Good Negress

by Verdelle, A. J.

  After Serena comes and after David and Big Jim and Margarete start to hover round the food, I set the table. Can’t wait for Luke edward any longer. When she hears the plates clattering, Serena comes in from David’s side and starts to pour fresh glasses of the punch I made. She puts one at the right of each setting because she loves a nicely set table. Serena loves my punch too, and she brought me the colored tumblers we use after I fixed punch at a dinner that she came to one time before. She calls it my country punch. (We made it for parades and such.) The tumblers are bright, and each one different, and they are cool when you touch them. Aluminum. Every time I use them I wish we had other nice things to set places with, like matching silverware.

  Big Jim sets his little ham dead center, and is standing up choosing the knife he wants to use. Serena and I are talking about what she is sewing, and Margarete is telling David how starving she is. I know she is trying not to say she wonders where is Luke edward, it is quarter to three. Luke edward knows that we eat around three—that’s when I always set dinner on the table, every Sunday the Lord send. He will come sidling in, at just the last minute, looking like he’s had a long Saturday night. Big Jim will set his jaw and glare at Margarete, and Margarete will not look back at Big Jim until the subject is changed, and Margarete will be calmer and less exhausted now that she can see Luke edward is all right.

  But I am not all right. I am tired and nervous, too much of both for somebody my age. I want to serve Granma’am’s dinner—a nice roast chicken with light gravy, rolls. We could still have snap beans. The cast iron is too heavy now for Granma’am to lift. Maybe Macie’s daughter is there, taking my place, lifting the cast iron, serving the dinner. Maybe not. Maybe Granma’am has put on her beetlebug wig and gone to serve church dinner with the other church widows. The plate I have left on the counter for Luke edward makes me nervous and pulls my eye to the right.

  Luke comes in the door as Big Jim is cutting. I am sprinkling paprika over the serving bowl of potato salad. We all hear the door open and shut, and each one of us looks at who we know the most about, although I notice that Big Jim looks more steadily at the meat. That’s all right; my eye sweeps past Margarete to check on her relief, and goes right back to the mound of potato salad. Big Jim and I both choose closeness to the food.

  Luke edward comes in, taking off his nice raincoat, and goes right to kiss his expectant mama.

  “It smells good in here,” Luke says, leaning down to Margarete.

  “I know, child, your sister is a-cookin somethin,” Margarete answers him, kisses him back, smiles.

  I take Luke’s place setting and squeeze it between Margarete’s and mine, so that he is not at Big Jim’s end of the table. Course, ain’t no names at the table, but I move my chair over, and say, “Go git yo’self a chair, Luke edward,” and that way he is clear what I mean. I mean, you would think Luke edward would stay out of Big Jim’s way on his own, but he hasn’t up to this point, so I do what I can.

  Everybody has set down when Luke edward comes back, so everybody has to scoot so he can get his chair in. I’m coming to the table with the steaming bowl of string beans, concentrating hard on the heat. Luke edward catches me off-guard, tips me with the chair he carries, and I drop the whole bowl of cooked-all-day string beans. They go crashing and flying to the floor.

  Serena squats down with me immediately. We are mice with intensity. We both pick pieces of glass out of the mess. I quickly check under the table to see that nobody is in their sock feet, and I picture in my mind the few loose string beans that still float forlornly in the pot liquor.

  Everybody talks at once: Luke edward knows I am very upset and he is sorry and he didn’t mean to get in my way. He is still holding the chair, for Pete’s sake. David, in his quiet, is saying, “Neesey coulda handled it, it’s just that it was so hot.” Margarete says from her chair not to worry, it’s OK and she’s sure there are more in the pot, and Big Jim has sucked his teeth in spite of himself, but he does come to help; he brings the dishrag to brush the mess all together so it can be gotten up. Me, Big Jim, and Serena are all three down on the floor. Margarete, Luke edward, and David sit at the table, all wearing shoes, thank Jesus. Everybody is breathing over the spill.

