The Salt Eaters

by Toni Cade Bambara

  “You are always quite plain and there’s the rub, turkey.”

  “It’s simply out of the question,” he continued, ignoring Ruby. “Further, it’s not necessary. There’s no law that says I have to live within the county line.”

  “Is,” Old Man Reilly murmured, his head dropped onto his chest.

  “Or convention mayhap,” Lonnie amended. “I’ll look it up.”

  “Page six-seven-two, paragraph one, lines four and five,” Jan was saying, tilting a fat blue book from the upright stacks on Patterson’s desk and sliding it down the table, rattling ashtrays, coffee cups and Patterson.

  “The issue, Jay,” Velma continued, “is not simply your persistence in the teeth of law and convention”—she nodded toward Lonnie—“but the fact that it’s just a definitive example of the egocentric way decisions are made in this group. And why we need to establish some policy right here and now.”

  “Well, well,” Patterson was muttering, leaning up out of the book and taking off his glasses, “it’s probably true that residence in town would … but ahh … Do you have any idea of what you’re asking? To rip up my roots?”

  “Roots? In the suburbs?” Ruby was laughing, slapping her thigh and rearing back in her chair. “Nigger please. That township was incorporated long after you got out of law school. You. Did. Get. Out. Of. Law school?”

  The Moultrie women, perched on the edge of the sofa knocking knees, cleared their throats. Daisy’s mother batted her eyelids a bit until she had everyone’s attention.

  “I don’t think discourtesy is called for,” she began, raising her brows and looking past Ruby toward the oil painting of Martin Luther King, Jr. “And I doubt that Mr. Patterson’s residence is really the bone of contention, as Velma Henry has so clearly put it.” This time looking past Velma to the golf trophies on the bookshelves. “The issue is, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Reilly …”

  She was nodding to each in turn, a tactic that had once earned her much applause some ten years ago in a meeting with the city administration, for it bought enough time for Velma and Smitty to leave the room, round up community folks, call the press, and block cutbacks in city services. Daisy Moultrie’s mother had been running it into the ground ever since, confused, no doubt, as to why she’d been celebrated in the first place. Velma leaned against the table. Palma sighed and counted the shells on her bracelets. Hampden, next to her, fiddled with the zipper on his cordovan boots while Velma, distracted, was remembering some absurdly shiny boots back in the days of the marching.

  Jay Patterson sat down when it was clear that Daisy Moultrie’s mother had no intention of relinquishing the floor. He sat down and was almost hidden by the lectern, the clock ticking away over the door, the yet-to-be-delivered speech fat and uncomfortable in his back pocket. Velma sat down too, landing on a soggy wad of paper, while the older woman picked up her pace, nodding to each of the women to join her in what turned out to be a fairly monotonous recitative.

  “Who put your campaign together, Reilly, while you and Grace vacationed on Jekyll Island?”

  “Who raised the money for the South Africa ad, composed it, gathered up the signatures and the money, placed it and absorbed the backlash?”

  “Who muzzled the Claybourne Inquirer, got them to squash the smear when your books turned up funny, Hill?”

  “Who saved your ass—and never got reimbursed for toll calls, postage or gas?”

  Who trudged through dust, through rain, through mud, through the corridors of the Chinese pajamas. Velma rubbed her forehead and leaned back in her chair …

  It had been a Gulf station. Of course she remembered that, the boycott had been still in effect and she’d felt funny going in there, even if it was just to use the bathroom. Mounting a raggedy tampon fished from the bottom of her bag, paper unraveled, stuffing coming loose, and in a nasty bathroom with no stall doors, and in a Gulf station too, to add to the outrage. She’d been reeking of wasted blood and rage. They’d marched all morning, all afternoon and most of early evening to get there. Shot at, spit on, nearly run down by a cement mixer, murder mouthed, lobbed with everything from stones to eggs, they’d kept the group intact and suffered no casualties or arrests. But when they got to the park, renamed People’s Park for the occasion, the host group hadn’t set up yet. The banners were still drooping, missing a string in one corner, the PA system only just arriving and two cables split, the bathrooms locked and boarded up and no food, no food. Just one lone pot of field peas and chicken backs a couple from the country had hauled up there in their pickup to feed the multitudes. Velma had leaned against a tree and tried hard not to look at her feet. Two pairs of rubber thongs left on the highway, a ragged pair of sneakers abandoned by a lard can and a patch of sunflowers on some railroad crossing, her reserve pair looped around her neck, feet too swollen to torture further. The marshals dragging themselves around trying to draw people in from the trees toward the flat-truck platform. The children crying from fatigue. The students singing off-key, ragged. The elders on the ground massaging knots in their legs. And Velma clenching her thighs tight, aware that a syrupy clot was oozing down her left leg and she needed to see about herself.

