They weren’t comments cast in dispersion, but might as well have been for all the pain they went on to cause after her little brother overheard them.
Bird legs, Bird girl, Chicken neck, Knobby, Knobs, Chirpy, and Chirper were just some of the unfortunate nicknames Cicada suffered through. It didn’t help matters any that she was like the mockingbird in many ways besides her lithe legs and knobby knees. She was proud. Wherever Cicada was, she was there with a bowed breast, pursed lips, and steely eyes. And when those defiant eyes found trouble, she dove into it head on, reveling in the opportunity to beat down any foe or challenge. Beyond all that, like the mockingbird, she loved to sing. From the first of the morning to the “death o’ the day,” as her Uncle Saul was sometimes heard to remark, Cicada could be caught humming or whistling if she wasn’t full on in song. But that was a trait the other children didn’t tease her over since hers was an incredibly beautiful voice.
Cicada’s singing was the only thing that soothed her father’s pain after her mother tragically passed at age thirty-nine, although the girl’s hymns weren’t enough of a balm to keep the man from abandoning his own life less than a year later as his grief weighed as heavy as the truck tire rim he tied around his neck. After he’d gone into the river one cold November night his body was never found. If only the authorities had known where to look, and if the color of his skin had been light enough to make them care, perhaps that sad fact would have been different.
With their parents gone, Cicada and her brothers, one older and two younger, were raised by their uncles, Nef and Saul, and the two men did well enough with the charges cast upon them.
Nef’s true name was Thaddeus, but he’d been called Nef for so long that even his brother Saul couldn’t quite pin down the mitigating circumstances behind his brother’s peculiar moniker.
Thaddeus Nef Anderson was a man of many talents and trades. Over the years he’d been a fishmonger, smith, farmhand, truck driver, carpenter, bricklayer and dockworker, just to name a few of his ways and means. The only constant occupation he’d held throughout the years was gambling. And, in Nef’s case, it had been an occupation, since he always took in much more than he handed over. Whether it was horseshoes—which he was unequaled in—or billiards or gin rummy, the man knew how to relieve others of the burden of just what to do with their hard-earned money.
Unfortunately, almost in exact proportion to his talent to win those folding bills was his talent to spend them.
He loved cars. Buicks were his favorite, and second to that, Nef loved women. Not the whores who could be bought in the back rooms of the smoky parlors or bars where he gambled, but the women there who might as well have been whores all the same, little girl-women lusting after his wealth, loving his frivolity with it.
All of that would change, however, when Cicada’s father filled his belly with whiskey and his lungs with river water, leaving his children to Nef and Saul. Nef came home from the road, back to the home Saul had never left, and the two men made sure beds were made and meals were on the table for all the years to follow. At first Nef thought such responsibility would be a burden, but before too long he made up his mind that it was the only thing that had ever given his life any meaning. In that realization he was right.
“I win again!” he often could be heard to say with a laugh whenever one of the children brought him joy.
Saul Anderson—on the most opposite of hands—had been a preacher. Had been, and always would be, his brother Nef liked to say. When Saul wasn’t behind the pulpit he was on his soapbox.
“Saul’s on his high horse,” Nef had often remarked, whether his brother was preaching in the church or at the supper table.
From as early as Nef had been called Nef, Saul had been shaking a finger at others explaining to them just how they were wrong and just where they should be right. Some folks tend to be irritating when they take up such ways, and as far as Nef was concerned, Saul was no exception. Fortunately for Saul, his congregation felt differently.
“Ain’t that always the way,” Nef once remarked. “The children, them that need be told how to do, they don’t want none of it, and the grown men and women folk, what should think for themselves, they come beating down the door come Sunday after Sunday just dying to hear you tell them how they should be going on with they lives.”
The Anderson family had originally spent its first few generations just outside Ternsville. After the Klan reared its bigoted head there, lynching innocents and razing black homes and their church, Saul took those members of the Negro community who would follow him, and he and Uncle Nef relocated to the south of Melby. That had been some four months gone by, and now it was beginning to look as if the Klan wasn’t a problem that could be left behind.
Cicada didn’t move with the family, she’d long earlier left for college, the first in her family to do so. That made her an even greater source of pride to her uncles, and Uncle Nef in particular couldn’t help but swell in the chest and strut a bit more than usual when he boasted of what an incredible young woman she’d blossomed into. Over the past few winters, when she’d made her way home for a few weeks of the holiday season, it became clear that she was no longer the knobby-kneed girl who fit all those childhood nicknames, and by the time she’d graduated and returned to the new homestead on the outskirts of Melby, a month or so after the Anderson family had moved, she’d become a rather stunning woman.
“I’ve put some of yesterday’s cold fried chicken in for your lunch along with your bologna sandwiches, Ben,” Cicada said quietly so as not to disturb her uncles who snored loudly from somewhere in the dark of the nearby bedroom.
“Thanks, that’ll do fer sure,” Ben said. “I don’t know why you whispering. You could call the damn pigs in from the holler and them two wouldn’t do nothing but roll o’er and saw more wood.”
Cicada laughed. Ben was her older brother and she had missed him very much during the years she’d been away to college.
