Within seconds, he stood immobile, drop-jawed, a mouth-breathing fool. There was a great putrefaction in that house with its dirt floor covered by overlapping mats of plaited river grass and the sickbed set plunk in the middle of what was kitchen, bedroom, and parlor all together. Through eyes stung by loathsome fumes, Jackson saw a man, perhaps once black, now mostly gray with impending morbidity, lying on a bare mattress ripped at the sides with its straw sticking out. The man groaned nonstop. His left leg was split from mid-thigh to groin. Around the edges of the wound, black blood puddled purple in the oily light, and at its center were bubbles of noxious pus from which flies fed greedily. Horrified, Jackson stared, choked, screamed, and ran from the house to the riverbank where he collapsed, gasping, in the muck.
It’s questionable whether a boy so young could logically process what had happened to him or what its ramifications might be. In later years, Jackson recalled only that he was rife with guilt at disappointing his father, humiliated that obviously he was not a man, never would be, and plain damn sick from too much reality. While his father did what he could for the wretched man within, Jackson shivered and trembled without. He quaked on his knees, his head buried in his hands. And then Daddy’s promised miracle happened. A soft small hand touched his shoulder, a high sweet voice whispered: You’re alright. You’re alright. Don’t cry, boy. You’re alright.
Jackson lifted his head to look into two black eyes, round and luminous, eyes that held a world of knowing his did not. They belonged to a young, dark-skinned girl, a smidgen older than he. They were twin beams of light pulling him out of himself into a universe where he was, indeed, alright, which is where the miracle lay. He wanted to ask her dozens of questions, but they would not form on his tongue nor issue from his mouth, so he put his arms around her and hugged for all he was worth. For her own reasons—it was her granddaddy perishing inside—she hugged back just as fiercely. The two stayed that way, united, united so for an eternity, until a voice called from the shack: Katherine! Katherine Marie! Bring that child back up the house. His daddy’s gettin’ ready to leave.
It was a toss-up which of the children was more reluctant to move, but move they did, each propelled by the other’s necessity. Jackson halted at the passenger door of the Studebaker. I’ll wait here, he mumbled. I’ll wait with you, Katherine Marie said. She stuck her small pointed chin out and pursed her lips as if in defiance or rather, as Jackson imagined, like an angel of God created especially to protect him, to give him strength to keep standing there upright though his knees knocked mightily in anticipation of his father’s displeasure.
The doctor emerged from the shack, followed by the woman who’d granted them entry, her hands weighted with slop buckets the contents of which she tossed to the side of the door. Daddy’s suit jacket was off, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Even through the dark, Jackson could see his father’s clothes were plastered to his skin. The adults spoke quietly together, then Daddy put his hand on the woman’s bony shoulder, squeezed, and quit her company, walking briskly to the car with his head down. Get in, he said, ignoring the presence of Katherine Marie entirely, but the girl was having none of it. She left Jackson’s side and ran around the car to pull at the back of the doctor’s shirt. Is he dead? she asked. Daddy didn’t answer. She pulled harder, shouted as if Daddy were deaf. I said, is he dead! The doctor twisted his torso to regard her fierce mouth, her narrowed eyes. Not yet, he said. Father and son got in the car, Daddy turned the motor, stuck his head out the window. He will be pretty quick, though. You best get in there and say your goodbyes. The girl started, her shoulders heaved. Then she turned with a grace, a dignity unnatural in a child so young, to walk slowly back into the house of death.
They rode in silence a long while. Jackson did not dare speak, his father had much on his mind and kept his own counsel. The boy prayed that he would continue to do so until they were home, where he could run upstairs and hide in his room. He put his mind on the toys there and the picture books, on his clean, cool sheets, on the seventy-four cowboys painted on the wallpaper. When the car turned down their street and it was maybe a minute before he was home free, Daddy spoke. Or rather he spat his words as if they’d been stuck in his throat the whole time and it needed clearing or he would not breathe another breath—spat them out in a fan of juice that sprayed against the windshield.
Why is it that a ragamuffin gal, brown as a bug, no bigger than my walking stick has more gumption than my own son, Jackson? I ask you that. Why?
