Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

by Jonathan Odell

  Floyd reached beside him on the nightstand and brought his book into bed with them. “Like I was reading last night, ‘Enthusiasm is contagious.’ And Hazel,” he said with a grin, “probably nobody around is more catching than me.”

  He began flipping through the pages and pointing out his favorite little sayings. “Listen to this,” he said excitedly. ‘. . .To a controlled thinker, every problem is an opportunity.’”

  “And here’s a good ’un: ‘Attitude determines altitude.’ And, ‘If life serves you a bum steer, eat steaks.’ How about this one: ‘If you get a raw deal—’”

  By then she had stopped listening. Those things didn’t make any sense to her at all, and she sure didn’t see what they had to do with Johnny Earl. So instead of looking at the book as he pointed out the words, she stared at the purple burn scars on his fingers and remembered the story he had told her when they were still getting to know each other. She had finally got up the nerve to ask about his mother. Without blinking, he said, “Died when I was six months old.”

  Hazel didn’t know what to say. She must have looked sad because Floyd quickly tried to reassure her. “It’s not like I knew her or anything.”

  “How’d she die?” Hazel asked, sounding a lot more sorrowful about the loss than he.

  Floyd looked down at his hands and began to rub the little purple blotches on his fingers that Hazel had always assumed were birthmarks. “Well, what they tell me is Momma was holding me in her arms, warming herself in front of the fireplace, when she had a stroke and fell out.” He held out his hands for her to see. “Daddy said I got these scars when I grabbed aholt of a burning log.”

  Hazel’s eyes had welled up with tears, not knowing what it would do to a person to reach out for his mother and touch fire instead. Yet Floyd told it as if it had happened to somebody else, somebody he had little patience for.

  Now she wondered why he wasn’t the one having nightmares, too. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t get past it all?

  Over the next few months, the more fearful she became, the more Floyd preached his religion of success at her. He told her in every failure is a seed for the next victory; it’s all in a person’s thinking. Then he began to write the sayings down on tablet paper and hung them around the house for her to find.

  “DON’T SPEND A SECOND OF TODAY FRETTING TOMORROW OR REGRETTING YESTERDAY,” the bathroom mirror warned her. The Philco greeted her with, “IT’S A MATTER OF MENTAL MAGNETISM: WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ATTRACTING TODAY?” “BE A CONTROLLED THINKER!” the hall closet door hollered.

  The last words she heard at night were from the lamp by her bed. The paper taped to its shade chided, “HOW FAST YOU TRAVEL ON THE TRACK TO SUCCESS IS DETERMINED BY YOUR TRAIN OF THOUGHT,” and to hear Floyd tell it, they were still only in slow motion. He had big plans for his family and was keeping a positive mind on the future, and she needed to be there with him.

  Hazel tried to live by his words, wanting desperately to be a good wife and a good mother, yet couldn’t gain that Floyd-Graham-rock-solid certainty. She watched with a mixture of wonderment and trepidation as Johnny ate regular, never got sick, learned to walk, and grew like he was supposed to. Best of all, he loved his mother and knew how to show it. That especially was a comfort. Of course Hazel loved him, too, but love took its toll. Hazel’s stabbing anxiety dulled to a constant dread.

  Not long after Johnny’s first birthday, Floyd talked her into getting pregnant again. He figured that with two children she wouldn’t have time to fret over things that didn’t matter. Another child would help prioritize her thinking, he advised.

  Hazel did as Floyd asked. She got pregnant and had another boy, Davie. She memorized more sayings. She recited them to her children like nursery rhymes. As much as she tried changing her thinking, she couldn’t get over feeling that she had only the loosest of handholds on the caboose of Floyd’s speeding train of success.

  1955

  Chapter Eight

  UP TO THE BIG HOUSE

  Even though she couldn’t find her voice to say it, Hazel figured their entire cottage could easily fit into this one room, and she was not alone in reverential silence. She and Floyd turned slowly in the middle of the empty parlor and neither spoke, as if a house this grand might not want to carry voices as common as their own. That the house was now theirs may have been a reality on paper, yet this minute, as they gawked openmouthed, that truth felt as hollow as the cavernous rooms themselves.

