The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  My granny tells them, don’t fight. It ain’t nice to do that, and Aunt Pauline says she was just saying. She reaches and squeezes my granny’s hand. She says she’s sorry, but days later my great-grandmother passes away.

  Dear Pearl dies way before her time. She had been eighty-seven, but that’s a very young age in our family. She should have had ten more years, though it was true that Dear Pearl had let herself go after she became a widow. She got fat, stopped wearing her bottom partials, and her daughters had to harass her to get in the bathtub twice a week. She didn’t have the sugar diabetes, though, even though she loved cola and peppermint candy. Her doctor had told her it was a miracle she was reasonably healthy.

  Nobody knew when it had happened. Dear Pearl went to bed early, skipping supper and saying she was gone lie down. Her cane tapped slowly as she walked back to her bedroom. The next morning, we heard Miss Rose calling her mother. When Dear Pearl didn’t rise, my granny said she was getting in more sleep, which Dear Pearl surely deserved. Hadn’t she worked hard all her life? Let her settle under that chenille spread. My sisters and I sat in the kitchen, while Miss Rose puttered around, cutting slices of streak-o-lean. Cracking eggs and pouring in heavy cream she’d bought from the farm down the road. My granny doesn’t believe in store-bought anything. During the summers, she cooks two sets of breakfasts: one for herself, my mother, and Dear Pearl, and another for my sisters and me. After breakfast, Miss Rose put the cooked meat and the biscuits in the oven but threw out the scrambled eggs. She went out to the garden with my sisters and me and plucked some weeds. When she came back it was lunchtime, but my great-grandmother hadn’t yet risen. When Miss Rose went into the room, it only took a moment for her to know something was wrong, and her cries climbed into full-blown screams.

  My granny’s a cheerful, smiling woman who offers perky words whenever you need them, but after she finds Dear Pearl, her tears are steady. I worry that she might not have any more water to give. I offer her full glasses, along with shoulder pats.

  “Thank you, baby,” she says, but she keeps right on crying.

  In a few hours after Dear Pearl is found, Mr. Cruddup, the Black mortician in town, pulls his funeral hearse up to the house. He solemnly greets my family and whispers his condolences. Only after he leaves with Dear Pearl in the hearse does Uncle Root arrive. He told my mother he didn’t want to see his sister carried out with her face covered. Uncle Root’s in his baby-blue seersucker suit, his red-and-blue-striped bow tie neatly centered, but he seems very sad. He sits in one of the plastic-covered chairs in the living room, his chin on his fist, and stares at the wall. Every hour, Mama sends me over with a full plate. Doesn’t he want to eat something? It might make him feel better. But the old man only shakes his head.

  The day before the funeral, I ask my mother if we have time to go to Macon to buy me a dress. I don’t have anything appropriate, only jeans and sundresses, but Mama goes to her room. She comes back out with a navy-blue dress with lace at the collar. There are low, dark heels, pantyhose, and a slip, all in my size.

  “I had a dream about Dear passing, so I packed this for you. But I put it out my mind. You know, sometimes I dream about something and it never even comes true. I was hoping it would be like that this time.”

  Ever since I was little, my mother would say that in Chicasetta it wasn’t a rare Black funeral that went badly, it was a rare one that didn’t. And there aren’t any cremations, either. Black folks in Chicasetta don’t believe in that: it’s not natural. That’s what they have the insurance man for. You pay him every month (or every two weeks, depending on the schedule), and no matter how poor you are, you have enough for a suitable burial. If you’re too poor for the burial insurance, Mr. Cruddup solicits donations for the homegoing. He’s closemouthed about your business, too. Mama says you can control the casket, the flowers, what part of the Black cemetery in town you’re laid to rest in, but you can’t control the guest list. It looks bad keeping somebody from paying their respects. What’s more complicated is when someone in your family misbehaves.

  Before the funeral, Mama tells me a secret, one I should never mention: Aunt Pauline isn’t Dear Pearl’s biological child. She raised the baby girl as her own after Annie Mae, the child’s mother, abandoned her. Annie Mae’s my granny’s blood sister, but she’s been gone so long that if her child hadn’t been given a photo of her, Aunt Pauline wouldn’t have even known the woman if she passed her on the street. The photo and a few stories are all that’s left of Annie Mae: Her favorite color. (Blue.) That she played the trumpet like an angel of God. That she never could stand wearing a dress.

