River, cross my heart (4 page)

A thin line of white paint led to a spot on the bank just a bit downstream of the three boulders. The surface of the river appeared closed, grim and unemotional. When Alice Bynum reached the crowded riverbank in the lap of Mr. Hadad's cart, she screamed sharply three times, then fell silent. It was not until this moment that she fully realized it was Clara who'd fallen in the river. Press Parker had plucked Clara's white ribbon, still knotted, from some jagged driftwood and held it in his hand like a flower.

Ella Bromsen, partially hidden by the box elder tree that stood between her house and Ina's, watched the procession that brought Johnnie Mae to Ina Carson's house on Volta Place. The women escorting Johnnie Mae walked close together. The head of the semiconscious girl lolled back and forth. The women walked smoothly and evenly and allowed little space between them. Their hips brushed lightly against Johnnie Mae and they spoke quietly, encouragingly. "Come on, baby. Just a little ways more, sugar."

It had been decided that Ina Carson would go ahead and ready the bed for her niece. Johnnie Mae would stay with her aunt Ina until someone could figure out what to do next. Ina huffed her short, plump body ahead of the other women as they walked from the riverbank, struggling to reach her house before them. Every now and then she paused to catch breath and turned back to look at Johnnie Mae's slumped-over body.

At midnight, the sky was still bright. The full moon was a yellow dime — perfectly round, with no mottling. Willie Bynum stood as still as a flagpole. He had remained in one spot the whole time they were dredging the river. Alice had allowed Willie to say it seemed best for the womenfolk and children to go home and wait for word. She let the menfolk suggest that whatever happened next, the women need not be there to see it. Bertha Howard, Elva Bemis, and Eva Copsey took Alice home. She was too wrung and twisted by this time to resist them. All her stalwart neighbor Eva had to do was gently touch her elbow and say, "Come on, let's go back to the house. Let the menfolk handle it from here." The women turned from the riverbank and walked homeward along the canal road, a line o{ children trailing them like solemn ducklings.

Willie had stayed, occasionally sipping coffee pushed into

River, (Jross My Heart - J]

his hands by the men who waited on the riverbank. Despite the heat, the men built a bonfire, which threw up bright flame and giant shadow and provided light tor those working the river. One of the men broke driftwood with his foot and stoked the fire. Great ropes of sweat poured down the faces of the men facing the fire. Willie stood stock-still and cried and sweated.

They did not pull the body from the river for twelve hours. Press Parker waded into the water when the dredging chains raised something to the surface. He grabbed hold of the chain to keep the body from swinging. There was little talk— only moans and "Lord have mercy"s from the bystanders. A cry went up from the group when the ropes and chains pulled Clara's body out onto the bank. It had been buffeted by the currents and by the dredging equipment so that it looked like badly bruised fruit.

The policeman in charge, Sergeant Michael Cronin, didn't waste compassion on Willie when he ordered him to look under the tarpaulin that covered Clara's body. "Yes, sir," Willie said, then pulled a rumpled white handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe his eyes.

Lexter Gorson, the shoe-shine man, spoke in a husky whiskey voice. "Here, man," he said and passed a flask to Willie. After Willie took a swallow, the bottle was passed around the circle of men. Even the white policemen standing around kicking dirt with their toes each took a swallow. Michael Cronin gladly drank some when the flask was passed

to him.

The police wanted to take Clara's body to the morgue for an autopsy, for reasons that they could not clearly convey to the men standing by to transport her small body to the

32 ' Breena Clarke

B. Jenkins Funeral Home. Reverend Buford Jenkins, black Georgetown's leading churchman and mortician, who was accustomed to dealing directly with white people in a way most of the other men were not, spoke up. "Sergeant Cronin, this is a baby. Her people couldn't hardly stand to have her cut up down at the morgue. Now you know this was an accident. Let me put her to rest like she is." Although Sergeant Cronin resented a colored man speaking up to white people, he agreed that it didn't make much sense to draw this matter out. He decided it was all right for Reverend Jenkins, Willie, and several o{ the other men to carry Clara up Wisconsin Avenue to the funeral parlor.

The party that left the bank of the Potomac carrying Clara on a wooden pallet covered by a dull green blanket looked like a marching stand of trees. Their ranks were closed, their heads were bowed, they made no sound.

