Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  “Allah has saw fit to grow my family and I ain’t glad about it.”

  “Have you prayed?” Mr. Al-Halif asked.

  “Too much guilt. I made duas.”

  She was in no state to pray and had repented for her other considerations. Long as Ennis had love, she couldn’t puzzle out how not to bring another of his babies even though they grow and need all the while. Ennis had the kind of love that saw to needs. How many times had he made something from nothing? Now that money was coming in they would be all right. If the baby didn’t cause sickness she could work till delivery. But what if folks stopped buying her jams? She was tired of the way they scrounged just to make it through hard times.

  Mr. Al-Halif called out to his wife, Yasna, and daughters. The urgency of today’s petition to Allah required jama’ah, as prayer in congregation was more likely to win Allah’s favor.

  Lemon lowered her head. “I know it is haram to end a life.”

  “It depends. Islam is a religion of compassion.”

  Like Lemon’s father, Mr. Al-Halif was a hafiz, and had memorized the Qur’an. “But we are told in 6:151 ‘you shall not kill your children because you cannot support them.’”

  They did their ablutions—the washing of face, hands, forearms, and feet—and prayed the Salaatul Istikhaarah for guidance. On the walk home Lemon remained conflicted.

  Ten days later, May-Belle opened the door and beckoned her niece inside. For weeks she had dreamed about it, waking up agitated, mournful, and unable to tell a soul about it. Now all the signs proved it. Lemon’s face was fuller, her neck a smidgen darker. “Ain’t no worry over the tansy and rue,” May-Belle said, removing a pinch of herbs from a small canister. The tea would make Lemon sick as a dog for three days even before she started to bleed. “You best let Ennis know what you fixing to do ’cause it’s as much his as it is yours.”

  .

  A gust of February wind rustled papers jammed between the logs of the cabin as Timothy rolled onto his side weary from a fitful sleep. Since the death of his friend Junior and Junior’s father, strange habits had taken hold of the Williams family. Momma used to be all peace. Now when Papa moved from the bed out into a day of God only knew what kind of danger, Timbo could hear her say, “Come back to us, you hear?” Delivery of her jam stopped. “Folks who want them just gonna have to come get them.” She wasn’t about to have Ivoe on the road alone with her little red wagon. In the last week, Papa didn’t have two words for anybody. Timothy looked outside to see how much snow remained. The ice he’d seen caked on the roof the night before—when they heard strange noises and Momma sent him out to look around—was melting. The bucket in the corner of the room was nearly full. He hated to rise so early, but like everybody in Little Tunis who now tended to business at strange hours, he figured getting out with the sun was the best way to see it rise again.

  Many would miss Mr. James Williams. He had a business in town, gray in his head, and friends. But Junior. Nobody knew his friend Junior like he did. When the milk sickness had Timbo bedridden and vomiting, it was Junior who told him whose titty he’d squeezed behind the church on Sunday, or how he’d made dice skitter across the floor. Junior was convinced one day their fortune would be made in craps games. Then they would have any woman they wanted. And with bond money too, they might even tell a cracker to go to hell. Junior wasn’t scared of nothing. Timbo hated to think how scared his friend had probably been at the end.

  Timbo warmed himself by the grate in the kitchen. “How you sleep?” he asked his mother, who was cooking breakfast.

  “Pretty good,” Lemon fibbed. “Can’t let it end you. The living got to keep on living.” She pulled at the front of her tight housecoat, carrying a plate of eggs and fried potatoes to the man-boy slouched at her table. She watched her son eat, wondering when he would sleep through the night again. The tragedies of last week had taken more from him than he would ever know. “Need to set up the peppers and radishes for spring. Getting orders already.” She nodded at the boxes of soil on the floor across the room. “When you go into town this morning, pick up my seeds. We out of coffee. Better get a tin of that too.”

