Midnight Without a Moon(10)

My top lip felt numb when I spoke. “S-something happened to Levi?”

Hallelujah removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. Before he put his glasses back on, anxiety shone in his eyes. “Rosa Lee,” he said, his voice shaking, his eyes tearing up, “Levi’s dead.”

My knees buckled. If it hadn’t been for the hoe, I would’ve crumbled to the ground.

Black, pulsating dots flashed around me as Hallelujah’s next words floated to my ears: “pickup . . . shotgun . . . head . . .” Dead.

The black dots multiplied as the earth spun beneath my feet. Nausea rose in my stomach, and every drop of biscuits and eggs I’d eaten that morning threatened to come back up.

Dropping the hoe, I grabbed my stomach and bolted from the field.

As I stumbled clumsily between the dusty rows of green cotton leaves, I couldn’t help but resent them. Levi Jackson, a fine young man, had spent most of his life tending to that field, bringing that cotton to life every summer. Now he no longer had his.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream until my anguish was heard all over Stillwater—?all over Mississippi—?all the way to Chicago, straight to my mama’s ears. I don’t know why, but I hated her at that moment. I hated her more than the nameless face that had shot Levi Jackson for no good reason.

But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t open my mouth and take a chance on throwing up and killing any of Mr. Robinson’s precious cotton.

By the time I reached the edge of the field, my stomach lurched. Racing past the chickens scratching in the yard, I dashed toward the toilet, heaving the whole time.

I’m not sure why I ran to the toilet, knowing its stench would only make me gag more. When I reached it, I ran behind it, my body lurching forward, spewing the last of my breakfast toward the ground.

Hallelujah banged on the door of the toilet. “Rosa Lee, you okay?”

“I’m back here,” I called weakly, all my strength now a yellow puddle on the ground.

Rubbing goose bumps from my arms, I came from behind the toilet and headed up the path to the backyard. Hallelujah trailed behind me. When I reached the yard, I hugged my arms around my stomach and doubled over. A sick moan followed.

Hallelujah put his arms around my shoulders and ushered me to the back porch. When my body dropped on it like a sack of overgrown potatoes, I pressed my face in my palms and screamed. I screamed until my stomach hurt.

I shouted into my palms. “Why, Hallelujah? Why?”

“He registered to vote,” Hallelujah said, his voice hoarse. “And they killed him.”

I raised my face from my palms and wiped away tears with my sleeve. “Levi wasn’t old enough to vote,” I said angrily.

Hallelujah removed his glasses and wiped tears from his own face. “He turned twenty-one last Thursday,” he said. “Went to the courthouse and registered the next day.”

“Levi left the field early on Friday,” I said, my voice choking. “Said he had something important to do.”

Hallelujah stood right beside me, but his words seemed distant as he detailed the little he knew of Levi’s murder. My mind was on Levi and what a fine young man everybody said he was. So all I heard from Hallelujah’s rant was “forced off the road” and “shot in the head.”

I could see Levi’s dark brown face as if he were standing right in front of me. It hadn’t been a week ago that I heard him brag to his younger brother Fish that this would be his last summer “chopping some white man’s cotton.” He was the first person in his family of eight boys to graduate from high school and attend college. After his first-grade teacher declared him brilliant, his parents scratched and scrimped for nearly twelve years in order to send him. In the summer, he came home and chopped cotton to help out, with the promise that when he graduated, he would get a good job and move his parents off Mr. Robinson’s place. That September would have been the beginning of his last year at the colored college Alcorn. And it was all for nothing. Levi was dead. Gunned down like a hunted animal.

“Something needs to be done about folks being killed for registering to vote,” I said, my teeth clenched. “First Reverend Lee in Belzoni, and only two months later Levi?”

Hallelujah wiped his face with his handkerchief, then put his glasses back on. He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “White folks won’t do a thing to another white for killing a Negro,” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he stared out toward the cotton field, where Papa and Fred Lee were mere dots on the horizon. “They won’t even do anything if a Negro kills a Negro. A Negro ain’t worth a wooden nickel to them. Kill one, another one’ll be born the next day to take his place.” He took his glasses off again and wiped his eyes.

Hallelujah plopped down on the porch beside me. We both stared out at the chickens clucking aimlessly around the yard. Slick Charlie, our only rooster, stood guard at the door of the henhouse, as if to say You hens better stay out there in the yard where you belong. Stay out there till your work is done.

When the screen door burst open, I jumped so hard I almost fell off the porch.

Queen stormed out the door. It was well past nine o’clock, and she still wore rollers in her hair. Her pointy nose stuck up in the air, as if she smelled something foul. She pinned her hazel eyes on me and Hallelujah and said, “Y’all cut out all that racket. I’m trying to sleep.” A copy of Redbook magazine hung from her hand.