AFTER DADDY WAS finally gone for good, Miss Lena made sure we three got back to school. She started talking to Mama about going back to work. Mama finally did go back to work after the envelope was empty and the papers were turned in. I think Miss Lena had to walk her there like we got walked to school.
Mama finally started to come around and make decisions. She spoke authority again; we kids depended less on what Aunt Lena said do. In the evenings, when Aunt Lena came by, Margarete reported on each of us: Luke edward needs, David needs, Neesey’s school shoes ain’t gone last. She developed new plans about what she would do; each one less grandiose than the one the day before.
Margarete had laid out Daddy’s suits in neat layers on the bed, and she slept on them. Nobody went into their bedroom but her for a while. The memory of the blood dime kept me away. She came into our bedrooms to check us: she rubbed Luke and David on their heads, and told them how sorry she was that they were boys without a daddy. I understood what she was saying, because at least I had her.
MOST OF MY daddy’s good friends were men on the trains. They did different things: cook, clean the cars and the toilets, attend to the people who had money for the sleeping cars, lift luggage, pass out pillows, fetch things for the passengers. My father did these last three things, mostly being in charge of the luggage.
Daddy had said all he and his men friends talked about on the trains was their kids and wives. He said that people who would never see us, probably, knew all about us. Daddy said he had told his friend Warren Blanchard about my skinned elbows from when I tripped on the scooter, and Warren Blanchard made his home in Cleveland!
I had imagined Daddy and his friends plenty of times, lonesome men on the tracked motor cars. I believed that my daddy must never stop feeling the buzz of a moving thing all the time, and I was proud that he never did complain about that. I could see these men, telling stories of their kids and wives, and planning hungrily for the off-week coming up this month or next. I saw them, shining their teeth into the late night, a semicircle of work and joking and much sadness. Travelling men, working men, men with chiselled grins.
My daddy Buddy was never as loud as his wife Margarete can be. And Margarete is not very loud. My daddy Buddy could turn the latch, come into a room, put down his grip, and still surprise you when he threw you up in the air. He was known for sneaking up behind Margarete in the kitchen, socks on his feet; he would interrupt what she was doing at the stove (whatever it was), and put his arms around her. She loved it, and she would put her head down and get quiet, stop midsentence if she had been talking. I don’t know how it was for her, she and I hardly talked about him, and definitely didn’t talk about how he made her feel, but if I can imagine it from this romantic distance: she steadied herself in the width of his arms, which were gone most of the time; she revelled that he was there, and that she was cooking what he’d eat; she smelled the soap and traces of motor oil and hints of the other cities he’d seen; she told God she loved him and blessed the floor under his feet. Then she turned around laughing, gave him a kiss, and said, “Get on out a here while I finish.”
BEFORE SUMMER ENDED Mama had decided that she had to make some changes, and she had to make them now. We had kind of a family meeting, and she said she wanted us to be cooperative while she tried to work this out. We were all three confounded, knowing, I think, that she had to do something about Luke edward. She said that maybe we wouldn’t have to move, but maybe we would have to change schools. She said that the train company had given us some money but not much and she was going to have to work more and spend less time with us.
She decided to go down to Patuskie, like Granma’am had said, to rest. She told me she would take me with her. I was ecstatic.
Luke edward and David went to stay with Aunt Lena.
They still let us ride the trains even though my daddy was dead. When Daddy was still on the trains, somewhere on the tracks, we got on in Detroit and the men took care of us till Virginia. But when Margarete took me down home with her, the men recognized and were kind to Margarete. Being alone like that was new as spring onion for me and my mama, surrounded as we had been by boys and men. In our flat in Detroit, Mama had been sleeping in the day while we went to school. And then when we was home, she was doing hair in the evenings in Miss Sally’s basement hairdresser shop. She hollered and pleaded at Luke edward and David: do this thing one way and at this time, and another thing that way and at that time. And Luke and David—near buck-eyed, sad about Daddy, wild as two puppies out yelping in the grass—trying to attend to their mama and to me. All Daddy’s things right where he left them, and he gone. This train ride was calm and pale green, in comparison. Me and Mama played clap games. And we looked out the window.
