“Look, if we get your ears pierced now, they will be all healed with your birthstone in them by the time you get back to Rehobeth Road. Ma can’t do nothing about it then but fuss.”
BarJean don’t know what she talking about. When Chick-A-Boo’s oldest sister, Marniece, took a hot needle and a piece of thread and pierced her own ears, Miss Blanche made her take her earrings out and her holes closed right back up. Marniece got her ears pierced again when she went to Newport News to stay with her Aunt Lillian for the summer. When she got back they were already healed with her birthstone in them. Miss Blanche made her take her $2.00 earrings out and her holes closed right back up again. I’m not even going to tell BarJean about Marniece, because I want my holes in my ears. I will just have to take a chance on Ma killing me when I get back to Rehobeth Road.
“Have a seat right here, little lady,” the girl in the jewelry store says after BarJean pays $1.00 for my ear piercing. “Now, hold still.”
She rubs some alcohol on both my ears and then she taking out her own needle and thread. I can’t believe it. I thought she was going to use one of them machines that Uncle Buddy told me his women folks got their ears pierced with. But she ain’t. I’m all the way in Harlem getting my ears pierced with a needle and thread. I could have done this right on Rehobeth Road!
It hurts a little, but not too much.
I am just looking at myself in the mirror. My ears look good. Wait till Chick-A-Boo see me.
“Your ears look nice, little sister,” BarJean says as I am still looking in the mirror.
“Thank you, sister. Are we going home now?”
“No, we still got to get your hair fixed. We suppose to be at Miss Van’s Beauty Shop in twenty minutes.”
BarJean and me run down the streets with all my bags, just laughing like old times. Times before they took my uncle and grandpa from us.
Miss Van is a piece of work. She got fake hair, fake eyelashes, and clothes like the dancers I saw on the sign with Mr. Ellington at the Apollo Theater. I’m not going to ask if she owns this place because the sign outside says VAN’S BEAUTY PARLOR.
I ain’t never seen so many women getting their hair fixed in one day before in my life. Those women are something else. I do not need a mason jar in here. They just talking their heads off.
Miss Van is not heating a straighten comb, so I do not know what she is going to do to my hair. I sho’ hope she ain’t going to braid it up.
A jar of perm! As she is pulling that jar of perm from under her counter, I feel faint again. Piece by piece she put perm in my hair after she covers my newly pressed ears. Miss Van laughs and says I do not need as much perm as BarJean because my hair ain’t as nappy as hers.
When she finish my hair, she don’t even put rubber bands on it. Miss Van is pulling my hair back with a piece of white ribbon to make a headband and my hair just fall on my shoulders like a real teenager. Like a real city girl.
Now we can go home.
Wait till Uncle Buddy see my pierced ears and my new hairdo.
10
Back South
It’s Monday morning and BarJean gone back to work. I don’t care what Uncle Buddy said. I have to talk him into coming home with me.
I am sleepy because we were up all night making my new clothes. BarJean is good with that sewing machine. She let me cut out all the patterns and she did the sewing. When she finished, I put the buttons on the clothes. I am going to be as clean as Willie Gatling when I get back to Rich Square. That’s what folks at home say when you real dressed up. They do not say you dressed up. They say, “You clean as Willie Gatling.” You see, can’t nobody get cleaner than Uncle Buddy’s friend Willie Gatling. He is always dressed fine from head to toe. He gets cleaner than Uncle Buddy. I ain’t never seen him without a suit. He works at the sawmill too and Uncle Buddy says he don’t wear a tie to work, but he is always in a jacket.
I can’t wear my new stuff today. I got walking to do. Back to the shoeshine stand I go.
Mr. Tom mad because I am back down here. But I tell him I’m going to keep coming until he tells Uncle Buddy to come back.
On the third day he said, “Come back tomorrow, child.” I finally wore him down.
“I will be back early, okay?”
He don’t even look up from shining some man’s shoes.
“Mr. Tom, do Mr. Wright really live in Paris?”
“Yes, child, he do. He moved there last year. Times hard in the South, but they ain’t easy here, either. They really ain’t easy for a man like Mr. Wright.”
