The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (24 page)

“What’s that?”

“It was the rage; even white people danced it. Johnny was such a show-off, strutting his partners around, doing that high-stepping dance.” I pictured that for a moment and wondered if folks were still dancing it.

“But for me,” I said, “my favorite music of all was the blues. Maybe because of Mr. Brandon. He mostly played that fiddle of his at the dances, but once in awhile he’d get out his cornet and play the blues. I could sit forever and listen to his cornet.” Seeing Mary’s raised eyebrows, I said, “That’s a kind of horn, and with the right man handling it, it brought out a hurt you didn’t even know was there.”

“Does he still live by Grandma?”

“Grandma doesn’t live in the same place anymore.” I paused. “Don’t know what’s happened to Mr. Brandon. Hard to believe he’d still be living in that old falling-down shack. Every snow-storm that blew through, Mama just knew it’d come down on top of him, bury him alive. It was a disgrace how his landlord didn’t keep it up. But maybe that was Mr. Brandon’s doing. He used all his money for whiskey. Least that’s what Dad always said. There was talk that when he was a young man he went off to Europe somewhere to learn music and that he even played in an orchestra there. I don’t see how; he was a fair-skinned man, but he couldn’t pass—anybody could see he was a Negro. But he’s the one what taught Johnny the piano. He had an old upright in that rickety house of his, and Johnny took lessons every Saturday morning. Evenings Johnny studied his sheet music at the kitchen table, reading the notes, his fingers running up and down the table just like he was playing.”

“But what about you? Didn’t you get lessons?”

“I tried a few times, but I didn’t have it in me. All I really wanted to do was sit and listen. That’s what I did when Johnny was taking his lessons. I sat on the floor next to the piano. I’d put my hand on the back of it where it stuck out from the wall. Johnny’d play and I’d feel the music, listening all at the same time.” I smiled. “Mr. Brandon’s floor slanted good, I’ll tell you what. One end of the piano leaned against the wall. Johnny used to joke that he couldn’t play a piano unless it ran downhill. Mama wouldn’t let us go to Mr. Brandon’s if there was a storm; she was that afraid of his roof.”

I rested the back of my head against the railing post, hearing once again the piano chords and the keyboard exercises. “Classical music, that’s what Mr. Brandon made Johnny learn. People like Schumann and Chopin. Mr. Brandon talked about those people like he had grown up with them.”

“Gosh.”

“Isn’t it something that I’ve remembered those names? Germans, I think, or maybe they’re Frenchmen.”

“They’re the ones that are fighting now,” Mary said. “Why’re they doing that?”

“I don’t know, honey. They’d be better off playing the piano.”
That’d quit all the killing,
I thought. That’d keep Al McKee, our neighbor, from thinking he had to go over there and straighten them out.

“Anyway,” I said, “on summer nights in Chicago, when it was too hot to sleep, Mr. Brandon, a little tipsy, would come out on his front stoop and play that fiddle of his. His music pulled us to him; we couldn’t help ourselves no matter how tired we were. We’d get out of our sticky, hot beds, make ourselves decent, and go outside. That man made us forget who we were.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’d forget what we’d done that day and what was waiting for us the next. We’d forget about the slaughterhouses or about cooking and cleaning up after other people. Mr. Brandon lifted our spirits. He got our feet tapping and our hearts pounding until someone would let out a whoop, grab themselves a girl, spin her around, and before you knew it, we had ourselves a dance. A dance on a city dirt road. Trains came through; we couldn’t hear a note, but we just kept on dancing, keeping time in our heads until the trains were gone and the music came back.”

“And you danced?”

“My, yes.”

“But just with Daddy?”

“Oh no, honey, this was before I even knew your daddy.”

“Oh,” Mary said, sounding shocked. Then her voice took a lonesome turn. “Wish I could’ve seen you dancing.”

“Those were good times.”

Mary swatted at Jerseybell’s nose. A knot of flies flew out.

