The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

by Ann Weisgarber

  “Dance? By myself ?”

  “No.” I used the stall rail to pull myself up. “With me.”

  “But we’re both girls.”

  “Nobody’s looking.”

  Mary giggled and stood up.

  “Come over here,” I said, “where we’ve got some room. Now, face me like this and give me your hands. When I start singing, we’ll slide a few steps that way, and then we’ll slide a few steps the other. Can’t do like I used to, can’t do much more than walk, but you’ll get the idea.”

  Mary squeezed my hands.

  Now old Dan Tucker is come to town

  Swinging the ladies round and round

  First to the right and then to the left

  Then to the girl that he loves best.

  Together we sang and danced, laughing when Mary bumped into Isaac’s plow, bobbing our heads to show we were sorry when we stepped on each other’s feet. Mary’s glowing face gave me a special kind of pleasure, the kind of pleasure a person got from making someone else happy. Not that I wasn’t happy; I was. Dancing with my daughter was a moment of such pure lightheartedness that I knew I would never forget it. I’d press the memory of it in my heart. I’d use it to get me through the coming winter.

  “I’ve got to stop,” I said a few dances later, propping up my belly with my arms. Breathing hard, I sat down on the milking stool.

  Mary wasn’t ready to stop. Humming, she danced on—spinning, dipping, and sashaying around the barn, her arms out before her, her hands touching a partner only she could see. When she finally stopped, she curtsied and sank down to the hard-packed floor beside Jerseybell.

  “Just three months till the Schoolhouse Christmas Dance,” Mary said, fanning herself with her hand.

  My smile faded. We didn’t go to the Schoolhouse Christmas Dance. Isaac always wanted to, but it was me what said no. I didn’t like the thought of being the only Negro woman in a room crowded up with white people. That’d make me uneasy; I wouldn’t know what to say. Every year Mindy McKee begged us to come to the dance with them, saying how friendly folks were, how nice it was to see neighbors all dressed up and having a good time. But I always had a reason not to. I’d remind Mindy that I was in the family way and showing too much. If that weren’t so, I’d tell her that it was too cold to haul the younger children all those miles, and at night too.

  It was different for Mary. She was used to white people.

  We were still the only Negroes in this part of South Dakota. There were the Thompsons and the Phillipses, two other Negro families, but they were north of the Black Hills. It’d been months since Isaac had heard anything about them. Maybe they’d sold out like everybody else. But even if they hadn’t, they were a good ninety miles from us.

  “Honey,” I said, “we don’t go to that dance.”

  “But now that I know how to dance . . . ”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Louise’s father’s going to let her dance with bigger boys this year, not just with other little kids like before.”

  “She’s older than you.”

  “Just by five months.”

  I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “You got any boys you’d like to dance with?”

  Mary pressed her lips as if embarrassed.

  “Well?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well?”

  “Joe Larson isn’t so bad. When I won the spelling bee he said he wished he could spell as good as me.”

  “He did?”

  “He gave me a cookie one time. It was round like a ball and had white powdery sugar on it. He said it was a Swedish cookie, his mama made it. That’s where they’re from. Sweden. Miss Elliott showed us where on the map. Joe’s the first in his family born in America. He’s real proud of it. He speaks English for his parents.”

  Lord, Lord. What would I do if a yellow-headed boy with blue eyes came up the road carrying a spring bouquet of orange wildflowers? What would Isaac do? Or this boy’s parents? Or the other ranchers?

  Mary said, “Louise teases, saying how Joe Larson’s sweet on me, but I don’t think so. He talks to all the girls.” She ran her hand along Jerseybell’s shuddering side. “But I think Franklin’s real nice.”

  An Indian. Merciful Jesus. Isaac would skin him alive.

  I said, “These boys, you’re best off ignoring them.”

  “Why?”

  “Be polite, but don’t be friendly.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t share lunch with the Larson boy anymore. And Franklin’s an Indian, and you know what your daddy thinks about them.”

  Mary’s mouth twisted.