  My granny never had made a sign that Aunt Pauline was adopted, and the two of them were so thick. So it didn’t make sense when my granny cut a jig at Mr. Cruddup’s funeral home, screaming that she wanted a white coffin, instead of the maroon one Aunt Pauline had picked out, Mama says—she was there at the funeral home when it happened. But then again, Aunt Pauline wanted to control the scriptures, to read Psalm twenty-three, instead of Ephesians, chapter two, verse eight. Aunt Pauline pulled out their mother’s Bible to show which scripture she’d loved the best, but Miss Rose told her that didn’t count for nothing. Everybody knew their mother never had learned to read. Mr. Cruddup whispered he would leave them to make the choice, but even after that Miss Rose and Aunt Pauline argued about what food to serve at the repast. One wanted pork chops, pound cake, and rolls. The other wanted fried chicken, sweet potato pie, and biscuits. At least they could agree upon the greens.

  It takes Uncle Root to bridge the feud. When he shows, Mama tells me to go back to my room with my sisters. Grown folks are talking, but she doesn’t fuss at me when I hang in the doorway of the living room. I hear the old man tell my granny and Aunt Pauline they ought to be ashamed of themselves. What kind of daughters behave this way, when their mother has only recently been called to Glory? It’s a scandal, and if the two don’t start acting right, he’ll make the decisions for the homegoing and the repast himself. He’s paying for most of it, after all. Because that fifteen-hundred-dollar burial policy his sister had taken out didn’t begin to cover the cost.

  Thursday afternoon, we walk into the funeral as the organist plays an instrumental of “Precious Lord,” lingering on every third note. Our family moves behind the white casket carried in by white-gloved men. We can’t hold all the mourners for Dear Pearl at our family church, so the venue’s been moved to the gymnasium of the new high school. Men carry in flowers and announce the last name of a family as they hold up each arrangement. So many flowers, as if a garden’s bloomed under the gym’s basketball net. All the older ladies wear hats. When Elder Beasley steps behind the podium, there’s a flurry of white, as those same women pull out handkerchiefs. He begins with Psalm twenty-three, before moving to Ephesians.

  Later, at the repast in the high school’s cafeteria, my mother says, what a beautiful homegoing. The adults at our table nod in agreement as they nibble at their plates of fried chicken, pork chops, greens, and candied yams. Those store-bought, faintly sweet, white rolls that everyone in the south seems to like, and biscuits that have chilled. There are many different flavors of cake. No one at our table mentions how the always dignified Uncle Root wept loudly behind the podium during his eulogy until my mother had gone up and hugged him, before walking him back to his seat. Or that Uncle Huck had been too broken up to attend his mother’s funeral, so he’d sent his boyfriend in his stead. The mourners only remark that it’s so nice that Miss Rose and Aunt Pauline have made up. At the grave site out on the family farm, they’d watched as the casket was lowered into the ground and the two sisters held each other.

  “Mama, don’t leave,” they’d screamed. “Mama, please don’t go!”

  The Definitions of Siddity

  A week after the funeral of my great-grandmother, Mama and I packed the station wagon again and left my sisters behind in Chicasetta. Coco insisted on taking the bus back up to New Haven, and Lydia drove her little car th
e twenty-five miles over Highway 441 to her own college campus. I should have been excited: Finally, I was starting at Toomer High, but I didn’t have anybody to help me get ready. To make sure I looked like I was in high school.

  When I was little, Lydia would unravel my four braids, oiling my edges with the blue grease from the medicine cabinet. She’d put ribbons in my hair, and tell me I was beautiful with my brown face and my brown eyes. It didn’t matter what Nana Claire said. She was just jealous of me, because she was pale as a corpse and you could see her creepy blue veins. And brown skin was the most beautiful, so I could sit in the sun as much as I wanted. Nana was mean, Lydia insisted. I shouldn’t pay any attention to her.

