by Lynne Hinton
For even though Mattie could not remember her children, tried not to remember her childhood, she seemed to be left with one maternal instinct, one solid place to land her sights on mothering. Somewhere winding through her chaotic thoughts and beating reluctantly in her brain, she knew.
If she died the youngest child would be left with nothing of family except for the son of a jungle orphan who wrapped anger and mistrust so tightly within himself that it bled through the skin of his neck.
So Mattie, who was not even aware of the power of motherhood, completely without a picture to recognize or compare it to and who was desperate to die, clung to the tiny bits of life that slid down her throat tasting like ripe strawberries and began to measure her dreamy, nightmarish state of living spoonful by spoonful. And only and all because there was a tiny, ragged thread of memory and hope unevenly rolled together and stitched loosely to a corner of her heart, and only because her daughter refused to let her go, Mattie did not die.
April 4, 1943
Mr. Roy Jacobs
317 Pinetops Road
Greensboro, NC
Dear Mr. Jacobs:
We are sorry to inform you, but you did not pass your physical for orientation into military service. The physician reports that you suffer from hypertension and therefore would be unable to carry out the responsibilities required of a soldier.
We thank you for your interest in being a part of the nation’s finest and hope that you are able to find a position that best suits your needs.
Sincerely,
Sergeant Thomas B. Clearstone
United States Army
Fort Bragg, NC
Seven
Olivia found out from Jeanie Maddox, Billy Ray’s girlfriend, that Roy was sixteen when he got laid for the first time. “Billy put him up to it,” the teenager reported after she saw Roy’s sister sitting on the sidewalk. She stopped to talk. “It was his idea in the first place to leave home.”
Jeanie had come into town to shop with her mother who was still in the fabric store studying patterns. Olivia was sitting near the flower store on Main Street. She was resting after having left her house early that morning hoping to sell some rags.
The young girl started ripping up bedsheets from her house and old towels that she got from Kay Martha’s beauty shop when she found out that she could make a penny a cloth. She even collected them from her neighbors and from folks in Smoketown and then she sold them to the butcher and to Mr. Henry, the man who ran the general store near the curve in the street.
She was sitting on the sidewalk, counting coins, when the older girl walked out of the store and stood next to her. Olivia slid over, giving Billy Ray’s girlfriend plenty of room.
“You know, Hangman,” then she stopped a second, then said his real name, “Roy, went to Fayetteville to sign up for the army.” Jeanie dropped down beside Olivia. She smelled of hay and sweet grass. Olivia thought she was lovely.
The young girl nodded, unsure if Jeanie was asking it or telling it. But Olivia had already figured out what had happened to her brother when she opened the letter that had come for him, postmarked from Fort Bragg. It had been sitting on the kitchen table for three weeks when she finally decided that Roy wasn’t coming home. She was curious about what a fort had to say to him.
When she read that her brother hadn’t been accepted into the army, she worried that he would soon be back. It had been a couple of months since she had opened the letter and she was just hopeful enough that maybe he had found something else to keep him away from Smoketown.
“Billy and Tommy were set on being in the army.” Jeanie eased into a sitting position and then rolled her eyes. “So they were the ones who talked Roy into joining them.”
Since Roy quit school earlier in the year, Billy Ray and Tommy only had to convince him to leave Tootsie’s Billiards where he worked afternoons. They came by the day before they were going to leave, Tommy’s seventeenth birthday, and asked him to join them. Which he did. Without too much hesitation.
“They had filled out all the papers, had their physicals, and were supposed to talk with a sergeant the next day.” It was all pretty routine, a simple procedure since the military was still in need of fresh soldiers to replace the ones who were coming home from the war.
“I went with them.” The older girl leaned over and held up some of the rags from Olivia’s bag. She set them down and slid her feet out in front of her.
It was late in the spring and Olivia noticed that Jeanie had on new sandals. She studied her own shoes and was embarrassed that she was still wearing boots, big, brown boots that she got from a neighbor of Tree’s, a boy neighbor. She pulled her feet behind her.
The teenager continued. “You know, so I could be with Billy his last night as a civilian.” She winked at the younger girl.
“Candy wasn’t a bad-looking woman,” Jeanie reported as if the young girl knew who she was talking about. “For a whore, I mean.” She elbowed Olivia.
The young girl folded the top of the paper bag and held it tightly in her hands. It seemed a bit uncomfortable to the eleven-year-old to be discussing her brother’s virginity right out in the open like they were. She glanced around to see if anyone else was listening.
“We hitchhiked all the way to Fayetteville and found a bar on the edge of town that didn’t care whether or not we were eighteen.” The teenager began twisting her hair. She was pulling long strands and then wrapping them around her finger.
“We got drunk on beer and shots of Wild Turkey and later Billy decided that Roy needed to get laid before he went off to war.” She stopped playing in her hair and started to fiddle with the hem of her skirt. She rolled it under twice, pulling it above her knees.
“That’s when we met Miss Candy.” She drew out the name, making each syllable long and interesting. She grinned at Olivia.
“She had on a store-bought purple dress that was too small for her and was wearing some strappy black high-heel shoes.” Jeanie had memorized the woman completely.