Jackson answered with the only explanation he could think of: Because Katherine Marie is an angel of God, he said.
His father slapped the steering wheel with one hand and laughed. This time, his laughter came to the boy’s ears as a cruel, belittling chorus, one that echoed in his ears the rest of his natural life. It followed him like demons after the hopeless when he dashed from the Studebaker into his home, then upstairs and into his room where he slammed the door and wedged his wooden chair against it. He heard Mama’s voice, demanding though covered in sleep: What happened? What did you do to him? What exactly did you do? The doorknob of his bedroom rattled as if she’d tried it. Daddy growled explanation. He was irritated, indistinct. The doorknob rattled again. Then dead silence into which Mama shouted without shouting: Leave him alone. It’s what he wants. Maybe from now on you’ll listen to me once in a while. Her tone deepened to a bass note Jackson had never heard her employ. It prickled his scalp.
Do not forget our arrangement, Doctor Disaster. Do so at your peril.
In the morning, Jackson stayed in his room until he heard Daddy go to the office. When he emerged, bursting with pee and covered in dried mud, Mama greeted him with great good cheer, covering his dirty face with kisses but asking no questions. She bathed him, made him pancakes, in general fussed over him until he wished nothing more than to be left alone. When he returned home at the end of the day, Daddy barely addressed him, although several times Jackson felt his father’s eyes boring into his back. Things stayed pretty much that way between them for the rest of his childhood. As for Katherine Marie, she remained enshrined in a far corner of his mind as an angel of God no matter what Daddy thought. A dark angel in tattered robes, but with the biggest wings God ever made sprouting from between her shoulder blades. He vowed if he ever met her again, he’d return the favor of her comfort in whatever way he could.
He did so in time, but while they were children, this proved more complex a vow to fulfill than a five-year-old could possibly imagine. It wasn’t a question of proximity. He ran into Katherine Marie from time to time. She’d come to his daddy’s office for medical care all her life on charity night, and he saw her there once in a blue moon. The first time he ran into her was two months after her granddaddy passed, on the steps of Sassaport’s News and Gifts where he and Mama had just dropped off a casserole for Uncle Julius since his wife, Junebug, was sick. Katherine Marie! Jackson cried out loud, and embraced her impulsively, hugging as hard as he did that terrible night, and she hugged him back just as hard. Mama smiled to watch this sweet reunion, but after they’d quit Katherine Marie’s company, she told him it wasn’t proper for him to be demonstrative with a Negro girl. In future, he should restrict himself to common greetings and gestures. You don’t want to make that gal feel self-conscious in the town, do you? she cautioned. Young Jackson took his mother’s wisdom to heart without question or comprehension, although ever after when they crossed paths on the streets of the town or that summer he traipsed all over her backyard in the company of his first friend, he hoped Katherine Marie remembered him and could see the wealth of tender feeling he tried to convey in his eyes.
Katherine Marie’s never going to change, Jackson told Stella as they left for the reception. You won’t get an apology out of her. So don’t go jabbing a stick in a beehive. Smile and say hello and go about your business.
Stella muttered what was likely an obscenity while arranging her skirts in the car.
I don’t feel much like changing to pl
ease her either.
Jackson sighed with resignation then dearly wished he hadn’t, for his wife visibly bristled at the sound and a heat rose from her. An ameliorating response was required, but he was damned if he knew what it was.
He fared best with Stella when he was prepared. On the average workday, before he quit his office at night, before he quit the world in which he was respected and obeyed to inhabit one where he was respected only as much as the consorts of queens ever are and any obedience he experienced was coincidental, Jackson prepared to shift gears. He telephoned Stella first, to gauge her mood and inform himself as to her concerns of the day. Then he took out a yellow pad just as he would during consultations with his clients and made a list of the things she’d just told him. These he headed under the title Requisites. Next he wrote down Advice dividing that section into two subsets: Opinion and Support. Where she’d asked his Opinion, he recorded his assessments as one, two, and three with one a and b, two a, b, and c. Where she’d solicited only Support of her own view, he found something positive to scribble under that subtitle even if in his heart of hearts he disagreed. The final section was Cautions, and hardest to compose. Under Cautions, he struggled to invent ways in which he could express his true thoughts without setting her off. While the first categories came to him in seconds, the last could take ten or fifteen minutes. Only when he accomplished that task did he shut the lights and head home. This is the way Jackson Sassaport kept the peace. It was well worth the effort of such painstaking means. When Stella was content, his domestic life was paradisiacal. When she was not, the fires of hell leapt at his feet. In unprepared moments, an addled tongue could get him in trouble.
