Midnight Without a Moon(60)

Monty turned to Papa. “Mr. Carter, why isn’t this girl in school?”

Papa fumbled for words. He removed his pipe from his mouth and, staring at the ceiling, scratched his chin, which I doubted even itched.

During the past three weeks, while I watched Queen and Fred Lee rise and dress for school and I dressed for the field, I had wondered the same thing: Why wasn’t Papa fighting for my right to be in school? Why was he allowing Ma Pearl to force me to settle for only a seventh-grade education when he himself had regarded education important enough to teach himself to read and write? I had asked him about it only once, and he’d replied that I was where I was needed most. It turned out he had the same reply for Monty.

“Rose is where I needs her most right now,” he said. But then he added, “She’ll go to school, soon as the harvest is in.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I will?”

Papa nodded and said, “You will.”

“I won’t have to stay home and help Ma Pearl?”

Papa shook his head. “Pearl’ll be a’right. The good Lawd’ll send her the help she need.”

Tears rushed to my eyes. I was going to school when the cotton was picked. I might be late starting, but at least I was going. I wanted to rush to Papa and hug him. But that was something I’d never done before, and I knew I was too old to start. So I simply whispered a choked “Thank you.”

But Monty sat up straight on the sofa. “Mr. Carter, on my many drives throughout this county, I’ve seen plenty of Negro men who could take Rose’s place in that field. These men have nothing better to do than play checkers in front of a country store.”

Papa placed his pipe back in his mouth. “Them mens expects to be paid.”

“Then pay them,” Monty said.

Papa glared at Monty. “I already hired all the extras I could afford. I can’t hire no mo’.”

“But why Rose and not Fred Lee and Queen?” asked Monty. “Wouldn’t you have harvested faster with the extra help?”

“Because Rose is apt,” Papa said. “She don’t need no school to learn. She’ll find a way to get her learning, just like Belle did. Queen and Fret’Lee don’t have them kind of smarts. If I keep them outta school even for the harvest, they’d soon give up. They’d accept that way of life. But not Rose. She know how to make a way outta no way.” Papa’s expression brightened a bit when he said, “Even now she’ll catch up and outrun every child in that school.”

“But why now?” asked Monty. “Why have you suddenly decided she should go when the cotton is picked?”

Papa scowled and said, “?’Cause a Negro without proper schooling ain’t nothing to the white man but a nigger.”

Smiling, Monty turned to me and said, “I hear you’ve been considering a fresh start.”

I gave him a questioning stare.

“Saint Louis?” he answered, his brows raised.

“I . . .” was all I could say before the words jumbled up in my mouth and refused to come out. I glanced at Aunt Belle. Like Monty, she was smiling.

“Belle and I have been talking,” Monty said. “She told me about your conversation when we were here a few weeks ago.”

“Our . . . conversation,” I stammered, glancing from Monty to Aunt Belle, then back again.

“I gaith whath you askth me thome thought,” Aunt Belle said.

Monty patted her on the knee, reminding her to rest her jaw. “The last time we were here,” he said to me, “we weren’t prepared to take you back. But after giving your request some thought and talking it over,” he said as he glanced lovingly at Aunt Belle, “we’d love to have you in Saint Louis.” He nodded at Papa and said, “That is, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Carter.”

My heart raced. I should have been smiling, leaping for joy at Monty’s words, but instead, my stomach churned with nervousness. Since the day Mr. Pete took Mama away in his train of a car, I had wanted nothing more than to go with them. To live a life up north. A life I could experience only from the way colored people from up north dressed, from the way they talked, even down to the way they laughed—?which was vastly different from the way things were for colored people in the South. I couldn’t believe the door to that good life was suddenly standing open before me. Monty and Aunt Belle were asking me, Rose Lee Carter, to go back to Saint Louis with them.

Like me, Papa seemed to have lost his ability to speak. He sat there, his expression unreadable, staring at Monty. When he didn’t respond after what seemed to be more than a minute, Monty spoke. “We’ll of course wait till after the harvest, if you’d like.” He smiled at me and said, “What do you say to the first week of November, Rose?”

Good thing I was sitting, else I would have hit the floor. Not only were my knees weak, but my whole body seemed to have melted like warmed butter. Here was my chance to leave Mississippi, and my emotions were in a whirlwind. Especially when I saw the look in Papa’s eyes. It was the same look of defeat that held Aunt Belle captive when Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were set free from the charge of murdering Emmett Till.

“Papa,” I said softly. “You want me to go?”

When Papa shook his head and said, “You know the answer to that question is no,” my heart took a dive.