“You won’t send me away, Papa. Not tomorrow. Tonight you’ll think about it. Not two months after I just started Spelman. The rumors will fly, Papa. The Blacksmith’s daughter is pregnant. One of those boys from Morehouse got to her. You don’t want anyone thinking that about your precious daughters.”
At the door he stopped and turned to look at her.
“Why can’t you ever be like your sisters? They are ladies, responsible, educated women. Haven’t we given you everything?”
“You gave me everything I needed to be tied down like an old woman, Papa. Old women is what my sisters are. They have never seen the world, never seen what’s beyond those books you read, never been past Tyson, Alabama. In fact they’ve never been anywhere except with you and mama. I am not going to be like them. Stuck in this house for the rest of my youth because my father is the biggest, richest, most feared, colored man in Atlanta. I will not sit here and wait for you to find me a husband. No Papa. You’re right. I’m not like them. I never was and was never meant to be.” She paused before she said: “Maybe I was meant to be a boy.”
She turned to look at her mother whom she loved and adored. The Blacksmith called out to Bira: “What is she talking about?”
“William, let it be. Brother is. . .” was all Bira could get out as June interrupted.
“My brother is what, Mama? A cripple. Sometimes I think you treat me like an after thought, just the way you treat him. Look where our rooms are. Off the kitchen. Isn’t that where the servants sleep in the rich white folks’ houses, Papa?” The Blacksmith was too shocked to speak.
“When you found out Willie could paint you didn’t see to it that he got special teachers. You could have any teacher come to this house and work with him. It’s not like you don’t have the money. It could be his trade. He could be famous. But you ignored his talent, you ignored him because you hoped one day he would die and go away.”
The sisters verbally complained.
Bira put her hand to her mouth as the tears began to flow.
“That’s all we ever got from you, Papa. Ignored. Look what you did to me. When I was seven and the choir master said I had a voice like an angel you took me out of the choir. Said singing was not going to get me a better life or a good husband. You didn’t want me to sing in the house. You’ve never wanted me.”
“I am your father,” he shouted. “I am the reason you are here.”
“Mama is the reason I am here. The reason Willie is here. Looking good to the rest of this town is why we’re here. Wouldn’t look right for the Blacksmith, the big healthy Blacksmith, to have two weak babies die from some unknown disease two years apart now, would it?”
Minnelsa, whose soft voice cracked the anger-filled air, spoke. “You have no right to say that.”
“You think I made it up?” June said directly to her sister. “You were here when Willie was born. You saw what happened. You think I made it up?”
“You have no idea what went on in this house the night Willie was born.” Minnelsa told her.
June cut her eyes to her father. “Oh yes I do. People talk behind our backs, they say things; truths, lies, anything they can about us. But it’s more than any of you have told me so I listen.
“I know papa was angry about Willie being born the way he is. Papa didn’t know for a few days what was wrong. He just knew he had a son. Had the name for him and the shop was gonna be his. I know Mama wasn’t supposed to have no more babies after Willie. The doctor said it might kill her. Our mother almost died that night. You were here, Minnelsa. You know better than anyone else.”
Minnelsa went to her mother and put her arm around her. “It’s best not to bring it up, June.”
“Why? Aren’t we all family here?” When no one answered she kept talking.
“When papa found out about Willie. . . Well, let’s just say on the night I was born our father was told two things by the doctor. One that the new born son he had hoped for was a daughter and that his wife couldn’t have any more children.” She looked at Bira. “Mama, I love you and I know you almost died giving birth to me, but he didn’t care. He just wanted a son. You almost died trying to give him another son.” June was pointing at her father with tears in her eyes. “He didn’t even hold me or touch me. The midwife told me. He didn’t see me because he left the house. He didn’t come back for days. Had to send the preacher to find him.”
“Stop this!” Minnelsa shouted trying to sound firm.
