Mary Emma “Mayremma” Smith (1911–1976)
I thank you all for blessing this book with your spirits.
Gratitude
I am indebted to my cousins Cherrol Bernard, Lionel Crichlow, and family for providing me a room of my own to live, recharge, figure out my life, and finish this book. Thanks also to cousins Carlo and Quovardis Lawrence; aunt Laura Taylor and cousin Kathleen Taylor; longtime sister-friends Cicely Peace, Andrea Knight, Cecilia Brown, Dawn Nedd, Marsha Cooper, Darlene Harden, Alicia McMillan; and brothers from other mothers Walter Fuller, Derek Rice, Dwight Brown, and Kenneth Wallace—without whom I would have certainly come undone.
I am grateful to Anita Abbott, Gloria Hardy, and Davette P. Reid for loving and caring for me like a daughter.
Vanessa Pettiford and B.J. Bernstein—y’all are some phenomenal women, amazing inspirations, and I’m happy to call you my friends!
I am particularly blessed to call these writer-warrior-women not just my friends, but also my family: Terry McMillan, Elizabeth Nunez, Donna Hill, and Margaret Johnson-Hodge.
I’d like to acknowledge the support and generosity of Jackson Taylor, director of the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program in Creative Writing at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, of which I am a proud alum.
I would also like to thank the El Gouna Writer’s Residency Program, the Serenbe Artist in Residence Program, and the Kalani Artist in Residence Program for providing me with the gift of time, space, and quiet.
I remain eternally grateful for Johnny Temple, Johanna Ingalls, and Ibrahim Ahmad of Akashic Books, who came together to rescue me from obscurity. I extend that gratitude to Aaron Petrovich, Susannah Lawrence, and Katie Martinez, who round out the Akashic Books family.
The research for this novel consisted primarily of these published works:
Germany’s Black Holocaust: 1890–1945 by Firpo W. Carr
The Buchenwald Report, translated by David A Hackett
Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars by William A. Shack
Near Black by Baz Dreisinger
Americans in Paris: Life and Death under the Nazi Occupation by Charles Glass
Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe
No Cause for Indictment by Ronald Porambo
While writing this novel I tried to respect history and geography, except when I chose not to.
Back in 2011 I was invited to spend one month at a writers-in-residence program in El Gouna, Egypt. I had a book idea, but no money to get there. A friend suggested that I launch a fundraising campaign, and “Eat, Sleep, Write: El Gouna” was born.
Over a three-month period I received donations from writers, readers, and people who didn’t know me from Adam—but wanted to help. Eventually, I met my fundraising goals and set out on a life-changing adventure. Four years later, that journey came to a close when I typed the final word of this novel.
I’m so appreciative of everyone who contributed to my campaign. No amount was too small—I received every cent with the utmost gratitude.
I did, however, want to acknowledge those individuals (friends, family, and strangers) who gave amounts that increased the pot exponentially: Vanessa Pettiford, Chava Frias, Laura Taylor, Tracy Jackson, Tananarive Due, Beverly Jenkins, Donna Woodard, Marcia Wilson, Tuesday L. Cooper, Edward May, Alice Fay Duncan, Ernessa T. Carter, Pascalle Goddard, Melanie McKie, Amy Moore, Kola Boof, Persia Walker, Brigette Major, Gayle Lin, Linda Duggins, Marie Brown, Pamela Walker-Williams, Juan Gaddis, Maria Jackson, Victoria Christopher Murray, Crystal Bobb-Semple, Marsha Cooper, Pricilla C. Johnson, Rebekkah Mulholland, and Trice Hickman.
I would also like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to my family, friends, all of the book clubs, book bloggers, and readers who have supported me all of these years!
Valerie Beaudrault, without your kindness and guidance, The Book of Harlan might not have come to fruition. You have my whole heart!
Finally, I want to acknowledge the tremendous debt I owe in this and everything else I have written to the lives of my ancestors.
Light,
E-Book Extras
Excerpt: Gathering of Waters
Also by Bernice L. Mcfadden
About Bernice L. Mcfadden
Excerpt from Gathering of Waters
___________________
Chapter One
I am Money. Money Mississippi.
I have had many selves and have been many things. My beginning was not a conception, but the result of a growing, stretching, and expanding, which took place over thousands of years.
I have been figments of imaginations, shadows and sudden movements seen out of the corner of your eye. I have been dewdrops, falling stars, silence, flowers, and snails.
For a time I lived as a beating heart, another life found me swimming upstream toward a home nestled in my memory. Once I was a language that died. I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies’ breath. But today, however, for you and for this story, I am Money. Money Mississippi.
I do not know for whom or what I was named. Perhaps I was christened for a farmer’s beloved mule or a child’s favorite pet; I suspect, though, that my name was derived from a dream deferred, because as a town, I have been impoverished for most of my existence.
You know, before white men came with their smiles, Bibles, guns, and disease, this place that I am was inhabited by Native men. Choctaw Indians. It was the Choctaw who gave the state its name: Mississippi—which means many gathering of waters. The white men fancied the name, but not the Indians, and so slaughtered them and replaced them with Africans, who as you know were turned into slaves to drive the white man’s ego, whim, and industry.
