When I walked into the kitchen, through the back doorway of the house, my grandmother was baking items for the upcoming Tobacco Days Festival.
“Where on earth did you come from?” she said, as I seated myself at the kitchen table.
“Oh, I just been out running around.”
“You’re just in time to eat some of these cookies. You need something to weigh you down so you don’t blow away. Hazel is not feeling well today, so I’m having to do all this cooking myself.”
Hazel had worked for my grandmother for many years. She was very outspoken and didn’t care to tell my grandmother if she was not happy about something. Sometimes my grandmother would grumble about things Hazel had said, but everyone knew she would never dream of firing her. Over time Hazel had become more like one of the family than a housekeeper. She was getting quite old now, and after her husband had died a few years ago, leaving her with a house she couldn’t afford the payments on, she moved into the little guest cottage behind my grandmother’s house. Hazel had never had any kids of her own and had always seemed almost like another grandmother to me.
“I’ll bring her some of these cookies and maybe that will cheer her up,” I said.
“No, better not take her any. With her diabetes so bad like it is, you wouldn’t want to kill her. I sure would hate to see you go to jail for killing old Hazel.”
“Surely a few cookies won’t hurt her,” I said, thinking my grandmother was just being silly.
“She’s getting on up in years. She’s not a spring chicken like me,” my grandmother said with a short laugh.
“Anyway, I’ll go over and see how she’s doing,” My grandmother was looking the other way, so I grabbed a napkin and a handful of cookies and walked out the kitchen door. I followed the sidewalk to Hazel’s house and knocked on the door.
“Who’s that?” I heard her say through an open window.
“It’s me, Brian.”
“Well, Lord, Child, come on in.” I walked in the house and saw Hazel sitting in a recliner with the TV running. More than a little over weight, she was wearing a red housecoat with a feathery collar and big red house shoes with pom-poms. A golden-yellow cat was resting on an arm of the chair. “Turn that TV off. I can see The Price is Right tomorrow. I’d get up myself but my legs are swollen so bad I can’t hardly walk.”
“How’s it going?” I asked, turning off the TV.
“Well, I’m burning up for one thing,” she said, fanning herself with a paper church fan, one of those wooden-handled fans with a peaceful photograph of a mountain stream on one side and a funeral home advertisement on the other side. “Your father’s supposed to come over here in the morning to put my new air conditioner in the window, should’ve came today. I finally saved up enough of those pennies your grandmother’s been paying me over the years to buy an air conditioner. You’d of thought she would have paid for an air conditioner herself, for all the years I’ve worked here. I guess I’m supposed to sit here in this oven like it’s 1950, hoping I don’t go to hell for stealing a church fan.”
“That looks like it’s a pretty big air conditioner,” I said, noticing a large box next to the front window.
“I went ahead and got a good one. I hope it snows in here when I turn it on; I’m so tired of it being hot.”
“Wow, that would be the best air conditioner in the world if it made it snow. I’d like to have one like that.”
“What’s that you got in your hands there?” she asked.
“I brought you some cookies,”
“Gracious, Child, you must be trying to kill me.”
I flushed.
“I’m sorry. I can eat them myself.”
“Now, set them cookies over here, so I can reach them. You know I’m just pulling your leg.”
I reluctantly sat the cookies on the table, then sat down in a rocking chair close to the recliner. Maybe my grandmother had been right. Maybe I shouldn’t be bringing cookies to a diabetic. Whatever the case, it was too late now. I couldn’t take them away from her, not after having just given them to her. She would think I was nuts or something.
“What’s that old woman doing making all them cookies herself? I told her I’d be over there after a while when I got to feeling a little better. My legs hurt so bad when I got up this morning I would of cut them off if I’d had a saw handy.”
“She’s trying to get them done for the Tobacco Festival.”
“I swear that woman thinks she’s Betty Crocker. Like they’re going to cancel the festival if she don’t bring cookies. As rich as she is, it looks like she’d just donate some money and save herself the trouble.”
“Do you think she’s really all that rich?”
“They’d have to shut the bank down if she took out all her money. She’s got enough money to bribe the Queen of England. She tries to act like she don’t have a pot to pee in. She’s so tight, if you listen close, you can hear her squeak when she walks. But don’t tell her you heard that from me.”
I started laughing. Hazel always made me laugh.
“So what have you been doing since school’s out, and you got all this free time on your hands?”
“Oh, not much. I haven’t been out of school too long yet.”
I suddenly thought of something to tell her. “Do you know that Miss Green that lives up the road from me?”
“Child, everybody round here knows Miss Green, killing all them husbands and getting away with it.”
“I went over there the other day.”
“What in heavens were you doing over there?”
“Momma sent me over there to take her some flowers.”
“You be careful round that old woman. There’s something not right about her. She knows things she ought not to know. There’s evil spirits at that place. I know. I went over there once, and I can sense things like that. And you know something else?”
“What?”
