I stop on the back porch and wash my hands in the white face tub that Ma left there for me. Old like everything else around here. Clean like everything else around here. The smell of her biscuits reaches my nose before I reach the back door that is falling off the way it does at least ten times a week. I’m sure Grandpa is coming up here with his toolbox and fix it as soon as he gets around to it. He has been a bit under the weather, so I don’t want to mention the door to him again. No need to tell Uncle Buddy because it’s dark when he leaves home and dark when he comes back. Ma never complains about what Uncle Buddy don’t do around here. I guess that $35.00 a month includes Ma fixing things too. Ma swears that money keeps us out of the poorhouse. If this ain’t the poorhouse, I don’t know what is.
Inside the slave house, in the kitchen, on the table I notice Ma’s black leather bag. The one that her oldest sister, my aunt Louise, brought her all the way from Harlem. I also notice that Ma doesn’t have on just any dress; she has on her Sunday go to meeting dress. She would never dress like this during the week, unless she was going to a funeral or the relief office over in Jackson. Lord have mercy, I just want to ask her why she is all dressed up, but Ma says that children ain’t suppose to ask grown folks questions.
That’s another rule on Rehobeth Road. “Don’t ask grown folks no questions.”
I know I really don’t have to. All I have to say is “Ma, you look so pretty.” And she does. Even if she don’t, Uncle Buddy says never beg a woman. “If you tell her she looks good, she will tell you anything you want to know.” Stuff like “Honey, honey you fine as you want to be” and “Baby, you the sugar in my coffee.” Now that’s the kind of mess Uncle Buddy says he used to tell them gals up in Harlem. I don’t know about them city women that Uncle Buddy knows, but Ma loves a compliment. So I just take my seat at the end of the table, next to the stove, where I have been sitting since Ma took me out of the high chair. The high chair we sold back to the thrift shop in Jackson when I got too big for it. Ma has prepared the usual two eggs, two pieces of bacon, and one biscuit. No milk, just water from the rusty well in the backyard.
“My, you look pretty today, Ma.”
“Well, thank you, child. I thought I would get dressed early. Mr. Charlie will be here soon.”
Ma would not be dressed like this just because Mr. Charlie is coming by. He comes by all the time. Mr. Charlie and his wife, Miss Doleebuck, are Grandpa and Grandma’s neighbors and best friends. At seventy-five, the same age as Grandpa, Mr. Charlie has a car. A 1935 Chevy. That’s it. The car! Mr. Charlie and Ma are going somewhere, but I have to find out where.
“I told you to eat your food. Mr. Charlie will be here in a minute. Now hurry.”
“He will?” I say, trying not to ask a grown folks question.
“Yes he will. I’m going into town with him and your grandpa. He’s taking Poppa to see Dr. Franklin.”
“Doctor?”
No time to follow some silly rule about not asking grown folks questions. I want to know why Grandpa is going to the doctor.
“Why?” I ask as tears run into the eggs that I don’t want no more.
I know Ma is getting ready to say, “Don’t ask grown folks questions,” until she sees the tears in my eggs.
“Now why are you crying, child? You know Poppa hasn’t been feeling well for a while. And what did Buddy tell you about crying all the time?” If I tell her what he really said she would give him a tongue-lashing as soon as he steps foot in this house. But what he really said was “Crying makes you piss less.” I can’t repeat that, so I say, “He said big girls don’t cry.”
Ma smiles and say, “He’s right. Now, hurry.”
Ma’s mighty out of herself this morning. She just rushing and fussing. She must be some kind of worried about Grandpa. He is definitely a little under the weather, but he must be really sick to go to a doctor. I figure that he has drunk enough of Grandma’s leaves from the woods to feel better by now. Grandma claims she has a cure for everything. Puttin’ tobacco on your chest for a sore throat. A penny around your neck to stop a nosebleed. A broom at the door so the hanks won’t ride your back at night and roots from the grass of the unknown for colds. And she has birthed as many babies in Rich Square as Dr. Franklin, the white doctor. She brought BarJean, Coy and me into this world and most of the children here on Reheboth Road. She nurses most of the grown folks on Rehobeth Road too, except Uncle Buddy. He says, “Never in this world.” As a matter of fact, Uncle Buddy don’t trust no doctors around here. He drives all the way to Harlem twice a year to see his city doctor. There have been a lot of talk on Rehobeth Road about a new colored doctor coming to town. Not Rich Square, but Potecasi and that ain’t too far. I guess that place is about ten miles away. Can’t worry about a colored doctor that might come later. I want Ma to tell me about the white doctor that’s here now and why Grandpa is really going to see him.
