Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Liz,” he called behind her, almost authoritatively, “you were pricing taps for your loafers, remember?” He hoped she did remember as he watched her big, curvy legs with a hint of bobby socks peeking from the back of her shoes rush up the ladder. He surely didn’t want any lip out of her evil-assed so-called father, Herbie.

  EIGHTEEN

  Noon sat on her back steps and watched her freshly hung clothes flap in the start of the sunrise. She had so much to do today. Another meeting at church tonight over the highway. The first meeting last week hadn’t accomplished much. City people hadn’t even shown up. Plus she’d been in such a state over Liz getting home so late, she was just calming down about the time Reverend Schell called the meeting adjourned. But at this one tonight they were supposed to be presented with real facts. Humph! Not enough facts in all of God’s universe to justify them being uprooted for a road, she thought. Then there was Fannie and Liz’s sweet sixteen birthday party at the Christian Street Y, less than two weeks away. All of downtown would be there. Even though Fannie and Liz were a couple of months apart, Noon decided to throw them a combined party to save all the preparation and expense of doing them one at a time. She had cakes to bake, had to finish Liz’s dress, Liz so specific when it came to her clothes, had to be a certain fabric, highest quality, even went with Noon to Fourth Street to pick out the thread. Couldn’t fault her, though, straight A student; if the worst she did was overspend on material, Noon could live with that. Fannie could be a straight A student too if she’d get her mouth under control. Smart as a whip, just always so quick to fresh-talk the teachers when they did something she didn’t like. She hadn’t even started Fannie’s dress. Then there were the decorations; she’d get Maybell to help with those.

  She tried to clear her mind of the road business and all she had to do otherwise, so she could enjoy the sun getting ready to splash in the sky. Today’s sunrise would be glorious; she could tell because the air had been unusually black just an hour ago as she’d pressed wooden-headed clothes-pins on to her wash. Now the first streaks of red and blue were starting to separate the horizon that hung over downtown and made her say, “Jesus, Jesus how great Thou art.” She’d just sit here for a little while longer, just let her thoughts tumble around in the newness of the day.

  She reached into the depths of her apron pocket and pulled out a vial of spirit of peppermint and rubbed it against her teeth. Her backyard peeped into the side of the Saunders Funeral Home, which took up a quarter of the block around the corner. Lush rosebushes that the Saunderses raised to cut down on the cost of flowers climbed along the plot next to the building and sent their fragrance to befriend the as-strong scent of the wild honeysuckle that lived up and down the alley. Noon breathed it all in now, the roses, the honeysuckle, the peppermint, and felt dizzy from the air that was new to this day.

  The side window to the Saunders Funeral Home was cracked a quarter of the way, and she could see light streaming through the opening interrupted by a to-and-fro of people moving quickly. She wondered who died last night. Wondered if Fannie had been right when she woke last week crying, saying that Miss Pernsley, her Sunday school teacher, was going to die soon. Noon and Liz had calmed her down. The only time Fannie cried, the only chance they ever had to console her, to hug her and smooth at her hair, which was long and woolly and ever so dense, was after a vision. The only time she seemed to need the press of flesh that she so readily gave to them all was after her seeing eye had shocked her with a revelation. But that night last week Fannie’s period had started too. As Noon and Liz had hugged Fannie and stroked the back of her neck with cool rags, Noon noticed her sheets, and told her maybe that’s why she was so upset. Maybe it wasn’t her Sunday school teacher at all, just her emotions running wild.

  Noon folded her hands in her lap now as the sun continued its entry into the morning. She prayed for the family of whoever it was causing the lights and the bustle at the Saunders Funeral Home so soon. Probably was Miss Pernsley that the Saunderses tended to now. Fannie hadn’t been wrong yet. Sometimes months would go by without Fannie seeing anything, not even whether a storm was brewing or whether a melon had sweet insides. But when she did, when she got still and stared and squinted and then lost control, whatever it was she’d seen came to pass. Like when she’d seen Noon’s father’s death six months ago and through her hysteria told Herbie and Liz. And Herbie, as gently as he could, told Noon. Noon packed Liz and Fannie up and boarded the first train Florida bound. She’d gotten there just in time to squeeze her father’s hand and hear him shout, “Death, where is thy sting? My baby Noon made it here in time.”

