Letters to Missy Violet

by Barbara Hathaway

  Missus Dockery called Maggie over and told her to show me and Mama her hands. The little girl was shamefaced at first and hid her hands behind her back. So I said, “Come here, Maggie. I want to show you something.” When she came over I balled up my fists and held them up.

  “Did you know that all babies are born with their hands balled into fists like this? But they are supposed to open up in a few months. See, like this.” I spread my fingers. Maggie looked at my hands then looked at her own. “Missy Violet told me that sometimes a baby’s hands won’t open up on their own so you got to help them. You got to let your mama pull them every day, and you got to sleep with them under your head or under your pillow. You remember how Missy Violet showed you?” And Maggie nodded her head.

  “Now show me what you’re going to do,” I said, and Maggie pressed her little crooked hands together like in prayer, then she rested them under her cheek like they were a pillow. “That’s right, Maggie!” I said, and gave her a hug like you do when you talk to her. That felt good, like when I was holding little Bennie, only Maggie didn’t punch me in the nose.

  So don’t worry about Maggie and little Bennie—they are doing fine. Mama said we would go back and visit them in a few weeks if you were not home by then. She says to give your brother our regards and to tell you all the family is well.

  From your best helper girl,

  Viney

  Mister Som Grit and the Rausy Brothers

  November 23, 1929

  Dear Missy Violet,

  There was a lot of excitement at the church a few Sundays ago. Maybe you already heard about it because everybody is talking about it, saying it was a sign, on account of what happened a few days after. Those crazy Rausy Brothers showed up at church service! All the older folk said never since there was an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Richmond County had a Rausy stepped foot in a church! But there they were—both of them, looking like two train wrecks.

  Some folks think they ran out of food back there in the woods and came down to the church to find something to eat. But Reverend Mims believes the Lord sent them to get saved because Pax, the one with the funny-shaped head, went to the Moanin’ Bench and got religion. Bledsoe didn’t go up, but he did clap his hands and pat his foot when Savior Brown sang “Oh, Happy Day.” But later, he started that herky-jerky laugh of his and kept it up right through Reverend Mims’s sermon. After that, he had to be escorted out of the church for picking at some of the sisters.

  Next thing you know, Mister Som Grit jumps up and starts testifying. Everybody was surprised because he’s a “Baptist born, Baptist bred, and when I die, I’ll be a Baptist dead” Baptist. Some of the folks think he came over to the Methodist to find a wife. They say he can’t get a wife over at the Baptist church because the women there know him too well.

  Arma Jean said she heard the preacher’s wife tell one of the ladies on the Usher Board that she didn’t understand why Mister Som Grit come over to the Methodists. She said “the pickin’s are slim” at the Methodist church because “most of the women Mister Grit’s age are settled widow ladies who don’t want to be bothered with no husbands no more” and the rest are “old maids who are afraid of men.”

  Arma Jean had an idea. She thinks Miss Petty should get with Mister Som Grit. She thinks Miss Petty secretly wants to be a married lady, and she thinks she knows how to get Mister Som Grit and Miss Petty together. That girl is a genius!

  But something happened a few days later that made us forget about Mister Som Grit and Miss Petty. One of the Rausy Brothers passed away. The one named Pax, with the funny-shaped head, just up and died. His brother, Bledsoe, stayed in the house with him for three days before he told anybody he was dead. He finally went to Reverend Mims and Reverend Mims sent Mister Brownlee out there to get the body.

  It was real nice the way everybody pitched in to help. Mama said it was the Christian thing to do. Mama and Miss Petty put together a dark suit for Pax Rausy, and the undertaker donated a pine box. The Goodwill Workers cooked food, and the Usher Board brought flowers. On the day of the funeral the church was packed. Mama said some of those folks just came there “to see.”

  Some of the menfolk got Bledsoe all cleaned and shaved and gussied up for his brother’s funeral, and he didn’t look half bad, except when he opened his mouth and showed those fangs he got for teeth.

  Pax Rausy was buried in the church graveyard thanks to Reverend Mims. He says there will be a place for Bledsoe, too, because the brothers were feeble-minded and had no kin.

  I have to close now. Tomorrow is a school day.

  Yours truly,

  Viney

  Papa’s Dilemma

  Papa is worried about his job at Liggett and Meyers Tobacco Company, where he makes and cuts cigarettes. They laid off about half of their workers a few weeks ago, most of them colored. Papa expects to be laid off any day now. “Guess I’ll be turnin’ in my blue uniform soon,” he keeps mumbling as he walks around the house. Lately he’s been talking about moving north. Every evening at the supper table Papa starts talking about going to Chicago or New York City or New Jersey. My heart quivers like a fiddle bow every time we sit down to eat, because I know Mama and Papa are going to argue about “going up north.”