I don’t suppose you do, honey, he managed at the arrival of this one. He put the car in reverse and backed out the driveway. I don’t suppose you do.
Fortune was with him. Stella’s mind had moved on to her speech, which she began to recite sotto voce.
Sometimes, Jackson reflected, he grew angry with himself for not insisting that his wife instruct her formidable powers of reason to service her emotions on certain occasions instead of the other way about. Her mind was a steel trap when she devoted it to a cause. Why did she let the dogs loose every time her innumerable sensitivities felt violated? Not that Jackson resented her for this. Stella was who she was. During their courtship, she made no bones or apologies about that. Her very family tried to warn him, waving enough red flags to equip a Stalinist rally. He’d wanted her anyway. He’d wanted nothing more than to make Stella Godwin happy, in effect, to protect her from herself. He was prepared and avowed to suffer to achieve that lofty goal. When it came to the part of his life that he feared looked to outsiders like enslavement to feminine caprice, he never blamed his wife. He blamed his mother. He blamed Missy Fine Sassaport.
TWO
Spring, 1947
THE YEARS BEFORE JACKSON’S BROTHER, Ray, was born were the idyll of his childhood. True, Mama was often preoccupied—with what, he never learned—but whenever he asked Eleanor, the cook, or Sukie or Big Bokay why he had not seen her that day, the answer was always the same: Your mama’s preoccupied. Other days, she hovered over him like a haint and just as relentless. He was her doll, her darling. She caressed him constantly and made him laugh. The morning after his experience with her husband’s version of medical school, she told him she’d a great decision to make and a week after that grandly announced she’d made it. I now know what I want you to be when you grow up, she said. I will make you the perfect husband, the prince of every woman’s dreams, and you’ll be loved and tended to forever. Your profession will come to you through your nature, she went on while he attempted to cipher the meaning of “profession,” but a man needs the gratitude of a contented wife to thrive.
To begin with, she taught him the rudiments of domestic chores. While these might not be the lessons young boys crave, the chance to be close to the body of his mother, to catch the odd embrace and the smell of her, good on some days, not so on others, to be, in fact, her day’s preoccupation, was a heady wine for the child. Though the broom was too tall for him, he learned to sweep expertly just for the touch of Mama’s hand across his brow when he was done. He learned to be careful with china and was soon trusted to polish silver. He couldn’t hang the clothes, he was too short. And he couldn’t carry the clothesbasket, it was too large. But he grew expert at churning the wheel of the wringer with two hands while Mama fed the wet clothes through and Sukie gathered them for a good shaking out at the other end. They shopped for groceries together, visited the pharmacy together, the bank.
After he had an appreciation of the work it took to run a household, Mama made sure Jackson was current with the pursuits women enjoy. They played cards, casino and Hollywood gin rummy. She taught him how to brush her hair for her, how to rub the kinks out of her shoulders. She introduced him to the joys of gossip. They listened in to conversations on the party line and pulled apart every nuance of their neighbors’ calls. Once they chanced to eavesdrop on Miss Welty, but it was only an idle chat with a Mrs. Brewster about the downturn in their butcher’s quality of meat. Rumors of a new polio epidemic about to erupt furthered Mama’s schemes. Under the protests of her husband, she kept Jackson from starting kindergarten that fall lest he become infected. They ceased to leave the house much and spent yet more time together. Cosseting him in her lap, she taught him to read and drilled him in his numbers, had him memorize the capitals of Europe, of all forty-eight states, and the major tributaries of the Mississippi. Since Mama held the conviction that women of quality admired music, she played the piano and taught him Stephen Collins Foster songs. That Halloween, she sooted his face and dressed him up as Old Black Joe, which he sang for his neighbors on the swankest streets of Guilford when they opened the door. He was a big hit.
