The Year of Jubilee, page 6
The word dear almost made me choke on my pork chop. I had smoothed my bangs down at the sides with bobby pins, trying to make my hair look like less of a disaster. “Y-y-yes. I put a little bit of lard on it.”
Virginia’s face twisted in confusion. I panicked to explain, afraid of bursting this beautiful bubble we were in.
“I took a spoon and got a tiny bit from out of the mason jar where you save the grease drippings. A while back Miss Pearl at the peach stand told me it worked, and it does, like a charm, but it makes it greasy if you put too much on, I guess. It was so frizzy today with all the humidity, I thought I’d give it a try.”
Isaac looked from me to Virginia, as though he were watching a Ping-Pong match, waiting for someone to miss the return.
I added, “Miss Adams says Miss Pearl is a very wise woman.”
Virginia’s eyes widened and her lips were pursed with a comment when Daddy shushed us to listen.
The bottom of the screen read CBS News and a man named Walter Cronkite spoke. “Last night President Kennedy addressed the unrest that has reached a boiling point in Southern states.” Images flashed of Negroes sitting at lunch counters and a hateful-looking man surrounded by state troopers, blocking the door to keep a Negro girl from enrolling in the same college as whites.
The screen returned again to Walter Cronkite, who continued, “The unthinkable violence against the children you see here was suffered at the hand of one of the South’s most notorious segregationists, Bull Connor.”
Grainy black-and-white images appeared of what seemed to be an ocean of children walking in their Sunday clothes. We sat wordless when the picture changed to streets full of children running from fire hoses held by police; the force of the water ripped clothes and nearly the skin off little brown boys and girls hunkered down in corners trying to escape. Police officers were swinging their clubs at young boys to force them into the waiting paddy wagons. Water flooded down the street. The camera zoomed in on a boy crying and holding his head with a streak of blood trickling down into his eyes. Daddy sat stone-faced, shaking his head.
The TV switched to a clip of a man standing at a pulpit, shaking his fist.
“Who is that?” Sissy asked.
“The police commissioner in Birmingham, Bull Connor. He hates Negroes at the risk of hell and damnation.”
“John, please!” Virginia protested.
“It does no good to shelter them from the truth.” He said this softly and kept watching.
I thought of Miss Pearl, how kind she was to all the kids at school even when they walked right by, never acknowledging her, or worse, said mean things. And I thought of Mr. Hutch down at the gas station, who Daddy always spoke to. Daddy told me he walked with a limp because he took a bullet in the Army during the Korean War. He always called me “Miss Grace” and would ask, “Would you like a jawbreaker, Miss Grace?” His voice was scratchy and soft, and he had kind eyes.
I wondered how those police officers and firemen could hurt these children when it was their job to keep them safe. Fear and sweat trickled down the back of my neck.
Virginia shot from her chair and switched the TV off.
“Virginia, why did you do that?” Daddy’s voice sounded annoyed.
“Because I’ve heard enough of this . . . and there’s nothing to be done about it anyway.”
“Miss Adams says—”
She jerked her head in my direction so fast I thought it might fly off her neck. “‘Miss Adams says, Miss Adams says!’” she spit out. “Grace, you’d be wise to take caution who you listen to, especially the likes of her.”
I jolted back, feeling as though I’d been slapped. Why was she attacking Miss Adams? I started to say something else to defend Miss Adams, but Daddy shook his head in warning to me.
Daddy, Isaac, Sissy, and I cleared the table and washed the mountain of dishes while Virginia disappeared into the backyard. She was probably picking out a switch for me. I didn’t care. My anger had gone from a simmer to a full boil. Just as I got back to my room and was about to put on my nightgown, Virginia called me back to the kitchen impatiently.
“Grace Louise, bring shampoo and a towel to the kitchen sink.”
My stomach sizzled with acid. I took my time going into the bathroom, expressing my own subtle protest. I stiffly brought them to the kitchen. She stood at the sink and with a single hard turn of the faucet, the water gushed from the tap.