  Savannah and Mama and I think it is a bad idea to move up north, but Papa and the boys think it’s the best idea Papa ever had. Especially Antonio Rose, my youngest brother. He’s the one who likes to stick up under Papa all the time, going along with anything Papa says. He’s even named after Papa’s mama, Rose Velvet, who was standing at the foot of the bed when he was being born, and died in her sleep that night.

  James Clyde, my oldest brother, said he was going to sell Brown Bisquit, the beautiful chestnut horse Grandpapa gave him, so he could buy a Buick and drive Papa all the way up to Chicago, where Papa’s cousin Essex lives. Roosevelt, my brother next to James Clyde, keeps talking about the fine clothes he’s going to buy when he gets up north. Savannah said, “Roosevelt, I declare, you care more about clothes than you do about the Lord,” and everybody laughed.

  “And he uses Mama’s smoothin’ iron more than Mama does on them,” I said, and even Roosevelt had to laugh, because it was true. Mama never had to tell him to hang up his clothes or brush off his shoes. Sometimes he would even pay somebody to iron for him. He’s real handsome and dudish, but not biggety. All the girls are crazy about him.

  Claude Thomas, my peculiar brother, says he can’t wait to go up north with Papa so he won’t have to miss the beginning of school every year to pick cotton. Usually, he just sits quietly whenever they get to talking about going north. He’s the one Mama worries about all the time, because he’s kind of moody and surly and don’t know how to stay in his place with the white folk.

  Getting back to Papa, one evening at the supper table he cleared his throat and said in a friendly voice, “I hear Joe Gladney done moved up to New Jersey and got hisself a good-payin’ job at an automobile factory.”

  “We goin’ too, Papa?” Antonio squawked. But before Papa could say a word, Mama said, “Eat your supper, Antonio Rose.” Then she turned to Papa. “I thought we had already buried that bone, James?” And there was a little ice in her voice when she said it.

  “Now, don’t go gettin’ your teeth on edge, Lena,” Papa shot back at Mama. “It’s not like I’m askin’ you to go to East Jublipp or someplace. We wouldn’t be the first family that got up and moved north—lotta folks doin’ it. And if I had had my way, we would have gone ten years ago!” Papa sounded angry.

  “You mean you already forgot all the trouble you had the last time you tried goin’ up north?” Mama asked. “Why, you almost went to jail!”

  “Papa almost went to jail!” Savannah and I both squealed at the same time.

  “Yes. Him and a lot of other colored men,” Mama answered, and commenced telling us about the time two labor agents from Detroit came down to recruit colored men for work in the steel mills up north. Mama said a bunch of colored men who ha
d just signed up with the agents were waiting at the train depot when the sheriff came and locked them all up, white labor agents and all. “Your papa almost went to jail too,” Mama said. “But when Sheriff Rainey couldn’t find a train ticket on him or a copy of the Chicago Defender, he let him go home.”

  “What’s the Chicago Defender?” Antonio asked, and James Clyde told him it was a northern newspaper that told colored people they should come north for a better life. Mama said Papa’s cousin Essex sent him a copy every month. She said she warned Papa that something bad was going to happen if he didn’t stop reading that northern newspaper. She said she’d decided that the next copy that came into the house would go right into the fire!

  Papa looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth while Mama was talking. “That was a bad year, Lena,” he said. “A heap of colored folks migrated north that year. They had to. The boll weevils ruined all the cotton crops, and storms and floods ruined the rest. Plantation workers like me couldn’t get no work. What was I supposed to do?”

  Mama acted like she hadn’t heard a word Papa said. “James,” she said, “all those folks who go up north come back down here garnished with diamonds and pearls and putting on fancy airs. Tellin’ us now ‘swell’ it is in New York City and Chicago and New Jersey—they’re not tellin’ the truth! Esther Green’s been writin’ to me ever since she went up there to live, and she tells me how hard it is to make ends meet. How cold it is. And how colored folks got to pay almost three times as much rent as white folks.”

  Papa put on a stubborn face. “I still want to go,” he growled. “I’m tired of bowin’ and scrapin’ and callin’ the foreman ‘boss’ and ‘captain.’ I’m tired of my children havin’ to stay home from school to tend cotton. Lord knows, all I want is a chance to make a better life for my family!” Papa said.

  When Papa said those words, Mama’s face changed, and I could tell she was sorry she had fussed at him. She said, “Eat your supper, James, before you get one of your sick headaches. We can talk about this later.” But this time her voice was sweet and mild.

  Missus Daisy Monroe

  November 28, 1929

  Dear Missy Violet,

  Do you know Missus Daisy Monroe? Mama really admires Missus Monroe because she is a fine seamstress and has her own dressmaking business in Durham, North Carolina. One day while Mama and I were at the general store, we met Missus Monroe and right away Mama began to complain to Missus Monroe about Papa pining to go up north. “He got a bad case of the itchin’ foot,” Mama told her. Missus Monroe didn’t seem surprised at all. “That’s nothing to be upset about, Lena. Folks go up north all the time,” she said. “People lookin’ for decent work. A fine seamstress like yourself could get plenty of piecework in a blouse or dress factory up there,” she told Mama.