  Timothy reached for his coat. “And take that”—Lemon pointed to the croker sack in the corner—“have them ground it up for me.” A moment passed, then, thinking of her spring yard. Lemon jumped up from the table, waddling swiftly to the door. “Baby, my mind ain’t but a minute long these days,” she called out, shaking her head to show her forgetfulness was a personal nuisance. “Better get me some petunia seedlings too. Be sure to fetch Ivoe from school. And, Timbo, don’t let the sun set on you.”

  Junior and his father had not heeded the warning. Sunday, after people stood up to share what they had seen or heard, Reverend Greenwood said the boy and his father had paid the price for taking the long way home. Didn’t make sense to try to put the pieces together, Timothy chided himself. Facts were simple: most Negro men lived till somebody saw fit to kill them. One day his time would come too; the why and the how of it didn’t matter. Feeling bad about it was foolish too, especially when he needed to pay attention like Papa always told him, so he could steer clear of potential trouble like now—an old woman reaching out to touch his arm. She fumbled with her pocketbook and asked for his help right there on Main Street.

  Across the street two men observed.

  “Look over yonder. What you suppose that boy got to talk to Lady Henderson about?”

  “Can’t say. I reckon she asked him something.”

  “I reckon she ain’t done no such thing.”

  The threat of the woman’s victimhood made the men walk with an elastic step.

  “Howdy, ma’am. Everything all right here?”

  “Everything’s fine. Sometimes I’m just a silly ninny. Went off without my specs. This boy helped me by reading the address on this envelope. I can manage just fine now,” the woman said, patting her thanks lightly on Timothy’s arm.

  Ssth. Lemon sucked her teeth. “Just ain’t right—James and James Junior both gone. Say before they was shot they took a mighty beating. Found them both half-naked,” she continued to Ennis, who made the stew his excuse for the lunchtime visit when they both knew he had come home to make sure she was safe. Lemon stopped stirring and waited for him to say something. How he could lose a friend—brother, really—and keep so quiet about it worried her. She was glad for the cooking so she didn’t have to look at him, because then maybe he would see how much it weighed on her. Couldn’t be helped. Life ought to feel heavy when secrets piled up so high not even a crack of light could get through. Made a soul dark is what it did—all the untelling.

  That morning fifteen years ago, when James Williams came by with the firewood, Lemon had been thinking of her parents in the cold, cold ground when James put the bundle down and asked where Ennis had gone. “To see about work,” she told him. Funny how the truth of a thing could change, depending on who said it. When Ennis had said it, somehow it sounded right, but coming from her mouth—well, she felt foolish just repeating it. James wondered if Ennis hadn’t run off like his momma had. And she didn’t know any better than to let her doubt show. Doubt told James he could take her in his arms like that and give her something she could believe in. Timbo didn’t come out looking like either one of them, but he was black, black like both men. It shamed her when Ennis held the baby for the first time talking about “My son.”

  A bottle slipped from Lemon’s hand and crashed against the floor, making the room reek of tamarind and chili peppers. “Don’t know how this gonna taste without the Worcestershire sauce,” she said, turning away from the bubbling pot, the house of the unborn baby leading the way. “Cora about ready for somebody to carry her on away from here. Can’t say I blame her. If something happened to you I’d sit down in that chair and try my best to rock on away from here. Yes, I would. Ivoe said the girls wasn’t at school last week. And you know it ain’t like me t
o meddle but they children. They can’t rightly see to each other. I went over there this morning. Look like Cora been beat from head to toe with a worry stick. Hair wasn’t combed. Dress soiled. I cleaned up a little bit, combed all they heads and fixed them something to eat. Ssth. Take a woman’s husband and her only son. Don’t make no kind of sense.”

  Lemon rubbed her belly and blamed the pear. Last November, she had intended to start the ridding process once Ivoe left for school because she didn’t want the girl to see her in pain from the cramping. And the bleeding could be messy. She waited on the herbs until lunchtime when Ennis showed up unexpectedly. Wearing that boyish grin, he held out cupped hands, wiggling and carrying on until she pried his fingers open. She laughed that it was only a pear, then grabbed the golden thing, sinking her teeth into the ripe flesh as syrupy juice trickled down her chin. Ennis pulled her close, pressed his head to hers, and kissed the sweetness from her lips. She inhaled him deeply—sweat mingled with the hint of clove in the shaving cream she bought him—and fell against his chest. The sleeve of his shirt couldn’t catch her tears fast enough. In their bed she told Allah she was fine with another mouth to feed just as long as He showed her how to do it.

