As we drove through the streets of Los Angeles the yellow tie floated into my mind, staying on top like a leaf in shallow water. I wondered where he was, Mrs. Pittman’s colored man, Negro man. I caught a vision of him, heading nowhere but away.
We had just gotten home when Michelle Jordan knocked. Michelle was funny. Ruth didn’t like her but I didn’t care. Michelle rushed in like she usually did, mouth running like a car motor, green eyes wide open.
She said without a hi or hello, “I can only stay for a minute, my mother’s next door at the LeFlores’.” Michelle’s mother and Mrs. LeFlore were friends. “What color dress you gonna get for graduation? You gonna buy it or have it made? You gonna have your shoes dyed to match? I’m wearing deep pink only because Mother won’t let me wear red and I asked my daddy but he said when it comes to clothes, Mother’s the boss. I picked out a pattern last week. I’m gonna get me some falsies. What about you?” Her eyes looked at my blossoming bosom. “Oh, I suppose you don’t need any.”
She went into the kitchen, said hello to Mrs. Pittman, picked up the lid on Mrs. Pittman’s pot, and said, “Beans? My mother won’t let me eat beans.” She took a breath and continued talking. “You gonna wear your hair up because Mother said I could wear a French twist and I’m going to the beauty shop that morning. So if you want to come with me, you just let me know because my mother’s third cousin, Jimmie, is gonna do my hair and he could probably do yours too. He does hair so it doesn’t even look like colored hair unless you go out in the rain and I’m certain it won’t be raining in the middle of June. Did I tell you that Daddy just bought us a brand-new car? Now we have two.”
Mrs. Jordan honked the car horn twice. Michelle turned the brass doorknob and walked out onto the front porch, still talking. Mrs. Pittman and I stood on the threshold, looking, waving as they drove away in the brand-new baby-blue Buick. Mrs. Pittman closed the door and said, “Lord have mercy, gonna drive some poor man crazy.”
Ruth stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. “ ‘Mother won’t let me eat beans, especially in our brand-new car, and I will be wearing a French twist.’ That girl’s fulla herself and someone else too.”
Aunt Olivia walked in, Uncle not far behind her, and asked if that was Michelle Jordan.
We all said, “Yes, that was Michelle Jordan.”
Mrs. Pittman added, “Whose mother’s third cousin, Jimmie, is a hairdresser who sure works wonders with colored hair.”
We filled the house with laughter and ate dinner.
Sleep came and I dreamed I was the actress Lena Horne. My dress was emerald green. I woke up, moonlight falling like dew everywhere, and wrote down emerald green, in case the dream escaped with the rise of the sun.
Three Saturdays later at the dressmaker’s, Ruth said, “Next year, I’m wearin red, red the color of a fire engine.”
Olivia said, “Red has always been one of my favorite colors.”
I stood on a chair, wearing the emerald green dress, and the dressmaker said, “Hold still so I can get the hem straight.” There was impatience in her fingertips.
I turned and looked in the mirror, and vanity hit me hard like sunlight after you’ve been in the dark. I felt pretty. I felt like the country girl from Sulphur was disappearing.
I stared at my reflection like Narcissus and thought about white cotton drawers and Ivory soap, blue gingham dresses and black patent leather shoes stuffed with cotton, the push pedal on Mama’s sewing machine.
The dressmaker brought me back, saying, “Got to take it in a little more at the waist; take it off, be ready on Wednesday.”
We pulled into the driveway. The front porch light was on. Uncle, sitting in front of the television, watching his favorite western, ignored us as we walked through the door. All he said was, “Hungry.” Aunt Olivia walked over to where he was sitting, bent over, and kissed him hard. There was more than love between them. I knew by the way he looked at her when she walked away, like his television show wasn’t important anymore. That made me smile because it was like what Mama and Daddy had, sparks flying.
At dinner there was talk about civil rights again. Uncle Bill said, “NAACP leader down in Mississippi got lynched, the Reverend George W. Lee, wouldn’t take his name off the voter registration list. All this talk about progress, I’d like to see some. Something big’s bound to happen. White folks gotta give up on this nonsense.
“Fear ... that’s what it is,” Aunt Olivia said.
“Pure wickedness,” Uncle Bill replied. “The courts think all they need to do is pass some laws. Laws the KKK laughs at before they get on their knees at night to pray.”
“People have to obey the law. If they don’t they have to go to jail, right?” I asked.
Uncle Bill replied, “Sometimes, Leah ... sometimes.”
“Then why don’t they take all those people who lynch and burn crosses and just put them in jail because they’re breaking the law?” I asked.