  “Well, punkin,” Floyd said, whispering for a reason unknown to him, “it took me six years to keep my promise. But I did it. I got you out of that slave cabin and put you up on the hill.”

  He looked at her with that sweet expression she remembered from before they married. It was the way he looked at her over ice cream during that magical month of planning their escape.

  “You proud of me?” he asked.

  The question comforted Hazel. He still cared what she thought. “I’m real proud, Floyd,” she whispered back. “It’s a dream come true.”

  Floyd stood a little straighter. “Like I always say,” his voice stronger now, “success is a dream with sweat on it.” He spoke the last part loud enough to send the saying echoing lightly off the walls. He must have approved of the way it sounded, because he said it again, louder. “Success is a dream with sweat on it,” he shouted, and smiled at Hazel proudly as his voice rang throughout the house.

  Hazel smiled weakly. There was no doubt about it. Floyd had been sweating big time. He broke all records selling farm implements, single-handedly putting enough machinery into operation to free up thousands of field hands. He had been such a standout that the Senator convinced his brother-in-law, the president of the bank, to loan Floyd the money to start Delphi Motors. The Senator had taken a liking to Floyd.

  On one occasion, the Senator had slapped Floyd on the back and said that already, with nothing more than a few well-turned phrases and that shit-eating grin of his, Floyd had changed the Delta landscape more than Ulysses Grant had during the invasion. Floyd had replaced the primitive hollers of the coloreds with the smooth hum of machinery. The Senator said there was no telling how far Floyd could go if he was his own boss. Now, thanks to the Senator—plus Floyd’s positive thinking, of course—he was selling Mercurys and Lincolns and Ford trucks out of a business he ran himself.

  While the boys scampered through the house, making their bare feet screech against the slick hardwood floors, Hazel stood there holding fast to Floyd, the same way she had that late afternoon when he showed her what lay beyond the bluffs and she struggled to make sense of it all.

  The walls around her were the pinkish color of mimosa blossoms, and all along their length were the empty, lighter spaces where portraits of the previous owner’s ancestors had hung. It occurred to Hazel that it might be easier living with the ghosts of slaves than of rich people.

  “How we going to fill it up, just the four of us?” she asked. “This house got rooms I don’t even know the names of.”

  “That’s why I’m taking you to Greenwood. So you can outfit this house with the grandest things you can find. Like I always say, ‘If you want to attract money, you got to smell like money.’”

  Choosing the curtains for the little slave cabin had stretched Hazel’s imagination to the limit, but this assignment made her head swim. She had no idea how rich folks went about filling up their homes, never having been inside a house this grand before.

  “Now, I mean it,” Floyd said. “When we go to Greenwood, buy only deluxe. We got an image now.” His eyes narrowed. “Oh, that reminds me.”

  Hazel braced herself. She could feel one of Floyd’s “lists for success” coming on.

  “You got to stop tussling with Johnny and Davie in the yard right out in plain view. I’ll find you a colored girl to watch them. And another thing, don’t let the boys go out the house looking like Indians. Put shirts and shoes on them. Even in summertime. We ain’t in the hills no more. People are going to be watchi
ng us close now.”

  Stamping like horses, Johnny and Davie, half naked and already brown as berries, their feet stained green with spring grass, giddyupped into the sitting room. Hazel got that old sinking feeling again in her chest. A good mother would have known better. This was supposed to be getting easier, she thought. Lurleen and Onareen turned out children like canned tomatoes and never seemed to give being a mother a second thought.

  With his arms outstretched, his frail blue eyes pleading, Davie bounced up and down at his father’s feet, calling out, “Catch me! Catch me!”

  Floyd lifted his son off the ground and threw him into the air, making Davie gurgle with laughter. At the peak of his rise, Davie yelled out, “Catch me!”

  Hazel clutched herself. She hated this game.

  Johnny noticed his mother’s dread. “Daddy, you be careful. Don’t drop Davie on his head.”

