One Day She'll Darken

by Fauna Hodel

  Chris always met her there after he finished work at the hotel, but on this day he was more than an hour late. When he finally arrived, Jimmie’s irritation was evident in her gaze; she suspected the worst. “Where you been?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? I had some things to take care of.”

  “What kind of things? Things that wiggle their ass?”

  Chris gave a calculating glance. “I don’t know where you get your ideas from, and at this point, I really don’t care.” He motioned for her to follow him as he headed out of the casino and into the parking lot for the drive home.

  “I get my ideas from what I see with my own eyes,” she continued, following along for just a moment, then took the lead and let Chris follow. “I been watching you with my niece, how you two been carryin’ on.”

  “Carryin’ on? There ain’t no carrying on. Oh, woman, what’s with you?”

  “Yeah, you think I don’t know what you been doing behind my back! That girl’s been going out of her way to keep it from me. Always ironing your clothes, picking up after you, following you around likes a little puppy dog.”

  “That’s why she’s here,” Chris snapped back.

  “And you. You can’t keep your eyes off of her breasts, staring her up and down every time she walks with that ass of hers shakin’ like jelly.”

  “That’s nonsense! Why, that girl is only trying to keep out of your way by helping to keep the house straight and taking care of Patta. Now you accusing me of messing with her. What the hell do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re a damn snake—that’s what I think!”

  Jimmie saw the veins rising from his neck as he slammed the car door shut and firmly took control of the wheel. “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “I ain’t no such thing. I know that girl since she was born,” said Jimmie, “and in all her years she had boys chasin’ her because she’s so pretty and that ain’t never changed and she knows it, too!”

  When the car stopped in front of the house, Jimmie noticed the front lights go off in the dining room, replaced by candlelight flickering in the window. “Now what she up to. She must got one of her boyfriends in there.”

  As Chris entered the front door, with Jimmie a step behind, Sally met them wearing a light blue dress. An old recording by the Ink Spots was scratching away on the phonograph in the background. The table was set perfectly for two, with Jimmie’s best satin tablecloth and fine china. Two candles on the table cast the only light in the room that made the silverware, glasses and Sally’s big brown eyes sparkle in harmony.

  Chris grinned. “Blessie, look at the beautiful table Sally’s set here,” he said, “And what is it that smells so good?”

  “It’s about time you two got home,” said Sally. “I made dinner and been keeping it warm for the last half-hour. I expected you a little earlier. Come, sit down. And wait till you see what I made for dessert!”

  “Dessert!” said Chris, “Well . . . what’s the occasion?”

  “I’ll tell you what the occasion is,” growled Jimmie in a slow, deliberate, and strained voice that froze everything but the candles.

  Chris quickly tried to make light of her tone. “Well, it must be something very special.”

  Before Chris uttered another word, Jimmie reached for the end of the tablecloth and violently yanked it from the table propelling silverware and glasses in every direction. In an instant, Sally’s romantic setting that she so meticulously prepared was now garbage littering the floor. Jimmie charged after her niece, knocking over the chair, yelling incoherently, only to be stopped by Chris blocking her way. Jimmie knew her wrath hit its mark as she gloated over Sally’s tears.

  “I know what you’ve been up to, you damn little whore! Ever since you come into my house you been trying to get your little hands wrapped around my man. I’m watching you all the time. Don’t think I don’t know what the fuck’s going on between you two. The only reason I let you stay is cause you’re my niece, and I feel sorry for your Momma!”

  “Blessie!” yelled Chris. “What the hell are you saying! Are you insane? How could you even think that about your own niece after all she’s been doing around here to help you?”

  Sally pushed herself from the protection of Chris and charged through door into the night. Jimmie turned to Chris and saw contempt in his eyes. “If this is what you believe in your twisted, drunken mind,” Chris said, “then there is nothing I can say to make you believe anything else. I can’t be bothered with you and your stupid jealousies any longer. I got my own life to live.”

  Jimmie began to speak, but Chris steadied his broad hand in her face, stopping her cold. She watched him stomp into the bedroom to return with only a small suitcase. That would be the last Jimmie would see of the only man she had ever cared for; he was gone forever.

  CHAPTER 6

  Chris left with all of the assets: the car, the bank account and the real estate, leaving Jimmie Lee with the liabilities, including Patta, who she now had to raise on her own. Keeping regular hours at the Riverside Hotel and taking care of a baby proved impossible. She quit her job, to the delight of her employers, and began cleaning houses a few days each week. Her work was sporadic, never earning quite enough to get by and always spending more than she made. Bills piled up and Jimmie borrowed from her family and close friends, but that sliced deeply into her pride, particularly after having been the center of attention for most of her life. Her dream of celebrity slowly dissipated with the weight of responsibility. But her generosity and impulsiveness never waned. At times she tossed silver dollars to neighborhood kids to let them know she was alive. She was poor and generous, an unfortunate combination.

