The Matter Is Life

by J. California Cooper

  Then the piano rolled out again and the people went in lines to pass by and view their friend, their relative, the man in the coffin, for the last, last time. They went to raise me up, I said, “I ain’t ready!” They let me lone.

  Then it was over and everybody was goin out the door. They finally got me out, after three or four “ain’t ready’s.” Oh such a huggin and a kissin goin on out there in the sun. People askin round, “What your family name? Ain’t I kin to you?” More hugs and kisses.

  Mostly all told me how good I looked and got around for my age. Some I smiled at, some I told, “Poot on that! If you ain’t goin nowhere, just goin from the bed to the toilet to the porch, back to the bed, restin all the time, you sposed to look good!” We all laugh.

  Then it’s time to get in the cars and go to eat at the widow’s house and really get down to talkin and gossip, old and new. They didn’t have to make me now, I was ready. Cause I love to eat! You see?

  When that was all over, I was full of everybody’s chicken and roast and ham, corn and peas. I got a child to get me a paper plate and I kept tellin them good-cookin women to reach me a piece of they cake or pie to take home. They did, and I had a good load of sweets. Gonna take my teeth out and suck on this stuff all through the day and night.

  They come to get me, told me we was goin and tried to take my plate, covered now, but I held on to it, still lookin round the table. Told em “I ain’t ready.” But they got me anyway.

  We all went home full, and a little quiet. Just somebody sayin, “That was Gurline Burn, you remember her?” Or bout somebody comin up from someplace. Things like that. We rode home a little sad, a little happy, a little full of spirit, a little tired.

  I knew, and pictured in my mind some of them, who came from out of this town, was somewhere right then packin pecans, greens, corn, preserves, things like that, in bags and boxes, takin some of their home home with them.

  We passed Big Church on the way home and I stared at it, even turned round in my seat, lookin at it out the window as long as I could see it. Wonderin, sayin to myself, “Won’t be long now. My time probly next, cause nobody don’t last forever. Seein my last stop on my way to the grave.” I turned back round, stole a little piece of potato pie out the side of my plate.

  Home, they told me to go change clothes cause it been a long day for me.

  I told em, “I ain’t ready! Cause it ain’t been no long day for me! Ain’t no day too long for me no more.”

  After I was in bed, I lay there thinkin bout the widow, God, Life, while I was eatin from my plate I had done hid in my drawer next to the bed. My teeth sittin in a cup on top the stand watchin me gum that food to pieces.

  I always say, “Well, we got another night. Good night,” to myself. Then I say a prayer to God fore I go to sleep.

  This time, I told God, “You can call on me do You get ready to. But, I’m gonna tell You right now, just like I been tellin You for years now. Just so You don’t forget, so You know in time. I AIN’T READY!”

  I hear my daughter, one, callin, tellin me to go to sleep and quit all that talkin in here to myself. I put another piece of sweet in my mouth, said “I ain’t ready!” just fore I fell off to sleep. Makes me so mad when I do that, cause I wasn’t ready!

  HOW,

  WHY

  TO GET

  RICH

  LESSON # 1

  You know, I’m just a kid, but I got nerves, and sometimes grown-up people just really get on em! Like always talkin about how kids don’t have no sense “in these days.” Like they got all the last sense there was to get. Everybody with some sense knows that if grown-up people had so much sense the whole world wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in today!

  Cause don’t nobody in the world seem to get along together, nowhere. Not even here, where they sposed to have most of the sense!

  I came up, long with some war. It’s so many wars you can’t always remember which one. My mama and daddy moved to the big city to get rich workin at one of them shipyards. Gramma too. It was real exciting coming, drivin all cross the country of the United States. Coming to where the streets was paved with gold and all everybody was makin money. We was gonna save up a lot of it and go home. Change our lives, Daddy said. Get rich.

  Well, we didn’t get rich or nothing like it. We got changed, tho. We got a lot of other things, too. Like separated and divorced. Daddy met one of them ladies out from under one of them weldin hats was workin at the shipyard. And Mama was sweet-talked, or somethin, by somebody else was workin in the same shipyard! They sposed to be makin boats and ships and things down there and it look like they mostly made love and troubles, breakin up families!