“No daughter of mine will be walking around with lard in her hair. Lean your head over . . . over!”
How many times had I heard her say, “No daughter of mine”? My anger mingled with despair. I was a reminder of the past she could not wash away. Hating her would feel so good.
“And whoever is putting these lofty ideas in your head, Grace, let me remind you that you live under my roof and are to follow my rules.”
I knew the “whoever” she was referring to.
“Grace, keep your head still!”
The water chilled me to the bone. I shivered. “It’s cold.”
“That’s right it’s cold. There’s no sense wasting hot water when cold would do just as well,” she said, her voice as icy as the sink water.
She scrubbed my scalp until I thought it would bleed. When she was finished, I wrapped the towel around my head. I couldn’t help the hot tears falling down my face as I ran to my room.
I heard a quiet knock.
“Grace . . . it’s Isaac. You okay? Can I come in?”
Isaac slipped in through the crack in the door that I made for him. I sat on my bed and turned my head away from him. I didn’t want to meet his eyes. I mindlessly stared at the drawings he had made for me that were taped to my pale-green walls, warm tears falling on the bare skin of my legs.
He shuffled to my bedside and sat down beside me. “I think your hair is nice, Grace.”
I could see how much he wanted me to feel better, and that made me want to feel better, if not for me, for him. I put my arms around his neck and hugged him so tight I was afraid I’d break him.
Isaac returned my hug, then grabbed the deck of cards from my bedside table. “Hey, I read a book about card tricks and I’ve been practicing.” He shuffled the cards and spread them out in a fan. “Pick a card!”
We sat in my room while Isaac amazed me with card tricks. I thought of Daddy and Virginia kissing. I thought of the children marching. How brave they were.
In the middle of the night I heard Virginia crying. I got up quietly and listened outside their bedroom door. I heard the rumble of Daddy’s voice, soft and comforting. I heard him ask, “What reminded you?”
Her answer was so soft I strained to make it out. “The water and . . . the blood.” She cried even harder.
An ache rose up in my chest. I knew I was the cause of her suffering. How could she or God ever forgive me, and what right did I have to be angry at her? There was a debt to pay.
Whatever happened, I had it coming.
8
RED BOOTS
Virginia’s eyes were red and swollen in the morning. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had heard her, but Isaac was especially quiet, which made me think he had. Sissy was still sleeping. Daddy asked me and Isaac to go along with Virginia to town and help her carry home gardening supplies. Isaac and I ate oatmeal by ourselves in the kitchen while Virginia and Daddy were in the backyard making a list before Daddy left for work.
Isaac slid his hand across the table and placed it in mine. I squeezed his hand. Virginia came through the hallway calling, “Kids, are you ready to go?” We heard the screen door open and then shut. We scrambled out, nervous about keeping her waiting.
On the drive to the hardware store, any trace of what happened the night before was gone. The children’s march and her emotional breakdown were all folded and tucked away neatly in a drawer. By all outward appearances this was a normal Thursday morning. She was chipper and buzzed about her flowers, hoping they would be chosen to be photographed by the garden club for Jubilee’s weekly paper.
“Mayella Thompson, the mayor’s niece, has a breathtaking rose garden that will be tough to beat, but who knows!”
Isaac asked from the back seat, “Mama, what is your favorite flower?”
“Hmmm . . . my favorite flower . . . that would have to be a daylily. They are a dazzling yellow and only in full bloom for a single day before they begin to fade.”
“That’s sad,” I said.
“Yes, it is.” Our eyes locked in the rearview mirror.
Her happy voice was betrayed by a sarcastic bite.
Then Isaac asked, “Do we have any at home?”
“In the backyard. They bloomed in the spring.”
“I guess we missed it,” Isaac said.
Virginia looked away from me. The tension she had tucked away gathered into the ghost that was always floating between us.
At the store, Isaac and I followed her through the aisles to the greenhouse in the back, where they kept annuals and perennials. There by the dahlias and echinacea was my makeover buddy, her face transformed by the earthy smell of blossoms. She didn’t see us walk up behind her.
