On one occasion, a recess monitor snuck up behind a clutch of boys listening with both ears to Jackson’s nonsense and wrote the whole business down. Just before the October break mandated by the State of Mississippi so that rural children both black and white could help harvest the family cotton, picking ‘til their backs ached and their necks burned, a letter was sent from the headmaster of Stonewall Elementary to Dr. and Mrs. Sassaport, a letter of complaint about the obscene mouth their son had developed over the summer. It ended in a threat to expel Jackson if the situation was not immediately corrected. Included were quotations from the spy’s notebook, which had Daddy in gales of laughter and Mama in a fit of outrage. Oh, all children get the facts of life wrong, her husband told her between guffaws, except when they get them right. Mama replied: Don’t insult me, Daddy. This is not what disturbs me. What I am red hot about is the grammar our boy’s picked up from that oversized pickaninny. All that low-life slang! This will not do. This will not do. We must find another way to socialize him.
The next morning was the last Saturday in September. When Big Bokay came by with his grandson to pick Jackson up for a Sabbath of riotous pleasure as was by now their habit, Mama put the kibosh on that day or any other day the one might continue to corrupt the other, saying: Jackson’s a bit poorly today, he can’t go out. Because she was on most occasions a fair woman, she gave Li’l Bokay his four bits anyway. Now, that’ll be the last for a while, she told him. You’re going to be helping your mama and granddaddy in that little field they’ve got the month of October, no? Of course you are. Well, then, we’ll wait until November and see if we want to continue our arrangement at that time. Alright? Alright. You all have a bountiful harvest, now. And a very good day.
Meanwhile, Jackson came barreling down the stairs eager and happy. Since school started, he spent the whole week long waiting for Saturday when he would once again play with his hired friend. Mama, Mama, where’s Li’l Bokay going? he asked. Is there something wrong? She bent over and gave him a hug. No, no, Jackson. Daddy and I have a surprise for you today, a big surprise. Just you wait ‘til Daddy gets home!
Jackson was not the fool everyone took him for. He was well aware his father kept office hours Saturday mornings. But Mama, he won’t be home for hours and hours and hours. Why can’t I play with Li’l Bokay ‘til then? She chucked him under the chin and lied to him as easily as she’d lied to the two Bokays. Because Li’l Bokay has some family business of his own today as it happens. Now, you go just read a book or something ‘til Daddy gets home. Unless you’d like to help me with Baby Ray. You can play with Baby Ray. At her suggestion, Jackson decided reading had fresh charms and repaired to his room.
When the doctor returned home at the end of the day, he had Big Bokay with him, the two of them struggling together to bring a large wooden crate into the house. They tipped it this way, they tipped it that, and finally shimmied it through the front door while Jackson watched from the stairs, his head half stuck through the spindles of the staircase. The women of the house—Mama, Sukie, and Eleanor—huddled in a far corner of the living room watching with interest as intense as the boy’s. Next came a lot of grunting and banging about until the men succeeded in freeing the crate of its contents: a brand-new console television, the first any of them had ever seen. Apparently a shipment of Zeniths had arrived to much fanfare at Uncle Izzy Joe’s appliance store just that week, but for one reason or another this stellar event had escaped Jackson’s ken.
Missy Fine Sassaport changed her mind four times about where the television should make its home. When at last she was satisfied, Daddy plugged it in, set up the rabbit ears, and turned it on. After a bit of fiddling with the controls and ears, they all oohed and ahhed at the crystal clarity of the test pattern and sat around waiting for a program, any program, to appear. Eventually, they watched a wrestling match and ten minutes of news, then the test pattern reappeared with a printed message that The Kate Smith Hour would be on at seven p.m., followed by the inestimable Milton Berle. Though the attendant commotion of the day was at least distracting to the boy, Jackson couldn’t figure out why the grown-ups were so excited or why they kept telling him how lucky he was to have such a fabulous invention in his living room sitting right there next to Mama’s veneered credenza, formerly the prized item of furniture in the house. When he made their acquaintance, he found Miton Berle funny, and Kate Smith looked as warm and cushy as Mama herself. But he preferred the big color screen at the picture show to the one populated by tiny black-and-white figures at home. The Zenith, he decided, was a toy for grown-ups that had little to do with him. By the next day, he learned otherwise.
