by Daniel Black
“You mean to tell me you ain’t cooked yet?”
Emma Jean huffed. Her nerves were already frayed, and, tired as she was, she had absolutely no patience for Gus’s mouth. “I had a lotta things to do today, man, so don’t start with me!”
“What’d you do?”
“Don’t worry about that, okay? I don’t need you givin’ me the third degree!”
Gus let it go. He washed up and waited.
“Somethin’ wrong with Momma,” Paul whispered to Mister, sitting next to him on the sofa.
“Yeah, I know, but I don’t know what it is. Where’d she go this morning? She left before we did.”
“I don’t know, but wherever she went she must’ve stayed all day ’cause this house is a mess.”
Emma Jean noticed the exchange, but chose to ignore it. It was already 6:30—an hour past dinnertime—and dinner was nowhere to be found. She sliced potatoes and fried them with onions in the cast-iron skillet and rolled out dough for biscuits. The leftover cabbage and yams from Sunday’s meal she simply warmed and placed on the table. At 7:15, she said, “Y’all come on.”
Gus blessed the food, then, before serving himself, asked, “Where de meat?”
“You ain’t gotta have meat every time you eat, man. Just go ’head and be satisfied with what you got.”
“But we got plenty o’ meat in de smokehouse. Why can’t we eat it?”
“ ’Cause I ain’t had time to fix it today, okay! Damn! You ain’t never satisfied with nothin’!”
The boys looked at each other.
“Y’all go ’head on and eat! Y’all acted like y’all was starvin’ to death!”
The boys filled their plates and ate in silence. The cabbage was lukewarm, and the potatoes were burned on the bottom, but they feared what Emma Jean might say if they complained, so, like Gus, they ate with bowed heads.
Afterward, Emma Jean was so tired she could hardly tidy the kitchen. She heard Henrietta in her head, roaring with laughter, and she hated her. Having underestimated how the agreement would affect her family, Emma Jean now understood that Henrietta had tricked her into more than she had bargained for. It wasn’t that the work of sewing was so exhausting; it was that, by the time she arrived home, she wasn’t fit for anything else. Damn bitch, Emma Jean thought. Of course she couldn’t quit. That would mean she wasn’t a woman of her word, and, if nothing else, Emma Jean Peace kept her word. And Henrietta knew it. That’s why she had taken advantage of her during a desperate moment. “Black hussy,” Emma Jean murmured. And all the while Emma Jean thought she’d had the upper hand.
By 8:30, Emma Jean collapsed across the bed as if she’d been shot.
“You actin’ mighty funny, woman,” Gus said, unlacing his work boots.
Emma Jean found enough strength to roll to her side of the bed. “I’m all right. I just got somethin’ I gotta do for a while.”
“What chu mean, ‘a while’?”
“I mean . . . a while. I can’t really explain it to you, so don’t ask me, but supper gon’ be late every day.”
“Every day?”
“I’ll try to put somethin’ on in the mornings before I go, but—”
“What de hell you doin’, Emma Jean?” Gus turned and stared at her.
“It ain’t nothin’ for you to worry about. It’s just somethin’ I gotta do ’cause I said I would.”
“Well,” Gus said, shrugging, “I sho hope it don’t last long, ’cause eatin’ at damn near eight o’clock ain’t gon’ work.”
Emma Jean drifted off before confessing that the change would probably last a lifetime.
