When he had finished, Mamie looked at him indeed as a man who had lived many lifetimes in his nineteen years. She looked at him as a man she could love, given time. She saw herself as the man adrift at sea with no hope, but then a crate floats by with fresh water and food and a Bible. She was adrift and Cooper was the crate floating by. He was fresh water. He was food. He was the Bible.
But there was a problem. When she looked at Buford, she felt her body call out to him. When she looked at this young man Cooper, she felt nothing. He was a beautiful man, but she did not desire his touch. She did not desire to touch him. If she took up with him, as clearly the Lord intended, she would have to be with him sexually. She would have to do it. She could not imagine it, but she would have to do it as his wife. This beautiful man, why couldn’t she desire him?
Oh, maybe this was not even the Lord! Maybe this was all in her head.
He was peering across the table at her with love. He had reached across and now he was holding her hand. She became aware of his scab picked raw. She was repulsed. She could not go through with it. He was beautiful, but he repulsed her. She would repulse him right back, and end this crazy thing.
“Cooper,” she told him, “I am not twenty-five. I am not thirty. I am thirty-four years old.”
“And as beautiful as a spring morning.”
She set her face. “And I am pregnant.”
Cooper squeezed her hand. “Yes. That is what Reverend Morrisohn told me.”
Mamie became cold, very cold, starting with the hand holding his picked-scab hand and chilling all the way up her shoulders and spreading throughout the rest of her body and soul. Cooper had that handsome smile on his face again. She saw now that it was the smile of a damned fool.
“Reverend Morrisohn told you?”
Cooper whispered, “Nobody else has to know. What we do, we do in the name of the Lord.”
Mamie was furious, but she hid it under a pleasant, ladylike smile. “Let’s do it then.”
You fool.
Don’t Go Spilling My Fruit
So two weeks after Jefferson Cooper began to court Mamie Culpepper, they were wed—they did it in the name of the Lord and to keep her reputation clean.
Cooper was the natural choice to fix it.
He was not a man inclined to run wild with women, for the Lord had changed his heart on a lifeboat on the high seas. Furthermore, he was a loyal disciple of Buford Morrisohn, not a damned fool, as Mamie had called him in her heart. And it was Brother Morrisohn who had spoken to him about the fine church lady who would be brought down low because of a certain callous act—a fine church lady who was in desperate need of a fix, and a quick one.
Now Cooper, a man who had survived in the face of certain death, was not one to compromise the Commandments of the Lord regarding fornication and adultery—of course he would have preferred a virgin for a wife—but neither was he an automaton or a marionette who ascribed a literal and fixed translation to spiritual principles. In short, Cooper believed that we are all born in sin and shaped in iniquity, and no man should be another’s judge. Should he who had taken a man’s life look with scorn upon the face of a woman who, at the age of thirty-four, had yielded, after resisting it valiantly for years, to the spiteful sexual nature of sin and corruption?
Cooper had believed that the Lord would provide him a wife who was beautiful, which Mamie was, who was strong in the Lord, which Mamie was, and who was chaste, which Mamie, Brother Morrisohn had informed him, indeed was, despite the loss of her maidenhead.
Forced sexual engagement at the hands of the spiteful white teen Chet Harbaugh might have robbed her of her virginity, but not her virtue. Neither would it rob her of her place in their spiritual community, if Jefferson Cooper had any say in the matter.
As Brother Morrisohn had put it, “The boy found her alone and had his way with her. It is a hateful and ugly act.”
She never spoke of the thing that the boy had done to her, and Cooper did not press the issue. It was a lady’s prerogative to choose not to speak of such indelicate matters. She was a fine wife otherwise, and passionate, though a little unimaginative in the bedroom, which was just further indication of the intactness of her virtue.
She had a big, soft body that was a wonder to look upon. Her breasts were indeed the cassava melons that the Song of Solomon spoke about. Her wide hips were a delight to behold. Her skin was black and starless as the perfect night.
She knew her Bible, he had to admit, better than he did, and thus was a great assist in the penning of sermons. He would watch and listen as she expounded on Scripture and then he would recapitulate her energy and ideas when he preached.
She was neither frivolous nor lazy nor a nag and she was proud, though not of her beauty, as are some women, but proud of being a woman, a lady, and she was content to follow his lead, though he was young and she had been independent of husbandly leadership well into her midthirties. There was never a need to rebuke his Mamie or to remind her that the man is head of the house as Christ is head of the church. In fact, it was she who demanded that he be the man by letting him control all of the money they earned from their joint labors in the fields of fruit. She always reminded him to send money to his mother and siblings back in Jamaica; she was not jealous of his mother. She understood the love of a mother, having lost her own dear mother a few years earlier.
She always spoke with a gentle tenderness to him, a wifely deference; she always called him Mr. Cooper, or Cooper, in public and “husband” in private, even while making love. He found it amusing that she blushed when he called her baby or darling or lover. She preferred to be called wife, or Mrs. Cooper, but she was proud of their marriage and she cherished her wedding band, which had cost him a week’s worth of unloading trucks for the Andersons.