But what you may not know and what the colonists, genociders, and slave owners certainly did not know is this: Both the Native man and the African believed in animism, which is the idea that souls inhabit all objects, living things, and even phenomena. When objects are destroyed and bodies perish, the souls flit off in search of a new home. Some souls bring along memories, baggage if you will, that they are unwilling or unable to relive themselves of. Oftentimes these memories manifest in humans as déjà vu. Other times and in many other life-forms and so-called inanimate objects, these displays have been labeled as curious, bizarre, absurd, and deadly.
You may have read in the news about the feline having all the characteristics of a dog, the primate who walked upright from the day he was born until the day he died, of men trapped in female hosts and vice versa, the woman who woke one morning to find that she had grown a tail, the baby boy who emerged from his mother’s womb flanked not in skin but scales, the man who grew to the towering heights of a tree, rivers overflowing their banks, monster waves wiping away whole cities, twisters gobbling up entire neighborhoods, relentlessly falling snow blanketing towns like volcano ash.
These are all memories of previous existences.
Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.
To my memory, I have never been human, which probably explains my fascination with your kind. Admittedly, I am guilty of a very long and desperate infatuation with a family that I followed for decades. In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the beautifully tragic heartbrokenness of their lives, and so for years remained with them, helplessly tethered, like a mare to a post.
Their story begins not with the tragedy of ’55 but long before that, with the arrival of the first problem, which came draped in crinoline and silk; carrying a pink parasol in one hand and a Bible in the other.
Chapter Two
In 1900, the Violet Construction Company purchased a tract of land on the south bank of the Tallahatchie River and dug up the bones of the Choctaw Indians and the Africans. They tore from their roots black-eyed Susans, Cherokee roses, and Virginia creepers, and removed quite a number of magnolia and tupelo saplings. They did all of this to make room for forty
threestory clapboard homes complete with indoor plumbing, grand verandas, and widow’s walks. A road was laid to accommodate horse and buggies and the rare motorcar. The cobblestone sidewalks were lined with gas street lanterns and the street itself was christened Candle.
Oak floors, chandeliers, wainscoting, and brass hardware dazzled potential buyers who came to view those homes that looked over the prettiest part of the river. The people walked through the spacious rooms holding their chins and sighing approvingly in their throats as they admired the fine woodwork and custom details.
The homes sold very quickly.
With the creation of Candle Street came jobs for laundresses, maids, and cooks, which brought in more people to the area—darker people.
So in 1915, the Violet Construction Company purchased a second tract of land, this time on the north shore of the river.
The north shore tract was cleared of most of the ancient, towering long-leaf pines whose thick canopy had deprived the land of sun, which turned the earth hard, dry, and as uneven as a washboard. Running vines speckled with yellow thorns coiled around trees, rocks, and the carcasses of animals and people who had stopped, dropped, and died there. The Violet Construction Company removed all of it and used the cheapest grade of pinewood to erect thirty modest-sized homes that did not have indoor plumbing, widow’s walks, or verandas. At night the Negroes had to depend on the light of the moon to guide them along the rocky, cratered footpath. And if there was no moonlight—well, God help them.
The Violet Construction Company named the street Baxter’s Road, but since only Negroes occupied those homes, both black and white alike began to refer to the little community on the north shore as Nigger Row.
The church, funded by the Negro community, was built in 1921. The residents of Candle Street gifted their dark, wooly-haired neighbors a small crate of Bibles and a proper crucifix set with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus molded from plaster of paris and nailed resolutely to its center. The Negroes did not have a man of the cloth living amongst them, so sent out word that they were in search of a suitable cleric to lead their flock.
As fate would have it, Reverend August Hilson and his family had recently been displaced by the race riots that erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Negroes who managed to avoid being shot down in the streets like dogs, or burned to a crisp as they slept in their beds, packed up what they could and fled Tulsa.
For weeks, August and his family lived like nomads, wandering from one town to the next until they wandered all the way to Greenwood, Mississippi. There, August learned that his services were in dire need, “Just down the road,” the bearer of the news advised, “in Money.”
* * *
August Hilson and his family took possession of a home on Nigger Row on a cool November day. The photographer from the local newspaper came to capture the auspicious occasion. The family posed on the porch. August was seated in a mahogany chair cushioned in red velvet. The long, dark fingers of his right hand curled around his favorite Bible. His left hand rested on the intricately carved lion’s head which looked out at the photographer from its post at the top of the armrest. His wife, a peanut-colored, petite, full-bosomed woman named Doll, stood dutifully at his right side with her left hand on his shoulder, her right hand wrapped around the long neck of her beloved pink parasol. The children—a daughter named Hemmingway and a son named Paris—were stationed to the left of their father, arms still at their sides.
It was the first time any of them had ever been photographed, and even though they were practically bursting with glee, their expressions were painfully somber and their postures were as stiff as stone.