Mama reminded me about how good I could read. She had packed four books for me, two I had had, and two new. She told me Granma’am didn’t read so good, and so Granma’am looked forward to my reading to her. Mama told me stories about Patuskie on the ride, how she grew up, what she was doing when she was little like me. Mama packed plenty food, and we ate it all. We had cakes from the mothers at the church, and I had a whole box of clothes that the mothers had collected and also packed for me.
“Why we takin all these clothes with us?” I did ask.
“It ain’t that many, honey, and besides they all new. You can have them to wear down home.” My mother’s suitcase was big as the bag I had, and so I let that go. It was so nice to see my mother distracted, to see her looking out a window, instead of down into her hands. I treasured that train ride, all our time together. I laid across Mama’s lap and slept sprawled all over her, since my brothers weren’t there.
And when we got there, Granma’am was gladder to see us than Mama had been glad, at all, since Daddy got sick and died. On my schedule at that age, Daddy’s getting sick and dying lasted a long time. Really, his dying still continued. We all stumbled over the permanence of his departure, where before we had danced toward his returns. None of us did much of anything right those days. But the trip me and my mama took was lovely and fresh, compared to the gray ash of evening our home had become.
Irene Jenkins and Valentine Kinsey and May Belle Watkins all come by Granma’am’s to visit with Mama at once. Margarete Palms had been widowed since they last saw her, so their throaty condolences flowed like song. Mama had a second funeral dinner on the Wednesday afternoon, with her old-time women friends from Patuskie. They wanted to know if she needed any kind of help, anything. We ate fried fish and green peas. They discussed The Boys, and How They Took It, and then they said I was sure up under Mama. They gave me cake and said I could go out front. I was glad cause the cake was chocolate, and I had not had to finish my peas. My daddy’s dying was enough to cause all the ladies Margarete had been friends with to put on tie-up Sunday shoes and put a handkerchief in they pocketbooks and come round to sit with Margarete. I listened to their talking from inside the screen door, but their voices were drowned by my chewing.
Evelyn Ownes came late in the evening. She and Margarete talked half the night. Miz Evelyn worked past dinner for the whitefolks, usually. But she was stepping sprightly when she come. My head was heavy, wanting sleep. She was cheerful and declared how she missed Margarete. Miz Evelyn always was one for telling jokes from her memory. Not made-up jokes, but the funny things that life had let happen, or as she said, life let her live to tell. Turns out, Miz Evelyn and Margarete both had had eyes on my daddy. They were teenagers, both wanting to catch him. He was brownskin with teeth like clean sheets on a line, Miz Evelyn said. He had finer clothes than could be bought in Richmond center. Margarete had been outside of Richmond, and Evelyn Ownes had not. (So that meant he had finer clothes than Miz Evelyn had ever seen.) Miz Evelyn thought that was probably why he had finally gone for Margarete because she had seen more of the world. Miz Evelyn talked to me through my sleep and drooling. She said I should wake up, cause Lantene be by soon to say hello to me. I tried to perk up, but I was pooped and full. I don’t eve
n know if Lantene got there, but while Margarete and Miz Evelyn laughed themselves to tears, I sunk through the couch pillows into the way of life of dreams.
“NEESEY, YOU WANNA put the cloves in this ham?” I went dashing into the kitchen, travelling high speed in my sneakers with the rubber tips. My favorite things to do were the things I could do myself. That ham would sit half-eaten on the table, and I could still point and say, “I put in the cloves.”
We had a lovely Easter dinner. We all sat down to one table; that was the first thing. Maybe in some families it is regular to have the boys and the daughter and the mother and the father sit down with knives and forks and plates and glasses of fruit punch for each one. But, like I said, my daddy took his meals on the train. Plus, holidays are famous for the feasts, and are only peppered by whatever other activities happen. This dinner, that Easter, began with a delicate routine, designed to let my tired father sleep as long as possible. Mama woke me up first. I remember her leaning over my bed, shaking me, “Wake up, Baby Sister, honey, wake up.”
