She liked the honesty the priest Paul had given her, she just failed to know such honesty would be so hard to find, would be the only thing that would carry her on, that she would have to hold such honesty to life.
Looking from the back of the train as it pulled away from New Orleans, Yinyang thought of her last years. “Well, New Orleans, you have given me one friend, Paul, and I am leaving him behind. I don’t know what I am going to, but I will never forget you New Orleans, you big, fun-filled bastard!” She laughed. “And I swear, I swear, I will end up with far more than all those lovely, fresh-faced ladies in their finery I saw here! I will, I will!” Oh, Satan was pleased. He loves wild ambition! It so often turns into greed and envy, hate and even murder in some search for satisfaction.
Then. She thought of God in the midst of her laughter and became serious. She thought, “Is He real? I can only lose if I follow that Bible.” Yet? God always hopes, it is written. Yin remembered Paul’s words, “It is your choice and your life. You will be able to blame no one or no thing for your life but yourself.” Yin shook her head to clear it and the thought flew away.
Yinyang settled back in her private room on the train. Everyone thought she was white. There was a young, handsome, jet-black porter that attended to her needs. Yin had never in all her sexual life had a black man that she knew of, though she had heard much about them and been told to avoid them. She smiled to herself, thinking, “White men would rather see a white woman dead than in a black man’s arms.” Yin reached for a magazine, still thinking about sex and love. In fact she had not had a man in these several years. She watched the young porter as he moved gracefully through his duties, she liked his movements, quick and sure. She watched him when he came to make down her bed. She thought, “What have I to lose?”
She asked, “What goes on in these trains on these long traveling nights?”
The porter smiled. “Sleep.”
Yin smiled. “That’s all?”
The porter made a few more deft moves, smoothing the sheets. “Well, I guess it’s just like bein at home for some. You do whatever you feels like.”
Yin opened her expensive suit jacket. “Do you have liquor to sell?”
The porter looked more closely at her. “A person can most always find some liquor.”
Yin stretched her arms and legs as much as possible in the small cabin. “Well … why don’t you see can you find some?” The porter said nothing, wondering just who and what she was.
Yin pursued. “What do you do when you finish helpin everybody to sleep?”
The porter reached her door to leave. “Well, play cards, read, think, whatever is okay to do.”
“Well … why don’t you get the liquor … and come back and have a drink with me?”
The porter just turned and looked at her, this pretty woman who was invitin him to come back … in the night. “Well … I don’t know, Miss.”
“Well, don’t think about it so much. Just do it. I … need to talk to someone … I can relax with.” She smiled up at him, moving her body just so. He stood there a moment, looking at her. She gestured for him to leave. “Go on now, and hurry back.” He left with a frown.
He did come back. She was undressed and in the narrow bed. He did bring the liquor. She paid for it because he asked for the money. They had the drinks. Then he had her. They were tired then, almost falling asleep. But the porter knew his business. He got up and left, wondering about what had just happened to him and why. A new porter was there to help her the next morning. Yin didn’t care, she was glad. She treated the new man as a servant, barely giving him a glance.
Anyway, she was on her way to Yoville. She had saved a nice piece of money. Had a marvelous wardrobe. Her mind was on the nice cache of gold Josephus had left behind, waiting for her at home. The diamond ring hidden there would be worth a lot of money, or she just might keep it. And the girl, her half-sister, Josephus had told her about. And the land, her land. In Yoville. “Hell!” she thought. “At least I’m not pregnant with Willie’s baby!” She laughed as she looked out of her window at life.
No, it wasn’t going to be Willie’s baby. But, she would be pregnant. She never would know the father’s name. It hadn’t been important enough to ask.
Yin was a young woman on her way home. A few people thought she was Negro, a few people thought she was white. Very few had ever cared what she was inside, except for what was useful to them. What can you know about people? You don’t know enough of time to judge, do you?
