The Red Rose Box (11 page)

He was usually serious and it was the first time I'd heard him make a joke. I thought about my daddy and his tall tales. Then I looked up at Uncle Bill and smiled. I looked at his feet and said, “No, they aren't, you got feet like everybody else.”

“We oughta be in a balloon like in
Around the World in Eighty Days,
” Ruth told him.

He looked out over the dark blue water and rambled, “When I begged your Aunt Olivia to marry me, and I'm not ashamed to say I begged, I told her that I would give her the best of everything.” He turned to Olivia and asked, “How am I doin?”

Olivia replied with a sly-as-a-fox smile, “You are a man of your word.”

Then he turned to Ruth and me. “Make sure when you get married and waltz down the aisle that he's a man of his word. That's the one thing you can't take from a man, his word.”

Ruth and I replied, “Yessir.”

“Leave those girls alone with that old man talk.... Old man talk, that's all it is.” Olivia laughed.

Uncle Bill put his arm around his wife's waist and said, “Old man nuthin, pretty brown gal.”

We approached Lady Liberty, holding her torch high.

I smiled, squinting into the sun, and thought that I was still just a poor colored girl, used to walking barefoot, catching fish with nothing but a string and a piece of crayfish on a hook.

I felt happy when I looked around and saw land, happier still when my feet touched it.

During our trip, we tried to behave like we were the well-brought-up young ladies that Aunt Olivia intended us to be, and she asked us not to slip back into our old habits once we got back on southern soil.

Ruth informed her, “That's gonna be hard because everyone in Sulphur, everyone cept the schoolteachers, talks like that.”

Olivia said,
“Except,
Ruth, not
cept.”

Ruth echoed, “Except.”

I knew that as soon as we got back to Sulphur we would again be accused of being high-minded, trying-to-forget-you‘re-colored, mama-ain't-got-but-one-washtub girls. I pictured myself taking off my country ways, saving them in a place where they'd be safe and sound, in case I needed them to make me warm and comfortable.

It was August. The New York City air was hot and our clothes stuck to us as we drove past broken fire hydrants. Water poured into the sky and fell back down like buckets of rain. Children ran in and about, smiling and cool. I wished I was with them.

Dinner was served. Uncle Bill pulled his wrinkled white handkerchief from his shirt pocket, wiped his brow, and took a sip of ice water.

“What a lucky man I am to be in the presence of three lovely Negro women,” he said.

“I'm not a woman. I'm a girl,” Ruth replied. “Why do some people call us Negroes and others call us colored?” I asked.

“Colored and Negro, same thing,” he replied.

Olivia added, “Same as colored. Colored is colored, nearly white to black as midnight, colored is colored.”

Uncle Bill folded his damp handkerchief. “I don't care what they call me, so long as they don't call me a nigger.”

I said, “White folks call us niggers, drive by in their trucks and tell us to get out the way, little barefoot niggers.”

The waiter served the strawberry ice cream I'd ordered.

Aunt Olivia dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “God doesn't seem to mind what color skin you wear.”

Someone began to play the piano in the hotel lounge. The music floated into the dining room and found us.

“Good night! Good night!” Ruth said as she bounced around the room like a big brown cricket. She settled on the bed and asked, “What you readin?”

I showed her the cover of the book that Uncle Bill had given to me.
“The Time Machine.
It's about this man who makes this machine and goes to other places without a boat or train.”

“Flyin in a airplane?” Ruth questioned.

“No.” I explained, “He gets in a machine and turns on the electricity and the machine takes him to other places.”

“That can't happen, he musta been dreamin.”

“Some things come from imagination,” I told her.

Ruth put her head on the pillow and said, “I'm not gonna be a teacher. I'm gonna be a lady lawyer.”

“No such thing as a colored lady lawyer,” I told her.

“Yessirree. Uncle Bill told me he knowed a colored lady lawyer once.”

“Knew, not knowed.”

Ruth closed her eyes and fell asleep fast. I covered her, turned off the light, and fell faster.

I fell into a dream, a dream about birds sitting in a weeping willow tree. They were sleeping until a flock of crows came, shiny and black. They circled the tree like Indians circling a wagon train. It began to rain and a wicked wind began to blow.

