Seventh Sister
THE night Seven Sisters was born, a squinch-owl hollered outside the cabin from sundown until the moment of her. Birth. Then it stopped its quavering cry. Everything stopped—the whippoorwills in the loblollies; the katydids in the fig tree beside the well; even the tree-frogs, burring their promise of rain as ‘sheet lightning” flickered across the black sky.
The row of slave cabins behind the Old Place looked ramshackled and deserted; had been deserted, for a fact, ever since Grant took Richmond. Daylight or a moon would have shown their shingle roofs fallen in and their sagging porches overgrown with jimson weed and honeysuckle. Only one cabin was livable now and inhabited. Dody, grandson of a Saunders slave, had wandered back to the Old Place, with a wife and a flock of emaciated little pickaninnies.
They had not thrived on odd-job fare in the city. So Dody had come home, the first year of the Depression, serenely certain of his welcome. He knew Cap’m Jim and Miss Addie would give them a cabin with a truck garden, in return, for whatever sporadic labor was needed on the old rundown plantation smack on the Alabama-Georgia line.
That was in ’29, six years ago. Miss Addie was dead now and buried in the family cemetery on the south’ hill. Most of the land had been sold to meet taxes. Miss Addie’s grandson, Cap’m Jim, alone was left. Cap’m Jim was a baby doctor in Chattanooga. He kept the Old Place closed up except for week-end trips down with his wife and two young sons.
The red clay fields lay fallow and uncultivated. The rail fences had fallen, and even the white-columned Place itself was leaky and in need of paint. Whenever Dody or Mattie Sue thought of it, they had one of the young-uns sweep the leaves and chicken-sign from the bare sanded clay of the front yard. But aside from that weekly chore, they had the deserted plantation all to themselves, and lived accordingly. The children grew fat and sassy on yams and chitterlings. Dody drank more homebrew and slept all day in the barrel-slat hammock. And Mattie Sue cooked, quarreled, and bore another pickaninny every year.…
That is, until Seven Sisters was born.
That night a squinch-owl hollered.
And somewhere beyond the state highway, a dog howled three times. More than that, one of the martins, nesting in the gourd-pole in front of the cabin, got into the house and beat its brains out against the walls before anyone could set it free.
Three Signs! Small wonder that at sundown Mattie Sue was writhing in agony of premature childbirth. Not even the two greased axes, which Ressie and Clarabelle —her oldest unmarried daughters, aged fifteen and seventeen—had placed under her bed to cut the pain, did any good.
“Oh, Lawsy—Mammy done took bad!” Ressie whimpered.
She hovered over the fat groaning black woman on the bed, eyewhites large and frightened in her pretty negro face. Ressie had seen many of her brothers and sisters come into the world. But always before, Mattie Sue had borne as easily and naturally as a cat.
“Do, my Savior!” Clarabelle whispered. “We got to git somebody to midwife her! Aunt Fan... Go long and fotch her, quick! Oh Lawsy ..” she wailed, holding high the kerosene lamp and peering down at the woman in pain. “I, I’se sho skeered... What you waitin’ on, fool? Run!... Oh Lawsy, Mammy... Mammy?”
Ressie plunged out into the night. The slap-slap of her bare feet trailed into silence.
The cabin’s front room was very still. Save for the regular moaning of Dody’s wife—-and an occasional snore from Dody himself, drunk and asleep on the kitchen floor—there was no sound within. The other children were clustered in one corner, silent as young foxes. Only the whites of their eyes were visible against the dark. Clarabelle tiptoed about in her mail-order print dress, her chemically-straightened hair rolled up on curlers for the church social tomorrow.
Light from the sooty lamp threw stunted shadows. The reek of its kerosene and the smell of negro bodies blended with the pungent odor of peaches hung in a string to dry beside the window. Hot summer scents drifted in: sun-baked earth, guano from the garden, the cloying perfume of a clematis vine running along the porch rafters.
It was all so familiar—the smells, the night-sounds. The broken and mended furniture, discarded by four generations of Saunderses. The pictures tacked on the plank walls—of a snow-scene, of a Spanish dancer, of the President—-torn from old magazines Cap’m Tim and Miss Ruth had cast aside. The last year’s feed store calendar, dated January, 1934. The gilded wreath, saved from Miss Addie’s funeral, now decorating the mantel with its purple and gilt ribbon rain-marred to read:
ABID Wl H MF…
Even the childbirth scene was familiar to all of Mattie’s children except the youngest. And yet...
