To tell you the truth, it had never occurred me. The signs were all around and I never saw them. I knew we lived in a place, a state, gone crazy, where good people had been killed for no good reason. I knew our nation’s leaders had been preoccupied with other things. But the reality, the day-to-day dangers and restrictions that define a colored person’s life anywhere in this country, had never struck me before. The shock and shame of it leave me staring, flabbergasted, at Armetta’s proud document.
“Try being colored,” Marvin had told me. And I couldn’t. Even in my wildest imaginings, I wouldn’t have come up with the picture painted by Armetta’s seven points. And that sickens me, truly.
For her part, Armetta is transformed. The weary, weeping soul who attended both of the Moores’ funerals in Mims has become someone else. She’s fired and filled up. Seeing the change, feeling my own sense of fear and frustration, I can’t help but ask her, “Armetta, how can you be so hopeful?”
She looks at me steady, without smiling. “Hope’s like food, Roo, like air . . . there’s no real livin’ without it. This world’s not perfect, not even close. But everythin’ we want, everythin’ we’re hoping for,” she says, “is ahead of us. You can’t move forward lookin’ back.”
She’s right,” Doto tells me later when I show her the Jacksonville Declaration. “We can’t change the world overnight, Reesa. But we begin by changing the way we choose to live in it.”
That same week, I’m relieved to hear, at last, from Vaylie.
Dear Reesa, she writes.
Thanks so much for the silver friendship bracelet. I love it! It was my favorite part of a very crummy Christmas.
Mamma and Daddy got into a big fight on Christmas morning. Over me, of course. Well, actually, it was over their presents to me. Mamma gave me a whole new wardrobe specially ordered from New York—I was hoping for a pink shirt with matching poodle skirt or maybe something with polka dots. Anyways, everything I got is either bright red, blue or green. My looks are “coltish,” Mamma says, and with my freckles, I’m so polka-dotted already, she says, I can only wear solid bright colors like “racing silks.” I hate every single thing she got me, Reesa, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of it!
Daddy’s gift was a small box with a little porcelain pony inside. It was his way of telling me that he’d given me a horse! My very own Tennessee Walker! I was so excited but Mamma about blew a gasket. “I told you absolutely NO on this horse thing, Gerald!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you did this to me!” and started crying up a storm. Daddy just looked at her, kind of squinty eyed, and hissed, “If you’re gonna make the girl dress like a goddamn jockey, the least you could do is give her a goddamn horse to sit on!” I’ll spare you the details except that, after they quit yelling at each other, Daddy dove into his Bloody Marys and Mamma took a couple of her nerve pills and they both passed out before we’d even had our breakfast. I had to call my daddy’s mamma and tell her they were “too indisposed” for us to make it to Christmas Dinner. Fortunately for me, Claudette came by with a pan of her Christmas gingerbread. She knows it’s my favorite. When I told her what happened she called Whit and he came all the way from Colored Town with a plate of their Christmas dinner just for me. Claudette and Whit both sat down with me in the kitchen while I ate and it was so good! Ham, sweet potato pone, collards with fatback and a huge slice of pecan pie after. This might sound crazy but I think I’d be a whole lot better off if Whit and Claudette were my parents instead of the ones I got stuck with. (And, wouldn’t my daddy’s mamma have a big fat cow if she heard that one!)
Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? I have two but you’re the only soul I’m telling them to. The first is to catch up with my school work. After missing the whole month of September, plus two weeks in November “on tour,” my grades are just awful. My daddy’s mamma got a look at my report card and suggested I might be better off at a school for slow kids! I wanted to tell her I know I’d make honor roll if I could stay in town for more than a couple months at a time, but she won’t listen to anything that has to do with Daddy’s “spells.”
My other resolution—well, wish is more like it—is that Mamma and Daddy will just stop fighting and get a divorce. Reesa, I hope I don’t get struck by lightning for saying this, but I think we’d all be a lot happier without each other. ’Course, Mamma would have to change her ways without all Daddy’s money, but we’d get by. And Whit and Claudette would take care of Daddy just like they always have. The thing is, right now, Daddy and Mamma and me are just like those three rattlers in your clearing, coiling and rattling and hissing at each other, then racing away as fast as we can to get out of the big old hole we’re stuck in.
