Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  “Yes, sir. A little ironwork out at the ranch.”

  “He pay you enough to buy all this here? Deputy, you ever knowed Jacobson to pay so much?”

  “Well, sir, I’m doing all right for myself. You ask anybody in Little Tunis they vouch for me. I’m a hardworking man. And I never goes nowhere without no money.”

  “I bet you is what they call a hardly working man. Ain’t no need in worrying about money ’cause what you can’t earn you can just steal. Ain’t that right?”

  “No, sir. I don’t steal and my family don’t steal. We works for what we needs and what we wants.”

  “Deputy, name me one Negro you know above lying.”

  “Can’t say I can, Sheriff.”

  “You see, boy,” the sheriff started in Ennis’s direction. “We had us a most unfortunate incident here in Snook a week ago. A widow had her wedding ring stolen, her finger plum tore off by a thieving Negro man. A hardworking blacksmith like you, after you melted it down, I imagine you fetched a pretty penny for it. Ain’t that right?”

  Ennis gulped. From the corner of his eye he saw the deputy reach into his holster. If he grabbed Irabelle and ran, they’d shoot him. And Lord only knew what they might do to her.

  “Now, sir, I wasn’t nowhere near Snook a week ago. I only been here once this year and that was on May twenty-seventh and May twenty-eighth.” His voice was soft and steady. “I got my own money what spend like everybody else’s. We don’t want no trouble.”

  “I’ll tell you how this is gonna go. I’m fixing to have my deputy check to see if you got the ring on you. Maybe you come back to return it ’cause you got some kind of conscience. I’ll search the child myself.”

  Irabelle lurched toward her father but the sheriff pulled her closer, his hands trembling as he groped her back and shoulders.

  It was very long ago but the sheriff remembered still. Running down to the smokehouse every Saturday evening after ten long hours in the fields with the other orphans. The colored boys he picked cotton with numbered six; he was the only white one, which meant he got special attention or none at all. More than anything, he liked to watch what went on behind the smokehouse, where arguments over who would touch whom ended in a group circle. Colored boys were something to look at. They came in all colors and sizes, but none was as perfect as the youngest, Ory—an angel from the Bible, except he was better than pale (too deathlike), he was the color of butterscotch. Whenever the sheriff closed his eyes there was the picture to beat all pictures, still: Ory with his britches midthigh while the others worked to make that angel face break. By his fourteenth birthday, the sheriff had the courage to demand his turn with Ory in the circle. He trembled in delight as Ory unbuttoned his pants, oblivious to the gunshots. Three or four rang in the air like angry church bells while someone yelled, “Get—you nasty boys.” He didn’t care about meeting his maker if it meant he could touch Ory, but the boy took off.

  “Please, sir, we didn’t come for no ugliness,” Papa said, twisting in the deputy’s hold.

  Irabelle felt the buckle of the sheriff’s belt knocking against her back.

  “I ain’t got nothing she ain’t seen before or won’t see soon enough, pretty as she is.” The sheriff pulled her head back and shoved two fat fingers into her mouth. He poked under her tongue, along the sides of her jaws, the back of her throat, making her gag while Papa did nothing. If the sheriff had asked she would’ve told him she would never try to eat a ring. At school a little boy had choked on a marble and almost died. The belt buckle clanged faster. She was going to get a whipping in a store by a white man and Papa wasn’t doing a thing about it. Her knees felt weak. Maybe the sheriff’s did too because he gripped one of her shoulders even harder now. Papa’s growl sounded worse than any sick animal she ever heard. He sobbed words she did not understand. And then the sheriff released her.

  Papa groaned as the deputy let him go and Irabelle ran over to him.

  “No ring.”

  A few miles beyond Snook, Papa drew his cart to the side of the road. “Don’t you never tell nobody about what happened.” He squeezed her shoulders, forgetting his strength, until she began to cry. “You hear me?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Everything about the trip was horrible, Irabelle thought an hour later as her father lifted her from the seat down to the ground in their yard. Now Papa hated her dress. No spills or dirt anywhere, but before she could reach the steps, he made her take it off. She stepped out of the dress and ran to the cabin. She wondered why Papa lied to Momma that evening. She had not torn the dress so badly that it was beyond mending.

  .

