Midnight Without a Moon(64)
As if the same cobwebs had magically appeared in her head, Queen stared at me blankly. After a moment she flinched. “You thought I was with Ricky Turner?”
I was too confused to answer.
Even in pain, Queen managed a conceited stare. “I got more class than that.”
“But Jimmy’s only fourteen. The same age as Hallelujah.”
Queen stared at me, as if the mention of Hallelujah’s name disgusted her. “Jim’s more man than that boy will ever be,” she said, her nose in the air.
Blood rushed to my head and seemed to pound in my ears.
I didn’t know why, but somehow knowing that Queen had gotten in trouble with Jimmy Robinson instead of Ricky Turner appeared frightening. What if Mr. Robinson found out? What would happen to Ma Pearl and Papa? Where would they go if Mr. Robinson ran them off his place because of Queen? Regardless of how good a farmer Papa was, I doubted he wanted to work for anyone other than Mr. Robinson.
My teeth clenched. “How could you do this to them?”
“What?” she said, staring at me as if I had asked her where babies came from in the first place.
“How could you do this to Ma Pearl and Papa?”
Queen rolled her eyes. “I didn’t do anything to them. They did this to me.” She shifted her weight and moaned in pain. “They lock us up in this house and won’t let us go nowhere but church and school.”
“That’s no reason for you to do what you did,” I said.
She rolled her eyes again and said, “When else was I supposed to leave this damn house and have some fun?”
“But with Jimmy Robinson?”
Queen’s haughty stare returned. “Why not?” she asked, her tone icy.
“Because he’s white, and you’re colored.”
“I’m as good as any white girl he coulda had,” she said, sniffing.
“He told you that?”
“He loves me,” Queen said. “I know he do.”
I pointed at her stomach. “What’d he say about that?”
As Queen stared at her stomach, tears suddenly flooded her eyes. “He loves me,” she insisted, her voice cracking.
I sighed. “But he threw you out of the truck?”
“Ma Pearl lied,” she snapped. “He didn’t throw me out. I tripped and fell.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. But I didn’t respond to Queen. I knew for myself how Ma Pearl could dress up a story, but I doubted she was making things up this time. I was sure Jimmy Robinson had thrown Queen out of that truck. He had discarded her, just the way his mama discarded the things she no longer wanted. He discarded her and handed her over to Ma Pearl.
October
Chapter Thirty-Two
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2
“‘WADE IN THE WATER. WADE IN THE WATER, CHILDREN. Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the waters.’” The words were meant to comfort the fourteen of us lined up along the sloping path that led to the banks of Stillwater Lake. Mother Edwards, Deacon Edwards’s wife, and Ma Pearl had lined us up according to age, with the youngest, nine-year-old Obadiah Malone, leading the way. Queen, being the oldest, as she’d turn sixteen in less than a week, was last. I was in front of her, and Fred Lee stood before me.
The old saying goes that if you aren’t truly saved, if your sign was false and you didn’t have religion, God would allow you to choke and strangle in the water when the preacher plunged you under. The night before, Queen had confessed to me that she was scared to go down into the water. After Ma Pearl’s discovery of her secret, she had said she didn’t want to be baptized. But Ma Pearl wasn’t hearing it. Queen was already about to bring her enough shame without backing out of her baptism as well. So there she stood behind me, all dressed in white, from the turban wrapped around her head to the thick stockings covering her feet, scared half to death that when she went down into that water, God was going to make it choke her to death.
Reverend Jenkins said that “troubling the waters” referred to a Bible story about a healing pool, where an angel troubled the waters during a certain season and the first person in the pool after the stirring would be healed. But my teacher Miss Johnson said the song was a secret slavery song, directing runaway slaves to wade through water to throw off their scents so dogs couldn’t track them. She said God would trouble the waters to keep snakes or alligators from attacking the slaves. I didn’t know whose version of the song’s story was correct, but I did know that I felt my own knees knock a bit just from the thought of my body being dipped backwards underwater. What if I slipped? What if Reverend Jenkins and Deacon Edwards dropped me? How deep was the water? I couldn’t swim, and I doubted whether any of them could either. What if I, like Queen, felt I wasn’t truly saved? Would I choke?
“‘See that host all dressed in white. God’s gonna trouble the water. The leader looks like the Israelite. God’s gonna trouble the water.’”
My knees knocked harder as our seemingly fear-free little leader Obadiah waded into the water. He was flanked by his older brothers Abner and Abel, both fifteen and already deacons. All the Malone children had been baptized before they’d reached the age of accountability, but at only nine, Obadiah had outdone them all. I prayed that his conversion was sincere and that he hadn’t been like me at that age, confusing the deacons’ words, “I move that so-and-so become a candidate for baptism,” with “I move that so-and-so receive a box of candy for baptism.” I would hate to see him come out of that lake sputtering to catch his breath.