Good Negress

by Verdelle, A. J.

  She say he got a job in a filling station, hadn’t been up here forty-five minutes seem like. The man what had the filling station had Mack getting underneath the cars changing oils and fixing things. Say Mack was like many another colored man—could fix near anything just putting the tips of the fingers God gave him up against whatever it was was broke. I knew she was exaggerating, but it could of been the late hour or all her hard work with Margarete made her spin like that. “Dat boy got paid once a week, reglar. Even wid helpin out wid de rent an Bereneice’s chillun, de boy still had too much money fo’ somebody from de country once ain’t had none.”

  Miz Alma was quiet again. “I don’t think dat child seen five dollahs in a month down Biloxi, an he was sweatin fuh de money, cuttin yards an trees, huskin cotton, sellin scraps he pickt up to de factory. Tryina help out de fambly. Came up to Detroit an got fifty-five full dollahs every week de Lawd sent.

  “He give half a it to me, every week, an I kept fifty cents a every dollah he turnt ovah. He was gittin to be a grown man an was earnin the money hisself. I didn’t wanna take it from him. I knew some time he be able to use it. Ain’t a soul in dis worl cain’t use a dollah when it come.

  “Lawd Jesus, if I didn’t spend alla dat money on mah baby’s buryin.” She stopped another minute. “Got a lil piece lef, gone put it in de house.”

  Well, Miz Alma sure did talk forty miles and didn’t tell me what had happened to her Mack. I was disappointed, but I didn’t dare ask again. I wondered if he drunk himself to death.

  Miz Alma finally told it that he start to running with these fast-butt city folk, and she couldn’t hardly get him in the house to eat good. She say he ended up going straight to work from wherever he happened to spend the night, and if she wanted to see how her baby was, she had to walk her skirts down to that gas station and see bout him. “Ain’t no kinda way fuh a mama tuh have tuh live,” she said.

  She say she left him and Bereneice down Biloxi for three years. Then she brought Bereneice up first, ain’t had no intentions on bringing Mack. But he begged and begged to come, and she missed him like she missed black dirt. “Once I let him come up here, I knew it was a mistake. I shoulda lef mah boy in de country, leas till he was full an grown.

  “Well, I’d walk downa that station an see him, once or twice a week. He be grinnin, happy to see me, smellin like a still.

  “I tole him every time, don’t make no sense boy. Y’mama gotta walk down to a outside fillin station see how her baby boy is doin. I tole him I’se gone send him back down home, but wasn’t really nothin I could do, and he knew that, he just said, ‘I ain’t goin back home, Mama, now come on here, look at dis beauty I workt on today. I got it runnin sweet, Mama, sweet.’

  “Usually I brung him a meat san’wich, or whatever we had an he sit on de ledge an chomp it down. I’se so worried bout his eatin since I couldn’t see him much. ‘Hi is Bereneice?’ he always ast.

  “Lawd. He was a good boy. I guess I sho did know dat since I couldn’t control him no mo, I wasn’t gone be able to keep him. One a dem fast-butt people he was runnin wid come knock on mah do one day tellin me tuh come down tuh Juniper Street and git him from dey house. Dey’s mighty sorry, dey said, but he got sloshed dey callt it and fell out in the back yahd a dey place. They didn’t notice he had gone out back, thought he had gone out front. Dey thought he went home, dey said. He froze.”

  CLARA CAME A lovely baby. Divine. She was all baby smell and bundly. She was all healthy and all brown. Margarete said, after Clara’s hair grew in, that her hair was growing in hard. Otherwise, she was perfect. A good-humored little girl.

  MISSUS PEARSON LEANED her hands on her desk. “You can come to my classroom anytime, Denise. I will give you work to do, and I will correct whatever work you give me. But if you find you have to stop studying seriously, it will probably mean I won’t be involved in your life.” She looks at me—I believe it is a sympathetic look—to see how I am taking this. I take it fine, I reach for whatever she offers like a weed tearing ground.

  “If you must stop studying, find a serviceable job,” she says. “You can add and subtract. Count money. Do errands. Take care of an old lady, or man. Roll change at the dime store. There is learning that can happen there. If you are not studying, then you have to learn to get paid.” She leans more forward, toward me. “And don’t let your mother make you idle, or housebound,” she says. Then she hands me a dollar and tells me to go home.