She said that the ring was too good to wear because someone might try to steal it. She preferred to carry it in her purse or in her bosom wrapped in tissue paper. She was always pulling it out, showing it to her women friends, or in a moment of leisure setting it on the table and watching it with quiet sighs.
He liked to watch her come and go in that yellow dress and kerchief. She had a way of walking that demanded attention, especially now that the baby was beginning to show. He liked to watch the way men watched her, the men who had not been worthy of her, the men she had passed up on because they were not saved enough, the men who had passed up on her because she was too saved, the men who had allowed her to reach her thirties without a mate. Their nets had missed this great catch, but their missing out had allowed her to grow strong in the Lord. She was a woman easy to love and Cooper loved her with all his heart.
He decided that when the baby was born, he would love it too. He anticipated that he would have to ignore for a while the sly smiles and titters of the others who would make untoward suggestions about the baby’s ancestry spelled out in its skin. But years later, he knew, the baby’s complexion would not matter at all, for he himself was fair-skinned and thus many would simply come to assume that the mix of the child was that of his yellow skin with Mamie’s black.
It was the Harbaugh boy who caused all the trouble.
Come citrus picking season, the boy would have that smirk on his face every time he came near Mamie. When he came near, Mamie would freeze up, like someone who had lost control of her limbs. Sometimes her basket of oranges would spill. At times like these, Cooper would go to his wife and put his arms around her and she would become calmer. The freckle-faced boy would stare at them with stupid fascination, then say something arrogant or vicious before driving off: “Watch it there, Sister Culpepper. Don’t go wasting my oranges. Time’s a passing and time is money. Pick ’em up. You help her there now, Reverend Cooper.”
Then he would drive off, cackling. It angered Cooper to see his wife have to submit to this torture, never mind that the boy publicly disrespected their marriage by calling her Culpepper and him Cooper.
One day the boy came by, driving slowly past in his truck as he w
as wont to do, and Mamie spilled her oranges, and he shouted to her, “Watch it there, Sister Culpepper. Don’t go spilling my fruit.”
Had the boy driven off immediately things might have turned out better for everybody, but he did not. He waited there laughing. In fact, he stopped his truck. It sat there in park while he laughed.
Cooper, who as always was nearby, had heard the boy’s words. This time he had said it different—“Don’t go spilling my fruit”—which in the mind of a man steeped in the King James Version of the Bible was a far cry from “Don’t go wasting my oranges.”
The boy might as well have shouted to all the pickers that Mamie was carrying his seed, his fruit.
Cooper felt as though every eye among the pickers was upon him, accusing him of being less than a man to this good woman who had been so badly wronged, and as he felt their scorn burn into his back the Spirit of the Lord left him and he was filled with wrath. He should have prayed, but he did not. So the devil took good hold, and Cooper walked right up to Chet Harbaugh sitting in that old Ford.
Chet Harbaugh kept right on laughing. He didn’t ask why the big picker preacher was standing in front of his car, the big picker preacher whose wife he figured was pregnant for old black Reverend Morrisohn. Chet just kept right on laughing as the big man reached inside the car with one hand and grabbed him by his thin neck and used the other hand to slap his face until there was much blood and pain and, finally, unconsciousness.
There was a smart picker there named Amos, who spent a lot of time at the altar because of his drinking and gambling, and he admired young Cooper who had prayed with him often, so he told two of the Mexicans to get in Chet’s car and drive the boy back into town, but drive slow. “Tek him to a doctor,” Amos told them, “but don’t be too clear on what all happened. We got to give Cooper a fighting chance.”
The Mexicans said “Sí,” and the car began to roll slowly down the road.
Then Amos told Cooper, “You in trouble, boy. You need to get on out of here fast. I got my old car. Tek it. Go south first, cause they gonna be lookin for you to head north. All the roads’ll be blocked. Stay down in Homestead for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Keep out of sight. Don’t talk too much to nobody. Then when the Klan done did its firs’ run at you, the army’ll be mad at ’em and they’ll have to rest up on their roadblocks. That’s when you want to head north. Then go fast and go far, boy. Go on up to Jacksonville at least. Go on up to Georgia if you can stand it. Stay up there for a couple months, then send for your wife and child.”
Mamie began to cry.
Cooper shook his head. “Why can’t I take her?”
“Boy, is you crazy?” said Amos. “You go running down to Homestead with your wife, they’ll know it’s you for sure. They’ll probably hurt her as bad as they hurt you, if the pain of seeing you strung up don’t kill her dead first. She’s carrying a child, boy! Now go on. Get on out of here. God love you, Cooper.”
Old Amos embraced Cooper and passed him the keys to his car. Then Cooper embraced his wife. The sun was high in the sky. Shadows were short, the air was sweet smelling, and their tear-flavored kiss was the last one they would ever share.
He told her, “I love you, wife.”
She told him, “I love you, Mr. Cooper.”
And then he was gone.
