Third Girl from the Left (16 page)

Vernella looked up, relief and fear at war in her eyes. “Yeah. My mama too. I heard her telling my daddy something happened down to the Drexel building yesterday. Something with some colored boy and a white lady. Then she saw me listening and told me to get on outside.” Vernella returned to drawing in the dirt, a look of elaborate boredom on her face. But her hands were shaking. Mildred's stomach tightened. Everybody knew what happened if you messed with white ladies. Mildred sat down next to her friend, found a stick, and started drawing her own patterns in the dirt. Her patterns were more ornate and nuanced than Vernella's. She loved the feel of the silken dust beneath her feet, the sense that she might make an image there. Always had. She thought of the colors she might use if she could somehow get them into the earth. Another time, they might have gotten up and gone to look for worms in Vernella's mother's lush vegetable garden. But today neither of them spoke. They were eight years old.

All over Greenwood that afternoon, the air was molten lead. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe the boy—his name was going 'round town now, Dick Rowland—would be forgotten. Or maybe he would be the only one who would pay. The old ones didn't think so. But the young ones could hope. So Greenwood tried to live normal that afternoon. Teenagers got ready for the prom that night. Mothers hummed a little faster than usual and prepared dinner. Folks made plans to go down to the moving pictures or out to walk the avenue in the warm Tuesday air. But it didn't last long. The guns were loaded, the torches lit.

Mildred's parents sent her to bed early that evening. No explanations. And from Mildred, no protests. She kissed them both and her father put one arm tight around her, something he didn't usually do. She smelled his bay rum and gun-oil-scented skin. Her mother kissed her gently behind the ear and brushed her hair back with her hand. They both gave her long looks before she went off in her white nightgown and careful braids, her feet brown and elegant against the floor.

 

The next thing Mildred knew, her mother had materialized in her room. The first day of June had just begun. Her mother's voice was thick and fractured. “Millie, you got to get up, get up, get up. We got to get out of here now.”

Mildred knew that the terror had come. Her mother, who rarely raised her voice above a cultivated whisper, except to laugh, was sweating and crying. She ran her hands over her face. Her eyes bulged dangerously. “Millie, I said we got to go this minute. These white folks done lost they minds. I told your daddy we should have left last night!” Her mother grabbed her arm and yanked her out of bed.

She fell onto the floor and her mother dragged her back up. She hurriedly shoved her feet into her Sunday school shoes, the first things that she saw. No socks. No stockings. No dress. Mildred heard explosions outside, things breaking, the occasional scream. It was already hot and her feet felt peculiar in the stiff shoes without lacy white socks. Her mother held her hand so tightly she could feel each bone. “Come on, girl. We got to go now.” Her palm was slick with sweat.

Mildred wanted to ask where they were going, but speech eluded her. It seemed as though she ought to ask a question, but she couldn't think what it might be. Her hip hurt where she'd hit the floor. She finally thought of the question. “Where's Daddy?”

“He's gone down to the Dreamland with his gun. They trying to hold 'em off down there.”

Her mother dragged her out the front door. They were both running as fast as they could. Once she was outside, Mildred thought she might never speak again.

Across the road, flames leapt from Vernella's small house. The step they had been sitting on the day before had been obliterated, orange flames horrifying the morning. The garden was torn up, destroyed. Pieces of wood, shards of crockery bowls, what was left of a rag rug, and one of Vernella's dolls littered the street.

Mildred had heard gunfire before in her life. Her daddy shot cans out back sometimes and she liked to watch, to feel the startle in her bones at each blast. But then it was contained, not a threat, not like this. The air crackled with electricity and smelled of smoke and faintly of burnt flesh, like a Saturday-afternoon barbecue. For a long time afterward, she couldn't eat without remembering that smell. “Mama, what's happening?” she screamed over the flames.