“I think that house is haunted too. It’s haunted by her dead husbands. Ain’t no decent woman ever had that many husbands to die from natural causes. And I just bet some of their spirits ain’t too happy. Your mother shouldn’t have sent you over to a place like that. If she tries to send you over there again, you’d be better off throwing them flowers in a ditch somewhere. That Miss Green knows things she shouldn’t, and I think it’s the devil’s information. The future will be revealed to us in time. We don’t need Miss Green to tell us what’s going to happen.”
“Do you think she tells Momma the future?”
“No, just forget I said anything about it. And don’t run and tell your mother what I said either. You just stay away from that woman, is all I got to say. I wouldn’t want you to end up in her deep freezer.”
Now more terrified than before, I said, “You know, something kind of strange did happen while I was over there.”
“Oh, heavens, what was that child?”
“She grabbed hold of my hand and told me she saw serpent eyes.”
“Oh lord, what else did she say?”
“I don’t know. I got so scared I ran off.”
“Well, you did the right thing by running off. That crazy old woman’s done turned the devil loose on you now. Your mother should never have sent you up there. Oh, child, if she had of told me something like that, I’d of had a nervous breakdown. I’ll be having nightmares about snakes now.”
“I had a nightmare last night that she brought me a king cobra in a basket.”
“Oh my heavens, Child, she’s done got me and you both scared. A chill just ran down my spine.”
“And you know what that means,” I said.
“Yeah, it means someone’s stepping all over my grave. They’re probably out there right now digging the hole, as old as I’m getting to be.”
“I’m scareder than ever now,” I said. “I’m afraid they might be digging my grave too.”
“Let’s just forget it and think about something more pleasant. We’re getting ourselves worked up to a frenzy. You try no
t to worry about what that old hag said to you. I’ll worry enough for the both of us.”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“So, I hear you did well in school this year.”
“Yeah, I did pretty good,” I said.
“I hope you keep a picture of old Hazel on your desk when you get to be president. I always did want to visit the White House.”
“You can come see me when I’m president,” I said.
“I will if somebody rolls my casket in.”
“Oh, you’ll live to be a hundred.”
“Child, I ain’t too far from a hundred now.”
“You have to live long enough so that my kids can get to know you too.”
“Good gracious, Child, if I was still alive then, I’d be an old crazy woman living in a nursing home somewhere—the oldest woman in the world. I’ll tell you what, though, even after I’m gone, I’ll watch over you from heaven.”
“What do you mean, like a ghost?”
“Good heavens, Child, not a ghost, a guardian angel. If the Lord lets me, I’ll watch over you and make sure nobody like that old Miss Green ever gets you. An old fat woman like me may not be the prettiest guardian angel there ever was, but I’ll try to be a good one.”
“Maybe you won’t be old and fat when you’re an angel,” I said. Hazel laughed out loud.
I looked up on the wall and saw an old photograph of a black man standing in front of a wagonload of tobacco. He was wearing overalls and a straw hat. “Who’s that a picture of?” I asked. “I’ve never noticed it before.”
“That’s a picture of George’s brother Isaac. I found that picture in a trunk of George’s the other day and decided to get it out again. I really liked Isaac. He was George’s oldest brother. He was a good Christian man, you know.”
“Is he still living?”
“No, he died years ago, not too long after I married George.”
“What happened to him?”
“Child, it’s a story you may be too young to hear.”
“I’m not as young as I use to be,” I said. “Remember, I turned eight last month.”
“I forgot you’re almost grown now,” said Hazel laughing.
“So what happened to him?”
“He was killed by some very bad people.”
“That’s awful,” I said, stunned. “Who killed him?”
“Well, I still think you might be too young to hear such an awful story, but I guess you could learn something about life by me telling it. Isaac was working on a tobacco farm over there close to Hopkinsville. The man that owned the farm had a wife who was what I call a floozy. Isaac often said she made him feel very uncomfortable. She would sometimes catch him alone and make advances towards him. Isaac wouldn’t pay her no attention, and she would get angry. After the first year of that business, Isaac said he wasn’t going to go back the next year, but the next tobacco season rolled around, and he needed the money, so he went back. That was a big mistake. He would have been better off never to have gone near that evil place again. One day Isaac was in the barn alone and here she came. And this time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She grabbed Isaac around the neck and tried to kiss him. About that time her husband walked in.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Oh, yes, Child. It was a death sentence. That farmer started yelling and slapping his wife around. He told Isaac to get off his property immediately, or he would call the sheriff. Isaac didn’t even take time to collect his things, and he certainly didn’t ask the farmer for the money he owed him. He was so scared that he came and lived with George and me for about a week after that.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said. “He shouldn’t have had to worry about it.”
“That didn’t make no difference. Back then a black man didn’t never want to be caught in a compromising situation with a white woman, especially a married one.
“Anyway, after staying with us for a week, Isaac thought things had settled down, so he went back home. A few days later, George found him hanging from a tree beside his house.”