“Girl, I gotta tell ya, it’s sure been nice having ya home these last few months.”
“It’s nice to be home.”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t much to look at, but it’ll have to do for now,” Ben sighed.
They sat at the table, each obscured in the early morning gloom, while their uncles’ snores occupied the lull in their conversation.
“Did you know him well?” Cicada finally asked, bringing a grave expression to her brother’s face. She didn’t need to clarify.
Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully before answering.
“Yeah. Yeah, I knew Ray real good. Was a good man.”
It seemed he had more to say, but his teeth clenched and his jaw refused to budge.
“I don’t understand people,” she said.
“Them ain’t people. They’re no good damn animals.”
If Ben had been outside he would have spit.
“Then why stay?”
“Why?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, why? What’s so wonderful about this place? There are places where this kind of thing doesn’t happen, you know.”
“Cicada,” he began, but checked himself and simply shook his head.
“Ben, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been outside of this, this place...this mindset that folks down here have. Trust me, it isn’t like this everywhere.”
“That so?”
She could see that he was growing irritated and that was something she’d rather avoid. Ben wasn’t a man with a temper, but he was a man, and so it seemed best not to get him too angry. Like all men his reasoning and good sense shut down when he got riled, or so Cicada believed.
“I’m not trying to put on airs, Ben. It’s just—”
“Do you remember when Auntie Rachael died?” he interrupted.
“I don’t...yes, but what—”
Ben got up and refilled his mug of coffee at the stove before returning to his seat and his point.
“Remember? I was the one what went with Mama to th
e funeral,” Ben began.
“I think so, yes.”
“Auntie Rachael, your mama’s oldest sister, lived up there in Baltimore. Big city, Baltimore. She worked in a textile mill, died from hard work, long hours, an’ lil’ pay, most likely more than anythin’ else.”
Cicada sat back and watched as some powerful recollection took hold of Ben’s expression.
“When your Auntie Rachael passed, our mama took me with her on her trip up for the funeral to keep her company. We couldn’t all afford to go, and besides, Daddy couldn’t get away from work no how. So, me and Mama, we got us our tickets and we was off to the big city...up North....
“I was six or seven I guess. Just a boy.” He held a hand out to mark his height once upon a time. “I was so excited to be going on such a trip now as you might imagine. Don’t recall too much of the train ride up. I know we was on that train o’er night and we got into Baltimore that next morning.
“And ya see after we got off the train and was going through what I guess was the depot there, Mama said she needed to be seeing about our tickets for the ride back the next day. So we went and got ourselves in line and that was what we was doing. After a bit I got restless though...just a boy like I was...and I started wandering around the depot there a bit.
“And damn it was hot. Near about like it been here lately. Hot and full of flies. Near as many flies as folks, and let me tell ya there was lots of folks in that depot. People was coming and going and I remember Mama told me to stay put and quit running about and such,” Ben recalled and shook his head with a sliver of a grin.
“After, oh, I don’t know how long it was, I decided I was gonna catch me one a them flies. They was the great, big, what folks call blue bottle flies. I don’t know why. The damn things is green an’ they sure ain’t made a no glass. But anyways, that’s what I decided for some reason or another. I was gonna get me one a them flies. So I was running about like the Tom Fool and all the sudden I done went and runned right into this woman. White woman. Runned right headlong into her,” Ben said, smacking his hands together hard to emphasize the point.
“Goodness,” Cicada said, but Ben didn’t hear her. He was far away in the Baltimore train station nearly three decades gone by now.
“She was a real pretty woman. Or so I first thought. Wore a fancy red dress and had a matching bonnet on her head as big as I ever did see. Smelled nice too...like sweet licorice, I recall.
“She hollered like I done stuck her with a branding iron when I runned into her. Made it feel like the whole world done come to a stop just because I runned into her. And then, with everybody all froze up to see what was the matter, she snatched me up by my arm, brought me up all tip-toes, and she leaned right down in my face...right down so’s I could smell that her breath was sour as ol’ milk gone bad. And you know what she said to me?” he asked as he stared away into the past where seemingly it lay off in the dark corner of the room.
Cicada shook her head.
“She said, ‘Somebody ought to put up a hitching post out front for you little coons.’ That’s what she said, called me a coon. A animal what need be tied up like...and me just a little boy. You imagine that?”
Cicada reached out and put a hand on Ben’s arm only to notice that it trembled slightly. The touch brought him back. He pulled his arm away and pushed his chair from the table.
“You might done you some traveling out there in that great big world what we live, but don’t you lecture me about the way things are, because I know. I know just how things are. Here, there, or anywhere in between. It don’t make no bit of difference.”
“Benjamin, you—”
“And ya want ta know the worse part a that damn day?”
This time Cicada didn’t make the mistake of trying to answer.
“When we got over to Auntie Rachael’s ol’ place, Mama whipped me. She whipped me but good. Said I done embarrassed her.
“Lord all mighty, but I stayed angry with that woman for a long, long time for doing that. I just couldn’t understand why it was that Mama was whipping me when it was that white woman what was wrong. I thought on that hard, for many a day since. Especially after Mama passed. That got me thinking on it even more. You know where all that thinking got me?