THE WINDOW IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE
MISSUS PEARSON HAD a visit with Margarete when I said that I couldn’t stay after school no more. I had stopped to the store with Josephus, he bought Chesterfields. J get on my nerves the way he act so grown sometimes. Something told me I should of gone home anyway. As I got near the front door to our flat, I heard her voice. I barreled in and almost dropped my things. I didn’t notice how I was throwing myself till I looked in the faces of my teacher Missus Pearson and my mother Margarete. Faces like brown pies, open os for mouths, they looked at me careen through the door. Margarete was in the chair she usually be in, and Missus Pearson was in the low brown chair don’t nobody like.
Missus Pearson looked different outside the classroom. She looked like somebody I’d never get chance to talk to. Somebody who ain’t have no reason to talk to me. Like Valentine Kinsey, but richer and more educated. But she my teacher, and she probably here to see about me.
“Hello, Margarete, Mama,” I stumbled. “Hello, Missus Pearson,” I said. I was trying to pull together some grace.
Missus Pearson smile at me, and Margarete say, “Miss Pearson is a Miss, Deneese.”
“Yes, Denise”—Missus Pearson cleared her throat—“I just said to your mother that many of the students coming up from down South use Missus as a statement of respect, like ma’am. You see what I mean when I tell you how difficult it is to understand your separate speech. Anyway, your mother was under the impression that I had moved to Detroit with my husband. I have explained to your mother that I have no husband; I don’t know if that’s what you thought.”
Lord Jesus. Here is Margarete, tired and full of today’s baby, picking in my teacher’s business, trying to stir up some mess. It was just like Margarete to get that unmarried fact spelled out first off. Missus Pearson kept on talking. “I came to discuss your continued study with your mother. We have had a good chat. But your mother desperately needs you here, as she tells me.” She held her head down at the end of this like she planned to clean her fingernails.
Now, who was Missus Pearson talking to? Not to me directly, but not to Margarete directly, either. Her words clunked around, heavy like nickels in a old tin can. She did not sound like my teacher of the fluid language and lovely life. I looked and Margarete was looking mad at me. Missus Pearson had looked up, kind of absent, but at me too. I blushed, embarrassed. I don’t know what this situation is exactly.
Margarete had told me nine times if once that she needed me to help round the house and with the baby, and that I was gone need that know-how in my life for sure. And Margarete said I already know how to read and write and spell. “You even know already how to make fractions,” Margarete had said one night when she come into the kitchen and I did my fractions while the short ribs stewed. Only on account of Missus Pearson had helped me learn, I remember thinking, but I didn’t say that to Margarete. Margarete stays in the kitchen checking into the pots and refolding dishcloths. I guess she want me to say something in reply.
“She ain’t talkin bout fractions and them things. She say I cain’t talk English,” I say.
“She say you can’t what?” Margarete asks me.
“I cain’t talk English,” I mumble.
“Who is this teacher?” Margarete turns around and asks me. “Have I seen her?”
BUT MISSUS PEARSON had a righteous nerve coming up in Margarete’s house like that. She sat straight up in that old low brown chair like her back ain’t never been bent; coming in to tell a lady what she just ought to do with her own daughter. Needn’t worry, if Margarete was considering letting me keep staying to school, her mind is changed now. Margarete was like Granma’am in that way. Neither one cottoned to interference from people.
Missus Pearson looked the schoolteacher and the uppity woman, but she didn’t actually look no better than Margarete used to look. The baby done changed how Margarete face the days now. But she still look good. Margarete’s skin had been humid since at least December, and her hair growing out thick, always bushing like fresh-washed. She full in the face, and her ankles is puffy. But she will be small and pretty again like she was.
Margarete had said to me in her bedroom one day that she too old to be havin babies, but she just thirty-six. I think she means she tired, what with the three of us grown or near grown, and now one more. I hoped she didn’t have nothing to say about being too old or too tired to Missus—Miss Pearson.
Margarete had her feet stretched out in the floor between where she and Missus Pearson sat. Missus Pearson had turned toward me when I came in, and she hadn’t turned back toward Margarete at all. Seem like she didn’t intend to.