“But why, Mr. Tom? You like it here. Why he any different than you?”
“You ask him when you see him again.”
I will do just that, I’m thinking to myself as I walk away.
I’m at the shoeshine stand the next morning before Mr. Tom could get his rag box open.
There he is. There’s Uncle Buddy.
“Hey Uncle Buddy!” I yell and jump into his arms.
We just hugging, hugging, and hugging.
“Why, Pattie Mae, you got your ears pierced, and look at your hair.”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“You look real pretty,” he says.
I knew he would see my newly pierced ears and my new hairdo. That’s how Uncle Buddy keeps his women folks happy. He notices everything about them.
He’s laughing because he knows that sister of his is going to skin me alive when I get home.
Now it’s time for the talking. Talking Uncle Buddy into coming home. If I cry a little, surely he will come back with me.
“Come back to BarJean’s apartment with me, Uncle Buddy I want her to know that you all right. I hear her crying about you late, late at night.”
He sits there for a few moments and then he says no. When he says no, I just cross my legs and do what Chick-A-Boo told me to do if I ever need to for an important reason. Lie!
“Uncle Buddy, Grandma don’t look right. She is gray in the face and I think she might die, too. Her heart is broke, just like Grandpa’s.”
A tear rolls down Uncle Buddy’s cheek.
“Uncle Buddy, I believe if Grandma can just see you once more she will be all right.”
“Lord, Pattie Mae, you probably right. This mess done killed the only daddy I ever had. I cannot let it kill Ma Babe too.”
Well! He does not say so, but I know we going back to Rehobeth Road on the first train leaving Harlem.
He put his hat and dark glasses on and we walk the back streets of Harlem all the way to BarJean’s. It ain’t but twelve o’clock, so we just sit in the living room and talk. Finally the front door open.
BarJean eyes get just as big as fifty-cent piece and down she goes. The girl done fainted. I don’t know why she fainted. She knew good and well Uncle Buddy was up here somewhere. When she wake up, me and Uncle Buddy is standing over her while she rest in the bed where he put her.
“Uncle Buddy, is it really you?”
“It’s me, child, it’s me.”
“What you doing here with Pattie Mae?”
“Well, I told you that she is the smartest one in the bunch. She came and found me when all of Rich Square and Harlem couldn’t.”
They hug and hug.
It’s a few days later and Uncle Buddy announces that we are going back home tomorrow. Grandpa ain’t there, but it’s still home. BarJean ain’t coming with us because she got to work. My aunts are back in Harlem now and me and Uncle Buddy done been to see them and Coy, too. Collie was not home when we went to Aunt Louise’s, thank the Lord.
All our folks are trying to tell Uncle Buddy not to go home. But he told them he got to see Ma Babe for himself. Coy, he ain’t saying nothing. He don’t even tell Uncle Buddy that Ma Babe is okay. He looking kind of strange. It’s probably because Ma and her sisters yelled at the poor man the entire time he was trying to drive them around to take care of grown folks business about Grandpa’s will.
Before we leave, I go by the shoeshine and say good-bye to Mr. Tom. J
ust my luck, Mr. Wright is getting his shoes shined.
Mr. Tom had told him all about Uncle Buddy, and Mr. Wright was concerned about us. I thought that was mighty nice. Mr. Wright talks to me for about two hours about what to do and not to do when I get back home. That man got a whole lot of sense.
“You know, Pattie Mae, when I was a little boy living down South, I lived in a house on an old plantation, just like Tom told me you do now. It was called Rucker’s Plantation. My daddy, Nathaniel, was a sharecropper and my mother was a schoolteacher. She taught me well, but my daddy left us, just like your daddy left. Left us for another woman. Those were hard times. Finally we moved in with my aunt and uncle Silas Hopkins.”
I can’t believe my ears. Silas is my daddy’s name.
Mr. Wright keeps on talking.
