Midnight Without a Moon(23)

Ma Pearl’s forehead creased. “How old is you?” she asked Monty.

“Thirty,” he answered.

“Belle ain’t but twenty-fo’.”

“That’s only six years’ difference, ma’am.”

With her expression stoic, Ma Pearl answered, “I can count.”

Monty grinned. “I’m sure you can, ma’am.”

Ma Pearl, of course, couldn’t let him have the last word. She glared at him and said, “Y’all sharing a bed?”

Aunt Belle fidgeted, shifting her weight upon the settee. “We’re engaged, Mama,” she said. She showed Ma Pearl her ring finger. It held a thin gold band. Atop it sat a dainty diamond.

Ma Pearl snorted. “That ring don’t mean y’all can share a bed.”

Papa sat straighter in his chair. He removed his pipe from his shirt pocket and placed it between his lips. He didn’t bother filling it with Prince Albert.

But before he could say a word, Aunt Belle blurted out, “It’s a shame what they did to Mr. Albert’s boy, ain’t it?”

Ma Pearl’s jaw dropped so hard it could’ve hit the floor. “What you know ’bout that?” she asked.

“Anna Mae and Pete told me.”

“How they know and they way up in Chicago?”

“Pete said he read about it in the Defender,” Aunt Belle answered. “Said it wasn’t much, just something about another Negro killing going unpunished in Mississippi. Didn’t even have his name. But Pete knew it was one of the Jackson boys. The one that was at Alcorn College.”

Papa rubbed his chin. “Hmm, the Defender,” he said. “That’s a colored paper, ain’t it?”

Monty nodded and said, “Indeed, it is. The Defender is a paper created and run by Negroes, Mr. Carter. It was founded in 1905 by Robert Abbott.”

Ma Pearl raised an eyebrow. “Abbott? That don’t sound like no colored name to me.”

“Neither does Carter,” said Monty. “But I assure you, ma’am”?— he held up his hand and turned it backwards?—?“Mr. Abbott was a Negro, with a complexion as dark as mine.”

Queen sneered. I could imagine what she was thinking—?the same thing she’d said to me too many times: Wouldn’t wanna run into a spook like you after dark.

“How they know ’bout what’s going on in Mississippi?” Ma Pearl asked.

Aunt Belle spoke up. “Just because Mr. Albert wouldn’t allow the NAACP to get involved directly doesn’t mean they didn’t in other ways,” she said. “People still talk.”

“Um-hmm,” Ma Pearl said, pursing her lips. “It’s all that talk that caused Albert ’n’em to run off in the night, sked half to death. They know’d them NAACP peoples wadn’t go’n keep they mouths shut. And as soon as they’da started lurking round here, white folks get mad and take it out on the rest o’ the family.”

“Mr. Albert and his family are probably better off in Detroit anyway,” said Aunt Belle as she rolled her eyes toward the window, where Mr. Robinson’s rows of white cotton stretched till they met the horizon. “At least they don’t have to pick that man’s cotton.”

“Humph!” Ma Pearl said. “He coulda at least stayed one mo’ week to help Paul finish choppin’ that last stretch o’ cotton.”

“You’re blaming the wrong people,” Aunt Belle said. “The NAACP didn’t run Albert Jackson from Mississippi. White folks did.”

Ma Pearl’s forehead creased as she squinted at Aunt Belle. “You ain’t messing with them NAACP peoples, is you?”

Without hesitation Aunt Belle snapped open her black patent leather purse and whipped out a small brownish card. She handed it to Ma Pearl.

Ma Pearl grabbed her chest as if her heart had suddenly failed. “Lawd, I knowed we shouldn’ta let you go up there with Isabelle.”

Ma Pearl might not have known how to read, but she certainly knew her letters. With a grunt, she read them one by one. “N-A-A-C-P,” then the name, “Lucy Isabelle Carter.” With a flip of her wrist she flung the card back at Aunt Belle. It landed on the floor. “Didn’t know I was raising no dirn fool,” she said.

Aunt Belle picked up the card and placed it back in her purse. “I’m not a fool, Mama.”

Ma Pearl stared hard at Aunt Belle. “You is a fool. All y’all fools,” she said, motioning toward the sofa at the three Saint Louis spectators.

Their eyes bucked.

“Mrs. Carter, I assure—”

With a pudgy pointed finger, Ma Pearl cut off Monty. “You got her into this, didn’t you?”

“Monty didn’t get me into anything, Mama,” said Aunt Belle. “I’m a grown woman. I make my own choices.”

“Stupid choices,” Ma Pearl said. “Messing with them folks won’t do nothing but get a Negro kil’t. Where was they when L. B. Turner ’n’em run Albert’s boy off the road and shot him?” She paused for an answer, then said, “They sho’ wadn’t here to stop ’em.”

“So they know who did it,” said Monty.

Ma Pearl was dumbfounded. She had put her own foot in her mouth, as she liked to claim about other people.