Afterwards, when Dewey thought of how the station had looked that afternoon, he could not remember whether he had taken notice of the great number of Negroes on the platform, in the colored waiting room; could not remember the many thoughtful dark faces of the men or that they wore newly pressed suits and clean shirts or that most of them carried chipped leather suitcases or frayed cloth carpetbags or shopping bags crammed with clothing, sheets, blankets, and pictures; could not remember the women in their summer dresses carrying sweaters and coats, their own and their children’s, or the picnic baskets in the crooks of their arms, or the walking shoes cleaned until the scars and scratches were hidden; could not remember the scampering, skipping children, running ahead of their parents or the littler ones hanging onto their mothers’ dresses; could not remember the babies sleeping in the grownups’ arms or on the benches; could not remember the old people hobbling proudly on canes, or sitting quietly waiting for the trains to be called; could not remember that the Negroes spoke in whispers, avoided the glances of white people, and tried not to be remembered.
He remembered there had been Negroes, there had always been Negroes at the depot, the porters in their gray suits and red hats, but he had not taken notice of the many others there that day or that most of them were boarding outgoing trains. All he could really remember was looking through the dirt-streaked window, finding his family amid the crowds as the train’s air brakes threw him forward, and his happiness at seeing Dymphna, his sister—whom he was old enough now to appreciate and like—for the first time since Christmas; his disappointment at not seeing Tucker and Bethrah anywhere on the platform; and finally, his surprise, no, it was a far more wrenching sensation than that, his utter shock at seeing his parents, his mother and father, smiling at one another and HOLDING HANDS (!) as gleefully as teen-agers. When he had left home after a dreary Christmas holiday, his mother had been muttering constantly about getting a divorce.
The train had stopped now. He reached up, tipped his two bags off the rack above his seat, and, after waiting for a few passengers to trudge by, fell in behind two girls, who, like himself, were returning home from school. They wore heavy crew-necked sweaters, though it was quite warm, and many beaded necklaces.
“So then he asked me if I had a block or some such thing and started to talk to me real soft, but I didn’t fall for it a bit. He told me it was natural for men and women to do it.”
“That’s just exactly what he told me.”
“Well, anyway, all of a sudden, honey, I realized I wanted to kiss him more than anything. And after that, I just fell apart.”
“Me too.”
At the door, a smiling conductor in a frayed blue suit guided passengers down the slippery steps. He reached for Dewey’s arm, but the boy shook free politely and hopped the last high step to the platform.
Dymphna was bouncing up and down. With each jump she turned a quarter circle, and finally she was facing him. She saw and recognized him, waved her arms, and, still in flight, tried to tell his parents. Then she disappeared below a bank of people, and when next he saw her, she was no more than thirty steps from him, running, her arms spread wide, her coat flapping behind her. Grabbing him tightly around the waist, even before he could drop his bags, she hugged him. “Dewey! Hiiiii!”
“Hello. How are you?” He was too stunned by her attack to say anything else.
She did not let him go, rather she hugged him tighter. “Fine. Is that all you have to say to me?” She leaned back from him. “How do you like me?”
“You cut your hair off.” Over her head he saw his parents advancing, still holding hands, and he wanted to know what to expect. He bent close to her, whispering. “They’re REALLY holding hands. What the hell’s happening around here—miracles?”
She hugged him tightly again. “Yes! Yes! Yes! I don’t know how it happened. But it looks like we have a chance to avoid a ‘broken home.’ It’s wonderful.”
His parents arrived. Dymphna turned him loose and his mother came forward and hugged him. She sounded as if she were sobbing and he could not understand what she said into his chest, but when she stepped back to inspect him, her eyes were dry and she was smiling. She had aged; he had never remembered gray hair wisping over her ears, but saw it now.
His father stood behind her, hands behind his back. “How are you, Dewey?” He reached out his hand and bent forward, almost timidly, taking no steps, as if there was between them a trench two arm lengths across and bottomless.
“All right, Dad.”
The man nodded, withdrew his hand and put it, with the other, behind him. “You look well, son.”
“He’s lost some weight,” his mother clucked.
They all looked at each other in silence and Dewey realized now just how much they had changed: his mother, still pretty, but no longer young, was almost matronly. Her once sharp features had softened, her brown eyes had dulled. But more than anything she looked tired. His father seemed to have shrunk and wasted away more than aged, but he looked happier than Dewey had ever remembered him, less oppressed, less as if something were pushing down on him. Dymphna had become quite an attractive young lady, was dressed fashionably, a copy of her mother as she must have looked twenty years before.
He had expected something drastically different; he would not have been even surprised if only one of his parents had come to meet him, bringing the news that divorce proceedings had already begun. Or if both had come, he would have expected them to keep their distance from one another, to talk only to him, not to each other, with Dymphna standing between them like a partition of flesh and blood so they would not, even accidentally, touch. But all this; they were—too happy.
