River, cross my heart (15 page)

"I declare," Alice Bynum exclaimed.

"I declare," Elizabeth Boston chimed in. "And do you consider yourself to be one of the Creeks?" Miss Boston asked.

"I don't do much considering on that, miss. We had our entitlements, though, same as the rest of the Creeks."

"Entitlements?"

"Our parcel of land from the government. All of the Creeks got title to a plot of land and we did, too, on account of my papa's mama was a Creek. My nearest people are buried beneath that land, though it doesn't belong to me anymore."

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Hattie rubbed the head of a fat cherub carved on the arm of the chair she sat in. The cherub had identical brothers on each of the arms and finials of the room's dark furniture. She looked into Elizabeth Boston's face, whose smooth tan skin was alight with interest above the eyebrows and along the tops of her cheeks. Hattie wondered at the frank show of curiosity by a young woman so determinedly proper and corseted. "Pearl's papa and my papa were shot trying to face off a mob of grafters. That was after 'twenty-one — after the big rioting and burning in Tulsa in 1921. These grafters were bent on taking the entitlement and showing us a lesson, too. I buried Papa and my husband. They're out there laying right now in the state of Oklahoma."

Alice Bynum, too, hung on Hattie Miller's words. She had heard plenty about the burning of Tulsa in '21. "My husband and my cousin and her husband were planning to go out to Oklahoma. But we came here instead."

"Oh, my!" Miss Boston could barely conceal her eagerness for more of the tale. Elizabeth Boston had a wandering, inquiring mind. Mostly it was reading that gave her the chance to roam vicariously, but a fondness for combing the backgrounds of people newly met supplied excitement too.

"Before James Miller, my husband and my Pearl's papa, had got cool in the ground, a gentleman I thought was right nice came to call on me. I was scared, being a woman alone with a young girl. I took up with him for protection. We went to the justice of the peace and got a marriage ceremony. Shortly after, he ran off from us and I was turned off the place. I tell you I cried a bucketful that day!"

Not wanting to take her eyes from Hattie Miller's face, the schoolteacher nevertheless flicked her eyes toward the

kitchen, concerned that Pearl and Johnnie Mae were listening. Hattie Miller seemed not the least inhibited in telling her sad story.

"See, he—that man I married with—he had been put up to marry me and get the claim to my entitlement to give up to the grafters. Little Pearl and I had to leave there with just the things you see here and our clothes. My people had a mighty lot of things my papa made. He was a carpenter. He made all his own things. Most of it were farming things and we just left them behind."

Alice Bynum asked, "Did your father make all of this fur-niture here, Mrs. Miller?"

"Yes, ma'am, he was a master carpenter."

"The frontier — Oklahoma — it sounds so colorful — so exciting—so free!" said Miss Boston.

"I don't know about that, miss. There was a sense that we owned—that we belonged there."

"We heard that colored owned lots of land there — that colored had their own towns, their own sheriffs and all?" Alice questioned eagerly.

"Yes, indeed! You want to see some towns, you just look at Tecumseh and Boley and some others. These towns were full of our folk. Our folk ran those towns and plenty others. And you ought to've seen Tulsa! There was plenty of colored there — big Negroes. 1 met my husband there. A couple of times a year, Papa hauled a dresser or a chifforobe or a table to sell to the big Negroes that lived up there."

"We were going to settle out there — me and Willie, my husband, and my cousin Ina, and her husband, Cap. But we heard about the trouble and changed our mind," said Alice.

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"I met my husband in Tulsa. He was shining shoes for the oil people and hanging out in the joints drinking Choctaw beer. That stuff used to turn folks crazy. It was worse than moonshine liquor. Papa convinced him to come out to our place and work it. James Miller was kind of a city boy at that time, but he wasn't too smart. He got so that he did the farm work as well as Papa and he got to like it real well. Pearl was born and raised on that place and I put two other little ones in the ground down there, then my husband and Papa. Pearl and I left there and went up to Tulsa when we got turned out. I kind of wanted to stay, but the reverend said Tulsa was no kind of town for a young widow with a girl child, especially a widow who had already been fooled. Tulsa is a wide-open town. He told us Washington city was a better place for us. I didn't really want to leave Tulsa. But I went along with the reverend's say-so. You ought to have heard the bands that played in Tulsa! They had the brass bands, bands that played at the dances and the carnivals and all. They had great lines of men walking and playing their horns!"