THERE was an eerie quality about the night, throwing the familiar out of focus. -The young-uns felt it, huddled, supperless, in the corner while Clarabelle fluttered ineffectually about the bed and its burden. It was so hot and oppressive, with a curious air of waiting. Even a rumble of thunder along the horizon sounded hushed and furtive.
And the screech-owl’s cry drifted nearer.
The woman on the bed writhed and moaned again. Clarabelle twisted her black hands together, bright with pink nail polish—relic of the winters spent in Chattanooga as nurse for Cap’m Jim’s youngest. She went to the open door for a fourth time, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps.
Aunt Fan had a cabin down the road about half a mile, and had washed for the Andrews as far back as anyone remembered. She was a church woman; in fact, one of her three husbands had been a preacher before he knifed a man and got sent away to prison. If anyone could help Mattie Sue in her extremity, it would be Aunt Fan …
The squinch-owl wailed again. Clarabelle drew a quick circle on the cabin floor and spat in it But the moaning of her mother went on and on, incoherent, rising and falling as though in imitation of the owl’s ill-omened call.
Clarabelle stiffened, listening. The hurried crunch-crunch of shod feet came to her ears at last. With a grasp of relief, she ran out to meet the pair—Ressie, returning, and a tiny weazened old negress with a wen in the center of her forehead, jutting out like a blunt horn;
“Aunt’ Fan, what I tell you? Listen yonder!” Ressie whimpered. ..“Dat ole squinch-owl been holl’in’ fit to be tied ever since sundown!”
The old midwife poised on the porch step, head cocked. She grunted, and with a slow precise gesture took off her apron, to don it again wrong side out.
“Dah. Dat oughta fix ’im. Whah-at Mattie Sue? My land o’ Goshen, dat young-un don’t b’long to git borned for two month yet! She been workin’ in de garden?”
“Well’m...” Clarabelle started to lie, then nodded, contrite. “Seem like she did do a little weedin’ yestiddy... ”
“Uh-huh! So dat’s hit! I done dole her! Dat. Low-down triflin’ Dody...” Aunt Fan, with a snort that included all men, switched into the cabin.
Outside, the screech-owl chuckled mockingly, as though it possessed a deeper knowledge of the mystery of birth and death.
Ressie and Clarabelle hunched together on the front stoop. Through the door they could hear Aunt Fan’s sharp voice ordering the pickaninnies out of her way into the kitchen. Mattie Sue’s regular moaning had risen in timbre to a shrill cry. Qarabelle, squatting on the log step of the porch, whispered under her breath.
“Huh!” Ressie muttered. “Ain’t no use prayin’ wid dat ole squinch-owl holl’in’ his fool head off! Oh, Lawsy, Clary, you reckon Aunt Fan can... ?”
The older-girl shivered but did not reply. Her eyes, wide and shining from the window’s glow, swept across the flat terrain. Fireflies twinkled in the scrub pines beyond the cornfield. A muffled roar from above caught her ear once. She raised her head. Wing lights on a transport plane, racing the storm from Birmingham to Atlanta,’ winked down at her, then vanished in the clouds.
“ Leb’ m-thirty,” she murmured. “Less hit’s late tonight... Daggone! If’n dat ole fool don’t shet up his screechin’...” She checked herself, sheepishly fearful of her own blasphemy.<
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Of course there was nothing to all that stuff her mammy and Aunt Fan had passed down to them, huddling before the fire on rainy nights. Signs! Omens! Juju... Cap’m Jim had laughed and told them, often enough, that...
The girl started violently. From the cabin a scream shattered the night. High-pitched.
Final.
Then everything was still. The tree-frogs. The quarreling katydids. The whippoorwills. The muttering thunder. A trick of wind even carried away the sound of the transport plane.
And the screech-owl stopped hollering, like an evil spirit swallowed up by the darkness.
FEW minutes later Aunt Fan came to the door, a tiny bundle in her arms swaddled in an old dress of Mattie’s. The girls leaped to their feet, wordless, eager.
But the old negress in the doorway did not speak. She was murmuring something under her breath that sounded like a prayer —or an incantation. There was a sinister poise to her- tiny form framed in the lighted doorway, silent, staring out into the night.
Suddenly she spoke.