No one had spoken. They stood now on a near-empty platform. Toward the back of the train a brakeman blew his whistle and the line of cars began to back up. An outgoing train was announced; it would be heading North. After a few seconds, Negroes began to stream through the main doors, marching toward the next track.
“You ladies go ahead.” His father stepped forward and picked up one of Dewey’s bags. “We’ll join you at the car.”
Dymphna stood by watching; she knew Dewey and their father had never been very close, at times had argued bitterly, and she had been wondering how, when Dewey came back, her father would get along with him. She made no move until her mother pinched her arm.
“Come on, Dymphnie. This’ll give us time to put on new lipstick.”
Dewey watched them through the door, noticing Dymphna turn back once or twice. He smiled. “God, she’s such a busybody.” He shook his head and spoke out loud.
“She is that.” His father stepped to his side.
Dewey turned, resenting the intrusion. “What did you want to say to me?” He had been trying to hurt the man, and was surprised to find he had.
His father looked at the ground in front of him. “Dewey,” he started, sighing, “I realize your mother and I haven’t made things too easy for you.”
“You mean you haven’t.”
“That may be so, son.” Dewey had scored again; something was wrong, or changed; his father seemed almost human. He had started to say in answer that he knew it was so, but decided to hear his father out.
“Yes, it probably is so, son. But we’ve…I’ve been trying to get things going again.” He looked up shyly. “Maybe when we, you and I, get to know each other better, I can tell you what it was all about.” He looked away. “Let’s walk, all right?” He looked up as if he expected a fight on this request too.
“Yes, all right.”
“Well, at any rate, it looks like your mother and I might be able to…” He did not finish. “And I was hoping that perhaps you and I could get to know each other a bit.”
Dewey found himself wanting very much to say: of course they could, that this is what he had been hoping all his life. But he stopped himself; there was too much separating them to wave a
way all at once. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe we could try. We have all summer. Maybe we could try.”
“Maybe we could.”
They entered the huge marbled waiting room; reflections replaced shadows beneath their feet. They went on to the parking lot, a large concrete open space with rows of dull metal parking meters ordered like the crosses of a military cemetery. There were only a few cars. From the front seat of one of them, his mother smiled and waved at them. Dymphna, who was sitting in the back, waved too. They looked very much alike.
When they reached the car, his father swung open the trunk and Dewey shoved in his luggage, then climbed in back with Dymphna. His father started the motor, stomped the gas pedal, and steered into the street.
There were a great many more Negroes than usual downtown, all, it seemed, carrying suitcases, wearing dark clothes.
“Dear? Did you hear me?” His mother had been talking to him. “I asked if you liked school?”
“Yes, Mama. It was fine.”
They were in the Northside. The streets were filled with Negroes, some sitting on white steps in front of tall, narrow, dirty brick buildings. Children played tag amid the garbage of vacant lots. Every so often, at the call of various black women with their breasts pressed flat against stone window sills, a child would break from the group and run into the house. Their good-bys seemed always quite final.
They passed a group of men standing on the corner in front of a bar with an unlighted neon sign. Their heads were bowed together as if one of them was telling a dirty joke. Dewey waited for an explosion of laughter, but none came. Instead, the men pulled apart and ambled their separate ways, solemn and alone. The entire Northside seemed strangely silent for a Saturday afternoon.
They crossed the river, and through the black steel network, seeming from the car no bigger than fly screening, the water swelled around the pillars, and the bridge, rather than water, seemed to be moving.
“Say, Dymphnie, how are Tucker and Bethrah? And the baby?” He noticed the silence. “Did you hear me? Dymphnie? How are—”
“I heard you, Dewey.” She stopped short. “We don’t know.”
“Pardon?”
His mother swiveled around to face him. “They aren’t working for us any more, dear.”
“Really?” That saddened him, but he decided it could not be helped. “Who are they working for?”
“No one.”
There was another silence.
“Where are they?”
“They were out at the farm.” Dymphna put her hand on his arm. He turned to face her. “They stopped working for us in April—”
“And we knew you’d be studying hard and didn’t want to worry you so we didn’t write,” his mother finished.
He sat back and knit his hands behind his head. “Oh, then they’re at the farm and not working for anybody. That’s good; I wanted to talk to Tucker about something. He wrote me a letter. Did he tell you?”
There was still another silence.
“What’s everybody so mysterious and solemn about?”
“Dewey,” Dymphna started as if she were going to tell him he had done something terribly wrong and did not quite know how to say it.
“There was a fire out there Thursday.” His mother looked at him seriously.
He jumped forward. “They’re not…Are they? Are they?”
“No, dear, they got out.” She shook her head frantically, as if the words were not enough.
“But nobody knows where they are,” Dymphna whispered ominously. “It’s really mysterious as the DICKENS.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t joke; it’s not funny…” He paused, seized on that as a possibility. “Or is it? Are you folks joking with me? What a bunch—”
“No, Dewey, they’re not joking.” His father, speaking calmly, kept his eyes on the road. “There was a fire and Tucker and Bethrah and the baby got out safely. And Dymphna is correct. Nobody knows where they are.”
