Yard War

by Taylor Kitchings

  Mama pulled away from her.

  “Sam is my husband and where he goes, I go. And I won’t hear another word against him, do you hear me? Not another word!”

  When Mama settles her eyes on me like that, it means I am in danger, and she was doing it to Meemaw. Except how could that be Meemaw? That lady had just told my mama we ought not to be a family anymore—I didn’t know that lady.

  I backed all the way into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, where I couldn’t see them.

  “Well, I better get back to your father,” the lady said. “I’m sure he needs my help with the girls. I suppose you’ll need us to keep them all night?” She said it like my sisters spending the night at her house would be a lot of trouble. My sisters and I had spent the night with her and Papaw a hundred times!

  She rattled around in her purse and her voice came closer.

  “I hope it’s all right if I get a glass of water before I go,” she said.

  I backed up more. She stood at the sink and didn’t see me. I meant to let her get her glass of water and leave. But I was too mad.

  “You can’t talk about my daddy like that!”

  She spun around.

  “Why, Trip! Where did you come from?”

  “Daddy…he…he ran outside and fought to protect me and Dee and my friends….He was fighting for us….He’s brave and strong and…”

  “Your daddy got arrested, honey.”

  “For doin’ the right thing! He works all day and night, doin’ the right thing. People come up to me in the grocery store and tell me how he saved their life!” My hands were shaking and my voice was shaking. “You can’t talk about him like that! Take back what you said! Take it back!” I wiped my eyes with the backs of both hands. “If you don’t take it back, you’ll make me…I won’t forgive you for it,” I told Meemaw. “Not ever!”

  Mama was standing in the doorway.

  “Virginia, you need to see to Trip. He’s been very upset by all this. As have we all.” She fanned her face with her hand and shook her head. “I don’t think the poor boy knows what he’s saying. Did he get a concussion?”

  Mama looked at her hard and cold. “Trip knows what he’s saying.”

  “We’ll meet y’all at church tomorrow with the girls,” Meemaw said. She sighed and looked over her shoulder at Mama on her way out. “You know I just want what’s best for my baby girl.”

  “No, Mama. You just want to be right.”

  —

  We sat on the couch together. I put my hand on her hand, and she put her arm around me.

  I told Mama that now I was glad we were moving, which started me crying more. She stared out the sliding glass door like she was looking at something in the dark.

  Willie Jane came into the room.

  “You get a good rest, Willie Jane?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Dee’s still asleep.”

  “We’ll get Dr. Westbrook to check him over when he gets here. I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

  “He will, he will.”

  “I hate to ask you to stay, but until I can get back with Dr. Westbrook, I don’t have any choice.” Mama’s eyes squeezed up like she still had more crying to do, and she put her hands to her face, trying not to.

  “I can stay.”

  “Oh, Willie Jane, I just feel so alone in all this.”

  “You’re not alone, Miz Westbrook.”

  Dee came in after a while, wearing his sheet sling, blinking hard at the lamp. Willie Jane jumped up and hugged him.

  “You boys had yourselves quite an afternoon,” Mama said.

  “Good thing they so tough,” Willie Jane said.

  “My arm hurts,” Dee said.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. I’ll get you an aspirin and an ice pack.”

  “I need some Marguerites, too,” he said.

  “And me,” I said.

  So Willie Jane made Marguerites, and we ate and talked and waited. At one o’clock, nobody had called from the police station and Mama said it was time for me and Dee to get to bed even if we had had such long naps. She gave Dee my bed, and she tried to give Willie Jane Farish’s bed, but Willie Jane said she was gonna stay up as long as Mama did. I got Ginny Lynn’s bed, which is barely long enough for Ginny Lynn, and would have done better on the cold, hard floor, but I couldn’t sleep much anyway. I kept seeing Mama and that person I didn’t know anymore fighting in the den. I watched it again and again in my head, like if I watched it enough times, something would change somehow, and it wouldn’t seem so scary and impossible. But the looks and the voices and the words stayed the same until I finally couldn’t watch anymore.