“White folks done lost they minds. Your daddy told me to stay in the house, but I just couldn't. Wanna try to get over to Mount Zion. It might be safe there. They burning down every house they find.” Mildred didn't know why her mother thought the church might be safe. Was God closer there? Where was God? The girl and her mother crouched down and ran low, porch to porch. But not low enough. The men were in front of them before they even heard their approach. Their faces were bright red, and they stank of sweat. Their guns were held down in front of their thighs. Mildred stared at them, words lost, and then felt the warm, sudden wash of urine down her legs. “Get up, nigger. We're taking y'all down to the courthouse. And iffen you don't come”—he made an airy wave with his gun toward a dust-covered body, maybe an old man, not fifty yards from them, his head at an odd angle, his flesh the color of a plum—“that could surely be you lyin' there. So git up. Git!” Mildred's mother screamed but didn't move. She continued to kneel in the street, clutching her daughter's hand. Mildred scrambled to her feet. Her legs were wet and sticky. Her mother still knelt, screaming. “I said, nigger bitch, get up!” There were two men. The cords in the neck of the shorter man stood out in furious relief, like they might break through the skin. Mildred's mother didn't rise. Mildred took an unconscious step away, sobbing, screaming, “Mama, Mama,” the only word she knew anymore. When he fired the gun and her mother fell backward into her own blood, she felt as though she'd been seeing that moment all her life. Mama, Mama. Her mother jerked once, the blood bright against the ground, then lay motionless. Mama, Mama. The taller of the two men poked her in the back with the rifle, almost knocking her down. “Come on, you little coon bitch,” he said. “Don't stand here crying for your mama 'less you want to end up like her.” Mildred stumbled along. The only things she could see in front of her were her mother's wide-open eyes, gazing at the blue sky starred with orange flames. Her hair was streaked with dust and blood and was wild around her head.

As hard as she tried—and after a while she stopped trying—she never could remember the rest of that day. How her father found her or where they went after. How she got blisters on her feet that got so badly infected she couldn't walk for a week. How she got scratches all over her face. What she said to her father about what had happened. The day was a hole. A hole the size of her dead mother's skyward gaze.

It was about two days later that she and her father went back to the remains of their home. They stood there for perhaps an hour, not speaking, the sun wounding the backs of their necks. Mildred didn't know what her daddy was thinking. He had used only the words he needed to—words like “eat,” “sit down,” “I don't know”—since that day. She wanted to take his hand, but she was afraid to. Then she spotted the only painting they had ever had in their home. It was a hand-tinted postcard of Leonardo's
Last Supper
. Mildred knew the occasion represented, of course, but she didn't know anything about the painter. She just loved it. Even though the colors were muddled and guessed at, she was always obscurely moved by the positions of the figures, their stern and sorrowing faces. She stepped forward, heard a black crunching under her feet, bent down, and picked up the picture. She held it gently, not wanting to damage it further. Miraculously, it was only slightly blackened on the edges. She also found the metal plate from their old Victrola, where Mama would put on Scott Joplin and they would dance together for a few minutes when their work was done. Until Mama would laugh and say, “Girl, we got to cut out all this foolishness. What would your daddy say?” And Mildred would laugh and say, “I don't know, Mama.” And her mama, Anna Mae, would say, “He'd say we gone plumb crazy.” Then she'd smile and give Mildred the biggest hug she knew how and get ready to start dinner. Mildred picked up the plate too. Kept it. Her father said nothing. Nothing about how they were dirty or what was she going to do with that old stuff. He let her pick up what she needed. The only thing he kept was a picture of Anna Mae that he'd stuffed into his shirt the night of the shooting, as if he knew it would be all he'd have left of his wife. It curled from the sweat of his chest.

On her wedding day, he gave Mildred the picture, along with these words: “Time you had this now. You know your mama would have been proud of you.” He looked out the window, clutching Mildred's white-gloved hand tightly. “They no better than dogs. Killed that beautiful woman. I spent the rest of my life trying not to hate 'em. You try not to hate 'em either. But be mighty careful before you trust one of 'em. They no better than dogs.” Mildred nodded. She kept the steel plate and
The Last Supper
and the picture of her mother. Sometimes, once she had a family of her own, she ran her fingers over the smooth surfaces. But she couldn't find the words to speak of what she'd seen. It was a blindness in her heart. She passed the photograph on to her boldest child. She remembered the colors: the brilliant blue sky, the black smoke, the orange flames. And she remembered the smell. Ash and burnt flesh. That she carried with her until the day she died.