It’s a New Year, Reesa. I wish I could believe it’ll be a HAPPY one. Write SOON!!!
Love, VAYLIE
Grabbing paper, pen and a jacket, I head out of the house.
Dear Vaylie,
Do you remember the big old oak tree next to Dry Sink? I’m sitting in it now on the same big branch we sat on last spring. My friend Marvin told me everybody ought to have a tree and this one’s been mine ever since I can remember; especially after Marvin told me about its heart. You didn’t get to see it when you were here but it’s carved in the trunk about ten feet higher up, a small heart with the letters “R.S. + M.M.” in the center. All my life, I’ve thought that heart was some kind of magical message just for me. Marvin told me he found it when he was a boy, but I’ve always been sure that M.M. was for me (Marie McMahon) and that R.S. was a sign, the initials of the man I’d marry someday. But, just now, thinking about our day here and in the attic, it hit me that M.M. wasn’t me at all, that the letters stood for Miss Maybelle Mason and her dead fiancé, Richard Swann!!!
Oh, Vaylie, aren’t a whole lot of things not at all what they seem? Like your grandmother thinking you’re slow when you’re as smart as can be. And like Whit and Claudette acting more like proper parents than your real mamma and daddy. It’s happening here, too, in the way a whole lot of white people think their skin tone makes them better than colored people— when the truth is some of the finest people in the world aren’t the least bit white!
My daddy calls the whole rotten mess “growing pains.” “No pain, no gain,” he says. Personally, I see the pain, but where’s the gain in your mamma and daddy being so mean to each other, or in Miss Maybelle’s heartbreak, or innocent people like my friend Marvin shot, and others—a colored couple named Harry and Harriette Moore—killed in their beds? I don’t get it.
Mother sees things di ferent. She tells me God’s like the dealer in a giant card game. Because of luck, some people wind up with better cards than others, but the important thing is to do the best you can with the hand you’re dealt. That’s what you’re doing, Vaylie—the best you can!
One thing for sure (I know because I’ve tried it both ways) is we can’t give up hope. Marvin’s mother says hope keeps us going, Vaylie. My mother says it keeps us in the game. ’Til luck, like the tide, turns. It always does, she says.
Give yourself a Happy New Year’s hug from me, Vaylie. And know I’m sending you all the love and hope and luck I can spare!
xxxooo, Reesa
Chapter 25
To celebrate George Washington’s birthday (and show off her new swimming pool), May Carol Gar-net’s invited our entire seventh-grade class to a Pool Party at her house.
“I don’t want to go,” I tell Mother. “Just yesterday, I heard our teacher scolding the boys for playing eeny-meeny-miny-mo, catch the nigger by his toe, light the sticks and watch him blow. If they try that in front of me, I’ll have to hurt somebody,” I warn Daddy.
But my parents are insisting I attend the party. “It’s the entire class, so your absence could appear an affront, Reesa. Besides, Lucy Garnet will keep the boys in line. You’ll be fine,” they say. “Just go on and get along.”
When Doto drops me off at May Carol’s in Opalakee, she reminds me that Daddy and Luther will pick me up at three,
on their way home from checking out a grove for sale, south of town.
May Carol’s house is a split-level, with wall-to-wall carpets and sliding glass doors. The pool’s what they call kidney-shaped with curved steps at one end and a big slide and diving board at the other. (Mr. Reed Garnet’s in real estate and does real well.)
Since it’s practically against the law to live in Florida and not know how to swim, most of us are good swimmers and divers, too. I join Joan Ellen Marks, who’s sitting on the side, feet dangling in the shallow end, watching the boys show off. Their goal, of course, is to leap off the diving board, wrap themselves into a “cannonball” and create a big enough splash to get the girls at our end wet. I don’t know the blond-headed boy climbing up the ladder.
I poke Joan Ellen. “Who’s that?”
“He’s May Carol’s cousin Randy, Randall Jefferson Holt the third, a real Georgia jackass.”