“Minnelsa ,you were here. The rest of you were sent away ‘cause Mama didn’t want you all to see her suffer. But Minnelsa. . . She’s known, she’s always known. Papa, you were going to leave a wife with two babies, one a cripple, just cause you couldn’t have a son that could follow in your footsteps.”
Tears rolled down June’s cheek. She turned to look at her mother. “And she still loves you.
“Minnelsa’s always known and she still loves you. She made the Preacher find you. She brought you home.” June wiped her tears and pulled herself up straight and tall. The red dress spangles began shaking with her fury. “But I don’t love you. I don’t have to love you because you never loved me. I hate you. I have always hated you and you have always . . .”
“Stop it!” They turned to see Willie leaning on the door of his room. His eyes were rheumy, his shirt soaked with perspiration, his voice weak and failing. “June, you promised never to tell we knew. You promised.”
With those words he collapsed to the kitchen floor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wasn’t much colored Atlanta talked about for the next few days but how they all missed the sound of the Blacksmith’s hammer in the morning. Rumors spread faster than storm winds but the truth beat it at every turn.
William Brown the Second, Willie to his sister June, Brother to his family and a smattering of friends, was dying. His sister Rosa, the nurse, tried to take him to the hospital but he refused to go saying he wanted to be in his own bed. His sister June, the closest person to him in the whole world, never left his side. In fact one of the most popular rumors was about the red dress June wore the dawn the doctor came to see Willie. A red sparkly, shiny dress like the flappers wore that clung to her like hard earned sweat.
Business was called off at the smithy. Gentleman callers didn’t come by the house at all. Only people allowed to cross the Blacksmith’s door were the minister and the doctor.
And the Piano Man.
Truth was Willie liked to lie in his bed and listen to the music the Piano Man played in the parlor. The music would fill the house with hope and the neighborhood with despair. Some said Willie was picking what song he wanted played at his funeral. And not some old Gospel song either. Something nice and fancy from Europe like the Piano Man played in the parlor night after night.
The Blacksmith still woke at dawn and the family ate with him except for June. It was she who fed her brother each meal, she who changed his bed linens once the Blacksmith lifted him. She who washed him and cared for him night and day. Word spread that she slept on the floor beside his bed. Truth was she slept in the bed with him. Warming his chills, wiping his sweats and bathing herself just before dawn so that the dying boy would awake and see her with fresh skin and clean, brushed hair.
Willie would tell her: “You look just like the dancing princess. Where did you dance last night?”
She would smile and tell him: “Why, Willie, don’t you remember? We were dancing together in your dreams.”
It took eight days for Willie to die. But it was eight days that his family belonged to him and him alone. The Blacksmith read to him from his many books occasionally carrying the boy into his big room with its healthy fire and sitting him in the most comfortable chair, the Blacksmith’s chair. June would sing to him accompanied by Rosa on the piano. The Piano Man would play tunes the boy had never heard on his Victrola.
The rest of the family would do what they could to make things nice for him. Fawn brought him flowers from the garden and bushes outside that he
could no longer sit near and smell, and Minnelsa told him about the bad little children in the school, which made him laugh. Jewel baked bread endlessly for he said the smell made him feel good. Rosa washed his hair in jasmine scented soap that she had purchased from a white owned store the Blacksmith didn’t like. When William Brown asked his daughter where she had gotten such an item, she boldly replied: “I got it for Willie.”
June smiled at her sister for giving this treat to her brother.
During those eight days June would not go near the Piano Man. And the Piano Man stayed in the house only long enough to play. He took each meal at Mrs. Maples (to her delight) and only spoke to the woman he courted when he was in her father’s presence.
June would stay in the room when her father read to her brother. Not that she didn’t trust him, for the Blacksmith was showing a different side to his son. June would watch them as the old man read and the boy listened and asked questions. She had no idea her father had such patience. He had never shown any with her.
