River, cross my heart (22 page)

The water appeared black in front of them. In the darkness there was no blue to it. Both jumped into the water and splashed great amounts of it onto the sides. The water had lost

the warmth of the day's sun and was, as Clara had imagined it, cool. Maybe Rat was right after all. Maybe they did get blocks of ice to cool down the water.

All the eyes in all the heads on all the pillows in Georgetown were closed, they thought. The only sounds were theirs. The trees overhanging the playground created a sylvan glade and all sound from the street was muffled. There was no breeze to rustle leaves or ripple the surface of the water. It was only them and the pool. The sensation of slipping into water so dark that the blue bottom could not be seen was exhilarating to Johnnie Mae.

Pearl was frightened, though she was determined not to say so. She got out of the pool after a very few minutes and sat dangling her legs from the side. She was scared mostly because she couldn't see where the bottom was. She was nowhere near as confident of her swimming as Johnnie Mae.

Johnnie Mae swam as easily in the dark as in daylight. She glided the length back and forth, and only the triangular trail her body made with her head forming the apex could be seen.

Pearl watched her friend admiringly. Johnnie Mae pulled herself to the side and raised herself out of the pool to the elbows, then dunked herself again and swam off.

"You look like a shark," Pearl said as Johnnie Mae barreled through the water. Johnnie Mae put her head up at the far end of the pool and called back, "You don't know what a shark looks like."

"You better go back home, little girl. You better go get in your bed before your papa finds you gone," Pearl countered, sensing that, despite Johnnie Mae's bravado, she was nervous about being in the pool.

Johnnie Mae shot up out ot the water, ran hack from the edge, then frog jumped back in. Her body made a roaring splash and sent water out along the sides. Pearl said, u Shh! Don't be splashing around making noise!" She sat on the side of the pool anxiously.

Toby Davis rapped his nightstick along the fence at the same time he yelled, "What's going on in there?"

Pearl jumped in her skin at the rat-a-tat sound and the booming voice. Johnnie Mae, instantly alert, whispered, "Get down. Get down in the water so he can't see you!" Pearl slid down into the water quickly, then raised her head slowly, peeping up to see who was yelling. She saw a big, round, red face pushed up against the link fence. The policeman's left eye was framed by a fence link. He shone his flashlight into the dark area around the pool to catch sight of whoever was swimming around in there. He'd heard splashing and was investigating. Wasn't nobody supposed to be cavorting around in there at night!

"Niggers! What you niggers doing in that pool?" Toby Davis yelled out. The face left the fence and Johnnie Mae knew that Officer Davis was going to find a way m. They'd better scramble if they were going to avoid getting caught. There was no runnirV and gamin' in Toby Davis's mind. Johnnie Mae swam toward Pearl. u Go\ Run! Get to the fence! He's going to find a way in. Run! Get outta here!" Her voice came out strangled, but the force of it lit a fire under Pearl.

Johnnie Mae swam the width o( the pool in nothing flat and jumped out. Pearl ran to the fence and climbed onto it. It bucked and threatened to throw her off, but she scrambled up and then down the other side. She heard Johnnie Mae yell, "Run! Don't turn back. Just run!"

Johnnie Mae put her foot into the links halfway up and tried to mount the fence. She managed to get one foot secure, but Toby Davis, who'd squeezed through the gate at the back of the playground where it was held closed by a chain and a padlock, crossed the ground speedily and grabbed her right foot. The police officer bellowed, "Nigger! Git down here! Git down or I'll shoot you off that fence!"

Pearl's legs, which were readying to run, stopped cold. She turned and looked back, hidden by shrubs. Davis had Johnnie Mae by one leg and was yanking and pulling her, trying to dislodge her from the fence.

"You want to swim, nigger? You know niggers can't swim 'cause niggers don't float." Officer Davis kept tugging on Johnnie Mae's ankle, and she stubbornly held to the fence. The fence wobbled back and forth with the frantic tussling.

Pearl's body went into that place of involuntary action that makes the body act because it cannot not act. She knew that Johnnie Mae wouldn't be able to hold on to the fence much longer. She could see that Toby Davis was serious about holding on. Johnnie Mae and Officer Davis were locked in the situation. Neither one of them was giving in, but Johnnie Mae was likely to come out the loser.

