“Late! What’s he mean, late?” Christine talks like Stella’s not even there. To Christine, Stella’s just another mosquito.
“I reckon he means you not always on time, Christine,” Arcola says.
“You see how easy it is to be on time, when you got three children at home and your sister always late coming to baby-sit.”
Arcola answers quietly. “I’m not criticizing you.”
“Sure ’nuff sounds like it. I think Miss Silver better work with Gloria now.”
“Whatever y’all decide, fine with me.”Was that me, speaking up so quick? Wish the students would come on back from break time.
“You better learn to speak up for yourself, girl, or this world gonna run right over you.”Christine speaks to me like I’m a child. “Miss Green Eyes, you gonna be squashed flat as a beer can in the street.”
“Yes, ma’am.”But I just did. I just did speak up. We’ve been getting along. Then, tonight, Boom! Christine comes down like a ton of bricks.
“What you want to go picking on Gloria for?” Arcola asks, but she grins. “She’s not hurting you.”
“I thought last week things went pretty well, didn’t they?” Stella asks. “Maybe we could work together, Christine.”
“My name is Mrs. Taylor.” She seals her lips up tight. But I know Christine is my friend. When the church was bombed, it was me holding Christine. I wasn’t nervous then.
“I’m sorry. I’m just used to calling everybody by his first name.” Stella speaks very politely, sounds sincere.
“So I noticed. You know, that’s the trouble with you white people. You think you got a right to call anybody by their first name.”
Now you shut us all up, Christine. Quiet enough now, Christine. Pin-drop time now. Ain’t nobody gonna breathe now. How long this gonna last? Everybody holding her breath. Sure wish my voice box just open up—any old squawk be better than this. Silence. Silence. Silence.
“Mrs. Taylor?” That’s Cat talking, so serious. “Have you ever made a mistake in your life?”
Arcola just bust out laughing.
“Yeah.” Christine relaxes on down a little. “I made enough mistakes for everybody in this room.”
“Ain’t we all,” Stella says quietly, regretfully.
“Not me,” sassy Miss Arcola jokes. “I’m perfect.”
Christine reaches over to whack Arcola’s behind. “She think she gonna be Miss Negro America!” Christine’s feeling high now. Feeling good.
“Why not be the first Negro Miss America?” Stella asks.
“Right on. Right on, there,” Christine answers, but the bitterness still flavors her tone.
“Y’all gonna be sorry,” Arcola teases. “I’m gonna be walkin’ down the aisle, Bert Parks gonna be singin’—” She starts to sing, “ ‘There she is, beautiful Miss Black Amer-i-ca. There she is.’ I have on my all-net evening dress, I be throwin’ long-stem red roses out in the audience, and I won’t give you all the time of day.”
“Christine’s cousin”—that’s me talking—“she was killed in the church bombing.” I think of Christine shaking in my arms, the face of Jesus blowed out of the stain glass. Me feeling strong. Feeling the bones in my body were strong and bright white.
“I’m sorry.” Cat and Stella say it together, like a duet. Both say it. Both mean it.
“I wish more white people were sorry,” Arcola says. I never hear her speak so sober and serious before. Like me, Arcola’s starting to want Freedom. She’s ahead of me. She demonstrated in May of ’63.
Christine looks like she’s going to cry. Arcola goes over and puts her arm around Christine’s shoulder. Cat takes off her brakes and rolls over. She can’t stand up to put her arm around, but she takes Christine’s hand and presses it against her cheek. Just boldly picks up that drooping hand.
We all are quiet.
And then students are coming in.
Cat grins like a big Cheshire cat. “Think I could be the first wheelchair Miss America?”
“Naw, girl,” Arcola answers. “They just want normal people. Like me.”
And we’re all comfortable. Miss Cat most of all.
Cat lets go of Christine’s hand and rolls herself toward the science corner.
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT the students come, the room hums for an hour: review in every corner. Break time. Then new lessons for the second hour. June passes into July, and the temperature rises steadily.