  I wanted a teenaged hairstyle, instead of braids, for the first day of ninth grade. Lydia would have helped me to wash my hair and roll it, so I could sit under the dryer. But Lydia wasn’t there, and Mama told me nothing was wrong with my hair the way it was. She’d been saying that since middle school.

  The morning of the first day of school, I gave myself a pep talk while looking in the bathroom mirror: You’re absolutely fine! It’s going to be okay! It’s a new school this year, and you’ll be really popular there!

  A knock on the door. A rattling of the doorknob, but I was locked inside.

  “Are you in there talking to yourself?” Mama asked.

  “That’s my business,” I called. “But it’s an intelligent conversation.”

  “Don’t you get smart with me, little girl.”

  I looked at myself and then took down my braids. I pulled my hair back in a long ponytail, sprinkled some water on my edges, and brushed them down. There. That might do. And in my room, I dressed in my best jeans and name-brand, button-down oxford shirt. I put shiny pennies in my loafers and repeated my inner pep talk. But the kitchen felt bigger with only me at the table, as my mother clicked around in her schoolteacher’s outfit, her high heels and green dress. She forgot to tell me how pretty I was without Lydia there to remind her. There was a loud greeting at the front door as Aunt Diane let herself in with her key, followed by my cousins Malcolm and Veronica. Malcolm went to Toomer High, too, so we’d be riding together.

  When the station wagon pulled up to the front of school, my mother stopped the car and unclicked her seat belt. I begged her, for the love of God, to please just drop off Malcolm and me. We already had our homeroom assignments and our class schedules. Please don’t embarrass me. Mama’s face was hurt as she fastened her seat belt again.

  In the front hallway of the school, Malcolm hovered.

  “You okay? I can walk you to your homeroom. That was mine, three years ago.”

  “I’m fine, okay? This isn’t the first day of kindergarten. I’m not Veronica.”

  He tapped my shoulder lightly. “All right, then, killer. Hold it down.”

  By lunchtime, I was feeling hopeful. A girl in my English class had told me she liked my shirt and my penny loafers. She was adorable. Brown with deep dimples and curvy by fourteen-year-old standards. Her relaxed hair fell below her shoulders, there were gold hoops in her ears, and her brand-name oxford shirt was identical to mine, except it was pink while mine was lavender.

  “You look dope, girl,” she said.

  “Thanks!” I said. “You, too.”

  Her name was Cecily Rester, and in the cafeteria she waved me over to the table, where she sat with four other stylishly dressed girls. I’d been walking beside Malcolm, but when she waved I put more distance between my cousin and me.

  “Is it okay if I sit with those girls?” I asked.

  “Do your thing, killer.”

  He headed over to a table of guys, and I set my tray down at Cecily’s table.

  “Is that your man?” she asked.

  “Definitely not! He’s my cousin.”

  “Ooh, girl! That’s good, because that dude’s a nerd.”

  Everyone at the table laughed. If I laughed, I’d be disloyal to Malcolm, but I did anyway. I told her I couldn’t help who I was related to. They laughed again, and I looked over at my cousin.

  One of the other girls said that he might be nerdy, but he was fine as hell, with those waves. He looked like El Debarge.

  “Whatever,” Cecily said. “Ain’t nobody tryna get with Malcolm Garfield. Ain’t his mama a white lady?”

  The next day, when I entered the cafeteria, she waved me over to her table, and the next days after that, too. She and her friends were popular. I could see that from the way the other freshmen in the cafeteria looked in their direction, but Cecily and her friends never looked back, unless it was to point someone out for ridicule. She began joining me on the steps after school as I waited for Aunt Diane to pick up my cousin and me. I was glad Mama was on bus duty at the school where she taught, so that it was my aunt’s glossy Volvo instead of my mother’s old brown station wagon that pulled up daily.

  My cousin sat with Cecily and me on the steps, but in the car after, I told him my friend and I had things to talk about. I lowered my voice: beside me, my baby cousin Veronica was napping in her car seat.

  “Like, girl things,” I said. “Like really private things we’d be embarrassed to talk about in front of boys.”