Late Sunday morning, Mama dressed him up in his blue suit and slapped a cap on his head. She hooked up her girdle, put on her navy funeral dress, her spectators and best hose, then topped it all off with a flouncy blue hat stuck through by an enormous pearl knobbed hatpin. Mother and child went for a walk past St. John the Divine Episcopal Church just as the congregation got out of service. While the families of congregants lingered chatting to one another on the steps and front walk, Missy Fine Sassaport patted Jackson’s rear end and told him to skedaddle off and wish a pleasant Sabbath to this classmate and that. She remained behind to greet their mothers, taking the opportunity to bewail the dismal verbal habits her son had absorbed from unfortunate sources. She begged pardon of those he had so innocently offended, and assured everyone that all this amounted to a mischievous phase, now absolutely over. Then she dropped the confidence that by the way, the family had purchased a television.
Fresh from communion with the Celestial, the ladies of St. John the Divine extended Christian charity to the Sassaport family and forgave Jackson his sins of prurience largely due to what they considered the persuasive charm of his mother, who was quite refined for a heathen. When they further informed their husbands over Sunday supper that the family of Jackson Sassaport had purchased one of the new televisions, the children of the household invariably overheard. In screeches or wheedles, they badgered their parents to buy a television too, as well as to acquire them an invitation to the Sassaport home immediately. Considering themselves scientific-minded, their daddies to a man were curious about televisions. Confronted by the pleas of whining children disturbing the Sabbath peace, they raised their eyes helplessly, perhaps a bit pleadingly, to their wives, who replied: Dr. Sassaport’s wife mentioned we are welcome to stop by any time at all to witness this electronic wonder.
That night the Sassaport living room was packed with neighbors. Children three deep sat cross-legged around the television with Jackson as their suddenly popular center. They watched The Ed Sullivan Show, where to the delight of all Julius La Rosa sang, Nanette Fabray made jokes, and a man juggled one hundred dinner plates for what must have been five entire minutes. Eleanor and Sukie made refreshments of iced tea and triangles of chicken salad between crustless bread. The two had never served quite so solicitously before, chiefly for the excuse to enter the room and catch a bit of old Ed themselves. From that night until Christmastime, when the congregation of St. John the Divine bought televisions from Uncle Izzy Joe en masse, there were friends of Jackson over watching television almost daily. Sukie began to badger Dr. Sassaport for a raise in her wages if every day there was going to be a party in the house. He refused. He was going broke enough, he told her, feeding the army of brats who had invaded his domain.
One Saturday morning just after this exchange, a gang of them was over, lounging around on the furniture and floor, mesmerized by Howdy Doody. Sukie was exasperated. It was supposed to be her day off. The kitchen was a shambles, two foot soldiers of Dr. Sassaport’s army had spilled milk all over Miss Missy’s plush red rug, and twice she’d been on her hands and knees mopping it up, and then a third had not only turned over his glass but jumped up and down at something Buffalo Bob said and ground brownie crumbs into it. She got down on her hands and knees again, praying to Jesus to bury the curses running through her head. Then she looked up, brus
h in hand from her chore, and shrieked. Frightened by the rude, sharp sound, the children all shrieked as well, disturbing the lady of the house who was upstairs working on her household accounts. Down the staircase she pounded, imagining a dozen catastrophes had occurred. What she found were six of Jackson’s playmates once again staring placidly at the tube’s screen, Sukie on her hands and knees, and Jackson himself on the other side of the room with his head stuck through the window talking to Li’l Bokay and some other village child.
Sukie! What on earth was going on down here? Jackson! Get away from there! You’re ignoring your guests.
Sukie shut her eyes so she would not have to see herself reduced to relating to Miss Missy the following: I’m very sorry, ma’am. I was startled when I looked out the window, as it appeared to me in my tired and distracted state that Li’l Bokay and Don Edward standing there were grown men about to break in. I guess I frighted the children, but they’re fine now.
