River, cross my heart (14 page)

Her first sight of Clara — a little brown nut in white swaddles—had been from between the hips of Aunt Ina and Ma Dear. Aunt Ina pushed Johnnie Mae forward and she pulled back into Aunt Ina's stomach and was pushed forward again to kiss Clara's little hand, a hand her weary-looking mother uncovered and presented to her lips. Her mama was a mound oi white sheets and Ma Dear's blankets, with only her head and arms visible. The mystery oi how Clara had come out oi her stomach remained shrouded beneath the layers of cloths. Her mama didn't stir from the shoulders down. Johnnie Mae had a pinprick oi worry about whether her mama would ever walk again. Johnnie Mae's face came down toward the hand and brushed her mama's cheek. Her mama held Johnnie Mae close for a moment, then gently eased her back to Aunt Ina. Clara's hand was so soft it felt like cotton on her lips.

Smelling her palm and recalling Clara, Johnnie Mae thought about sitting in the dark in the Blue Mouse Theater

all the whole of Saturday afternoon. They loved the Blue Mouse Theater. Johnnie Mae generally paid Clara's way into the matinee because, though Clara had her own pennies, she did not have many.

On Saturday afternoon in Georgetown, few children were anywhere but at the Blue Mouse Theater watching the moving pictures. Most of the children raced through their morn-ing chores and odd jobs, and the pennies and nickels and dimes they earned poured into the Blue Mouse's coffers. Chewing on whatever they had gotten in paper bags—penny candies and hard things to suck on — was a pleasure for the Bynum sisters. Each ate a hot dog in the theater. Johnnie Mae helped Clara handle her slopped-with-mustard dog, taking it up to her mouth to lick the sliding mustard off the sides. Responsible for keeping Clara clean, Johnnie Mae was all the afternoon chiding Clara and often resorted to licking sticky messes off her baby sister's fingers.

Clara sat forward in her seat with her short legs dangling above the gooey messes on the theater floor. Her eyes were glued to the screen. Halfway through the first picture, Clara would slump back in her seat, asleep. Her hands would fall away from her bag of candy. Her hands and the bag would be moist with spittle and sugar.

It had been in the Blue Mouse Theater that Johnnie Mae and Clara saw newsreels of the great swimmer Gertrude Ederle doing the Australian crawl all the way across the English Channel. Slathered with grease to coat her in the freezing water, she looked like no other woman Johnnie Mae had ever seen. She was a marvel! Johnnie Mae told Clara that she was going to swim the English Channel just like Gertrude Ederle. Clara laughed. She said Johnnie Mae was silly.

Every Sunday since coming to Georgetown, Hattie Miller had waited for a delegation o{ church ladies to call on her. "Surely it's the custom here to welcome decent Christian families to the church?" she remarked to her daughter, Pearl. All these eight weeks, she held on to the hope that the women o( Georgetown would judge her and Pearl worthy of their churches and send someone to call on them. In the meantime, she and Pearl prayed in the parlor.

In preparation for the call, each Sunday morning Hattie Miller dressed in her finest, most Christian dress and shoes. Her face was prunelike and very dark, with small gold hoop earrings adding the only glint of color around her face. She sat rigidly with her Bible in her lap in the tiny front room of her house on Dent Place. The high-necked silk crepe dress she wore was well made but past the fashion, and her ankles were completely covered by the dress's full skirt. The high-topped shoes that peeked from beneath her hem were soft with wear but held a lustrous shine.

After services at Mount Zion, Miss Elizabeth Boston

asked Mrs. Alice Bynum and Johnnie Mae if they wouldn't accompany her around to the narrow house on Dent Place where Hattie Miller and her daughter lived. She took it as her duty to become acquainted with her students' families and she was curious to know more about the unusually quiet and retiring Miller girl.

When they reached the Miller house, Elizabeth Boston rapped on the door. Hattie pulled open the door before Miss Boston's hand had returned to her side and smiled broadly, but not easily. The ladies were surprised. Mrs. Miller seemed to be expecting someone; she acted as though she were waiting for them.

"How do you do," Miss Boston chirped.

"How do," Hattie Miller replied.

"Mrs. Miller?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm Elizabeth Boston, your daughter's teacher."

"How do."

Miss Boston gestured toward Mrs. Bynum and said, "This is Mrs. Alice Bynum and her daughter, Johnnie Mae. Johnnie Mae sits next to your Pearl in class."

