When I pulled out my notebook, Dr. Oludara told me, put that away. Just stand here awhile and look at this place. Think about the people who had lived in this one room. That’s all I needed to do. She’d been to this cabin four different times, though the guide didn’t remember her. She’d even taken pictures.
On our return drive, we stopped at a homestyle diner. The meal was on her, even after I told her I was really hungry. I ordered a whole catfish and hush puppies. Four sides, and I took two rolls out of the basket and smeared margarine on them.
“Gosh, I’m starving. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I had that fried pie. And I ate a huge breakfast before that.”
“Don’t you even worry, Ailey. I’m about to grub myself, when my plate comes. The catfish is outstanding here.”
We didn’t talk much on the rest of the drive. I was sleepy from all the food I’d eaten, and Dr. Oludara didn’t start a conversation. It was evening by the time we arrived back on campus, though the summertime sun was high. She wheeled the car into the parking lot, but when I opened the door, she asked, could we sit a spell? She’d keep the car running so we could sit in the cool air.
“So, what’d you think, Ailey?”
“You want me to tell you the truth?”
“Definitely.”
“I hated that tour guide! He was so rude. No, not rude”—I tilted my head—“something else I can’t put my finger on.”
“He was dismissive.”
“Yes!” I bounced in my seat. “That’s it! It’s like, he didn’t even care about the Indians or the Black folks. And when he said we should be proud that slaves had built that plantation? Ooh, I wanted to choke him!”
She laughed. “I know! I’m glad I was there. You were about to catch a case.”
“You said you’ve visited four times. How many of these other plantations have you toured?”
“In the past five years? Twelve. And I’ve gone to each at least twice.”
“Oh God.”
“That dude back at Moss Road is one of the nicer ones. I’ve had other guides stop the tour when I asked about slavery. A couple of the plantations, they’ve literally whitewashed the quarters and put in furniture and throw rugs, like a slave cabin can be gentrified.”
“How do you deal with that?”
“You get used to it. But there’s something about the sadness I feel, whenever I go those places. It’s all on my skin. But you must know what I mean. Your family lives on a former plantation. You must feel those people every time you step on the land.”
I moved my purse onto my lap. I liked this lady, but I wasn’t going to tell her my business. I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and she would, if I told her my dead sister talked to me.
“I guess I don’t really think about it much.”
“Really? Dr. Hargrace took me on a tour of the place a few years back. None of the original cabins are still there, but there’s the old general store and the plantation house ruins.”
“Did he take you to his pecan tree, too? He loves that tree!”
She didn’t join in my laughter. “He did take me, Ailey. And I was very respectful. Dr. Hargrace tries to entertain people with that story, but one can only imagine the trauma of that experience, that he narrowly escaped a lynching. I’m sure he has nightmares about that.”
“You think so?”
“Of course he does! And the fact that a Black man of his generation stayed in the deep south and had to struggle with that memory? And then continued to do such important work for his students, even for the Black community in Chicasetta? How he’s kept your family church intact? Do you know that the original wood floor of that church is still there, from back in 1881?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And now he’s trying to stop it from becoming a historical site.”
“But why? That would be a good thing, right?”
“Usually it would, but he wants to keep it private property. Otherwise, the city will want to have tours up there, and then people will want to visit that mound behind the church. He has an attorney helping him, to make sure the state doesn’t try any shenanigans. A family friend, he said. A young brother named James something. He just passed the bar.”
“David James?”
“That’s him. Dr. Hargrace wants to make sure people won’t walk on that mound and erode it. Like what happened to Rock Eagle. People came through there stealing bits and pieces of the monument.”
“This is the first I’ve heard anything about this. Uncle Root didn’t tell me one thing.”
“Ailey, hasn’t your family lived on that land for over a century?”
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s been a long time.”
“You have all this history in your actual backyard and never were curious about it? That’s surprising.” Her bracelets clattered. “What do the kids say? Girlfriend, you’re slipping.”
