A Matter of Souls (7 page)

Miss Clotille had always been helpful in pointing out those small things that separated the Reeds from the most cultivated,
ideal
Colored class. At every turn she had a little idea, or suggestion or correction. Miss Clotille had taken Hazel under her wing, brought her to work in her home to…

To what?

It occurred to her that as long as Hazel felt too brown and far from correct, Miss Clotille's tiny person stayed lofty, light, and proud.

Sudden, urgent tapping on the door interrupted Hazel's discoveries.

“Hazel! I need to get in there!” Without thinking, Hazel leaned to open the door.

Jurdine rushed to the mirror. In silence, Hazel watched
her older sister, conscious for the first time of how much Jurdine and Miss Clotille were alike.

Jurdine wasn't small, but she was perfect in figure, curving exactly where she should. She had lovely ankles. Her creamy skin had to be some kind of throwback to Mama Vee's White grandfather, and the blood mix had straightened every curl out of Jurdine's shoulder-length black hair even when it was wet. She had the full lips and wide dark eyes of their father, and the only thing of Mama's that Jurdine had gotten was the husky tone of her words.

The ideal Colored woman.

Jurdine must have felt her sister's stare, because she paused and narrowed her eyes. She spun around, smoothing the lines of her tight black skirt. The white explosion of ruffles she wore to top it fell away neatly from her ample cleavage, which she shook in Hazel's stunned direction.

“What?” she breathed arrogantly.

“Where are you going this time of night?”

“Not to any dance with a piss-poor piano player!” Jurdine smacked her ruby lips together to even her lipstick. She had just the right hint of rouge on her cheeks.

Hazel set her jaw. She didn't want to be provoked, and it was so easy for Jurdine, who had learned from the mistress of provocation in this house, their grandmother.

“Does he know you're secretly trying to make yourself light, bright, and damned near White—like me?”

Hazel tried to grip the jar tightly, but it slipped from her fingers and rolled to the floor. Jurdine bent to pick it up.

“You are what you are, Hazey,” she said, throwing the words out as if Hazel's being anything wasn't important in the scheme of life.

“And what are you, Jurdine Marie? Johnson C. Johnson gets paid to play the piano. What you get paid to do, Jurdine?”

Jurdine blanched.

“How many chickens are you gonna pluck tonight when you sneak out?”

The pride slumped out of her shoulders. Her luscious lips parted and closed, but she couldn't seem to manage even a quick drop of meanness.

Hazel stood up, lightheaded—so much had changed, so much was changing—and opened the bathroom door. “You better be careful, Jurdine.” Hazel pulled the door closed behind her with a soft click and made her way to the bedroom, where she collapsed across the bed she would share with Jurdine whenever she came home. If she came home.

Hazel didn't sleep. Later, in the last humid hours of night, she felt Jurdine's presence in the room, felt the mattress move as she sat to peel off her clothes and push them carelessly underneath the bed. Hazel heard the soft crying and knew she wasn't meant to. She almost got up to give comfort.

But she didn't. She curled away from the pain to dream.

The next morning Hazel felt terrible when she woke. While she'd dreamed, a sadness about Jurdine and Miss Clotille had somehow settled in her bones. Even thinking of getting up seemed too much effort. She blinked in surprise at the empty, quiet room.

Jurdine was long gone, and so were Velma Jean and Violet. Miriam and George Ann's cots were already closed and rolled into the corner. Hazel pushed herself up onto an elbow. What time was it?

“Chile, lay back in that bed!” Mama Vee bustled in with a tin mug of what smelled like peppermint tea. Hazel obeyed, because her head and stomach had jiggled in time with each other when she moved. She lay back on the pillow as her grandmother came around.

“Jurdine said you tossed and turned all night, and Evelyn came in here and said she felt a fever on you. I don't have time to do no coddling, just here's this tea to settle your stomach.”

Mama Vee was wearing her starched black uniform, and her smooth silver hair was sleek under a hairnet. She put the cup on the small bedside table and stood over Hazel like a doctor who could examine with x-ray eyes.

“‘Course, I don't believe it's your stomach that needs settling—I believe it's your hard, kinky head!”

Hazel closed her eyes. It was no use trying to point out to Mama Vee that her hair had never been crinkly or kinky; just as it would never be any use trying to convince her the truth was that being
any
shade of brown was simply being Black to the folks Mama Vee wanted to impress. Hazel
rolled away from her grandmother, pulling her knees up to meet her chin as she lay on her side. Her joints ached.

“You surly wench! I'll send word round to the school and Miss Clotille that you won't be comin' to work today.” Mama Vee's voice receded as she marched away. “Seems to me, somebody in your position would take her job more serious …”

Hazel wanted to holler that Jurdine took her job real serious, but she didn't have it in her. Jurdine was only trying in her own way to do the same thing as Hazel. She wanted more out of her life than an ordinary Colored one—or Negro or Black one—was likely to provide.

When Mama Vee was long gone, Hazel slept fitfully. Thoughts skittered in her semiconscious mind between stretches of nothing.

“Hazel! Hazel!” Was that Jurdine? Couldn't be … Hazel slowly forced her heavy eyelids open. The light filtering underneath the half-pulled shade was different. She was overwhelmed by the scent of chicken feathers and sweet perfume. Her stomach turned and cramped. Yes, Jurdine.

Hazel blinked up at the pale face.

“W-What?”

“I brought you a surprise. Wake up!” Jurdine was grinning. Hazel took a deep breath. She still felt something awful.

