Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  Ivoe ran a gloved thumb over the filled keyhole and called out for Ona as she rapped on the door. She searched the ground for a rock to throw at the upstairs window just as a paddy wagon pulled along the curb and two officers jumped out and seized her.

  “Gonna get your people in a world of trouble,” the grim-faced guard said to Ivoe upon delivery of a sandwich and glass of water.

  “We have always lived in a world of trouble. Kindly take back your tray. I do not wish to attract vermin.”

  Exhaustion took hold the way fear might as Ivoe settled uncomfortably on the hard bench, wriggling her wet feet from slosh-covered boots. Damp and cold, she wrapped the lone provision—a rough blanket—around her legs and drew up the collar of her coat. Denied a phone call to Ona, she tried to brace herself for the long night ahead. In a land where mob rule still had a firm hand, a race woman’s position was precarious at best. Outside of the NAACP, to whom could she turn for help? Claude Barnett’s Associated Negro Press, founded in 1919 to disseminate critical news features to all black newspapers, did not offer legal or pecuniary aid. And bail money had never been a Jam expenditure allocation. She realized the urgency of an emergency fund for such a crisis, maintained by an organization that aided all black journalists. Depending on how long they kept her, some of Jam’s tasks would have to be divided. She was no stranger to Jackson County’s presiding judge, Harry S. Truman, but could not fathom what his ruling might be. No matter the outcome, Ona and Bunchee must keep the paper going.

  The next morning she looked out her cell window and drew a shuddering breath, stunned by what she saw. Across the street, a quiet mob crowded the sidewalk. She craned her neck to see how far the human chain ­extended—beyond the end of this block into the next. In the blustering cold, shoulder to shoulder, they began to sway to a minor cadence as their voices swelled with song.

  Heavy load, heavy load,

  Don’t you know God’s gonna lighten up your heavy load.

  Heavy load, heavy load,

  God’s gonna lighten up your heavy load.

  The language of grieving never had words; the human heart does not speak but sings its sorrow. Ivoe heard theirs now, a plaintive refrain sifting through her soul. Somewhere in the crowd a baritone led them and made her think of her father. She could not catch the tears welling up at the gentle droning of what sounded like a multitude.

  Some time ago the minister had asked why she’d stopped attending Stranger’s Rest. Ivoe laid blame to the newspaper rather than her own shaky faith. She enjoyed her stay-at-home Sundays while Ona went to church. Ona had felt something that Ivoe didn’t or couldn’t until now: community. Everybody’s little bit of goodness pooled together to lift someone higher.

  Distracted by the clink of keys, she turned around as the cell door sprang open.

  “They have a right to hold you for disrupting the peace in light of previous warnings,” her attorney said. News of her arrest had made the morning papers: “Negro Woman Editor Arrested and Accused of Stirring Negroes into Frenzy.” To escape jail sentencing she must promise to devote a column to the Liberty Loan program and encourage her readers to purchase liberty bonds in every edition of Jam for the next year. One document required her signature. The Kansas City Commission on Race Relations Statement said that she would exercise more care and accuracy in handling racial subjects.

  Ivoe could still hear the street singers when she wiped the cold cream from her face that evening and climbed into bed, where Ona held her tight and listened to the story. Ona was moved to tears hearing of the familiar and strange faces who had shown support through song. Now, she reached over to the little side table beside their bed for the subscription ledger, making little noises that revealed her pleasure.

  “Ivoe, we’re in the beans! We’re in the beans, baby!”

  Five thousand! The readership they once thought they’d achieve in six months had taken six years to win if you didn’t count the “free readers.” Passing the paper from person to person was an act so prevalent on the Vine, an accurate count of Jam’s readers would never be obtained. When she considered how the paper was recycled and its information passed by word of mouth, Ivoe knew they would never know the real number of lives Jam influenced.

  .

  BLACK PRISONER SHOT TO DEATH—

  PENITENTIARY IS SCENE OF CONFUSION

  by Ivoe Leila Williams

  MISSOURI STATE PENITENTIARY, JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.—A black convict’s fear of another sentence to Missouri State Penitentiary’s “black hole” of solitary confinement was believed responsible yesterday for a single-handed prison break in which the prisoner was shot to death and eight other persons wounded.

