Sunshine in the Delta: A Novel
Page 1
Sunshine in the Delta
Erica M. Sandifer
Table of Contents
Title Page
Sunshine in the Delta
Delta Woman, Dammit
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
For my dear mother; for my dearest grandmother.
Delta Woman, Dammit
Now I know I’m a sinner,
And I have a hard time bein’ a saint.
I ain’t no good girl, and I refuse to act what I ain’t.
See I wear red lipstick, and I drink red wine, too;
I may have kissed your cousin,
But I fell in love with you.
Juke-joint Sally—I slap my hip to the beat;
I love the blues, and when I’m on the dance floor,
I’m doing voodoo with my feet.
I go to church on Sundays dressed real cute,
But as soon as service is done,
I’m back to my Delta roots,
Standin’ at the edge of a turn road, talking to the sun,
’Cause he’s the only one awake when my job is done.
I wear my crown on my hips, and I do my dance
While the brothers drank moonshine,
Starin’ at me in a trance.
I’m a Southern girl—I love my Delta ways;
Mama likes when I’m a good girl,
But the boys love when I misbehave.
Cooking and cleaning, cornbread in the oven;
Some say I’m loose—I just call it Delta loving.
Young black sister, can you see my roots?
My granddaddy was a dranker,
And, dammit, I am, too.
Introduction
To my daughter, Erica, with love
Carved from the pages of history and etched in the intricacies of the South, Sunshine in the Delta depicts the saga of an American family’s struggles, adversities, and triumphs as they persevere to overcome poverty in Money, Mississippi in the 1960s. While Money, Mississippi itself was developed for the sole purpose of cotton cultivation, the town’s past is indicative of the common plight of African-American families in the rural South at the time. Many families succumbed to hard labor and toil while working as sharecroppers from sun up to sun down. Long hours spent in the sweltering cotton fields of Mississippi were merely compensated for by the meager wages of the day, which told the harsh reality of the tenement farmers. The historical account—told through the eyes of its main character, Neeyla Jean, the daughter of sharecroppers—chronicles Neeyla’s life through her day-to-day existence growing up on the Money Road.
Through her many struggles, Neeyla finds love and acceptance through the guidance of Clementine Baker, a wealthy, white aristocrat and a cousin of the late Hernando Money, for whom the town was named. While working as a domestic employee for the Bakers, Neeyla learns the true meaning of life, and how to truly overcome the domestic strife and turmoil that continually surrounds her own family. Through themes of self-realization and crisis versus identity, Neeyla’s character epitomizes the archetype inherent to the traditional coming-of-age story. Neeyla learns that the true meaning of life is often reflected in the small things, such as sharing lemonade with Mrs. Baker and learning to grow green tomatoes. These lessons become invaluable tools as Neeyla slowly progresses to womanhood.
Neeyla and her family are settling migrant farmers, situated on the outskirts of Greenwood, Mississippi in the town of Money, the location infamous for the murder of Emmett Till, and also the resting place of bluesman Robert Johnson. The town itself is rich in history and steeped in ancestry. Its first post office was erected in 1901, and was named after Hernando Desoto Money, a former United States senator, lawyer, and newspaper editor from Mississippi. The town of Money was built on a railroad line located along the Tallahatchie River.
As the novel opens, Neeyla Jean’s words echo off the pages, and time stands still:
“At night, the sky was black—blacker than blue, like the old folk used to say. I stood in the window and watched the cars at night. How they fly down the Money Road. The night out there behind them fields, it was black and quiet, but if you listen real, real close, you could hear me thinkin’. Thinkin’ ’bout Reena. Thinkin’ ’bout my brother. ’Bout Henry. Mrs. Baker . . . ”
Chapter 1
“At night the sky was black, blacker than blue, like the old folk used to say. I stood in the window and watched the cars at night. How they fly down the Money Road. The night out there behind them fields, it was black and quiet. If you listen real close you could hear me thinkin’. Thinkin’ ‘bout Reena. Thinkin’ ‘bout my brother. ‘Bout Henry. Mrs. Baker. . .
I woke up in a cold sweat in a dirty, nasty nightgown that I forgot to wash. I heard Carrie screamin’ and cryin’ and carryin’ on like she was some madwoman who lost her mind a long time ago. I jumped my tail right up out the bed and ran to the front room. There she was, holdin’ a rag up against her head, backed up in the corner, petrified, like she had seen a ghost. The porch door was swingin’ wide open, and I heard my daddy’s truck startin’ up and scotchin’ off. I ran outside to the edge of the road and watched his truck until it disappeared in the black night.
The night was as black as the water that shone down there at the river when it got dark. The grass was thick and wet around my ankles as I stood there watchin’ my daddy’s truck bein’ eaten up by the blackness, enveloped in the night. The wind was whippin’ my gown up, and Lord knows, I had just the panties I was born with on. It was one of them nights, back then in 1963, out there in the dark—in the middle of Money, Mississippi. It was one of them days, back when I was around fourteen years old, when my daddy, Jab, come home drunk and knockin’ the hell out my mama. This time she was bleedin’ out bad, and it would not stop. I looked over on the floor, and there was a cast-iron skillet just sittin’ there with my mama’s blood all over it. This time I just knew she was gon’ die. There was no use in callin’ the law; they wanted us to kill each other dead so they’d have less to worry ’bout.