  “I was there myself in nineteen twenty-five,” Missus Monroe said, and Mama’s mouth flew open like a baby bird’s. “I stayed a whole year, had my own customers and everything,” she told Mama. She said she would have stayed longer but her mother took sick and she had to come back home to wait on her.

  “Is that so?” Mama said.

  “My daughter is up in Chicago right now, in nursing school,” Missus Monroe told Mama, and smiled real proud. “She’ll be a hospital nurse when she gets through.” When Missus Monroe said “nursing school,” my ears began to tingle, and I forgot my manners and butt in to Mama and Missus Monroe’s conversation.

  “You mean they have a nursing school for colored girls up north?” I squawked, and Mama gave me a hard look for speaking out of turn. But Missus Monroe laughed and said, “Why, yes, child. It’s called the Provident Hospital Training School, and it’s owned and run by colored.”

  “Well, for goodness’ sakes!” I said. And Mama and Missus Monroe couldn’t help but laugh. I didn’t know what else to say. A school for colored nurses—imagine that! A school owned and run by colored people! Miss Battle was right: Colored people are doing fine things in all the trades every day now. Going up north didn’t sound so bad after all.

  After Missus Monroe talked to Mama, Mama got over being mad at Papa for wanting to go up north. I guess she decided it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, because more than anything else, Mama just wants Papa to be happy.

  But I still don’t want to leave my friends and family. Not only that, but who would help you “catch babies” if I went away? I have an idea. Maybe Papa will let me come back every summer, and I’m sure he and Mama will let Arma Jean come up for a visit once in a while. Now I feel better about going, especially when I think about getting a vacation from Charles.

  Yours truly,

  Viney

  So Much to Talk About When I Get Home

  December 4, 1929

  Dear Viney,

  I hope this letter finds you and the family well. I had hoped to be home by the holidays, but Brother still needs me. I have been reading all of your letters. Sometimes I read them more than once when I start to miss you all. You are very watchful and alert to everything that is going on around you. That is a good quality. And you really care about others. That is one of the things I love about you.

  I want to thank you and your mother for going to see about Little Bennie and little Maggie Dockery for me. I’m happy you found them doing well. I knew that Little Bennie was going to be a little devil by the way he jumped into the world! Bless his heart.

  Now, little Maggie Dockery is very shy. You will have to visit her often to make sure she does her calisthenics. Sometimes take her a small gift, a used toy that she can hold in her hands to encourage her, and give her mother my love.

  I was very sorry to hear about one of the Rausy brothers passing away. It was kind of Reverend Mims and the church members to do what they did.

  You asked me if I knew Missus Daisy Monroe: I know of her but I don’t know her personally. I have heard about her fine sewing. I didn’t know she had a daughter in nursing school up north. That is wonderful! Like I always say, the world is changing all the time. I think you would make a fine nurse, Viney. Seems like we have a great deal to talk about when I get home. We will have to sit by the fire and talk for a long, long while.

  Is your daddy still excited about going north? Lots of people are doing it. Going north has its good points and its bad points, but chances of getting a good education probably are better in the North. I’d like to know more about the nursing schools up there. Yes, we have a lot to talk about.

  How is school? When will you get your report card? Let me know how your grades are. Give Charles my love and kiss Cleo for me. Give the whole family my regards. Brother sends his regards too.

  Yours very truly,

  Missy Violet

  Cousin Essex

  December 12, 1929

  Dear Missy Violet,

  After we all got used to the idea of moving north, Papa got a letter from his cousin Essex who lives in Chicago. Papa read the letter at the supper table.

  “Hello, James,” it began.

  I hope this letter finds you and Lena and the children in God’s care. Guess you are wondering what took me so long to answer the last letter you wrote me, asking about places to stay in Chicago while you look for work. The reason is that things are very bad up here now. You all probably already heard that we are in a depression. Back in October, most of the rich white folks up here lost all their money in the stock market crash, and that brought everybody down a peg or two.

  A lot of factories had to close down, and a lot of wealthy families had to let their cooks and maids and chauffeurs go. Colored people are having rent parties to help pay the rent. Colored and white alike are standing in soup lines, and some are looking through garbage cans for scraps of food to feed their families and for wood to keep them warm.

  People are freezing to death. PEOPLE ARE FREEZING TO DEATH. We are all having a hard time up here. Some folks may have to go on relief.

  I lost my good job at the shipyard, but by the Lord’s grace, I got a job at a colored funeral home.
It’s only two days a week. And Sadie’s job at the laundry been cut down to one day. Thank the Lord for folks dyin’. Things are real hard, cousin, so I can’t invite you to come stay with us right now. You all stay down home where you can at least grow something to eat and keep a roof over your heads and keep warm. Sadie cry all the time now, say we should come back home. I don’t know, have to see how things turn out up here. Please keep us in your prayers.