When she pulled up to the old man’s house, she told me, don’t forget to shower and pray. Remember what happened last time.
* * *
In the days that followed, I began to talk about our family church, hoping Uncle Root would reveal what he and David had been working on, but he never took the hint.
One night at dinner, I told him that it hurt my feelings that he was keeping secrets from me. That Dr. Oludara had told me all about what he and David had been doing, to make sure the church didn’t become a historical site, unless the state agreed to Uncle Root’s terms.
“I wasn’t being intentionally secretive, Ailey. You’ve never seemed concerned with family history.”
“That’s not true! I love your stories. Didn’t I ask you to tell me your Du Bois story last night?”
“That is for entertainment. This issue with the church is a serious legal matter that involves Brother David. He owns the building.”
“But I thought Elder Beasley owned everything. He’s been the preacher for, like, forever.”
“He was appointed by our congregation, back in the sixties, but that building was in the name of David’s grandfather, and when J.W. died, he inherited it. This is why David didn’t leave the state for law school. He promised his grandfather and me that he would look after the church, because I own the land the church sits on. And that includes the mound.”
“But what about the cemetery? Miss Cordelia is old. Won’t her relatives try to sell the farm?”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that. Not at all. Cordelia and I have an understanding.”
I tried to salvage my anger. “You still could have told me. That’s not cool.”
“Sugarfoot, I’d be happy to share any information about our family. All you have to do is ask. You know I love talking to you. Now, I think I’d like a cup of real coffee for a change. What about you? Why don’t I put us on a pot?”
That Sunday, after church, I walked through the fellowship hall and out the back door of the church. I hadn’t been back there for a long time, ever since I’d been stung by the wasp. The outhouse had been torn down, once the inside toilet was installed in the fellowship hall. Now nothing obstructed the view of the mound and pink and blue wildflowers that had erupted on its surface. Behind me, I heard the old man ask, wasn’t it beautiful? He touched my shoulder, and I nodded. I laid my cheek on his hand.
On the walk back down the hill, he wanted to visit his pecan tree. He had a feeling it was lonely without him. When we walked through the tall weeds, the old gray cat came up to me, mewling.
He leaned against his tree. “I’m not young anymore, either, Ailey.”
“Here you go with that—”
“—stop, sugarfoot! Would you just stop?” His voice was transformed: he was nearly shouting.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Root. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“You have to listen sometimes! You can’t cut folks off or talk over them every time they say something you don’t want to hear.”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighed, and when he spoke again, he’d lowe
red his voice. “Ailey, an old person needs people to take care of them, no matter how independent they want to be. But I didn’t know that as a young man. I promised my mother I would leave, when I was a little boy. I didn’t even know what she meant when she told me, leave this place. Olivia wanted to come back south, so we could help my family, but I hated this place. I hated the white folks for being so brutal, and I hated the Negroes for being so afraid. And once I came home, I hated my brother, Tommy. I was furious all the time.”
He stayed quiet for a time. He broke off twigs from his tree, but I didn’t say anything. I waited. I wanted him to know I had paid attention to his words about listening.
“One Sunday, I was sitting on the porch and my brother walked up and sat down. Tommy liked to come and visit Pearl on the Lord’s day. She always had a plate for him, and they would sit and rock on the glider. As he sat there, I listened to him talk. He was so sweet and friendly, and my sister and him got along like a house on fire. He was ten years older than her, old enough to be my father, and he thought he was a fair man, what we used to call ‘good white folks,’ even though every Negro family on his farm was barely scraping to get by. All the Negroes except my family, that is. But Tommy had lied to himself that he was an honorable man, and my sister was lying to him, and all the Negroes on the premises were lying, too. Acting like he was another breed from the other white men in town, but they never knew when he’d turn on them. Those turns were rare, but they had happened, and so the Negroes on Wood Place held their breath. Pearl wasn’t scared of him, but everybody else was. That was the truth, Ailey. And the truth can be both horrible and lovely at the same time. It seemed like I was the only one who would say that out loud. I was the only Negro that Tommy knew who would tell him what was what. And you’re like me, Ailey. You tell everybody the truth.”