Dewey was leaning forward now, gripping the back of the seat. “How did it start?” And then a horrible picture flashed through his mind: men in sheets, flaming crosses, catcalls. “It wasn’t…it wasn’t the…”
His father knew what he was thinking. “No, they didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“The paper said he set it himself. Honestly!” Dymphna bounced on the seat like a small girl.
“Set it himself!” He threw his hands up. “Now you ARE joking.”
“No, dear, that’s what the paper said. But they weren’t certain. And no one’s seen Tucker or Bethrah since. I can’t really believe he set it himself, though.”
“I can,” his father asserted quite without emotion. “I’m quite certain he did.”
“How do you know?” Dewey was leaning over his father’s shoulder.
“It’s quite involved, son, and I’d like to go into it when we have more time.”
The old resentment flooded up: “God damn it, that’s what you ALWAYS say. You NEVER have enough time for ANYTHING.”
His mother looked worried, once again seeing a familiar nightmare. “Dewey, I don’t think your father would say that if—”
“Oh, Mama, grow up. That’s the kind of thing he’s been saying all my life.”
“But this time it’s different, dear.”
“How different?” He had spoken before he realized he was almost arguing with his mother, who was actually speaking in behalf of his father. In the past, the arguments had been between him and his father, with Dewey defending his silent mother. “Well, maybe it is, but I’m finding out for myself.”
This interested Dymphna. “How?”
“I’m going out there and see, talk to somebody. THAT’S how.” He had taken her simple question as a challenge.
“Would you like to take the car?” His father made a peace offering.
“No!” He decided that was too harsh. “No, I’ll ride my bike, thanks. I’ve…I’ve been sitting for two days straight.” He stopped, then added, “Thanks, anyway.”
His father nodded.
No one had any more to say.
The road widened. They passed two Negroes, heavily laden, walking toward New Marsails in the dust they themselves were kicking up. As the car passed them, Dewey thought he recognized them from Sutton, but the car had sped by too fast and he could not be certain.
Dymphna Willson
I SAW SOME ODD THINGS coming home from school yesterday. That was Friday. I go to school in New Marsails; miss binford’s school. It’s very exclusive.
Anyway, when I got on the bus at the depot—they’d let us out early and it was about noon—I noticed there were an awful lot of colored people there. I mean hundreds. But I really didn’t think too much of that. But when the bus came into Sutton, there was a crowd of colored people there too. They were standing on Mister Thomason’s porch with suitcases. As soon as I got off they all got on.
The only reason I’m mentioning this is because I’ve been thinking about the one colored person I really know, Bethrah Caliban, a lot the past couple of days, especially since the fire. I’ve been thinking about when she first came to work for us, and how she happened to marry Tucker, and plenty of other things.
I can remember it all pretty well because I was going through a period in my life when everything was symbolic of SOMETHING, when each second, I thought, I was deciding something big and dramatic. Girls are like that when they’re fifteen, which I was that summer. That was two years ago, almost exactly.
Bethrah came to work for us because Missus Caliban, Tucker’s mother, was doing all the work. John wasn’t much good for anything; I guess he must’ve been at least eighty. And you couldn’t get Tucker to do any house cleaning. It wasn’t that he’d refuse; you just wouldn’t dare ask him. He’d come in and lift heavy things, but he wouldn’t do anything else. He w
as in the garage most times. So Mother decided Missus Caliban needed some help and called an agency.
They sent the first woman on a Wednesday, but nobody liked her and she was gone by Thursday night.
Friday morning, when the doorbell rang, I was sitting in the parlor waiting for some friends to come and pick me up. So I yelled back to the kitchen that it was for me and went on to the door.
“Hello, I’m Bethrah Scott. I came to apply for the maid’s job.” And she smiled.
I was stunned. She didn’t look at all like a maid. Maids are fat and very dark and have thick Negro accents. I mumbled something like: “I’m Dymphna…Willson. I…” and looked at her again.
She was tall—that was the first thing I thought about—almost six feet (in heels, she said later, six feet, one and a half) and slim; I guess willowy is a better word. Her hair was dark red, like old rust, straight and shiny, wavy and cut off short. She was wearing a light gray summer suit with a plain white blouse and the cutest pair of black shoes you ever saw. Her eyes were big and hazel. She was just beautiful, that’s all, and I loved her the first moment I ever saw her. Not only didn’t she look like a maid, she hardly looked like she was colored, except maybe her nose. She looked very young and when she smiled, her eyes smiled too so that her whole face seemed happy.
I just stared up at her and smiled, asked her to come in, and told her I’d get my mother. I saw her inside and closed the door. I wanted to say something profound, but didn’t know what so I ran down the hall to the kitchen where Mother was having a late morning cup of coffee and talking to Missus Caliban about what they needed at the store that week. I told Mother a girl had come who wanted to be a maid. I started to say that she didn’t look like a maid, but didn’t finish the sentence.
Mother noticed how confused I looked. “What’s wrong, dear?”
A Different Drummer Page 9