  —

  Mama and Daddy were eating scrambled eggs and grits and sausages and biscuits at the big table. They said to go into the kitchen and let Willie Jane fix me a plate. Dee was in there, going to town on a biscuit. I was glad they were still here, but I didn’t get it.

  “Did you sleep okay?” I asked Willie Jane.

  “Haven’t been to sleep. You?”

  “A little. This is Sunday, right?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “You’re awful happy for somebody who didn’t sleep.”

  “It’s a beautiful day.” She pointed out the window. I had to admit the sky was a bright, clear blue.

  I sat down at the dining room table and piled up all the scrambled eggs that would stay on a fork and tumped them into my mouth. Then I split a biscuit, put a sausage between the halves, and shoved in as much as would fit.

  “Take it easy, greasy, you got a long way to slide.” Daddy looked dog-tired, but he was acting all peppy.

  “Are you okay, Daddy?” I said.

  “Your daddy’s feeling pretty chipper, considering what he’s been through in the past twenty-four hours,” Mama said.

  Daddy munched his sausage and nodded and smiled. His eyes had a new kind of light in them. Mama could call it “chipper,” but he looked kind of crazy to me.

  I took a big gulp of juice and asked the question most kids never get to ask their dads: “So, how was jail?”

  “Oh, a very accommodating establishment, jail. The bed’s a mite hard and the menu’s a bit skimpy, but otherwise most accommodating. Glad to get home to this big country breakfast. How’s your face?”

  He had Band-Aids on his face too, and his hands and his arms.

  “Fine,” I said. “How’s your everything?”

  “Doing well, doing well. Every man needs an old-fashioned fistfight and a night in the hoosegow now and then. Makes you see things in a whole new light.”

  I wondered if he had been drinking liquor, he was so chipper.

  “When you’re finished with your breakfast, you need to hurry and get ready for church. It’s already too late to make it to Sunday School.”

  “Do we have to go to church today, after all that’s happened?”

  “Especially after all that’s happened. And look in your closet for some Sunday clothes for Dee,” Mama said.

  “What?”

  “Your mother and I decided it would be good for us all to go to church together,” Daddy said.

  “Willie Jane and Dee are going to our church?”

  “I told Willie Jane we would be honored if she and Dee would go to church with us this morning,” Mama said.

  “And she wanted to?”

  “She said she did.” Either Mama was slap-happy from no sleep, or she had been drinking liquor, too.

  “You know what Dee said?” Daddy was beaming. “He said he didn’t see how anybody could get mad at a colored boy in God’s house. And that’s the truth, isn’t it? I told your mama, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s really put ’em to the test.’ ”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Daddy, you don’t need to go to church, you need to go to bed.”

  “Your old dad’s used to not sleepin’ much, pal.”

  So I took Dee back to my closet. I found a white shirt and some pants that were okay if he rolled them up. Daddy had made
Dee a better sling and told him he didn’t think anything was broken, but we would get his arm X-rayed on Monday. Dee said it hurt to move it through the sleeve. I tied his tie for him. My navy blazer didn’t swallow him up too bad. He had to roll the shirt cuffs back and pull them together under the coat sleeve.

  Mama gave Willie Jane a dark-blue dress that worked pretty well.

  Then we all got in the station wagon.

  Willie Jane was still so happy. She winked at me like she knew something I didn’t.

  “And we’re off like a herd of turtles,” Daddy said.

  When you walk through the church door, Mr. Ganderson always smiles like he’s saying, “The bigger the smile, the better the Lord likes it,” and hands you a bulletin like he’s been waiting all week to give you this. But when he saw us this time, his smile shrank up, and he looked at the other ushers like somebody better do something quick.

  “They’re with me,” Daddy said, and we kept walking. Nobody tried to stop us.