  Hazel smiled sadly at Johnny, relieved yet at the same time a little ashamed that he had been the one to speak out.

  “We just having some fun. No harm done.” Floyd set Davie down on the floor and then turned to Johnny. “Hey, Little Monkey. You wanna go next?” he asked, holding out his arms. Johnny took two steps backward.

  Rebuffed, Floyd returned his attention to his wife. “Now, like I was saying, you got to help me, Hazel. We’re building us up a reputation. This house is only the start of it.”

  Nodding her agreement, she looked up into his confident face. Floyd was already acting as if he had been born and bred in this house, when only a few minutes ago he was asking like a child if she was proud of him. It amazed her how things came so natural to him, in the way raising babies came natural to her sisters.

  Floyd unveiled the next item on his list. “I think it’s time you learned to drive.”

  Hazel’s mouth dropped open. “You gonna teach me, Floyd?” she asked, not believing her ears. She had always assumed that driving was beyond her, mainly because Floyd had never suggested it before.

  “That and more. I’m going to get you your very own car. Brand-new Lincoln. Columbia blue. Special-ordered it.”

  “My own car? For me?” Hazel began to tear up.

  “Yep. That way you can be a rolling advertisement for Delphi Motors. I’ll put the trucks under the men, and you can help me put Lincolns under their wives.” He winked at her. “We can be a team.”

  “A team,” she repeated. Yes, she thought, that was it! Exactly what she had wanted and didn’t know how to say until Floyd put it into words. He was so smart. Hazel wanted to be a team with him. The idea thrilled her as nothing had in years. Leave it to Floyd to find a way for her to catch up and travel by his side.

  To her delight and Floyd’s amazement, Hazel took to driving like a duck to water. Two weeks with her new Lincoln and she was backing up the big car, passing on the left, even parallel parking. Her stops became feather light and her turns as smooth as butter. After all those hours riding around with the route men, she figured something must have rubbed off. Hazel didn’t mention that to Floyd. She let him assume that at long last there was something she took to natural. Others might be good cooks and good mothers or good salesmen, but driving a car was going to be Hazel’s special calling.

  In no time she was confident enough to do the furniture shopping all by herself. She got behind the wheel and powered the mighty machine west on 84, taking the highway straight on into Greenwood. Once there she negotiated big-city traffic, insisted on her rightful turn at intersections, and competed for parking places with the most aggressive of men drivers. The Lincoln was making her into a new woman.

  Floyd was nearly as excited about her success as she was. After the furniture started arriving and they began to get settled into the house, he lost no time setting the next phase of his team plan into motion. He told Hazel her team goal was to put at least ten miles a day on the Lincoln and to do it in public view. “You can be an inspiration to all the women in Delphi,” he told her. “Nowadays ever woman ought to have her own independent means of transportation. It’s the way the world is going.”

  One evening he brought home a brochure and dramatically spread it out on the kitchen table. “Looka here,” he said.

  What Hazel saw was the full-color picture of a very happy woman driving down the road in her Lincoln. “Try to look like her,” he said reverently. “She’s the sign of things to come.”

  The beautiful woman wore a large off-the-face hat with a mile-long ribbon rippling out the window, a matching scarf, and white gloves just to the wrist. At first Hazel felt a little strange about the idea, hoping that Floyd wasn’t trying to trade her up into something that she wasn’t. Yet when she saw the look of respect with which he regarded the woman in the picture, she knew she had to do it. Taking the advertisement to Gooseberry’s Department Store, she suited herself up as close as she could come to the happy woman.

  Hazel put shirts and shoes and bow ties on the boys, loaded them up, and in her new picture hat with a blue satin ribbon, silk chiffon scarf, and white gloves, backed away from their beautiful home and drove up and down Gallatin Street, from the bridge to the church and around the courthouse, looking happy, six times a day.