Aunt Pratt Alone
JUST BEFORE SUNSET, STELLA’S AUNT PRATT WANTED HER steel fingernail file, and she knew exactly where it was (she knew where all her things were) in the shallow drawer of her dresser hopelessly across the room. She’d have to wait till somebody who could walk well came into the room. She’d already taken off her leg brace. Then she’d ask, very courteously, if that able person would please look in the top, flat, handkerchief drawer and get her steel fingernail file.
She’d just picture something else instead of her steel file: the little wooden carved rose embalmed in a clear plastic bar. The tiny rose pin was in a box on the bedside cart; Pratt could reach her jewelry if she wanted to. Stella had liked to pin the red rose on the hem of her short skirt when she was a little girl, so she could see it better than if it was up on her shoulder. With her small thumb, Stella—poor little orphan—would rub the plastic over the rose again and again, but the delicate rose was safe inside the plastic.
These days, when Stella came into the room, she surprised Pratt—Why, who was this grown girl? Hair flipped up so even all around from shoulder to shoulder. Pratt often forgot now that time was passing. It had been the 1940s and now it was almost the mid-1960s, and what had happened to the 1950s? What was she herself doing all that time while Stella was getting bigger? And why was it that she was worried about Stella?
Stella had graduated, but she was always going to school, still. To teach, she said. She had decided to teach black children, like a missionary. Was that what integration was? Stella seemed strained and thin, but Krit never noticed. Maybe Pratt imagined it. She spent her nights imagining now, and watching her stories on TV in the day.
The mirror over the old dresser was mottled and cast a darkness over anyone who looked in it. But a mirror could be resilvered, Pratt knew that. Someday, she’d have the big mirror brightened up and then it would flash, over there in the corner, like sunlight off the pond. Down at Helicon.
That day when Barney Chesser went mad from dog bite. The pond had flashed brightly that day. She’d noticed the brightness of the pond just before somebody—well, she knew who—had dashed in and said, Barney’s gone mad. He said for his sister to put down her iron—there in the front bedroom—to put down her iron and to pick up the twin babies and get out of there. Barney said he felt funny. He said Sis must lock the door.
The doctor had his lariat, and he had been west once and knew how to throw a lasso. They broke out the window and lassoed Barney and threw loops around the bed and tied him to the bed, all the time his head slinging back and forth, trying to bite, the foam flying. If the foam landed on an open sore, you were as good as bitten, and no hope for you.
And what could they do for Barney Chesser, bit by a mad dog?
He’ll bite off his tongue! one said. To prevent that, the doctor took his pearl-handled knife and stuck it between Barney’s teeth. And Barney bit the pearl handle in two.
By nightfall, he was dead. And Pratt, in her house across the street, folded her hands on the windowsill and watched them douse the house with kerosene. Except for what was in the mad room, they carried out all the furniture. Pratt watched the men hold their torches to the corners of the house. She stood there, her arms folded across the windowsill, with little Son beside her till Gene, her husband, came back, and they all three stood together to watch the house burn.
Before she left this afternoon, Stella had stood in front of the mirror primping, but what was that place she had mentioned going to? If y’all needed to find me, Cat Cartwright and I are working out at Miles Colleg
e. I’d rather you not tell Aunt Krit, though.
Pratt remembered Barney’s sister Bernice, her only nineteen, snatching up her twin babies, hurrying, setting a baby on the floor once she was outside the front bedroom so she could lock the door. It would have been the big twin she sat down; she always carried him on the right, where she was stronger.
Sometimes Pratt felt the world was like Barney Chesser’s bedroom. Somebody was going to go mad. Like Hitler did. Pratt wished, if she could, that she’d be able to pick up what was most precious and get out of there, if that happened in Alabama. Watch the whole South burn up, from a safe distance.
Stella ought not be out late after dark with colored people, but Pratt would bite off her tongue before she’d say anything to Stella, or Krit, about it. “Mind your own business,” her mama had said, “if you want to get along with people.” Men had been killed over in Mississippi: two Yankees and a darkie. “Civil rights workers,” the TV had said.
