by Lisa Belmont
For the first time, I saw the color drain from Momma’s face, too. I wondered if she knew somewhere deep inside herself that Pa was to blame.
I got to thinking of all them critters she’d help when they were wounded. How she’d dote on them something fierce, mixing up concoctions of chamomile and marshmallow leaves. She’d steep them in hot water and apply them as a poultice, sometimes even making up a nesting box to give them a safe place to sleep. I wondered if she started thinking that Big Jim deserved to be treated at least as good as them critters.
“Big Jim,” Widow Jones said. “You’re staying at Whitehall until you’re all healed up, you hear? I don’t want you worrying about a thing.”
“No, ma’am.”
Widow Jones and Hattie Mae exchanged one of them looks that don’t need no words. It was from one mother to another. For a minute, I started wondering if Widow Jones was thinking of her own child buried outside.
Either way, she didn’t look none too happy and said, “Big Jim, you feel up to telling us what happened?”
Big Jim looked up at her, his lip quivering. She took his hand and told him it was all right. That no one should suffer like he’s done.
I couldn’t stand it anymore and left when Momma told me to get started on the laundry. I got to worrying about what Pa would do when he heard Big Jim was telling on him. Not to mention Widow Jones. I imagined she’d put us out in the cold. Pa without a job and me and Momma scrounging for rotten turnips in the garden.
I was so preoccupied, I poured Clorox bleach in Widow Jones’ Maytag washer. I didn’t realize it until all her red blouses came out pink. Lord, I wrung them out to dry, praying Widow Jones wouldn’t mind.
After I finished the laundry, I stopped in the library. Widow Jones had gone into town and told me I could do some reading in between chores. That’s where Hattie Mae found me, curled up in a lemon-colored chair next to a stack of easy readers.
“Remember what I said?” she scolded me.
“But Widow Jones ain’t here.”
“No, but your momma is.”
“She won’t be going in Big Jim’s room.”
Hattie Mae looked at me kind of funny, almost like she was trying to say she admired my determination and yet, wouldn’t let me have the satisfaction.
“Don’t get caught,” was all she said before she left.
I grabbed a few books and hightailed it into Big Jim’s room.
“I brought you some books,” I said. “They’ll keep your mind off your ankle.”
“Miss Chloe.”
“Yes,” I said, knowing what was on both of our minds.
“I ain’t told. I jes’ said it was some white man down by the river. Some man I ain’t never seen before.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my relief. “Did the doctor believe you?”
“I think so, but Widow Jones said she’s going to speak with her lawyer in Charleston. She’s real upset about what happened and thinks it’s Joss Bleekman’s doing. She said he ain’t caused nothing but trouble since he put up them lynching posters.”
I didn’t want to think how upset Pa would get when he learned about Widow Jones, so I spread the books on the bedspread and told Big Jim to choose what he wanted me to read.
Big Jim pointed to a book called Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Mr. Jones had lots of books about the sea, but this one looked kinda different. Inside, there was an illustration of a stormy sea and a man in a little wooden boat holding a harpoon. A whale’s tail splashed sea water over a few men struggling to get in the boat. I hadn’t realized I’d taken it and wondered if it’d be a good idea to read it, but Big Jim insisted. I got to reading, real slow and easy like, as Big Jim just lay back and closed his eyes.
“I’m listening, Miss Chloe.”
He looked downright peaceful until I got to the part where the narrator, Ishmael, says, “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however, the old sea-captains may order me about – however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way – either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.”
“Miss Chloe, what do you think he means when he says ‘Who ain’t a slave?’”
“I think he means even a sailor, a man of the sea, got to take orders.”
“Ya reckon?”
“Ain’t no ship gonna sail through all them treacherous waters without a captain barking out orders.”
“Reckon so.”
“That’s why there’s all them shipwrecks in the Ashley.”
“Never thought ‘bout other folks being slaves.”
“Maybe there’s lots of kinds of slavery,” I said, closing the book. “Kinds we don’t ever think about.”