  Daddy’s lady liked to party and stuff, so lotta our saving money went out that way. And him and Mama began to fuss and fight a lot, with Gramma runnin round sayin, “Now you all, now you all.…” But it didn’t help nothin.

  Then, Mama put him out and locked the door one night after he got off the “night shift.” See, he really worked days. We had to move then, cause our money was cut in half or just even way down.

  After while we moved into some cockroach’s house. I don’t know was it because of bein poor or nothin, maybe just cause it so crowded round here. Ain’t hardly no place to rent near bout nice as our house what we was buyin back home what we left from to come out here and get rich.

  Mama kept workin, naturally, and Gramma took to workin part-time domestic. It was just the three of us then, but things were high-priced and soon Gramma had to work full-time cause Daddy didn’t bring no money much.

  You could see everybody if you stayed out in the streets long enough, so I used to hang around places where he might be going to. Bars, gamblin shacks, Bar-B-Q shops. When I see him on the street he would always go in his pocket and give me some money, a big kiss and a hug. But not Mama. He wouldn’t give her nothin, he said, cause she had a man-friend now. I didn’t see no sense in that cause I was his child and he was the only man-friend in my life. Help me! But he didn’t, if I didn’t catch him.

  Gramma didn’t like Mama’s man-friend so, soon, Mama was stayin away over to his room and it was just Gramma and me. Gramma tryin to work and make me a home so I’d be a good girl and grow up to be a good woman, and me tryin to catch my daddy on the streets with his bad woman for that extra five or ten dollars he would give me. This new place didn’t have no streets paved with gold for us, but it sure did change our life. If I was a cussin person I could tell you what my Gramma says the streets are paved with!

  Then, Gramma’s other children who had come out here started havin problems too. Either the mama or the daddy left and each one sent their children to live with us. With us! There was two, both boys.

  Our life changed some more. Scuffelin round with Gramma on what chores everybody else ought to do, who ate the most, got the dirtiest jobs and things like that. We all went to school. And we were poorer than ever. People sure can forget their kids! Just love em and leave em. They knew we had to eat and Gramma was workin hard as she could. We was poor. Government said we wasn’t, but it sure felt like poor to us!

  About this gettin rich, it’s very easy to understand why anyone wants to be rich. One big reason, for us, was we was poor, black and living in a ghetto. All three of us, my two fourteen-year-old boy cousins and thirteen-year-old me, were single children. That is we had one parent each … Gramma.

  I will call one “John” (the slick one) and the other one “Doe” (the kinda dumb one), and you can call me “Einstein” cause I was the smart one. Now Doe had come from the country, but John and me were from the city; leastways, a little city close to a big City. We always had the ideas, Doe was a hard worker, but very lazy at it.

  Anyway, going on a paper route in the mornings (I went along to manage things because my grandmother had to have absolute peace and quiet to sleep as late as she could before we helped her cook breakfast and she went to work), we always saw this gang of people on the street corner. Befuddled, dirty, poor-lookin, some w
inos, stuff like that, waiting for the bus to haul them to the country to pick fruit or something like that all day. Then they would be brought back to the same corner where they all began to stuff their hands in their pockets, hunch their shoulders and walk hurriedly away, kinda a tired hurry.

  Now, we knew they must have made some money and were rushing off to buy things with it! So, one morning I asked the bus driver how the job went, you know, how much and all? Well, he said fifteen cents a sack or a box depending on what was picked. That sounded pretty good to me when I thought of my two big strong cousins, so I asked what we had to do to get the job. The answer was to get a social security card and be on the corner at 5:00 A.M.

  I thought about that for a week or so, then held a meeting and we all went down and lied and got our social security cards. I said I was twenty-six years old, so you know that was some government worker who wasn’t thinking bout nothin cause she gave me my card and after my two cousins lied, gave em theirs, too!

