Strange Fruit, page 13
“Yes.”
It was a long time before Bess spoke again. “Tracy?”
“Yes.”
“I knew … I’ve always known he’d ruin you.”
“I’m not ruined. I’m happy. Very happy,” she added softly.
Bess stared at her. “I believe you think he loves you,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“But, Nonnie—” she stopped. Began again, “You’re such a fool! How could you be such a fool? Going to college and everything! You’d think you were some little country nigger like Dessie who’d never had a chance—You know no white man—you know, Nonnie, no white man loves a—And I’ve tried so hard to look after you—” Bess’s voice broke.
“You have looked after me, honey.”
“A fine mess I’ve made of it! Oh, Nonnie, how could you! After all Mama—Even if he loved you and respected you what good’d it do, with you colored! What good, tell me that!”
“Let me talk a minute. I know Tracy lives in a white world. I know what that means for him and I’ve accepted it. It was hard—” her voice faltered, grew more certain, “at first … but … I know he will have to live in that life. I—” she paused, went on, “understand that. It won’t change things for us. It can’t.” Suddenly she began to tremble.
“It can’t! God Jesus, you say it can’t! What do you think love is—a charm you wear around your neck? You don’t know what’s ahead of you. You haven’t any idea! And a baby! Lord God, what chance would a child have—how could you want to bring one into this world and subject it to—Trouble is. Non, you won’t admit this world! But it’ll make you admit it sooner or later. It’ll pound you and beat you over the head until it gets you down on your knees, begging it to—”
“I know what’s ahead, Bess.”
“You’d make me laugh, if I weren’t so sick.
“You won’t have the courage to see it through,” there seemed no end to Bess’s words, tumbling out as if freed from a too-long restraint, “and don’t you dare tell me others have! Just look at our skin! What does it mean to you, that color—just a pretty shade? You know what it meant to the women back of us—you’ve got to know, Non! Shame and degradation and heartbreak. Now here you are—as well educated as any girl in this town—as Laura Deen, his own sister. Non! Mama saw to that with her hard labor. You can’t be satisfied with a concubine’s life—that’s what you’ll be, that’s the Bible name. There’re worse—God knows—and you’ll hear them all before you’re through.”
“There’re back ways to happiness,” Nonnie said softly, “and the Negro knows them all.”
“You make me sick!”
“Please, Bess.”
“I mean it. I could vomit. In slavery maybe, in those bad years afterward, folks had to find back ways. Had to! Not now. We’ve got to follow American ways. We’ve got to be respectable. We are respectable, Non. Our folks were decent people—fine good people. Biddy, don’t you see! We’re on Main Street now even if white folks do push us off the side-walk. We’re there! We’ve got to stay there.”
Nonnie’s unyielding silence whipped Bess on to more words. “Better do like me, marry a porter—a plain ordinary—Guess that’s why—” She paused as a great wave of song from the big tent swept over the town, backwashing against the swamp edge. “Guess that’s why you’re looking for something you think’s better. Well, it isn’t better!” She turned fiercely on her sister. “Always, Nonnie, you’ve wanted things better than you could have—”
Nonnie touched Bess’s arm. “I don’t think anyone could be better than Jack, Bess. Grinding ahead, the way he does, waiting on people, emptying spittoons—”
“Yes, but you don’t want your man emptying spittoons, that’s it, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you, I don’t want mine doing it either, but he’s Negro and that’s all he can find to do. You hear that! There’s nothing else!” She paused, went on, “God knows it’s better than being a white do-nothing like—”
“Don’t let’s fuss, honey. You know what I think of Jack. I’ve always thought him the finest—”
“Oh God, I wish I did,” Bess groaned. She said very quietly after a moment, “When he’s away I see it. When he comes home I don’t do a thing but give him the devil. He wants to have a big time. I want to settle everything that’s come up while he’s been away. We end by telling each other to go to hell.” She laughed tremulously.
“But he understands you,” Non whispered.
Across town the music had grown mournful.
“They’re having the propositions,” Bess whispered.
Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidd’st me come to
Thee Oh Lamb of God, I come, I come.
You could fill in the words you couldn’t hear. Anybody born in Georgia could fill in the words.
Tracy was there, sitting on the back seat with Gus Rainey and the boys, listening to the music, listening as that preacher talked about hell and its torment, listening as he begged sinners to take this last chance to make themselves right with God. But he wouldn’t be moved by it. No. He’d told her too many times no preacher could ever get him worked up again. He’d sit there, rubbing his fingers up and down the wood of the pew, a half smile on his lips. He wouldn’t be moved by it—
And then Nonnie’s mind filled with Tracy’s white world. Tall lady with the square jaws … little thin Dorothy Pusey he had gone with since high-school days … Laura so aloof, so hurting to his pride … burning-eyed evangelist raising ghosts with black-magic words. She saw Tracy, young sixteen-year-old Tracy as he told her once how he felt when he got converted and in the telling of it had grown restless and troubled … telling her how when he was twelve, he had not been able to sleep at night during a revival because of a dread of dying. And then she saw him as he had come to her six months ago, drunk after a fuss with his mother.… And suddenly it seemed to her that she had already lost him—that between her and him great white waves were growing higher, pressing him back, farther and farther—
Just as I am, without one plea …
—farther and farther—
They were singing it again. That meant the preacher was calling them again to the altar, that—
Bess said, “They’ve learned to do it better than we do. More efficient—more gloom to scare you with.”
“Oh Lamb of God,” how easily the words wove themselves into her aching mind, “don’t let them do it—don’t let them do it—”
“Well, let’s leave them to their sins and go inside.”
They turned toward the dark house.
“Lord, how my com hurts! Here,” Bess caught hold of Non’s arm, “hold this.” She gave Non the bag, stooped, took off her shoes and stockings, wriggled her toes in the sand, sighed. “They didn’t touch supper. She told me to take what I wanted. Thought we might as well enjoy the funeral food. Didn’t know I had one on my hands here.”
“You haven’t Tracy and I’ll work it out.”
“Tracy!”
Bess reached the steps, sat down. “Before you go for Jackie, sit here a minute and listen to me. Now how long since?”
“Nine weeks.”
“We’ll have an abortion. Sam—if he’ll do it. If not, Aunt Mag. Whoever does it, I’ll be there to see everything’s clean. We’ll manage it, Biddy, right away.”
Nonnie saw Bess press the back of her neck in the old gesture of strain. The house was terribly still as she searched for an answer, as if her unsaid words had cut it off from the night sounds. She wanted to give Bess peace, to accept her sacrificial offering; but she had no words to explain why she could not, so she said simply “I’ve got to have my baby, Bess.”
Bess did not answer, and Non knew she had turned her face toward the clump of cannas because she couldn’t keep her chin still. She watched the fingers move in the old rubbing gesture against her neck.
Bess felt around for her shoes, picked up the package, started into the house.
Non whispered, “I’ll go for Jackie.”
It was almost dark on the back path and she walked quickly, running from this talk with Bess, from these doubts released by their words.
Jackie was asleep. Miss Ada had put him on her bed and spread a piece of mosquito netting over him and sat now at the open door. Across the pauper lot, edging the back side of the cemetery, in the pale afterglow, the Massey tombs held three thin white shafts against the sky, and at these, or beyond them, Miss Ada stared as she bit her nails and rocked her straight chair with a tap-tap-tap against the wall. Her gray hair was hanging loose about her shoulders and she wore her old pink Mother Hubbard. In haste she gnawed her nails as if it were a task to be done so other tasks could begin, but her gaze across the graveyard was slow and fixed as the passing of time. So she had looked for years; so she would continue to look and no one would know, no one would ever want to know the dull adumbrations of thought that stirred like heavy moths behind that old face.