  And when Noon’s mother had asked her how, how did she know to come when she did? They were just about to pick up the phone to call her when the next thing they knew she was standing there right at her father’s deathbed. How on earth did she know? Noon didn’t tell them it was Fannie. Child found in a box the way they’d found Fannie caused enough talk about witches’ babies and the like in that part of Florida where they had migrated from islands in the Bahamas with names like Exuma. Islands so small they didn’t get a pinpoint on the map. Islands that had served as docking stops for slave ships North America–bound. They picked up Jesus there but never really put their other ways down. They already knew that Fannie had dropped into their lives on their front steps one cool predawn morning like magic; they didn’t need to know that she had a seeing eye too. Noon’s mother’s smooth, oil-rich brow would have wrinkled in fear; what with all that was done to Noon when she was twelve, they would have started talking witches’ children for sure.

  Noon thought she could hear wailing coming from the Saunders Funeral Home now. Family probably followed the hearse over from wherever they picked up the body. Probably died right at home. Most colored people died at home, she thought, or close to home. Trying to get home.

  Like that morning when she was trying to get home back when she still lived in Florida. She had stopped herself from thinking about that morning over the years. But her trip home for her daddy’s death had revived it all. Now the memory of that morning would rise at her like a serpent that uncoiled so slowly she wasn’t even aware it was there, right there at her feet, and then suddenly at her face sticking out its ugly tongue; the memory caught her like that. She had started seeing that morning again in the oddest things: the nub of the fishman’s fingers, the red basting strips for trimming Liz’s dress, the dried bits of dough she’d flick from her rolling pin, even sitting here on her back steps watching the Saunderses prepare the dead for the living.

  She was only twelve years old that morning. Breasts not fully sprouted, hips not even rounded out, hadn’t even started her monthly. Her mother had warned her. “Noon,” she’d said, “heard talk about some heathens running through South Florida performing a ritual that sacrifice young girls to whoever it is they pray to.”

  “Who do they pray to?” Noon had asked her mother as she shuddered at the very thought.

  “Don’t know, don’t want to know. If I did know, wouldn’t call out the name. All I know is it ain’t Jesus. From what I hear they did to a little girl not far yonder, scraped her insides like they was cleaning a chicken for roasting, devil worshipers is what I call them. Hear tell they don’t stay in no one place for long. You just stay close to home till they pass on through these parts.”

  Noon didn’t think she had wandered that far from home. Not even a mile past the church that stood solid as the lead structure into town. She had woke that morning before the sun did with berries on her mind. Huckleberries. Her daddy had remarked the night before that he had a taste for huckleberry dumplings. Noon knew where the blackest and sweetest berries grew. Where the juice flowed with just a pinch. Perfect berries for wrapping in strips of dough and dusting down with butter and cinnamon and cooking until the dumplings plumped. She thought about her dumplings as she half skipped, half ran into the sunrise. Her pan was already greased down waiting on the ledge, her dough patient under the covered bowl. All she ne
eded now were the berries that dripped their juice like crystal melting, so black and shining until the juice looked clear.

  She left the white stone pavement of town and stepped out of her huaraches onto the opened dirt road that was the beige color of sand. Her toes pushed deeper into the earth that was a softer sand as she moved into the woods. The air was moist under the thick green canopy of palmetto. It settled along her hair, soft and thin, and seeped down along her forehead. Morning birds called to each other, and possum rustled through the understory as she saw her tree. The one that would yield up the best huckleberry dumplings her father’d ever tasted.