To prevent herself from abusing the maid, Jackson’s mama yelled at him instead. I said get away from there, Jackson! And you two get away from that window! Don’t you ever sneak up on my house again. Do you hear me?
The dead could have heard her. Jackson jumped a foot away from the window at her first note. The children forgot Princess Summerfall Winterspring and went stunned and wide-eyed at its second. Li’l Bokay’s cousin took off. But Li’l Bokay stood his ground. He waited patiently until she was through and said: Miss Missy, ma’am, I was just hopin’ to see the new TV. No, no you will not see the new TV. My son has friends of quality now. I cannot, as I am entrusted with their care, expose them to you and your sort of vulgarity.
With that, Jackson’s mother quit the room, the children being children burst into laughter. Jackson stood mute, frowning at the sight of Li’l Bokay marching toward the woods with a measured step, his head low. In the next moment, he heard the strains of the Post cereal jingle, which he liked to hum around the house, and lost himself in watching the advertisement that went with it rather than digest what had just happened to his first, beloved friend.
There was a sliver of time after the Howdy Doody massacre in which Jackson attempted to mend his relations with L’il Bokay. The very next morning, a Sunday, he left the house while his parents slept in and ran through the woods to the village to find the older boy and apologize to him for Mama’s tirade. First, he ran to his house, a small clapboard structure cut up into seven tiny rooms to house with some pretense to privacy the three adults and five children who lived there, but no one was home. He ran to the Little Children of Jesus Baptist Church next, a place L’il Bokay had mentioned to him in the course of describing the largest female chest he had ever seen, a phenomenon which belonged to the congregation’s choir leader.
The Little Children of Jesus Baptist Church was a square of cinder-blocks with no steeple, although there was a rail-tie cross painted red bolted over its metal front door, a door much like those found in school gymnasiums to keep the noise in and the ruffians out. It was still a warm time of year and the windows were open. Prayerful voices raised in song and recitation burst out of them like air from a bellows. Jackson crept to a window, hunkered down, and peeped. He searched through the mass of black faces within seeking L’il Bokay’s but there were too many of them. Never before had Jackson seen so many Negroes confined in one place. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could breathe in there, cheek to jowl as they were, let alone sing or dance like the group up front where the preacher stood with his arms outstretched. The preacher, a large round man in a white robe adorned with a rainbow of colored crosses embroidered along its hem, swayed from massive hips. His head bobbed up and down or side to side in sharp jerks to the rhythm of his people’s worship ‘til a heavy lock of slicked-back hair fell onto his forehead and bounced there. His lips moved, he seemed to be talking, but the folks he addressed clapped their hands and stomped their feet so loud it looked impossible any of them could hear him.
Giving up, Jackson walked from the church to the street and luck was with him. Big Bokay’s truck pulled up, hauling a dozen or more children decked out in Sunday finery. They stood up in the flatbed so as not to get their best clothes dirty while hanging on to one another for dear life, and L’il Bokay was among them. Don Edward was as well. Jackson waited while the small ones were gathered and lowered to the ground by L’il Bokay’s mama and a woman he felt must be an aunt, and the big ones jumped down. He took a deep breath and approached. L’il Bokay, L’il Bokay, he called out at least five or six times before the other slowly turned round to greet him. Why, Jackson, boy, L’il Bokay said, what you doin’ here? He smiled. It was a cynical smile to match the tone he used, a tone that caused Jackson to furrow his brow in confusion. He sounded like a grown-up with a secret that mere children could not comprehend, like his teacher did when Jackson failed to get the point of a lesson. Beyond this, he wore a suit that aged him considerably. How had L’il Bokay grown up overnight? The question confounded Jackson’s tongue. He stood puzzled and silent until the other said: Look, I got somewheres to go. He nodded his head toward the Little Children of Jesus Baptist Church, which all of his people had just entered. Unless you want to come with. How about that, Jackson? You wanna set in the water and be one with Jesus? Then he laughed a laugh with an unmistakable barb of cruelty at its hind end. Jackson couldn’t find the humor in it. So he took another deep breath and said what he’d come to say.