  Exhausted, she was squinting through the dust and grit of her lashes when the limousines pulled up, eye-stinging shiny, black, sleek. And the door opened and the cool blue of the air-conditioned interior billowed out into the yellow and rust-red of evening. Her throat was splintered wood. Then the shiny black boots stepping onto the parched grass, the knife-creased pants straightening taut, the jacket hanging straight, the blinding white shirt, the sky-blue tie. And the roar went up and the marshals gripped wrists and hoarsely, barely heard, pleaded with the crowd to move back and make way for the speaker. Flanked by the coal-black men in shiny sunglasses and silk-and-steel suits, he made toward the platform. She carried herself out of the park in search of a toilet, some water to wash up, a place to dump her bag before her arm broke or her shoulder was permanently pulled from its socket. And rounding a bend, the dulcet tones of the speaker soaring out overhead, she’d spotted the Gulf sign and knew beforehand that the rest room would be nasty, that just getting past the attendant would call for a nastiness she wasn’t sure she could muster but would have to. Knew beforehand that she would squat over a reeking, smeared toilet bowl stuffed with everything that ever was and pray through clenched teeth for rain. Some leader. He looked a bit like King, had a delivery similar to Malcolm’s, dressed like Stokely, had glasses like Rap, but she’d never heard him say anything useful or offensive. But what a voice. And what a good press agent. And the people had bought him. What a disaster. But what a voice. He rolled out his r’s like the quality yard-goods he’d once had to yank from the bolts of cloth in his father’s store in Brunswick, Georgia, till the day an anthropologist walked in with tape recorder and camera, doing some work on Jekyll Island Blacks and would he be so kind as to answer a few questions about the lore and legends of the island folks, and “discovered” him and launched him into prominence.

  “Leader. Sheeet.”

  And no soap. No towels. No tissue. No machine. Just a spurt then a trickle of rusty water in the clogged sink then no water at all. And like a cat she’d had to lick herself clean of grit, salt, blood and rage.

  Palma was nudging her, the click click of the cowries reminding her even more of that time and she blew her turn, someone else taking up the “And who chartered buses for …”

  MATRIARCHAL CURRENCY, the sign on the table had read. And she’d purchased the cowrie-shell bracelets for Palma less as a memento more as a criticism. Bought the cowrie shells to shame her, for she should’ve been on the march, had no right to the cool solitude of her studio painting pictures of sailboats while sisters were being beaten and raped, and workers shot and children terrorized. “Divination tools,” she had winked at the peddler who’d been too eager to rap the long rap about cowries and matriarchy. Velma’d worn them that day in the park and for the duration of the march to the state capitol to set up t
ents. “Little pussies with stitched teeth,” her aid on the PR committee had leered, touching the cowries. And it seemed as good a time as any for her to go draft the press releases.

  “Velma?”

  She stood up again, certain that she was leaving a red-brown smear on the chair. “Who’s called in every time there’s work to be done, coffee made, a program sold? Every time some miscellaneous nobody with a five-minute commitment and an opportunist’s nose for a self-promoting break gets an idea, here we go. And we have yet to see any of you so much as roll up your sleeves to empty an ashtray. Everybody gets paid off but us. Do any of you have a grant for one of us? Any government contracts? Any no-work-all-pay posts at a college, those of you on boards? Is there ever any thing you all do on your own other than rent out the Italian restaurant on the Heights to discuss the Humphrey-Hawkins bill over wine?”

  “And the place is bugged, of course.”