Pratt ran her thumb over the top of the nail on her first finger. It had a split there; she could feel it. She wished she had her steel fingernail file.
Lee Plays Barber
“AT THE KLAVERN,” RYDER JONES TOLD HIS WIFE, “THEY say white teachers are going out to Miles College.”
“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear,” Lee answered. “Now tuck your head down so I can shave your neck.” She was proud of her new electric shaver. What with Bobby getting big and needing haircuts, and Ryder going to the barbershop every two weeks, and Tommy outgrowing his bowl cut, she figured they’d save in the long run if she invested in some barber tools. She’d stitched up a little white shoulder shawl with a turned-up pocket all round the hem to catch cut hair. She’d used some leftover Klan robe fabric.
“Bob said he saw an old Pontiac with two white girls in it turn in at Miles College.”
“Maybe they was lost.”
“Maybe it’s time for some teachers and students out there to learn a lesson.”
She lifted the shaver away from the back of his neck. “What kind of lesson, hon?” She let the shaver go on buzzing.
“Don’t play dumb, Lee. You know I don’t like that.”
The shaver vibrated and buzzed in her hand like the most powerful bumblebee in the world. She thought how brave kids used to sneak up on bees massaging a clover head; the brave ones could grab a bee by its wings and hold it up buzzing between two clamped-together fingers.
Lee decided she’d better not say anything else to Ryder about his business. She put one hand on top of her husband’s head and pointed his chin down. He let her, just like she was the real barber. Now the white skin rose up out of the cape, a little crescent of white skin below the sunburn.
“Ain’t you ’bout finished?” Ryder asked impatiently. “I’m tired of this.”
“I just wanted to finish up good so it would last.”
“Kids at your mama’s?”
“Yep.” But why was he asking her that? It was Saturday night, first Saturday night of the month, Mama always kept them. “She’ll bring ’em to Sunday school in the morning, hon.”
“Lee, come round here to the front and kneel down and look me in the eye.”
She obeyed at once, snapped off the shaver, and laid it on the kitchen table.
“Now,” he said, looking down at her like he was a king on a throne instead of a fool on a stool. “Can I trust you, Lee?”
“ ’Course, honey. I ain’t done nothing.” But she was feeling guilty and scared. “Not a thing.”
“I’m talking ’bout the future.”
Why did he look all nervous and eager? What did he want to do to her?
“Yes, you can, honey,” she said. “Only—”
“Onlyest what?”
“Don’t hurt me.”
He smiled at her, and she felt the fear rise up her throat like the mercury column in a thermometer.
“I need to teach you something,” he said.
“Oh no,” she pleaded. “What I done done, Ryder?”
“I don’t mean like that. I’m gonna share something with you. Something secret, and I got to know I can trust you not to tell.”
“I won’t ever tell anybody,” she said. Her knees were hurting from pressing on the hard kitchen floor. Her eyes were just above the level of the tabletop. She looked at her barber tools lying on the kitchen table—the long skinny scissors with the extra loop for bracing. The little black plastic comb. The electric shaver, the dusting brush with the green plastic knob handle. The barber instruments resembled pieces from a doctor kit, special and expensive. “I could charge the neighborhood kids a quarter,” she said. “Do their hair. Earn a little extra.”
“Pay attention to what I’m trying to tell you.”
She stared up into his eyes.
“I’ve got the directions, and the things we need”—he was almost panting—“to make bombs. I want you to help me practice it. Not to set anything off by ourselves, but just to practice. And I don’t want you to tell a living soul.”
“I won’t, Ryder. I never would. But I don’t know nothing about bombs.”
“I do,” he said. “Bob’s been trying to teach me. You’re good with your hands, Lee. I always been kind of clumsy, and my fingers is stiff from being out in the weather all the time.”
“Want me to untie the cape now?”
“You can, but that’s not the point. You got good fingers what with sewing and now barbering. You could help attach wires. That kind of thing.”
