She looked to me for confirmation that I felt the same. But Miss Lula had prayers much different than my own—her prayers born of her circumstance, and mine born from mine, as if there was a white god and a black god depending on the petitioner. And while I knew there was no need of beating your head on the same stubborn stone unless you planned on learning something from it, and that I should just smile like usual, her words still brought nothing but pain to me, as those memories of Henry and our past came to mind as swiftly as his life had likely departed, that life he’d given to me in song and time and love. I said nothing to her, my anguish bursting from the seams and running down my sides, pressured like firemen’s hoses within my pursed lips. I was lost here, forever confined in today and yesterday with no future, a clear view of the trails that bus left behind as my soul swept up in the smoke from its exhaust. Unseen in rearview mirrors, invisible to them like black faces on the pavement, like buoys lost at sea, I could no longer keep quiet.
I knew very well that the negro controlled almost nothing in this world, having that white hand strangled around our necks so tight, with our sights in constant view of what little we had—our toil and our souls and our God—His land a bounty stretched in front of me, belonging only to the white man. That surge of blood coursed through my brain and caused those few cars on the road before me to burn red hot beneath the sun as it cast mirages over the fields like a sea of watery graves out amongst the cotton and peat moss, graves that ran for miles in both directions and caused the soil to sway just like that vast ocean it mimed, those graves placed out there for the just folk, I knew, someplace my Henry most likely laid.
For here, the negro worked, his hands grown harder and his heart just the same, his hair not flowing and dainty but rough, his eyes a darkness that grew to handle the sun, and his feet a plagued callus he stood upon. Looking up from my seat of discontent I found the Missus still in her frustrated state and felt my stomach sour, my tongue water with urge to speak, and my hands tremble from that struggle to hold it all down. I could say so many things at that moment but knew Floyd was right, and so I kept quiet, forcing those thoughts back into the depths of my mind for God’s watchful eye to keep. Instead, I remembered Henry as I did each night, and his smile gave me peace. I thought of Floyd and acted like the good nigger I was supposed to be as I watched the land along with the Missus, the cotton a misery to me that she prayed would always be present in our lives, something my daddy knew and his daddy before him, too—that whiteness to be a devil.
CHAPTER 9
The Mississippi summer seemed to grow hotter each year, and that summer of 1967 was no different. Lord willing, we would make it through. The buds of the pagoda dogwood hung low, fanned out over the horizon in a white pageantry of pomp and dance, circumstance enough for us to walk amongst the fields in admiration of their splendor, which the Missus and I did almost every morning before the sun rose too high and suffocated us in its grief. She’d taken to having two showers a day, yet even then the heat was unbearable, that lasting kindness of a spring day long gone while in its wake stood the bearer of oppression. Even during the night we stayed out from under covers, as the sun never fully retired, even if it did turn its head.
In slow succession we made our way from the kitchen to the front porch, Miss Lula unwilling to sit indoors on any day now that there were workers in the fields. She was excited by the work of those men, insisting to me how she could just never spend so much time under that hot sun, how she could live a hundred years and never grow to like it one bit and how those people just got it in their blood. She had kept her good spirits since her recovery and seemed to strengthen each day we watched those men, calling for vast amounts of time in my company, which kept me from the fields. On occasion, Floyd would toss a wave or send over some piece of fruit he’d plucked from a tree out back. Missus never ate any, yet she enjoyed it all the same, that feeling of connectedness that grew just by being present with those around her. Often Floyd would join us on the porch once his gift was presented, resting his dog-tired feet and exhaling loudly as he took in the shade and a cold glass of water, the remainder of that glass’s contents serving as a cool bath over his head as he stood and went back to work. When Jesse returned after having taken a week off from the house, some excuse he’d given about a trip to Jackson or thereabout, Floyd sent him over with the plucked item that still bore the leaves of the tree on its stem.
“Bernie, go wash it,” Miss Lula demanded as Jesse presented it.
Ain’t never eaten one bite a day in her life and now she wanted to try it.
Jesse placed the fruit in my hand and watched as I walked it inside, his hand having been confiscated by the Missus who prevented him from leaving. I hurried to the kitchen with the fruit nearly falling to the ground in my haste. Nonetheless, by the time I’d washed it and returned, Jesse was seated by the Missus with her hand upon his shoulder to keep him there. My attempts at catching the boy’s eye were blocked each time by the Missus’s protruding knee.
“Jesse,” I called in a voice that screeched from my body like shoddy brakes.
His eyes met mine in a state of panic.
“Take a piece back for you and Floyd,” I instructed him.
Jesse attempted to stand but was stopped immediately by the Missus’s grip as she squeezed his shoulder and he eased back to the ground.
“If only for a bit,” she said slyly. “Floyd does it all the time.”
Jesse settled at the Missus’s feet, a stiffness in his movements that never allowed him to get too comfortable, I was happy to see.
“So how’s it been so far?” the Missus asked.
“Just fine, Miss,” Jesse said.
“Well, I don’t see how you manage with this heat,” she continued.
“It’s not so bad, Miss,” he said. “Once you get used to it.”
“I tell you, I’d just melt in a minute,” she said. “Can barely keep up with Bernie as it is in the mornings.”
“Yes, Miss,” he replied.
“So tell me, how’s your brother?” she asked, that bit of devilment finally peeking through as she lifted her lip and flashed her piercing fangs. “We sure do miss him around here.”
“He be fine, Miss,” Jesse said.
“Wished we could’ve kept him,” she swore, placing her sights on me now. “Just ain’t enough work sometimes. Nothing you can do though.”
“He understands,” Jesse said. “Mama sent him down to Jackson this summer with my aunt and uncle.”
“This’s no place for a smart boy like him anyway,” she said with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“But, Jesse, you gonna stay, right?” Miss Lula asked.
“Of course, Miss,” he said. “I likes it here.”