River, cross my heart (24 page)

In the earliest hours of daylight, the breeze off the Potomac carries the fragrances of wild places upriver and the flora that inhabit them. Air comes down from these places, stoops low over Rock Creek, and blows back across Georgetown, bringing along a scent that has no name other than morning.

Johnnie Mae sat before a pile of onions blowing short breaths between her lips. She wanted to sigh, to expel a long, slow chestful of air. But sighing annoyed her mother so. Mama disapproved oi it as a behavior for young girls. She never sighed herself and she never let one of Johnnie Mae's sighs go unnoticed. "Sighing will age you," she said now, going back into a closet of aphorisms and mother-wit mumbo jumbo. Now isn't that the silliest thing, Johnnie Mae thought, hoping her mother wouldn't be able to read these impudent thoughts on her forehead. Mama continued, "You see, you turn that sigh into a yawn and it'll clear you out. A yawn will give you strength to get started again. A sigh leaves you down with nowhere to go. Then you have to wait for your second wind." Johnnie Mae cultivated her puff-puffing.

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The work o( fixing extra-large portions of potato salad, bean salad, fried chicken, and all the required summer picnic foods was boring. Johnnie Mae handled the mountain of onions assigned to her competently, pulling their skins off quickly. She dabbed her eyes and blinked, but skinned and cut the onions deftly. Mama peeled from a pile of hot white potatoes and supervised Johnnie Mae. The two worked along qui-etly. Johnnie Mae shifted her hips to settle herself on the chair. The unaccustomed cloths between her legs were chafing her. Alice glanced up without moving her head to study the girl slyly. She hadn't said much. Didn't ask any questions about starting her monthly.

For many years, the last Thursday before Labor Day had been the traditional day for the Mount Zion Church picnic under the P Street bridge. Spread out along the P Street beach, it was the biggest social event of the summer. Women who cooked for a living five or six days a week had been up much of the night preparing the picnic and were up again at sunrise. Cakes were made the day before, chicken fried early in the morning, and potato salad mixed and cooled. Daughters had strict instructions for assembling and cleaning and being ready.

A full two days before the picnic, Ina Carson had buried a skinless young pig in a brick-lined pit in her backyard, covered it with basil and sage, and built a slow-burning wood fire atop it, just like Cap used to do. Carolina-slippin'-and-hidin'-buried-in-the-ground roasted shoat had been one of his favorite dishes. Cap used to say that the fact that his daddy had risked the road gang or even his life in stealing the shoat from Cal Jackson when stores were low made it taste extra good. His daddy did this when he and all the kids and Cap's mam

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had got tired of the wild taste of game. Daddy Carson roasted the shoat really slow for five days or so. He tended it all by himself, guarding the fire and stoking it. Not wanting to risk anybody else's life but his own, he wouldn't even hint as to where he had it stashed. When it was done he'd haul it to their table. And when they were done eating it, Daddy Car-son buried the bones in an iron chest under the cabin to foil Cal Jackson's dogs, which people liked to say had the power of augury and could find a missing bone before it was lost.

Ina's shoat had come honestly, with a pretty, soft skin that she rubbed down with salt and pepper. It came up out of the ground that Thursday morning with its flesh crisp brown and barely clinging to the bone and smelling like backwoods Carolina.

Johnnie Mae saved the biggest onion in the pile for last. It was the size of a softball, with a thick, brown-striped skin. Under the shiny skin were two halves joined with a line be-tween the two halves and the hint of another skin. Mama noticed Johnnie Mae's change of rhythm and looked down at the girl's hands to see what she was looking at.

"That onion you're peeling — let me see it," she demanded. Johnnie Mae looked up, puzzled, and held out the onion for her mother to see. Mama's nose turned up into a hard wrinkle. "Put it down. Put it in the garbage. That's no good."

For the life of her, Johnnie Mae couldn't see what was wrong with the thing. She'd been careful to root out any soft-spotted ones. This one was firm and certainly had a sweet pungent sting. "What's the matter, Mama?"

"That's a double-sided onion," Alice continued. "That's bad luck. Throw it out. Don't ever use a double-sided onion,

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Johnnie. It's bad luck. Don't even finish peeling it. They say a double-sided onion will divide your house against itself."