  Luke edward puts down his chair next to Margarete by lifting it over the head of the commotion. He takes the slotted spoon I have left angled in the pot and scoops the pitiful rest of the string beans out into the ugliest remaining bowl in the house. Big Jim has taken the two ham hocks off the floor and rinsed them, and he drops them in the bowl Luke edward has made, mumbling, “Ain’t nothing wrong with that meat.” And we all sit down to the table at once, and David thanks God for the food and for the family and says if we can ask a favor, please don’t let there be any glass swallowed, or stepped on, in this house, this day.

  We all say Amen, and everybody tells me what a mean cook I am. Big Jim says I put my feet in the food and Margarete says she’s so glad I’m here to help her out. I have time to calm down, and I think that somewhere in me I knew this dinner would be messed up, even with its teeny tiny ham.

  I DID HAVE the mind to ask Big Jim whether he wouldn’t like to have chicken for Easter. “Naw, I rather ham and potato salad,” he said. I had waited until he was on his way out the door, had kept wishing Margarete would say something, instead of me. Hadn’t she told him? Maybe I was the only one reeling. Nobody else seemed to be bothered. Wasn’t nobody else cooking, though, either.

  I do not eat ham. It is not because it doesn’t taste good, because it does. Nothing better than a thick slab of smoked ham, quick fried to brown, between hot buttered fresh baked bread. Not a thing. But if ham kills your father, then common sense will tell you not to eat no ham.

  Nobody else in my family seems to feel this way. I am surprised and at the same time not surprised about this. I have a baked chicken breast tucked in the oven for my Easter meal. I will eat it after the set-down dinner is through.

  After dinner, David and Serena put a exclamation point on everything. They announce they are getting a place to themselves. Two weeks later David takes all his things from around his bed, and he leaves Margarete’s house. Margarete tells him she is proud of him and tells Serena that she don’t feel old enough for a daughter-in-law, but Serena is a good daughter-in-law to be coming in the family. In two months, David and Serena get married. We all get dressed up and go down to the courthouse. I bring Serena’s hand arrangement as a gift. Luke edward is dressed far snazzier than my sweet brother David, the groom. Serena kept a lovely house.

  MAMA DRAPES ME in a apron so I can butter toast. She tells me to do the whole loaf cause the boys will be hungry. I feel the heat from the oven door I stand next to, where our Virginia ham is baking. Mama sends my sleepy daddy into the bathroom, and he gives me a big hug and kiss on his way through the kitchen. Then Mama goes into Luke and David’s room; their heads are heavy globes. Of course, they don’t want to get up, but thanks to our daddy, they took their baths last night. Mama totes the big jar of petroleum jelly.

  David and Luke edward are both old enough now to grease their own legs. They just refuse. Mama tells them all the time they shouldn’t walk around with ashy knees, and they say OK, in a drone. Every time she leaves them alone to get dressed up, they come out ashy, expecting to go to church or go visiting, looking like that. You wouldn’t catch me with no ashy elbows. They just don’t care, I think. Funny what boys don’t care about. It makes me laugh; can’t be they don’t know what Mama is talking about, after all these many times. And so Mama goes after them with the Eboline.

  Of course, Daddy and Luke edward and David want to start the ham for breakfast, but Mama is firm. She says it isn’t ready, and we don’t have time. She tells all of them—she is kissing and coddling my daddy, brushing and smoothing his hair—that they should eat the toast I buttered, and they’ll be good and hungry for dinner.

  Daddy wants to know who’s coming over, and Mama names some people who are coming after dinner. All the people
coming are friends of my daddy’s, and I haven’t seen these people in a long time. I am marvelling at how wonderful my mother has been at organizing everything, and I like the way she is smoothing and pomading his hair. I notice how much harder he smells than we do, and I have a piece of buttered toast. My mother has a piece of buttered toast. The boys are well greased, and I go for my dress, and the boys and my daddy eat the whole loaf of bread.