The truth was she wished she had the courage and the strength to put her brother out of his suffering. She could hardly stand to watch him cough, to wince in pain when all she could do was change the bed clothes when he soiled himself. She held his hand for hours when he went on and on about things they had done as children.
“Remember when. . .” He forgot some piece of the story of pulling themselves up into the tree by rope, or each eating two hundred pecans one afternoon and vomiting all night.
“Remember when. . .” She would remember for him and fill in the blanks.
“Remember when. . .” What she couldn’t remember as she held his hand trying to give him her life force, she made up.
Bira Brown sat on the floor in her son’s room and called on the Great Spirit to protect her son. June had never seen her mother do this but the older sisters remembered family deaths when Bira put aside any knowledge of the Christian faith and turned into a Blackfoot Indian and did what could only be called the most unchristian of things. She sang chants that only the spirits could understand. She burned leaves and bark in the room and the scent floated in and around the house. Those that passed the house would see the dark thin smoke and swore it was the Angel of Death taking residence until the boy was gone. Bira ground herbs and roots into poultices and said incantations as she rubbed them on her son’s chest. The boy never complained of the smell or the rubbing that left his pale skin reddened. He enjoyed his mother’s touch.
No one said a word, not the minister, not the doctor, not the Blacksmith. For his mother’s humble and soft rumblings seemed to ease the coughing that came from deep in his chest. “There is nothing anyone can do,” the minister once said to the doctor, “but leave him to Jesus.”
If the Blacksmith heard this or not, he didn’t say. Each night when he knew the rest of the family was sleep he would go to check on his son. To stand and watch him breathe, to hope he wouldn’t die.
And from time to time, pray that he would.
“I am old, Lord,” the Blacksmith would whisper to the night wind as if she were carrying his words to God. “I have a cripple son and five daughters. I have tried to do my best by them all, Lord. Where have I gone wrong?”
Inside the house he could hear June singing sweetly to her brother:
“I believe I’ll go back home
And admit that I done wrong.”
“Why have I never noticed the sweetness of the sound of her voice, Lord?” He brushed the old horse that had been his companion for so many years. A brisk, cold wind blew and the Blacksmith looked up at the house. “Why is she singing that song to him, Lord? I am sure she knows others. Others that I would not approve of.” He stopped brushing and looked up at the house. The wood would have to be chopped by someone else, he could hire a boy to come by and do it. “My son was strong, Lord, stronger than me. Why didn’t I see it?”
He brushed until his old arms were sore. He went to his private room and picked a volume of Shakespeare, he had no idea what it was. He opened it but never saw the printed words.
“My son should be with me, Lord. My son should be by my side.” He closed his eyes and rested for a while. When he awoke it was late and a quilt covered him. Bira, sweet Bira who cared for them all had covered him from the chill of the night.
“Why did she never tell me about the strength of my son?”
That night the boy stirred a great deal. It seemed that having June lie next to him, holding him and refusing to let him go, was keeping him from his rest. So the Blacksmith picked up the tiny, soundly sleeping, June and took her to the bed she hadn’t slept in for seven nights. He touched the boy’s forehead then held the old bowl for him to spit the poison from his body.
It must have been two hours before Willie was lucid enough to realize that it was his father nursing him through to his death.
“Why didn’t you kill me when I was born, Papa? The midwife said nobody would have faulted a man for putting a pillow over the face of such a sick and weak baby. No one would have ever known.”
The Blacksmith wiped his son’s brow. “I would never kill a child of mine. No matter what he was.”
“But you never loved me, Papa.”
“Love,” the Blacksmith stated with his usual harshness, “is for women.”
“And cripples.” The boy coughed. When he finished he looked into his father’s eyes. “I was never a woman, Papa. I was strong, could cut wood, pull myself up a tree. I just didn’t have legs, Papa. I was real strong but you never wanted to see.”
“Of course I saw, boy. You were always a big help to your mother and sisters.”
“You never took me to the shop, Papa. Your shop. You never did.”
The Blacksmith hung his head.