I
N
1954
CARMEN JONES
WAS RELEASED AND DOROTHY
Dandridge became the first black woman ever nominated for a best-actress Academy Award. She smiled from the cover of
Life
and
Ebony
, adorned in the finest designs, her skin the color of desire. The magazines praised her beauty and poise, her elegance and modesty. They didn't write about the failed marriage to Harold Nicholas, the autistic daughter banished to an institution, the back doors she was forced to enter and the dining rooms she was not permitted to eat in, the pills, the sorrow that would eventually consume her. They wrote only about the exquisite surface. The week that
Carmen Jones
played at the Dreamland, Mildred walked to town every day while the children were in school and Johnny Lee was at work. One day, she asked a neighbor to take Angie to her afternoon kindergarten and then went to the early show and saw it twice. She didn't tell anyone and the ticket taker figured it was none of his beeswax what she did. She sat there, barely breathing, watching the brilliant colors swirl about the frame and Dandridge sashay with the glory of the blessed through the center of the screen. Mildred cried every time she saw it. It was like being at church when everybody was singing and she couldn't catch her breath. Like the dirt under her hands as she worked in the garden, the sun on her neck as she hung out the wash. Like the flowers by the roadside that made her long for a way to scoop the color up and keep it inside her.

She'd learned, after that day in 1921, that there was no time for dreaming or wondering, no time for listening for the fairies only you could hear scampering across the earth around you. You had to keep moving on, had to keep yourself in check. Keep everything neat. It couldn't keep the terror away, but it kept your hands busy and your body busy so you didn't just lie down in your sadness and not get up. So you didn't fall into the sky, never to return. So she gave her family what she could, gave her husband, Johnny Lee, her order and affection, her children her presence and the occasional smile. But none of them knew that she was a person who would go see
Carmen Jones
six times in a week and cry every time. They didn't know about the colors. And she didn't know how to tell them.

 

A Sunday morning at the Edwards house. Mildred bustles around the stove, stirring oatmeal, shifting sizzling bacon. Unlike many women on their side of the tracks in the 1950s, Mildred neither has to take in washing nor go out to clean or cook for a white family. Johnny Lee is the only black pharmacist in Tulsa. He studied and saved and suffered to get there. But he's there. His prosperous family shows that he's there. The children are seated. Otis, Jolene, and Angela. Ten-year-old Otis seems suited to where he was born. He is serious and quiet, an average student, handsome and stolid. He has a beautiful smile and large hands that he will grow into. Jolene is eight. Her favorite thing to do is to play house with her dolls and help her mama out in the kitchen. She is always bossing around the other children, much to their annoyance. It's important to her that things are done correctly. She once cried for an hour and a half over a B on a spelling test, the first grade below an A she ever got. Angela is five, in kindergarten, and in love with the world. Her hair ribbons are always untied, her knees are always dirty. She wants a witness to all she says, does, and thinks. She never stops talking. Mildred's ears ring with it, the sweet maddening chimes. “Mama, Miss Arthur says that I can be line leader on Monday.” “Mama, when will I have homework?” “Mama, you gonna sing in church today?” Mama, Mama, Mama.

Mildred makes distracted affirmative noises toward her. They are trying to get to church, always an ordeal. The neat braids to be made, getting Angela into her stiff white dress and then getting her not to spill anything on it for the half an hour before they go. Making herself presentable. Answering Johnny Lee's questions about where his tie was. Her head was aswirl with detail. Finding everything and herding them out the door, clucking and fussing like a hen. Johnny Lee walked behind her after closing the door. “Lord, woman, we gonna make it in plenty of time.”

“Just barely.”

“Well, the Lord will wait on us.” He grinned. “Really, Millie, we gon' be all right. You don't need to take on so.”

Mildred sighed and didn't answer. Angela ran pell-mell ahead of them, kicking up dust. “Angie, don't you get your good dress dirty!” Mildred yelled. Then sighed again. “That child like to kill me. Just can't keep nothing nice.”