  The dead man was Hughes Adams, 24, who was killed as he ran screaming across the big prison yard toward a row of cellblocks. Seven of the wounded were fellow convicts and the other was a guard.

  The prison was thrown into confusion by the outburst and for a time it was feared a wholesale break might ensue. Shouts of wall guards as they fired at Adams mingled with the cries of terrified prisoners running from the bullets that raked the yard.

  Assistant Deputy Warden Charles Hargus said Adams, serving a ten-year term from Kansas City for conviction of assault with intent to commit murder, had been released from solitary confinement only last Sunday. He had been found with a knife, the assistant warden claimed.

  After breakfast yesterday morning, Adams broke prison rules by lighting a cigarette before the line of prisoners left the hall. A guard started him toward the captain of the guard’s office, where punishment is meted out.

  Adams broke from his unarmed keeper and raced across the yard. He had no chance to escape, and at first the gun guards on the wall fired around him. As he neared the cellblocks two bullets brought him down, killing him instantly. In prison argot, Adams “went bronco.” Guards believed he broke away in a wild fit of terror over being returned to the solitude of the black hole. The wounded men all were struck by glancing shots and only slightly injured. The prisoners were Irvin Jones, Orville Brown, Joe Anderson, Harold Tuttle, Lee Cavanaugh, Roosevelt Williams, and Ben Wright.

  A coroner’s jury today exonerated the prison guards. The jury held the guards fired in performance of their duty. Guards Teddy Payne and Ronald Betts were named as the men who fired the shots that killed Adams.

  For six days they had pitched about on the Atlantic in a small stodgy cabin fetid with the odor of stale booze and vomit. Now the vessel sailed calmly. Ivoe gazed out at endless loamy waves. Who would have ever thought a Negro girl from Texas could have sea legs? She pulled up her shawl against the spraying mist, sketches of Little Tunis on the canvas of her mind: newspapers, maps, climbing Momma’s fig tree to think of a future she had no language to describe, a future like the present. Momma would come out of the house, look all around, before she thought to look up. “Come down from there, girl. Them figs don’t need no company. Come down before you die your natural death.” Always she detected some note of pleasure in the voice, for while Momma knew the view wasn’t much, the vision was everything.

  Since the maiden voyage of Jam almost seven years ago, their operation had grown from two to six. A deal secured by Ona with a black-owned printing shop, which printed the growing paper at an affordable price, freed up money for hiring three part-time journalists and Bunchee. As business manager, Ona oversaw circulation. Lily Turner—Ona’s YWCA friend—contributed columns on homemaking. Celia Benton wrote about education, black literature, and music and maintained the back-page social column, The Vine in Bloom, highlighting the accomplishments of everyday people. In Celia’s husband, Dr. Benton, who had opened the city’s first colored sanatorium, they found the health and welfare editor. Ivoe’s own column—Woman About Town—featured reports on her meetings with various factions from Kansas City’s political machine. At age eighteen Bunchee, who had a flair for words and the moxie for finding the right story, often
attended meetings with her, taking copious notes—like any good cub reporter in training. He fact-checked stories with the editor, sometimes compiling news from the wire service of the Associated Press.

  Inside the Jam headquarters Ivoe was both at home with Ona and in the world, advocating for her people, the only worthwhile work she could think to do. Occasionally, at a late hour, Timbo dropped by, claiming the light from the window set off his concern. Accompanied by men from the packing plant, they retreated to the loft and sat down for union talk over fried fish or tomatoes, which Ona cooked up for them. The men’s voices carried above Irabelle and other musicians, who often congregated after a gig to practice, jamming in the loft. This was the paper’s greatest reward—family, community, including those far away whom she had never met. After two days on the train from Kansas City, their first stop in Manhattan before boarding the ship had been to the Seventh Avenue office of the Amsterdam News to finally meet one such ally.