  We walk to church. Zion is not far from where we live: two long blocks down and one block to the left. Mama usually sends David and Luke edward and me to church by ourselves. We usually race and ruckus all the way down the blocks, and I holler to my brothers that they better not tear my dress. This morning, it is Easter, and our daddy is home. We are walking not running; we are passing our neighbors. We cause comment, us all in white and yellow, five.

  My daddy is handsome, and he is a man who’s been places. He has shirts from Ohio and shoes from New York! My mother lusts for these things just like my daddy; she is wearing white shoes with scalloped edges that he brought her from somewhere the train stops. I asked my father how he knew what shoes to buy Mama. He said he knows her size. That wasn’t what I meant, what I meant was what she likes. Whenever he came in with a shoe box, she would rush to open it, and would squeal, delighted. She would find an outfit to wear with them right away. The spike heels and pointed toes are what she likes.

  Everybody looks at us on our way to church. My mother is beaming; it is not usual that my daddy’s on her arm. Daddy and Mama both grin, giddy. She leans into his side. I skip. David and Luke edward stay just on the good edge of bad. Mama and Daddy wave at people, say we can’t stop, but maybe on our way back we will.

  Everybody in the neighborhood is better dressed than all year. Like a pageant: a flag of happy colored people, wearing whites and pinks and yellows for the spring. I have Daddy to skip beside, my brothers dash around in their short pants—they are punching each other—and everything is wonderful.

  Daddy says it’s time for David to have long pants. And Mama says Luke will be too upset. They decide that next year both Luke and David will wear long pants together. Daddy promises that next year we’ll have a car to drive to church. I don’t understand this since we walk to church easy as pie, but Mama reminds me that I should stay out of grown folks’ conversations, and since Daddy gives me a swing, I don’t pout. Daddy promises to take us sometime to Montreal on the train. I ask from the air his arms give me, “When we going to Montreal, Daddy?”

  “Sometime soon, Baby Sister, I promise.”

  Church is long and exuberant. All humanity is there. By the time service starts, the benches shift and shudder while latecomers squeeze their hips into places where the ushers have seen a sliver of brown and have held up a finger, One. The late man or woman will rush toward the one finger and wriggle themselves into the sliver on the bench; everybody in the row will have to squeeze themselves narrower, rehang their spring coat over the back of the church bench, move their pocketbook off the seat and put it down on the floor in front, frown frustratedly if you’re a child like Luke edward or me, smile apologetically if yours are the squirming hips. Turn around and blaze—Good morning, Happy Easter—to the last arrival.

  We are not late, and so all five of us line up on a bench together. We sit on the right, where Mama likes to sit, so she can have a full view of Reverend Puckett and the choir, which she sings in off and on. Reverend Puckett’s first name is Niles, but he never uses it because he says it isn’t Christian, so he refers to himself as Reverend N. John Puckett, which Daddy thinks is hilarious. Us kids call him Reverend John, and Daddy just calls him Puckett, at home and to his face.

  “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, Oh what a foretaste of glory divine, Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His spirit, washed in His blood. Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; Angels descending, bring from above, Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long; This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long. Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blest, Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness, lost in His love. This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long; This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long.”

  My mother got me used to good singing early in life. She did not have a high voice, and she didn’t try to stretch it to make it high either. Her voice sounded reedy, and she sang like she was lost in thought.

  The lady in the white dress who had slivered next to us was more like regular ladies who sang in church but never in the choir. Her voice sounded tinny and uncomfortable; she strained to sing on top of the music, and my mother says you have to find a place in the music for your voice. The music is full of notes, my mother says, and there are always some notes you can match or mate with, don’t strain. This lady had never talked to my mother about singing and so she choked her voice and stretched her neck and strained and finally cried. She waved a fan she had in her hand that had a picture of sweet Jesus on one side and the funeral home record on the other. It was one of the fans with the curvy sticks. When she sat down tired, I leaned back too so I could save my little space to sit. Later in the service, I change seats next to my daddy, and it saves my ears.