  “Honey,” I said, not knowing how to explain this thing and wishing that I didn’t have to. “People get along best if they stay with their own kind.”

  “Their own kind?”

  “That’s right. Negroes with Negroes and whites with whites. And Indians . . . well, it works best this way.”

  “What about Louise?”

  “That’s all right. It’s just with boys, well, it’s different. You stay with your own kind when it comes to boys.”

  “But they’re my classmates.”

  “You heard me. Stay away from the boys. Understand?”

  She nodded. In the flickering lantern light, I saw tears standing in her eyes. I put out my hand to her. “Come here.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Just wanting to gives you a hug, that’s all. It’s been a good while.”

  Mary came to me and wrapped her arms around my swollen middle and rested the side of her face on top of my belly. I patted her head, feeling the springy hair that had worked loose from her braids.

  I wanted to tell her I was sorry. When we first came out to the Badlands, Isaac was sure the country would fill up with Negroes. That hadn’t happened.

  The barn was quiet. Even the crickets had stopped their chirping. But the biggest quiet came from Jerseybell. Her breathing had stilled and her chest wasn’t shuddering. I pulled my handkerchief from my sleeve. “Honey,” I said. “Jerseybell’s dead.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no.” She went to Jerseybell, laid down, and put her head on Jerseybell’s neck and an arm around her. I let Mary cry for a while before telling her it was time for bed. She wiped her eyes on my handkerchief and helped me up from the milking stool.

  I unhooked the lantern, blew out the oil rags, and put my arm around Mary’s shoulders, feeling the sharpness of them. “You’ve been to your first dance,” I said. “There’ll be more.” I forced my voice to be strong. “With boys. Negro boys.”

  14

  THE MANDOLIN PLAYER

  Isaac?” I said when I came into our bedroom after coming up from the barn with Mary. “You awake?”

  “Some.”

  “Jerseybell’s dead.”

  The mattress crackled as he turned onto his back. “Mary all right?”

  “She will be.”

  “At least this way I don’t have to put Jerseybell down.”

  I put on my nightdress, sat on the edge of the bed, and wiped the bottom of my feet with a rag. “You going to bring Al’s milk cow home tomorrow?”

  “I’ll go as soon as I take care of Jerseybell.”

  I got in bed beside him, lying on my side, my back aching. My earlier spell of restlessness was gone now, washed out by all the dancing. Maybe the baby was a few days off. That’d give Isaac time to get the new cow. That’d give the baby time to perk up and start kicking. I said, “Mary’s growing up.”

  “They all are.”

  “She’s noticing boys.”

  “She’s only twelve.”

  “She’ll be thirteen in a few weeks. Lots of girls from around here start courting by fourteen.”

  “Not Mary.”

  “I’m just saying she’s noticing boys. Boys from around here.” I felt Isaac looking at me. “White boys.”

  “Good God.”

  I said, “Mary needs to meet some Negro boys.”

  He didn�
�t say anything.

  “She needs to meet some nice Negro boys before she thinks the only boys what count are white.” Or Indians, I almost said.

  “What are you saying?”

  I paused. “There’s going to come a time when our children’ll have to go home.”

  “This is home.”

  “Chicago,” I said.

  “There’s no need for that. Zeb Butler will help. Him and Iris.”

  “What?”

  “They know most of the Negroes in the Dakotas, Nebraska and Iowa too. They’ll know who’s right for Mary. And for John, when it comes time.”

  Zeb Butler and Isaac had served together at Fort Robinson. He had quit the army a year or so before Isaac and had gone to Sioux Falls. Him and his wife, Iris, rented rooms in their house to Negroes passing through town. Me and Isaac had stayed at their home on our way from Chicago to the Badlands. They were rough people. Zeb Butler drank too much to suit me. I didn’t want them having anything to do with our children.

  “But not before Mary’s sixteen,” Isaac was saying. “She’s not getting married before then. We need her here.” He paused. “I’ll find her a rancher, a good man who knows what he’s doing, someone proud to have her.”

  “Maybe that’s not what Mary has in mind. Maybe she wants to be a teacher, maybe even a nurse.”