  “Are you talking about menstruation?” my aunt asked. “There’s no need to be shy about that. It’s a natural part of any young girl’s life, and he already knows—”

  “Naw, naw, I get it.” Malcolm’s face was pink, as he fumbled with the seat belt. “It’s cool, killer. I’ll wait somewhere else. Do your thing.”

  * * *

  I’d never had a girlfriend before, except for Lydia, and a sister had to love you. That was the blood contract, and I supposed that’s why I had my father’s mother as a friend, too. Nana Claire wasn’t very nice, but she was family.

  I was her favorite; or rather, I was the only grandchild she tolerated. My sisters weren’t to Nana’s liking, and the feeling was mutual: they made fun of her behind her back. Nor did she want to spend time with Malcolm. Boys were savages, she told me. She’d only tolerated her own sons as a mother’s cross to bear. And Veronica was going on five and thus too taxing on the nerves.

  Nana was unlike any woman in my mother’s family. She wore coral lipstick to match her nail polish and powdered her nose and cheeks daily, even if she never left the house. Nana did not cook like my Chicasetta granny. The only recipe she knew by heart was for her Creole cookies, which she only baked on holidays. She employed a maid because she didn’t do housework. A lady had to worry about her hands, and Nana wore white cotton gloves to bed every night, slathering her hands with petroleum jelly before the gloves went on. She never went outside without a hat, and she warned me that if I wasn’t careful to protect my skin, I’d have the complexion of an old fishwife when I turned thirty. Nana never seemed to sweat, either. No matter how high the temperature, her brow remained fresh, and she was lovely smelling. Her aroma took you to a better place in the world, where there was no hunger or war or southern relatives who ate repasts of pig offal and covered their living room furniture in plastic.

  Nana and I would take our Saturday field trips. I’d spend the night, and the next morning, we would dress in church clothes and take a taxi to Worthie’s, the department store downtown. I would sit outside the dressing room waiting for her. When she emerged wearing one of the conservative yet expensive outfits she’d tried on, I’d clap for her, as if she were a fashion model.

  When we returned from shopping, we would sit in the anteroom outside her bedroom’s inner chamber. Nana in her wing chair, while I sat on the floor. She’d turn the pages of one of her photo albums. She had hundreds of pictures, some in albums, others in special binders. There were pictures covering the red-painted walls of the anteroom, too, in silver frames, and more in the bedroom. Pictures of my grandfather Zachary, whom his grandchildren had called “Gandee.” My father and Uncle Lawrence as small children dressed up for Easter. My sisters and me in matching, fancy dresses. My cousin Malcolm standing behind Aunt Diane, a hand on her sho
ulder as she held a bald baby Veronica.

  She pointed to an older photo in the album. Tucked into four corner holders.

  “This was taken at the Vineyard. 1938, I believe. Or ’39. It was before the war, though.”

  “World War Two, Nana?”

  “Yes, Ailey. How old do you think I am? That was almost fifty years ago, so I suppose I am close to my dotage. But don’t tell anybody that.”

  Nana handed me another photo. “This is Mrs. Richardson and me when we were young girls.”

  “I think I remember that lady. She died, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. Poor thing. Breast cancer. Can you believe I was ever that young? That’s me, on the right. I’m the blonde.”

  Two very pale girls wore bathing suits. The brunette wore a modest, almost dowdy suit. It wasn’t a color photo: the blond girl’s hair looked white in its pageboy style. The halter of her suit’s bosom was shirred, and the bottom exposed lots of thigh.

  “Mother complained so much about that suit, but I told her, ‘It’s the new style, and I’m going to live until I get married. Really live!’ I’m glad I did. The war cut into our fun, and I went gray so early, right after Lawrence was born. You can’t wear gray hair past your chin. It looks unkempt. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ailey, how many times have I told you that ‘ma’am’ is servant talk and we are not servants? At least we are not on my side of the family.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wish your mother wouldn’t take you down to that backwoods metropolis every summer. It’s ruining you. Here’s the cottage on Oak Bluffs. It’s getting difficult to travel now, but do you know why I still go, Ailey?

  “No, ma—no, Nana.”

  “I go because there are Negroes like me there, people with whom I feel comfortable. We are accomplished, we are quiet, and we never make trouble. If you adhere to those rules, you will have peace with others.”