“Emoline, stop daydreaming and let’s go!” Cordelia’s voice broke in, shattering her floral dream.
Emoline turned, her breath catching when she saw us, realizing we had heard her mother’s reprimand. She was holding a flat of yellow and orange begonias in her arms and did not meet my gaze.
Isaac spoke first. “Those sure are pretty flowers.”
“Thank you, Isaac.”
I looked at Isaac with obvious confusion and disapproval and then followed with a sarcastic question. “Since when did you guys become such good friends?”
Emoline snapped back at me, “Is it such a shock that you don’t know everything, Grace?”
Isaac giggled at this, which evoked unexpected laughter from Emoline. I wanted to throttle him. How could Isaac be nice to her after what she had done to me? I had told him the whole story the night it happened.
I let my eyes drill a hole into hers and then his, willing myself not to touch my bangs.
Cordelia was turned out in a pink floral frock with a pink straw hat and a man-size pair of pink sandals.
“Cordelia, aren’t you a vision in that coluh,” Virginia said with forced charm, leaving off the r on the end of color. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“Hello, Virginia.” There was an awkward pause. “Just picking up a few things for my garden. Did you watch the news last night?”
“Yes, we just got a new TV.”
A fact Virginia seemed a little too anxious to share.
This was not lost on Emoline. “Y’all are just now getting a television? We’ve had one in the living room for over a year, and my daddy just bought another one for the kitchen.”
A lopsided grin with a slight nod of her head showed Cordelia’s approval of Emoline’s boast about their family’s superior status.
Cordelia’s next words seemed casual, almost bored. “Things are the way they are for a reason. Those Northerners are known to be godless heathens, going in for all manner of sin. I’m just so thankful we have it straight here in the South, aren’t you, Virginia?”
A moment of indecision ran across Virginia’s face before she nodded in agreement.
“We’d better be on our way . . . lots of gardening to do,” Cordelia said, clearly done with the conversation. As she passed by me, she stared at my bangs and clucked her tongue to remind me how rude I had been. I wanted to give her an earful but I knew better. Even without a threat from Virginia, Cordelia was a grown-up and the preacher’s wife. To back-talk an adult was almost as bad as taking the Lord’s name in vain. It was a cardinal sin of Southern manners.
I looked over at Isaac, who was in a daze watching Emoline walk away. Did Isaac have a crush? On Emoline?
At the till, Rank Gunner and Brady Boon sat on each side of a barrel with a checkerboard between them, talking to Mr. Handy while they played. Virginia pushed her cart up, and Mr. Handy rang up the items one by one.
“Hello, Mrs. Mockingbird, kids. How are y’all today?”
“Fine, thank you, Mr. Handy.”
He reached under the till and handed Isaac and me each a small sucker.
“Thank you!” Isaac and I chimed together. He had always been such a nice man.
Rank Gunner, the father of my classmate Eli, leaned back in his chair, putting his red cowboy boots on the top of the barrel, and spit into a small tin can. He looked Virginia up and down in a way that made me want to gouge out his eyes. A bit of black tobacco juice pooled in the corner of his mouth. I thought of the bruise on Eli’s back.
He tipped his hat to her. “I couldn’t help but overhear what you and the preacher’s wife was saying.”
Virginia continued to place the things from her cart onto the counter. She looked his way but did not respond.
He leaned back and tipped his chin up in the air, dribbling more tobacco juice and a stream of smugness down his face. I heard the jingle of the front door but was too distracted by Mr. Rank’s ranting to turn around and see who had entered the store. “You just got to remind them who they is and who is boss.”
He rose up, bringing his red boots back down to the floor in a loud thud. He licked his thumb and put it over one of the black checkers. “You gotta keep your thumb on ’em all the time.”
He laughed, his teeth stained brown and crooked like swinging doors collapsing in the middle.