  Ennis didn’t cry for James Williams like a brother because he had lived with him only a year at Paw Paw’s place, but his head hurt him just the same. Maybe it was the catfish stew Lemon was preparing, which James had liked so much, or maybe it was the dwindling pile of wood near the hearth that brought his friend and the morning they shared last summer so near. Sitting on the riverbank next to buckets full of sunfish, anybody could see James had a lot on his mind. Ennis waited until Timbo and Junior put down their fishing rods to go for a swim before he spoke up.

  “Seem like when we was boys time was lazy. Just stretch on out before you like this here river. You remember, James? Seem like time wasn’t never gone end.”

  “Yeah, Ennis, we mens now. My family, we not no little people. We hardworking and we not no little people. I want to see big things happen for my family. I want to see it before my time is up,” James said.

  “Ain’t a man in Little Tunis ain’t done felt how you feeling now.”

  “A man supposed to be able to put his family up in a good home. Leastwise that’s why we work. Didn’t Paw Paw tell us the only way we was to live and die mens was if we worked and made good homes? Well, Ennis, dammit, I’m doing that but it don’t matter none if my wife afraid to leave the house or afraid to come back to it once she gone,” James said, wiping his eyes.

  It was the first time Ennis saw a grown man cry and it stirred something in him.

  “Ain’t so much the house as it is that sawmill of yours—up there in they neck of the woods.”

  “They neck of the woods my foot. Been hauling that devilish timber since I was them boys’ age. Shit, after all them years I knowed what he know, why wouldn’t I go into business for myself?”

  “Seem to me you can’t stay up there with them, James. Just ain’t safe.”

  “Been thinking on that, Ennis. Been thinking on it hard. You remember when folks used to talk about Kansas? You probably didn’t pay it no mind.”

  “Boy they talked on Nicodemus so tough—like it was some kind of heaven,” Ennis said, wistful. “Nicodemus, Kansas.”

  “They say we owns all the houses, all the businesses up there, every­thing. Down here they wanna work you half dead then pay you with that company scrip. Soon as I crawled out from one hole and dust my knees off good, I crawled back into another one. Took a little time and we did without. Now we got our own outfit and doing good. Got all the colored business.”

  “They gonna make you pay for it, James. Watch yourself.”

  “I ain’t watching nothing. One more year and they can have all this. You and Lemon oughta come go with us.”

  “I’ll run it past her. Don’t think I ain’t thought about it. I could smith anywhere.”

  “But a colored town . . . boy you can’t beat that with a stick.”

  Ennis and James washed down the lunch Lemon packed for them with whiskey, watching their boys climb the trees along the muddy shore, crawl out on the limbs, and dive into the river with a mighty smack. At one point James said, “How them boys expect us to catch anything making all that noise?” But Ennis knew, like James, they both found the day’s only comfort in their sons’ laughter.

  Presently, Lemon had a hard stare fixed on Ennis.

  “And you wonder why I don’t want you building me nothing. What I want a little shack for? Or even a stand? White folks ain’t ready to see colored folk have nothing of they own. No, sir. I’ll keep right on selling my jams from my kitchen ’cause soon as they see you doing all right—doing for yours like they do for theirs—they go and do something like this. Opening a business is one thing, but to leave Little Tunis? You know, Ennis, I believe if James had kept his family down here he would still be with us. That was mistake number one—leaving Little Tunis.”

  “Naw, mistake number one was being born colored.”

  .

  Not even the brutal cold could cool the heated blood of those mourning the 266 killed in the blast aboard USS Maine. Seized by the fervor of war—the nation’s first in foreign territory—the men of Burleson County practiced chivalry at every turn. Small boys marched down Main Street, going out of their way to open doors for women or to catch a toddler before it fell. Young men joined the National Guard and army with hope to deliver a blow against Spain worthy of a spread-winged eagle suspended from a red, white, and blue ribbon.