  “She’s a rancher’s daughter. She’ll want her own land.”

  It would never be hers, I thought. It’d always be her husband’s. But Isaac was right. Mary was born to the life. Someday she’d want her own house, and marrying was the only way our girls would have anything. I’d been taken aback when Isaac first told me how it worked. “This will all be his,” he had said a day or so after Isaac Two, our first boy, was born.

  “And Mary’s,” I said. She was a year and a half.

  “She’s a girl,” Isaac said. “Ranch land always goes to the oldest boy so the land stays intact, doesn’t get split up. Then it goes to his oldest boy. That way it stays in the family, keeps the family name.”

  “But Mary?”

  “She’ll marry a man with his own land. I’ll see to it.”

  “What if we have more sons?”

  “They’ll work for me and Isaac Two until they’re ready to go out on their own, get their own ranches.”

  Put that way, it seemed sensible. But it hadn’t gone that way. Negroes hadn’t come to the West, and Isaac Two had slipped on a pile of rocks. The ranch was going to John.

  Isaac said, “Zeb Butler’ll know of ranchers, Negro ranchers in need of a wife. And John’ll want a woman from around here, one who has a taste for the work. He won’t find that kind in Chicago.”

  Isaac was talking about our children like they were cattle. Their marriages would be bargains for land. Just like ours had been. Isaac would do the bargaining for his children and they’d go along with it. They’d want to please him. Grown up and married off that way, they wouldn’t know the first thing about courting, about sharing ice cream sodas or about going to dances. They wouldn’t know anything about falling hard in love and how that made everything easier to bear.

  I said, “You’ve got this all worked out.”

  “Ever since Mary was born.”

  I felt sick. I saw the girls married off to men what worked them hard and treated them rough. I pictured John’s wife—worn out and little more than a ranch hand. That wasn’t what I wanted for them; our children should have better. I had to make Isaac see that too.

  I gathered up an old memory, a favorite that I pulled out sometimes to soften the hard times. I said, “Remember when Mary was about a month old and we went to Interior?”

  “No.”

  I had to help Isaac remember. “Well, on that day it’d turned warm again even though we had had a heavy frost just a few days before. You called it Indian summer. You said it was our last chance to go to town before the cold set in. I hadn’t been in months. I was proud to go—I had Mary to take.” I laid my hand on his arm and felt the hardness in his muscles. “Remember?”

  “No.”

  “I had my shopping to do. I was in the store holding Mary; I was waiting for Mrs. Johnston to finish up with Mrs. Nelson. When she did, Mrs. Nelson came over and asked to see Mary. It surprised me; most usually she wasn’t all that friendly. Then I recalled that her children were all grown up and moved off. I could see she wanted to hold Mary so I let her. She ran her finger over Mary’s cheek and she put the tip of her finger to her eyelashes. She told me that a girl with such eyelashes would break every boy’s heart what looked her way. Me and her smiled over that.” I stopped. Mary had been such a little thing. At the time I couldn’t imagine her anywhere close to grown.

  I said, “You were waiting by our wagon. ‘Let’s find a patch of sunshine,’ you said, ‘and have our dinner before heading home.’ But we never did. Because across the street in front of the blacksmith’s was a wagon, and there was a white girl sitting on the buckboard. Remember her, Isaac?”

  “No.”

  “I do, just like it was yesterday. She had brown hair—braids—and freckles everywhere. I’ll never forget her face. She was plain, but there was something pretty about her—her eyes maybe. She couldn’t have been a day over sixteen, if that. One of her horses was missing, it must have thrown a shoe. But she didn’t seem to mind in the least because she sat there playing her guitar like she was home in her own parlor.”

  “A mandolin,” Isaac said. “Somebody asked her and that’s what she said.”

  “That’s right. A mandolin. It was the prettiest music. People stood around listening, enjoying themselves. For once nobody was in a hurry to get home to their chores. The girl told somebody her and her husband were from Billings, clear over in Montana. They were on their way home. I thought, Husband? She’s too young to be married; she isn’t even wearing her hair up.