“Her hair was curly and yellow; and the old cow was painted up like Christmas to cover old acne scars.” She leaned against the side of the building where they were sitting. “And she had on fake eyelashes and too much lipstick.”
She straightened up. “A fine time,” Jeanie said the whore had yelled when they were walking down the street, “is what you boys need.”
They ended up following the woman as she headed around the corner from the bar, down along a side street, through a couple of alleys, and up the fire escape stairs of a building facing the slave auction block that sat in the middle of town. There, they all went into an apartment where the rooms were divided by thin curtains, darkness, and a thick wall of smoke. Candy motioned Billy Ray and Jeanie into one room and Tommy and some other girl into another and then, holding Roy’s hand, headed into another section of the apartment at the front of the building.
Jeanie told Olivia that when she came out of the room to get something to drink, Roy was sitting uncomfortably in a straight-back chair watching Candy undress in front of him.
“I saw the whole thing,” she said to Olivia. She smiled, then laughed as she sat next to Roy’s little sister, remembering how awkward the boy had appeared.
Candy knelt in front of him, pushed his legs around her, touched his face, her fingers melting into his skin. “This your first time, ain’t it?” she had asked as she pressed her thumbs along the bones of his cheeks and the curve of his jawline. She kissed the lids of his eyes and called him, “Baby.” As she moved her hands near his throat, near the scar around his neck, he quickly pulled her hands into his and pushed them down.
Then she began to unbutton his shirt and undo his belt. She smiled when he fumbled with her clothes. And she took his hand and guided his fingers across her. She whispered in his ear. And she rolled beneath him like the earth in a dream. When it was done, when he was done, she squeezed him tightly, moved from underneath him, kissed her finger, touched his lips, got up from t
he mattress on which they had lain, and walked into the darkness.
“It was sweet,” Jeanie said, deciding not to share any of the details she had witnessed with the girl.
Olivia blushed. It embarrassed her to know someone else had been watching Roy during such intimacy.
“When we woke up, the two women who had been with Tommy and Hang … I mean Roy, were gone.” Jeanie smoothed her hair down and raised her chest and shoulders, tightening the top of her blouse and showing off her figure.
“Then they all went over to sign up.” Jeanie pulled out a pack of gum from the pocket of her blouse. She held it out to Olivia who took a stick. The older girl opened one and began chewing.
“That’s when Roy found out he didn’t get in.” She saw some other teenage girls across the street and waved at them and then turned to the little girl who was trying to unwrap her gum.
“And you haven’t heard from him?” she asked, surprised that someone in his family wouldn’t know where he was.
Olivia shook her head. She stuffed the stick of cinnamon gum in her mouth. It was hot and sugary.
Jeanie sighed. “Billy said that he overheard everything in the sergeant’s office.” She turned to Olivia and hesitated. Then she decided to go on. “He said that the guy started the interview by asking Roy the same questions he had asked him and Tommy.”
She crossed her legs at the ankles and spread her hands out on her thighs. She studied her nails. Olivia noticed that they were short and round and pink.
“But,” she added, “Billy said that the sergeant seemed mad at Roy even before he asked him anything.”
Olivia set the paper bag beside her and with interest waited for the teenager to explain.
“He said that the man wanted to know why Roy quit school and what he was doing.”
Olivia thought about her brother’s job and wondered if working at a pool hall was disapproved of by the military.
“Then he wanted to know who his daddy was.” Jeanie seemed ashamed to say this to Roy’s sister. She knew that Olivia’s mother was not married to either of her children’s fathers.
Olivia turned her head away from the other girl. Her face felt red.
“Billy was filling out some other forms while Roy was in the sergeant’s office,” Jeanie explained, “and he told me that after the man asked Roy about his father, that then he asked him how old he was and whether or not he had gotten fucked the night before.”
Billy shook his head when he was telling his girlfriend this part and Jeanie figured that Billy felt sorry for his friend and that he told her about the interview because he felt somewhat responsible for what happened. She didn’t say these things to Roy’s sister.
“The sergeant had then asked Roy what he had planned to do in the army. Billy and Tommy had both said that they wanted to fight in combat; but for some reason, Roy had told the sergeant that he wanted to fly.”
Olivia did not respond. She didn’t know what her brother had meant and yet she could tell it had been a bad thing for him to say.
“That made the man laugh,” Billy reported to Jeanie before she left for home and he left for boot camp. And they both understood that at that point the interview really went sour.
“Fly?” the sergeant asked. “Where you think you are, boy? This ain’t no fly station. Did you see the sign when you came on base?”
Apparently, Billy told Jeanie, Roy didn’t answer.
“I said, did you see the sign when you came on base?” the man asked again.
This time, Billy said that Roy spoke up. “Yes,” he replied.
“And what did it say?” the sergeant asked.
“United States Army,” Roy answered.
Then Billy said that the sergeant kept on hammering him. “You think you can fly in the United States Army, boy?”
Roy hesitated and then finally responded, “I don’t know.”
Billy said then that the man seemed to go for blood. That he was loud enough that everybody around the office heard him.