Ma still in deep thought, she doesn’t say a word for a minute.
“Ma, I guess Grandma’s medicine ain’t working.” I’m trying my best to get her to talk. She looks like she wants to laugh at my belief in Grandma’s homemade medicine. Like the time I couldn’t stop pissing in the bed and she boiled me some green stuff to drink for a month. Ma said that it wasn’t that stuff that worked. She is probably right and it was her threats of beating my skin off if I didn’t stop messing up her sheets that did. I just didn’t understand why Ma went through all the pain of having me and then she planned to beat my skin off. Anyway, I want to know what is happening with Grandpa. My grandpa!
“Don’t you worry about Grandpa. He just has a slight cold.”
I can’t believe she just said that.
A churchwoman lying. Lord have mercy!
“Slight cold? It’s June.”
Ma ignores me as she takes her old blue apron off and hangs it on a nail behind the kitchen door that don’t have paint on it either. Then she sits down and takes off her bedroom slippers and puts on her black Sunday go to meeting shoes.
“Can I go with you to town? I want to see Grandpa.”
“No you cannot. You have to go and help your grandma pick strawberries. She is waiting for you.”
Grandma’s strawberry patch is as big as our cucumber patch and she sales them at the market every other Saturday as fast as we pick them. Sometimes folks, even white folks, come by the house to buy them by the basket. She only charges a dollar a basket. I overheard Uncle Buddy telling Grandma she should charge more for her big, pretty strawberries. She quickly told him he should mind his business. “Folks round here don’t have that city money like you made in Harlem, boy.”
End of that!
Ma reaches in her bag and pulls out my letter from BarJean that probably arrived yesterday, but she forgot to give it to me. She forgets sometimes and I have to ask for my Thursday’s mail. Rain, sleet, or snow, my letters come from BarJean every Thursday that the Lord sends. Always on blue stationery in a blue envelope and always on Thursday. As she gives me the letter, I hear Mr. Charlie’s car horn blowing like he is running from a fire.
Before Ma can say, “Sit back down and eat,” I grab my letter, stuff it in my pocket, and run out of the door. Surely, she is not going to forget that I grabbed that letter out her hand. That will get me one lick or no TV at Grandma’s house for a week. Don’t have to worry about the TV around here. We don’t have one. Uncle Buddy says he don’t care what Ma says, he’s giving me a TV for Christmas.
Mr. Charlie is waving as I run down the long path trying to get to the car before Ma can even get her purse off the table. I want a minute alone with two of my three favorite men. Uncle Buddy is the third, of course. Actually they are the only men in my life. Uncle Buddy said my daddy, Silas Sheals, ran off with Mr. Charlie’s gal Mattie when I was a baby. He also said that my daddy and Mattie got themselves a new baby girl named O’Hara. Named after that white woman Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind. Ma don’t ever say nothing about my daddy and Mr. Charlie and Grandpa somehow managed
to stay friends. Now Miss Doleebuck dares my daddy to dot in her door and the same goes for Mattie if she wants to bring him with her. So Mattie only comes on holidays and Silas Sheals don’t show his face at all. Miss Doleebuck said they both are a disgrace. Grandma said, “Disgrace my foot, Mattie is a slut.” I’m almost sure that Grandma is going to tell me what a slut is as soon as I am older.
I tell you one thing, if she don’t tell me, Uncle Buddy will. All I got to do is ask him.
I pull the car door open and jump in Grandpa’s lap.
“Hey, gal,” he and Mr. Charlie say at the same time.
“Hey, Mr. Charlie. Hey, Grandpa.”
Grandpa don’t look the way he did yesterday. He is dark compared to his light skin that usually look like a cake of butter from their old cow that I named Sue. The poor cow was nine years old and didn’t even have a name until last year. Rooms on Rehobeth Road got names, why can’t the cows?