“Not all of it, Uncle Root. There’re things I just can’t say out loud. Not now and maybe not ever. I’m tired sometimes. And I’m really, really sad.”
“I know you are, sugarfoot.”
“I was sad before Lydia died. Even before Daddy died. I didn’t want to admit that to myself. It seemed like I was just holding on, and now I just don’t know if I’ll ever not be sad.”
“But it’s good that you can say how you feel, Ailey. And you don’t have to tell all the truth if you don’t want to. But it’s important to know what the truth is, even if you only say it to yourself.”
I walked the few steps to where the old cat lay in a sunny spot. She probably had fleas or worse, but I leaned and stroked her head. She purred and rolled over on her back, exposing a belly that had bits and pieces of leaves stuck in the hair.
I spoke with my back turned. “Lydia is still gone, no matter what I say. Why couldn’t I save her, Uncle Root? I wanted to, so bad. I wanted to make her better.”
“I know. That’s the way I felt about my mother, Ailey. She died and left me when I was just a little boy, and for years, I blamed myself. If I could have taken her away from this farm, from my father, from all this racism and oppression, she might not have caught influenza. That frustration will probably be with me until the moment I leave this earth. But once she was gone, it took me years to see that I had to live for the both of us, because she loved me so much. Like Lydia loved you. Anybody could see that, Ailey. She was crazy about you. She probably loved you more than even I do, and I love you very, very much. And that’s why you have to carry on, Ailey. Wherever Lydia is, she’s asking that of you. She wants that for you.”
I kept scratching the cat’s tummy, and she wiggled around on her back. Purring, eyes closed into green slits.
Song
The Growth of a Family
Even in a place of sorrow, time passes. Even in a place of joy. Do not assume that either keeps life from continuing, for there are children everywhere. And children are life, for they keep their mothers’ beauty. Sometimes, even when their mothers are lost to death or distance, these women urge their young toward survival. This is what happened after the girl Mamie died in labor giving birth to Samuel Pinchard’s son, who had been named Nick. Even in death, Mamie looked after her child.
After Mamie’s death, the newborn Nick needed milk, and there were only two women in the Quarters who were nursing. These two women shared the bald, white baby between them. They walked between their cabins to exchange him. Yet while they were feeding Nick, they did not touch his face or make the sounds that babies crave. Neither woman wanted to raise the baby as their own; he looked like his father, whose transgressions had killed Mamie. Though Nick was blameless, it did not matter to these women. They had no affection for him.
After his nursing time, when Nick could tolerate mashed sweet potatoes and finely minced greens, and did not wake in the night, screaming for milk and absent love, the women approached Aggie. They asked her to take Nick for her own child. Ahead of time, the two women had worked out the argument, that they had five children between them and husbands and field work. One woman was holding Nick, and when she put him down, the child crawled to Aggie. She picked him up and he twined his arms around her neck. Her breasts began to ache, and she heard Mamie’s voice telling her, don’t abandon her baby. He could not help that he looked like a slave master. He was only a motherless child, and Aggie should know how that felt.
Aggie took this baby in without asking Midas or Pop George, but they did not reject the child’s arms, either. Before he was old enough to walk alone, Aggie carried the baby on her back, wrapped around her in a cloth. In his third summer, Nick let go of Aggie’s hand and joined the other Quarters children in their play. The child listened to Pop George’s stories and, despite his pale skin, blond kinks, and cat’s-eyes, he was accepted by the other little ones, for the very young do not take on prejudice the same as adults.