  “Ruby, hush.”

  “Drinking at the bar is all we’ve witnessed yet. You all say we need a conference, we book the hotel and set it all up and yawl drink at the bar. We shuttle back and forth to the airport, yawl drink at the bar. We caucus, vote, lay out the resolutions, yawl drink at the bar. We’re trying to build a union, a guild, an organization. You are all welcome to continue operating as a social club, but not on our time, okay?”

  “Amen.”

  “And from now on, when you want some ‘input,’ don’t call us—”

  “We’ll call you.”

  “We’ll notify you about the meetings. And you are welcome to join us at my sister’s studio, which will be the temporary headquarters of Women for Action until we get a more permanent place.” Velma felt Jan’s eyes trying to get hers, felt Palma tugging at her dress. But she went on. “You all continue lollygagging at Del Giorgio’s, renting limousines and pussyfooting around town profiling in your three-piece suits and imported pajamas while the people sweat it out through hard times.” Palma had yanked her down in her chair as Ruby got to her feet.

  “I heard that, Vee. You all hear that? We all hear that? Well, this is it, my honeys. We’re at the crossroads and are gonna have to decide the shape, scope, thrust and general whatnot and so forth of this group. Let’s take some time out to think it through and then we’ll hear from whoever wants to speak they speak. Two-minute limit, if you please. This is it, the crossroads.”

  * * *

  The roads had been washed out. The walkways between the tents were a joke. The children had found dry planks from somewhere and laid them down, but they weren’t dry for long or effective. It kept raining and the walkways were mud, planks too, tents too, everybody caked with red mud. The older women paying it no mind, moving about with slop jars or buckets of fresh water or food like ancient mud mothers from the caves, hair matted and shining with henna, hands red, streaks and slashes across their faces to denote clan kinship. The tents were collapsing, the bedrolls mildewed. The portable toilets had long since not worked. The children on errands in indescribable clothes and barefoot, red mud coming up between their toes like worms, and worms too. Many down with fevers. One doctor making rounds, stumbling with sleeplessness and impotence.

  Velma had gone up to the hotel, her shoes dangling around her neck, the clipboard in the ache of her left arm. She’d hitched but mostly walked, keeping her eyes strictly off her swollen feet. Gone up to the hotel to make some calls—find another doctor, locate the support group to bring food and aspirin, phone in the press notices, try to locate James’ group that had gone to meet up with King in D.C.

  She was hanging on to the counter with both hands, nails splitting, hands swollen, the phone too heavy to consider handling without a deep intake of breath and resolve. She could barely stand up, much less focus on the clipboard and flip pages. And behind her the easy laughter, that familiar voice. Oh those dulcet tones. And she looked into the mirror. The speaker and his cronies and the women, those women, coming down the corridor.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to belabor the point,” Velma said, clearing her throat, not sure where they were on the agenda, “and I certainly don’t want to antagonize or polarize—”

  “Let the chips fall where they may, Vee.”

  “Ruby, hush.”

  “—but a review of the history is important if we’re to map out with some intelligence and fairness the agenda of the organization. As Ruby said, we’re at the crossroads, and what we decide tonight will be … decisive. It’s not just a matter of who’s taken responsibility in the past for carrying out the work, for getting out the press releases, the mailings, for doing the canvassing, for organizing a base among campus forces, street forces, prison forces, workers, gathering the money, arranging for transportation …”

  She was hanging by her nails on the slippery material of the hotel counter, her legs trembling with fatigue, her nose stopped up, her skin caked with mud, her face, her hair dusted with insect wings and pollen. Hanging by her nails, her backbone on fire, her bowels boiling. The switchboard cables a fabulous Indian rope trick she’d have to deal with to make the calls. The clipboard a confounding puzzle of glyphs and ciphers. And slanting across the mirror over the key rack the men without their sunglasses, hair glistening fresh from under stocking caps and fro cloths, the men carrying silver ice buckets and laughing with the women, the women clean and lean and shining, prancing like rodeo ponies—roans, palominos tossing their manes and whinnying down the corridor. And the man who would be leader.