Ruth added, “They should put them all on one big boat and send it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean without food or water. Then they would all die from dehydration and starvation. My teacher taught us about that. Dehydration means no water, starvation means no food.”
“Your gramma will be here next week,” Olivia said, changing the subject. “I was thinking she could stay in the room with you, Leah.”
Ruth looked disappointed.
“Or with Ruth,” she added.
“She could stay with me one night and Ruth the next,” I said.
Uncle Bill said, “Very good, Leah ... diplomacy.”
“What’s diplomacy?” I asked.
“It’s when a person can deal with a problem and everyone is happy. There’s no loser. Everybody wins or at least they think they do.”
I wondered how he knew so many big words. “Did you go to college, Uncle Bill?” I asked.
“Yes ma’am, I’m a Morehouse man ... in Atlanta.”
“Then why were you a chauffeur?” Ruth asked.
“Couldn’t find a job at a newspaper. My major was in journalism. Had a few other things I could do well. Drive a car was one of them, saying yessir, nosir was another. I learned a lot watching rich white folks and how they live. I learned how not to be poor. So, I can’t say it was a bad thing.”
Aunt Olivia gave him a look of love and Ruth and I cleared the table because Mrs. Pittman had gone home early. I washed the dishes and Ruth rinsed. It felt a little bit like home.
Twenty-two
The train station was filled with beams of overlapping light. Gramma was alone. Elijah’s fear of earthquakes had won.
I looked straight into the eyes of my mama’s mother. She reached, pulled me to her, and kissed my forehead, the way she had a habit of doing. Then she put her arms around Ruth, held her close, tight, like she was filling her with love or goodness.
Gramma let go of Ruth and embraced Olivia. Tears came to their eyes but didn’t flow. We walked from the station to the car.
“Ruth, Elijah sent you and Leah some love and a little hug, wrapped up inside me, free for the askin, whenever you need it. Said to kiss you both on the forehead for him. And Hank De Leon sent you the possum coats he been promisin you since you was knee-high. Not likely that you gonna ever need to wear em, all this California sunshine.” Gramma held my hand as we drove half a block and parked the car.
We ate lunch on Olvera Street, surrounded by the sounds of Mexico.
Gramma said, “Never had it in my mind to mash no pinto beans but they seem to be mighty tasty this way.” She put the fork into her mouth and swallowed.
“Mrs. Martinez, who lives next door, serves them with almost every meal, including breakfast. They call them refried beans,” Olivia said.
“Mrs. Martinez gave me some meatball soup and tamales one day after school when it was raining but she didn’t give me any beans,” I added as I bit into a taco.
“Leah is in love with Gilbert Martinez,” Ruth said. “He’s a Mexican but he speaks English. Some
times his mother speaks Spanish and his father likes to sing when he’s working in their garden.”
Olivia and Gramma shared a smile.
We bought four white lace mantillas and drove home happy, humming to music on the radio.
Having Gramma’s heart near mine felt good and I hoped that she would stay and love me for a while, love almost like Mama’s. I stayed near her all day, showing her my photographs, modeling my emerald green dress.
That night Gramma put her head on the pillow next to mine and I told her, “In The Wizard of Oz there was a place called the Emerald City.”
“It seems to me Los Angeles is like a emerald city, palm trees standin up everywhere, green jewels in the sky,” she said. She embraced me and we fell asleep.
When we awoke, it was early morning and she said to me, “A kind, quiet man, patient, soft-spoken, quick to smile, hands with tenderness runnin through em; that’s the man for you, Leah. You too soft for anything else. B’fore you marry, send him to me. I’ll know if he’s the one. If he don’t wanna come see me, let him go his way and don’t look after him. You remember what I’m sayin to you. Promise me that.” We fell asleep again.
The morning of graduation I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and Gramma helped me slip into my dress. The zipper purred as she pulled it up. She turned me toward her and said, “Bless me, Jesus, but if you don’t look like your mama. My Rita, how I miss her, cookin beside her in the kitchen. What she would give to see this day.”
I asked Gramma if she missed our mama as much as I did. She replied, “Course I do, but I know one thing bout my daughter Rita. She wouldn’t be gone if she hadn’t been ready to have her meetin with the Lord. And Leah. You be at peace now bout it or you gonna feel a slice missin from your heart till you gotta head covered with gray. Got a spirit of sadness round and bout you, follows you round like a tail on a donkey. I’d like to see it lift b‘fore I find m’self on the train, headin home.”