“Come on, girl. Sit up, now. Let me smooth your hair. And this gown …” Jurdine looked around quickly and
grabbed a blouse from the twins' bed. She threw it over Hazel's shoulders and arranged it like a bed jacket.

“What in the world are you doing?” Hazel asked, wanting to resist her sister's out-of-character fussing and concern.

“There!” Jurdine stood back for a moment. “Now, close your eyes.”

Hazel sucked her teeth in irritation. “For real, Hazel! It's a big surprise, but I have to give it to you in a hurry, before anybody gets home!”

Hazel frowned and obeyed.

“Don't make that ugly face!” Jurdine said. “You'll be sorry!”

“Jurdine—”

“Okay, open your eyes. Surprise!”

Hazel turned in the direction of her sister's voice, and there in the bedroom doorway stood Johnson C. Johnson. He had on his crisp khaki uniform, but he had topped it with a cocky straw Panama. He swept off his hat with one hand; with the other he held out a bunch of roses from Reverend Clark's yard. Hazel's physical and mental agitation eased, and she managed to smile.

“Excuse me for imposing, Hazel Mozella Reed. But your sister here found me and said you were laid up, and I knew it must be serious because I never heard of you missing school or work or anything. And I thought … maybe you might not be up for tomorrow night, so—”

Hazel wanted to say “No!” but a wave of nausea shook her. As she watched JC's expression change from simple
caring to worry, someone else banged into the house and Jurdine's voice was soon in argument with Baby George's.

“How come I can't …” George almost knocked JC down shouldering her way into the bedroom. “Oh. Hey, JC,” she said, plopping onto the bed.

“Hazel! I just happened to mention to Mr. Goodman about the bleaching cream, and—”

“What?” Hazel moaned.

“George Ann, one day your mouth is gonna write a check your ass can't cover!” Jurdine fumed.

“Bleaching cream?” JC walked around the bed and sat so close that Hazel could look straight into his questioning eyes. There was no blame there, only love. Love! She couldn't speak.

George, however, had words bursting out. “Yes! And no wonder you're down. Do you know what Mr. Goodman said is in that mess? Mercury! Mercury, Hazel!”

Hazel couldn't answer. A pain seized her and she jerked her knees up, dry heaving. She felt George take her hand, and she heard Jurdine screaming in the background. But closest to her ear was JC's strong authority.

“Hazel, we're takin' you to the hospital.”

She passed clean out.

“Oh, Hazel, you look so peaked.” Hazel found it strange that Daddy didn't use his regular nickname for her. If she was dreaming again …

She was not. She woke up feeling very weak, and her father was really standing over her. She wasn't at home anymore. The smell of medicines and cleaning products made her nose tingle. There was a bright white curtain curving around the narrow bed.

“I'm in the hospital, Daddy?” she asked. Her voice sounded small and far away.

“Yes, baby, yes,” Mama answered.

Hazel turned her head on the pillow. Her mother's face was strained. And scared. Hazel tried to reach out to her and realized that the bottom half of her body was numb. Her eyes widened.

“What happened?” was all she could get out. Was she paralyzed? How? What?

The metal rings holding the curtain suddenly slid back noisily. A white-coated, white-haired White man frowned at Hazel. When he moved, she saw a black-haired ghost cowering behind him, trembling in an ugly work smock. Jurdine.

Hazel blinked and licked her dry lips, attempting to put her confusion into words.

“Don't try to talk just yet.” The doctor unclipped a chart from the bed and read it over quickly, then shoved it under his arm.

Hazel had a flashed memory of JC's muscular arms, and a straw hat, and big old pink roses …

“George? Evelyn? I'm Dr. Barton.”

Barton, Hazel thought. Like Clara Barton, the nurse.
Was he kin to her? Hazel wanted to rid her head of these random notions … She wrinkled her forehead and attempted to focus.

“And you, child, must be the naughty one.”

Hazel felt offended, and that familiar emotion cleared her wits. “How come I can't move?” she challenged. The doctor looked directly at her.

“Because, Hazel, you are still under anesthesia. You had a kidney removed.”

Hazel shivered as her parents gasped.

“Oh, you'll recover all right. There are plenty folks who live normal lives with one kidney. Some are born with only one. But you—you poisoned yours, with mercury. Your entire nervous system almost shut down. You were dying.”

Hazel was shocked. She'd been bettering herself and killing herself at the same time? The devil. The devil had been doing a fine dance inside that little jar, hadn't he! And inside her head, too.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “How long were you using that …”

Mama fumbled in her bag and pulled something out. “Beauty Queen Complexion Clarifier,” she read in a strange, singsong voice.

The doctor took the jar and looked at it carefully. “Unhealthy, unproven, dangerous, and deadly,” he finally said. “You're a handsome Colored girl. I hope you've learned your lesson.”

“Yes sir,” Hazel murmured, looking down at her smooth, evenly brown hands. Brown. Not any lighter. Not wrong. Just brown.

“Mother and father, I need to speak with you about your daughter's recuperation.” Daddy gave Hazel a smile, Mama planted a kiss, and they followed the doctor away. Jurdine stayed at the foot of the bed.

“Oh, Hazel, what a stupid thing to do!” she said in a low voice.

“You oughta know, Jurdine.”

Hazel waited for her sister's comeback, hoping that she was numbed enough to take whatever blow was coming. Instead, Jurdine blushed deeply, and Hazel could see tears welling up in her eyes.