The teenager recited word for word what the man had yelled. “Well, you ought to know,” he shouted. “A soldier don’t fly, boy. A soldier marches and crawls and slides on his belly. There ain’t no flying in the army, boy, unless you plan on moving dead men from one place to another. That what you planning on doing, moving dead men?”
There had been no reply this time, Billy said.
The sergeant kept on. “Then I expect you better pay attention before you stand in line or sign your name on something.”
Then Billy said he asked Roy if his mama knew that he was there and that Roy hadn’t answered.
After that Billy was told to finish his forms in another office and he never saw his friend come out of the interview. He just knew he didn’t get in. He had met up with Tommy and Jeanie later at the bar where they had been the night before and reported what went on.
Jeanie didn’t repeat all of the story she had heard from her boyfriend. She had not intended even to tell as much as she had to Roy’s baby sister. She thought that the little girl might have known some of what had happened; but she could tell by the blank expression on her face that Roy had not been in touch with anyone in his family.
“What happened to Billy?” Olivia asked, wondering how long the couple had been away from each other.
“He stayed in Fayetteville for a while.” Suddenly the pitch of the teenager’s voice lowered. “Then they sent him to Germany.” She took in a breath and let it out slowly.
“I haven’t heard from him in over a month.” She pulled the gum out of her mouth in one long, narrow rope. Then she twirled it around her tongue and stuck it back in her mouth.
“I hear that all the soldiers fall in love with French women,” she said, sounding sad to the young girl.
“Oh, well.” She jumped up, shaking her head. She saw her mother coming out of the store down the street. “Tell Roy to stop by if he comes home.” She patted Olivia on the head.
Olivia nodded and pulled her bag closer.
And then as the older teenager walked away, flipping her hair with her outstretched fingers, Olivia sat on the edge of the sidewalk and imagined what must have happened to her brother.
She wondered if he was denied entrance into the military because someone had heard of how he had treated his sister. She wondered if they didn’t let him in because they knew that he was mean and cruel or if it was the scar around his neck.
She wondered if he had fallen in love with the whore whose name was all sweetness or if he was on his way home again.
She stood up, grabbing the bag and stuffing it under her arm, and walked across the street to the feed store, hoping to make a sale.
April 10, 1945
Mr. Edward Saul Love
319 Pinetops Road
Greensboro, NC
Dear Mr. Love:
We are happy to extend to you an invitation to study with us in Greensboro at the Agricultural and Technical Training School. We are confident that you will enjoy your education at this campus and look forward to having you as a part of our student body.
You will be receiving other information soon regarding the status of your scholarship and loan applications as well as registration and housing details. Please fill out and return the enclosed acceptance form so that we can retain your student status as a freshman for Fall 1945.
All best wishes as you finish out your high school education and again, congratulations.
Respectfully submitted,
Mr. Earl T. Jones
Director of Admissions
E. Saul’s acceptance letters into several colleges made up for all the lost things in Miss Nellie’s and Ruth’s lives. He was the pearl of a great price, the treasure hidden in the field. And it was worth all that they had struggled against, fought for, and dreamed about just to see him start to fly. He was the son who could take them out and away from everything Smoketown had stolen. He was the new world, the new South, the new black man. And they delighted in his accom
plishments, his test scores, his scholarships as if each one was a step bringing them closer to heaven.
Since before he even started school, the two women had begun packing their dreams on his shoulders, feeding him their aspirations, and measuring him for the costumes of their desire. Even with the problems they had with his father, even with trying to live with a violent and bitter man, they still managed to nurture what they were sure could grow in the soul of a little boy.
When he responded by reading at the age of four and solving math problems before he started first grade, they knew he was their ticket out of misery, out of sadness, out of being poor women, even out of being black. He was the song of salvation they sang every time they bowed to pray.
Early in the morning as he sat at the table making rhymes and calling out words he could spell, they pulled out their abandoned passions and slipped them easily under his tongue. Deep in the afternoon when he napped under the tree, they carefully brought out their neglected hopes and pillowed them beneath his neck. And late at night on those occasions when he would sleep, they took down old wishes and blew off the dust, balancing them ever so gently across his back.
They nurtured him on all the things they had locked up and put away and it gave them immeasurable joy just to think of all that the little boy could do, all the things he could give them, all the places he would carry them.
It wasn’t long before the dream wasn’t just Ruth’s or Miss Nellie’s. It became more than just the hopes of a prejudiced mother and a biased grandmother. It became more than just somebody else’s little boy. Everybody in Smoketown started to think that E. Saul was of their own making, birthed of their own withered hearts; and they congratulated themselves that they had been a part of creating such a smart and dutiful boy.
Teachers sent home notes about his abilities, detailing how he had answered the difficult problems they had manufactured or how he had written papers or solutions that they had inspired. Preachers and principals commented on which choices he should make with his education, proudly expecting him to follow in their footsteps and go to the schools they had attended. Neighbors asked to hear him read his research reports, trying to find anything to which they could lay claim, a story, a memory, a beautiful phrase. Everybody in Smoketown wanted to think they had a piece of the bright young man who knew words like they knew sorrow and could pull color from a rock.