The sheriff came first, poking his nose around, calling it investigating. He was in the employ of the Harbaughs as well as their second cousin. He was big and chinless and wore a sweat-stained cowboy hat. He slapped some of the young men around pretty good, but they each told him the same story: Cooper stole Old Amos’s car and fled north.
The Klan came that very night, burning more than a dozen wooden houses, and beating several young men pointed out by Chet as having been in on it, but killing no one. This angered Chet, who walked around now with his head bandaged in white like a high priest of righteous wrath. Chet demanded blood and vengeance, but it was picking season. Every able body was needed to bring in the crop.
The baby came next.
They named her Isadore. Isadore Cooper. She was born early. By everybody’s recollection it was only a six-and-a-half-month pregnancy, and there was some gossip about why that was.
Did Mamie and Cooper, two stalwarts of the Faithful, engage in sexual communion before marriage?
What of the rumor that Cooper had slapped the Harbaugh boy senseless for offending Mamie? What of the rumor that the boy was the baby’s father? How could that be when the baby was so dark?
How could the baby even be Cooper’s and be so dark? Was not Cooper a fair-skinned man?
The people of Goulds gossiped themselves into a self-righteous ecstasy and concluded that all would be resolved when Cooper returned to retrieve Mamie and the child. They were eager to see how it would all come out.
But Cooper had been gone two months now, and there was no sign of him. Everyone felt that it was safe for him to return, if he was careful about it, and collect his wife and child because the Klan had found a boy about Cooper’s height and complexion up around Fort Lauderdale and worked out its blood vengeance on him. This boy was a known thief and troublemaker, so he has not sorely missed by anyone, except for the white girl he had been shacked up with, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief that now Cooper had a fighting chance because the white sheets and blazing crosses weren’t coming out at night anymore.
The gossips noted that these days Mamie rarely left home and never without company—her cousin Glovine, Glovine’s husband the Reverend Morrisohn, her aunti the old midwife, and her infant child Isadore, over whom she doted. By all accounts Mamie was a good mother, but there was clearly a pall of sadness and worry hanging over her, and it had something to do with the child. Mamie seemed ever in a state of agitation.
Then there came a day when the word out on the street was that Cooper had snuck back into town the night before and vanished again before the white people had even awakened.
The evidence was plain before everybody’s eyes. Old Amos’s automobile was parked outside his shack again. Everyone assumed, then, that this meant Cooper had come and collected Mamie and the baby. But how did he transport them away if he had given back Amos’s car? There were rumors of a mysterious bus and then some talk of a friend with a car who had driven down with Cooper. There was even talk of Reverend Morrisohn brokering a deal with Old Man Harbaugh so that all was made right and Cooper and Mamie need no longer fear harm from any white man.
This rumor held the most power and survived the longest because there were quite a few who could testify to having witnessed Reverend Morrisohn being present at Mamie’s house on the night that Cooper had snuck back into town. The same would testify that the Reverend Morrisohn (sometimes without his wife) was often at Mamie’s house late into the night.
The same would also testify that the facts are these. Cooper drove back into town on the night in question. He parked the car in front of Old Amos’s clapboard house and went inside to say something to Old Amos. Perhaps goodbye. Perhaps thank you for saving my life. Fifteen minutes later, wearing a large hat to conceal his features, he emerged in seemingly good spirits from Amos’s dwelling and walked with the old pep in his step down the dirt road to the seventh of eight similarly built shacks. He went inside. There was a shout, but not of joy. Then, a few minutes later, he emerged from the dwelling of his wife and walked due north and was never seen in these parts again.
The same would also testify that when Cooper emerged from the dwelling of his wife, she emerged from it also following behind him, frantically beating her breasts and pleading with him to come back. But Cooper did not look back. Had he looked back, he would have seen Reverend Morrisohn emerging from the dwelling as well, with the baby Isadore in his arms, sleeping peacefully, swaddled in her little blanket with only her dark face exposed to the night. Had he looked back, he would have seen Reverend Morrisohn put a hand on Mamie’s shoulder and say something into her ear that made her head fall to her chest and made her sob uncontrollab
ly and then follow him back into the house.
The same would also tell you that Cooper just kept heading north, on foot, in that big old hat he wore to conceal his features and his tears.
Sobbing miserably.
Why is Reverend Morrisohn in my wife’s house at 2 in the morning? Why does my child look so much like him?
My Sister
My Dearest Sister,
I hope this letter finds you in the best of health and under the blessings and Grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I got this from a transcript of a guy who was interviewed on a talk show. I think you will find it interesting:
When I look at a beautiful woman, what do I see? I see that she is beautiful and that is all. I do not desire her. Now don’t take this the wrong way. I am not saying that I don’t desire women. I am not saying that I am gay. I am saying that I am thirty years old and I have been with women, as you call it, and I am no longer attracted to all that this implies. I see a woman and my sexual impulse is stifled by her husband, or her boyfriend, and her mortgage, her dying mother, her job, her children, her headaches, her allergies, her trip
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