Moonrise over new jessup, p.24
Moonrise Over New Jessup, page 24
“You’d rather have folks shouting hate to your face?” he said.
“My face is just fine in New Jessup, Alabama, Raymond Campbell.”
“I know it is,” he said, the flirtation in his voice cut short by that false contentment again. He sat up.
“What’s aching you?” I asked him.
“Nothing to worry about. Hit my shin at the shop.”
“You didn’t tell me that when you came home.”
“Hardly hurts. I was just lying on it funny. Besides, I was trying to get you out the house before you got ahold of me with one of your ointments or potions.”
“I don’t hear you calling them ‘potions’ when I’m out gathering marigolds for your aches and pains, or when that ointment takes the swelling down.”
“No. You’re right.”
“Where we stay in DC? I bet they won’t even have marigolds. Probably just aspirin and ice.” The moonlight played with the flecks of green and yellow in his grays and one side of his mouth kicked up—his willingness to take some light sparring after the fates had already called the round for him. And I genuinely wanted him to be happy, though I also wanted to remind him that this trip would force me to dress myself in armor I had shed years before.
“Probably no marigolds, no,” he said. “But we’ll see Matthew, and Freedmen’s Hospital is there if we really get into a scrape.”
“We have Blakely Memorial right here. And marigolds. Acres of hydrangeas, azaleas, real pretty ficus—”
“There are lots of pretty flowers in the world. Different, too.”
“Because of the soil. The climate.”
“You know more than most in this town about the world outside New Jessup.”
“Sure do. Know how to grow things. Know what makes them wither, and what makes them thrive.”
In the heartbeat between injury and pain, his eyes flashed. Whether because of his shin, or because of my words, I don’t know. But my heart caught to see it either way.
“Look, Raymond, it’s just that, coming up, even if there were no signs, there were signs, you know?” He absorbed my words with a slow nod. “Here, there are no signs welcoming or refusing me. No signs telling me my place because everyplace is my place.”
“I know you love it here, and it makes my heart soar that you don’t have to deal with hatefulness. And you won’t.”
The tender case he made brought a smile of concession to my lips. Still, you lifted his tone, meaning to stand out whether he intended it or not. Hovering as a reminder that he did have to deal with signs. Like weeks before, when the Fitzhughs had called looking for the rear fender and door from a Cadillac 62 and he had scoured the boneyard looking for the car. It came apart easy enough, and Raymond carried the parts across the woods. Chase burst through the front door before Raymond could make his way around to the back (no need trying front doors over there)—meeting him in full view of the audience waiting through the plate glass inside the waiting room. He loud-talked my husband, saying that he had asked for a whole car, and true to Campbell form, Raymond had only turned up with the pieces.
Victorious by the Tombigbee, Raymond went back down to his elbow, adjusting his leg to avoid the bruise again. He urged me to uncross my ankles to let him play with Little Turtle. Happily obliged, he traced my birthmark and talked about our itinerary until deep into the purple night. After he stood and pulled me to my feet, we yawned and stretched the kinks. He looked at his old, beat-up watch.
“You’re keeping me up late tonight, darling. Me and Lisle wanna drop a transmission over to Fitzhugh’s tomorrow before church.”
“On a Sunday?” I shook the blanket.
“This way, Chase won’t be there to act a fool in front of their customers again.”
“I still can’t believe he would say something stupid as that. ‘Ask for a car and get the pieces,’ like you didn’t bring exactly what he asked for,” I said.
With my arms spread wide to fold the blanket, he told me, “Yeah. Trying to claim we used to tow the cars in more wrecked than they should be, and it drove their customers’ repair costs through the roof. Said that’s why they ended the towing.” Everything stilled except the catfish thrashing its desperate, dying breaths inside my chest.
“Raymond, stop lying.”
“God heard me speak it, darling.”
“You never told me that part. About the costs. Not to mention that he said they ended the towing?”
“Well, that’s what the man said.”
“Ain’t that rich? Weren’t those cars already cracked up to begin with, which is why they needed the wrecker?”
“You got it.”
“So they were upcharging their customers? Ripping off their own folks?” He nodded. I needed something to take my frustration, so I snapped the blanket a couple good times to shake every crumb of dirt loose. But the stink of this news lingered. Dirtmouthing my men and their work to rip off other whitefolks? I was too through. “Trifling! Chase Fitzhugh couldn’t fix a training wheel to a bicycle, to be blaming us for all that. He should be ashamed of himself.”
“Should be. But trust me—he ain’t.”
“And what about his father? Where was Mr. Doing-Business-Since-Toy-Trucks this whole time?”
“Inside. Through the window. Doing something behind the register to avoid my eye.”
“That’s because he knew their high bills were none of our fault. He was right to be shame-faced about it. He shoulda yanked his son’s chain long ago.”