I gasped. “That’s awful!”
“It was terrible. George nearly went crazy for a time after that. I tell you, that was one of the saddest funerals I’ve ever been to. Their dear mother screamed and passed out when they closed the casket. She had to be carried home. I tell you, Brian, some things in this world just ain’t right.”
“That’s a terrible story,” I said. “Do you think it was the farmer who did it?”
“I’m sure of it. I’m also sure others helped him. Isaac was a big man, and that farmer couldn’t have done it alone.
“God knew that old farmer was guilty too. Wasn’t very long after that he was killed in a tractor accident. Can’t say I felt sorry it happened; God forgive me.”
“Do you think they hung him just because he was black?”
“I know that’s why they did it. That’s the way things were back then, at least with some people. Things is a little better now, but there is still a lot of prejudice people out there. Thank goodness black people started standing up for themselves and things have gotten some better. I’m afraid I used to be one of those people who like to keep quiet and not stir up anything. Wouldn’t nothing have changed if it had depended on me, a fact I regret.
“If I was a young person growing up in this day and age, I wouldn’t be making a career out of working for no grumpy woman like your grandmother. And don’t you dare tell her I said such a thing, or I’ll deny it until my feet catch on fire. And you’ll have to answer to me later. Don’t get me wrong; I like your grandmother. She’s a good woman. She just don’t know what it’s like to have to struggle. She thinks struggling is carrying around that big ugly purse of hers. I tell you what, though, if I was growing up today, I’d get me an education and find me some kind of high-paying job. I’m not sure what that job would be, but I guarantee it wouldn’t have nothing to do with working for your penny-pinching grandmother. I’d do something that would make big a difference in the world.”
“Was anyone ever prejudice acting to you?” I said.
“Oh heavens yes, Child. Let me tell you a story about something that happened to me once.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “I love to hear you tell stories, but I guess this one won’t be a happy one like some of them.”
“When I was a young married woman, I’d never been outside of Kentucky. You wouldn’t believe it with Tennessee being just down the road, but I hadn’t. Then one day I got a letter from my Aunt Elsa in Georgia. They was having a big family reunion down there and wanted us to come. I told my husband, George, we just had to go. His family all lived here in Kentucky, but most of my family lived in Georgia, and I never had been there before. My mother met my father and moved here to Kentucky before I was born. My father and his brother both had jobs with the railroad at the time, made a pretty decent living. Well, George thought going to the reunion was a good idea too. I tell you, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. My mother said she was in too bad of health to make the trip, but she got her some feed sack material together and made me one of the prettiest dresses I’d ever seen. I couldn’t wait to get down there and show off that pretty dress.”
“I never heard of a feed sack dress,” I said.
“Back in those days, a lot of people didn’t have much money, and poor people like us was proud to have a dress made out of feed sack material. The sacks came in all kinds of beautiful colors and designs.
“We had an old model T that wasn’t much, but it was faster than walking. George cleaned that old car up and got it running good, and when the time came, we loaded it up and headed out. I had some money I’d saved up from cleaning houses and was feeling like a rich woman when we took off on that trip. We were getting hungry about the time we got to Nashville. We like to never have found us a place to eat. Every place we came to had signs up like ‘Whites Only’ or ‘No Coloreds’.”
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard
of,” I said.
“We finally did find us a little diner that would serve us. They sold us our food out the back door, and we sat in that junky old car and ate. I didn’t feel like such a proud rich woman anymore. The worst part was the food wasn’t even good. Every bit of it was overcooked, and it didn’t even have salt on it. Now what kind of place would serve food with no salt on it? I wanted to go in and tell them that, but George thought it would just be stirring up some trouble, you know, stirring up the cow pile. A cow pile may look dried up, but if you stir it, it’ll start to stink again. George was even less inclined to stir up cow piles than I was. He suggested that maybe everybody’s food tasted bad. I let him know that there was no way they’d have so many customers if they was serving a mess like what they gave us. People would be storming out throwing a fit. We swallowed our pride and swallowed what we could of our food and left.
“Now, don’t think I would just drive away if somebody tried to treat me like that today. I was a naïve girl back then, scared of just about everything. I’d be in there tearing the place up if a restaurant tried to serve me out the back door now days. My mouth would keep me in trouble all the time if things were still as bad as they were back then. Don’t get me wrong, I find plenty of things to rant about today, but at least things have gotten a little better. I’ve learned to speak up for myself over the years.
“Anyway, back then most of the roads were dirt, and there weren’t many gas stations. We got a little ways east of Nashville, and George started getting worried about running out of gas. We drove for miles and miles with no sign of a gas station. Then, finally, we came upon one. We pulled up to the pumps, and a greasy-looking young man came up to the window.
“‘We’re closed,’ he said.
“‘The sign says you’re open,’ George told him.
Chips of Red Paint Page 4