“Are you okay, Grandpa?”
“I’m all right, child. How you this mornin’?”
“I’m fine. I got up really early today.”
“Is that so? And why did you do that?”
“Well the ground too wet to chop, but I picked a basket of cucumbers. I’m trying to sell a lot so that I will have extra money when I go North. Uncle Buddy said there’s lots of stuff to buy in Harlem.”
“He did, did he? And just where is Buddy this morning?”
“Working as usual. But he is taking me to the movie house tonight.”
Grandpa said he was never going to that theater as long as colored folks have to go in the back door. But he is glad that I am going.
“Well, that will be nice.”
“You aren’t going anywhere if you don’t get your tail off of Poppa so that we can leave.”
The voice of trouble have caught up with me.
Ma has made it down our long path and she looks so pretty as she give me the look.
“Leave her alone, Mer. She just saying good mornin’.”
Thank God, Grandpa is coming to my defense. Not that Ma is listening. She says Grandpa can’t raise her children. Now she says that to me, not to Grandpa. She don’t do no talking back to Grandma or Grandpa even if she is forty-eight.
“Fine, but we have to go.” Now she’s giving me the “I’m going to tear your tail up later” look.
I ease out of the car and stand on the wet grass hoping Ma will let me go.
Instead she starts giving me orders for the rest of the day.
“Now you know you can’t stay home by yourself. Go on up to Ma Babe’s and I will come there when we leave Dr. Franklin’s.”
That’s what Ma call my grandma, “Ma Babe.”
“But I haven’t taken my bath yet.”
“You don’t need a bath. You are going straight to the strawberry patch.”
“Bye,” I say as I wave.
They wave back as Ma points her finger, saying something. Who knows what. I will have to talk to Ma later when Grandpa and Mr. Charlie ain’t around. I know she knows I’m becoming a woman and I’m getting too old not to wash up before leaving home. I don’t know when, but soon I know I’m going to get my period just like Denise and Sylvia at school did. Denise told me she was sick as a dog when Mother Nature came to visit her the first time. Sylvia said she didn’t hurt at all. Accordingly to the conversation I overheard between BarJean and her best friend Boogie, Miss Doleebuck’s granddaughter, the only reason Sylvia didn’t hurt when she got her first period is because she had been messing with boys already. What a horrible thought. I think Sylvia might be a slut, too, like Mattie. Denise, Sylvia and me suppose to be best friends at school. But I like Caroline much better than both of them. We call her Chick-A-Boo. She lives right down the road. She is my real best friend. Those other girls are not like us. They are town people. They got more than two pairs of shoes and they have daddies. Beside, they spend all their time talking about boys. Uncle Buddy has already warned me to stay away from boys. He said they will give me worms. God forbid what that means.
I just pray we move into a house with a bathroom before my period comes. I don’t want to use the outhouse for such personal matters. But I’ll worry about my period when it comes.
Right now I just want Grandpa to get well. I feel like crying just thinking about Grandpa going to the doctor. Specially Dr. Franklin. Now Grandpa don’t know that I know this, but one day when I was fishing with Uncle Buddy over in Jackson Creek, he told me that Dr. Franklin and his brother Eddie, who is the sheriff, had mistreated Grandpa about thirty-five years ago. See, before the Holy Ghost came and saved Grandpa one Sunday morning at Chapel Hill Baptist Church where he has been attending for fifty years, he would go into town and drink in what colored folks called “the bottom” on Saturday nights. It was really an alley where the colored men would get together every Friday and Saturday night to play cards and enjoy their moonshine. Grandpa said he had a mason jar of moonshine too many when he decided to go home before Grandma came looking for him.
Just as he tried to climb into his old pickup truck, the sheriff stopped him.
“Where you going, boy?”
“Home, Sheriff Franklin. Just heading home.”
“Not tonight, you ain’t!”
Grandpa was more than willing to sleep the moonshine off in jail. But that old mean sheriff took it upon himself to hit Grandpa over the head with his billy club before arresting him. Knocked Grandpa cold and threw him in jail. Uncle Buddy said Grandpa was convinced that Dr. Franklin, whose office was upstairs from the jail, knew he was hurt and didn’t come to see about him until morning. Both them Franklin boys are mean. Now if Grandpa even mentions their names, he’ll say, “Yes, evil and evil sleep in the same bed.”