A low feeling came over me. A young girl like Mary should know something about dancing. She should have socials and dances to go to, and she should know what it was like to have friends what lived a door or two down the street. But with Isaac working the gold mine in Lead, I’d need Mary at home. She wouldn’t be going to school.

I was a few months short of fourteen when I quit school. I did it so Johnny could keep going. Mama had backed me on this, and Dad hadn’t fussed all that much. He didn’t see that a girl needed much schooling, and even if he never said it, Dad was proud that Johnny was smart. He might have said that he wanted Johnny in the slaughterhouse, but Dad paid for piano lessons and he let Johnny earn a high-school diploma.

Mary was smart enough to be a teacher. Or a nurse like Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s daughter. Isaac’s father had started a nursing school for Negroes. That was where Mary should go. It was her grandfather’s school; it was where Mary belonged. I pictured her in a starched white uniform. I imagined sick people turning to Mary as she walked through a hospital ward. They’d call her Nurse DuPree.

It wasn’t right that she’d have to quit school this winter. I tapped my foot. It was wrong what Isaac was doing to us, leaving for the winter. I tapped harder, willing Mr. Brandon’s fiddle music to find its way to me in a barn buried in the heart of the Badlands.

“What’re you doing, Mama?”

“Listening.”

“To what?”

“Fiddle music.” I cocked my head and put my hand behind my ear. “Hear?”

Puzzled, Mary drew her eyebrows together. I sang.

She grinned, her fingers keeping time on Jerseybell’s flank.

“Sing it again, Mama. Please?”

“Only if you’ll dance.”

“Dance? By myself ?”

“No.” I used the stall rail to pull myself up. “With me.”

“But we’re both girls.”

“Nobody’s looking.”

Mary giggled and stood up.

“Come over here,” I said, “where we’ve got some room. Now, face me like this and give me your hands. When I start singing, we’ll slide a few steps that way, and then we’ll slide a few steps the other. Can’t do like I used to, can’t do much more than walk, but you’ll get the idea.”

Mary squeezed my hands.

Together we sang and danced, laughing when Mary bumped into Isaac’s plow, bobbing our heads to show we were sorry when we stepped on each other’s feet. Mary’s glowing face gave me a special kind of pleasure, the kind of pleasure a person got from making someone else happy. Not that I wasn’t happy; I was. Dancing with my daughter was a moment of such pure lightheartedness that I knew I would never forget it. I’d press the memory of it in my heart. I’d use it to get me through the coming winter.

 

 

 

“I’ve got to stop,” I said a few dances later, propping up my belly with my arms. Breathing hard, I sat down on the milking stool.

Mary wasn’t ready to stop. Humming, she danced on—spinning, dipping, and sashaying around the barn, her arms out before her, her hands touching a partner only she could see. When she finally stopped, she curtsied and sank down to the hard-packed floor beside Jerseybell.

“Just three months till the Schoolhouse Christmas Dance,” Mary said, fanning herself with her hand.

My smile faded. We didn’t go to the Schoolhouse Christmas Dance. Isaac always wanted to, but it was me what said no. I didn’t like the thought of being the only Negro woman in a room crowded up with white people. That’d make me uneasy; I wouldn’t know what to say. Every year Mindy McKee begged us to come to the dance with them, saying how friendly folks were, how nice it was to see neighbors all dressed up and having a good time. But I always had a reason not to. I’d remind Mindy that I was in the family way and showing too much. If that weren’t so, I’d tell her that it was too cold to haul the younger children all those miles, and at night too.

It was different for Mary. She was used to white people.

We were still the only Negroes in this part of South Dakota. There were the Thompsons and the Phillipses, two other Negro families, but they were north of the Black Hills. It’d been months since Isaac had heard anything about them. Maybe they’d sold out like everybody else. But even if they hadn’t, they were a good ninety miles from us.

“Honey,” I said, “we don’t go to that dance.”

“But now that I know how to dance . . . ”

I didn’t say anything.

“Louise’s father’s going to let her dance with bigger boys this year, not just with other little kids like before.”

“She’s older than you.”

“Just by five months.”

I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “You got any boys you’d like to dance with?”