Reverend Jenkins tossed Teaspoon Tyler a penny and sent him off to tell Miz Jenkins to go around to the funeral parlor, open things up, and ready his equipment. By the time the procession got to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, Viola Jenkins was waiting there with a long, sanctified cloth of embroidered white silk. She lofted the cloth and it settled over Clara's body. The men did not lose step as they proceeded to the funeral parlor.

Ina was surprised to see her next-door neighbor Ella Bromsen at her door around dusk o{ the next evening. Most everyone in Georgetown was over at the Bynums' house on O Street with Alice and Willie. Ina did not know that Ella had been

standing out behind the tree, looking in now and again—biding her time before knocking. Ella carried a large mason jar containing an amber liquid and some stalks. She carried the jar reverently, and Ina stiffened a little, wondering what unholy mess was being toted up to her door. Hospitality won out over suspicion, and Ina opened her screen door and invited Ella into her parlor.

Ella Bromsen wore a red trainman's bandanna tied around her head. Her arms were folded over her chest, guarding the large breasts on her narrow, muscular frame. Ella's was a slow face. Her eyes never darted. Her nose, cheek muscles, and eyebrows moved at the speed of molasses.

Most of Georgetown was inclined to think o{ Ella Bromsen as a conjure woman of the dangerous sort. A few women were sure that she was the one who had put a hex on their man and run him off. But Ella made her primary living by making and selling brooms. She kept the tools of her trade — bundles of straw, driftwood, fresh-milled broom handles, and spools of cord—stacked about her house, outside and in. Ella Bromsen's uncurtained kitchen windows were lined with mason jars filled with decoctions in shades of green, pink, and amber and with satchels of seed and roots. With these, Ella supplemented her broom-making business by catering to folk who wanted a backwoods remedy for croup, constipation, insomnia, rheumatism, lack of vigor, or female troubles.

"I won't stay, Miss Ina," Ella said, standing just inside Ina's front door. "Here is something for the girl. This is a potion—a decoction for tea—for the girl. This one will help her. Give it to her as a tea in morning and at night. This one will help her to sleep real deep and heal herself way down." Ella said all she

had to say on one breath and handed the jar to Ina. Then she turned and left.

Ina called after her, "Thank you. I say thank you. I give it to her when, you say?"

Halfway between the two houses, Ella turned around. "A cup in the morning. A cup in the evening. Start this evening."

"Thank you. Thank you," Ina called out.

Many another person would have been reluctant to give much credence to the power of a potion as sickly looking as the liquid Ella gave Ina. But Ina had a feeling that Ella knew something about herbs and teas and such and that this brew might help to drive away the demons pulling at the fragile stalk of what was left of Johnnie Mae. The girl had thrashed about on the bed the previous night—in fact, ever since she'd been brought to the house. Her eyes, under the tightly shut lids, seemed to be fluttering backward up into her skull. She had not opened her mouth to let in food or drink. Ina was puzzled as to how she'd be able to get Ella's brew down the girl's throat.

After Ina warmed a bit of the brew in a cup and tested it on her own lips, she put Johnnie Mae's head in the nest of her elbow and slid small teaspoonfuls between her teeth. The first two spoonfuls dribbled down her chin, then the girl's lips parted slightly. After several spoonfuls, Johnnie Mae's mouth opened more. Ina poured the rest of the decoction down the girl's throat. Johnnie Mae shuddered and her breathing be-came soundless. Her body sank into the doughy mattress.

A Clara came into the room. A Clara whose head was swollen to twice the size of what had been her normal size, a

Ruer, Cross M\ Heart - 35

swollen-headed Clara with large prune-colored eyes. The face was a face of eyes only. The large face had no mouth or nose, hut it made a laughing, snorting sound that infected the room. The face played a game and laughed at its own game—a game of dancing over cobblestones. Johnnie Mae struggled to see the feet oi the figure but she could not. She heard the feet clearly and her eyes ached in their sockets with the effort o( trying to locate the source of the sound. She heard the feet strike cobblestones like horse's hooves. Clip-clop, clip-clop. The huge head — the face full of eyes, Clara's eyes — laughed at the clip-clop sound the feet were making and seemed to laugh also at the great effort Johnnie Mae was making to locate the feet. The face laughed uproariously, pulling Johnnie Mae's body off the mattress with its manic energy, drawing Johnnie Mae into the game. "Step on a crack, break your mother's back."