“When that white woman called me that, when she said what she did, I figure it made Mama ashamed. Ashamed of who I was, who she was. Instead of taking offense for that cracker’s hateful ways, Mama took it to her heart to think maybe she was right. Maybe we was less than human. And that there, her thinking so low of all us, that was the worst thing that happened to anybody that day.”
Outside, atop the tin roof above them, a rooster scrambled, claws scratching madly as he sought a vantage from which to start the day. Ben went quiet and sipped his coffee. After a moment the rooster let go with his morning crow. Perhaps it was because the mood had been so oppressive—although neither could have really said—but regardless, Cicada and Ben both burst out in laughter when Uncle Nef answered the bird with a bit of sleep talk. “Comin’, Daddy!” he yelped and then snorted long and hard before settling back into his snores once more.
“What I tell ya,” Ben said, lightly slapping his knee.
“Oh, goodness,” was all Cicada could manage as tears of mirth replaced the sorrowful ones that had been welling in the corners of her eyes.
The old, dented coffee tin on the stove began to tick and smoke as the last of its contents boiled away.
“Coffee pot,” Ben said between dying chuckles as he gestured with his mug to it.
“Oh!”
Cicada jumped to move it from the burner. The smell was a familiar one to the home and it brought her another smile.
“Don’t burn the place down, Cicada. I doubt those two would bother to wake up for that either.”
The rooster crowed again and the coffee tin hissed as Cicada filled it with cool water from the kitchen tap.
“Come on now, you three lazy bones burn more brew around here than any folks I ever met.”
“Not me,” Ben said innocently. “Speaking a fire, I better put one under me and get over to the Sayre’s.” He rose to leave. “Lord God, but I ain’t looking forward to ‘nother day like yesterday. It ain’t no wonder he don’t want to plow that field his self. Damnable hot.”
Ben made for the door, but Cicada stopped him short. They embraced for a long and heartfelt hug before she held him at arm’s length.
“It’s really, really good to be home, Ben.”
“Always is, little girl. Always is. I’ll see ya at the service for Raymond this afternoon,” he said and kissed her cheek.
“Sure.”
As Ben rushed past her out the door, he playfully smacked her rear as he’d done all through their childhood.
“Benjamin!” she scolded in surprise. Her exclamation startled Uncle Saul from his slumber and the old man roused to the sound of his nephew Ben’s whooping laugh as it faded off into a morning that was already uncomfortably warm.
Chapter Eight
The earth was moist and that was both a blessing and a curse for the cicada longing to escape it. The moisture was a blessing because for weeks the ground had remained dry and hard, baked solid as a brick by the harsh sun after the last rain so many weeks before. As such it had been impenetrable. And yet the early morning’s brief and scattered rainfall was also a curse; it had left the soil almost too much of a bog for the buried cicadas to free themselves from it.
Long after its brothers and sisters had gone, there remained one last nymph still struggling against the nearly impossibly heavy earth. The nymph’s instinct wasn’t to be dissuaded by something as insignificant as impossibility, however, and so it kicked and fought in its migration to the surface. There was no other way.
After an exhausting trek, which had taken far too long, the earth finally gave way and broke open as the cicada nymph triumphantly emerged to the midday sun. It was a greeting that did not bode well for the insect, unfortunately. As a matter of fac
t, it was worse than the battle that the nymph had just barely overcome. The nymph should have already found its way into the sanctuary of the tree canopy by the time the sun had risen. Safely concealed from the host of predators that awaited it, the nymph would have then shed its exoskeleton in a shady refuge where it would go on to complete its metamorphosis. But, just as there had been no choice before, there was no other option now. The force of life was set in motion and could not be denied. Vacuous in intellect, the creature would brook no anguish for its predicament, nor pause for reflection upon its accomplishments thus far.
A suitable young sapling was found almost immediately, and again without hesitation the nymph began the arduous ascension. Sadly, before the creature found its way into the protective foliage, some primal drive forced it to halt its trek and begin the process of shedding its exoskeleton. Undulating and swelling its thorax and abdomen with all the unyielding persistence of a blade of grass pushing up through asphalt, the exhausted nymph eventually managed to crack open the back of its exoskeleton and began to slip free out through the narrow seam. Slowly the nymph wriggled until its head was protruding from the chitin sheath, but before the thing could finish molting the opaque suit of amber, it was spent.
The damp earth had been a burden that day to man as well. Not far from where the cicada nymph had exerted itself, Dennis Hart, the sole gravedigger and caretaker for Melby’s Green Pines Cemetery, had toiled to once more dig out the muddy pit that had collapsed sometime in the night during the rain.
The grave was meant for Raymond Stout. It was only the second internment in the recently designated grounds for Melby’s newest residents, and its very existence was yet another proof of just how unwelcome they were. A stone’s throw away stood the wrought iron fence of the cemetery. Beyond that fence the lawn was trimmed and well-kept, while here between the marker of Matilda Jones and Raymond Stout’s fresh hole, the weeds grew wild and unchecked since the “colored” cemetery had been placed behind and outside of the Green Pines Cemetery proper.
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