by Anne Moody
“Look, Essie Mae, that woman is poor. Only the rich whites here pay five dollars a day for housework. You don’t have to keep the job. You can just work there until you find something better to do.”
“I was talking to my boss today,” Ed said. “His wife is gonna try and find something for you. But you keep that job until you git something else.”
I called up Mrs. Jetson the next day and told her I would take the job for the summer. I would be making eighteen dollars a week. I went to bed that night thinking that within two weeks I would have another job.
Mrs. Jetson worked in one of the big shoe stores on Third Avenue. Her husband was a construction worker. I didn’t realize how poor they were until that Saturday, the end of my first week’s work. I had finished everything and was watching TV with her two sons when she came home that evening.
“I’m going when this story is over, Mrs. Jetson,” I said, indicating I was waiting for my money.
“Essie, I am gonna have to give you a check Saturday of next week. I won’t be able to make any deposits until then.”
I stood there looking and feeling like a stupid fool. I didn’t say anything, though. I just left. “I will not go back there Monday for nothing,” I thought as I went to bed. But by Monday I’d changed my mind. I knew if I didn’t go back I would never get my money.
The next Saturday I walked up on the porch and found the house locked. I was shocked. After noticing the curtains had been removed from the front window, I looked inside and saw that the house was empty. I didn’t believe it. I stood there looking in that window for about thirty minutes. Then I knocked on the door of the lady who lived in the next house.
“Excuse me, please, I just noticed that Mrs. Jetson moved last night. Did she leave any money with you for me?” I asked her.
“Money? They don’t have any money. They were gonna be thrown out of the house today. That’s why they left last night. She didn’t pay you?” the lady asked.
“No. And she owes me for two weeks’ work.”
“Why don’t you call her at the store on Monday?” she suggested. “That’s pretty thoughtless of her to do such a thing.”
On Monday I did call the shoe store, and was told Mrs. Jetson had quit on Friday. I had never before felt so gypped in all my life. Out of all the women I had worked for, this woman was the worst. Even worse than Mrs. Burke.
The following week I went to see a girl I had once gone to school with who was also living with her uncle in Baton Rouge. Susie was working in a restaurant. She had promised me that she would let me know when there was an opening there, but that evening she told me bluntly, “Essie Mae, they ain’t hired nobody at the restaurant in a long time and look like they ain’t gonna be hiring nobody soon. Jobs are so hard to find, people just don’t quit so fast now.”
I went back to Ed’s and packed up my suitcase. I would have gone back to Centreville that night, but Ed wouldn’t let me leave until next morning.
I overslept and missed the nine o’clock bus. The only other bus going to Centreville was at four-thirty that afternoon, so I bought my ticket, with the five dollars Ed had given me, and put my suitcase in the locker, and went back to Ed’s to wait. As soon as I walked in, Bertha told me that Susie had called because she’d found a job for me.
I called Susie that night. She told me that they needed someone right away, and she asked me to go with her the next morning for the interview. I made up my mind that I could get that job. “I’ll pass the interview,” I told myself, “I know I can.” But I left my suitcase at the bus station in the locker, just in case.
When I met Susie I was wearing bangs and a ponytail and looked more like twelve than fifteen. She balled my hair up on my head and made me put on more powder and lipstick. “Now you tell them you are eighteen or nineteen ’cause they won’t hire you if they know you are fifteen. And tell them you finished school too,” she said to me as we got off the bus together.
The only thing Susie didn’t warn me about was to lie about my social security card. I didn’t even know what social security was at the time. Mississippi Negroes never made enough money to have any taken out for hard times. Times were always hard. And I guess white folks didn’t think they would live long enough to enjoy it. Anyway I told the manager of Ourso’s Department Store that I’d left my social security card at home in another purse. They needed someone so badly that they took me on, and I started work that very same day.
As soon as my lunch break came I ran next door to the restaurant to ask Susie about a social security card. She said we could pick one up on our way home that evening. We spent an hour together walking around the neighborhood. Susie pointed out several other businesses the Oursos owned. Among them were Ourso Hardware, Restaurant, Gas Station, Grocery, and Tastee Freeze. And one of the Oursos was president of the American Bank. They owned that whole section of Plank Road. They were the richest people I had ever heard of. One of them lived in a mansion almost two blocks long. All the white folks in Centreville put together didn’t have as much as the Ourso family. I kept thinking of how unfair it was for any one set of people to have so much.
My job consisted of cleaning the showcase glass, pressing wrinkles out of new dresses, helping with display windows, and sometimes sweeping. There were two of us employed in the same capacity. The other lady was a middle-aged Negro woman who worked part time. She told me that she had worked for the Oursos for about ten years, and how nice and rich they were. We were both paid twenty-four dollars a week. I didn’t consider that salary just at all. I felt that as rich as they were, they could have afforded more—much more.
In no time at all I was well liked by most of the Ourso family. They considered me a pretty little sweet colored girl. I was very shapely, with nice long legs. The young women in the Ourso family were always telling me how they envied my shape, and asking how I kept so nice and slim. “If you were fifteen, you would look slimmer too,” I thought.