  I leave somber, not knowing what else to do. I wished I could figure out a way to stay, but it takes me a long time to figure out what to say behind the fancy lectures Miss Gloria Pearson gives me. In a day or two I will have a response, but now I just have to leave or stand silently. She has dismissed me, so I go on home. I put Gloria Pearson’s dollar in my grip underneath the bed.

  I absorbed what she said. I have replayed it many times.

  I went and sat in her classroom after school whenever I could until Clara was near three years old. Margarete and I tussled about this, but there wasn’t much I could explain. I just stayed focused on what I was trying to learn; I couldn’t give up anymore. Gloria Pearson’s remark DON’T LET YOUR MOTHER MAKE YOU IDLE, HOUSEBOUND, rang in my head loud like the school bell, and just as long like they hold it, insisting you come in.

  EVERYTHING HAS FALLEN BUT THE COLLARDS

  THE WATKINSES’ CROWDED shelves and narrow aisles were as busy as Patuskie had to say for itself. The warped, wide floorboards creaked under the town’s shoes and needs: more flour, bags of rice, pounds of dried red beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, cornmeal, the children’s hopes for raisins. All the goods waited between the sunlight and the colored store like handmade gingham curtains with curled ruffles. The matching ribbons of the Watkinses’ class buttoned the curtains back, and let the world in.

  Luke hated the place. Not because it didn’t entertain him. It entertained him in some small ways. I think he hated the ways it was the same. It was the same as it had been, every summer when we came. The porch of the store was its greeting and its permanence. Clear and swept and sunwashed in the morning; you could look at it and have second thoughts that it was the dilapidated small center of the colored town you knew it was. Ladies going to wash or clean would stop to say a word or two to May Belle, and would drag their wide feet and flapping shoes up the porch stairs, and back down in more of a hurry. By noontime, especially near the end of the week, the young girl helpers of the women—wherever the women worked or if they worked where they lived—might be sent on a dash to get a few pickles as a supper surprise, or some more bicarbonate for somebody whose stomach ached that morning, or if you sat for monied children like the Kinseys’—like I did—you might be sent for some already cooked cornbread that May Belle had worked on in the morning and set out in a basket between napkins to hold in the escaping heat. The shoes—like mine—scraping up the six steps and across the porch would be industrious, excited about responsibility.

  Luke hated the place because for all its busyness, he was bored. There was nothing for him to do. He did not sit for children or tote food. He was not interested in fabric or other dry goods. Watkins never gave him anything to make, hardly gave him the time of day. It wasn’t because of Luke, really. Watkins thought himself to be just the busiest man. Him and Eisenhower. Everything Watkins gave was by example, and everything he took was hard, like cash or baskets of fruit.

  The last summer Luke was down Patuskie, he must have been fifteen. I was about nine and already living down home with Granma’am. Didn’t Luke come down there that summer and try to steal from Watkins? Lord. Made one of those memories that make you shudder, even when twenty years have lodged between. Started the whole country town to talking about Mama’s unraised city boys. “Margreet,” they called her, “sho got hell in dem chillun, specially dose big ole boys.”

  One of Macie’s million minion run up to our side door to tell Granma’am what had happened, long before Luke edward got home. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Whe
n she got to the side screen hollering, Luke edward done got in trouble, I got up from the meal I was helping Granma’am make and stalked to the screen like I was Mama.

  “What you talkin bout, Mae Rellen?” I demanded. I did not open the door; she blabbered from the dirt side of the screen.

  “What you say, Mae Rellen?” Granma’am took over.

  “Miz Dambridge, Luke edward done stole some’m from Mistah Watkins.” Mary Ellen rushed to tell it. Granma’am’s joining me at the door gave importance to the situation. Her presence also washed away my itsy-bitsy authority.

  After the tale had finished being told—I just wished it was a lie. I followed Granma’am to the front, feeling little, not knowing where else I should go. Granma’am fussed and talked to herself, didn’t turn up the parlor light at all. Granma’am was always saying she didn’t see so good these days, but she let the parlor descend right into dark. I knew why, I had seen that her eyes had cracked. Thick sliding tears came down, like egg-white slather, after the shell gets slammed on the bowl.

