by Minrose Gwin
An unkept promise is a festering sore. When Jo recovered, Alice was terribly busy with school and tired on the weekends. They would wait until summer, but when summer came, her mother was pregnant again and sick to her stomach. Then there was Tommy, and that was the end of that.
HER UNRULY eye, that mischief-maker, whispered a Word to Keep in her ear. Dehiscence. A splitting open, a rupture.
Her mother had given her that word on her thirteenth birthday. It had come with a warning, a double meaning. First, rupture. A sutured but infected wound could rupture, sowing destruction throughout the body, killing the patient. Or, happily, her mother said, dehiscence could mean the breaking open of a seed pod, scattering seeds to grow and flourish. You’re almost a woman now. You get to choose, her mother had said. Write down both meanings.
She hadn’t understood her mother at the time, but had heard the warning in her voice.
THE TORNADO had split something open; something had fractured, like the bone in her arm. Now all she needed was food and diapers and water. She needed to go out into the town and find those things she and this child, her child, needed to sustain themselves.
She would have to leave him for a little while. Otherwise, she would be found out.
But now he was bucking and crowing in her arms, wide-eyed and rambunctious. Delighted with himself and her.
She’d never been so hungry. She felt as hollowed out as an empty bowl.
The room lurched and pitched. One of the aunts walked by the door to the bedroom, her dark skirt swishing.
Tell me what to do, Jo begged, but the aunt was gone.
SHE AWOKE when he hit the floor.
A thud, followed by a sharp intake of breath. Then he began to scream. It was a different kind of scream, higher pitched, a spiral of sound.
There he lay, unbelievably, on the hard floor, the wood floor, under her feet, sprawled on his back, arms and legs gyrating. There was a baffled look on his face.
She fell to her knees. “Oh good lord Jesus,” she breathed, trying to gather him up, but succeeding only in shoving him across the floor with her one good arm. “Oh baby, oh no.”
At that moment, inside and over the baby’s shrieks, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Then Aunt Fan and Aunt Sister were there, taking up the whole doorway. They wore long nightgowns, yellow for Aunt Fan and a faded blue for Sister. Their hair was wrapped in paper curlers.
They frowned and shook their heads at her.
Merciful heavens, Jo, what are you thinking?
Aunt Fan swept in and bent down and helped her pick Tommy up from the floor. Aunt Sister told her to put that poor child down on the bed. Support the head, they instructed in unison. Look him over, head to toe.
They hovered, their freckled fingers touching the baby here and there like a sprinkling of pepper. Broken neck, make sure, careful now.
On the bed Tommy screamed on.
Jo patted his face and belly. The head was the worry, the back of the head. She was afraid to look.
Lift it, touch it.
A bloody pulp. That was her fear. But it didn’t even feel dented, and when she brought her hand out, there was no blood on her fingers. Not a drop, she turned to tell the aunts.
They just looked at her, their heads cocked. There was a question forming on their lips.
Jo put her fingers in her ears.
Go away, she told them, you’re dead. This is none of your business.
They ignored her, whispering back and forth to each other.
Tommy stopped screaming abruptly. His bottom lip quivered, his eyes closed.
Doctor. Head injury. Which one of them said it she didn’t know.
THE MINUTE she walked through the door of the theater, she burst into tears. A colored nurse she hadn’t seen before came running and took the baby from her arms.
“Calm down,” the nurse said. “What’s the matter?”
Jo stopped short. The nurse’s tone was stern and her clipped speech seemed foreign.
“He took a fall. He fell off the bed. He hit his head.”
The nurse put Tommy on a spare cot and started poking on him. “He looks all right. I’ll go fetch the doctor. You stay with him.”
The nurse turned then. “This baby’s your maid’s?”
“What?”
“This child’s a Negro.”
“No, he’s not. He’s my brother.”
The nurse looked at Tommy again and pursed her lips, then took off down the aisle toward the stage.
The doctor wasn’t one Jo had seen before. He had a boyish look, too young for a doctor.
He examined the baby from head to toe, waking him to peer into his pupils. “Whose child is this?” he asked Jo.
“He’s mine. He’s my brother.”
How many times would she have to lay claim to her own flesh and blood?
The nurse pulled the doctor (if he was that) aside and whispered in his ear.
The doctor turned back to Jo. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Now I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal already, but this child may be a case of mistaken identity. We need to look into this baby’s identity. Where are your parents?”
A pesky gnat of a question. She brushed it aside.
Tommy had begun to fret. “Let me hold him,” Jo said. “He needs me.”
The colored nurse made a move toward the baby. Jo stepped in front of her. “Let me settle him down.”
The doctor and nurse exchanged glances. The doctor made a motion to the nurse, and she stepped back.
“He’s hungry,” Jo said to the nurse.
The nurse looked at the doctor and he nodded and she hurried off.
Jo picked up Tommy and quieted him.
There was a scream from one of the cots up on the stage. The doctor turned and ran toward the commotion.
Jo looked down at Tommy. He smiled, waved his arms at her.
