Midnight Without a Moon(32)

“That what Isabelle got up there in Saint Louis?” Ma Pearl asked. “A fancy house to call her own?” Ma Pearl snatched up her empty cup, turned on her heel, and stalked over to the stove. As she picked up the coffeepot, she chuckled. “You been in Saint Louis, what? Five years? Now, you know something?” She refilled her cup as she chuckled again. “Isabelle tell you how she got that house?”

Aunt Belle didn’t answer. She simply stared into her coffee cup, her expression somber.

“You don’t know nothing, do you, gal? That fancy house yo’ aunt got up there in Saint Louis?” Ma Pearl paused and stared at me. “I ain’t go’n say how she got that fancy house in front this chile here,” she said. “But I know one thang: all that living up north go’n do is teach you how to be a dirn fool.”

Tears bulged in Aunt Belle’s eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was sad or angry, but what came out of her mouth next told me she felt sorry for Ma Pearl. “Slave mentality, Mama,” she said. “These whites down here have you thinking you’re somehow less than they are because of the color of your skin.” She shook her head. “You’re not. I’m not,” she said, pointing to her chest. She glanced around the room, gesturing with her hand. “None of us are.”

Ma Pearl’s nostrils flared. “And you got a fool mentality, gal. White mens wouldn’ta took that boy for no reason. He did something.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “He did something a’right. And it’s go’n cause trouble for all the other Negroes round here. You wait and see. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times: one Negro do something, and white folks get mad at all us. Like we all is one.”

“Coloreds outnumber whites in this county, Mama,” Aunt Belle said. “We shouldn’t let them run over us like this.”

Ma Pearl strolled over to the table and set her cup down. “Us?” she asked with raised brows. “You don’t live her no mo’.” She waved her hand in the air. “You a city gal now. Coming down here in yo’ fancy car with yo’ fancy friends. Wearing fancy clothes, bringing these gals fancy clothes, trying to make them like you. White folks don’t take too lightly to niggas trying to act like them. And that’s exactly what you city niggas do—?try to act like you white. Like you as good as them.”

“We are,” Aunt Belle answered tersely, her voice quaking.

Ma Pearl snorted a laugh. “You think if I dress up that sow out there in the hog pen I’m go’n let her come in here and sleep in my bed? Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “?’Cause she still a hog, no matter how clean and dressed up she is. And niggas is still niggas, no matter how dressed up they is.”

Aunt Belle sighed. “Mama,” she said, pausing, shaking her head. “You should want something better for yourself than this.” She motioned her hand to signify not just the house, but all of Mississippi, it seemed.

Ma Pearl lumbered over to the back door and stared out through the screen. She stood there, not saying a word, only contemplating as she observed her backyard full of chickens, a few hogs, and a cow mooing in a small patch of a pasture. “Things is better than they used to be,” she said, still not turning to face Aunt Belle. “And they wouldn’t be so bad as they is if the gov’ment wadn’t trying to force the whites down here to act like the whites up north.”

“Mama, why are you so afraid of white people?”

“You ain’t see’d what I done see’d,” Ma Pearl said. She turned abruptly, nearly spilling her coffee. She stared icily at Aunt Belle. “That boy ain’t missing,” she said. “He dead. Just like every other nigga that got outta place with the white man. And ain’t nobody go’n do a dirn thing about it.”

“The NAA—”

Before Aunt Belle could finish spelling out the letters, Ma Pearl cut her off. “The NAACP can go to hell for all I care. More Negroes been kil’t since they came down here than ever before. Whites, too, if they find theyselves on the wrong side of the line. The NAACP can’t stop a Negro from being lynched, and they can’t make the sheriff put a peckerwood in jail for doing the lynching. This Miss’sippi. Ain’t nothing go’n never change.”





Chapter Seventeen


SUNDAY, AUGUST 28


WITH MA PEARL’S WORDS RINGING IN MY EARS, I left the kitchen and went back to my room. I had to lie down and ease the pain throbbing in my head.

When I sighed and collapsed on my bed, Queen stirred in hers. She sat up, stretched, and asked me what time it was.

I shrugged and mumbled that it was a little after ten.

Yawning, she asked, “What’s going on? How come Ma Pearl didn’t wake us up?”

“A colored boy from Chicago is missing. White men took him from his uncle’s house in Money.”

Queen shrugged and asked, “We ain’t going to church?”

I shook my head. “Reverend Jenkins is over in Money. Papa, too.”

She sniffed the air and said, “Ma Pearl didn’t cook?”

“Queen,” I said, scowling, “a colored boy is missing. Two white men came to his uncle’s house in the middle of the night and took him.”