Everything got real still when I said that. Big Jim looked at me with his big brown eyes, and they kinda melted me a little.
“Yessum,” he said. “I ‘spect there are.”
I went to the library that afternoon, reeling a little that, as Melville said, we’re all slaves in one way or another. I ran my fingers along the spines of the books. I didn’t want to read about plantations and slaves and all the things that must’ve gone on around these parts. I wanted to read about faraway places and fairy lands. Places that didn’t have no problems. And yet, as I touched the spines of all them books in Widow Jones’ library, they all seemed that way. Tainted with the past.
I was about to give up when I found what looked more like a ledger than a book. The leather was worn out and the binding was coming loose. I opened it to the first page.
DRAYTON JONES’ LEDGER – WHITEHALL PLANTATION 1858
It was handwritten in black ink and looked like the shopkeeper’s ledger that was kept on the front counter at Uncle Hickory’s store. The pages were stained and crinkly, like they’d been dipped in tea.
I flipped through a few pages and read about the income and expenditures of Whitehall Plantation. The cost of supplies and the amount of cotton picked. I didn’t think it was all that interesting until I got to the section where it listed the slaves owned by Drayton Jones. Samuel and George worked the fields along with Benjamin, Amos and Moses. I stopped reading at Moses. He was the one in Widow Jones’ story. The one that drowned in Foxhole Swamp. The ledger didn’t mention a wife, and I got to wondering about her.
I tucked the ledger in my satchel and went to the kitchen. Widow Jones decided some comfort food would help her and asked Hattie Mae to bring up some jam from the cellar.
“Raspberry, blackberry or strawberry?” Hattie Mae asked.
“Just bring them all. Baking will calm my nerves,” she said, getting out a mixing bowl. She fastened a white apron around her waist that looked utterly out of place with her pink chiffon dress and lustrous pearl necklace. “That lawyer of mine got me to thinking I oughta have Big Jim press charges.”
I gulped real big. I hoped Widow Jones wasn’t gonna talk Big Jim into sending Pa to jail. She got to fumbling around in the kitchen, pulling open drawers and slamming them shut. “Where’s Hattie Mae keep them spatulas?”
I opened the little drawer next to the sink and took out a long-handle rubber spatula. She poured flour and sugar in the bowl and held it in the crook of her arm, mixing it up real good.
“Ain’t never seen nothing like Big Jim’s back,” she said. “Boy’s probably gonna keep them scars for life.”
I looked out to the slave cabins. They glowed in the setting sun.
“Widow Jones, you think them slaves got whipped at Whitehall?”
Widow Jones stopped stirring and looked at me. “I imagine so.”
“Them overseers were mean sometimes, weren’t they?”
She put down the bowl and came to the window. We watched the sun melt behind the cabins like something in us was about near to setting. Part of me hated myself for being like one of the
m overseers. Maybe I didn’t whip Big Jim myself, but watching him get the tar beat out of him was darn near close.
“I think that’s why I like teaching Big Jim to read,” I said, feeling all at once that Widow Jones would understand. “Cuz at least that way he can escape Mills Hollow. He can just open one of them books and go right over to merry old England and King Arthur’s Court. Or, if he’d rather, he can go to Paris and be with the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Or, better still, he can hobnob with all them rich folks, like Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester. Why, I think that’s about the nicest thing I can do for him. Take him away from here.”
Widow Jones embraced me real tight. “I expect you’re right, Chloe. Sometimes we all gotta get away from what haunts us.”
I looked at her as the last pink rays of sun dipped behind the trees. I wondered what was haunting her but knew better than to ask about some skeleton hiding in her closet.
She slipped a letter off the counter and showed it to me. “My lawyer wants Big Jim to give a description of the person who beat him. To tell us where and when it happened. And any possible witnesses.”
I looked down at the letter and all them fancy words. I didn’t know if those words could help Big Jim or not.
“You think that boy is gonna say anything or is he just too darn scared?”