  We rushed home and explained everything to our grandmother, who listened and laughed a little when she told us that was hard work. Wellll, we know ALL work was hard to her so that didn’t stop us!

  She gave us some money to buy bologny and some other stuff after we arranged to pay her back. We fixed our lunches in the best happy mood we had been in, in a long time! We made a beautiful fat bologny sandwitch each and a piece of fruit; set them neatly in the refrigerator with our names printed neatly on each bag. We then went to bed to sleep, dreamin of all the money we were going to have!

  I even counted up to maybe a year between the three of us and we could let me keep the money, some of it, save it and then maybe find a little business we could go into to get away from cockroach alley, the dirty looking characters and the winos round here. Set Gramma down. Not have to wait around waitin to catch my daddy. I had all our lives planned. I slept good that night!

  Anyway, we woke up early, ate a little cold cereal, grabbed our lunches and rushed to the corner. Wellll, the bus was halfway down the block, leaving us! We screamed and hollored, but to no avail, cause he kept right on truckin. Oh! We were mad! And disgusted! After we got through blaming each other, we went home and got ready to eat our lunches when Gramma told us we better save em for the next day if we was gonna try again cause she wasn’t buying no more! See? I knew I had to get rich! We sat the lunches in the refrigerator and went on out to get the papers we had stashed and deliver them to the people who almost didn’t get them!

  The next morning we skipped the cereal and rushed to the corner, but they were gone again! My Lord!! We were mad! We went home and put our lunches back in the frig. You know them sandwitches were beginning to turn up at the edges! Much less the fruit! We ate that soggy fruit stuff on the way home in the dark morning. We hardly spoke for half a day or so … we all blamed each other.

  The next morning, the THIRD one, we didn’t even go to the bathroom or nothin. Went to bed dressed and ready and got up, grabbed them beat-out tired lunch bags and made it to the bus … on time.

  Now, there was a very disgusting group we were goin with and we felt so superior to them mentally and physically. We knew we would be the champs that whole year and we laughed at them and everything! Especially one old lady who looked like she was 109 years old.

  We just laughed at everything! We almost rolled in the aisle of the bus, but we kept it down except for that piece of laugh that sometimes busts out in spite of all you can do to hold it in!

  One old wino-lookin man was telling everybody bout his experience as a picker and everything he said he would add, “Don’t you know? Don’t you know?” That cracked us up! We didn’t listen to what he said, just how he said it. We found out later we shoulda just listened to what he was sayin.

  Well, daylight was coming fast now, and the farther we drove, the hotter it was gettin to be. It didn’t look hot, but when that big, ole red sun shone down on you through that ole dusty window, it was hot! The scenery was nice tho. You know, space and trees and a big sky and all. To a city kid, it was different. It was good. Like back home. I had forgot I missed it, with all the other stuff I had to have on my mind. We finally just relaxed and enjoyed it. I know it’s some birds in the city, but we could SEE these, justa flying way out all over in the sky. The tall trees wavin and stretchin, like us, in the morning sun. And the sky … the sky was so clear … and blue. I got so relaxed and dreamy, I even dozed off a few times. Doe slept. John was still sniggling at the old wino til I told him to quit it cause he was nudging me with his elbow, lettin me know to listen to somethin and all I wanted, at that time, was to look out the dirty window and dream about stuff.

  Anyway after bout two hours or so, the bus arrived at a field and we stretched quickly and flexed our muscles and jumped off. We were ready! Ready to get started on our big money! Everybody else just walked off, natural like. We grabbed two or three sacks each and told the man to point to our part. He said, “You all kin take any part but just stay in this section.” Okey!!

  It was an onion field. We started right in diggin and pullin them onions to load our sacks just like we was throwin money in them sacks. We threw the extra sacks around our necks, but in two minutes that sun was so hot on our backs we threw them sacks off, watching where, so we would know how far we had to come back for them. We were organized!