“Clary honey... Ressie. You mammy done daid. Won’t nothin’ I could do. But... my soul to Glory! Hit’s somep’m funny about dis gal-baby! She white as cotton! I reckon yo’ mammy musta had a sin on she soul, how come de Lawd taken her... ”
Clarabelle gasped a warning. A broad hulk had blotted out the lamplight behind Aunt Fan—Dody, awake, still drunk, and mean. A tall sepia negro, wearing only his overalls, he swayed against the door for support, glowering down at the bundle in Aunt Fan’s arms.
“Woods colt!” Dody growled. “I ain’t gwine feed no woods colt... Git hit on out’n my cabin! I got eight young-uns o’ my own to feed, workin’ myself down to a frazzle... Git hit on out, I done tole you!” he snarled, aiming a side-swipe at Aunt Fan that would have knocked her sprawling if it had landed.
But the old negress ducked nimbly, hopped out onto the porch, and glared back at Dody. Her tiny black eyes glittered with anger and outrage, more for herself than for the squirming handful of life in her embrace.
“You Dody Saunders!” Aunt Fan shrilled. “You big low-down triflin’ piece o’ trash! I gwine tell Cap’m Jim on you! Jes’ wait and see don’t I tell ’im! Th’owin’ Mattie’s own baby out’n de house like she wont nothin’ but a mess o’ com shucks! And Mattie layin’ daid in yonder...”
Dody swayed, bleary eyes trying to separate the speaker from her alcoholic image.
“Daid? M-mattie Sue... my Mattie Sue done daid? Oh, Lawsy— why’n you tell me...?’’ His blunt brutal features crumpled all mat once, child-like in grief. He whirled back into the cabin toward the quilt-covered bed.
“Mattie?” the three on the porch heard his voice. “Mattie honey? Hit’s your Dody—say somep’m, honey... Don’t sull up like that and be mad at Dody! What I done now?... Mattie... ?”
Clarabelle and Ressie clung together, weeping.
Only Aunt Fan was dry-eyed, practical. In the dark she looked down at the mewling newborn baby. And slowly her eyes widened.
With a gesture almost of repugnance the old woman held the infant at arm’s length, peering at it in the pale glow from the open cabin door.
“My Lawd a-mercy! ” she whispered. “No wonder Mattie Sue died a-birthin’ dis-heah one!’ Makes no diffrence if’n hit’s a woods colt or not, dis-head chile...”
She stopped, staring now at Clarabelle and Ressie. They paused in their grieving, caught by Aunt Fan’s queer toner The old woman was mumbling under her breath, counting on her black fingers; nodding.
“Dat ole squinch-owl!” Ressie sobbed. “I knowed it! If’n hit hadn’t a-hollered, Mammy wouldn’t...”
“Squinch-owl don’t mean nothin’ tonight,” Aunt Fan cut in with an odd intensity. “Eh, Law, hit’s jes’ stomp-down nachel dat a squineh-owl’d come around to holler at dis-heah birthin’. Nor neither hit wouldn’t do no good-to put no axes under Mattie’s bed, nor do no prayin’. You know why? Dis-heah young-un got six sisters, ain’t she? Dat make she a seb’m sister! She gwine have de Power!” Like a solemn period to her words, a clap of thunder boomed in the west, scattering ten-pin echoes all over the sky.
“Yessirree, a seb’m-sister,” Aunt Fan repeated, rubbing the wen on her wrinkled forehead for good luck. “Y’all gwine have trouble wid dis chile! Hit’s a pyore pity she didn’ die alongside she mammy.”
RESSIE and Clarabelle, saucer-eyed, peered at their motherless newborn sister, at her tiny puckered face that resembled nothing so much as a small monkey. But she was white, abnormally white! Paler than any “high yaller” pickaninny they had even seen; paler even than a white baby.
Her little eyes were a translucent watery pink. Her faint fuzz of hair was like cotton.
“De Lawd he’p us to git right!” Clarabelle whispered in awe. “What us gwine do wid her? Pappy won’t leave her stay here not no woods colt, and sho not no seb’m-sister! Will you keep care of her, Aunt Fan? Anyways, till after de funeral?”
The old negress shook her head. With flat emphasis she thrust the wailing bundle into Ressie’s arms, arid stumped down the porch step. .
“Naw suh, honey! Not me! Hit say in de Good Book not to have no truck wid no conjure ‘oman. And dat little seb’m sister of youm gwine be a plain-out, hard-down conjure ’oman, sho as you bom!... Jes’ keep her out in de corn crib; Dody won’t take no notice of her. Feed her on goat’s milk... Mm-mmm!’’ Aunt Fan shook her head in wonder. “She sho is a funny color!”