Too scared? It seemed like that’s all any of us were anymore. Scared out of our britches. I was scared of what happened to Big Jim and what might happen to Pa. I was scared to tell Widow Jones and even more scared to tell Momma. Scared of what she might think of Pa.
It was all I could do to help Hattie Mae when she brought the jars of jam up from the cellar. We set them on the counter, and she gave me a good glare.
“You done waxing Widow Jones’ floors?”
“Just got the foyer to do.”
“That floor won’t clean itself,” she said, taking the bowl Widow Jones had started on.
Hattie Mae got to working the batter real good and poured it in a pan. I got the oven lit and got real excited to spread all that jam on the sponge cake. Hattie Mae looked at her watch and said it’d be thirty minutes before it was cooked.
She got to working on a batch of biscuit dough, but I could tell she wasn’t none too happy about me helping in the kitchen. Every once in a while she’d nudge me out of the way like I was blocking her from getting to the baking soda or flour. Lord, I was a mile away from anything having to do with them buttermilk biscuits.
I just sat there with Widow Jones, slicing up strawberries for the cake, when Hattie Mae pushed the biscuits in the oven and left out the swinging door.
“Don’t mind, Hattie Mae,” Widow Jones said. “She’s awful upset about Big Jim.”
She wasn’t the only one. I felt all torn up myself.
I sliced a strawberry, right down the middle, and said, “Widow Jones, I read about Moses in the library, but was wondering what happened to his wife?”
“Moses who, child?”
“Moses who drowned in Foxhole Swamp.”
“Lord, did you find Drayton Jones’ old ledger? He kept good track of the plantation, didn’t he?”
“Yessum, but do you know what happened to her?”
Widow Jones got out the powdered sugar. She liked to sprinkle her sponge cakes real good, especially when they were going to be served to her ladies’ auxiliary club.
“Moses’ wife was sold shortly after the incident with Priscilla. Drayton made sure of it.”
“She was sold?” I said, looking out to the slave cabins.
“He’s got another ledger in the library somewhere. It’ll tell you where she was sent.”
Those slave cabins looked awful lonely gleaming in the moonlight, even though Puddingtate had whitewashed them and swept them out for the Charleston Historical Society. They’d come around and taken pictures and even done a write-up on Whitehall.
When I didn’t take my eyes off the cabins, Widow Jones said, “If I knew you’d get so worked up about Whitehall’s history, I would’ve shown you Drayton’s ledgers a long time ago. Now, are you gonna help me with this cream filling or not?”
“Yessum,” I said, getting up and finding the recipe book behind a stack of Cosmopolitan magazines.
I knew I was never gonna get to the floors at this rate, but it was good to get my mind off Big Jim. I got out the heavy cream and lemon curd, and we liked to have a good time mixing up that filling.
When we were done, I brought Big Jim a slice of the jam cake we’d made.
“I thought this might be better n’ a book,” I told him.
I just watched him eat, laughing when he got jam on his chin. It was the first time he’d had a good appetite since he got hurt. He licked the plate clean and asked for another slice.
It was a peace offering, I realized. Me serving Big Jim. I would’ve done it for the rest of my life if it’d help.
2 Cor 9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. KJV
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Late that evening there was a knock on the front door. Rufus barked something fierce, and Pa rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He got up from the rocker while Momma and I spread peanut butter on a bowl of pinecones.
Pa scratched his hind end and buttoned his flannel shirt so his chest hair wasn’t poking out in all directions. He opened the door, and Mr. Iverson stood there dressed in his Sunday best with a group from church. Momma motioned me to the door, and we stood behind Pa, wondering what in the world was going on.
Mr. Iverson removed his hat and said, “Sorry to come at this late hour, but we’ve heard some distressing news about a fellow Christian brother. A nice young man in our community.”
“Is that right?” Pa said.
I looked out at all them nicely dressed folks and spied Miss Lilly. She was standing next to the young man she’d started dating. She had on a real pretty coat and sparkly earrings that caught the light from the porch.
