The Dry Grass of August(4)

Before we left, the waitress gave us a greasy paper bag. “Here’s the food for your girl. Boss says she can use the bathroom off the kitchen.”





There was a sign at the town limits of Wickens, Georgia:



NEGROES

Observe Curfew!

WHITES ONLY

After Sundown!





Daddy would approve of such a sign. I hoped Mary hadn’t seen it. Her head was against the seat back, her eyes closed.

Mama pulled into a motor court and asked me to go with her to see about rooms. We passed a lawn jockey with a grin on the black face, white teeth gleaming. Mama told the man at the desk, “I’ve got four children, one of them still a baby, and I brought my girl along to help. We don’t mind sharing with her, but she must have a bed to herself.”

“Can’t have your children sleeping with her.” The man touched Mama’s hand. She jerked it away. He frowned. “They’s a nigger hotel downtown where she can stay, then y’all can c’mon back here.”

Mama flinched. She never used that word. She said colored or darkie or Negro. Daddy said she was mired in euphemisms.

“Well?” the man said.

“I won’t have her staying off by herself.” Mama’s voice was low and sharp. She left the office, pulling me behind her.

We found a place that would have Mary, the Sleep Inn Motel. The man who ran it walked outside with Mama and pointed to a cabin behind his office. He looked at Mary standing by our car. “That your girl?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his mouth. “She can just let herself in.”

As soon as we got in our room, Mama called Uncle Taylor. “Hey! We’re at Wickens, Georgia, well south of Atlanta, making good time.” She said, “Uh-huh. No, no problem. We found a place that let her stay.” Mama listened, then said, “I can’t talk to him right now.” Did she mean Daddy? Another pause, then, “We’ll see y’all tomorrow; can’t wait.”

After I put on my pajamas, I wanted to go see if Mary was okay. Hot as it was, Mama made me wear her bathrobe so I’d be decent. When I got to the cabin, I was shy to knock on the door. Mary stayed with us when Mama and Daddy went out of town, but it was our house, and I never minded walking right in the den where she slept on the pull-out sofa. I knocked softly.

Mary called out, “Come on in, Jubie.”

The door opened into a small room. The bulb hanging from the ceiling didn’t give off a lot of light, making the room feel close and hot, even with the one window open. The air smelled of dust and soap. Mary was in the only chair, a wooden ladder-back like we had in the kitchen at home, but with one leg shorter than the others so that she was slightly tilted. There was a tattered white Bible in her lap.

“How’d you know it was me at the door?”

“Who else would visit me so late in the evening?”

“Might have been a gentleman stopping to see you.”

“Might have.”

She wore a blue chenille robe and white terry cloth slippers. Her reddish-brown curls were free from her combs. I’d heard Mama say that Mary used a henna rinse, and I liked it that Mary had vanity.

She pointed to the bed. “Sit yourself down, girl.”

I sat and had to grab the footboard to keep from falling backward.

Mary asked, “You never been on a straw tick?”

I tried to find a way to sit, but the bed pulled me down. I scooted upward and put my back against the headboard, my left leg dangling off the side. “How can you sleep in this thing?”

“That’s what you do with a tick, sleep in it, not on it.”

“What’s that squeaking every time I move?”

“Got ropes underneath, not springs like you used to.”

“That would keep me awake.” I swatted at a mosquito that buzzed my ear.

“You doing okay, Jubie?”

“Except for being crowded in with everybody, our stuff all over, and here you are with a whole room to yourself.”

“Sometime it pays to be a darkie.” She rocked on the uneven chair.

I hooked my toe through a hole in the rag rug. “Where’s your bathroom?”

“What you think this is, a castle for colored folks? There’s an outhouse, little ways into the field, and the pitcher and bowl there.”

“Got any water in it?”

“The lord of this here moe-tell let me fill it from a tap outside. I’m better off than I might’ve been.”

“This room has nice ambience.” I tripped over the word. I hadn’t said it out loud before.

“Another new word, huh? What’s it mean?”

“That your room has a good feeling to it.” I struggled off the bed. “Is that a family Bible?”

“It was my grand’s. Got our dates in it.”

“Could I see?”

She opened the front cover of the Bible and handed it to me. “Be gentle. It’s got more’n seventy years on it.”

I held the book carefully. In many different hands, there were records of births and deaths, marriages and baptisms. The dates in Mary’s Bible went back much further than what Stell had recorded in ours. One entry said, “Mary Constance Culpepper, born September 20, 1906. Married Pharr Lincoln Luther, May 18, 1925.”