  Chapter Nine

  THE TROIS ARTS LEAGUE

  Hazel stepped back from the hall mirror and tugged at her skirt, evening the hemline. The dress was the most beautiful thing she had ever bought, an ice-blue shirtwaist made of silk shantung, which the salesman swore set her eyes to dancing like the sunlight on lake water. She took a tissue from the hostess pocket and, leaning in close to the glass, carefully dabbed at the lipstick in the corner of her mouth. Next she fussed expertly with the collar, smoothing the tips down flat.

  Well, the clothes and the makeup were certainly up to muster. Everything shaded, highlighted, smoothed down and lined up. However, what Hazel couldn’t see was the person between the lines. Touching her cheek gently, she longed for Floyd and wished he was there to tell her how beautiful she looked. A glimmer in his eye would do. But he wasn’t there, and she needed to do this on her own. Floyd was counting on her to be a team with him.

  At his insistence, she had invited some of the neighbor ladies over for punch and to show them what she had done with the house. More than three months had passed since they had moved in, and not a single person had come calling. Floyd had told her, “Hazel, you can’t wait for success to come knocking. You have to find out where it lives and then go hunt it down with a stick.”

  “Floyd, I don’t know what to say to women like that. What do they talk about?” Whatever it was, she was sure it wasn’t mules, heel flies, and ringworm.

  The women reigning in the houses around her were formidable-looking creatures, skin untouched by the sun and white as alabaster, with rouged cheeks, severe as Delta sunsets, their shoulders pulled back and chests puffed out, dripping with brooches and breastpins and cameos like generals on inspection. They were proper in ways that were foreign to Hazel, having cultivated curious manners that pushed you away rather than pulled you closer. When met on the street they could use a smile like an extended arm as if to say, “OK, that’s near enough.”

  Hazel stood there at the mirror waiting for the bourbon to kick in. To make it through more and more days, she had been relying on the Jim Beam in the pretty decanters that Floyd received from the Senator each Christmas and kept lined up on the counter. She knew she shouldn’t, but sometimes it was the only way to muster the hope she needed to keep on going.

  She remembered her first drink. As a girl, wandering the outcroppings, she came upon one of the places where her father hid his shine under a rock ledge. When Hazel unscrewed the top and brought the bottle up to her nose, the smell cut her breath and made her eyes burn. Should she? The preacher said it was a sin. Her mother called it a curse. However, that didn’t stop her daddy from devoting a good portion of his life to it.

  Hazel took a drink. The clear liquid breathed its fiery breath deep down into her and caused her to tear up and cough. She took another. />
  The sensation was like nothing she had expected, like two warm hands clasping her face. Her spirits soared higher than the chinquapin oaks before her, higher than the Appalachian foothills that surrounded her. She now understood why her father drank. He missed hope, too. When she couldn’t find hope in Floyd’s eyes, sometimes a sip or two of bourbon would hold her over the dry spells.

  Hazel heard Johnny yelling from the backyard. “Momma! She’s here! She’s here!”

  At last! The maid Floyd had promised for the day. A day was probably as long as she would last. Maids came and went with such regularity, Hazel barely got to know their names, because usually by the end of their first day on the job Floyd had found some reason to suspect them of stealing from him.

  Hazel waited to hear the confirming slap of the back door and then called out, “Bring her on in here!” She quickly drained the bourbon from the tumbler she kept hidden behind the flour sack and popped a peppermint in her mouth.

  A husky voice sang out, “Whoo-ee!” When Hazel turned, the first thing that caught her eye was a stretch of white fabric showcasing a prominent rear end. At that moment the colored woman it was attached to was gazing into the parlor, her hands planted on her well-rounded hips.

  “Look at all them pretty colors,” the woman said, apparently to the boys who stood on either flank. “More tints than One Wing Hannah’s jukebox.”

  Davie yelped and then took off in the direction of the green vinyl sectional, undoubtedly with the aim of scaling up the back of the couch and jumping off. A split second later, Johnny was in hot pursuit.

  The woman turned again toward Hazel. She was wearing the snuggest maid’s uniform Hazel had ever seen. Her breasts pooched out the top of her dress, reaching for daylight. Her smile involved at least two gold teeth. “Hidey. My name’s Sweet Pea. You Miss Hazel?”