  “But here’s what I especially like remembering about that day. You took Mary from me—she was asleep by then. You tucked her into her basket and put her on the floor of our wagon, right under the buckboard. Then you looked right into my eyes and I remember thinking, Why, Isaac’s not the least bit sorry he married me. I’ve made him glad. He wanted a son but he got a daughter and still he’s glad. My heart nearly busted wide open, I was that happy.”

  Isaac turned over on his side to face me. “You never complained,” he said. “As hard as I worked you, you never complained.”

  “You didn’t either,” I said. Then, “You remember what happened next?”

  “No.”

  “You bowed, like a gentleman from a book, and said, ‘Mrs. DuPree, will you do me the honor of this dance?’ Before I knew it, we were dancing right there in the middle of the street in front of all those people.”

  “It was a waltz,” Isaac said.

  “That’s right, it was. It was our first dance. Married a whole year—more than a year—and we had never danced. Because we’d never courted.”

  Isaac said, “You kept your head down. All I could see was your bonnet.”

  “Couldn’t imagine what all those white people were thinking about us. But at the same time, I wanted that sweet music to go on forever. I knew I was the luckiest woman in the world, married to you and having Mary. It was the finest moment of my life.”

  It was also when things changed between me and Isaac. It was when I became his wife.

  I said, “When she stopped playing, the girl tipped her head to us like we had pleased her. Then you swung me up on the buckboard, and we rode off. We were halfway home before we thought to stop for dinner.”

  I was quiet so we could both think about that. After a while I said, “Everybody needs a sweet time in their lives.”

  “I don’t disagree with that.”

  “That’s what I want for our children, a dab of sweetness mixed in with all the hard work. Because that’s mostly what it is. Hard work.” I put my finger on his cheek. “They need to do their own choosing.” I felt the rough stubble of his beard.

  “I won�
��t hold a gun to them.”

  “You won’t have to. They’ll do anything to please you.”

  “I’m their father.”

  “And that’s a big thing.”

  Isaac didn’t say anything.

  I thought about the freckle-faced girl sitting on the buckboard that long-ago day in Interior. It was the end of October, her horse had thrown a shoe, and she and her husband were far from home. Everybody needed something to fall back on when they were having hard times, and for that girl it was her mandolin.

  I thought about the root cellar with its empty shelves. I thought about snowdrifts as high as a man. I thought about water frozen in buckets and white blizzards that burned people’s sight away. In blizzards, grown men were known to get lost between their houses and their barns. If they were lucky and found their way home, they were grateful that the worst thing that happened to them was frostbite. They were grateful if they only lost tips of noses, fingers, or a few toes. If a winter was particularly hard, cow chips for stoves ran low and children fell sick with chest ailments. Women died too, leaving their children motherless.

  Our children needed something to fall back on during hard times. Isaac thought land was enough. I knew different. During hard times a person had to be able to say that it wasn’t always so hard. A person needed to say, Once I played hopscotch with girls my age, once I played baseball with boys like me, and once I sang and clapped my hands at a neighborhood dance.

  Isaac’s breathing told me he was asleep. Tears came to my eyes. For him, everything was settled. He was going to Lead to work the mine this winter. Me and the children were staying behind. When it came time, he’d find a hardworking woman for John and men with land for our girls. Isaac was doing it for the ranch. The ranch was his way of lifting up our children. He didn’t want his daughters to cook and clean for white people. He didn’t want John in a slaughterhouse or taking white people for rides on hotel elevators. But that didn’t mean ranching was easy. It didn’t mean that a marriage based on a bargain lifted the heart.

  “They need a dab of sweetness,” I whispered. “For the hard times.”

  I got up, went to the parlor, struck a light, and sat at the writing desk. I got out two sheets of paper and blew the grit off of them. Isaac was going to Al McKee’s tomorrow, and a few days later Mindy was going to Interior to take the train home. On one sheet of paper I wrote a letter to Mindy McKee. Good-bye. On the other, I wrote a letter to Mama. Can we come?