Bette caught the door with her arm. “I ain’t accustomed to goin’ round to no back door. I came to see Miz Mayfield.”
The butler looked at Bette and her raiment with disdain. “Who shall I say is calling?”
Looking him right in the eye, Ma Bette said simply, “The other Miz Mayfield.”
“Let her in,” a drawl of a voice instructed the butler.
Then Julius Mayfield’s auburn- and white-haired wife appeared in the foyer.
“Why Bette, I haven’t seen you since Sweet Tamarind, when we were all together . . .” Her voice trailed off as if the sentence could never be finished.
Ma Bette was silent.
“What is it you want?” the white Miz Mayfield asked pointedly. “Bette, I spoke to you. What do you want? What is it I can do for you?”
Finally Bette said, “There’s something we can do for each other, I do believe.”
Taken aback and more than a little angered, Mrs. Mayfield started out of the foyer. “Follow me, then,” she said, leading Bette to the study, an oval room flushed with golden light filtering through the shuttered French windows. She sat primly on a couch, leaving Bette standing.
“Well, now we’re alone. I want to know what you want, bold enough to walk to my front door.”
Ma Bette remained composed. “Miz Mayfield, I don’t and didn’t never mean you no disrespect. And I’ve never asked you Mayfields for anything after serving Master Julius all his natural-born life, but now we’re in a terribleness of trouble. And I needs your help.”
Sitting back and arranging her skirt, the white Mrs. Mayfield surveyed the colored woman whom she’d resented for so many years. All she saw was a weathered old woman in an outlandish outfit befitting a child’s first communion. “You want me to give you money?” she laughed.
And as Mrs. Mayfield laughed, Bette began to lay out on the couch photographs of Julius’s colored family: Julius with Bette by a swing, Julius with Blanche on his knee, Elma and Juliet making flower garlands. The next picture was Ma Bette with a baby boy child swaddled in a little blanket the weaver women had made special, lying in the simple crib Lijah-Lah crafted, then last Julius and the white Mrs. Mayfield with the same boy child wrapped in the same blanket, but his bonnet with ribbons and silk.
Ma Bette bitterly fingered the photograph of Mrs. Mayfield with the baby in her arms, the picture she’d taken off Julius after she’d killed him. “Your youngest, I b’lieve, your only son, our baby boy.”
Mrs. Mayfield reached for the couch back to steady herself before she collapsed. Bette smiled. “Ain’t it funny to ya that Julius never thought he could have himself a son by either one of us, but I fooled him, didn’t I?”
All of a sudden the white Mrs. Mayfield bolted up. “Get out of here, you nigger bitch! Get out of my house this minute!”
Bette didn’t move. She only said, “Don’t never call me out of my name again.”
Mrs. Mayfield, whose hair seemed to turn wholly white in seconds, fell back into the comfort of the chaise. Bette was not yet finished with her task, however.
“Been so long now I almost forgot I had myself a boy chile, but Julius III is most an old man hisself. He nevah knew nothin’ ’bout me, ’cept I was Massa’s fancy gal. What’s that to think about your mama?”
Mrs. Mayfield started up at the thought that Julius might discover that his mother was a nigger wench. Bette ignored her fury and continued, “Besides, I always liked girl chirren. They sensible, easier to deal with. Your son’s a important man now. And I don’t want to see any bad things befall him or your family.”
“You want money?” Mrs. Mayfield blurted with venom.
“Just enough to help my granddaughter get back on her feet and take care of her two chirren. They father deserted . . . You can keep the pictures. I don’t look my best in them anyway,” Bette casually replied.
“How do I know that there aren’t any more of these?” Mrs. Mayfield asked.
“I tol’ you I don’t look good. There ain’t no more,” Bette said forcefully.
“How much do you want, nigger?” Mrs. Mayfield asked with contempt.
Ma Bette answered matter-of-factly, “Massa Julius says he had uh offer fuh me once. Said em could fetch turty-tree hunnud dollah, but dis niggah wort more ’n dot. I reckon it’ll do ’bout now.” Acting as quickly as she could to remove this blight from her home, Mrs. Mayfield left Bette in the study only as long as it took her to get the money.
