair of beautiful brown lace-up oxfords.

  One evening in early October, Mama and I sat on the porch steps where it was cooler than in the cabin. I was wearing just my socks, and she was polishing one of my brown oxfords. She was stroking that shoe with the polishing rag so gently, like it was a kitten. She had finished the hard rubbing, and gotten pleased, and started the gentleness. I watched her turning her head lopsided, smiling, loving that handsome shoe.

  Finally she held both the shoes up together by their heels and asked, “How that, sugar man?” They glowed new brown and Mama’s face was glowing, too. “Slip ’em on. Le’s see how they look.”

  Wearing my clean socks, I slid my feet in. I scrunched my toes inside the shoes and the inner leather was slippery and smoother than mud. I took up the slack in the laces, and carefully tied the knots, which I had just learned to do.

  “Stand up.”

  I stood up, and she surveyed me approvingly from top to toe.

  “Skeet,” Mama said, “nex’ week you’s gonna start in at the school.”

  I scarcely dared look her in the eye, but finally I did, and saw the shining there.

  “I is!” I felt my whole body go glad.

  “You sure is, doll-baby. First grade. You soon catch up.”

  Sadly, though my sister was almost nine, Mama told Margaret Rose she couldn’t start to school just yet.

  I LOVED SCHOOL from the get-go and still remember some of the lessons I learned. Only Mississippi paid its teachers less than Alabama did, but my teachers were wonderful people, and I remember their dedication with great gratitude.

  I remember when my teacher, Miss Smith, put change in my hands and said, “Money is counted in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and halves.” And I shook them all together in my cupped hands, and they made a joyful noise. Now I could count my own pay.

  Once Miss Smith wrote a word on the blackboard:paste. And she said, “It does not stick together. It is for mouths, or more exactly for teeth, but it cleans your breath, as well as your teeth—toothpaste.”

  I found it delicious as ice cream but not cold. It was to be spit out, which I thought a shame.

  Probably using her own money to make the purchase, Miss Smith gave each of us a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush. When I took them home, Mama said I must share my brush with my sister, and I gladly did.

  And another day Miss Smith said: “There is a story about each one of you.” And she printed my story on the blackboard. For everybody to read:

  Skeet is seven years old. At home, Skeet has a mother and father, one sister, and two baby brothers. He has a grown brother named Charles, too. Skeet has pretty shoes. He works in a food store. His real name is not Skeet. It is Edmund Powers.

  At lunchtime, I whispered to Miss Smith, “I was in the protest. I want to write about that someday.”

  “You can,” she said. “Someday you can. And tell your grandchildren, too.” Then her eyes filled with tears and she hugged me. Her voice changed. “I so proud of you.”

  “Don’t cry, Miss Smith.” I stopped eating my paper cup of chocolate ice cream. I stared at the little wooden paddle that came with the cup and felt something change inside myself. It was my spirit growing toward the future.

  “I was too scared I’d lose my job to join in,” she said. She took out the tissue she always kept tucked in the belt of her dress. I could feel her tears wanting to flow.

  “I sure am glad you here to teach me,” I said and smiled at her.

  How did I know enough to say that? I think it was because she was kind to me, and her kindness elevated me to a new level of maturity. For a moment, she drew me up to her level of understanding, how we must all encourage one another. I wondered if she had been at the funeral after the church bombing. I hadn’t seen her.

  That day I viewed my first film clip in first grade. Miss Smith said, “You’ll see the president of the United States and his family. Do not talk when I turn off the lights. Do not leave your seat. Do not laugh or cut up in the dark.”

  And there he came, projected onto the wall, walking and talking, with beautiful white teeth that were surely just brushed with toothpaste, and crisp thick hair, a little bit like mine. We saw him in special clothes called pajamas, smiling and playing with two little children. Tossing the little boy up into the air. A beautiful little white girl.

  When the lights were on, Miss Smith said, “It is possible in this day and age, in your lifetime, Edmund Powers and all of you, for a Negro to become president of the United States!”

  That was a hard time, the fall of 1963, but even while terrible things were happening and families were shattered, children were getting jobs, gifted with new shoes, sent to school, and getting inspiration and ambition from their teachers.

  Three

  O Sacred Head,

  Now Wounded, November 1963

  Box of Moonlight

  THE JIGGLING OF THE BED WAS WAKING STELLA.

  The jiggling came into her consciousness from a distance, the way a horse rides toward the movie camera in a romantic western. The hoofbeats grew louder and louder till they were upon her, and she woke up.

  But she was lying in her bed, and the room was full of moonlight. She glanced up over the headboard and there was a three-quarters moon gleaming like a shield. She had forgotten to pull the shade and close the curtains, the way her aunt always instructed.

  The house and the night were absolutely still. No, an airplane was flying low over Norwood, headed for the airport.

  During the summer, several times a week, she and Darl had walked over to the highest hill on Norwood Boulevard, only a couple of bloc
ks away. They sat with their backs against the largest oak tree on the highest hill, and hugged and kissed for hours. Sometimes when a plane flew over large and low, it seemed just above their tree. Each window of the plane was clearly outlined, and Stella knew that on the other side of the line of portholes were rows of people in upholstered seats. Those travelers had no idea that she and Darl existed, that just below, for an instant, she and Darl were lying on the grass in a rapture of pleasure.

  But the plane was passing over her bed now; it couldn’t have awakened her.

  She inspected the room—dresser with its bench and winged, three-way mirror, the highboy. How still the furniture seemed. The room had only three pieces of furniture in it. When Stella studied, she worked at the dining room table. Without moving, she glanced at the closet door, and it was closed and still, standing white and tall in the moonlight.

  Then what had moved?

  Stella became aware of her hand placed low between her thighs. She stirred against her hand. Yes, she had been rubbing herself. She had been masturbating. Stella smiled. She became a froth, a foam of amusement.

  She had read that shocking word in one of her college psychology texts. Despite myths, the book said, masturbation did absolutely no damage of any kind, mentally or physically. Myths? No one had ever mentioned masturbation to her, let alone myths about it. Now she knew what it was. She giggled—she tried so hard to be good; in sleep her unconscious had tried to relieve her need. So much kissing and hugging, all summer. Then fall weather had set in, and they really didn’t have a place to go.

  Last night, with warm jackets on, she and Darl had walked to their giant oak on the boulevard, but the ground was too damp and chilly for sitting. All the leaves had fallen, and the bare branches stretched bleakly into the night sky.

  They resolved to stay only till a plane had flown over. She stood with her back against the rough oak bark, and Darl pressed against her, kissing and kissing. When they heard the plane approaching, Darl flung himself flat on his back on the cold ground, spread his arms out in crucifix fashion, and said, “Raped by a jet plane!” All lit up, the plane roared over them.