  The uptown train jostled through the subway tunnel from 34th Street to 125th, where they met Amsterdam News contributor T. Thomas Fortune. Their correspondence with Fortune had begun during the summer of 1919, following Ivoe’s coverage of the Omaha race riot. It was Fortune’s recommendation that she and Ona make the crossing for the Pan-African Congress in Paris. Urging them along Harlem’s crowded streets, he was a gregarious guide. For several hours they thrilled to sites they had only encountered in his paper: Garvey’s Liberty Hall, Strivers’ Row, Abyssinian Baptist Church. He pointed out the best nightclubs—the Sugar Cane, Connie’s Inn, Cairo’s—and the infamous Barron’s Cabaret, where blacks worked but could not attend. At 140th Street, Fortune pulled them inside Tabb’s Restaurant, where they peered out the window at the strangest scene.

  “Mrs. Trace,” Fortune said, and sighed. “Now there’s a story for the ship. Welcome to New York City, ladies, where everybody’s story is worthy of the front page.”

  Traffic halted. Horns honked. A man carrying a curious case—too small for a proper valise, too deep for a briefcase (Ivoe took him for a salesman)—pushed through a growing crowd to address the woman sitting in the middle of Lenox Avenue with a baby, or so Ivoe thought until the man twisted it away from the woman by the head and tucked it under his arm. Ivoe and her companions watched as the man helped the woman, engulfed in the loudness of an orange dress, rise to her feet. She looked to be about Ona’s age—early fifties. She seemed confused and, despite the man’s arm now snug around her waist to hold her steady, too alone.

  After their feast of fried chicken and waffles, they rode the subway down to South Ferry and joined the squall of deafening chatter bustling up the gangplank at New York Harbor. Ivoe grabbed Ona around the waist, squeezed tight, laughing as the ship hove past the Statue of Liberty. Sailing to France where the dollar was strong and there was no Jim Crow. Aboard the RMS Mauretania, Ivoe had strolled the decks, socialized with passengers until the sunless opal sky turned dusky pink while Ona remained below, filling the bedside basins with vomit, her only reprieve the salty breeze through the crack of their tiny cabin window. Still, at night before the slap of waves against the ship lulled Ivoe into perfect sleep, Ona assured her that the congress would be worth more than a hundred difficult crossings.

  .

  “Father up in heaven.”

  Jammed against the rails of the RMS Mauretania, they waved at every­one and no one in particular as the ship moored alongside the wharf. Ivoe bounced in her shoes as a giddy Ona pounded her fist excitedly on the wooden banister from which sprang a rusty nail.

  They spent the first hour in France stanching the blood flow from the gash in Ona’s hand, soaking several towels before the ship doctor could bandage it. From Le Havre a train took them to the north of Paris, where upon exiting Gare Saint-Lazare a majestic, white-domed basilica caught Ivoe’s eye. Here the city’s black people lived in grand stone buildings—like those she had imagined while reading European novels in her youth—as well kept as any in Paris. In America one hotel in a hundred would put up two race women; in France they had their pick of first-class lodging. In the shadow of la Basilique du Sacré Coeur, along the steep, cobbled rue de Steinkerque, they secured a charming fourth-floor apartment without incident or the slightest inconvenience owing to pigmentation.

  The Vine in Montmartre was no fringe at the bottom, no slum or ghetto of dilapidated tenements, but was nestled at the city’s highest summit amid small theaters, quaint bistros, and nightclubs, which were full of that wonderful black noise: jazz. The French called the quarter la Butte—a colony of streets teeming with artists, itinerant musicians, black soldiers who had remained in France after discharge, and their lovers. Ivoe and Ona wandered to the open-air market at the edge of the village. They lost count of brown faces in restaurants side by side with whites or in the finest shops exchanging money for quality wares (fifty francs to the dollar!). A pair of prattling men parted the bustling crowd for them at the entrance to Pigalle. Rows of pushcarts overflowed with brass trays and candle holders from Algeria, Turkish carpets, potted herbs and spices, linens, chinaware, silver samovars, bargain wristwatches for gentlemen, ladies’ parasols, and a bed of scarves. Ona reached for a gray silk twill scarf. A few steps farther along, a fine pair of shoes beckoned from a store window. Ivoe parted with two hundred francs (four dollars—for what would have surely cost ten in America) for the oxblood leather Mary Jane pumps with ribbon at the ankle in place of a strap. Thank you, Mr. Ferragamo.

