Midnight Without a Moon(40)

I swallowed the truth. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Anna Mae sho’ is lucky,” Aunt Ruthie said. “Always has been,” she added, sighing.

“How the chi’ren?” Papa asked.

“They fine, Papa,” said Aunt Ruthie. “You hear how they out there runnin’ round that porch makin’ all that racket.”

“Um-hmm,” Papa said, nodding, staring toward the wide window that overlooked the porch.

Even with hungry bellies, Aunt Ruthie’s children could smile. Their daddy might have been a trifling drunk, but their mama was always there. Always caring. Always loving them with everything she had.

“Ready for school?” Aunt Ruthie asked me.

I looked at Papa, then I replied tersely, “I won’t be going to school next week.”

“You won’t?” Aunt Ruthie asked, her brow furrowed.

Just thinking about school made a lump rise in my throat. I shook my head because I couldn’t answer.

“How come?” she asked.

This time Papa spoke for me. “Rose is needed at the house. I’m shawt on help for the pickin’, and Pearl gittin’ to the point where she need mo’ help too.”

“This jest till the harvest in, like we used to do, right?” Aunt Ruthie asked. “She goin’ back in November, ain’t she?”

When Papa shook his head and said no, I felt like fainting.

Aunt Ruthie grimaced and said, “You go’n take Rose outta school, as smart as she is?”

Papa sighed, but he didn’t answer Aunt Ruthie, just like he wouldn’t answer me. Instead, just like he had done when he questioned Mr. Pete on the day they left for Chicago, he crossed his right leg over his left knee, removed his pipe and Prince Albert tobacco from his shirt pocket, filled the pipe, and placed it between his lips. He puffed, even though there was no smoke, while Aunt Ruthie and I regarded him with the same curiosity with which he had regarded Mr. Pete when Mr. Pete had made a decision others could not seem to comprehend.





Chapter Twenty-One


SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4


I DOUBTED THERE WAS A NEGRO IN STILLWATER, other than Slow John, who wasn’t in church that morning. Even Uncle Ollie came. And Aunt Ruthie, which was rare. She and her children huddled in the last row of the church, near the window. Aunt Ruthie once told me that she didn’t like church, because when they came, folks stared at them as if they didn’t belong. I stopped staring when I realized I was acting like one of those folks.

I snapped to attention and stopped glancing around being nosy when Miss Doll belted out, “‘Je-e-e-sus, keep—?me neeear thy cross. There a pre—?cious foun-n-n-tain. Free to all a he-e-ealin’ stream—?flows from Cav—?re-e-e’s moun-n-n-tain.’”

The congregation joined in. “‘In the cross . . . in the cross . . . be my glo-o-o-ree-e-e evu-u-uh. Till my rap-tured soul shall find . . . rest . . . beyond . . . the ri-i-i-ver.’”

It didn’t take long for me to tune them out, and my eyes—?and mind—?began to wander again. River. The Tallahatchie. A body weighted down with a seventy-pound cotton-gin fan. I had never been inside a cotton gin, but they always looked scary to me. A huge barnlike building where cotton was processed. Very spooky.

Seventy pounds is a lot of weight. I had picked that much cotton before, and I could never lift the sack. I shivered as I imagined someone binding an object that heavy around my neck, then throwing my body into the river. What if that had been Hallelujah? Or Fred Lee? It didn’t matter who he was, really, because he still belonged to somebody. Somebody who loved him.

By the time my mind drifted from the Tallahatchie River and found its way back to Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, the congregation had completed their moaning of “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” and the seven-member choir had begun to sing another song about Calvary.



“Calvary,

Calvary, Calvary, Lord!

Surely He died on Calvary.

Don’t you hear Him callin’ His Father?”





About midway through the song, Miss Doll changed the lyrics. “Can’t you hear him callin’ his mother? Can’t you hear him callin’ his mother?” she sang again and again.

Several women removed handkerchiefs from their purses and began dabbing their eyes. Ma Pearl’s eyes bulged as though she might cry as well.

“Scorned and beaten, despised of men,” Deacon Edwards, the thinnest man I had ever seen in my thirteen years, cried over the singing. His words blended into the singing as though they were part of the lyrics. “A dog got a better chance at living than a Negro in Mississippi,” he said.

The choir continued to moan “Calvary,” as several “amens” were murmured among the members.

Miss Doll’s voice got louder. “Can’t you hear him callin’ his mother? Can’t you hear him callin’ his mother? Surely, oh surely, he died in Mississippi.”

Miss Doll could no longer contain her tears, and they came spilling from her eyes. Women began to shout and holler, and the ushers sprang into action. The air around me was thick, and I thought I would suffocate. I had been going to church all my life, and I had never felt “the Spirit” until that moment. I don’t know what came over me, but my body began to tremble and tears gushed from my eyes as well.