Nonnie leaned against the boxwood, feeling its rough sturdiness, its age, feeling within herself an awakening as if eyelids long closed had opened. She knew now that Miss Ada, the old dope fiend who had frightened her as a little girl, who even yesterday had been someone to pity smilingly and to be gentle with, was herself. Herself projected into a past, and an inexorable future. She had often wondered in idleness what manner of man Miss Ada had loved. She had heard white folks say they’d never understand Miss Ada, grieving her heart out for Syd Rogers. As pretty a girl as she had been could’ve picked a half dozen that would have averaged up a sight better and could’ve had them for a glance. But they did not know what Nonnie knew in sudden divination of the truth, that there could have been no one else for Miss Ada, no picking of the “best,” for there was no one else in her world. No fibers twisting about in rich soil, sucking up nourishment where it could be found, no taproot reaching downward into the deep earth of old biological satisfactions. They were parasites, she and Miss Ada—Nonnie tried to smile but instead began to tremble—like the Spanish moss, like the tree ferns in the swamp, living off their one love, nourished by it, until it died; living off it still, slowly dying as it rotted and shriveled, becoming ash with its ash.
“Miss Ada,” she whispered, and repeated it aloud, “Miss Ada.”
The paper-yellow face was a blur in the dusk, and only the tap-tap of the chair gave life to the old house, set in a greenness that age and decay bring, now turned black in the night.
“Miss Ada,” Nonnie said and touched the thin old shoulder.
“Yes, dear,” a soft voice answered, soft and as young as Nonnie’s own.
“I’ve come for little Jackie, Miss Ada.”
The chair grew still. Miss Ada slowly traveled the distance from the graveyard to her porch. “Yes, dear. Let me see, where can he—where—yes, yes, I know. Come in here, he’s in here.” She turned, lowered her voice. “He’s asleep.”
Through the dark room they felt their way until Miss Ada found the lamp on the bureau and struck a light. She shaded it with her hand as she lighted it and turned the wick low. “He’s a sweet child,” she whispered. “Come and look.” And taking Nonnie’s hand she tiptoed to the bed.
Jackie lay sprawled on Miss Ada’s counterpane, a little brown smudge against the whiteness. Nonnie remembered as she looked at him, lying there, red lips pouting in sleep, brown hair curled tight against damp forehead, what Bess had once said of Miss Ada. “She’s a sleepwalker,” Bess had said, “but some day she may wake up and remember that we are Negroes. She’ll some day remember about race, and then what will happen to Jackie? Suppose,” she had gone on with sudden animation, and her voice was serene, but Non knew she was scaring herself in spite of her lightness as they had done as children when they ran through the graveyard, “suppose she remembers and in her hate and shame she kills him or hurts him in some awful way, or makes up a wild story and sicks the Ku Klux on us. Suppose—” But Jack, home from his run, had interrupted her with mingled impatience and commonsense. “Good Godamighty, Bess, hush! You’re working yourself up and having a big time, but you’ll keep me awake all night with your worrying, and tomorrow you’ll go to work with a headache. Sure she’s cracked! That’s what makes her safe. C’mon,” he had added suddenly, “let’s go to Sam’s. We need to be around somebody who talks sense. I do wish to God,” Jack had added as they went down the steps, “that the boy had somebody else besides that old woman to play with. Fine start for a boy!”
“Better than these wild little tikes who spend their days in the ditches doing—well, you know—”
“No I don’t,” Jack said belligerently. “What are they doing that they shouldn’t be doing or that white kids don’t do?”
“What you did at their age, I reckon—and you know what that was.”
A glance like heat lightning between them, then Jack had laughed, muttered something about Bess’ being the biggest goddam idiot, and suddenly all of them were laughing, and they had walked down the path toward Dr. Perry’s. But later, after Jack had gone back on his run, Bess mentioned it again and again to Nonnie. “I wish I hadn’t thought it,” she would say, and rub the back of her neck.
Nonnie was conscious now of Miss Ada’s hand against hers, of the dry hot flesh, as she whispered in reply, “Yes, he is sweet and getting so big.” But she knew that Miss Ada was as harmless as she—that no injury would ever come to them through her, for this world with its racial hate, its bitterness and struggle for bread, would never exist for Miss Ada again.
