Midnight Without a Moon(34)
“Then you know why we’re here,” Aunt Belle said. “The White Citizens’ Council uses those scare tactics to keep Negroes from registering to vote. They know that if colored people voted, the South would lose its fight to keep Jim Crow laws intact.”
“They ain’t just scaring people, Aunt Belle. They’re killing them,” I said. “Levi is dead. Lamar Smith is dead. Reverend Lee is dead. And for all we know, that boy from Chicago—?Mr. Mose Wright’s nephew—?could be dead. And like Ma Pearl said, we don’t know what he did to make those white men angry enough to take him from his uncle’s house.”
Aunt Belle’s expression grew dark. “Well, I assure you it wasn’t registering to vote. The boy is fourteen and from Chicago. And for all we know, he didn’t do anything. It wouldn’t be the first time these crackers lynched a colored man just because they felt like it.”
I grabbed my chest. “You think he was lynched?”
Aunt Belle shook her head. “No, no, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” She looked away, but not before I saw the tears in her eyes.
“Aunt Belle,” I said quietly, “do you think he’s dead?”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Let’s not think that way, okay?”
I nodded, but the thought lingered in my mind like a bad dream. I didn’t know the boy from Chicago, but I knew my own little brother. And I would want to die myself if something happened to him, especially if he was taken in the middle of the night by white men.
Aunt Belle turned back to me and said, “Come here.” She embraced me and held me tight. “I know you’re scared. This is a hard place to live in, and it’s a hard time to live here as well. But you’ve got to be brave. We’re in a war. And there has never been a war fought where everyone lived. Some folks will have to die.”
My body shook. “But I don’t want that somebody to be you,” I said. “Can’t you just stop? Can’t you just go back to Saint Louis? Why do you have to risk your life just so colored people in the South will vote?”
Aunt Belle pulled away and held me by my shoulders. “When I first left for Saint Louis, I swore I would never set foot in Mississippi again,” she said. “Then I came back to visit, and I saw the plight of my people. It broke my heart. Once I met Monty and learned so much about our history from him, I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to come back and help my people.”
I shook my head and muttered, “I don’t wanna be here. I wanna leave. Go to Chicago. Saint Louis. Anywhere. As long as it ain’t the South.”
“And you will,” Aunt Belle said. “When you’re old enough.”
“What about now? Why can’t you take me back with you when you leave next week?”
Aunt Belle shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Her forehead creased. “Besides the fact that Mama won’t let you leave?”
I didn’t answer.
Aunt Belle sighed and said, “I can’t. I just can’t right now, because I didn’t come down here to take you back to Saint Louis, so I’m not prepared to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I said, my voice pleading. “I know how to take care of myself. I can cook and clean and do anything a grown person can do.”
With solemn eyes, Aunt Belle simply shook her head and said, “I’m so sorry, Rose. But I just can’t right now. That’s not why I came.”
Aunt Belle’s words closed in and crushed me, just the way Miss Addie’s shack had crushed me in my nightmare. And at that moment I wished the nightmare had been true. I would have preferred being buried under the rubble of Miss Addie’s fallen shack than sitting there holding the ruins of my crushed dreams.
Chapter Eighteen
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
AFTER AUNT BELLE LEFT MY ROOM, I SLEPT FOR HOURS. And I didn’t care if Ma Pearl got mad at me. She could have come in and beat me with that black strap of hers, and I wouldn’t have cared. Aunt Belle had disappointed me so badly that I didn’t really care if I just suffocated in my hot room. The air was thick and muggy from what I assumed was middle-of-the-afternoon heat. I had no idea what time it was, but Queen’s bed was made. Not neatly, but made, nonetheless. Since we didn’t have church, she was probably already gone to visit her mama and her six siblings, which she occasionally did on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, although it was more like babysitting while Aunt Clara Jean went from house to house gossiping.
My body was stiff, and my head ached. Too much sleep. My body wasn’t used to sleeping past sunrise. I got up and stumbled through Fred Lee’s room, hoping someone was kind enough to have left me a basin of water so I could wash my face. There was none. I’d have to go outside to the pump and get my own. But at least someone, obviously Fred Lee, not Queen, had emptied the pot of the previous night’s contents. One less chore for the day.
On my way to the kitchen, I couldn’t help noticing the voices coming from the parlor, which was to the right of the front room. The voices belonged to Papa, Ma Pearl, Aunt Belle, and Monty. They were talking about the missing boy.
In the front room was a large rectangular mirror that Ma Pearl had gotten from Mrs. Robinson. Though the mirror was cracked straight down the middle, it still served its purpose of showing reflections—?twice. It hung on the wall next to a large picture of a longhaired, smiling Jesus—?also courtesy of Mrs. Robinson. Through the mirror I could see Papa perched in his chair, directing his attention toward the settee, where I assumed Aunt Belle and Monty sat.