Henrietta and Emma Jean never talked. Henrietta simply told her what to do and Emma Jean did it. By the end of the first month, Emma Jean discovered that the biggest torture of the job was the silent contemplation it forced. Endless hours passed with Henrietta either quiet or absent, and, in that time, Emma Jean’s mind, without her heart’s permission, wandered back to moments and decisions she never thought she’d reconsider. That was the agony of the job—sitting in silent discourse with herself, then, because of the burn scars, standing, subject to the same mental contemplation. Emma Jean had never known the power of silence. Her life had been filled with sound, noise, speech, and she liked it that way. She could control what she said and to whom she said it. Even when someone’s words pissed her off—like that damn Sugar Baby—she liked that her sharp tongue came to her rescue and put folks in their places. And of course with seven children, someone was always asking or telling her something, and by the time she tired of talking, she was ready for bed. Not now. Now, Silence ruled her and made her think about things. It was so inconsiderate. It didn’t care that some memories were too painful to revisit. It didn’t care that Emma Jean wept aloud each time it forced her back to places and experiences she had forgotten for the sake of sanity. It wasn’t the least bit moved that it sometimes made Emma Jean wonder if she were losing her mind. Silence seemed to enjoy the game. Could Henrietta have known Silence? Could she have known this would happen?
Emma Jean saw Claude Lovejoy’s face one day, buried within the threads of a yellow garment. He was weeping and looking at her as though asking, Why did you reject me? Emma Jean turned away, shaking her head violently, but the image remained. “I was a child,” she mumbled. “What was I suppose to do?” The face continued staring, unmoved. Angrily, she bunched the cloth and threw it across the room. After retrieving it and still beholding her father’s face, she ripped it to shreds. Henrietta found her sobbing at the table.
“Something wrong, honey?”
Emma Jean hadn’t heard her enter. “I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes and said, “We’ll need another bolt of yellow fabric. This one fell apart.”
Henrietta smiled. “I see. Well, don’t worry about it. If it happens again, we’ll just have to get Gus to pay for it.”
“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with Gus. You leave him out of this.”
“Fine. But if you get so mad you destroy any more of my cloth, you gon’ have to pay for it—in cash.”
Henrietta walked around the house for the next hour, envisioning Emma Jean engulfed in a rage of fury, ripping yellow strips of cloth and probably cursing all the while, and taunted, “Are you having fun yet?” There was nothing Emma Jean could say or do. Belligerence was useless since, for better or worse, she couldn’t go anywhere, and Henrietta would undoubtedly have welcomed a physical brawl. Ignoring her was the best Emma Jean could hope for, and Henrietta’s mocking laughter made that practically impossible.
By Christmas of 1958, Emma Jean’s balancing of home and work had fallen apart. She was simply too tired to clean and cook after twelve hours of tedious sewing. Still, Gus didn’t know about the arrangement, but he stopped questioning her once she started crying her nights away. In the mornings, she’d soak her hands in hot water, hoping to ease the tension from her joints, but it never helped much, and squeezing the small rubber ball repeatedly only intensified the pain. Henrietta recommended that she sit upon her hands and rock like her mother used to. It relieved her arthritis, Henrietta said, and maybe Emma Jean would find a similar relief. “Of course Momma’s mind wasn’t too good, either, so rocking helped her steady herself.”
“I ain’t no old, crazy woman!” Emma Jean said. Yet, after dropping and breaking half of her good dishes, she knew she needed to do something. She tried Henrietta’s suggestion, and, much to her chagrin, it worked. Gus frowned, wondering why in the world she was rocking like that, but her quivering mouth kept him from asking.
Henrietta opened her boutique in March of 1959 with grand success. Women marveled at the variety of dresses, skirts, and blouses it offered, and wondered how one woman could produce such volume. Henrietta smiled and said, “The Lawd always makes a way!” Within a week, she had sold half her merchandise—mostly to white women—and she told Emma Jean, “Guess we gon’ have to double our production.” Henrietta gave Emma Jean a brand-new pair of scissors, and Emma Jean received it like a
Hebrew slave might have received straw for bricks. Although the cutting was easier, the sheer volume of cloth being cut had doubled, so the pain in Emma Jean’s hands never subsided. With Henrietta tending the boutique, Silence came more often. It asked Emma Jean, one day, why she had abandoned King Solomon.
“I didn’t abandon him.”
Sure you did.
“No, I didn’t.”
Then why didn’t you let him go to school? He’s the one who wanted it.
“ ’Cause we couldn’t send but one.”
Oh yeah. And you wanted Perfect to go.