Missus Pearson think it’s downright dumb of me and Margarete not to be sure I get all the education possible. And for free. Missus Pearson had already told me that the education I was getting for getting up and walking to school could not be bought for a girl like me in the place I had just come from. She meant Patuskie.
MISTAH FITZWILLY TAUGHT us mostly from what happened where we lived. He only had one good arm. Fact, in the outside Richmond Negro school down home, school with Mistah Fitzwilly wasn’t like this at all. We was all in one schoolroom, seem like all in one grade. And I was one of the smartest. In Patuskie, I went to school to help the younger children learn how to read sentences and tell colors. Like what colors the soil change in answer to time: when it either grows food or swallows up the spoils of it. And who it is you live round: what kinds of things they probably need and what kind of schedule they life is on. He told everybody, including Granma’am, how he depended on me to help him teach. Everybody expected Mistah Fitzwilly would need help since he only had one good arm. As my reward for coming every day and keeping up the work with the younguns, Mistah Fitzwilly let me carry home the few new things come for the school so I could learn before the other children use up all the wear.
Mistah Fitzwilly say Luke edward was another excellent student. He told the story every Christmas about the nativity cradle Luke edward made from mud and flour-water paste mixed together. He said that the cradle was the perfect shape and architecture, that it rocked on the ridges Luke edward had shaped. He tried to talk to Luke edward about drawing blueprints or making furniture and instructed Luke edward to find out more about it when he went to school in Detroit. Mistah Fitzwilly said a lot of wonderful occupational things could be done in the big northern cities; he waved his shrunken arm to help with the points he made.
Mistah Fitzwilly was a sad little man when he heard Luke edward wasn’t coming back south. He asked me and Granma’am how was Luke edward doing. He came to visit Granma’am to ask more detail. When Granma’am handed him his books when he left, he said he hoped Luke edward would continue to grow smart. Too much opportunity can be a sea of temptation, Mistah Fitzwilly had said. Granma’am just pursed her lips.
Mistah Fitzwilly taught from what people said and did. Margarete and Mistah Parsons’ sons, and, of course, Harold Grayson—they were
Mistah Fitzwilly’s examples a lot of times. They brought Patuskie almost all the news we got of outside Negroes. When they came and said colored men’s getting factory jobs, Mistah Fitzwilly explained to the children my size the difference between industry and farms. When Margarete told the whole town about taking the boys to Belle Isle, Mistah Fitzwilly passed around a picture card with a motorized boat on it, and he talked about the power machines have these days. When I first came to the school, Mistah Fitzwilly had me talk about how it was to come back down South. I pretended I was Margarete, and waved at the country people with my remarks. I mentioned Detroit’s great size, Negro men with jobs, and traffic lights, and paved streets all cross town.
Luke edward’s nativity cradle was good for almost all the Christmas lessons: mud and how to make mud hold shape; cradles and how long children sleep in them; Jesus not having fancy things to sleep in; furniture, furniture height; how important it is to learn how to make things, to occupy your hands constructively; giving, and giving to others from what you have made.
We had our own news too that we talked about in the schoolhouse. When Casiah Greenfield brought back her first baby, Chessie, it got raised as a subject. I told the schoolroom that I had visited Casiah and Chessie and took some mashed fruit. I said, “Casiah’s baby Chessie is healthy and round.” People know this day that Chessie Greenfield liked bananas and mashed peaches when she was a little girl. And James Jr. Lawes, well, when he run up against that rusty rod and cut his arm so bad, we was all standing out in the yard looking. Victory Simmons ran all the way to the edge of town to the whitelady’s house where his mama was taking the piano lesson to get her. People said James Jr. Lawes’s mama was crazy, taking piano lessons at her age. But Granma’am say people just mad about the Missus Lawes being so light. She had come from Poughkeepsie, New York, to Patuskie. Married her cousin. Handsome family. Time she got to James Jr., me and Mistah Fitzwilly had held down the skin and tied his arm with a piece of clean window curtain. Well, she took and carried him all the way to Richmond center to get some shot she called a noculation. Said it was the only thing she was sure would keep his arm from falling off. Then, Mistah Fitzwilly discussed noculations in the class.
Good Negress Page 14