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washington, D.C. was sweltering hot when Aunty lost her job and came home disgusted, tired and mean. Hosanna was around fourteen years old, and Aunty looked at her as if Hosanna was a grown woman, as though Hosanna was the cause of her losing her job. Aunty went right back out the next morning to seek another job but was unable to find one right away. She was out of work for several weeks. Finally they had to move because Uncle Deacon “couldn’t find any work,” he said. The preacher landlord said, “Sometimes God tests us to see if we are worthy.” He had them evicted. “For your good,” he said.
Put out of even that low place that needed everything, Aunty got way down in her heart, feeling guilty. She did a lot of crying over the sink and into her pillow. Hosanna’s heart needed to love someone and Aunty was her blood. She loved her, when she could, and she felt sorry for her and angry at her, too. She knew that woman, her aunt, knew right from wrong and should not be fool enough to believe her preacher or her husband was doing her right! If grown-ups knew so much about life, why didn’t they do it better!? Hosanna’s young mind was reaching to understand things no one ever talked about. She was building her mind so she’d know how to make decisions. She made up her mind never to get married … for a long time, that is. She started finding excuses to keep from going to church with Aunty.
They didn’t move far. Couldn’t. Black folk could only live so many places. They moved around the corner. Same apartment, different address, less room. Hosanna’s space was especially cramped. Her bedroom was rolled out at night in what they referred to as the living room. When Hosanna made the mistake of complaining sometimes, Aunty sniffed and said, “I reckon there is more room back there where you come from.” She wiped her nose with a gray, wrinkled handkerchief. “Chile, I’m the only one bringin any money in this house. I ain’t got no help round here. This the bes I can do for you.” Hosanna would bow her head and Aunty would continue fussing at her because she couldn’t fuss at Uncle Deacon. “You young. You eat and sleep and go to school while you here livin under my roof. I bring the clothes off my job so you will have somethin on your back! You cries bout that, too! Either they too small or too large. Or somethin’s wrong wit em!”
With tears in her eyes, Hosanna rushed to explain. “No, Aunty, no. I preciate what you do for me. I’m glad to get em! Just tired of some of them kids laughin at me sometimes.”
Aunty slammed a piece of cold meat brought from her job on the table. “Some kids ain’t got nothin! And you ain’t such a kid no mo! You gettin mighty grown-up. Look at you! Mos a woman! Too old for me to take care for by myself!”
Walking to and from school, Hosanna would think of ways she could make money. Some girls even younger than she was stole, begged or prostituted themselves. She shook her head, “I am NOT going to do any of that. My mama and daddy done left me a home and some land and I got a brother and sisters I can go to before I do that! I don’t give a damn what nobody say or what they do, I know what I want my mind to think and what I want my body to do.” Hosanna didn’t think much of the church she went to less and less with her Aunty and Uncle Deacon, but she did hesitate in giving up believing there must be a God. He had taken the place of her mother and father. She talked to Him. He had to be there!
“You ain’t my chile! I’m just helpin my dead sister out! You jus my niece.” Aunty didn’t mean to be mean again. She was just poor and could see no way out ever. Nothing in her life was really good. Not her home, not her
job, not her man. Just her church, she thought. It got the little change she could not really spare. Took it with a smile and a hurried, whispered blessing.
Then, sometimes, Aunty would sit on Hosanna’s cot and talk about the “old days” when she was back home with her family. Nights around the “woodstove eatin hot sweettaters out the ashes, Papa tellin stories, everybody kinda cold from the drafty old farmer’s shack but laughin and happy and lovin each other.” She would speak of her sister, Hosanna’s grandmother, Bessel. Seemed she was the sweetest one when they were young. And “Oh! how we all hated that field work! We all lef, but just Bessel stayed.” Aunty would laugh, and tell more stories of back home. So, Hosanna had some good evenings with her Aunty. But … they were too few.