  WATKINS COME IN cause Granma’am invited him. That’s how country people do, even if it’s some bad news coming, or maybe some enemies being made. Country people start out by asking each other in. After that they get to sweating and tussling, and get they lips poked out. Sometimes, like in Granma’am’s case, they part mostly friends: patting each other on the back, tipping they hats if they men. Leaving out the door with the parlor lights off, to keep the place cool, and smiling at each other to keep relations warm.

  Watkins walked to the house with Luke, he was trying to lecture: all us being Negro and living in a hard world and living in a world where nobody will excuse nothing we do and he’s sure Luke must know this from living up there in the city where at, in Detroit, wasn’t it? Luke was quiet, letting the man talk. A head taller than the man already, Luke just let the little man talk.

  Mistah Watkins wasn’t never so tall—Miz May Belle Watkins was taller than him—plus, Mistah Watkins had already started to shrink some on account of him gettin old.

  Luke was a good listener even if they said he was a thief, and I’m sure he didn’t answer no provocations. Luke don’t pay none of them no mind, I know that about him. “All these country people talk is Bible or what’s growin, don’t none of em know dishwater from bathwater, Granma’am included,” Luke once said.

  I drew in my breath at the nerve he had to say things.

  People down the country was always trying to raise David and Luke edward; Margarete thought it was nobody’s job but hers, and Granma’am thought she couldn’t possibly do it. Especially not alone. “Iss no way Margarete can handle dem big strappin boys by herself, jes herself,” they all said, “specially up dere in dat city where everybody seem to think dey wiser than us home folk. Look like dat’s what Margarete’s boys is growin up to think. It’s jes a shame bout dem kids.” They was all saying it, the same things.

  SO LUKE AND his stealing gave people a ready excuse to talk about what not having a daddy does to boys. They just can’t become men without a strong man around to whip they butts. Can’t become good strong men, no way.

  The complicated lot of our sons.

  “Dat Luke,” people said. “Gone git hisself cut up dere in Detroit.” They had all heard that in cities there was stabbing, one bad Negro to another. I was still young and seemed a good girl—people said about me. “You’ll probly be all right, a good Christian girl, but understand, dear, dat yo brothahs, wid dey big selves and dey bad ways, ain’t to be imitated.” They just kept on talkin about my brothers, to me, around me, to each other.

  “You know these silly country folk, they got things as figured out as God,” Luke edward had said. And they was just a-telling me how to handle myself with respect to my brothers; I heard but did not listen. Watching was more important, cause let me tell you, that summer Granma’am was fit to spit.

  Sometimes when Granma’am went out to funerals or to some place she had to travel to, she put on a wig Margarete had brung her. The wig was dark brown like Granma’am’s hair, and it went more forward on her head than when Granma’am fixed her hair herself. When Granma’am put it on, it looked more like a hat than a wig to me. Shining like a beetlebug shell. After Macie’s daughter left from the side door where she had dumped the news, Granma’am went fumbling into her room; she surprised me coming back out into the parlor; she was wearing the beetlebug wig and her outside shoes. She had buttoned up her housedress all the way to the top.

  MISTAH WATKINS WALKED Luke straight up to Granma’am’s front. Granma’am and me watched the two of them come in the yard and up the path. Granma’am had gone to sit in the front room and wait for our big boy, Luke, to come back. She mumbled: “Comin down here makin embarrassment for me where I got to continue to live wid people, down here where I been livin for more’n fifty years an where his mama was born and still from. I don’t know what’s a-matter with dat boy but he ain’t gone steal an he ain’t gone mess up my relations.”

  Mistah Watkins, he tipped his hat. “Well, Miz Dambridge”—he drew it out, seem like—“me and this here granboy a yours got some bad news to dis-skuss witcha.” Luke was not looking direct at Granma’am; he better not. Granma’am do not allow you to look directly in her face unless you old as she is or you got something of great importance to say. You better not be looking at her, specially if you wrong. She don’t allow not one suggestion of disrespect. I was looking at Luke edward, and Mr. Watkins was steady slow-talking. “Well, boy, you wanna tell y’granma whatcha been up to t’day?” Luke did not speak, of course; he stood in the parlor pitiful. So there me and Granma’am were in the dark-almost front room waiting on and now listening to the men. We waiting for Luke to tell what he did, confess, take the heaviness of Mistah Watkins away. We was waiting for him to make drawling Watkins leave, what with him standing there breathing like a old hyena. And Watkins went on, saying we all hoping that Luke would still grow up to be a man. (Is that what we all hope?)