“One night some white men came to our house in the middle of the night and killed my uncle because he was a black man with money. He owned his own salon and made lots and lots of money. That did not sit well with the white folks. It scared Mother and my aunt so bad that we left for Chicago after the funeral. From Chicago I moved to New York. As a writer it’s been hard here, so I moved to Paris. I moved to Paris for the same reason Tom don’t go south of Baltimore. I moved there to be respected as a black man. Ill be leaving again soon because that is where I can survive as a man, as a writer. That’s what your uncle and Tom trying to do. They are trying to survive as black men. Remember that.”
He just talking and talking. I like Mr. Wright. I like what he saying. I mainly like the way he never use the word colored or Negro when he is talking.
“This is for you, Pattie Mae,” Mr. Wright says.
It’s a book!
Native Son by Mr. Richard Wright.
“Thank you, Mr. Wright,”
I place the book careful in my pocketbook and take a bag Mr. Tom gives me. It is a box of cigarettes for Mr. Charlie and some hatpins for Miss Doleebuck. These will look good in her nice Sunday hats.
I am on my way. It is time to go home. Home to Rehobeth Road. Home to Grandma. BarJean and Coy give us a ride to the train station. She just crying because we are leaving. I will miss her, but that crying? Oh, no.
On the train home, me and Uncle Buddy just talking about everything under the sun. “Uncle Buddy, do you think they going to put you in jail again?”
“Child, who knows with white folks? But what I do know is I ain’t going to stay down South when this trial is over.”
That’s not what I want to hear, but I don’t want to say nothing right now. So I just shut my mouth.
Our train ride home is as sweet as bee honey. Uncle Buddy only leave his seat to go to the bathroom because he does not want white folks to see him. They definitely will not run into him in a “colored only” bathroom. According to Bay Boy, some of the crazy white folks at home talking about they want to bring Uncle Buddy back to Rich Square dead or alive. No matter what they saying, Uncle Buddy did not do anything wrong and it’s time for the truth to come out. Crazy white folks.
I know when we are in North Carolina because even in the twilight, through the train window, I can see nothing but white. White cotton. If you ain’t never seen cotton grow, you have really missed something special.
When I left, the cotton was barely out of the bow. Now it’s everywhere. Look-a-here, I’m not picking one piece of cotton this year! I am a city girl now. Besides, I talked Uncle Buddy into coming home when no one else could. So it’s my job to stay close to him, close to home. So no cotton picking for me.
The train done stopped in Rocky Mount and I can see Ma standing there in a dress that I have never seen before. I’m sure that one of her sisters gave it to her because Ma don’t buy many new clothes. Ma got the law and Mr. Charlie with her. Ma already told Uncle Buddy on the telephone that the law is taking him into custody for his own protection after they take him by Jones Property to see Grandma. Protection! They got some nerve. That is how this whole mess got started in the first place. If they had been protecting Uncle Buddy he would not have been in trouble. I step off the train first and walk up to Ma.
“Don’t cry, Ma, it’s going to be okay.”
She hugs me with one arm and Uncle Buddy with the other. Then we all get in Mr. Charlie’s car and head home with Sheriff Franklin following us back to Rich Square. Back to Jones Property. There are three more cars behind Sheriff Franklin and it ain’t the Klan. Mr. Charlie says he told the black Masons to come too. They didn’t get out of their cars, but as soon as we pull out of the train station, they pull out right behind us. Mr. Charlie wait until we are on the road to tell us about the Masons. After that, nobody is saying a word all the way to Rich Square.
Lord, turning on Rehobeth Road is really hurting my heart. I don’t know life here without my grandpa. Mr. Charlie just drove right past our house and I know we are going to Jones Property first. There’s Grandma with Miss Doleebuck and Mr. George. They sitting in the screened-in porch so that the flies and mosquitoes don’t get them. Grandma done stood up and she walking off the porch. The same porch where my grandpa used to sit every night. The one he built with his own hands.
“Lord, I want to thank you for bringing my child home,” Grandma crying into the night air.
“Yes, Lord,” Miss Doleebuck cries out. Mr. George just sitting here crying away. He ain’t shouted or cried a tear since Mr. Perry and Mr. Massey died. He must be thinking about his own boys.
Uncle Buddy is getting out of the car mighty slow. I think he wants to go back to Harlem before the women start shouting for real.