“We’re taking up a collection and praying that he gets back to good health.”
“Uh-huh,” Pa said. “You want Charity to bake a cake?”
“A cake would be nice, but we figured money would be the most helpful. Anything you can spare would be greatly appreciated by the family.”
If Pa respected anybody, it was the preacher.
“I think he’s a real fine man,” he told Momma not two Sundays ago. He was, too. Everybody in town said Mr. Iverson was always doing good things for folks. Course, I didn’t think Pa knew he visited the sick folks in the Negro section the same as the white folks.
Pa motioned for Momma to get the tin. It was a little can where Pa kept his money. Caleb and I weren’t supposed to know it was stashed in the pantry, so I pretended not to notice when Momma brought it from the kitchen. Lord, it wasn’t like Pa to give money away, but since the good reverend was standing on our front porch, I think Pa figured it was worthwhile.
“Here you are,” Momma said, handing Mr. Iverson a dollar bill.
Why, a dollar could buy Pa a new flannel shirt. Or seven loaves of bread down at Uncle Hickory’s store.
“A dollar?” Pa said, blushing real bright. “We can give more than that.”
He took a five-dollar bill from the tin like he’s Mr. Moneybags and made sure everyone got a good glimpse of Abraham Lincoln’s face. Lord, I felt my eyes pop open wide when he dropped the bill into the collection plate.
“Hope he gets better real fast,” Pa said, crossing his arms and looking out over the congregation like ain’t I something?
“Much obliged,” Mr. Iverson said. “You’ll feel real good knowing your money’s going to a worthy cause.”
“I’m sure it is,” Pa said, flashing a toothy grin. “What’d you say the young man’s name was?”
“James Robinson,” Mr. Iverson said, tipping his hat. “Thanks again for your Christian generosity.”
I looked at Pa. It didn’t register until he’d closed the d
oor. He scratched his head and stood there with his hands on his hips like he’s contemplating the meaning of life.
“What’s Hattie Mae’s last name?”
Momma knew where this was going and hemmed and hawed. “Don’t remember.”
“It’s Robinson, ain’t it?”
“Reckon so.”
Pa’s mouth liked to drop to the floor. He didn’t say nothing. He just went to his room and slammed the door. He’d just given six whole dollars to Big Jim.
Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.
Ida B. Wells
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Momma wasn’t feeling so good the next morning, so she stayed home. I went ahead to Widow Jones’ and got her laundry sorted and washed. I was glad she didn’t get upset about her blouses turning pink. Seemed like she had other things on her mind. Besides, she had more clothes than you could shake a stick at. There were all them blouses from the little stores in Charleston and the boutiques on Broad Street where the shopkeepers knew her by name. And then there were the silk scarves she was so fond of wearing. Not to mention them dresses. Lots of light, airy dresses for Sunday socials.
I was so tuckered by the time I wrung out her last pair of silk undies that I could’ve gone to sleep right beside her Maytag washer, but I knew Big Jim would be nodding off to sleep, so I went to tell him goodbye. Widow Jones’ mother-of-pearl clock chimed on the nightstand, and it made me think of what she’d said. My clocks help me remember what’s important. Maybe, in some kind of way, they helped me, too.
I poured Big Jim a glass of water and told him I’d see him in the morning. He closed his eyes and went right off to sleep.
I wasn’t looking forward to the walk home. It was dark out, and Caleb said the ghost of Foxhole Swamp liked to shriek something fierce at lonely travelers. I figured I could manage though since I had Rufus.
I closed the door to Big Jim’s room and made the long walk down the hall. I grabbed my sweater from the closet, trying to ignore the ruckus Hattie Mae was making in the kitchen. I figured she’d seen a spider. Last April she found a big web in the cellar and wouldn’t go downstairs until Puddingtate cleared it out. Widow Jones’ garden party had to wait for their bourbon sours and a few ladies whispered that Widow Jones needed better help.