  We sing “Up from the Grave” before the sermon. It is the snappiest of hymns. Everybody loves the story of the Risen Son and Saviour, and so the church is a blanket of tilted heads and moving mouths. Even Luke edward and David sing—we learned the words in Sunday school. When the verses are over, and we sing all four, the congregation sits down, and the organ keeps playing. The organ is a man and he continues to sing, once everyone else has sat down. The man does not sing as fast as we all did, and we can all hear his voice roll from low note to lower, telling us a story about the mercy of God. The voice deepens and seeps into the floorboards of the church. The floorboards make a tremor underneath the hard shoes of the men, the high heels of the women and the banging legs of children. My feet want to feel the shaking floor but don’t reach, so I slide off the bench to lean on the singing man. The blanket of heads sways in the benches, like the voice has been a wind. One by irregular one, ladies get up, clap their hands, praise the Lord. Women drop their hats accidentally behind them. They holler out loud, or faint. The men just stand if they want to, in straight-backed testimony, while the women continue to rise and to fall.

  The nurses are mobilized and the organ man still sings. All space is activity, tears cut through pressed powder and make lines on the face. Eventually the organ man, who shepherds the church, leads the flock back to quiet from the heat of the interlude. Hush, now hush. (This is my story, this is my song.) Then N. John Puckett seizes what the wailing man has left. Reverend John reads a roll of Bible verses, and speaks with his finger pointed up in the air; he holds his open Bible toward the dark ribs in the ceiling of the church.

  What I have left in me of what Puckett had to say that day is this:

  Sit yourself down when you enter Your Father’s House. Notice, children: I did not say kneel. Kneeling encourages hurry, children. And when you enter Your Father’s House, you must not hurry, but tarry instead. I say (clap) tarry, instead.

  Sit down and linger with Your Lord and Savior. He (clap) gave everything for you. Rest your feet, and talk (clap) with Jesus. Give Him your heart while you give Him your time. Tell Jesus what you’re thinking that you need. If you do that (clap) then you will take time. And while you are waiting and while you are praying, what you need will (clap) come, white clouds on a Monday. Sit down with Your Father, sit down, with Your Father. Sit (clap), down (clap, clap) in Your Father’s House.

  Some people sat down, but most people stood up. Puckett is a good preacher with a big booming voice. He grabbed his big Bible and took it open, walking up and down the church aisles. “The doors of the church are open,” he chants. His voice always sways in the rhythm of learned religion.


  Collection. People rummage into their pockets, into their pocketbooks. Either you need an envelope or a dollar bill. Just try to put a quarter in a Bible.

  The organ music blares “Thank you, Lord” at a fast and lifting speed; the congregation passes money down to the left of each row. The lady next to me hands me a stack of dollar bills, and before I can look good, Mama snatches them from me. Luke and David hardly got their hands on the money either. Daddy adds his envelope and waits at the end for Puckett to come by with the Bible. Puckett puts his hand over the money in the Bible and the ushers come up behind him with a straw bucket. He pours all our offerings in, and on to the next row he goes.

  At the end of the service, “What a Fellowship” leaps from the organ. Everybody shakes hands with everybody. The sliver-wigglers smile apologetically and either explain what detained them or comment on how full the church is this lovely morning. The sliver-wigglers are forgiven. The aisles are packed, the doorway is packed, and the getting out of church requires that twelve thousand hands touch my head.

  THE HAM I had put the cloves in rose like a big tinfoil rock from the center of the table me and Mama had set. We had green beans that I had helped to snap and a big bowl of potato salad Mama had made. We stopped down in the church basement and got some bread—so the rolls had been made by somebody other than Mama and me. Mama had got pie and ice cream for dessert; she had bought more than enough because we planned to have dessert with Daddy’s friends.

  ME AND MAMA gave the Easter dinner very much discussion. Even then I was learning the kitchen, while David and Luke edward were outside playing ball. Easter dinner got hovering, stooping care—mostly since Daddy was home.