Nonnie picked up Jackie, turned to whisper her thanks, and paused. In the sputtering lamplight a thousand lacy valentines shimmered fantastically from ceiling to floor—the gifts of Maxwell children who had discovered long ago Miss Ada’s pleasure in them and each year, giggling and whispering in derisive sympathy, brought to her their pretties when they were done with them, in annual payment of tribute to her who had added so much to the mystery of their young lives, becoming for them, as the years went by, their Valentine Witch …
Miss Ada stood in the middle of the room, clutching her wrapper close to her thin body, strings of hair about her face, eyes fixed on a faraway point, unmindful now of the girl and the sleeping child. From the far side of the old house came the hollow tap-tap of Mrs. Wood’s cane as she crossed the runway, coming to bring supper to her daughter. Ninety years old she was, a little gray rag of a human, grimly holding on to the last thread of life, so as not to leave poor Ada alone.
Quietly Non went out and down the steps. As the path turned she looked back. Miss Ada had not moved, although now her mother stood before her and was holding out a bowl to her.
Non stood at the gate waiting, as she had done so many evenings of her life, and would do again. The last song in the big tent had ended, and white folks grown silent had gone to their homes, and some were asleep, worn out with penitence.
For tonight Brother Dunwoodie had been filled with the power of the Holy Ghost and had preached as he had never preached before his sermon on Mother Love. Some had heard it before, for Brother Dunwoodie had held a revival in Maxwell four years ago, but no one had ever heard him preach with the power that was his tonight. And when he had done, Brother Trimble sang in his clear tenor voice Where Is My Wandering Boy. Out there under that tent covering, where great shadows wavered, splotched here and there by dim lights, the people sat hushed and unmoving, waiting for the next words of that tired-faced, burning-eyed, black-haired man of God. When he spoke, his words were so low that you had to lean forward to hear. “I’ve done my talking now,” he said, “I’m through. There’s someone else talking now. I want you to listen. I want you to bend down and listen, for it’s mother love whispering. Whispering to you to come home to God. Come home. Whispering to you to come back, not to her arms, but to Jesus’ arms, where she knows you’ll be safe. Maybe she’s already taken her place up there with God, but she’s lonely there without you … she can’t be happy even in heaven without you. Listen …” The pianist was playing softly now Almost persuaded now to believe. “Listen … to her soft sweet words … whispering to you to give up sin and be her little boy again, pleading with you to promise that some day you will meet her there …”
The town was quiet now. White Town. Colored Town. And Nonnie standing there at the gate had not heard the preacher’s words. But her mind was full of revival sounds as after a fire bits of ash float for a long time through the air.
A crunch of sand underfoot made her turn and open the gate, as quickly stop as she recognized the impatient rhythm of Eddie’s footsteps.
He said, “‘Lo, Biddy,” and held the gate ajar.
“Hello Eddie.”
“Feel like walking a bit?”
“Let’s just stay here.”
“O.K.”
They stood looking out over the palmettos.
“You know,” he said after a long silence, and laughed, “sometime I’d kind of like to get acquainted with you again.”
She smiled, said quickly, “What have you done today?”
“Nothing, as usual. Salamander’s for a coke and sandwich. Out with Sam on a call. Hung around the tent tonight and watched that white man save souls. He’s damned good at it.”
She tried to keep her voice casual and light. “Save many?”
“Did a pretty good job.”
“Is it—fun, Eddie, to watch?”
“Depends on your idea of fun. Sort of, I reckon. Kind of like watching folks strip in public. Tickles me to see these white folks—”
He seemed to have forgotten to finish his sentence, “See them—what, Eddie?”
“See them crying and praying out loud, telling the world things they’ll be sorry as hell they told after that preacher leaves town.”
“Why do they do it?”
“Search me. Why do we do anything we do?”
Above the ditch on the far side of the road lightning bugs kept up a steady movement of light as if someone with a big incandescent pencil were making quick sharp marks on the night.
“But he gets you worried too, kind of.” Ed laughed.
