“No talcum today, huh?”
Alice was lost. “Pardon?”
“Never mind,” Easter said. “What you doing here?” Alice couldn’t speak the truth, because she didn’t exactly know what the truth was, so she just shrugged her shoulders.
Easter scrutinized her for a moment and then stuck her hand out. “Well, don’t just stand there doing nothing, help me up.”
Once she was on her feet she brushed the dirt from her dress and righted her hat on her head. She glanced at the hole and the heap of dirt and then turned to Alice and asked, “Your parents know you out here?”
Alice shook her head no.
Easter sighed and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Well, you followed me all of the way out here for some reason, so what is it?”
Alice mumbled something Easter couldn’t hear.
“Speak up, child.”
Alice fastened on Easter the most intense look she’d ever seen a child give. “Are you E.V. Gibbs?”
Easter didn’t know whether to smack Alice’s face or just ignore the question. In the end she looked stupidly back at the child and said, “Who’s that again?”
Because she had never really known that person.
CHAPTER 39
Miss Anthony had no business in the colored section of town at the time of the morning—or any other time of the day, for that matter. But there she was doing forty down the road with the windows open and the wind in her hair. The volume on the radio was turned up and she was singing along to Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” when she spotted two figures stepping from the forest of corn. She sped past them, and recognized one of the two as her student, Alice Everson. Miss Anthony smashed her foot down on the brake so hard that the tires squealed and the car spun, screeching to a stop on the opposite side of the road, facing oncoming traffic.
She composed herself, turned the car around, and slowly coasted to the spot where Easter and Alice stood frozen and staring. She leaned over the seat and through the open window called, “Morning.” Her eyes were fixed curiously on Easter. “Alice, you sure out early. Everything okay?”
Alice nodded her head and Easter said, “Everything is just fine. Just fine.”
“What you all doing out here … so early?”
Alice stammered an excuse but Easter shoved her gently aside, bent over and rested her forearm on the metal ledge of the window, and began a slow and deliberate inspection. She looked Miss Anthony in the eye and then off in the direction she’d come from, before shifting her gaze down to the skirt Miss Anthony wore that exposed most of her thighs. Easter’s eyes traveled to the woman’s bare feet and then over to the high-heeled shoes that lay on the passenger seat. An unmistakable musk wafted off Miss Anthony’s body; you only had to be with one black man to know that scent, and Miss Anthony reeked of it.
Easter’s eyes met squarely with Miss Anthony’s again and she turned the woman’s inquiry on its side. “I might ask you that same question, ma’am.”
Miss Anthony’s face went red. She was not a stupid woman. Easter had made herself quite clear. And so she swiped the shoes off the seat, swallowed, and blurted, “Can I give you a ride?”
“Well thank you, ma’am, that is mighty nice of you,” Easter smiled.
Shannon just stared at the two of them. They were quite a sight, Easter muddied from the waist down and Alice bedraggled with bits of … “Is that corn husk in your hair?” Any real mother would have shown some hint of interest, anger, or alarm, but Shannon’s only concern lay in the glass of gin and orange juice she clutched in her hand. And so she dismissed them with an exasperated roll of her eyes.
Miss Anthony hoped she hadn’t seemed rude, but something about that Negro woman was familiar and she couldn’t help but stare. Their eyes had met in the rearview mirror a number of times and she had smiled and the woman had smiled back. Numerous times Miss Anthony wanted to ask, Do I know you? But the words never came out. And now, as she readied herself for church, the nagging, knowing feeling persisted.
CHAPTER 40
Easter had tossed the small round tin into her purse and there it remained, forgotten for the hours that fell between Sunday morning and Monday afternoon. Forgotten by Easter, but not Alice, who thought about it in the way a child thinks about Christmas or summer vacation.
She had a whole two dollars saved and offered one to Junior if he would cause a distraction that would warrant Easter’s attention. He agreed, of course, being the filthy urchin that he was, and dropped to the ground and feigned a fit complete with flailing hands and feet. While he wailed, gurgled, and frothed, Alice slipped into Easter’s bedroom, rummaged through her drawers, looked under the bed, and finally found the straw purse with the cane handle and the prize hidden inside and cried, “Eureka!”
With the tin tucked safely in the pocket of her denim overalls, Alice sidled up behind Easter who had jabbed the business end of the wooden spoon into Junior’s mouth hoping to prevent him from swallowing his tongue. Easter was trembling and wide-eyed when Alice appeared at her side. “What in the world is wrong with him?” she asked without a hint of concern.
A wink to Junior told him that his job was done and he reached up and yanked the spoon from his mouth. “What you trying to do, Easter, kill me?” he cackled as he jumped to his feet and streaked away.
Easter collapsed into a chair and pressed her hand against her clamoring heart. “I’m going to beat that boy black and blue,” she breathed.
It took some doing, but the paring knife eventually accomplished the job and the lid popped off and went sailing across the floor. In the safety of her room Alice stared for a long time at the folded piece of yellowed paper before finally taking a deep breath and removing it from the tin. She didn’t know what to expect and her heart hammered with anticipation as she carefully undid the folds and smoothed out the creases.