It was a month after Mattie’s funeral before Cap’m Jim came down to the Old Place again with the boys and Miss Ruth. When he heard, by neighborhood grapevine, that Dody’s new baby was being hidden out in the com crib like an . infant Moses, he stormed down to the cabin with proper indignation.
He took, one startled look at the baby, white as a slug that has spent its life in darkness under a rock. Pink eyes blinked up at him painfully. The little thing seemed to be thriving very well on goat’s milk, but the com crib was draughty and full of rats. Cap’m Jim attacked Dody with the good-natured tyranny of all Deep-Southerners toward the darkies who trust and depend upon them.
“I’m ashamed of you, boy!”—Dody was over ten years older than Dr. Saunders. “Making your own baby sleep out in a corn crib, just for some damnfool notion that she’s a hoodoo! And of course she is your own baby. She’s just an albino; that’s why she’s so white.”
Dody bobbed and scratched his woolly head. “Yassuh, Cap’m? Sho nuff?” “Yes. It’s a lack of pigment in the skin . .. er. .. ” Dr. Saunders floundered, faced by the childlike bewilderment in the big negro’s face. “I mean, she’s black, but her skin is white. She... Oh, the devil! You take ‘that child into your cabin and treat her right, or I’ll turn you out so quick it’ll make your head swim!”
“Passuh...” Dody grinned and bobbed again, turning his frayed straw hat around and around by the brim. “Yassuh, Cap’m... You ain’t got a quarter you don’t need, is you? Seem like we’s plumb out o’ salt and stuff. Ain’t got no nails, neither, to mend de chicken house...”
Dr. Saunders grunted and handed him fifty cents. “Here. But if you spend it on bay rum and get drunk this weekend, I’ll tan your hide!”
“Nawsuh?’ Dody beamed, and guffawed his admiration of the bossman’s unerring shot. “I ain’t gwine do dat, Cap’m! Does you want me for anything, jes’ ring de bell. I’ll send Clarabelle on up to look after de boys.”
Dody shambled off, grinning. Cap’m Jim let out a baffled sigh. He strode back toward the Place, well aware that Dody would be drunk on dime-store bay rum by nightfall, and that the big rusty plantation bell in the yard would clang in vain if he wanted any chores performed. But he had laid the law down about the new baby, and that order at least would be obeyed.
“A pure albino!” he told his wife later, at supper. ‘’Poor lil’ mite; it’s amazing how healthy she is on that treatment! They won’t even give her a name. They just call her Seventh Sister... and cross their fool fingers every time she looks at ’em! I’ll h
ave to say, myself, she is weird-looking with that paper-white hair and skin. Oh, well—they’ll get used to her...”
Cap’m Jim laughed, shrugged, and helped himself to some more watermelon pickle.
Dody, with his fifty cents, rode mule-back to the nearest town five miles away. In a fatherly moment, while buying his bay rum at the five-and-ten, he bought a nickle’s worth of peppermints for the young-uns. He bought salt, soda, and some nails.
Plodding back home up the highway, he passed Aunt Fan’s cabin and hailed her with due solemnity.
“Us sho got a seb’m-sister, all right,” he called over the sagging wire gate, after a moment of chit-chat. “Cap’m Jim say she ain’t no woods colt. He say she black, but she got pigmies in de skin, what make her look so bright-colored. Do, my Savior! I bet she got de blue-gum! I sho ain’t gwine let her chaw on my finger like dem other young-uns when she teethin’! I ain’t fixin’ to get pizened!”
“Praise de Lawd!” Aunt Fan answered noncommittally, rocking and fanning herself on the front stoop. “Reckon what-ail she gwine be up to when she old enough to be noticin’ ? Whoo-ee! Make my blood run cold to study ’bout it!”
DODY shivered, clutching his store-purchases as though their prosaic touch could protect him from his own thoughts. If there was any way to get rid of the baby, without violence... But Cap’m Jim had said his say, and there was nothing for him to do but raise her along with the others.
It was a fearful cross to bear. For, Seven Sisters began to show signs of “the Power” at an early age. She could touch warts and they would disappear; if not at once, at least within a few weeks. She would cry, and almost every time, a bullbat would fly out of the dusk, to go circling and screeching about the cabin’s field-stone chimney.
Then there was the time when she was three, playing quietly in the cabin’s shade, her dead-white skin and hair in freakish contrast with those of her black brothers and sisters. The other pickaninnies were nearby—but not too near; keeping the eye on her demanded by Clarabelle without actually playing with her.
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