Too late. They shouting to beat the band. So Uncle Buddy just picks Grandma up and he is swinging her around like she ain’t got no bones in her body. I’m just standing looking at them. Uncle Buddy didn’t think he would ever see her again. Grandma didn’t think she would ever see him either.
“Your daddy gone on, son. Lord, I wish he would have lived to see you one more time.”
That is the beginning of them talking. Uncle Buddy does not ask Grandma about being sick. I reckon he knew I lied the minute he saw Grandma wasn’t turning gray. Uncle Buddy would have lied to save the Jones family too. So he just keep on talking. He tells her all about being a gravedigger at the funeral. They talk for an hour. Until the sheriff, who is sitting in his car, says, “Time to go.”
Now that it’s time for Uncle Buddy to leave, the shouting has started all over again.
“Don’t cry, Ma Babe, it’s going to be all right,” Uncle Buddy says as he climbing into Sheriff Franklin’s car.
Uncle Buddy rode here with us, but the sheriff says he got to ride back with them and that’s final. But it ain’t nothing the sheriff can do about all them Masons following them to wherever they taking my uncle. They are lining up like they going to a funeral and when Sheriff Franklin pulls out, they follow him. They done made up their minds that they ain’t letting Uncle Buddy out of their sight. Even Mr. Charlie goes. Mr. George stays behind with us women folks. As soon as the dust settles from all these cars leaving Jones Property, I’m going to ask Ma where they taking Uncle Buddy.
They gone.
Now we all just sitting here looking at each other, so this is a good time for me to ask.
“Ma, can I ask a grown folks question?”
She just looks at me. I don’t know how old I have to be to know what is going on in the world. Right now I will settle for what is going on right here on Rehobeth Road. Maybe after I tell her that I met Richard Wright she will know I know some grown folks stuff.
“Ma, where they taking my uncle Buddy?”
“Honey they taking your uncle up to Raleigh to the State Correction Center. He ain’t under arrest, they just taking him there for safekeeping.”
I don’t say a word. Because grown folks think that I’m crazy. I already heard Coy tell BarJean what the law did to the seven white men that tried to hang Uncle Buddy. Nothing! They didn’t do nothing to them. They didn’t even go to their houses to arrest them. When the law realized that the white
men had not killed Uncle Buddy word got around and the next thing you know, Coy said, papers all over the state were writing about what happened to Uncle Buddy. That is the only reason that Sheriff Franklin arrested those men. He just sent word to each one of them to come to his house. He didn’t even handcuff them. He told them they were under arrest and then had white men from all over the county waiting in his living room to post their bail. Even Mayor Smith was there and helped with the bail. It was graduation day for the schoolchildren, and the superintendent for Northampton County left graduation to help post the bail. What kind of mess is that? Them white men folks were back out on the street before suppertime.
I just can’t wait to see what kind of trial they give Uncle Buddy. I just want to see how they treat them white folks and how they treat my uncle. Accordingly to what I hear Coy tell BarJean, they going to have their trial on the same day. That ain’t right either. I hate going to bed mad, but I’m mad as one of Mr. Bay’s bulls tonight.
Two weeks passed before they announced Uncle Buddy’s trial date.
11
The Courthouse
I didn’t sleep much last night. Uncle Buddy’s trial is going to start in two hours and I just want it to be over with. I want the judge to tell them seven white men that they was wrong for what they done to my uncle. I want them to know that they killed my grandpa. We will see in a little while.
Not a word is being said on Jones Property this morning. Everyone just dressing and praying to they self. I know they praying because they lips just moving and ain’t nothing coming out.
Mr. Charlie don’t suppose to be driving but here he come. He get out and come inside.
“Mornin’, Babe.”
“Mornin’, Charlie. We’re ready.”
Without saying another word, we all go onto the back porch, then head for Mr. Charlie’s car. Miss Doleebuck inside the car waiting for us and yes, she is all dressed in black with one of her famous wide hats on.
“Mornin’, Miss Doleebuck,” I say.
“Good morning, child.”
The Return of Buddy Bush Page 6