I wanted to tell her that I missed Louisiana and living in Sulphur, where almost everyone knew my name. I wanted to let her know that sometimes I walked around barefoot just for the feel of the grass and dirt beneath my feet. But I could feel sadness coming and so I said nothing as I held Gramma’s hand.
Gramma brushed my hair and put a little red lipstick on her finger. She dabbed the lipstick on my lips. “Just a little. You got natural beauty.”
“My friend Michelle Jordan wears lipstick to school every day,” I informed her.
“Y’all too young for every day.”
“When I grow up, I’m gonna be a teacher, Gramma. Like Mrs. Redcotton and Mrs. Larson,” I said.
“That would sure make your mama ’n daddy proud,” she said.
I sat down on the side of the bathtub and watched her paint her mouth. She took a piece of tissue and pressed it to her lips, leaving a red print, and tossed it into the wastebasket. She had wrinkles around her eyes and her hair was gray. Her cheekbones were high. She patted her face and mine with powder, to take off the shine, she said, and stepped into a blue dress that had buttons in the back instead of a zipper. I buttoned them for her, bottom to top, and we looked at each other in the mirror, delighted.
Ruth opened the bathroom door without knocking and came in. She was wearing a pink dress, pink socks, white patent leather shoes, and Shirley Temple curls. “Everybody’s waitin. Uncle Bill said we bout to be late if you don’t hurry. Said he can’t understand why women take so much time in the bathroom.”
Gramma took one last look in the mirror, put her lipstick and powder into her purse, and we hurried to the car.
Mrs. Pittman was waiting for us outside the school auditorium, wearing a smile, a black-and-white polka-dot dress, and a black pillbox hat.
They went into the auditorium to find seats and I went to my classroom. The boys were wearing ties and suits, gray, brown, navy blue, and black. The girls’ dresses were white, green, red, blue, pink, lavender, some made from lace, others from satin.
Donna Peterson touched me on the shoulder and we smiled at each other. “Your dress is pretty,” she said.
She was wearing yellow. It almost matched the color of her hair. “So is yours,” I said.
I found my place in line, in front of Michelle. She leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “I have on eye shadow, can you tell?”
I turned and looked at her. The faint color of pale blue was on the lids of her eyes. “I can tell. It looks pretty. I like your dress.”
“I like yours too,” she said.
All of the sixth-graders walked into the auditorium and took their seats. The principal talked about the future and how the world was changing.
I thought about the way my life had changed, the schoolhouse in Sulphur, the boys and girls I had sat with while Mrs. Redcotton tried to fill our minds. I looked at my hands and remembered telling Elijah that I wasn’t going to be a cotton picker.
I turned and looked at Ruth, Gramma, Uncle, Aunt, and Mrs. Pittman as I rose from my seat. I wished Mama and Daddy were there as I walked up the steps in front of Michelle Jordan. Mrs. Larson handed me my diploma and said, “Leah Jean Hopper.”
The next day was my birthday. I was twelve. I was a young lady. I sat on my bed and looked out the window and I could hear Ruth whistling like a bird across the hall. Low clouds filled the sky.
Gramma and Mrs. Pittman spent the afternoon in the kitchen together, cooking, talking, and laughing. They filled the house with joy. Mrs. Pittman played Nat King Cole records on the record player and sang along. Gramma made a coconut cake and when Uncle Bill and Aunt Olivia got home from work we ate barbecued chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and baked beans in the backyard by candlelight. I was feeling like I had a family again, like Ruth and I had a place where we belonged. Hot sat at my feet and I slipped him a piece of chicken. He was devoted.
The weeks flew by too quickly and Gramma was boarding her train. Olivia had asked her to stay. Uncle Bill had chimed in. Ruth had pleaded with her. I had whispered prayers to God. Gramma had simply said that California was not where she belonged. That it was too big a dose of people for her to handle all the time, that she longed for the quiet of the country, even if it meant she would never vote, that Sulphur was where she’d been born and it was where she’d be buried, that she needed to get home to tend her little garden of turnips and tomatoes, to give Elijah a peck on the lips. And so she went.
I knew that I would miss her every time a train blew its whistle twice.
That night, I closed my bedroom door and took down my red rose box. I sat on the bed and unlocked it. I took out the pearls and put them around my neck. I tied the white scarf with black flowers around my head and clipped the earrings with purple stones to my ears.
I held the photograph of Mama and Daddy in front of me and remembered.
Ruth turned the glass doorknob and walked in without knocking. She sat on the bed beside me, looked at the picture, and put her head on my shoulder. No tears came.
The Red Rose Box Page 10