The ink was faded, but not so much that Alice couldn’t discern the letters or the word they formed: HATE.
CHAPTER 41
After school on Monday, Miss Anthony went to the library to visit, for the umpteenth time, the cherished display. The glass was speckled with tiny fingerprints and she shot an annoyed look at Lollie, who was flipping lazily through a fashion magazine.
“Is it too much to ask to keep the …” Miss Anthony declared under her breath as she used the hem of her sweater to wipe away the smudges. While she looped the knitted material across the surface, her eyes lit on the newspaper article with the photograph of a smiling Meredith Tomas shaking the hand of Horace Liveright. Alongside that photo was a shot of the accused Negro plagiarist, E.V. Gibbs.
Her expression lacked emotion, but her eyes were on fire, and it was the fire that Miss Anthony first recognized. What followed that was the echo of Alice’s declaration: “My maid reads!”
The realization slammed into Miss Anthony and she doubled over. “Oh. My. God.” reverberated through the quiet library like thunder.
Alice skipped down the stairs and was stunned to see Miss Anthony seated on her living room couch, a cup of tea in her hand, nervously bouncing her leg. Shannon sat across from her, holding her chin, something she did when she was listening to something she found extremely interesting or unbelievable. Both women looked up when Alice came down the steps.
Of course Miss Anthony was there to report on Sunday’s incident. It was Thursday and Shannon hadn’t once brought it up. It was as if it never even happened and now Miss Anthony was there to remind Shannon that it had.
Alice stared at them, waiting for her mother to call her in and begin the interrogation. Shannon stood up and Alice’s lips parted, her defense balanced on her tongue. “Hey, Alice,” Shannon said. She walked over and pulled the French doors closed.
Alice stood staring at the closed doors and an eerie feeling crept over her. Something was wrong, she thought, as she headed out of the house. Something was very wrong.
Shannon sat back down in her chair and folded her hand over her chin. “Are you
sure, Miss Anthony?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
Shannon leaned back and began moving her hands up and down her bare arms. It was eighty degrees in the house, but suddenly she felt chilled.
“Pretty sure is not enough, you have to be absolutely sure.”
Miss Anthony thought about it for a moment, then bobbed her head rapidly up and down. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m absolutely sure.”
Shannon sighed. “I—I don’t know. If you’re wrong I mean it would just start a whole mess of trouble for nothing. You said she did what now?”
“Plagiarized—”
“And that means stealing, right?” Shannon shook her head in disappointment. “Oh gosh, you know how Dobbs is, he’ll blow a gasket if he finds out about this. I mean, if you steal a story what won’t you steal?” Her eyes wandered over to the Fabergé egg and she wrung her hands. “We have to be sure. Will you drive me down there so that I can see for myself?”
Did they expect Lollie Smith not to ask what was going on? The two of them standing there as still as mannequins staring at the display. Who could ignore that? Had someone scrawled something lewd onto the glass? Was something missing? It would have been easy to steal something from the display. After all, it was just a glass box turned onto its opening. No lock and no key.
Lollie walked over to see what the matter was and when she asked, they told her and said that she shouldn’t say anything about it to anyone and Lollie had agreed. But as soon as the two climbed into Miss Anthony’s Chevrolet, Lollie Smith was dialing her sister’s number.
One call led to another and the telephone circuits in Waycross and the neighboring towns buzzed with the news until finally the phone rang in Odell’s Beauty Salon where Easter was just coming out from under the dryer. Odell herself answered the phone. “Who the hell is E.V. Gibbs? Ain’t nobody I ever heard of. She what? The maid o’er at the Eversons’? The Eversons’? Well, who the hell are they?”
Odell listened to the woman jabber excitedly on the other end of the line and after a moment her eyes went wide, then fell on Easter.
“Oh, those Eversons.”
CHAPTER 42
The way Dobbs heard it, E.V. Gibbs was a murderer. His secretary, Emma Goodkind, had brought him the news, though he had a hard time understanding her—the size of her breasts had a lot to do with it; they filled the room and muffled the sound of her voice. The blouse she wore that day—white with an explosion of red flowers—only compounded the problem.
“Pardon?”
Emma set the stack of papers down on his desk and then folded her arms under her breasts, training them on him like assault missiles.
“I said that maid of yours is causing quite a stir. Seems she killed some white writer woman up in New York way back in the olden days or something.”
Dobbs blinked. He’d been able to catch the words maid, killed, and olden days, but not much else. He was about to ask her to repeat herself once more, but Emma was swaying out of the office, her laughter trailing behind her like a scarf. Dobbs picked up the black desk phone and dialed his house and was greeted with the blaring sound of a busy signal.
Easter saw the line of cars out front and her first thought was that someone had died. When she entered through the back door and found a throng of people gathered in the kitchen, a camera bulb flashed and her vision was veiled in a shroud of blue and yellow dots. She’d raised her hand in surprise and when she lowered it again she was back in Harlem, standing outside 409 Edgecombe, clutching her suitcase. The reporters had formed a wall around her and pelted questions at her like stones.
