Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  “In case the members have been remiss in their Christian duty, we wanted to bring this by to make sure you and Sister Ona have plenty to eat.”

  “Chicken and dumplings,” the smallest one said.

  “Lima beans and ham hocks.”

  “And apple crisp.”

  “Goodness. Enough to feed an army,” Ivoe said, taking each dish and placing it on the counter. “There are no words for your generosity. People have been really quite kind.”

  “You say there are no words, but we hope you find them, Miss Ivoe. We need the Meditation. It is not as though we have our own newspaper.”

  To spite herself, over the next few hours, a list of those who might help carry the idea further came to Ivoe: members of Stranger’s Rest, nearly four hundred; the YMCA; the YWCA; Vine Street—these were people who said yes when she worked on the Meditation. They might say yes again.

  “If we raise enough money, I can print the paper,” Ona said. “At least until the circulation grows beyond our means.”

  “If I’m going to build a true paper it’s going to have to reach beyond the pews of Stranger’s Rest. We’ll have to move beyond the church for subscriptions.”

  Ona grabbed a pencil and paper to write. “We’ll invite people over and you can address everybody at once. Whoever wants to help can and those who won’t won’t.”

  “Won’t what?” Lemon said, glancing at the clock as she reached for her apron. Before she could tie the knot she noticed the counter. “My stars. Where all that food come from?”

  “The church.”

  “What y’all talking about?”

  Ona looked at Ivoe with pride. “Lemon, you are looking at the first woman founder, publisher, and editor in chief of a colored Kansas City newspaper.”

  “Newspaper? Now, Ivoe, I knowed you to have some funny notions all your life. How in the—”

  “We’re short on money—when have colored people not been short on money?—but we’ve got just about everything else covered,” Ona said.

  “We’re not talking about anything big, Momma. Just a small newspaper.”

  “You think colored folks fixing to spend their hard-earned money on a paper? To read about how Miss Ann trying to get the vote, or this war that don’t have nothing to do with us?”

  “Well, Lemon, you might be right, but somebody’s got to bring the news to the people around here. Last week, I received an old Texas Freeman clipping in the mail. Back in December, thirteen black soldiers were hanged in uniform at a military camp outside of San Antonio by a mob of infantrymen.”

  “Now, Momma, you know when you’re in the kitchen on Ward Parkway perusing the Star you’re not about to come across anything like that.”

  “These are the stories we ought to know about . . . Some of us are walking around here within an inch of our lives and don’t even know it,” Ona said.

  Lemon wished for Ennis; he ought to know what a little sacrifice was returning not just to them but a whole lot of other people too. She bent over the large burlap sack and dug down deep, past the beans, until she felt the cool jars.

  “Here. This ought to help.”

  In Texas she had only to plan meals and feed the Starks and their guests, but in the city the chores demanded of her tripled by the week. Along with cooking, she counted and polished the silver, washed and ironed the table linen, and scrubbed the floors of the pantry and kitchen. Since her children weren’t babies anymore and she spent so much time at her employer’s house, she brokered a deal: “If you let me keep a garden here, whatever I grow will be as much yours as it mine. Won’t charge for seeds or nothing. Got my own supplies. I sure would appreciate growing the things for preserves my family and I are accustom to eating. I think you’ll enjoy them.” Spring and summer months, she gardened until the sun set. In the evenings, she made use of all the pots and pans the big kitchen provided. She often spent the night in order to rise early to can what had simmered on a low flame while she slept. One taste of her tomato jam by the maid next door and orders started to arrive from all over Ward Parkway. Domestics averaged $4 to $7 a week. Lemon earned $7.25—an extra quarter thrown in because Dr. Bacchus loved her chess pie, a staple every Sunday—but peddling her preserves she had doubled her earnings.

  “Ivoe, look. Look, girl!” Ona gasped, unscrewing the brass-colored lids. “You know, Lemon, they let colored folks bank nowadays.”

  Ivoe eyed the fruits of her mother’s labor. Hope in a jar!

  “I’m not fixing to trust the fruit of my labor to hands what done mishandled me and mine for years and years on down the line. No thank you.”