  September nightfall brought no reprieve from the heat. Ennis hammered the ground, blinking back perspiration. He dabbed his forehead with the back of his hand, turned his head, and caught the full length of the man’s body. The man must’ve been blind to miss a boulder that big. Must’ve been driving the horse too hard and fast ’cause when Ennis came up on the cart it was a pile of lumber and the man was crumpled up against the tree. Looked like his arm and leg were broken. “Take my horse, go into town, and get help,” the man said. Horse was hurting but it would be all right. Ennis thought about ripping the shirt off the man’s back to plug the hole bleeding from his head when he saw a small black case on the ground near a wheel still spinning on its axle. In fits and starts, the man explained that he had been on his way to Caldwell to play at a circus.

  Ennis screwed the three wooden pieces together, but blowing into it didn’t sound like much of nothing. “This a clarinet—ain’t it?”

  Ennis wondered if anyone had seen him leave his shed that evening. Wasn’t nothing for a Negro to up and disappear, but sooner or later they’d come looking for this man.

  “See, you can’t all the time do what you got a mind to do, even if you thinking with your right mind. You laying there thinking I’m studying on you with my wrong mind. It ain’t that. Can’t take you to May-Belle’s. She liable not to be home and ain’t gonna do me a bit of good to get caught with a ailin’ white man. I could tell it just like what you and me know to be true and they still gonna find some wrong in it. Can’t help you, sir.”

  He couldn’t end the man’s life or leave him there to rot. It took a few hours for the bleeding to kill him. Ennis used a rock to hew out a grave, took the clarinet, and started for home.

  Motes of dust rode a beam of autumn sunlight through the train window. Hardly an auspicious beginning, Ivoe thought, as she twisted uncomfortably, careful not to snag her skirt on the splintered bench. Her long legs dangled over a battered leather valise the color of burnt butter, stuffed with books and every item on the Willetson list, including three long dark skirts made of poplin and pongee, donated by Miss Susan, who had once been twenty-six inches at the waist. Her seatmate (wide as a safe) reached into his vest pocket, poked her in the ribs, and decapitated several flowers from the bunch laid across her lap. Push, push, went the rude man, fumbling with his tin of cigarettes. By the time they reached Austin, the porter would have to peel her off the window. Colored people paid the same fare as whites, yet they were packed into a filthy passenger car half the size of the adjoining coach for travelers of a fairer hue. (And with the added indignity of no lavatory.) Yet when the white coach overcrowded, a white man traipsed past her to an old colored man who gave up his seat with no prompting. How did colored people live with the brunt of these inconveniences posing as law? Ivoe wondered as she leaned against the window, nearly tasting the fig jam that sealed her memory.

  Seven years ago when Miss Stokes shared her Newtons during the train ride to Austin, Ivoe quelled her excitement by sweeping her tongue against the roof of her mouth where the soft, sweet cookie had melted. Now she swept jittery nerves into a corner of her mind with a bundle of memories woven tight like the finest of her mother’s homemade brooms. After reading her letter to President McKinley at the all-state educators’ conferenc
e in 1898, they had strolled Congress Avenue, teeming with streetcars, shops, and fancily clad people. At the Soda Fountain they could not enjoy their drinks in the cool of the parlor, so they stood beneath the awning, escaping the sun’s glare but not its heat. Between sips of Vernors ginger ale, Ivoe peered through the window at the whirring fans cooling white customers, listening as Miss Stokes went on about promises. “If you make just one to yourself and keep it, it will be a lifelong comfort to you.”

  A return to Austin seemed as good a promise as any. Now as the train rounded the curve, shutting Starkville from sight, she thought of her last moments with her family. When Timbo passed the house on his way to work, she was feeding chickens in the backyard with Irabelle. His jump-atcha gave her a fright that made her holler. He teased her about being so scared all the time; she called him a fool and they laughed too loud for so early in the morning. Before leaving, Timbo told her about something he’d seen years ago on a Florida beach. “You can’t see the end lessen you cut it down. The sun can’t wither it, fire can’t burn it, and moss can’t cling to it. When a strong wind come, it just bends—lays all its fans out till the wind lets up. You remind me of that cabbage palm, Ivoe. You might have to bend a little but you ain’t never gonna break.” That’s how it was with Timbo. Lord knows he could act foolish and ornery, but whenever her brother said she could do something she believed him. The ride into town with Papa and Irabelle was silent—creaky cart wheels on a dirt road. Momma waited by the tracks at the train depot, a bunch of yellow primroses in her hand. “Probably wilt on the train in all this heat. You be in my thoughts much longer.” She hugged her tight and whispered, “Baby, you going places I didn’t have sense enough to dream about.”