Nick was enough for his now-mother. Aggie did not want another baby. It was one thing to take care of a little boy who had no one else in the world, but to bring another child into it was too much for Aggie—for after the death of Mamie, Samuel’s ugly appetite had increased. The first time, he’d knocked on the door of one of the cabins, asking for a darling dark-skinned little girl by name. She had an infectious laugh and dimples; in the fields, the grown folks could not help but return her smile. The little girl’s father had refused to send his child out, and that next morning, the father had been found dead in the fields, his broken body a brazen image, and Carson Franklin had ordered two Quarters-men to drag the corpse to the small cemetery allotted for Negroes. The next night, Samuel knocked on the same cabin door. The little girl’s mother tried to refuse—her face was lined with tears—but Samuel pushed past the mother and sought the child. The mother screamed, and holding on to the child, Samuel kicked at her legs. As he headed out of the cabin, the mother called after her child, Mama shole was sorry.
Thus, Aggie listened to her body; remembering the lessons of her grandmother Helen, she resisted Midas’s quiet embraces in the front chamber of the two-room cabin during the times when her womb wanted to conceive. If she gave in to her own desire, she made sure to drink a tisane from wild carrot seeds steeped in boiling water, which would make her body inhospitable to pregnancy. Yet, when two years passed and Samuel had not snatched any more little girls from the Quarters, Aggie relented. With a monster like her master, she couldn’t be sure that all would be well, but she let Midas court her womb the same as he had done her heart. During her sad times, he took Nick upon his knee, to the boy’s delight and his wife’s reluctant smiles. And Pop George did his part as well. He told Aggie he wanted as many grandchildren as she could give him. They could sleep in his room. And when her womb filled, Aggie relented to gladness. She was fat and hungry through her ten moons of pregnancy.
At Aggie’s labor, when the Quarters-woman who’d urged her to strain and push told her she had given birth to a girl, Aggie was touched with fear. The woman placed the baby to the mother’s breast. Apologetic, she pointed to the red-tinged birthmark on the baby’s forehead, but Aggie laughed in
pleasure. Though her daughter was perfect in her mother’s eyes, the baby would be flawed to her master.
Samuel ordered Pop George to bring the child to the kitchen house, in order for him to inspect the baby Aggie had borne, whom he called his “new property.” He didn’t want to see Aggie for those few minutes, for he couldn’t abide her presence. Pop George reported that when Samuel saw the angry red mark across half of the baby’s forehead and left eyelid, he shrank back with disgust. And Pop George whispered that this child was a blessing, and Midas whispered that God shole was good. And Aggie agreed and held out her arms for her baby, and said she wanted to name her Tess.
Nick clapped his hands at the adults’ joy. He went to the bed where Aggie lay with the baby in her arms and kissed his sister on the cheek.
The Place Where the Young Friends Live
During the time that Aggie had been pregnant with Tess, Samuel had begun the building of the structure on the left side of his house. And only weeks before Tess was born, Lancaster Polcott’s wagon had pulled up to the yard. A bright-colored little girl had been lifted from the back of the wagon by Polcott’s Negro helper. The girl had been adorned in an exquisite child’s dress with many ribbons—the skirt only a bit below her knees and ruffled pantaloons down her legs—but she’d worn a grown woman’s severe coiffure. Aggie’s unborn baby had listed within her, a sad prophecy, as she’d watched the left cabin from afar. She’d seen the new Negro, Claudius, grooming the flowers from afar, but she did not see Samuel.
Aggie suspected what was happening in the left cabin, but she was determined not to let it spoil her own happiness. She cultivated indifference: she was a woman and a slave, and she could not control everything. The little occupant in the left cabin had not been born on Wood Place. She was a stranger. When Aggie stopped nursing and began to have women’s cycles again, she returned to the moon house. Yet she did not reveal Samuel’s actions to Lady, the same way she had been silent about Lady’s Negro heritage. Lady already knew about Mamie, but not the other little girls. It wasn’t Aggie’s responsibility to cause trouble in order to keep others informed.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 57