The lady working with me had been considered the Oursos’ favorite Negro before me. Within two weeks she was almost completely out of the picture. I was now getting all of their attention. One day when she and I were out in the ironing room pressing dresses, she became extremely confidential with me. She told me all about her family, her ex-husband, etc. She and I even spent our lunch hour together. We had a beautiful time. I was so overcome by how nice she was to me that I told her all about myself—that I was only fifteen, and hadn’t finished high school, that I was from Mississippi, and that I only had one month to work there.
When I came to work the next morning, I was told the manager was waiting in his office for me. He was sitting at his desk when I walked into his office. The only thing he said was, “Here is your check, Anne. We can’t use you anymore. Thanks. We liked you.”
I stood there wondering what had I done. I wanted so badly to ask him. But the look on his face told me that it was best that I just leave. So I did. Walking out of the door I saw my confidential friend who had shared the work with me. I was about to walk up to her and say good-bye when she turned her head. Then I knew what I had done wrong.
———
I got off Greyhound in Centreville with sixty-five dollars in my pocket and new school clothes. Walking home swinging my suitcase, I began to think that the experience hadn’t been so bad after all. I got so wrapped up in thinking about Baton Rouge that I forgot I was back in Centreville until I ran into Doris, one of my classmates.
“Moody, where you been? You certainly disappeared some fast after school. Someone said you were in New Orleans.”
“I went to Baton Rouge and lived with Ed and got a job. What’s been going on here?” I asked her.
“Nothing, really. They ran Benty and Mrs. Rosetta them out of town,” she said.
“For what?” I asked.
“They claim Benty was screwing that little poor white girl who live down in that bottom,” she said.
“The girl living in that bottom where that white woman with them three chil
dren lived?” I asked her.
“What white woman with three children?” she asked.
“The one Mr. Banks was suppose to be taking care of. The one who left town after the Taplin burning.”
“Yes, that’s the girl. The one living next to where that woman lived,” Doris said.
“You know Benty wouldn’t have nothing to do with that trash,” I said.
“They say he did, anyway Benty them have moved now.”
“Where?” I asked.
“To Woodville, so they say. Benty was kin to you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s my cousin, not close, though.” Suddenly I was trembling. “I better get on home,” I managed to say. “Mama them don’t even know I’m coming.”
I felt as bad as if I had never gone to Baton Rouge for the summer. “Before I get home,” I thought, “I’ll have a nervous breakdown in the street. I’ll surely get sick if anything like the Taplin burning happens this year. I’ll just crack up if I have to push anything else into the back of my mind.”
I was still shaking as I walked up on the porch. Jennie Ann was playing there. “Essie Mae done come home!” she cried. She went running into the kitchen where Mama, Raymond, and the rest of them were sitting, while I went to my room to drop my suitcase and try to pull myself together.
“Look at you!” Mama said when I walked in the kitchen. “As skinny as a stick. Didn’t Bertha and Ed feed you?”
“Sho’. I had plenty to eat,” I said.
“Then how come you lost all that weight?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just lost weight, that’s all. I met Doris on my way home and she told me they ran Mrs. Rosetta and Benty them out of town.”
Raymond got up and walked out of the kitchen at that point. When I looked at Mama, she dropped her head. Then I looked at Adline, James, Junior, Jennie Ann, and Jerry. They seemed a little strange to me too. And I stood there trying to figure out just what was strange about them. Why had Raymond walked out? Why wouldn’t Mama look at me?
I didn’t say anything more to anyone. I walked out of the kitchen, went to my bedroom, and flung myself on the bed.
After a while Mama came in. “Take your shoes off that spread,” she said angrily.
“What’s wrong with everybody? What’s wrong with Raymond?” I asked her as I kicked off my shoes.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Ray! What’s wrong with you? ’Fore you get in the house you start worryin’ me ’bout who got run out of town. Why is you so interested in things like that?”
“Why can’t I ask about Benty them? They are kin to us, ain’t they? What’s wrong with people talking? What’s wrong with people? Negroes are being killed, beaten up, run out of town by these white folks and everything. But Negroes can’t even talk about it. I shoulda stayed in Baton Rouge.”
Mama didn’t say a word after that. She just went away, looking hurt. After she left, I began to think of what Mrs. Rice told me once when I was talking to her about the NAACP: “You gotta find something to do, Essie, that will take your mind off some of this. It’s not good for you to concern yourself too much about these killings and beatings and burnings. The Negroes here ain’t gonna do nothing about them. You should be having fun and enjoying yourself like others your age. Why don’t you take piano lessons or something.”
“Yes, that’s it,” I thought, still lying there. “This year I’ll take piano lessons, I’ll join the band and play basketball again. I will keep busy from sunup to sundown. Then I won’t have to think about the Taplins, Jerry, Emmett Till, or Benty. No, I won’t even have to talk to Mama them, or get up tight when Raymond stares at me all the time, because from now on, I’ll spend as little time in this house as possible. Next summer I will go back to Baton Rouge and get a job. And as soon as I finish high school I am gonna leave Centreville for good.”