  Some people looked at us real quick and then looked away, and some kept staring when we turned onto our usual row halfway down on the right, Daddy first, then Mama, then Willie Jane, Dee, and me on the end. Meemaw and Papaw were already sitting with Farish and Ginny Lynn in their usual seats on the opposite side. Papaw had an expression like aliens had landed. Meemaw’s lips were pressed hard together and even from across the sanctuary, I could see that her eyes had gone black just like Mama’s do. Farish and Ginny Lynn were giggling. Mama flapped her hand for them to sit up straight and hush.

  There’s usually a lot of talk before the service gets started, but things got real quiet all at once. It was like Dr. Mercer had stuck his head in and shushed everybody. All you could hear was whispering hisses. The choir looked paralyzed. And every one of them was staring right at us.

  Sweet old Mrs. Meriweather tapped Willie Jane on the shoulder and smiled real big and said, “Are y’all from the Ethiopian mission?”

  “No, ma’am,” Willie Jane said. “We’re from Jackson.”

  Mrs. Meriweather looked confused.

  Johnny Adcock sat a few rows down with some older guys. I didn’t see any Bethunes, so that was good. I hoped they were too beat up to get out of bed.

  I asked Willie Jane if she was okay. She nodded, sitting straight as a board and holding on to a little smile. Dee was looking around at everything.

  “Is it like your church?” I whispered to him.

  “Pretty much. It’s a lot bigger. The organ pipes are a whole lot bigger. And we don’t have all that up in the back like y’all do, and we don’t have a balcony, and we don’t have these colored windows with the Bible people on ’em. But it’s pretty much the same.”

  It seemed like it was taking this service an awful long time to crank up. There was nothing to do but listen to the organ, which I personally do not like one bit. Organ music sounds like rotten flowers to me. I heard the ushers talking and kept expecting one to tap me on the shoulder, smile like somebody had died, and ask us to leave.

  I leaned over to Mama: “Why hasn’t it started?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think they’re waiting for us to get kicked out?”

  “Hush.”

  I could tell she was wondering the same thing.

  You’re not supposed to rubberneck in church, but I finally had to look behind me. There were the ushers, standing together at the top of our aisle, whispering about what to do with us. It was a relief when the choir director walked out, followed by Dr. Mercer. I didn’t know whether he would ask the congregation to welcome us or help the ushers throw us out, but I thought he would say something. It’s not like a colored person had ever sat in one of those pews before.

  But he held up the palms of both hands, and the ushers went to the back.

  Then the choir director told everybody to turn to “Onward, Christian Soldiers” in their hymnals, and we started singing. Everything went on as usual: the welcome, another hymn, a reading from the Bible, another hymn, announcements, another hymn, stand up, sit down.

  Then, while the ushers were coming up the aisles with offertory plates, Mr. Goodrich popped up from his seat down front and turned around: “Are we really going to ignore this?” He pointed at Willie Jane and Dee. “Who wants these people in our church? The one place, the one place that’s still ours? Who wants these people here?”

  The organist stopped. Mr. Goodrich yanked his wife up by the hand and she yanked up their boys, and they all marched like good Christian soldiers up the aisle and out the back door.

  Then the Thompsons got up and walked out. Then Mr. Newsome. Everybody started talking, not even pretending to whisper. I only heard pieces: “lost their minds”; “insult to the congregation”; “never in all my born days.” More walked out.

  Mama kept looking across the sanctuary at where Meemaw and Papaw were sitting with the girls. Meemaw was shaking her head, like “I told you so.”

  Dr. Mercer was holding out his arms: “Everyone! Please! Please!”

  “Tell them to leave,” yelled Mr. Ganderson from the back. “They’re the ones should be leavin’, not us!”

  “Yeah!”

  “That’s right!”

  “Tell ’em, preacher!”

  Dee was about to jump up and run, and I was ready to run with him. Willie Jane told Daddy we ought to leave. She was pretty upset.