Brass bands on the frontier! Brawling, brash, braying — Oklahoma brass bands! Elizabeth Boston played with the sound of the words in her head. She had the habit of storing up words and descriptions of things and places to use later in pictures of her own. Adding them to the words in all the books she'd read, she put her own pictures to Hattie's words and felt the passion of the towns Hattie spoke about. She could see folks lining the dirt tracks that passed for thoroughfares on the frontier and felt the tremble in her bowels at the thought of tubas, kettledrums, and trombones. Her father boasted that he did all the traveling in the family so his

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women could stay put and nest, like hens are supposed to. He always said it as if he'd done them a big favor by eating up the world and leaving them at home on their duffs.

Elizabeth Boston was fast becoming the thing she'd been heading toward all her life. She was becoming a fluttering, mercurial person inside a well-mannered, predictable, chilly shell. A great conflict was going on inside her at this moment. Lord, how much she'd love to grasp Hattie Miller's hands and beg her to continue with the story. She didn't want her to stop until she'd recounted every detail. How she'd love to draw her feet up into the wing chair. And how much she'd love to cross her palms behind her head and just listen to the sound of Hat-tie Miller's voice!

In the kitchen, the girls were gripped by Hattie Miller's narrative too. Pearl, familiar with it, was nevertheless riveted by her mother's telling. It sounded exciting and she marveled that these events had concerned her. Her life sounded like a story out of an adventure novel, yet she had known it to be sad and frightening and in the final analysis mundane. Listening to the tale brought Johnnie Mae to a new way of thinking about old namby-pamby Pearl Miller. Why, she could have the school yard gang eating out of her hand if she had the gumption to tell them about Oklahoma—about the Indians and the grafters.

"Mrs. Miller, we're so happy to have your Pearl in our school. We see to it that the colored students get a fine education here. We have a long tradition." Johnnie Mae listened to Miss Boston going on as if making a speech. "Mrs. Miller, your Pearl is a lovely girl. However, I do worry about her. She is so abnormally quiet and retiring. I mean, she never speaks up

even when I call on her for the lesson. I thought there might be something troubling her."

At this, Pearl raised her eyes and looked toward the front room, then across the table at Johnnie Mae.

Miss Boston felt her face trembling, became unsure of her voice. Why in the world couldn't she just admit to people that she was curious about them — that she wanted to hear their stories — that she really did care about their children and wanted fervently for them to learn. Why couldn't she just plainly say that she was confounded by this girl's mealy-mouthed demeanor?

U I s'pose it's because oi the trouble we've seen. Since the trouble, she's been real scary." Hattie Miller looked toward the kitchen with a pitying expression.

"Well, perhaps with time she'll feel at home here. The situation for our people is a little more fortunate in Georgetown than in some other locales. We have our share of troubles in this municipality, but we also have a great many educated and upstanding Negro citizens here." Miss Boston declared all this as she drew herself up to the proud posture with which she'd entered the house.

"That's what the reverend said. I declare, I hope so. Pearl and I saw a fair amount of trouble in the territory."

"Perhaps she will develop a friendship with Johnnie Mae. 1 wouldn't be surprised if they became fast friends," Miss Boston said.

Pearl again looked up sharply and caught the ambiguous look that Johnnie Mae gave her. Johnnie Mae had taken an interest in her, but Pearl was sure there was a cruel prank in the offing. And there were those who said Johnnie Mae'd

been acting strange since her little sister drowned. Funny that Miss Boston wasn't mentioning this fact to her mother!

Elizabeth Boston collected all the remaining cake crumbs onto the tines of her fork and slipped them demurely into her mouth during the lull in conversation. Hattie urged, "Won't you have another piece, Miss Boston?"

"Oh, no, Mrs. Miller, I must not. However, this is about the finest cake I have ever had."

"Thanking you warmly. Baking is a thing I've always had a good hand at." The women sat quietly looking into one another's faces, smiling.

