A Sky Full of Stars

by Linda Williams Jackson

  My forehead creased. “They all went to college.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Aunt Ruthie said. “Is they teachin’ the history?”

  “The history?”

  “Not the one where we was slaves. The real one. The one white folks don’t want y’all to know.”

  “Aunt Ruthie—”

  She cut me off. “You didn’t thank I cared, did you?”

  I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I didn’t.”

  “Oh, Rose. I care. I care deeply. You know how bad I wanted to go to Saint Louis when I was sixteen?”

  I shook my head.

  “I snuck in the trunk o’ the car,” Aunt Ruthie said, smiling at the memory. “Aunt Isabelle ’n’em didn’t know I was in there till they stopped in Memphis.”

  “Why’d they stop?”

  Aunt Ruthie chuckled and said, “I couldn’t breathe and started banging on the trunk to git out.”

  “Aunt Ruthie! You could’ve died!”

  “Well, I didn’t. And they brought me right on back here to this house.” She shook her head. “I wanted to go so bad.”

  “I did too,” I said quietly. “At first.”

  “How come you changed yo’ mind?”

  I shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Papa. Fred Lee. This,” I said, gesturing toward the open space.

  “Rose, you kiddin’ me, ain’t you?”

  Sheepishly, I shook my head.

  “You stayed for this?” Aunt Ruthie said, frowning. When I didn’t answer, she shook her head. “Rose, baby, land is everywhere. You need to think about yo’ future. What kind of future do you have here?”

  I stared squint-eyed at her. “You ever been to Mound Bayou?”

  “No. But I heard of it.”

  “You know it was founded by Negroes?”

  “That’s what I hear peoples say.”

  I told Aunt Ruthie about Joe Ann.

  “College? At sixteen?”

  I nodded. “I wanna do that too.”

  “I bet you could do it faster if you was in Saint Louis.”

  “Joe Ann said there were other students from the Delta at her college. Some are sharecroppers’ children.”

  Aunt Ruthie nodded. “That’s real nice, Rose. But I still wants to know why you is so scared to go to Saint Louis.”

  “I ain’t—”

  “You scared, chile.”

  I shook my head. “No, Aunt Ruthie. I’m not. At first I was.”

  I told her about the conversation I had overhead at Mrs. Robinson’s, and how bad it had made me feel. “They made me feel as dumb as a rock, like I really was worthless because I’m a Negro. Then I went to Mound Bayou and saw what was possible. I saw a great work that had been done by former slaves, and I knew my people weren’t as dumb as rocks, because rocks don’t build cities.

  “And I want to be like Joe Ann. I want to go to a fine colored college like Tougaloo. I know it’s too late for me to go at sixteen, but I want to be one of those Delta sharecropper children at Tougaloo.”

  “I still don’t understand you,” Aunt Ruthie said, smiling. “But I’ll accept what you say, ’cause you sho’ don’t sound scared to me.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not, Aunt Ruthie. I was before, but I’m not anymore.” I thought about how disappointed Hallelujah was to find out Dr. Howard was leaving Mississippi. I thought about how heartbroken I was when Mama left me and Fred Lee. “I want to be here for my family,” I said. “I want to help you get your business started. I want you to be like Miss Bertha and the colored folks in Mound Bayou who have their own stores. I want to help you with your children.”

  Aunt Ruthie placed her mug on the floor of the porch. I did the same, as the coffee was no longer hot. She smiled at me warmly. “Rose, that’s beautiful,” she said. “You have a heart of gold. But you don’t hafta stay here for me and my chi’ren. We’ll be a’right. You need to do what’s right for you. You jest thirteen, baby. You got yo’ whole life ahead o’ you. You can be more than any o’ us ever wanted to be.”

  “And I will be,” I said. “And I can do it right here. In Mississippi. With my family. Besides, with any luck, Queen might get to go to Saint Louis.” I told Aunt Ruthie about the letter I had written to Aunt Belle on Queen’s behalf and how I had gotten Hallelujah to mail it for me so Ma Pearl wouldn’t find out.

  Aunt Ruthie smiled. “You full o’ surprises, Rose. Jest like yo’ mama. Anna Mae might not had the book smarts like you, but she sho’ know how to make a way outta no way.”