  “We’re stayin’,” Daddy said in a mean tone of voice. Then he made his voice softer and said, “I think it’s important that we stay. If y’all are willing to. They’ll settle down.”

  “Everyone, please calm down!” Dr. Mercer kept saying.

  Finally people got quiet. There were half as many there as when the service started. They looked at Dr. Mercer like they were expecting him to say the words that would fix this. I thought he would yell at them for their bad behavior. I was ready for every word of this sermon.

  Dr. Mercer folded his hands on the pulpit and looked from one side of the congregation to the other and said, “Perhaps it’s best to begin today’s message. I’d like to ask everybody a question today, and I want you to search your hearts before you answer….”

  I was thinking he’d say, “Do you believe God only loves white people?” That would be a good question.

  “…And the question is, am I a Mary or am I a Martha? I’ll say it again. Am I a Mary or am I a Martha? Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to the Book of…”

  I couldn’t believe it. A regular old sermon. Like nothing had happened. In the next thirty minutes, he never said a word about Dee and Willie Jane being there.

  We sang “Just as I Am” at the end, which is when people are supposed to come down and ask to be baptized or rededicate their lives and stuff like that. Dr. Mercer waits for them down front and sometimes he talks on the microphone between verses: “Won’t you give your heart to the Lord today? Won’t you come?” Some Sundays he won’t give up until we’ve sung the hymn through twice. Today we sang two verses and quit. The service was over.

  Daddy said to get up and walk out slowly, not like somebody was chasing us. We met Farish and Ginny Lynn in the vestibule and you would have thought they had been away for months, the way they ran up and hugged Mama and Daddy. Daddy said they had to hold all questions until we got to the car.

  Dr. Mercer was standing at the top of the tall steps, shaking everybody’s hands as they came out, like he always does. Papaw was having a long talk with him. Daddy guided us around them, and we started down.

  “Go back to your own kind,” came a kid’s voice behind us.

  “And stay gone!” yelled Johnny Adcock.

  Him and his friends yelled more ugly stuff. I heard adult voices, too.

  “You must stop this immediately!” Dr. Mercer said.

  They didn’t stop.

  “Keep walking,” Daddy said. “Don’t look at them.”

  I had to turn once, real quick. Dr. Mercer was holding his arms out, looking back and forth at everybody. Some of them
were waving their fists. Papaw was just standing there looking confused in a way I’ve never seen Papaw look. When I looked back around, Meemaw was halfway down the steps with us, putting her arm around Mama.

  “Honey, oh, honey, I don’t understand what you’re doin’, but…I’m still your mama,” she said. “I’m so sorry…about…about…” And she started crying. Then Mama started crying. We stood at the bottom of the steps while they hugged and cried, while people streamed by us or yelled down at us.

  The sun was so bright I could hardly open my eyes against it to see where the station wagon was parked. Meemaw hugged Mama one last time and went back to find Papaw.

  “Okay, we’re to the car,” said Farish. “You said you would tell us.”

  “Daddy got in a fight, sweetheart. But it’s all gonna be okay.”

  We were all standing at the back of the station wagon.

  “The church is mad at us,” Ginny Lynn said.

  “Maybe it’s not our church anymore,” Daddy said.

  “Who were you fighting, Daddy?” Farish asked.

  “We were fighting lots of people,” I told her. “They got me on both sides of my face. The police came and everything.”

  “Police?”

  Daddy looked up at the sky, and I knew I shouldn’t have said that.

  “Did you have to go to jail?” Farish asked.

  Mama shook her head at me and Daddy, like “Don’t talk about it.”

  But Daddy said, “Just for a little while.”

  “Did Trip have to go to jail?” asked Ginny Lynn.

  “No, darlin’.”

  “But they let you out?” asked Farish.

  “Oh, yeah. They let me off with a slap on the wrist.”

  Farish looked at Mama with her eyes wide. “They slapped him? I didn’t think policemen were supposed to slap people.”