A few yards from the place the two girls had hidden their clothes, the ground was covered with stinkballs—the fruit of the Japanese ginkgo tree. Most every block in Georgetown had some o{ the decorative ginkgo trees with their horribly stinking fruit. Stinkballs lay all over the ground waiting for somebody to step on them and release the putrid odor. Pearl grabbed up an armload of them and shinnied back up the fence. Despite the wobbling, Pearl gained the top and straddled it. From her perch, she lobbed a stinkball at Toby

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Davis, hitting him upside his head. The stinkball glanced off and smashed on the ground at his feet. It released a stinking smell and Davis cursed. Pearl got tickled at his grimaces and threw more of the stinky things onto the ground at the policeman's feet. He stumbled around, stepping on the missiles and releasing their smell. Pearl leapt down, got more stinkballs, mashed them between her palms to release their odor, and lobbed them over the fence on top of Toby Davis.

Distracted by the stinkballs, Davis loosened his hold on Johnnie Mae's ankle. She hoisted herself up over the fence and down on the outside. Pearl, arms full of the stinking missiles, continued to hurl them onto Officer Toby Davis's head and shoulders.

"This ain't no game! I'ma get you, niggers! You ain't got no business to be in this swimming pool!" Toby Davis sputtered with rage as Johnnie Mae and Pearl grabbed up their clothes and ran down the street.

When they got to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Volta Place, separating to go their different ways, Johnnie Mae stopped to take a good look at Pearl's face. The girl was laughing, full-out laughing — at what they'd done, at what she'd done. She had pelted Toby Davis all over his head with stinkballs and she was howling like a banshee about it. Johnnie Mae grabbed at Pearl's shoulders and shook her, saying, "Shush! You better stop hollering and laughing. You better hightail it home and get in the bed, little girl!" Pearl kept laughing. She ran off toward home with her head thrown back, laughing.

The distance from Wisconsin Avenue to Johnnie Mae's house seemed great — out of all proportion to the usual distance. She'd run up and down these streets so often that she

214 ' Breena Clarke

could recognize each cobblestone by its feel beneath her foot. But tonight, her feet were nearly numb. When she crossed Wisconsin Avenue, she started to run, and the feeling did not come back to her limbs even then. She felt instead that she was flying over the cobblestones and around the tree boxes.

All of the windows in all of the houses were dark. She went down O Street and into the alley behind her house. The only house with a light on was her house. With the curtains drawn, the window looked like a square sun. She ran through the yard and up the porch steps, opened the door with a swift, desperate pull on the knob, and plunged headlong into the room.

Her papa and mama stood when she entered. They stood and looked at her without saying a thing. Their faces indicted her for many and monstrous transgressions. But they wouldn't have thought of it — could not have imagined what really happened.

"You been swimming in the middle of the night? Your clothes is all wet through. You been walking the streets like this at night? Johnnie Mae? You hear me?" Papa broke the silence.

"Johnnie Mae, has something happened to you?" Mama asked. Her face was all torn up. "My Lord, what's going on?" Mama exclaimed and Calvin, who'd awakened at the sound of the loud voices, joined his strident voice to the others'.

"Has somebody done something to you, girl?" Papa asked, his voice climbing higher in volume and pitch. "I'm callin' the law!"

"No! Something happened, but not what you think," Johnnie Mae answered.

"What happened, Johnnie Mae? Where have you been?" Mama asked.

Kit er, Cross M\ Heart - .

"A girl gets up in the middle of the night and goes tramping through the town. Anything is bound to happen. What is it?" She bowed her head in the face of her papa's voice.

"Where your shoes at, girl?" Mama asked. "What happened to your shoes?" Johnnie Mae had not thought about the shoes since she took them off before climbing the fence. Where were they? Still on the grass by the fence? They were still where she'd left them and she'd come all the way home without them — without even noticing that she'd forgotten them. She looked down at herself—bare feet, dress wet. What a shameful sight!

Her papa said, "Has something been done to her? I'll kill the man that's done it. I'll call the law! Alice, I depend on you to tell me if this child has been taken advantage of."