  I wondered if Granma’am had expected Luke to come home alone. I did. My chest was getting constricted from the deep parlor darkness. My chest was getting heavy, family-flat.

  I start to follow the whine I hear in my head. Luke, why you disappoint Granma’am, why you got this man standing here talking about you like he talking about you when he know and Granma’am know and I know and you know, he talking about Mama, talking about our mama straight to her mama’s face, saying all the awful things the whole town wants to say about our mama. Everybody in this town still talking about our wild fast mama and here you is back here after all this time and everybody talking about her bad-ass boy. They don’t know us like they try to, saying her husband done died, probably from living too hard. They saying I’m too young to help really, and ain’t it a shame good Christian Miz Dambridge has such a hard time with the young’uns, specially them boys of Margreet’s.

  All of a sudden, seem like, Mistah Watkins says to me: “I say, little Miss Deneesey, I hope you don’t think all lis bidness is funny; I sees you sittin dere teeth just a-shinin. What is you grinnin like a chessy cat bout? You know dis big brother a yours ain’t done no fine thing, comin down here tryina steal from us. We’s all workin, we’s all tryina make our own lives, and we cain’t, naw, we cain’t be stealin from each other. Is’at the way ya’ll do up dere in dem cities?” His voice wheezes up like an engine warming.

  Why is he talking to me! Is he just planning to talk up all the space to anybody till some other thing happens? And what am I supposed to do with his questioning, should I answer since he’s grown? I decide I won’t say nothing, that there’s nothing for me to say.

  He just talks. “If dat’s de way y’all do I don’t know how y’all be livin wid each other at all, dat ain’t no way to respect a man or his family or yo’ neighbors or yo’self. Ain’t dat right, Miz Dambridge?” He drawls on, ain’t getting the first answer from nowhere, looking for agreement from my Granma’am who would rather Luke edward act different, but who would not exc
laim her feeling in front of company. “I jes hope you ain’t sittin dere laughin at dis sitya’ation.” He is still trying to talk to me. I can’t believe it, and he go on, “Cause dis is vereh seryous y’know.”

  Salt rolled off my face onto my teeth by then; guess Watkins had good eyes for a old man. He don’t have bullseye sense, though. Teeth showing like that ain’t no laughing all the time—teeth showing ain’t even no smile all the time. Fact, it was my imitation and my recollection of my mama’s stretched mouth, my mama’s teeth sitting out there trying to figure out what the hell to do about the child got her standing there front of the authority. What I’m gone do with these kids? Lord have mercy. That’s the teeth Mistah Watkins was seeing in my face in the dusk, he just didn’t know it, I guess. He ain’t seen my mama in so long, ain’t no wonder. Or maybe she ain’t never been yanked in front of him like this. Or maybe my mama Margarete don’t see him like the authority he making of himself this evening, in control of my brother this way. Mistah Watkins, he don’t know how much my mama’s child I am.

  Granma’am, she know, and maybe she hear the salt and snot melt together, my faceful a worry for my god, Luke edward. Maybe Granma’am hear me try to draw it back in my nose and down my throat quietlike. My Granma’am, she know me, she know what’s happening cause I been living with her these past few years, and she always say how come I can’t separate myself from the boys. They almost old enough to be a different generation from me, she say. But I’m their sister and when they on the fry I am too. When I get to the front of the line (which I will do), I want David and Luke edward right with me.

  Granma’am interrupt Mistah Watkins, and I’m more awake now but I’m still stuck with that crazy almost-grin on my face, calling it a grin according to Mistah Watkins cause I just don’t know how to eat the salt of shame without the corners of my mouth jerked back. Not yet anyhow.

  So Granma’am interrupt him: “Luke,” like thunder, “whatcha got tuh say fuh y’self; we gone send Mistah Watkins here on his way. Whatcha got tuh say fuh y’self, Luke edward?”