  “Well, hopefully Aunt Belle will let Queen go live in Saint Louis.”

  Aunt Ruthie glanced toward the door. “I hope so too,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Saturday, December 24

  A BABY DOLL. IT WAS ALL I EVER WANTED FOR CHRISTMAS. But I never got one.

  Once, while playing in the yard when I was six years old, I found a small tree branch that had twigs sticking out to the sides like arms. I took the branch inside with me and pretended its top was a head, the twigs were arms, and the bottom was legs, one draped over the other. I wrapped the branch in a little blue and white quilt I found in the trunk in Grandma Mandy’s room.

  It was almost as if my six-year-old self knew I would never actually own a doll, so I played with the tree branch as though she were one. I held her in my lap. I sang to her. I tried to read the funny pages to her. I even slept with her—​until Mama made me throw her away.

  A year later she left me and Fred Lee for Sugar and Lil’ Man. She should have let me keep my tree-doll. At least I would have had something to hug when she was no longer there.

  Now, seven years later, at age thirteen, I still secretly wished for a doll when Reverend Jenkins came on Christmas morning bearing gifts for me, Queen, and Fred Lee. He had been bringing us gifts since I was nine—​young enough to still want a doll. So I’m not sure why a doll never made its way into the box he presented us. Perhaps it was because my best friend was a boy, and he assumed I didn’t like dolls. Or perhaps he remembered how much I used to love climbing the ancient oak in the front yard way more than Hallelujah did. Then again, there was that one time I cried because Fred Lee received a slingshot and I received a book. As much as I wanted the slingshot, the real reason for my tears was because I didn’t want the book. I was so mad that I don’t even remember what the book was about, or what happened to it.

  But this year Reverend Jenkins came by on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. It was one in the afternoon when they showed up. I had spent the day sweeping and mopping every floor in the house except the kitchen. And that’s because both Ma Pearl and Aunt Ruthie bustled about in there preparing a feast as if Jesus himself would show up at our front door on Christmas Day.

  The house was warm and cozy and filled with a mixture of sweet smells and salty and spicy ones. My mouth watered at the thought of Ma Pearl’s chicken dressing with a slice of coconut cake on the side. Christmas was the only day that we were allowed to eat dessert anytime we wanted even if it meant having it on the same plate as our regular meal. And I had promised myself that I would not let ingratitude spoil Christmas like I had Thanksgiving, even if Mr. Robinson sent over another consolation turkey. So far that week we hadn’t seen one.

  I had just left my room, where I had changed into a clean dress, when I heard the voices of Hallelujah, Reverend Jenkins, and Miss Bertha in the parlor. My heart rejoiced. Miss Bertha was visiting us too!

  She had allowed Aunt Ruthie the use of her kitchen for two days so she could fulfill her Christmas cake orders. In addition to the first order of seven cakes she had received on Monday, seven more orders came in the next day. And like a champ, Aunt Ruthie had gotten those seven cakes baked and ready for pickup at the store on the day before Christmas Eve.

  To keep Aunt Ruthie from being tempted to use any of the money she earned from her cakes, Miss Bertha and Reverend Jenkins agreed to pool their money and buy small toys for each of her children. (I secretly hoped the girls wo
uld get dolls, so I could play with them too.) The Jenkinses truly were good people, and not just good colored people. Well, in the opinion of most whites, they probably weren’t good colored people anyway, seeing how they wouldn’t “stay in their place.”

  The voices coming from the parlor weren’t as festive as I expected. Papa, Ma Pearl, and Aunt Ruthie had congregated in there as well. When I approached the doorway, they all stopped talking and stared at me awkwardly. Had I done something wrong?

  One look at Aunt Ruthie told me the answer to that question was no.

  She was sitting on the sofa, sobbing.

  Miss Bertha sat next to her, her arm draped around Aunt Ruthie’s shoulders. She looked as if she had been sobbing too.

  My first thought was that something bad had happened to Slow John. And I felt guilty. For years I had hoped something bad would happen to that man—​even death—​just to get him out of my aunt’s life. But what if he had been lynched? No matter how evil Slow John was, the thought of even him being killed just because of the color of his skin made me nauseous.