After sitting with Johnnie Mae for eight straight hours, in which time the girl did not move a muscle, Ina became worried. She jumped up, ran next door, and banged on Ella Brom-sen's back door. Ella made her way to the kitchen suspiciously and opened the door a crack. Ina's voice was a fluttery whisper. "She's sleeping so deep I think she's going to slip away."

"That tea is s'posed to take the river water out ot her blood. She needs to sleep deep until this is over with," Ella said. Ina looked at Ella's face and was startled to see amber flecks in eyes that she remembered as coal black. Ella's eves appeared like a brackish stream—full of organic matter, and slowly moving.

Ina said nothing more, and Ella closed the door on her. Walking back across the yard, Ina fussed at herself for being

gullible, for not having the doctor come look at the girl, for not being patient enough to let God work his will.

When Ina returned to the bedroom, the smell of urine was strong. The bedclothes under Johnnie Mae were soaking wet. Ina undressed her, undressed the bed, changed the sheets, washed the girl. She washed her gently all over, and Johnnie Mae did not flutter an eyelid all the while. Her muscles were completely limp, her face as smooth and unworried as a baby's. Ina massaged petrolatum on the girl's arms and legs and belly, and put a cool cloth on her head. She sat on a chair between the bed and the highboy and twined her fingers together but would not peak them. The rest of the night she slept in the chair and left it only to make her water. Periodically Johnnie Mae sucked a sharp breath through partly opened lips and the breath rattled at the back of her throat, escaping as a small gasp. Ina plumped and straightened the bedcovers and patted her head but observed no change in the girl's condition.

Sculling the surface of her dream state, Johnnie Mae's thoughts rose to a penumbral sphere one rung below full consciousness even- so often throughout the night and day and night that she lay in Ina's bed. Her eyes remained firmly closed, but Ina's whispered words occasionally broke through. Johnnie Mae smelled salves, soaps, bleaches, and coffee. She felt soft things brush her skin.

When Johnnie Mae looked up and saw the house on O Street her legs locked. Burning urine threatened to flow down her legs and soil her white ankle socks. She stood stock-still, squeezing her thighs together, staring at the black funeral bunting hanging on the door to her house. Aunt Ina, holding her firmly against the right side of her body, crushed Johnnie Mae's face underneath her breasts. A stale-sweet powder fragrance permeated the fabric of Aunt Ina's dress.

Aunt Ina brought Johnnie Mae back to the family's house dressed in a black wool dress that she had altered to the girl's size but that had the appearance of an older woman's dress. Johnnie Mae's willowy, athletic body seemed to have shrunk since Clara's drowning—as if some essential part of her had drained off. Walking along the street, she appeared to be sinking down into her dress as she progressed toward the house. Once or twice Aunt Ina had to urge Johnnie Mae to pick up her feet.

Aunt Ina gasped, "Lord, have mercy, Jesus!" when her urgings failed to move Johnnie Mae up the steps to the front

door. The girl just stood on the sidewalk and looked at the door. She was perfectly still except that her lips trembled. Ina feared that she'd not be able to get Johnnie Mae into the house.

Press Parker, whose big old paws scooping under the water hadn't been able to bring Clara back to the surface, came up behind Johnnie Mae and Ina. He lifted the girl into his arms and carried her up the steps. He placed her on the threshold and smoothed the wrinkles he had made in her dress.

Press Parker built coffins for B. Jenkins Funeral Home. He had hiccuped uncontrollably the night before while hammering the short planks of pine for Clara's little box. The pine was young and unfinished-looking. Several long pulls on a bottle of corn whiskey eased Parker's hiccups. He drew out a pair of ornate brass handles wrapped in chamois from a metal chest in his work shed. They were a keepsake he'd never breathed a word about. Foraging through the underbrush behind the Mount Zion cemetery looking for dead wood and what-all-else, he'd seen the handles sticking up out of the ground. The shifting and settling swampy earth had probably loosened them from the coffin of a rich man buried when the cemetery had been part of the old Methodist burying ground. Parker had been saving the brass handles this long while for the oak casket he planned to build for himself. But he felt like he ought to add something special to Clara's box, since he'd been the first to get to the river and had not been able to save her. The handles added heft to Clara's coffin and made him feel better about her. His hiccups stopped and the whiskey did its best work around dawn, when Parker lay his head against Clara's box.