“Is it true you stole Meredith Tomas’s story and entered it into the contest as your own?”
“You’ve been accused of being a thief of literature, what is your response to that accusation?”
“Why did you do it, E.V.?”
Why?
When Easter had posed that very same question to her, Meredith had crinkled her brow and tilted her nose up at her.
“What are you insinuating? It is I who should be asking you that question.”
And Easter hadn’t had another word to say to her. She went to her bedroom and began to pack.
Rain had scrambled behind her. “I don’t understand what’s happening! What did you do?” she’d cried, grabbing hold of Easter’s arm.
Easter spun around. “What did I do?” The look Easter gave her stopped Rain’s heart cold and her hand fell dead away.
And now, in the Eversons’ kitchen, Easter bestowed on the spectators that same look before spitting, “What is this, a lynch mob?”
A gasp went up and Shannon’s face turned crimson. She caught Easter by the hand and led her through the crowd, up the stairs, and into the quiet of her bedroom.
CHAPTER 43
The news that E.V. Gibbs, once the literary love child of the Harlem Renaissance, was now nothing but a lowly maid in Waycross, Georgia snaked its way into Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and New York. Every day there was a new out-of-state license plate, a new face sitting at the counter of the local diner asking questions and scribbling answers into a notepad. Waycross hadn’t seen this much activity since Viola Sanford’s cockatiel started reciting the Lord’s Prayer. That had been twenty-odd years ago and people still called it a miracle. Well, Dobbs called this a miracle too.
He charged a quarter at the door and placed Easter on exhibit, like Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo, Geronimo at the St. Louis World’s Fair, and Saartjie Baartman before all of Europe. Parents set their babies on her lap and snapped photos. She signed autograph books.
Shannon felt like a movie star. The only things missing were floodlights on the lawn and a red carpet.
All of the reporters asked Easter the same question: “Did you plagiarize Meredith Tomas’s story?”
And Easter’s stock response was always, “God knows the truth and so does Meredith … rest her soul.”
The last journalist to come to speak to Easter was a tall, smooth black man with warm eyes and a neat mustache. His name was Roi Ottley and he’d driven all the way down from New York to interview her for the Amsterdam News. Roi Ottley had covered World War II, and was the first Negro correspondent for a major newspaper. He’d even had an audience with the Pope!
Roi placed both of his hands over Easter’s and looked deep into her eyes like she was someone he had been waiting to meet for a very long time. No one had made her feel that way in ages, and she blushed beneath the weight of it.
He said, “Please call me Roi,” when she addressed him as Mr. Ottley.
And she said, “Please call me Easter.” But he didn’t, he called her Miss Easter.
He had a presence about him and Easter knew immediately that he was an island man because he wore his pride wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.
She asked, “Where were you born?”
“New York City, but my parents are from Grenada.”
He spoke in a tone that was just above a whisper, and preferred to sit on the hassock at her feet instead of on the sofa. She felt like a queen.
“You are one of my favorite writers from the Harlem Renaissance,” he said, “and I thought Glorious was brave and beautiful.”
Brave and beautiful? Her little story about a slave girl who escapes to the north and swan dives into the deep end of life? Brave and beautiful … Easter beamed with pride.
He asked, “Where have you been all these years?”
Easter leaned back into her chair, folded her hands in her lap, and thought. She’d been so many places, had seen so many things. She had left Harlem, of course. She couldn’t stay there, not after what Meredith had done to her, branding her as a plagiarist, a liar, a thief. She left Harlem and went to Brooklyn, where she briefly secured a job as a maid for a wealthy widow, and then the stock market crashed, forcing her to join the masses of disenfranchised people in a shantytown—a Hooverville in Red Hook. During the day she looked for work, in the evening she stood in soup lines, at night she slept under a box o
n a bed of newspaper. It was the worst time of her life. Someone stole her shoes right off her feet, she watched a woman die while giving birth. When the soup kitchens ran out of food Easter rummaged for scraps in the garbage. Many a day she dined on her own spit and anger. So destitute was she that pride was an unaffordable luxury; and so she claimed a street corner and begged for change.
She heard about work in Detroit and somehow made her way there and secured a job cleaning toilets at the Ford Motor Company auto plant. On Jefferson Avenue she shared a room with four other women; there were only two beds, so they rotated and every fifth night Easter slept in the tub. When things began to take a turn for the better she bought a ticket to see the Oscar Micheaux film Murder in Harlem, and in the velvety darkness of the theater she thought she saw Rain, still stunningly beautiful, smiling out at her from the background, and Easter began to weep.
One year folded into the next, wars were fought and won, fought and lost, people died, babies were born—life churned on and now she was back home in Waycross, Georgia.
Roi pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and held it out to her. Easter stared at the white square of cloth for a long time, not sure why he was giving it to her, and then she licked her lips and tasted her salty tears. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
“Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she sighed as she dabbed at her eyes. “Look what you got me doing. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” Roi said, and waited patiently for her to compose herself before he leaned in and asked, “Are you still writing?”
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