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach and pressed away the sickness.

  The chair creaked when Ma Pearl hoisted herself out of it. She stood, shoulders slumped, and sighed. She shook her head and said, “I’m a go’n back in here ’n finish cookin’.

  “I’m so sick o’ this mess,” she said as she brushed past me, almost knocking me over.

  I entered the parlor and sat in the chair that had been warmed by Ma Pearl. “What happened?” I asked.

  Miss Bertha stared at me with solemn eyes. “Someone set fire to my store last night.”

  I gasped.

  “Oh, Rose!” Aunt Ruthie wailed. “All my cakes is gone!”

  “Someone burned up your cakes?” I asked.

  “No,” Hallelujah answered for Aunt Ruthie. “Vandals tried to burn down Aunt Bertha’s store.”

  “What?” I grabbed my chest because an almost unbearable pain had invaded it. “How?”

  “Someone poured gasoline at the back door and lit it,” Reverend Jenkins said. “Luckily Mr. Jamison was still at his store doing inventory and noticed a brightness that shouldn’t have been there. When he saw the fire, he didn’t bother calling the police. He already knew they’d do nothing.

  “He called me. And I called Bertha. When we got to the store, Jamison had already rounded up a bunch of folks, both colored and white, and they were putting out the fire with buckets of water.” He shook his head and said, “I thank God for that man. He’s one of the few whites around here who hasn’t joined that Citizens’ Council.”

  “A lot of stuff was still destroyed though,” said Miss Bertha, choking up. “Including all those cakes Ruthie worked so hard on.”

  “Cakes can be replaced,” said Papa. “Let’s jest thank the good Lawd that it wasn’t peoples they destroyed this time.”

  “Amen,” said Hallelujah.

  “I knowed this was all too good to be true,” Ma Pearl said as she reentered the parlor. Again she had managed to slip into the room without being noticed.

  Without her telling me to, I knew to get out of the chair she had been sitting in. I joined Aunt Ruthie and Miss Bertha on the sofa.

  “How you know this ain’t the Lawd’s way o’ tellin’ you you ain’t got no bizness makin’ cakes up in somebody’s kitchen then turnin’ right ’round tryin’ to sell ’em to peoples. Somethin’ jest ain’t right ’bout that.”

  “It’s called entrepreneurship, Miss Sweet,” said Reverend Jenkins. “And people have been doing it since Bible times. When the widow of a prophet had to pay off her husband’s debts, the prophet Elisha asked her what she had in her home. She replied that all she had was one jar of oil. The prophet told her to go borrow jars from all her neighbors, then pour the oil from her jar into the other jars. By a miracle, the oil from that one jar filled all the others. Then the prophet told her to go sell those jars of oil to her neighbors so that she could pay off her deceased husband’s debts and then she and her sons could live off the rest.

  “And that is just what Ruthie has done. She has taken what she has—​her baking skills—​and she is using that to earn a living for herself and her children after her no-count husband—​who is as good as dead to her—​has left them with nothing to live off.” Reverend Jenkins stared lovingly at Aunt Ruthie and said, “And you should be proud of her.”

  Ma Pearl grunted and said, “Did the Bible say anything ’bout that widow’s oil burning up? If this was from the Lawd, then how come them cakes burnt up ’fo peoples had a chance to come git ’em?”

  “Because we live in a world where evil abounds, Miss Sweet,” said Reverend Jenkins. “And sometimes the good gets mixed right in with it. But trust me, the cream always rises back to the top no matter how much you stir it up with the clabber.”

  “Well, Mr. Fancy Words, today Christmas Eve, so how she go’n git seven cakes fixed and took to the folks that done already paid for ’em?”

  Papa cleared his throat. “Last I checked,” he said, “there was exactly seven cakes sittin’ there in the safe in the kitchen. They already covered up with plastic and ready to go.”

  “Them my cakes!” Ma Pearl snapped.

  “You don’t need ’em,” answered Papa. “Look like you could stand to miss a few meals anyway.”

  “Y’all ain’t takin’ nan’ one o’ my cakes outta my kitchen,” said Ma Pearl.

  Papa addressed Miss Bertha. “When you need to git them cakes delivered to Ruthie’s customers?”