She rose up from her knees. “Ryder, I’m not sure that’s a woman kind of thing. I don’t know if the other wives—”
“That’s why it’s got to be just our secret. I don’t want you talking to any other wives about this. Not even if they’re Klan. Especially if they’re Klan.”
Her gaze fell on the green plastic handle of the soft barber brush. Bombs? The handle reminded her of marble what with a few streaks of white running through it. She didn’t want to bomb anybody. She could hear again the distant thud when the little colored Sunday school girls were exploded. She blurted, “I want another pair of panty hose.”
“You what!” He was turning red in the face.
“Here, hon, let me dust you off with this soft brush,” she hurriedly suggested. Lee knew that the soft dusting always soothed him. She made a stroke on his neck. He closed his eyes. She softly, softly brushed the little cut hairs from his neck and cheeks. Carefully, she brushed down his nose like she was painting his picture with the brush. The ugly color drained back down into his body.
“The panty hose could be my reward for helping,” she said. “Just one pair. They’re so modern. I just love them.”
“I like you in a garter belt,” he said, with his eyes closed.
She saw the lust tension gathering in him—just the words garter belt.
“Well, I could still wear a garter belt whenever you liked.” She stopped brushing his face. “And I could wear the panty hose when I liked.” He opened his eyes. She looked at him and smiled. “I got a garter belt on right now.”
“And you’d study the directions and go over it with me?”
She carried the barber cape over to the garbage and carefully shook the hair out of the hem-pocket into the brown grocery sack. “Mama always said I could learn ’bout anything I studied on.”
He slid off the kitchen stool and held out his hand to her. “Let’s take advantage of the kids being gone.”
He winked a nasty little wink, but suddenly she felt excited. They would just go to it, fast, before he hit her about something.
Dappled Light
IN A SHADY GROVE, IN THE DAPPLED LIGHT OF LATE AFTER- noon, Fred Shuttlesworth took a little time just for himself in the wooded area behind Pilgrim Baptist Church. It was Monday, and he’d come down from Cincinnati to lead his regular Monday-night mass meeting. He sat on a large pitted rock because it helped him identify with the apostle Peter. “Upon this rock…,” Christ had said of Peter, “I will build my church.”
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br /> And what was a church—any church—but a Movement? If the spirit inhabited a group of people, it didn’t matter what church walls they were inside. They could be outdoors; they could be marching in the streets. Anybody in a demonstration was really in a church, a church on the move, because the spirit inhabited them and made their feet to move. The body was the temple of God and it was the Holy Spirit that came to live in the body and make it a temple.
This quiet place…with just him alone, quiet—it held a holy moment just like later, inside, when with all eyes turned upon him he would give his body, and his sweat, and his mind. The great flow of words would take form from his tongue and teeth and lips to tumble from his mouth like a mountain stream flowing from a cave in the high hills….
But now for his quiet moment with nature, alone on a rock.
He liked the spotted light, not gloomy and depressed like the shade, not bright and overbearing, urgent and punishing like full sun. He looked up into the lacy leaves. They had special trees here. Landscaped trees they called river birch, with fine cut pale green leaves, and whitish bark, scaly, mottled with gray, unpredictable. Where the Lord leads, I will follow.
What was he without Scripture? More than the full armor of God, the Word was inside him. And the Word was outside him, suggested by the rippling of these little leaves and by the dancing shadows they cast on his skin. He thought of the four little girls who had passed, and his eyes filled with tears. He thought of his own children, their strength and their ready willingness to stand with him. And Ruby, his wife.
He placed his hand very gently, tenderly, on the rough, pocked surface of the rock, and his body remembered how he had lain, horizontal in his bed, and how he was lifted, lifted in his sleep, by the bomb placed under the floor of the house, directly under the position of his bed. It must have been a flash—all in a flash the bomb lifted the floor joists and scattered them, and lifted the floor planks and broke them, and lifted the legs of the bed and the bed frame, and the wire box springs up into the air, and the whole mattress and him on it in his pajamas. The sound roared around him, but he had been in the whirlwind of the Lord, kept safe in the eye of the storm. Fear not, for I am with thee….