Mother and son spent so much time together, he had no other friends but she. To the people of the town, he looked to be a complete sissy. Missy’s Sissy a tribe of pint-sized ruffians called him behind his back as he and Mama traversed Main. Although he did not know what the word “sissy” meant, he knew it was an insult and complained to her. Mama said: Don’t you mind anything that comes out of the mouths of common children, Jackson. They are ignorant and cruel. Common children don’t have the faculties to appreciate the things we do. They’re just jealous, is all. Remember you are from one of the town’s leading families. You must rise above, rise above.
It took a while, but Jackson eventually realized this claim to local nobility was a spurious one. While their address was desirable, smack in the middle of a swell gentile neighborhood, they remained Jews. Daddy may have been a doctor, but the rest of the family were tradesmen in a town where only landowners with a history going back to slave times could claim the highest rungs of the social ladder as their own. Jackson’s extended family was old, vast, and spread over three counties, but despite their retail empire, despite their town’s proximity to the state’s capital, there were few Jews in Guilford, Mississippi. The twenty or so Sassaport Jews there were amounted locally to a glut. None of these were particularly observant, most ate shellfish and pork. In an orgy of ancestor worship rather than the fear of God, they spent major holidays together, feasting at New Year’s, fasting and apologizing to one another on Yom Kippur, asking the four questions at Passover. At least twice a year, rarely more, they organized a bus to transport the clan to Jackson and the synagogue there. Sassaport women lit candles on Friday night before supper, but there was nowhere for their men to read Torah in the morning, so they slept in on Saturday or opened up shop. Not only did they have no synagogue as their family traditions became muddled, peculiar, sporting accents and melodies of a hybrid Ashkenazi-Sephardic strain that even the Jews of the capital could not decipher, but they failed to found one. When they married or passed, they hired a traveling rabbi to officiate. Like most Jews of the era and region, they did not bar mitzvah their boys. The custom made them stand out too much when their goal was to blend in. The gentiles of Guilford resp
ected them enough to patronize their outlets and offices and were unfailingly polite as well, but it did not often occur to them to drink bourbon or break bread with the murderers of their Lord Jesus Christ. Be that as it may, no one threw stones through their windows or attacked them in the street or rounded them up. Occasionally someone, usually a preacher from his pulpit, lamented the Holocaust or praised the new state of Israel. On civic holidays, they were not only invited to all celebrations but also honored on occasion. Whatever slurs were made against them were made behind their backs, out of hearing. For the Sassaport clan, this proved the glorious difference between America and Nazi Germany. A Jew could make a living in America, unmolested, even in the great maligned South, they told each other. Best country in the damn world, they said, thumping one another on the back. Uncle Benny, who owned the ironworks and gun shop outside of town, was so convinced he bought stars and bars posters for his shop windows and changed his name legally to Benny Lee, retaining however his patronymic.
When Jackson’s special relationship with his mother was over, it was over in a hurry. First he was informed that a brother or sister was coming. Then one day, his mother sat at the piano to teach him patriotic songs from the First World War and the next a music teacher appeared on the doorstep to take over as Mama was close to her time, and needed her rest. Just as suddenly, there were no more reading sessions, no more cards. A waiting stillness fell over the house. Daddy and the servants spoke only in whispers, and Jackson wept quiet tears. He suffered a misapprehension. He considered he was such a failure as a child that Mama had grown weary of him. Or he considered if her pregnancy turned difficult, it was because he had worn her out. When January semester came, Jackson was sent to a private school. The doctor had sworn to his wife that not a single student or student’s family member from Stonewall Elementary had contracted fever accompanied by paralysis. But for Jackson, it felt like the last boot of banishment planted up his backside. He complained to Mama with tears streaming down his cheeks. He didn’t want to go. Lonely as he was, he wanted to stay home. By this time, his brother, Ray, was in residence.
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