Midnight Without a Moon(52)
I was exhausted from a long day of picking cotton, frustrated at all the learning I was missing at school, but somehow I stayed there on the floor, my legs stretched before me, my head resting against the wall, the nutty scent of Maxwell House coffee lingering in the air. The conversation of colored people discussing the trial of two white men accused of lynching a Negro made me feel good. But then there was Ma Pearl, and she simply had to toss in her two coins.
“I don’t like all this crazy talk up in my house,” she said. “Coloreds and whites was gittin’ ’long jest fine ’fo all these NAACP peoples showed up.”
“God, Mama,” Aunt Belle said. “How can you call this master-slave existence getting along?”
“I ain’t nobody’s slave,” Ma Pearl said. “I gits paid for my work.”
Even from the other side of the wall, it seemed I could hear Aunt Belle’s eyebrows shoot up when she asked, “What? Three dollars a week?” She sighed and said, “It’s a shame how that woman got you thinking she loves you.”
“Y’all young folks thank you know everything,” Ma Pearl said. “Don’t know nothing. Thank them northern Negroes go’n be round when the Klan show up at ol’ Mose’s do’step tonight? Nah, they ain’t. They go’n be somewhere hidin’ behind they own locked do’s.”
The kitchen was silent for so long it was as if they all had suddenly fallen asleep.
Finally Ma Pearl spoke again. “Not all white peoples is bad,” she said.
“Yes, Mama, we understand,” said Aunt Belle. “Negroes have their good white people just like white folks have their good nigras. And it was them good nigras that helped Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam kidnap Emmett Till. Any word yet from Miss Doll about where her nephew and Milam’s other good nigras have run off to since this trial started?”
“I don’t know noth’n ’bout that,” Ma Pearl answered brusquely. “If them NAACP peoples wanna know where Doll’s nephew at, they can ast her, ’cause it ain’t my bizness.”
“Well, we know that he and the others know something,” offered Monty. “The word among our people is that the sheriff is holding Milam’s workers in a jail somewhere in a town called Charleston until this trial is over. Now, just why do you suppose the sheriff would go through so much trouble?”
“Like I said, ain’t none o’ my bizness what Milam’s niggers do,” Ma Pearl answered.
Monty puffed out his chest. “Well, our people will find them. And when we do, we will get some answers.”
“And jest who is yo’ peoples?” Ma Pearl inquired.
“The NAACP, of course,” answered Monty.
“I wish I could get my hands on Milam’s Judas niggers,” Aunt Belle hissed. “I’d beat ’em worse than Bryant and Milam beat poor Emmett. And if I had a pistol, I’d use it on Bryant and Milam!”
“Gal, Saint Louis done really ruint you!” Ma Pearl snapped. “I didn’t raise you like this. That boy dead ’cause his mama didn’t teach him to respect white folks. Now you talkin’ foolish jest like I bet he was. Talkin’ ’bout shootin’ white mens. Gal, I taught you better’n that.”
“Miss Sweet!” Reverend Jenkins yelled. His voice was so loud I jumped.
When he spoke again, his voice had calmed to his preaching level. “I understand there’s a certain bond between the older Negroes and the whites, but we’re living in a new time, and Mississippi needs to change with the times. Respect is something I agree with, but the constant bowing down to whites because of Jim Crow scare tactics has got to stop. True, the young man had no business whistling at Mrs. Bryant, but not because she’s white and he was a Negro, but because he was a fourteen-year-old boy and she is a grown, married woman. That’s the kind of respect we need to teach our children. Respect for their elders, respect for authority, respect for their fellow human beings. Not respect based on some antiquated Southern way of life.”
When the silence came again, I should have known that Ma Pearl was getting her ammunition together to fight back.
“Preeeeacher,” she addressed Reverend Jenkins sarcastically, “you sit here in my kitchen telling me how things got to change. But the man who own this house says I best leave things the way they is. Tells me I gots to leave if I let these northern Negroes tell me how I oughta live in Mississippi. Now you tell me this: Where we go’n go if we git thowed off this place? You got a house for me? You go’n let me and Paul and all these chi’ren of mines live in town with you and yo’ boy? I ’spect y’all got ’nuff room for all us with all that money you makin’ taintin’ the chi’ren through the week and fleecin’ the flock on Sunday.”
Reverend Jenkins chuckled. “First of all, Miss Sweet, I teach our children, not taint them. And second, last I checked, my flock didn’t have enough wool for me to fleece.”
“Humph” was all Ma Pearl could counter with.
“You could always come to Saint Louis, Mama,” Aunt Belle said softly.
Saint Louis? My heart felt like it momentarily stopped.
I would gladly go to Saint Louis with you! I wanted to cry out to Aunt Belle. If only you’d ask! Saint Louis—?Chicago—?even Detroit. It didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t Mississippi. Why was she extending an invitation to Ma Pearl and not me? I know she said she wasn’t prepared to take me with her. But how much preparation could she possibly need? Her two weeks were almost over, and I still hadn’t had an opportunity to speak to her in private. If only I had the chance, I could perhaps convince her that I, too, was worthy of the North.