  Well, fifteen minutes later the bus driver came out and, waving his hands over his head, he hollered, “Wrong field, wrong field!” and pointed toward the bus to let us know to head back. Oh shit! we said to the sun (and we didn’t even curse much usually). He continued, “Throw em down, leave em here!” We said to each other, “Not us! Hell, this is hard work!” Everybody else must have said the same thing cause everybody took a few onions out and threw them on the ground, then took their sacks on the bus with them. My cousin John, the city boy, grabbed all ours back when nobody was looking and some of the other ones too! He got on the bus with onions falling every-whichaway, saying they were all his.

  Now, that onion smell … in that hot bus … was overpowering, so we were really glad to get to the right field. That took about ten minutes or so, then we were hopping out to get going again!

  The sun wasn’t even up very high, maybe it was about 9:30, but it was like it had been up there shining all week! I wanted to take some of my clothes off! But I’m a girl, and a lady, as my grandmama taught me, so I kept em on, even that thick cotton undershirt she had made me put on. Chile, I was hot!

  We got started. The field was still onions. I stayed close to my cousins because the 109-year-old lady and I were the only two women and she didn’t get no eye action, but the men seemed to look at me a lot from under their hats. See, I kinda had a little bust line, you know. So I was careful to stay close to protection should anybody lose their mind out there lookin at my new shape I was gettin! Anyway, now we could go to work for real.

  Don’t you ever let anyone tell you that an onion is smooth! You had to pull so hard to get them things out of the ground! My smooth, young skin started comin off on them onions. I went over to the bus man and asked for a knife to dig them with and he asked me, “How old are you?”

  I lied, “Sixteen.”

  He said, “That ain’t old enough, you have to be eighteen.” He smiled with some yellow teeth between his cracked lips.

  Darn! I hadn’t lied enough! So I gave him a mean look and went on back to my row and my sack. I had about half a sack only. John and Doe were not too much further ahead of me, but everybody else was on their second row and their third or fourth bag! The 109-year-old lady even was workin on her third sack! Maybe she was only a hundred years old!

  Well, anyway, at lunch time, two and a half hours later, I had a bag and a half. John had two bags and Doe had about two and a half! I know John had stole some of them onions from the other sacks when he went to start a new row. At fifteen cents a sack, we had made ninety cents! Altogether.

  Ach! (This picking was teaching me how to speak German.) We only had three hours more
to go and it was goin to cost us $1.25 each to pay for the bus trip! Ach! We hadn’t asked Gramma for no money because that didn’t make sense! WE were going to make plenty money! Besides, she would have screamed anyway. One, for waking her up, and two, for the money. The hundred-year-old lady had fifteen sacks. Fifteen! All by herself!

  Lunch time. We got our lunch bags from the bus and looked for some shade. Quick as we wipe the sweat away it would come right back. It was hot, hot, HOT! I have to say it three times! We were hot, sweaty and dirty and tired. Oh Lord, we was tired. My hands were raw. The sack was heavy and only half-filled. I had to lug mine with me everywhere just to keep my own cousins from takin any. We looked at each other and we almost cried! But … we were too strong for that. Besides, nobody wanted to be first to cry. We all knew one thing tho … we HAD to get enough onions to get home. That $1.25 each!

  We opened our lunch bags (under no shade) and those bologny sandwitches were almost rolls, they had turned up so far! The lettuce, an ugly shade of greenish-brown, we threw away. The tomato, we just sqwished and threw in the dirt (even the birds flew away from em). We ate at the rest.

  Then a bean lunch truck drove up. Those beans were smelling GOOD! All over that field! And we didn’t have any money! Now … I knew enough to know that some of those men had been eyeing me all day and so I just walked over to the bean truck and stood there lookin like a hungry fool. My cousins just stood back and watched me. Somebody beckoned me to the bean window, but I shook my head with the saddest face I could make, I wasn’t playin either, and said I didn’t have any money. After a little while, the wino-lookin older man bought me a bowl of beans. A whole bowl of beans! Oh! they smelled so good! I smiled down at them and almost screamed with delight as I walked away from the man, thanking him. I even forgot how hot and tired I was. Only for a minute tho.