I just wanted you to know I’m very sorry about yesterday. Mama shouldn’t have talked to you like that. I don’t know what got into her.
Oh, you don’t.
No. I do not.
Then I’ll tell you. She don’t like me, Jackson. She don’t like me at all. She don’t want me ten feet away from you. She especially don’t want me to be talking with you outside a Negro church on a Sunday morning. You better get on home now.
L’il Bokay gave him his back and walked to the church in the same measured step of the day before, only this time his head was not down but up. Jackson watched him, thinking: He’s only three years older than me, but he is a man I do believe. Imagine that. L’il Bokay Cooper, a man.
After that day and until the year L’il Bokay, Katherine Marie, Jackson, and Bubba Ray crossed their threads of fate and made a knot as big and knobby as a tree-hole spider, Jackson ran into L’il Bokay once in a while, in the street or in some Sassaport store or other. They were polite, exchanging pleasantries about the weather and such, but that was all.
In retrospect, he experienced great guilt over the way their friendship ended almost before it began. He complained of it when he finished telling Stella everything. She kissed him, then reminded him he was barely seven years old at the time. Still, he said. Then she asked: Forget about Katherine Marie, do you think maybe that moment your mother booted him was it? The moment that made Mombasa out of him? The moment that planted the seed?
Jackson didn’t even have to think about it.
Oh, I don’t believe so. I believe he probably had an acquaintance with humiliation already.
He lay with his head on her breast, their legs entwined. She played with his hair and smoothed his brow. After a minute or two, he picked his head up and twisted to look in her eyes. All the hard, clear honesty of a young man in love for the first time was in his voice, his features, an intimacy that will devastate a woman’s heart every time, and he said: I know it was cruel, but at the time I was a boy with the attention span of a newt, there was a lot of excitement around me, and it was just normal that Li’l Bokay would stand out there, it was just normal that he didn’t knock on the front door like the other boys. I didn’t understand the “have to” part. It was just normal. Same as me learning Christmas carols and the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t see anything incongruous in it. It was just normal. Either way, I hate to think I’m in the middle of his anger. I know later on when push came to shove, I couldn’t help him, and he was depending on me. But it wasn’t my fault. Just like when we were children, there were powers at work str
onger than me. So maybe I’m on the outskirts of his anger, but not smack dab in the middle.
Still, Stella the uncompromising said. Still.
Jackson fell to a miserable meditation then, recounting the various failings of his young life, when Stella sat up suddenly and said: My! We forgot to tell them we’re engaged. Let’s wake them up now and do it!
Her fiancé cringed. No, no. Let’s wait ‘til I get you a ring. It’s just not right to make an announcement without a ring, and I don’t think I can bear more opprobrium tonight. Let’s get through the weekend. When I buy you a ring, we’ll tell them.
Her face fell, her lower lip jutted out.
Please, darlin’, please? he begged, and counted his blessings that for the price of ten minutes of attention to her most excitable parts, she relented.
FOUR
Fall, 1963
JUST AFTER FOUR A.M., STELLA slipped down the hall barefoot with her back against the wallpaper to go sleep in her own bed. Around seven a.m. there was a persistent cat’s scratch at Jackson’s door. Who’s that? he asked, groggy and confused, unsure where he was or whether what woke him represented animal advance, a branch set against a window, or human interruption. A female voice that was neither Stella’s nor Mrs. Godwin’s answered: Mr. Godwin wants you to know he’ll be ready to leave for services at eight fifteen. Dang, Jackson muttered, understanding immediately the implications of the announcement. He thanked the messenger and hauled his poorly rested limbs from bed with effort, calling up a vision of Stella in her most stimulating poses of the night to supply him strength for washing up and getting dressed at an uncivilized Saturday-morning hour. The more he thought of his fiancée the lighter, the more determined his spirit became. Jackson decided that if he and her daddy had started out badly, it was his duty to improve things. He would rise to the occasion to prove he held nothing but respect for Leonard Godwin despite his rudeness. Thankfully, he’d packed his blazer and a good pair of pants in case Stella wanted to step out in the city. He put these on, ransacked his mind for proper sabbath greetings, and descended the stairs.
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