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a way for Hosanna to help herself came up in an unusual way. Aunty found another job, of course. She worked on Saturdays, naturally. Saturday mornings, while Hosanna was still asleep Uncle Deacon would come in and she would wake up with him feeling on her, digging his nasty, dirty fingers in her fresh, clean flesh. She hated him too much to act out a scene with him sometimes, so she just slapped the fatal shit out of him and tried to scratch his face so he would have to explain it to Aunty. Then one time, he slapped her back. Hard. She ran out of the apartment in her gown that time, screaming in the hall where others could hear. Uncle did not know who was home and who was not, and they might call the police, so he did not follow her to make her come back inside the apartment. When anyone would pass her in her nightgown, she would look down at the floor until they passed. She did not return inside until he said he would go out. When he tried to come in later, she would go out and stand in the hall. Uncle Deacon called her “stupid.” But that evening, she asked Aunty if she could go to work with her on Saturdays.
Aunty’s back straightened as she looked at Hosanna. Her brow wrinkled, her eyes softened as, tilting her head, she looked at her niece with gratitude. Hosanna went to work.
Hosanna did not like the work Aunty did, but she learned and did it. Then Aunty got Hosanna her own job for weekends. Cleaning and serving. And, see, Aunty said you could miss church if you were working. This way Hosanna could go to school during the week and still bring some money in.
This arrangement went on for several months. There began to be days when Hosanna had to miss school to take some extra job. Aunty would say, “You a smart girl, you’ll make it up, chile.” Hosanna got most of her food from her own jobs now, and there were a few more smiles in the apartment. Hosanna let her schooling slip. She almost forgot that schooling was her real way out of her situation.
One Sunday morning when Aunty had left early for church, Hosanna woke up having to struggle with Uncle Deacon. She rolled her eyes back in her head and fell all over everywhere and hollered, “God, help me!” But this time, somehow, it was different. She just quit trying to fight and started crying silently. That didn’t stop Uncle though, he just put his arm around her, whispering, “Now, come on now, Uncle make you feel better. You don’t know what you fightin, girl. Let me show you, let me make you a happy girl.”
Hosanna’s anger made her come to herself. “You ain’t made nobody else happy, you ole bastard! Lying to the Lord, lying to Aunty, and now you gonna keep tryin to lie to me!” She clamped her teeth down on his nose and bit with all her young might. Now, that worked. As soon as he could get loose, he was gone, saying, “You gonna get your little ass outta my house! You ain’t got sense to preciate what I do for you, lettin you live here all these years! You owe me!”
Hosanna screamed through her tears of anger. “I ain’t gonna let you, NEVER let you, do nothin to me!” Then she fell back panting, and lay there with her face turned to the wall, staring into space.
When Uncle Deacon had finally gone to church to pray and the house was quiet, Hosanna turned her mind to looking at her life. She was the one who would have to change things. She thought of all the ladies she had been working for. Some, a few, were kind of nice, and they were rich, too. “I can talk to em, I’m a good worker. I can see can I live in. Then I can save my money and take my self home. Home.”
When Hosanna decided which ladies she would ask, she left church behind that Sunday. She took the change she could find (she knew where all the money was hidden in that apartment but didn’t want to take Aunty’s blood-and-sweat money) and started out across town to speak with them. “I’ll ask can I move in for just a while to help them more at the same money. Then I’ll see can I add a little more from extra work on my own.” Mrs. Doll, the very first lady Hosanna spoke to, needed a live-in kitchen helper and laundress. She said yes.
Hosanna asked for a small advance so she could move in that day. The lady looked at Hosanna sidewise and said, “Now if you take my money and don’t plan to return, I will call the police.” Hosanna said to herself, “Oh shit, this kind.” But she assured the woman of her good intentions and took the money. She didn’t have much, so moving in one day was no problem. Just leaving Aunty like that presented a small one.
Now … listen. Aunty was not a mean woman. Just stuck in a hole in life with poverty and a husband who escaped into little feelings on young children. He evidently could not think any larger, and being poor and hungry for any pleasure out of life kept his mind in some dark, tiny, dirty place. Kept him from growing. Or maybe his brain wasn’t the kind that grew.