  When Ona Durden arrived last December, Lemon didn’t know what to think. Even when her children were all for uprooting to Kansas City, she had hemmed and hawed, but here was a professional woman, no spring chicken herself, who had picked up and followed Ivoe. She thought back to a conversation she had with Ivoe alone in the kitchen while they were making Christmas dinner.

  “I don’t understand it. Go everywhere together, even the church. She ain’t your momma—ain’t your sister. Who do you tell people she is?”

  “Momma, you got three children. I don’t rightly recall you ever telling Timbo who he could love. Irabelle neither. So I can’t imagine you’re trying to tell me.”

  “I don’t mean no harm. I remember Cherry Street—how she made that little house a home. I see how she think the world of you—that much has always been true. I see plenty, but it don’t help my understanding none. No need in me lying.”

  They were quiet for a spell—time enough for her to run cold water over the boiled potatoes and peel two or three before adding, “It’s like she the oak tree and you the ivy—just wrapped yourself all around her.” That’s when Ivoe reached across the table and laid a hand on her arm and said, “Momma, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

  Shoulder to shoulder, the two counted the money. Lemon understood something about life. You can look at a thing wrong for a long, long time. She had looked head-on, right side up, and sideways, and still not until this very moment had she given the picture any true meaning. No man had come along and poured himself into her daughter and let his love take root and flower there. Miss Durden had come instead. Planted a seed deep down in Ivoe. For years it had blossomed. She couldn’t dwell on her faith. Allah would have to harden her heart because it was impossible not to love Ona for who she was, her way with Ivoe. She would continue to pray for them, for the help they wanted to bring to so many.

  Their voices rose as they talked excitedly about presses.

  “Y’all fixing to write the paper and print it?”

  “If you cut your own firewood, Lemon, it’ll warm you twice,” Ona said.

  The two rowed the same boat. Now exactly where they was headed, they would all find out soon enough.

  “When you finish with those,” Lemon said, turning to leave the kitchen, “might as well count them in the broom closet.”

  .

  Ona listened to the soft drone of Ivoe’s sleeping and wondered where she had found a copy of the book of poems lost in the fire. She reached out to touch her. The evening had been very special, despite her dread at the thought of coming home. For days, and without pausing for air it seemed, Ivoe had talked about plans for the paper. To distinguish her periodical, instead of graphic front-page images—à la the Boston Guardian—or flashy headlines in bold red ink like those in the Chicago Defender, she would use dusty-rose paper for front and back pages and grass-green ink for the paper’s name. A well-placed editorial in favor of shocking violence would keep readers’ attention. Like the Philadelphia Inquirer, which gave careful, attentive coverage of the community, she would not totally venture away from church or social news but would also offer significant coverage on national issues affecting them. She hoped to do a fine balancing act—to speak to the small elite colored class while proving to all he
r readers that she knew exactly who they were, like the Murphy family who called for equal pay for colored teachers in their last issue of the Washington Afro-American. But it was the thorns on the vine, those no longer completely controlled by the domination of whites for the first time in their lives and a discredit to the race, that she would target. They had left their manners in the country. Through her column, Woman About Town, she would voice opinions on self-help as a means to bring about improvements for the race.

  Her first published statement would be a gentle reminder of etiquette—to say “thank you” and “if you please” when receiving service and to speak softly. They should refrain from loudness and public ridicule of each other because the loud and blatant were never trusted. They should take all care in matters of hygiene, which was to whites a signal of moral judgment. They should take care in wearing pleasant hair and having clean teeth, nails, and clothing, preferably in subdued colors. Since the outbreak of the war, people dressed in somber colors, nothing like the woman who lived down the hall and wore tight, loud dresses. The woman’s rouge and lipstick were always too bright for her mahogany skin and Ivoe ached to let her know in some gentle way the rules of cosmetics passed along to her at Willetson: darker skin means lighter, not heavier. Publishing a list of comportment classes offered at the YMCA and YWCA would go a long way. The way they looked, spoke, and acted mattered—a fact that should be ever present in every colored person’s mind. She would warn against excessive spending, including money handed over in tithes by devoted churchgoers who could barely sustain the cost of day-to-day living.