Pearl's hand pushed aside a panel of the beige filet-crochet curtains on the front-facing window and peered out at Miss Boston standing on the stoop with a woman she didn't know and Johnnie Mae Bynum. Pearl's mind ticked through a list of possible reasons for Miss Boston's visit. She'd been ever so quiet in class. There couldn't be a complaint. Maybe Johnnie Mae had made a complaint against her? What on earth could the teacher want on a Sunday? Maybe Miss Boston was making the long-awaited formal church call? Pearl's chest got to pounding with emotion that traveled off her mama and

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settled on everything in the room. At long hist Pearl and her mama were going to he welcomed — would he taken in — by one of the churches.

"Oh, how do you do. Please step in." Pearl's mother could barely contain her excitement. "Pearl, your school friend is here to call," she sang out. "How do you do, little lady."

"I hope we haven't come at a bad time, Mrs. Miller." Johnnie Mae's mother spoke in a formal but very friendly voice.

"No, ma'am. Please step in and take a seat, won't you?" Hattie Miller opened the door wide and directed the visitors into a room filled with very large, carved furniture oi the same dark brown color as she. The path through the chifforobe, vanity, several chairs, end table, and oval dining table was narrow and winding.

Pearl hopped to her feet and arranged her dress when the visitors entered the room. As on every school day, her hair was neatly done and her skin glossy with oil. Her mama had told her to smile when company came and this she tried to do when Johnnie Mae, her mother, and Miss Boston entered the parlor. But the expression that passed for smiling with the Millers was so bland a thing as would cause a stranger to call them both dour.

Johnnie Mae's smile too was tight with politeness and nothing else. She hadn't wanted to come along, but Mama had made her. Mama said they had a duty to welcome folks and make them feel at home. It was especially important for newcomers to feel that the church welcomed them. And Miss Boston thought it was a good idea for Pearl and Johnnie Mae to get to know each other. Johnnie Mae thought Pearl was a bump on a log and as dull as dust.

Hattie had baked, brewed strong, flavorful coffee, and

washed the four matching china cups and saucers in anticipation of this visit as she had done each Sunday morning since they'd arrived in Georgetown. Her only fear had been that more than four ladies would come.

"Miss Boston, Miz Bynum, won't you take a cup of coffee?" Hattie Miller trilled in her most proper, company-come-to-call voice. Short of stature, she moved about the room like a spinning top. Pearl sat back into a chair by the front window and resumed reading her Bible, peering intermittently over the book at Johnnie Mae, who sat on a chair next to her mother. Neither girl spoke to the other.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Miller. I'd love a cup of coffee if it won't be too much trouble," Miss Boston said.

"Oh, no. I keep a pot on every Sunday the Lord sends. I been expecting a call from the church," she said and spun off to the kitchen.

Elizabeth Boston's face got warm suddenly. "Let's see, how long have they been in town? Several months at least. And no one from the church has called on them? Some of the old customs are surely fading. It's unforgivable." She muttered to herself and clucked her tongue at this lapse in Christian custom.

Hattie Miller carried in a large silver tray, on top of which were three cups of coffee and three matching plates holding large, moist wedges of cake. The lemon cake sat high on the plates, topped with lemon icing. It was the kind of cake, with perfect layers and perfectly blended flavors, that does its own boasting, speaking eloquently for the woman who made it.

"Pearl, take Johnnie Mae out to the kitchen. There's cake

in there tor you girls and buttermilk if you want it," Mrs. Miller practically sang out to Pearl. She was pleased to he exercising her hospitality.

Pearl was taken aback by her mother's directive. She should have known that she and Johnnie Mae were going to be sent to the kitchen. Oi course her mother was going to want these ladies all to herself. Oi course she was expected to take care oi hospitality toward Johnnie Mae. She sprang up out oi her chair, shot a glance at Johnnie Mae, and looked away before Johnnie Mae's eyes locked with hers. She wound her way through the furniture to the kitchen. At a nod and a brief wrinkling oi the brows from her mother, Johnnie Mae followed Pearl to the kitchen. She'd known, too, that banishment was likely.