  Always under the threat of repossessing the few things she bought on time, Jimmie tried charm to fend off the repo man, but her excuses only made them more aggressive, often cornering her on the street. To keep them at bay, Jimmie sometimes returned home with an admirer from the New China Club, deliberately showing off Patta. She told most of them that she was babysitting for some white folks. However, to those she trusted, she told the truth. The sight of a little white girl calling Jimmie, “Momma,” easily persuaded even her most down-and-out suitors to kick in a deuce to help her cause.

  Jimmie Lee sat on an old wooden stool on the porch drinking gin and 7-Up out of a mug while watching Pat play in front of the house. Jimmie fixed her gaze on the baby; her eyes began to swell with tears. “How I’m gonna keep you?” Jimmie murmured. “You’re my whole life. I can’t let them take you away from me.”

  “What’s the matter, Momma? You ain’t feeling good?”

  “No baby, I’m just worried about you. I don’t want anyone to take you away from me.”

  “Who’s gonna take me away? You’re my momma. I stay with you.”

  “I want you to stay. But I ain’t your real momma. She’s someone else.”

  Pat looked up again with a puzzled and curious expression; she wasn’t too young to grasp the concept.

  Jimmie Lee continued, “You’re three and a half years old now. You’re old enough now to understand some things,” Jimmie Lee said as she shuffled down and sat face to face with her daughter.

  “What kinda things, Momma? Like why you walk funny sometimes?”

  “No, not that. That’s something you shouldn’t be worried or even thinking about. I drink cause Chris walked out on me and you. He left me alone with nothing. No money, no car, no job, and you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you,” she gazed sternly. “He left me and you. And he left without getting any adoption papers signed, so you don’t even belong to me.”

  “Yes I do. I belong to you, Momma.”

  “Well, how do I know that? I ain’t got no papers that say you belong to me.”

  Pat looked uncomfortable. Jimmie knew the baby didn’t understand, but continued anyway, “Are you gonna just up and leave me just like your daddy? Huh? You can, you know. You could just walk out that door anytime you want. I ain’t your
real momma. Do you want to leave? Do you want to leave me?”

  Pat grabbed hold of her momma and held on tightly. “No, no, I don’t want to leave you. I’m never gonna leave. You’re my momma.”

  “If your daddy, Chris—and he’s ain’t your real daddy—hadn’t left us with no money, and if he did what he was supposed to do with the paperwork, then no one in the world would be able to take you away from me. But he didn’t. So we got to be careful about who we tell what to. I’ve got to protect you from those white people who would take you away in a flash.”

  Pat stood back and stared at Jimmie. “Tell me who’s my real momma,” she said.

  “Well, she’s something else.” Just then she noticed a car driving slowly down the street. “And someday, I’ll tell you all about her. But right now we got to go inside.” She swooped the child up and fled inside, locking the door behind her. She peered out the window and realized the car drove by the house without stopping.

  Later that afternoon, Hemphill, a boyfriend of Jimmie’s stopped by for his occasional visit. Jimmie was in no mood for a romp this day and let her feelings be known. That led to an argument. As the commotion intensified, Jimmie filled a pot of water, placed it on the stove, and brought it to a boil. In between her turns at hurling high-pitched epithets, she began humming an eerie, inharmonious tune. Jimmie eyed Pat who was hiding her head, and visibly distressed. Jimmie knew that her bad-temper was useful for controlling any situation. As the argument reached a peak, she grabbed the pot and flung the scalding water into Hemphill’s face.

  His wild screams crashed through Pat’s protected world. Shocked by Hemphill’s expression of agony, shocked by the extremity of Jimmie’s action, Pat froze in horror when a few minutes later the police were outside the door ready to investigate the screaming. When Jimmie heard the banging at the door, she hid Pat in the closet, avoiding any explanation of her presence to the officers.

  She congratulated herself for talking her way out of being arrested by sloughing the incident off as an accident. But the police didn’t much care anyway. They saw it as just two coloreds trying to kill each other—and to them that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  It was later that evening that Jimmie realized it would be better if Pat stayed with her mother for a while. “Patta, we’re gonna take a trip to see my momma. Would you like that?”

  “Who’s your momma?” Pat asked.

  “Who’s my momma? My momma is my momma. Everybody’s got a momma.” She paused and look at Pat. “Yeah, we’ll take the bus and you could watch out the window. Maybe if you’re real good, I’ll let you stay there with Big Momma, too. Sound good?”

  “Where’s her house?” Pat asked.

  “Oh, it’s far from here, Los Angeles. That’s where they make all of the movies,” Jimmie said.

  “Does Big Momma make movies?”

  “No, you silly thing,” Jimmie giggled. “If Big Momma made movies then I’d be a star already. I’d be on TV and mixin’ with all the other stars. I’m a good actress, too. You know that?” She looked down at the baby and made her eyes open wide. “Why I’m as good as any of them. I can sing just as good as Lena Horne. And I’m prettier than all of them. And someday I’m gonna be famous and rich, too. I woulda been on my way already if you didn’t come along.”

  To the child the Greyhound Bus was big and bright—an adventure. Yet, to Jimmie it was a place to be cautious, a holdover from her days in Mississippi. They sat in the back. Pat stood on the seat near the window watching the mountains and desert pass by. The trip still seemed to take forever.