  Once again, heart and head thrilled to the excitement of Congress Avenue, where Ivoe hailed a colored livery. Her stomach quivered as if one too many butterflies had flitted in. Whose orders did she have to follow now? Who would she talk to when she was excited, scared, or just plain lonely? With timorous step, she approached the main gate of Willetson Collegiate and Normal Institute. A man took her luggage and welcomed her with a map and his assurance that her belongings would be sent to her room. For years to come she would remember the next moments of quiet joy; she felt soothed and embraced by the terraced hills of lush, shimmering grass and a blooming mandevilla arbor. Now here was a place to think—no hint of strife, no untidiness, nothing ugly staring her down. At every turn were mounds of lavender and sassafras bushes. She followed the redbud trees, like sentries, along the narrow path to the main buildings—fine masonry of russet-brown and orange clay—and thought of May-Belle. She climbed the hill behind Allen Hall, where she watched the Colorado glimmer through town. Two years surrounded by books and beauty.

  The nature of joy was her first lesson: how it loses savor without anyone to share it with. She had won a round or two in the fight against loneliness, remembering her family’s advice. Papa had squeezed her tight and chided, “A colored man crave flesh. He don’t wanna be hugged up on no gristle. Don’t be the last one to eat ’cause the only man what want a skinny woman is a man what can’t afford to feed her.” Momma meant for her words to be called up on some lazy afternoon when she said: “Keep a hold of that bed and see what happens. Because while you got a hold of it, white folks got a hold of a book and they somewhere reading and thinking. When they come to you, they done already thought twice about how to use you. Study hard. Bring me some good marks. Don’t you bring me no big stomach. Keep my nose high.”

  Leaning against her favorite redbud, Ivoe smiled to think how proud her family would be as she copied her schedule in her first letter home:

  Willetson Collegiate and Normal Institute

  Course of Study, Fall Term, 1905

  14 Weeks, Class Hours per Week

  Printing5.5

  Typesetting & Basic Press Operation3.5

  Renaissance Literature4

  Typesetting & Basic Press Operation4

  History & Civil Government4

  French4

  Domestic Science, Cookery & Lab2.5

  .

  A glance at her watch and quick thumbing to the end of the book made Ivoe’s heart sink. Less than ten pages of the Pauline Hopkins novel remained but there was the convocation to attend. She smoothed her skirt and buttoned the top of her blouse, listening to the chatter outside her window. A week had passed and she had not learned the name of a single classmate. There were smiles, a door held open, directions given to Beard Hall, the usual politeness, but not the makings of real friendship. She was the apple fallen from the lemon tree, having inherited from her mother a lack of female companionship. Failure to arouse anyone’s interest made her feel ordinary. Now in the midst of small groups making their way to the assembly hall, she fell behind, lacking all gumption for introductions.

  As the convocation began, she took a seat in the empty first row. The Willetson choir sang; a Methodist minister prayed; the president made his address. “At Willetson, we wish to impart a liberal education to women whose sole objective is to harness character and gain intellect.” He spoke of the school’s founder and bade their attention to the music of Schumann, performed by one of their own.

  The young woman entering the stage was oblivious to their snickering, a metallic buzz like the swarm of locusts. No feature of her frock adhered to the mailing—“A plain white cotton shirtwaist with high neck, a long dark skirt, and dark shoes should be worn to all special programs and classes.” Her dress, a dull shade of green-tinged yellow, was hemmed by tattered black lace that drew eyes to the cracked white button shoes so stiff with polish a single step more and the leather might crumble off her feet. Ivoe pitied the dress but not the model. If only she had walked the planks of the Little Tunis schoolhouse like the girl gliding to the piano with a confidence that made one forget her shabby appearance.