  But then there was a stark silence. Not the birds, not the possum, not even the drips of the clear dew from leaf to soil. Just no sound. She had never heard the booming of no-sound before. She stopped, terrified, a silence as loud as this surely meant a supernatural power was close.

  And then another sound interrupted the no-sound. The ripping squeals of calves that almost sounded like the cries of a young girl. The caws-caws of chicken. The chanting of people filled with words she didn’t know.

  She knew to run. As soon as she’d heard the no-sound, she knew to run. Before the chanting even, she’d dropped her basket meant for her sweetest blackest berries. Tried with everything in her to move her feet through the sandy earth that held her feet captive and slowed her even as she tried. Tried to get to her mother and father and brothers who praised a gentle God, not the heinous devil these people chanted to in words she didn’t know, except for the word “blood.”

  Her feet were no match for theirs. Three of the men caught her before she could even get back to the morning, to the beige-colored dirt road that led to the white stone pavements of town where she left her huaraches waiting.

  They carried her writhing, screaming body back in the woods as they chanted and called for blood. Her blood, which was supposed to nourish the babies she dreamed of having. Her blood, which she would one day whisper about to the other women saying that hers came this day or that, the way her mother and the ladies whispered as they stirred over pots for the meal after church. “Mama,” she cried. “Mama, Mama, Mama,” she screamed in a continuous wail as she kicked and punched and hollered for her mama. Her mother would know what she was up to when she saw the buttered pan and the dough under the bowl already cut in triangular strips. So organized she was. She’d smile and say that Noon done gone for berries this morning. And when she wasn’t back, her mother would know to send her father and brothers with their shotguns cocked. “Hurry, Mama,” she screamed.

  They tied her fighting body down and dressed her in oil, and sprinkled her with powdered herbs the likes of which she’d never smelled. Acrid smells like turpentine, burning hair, decaying flesh. The women slapped her face and told her not to fight it. Easier on her if she didn’t fight it. Then the men among them took her. Old and young, each more violently than the one before. The onlookers chanted and fainted and came to calling for blood. They wouldn’t stop until they saw the blood. Not the trickles that fell with the first searing pain of a young girl being stretched wide, but the gushing that came later, seemed like hours later, when calf after calf had been placed around her in a circle. The calves bled too. They cried out and moaned for Noon when she no longer could. When she wished all of her would die but only part of her did, the part where her womanly passions were just starting to come to life.

  The wailing coming from the Saunders Funeral Home got louder now, the daybreak wider as Noon sat on her back steps and rubbed more spirit of peppermint between her teeth. Then she could hear Mahalia Jackson singing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” The Saunderses were good in that way. When the family members stood in the funeral parlor and stared in death’s eye and wailed and pounded their chests and cursed God, the Saunderses knew to put on Mahalia, knew to let her gospel songs rise and fall and fill them up, knew to let a singing voice do what a speaking voice could not.

  Noon thought about what she’d cook to take over to the bereaved family as she listened to Mahalia sing. Potato salad. She’d pull down her largest, fanciest bowl, the one with the thick beveled edges that made a prism when it caught the light. Then she’d take the large fancy bowl of potato salad over to the bereaved. Most of downtown would be there with their food donations. House full of people would be there. Noon and the other neighbors would console the grieving family, even help them clean the house. When they all sat down to eat, Noon would just have her potato salad. No meat today. She’d lost her taste for meat hearing that wailing from the Saunderses’ so early.

  By the time she left the grieving family it would be time for the meeting at church. She would be exhausted when she finally got home. So tired she’d fall right in the bed like stone. A quick sleep would come. She’d be dead asleep when Herbie pressed himself into bed. Not that it mattered anymore. He had long since stopped reaching for her, stopped pleading with her in a desperate voice to just tell him why, why it was she didn’t have a nature to her.