Johnnie Mae snickered as she let the onion fall into the pan of garbage scraps. It never ceased to amaze her how many odd things a person had to remember simply to get through the day. Things that had to be remembered because they weren't set down in any book she'd ever seen and certainly weren't taught in school. If you spilled salt you had to quickly throw some over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck. Never sweep dirt in a circle, but out toward the door—and never from the doorstep in. Don't touch the milk pitcher when you've got your monthly, or the milk will curdle.

The list of things not to do when you had your monthly was so long and arcane that Johnnie Mae began to think that most were made up to keep a woman from doing anything at all. And all the grown women—she was one now, though except for this one messy, stinking, achy thing, she didn't feel like it—spent their time figuring if it was coming soon or late or not coming at all. And for all the figuring and wondering, they were all reluctant to speak out plainly about it. When they talked about their monthly, it was in croaking whispers through dissimulating lips.

The annual Mount Zion Church picnic was the largest social gathering of black Georgetowners. All kinds of public and private plans were being made. Some men were running over in their minds which big rock they'd tie a watermelon to so that the cool creek water would bathe it and chill it for after the heavy food was eaten. Ca'line Brown's parlor was busy with folks slipping in for a bottle of home brew.

At sunrise on the morning of the picnic, members of the Elks Club gathered at the P Street beach to stake out the spot

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where they would set up a huge pot of coffee over an open fire. Members came hauling firewood from all over Georgetown. Mr. Pud Allen even went up Conduit Road to get hickory wood because he so loved the smell of hickory burning under boiling coffee.

By noon most of the family groups had found a good spot to spread out their baskets, and teams had been chosen for baseball and horseshoes. Johnnie Mae's favorite picnic game was the three-legged race, but she'd made herself scarce and hadn't been chosen for a team.

After she helped her mama get settled in a good picnic spot, Pearl left her exchanging pleasantries with Dr. Hiawatha Parmalee and his wife. "Your Pearl is coming up to be a nice-looking young lady, Sister Hattie," Mrs. Parmalee said, once "hello" and "how do" had passed back and forth among the three. "Praise God, she's got all my looks now. And some of her papa's, too," Pearl heard her mother say as she walked off. Hattie Miller had, by dint of conscientious attendance at church services and women's auxiliary meetings, become well thought of at Mount Zion Church.

Pearl wove in and out of clumps of people, looking for Johnnie Mae. She found her finally, off by herself at the edge of the creek, sitting on a boulder. Pearl dropped down beside Johnnie Mae and waited for her to acknowledge her presence. Behind them was the laughing and shouting of the picnickers and in front of them was a merry splashing and sloshing of water over rocks.

The creek was gently conversational—a gaggle of happy voices. The words were indistinct, but the sound was of a group happily talking and enjoying their exchange. The people at the picnic behind them on the grassy knoll of the

P Street beach were also happily enjoying one another's company. Johnnie Mae imagined them talking among themselves and not including her. All were part of a confederacy of adults talking about grown people's things and not including her or any of the babies. And Pearl was now part o\ them. Pearl, who used to be a scared rabbit who wouldn't make a sound, was now up among them talking about things in a code of womanly dissembling.

That day Pearl's mood had been bright until she came upon Johnnie Mae. She was now more successful socially, having won the friendship of a few more of the girls at school. It was through Johnnie Mae that she'd acquired these friends and Pearl felt she owed her a special Loyalty. But today, a day when all o{ Georgetown was lighthearted and playful, Johnnie Mae was moping and shying away from the activities. Pearl was afraid that sitting on rocks with water all around was having a saddening effect on her. Perhaps that was what was making her sulky.

"What's wrong, Johnnie Mae?" Pearl, tired of the silence on a day when all else and whosoever was laughing and giggling, asked tentatively.

"NothinV she said. The kind of "nothing" that begs "Ask me and ask me again till I tell you."

"Somethin' 's the matter. I can tell."

"Nothin."

"Somethin' 's the matter. What's the matter?"

It took a couple oi sputtery tries before Johnnie Mae managed to tell Pearl that she'd finally got her monthly.

"Is that all? Johnnie Mae, you're craiy," she said in the exasperating way she had recently acquired. Pearl was suddenly so womanly that even' comment she made sounded like smug

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pity. She was smug because she'd got her monthly a few months ago and was now quite used to it.