  Trying not to see them, but seeing them anyway, her eyes swimming in the mirror, slipping and sliding over a field of red silk. No bib overalls. No slop jars here. Just red silk lounging pajamas and silver ice buckets and those women. Losing her grip, the phone too heavy to hold against her ear, her eyes floating in the mirror, skidding over the raised threads that worked out a dragon of white and gold with blazing fangs and fire. Any minute she’d be a heap on the floor, a puddle of red mud in the carpet but for two hands that were holding her up up under her armpits. James? Had he come for her at last? Come to merge the ranks? Someone had broken away, had come crashing through the mirror to lift her, to drag her away, hustle her out of the door. An ice bucket banging her in the knees, the cold stabbing her in the thighs. The shoelaces strangling. Her head snapped back in the rush and shove and all she could see, the landscape of her world, was a blond hair between green threads on a field of red.

  “Be cool.” Palma was patting her, one of the bracelets sliding off into Velma’s lap. “Don’t get overheated, Vee girl.” Palma was winking, being their grandmother. “Be still, girlie.”

  Velma ghosted a smile and leaned back, her stocking feet clutching at tufts of the carpet that softened the debate in Patterson’s office.

  “Be still, Velma. Just relax now,” Ruby was bending with the basin, trying not to bump against the tent, damp with rain. “One monkey don’t stop no show. Not one, not six. The struggle continues. Haste not, waste not. Not to mention a stitch in time. Et cetera and so forth. Just get your feet to cooperate and everything’ll be just fine.”

  Ruby was trying to put her feet in the basin. Daisy Moultrie was brushing her hair. Velma had no control over her feet. No control over her head either. It seemed to bang around on her shoulders one minute, loll and bob the next. She feared the cronie had broken her neck shoving her out of the hotel. But the water was cool, it calmed her. The stroking of her legs was soothing too. The washcloth soft and fragrant with something Ruby always wore. But Daisy Moultrie was brushing too briskly. And the sparks that flew threatened to ignite her all over again, catch the tent on fire, burn up the stack of fliers waiting on a camp stool for her to distribute. She could hear the crackling wheeze of red silk ablaze.

  “Sistuh mine, it’s a hard row to hoe, but ain’t nothing to go out about,” Ruby was saying, flinging the water out back, the flap of the tent lifted and moonlight spilling in, the arc of water frozen for an instant, just long enough for her to believe she’d been washed clean of it all.
/>   “How ya feel? Velma?”

  And she wanted to answer Ruby, wanted to say something intelligible and calm and hip and funny so the work could take precedence again. But the words got caught in the grind of her back teeth as she shred silk and canvas and paper and hair. The rip and shriek of silk prying her teeth apart. And it all came out a growling.

  “Velma!” He was out of the booth again, leaning over the table toward her, his jacket hem in her coffee cup. “Aw, baby, don’t get angry about things over and done with. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  “Growl all you want, sweetheart. I haven’t heard a growl like that since Venus moved between the sun and the earth, mmm, not since the coming of the Lord of the Flames. Yes, sweetheart, I haven’t heard a good ole deep kneebend from-the-source growl such as that in some nineteen million years. Growl on. You gonna be all right … after while. It’s all a matter of time. The law of time. And soon, sweetheart, this will all be yours. You just hold that thought, ya hear?”

  two

  “Quit wrasslin, sweetheart, or you may go under. I’m throwing you the life line. Don’t be too proud to live.”

  “Speakin of wrasslin with pride, Min—”

  “What you say?” Minnie Ransom hadn’t been aware of her spirit guide’s presence, or of her own drift elsewhere.

  “Say she can’t hear you, Min. Don’t even see you. Henry gal off somewhere tracking herself.”

  “Mmm. Hanging on to her’s like trying to maneuver a basket of snakes on a pole. Spasms in every nerve center. And me, I feel like I’ve been in the middle of a hornet’s nest for days. No time to recharge and replenish myself. But talking to Doc’s like talking to sidewalk. He will have his little shows. What’s ailing the Henry gal so, Old Wife? Not that I’m sure I can match her frequency anyway. She’s draining me.”

  “Maybe you’ve met your match, Min.”