She wondered whether her mother was better, back in her right mind. She wanted to ask her something. She walked up the steps to the stage and back to the corner where her mother had been. She parted the curtain.
Her mother lay there asleep, her mouth slack, one hand, mottled with scratches hanging over the side of the bed. What was left of her leg had been taken down from the sling and was hidden under the sheet.
“Mother,” Jo said.
Her mother opened her eyes. They were red and swollen. “Dear Jo,” she said. “You’re really alive. I thought I dreamed it.”
Jo walked toward her, smiling back. She came to her mother’s side and sat down on the edge of the bed, turning Tommy toward her.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Her mother sat up in the bed and took her hand. “I have something to tell you, honey. They found our Tommy. They found him in George Walton’s cornfield. He was already gone.” She began to sob. “My baby boy. Your daddy’s gone to bury him.”
There was a chill now. It started at the top of Jo’s head and began to descend. It glided down, icing her ears, then her lips and neck, then moving into the good right arm, then freezing the ants in the bad left arm, then settling in the pit of her stomach and after that slithering down into her thighs, and after what seemed like hours, into the soles of her feet until she was nothing but a block of ice.
Then her mother looked at the baby in Jo’s arms. “Whose baby is that?”
SHE FLEW, she scurried. She knew the way. Right on Main, the long blocks up Main toward Crosstown, then over the tracks, to the left and down the highway toward Verona.
The colored boxcars sat, dark and streaked with rain. She went to Number 4.
The old colored woman sat at the table, her head in her hands, the cat sprawled under her chair. A candle flickered on the table.
Her name, Jo remembered suddenly, was Dovey.
“What are you doing here?” Jo asked Dovey.
The cat stretched and yawned.
Dovey raised her head. There was a knot on her temple the size of an egg. Her eyes gathered time and split it
open.
“Waiting for you.” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up and held out her arms.
Jo held Promise close. His breath tickled her cheek. She closed her eyes, knowing, suddenly, that one day he might turn and look at her with hatred and despair in his eyes, accusing her of crimes she had yet to commit. Even then she would put her flawed arms around him, even then she would hold him close.
What a beautiful name, Promise.
Dovey leaned toward the baby. “My Charlesetta come back to me.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Had.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This her grandbaby.”
“He’s mine too. I have a claim.”
“You sure do. You saved him.”
“He saved me.”
Dovey looked at her. “You his aunt. Claiming your own and standing by your own two different things. I got my own business to take care of in that department.”
“So do I,” said Jo, remembering her mother, how she looked like a tree struck by lightning, everything burned away.
Dovey moved closer, touching her now, reaching for the child in her arms. In the candlelight, Dovey’s face was smooth and radiant, revealing the girl she’d once been.
Jo opened her mouth to speak, to say something about love. But not just love; love was easy. Something about affiliation, a Word to Keep if there ever was one. Definition: standing by.
NOW, THOUGH, there was no more talk but a flurry at the door. Now there was that other girl, the mother, Dreama, her face full of light, her hair a halo in the flicker of the candle. Beside her an old colored man (Would Jo never brush this caul of color from her eyes?). His face a row of furrows, the long haul of seasons. His eyes watchful.
Promise had begun to squirm and kick. He’d become heavier and heavier. Now, in that eternal split second, he gathered himself and pushed off Jo’s protruding hip bone (oh, she was hungry, she’d never been so hungry in her life) and leapt like a slippery fish.
A flash in the water, a ripple in the stream of a long life.
There he goes, here he comes.
Years later, Jo will look at him, a man now, and remember his sheer beauty in that moment.
And when he leapt from her one good exhausted arm, it was Dovey who caught him.
AFTERMATH
“This is Tupelo! From the wreck and ruin we must rise again.” So began an editorial in the Tupelo Daily News published a week after the F5 tornado carved its fifteen-mile-long path through town, destroying most of what was in its wake.
And Tupelo did rise from the rubble, at least part of Tupelo did. The All-American city’s recovery from the tornado of 1936 was swift, thanks in large part to a remarkably effective coalition of local, regional, and national government agencies; businesses; individuals; and news agencies. Within hours of the storm, the American Red Cross had assembled personnel to establish a disaster headquarters that would provide food, tetanus shots and other medicine, clothing, and housing. The American Legion quickly mobilized more than 500 trucks of 1,400 men to remove debris and provide food, clothing, and medical supplies. By 2:30 A.M. on April 6, only a few hours after the tornado, a special relief train carrying doctors, nurses, and medical personnel left Memphis for Tupelo. Later that day, caskets were rushed in and at least sixty embalmers converged from surrounding towns to assist in the grim task of preparing bodies for burial; and by April 7, the work of burying the bodies had begun, with graves being dug by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies. There were no funeral services; the hasty burials took place about every ten minutes. The many animals that died were piled on the banks overlooking Gum Pond and cremated.
Another of Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), developed a clothing distribution center, and the Junior Red Cross provided schoolbooks for students. Reed’s Department Store opened its doors to those in need of clothing. Most of the schools had been destroyed, but, once debris was cleared and housing needs were taken care of, students returned to schools in alternate locations.