  Miss Bertha glanced at Ma Pearl, who huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I think the customers will understand. We can’t help if someone set fire to the store.”

  “Rose,” Papa said to me, “you ’n this boy go on in there and git them cakes and put ’em in Preacher’s car.”

  Hallelujah looked as if he was scared to move. But I wasn’t. I jumped up off the sofa and strutted straight across the floor.

  With much hesitation, Hallelujah followed.

  After three trips, we had loaded six of the cakes into Reverend Jenkins’s car. The last cake left in the safe was the big white coconut one. It had three sumptuous layers of moist yellow cake with plenty of vanilla cream between each layer and an abundance of coconut packed into the outer layer. I didn’t want it to go.

  When Hallelujah reached into the safe and pulled it out, my mouth watered.

  “I wonder who’s getting that one,” I said.

  Hallelujah shrugged. “I don’t know. But folks have been going crazy over Miss Ruthie’s cakes, so I hope Miss Sweet’s cakes are just as good.”

  I wiped drool from the corner of my mouth. “That one is,” I said, sighing.

  Ma Pearl stormed into the kitchen, grumbling. “Now what I’m s’posed to do ’bout cakes tomorra’?”

  Maybe Mr. Robinson can buy us one.“If you have the ingredients, I’ll help you make another coconut cake,” I offered.

  “Humph” was all Ma Pearl said before she turned and stalked back out of the kitchen.

  “What’ll Miss Bertha do now?” I asked Hallelujah as we headed to the car with that delicious coconut cake.

  “Pick up the pieces and move on like she always does,” he answered. “And don’t worry. She’ll make sure Miss Ruthie is able to keep making cakes and selling them. She doesn’t need a store for that. Just a kitchen.”

  “I just hope Aunt Ruthie doesn’t give up,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. Aunt Bertha won’t let her.”

  “You think people will still buy Aunt Ruthie’s cakes after Christmas?”

  Hallelujah frowned. “Course they will. Aunt Bertha says even a few white folks have asked about Miss Ruthie’s cakes.” He carefully placed the cake on the back seat with the others. “Besides, Aunt Bertha has even bigger plans for Miss Ruthie. But she’s waiting until after New Year to tell her.” He raised one eyebrow. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “I’ve been known to accomplish it once or twice,” I answ
ered.

  Even though there was no one else besides me who would hear him, Hallelujah leaned in and whispered, “Aunt Bertha’s making arrangements for Miss Ruthie to move to town so she won’t have to pay Miss Sweet to use her kitchen.”

  My heart leaped. “Wait. If Aunt Ruthie moves to town, Lil’ John and Virgil can go to school.”

  Hallelujah nodded. “Yep. They sure can.” He grinned and said, “And it’s all because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “You suggested to your aunt that she bake cakes and sell ’em. Now look where it’s leading to—​her maybe having her own business and her children finally going to school.”

  I had heard people say that their hearts swelled with pride. Well, for the first time in my thirteen—​almost fourteen—​years, I experienced it for myself. Hallelujah was right. I had encouraged Aunt Ruthie to use her skills to help herself. And I felt good, like a bright shining star on a moonless night.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sunday, December 25

  I WAS GLAD CHRISTMAS CAME ON A SUNDAY THAT YEAR. Church service wasn’t as long as it was on a regular Sunday because Reverend Jenkins wanted to make sure we had sufficient time to spend with our families that day. And he wanted to make sure the few children who received toys from “Santa Claus” actually had time to enjoy them. And for the “bad” ones who received only coal in their stockings, he had said, he hoped they could find a use for that too.

  Aunt Belle used to do that to me and Fred Lee when we were little—​put coal in our socks. She stopped when I asked her why Santa didn’t like us. At first, I thought Santa didn’t like us because we had a woodstove and not a real chimney for him to slide down and land boots first in a fireplace. Then, when Mama left us, I thought it was because we really were bad. But when Aunt Belle said, “You have to have money to get toys,” I thought she meant Santa had to be paid. So then I was left thinking that Santa only brought toys to rich children, because only their parents could afford to pay him. Eventually, Aunt Belle sat me and Fred Lee down and explained that toys came from the store, and Santa was only made up, to make Christmas more magical.