“His name’s Paul.”
Paul. Perfect. Same difference.
“No it ain’t!”
Sure it is. And you loved her most. That’s why you abandoned the others.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. It didn’t happen like that!” Emma Jean looked around quickly. Was she losing her mind? Who was she screaming at?
All he wanted was to learn, and you denied him. What kind of mother are you?
“Kiss my ass!” she shouted.
“Emma Jean?” Henrietta said slowly, coming through the screen door. “Who are you talking to?”
Snapping back to reality, she said, “Oh . . . um . . . nobody. We’re out of black thread though.”
Henrietta had noticed that the confident, self-assured Emma Jean had been replaced by a sullen, discomposed one. She had stopped grooming her hair—something the old Emma Jean would never have done—and some days her clothes looked as though she had slept in them. Mamie Cunningham noticed the change weeks earlier.
“What’s wrong with Emma Jean?” she asked another deaconess.
“I don’t know, but she don’t seem like herself, do she?”
“Naw, she don’t,” Mamie said, staring at her archenemy from a distance. “I spoke to her ’fo church this mornin’ and she smiled like somebody tryin’ to keep from cryin’.”
“You don’t guess she sick, do you?”
“I don’t think so. It’s somethin’ else. Somethin’ deep down.”
“Maybe she thinkin’ ’bout what she done to dat boy.”
“Maybe so.”
If Emma Jean had had her way, she would’ve stopped attending church altogether, but Gus wouldn’t hear of it. He said a family ain’t a family if they don’t go to church on Sunday mornings. Emma Jean hadn’t the strength to argue. She knew she wasn’t her old self. Her spunk and drive had dwindled to barely enough motivation to speak to others, and many days she considered quitting Henrietta’s and simply letting her integrity crumble. But she couldn’t. It was all she had of her former glory, and if she gave that up there’d be no reason to live. She didn’t care about much else now. She didn’t have the energy. Every morning when she looked in the mirror, she saw Mae Helen’s face taking shape over her own and she cursed the day she agreed to be Henrietta’s slave.
Was it really worth this? Really?
“Please leave me alone,” Emma Jean muttered. She would’ve stabbed Silence if she could’ve.
You shouldn’t have done that to that boy.
“Don’t you talk about my baby. Ever!” To this point, Silence had avoided the issue, and Emma Jean had been grateful. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”
But you do.
Emma Jean didn’t respond.
You should be ashamed. You have no idea what you’ve done. And all because you wanted something you didn’t have.
“That’s right! I wanted something I didn’t have. Why don’t people understand that?”
’Cause you destroyed somebody else to get it.
“My momma did it!” Emma Jean declared before realizing what she’d said.
Yes. She did. And you hated her for it.
Emma Jean leaned her head back to stop the tears. “She was such a pretty baby.”
He.
“You know what I mean.”
But why did you do it? He was an innocent child.
“I was a innocent child, too!”
Yeah, but didn’t you grow up?
Emma Jean paused.
Now look at him. He don’t know who he is.
“He’s still my baby. And I love him.”
Sure you do. But does he love himself?
Emma Jean went to the window and studied the rain. Sometimes Silence went away when she sang, so she began, “All of my heeeelp.”
That’s Sol’s song.
“You don’t bother me when I’m singing! You know that!”
Yeah, but that’s Sol’s song and you don’t have no right to sing it. Not the way you treated him.
“What are you talkin’ ’bout? I loved him just like I loved the others!”
Really? He never knew it. You didn’t even go to his graduation.
“Yeah, but I sent Authorly! Ain’t that enough? I can’t do everything.” She returned to her work. “I’ve done the best I could by all my children.”
Yeah right!
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Somebody was.
“Don’t start that again!”
I’m just wondering how you justified it. That’s all. It really didn’t bother you?
“No, it didn’t bother me ’cause I didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”
Oh, sure you did. You just didn’t care. You didn’t think about anyone but yourself.
“Well, who else was thinkin’ about me? Huh?”
No one.