My mother, Carrie, ran to a neighbor’s house who lived a few miles down the Money Road, and she stayed there for a few days. She always ran away when Jabo jumped on her good enough, talkin’ ’bout how she was gon’ leave him; however, her behind would always be right back. I was just hopin’ that she made it back alive, and did not bleed to death halfway down the road or get caught by one of them evil white men. I was the one who cleaned the house. I was the one who watched all them chaps while Carrie and Big Mama was workin’. That was my job.
We lived on a plantation out on the Money Road. We had a one-bedroom shack house that used to be an old juke joint, where a man lost his life over a gambling debt. One bedroom, and the kitchen was a part of t
he front room. There were nine of us in all who lived there, but we made it enough space, some kinda way. The town of Money was the countryside right outside of Greenwood. Once you crossed the Tallahatchie bridge, you was slap right on the Money Road. It was the main road, and it stretched way out through town. There was fields to the left and right, and on both sides was cotton, corn, and workin’ negroes for days. KKKs was deep out there in them woods, but we just stayed to ourselves and prayed. Nobody bothered us too much if we wasn’t out lookin’ for any trouble.
I would sit on the porch in the daytime before Big Mama and them came back from work, watchin’ them white folks ride by in they fancy cars. They watched me and them kids until they couldn’t no more, and we was starin’ right back at they asses. I guess we was a sight to see, standin’ outside with our heads half combed, clothes all dirty. Hell, I would have been starin’, too. Our house was right next to Big Mama’s house, side by side, almost like we lived on a farm, which wasn’t too far from where we was livin’. When my daddy wasn’t drunk, he worked on the poor white folk’s farm down the road behind our house. The big ole cows used to be eatin’ the hell out of that green grass that grew so thick and pretty. I guess I never seen grass that green. Guess it was the way the sun hit it. Most of everybody who lived out there was sharecroppers, pickin’ cotton for a livin’. Cotton, corn, greens, and them black folks souls grew out there, out there way down deep in that Mississippi Delta soil.
Chapter 2
Now, Big Mama was Jab’s mama. Her real name was Miss Louis Coleman, but we all called her Big Mama for some reason. Funny, ’cause she wasn’t big at all. Matter of fact, she was real skinny, with long, pretty, curly hair. They say her mama was a full-blooded Indian, Choctaw, but I never met her. Carrie was my mama. She was from Carrollton, way up in the foothills of Mississippi. Her skin was black as coffee; real smooth, too. She had white teeth like my daddy, and her hair used to be in four plaits with a red scarf over it all the time. Never seen it no other way ’less she was goin’ to a funeral. I call her Carrie—not “mama”—’cause she never spent time with me like a real mother did. She made me watch all her babies, like I was the one who had ’em. I never really had a real problem with it, but I never got to do nothin’. I dropped out of school when I was in the eighth grade on account of missing too many days. I was smart as a whip, but I was just too busy tendin’ to them babies—all six of ’em.
Carrie and Big Mama worked the fields all day until the sun went down again. All the black folks who lived in Money was sharecroppers, and that included Carrie and Big Mama. I remember waking up in the summertime to the hot sun beaming down on my windowsill every morning. I would be watchin’ from that hot windowsill and lookin’ at them two, dragging heavy sacks of cotton down the Money Road. Those were the days that I learned how to be a woman. I learned everything I needed to know in life right at the age of fourteen.
My birth name is Neeyla Jean Sandifer, but everybody calls me Marie for some reason. Sometimes I forget I have a first name. I got my last name from my daddy, whose name is really Mr. Robert Sandifer, but they call him “Jabo” for short. Now, how we became Sandifers is crazy as hell. See, my daddy was originally born a “Sanford,” a way over in Helena, Arkansas. Big Mama married some old, decrepit man from Arkansas who was way older than she was. Carrie told me that he was a school teacher, so that must be why my daddy was smart as a whip. How Big Mama ended up in Helena, Arkansas I do not know, and she way from Sturgis, Mississippi.
They said that my daddy got into a bad fight with a white man when he was livin’ in Helena. Supposedly, he stabbed him and killed him right there on the spot, puttin’ white man’s blood all over his hands. Afterwards, he ran over here to Mississippi, and Big Mama came, too, planting these strong roots in the delta sunshine. Later, Uncle Willie and Aunt Augusta changed his name from “Kado Sanford” to “Jabo Sandifer” to hide and cover up what he had did. You know, back in them days if you even looked at a white person wrong, you was done for. You might as well pick yo’ rope and yo’ tree—so they all was scared and runnin’—afterwards, runnin’ to small a town called Tchula, Mississippi. I guess that wasn’t far enough, ’cause somehow they ended up in Money, and that was where they asses stayed.
I have no idea how Carrie and Jab met, with her comin’ from the rolling foothills of Carroll County, Mississippi, which ain’t too far from Greenwood. I would imagine one of these back roads from out here in Money would take you straight to it. I ain’t never bothered to ask Carrie where she met my daddy, or how they got together and made me first—then all them other chaps who took way more from me than they ever gave. So there we was, Negroes livin’ in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s.