In the week after the tornado, property owners signed authorizations for the removal of debris by government agencies, Tupelo Hospital was repaired and reopened, and the Resettlement Administration began clearing a thirty-two-acre plot for the construction of housing for homeless storm victims. The Frisco Railroad turned over all the boxcars needed for housing the homeless. Two “Boxcar City” camps, one for whites and one for blacks, were operational by April 13.
A special WPA grant of $1 million was made available for relief work, and a week later President Roosevelt signed a bill authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to lend up to $50 million for rehabilitation of places affected by spring storms, and the RFC set up an office in Tupelo. As witness David Baker said, “Those who could rebuild, did. Those that couldn’t had their homes torn down and something else built in their place. You can’t imagine the hammering that was going on. That’s all you heard for months.”
How much, if any, of the then-generous fund for rebuilding was made available to African Americans is unknown. An editorial in the Tupelo Journal urged citizens to rebuild “our Negro quarters as a model for the nation in neatness and convenience,” noting that the town had had “many eye sores” in its black sections that “were not only bad looking but inadequate for living quarters.” In general, though, as author Robert Blade points out, “Tupelo’s African-American community, all but invisible before the storm, remained that way.”
As something of a postscript, one of several historic African-American communities in Tupelo, “Shake Rag,” known for its blues and gospel musicians and its proximity to Elvis Presley’s childhood home, was leveled during an urban renewal in the late 1960s and its residents relocated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My greatest debt is to my longtime friends Robert Blade and Anna McLean Blade for their invaluable help in accumulating information about the Tupelo tornado of 1936. Robert, who authored the important book Tupelo Man: The Life and Times of George McLean, a Most Peculiar Newspaper Publisher, helped with library research and generously connected me with people I needed to interview. Anna, my dear friend from childhood who died before this book was published, possessed a tenacious long-term memory and an incisive social conscience; she generously helped in ways large and small to enlarge my knowledge of our hometown and bolster my spirits throughout the research and writing. It is a great sadness to know that she will not read beyond chapter 2.
Thanks to Lyn Martin Schloemer for forwarding me the email about the tornado’s uncounted casualties that began this journey. I am grateful also to the survivors of the Tupelo tornado of 1936 who were willing to share their stories: David Baker spent one long September afternoon telling me storm stories, including the tale of his family cat; and the Reverend Robert J. Jamison recounted the loss of his family home in the neighborhood known as “Shake Rag.” At the Oren Dunn City Museum, Rae Mathis Guess was exceptionally helpful, especially in selecting photographs of the tornado’s aftermath; and Professor Berkley Hudson generously shared his knowledge of Otis N. Pruitt’s remarkable photography. Joe Rutherford offered invaluable insights into historical contexts. Many thanks also to Susie Dent, Jim High, Medford “Mem” Leake, and Julian Riley.
Tupelo, Mississippi, Tornado of 1936, compiled by Martis D. Ramage Jr., and published by the Northeast Mississippi Historical and Genealogical Society, was essential to this novel, and many of the most bizarre incidents of the tornado leapt into the fiction from those compiled accounts of the storm as well as newspaper clippings, a video of survivors’ stories, and other artifacts uncovered at the Lee County Library and the Oren Dunn City Museum, Tupelo, Mississippi. I thank Matt Turi and the Southern Historical Collection, Otis Noel Pruitt and Calvin Shanks Photographic Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for assistance and permission to publish Otis Pruitt’s photographs of
the tornado’s aftermath.
I am deeply grateful to Carrie Feron, who believed in this book from the get-go and whose enthusiasm and incisive commentary never fail to galvanize the creative spirit. Thanks also to Carolyn Coons and Kim Lewis for their care with the manuscript. As always, Jane von Mehren, agent extraordinaire, provided unwavering support, editorial acumen, and calming energy.
I also thank Elizabeth Spencer for reading the manuscript and giving me the benefit of her considerable writerly wisdom.
Finally, heartfelt thanks to Ruth Salvaggio for the hard questions she asked of this novel.
HISTORICAL PHOTOS
The following photographs of the aftermath of the Tupelo tornado of 1936 are published courtesy of two different sources: the Oren Dunn City Museum, Tupelo, Mississippi; and the Southern Historical Collection, Otis Noel Pruitt and Calvin Shanks Photographic Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Otis N. Pruitt was a remarkable photographer located in Columbus, Mississippi; the Southern Historical Collection contains 88,000 of his photographs, some of which reveal a keen eye for racial dynamics of the early twentieth-century South. The photographs from the Oren Dunn City Museum are from various sources. Some information for the captions was taken from Tupelo, Mississippi, Tornado of 1936, compiled by Martis D. Ramage Jr., 1997.
Please be warned that some of the following photos are graphic in nature.
The First Baptist Church of Tupelo received major damage. Photo by Otis N. Pruitt
A view of the author’s grandparents’ house in the upper right. Photo by Otis N. Pruitt
Looking southeast from a corner near downtown Tupelo. Photo by Otis N. Pruitt
A westward view of the destruction. Photo by Otis N. Pruitt