After a few moments, Alice Bynum and Elizabeth Boston chirped and clucked about having enjoyed their visit. Johnnie Mae sighed with relief and left the kitchen table to return to the living room. Mrs. Miller's lemon cake was, as Miss Boston said, most delicious. But Johnnie Mae had been bored silly and pretty salty at being forced to endure Pearl Miller's company in the kitchen. Johnnie Mae heard Miss Boston and her mother urge Mrs. Miller to come to Mount Zion Church and to the community center.

Miss Boston stood first and extended a small hand at exactly waist level toward Hattie Miller. She shook Hattie's hand. Alice Bynum also shook Hattie Miller's hand, and Johnnie Mae, standing next to her mother, curtsied briefly. Turning to Pearl, Mrs. Miller pressed her amiably to bid Miss Boston and Mrs. Bynum and Johnnie Mae good-bye and to thank them for their visit. Pearl obediently gave a short curtsy and, with her eyes boring into the parlor rug, said, "Thank you, Miss Boston. Thank you, Miz Bynum." In the instant that none of the women was looking at her, she glanced upward and licked her tongue out at Johnnie Mae.

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Hattie stood in the doorway and watched her visitors' straight backs as they walked away. Miss Boston and Mrs. Bynum turned at the sidewalk and gently inclined their heads before moving along down the street. Hattie Miller attempted a sweet smile at her visitors. She was enormously pleased. The ladies' visit had been satisfying and well worth the wait.

"You're thrashing and worrying like a girl that's been caught out. You're a married woman. It's not like you have a houseful of babies. What's the matter? You scared?" Ina asked.

"You know my mama died bringing me. It makes me a little scared," Alice explained.

The women's voices had the tone of clarity that talks between two women out of earshot of husbands and fathers and children have. But, anxious about being overheard, Alice kept her voice low. Johnnie Mae would be getting up and coming into the kitchen soon. The two women wouldn't have much time alone together to sort this thing out. And it would have to be sorted out soon. Too much longer and the decision would be made for them.

The women had risen early to get a good start on the Thanksgiving Day cooking. Ina had come over to her cousin's kitchen several hours before sunrise—around the time that late became early—and the women had divided up the many tasks. For most of the past two weeks, Alice and Ina had shopped and

planned our the cooking and baking tor the two Thanksgiving dinners: rhe Bynums' family dinner and Alexis St. Pierre's.

Ina looked up from cleaning the collard and mustard greens. She said, "It's hetter here. Colored can go to the hospital. You can get better help than your mama did. They've got colored doctors here. You know that ol' bastard doctor they had down home didn't care about colored."

"Ina! Shh! What kind of thing are you saying?" Alice was surprised at the vehemence of her cousin's words.

"Well, we're not no children. You know who I'm talking about." Ina's normally placid face became tangled with anger. 'That old drunk man that was the doctor for colored down there didn't give a damn about helping colored women to bring babies. They called him when my time came because I was having trouble. He said the reason the baby wasn't coming was 'cause he was strangulatin' on his own cord. Then he sent all the women out of the room and he reached in and brought the baby out with pincers. I've always believed that he strangled my baby himself. That old bastard hated colored people and wouldn't come to help any of the colored women bring a baby unless she was close to dead. I think he fixed me, too. I think he fixed me so Cap and I couldn't make any more babies." Ina swabbed at her eyes.

"That was a sad time, Ina Mae," Alice said, patting her cousin on the shoulder. "I'm just not sure this is the right time for me to have another child. You know, with Clara so recently gone."

"Alice, girl, that's not your business," Ina said, recovering herself. "That's God's business. My mama said it's the Lord who decides what is the right time to bring a baby."

"The Lord. The Lord's the one who decides when to take them, too."

"Yes. It's the Lord's decision no matter what we think about it. You thinking about going up Number Ten to that woman up there? It's a big risk. She could ruin you for good."

"I thought about it."

"Does Willie know yet?"

"I don't think so—yet."

u Go into it with a light heart, girl. It'll be a joy tor all o( us — you, Willie, Johnnie Mae. It'll be good tor her. It'll ease you over the loss of Clara."

"No. It won't. That's the thing it won't do."

"Do it for him, then. Do it to hold him. Do it to make a home."