Chapter 3
My daddy was black as night, but his smile was white as cotton. He had perfect teeth, straight in a row on the top, and the bottom was pearly white. I guess that’s why Carrie fell so hard for him. Like I told you before, Daddy was smart as a whip, but he was a straight-up outlaw, always in and out of jail. He served some time on a county farm for burning up some man’s car. I don’t know what Carrie did to him, but the folks always used to say he was “pissy”—mad at her. He would come home drunk, actin’ a plum fool, cryin’ and carryin’ on and throwin’ thangs. When he couldn’t get to Carrie, he would get her clothes, take ’em outside and burn ’em. He took her shoes from out under the bed and burned ’em, too.
Sometimes I watched with my eyes glued against the gloom and darkness. Sometimes I just took them kids over next door to Big Mama’s, and watched the night turn from sullenness into silence. My Uncle Willie and his wife Minnie stayed with Big Mama and my Auntie Augusta, too. My Uncle Willie married a woman named Mildred when he got over here and found her. They had a few babies, Toby and Jessie-Lee, who was just a few years younger than some of us. Mildred was so nice to them; she kissed and hugged ’em and fixed they hair, too. Mildred would straighten my hair sometimes when Big Mama didn’t feel like it. I used to wonder why Carrie never kissed us, or cooked no hot meals for us like Mildred did for them over there.
Jabo may have beat the livin’ daylights out of my mama Carrie, but he was a good father to us. When he and Uncle Willie would come home from plumbing, he brought a brown paper sack full of food: fish, chicken, cornbread, and sometimes cake; all kinds of different stuff for us that he knew we liked. We would wait every night for him to bring that brown paper sack in. Most times he would come, but sometimes he didn’t. When he did come home, the joy in our eyes made him happy as any father could be, which was the only time I would see him smilin’. Sometimes when he came home with nothin’, we would cry, and on occasion he would cry with us. My daddy had a heart of gold that was swimmin’ in all that moonshine. What’s more, he never laid one finger on any of us. He would often spend time with us like the real daddies I saw in the magazines—fancy folks magazines—takin’ us fishing down to the river with him. My daddy was so good at fishing that he didn’t need no pole. He jumped in that water and caught them mud cats with his bare hands, and that there was some of the best fish we ever fried.
Chapter 4
Jabo was the only black man I knew who was married to three women—all at the same time. I guess he could be considered a bigamist. I have never met ’em or seen ’em; maybe they just died or somethin’, or either he ’bout beat ’em to death. All I know is I had two half-sisters who was dead, too. They buried out there right next to Robert Johnson, over there by Li’l Zion Church, where at a certain time of day the light glistens an intense yellow through the barren and majestic trees, bringing in the sunshine of the delta. All the old folks know that’s where Robert Johnson is really buried, but some doubt that, too.
Yet I’m still tryna figure out in my mind how in the Sam Hill we ended up in Money, out here in middle of nowhere. Everything was such a damn secret. There were a few thangs I knew, but nobody ever knew why they happened. Big Mama kept it all on the inside. She would never even dare let anybody see her naked. When she went
in the bathroom, she always locked the door, and when she got out of the tub, she was always careful to lock the bedroom door behind her. I tried to catch her slipping one day, but she was on it. If she got sick, she just got over it on her own, ’cause she wasn’t goin’ to see no doctor, even if her life depended on it. One time Big Mama got a sore on her left leg for no apparent reason. Then flies blew it, and li’l tiny worms got in it.
She used to sit in the kitchen and pour peroxide on it until the maggots fell writhing to the floor, and she rubbed lumps of Vaseline over it before tying the wound tightly to ward off the whole ugliness of it. Eventually it healed up on its own. Li’l did Big Mama know, she had diabetes, but even more so, she did not have the slightest idea ’bout her own mortality. Needless to say, she would not even shop for groceries. When she did go to see her sisters, she went in the black of the night and come back in the even darker night. Big Mama was the most private lady I have ever known, and I ain’t even ever met them sisters she used to go see. I heard they were all light skinned, and looked like white women. They all had pretty hair, too, so they married white men and passed as whites. Damn.
I never really met anybody on my daddy’s side but Willie and Augusta. Augusta was real quiet, too. She talked when she felt like it, but God knows she was pretty as a teacake on Sunday. She was the prettiest auntie I had. It was just Big Mama and her two boys, and one girl: Jabo, Willie, and Augusta. I’m guessin’ their daddy decided that no white folk wasn’t ever gon’ drive him away from his home. Reckon he stayed on over there in Arkansas, and if he ain’t dead, I wonder why he never came to visit. Big Mama was Carrie’s mother–in–law. Carrie was married to Big Mama’s son, Jabo. My daddy was crazy, but Miss Carrie was not too innocent herself. She was just mean. Mean for no damn reason. I think it was ’cause she was so black. I know she really loved us, but she just didn’t know how to show it. Yet there’s got to be some kinda love in you to have eight babies.