Chapter
THIRTEEN
That night, I lay in bed making plans for the whole year. Somehow I thought of everything except Mrs. Burke and the job after school. And I didn’t even think of her the next day until she happened by the house. Mama, Adline, and the rest of the children were sitting on the porch when she drove up. I was in my room going through my old school clothes.
“Essie Mae! Miss Burke here to see you,” Mama called to me.
“Is Essie here?” I heard Mrs. Burke say. “I just stopped by to see when she was coming back.”
“Is Essie here?” I thought, going to the porch. Why did she just happen by here today?
“My, but you lost weight! How did you like Baton Rouge?” Mrs. Burke asked me as I went to the car.
“It was O.K.,” I said.
“What did you do while you were there?” she asked.
“I got a job,” I said.
“Oh, you didn’t tell me you were going to work. I thought you were going for a vacation.”
I stood looking at her, thinking to myself, “Why are you so interested in what I did while I was in Baton Rouge?”
“I would like for you to come back and work for me; if you are not doing anything Friday and Saturday I would like for you to help me give the house a good cleaning.”
“I gotta get my school clothes together before school starts,” I said. “I could help you next weekend.”
“And when does school start?” she asked.
“A week from Monday.”
“But I was kinda hoping you could help me this weekend. We are having company Sunday.” She waited for me to answer.
I didn’t say anything.
“O.K.,” Mrs. Burke finally said. “I’ll see you next Friday.” Then she drove off.
“That’s how you talk to white folks?” Mama said to me as I walked back on the porch.
“Now what did I say to Mrs. Burke? How am I suppose to talk to her?” I asked.
“You didn’t have nothing to do Friday and Saturday that you couldn’t help her.”
“I do have something to do. You heard what I told her. I gotta get my school clothes together.”
“You got all next week to do them clothes,” Mama said.
I still didn’t understand the change that had taken place in Mama while I was in Baton Rouge. Again, I knew that Raymond had something to do with it. He wasn’t just looking at me longing like he used to. Since I had come back from Baton Rouge, he had barely spoken to me. Whenever he was around, I got this strange feeling that for some reason or other he hated me.
About two weeks after school opened, all my plans were in operation. I was busy for a total of eighteen hours a day. Each day I spent the last two periods of school on the band or on basketball. Then I would go straight to work. I was never home until eight or nine at night and as soon as I entered the house, I’d begin helping Adline them with their lessons so I wouldn’t even have to talk to Mama or Raymond. On Wednesday and Friday nights I took piano lessons. On Sundays I taught Sunday school and B.T.U.
I was so busy now that I could work for Mrs. Burke and not think of her or her guild meetings. I would fall asleep at night without dreaming old, embedded, recurring dreams. I had to keep a lot of things in the back of my mind until I finished high school.
When our mid-semester grades were released, I discovered I had made A’s in all my subjects. Everything seemed so easy now. Sometimes I got scared because things were moving along too smoothly. Things had always seemed hard before. But now I was doing three times as much and I felt as if I could take on the whole world and not be tired by it. I was even better in basketball than I had ever been. In fact, I was the number one girl on the team.
Mr. Hicks, our new coach, was a nut for physical fitness—especially for girls. He hated women who were dumb about sports and he used to practice us until we were panting like overplowed mules. Sometimes he’d even take us out to play touch football with the boys so that we could learn that game. All the girls who didn’t go along with his physical fitness program or who were fat and lazy he dismissed immediately. He was determined to have a winning team and was intere
sted only in tall, slim girls who were light and fast on their feet. I think I worked harder than almost anyone else.
Shortly after mid-semester, Mr. Hicks organized a gymnastic and tumbling team. All the basketball players were required to participate. Running and heaving a ball on that open basketball court wasn’t so bad, but falling on it when we did somersaults, handsprings, and rolls was like falling on steel.
Mr. Hicks was the most merciless person I had ever met. The first few weeks some of the girls could hardly walk, but he made them practice anyhow. “The only way to overcome that soreness and stiffness is to work it out,” he would say. We all learned to like Mr. Hicks, in spite of his cruelty, because in the end he was always right. After three weeks our stiffness was completely gone and we all felt good. Now I took in all the activities without even getting short-winded. And I finished the semester with straight A’s.
One Wednesday, I was ironing in Mrs. Burke’s dining room as usual when she came to me looking very serious.
“Essie, I am so tired and disgusted with Wayne,” she said, sitting down in one of the dining room chairs. “He almost flunked out of school last semester. At this rate he won’t finish high school. I don’t know what to do. He’s in algebra now and he just can’t manage it. I’ve tried to find someone to tutor him in math, but I haven’t been able to. How is your math teacher?” she asked me.
“Oh, he is very good, but he hardly ever teaches our class. Most of the time he lets me take over,” I said.
“Are you that good in algebra?” she asked.
“Yes, I make all A’s in algebra, and he thinks I am one of his best students.”
She looked at me for a moment as if she didn’t believe me. Then she left the dining room.
“Look, Essie,” she said, coming back with a book. “These are the problems Wayne is having trouble with. Can you work them?”
“Yes, we’ve passed these in my book. I can do them all,” I said.