I woke up. It was dark outside. There was no moon, not even a slice. Birds were sleeping, I guessed, except owls. I sat in a chair until I saw the sun.

Aunt Olivia came in quietly, softly, tears in her red eyes. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Hurricane hit Sulphur.”

And that was how God chose to take Mama, Daddy, Sister Goodnight, Miss Lutherine, Nathan and Micah Shine, Miss Lilly, Penny Adams, and nearly twenty-five more, in the middle of the night, without warning. Ruth and I, Gramma and Elijah and a few others were spared.

I told Aunt Olivia that she was a liar. “They're not dead! You're just mad becuz you can't have no babies! You want us for yourself! We're goin home next week! Daddy gonna be at the train station and Mama gonna be with him.”

Olivia reached for me. Tears kissed my lips while Ruth slept.

 

 

 

S
ulphur was torn, ripped up with few places for anyone to lay their heads. Fallen trees rested on their sides. Roofs rested on the ground. Roads were flooded. The sky was gray.

It was eight days before Mama and Daddy were laid to rest, in plain pine caskets, side by side.

We walked over pieces of the house where we'd been born, Ruth and I, looking for something, anything, bits of this and that. Ruth ran to me, a broken picture frame in her hand. Mama and Daddy stood arm in arm on their wedding day. I tried to take it from her but Ruth held tight.

She looked at me. “They ain't gone. They just hidin. I'ma find em. They just ain't looked hard enuf.” Tears.

I sat down in the rubble. “No such word as
ain't....
They gone, Ruth.”

Ruth turned to Elijah, standing nearby, and asked, “Where's my mama'n daddy?”

Elijah answered, “With the angels.”

Ruth handed me the picture. I pulled out the pieces of broken glass, put the picture and the broken frame in a brown paper bag, pulled my legs up close, and wrapped myself up. Tears.

“Why people gotta die?” I asked Elijah.

“They ain't really dead, Leah, just changed.” Elijah took the bag from my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“I can't touch em, can't see em, can't hear em. So they're dead.” More tears.

Elijah took Ruth by the hand. “Come along now, Leah, your gramma's waitin outside, Aunt and Uncle at the church. Y'all gotta train to catch. Nuthin else worth savin.”

I walked over memories and bits of broken glass and saw the postcard we'd taped inside our closet. I picked it up, tore it into pieces, and let them fall to the ground like falling leaves. I didn't want it. Hadn't been for Olivia and the red rose box, none of this would have happened. Ruth and I would be with Mama and Daddy, walking through the streets of heaven.

I pictured the four of us, a family of angels with silver wings, white gowns, halos of honeysuckle around our heads, sitting near the throne of God. I looked down and saw the peach pit we'd planted. It had taken root and pushed its way up into the light. Tiny green leaves sprouted. Its newness had saved it. I thought of Miss Lilly and climbed into Elijah's truck.

“Why can't we stay here with you?” I asked Gramma. Ruth sat on her lap. There wasn't an inch of space between us. My right shoulder touched the truck door.

“Got nowhere for y‘all to sleep. I got no other choice, Leah. It's best this way.” Heartache hung on her words. “Olivia gonna do right by you and her husband is a righteous man. Y'all gonna have everything, everything.”

“I don't want everything. I want Mama and Daddy.” I took off my patent leather shoes and tried to throw them out the window. “I don't want nuthin money can buy.” Gramma caught my arm. My tears would not stop.

Elijah handed me a handkerchief. “Dry your eyes, Leah Jean, b'fore you cry yourself blind.”

“Let her be,” was all Gramma said. Then she said again softly, “Let her be.”

On the train I began thinking about my prayers and not wanting to spend my life in Sulphur. I wondered if that was what had made the hurricane come or if Mama and Daddy were just ready to go, knowing we would be in good hands. I didn't want to pray anymore and I was thinking that I was going to throw my rosary out the window, off the train, when no one was looking. Ruth and I sat there, shoulders touching, across from Uncle and Aunt. I twirled a lock of hair between my fingers, the same way Mama used to, and more tears came.