After an hour or so on the boulder in the sun, the two girls succumbed to the lure of fried chicken and potato salad. Like the other young people, they circulated the picnic grounds and took plates of food at every family grouping they passed. At the bake-sale table, each bought a piece of cake for a penny and relished choosing a slice of cake other than her mama's. Pearl's mother's lemon cake was completely gone any-way and Alice Bynum's chocolate layer cake was down to the last crumpling slice. Mabel Dockery's mother was the cake slicer and was installed in a chair at one end of the long table on which the cakes were placed. Her fat arms didn't rise from her sides as she cut the cakes, and between each slice, they came to rest across her wide middle.

Talk around the cake stand was all about whether it was proper for Dr. Tyler to be so openly enamored of Miss Gladys Perryman with his wife dead only three months. Johnnie Mae was surprised at the way Pearl had got all the salient facts of the big scandal and expressed the opinion that Miss Gladys Perryman was the prettiest woman in Georgetown. Gladys Perryman was not the only woman at the picnic with a parasol, but she was the only one whose parasol exactly matched the soft, bright yellow of her dress. The dress hugged her slim figure more closely than some of the talkers thought was proper, but all agreed that she cut a lovely swath while promenading on the arm of Dr. Tyler. Sarey Tyler, wearing a close-cropped head of shiny curls just like Gladys Perryman's, followed behind the couple, absorbing what was left of the admiring glances bestowed on the two. Gladys Perryman had established herself quite firmly in Georgetown. She was a fixture

m cultural functions sponsored by the Heliotrope Circle and at the numerous social club functions held at Monticello House. And now there was talk that she would soon open a proper beauty shop in a storefront on P Street.

Pearl Miller, never much for running and jumping, had of late become a real stick-in-the-mud. She shook her head at Johnnie Mae's urgings to cavort. Racing headlong up the hill toward P Street and calling out over her shoulder for Pearl to follow, Johnnie Mae looked back to see an expression of polite indulgence about the girl's eyes. The kind of look any grownup would turn on a too-playful child. Pearl's steps were measured and suddenly graceful. And she strove mightily to imitate the elegant swoop-and-dip gait that Gladys Perryman accomplished so effortlessly. Johnnie Mae was puzzled at the change and couldn't suppress the feeling that she and Pearl had parted company and were now on different sides of a divide. When Pearl reached the top of the hill breathing hard, Johnnie Mae smiled.

Johnnie Mae got tired of feeling like a baby around Pearl and walked off from her. Pearl had fallen in with a group o{ girls from their class and was jabbering and trading tales. The conversation got most animated when Charlie Edward Hughes was brought up.

Everybody and his brother was at the picnic and all seemed intimately involved with someone. Johnnie Mae felt excluded. Why, her mother had even said that Johnnie Mae need not bother to look after little Calvin today. And right now her mother was holding court with Calvin on the grass, surrounded by cooing women and a particularly talkative Aunt Ina. They were all acting like they'd never even seen a baby before. Miss Ruby Tilson, amiable but as plain as a

muddy-brown wren, was babbling nonsense words to Calvin. For his part, the baby was sitting up on Mama's lap as if he were the king of England. Everybody was having a bright time.

As soon as she let loose in her mind her annoyance at the baby and her mother and all the other cackling women, Johnnie Mae felt ashamed. Maybe it was a good idea for her to stay away from Calvin. Maybe he was safer if she wasn't responsible for him. Over the few months since Calvin had come, she had questioned herself and considered that her parents and Aunt Ina and maybe some of the neighbor folks might think she wasn't responsible enough to look out for a baby. She had been trusted with Clara and Clara had drowned. Was Calvin going to be safe with her? She made up her mind that she was going to look out for Calvin. Be a stalwart guardian, but at a distance. She was going to let her mother have her baby to herself. She loved him—truly did. He was soft and helpless now, and sweet-smelling. He was a happy, gurgling baby. And when all of them were sitting around the stove in the kitchen and wiggling their fingers at him and baby-talking him, Johnnie Mae was happy and comfortable, too. But Calvin was precious to them. He was Papa's precious dream child and Mama's consolation baby. And Aunt Ina shared him. He meant so much to all of them that Johnnie Mae was leery of being too close to him and maybe putting him in jeopardy. It was on account of them. It was because she didn't want them to lose Calvin the way Clara had been lost—lost because of her.