Bette said sweetly, “Thank you, m’am, I won’t be troublin’ you again.” Family’s more ’n blood, blood more ’n family. And she departed as she entered, out the front door.
Tending after Osceola, Lizzie, and Elma overwhelmed Raymond with their talk of Deke and the recruiter, but Lizzie’s intention that her sister get out of Charleston with Raymond had not dimished. Lizzie and Osceola together were almost more enthusiastic about the coupling of Elma and Raymond than were the two lovers themselves. Almost magically the four arrived at the Reverend Caldwell’s door, knocking loudly and calling out to him they had an emergency. The Reverend came to the door to see to the ruckus. Raymond in his inimitable way quieted the group and explained, “We wish to be married so that we can continue on to New York to make our home.”
The Reverend scratched his head, puzzled. “Does your mother know about this, Elma?”
“Well, no sir, not yet. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet, but she’s certainly met Raymond, sir.”
Lizzie was growing restless with all this talk. She jumped in front of Elma and Raymond and whispered loudly to the Reverend, “They have to get married! Don’t you understand?”
Thinking that Elma must be with child, the Reverend hurried the quartet into his small parlor to perform the ceremony. Enough had happened to the Winrow family, Eudora didn’t need a daughter with so much promise to disgrace her as well. Elma could only hear the murmuring of the minister’s voice, “Do you Elma take this man Raymond to be your lawful wedded husband to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, to honor and obey for all the days of your life, till death do you part?”
Elma heard herself say “I do” resolutely. Raymond looked at her with such intensity when he said his vows that Elma believed the Holy Spirit had truly visited them.
Lizzie and Osceola eyed each other and the newly wedded couple, blushing. Was this what the future held for them as well? Elma and Raymond were kissing everyone, the Reverend, Lizzie and Osceola, each other. They almost forgot they had a train to catch and a mother to see. A mother whose hard work and dreams had intended for Elma to finish college. What were they going to say? All they knew was they were in love and legally married.
Eudora could tell them a thing or two about love, about working till you couldn’t stand, sewing till your fingers bled, doing without so long you couldn’t imagine plenty, staying with a man more like the Devil than a husband for the good of the family. Eudora could tell them about love all right, but what love were they showing her to get married at a time like this? These were Elma’s thoughts as they headed towards their farm, or what used to be their farm.
One of Bette’s clients had given her a ride back to the Winrow place, where Eudora was busy packing the years of sacrifice away with every article she touched. She came across dresses that both Lizzie and Elma had worn, old bonnets, and quilt upon quilt that had kept them warm. “Well, I wondered what had happened to you, Mama, when you know how much we have to do before the move. I spoke to Blanche. We can stay there with her, all those Diggses, for a few weeks till we get on our feet.”
Eudora brushed her hair out of her face, waiting for some answer from Ma Bette, who simply took the money out and placed it on the table. Eudora stopped what she was doing, dumbfounded.
“Mama, where’d this come from?”
Ma Bette, enjoying Eudora’s surprise, said, “A rainy day. Never you mind and don’t ask me no more questions. Just be grateful to the spirits. Now we don’t haveta spend no time with those Diggs people
at all. You’re free, Eudora, to do what you must, but hold on to it, ’cause there won’t be no more luck like this for us in a long while.”
Eudora, who hoarded her hugs so often now, almost squeezed the life out of her grandmother, “I love you, Granma,” and wept all her troubles from her taut body.
Lizzie burst into the room like a cyclone, only to stop on a dime. She’d never seen her mother cry.
Lizzie approached her mother to soothe her, but Eudora only reached out to her, gently trying to let Lizzie know that nothing was wrong. “I’m all right, darlin’. Don’t you bother yourself about me.”
Thinking that her mother was crying about losing the farm, Lizzie confusedly began, “Mama, we’re gointa be just fine, Elma’s going to New York and she and Raymond are gointa send money down here to us, and I’m gointa get a job and me and Osceola are gointa give you all our money. Ain’t that right, Osceola?”