  Now Mahalia was singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The sunrise was complete, and the yellow chased the red and pink streaks behind the blue. Miss Pernsley. Fannie’s Sunday school teacher. Noon was sure that’s who it was right now on the gurney in the room where the Saunderses dressed the dead. She caught a whiff of formaldehyde through the roses and honeysuckle still making friends in the alley. “Sleep on, Miss Pernsley,” she whispered. “Better that all of you should die than just a part.”

  NINETEEN

  The church was going through something. Noon could feel it as she and Fannie and Liz walked through the door. At first she thought it was the shock of the news of Miss Pernsley’s death. Then she thought it was just her; she was still feeling shaky from her early-morning remembrance as she’d sat on her back steps. But there was something else too. People were jumpy, smiling too much, trying too hard to be cordial. They were saying, “Praise the Lord,” louder than usual with a determination, a hardness. They were like lovers on the verge of separation, when each partner knows it but they deny what’s imminent and make love anyhow.

  Reverend Schell was in his office, in an upper room just to the side of the main sanctuary and behind the Baptismal Pool. Willie Mann was with him too, and a representative from the city, Tom Moore, a tall, balding white man with a nervous tic that made his left cheek jump up and down as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to smile or grimace. Reverend Schell sat behind his expansive wooden desk, a gift from his congregation acknowledging his thirty-fifth anniversary of pastoring the church. Willie Mann and Tom Moore sat catercorner one on each side of the desk. They sat where people usually did when they’d come for counseling.

  Willie Mann was smiling. He handed Reverend Schell a small brown envelope filled with dollar bills that could have been a tithing envelope except that it bulged.

  Reverend Schell waved the envelope away. “Can’t accept that, I said. Can’t really say that I understand all of this highway business, certainly I can’t accept money to endorse a plan I’m not even sure I understand.”

  Tom Moore coughed. Without looking up from a diagram spread across his lap that he seemed to study now, he said, “Just accept it as payment for your time, Reverend. That’s all, no strings.”

  “But I don’t even know all the details.” He motioned to the stapled sheets of paper on his desk and patted his breast pocket. “Left my glasses at home so I can’t even begin to read through the background. All I know for sure are the same rumors been floating around here for the past few months. That you want the people to sell their homes so y’all can come through and bulldoze for a highway. This little community is home to these people. Lot of these folks don’t even travel north of Market Street or west of the Schuylkill River even. Plus, people start moving, it’ll siphon off the membership rolls of the church. I don’t think this highway business is gonna go over well, not well at all.”

  “Reverend, Reverend, Reverend.” Willie Mann interrupted, and laughed softly as he allowed the envelope to
slip from his hands onto the desk. “We’re just talking tonight, sir. That’s all.”

  “You keep saying ‘we,’ William. Explain your involvement.” Reverend Schell leaned way back in his chair and peered at Willie Mann.

  “I’ve been hired on as a consultant to what we”—Willie Mann laughed softly again—“they are calling simply the Highway South Project.” He walked to the window with Reverend Schell’s eyes still on him. “Lots of involvement, Reverend. Not just the city either, private concerns, even some state and federal. Big, big fish involved, Reverend. You ought to consider jumping on the wagon, sir. Quite a train”—he cleared his throat—“a gravy train, if I may say it and not be insulting.” He returned Reverend Schell’s stare. “It’s the way things are done now, Reverend. It’s 1956. That Eisenhower is a different sort, really. Maybe it’s his military thinking, but his type don’t go right to the people, they work through the leaders. So of course the first thing I said when I was approached about working with this project is that we need to bring Reverend Schell on board. A pivotal leader in this community, I told them.”

  Willie Mann walked back to his seat and glanced at Tom Moore. He didn’t tell Reverend Schell that Royale owed the city for back real estate taxes, that he’d racked up citations for violating the blue laws when he served liquor on Sunday mornings, that he had been caught buying wholesale from a nonlicensed distributor in New Jersey. He didn’t tell Reverend Schell that he was working with the project not only to protect the business Big Carl had built up over the years but also to keep his own pretty ass out of jail.