  But that night when Ona made it to the last step at the top of the landing to the apartment they shared with Ivoe’s family, she had no interest in listening when Ivoe threw open the door. “Got something I want to read to you,” Ivoe said, all spritely. Without the heart to tell the city’s most important newswoman that she was dog-tired from trying to convince folks to take a subscription for a paper that didn’t yet exist, she followed Ivoe inside and sat down to the table. Where was everybody? she wondered. “Everyone’s gone to see The Homesteader. Even Momma was excited to see Mr. Micheaux’s handiwork. Couldn’t for the life of her believe we finally got a picture show with real live colored folks in it.”

  “What do you want me to hear?”

  Ivoe pulled out a book. “Like we used to say in the good ole days.” She read until the part she loved best and could recite from memory. Closing the book, she pulled Ona up from the table:

  Put my ahm aroun’ huh wais’,

  Jump back, honey, jump back.

  Raised huh lips an’ took a tase,

  Jump back, honey, jump back.

  Love me, honey, love me true?

  Love me well ez I love you?

  An’ she answe’d, “’Cose I do”—

  Jump back, honey, jump back.

  As they lay on their sides, Ivoe cradled Ona from behind, reading over her shoulder from Oak and Ivy. She loved the feel of Ona’s face against hers. She traced the hairline where silver was just beginning to show and followed the curve of her cheek, tilting her chin a little to kiss her full on the lips. For the rest of the evening until the wee hours of the morning they lay this way, talking, laughing.

  Rising from the bed, Ona kissed Ivoe on both temples. Their speechless conversation an hour before was meant to send Ivoe on her way, but in case she needed more proof that this was a journey for two, Ona opened the top drawer of the bureau, carrying away the new tray of fonts to the bed, where she went to work laying her letters. Ivoe writhed at the cold metal on her belly, running her fingers across the word: Love.

  Ivoe powdered her face and double-checked her purse for the bank passbook. The refulgent morning lifted her spirits—in the white sun even the brick buildings seemed to glimmer. At the corner of Vine, an elderly man with a smile as warm as the day reached out to her with a gentle touch. “Miss Ivoe,” he started, “heard about the fire. I hope that doesn’t mean the newsletter has ended.” A jalopy’s horn startled them both on their way. As she reached the other side, she turned around to shout thanks to the man, but he had already disappeared in the teeming crowd. She glanced at her watch—right on time. Waiting for her at the corner of Eighteenth Street was the cunning grin that belonged to Ona.

  They peered through the window as the young woman unlocked the door of the two-story barbershop, now the Vine Street headquarters of Kansas City’s first female-run black newspaper. Ona’s savings paid the first year of the lease; with Lemon’s money they had purchased a linotype press, set up a telegraph account at Western Union and a telephone. In a few weeks, the ground floor looked like a pressroom. Clubwomen visited with houseplants, lightbulbs, pencils. Lois Humphrey sent two women from packaging and receiving with stools the factory had replaced. “Bang out the dents and they’ll suit,” she said after placing an advertisement for a new dipper. The minister at Stranger’s Rest took up a collection. “If you ever received an encouraging word from the Meditation . . . if you believe the newspaper will do the same . . . dig deep.” Wood, paint, a hammer and nails were delivered free of charge, compliments of the hardware store around the corner. Ona hand-painted the sign on the glass door, an elegant black calligraphy that each passerby stopped to read:

  JAM ON THE VINE

  EST. 1918

  NEWSPAPER. LINOTYPERS.

  Ivoe pushed the rickety dressmaker’s table donated by the YWCA along the sidewalk. (Until the telephone rang that afternoon, she had been an editor without a desk.) The city’s cacophony was a welcome reprieve from the young YWCA women’s endless excited chatter. One of their own writing about and for them! And Miss Durden . . . handling the print job on her own! Across the street a colored boy tossed a ball against a brick wall while a white man, wide as a hassock, languorously filled the doorway of the butcher shop, working a toothpick as he eyed the boy. Whatever the butcher said to the boy prompted him not to catch the bouncing ball. Instead, the butcher bent down for the ball and placed it in his apron pocket. As the boy began to walk away, Ivoe called out to him.