Eudora laughed and pointed to the money on the table. Lizzie’s eyes just about popped out of her head. Eudora assured Lizzie that there was nothing to worry about.
“Cuz Pa is comin’ back to us, I know he is!”
Eudora didn’t raise her voice, she merely put her finger to her mouth, leaving Lizzie to think all she needed to do was hush for now. No more chatter. Only a peace Lizzie’d never seen on her mother’s face.
Lizzie’s exclamation brought Elma and Raymond into the room. Eudora roused herself. “Listen everyone, we’re going to be all right. We can move into Charleston like proper folks.”
The entire brood fell into congratulating hugs and kisses. Betty invited Raymond and Osceola to join them for a repast that they could now truly enjoy. “Late supper,” she chuckled, “not the last.”
Elma pulled away from the celebrants to talk quietly with her mother. “Mama, I’ve got something to tell you.” Finally, with Eudora’s full attention fixed on her, Elma said, “Mama, Raymond and I were married this evening. We’re married and in love, Mama. Please be happy for me.”
Elma stood absolutely still waiting for a barrage of anger from her mother, but instead Eudora stroked her daughter’s face and hugged her fiercely. “Oh Elma, I’m so glad for you. You don’t know what a blessing that is to be married and in love. I wish you years of happiness. Where is my new son, Raymond? Come on over here. Do you promise me to love Elma and care for her gently? That’s all I ask.”
Raymond nodded yes. And Eudora hugged Raymond, too. She was on her way to hugging Osceola when Lizzie, not trusting her mama’s change in temperament, jumped between them. So Eudora hugged Lizzie again. It felt awkward to be held so close by her mother. Lizzie was used to Tom’s loose hugs and affectionate kisses, but her mother had always been so standoffish. Raymond, too, was startled by Eudora’s response to the marriage. He told his bride, “See, she’s not that bad, Elma. Everyone wants you to be happy, and I intend to do just that, make you happy.”
There was such commotion Lizzie couldn’t decide which of her stories to tell Eudora and Ma Bette first. There was the duet with Phil Smith, the fight with Deke, and the Reverend marrying the lovers. Lizzie had more to talk about than there was air in the room. Raymond and Elma were trying to explain their plans for New York. Eudora shook her head yes to everything they said. The calm emanating from Eudora enveloped the whole house. The quieter it got, the more Lizzie felt estranged. The house she was used to had been full of fury and music. But the cause of that, her father, had disappeared, and this new Winrow household felt unnatural to her. Lizzie walked with Osceola to the porch, where she waved good-bye to him as he captured fireflies and then freed them in her direction. Only Ma Bette was outside with the land now. Suddenly looking mature for a child her age, Lizzie sat next to her great-grandmother.
“Ma Bette,” she said quietly, “he ain’t comin’ back, is he?”
“Don’t seem likely.”
“Moon’s got a cloud ’round it.”
“Rain’s comin’.”
13
When Tom Winrow disappeared, Dora had to think of the practical things—how to make ends meet, how to position the family in society, regain dignity. Since Elma had decided to settle in New York, Dora moved with Mah Bette and Lizzie into the old flat on Rose Tree Lane, which she was now buying over time from her cousin Roswell Diggs. Married down and brought down further, right back where I started. Dora consumed herself with industry. She took on extra work from Yum Lee, added a sideline millinery business around the holiday season, clandestinely sold piece-work to the mail-order catalogue mills, and hoarded her savings against every imagined calamity. Another earthquake, or a hurricane! Readymade clothes just ruinin’ my trade!
In those years, she had little time to attend to her second daughter. She was too busy puttin’ a roof over their heads and food on the table to realize that her child lived outdoors. It didn’t help that Lizzie, with her muscular build, her broad flat face and wide smile, was an impish facsimile of the man who had abandoned them. By the time Dora looked up from her Singer sewing machine, her daughter had grown up—wild.