When Dr. Franklin finally checked on Grandpa just before day, he wrapped his head in some bandages and let him drive himself home. Well it turned out Grandpa had a brain concussion (whatever that is) and he drove his old red Ford right into a tree down on Brown Hill Road. Grandpa passed out and slept for hours. By seven in the morning, Grandma and Miss Doleebuck headed out on foot searching for their husbands. Yes, Mr. Charlie was in the cell next to Grandpa the night before for no reason at all. They just arrested him for coming to the jail to look for Grandpa.
They released Mr. Charlie later on that day when Boogie’s mama, Fannie Mae, went down to that jail and cussed them out like they weren’t even white folks. Around 8:30 that morning, Grandma and Miss Doleebuck made it to Grandpa’s truck where he was still passed out. It took them a while to wake him up, and when they did they had to walk all the way home. Poor Grandpa started having blackouts after that and he never took another sip of moonshine. Been saved and sober ever since.
The other thing Grandpa don’t know is Uncle Buddy told me that although he was little he remember the whole thing. He also don’t know that Uncle Buddy and some of his friends, Lennie, Hosea, and Earl, went out to town that next weekend and put holes in every Franklin car tire that they would find. They sure did. That’s what Uncle Buddy said and I believe him. Mercy to the highest, it’s nice to have all this grown folks business at twelve.
I better stop thinking about all of this before I reach Jones Property because Grandma can read your mind. Now she is a piece of work. I swear that woman knows what I am thinking before I do. Smoke coming from the chimney in the kitchen at Grandma’s house and I know she has not put out the breakfast fire yet. Thank God, she’ll cook me some breakfast, I’m thinking, as I walk faster. I can’t make it till noon without food.
That pleasant thought ends quickly when I find myself face to face with the bulls from Mr. Bay’s dairy. He is Grandpa and Grandma’s neighbor and compared to us, Mr. Bay is a rich man. Rich and mean. I don’t think he like colored folks very much and he laughs every time one of us forget and wear red while passing his terrifying bulls. Today that would be me. There is a big fence between me and the bulls, but I am still afraid to run, because I know they will run all the way down the fence with me. That alon
e scares me to death. Uncle Buddy walks by here whenever he wants to, wearing blue, red, whatever colors he please. He says, “I ain’t scared of no damn bull. I’m going to eat them for dinner one day. They ain’t going to eat me.”
I can’t run if I want to since my dear sweet ma locked me out of the house in my bare feet. I want to stick my tongue out, but that’s red too.
I walk in slow motion as the mama cows join the bulls at the edge of the dairy farm field. There must be fifty all together.
I finally reach the path that divide Mr. Bay’s dairy from Jones Property. I am still nervous when I reach in my pockets and feel my new letter from BarJean. The bulls have scared me so bad that I almost forgot I had it. I stop at the pecan tree to catch my breath and to read my letter. Grandpa planted this tree forty-eight years ago for Ma. The day she was born. He calls it Mer’s tree. In the back there are trees for her sisters, the Louise tree and the Rosie tree. Yes, Uncle Buddy has a tree too, right over there at the pond. Since he ain’t blood kin, Grandpa just took Uncle Buddy for a walk when he was ten and let him pick out his own tree on Jones Property. The day I was born Ma said Grandpa went right outside and planted my tree. But the Pattie Mae tree ain’t big enough to sit under yet. So I’ll just set under Mer’s tree to read my letter.
The paper is blue like always and it smells like BarJean’s favorite perfume. I can hardly wait to sit down as Hobo, who has followed me all the way, lies down beside me. The words make me feel closer to the North that I will soon see.
Dear Pattie Mae:
How are you, Ma, Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Buddy doing? I am doing fine and so is Coy. You know we have been sharing an apartment together all year. Well, the big day has come and I am moving into my own place down on 125th Street. Your big brother has met a really nice girl and they are getting married. That’s right! Now you will have two big sisters.
Legend of Buddy Bush (9781439131824) Page 2