  Thaddeus Talmadge Bunchee Knox the Third lived with a house of Jamaican men—a father and three cousins. His mother and aunt, as he explained it, were on their way to America soon. Yes, he agreed, he was a well-mannered young man. Yes, he could be trusted to carry his end of the table down the block without bumping the legs too much. Yes, he most certainly would buy a new ball with the change she could not afford to give him but parted with anyway. He thanked her and turned to leave when she called him back. One day he would be every bit Thaddeus, every bit his father and grandfather’s namesake; his dark skin, pointy chin, and neatly trimmed hair already gave him an aura of sophistication beyond his twelve years. The pug nose, bright eyes, and full mouth that could not help but turn up at the corners made him her Bunchee. “Bunchee,” she said, as though they had been friends a long time. “Soon I’m going to need some help delivering my newspapers. Do you know the neighborhood pretty good?”

  He nodded.

  “It might be a little while before I can pay you what you’re worth. But there are other ways to be paid besides money.”

  Bunchee looked skeptical. “Like what?’

  “Sometimes I go over to the YMCA. Do you know who lodges in the basement of the YMCA?”

  “No.”

  “Colored baseball teams passing through to play our Butterflies.”

  He laughed. True fans called the home team the Kaysees, since they might have been as graceful as butterflies but they sure flew much quicker around the bases.

  “Think of the games you might see, the autographs you could get as my paperboy.”

  Bunchee grinned.

  “Now, if I’m going to depend on you, you have to stay out of trouble. Don’t play around any place you’re not sure of. Any time you want to toss your ball”—she leaned into the brick of her own building—“you can do it right here.”<
br />
  .

  The carpenter was sawing pine for shelves to line the walls when Ona turned the key. If she had to rank it, it was the happiest moment of her life. She and Bunchee had just finished door-to-door deliveries of two hundred newspapers of handbill size. On the way back to the office that evening, she had met fifteen more people inquiring about subscriptions. She greeted the man, took a copy of the paper from the pile on the table, and ascended to their living quarters. As stenographer, linotyper, secretary, and cheery greeter, Ona was exhausted. She operated the press, typing stories dropped off by columnists Ivoe hired to offer diversity of opinion—her one rule: write only what you can prove.

  Ivoe darted in and out of the office between investigations, interviews, and advertisement solicitations, often too busy to share the slighest anecdote. Bunchee bumbled through the door at half past two, fifteen minutes or so after school let out. He made a beeline for the small black leather book hanging from a hook on the wall near the telephone. “How many subscriptions you getting today, Bunch?” Every day he picked a higher number, then braced by the challenge would be off.

  As for her editorial philosophy, in the newspaper’s maiden issue, August 6, 1918, Ivoe outlined exactly what she intended:

  Dear Reader:

  Thank you for supporting the inaugural issue of Kansas City’s Jam on the Vine, a publication whose object is to set forth those facts and arguments that show the dangers and consequences of race prejudice, particularly as manifested toward colored citizens. The policy of Jam is not to publish stories of brutality and crime in the spirit of the cowardly journalist. It aims to assist colored people in maintaining familial and community bonds, strengthening economic ties, and fostering political-mindedness. With headquarters on Vine Street, the paper takes it name from the spirit of enterprise possessed by my mother, who sustained her family through the hardest of times by selling tomato jam and other savory preserves. The spirit of my mother, duplicated and coupled with forbearance, will guide our people out of the shadows into the full light of promise outlined for the American citizen in the Gettysburg Address. The policy of Jam is thus defined: It will first and foremost record important happenings and movements that bear on the great problem of interracial relations in Kansas City and in the world, especially those that affect Colored America. It is my hope that its editorial page will be looked upon not simply as the musings or meditations of the paper’s founder but as an important expression of opinion that reflects on the rights of the colored race and the highest ideals of American democracy. Jam will be the organ of no clique, creed, or party and will avoid personal rancor and rumor of all sorts. Every week we will rake the news field for subjects that will be inspirational to the race and promote good citizenship. It is our responsible duty to let the colored man know the plain truth of how to better the race’s condition. It will assume honesty of purpose on the part of all its contributors, aiming always to accurately and completely address the great national questions that agitate our race.