“That’s right! So I had to think about myself.” She stuck her thumb with a pin and shouted, “Shit!”
You’re still selfish. Even if others didn’t think about you, you didn’t have the right to mess up that boy’s life. Especially as a baby.
“Leave me alone, goddamnit! You don’t know nothin’ ’bout me, so you can’t judge me!”
You’ve already been judged. Now you’re being sentenced.
“To what?”
Silence paused. To the truth.
Henrietta’s business flourished. A month after opening, she purchased a storefront on Main Street in Morrilton. No colored person had ever done that. Above the door hung a huge sign that read TRISH’S THINGS. Swamp Creek residents boasted with pride. They said God had worked a miracle for Henrietta, and maybe now Morrilton whites would welcome other black businesses into the downtown area. In the midst of it all, Henrietta never mentioned Emma Jean.
Weeks passed. Emma Jean’s screaming increased as Silence tormented her.
Emma Jean? she heard one still, quiet, gray morning.
“Please leave me alone.”
I can’t do that. Not yet.
“Why not?”
’Cause you ain’t told the truth.
“About what?”
You know about what.
“You can’t make me say I’m sorry for what I done!”
You already sorry for what you done. You just ain’t told the truth about it.
“The truth is,” Emma Jean sassed, “that I didn’t have no other choice.”
Sure you did.
“No, I didn’t! You don’t know what was in my heart then.”
Yes I do. I live there. Remember?
“Then you oughta know why I did what I did.”
I do know. But that don’t make it right.
“What’s right changes from day to day.” Emma Jean was becoming exasperated.
Not this time. You was just wrong.
“And if I was, what can I do about it now?”
Admit it.
“But I wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have nothing else.”
You had everything. A husband, six boys, your—
“That ain’t what I wanted! You know that! I had been dreamin’ ’bout a daughter since I was a little girl. I just wanted to love her right.”
Unlike Mae Helen had done you?
Chills raced across Emma Jean’s arms as she touched the crescent-shaped scar. “This ain’t about her.”
There you go lying again.
“Why don’t you just leave
me alone!” Emma Jean’s hands trembled.
Mae Helen’s gone now. She can’t hurt you anymore. You can let it go.
“Let it go? If it was that easy, I woulda let it go years ago!”
Oh! So you admit Mae Helen hurt you?
“That ain’t nothin’ to admit! She almost named me Nobody! Of course she hurt me. Anybody wit’ eyes can see that.”
But they can’t see the scars. Not the real ones.
“I don’t wanna talk about her.”
I’m sure you don’t, but you gotta. You can’t get to the truth ’til you settle the past.
“I’m through with all of that!” she shouted. “And I don’t wanna hear nothin’ else about it.”
Remember the baby doll Mae Helen bought?
“Shut up!” Emma Jean screamed, covering her ears as if the inner voice were too loud. Her body quivered like a condemned convict sitting in the electric chair.
And remember washing dishes as Pearlie and Gracie combed each other’s hair?
“Shut up!”
And remember how Mae Helen burned your forehead with the hot comb?
“No!”
And remember how you fainted in the chicken coop after—
“No! No! No!”
No one heard Emma Jean’s protestation. She wilted to the floor, surrounded by strips of cotton, polyester, and silk, and begged Silence to spare her. It did, but only for a while. Once she recovered and returned to work, Silence returned.
I’m never going away, you know.
Emma Jean closed her eyes as tears formed. “I wish you would.”
Well, I won’t. Not until you admit the truth.
“Fine! What is it you want me to say?”
It’s not what I want you to say. It’s what you need to say.
“Whatever! Just tell me and I’ll say it—if it’ll shut you up.”
And you gotta mean it, too. It don’t mean nothin’ if you don’t mean it.
Emma Jean repeated, slowly, “Just tell me what to say.”
Silence hesitated. No. You gotta look in your heart and see the truth for yourself. Then say whatever you see.
“Well, I don’t see nothin’ in my heart ’cept love for my boys. And respect for my husband.”