I love Joan Ellen. She’s the only girl I know who swears out loud and gets away with it. She gets it from her mother, who’s foul-mouthed but so funny about it and so well connected around town that nobody seems to care.
“Kind of favors her, don’t he?” says Lottie Ann Louis, meaning that Randy’s pointy features and pale skin tone’s a lot like his cousin’s.
Randy proves to be the king of cannonballs, splashing every single one of us.
“Told you, didn’t I?” Joan Ellen says as we peel off our cover-ups and spread them on the grass to dry in the sun.
Miz Lucy Garnet appears on the patio with a large platter of fried chicken. Behind her, a short, yellow-skinned woman uses pot holders to carry a pan of baked beans, long strips of bacon still sizzling on top.
“Anybody hungry?” Miz Lucy calls. “We got a bunch of Selma’s fried chicken here and, boy, is it good!”
Selma is the Garnets’ new maid, hired last spring to replace Armetta. Selma lives in Opalakee Colored Town, west of the train tracks that divide the white area and downtown businesses from the Negro community.
All the boys rush forward to the table where Miz Lucy’s placed the platter of chicken beside the heaping bowls of potato salad and cornbread and the stack of paper plates and napkins.
“Gentlemen, step back now. It’s ladies first at our house, as I’m sure it is at yours,” Miz Lucy chides the boys with a smile.
“Ain’t no ladies at my house,” Cousin Randy yells.
“No gentlemen, neither,” Joan Ellen tells him, grinning at me.
The boys shuffle to the end of the line which we girls have politely formed.
Filling my plate, I decide that fried chicken and bacon-topped baked beans are only two of the many differences between my family and that of my Opalakee classmates. My mother bakes, never fries, our chicken. Our beans are “Boston-style,” cooked in a round brown pot and served with round dark brown raisin bread instead of the buttery yellow cornbread Miz Lucy serves.
After lunch, May Carol and Miz Lucy organize a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Still enjoying her jackass joke, Joan Ellen looks from the game Donkey to Randy and asks “Which one?”
The boys win that game.
Next, we play Simon Says in the pool and, fortunately, we girls win that one. The tie-breaker game is a relay involving diving and swimming the length of the pool to hand off the baton to your team members at the opposite end. We put Lottie Ann, our best swimmer, last. Even though she narrowly beats out red-faced Randy, Miz Lucy calls it a tie.
Since it’s ten ’til three and Daddy’s due soon, I get out of the pool, visit the bathroom, grab my sun-dried cover-up from the lawn, and hunt for May Carol and Miz Lucy to thank them for inviting me. They’re not in the pool area or the kitchen, where I see Selma and thank her for the delicious fried chicken.
“Thank you, honey,” she says. “You’re that McMahon girl, aren’t you, from Mayflower? Your family helped out Armetta after she left here?”
“I think my parents would say that Armetta helped us; but, yes, I’m Reesa McMahon. Pleased to meet you,” I say.
“Pleased to meet you, Reesa! You see much of Armetta and her husband Luther?”
“Well, actually, Luther and my father are picking me up any minute, which is why I was looking for May Carol, to say goodbye.”
“I b’lieve you’ll find Miss May Carol and her mamma in the back bedroom. And, Reesa . . .”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Would you ask Luther to have Armetta give me a call?”
“I’ll tell him as soon as I see him. Thanks again for the chicken. Bye!”
Racing down the hall, I hear Miz Lucy lecturing May Carol loudly, something about “conduct unbecoming a lady” and then the sound of a stinging slap. I rap loudly on the door and, without opening it, make my goodbye quick. “May Carol, it’s Reesa! I’m going now; thanks for inviting me!”
“You’re welcome, honey,” Miz Lucy calls back, in a voice like sugar.
I turn and walk quickly down the hall, thankful for yet another difference between my mother and May Carol’s.
Passing through the living room on my way out the door, I hear that Cousin Randy’s organized the boys into a pool game like one I’ve played with my Chicago cousins. It involves one shut-eyed person calling out the word “Marco” while the others, trying to keep from getting caught, call back “Polo!” The big difference, however, is that shut-eyed Randy is calling out “Nigga!” and the others are calling back “Massa?”