  There was confusion—a thunderous roll on the keys against the quiet commotion in the corner of the stage, where the heaving tremor from the piano’s ragged melody agitated the president from his seat. A wave of soft rustling rippled behind Ivoe as others adjusted to the unexpected rollicking tempo. Ivoe tapped her foot along with the strong, marchlike boom-chick, boom-chick, boom-chick. The pianist was a flurry of hands, swaying side to side, pounding the pedal on the far right with a surprisingly sturdy shoe. Head reared, a smile blazed across her face. A high-pitched laugh of pure pleasure erupted from the stage. Watching her was like feeling inside an old mattress and finding a newspaper.

  .

  The sun beamed through a rift in the clouds that morning. On Fridays, Ivoe made haste for the printing department. She was disenchanted with history and civil government, which was compensated for only by Rabelais (so funny she could not read him before bed, or else sleep with a sore belly), and embarrassed by French, the vocabulary of which felt strange in her mouth. Nothing felt strange in the printing shed, where her time was divided between three stations—the composing room, the pressroom, and the bindery room—trial and error, possibility and adventure. After a month, she knew grades of inks and paper and was practiced in different styles of magazine and newspaper folding—­practical training in the everyday work of a printing office, all under the tutelage of Miss Durden.

  Miss Durden stood out for her fiery intelligence. On the first day she warned her students that the gentlemen of Wiley College were not likely to know them. Printing students did not lollygag; printing students belonged in the shed, at work on the weekly publication of the Willetson Herald or producing the college’s programs, stationery—all printing needs. She was the kind of teacher who gave herself completely, connecting seemingly disparate ideas, presenting a knowledge so whole, so shockingly simple in its complexity, as though you were fated to find it out. Reports of kindness about the teacher clung to students’ tongues like honey: This girl received a graded test along with a discreet envelope, making possible her visit to a sick parent. Anothe
r girl, told to wait after class, was the recipient of a much-needed coat. How many times had Miss Durden escorted a student to the dining hall, whispering into the matron’s ear before leaving the girl to eat?

  The clink of silver greeted Ivoe as she passed the printing shed’s wall of “Perpetual Visitation,” where a jungle of hands opened cabinets and dipped into trays. The first cabinet housed the whole-word types used with great frequency—the, what, for, but, so, and. Subsequent cabinets each held two shelves: cases of capital letters on the top shelf, lower cases on the bottom. A few feet away from the metal cabinets, worktables of quiet camaraderie set print letter by letter. Ivoe often fumbled with the cases and fell behind the others in typesetting speed. Some girls handled the chase and stick as naturally as a knife and fork—not Ivoe.

  Observing the position of Ivoe’s hands as she worked the press bed, Miss Durden often gave a comic groan and pulled the girl’s hands away in the nick of time. “Father up in heaven,” she muttered.

  .

  Cracked shoes and a shirtwaist stained from too much bluing failed to render the figure in the dining hall entrance anything but invincible. Ivoe recognized this girl’s regal bearing. Since the convocation, she had gone out of her way to pass the music building, unsure of what she would say to the girl—a shade too good-looking for life’s most awkward stage—if their paths crossed. She waved to the pianist, who looked back at her, unsmiling, as if determining whether Ivoe was worthy of her company.

  Ivoe removed the books from the chair beside her and admired the girl’s hair, clustered in rich dark waves and pulled together at her nape in a chignon. Conversation was easy when you started with the truth. Ivoe said she had never heard piano playing like that.

  “Mister Tom Turpin’s ‘Buffalo Rag’ instead of their Schumann. I lost a week in the practice room on account of devising my own program, but it was worth it. Now listen”—she leaned in close to Ivoe, as if about to tell a secret—“I would know very little that our people have accomplished in the ways of music, poetry, literature, if I had not found it out for myself. I suppose Willetson is like every other institution for learning in America. Even when the teacher is colored, don’t expect to be told anything worthwhile about yourself. Most teachers here are white and they love to hear about how great they are. Can’t shut them up on talking about it neither, as if they made the world on their own. Makes my ass hurt. But commence to talking about how great you are and you’ll be talking to yourself. I imagine you’ll do fine. You’re polite enough. I bet you can recite all kinds of facts about what they’ve done—Edison, Einstein, and them. They’ll love you for it too. But will they love you when you tell them about Douglass and DuBois? If you’re not careful, they’ll teach you to despise yourself. And you can’t do nothing worthwhile unless you feel good about yourself. When I play Mr. Turpin, I feel good. Going to feel good again when they finally let me back in that practice room.” Berdis winked and broke into gales of laughter like silver rain tapping on broken glass.