  When they arrived at the bus depot in Los Angeles, Pat saw the woman that Jimmie called Big Momma standing with a warm, glowing smile and arms open wide. Pat knew she would be safe.

  “Oh my, my, what a big girl you getting to be!” Big Momma said as she swooped the child off of her feet and into her arms. “You are about the most beautiful child I’d ever seen. And look at that blond hair, all curly and such.”

  Pat returned the smile and quickly gave Big Momma a kiss on the cheek. “You Momma’s momma?”

  “Yes I am, child, but let me put you down cause you are just a bit too big to be holding on to.”

  Together they took a cab to Big Momma’s house on East Fifty-sixth. It was a home more refined than the dwelling that Pat was accustomed to in Sparks. With two bedrooms and a big kitchen and a large parlor, it had more than enough space for a three year old. She enjoyed the conveniences too: a front porch closed in with screens and glass, a brick stoop with big planters at each end, and a small front yard with lots of colorful flowers. Inside, Big Momma kept dozens of interesting objects in a massive glass china closet: small statues, pictures of saints, souvenirs, candles, black-and-white photographs of her family, and odd curios that endlessly amused Pat.

  As the two women watched her enjoy her new surroundings, Big Momma motioned for Jimmie to come into the kitchen out of earshot. “What are going to do with that child?” Pat overheard Big Momma say. “When she’s a baby that’s one thing, but she’s getting big and she sure isn’t getting any darker, no matter what you tried to do.”

  Pat stepped closer toward the voices, but out of view.

  “I know, I know. She’s such a sweet child and I love her like she was my own, and I’m gonna do what I said I was gonna do. I’m gonna keep her, except right now I need to get some things straightened out at home and I need to leave her with you for a while,” Jimmie said.

  “You’re gonna keep her? Do you have any idea what kinda problems you in for trying to raise a white child?” Big Momma said.

  “Momma, this ain’t Mississippi. You living in the past, this is modern times. They don’t hang you from the nearest branch no more. They don’t run you off with tar and feathers. . . .”

  “Now you listen to me,” Big Momma interrupted, “nothing has changed. I’m as God fearing as anyone and I’ve seen what they can do without hanging you from a tree. And you, as spunky as you are, ain’t gonna be able to deal with what they do to you when they find you holding on to a white child that you don’t have adoption papers for. Even if you did get the papers, it still wouldn’t matter. That child belongs with her own people. You know that.”

  “Well she’s mine and I’m not gonna let anyone take her away from me,” Jimmie said.

  “But she’s white! And you hate them.”

  “Her birth certificate says otherwise and I’m gonna teach her to be black like me.”

  Jimmie Lee returned to Sparks the following day. Pat was so busy with all the new things to do that she didn’t notice until after supper that evening that her momma wasn’t there, “Where’s Momma and when’s Momma coming to put me in bed?” she asked.

  “Your momma hasn’t been feeling very well since Chris went away, so she had to go back to Sparks and she wanted you to stay here with me.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “Oh she’ll be back, don’t you worry about that.”

  The child just sat in thought. Then Big Momma added, “Are you afraid of Jimmie . . . I mean your momma?”

  “She scares me sometimes, but I’m never gonna leave her.”

  “You love your momma, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, she’s my momma.

  “Listen, Pat,” Big Momma got up close to her, “if your momma does something that seems crazy, or gets angry or starts trouble of some kind and you get scared, here is what I want you to do. Fold your hands together like this and pray to God and He’ll send His angels to protect you and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  “Pray to God, who’s God?”

  “God is the One who’ll keep you safe, He is the One who made you and He is always lookin’ out for His little girls to make sure nothing can happen to them. So when you need help of any kind, just say, ‘Dear God, it’s me, little Pat, and I need Your help to protect me from the bad thing that may happen to me.”

  “And you know what? He’ll send His angels around just to watch over you. It works
all the time. You just got to believe it.”

  Pat smiled and let out a sigh as if the weight was lifted from her tiny shoulders. Big Momma gave her a big hug and put her to bed.

  For the first few days, Pat slept in the bed with Big Momma, but then she moved Pat into a room with Big Momma’s nephew. Johnny was about ten and watched over her like a big brother.

  Big Momma took Pat and Big Johnny all over the city with her—to shop at the grocers, to the church, to pay some bills, or to the bank. Sometimes she took Pat to work with her at the different homes where she worked as a cleaning woman. Mrs. Rolstadt was one she respected and admired.

  “Well, who’s this lovely little lady?” the woman asked as Pat stood by the couch fiddling with her hands.

  Big Momma quickly replied, “I’m babysitting while her mother is up in Reno. She hasn’t been feeling very well and she asked if I’d take care of her. And it’s been a delight.”

  “Oh, lovely.” The woman knelt down near the child and looked right into her eyes. “You are a cutie. What’s your name?”

  Pat looked up at Big Momma as if to ask for approval. She didn’t answer. “Her name is Pat,” said Big Momma.

  “Well, Pat, would you like some cookies and milk?” Pat nodded and followed the woman into the kitchen. Within moments, Pat was chatting away with Mrs. Rolstadt. They hit it off very well.