2
“Can we help you with something, Collins?” Mama asked. She was keeping her voice calm, quiet. When she really wanted to yell, me and Jay could hear her across the fields even if she was still inside the house.
“You will show me respect and call me Deputy Collins, Janey Turner.” The policeman took his time and looked over each one of us as we stood out in the hot sun and he stood on our porch in the cool shade. “Or you know what’ll happen.”
I could hear Mama gritting her teeth, but when her voice came out, it sounded polite. I might have been ten years old, but I knew Negroes could get arrested or beaten up for talking back to a white person or for saying a white person lied. Even if it wasn’t against the law for a white person to hurt a Negro.
“What can we do for you, Deputy Collins?”
He folded his arms over his bird chest. “You can get over here and open this here door so’s I can search this house.”
Mama didn’t move an inch. “For what reason?” she asked.
Deputy Collins sneered at us. “I don’t need no reason, Janey.”
He was right. I knew about police barging into local rootworkers’ homes. Whispers at church and from the people who came to Mama’s stall or Doc’s cabin said that Deputy Collins was the worst one of them, that he was looking for reasons to bother rootworkers, even take them away. The Daniels, another rootworking family on the island, got dragged out of their house and away to jail. Nobody had seen them since. Now, people said, it was best to let Collins search. Refusing or asking why would just make the deputy angrier than he already was. And if he got really angry, he might drag Mama and Doc off to jail, leaving me and Jay alone.
Deputy Collins wiped sweat off his face with the back of his hand. “Now come on and open this door before I force it open like I did that junk-filled cabin.”
We all turned as one and looked behind us. The padlock Doc kept on the door of the cabin when he wasn’t in his shop had been pried off.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear the beat in my head. I wanted to tell him to go away, that we weren’t bad people, and that we just wanted to be left alone. But I couldn’t. I was so scared I just stood there. Stood there in our front yard with the sun burning down on my neck, sweat running down my forehead, my whole body tight as a drum. My skin felt too snug for me and I wanted to jump out of it.
Mama bit her lip, probably to keep her words inside. She marched up to our porch and opened the screen door, then unlocked the front door, then swung it wide to allow Deputy Collins to walk in first, the rest of us behind him.
A blast of hot, sticky air hit me as soon as I walked inside. The house had been closed up since early this morning when we left for the funeral. On an ordinary day, we would open the windows first thing to let the hot air out of the house and let the sweet summer breeze in. We all waited while the deputy went through each one of our rooms in order: our front room, Doc’s bedroom, Mama’s room, the room I shared with Jay, the washroom, and the kitchen. He looked through everything, opening drawers and dumping the contents on the floor, ignoring Mama’s and Doc’s pleas for him to not destroy what we had.
“Mama?” I whispered.
“Shhh, Jezebel. It’ll be over soon enough.”
As Deputy Collins tumbled and fumbled around, he knocked into a small bud vase I had forgotten to take and place on Gran’s grave. I wanted to run forward to catch it, but Mama held on to me. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it shattered against the floor. Jay’s face was like a rock, but tears were shining in his eyes. And not like the tears we had for Gran. These were tears that came because we couldn’t do anything to stop what was happening to us. Not without taking the chance that one of us might get hurt.
Finally, as Mama said it would be, it was over. Deputy Collins came out of the room I shared with Jay. He was breathing hard, but the look in his eyes was even harder.
“People round these parts say you all are some kinda magic witches or something. I don’t believe in no witchcraft myself, but I do believe you people are up to no good.” Deputy Collins pointed his sweaty finger in Doc’s face, and I could see, even under his thick beard, how my uncle’s jaw clutch up tight. “I got my eye on you Turners. And I will catch you one of these days.”
“Catch us doing what?” Jay muttered under his breath so only I could hear. “Living?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from answering him. No one else said anything either, and the quiet stretched like a rubber band, long and quivering. Finally, it was Mama who broke it.
“I need to clean my house now. Good day, Deputy Collins.”
The deputy looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. Instead, he stomped toward the front door, shoving over one of the kitchen chairs around our table as he went. Then he pushed the screen door open with his shoulder, letting it slam shut behind him. A moment later, we heard the engine of the police car scream to life and tires skidding in the dirt, scaring our chickens into a bunch of squawking.
When all was quiet, Mama collapsed into a chair. Her breathing was fast, like she’d been running. I picked up the chair Deputy Collins had pushed over, brought it next to her, and sat down. Doc took a pitcher out of the icebox and splashed some cold sweet tea in a juice glass for her.
“You okay, Mama?” I asked. She looked tired and her hand shook as she drank the tea.
Doc poured some for me and Jay too, then for himself. He eased himself into a chair across from Mama with a serious look on his face.
“Janey,” Doc said. “What happened with Collins is even more reason for you to let me teach the kids some root. We need to get them started on helping to protect ourselves and this place.”
“I thought rootwork was just, you know, luck potions and healing medicine.” I held Mama’s hand but looked at Doc. “Like that stuff you make when my tummy hurts.”
“Healing is part of it.” Doc took a long drink from his glass and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a clean, white fingertip towel. “It’s a service we provide because Negroes can’t go to hospitals around here. They won’t let us in, even if we’re sick or hurt. So healing is an important part of rootwork.”
“But it isn’t the only part?” I asked.
“It sure isn’t!” Mama snapped. Her black patent-leather clutch bag lay on the table, and she was smacking it, in quick motions, with the cardboard church fan she got earlier. It sounded like a tree branch hitting the house in a storm.
“Janey,” Doc sighed while Mama grumbled to herself.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered, wondering if root was secret and I shouldn’t talk about it too loud.
“The sort of things you’ve seen me and your gran doing since you were young, that’s only part of what working the roots is about,” Doc said. “But your gran always said that as soon as she was gone, it was time for you both to learn about the rest. About protection. About making the lives of people you love better.” Doc rubbed Jay’s head with the palm of his hand.
My socks were slipping down into my buckled Mary Jane shoes. They were dusty from the road, and the dirt made my skin itch. I pulled them up anyway. “Protection from what?”