Aunty had been glad she had come on out of the country and bare feet and what she called hard work in the fields to better times. To Hosanna’s mind, Aunty had just changed one hard time for another hard time. Plus a burden, a liability on her in the shape of a man who wasn’t poot! It was Aunty’s life though, she had mapped out her own plan.
Hosanna had grown to love Aunty, felt sorry for her. But, as that same time went by, Aunty was getting evil from her life. She was hard to be around. Resented Hosanna making her own decisions without her say-so. Hosanna knew she did not have time to be a fool, not for a fool. “My mama and daddy wasn’t no fools, they got their own house and land!” So, even though Hosanna appreciated and even loved Aunty because she was of her mother’s blood, she didn’t respect her or her life.
Still in her early teens, almost all Hosanna’s experience had been hard learning experiences. She had never lived as a child. The love that comes from parents had long been denied her in life. As anyone would know, that in itself is enough hardness to start life with. Her aunt’s love was there, but it was a taking love as well as a giving one—hard-edged, lukewarm, from a tired, unfed heart. Day by day, Hosanna never knew what was to come next. There was always some struggle to be made, a fight to be fought.
Now, she was leaving even this small family of such, to be on her own. By herself. To survive. In some kind of peace, if possible. All she had was her brain, her mind, her hands and feet.
Some would have had their god to lean upon. Hosanna believed in God, but not the god of the little church she had attended with her aunt. She knew people to speak with their open mouths, seemingly full of God, but the devil was there, hiding behind holy words. She knew that the god her aunt and others like her served, gave no peace, no joy, except maybe when they opened their mouths to sing out. With heads thrown back, eyes closed and voices raised, they declared more pain than joy and the reverends’ and preachers’ hands were held out and open, beseeching even as they sang. So Hosanna put God away somewhere in her mind and went on to take care of her own problems herself.
She waved all thoughts of boys, men and love away with a “tsk!” or “humpth! I ain’t never seen love done good!” She remembered only slightly her own mother and father and their love.
But work now. Hosanna had been hearing that to work in service was a low job. For her, it was not. There was always heat, food, even learning and some little money at the end of the job. She knew there were mean people who hired you, tried to work you to death, did not want to give you much for your sweating labor, but she guessed there were mean people in every walk of life. She thought, �
��That man up there in the white house sure wasn’t too nice to everybody either and people voted on him to be nice to them. We in a war now! Somebody’s dying right now!”
Besides, Hosanna had seen servants who ruled the house! Servants who were secure and even protected from the outside world. Some people were very lucky that other people were rich and lazy. When they came to depend on you real good, some of those people would ask for advice. Some even let a servant tell them what to do. Hosanna had even seen some servants who frightened their employers! She had also seen lazy servants who did as little as possible and did it poorly, and they were still paid and fed. Be full and have a little money, too! So service was not low to her. She decided she would use it to do what she had to do. Free herself. From Uncle and this life that was going nowhere. Take care of herself.
The alternative for her, right now, was to steal, be a whore, lie, cheat. In her little wisdom from her study of God and the streets, she knew the alternative would be giving her life away to some jailer, some prison. What’s lower than that!? She wanted freedom, not prison. She would work for it!
She thought of school, sadly. She would love an education. To go to college! But it was 1914 and education was not given away. And you couldn’t get it in thirty minutes which was when she needed it.
Hosanna sat on her little sofa bunky bed in her aunt’s house, her few packed things waiting at her feet. She was not so afraid. But she was so, so lonely. Her young little heart was a graveyard begun with the tombstones of her Papa and Mother dear. In her time at her aunt’s, life seemed to be chiseling her name on a stone to sit forever in her mind. She did not think this, but it is true: What she did now would decide so much of the quality of her life. But her feet kept moving and her mind, sometimes leading, sometimes following, reached out to get away, to live. Oh, the pillows that have been soaked with tears by those in this world, trying to find a way.
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