  “Why carry the old ones?” Ona said, prompting her to leave them behind. In the middle of rue Blanche, a few meters from the stunning Moulin Rouge, Ivoe and Ona stole a kiss.

  Misinterpreted directions, wrong directions, slightly off directions, finally landed them at Le Grand Duc. The night air in the Pigalle was cool and balmy when they entered the raffish room no bigger than a telephone booth in Kansas City’s Washington Hotel. During their crossing, Fortune had told them about the hub where they could meet other blacks newly arrived in Paris. They settled at a bare wood table, at once seduced by the small cavern of rough stucco walls and wrought-iron fixtures. A gentleman dining alone recommended the bouillabaisse. The soup—a greige broth with clams, cockles, and cuttlefish—arrived in chipped bowls, completely unappetizing in appearance, utterly delicious to the taste. As they huddled over a shared dessert neither could pronounce—a gratin of buttered apricots in pecan meal—a jazz quartet played “Somebody Loves Me.” In Kansas City, a black person could not piss in the same toilet or spit in the same sink as a white person. Here, no separate stand-up counter, no invisible color line down the café’s middle to segregate patrons. Ivoe sipped from her kir. Ona leaned forward and touched Ivoe’s face in impulsive tenderness, flashing her a bold look of intimacy. After dinner they strolled boulevard de Clichy—Ona cloaked in a knockout gray scarf, Ivoe’s new shoes bending to the humps of cobblestone. Taking in women in widow’s weeds still mourning the millions taken by the guns at Verdun, the squeak of carriage wheels, the joyous reunions between friends, the noise of a city bursting at the seams, they returned to rue de Steinkerque late, appetites sated, black currant lips sticky and sweet. The only thing to do was make love and sleep without dreaming.

  .

  The cheerful sounds of chaffinches outside their window awakened Ivoe. For hours it had lain dormant, but now quiet joy, roused by the beat of wings and singing, gave way to a sigh. She felt her way back to the final moments of last night and a smile of reminiscence spread over her face. She turned on her side to watch Ona blissfully asleep, reflecting on the perfection of the last few days, then rose to dress—to make it begin all over again.

  Looking down on the blooming courtyard, Ona complained of a stiff neck “and hunger!” For twenty minutes Ivoe had prepared to go out and retrieve breakfast, yet happiness guided her aimlessly around the apartment. Ona had cheated her out of the pleasure of seeing her in a different light; she moved as gracefully about as though they had lived there ten yea
rs, and had the uncanny knack for carrying home with her, unpacking and rearranging the rooms’ furnishing so that the flat reflected the rhythm of their lives.

  Ivoe stepped out into the sweet-scented morning air, greeted by hyacinth, thirty or forty blossoms on a stem. A few paces more, the fragrance faded into a delectable aroma—bread baking around the corner. Across the street, poodles and small hounds relieved themselves against a stone building while a street sweeper worked nearby. Clearly, the logic behind French municipal services was to serve the environment, regardless of who lived where.

  Ivoe tossed copies of Le Petit Parisien, Le Matin, and Le Journal on the table. Ona eyed the weeklies greedily. Two out of every six words she understood, yet observations were noted. The French press used smaller font, more words per line, and half the space American papers gave to advertisements. Even the ads were fact-based, less enticing. Ivoe laid out a breakfast of coffee, bread, goat’s cheese, and honey, relaying a scene she witnessed at the boulangerie. She put on a husky voice to enact the American black man cutting down the Frenchman who tried to cheat him. “‘Not another franc,’ he said. ‘Now politely give me all the bread I have paid for.’” Back home, any black man audacious enough to count his change in front of a white shop owner, let alone question him without fear of reprisal—especially in the South—was as rare as hen’s teeth.

  Ona wanted to spend the beautiful spring day in a twelfth-century crypt.

  “My Methuselah, all of the fashion houses of Paris and you want to visit some old bones.”