Jackass is right, I decide, remembering Joan Ellen’s words, and feeling my blood boil. Through the dining room, I see Selma in the kitchen— no doubt she’s hearing him, too—and all of a sudden, as a loud “Nigga!” bursts through the house, this is more than I can stand!
A large green watermelon on the kitchen counter gives me an idea. I tear through the dining room, rush into the kitchen, scaring Selma, and say, “Knife! Grab the biggest knife you can find and follow me!”
Lunging out onto the patio, I yell, “Randall Jackass Holt the third, think fast!” and hurl the big melon straight at his stupid chest. It lands, just inches in front of him, with a huge splash that shocks him silly. On reflex, he scoops it up and now stands cradling it like a baby, glaring up at me from mid-pool.
For the briefest moment, I glare back, then smile real sweetly and say, with my best fake simper, “Miz Lucy says it’s time for the seed-spitting contest out back. She’s put Selma in charge of cutting and wants you to carry it out for her, please.” “Bye, now,” I call to the girls on the lawn and to Selma who, giant knife in hand, grins back at me, eyes very bright.
On the drive home, I tell Daddy and Luther all about it.
“Lawdy, you a bold little Rooster,” Luther tells me. “Wonder where you got that from?”
“She’s her grandmother’s granddaughter, I’m afraid.” Daddy shakes his head.
Luther chuckles. “Wait’ll Ah tell Armetta. Better yet, think Ah’ll let Selma tell her.”
“Boy, can she cook,” I tell him. “Selma’s was the best fried chicken I’ve ever had.”
“Uh-oh, you turning Southern Belle on us?” Daddy teases.
“No, sir, not if that’s what Miz Lucy’s trying to make May Carol.”
“You know,” Luther says, raising his eyebrows, “Armetta could tell some tales ’bout Miz Lucy . . . that woman is high strung!”
“I sure wouldn’t want to cross her,” my father agrees.
“Oh, she’d pull your hair out, for sure,” Luther tells him.
Daddy’s chuckling as he turns to back the truck up to the packinghouse platform, but all of a sudden, his look changes. “What do we have here?” I hear him ask under his breath.
A man, a stranger, is standing on our platform. He’s medium-built, with the untanned look of someone who spends his days indoors. He’s dressed for business in a white shirt, dark pants, and a tie that’s been loosened in the afternoon heat. In his hands is a notebook and he’s watching our truck.
Chapter 26
Mother, spott
ing us from the showroom, appears tense-faced on the platform. As we pile out, she says, “Warren, this is James Jameson from the F.B.I.”
“Warren McMahon,” my father tells him, extending his hand. “This is my daughter, Marie, and our friend, Luther Cully.”
“Jim Jameson, sir, in the flesh, as requested.”
“Excuse me,” Mother says, “I’ve got customers in the showroom.”
Mr. Jameson smiles at Mother and says, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Reesa?” Mother says, meaning I’m to come with her.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell her, stalling for time.
“Mr. Jameson, my assistant, here,” Daddy says, nodding to me, “doesn’t let me talk to law enforcement without seeing some identification.”
“I heard about that. Miss McMahon, my badge,” he tells me, not smiling, and flips open the black wallet from his back pocket. “And here’s my card,” he adds.
I examine his badge and the small white rectangle. “Says here he’s official, Daddy.”
“Where’s he from?” Daddy asks, catching my eye.
Daddy heard it, too. Mr. Jameson’s accent—the shape of his vowels especially—is a revelation, and a relief.
“Well,” I say, “his address is Orlando, but he sounds like Ohio to me.”
“Cleveland,” Mr. Jameson nods.
“Can we talk to him, then?” Daddy asks me.
“Fine by me,” I tell him. Ohio, I think, is a definite step up from those other two agents who were here before . We have many long-time customers from Ohio. Mother loves them because “they order early and their checks are always good. Ohioans,” she always says, “are as good as gold.”
“Well, thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Jameson tells me, very serious. “Okay to sit here?” he asks Daddy, pointing to the bench by the washer’s big water tank. “Can Mr. Cully join us, too?”
Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Page 14