Lizzie Winrow had an energy that could not be contained by bows, straps, buckles, or belts. Dresses cut the stride of her run. Buttons resisted wrestling bouts. Seams were meant to be split. Fifteen minutes after Mah Bette pulled her hair straight, she looked as if she had just arisen, the edges at her temples in gossamer spikes and her crown the crest of a cockatoo. She could run faster, throw further, spit longer, and hollah louder than any boy she knew. “Evuh!” Only difference she could see was that she couldn’t pee in an arc. She tried a couple of times to invent a technique for girls, only to decide that such a contest was a waste of her time. “What a peein’ contest got to do with progress?”
Lizzie never did like to do things she was supposed to, never liked to be caught in the ranks of what the respected expected. Since her pa was gone, she felt disobliged to obey anyone. She was full of anger with no place to put it but into trouble. She could win most any fight, but she rarely had to. She’d made an early discovery—get loud and improvise a barrage of epithets to make your assailant shrink from blows of pure sound. Expert at the dozens, she turned her hostility into pearls of wit, salting the pain of her victim with the complicit mockery of the crowd, her jocular slander, the parry, thrust, and contact. With military precision, she had an instinct for detecting the path straight to the heart. Audience was her armor, laughter reinforcement. An audience insured she would never feel abandoned again. She would never risk trusting her feelings to any one person again. But a crowd? That was a different story. With a wild shock of red and blond hair, a splash of freckles across her nose, her broad juicy mouth always had somethin’ to say. Talking trash, she tried to claim her place in the world by announcing, “I am here!”
Most often Lizzie could be found rambling with her two friends, Osceola and Flip. “I forbid you to associate with either of them,” her mother had said. As a consequence, Lizzie made the two boys her best buddies. While Lizzie knew Ossie from Pilar’s, his official home was the Orange Street Orphanage Asylum, or what folks fondly used to call Crook School. By the turn of the century, the shelter was no more than four damp walls and rows of tattered cots shared with rats and waterbugs. Like most, Ossie, when he could, scrambled out the shutterless windows onto the street, down to the harbor and market district where the ambitious could make money. At twelve he left the home altogether and, following his older brother Deke, made his living on the streets. He had learned some music fundamentals from Mr. Mikell, the music teacher at the home. The rest of his musical education he picked up from the veterans who frequented Pilar’s Palace of Pleasure—Professor Jocelyn on stride, Tom Winrow on cornet before he left, the Pullman porter Doc Sullivan, sittin’ in sometimes on drums, and the regulars like Mingo and Black Tad, with Deke’s girl Tillie on vocals when she wasn’t juiced. Osceola Turner grew up sitting on the piano bench next to Mr. Jocelyn, watching the Professor’s webbed fingers hitting a thousand notes. Being “forbidden to set foot in that place,”
Lizzie would watch the band and pick up what she could out the side window. Deke stood at the door as manager and bouncer, his wide chest sporting custom-made suits. She had seen Deke threaten her pa the day he disappeared and she vowed he would one day answer for that. Deke Turner was the last one to see her father. He knows something. But Deke’s malevolence intimidated her. She had seen him drag a patron from Pilar’s and beat his face to a pulp, gut-punch the girl who had caused the trouble, then straighten his suit and walk back in as if nothing had happened. She steered clear, with one exception, her friendship with Ossie, Deke’s little brother, but the thought of revenge always resided in the back of her mind. One day she would steal away something he loved. Show you how it feels.
If Osceola was her best friend, Flip was their white man. Standing on the corner, arms akimbo in a striped tee-shirt and corduroys worn at the knees, the young Flip had introduced himself, saying, “Let me be your white man. Every colored act need a white man to get along. I’m offerin’ to be yorn.” Flip was the eventual son of Tildie Bonneau and Coleridge McKinley. After Tildie was stood up at the altar by “that Northern scoundrel,” her first cousin Cole, “tragically infirmed by a hooligan who was never apprehended,” married her as a token of honor and affection and mutual necessity. A month later they produced a daughter and some years later a son, Coleridge IV, whom everyone called Flip. Some years after that the elder Cole bought an old theater and converted it to a movie palace, just in time for the 1915 Charleston premiere of The Birth of a Nation. Flip grew up spending half of his time at the family home on Everett Street and half in the alleys behind the Bijoux on King. True to family history, Flip liked runnin’ wild with Negroes.
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