From beneath the dark blanket that covered both photographer and camera, the photographer counted off: Three … two … one …
The bulb exploded, expelling a puff of white smoke. A cheer went up from the small crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle, and the Hilson family officially began their new lives.
Days later, when August was presented with a framed copy of the newspaper article, he took it into the drawing room where the light was brightest. There, August stood for many minutes gazing wondrously at the grainy picture. He thought they all looked like wax figures—well, all except Doll, who had the faintest wisp of a smile resting on her lips.
August was too modest a man to hang the framed article on the wall for every visitor to see, so stored it away on a bookshelf. Every once in a while, when he was home alone, he would remove the framed treasure and ogle the picture.
Over the years, the clipping yellowed and curled behind its protective glass, and the photo began to distort and fade. Sometimes when August peered at it, Doll seemed to be sneering; other times, she bared her teeth like a badger. August blamed the changes in the picture on figments of his imagination, poor light, and aging eyes; he had a bagful of explanations to explain it away. The final straw, however, came when he looked at the picture one day and saw that Doll’s middle and index fingers on both hands were crossed; August could not for the life of him decide if the gesture had been made in hope of good luck or for exclusion from a promise.
He tossed the memento in the river, but it was too late—his fate was already sealed.
Chapter Three
Doll was the love of August’s life, but she was also a thief.
Back in Tulsa, she had closed her arms around the shoulders of an elderly parishioner and expertly procured a shiny, dark plume from the woman’s brand-new Easter hat.
She was a bandit—stealing her daughter’s prized silk hair ribbons and all of her son’s blue marbles. When she saw the children crying over the loss, it filled her with giddy pleasure.
Before the children came, Doll had even stolen her husband from his first wife. It wasn’t her fault—the spirit of a dead whore had taken root in Doll’s body on the very day she was born.
Doll’s mother, Coraline, was six months pregnant with her second child when Doll, who was five at the time, looked up from the bowl of shelled peas and asked, “Mama, how was I when I was a baby?”
Coraline was slicing carrots for stew. She stopped, raised the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead, and swiped at a damp braid of hair. The question unearthed a memory and a smile.
“You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn’t stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy—God rest his soul—who stopped me from throwing you down the well.” Coraline laughed and swiped at the braid a second time.
Doll raised her hand and stroked the taut skin beneath her chin. “Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well,” she said.
The knife slipped from Coraline’s hand and clattered to the table and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
The statement was horrible—yes—but the voice behind the statement was terrifying. Esther Gold, Esther the whore—dead and buried for half a decade, and now come back in her daughter, in her Doll? Coraline blinked with disbelief.
Esther the whore had been a fixture in Tulsa, and could be spotted, day in and day out, wrapped around light poles, beckoning men with a wiggle of her finger, hissing like a snake: “Pssst, come here, I got something that’ll make it all better.”
She had been a beauty once, bright-skinned and thick-legged, with a curtain of hair that stretched all the way down to her waist.
Esther.
Too pretty for any woman to want as a friend. So beautiful, men didn’t think about loving her; they only fantasized about melting away between her creamy thighs.
Poor Esther.
The men she welcomed into her heart and into her bed should have worshipped the ground she walked on—and they did for a while—but eventually her beauty felt like a hot spotlight and their confidence faded away beneath the luminous beam. They questioned her loyalty and themselves.
Why she want me?
The answers always fell short of what they needed, which was a scaffold of assuredness sturdy enough to bear their egos. Esther replied, “I love you, ain’t that
enough?”
They said it was, but it wasn’t and they didn’t know why. So the men beat her for loving them.
They beat the goodness and the sweetness out of her. They beat her into the streets, into back alleys, down into the dirt, into the gutter, onto her knees, her back, and then they climbed on top and emptied their miseries inside her.
Esther.
The voice was unmistakable, but Coraline had to be sure, so she said, “What you say, gal?” And Doll repeated herself in the same whiskey-and-cigarette scarred voice.
Coraline rounded the table, caught Doll by the collar of her dress, and dragged her out the house and down the road to the old woman called Sadie, who had herbs and potions that would deal with a tramp soul like Esther.
“Uh-hmmm,” Sadie grunted as she used her thumb and forefinger to stretch Doll’s eyelids open. After peering in the right eye and then the left, Sadie rocked back on her heels and nodded with confidence.
“Yeah, she in there all right.” Sadie shook her head pitifully. “Sorry for this, but it make sense now, all that hollering she done when she come into this world.”
Coraline nodded her head in agreement and then folded her arms around her swollen belly and began to sway.
“Sit down, Coraline, before you fall over,” Sadie warned. “You remember how she die?”
“Who?”
“That old whore.”
Coraline eased herself into a nearby chair, dropped her head into her hands, and forced her mind to look back. “I think she was stabbed to death.”
“So she died by the blade? You sure? You gotta be sure now.”
Coraline pounded her fists against her temples. “Yeah, someone cut her throat.” Her eyes swung to her daughter’s complacent expression and back to Sadie’s well-lined face. “You gonna be able to pull that whore outta my child?”
The Book of Harlan Page 28