I wanted so much to stand up to Rank and tell him what Miss Adams had told us, but the words were nailed down inside me. Rank jerked his head toward the front door and looked with disdain, which made me turn to see what had become the brunt of his disgust.
Daddy’s friend Mr. Hutch stood with his little girl, who looked to be my age. Their sad eyes both found mine. Hutch’s large hand trembled as he turned his daughter around and out of the store. I wanted to run after them and say something, but what?
Rank spat into his can, watching Hutch limp away, and grunted, “Good riddance,” his ripe hatred on him like his body odor and his name.
Isaac quietly stepped closer, picked up one of Brady’s checkers, and jumped a line of Rank’s checkers, moving into the king position.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Rank’s anger flared, but Brady was snickering and nodded his approval, patting Isaac on the back.
Isaac peered intently into Rank’s eyes.
I noticed a small grin of satisfaction on Virginia’s face. “We better be going. Good day, Mr. Handy.”
I shrunk back in shame, wishing I had done something to stand up for Hutch the way Isaac had. But I was too scared of making Virginia upset. Too afraid of what Rank Gunner might do. I loathed myself. Was it good manners or cowardice that kept me from speaking out?
When I got home, I retreated to my room and wallowed in my self-loathing, which lasted through the weekend and made church on Sunday even more miserable than usual.
On Monday afternoon, Virginia called Isaac and me into the kitchen. “Kids, your daddy’s on his way home from the garage. When he gets here, you need to leave him be, give him some space.”
“What’s wrong?” Isaac asked.
“Just do as I say, please.” She turned her back and continued chopping a pile of raw vegetables on the counter.
As we left the kitchen, we heard the phone ring and Virginia say, “Hello, Cordelia!”
Isaac’s eyes locked with mine. “You okay, Grace?”
I shrugged.
“Why have you been in your room all morning?”
I couldn’t explain, so I changed the subject.
We heard the sound of tires on the driveway gravel.
I whispered, “Do you want to go see Daddy?”
He nodded.
Our curiosity wouldn’t allow us to follow orders, and since Virginia was on the phone, this was our chance. We watched through the back screen door as Daddy walked to the shed. We eased out, careful not to let the door slam behind us.
When Daddy was upset, he always went to the shed.
Rojo was pecking in the dirt under the old oak tree and followed us through the yard like a dog would.
We could hear the twang of country music on Daddy’s radio with the twisted wire hanger that he had fashioned into an antenna. As we peeked in around the doorway, we saw him hammering nails into a bench he was making for Virginia’s garden.
Rojo made a clucking sound and Daddy turned to us.
“You kids need something?”
We hesitated, then ran to him, wrapping ourselves around his waist. He placed an arm around each of us, his shoulders slumping.
“Daddy, did I do something wrong?” Isaac asked.
“Was it me?” I asked.
“It’s not either of you. Y’all go play and take Rojo with you.”
He turned away from us and went back to his hammering.
Virginia and Daddy fought in the kitchen for a long time that night. Their voices, hissing in strained whispers, were easily heard if you sat close enough. Isaac came out and joined me in the hallway and we both listened. Even Sissy, who Daddy said could sleep through an atomic bomb, roused and came to the doorway of her room before she lost interest and went back to bed.
“John, I do not approve of this! Folks in town will think we are troublemakers. I have worked so hard to finally fit in . . .” Virginia lowered her voice. “You know whose husband is a member, don’t you? This could cost me my position. I’m finally being accepted, John. All that work, out the window, for something we can’t change anyway.”
“Virginia! There are some things that matter more than what Cordelia thinks.” He slammed his fist on the kitchen table, which rattled the coffee cups and saucers.
Isaac and I smacked our hands over our mouths. I couldn’t remember a single time when Daddy had spoken that sternly to Virginia or with any of us. We snuck back to our rooms. I lay in my bed, unable to sleep. I was comforted by the train whistle blowing high and lonesome. With my windows open, it sounded close by. A part of me wished I could jump on that train and ride away from all of this.