Mary pressed her lips as if embarrassed.

“Well?”

“Maybe.”

“Well?”

“Joe Larson isn’t so bad. When I won the spelling bee he said he wished he could spell as good as me.”

“He did?”

“He gave me a cookie one time. It was round like a ball and had white powdery sugar on it. He said it was a Swedish cookie, his mama made it. That’s where they’re from. Sweden. Miss Elliott showed us where on the map. Joe’s the first in his family born in America. He’s real proud of it. He speaks English for his parents.”

Lord, Lord. What would I do if a yellow-headed boy with blue eyes came up the road carrying a spring bouquet of orange wildflowers? What would Isaac do? Or this boy’s parents? Or the other ranchers?

Mary said, “Louise teases, saying how Joe Larson’s sweet on me, but I don’t think so. He talks to all the girls.” She ran her hand along Jerseybell’s shuddering side. “But I think Franklin’s real nice.”

An Indian. Merciful Jesus. Isaac would skin him alive.

I said, “These boys, you’re best off ignoring them.”

“Why?”

“Be polite, but don’t be friendly.”

“What?”

“Don’t share lunch with the Larson boy anymore. And Franklin’s an Indian, and you know what your daddy thinks about them.”

Mary’s mouth twisted.

“Honey,” I said, not knowing how to explain this thing and wishing that I didn’t have to. “People get along best if they stay with their own kind.”

“Their own kind?”

“That’s right. Negroes with Negroes and whites with whites. And Indians . . . well, it works best this way.”

“What about Louise?”

“That’s all right. It’s just with boys, well, it’s different. You stay with your own kind when it comes to boys.”

“But they’re my classmates.”

“You heard me. Stay away from the boys. Understand?”

She nodded. In the flickering lantern light, I saw tears standing in her eyes. I put out my hand to her. “Come here.”

“Ma’am?”

“Just wanting to gives you a hug, that’s all. It’s been a good while.”

Mary came to me and wrapped her arms around my swollen middle and rested the side of her face on top of my belly. I patted her head, feeling the springy hair that had worked loose from her braids.

I wanted to tell her I was sorry. When we first came out to the Badlands, Isaac was sure the country would fill up with Negroes. That hadn’t happened.

The barn was quiet. Even the crickets had stopped their chirping. But the biggest quiet came from Jerseybell. Her breathing had stilled and her chest wasn’t shuddering. I pulled my handkerchief from my sleeve. “Honey,” I said. “Jerseybell’s dead.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no.” She went to Jerseybell, laid down, and put her head on Jerseybell’s neck and an arm around her. I let Mary cry for a while before telling her it was time for bed. She wiped her eyes on my handkerchief and helped me up from the milking stool.

I unhooked the lantern, blew out the oil rags, and put my arm around Mary’s shoulders, feeling the sharpness of them. “You’ve been to your first dance,” I said. “There’ll be more.” I forced my voice to be strong. “With boys. Negro boys.”

I
saac?” I said when I came into our bedroom after coming up from the barn with Mary. “You awake?”

“Some.”

“Jerseybell’s dead.”

The mattress crackled as he turned onto his back. “Mary all right?”

“She will be.”

“At least this way I don’t have to put Jerseybell down.”

I put on my nightdress, sat on the edge of the bed, and wiped the bottom of my feet with a rag. “You going to bring Al’s milk cow home tomorrow?”

“I’ll go as soon as I take care of Jerseybell.”

I got in bed beside him, lying on my side, my back aching. My earlier spell of restlessness was gone now, washed out by all the dancing. Maybe the baby was a few days off. That’d give Isaac time to get the new cow. That’d give the baby time to perk up and start kicking. I said, “Mary’s growing up.”

“They all are.”

“She’s noticing boys.”

“She’s only twelve.”

“She’ll be thirteen in a few weeks. Lots of girls from around here start courting by fourteen.”

“Not Mary.”

“I’m just saying she’s noticing boys. Boys from around here.” I felt Isaac looking at me. “White boys.”

“Good God.”

I said, “Mary needs to meet some Negro boys.”