  Held up against the silent war at home, Havana Harbor was an afterthought for those gathered in the shop of a carpenter who described the scene witnessed a week ago: a Negro boy reading to Old Lady Henderson. Where did the boy and his family live? Did anyone remember a few years back in Snook? Derisive guffaws broke out among them. Treading a path to Little Tunis, one slipped, having caught a boot in the hem of his robe, and tumbled down the frozen alabaster pasture. The more surefooted made giddy strides in the blistering cold until they came upon the white edifice shimmering silver in the moonlight. An hour later they would still be found there, feeding the blaze.

  Ivoe listened with her classmates before a heap of charred wood. She tried to understand, but like jamming the wrong puzzle piece into an almost-finished puzzle, she couldn’t make the picture in her mind fit with Miss Stokes’s words. Why would anybody want to burn down a schoolhouse whose benches left your behind full of splinters and none of the inkwells ever saw a drop of ink?

  The tallest girl among them began to cry. “Can’t we all just come to your house?” Or can I come by myself? she thought but did not say.

  “There is not enough room to accommodate all of you,” Miss Stokes said.

  A small boy piped up cheerfully. “Is school finished for good?”

  “Certainly not—”

  “But us ain’t got no books. No papers. No nothing,” said a small girl.

  Ivoe thought of the books: Golden-Haired Gertrude, One Thousand and One Nights, Gulliver’s Travels. She drew a shuddering breath, picturing the dictionary somewhere in the heap, and began to cry.

  “As soon as I gather some materials and find a meeting place,” Miss Stokes began, fighting to quell the anger in her voice, “we will continue with the business of your education. In the meantime, read whatever you can and practice your ciphering. I am sorry for our loss.”

  That spring, “sorry” seemed to follow Ivoe everywhere. She walked too heavy, ate too loud, made too many messes. Everything she did required an apology to Momma. In the weeks since the school burned down, she had worn out most of her mother’s nerves and was now on her last one. On account of her baby brother stretching and growing (the unborn baby had to be a boy), the only time Momma stopped complaining was when Papa came home. Everybody knows a growing belly makes you tired. While Momma slept in the afternoon, Ivoe cleaned up the kitchen and
thought about what she liked about school and now missed—like playing drop the handkerchief or leapfrog, where she could best the tallest girl in class, whose legs were longer but who did not bend enough at the knee before she leaped. She was fond of spelling bees and even handwriting, despite her poor penmanship. How many times had Miss Stokes handed her a scrap of flannel to erase and start again. She did not miss multiplication or trips to the recitation bench at the front of the room, where each pupil was called to talk through an arithmetic problem, the worst part of school.

  Most days, time could be lazy and barely move at all. Ivoe liked to take a pair of shears to the old Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog Susan Stark brought when she came to buy jam. Cutting out pictures of items she wanted seemed to nudge time forward till Momma fussed, “Make this the last time I see you sitting around with wish books and pictures of things you’ll never buy. Instead of studying on things you want, study on what you want to do.” Momma had also gotten after Miss Susan about the catalogs because one day she brought a bundle of books. After morning chores, during the long middle of the day and then again before bed, Ivoe rode the hills and valleys of Sheffield County alongside her favorite knight. No challenge was too great since her bravery equaled the hero’s. She had defeated the Caddo girl just as Ivanhoe had beaten Sir Brian. Even more than the camaraderie found in the Waverley novels, she was rapt by the stories’ allusions to love.

  Love was a curious thing. Love made her mother harp about the ways she should act. (She ought not be boastful or call attention to herself.) Love had Papa and May-Belle remind her of the light she carried that was hers to shine. (She should speak her mind, share, and be brave.) Sometimes late at night she could hear love in the next room—Momma’s whispers, Papa’s laughter (in the morning there would be extra jam). Love was all around though no one ever spoke of it. In this way the Waverley books were the greatest gift she’d ever received; she could read all about the bold things love made a hero do.