Midnight Without a Moon(30)
Miss Addie grinned, as if nothing unusual had happened, and said, “Git these chi’ren some dem teacakes ’fo they leave.”
Chapter Fifteen
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
I HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET A FULL NIGHT’S SLEEP since the night I got up to use the pot and caught Queen sneaking out the window. And that Saturday night was no different. She lay over on her bed, breathing softly, but I couldn’t tell whether she was really asleep or just faking. I decided she was faking. So I did the same, with my face turned toward her bed in case she tried to sneak out.
Sure enough, after what felt like an hour of lying there playing possum, I heard a truck in the distance. It cut off suddenly, but I could still hear some clanking, as if the truck were coasting along without its engine running.
Queen’s bed creaked.
When she eased off the bed, I saw that she was fully dressed. Again, in one of her new outfits. A powder blue pantsuit.
I sprang up to a sitting position.
Queen nearly jumped to the ceiling. “You scared me!” she said, half yelling, but mostly whispering.
I crossed my arms over my chest and asked, “You going somewhere?”
Her face, illuminated by moonlight, quickly went from surprised to hateful. “Mind your own business, spook!” she hissed at me as she headed toward the window.
I got up from my bed and followed her. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”
“Not if you keep yo’ dumb mouth shut.”
“I don’t mean that kind of trouble.”
Queen waved me off. “You don’t know nothing, ol’ ugly girl. You just a baby.”
“I know sneaking out at night with a boy can get you a baby.”
Queen’s face hardened. She grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm so hard it popped.
I winced and tried to wriggle free. But for someone who never did any work, Queen was surprisingly strong.
Twisting my arm harder, she leaned her face nearly nose to nose with mine and snarled, “If you say one word about this, I will break this arm and twist that ugly head right off yo’ skinny . . . black . . . neck.”
She breathed heavily in my face. Her breath smelled like mints. Those, too, she obviously stole from Ma Pearl’s chifforobe when she’d swiped the powder blue outfit she was wearing.
Before I could wrestle free from her grip, the faint tap of a horn had Queen dropping my arm and dashing out the window faster than Flash Gordon.
“I hope you get eaten up by mosquitoes!” I yelled after her.
I fell onto my bed feeling just what she’d called me: stupid. Why should I care what happened to her? She was meaner than a bear caught in a beehive, as Ma Pearl would say. So she deserved whatever she had coming. I couldn’t believe Ma Pearl was making me leave school and letting her stay in. She wasn’t doing anything with her life but throwing it away. I, at least, had dreams.
I lay flat on my back and rubbed my wrist. My skin burned where Queen had dug her long fingernails into it. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it was late and I should’ve been sleeping. Before I knew it, Slick Charlie would be crowing, the scent of coffee, biscuits, and salt pork would be stuck in the stuffy air, and Ma Pearl would be storming through the house with her war cry: “Rise ’n shine, Saints! It’s time for church!”
Of course, that wouldn’t include Queen, who would be curled up in a ball, moaning, “Oh, Ma Pearl, I can’t go to church this morning. I got the cramps.”
I flipped my pillow to the cooler side, rolled over to face the wall, and tried to sleep. But it was no use. Everything and everybody raced through my mind, especially poor Hallelujah, who was in love with Queen, and probably with Miss Johnson, too, only because of their light complexions. Why was everybody so afraid of blackness?
Well, everybody except Aunt Belle, whom I hadn’t seen all week because of Ma Pearl and her big mouth. To be fair, I couldn’t blame Aunt Belle’s absence entirely on Ma Pearl. It was Aunt Belle herself who was too busy working on behalf of the NAACP and didn’t have time for her family.
She and Monty, along with their northern comrades, were driving all over Leflore, Sunflower, and Bolivar Counties rounding up backwoods Negroes, trying to convince them to register to vote. Didn’t she realize that Reverend George Lee and Mr. Lamar Smith, a proud colored man who fought in a war, were lying stone cold in their graves for doing the same thing? I never thought I’d agree with Ma Pearl, but now this NAACP thing was affecting my own kin, and I was afraid. I didn’t want my aunt gunned down in the prime of her life. Nor did I want her body mutilated and hanging from a tree. I wanted her at the house with us, sitting around eating good food, telling funny stories, and laughing—?filling my head with dreams of what life was like up north.
My chest ached, and I wanted to go find her, snatch that little NAACP card from her black patent leather purse, and burn it before her very eyes. Like any other Negro, I wanted change too, but not at the expense of my own family.
When sleep finally came, I found myself in a dream where I was trapped inside Miss Addie’s tiny house. Her silver eyes aglow, she stood over me, swaying, and chanting, “Somp’n ’bout to happen. Somp’n ’bout to happen.”
I called for Jinx to make her stop. But Jinx was nowhere in the house. I was all alone with Miss Addie, and I had no way to escape. The walls closed in, and the little house came crumbling down upon me.