The kitchen was a neat, well-furnished room. A large table dominated the center oi the room and chairs enough for six people were placed around it. Mrs. Miller had set out two glasses of buttermilk with the lemon cake proudly in the middle of the table. Johnnie Mae stood next to one oi the chairs that had a plate and utensils in front of it and looked about the room. She wondered if Pearl and her mother had boarders. There seemed to be so many places at the table. Waiting for a signal to sit and eat, Johnnie Mae turned to Pearl, who stood next to the other place setting with her head bowed. Pearl was the hostess and she knew she was supposed to make her company feel at home. But she was still ill at ease around Johnnie Mae and she wasn't quite sure what to do. Finally she said, u Take a seat, please," and Johnnie Mae sat down.

Pearl took up the cake knife and cut pieces for her guest and herself. The girls ate in silence. The door from the kitchen

134 ' Breena Clarke

to the front room was left open and the two strained their ears toward the talk in the parlor.

Miss Boston first pecked at her slice, then returned for a healthy bite. "Mrs. Miller, this is a fine cake."

"Quite nice of you to say so, miss. You are from Mount Zion Church?" In the past weeks, Hattie had promenaded past each of the Georgetown churches that appeared to have Negro congregations. Their denominations mattered less to her than good preaching and a fine, upstanding, well-dressed congregation.

"Yes, we do attend there." Miss Boston meant to eat the cake more delicately than eagerly, as she'd been taught, but couldn't resist its lemony taste. She stared at the silver tray and the delicate porcelain cups, saucers, and plates. Why, her own mama served proudly on mismatched pieces of crockery pilfered from the Pullman cars on which her papa had worked. Miss Boston had never seen a set like this in any colored person's home. She was in grave danger of forgetting her manners in looking from Hattie Miller's dark, lined face to the smooth bone china and the fine, tasteful furnishings.

"It's a mighty fine edifice." Hattie parroted a phrase her papa had found so useful. The stone buildings in their hometown of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, were always "mighty fine edifices" to her papa.

"Oh, yes, it is a handsome church. We are very proud. Every brick laid by a member of the congregation," Miss Boston said, eager to crow about the church.

"You've got every right to be proud. You Georgetown folks are prideful people." The women smiled graciously, each proud of her own demeanor.

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Elizabeth Boston placed her plate carefully on the oval table at her elbow, picked up her coffee cup, and placed two small spoonfuls oi sugar in it. The coffee, too, was uncommonly satisfying. It had the robust flavor of strong country brew, and Miss Boston longed to slurp it down. After a few demure sips, she took a healthy slug of it, put down the cup, and came around to the subject of her visit.

"Mrs. Miller, I've actually come to speak to you about your daughter, Pearl."

Hattie's pleased smile faded and lines bored deeper into her forehead. "Is she the cause of some trouble?" Hattie asked.

"Oh, no, no. Pearl is a lovely, sweet, well-mannered girl, Mrs. Miller," Miss Boston maintained.

"It's very nice of you to say so, miss."

"We're very happy to have her in class."

"Thank you."

Pearl figured that all that had been said up to now was merely polite preamble. At any moment, Miss Boston's true purpose in coming would be revealed. And further, Mrs. Bynum and Johnnie Mae had something to do with it.

"You have just recently moved to Georgetown?" Miss Boston asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Hattie Miller answered.

"May I ask where you have come from, Mrs. Miller?" Alice Bynum asked.

"We come from the territory. We come from the Oklahoma territory, Mi: Bynum."

"Oh, mv, that's very intriguing." Elizabeth Boston prided herself on the words in her vocabulary that added the scalloped edges oi adventure and passion to mundane thoughts.

Intriguing was one of these. Though Mr. Ernest Boston, her father, was always on the road with the railroad, her own traveling had been limited. All of it had been done in the pages of books and by the tales told by her father and the people she met. In all her years she'd left Georgetown only once, to visit some of her people in Philadelphia.

"My nearest people are buried in the state of Oklahoma," Hattie Miller said.

"How come you all to be out that way, Mrs. Miller?" Alice Bynum asked.

"That's way out west, isn't it? There are a great many Indians out there, Mrs. Miller?" Miss Boston blurted out.

"Yes, ma'am, a great many. We number some of our people among them. Our folks have been out on the frontier since Emancipation."

"I declare," Miss Boston said.

"My papa's papa's papa brought himself and a wagonload of folks out there as soon as they said he was free to go. He swore he wanted to strike out for where things were new to him. The woman who birthed my papa was a full-blooded Creek, miss."