“I could have sat on a tree stump. I could swing a hammer just like I heard you swinging it every morning of my life, if you had taught me. No one had to know I was weak Papa, cause I wasn’t. I was strong. I have hands just like you, Papa. Big hands.” And the frail boy held his pale palms up to the dim light. The Blacksmith placed his own hand to one and sighed. Just as big, just as strong. Gnarled in a few places from the crutches, from the chopping of wood, from pulling himself up into trees by rope. Strong hands.
Exactly how he measured each of his daughters’ suitors.
But he had forgotten to measure his son’s.
Tears welled in the Blacksmith’s eyes. “The doctors said the sun would hurt you, and the winds would chill you. I know you don’t believe me, but I always cared about you. And when they said too much exposure. . .”
“I wish,” the boy whispered laying back and looking out the window into the night, “that I could have seen your shop, Papa. It’s not far from here. When I was little I tried to go in my wagon. June tried to pull me. But there was this hill and she was so tiny.”
The boys head was cool, almost normal. He closed his eyes and faded into sleep. The Blacksmith remembered coming home one day when the boy had been nine, thinking: I left Bira and the girls without enough wood for to cook dinner. I’ll have to cut a whole cord tonight.
But Willie had cut it all. While his father had been at the shop a legless boy had been the man of the house, dragging himself about on crutches. The boy had cut new slats for the beds and fixed the chair legs. The boy had been every bit a man. But the father never noticed.
Silently he bundled the frail body into the many blankets that covered him and lifted the fragile parcel towards the door. Willie awoke startled.
“Where am I going, Papa? Am I going to glory?”
The Blacksmith tried to laugh. “No boy, in a few hours it will be dawn. You’re going to the shop with me.”
He took his son quietly from the house and out to the barn. He laid him on a pile of straw in the back of the wagon then he hitched the horse. Slowly and quietly so as not to wake the sleeping women, he started from the house for the shop, leaving behind the cloud that clung to his home like a veil of tears. He turned time and again to look a
t his cargo, his only son.
“I ain’t never been out this late, Papa.” There was happiness in his voice. “Look up at them stars.”
“Son, this ain’t late this is early. Come to think of it,” the Blacksmith chuckled, “I ain’t never been up this early.”
The boy didn’t laugh but he smiled. The trip never took very long but with such frail cargo the Blacksmith made sure to miss each and every hole and to go slow when he could.
“Papa,” the boy asked with false strength, “why’s the shop so far from home?”
“Isn’t far, son, but ain’t near. Used to be near, used to be in the barn.”
“Why’d you move it, Papa?” the boy asked, then added: “I didn’t know you could just look up and see such stars.”
“I moved it ‘cause a white man tried to get too friendly with your mama one day. I decided it was good business if the white folks didn’t know where my family was.”
The boy was silent again and the Blacksmith looked back and saw that he was sleep.
To get down the hill to the shop was not a difficult thing to do since years before the Blacksmith had built a road of tar and gravel. No one ever complained about getting to his shop. Willie felt nothing from the smooth pavement but he woke just the same when the wagon stopped. He tried to sit up.
“Easy son.” The smithy lifted the boy and propped him on hay and feed bags. He pointed to the small shack-like house. “Well, here it is. This is the shop.”
The boy smiled at the place and his father.
“I didn’t think it would look like this. Papa, it’s so small.”
“It’s bigger than the first time you saw it.” The Blacksmith said with pride.
The sad sick eyes widened in disbelief. “I’ve been here before?”
The Blacksmith went around the wagon and stood behind his son, touching his forehead. The boy’s fever hadn’t returned and for that he was glad. “On the night you were born I snuck into the room when all the women were finished having their way with you and I took you here. I showed you to the sky and to the land. Then I showed them to you. I told you we would one day work here together. That it would say ‘Brown and Son’ on the sign. Then I snuck you back home.” Tears shook the Blacksmith’s voice.
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