Fearing the direction their fears were taking them, Johnnie Mae blurted out, "No! We were swimming in the pool on Volta Place."

Papa asked, his anger rising higher, "Who are you sneaking out to see and keeping time with? A young girl like you, keeping time with boys already. I declare! That's what I been talking about, woman!"

"Hush a minute and give her time to tell it. Let her tell it," Mama said. "Go on and tell it, Johnnie," she said firmly.

Papa and Mama sat at the kitchen table and went silent as stones, watching her mouth as if they didn't trust their ears and would have to read her lips. It took her some moments to gather up the story and tell it coherently.

She spoke evenly and included all the details of her and Pearl going to the pool, climbing the fence, swimming in the water, and being caught.

"The police! The police caught you in there!" Papa broke

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in and the fear in his voice was considerable. Johnnie Mae collapsed into a chair. Mama sat down, too, and pulled her chair up close to Johnnie Mae. "Go on," she said.

"We scrambled up out of the pool," she continued, "and he caught my foot and held on to me. Officer Davis—"

"It was Toby Davis saw ya'll?" Papa barked at her. He looked at his wife solemnly.

"Yes, sir," she said and continued the tale, telling them all about Pearl throwing stinkballs on top of Toby Davis's head.

Papa banged the kitchen table with his fist and stood up. "God! This is a bad situation!" He sat back down and rubbed his forehead with his palm.

The coffee that Willie had drunk started to worry his stomach. The bottom of his belly felt like a smoldering fire. He wanted to belch and clear it or put something soft in it to sop up the acidy coffee. Alice took bacon and eggs from the icebox and started to assemble a breakfast.

Willie's nerves were calmed some by the fried eggs and bread. Alice tried to eat something, but her stomach turned at the sight of the eggs. She warmed a glass of milk and after Johnnie Mae had drunk half o{ it, she ushered her up the stairs to bed.

Nobody wanted to make much of the incident except Toby Davis. He was good and sore about being pelted with stinkballs. But after he told his story to the desk sergeant at Number 7, there was little interest in rounding up the perpetrators. Sergeant Michael Cronin told him to forget it, especially since he couldn't say exactly who the two nigger gals were. He was told to pay closer attention to the swimming pool on his

rounds. "Keep the little niggers from gettin' in the pool in the first place!" Cronin bellowed.

Cronin, who considered himself sympathetic toward colored, followed a policy of seek in y nut a reliable representative when there was a potential problem. And if pickaninnies continued to sneak into the whites-only pool, there was going to be a problem. So he sent Peanut Walter with a note to Reverend Buford Jenkins telling him to come down to Number 7 to discuss a "situation."

When Peanut Walter arrived, Buford Jenkins came out of the small anteroom off to the side of his parlor, where he'd been working on his record books. He'd been noting down the names of those married and baptized and laid to rest since the last time he'd gotten around to working on the church records. The pastors of Mount Zion Church had been keeping records of the whereabouts and circumstances of their members since the church was founded. In the times before Emancipation, the pastors had cryptically recorded the fate of members who'd disappeared due to tragic or mysterious circumstances as "lost." People who were captured by patrollers or bounty hunters and returned to the Deep South were listed as "taken away." The lucky or brave ones who were sent farther along the Underground Railroad to Harper's Ferry and on north to Canada were noted as "gone away."

After reading the note Peanut Walter handed him, Reverend Jenkins closed the record books and put on his suit coat. Jenkins paused in front of a mirror and vigorously brushed his hair. Many a man is sorry to see gray hairs pop up around his temples, but Buford Jenkins was happy to see them. With a bulbous nose that was occasionally decorated with a black-headed pustule, he was not considered a good-looking man.

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Gray hairs helped him look dignified rather than comical. This was all to the good around white folks, especially the official ones. They liked to have someone they could talk to who could speak up for the Negro race with a suit and tie on. And in relations with whites, a colored person always needed an introduction or a tell. A colored man needed some subtlety of appearance, like gray temples or a limp, that proclaimed a mild intention.

Bethel Jenkins, his mama, had raised no fool. Jenkins had sense enough not to wear his best suit or his best shoes down to the police station to see Michael Cronin. Clean and slightly threadbare—that was the best way to dress for talking to the white folks.