“Some folks figure it’s better to go along to get along. Fitzhugh keeps saying he’s retiring soon. Got one foot out the door. And besides, he treated that phone call with Pop like they were doing us a favor to end the towing.”
“Let me call him up, then. Remind him that Campbells never worked for anybody but Campbells. I’ll tell him exactly what they can do with the money and the aggravation that comes with it.”
“I don’t think so, darling.” He laughed softly. “Thank you, but I think it’s just as well you never meet the Fitzhughs. No. Let’s both lay it down. I brought you here to talk about a trip and an anniversary,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. Time for my heart to stop racing again.
This time, throbbing because the Fitzhughs were once again out here proving that they were nobody’s Negroes. Not self-reliant. Or talented. Or resilient. And only creative enough for this sleight of hand with their customers. They were nothing like my husband who—according to some quick math in my head—had planned this trip less than a week after this happened across the woods. A man of the fullest measure, proving indignity away by grand gesture, if a gesture that had me reaching for excuses and alternatives.
“I thought you’d like to get away for a while,” he said. “That’s it. DC’s not New Jessup, no, but I’ve been before, and Matthew and Patience are there now. We’ll find our folks and have a good time.” He pulled my hand to his lips, kissed my palm, then pressed it against his cheek and closed his eyes. Pressing his flesh into my hand the way one who radiates nightglow pleads for trust, support, and forgiveness from the ones he both protects and needs most. The real cross of a Negro man and the reason a Negro woman like me clenched teeth and swallowed bitter pills like candy.
“All this today, buttering me up to tell me about this trip? You coulda just told me,” I said.
“I did just tell you.”
“Without Waverly’s and the river, I mean.”
“I love perch and love watching you eat perch,” he said, his voice molasses with flirtation. “The way you pick at it with those long fingers, and your pretty lips shine with grease.”
“There you go.”
“I just wanna see that smile.”
“Here it is, baby.”
“And look—I booked you some time with Miss Vivian on Monday. You know how hard it is to get an appointment with that woman?” When I raised an eyebrow to remind him of just how well I knew it, he blushed and flashed that guilty grin. “But she squeezed since it was you.” I started to object to the extravagance. I clipped coupons to stretch dollars he never asked me to stretch. But I liked being the reason for the light in his eye.
So on Monday, Dot watched from the corner while me and Earnestine had differing opinions over pins. Resting a hand atop a stomach already rounded by Clifford’s little brother (brother, she was sure), Dot talked and distracted our babies with toys and baubles from the dressing room while I slipped in and out of outfits for alteration. The appointment was a crowded one, made more so by Earnestine, who was fitting me, pinning me, doing all Miss Vivian had done for me in the past. But Miss Vivian was busy with Mrs. Wicks on the neighboring pedestal, leaving me with her daughter to place pins I could place myself.
“Well, isn’t it nice to be Mrs. Raymond Campbell? Washington, DC,” Miss Vivian sniffed in that quiet, musical way of an impressed mama. I smiled and warmed inside.
But before I could open my mouth, Dot said, “Hmph, I’ll say,” with her lip poked out. “I married the wrong Campbell man, Miss Vivian.”
“You think you may have wanted to figure that out a little sooner, Dorothy?” said Miss Vivian, flicking her eyes towards Dot’s belly. My sister-in-law’s cheeks turned cherry red.
“Miss Vivian! Isn’t that just the wickedest thing to say to me?”
“Call it what you like, but with so many young ladies around here expecting, it might make sense to start making maternity clothes. Right, Earnestine?”
One day, Mama kissed and hugged me and Rosie and promised to be there when we arrived home from school. But while we were away, and without warning, she collapsed in the cotton, the thread of her days snapping so violently that the moon should have never continued to rise and set. My everyday had already ended with Miss Vivian, but another piece of my eternity died when she uttered Earnestine’s name where mine belonged.
“Alice?” Mrs. Wicks said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I asked you about Matthew Washington.”
“Yes, ma’am, what about him?”
“How he’s doing,” she said with the irritation of repetition. “They introduced the new residents at the Blakely Memorial benefit, and I was surprised not to see him among them.” She had no cause to be surprised when everybody in town knew that Matthew and the Washingtons were still pegged as sympathetic to Patience and her troubles. The sweet shop lines had recovered some but were still far from the crowds of old whenever I passed by on the street, and he had only been home once or twice since the river. Patience moving to DC was none of anybody’s business. Besides, I was already nervous about seeing her for the first time since she was sent away, and had no desire to bring her up in my appointment and remind Miss Vivian about my role in Patience’s undoing.
Mrs. Wicks coursed bankers’ money through her veins, and she had a hand in every social club and activity on our side of the woods. She was forever bragging about her family lineage—her father and her husband and her sons. All Morehouse men. All bankers or bankers-in-training. Women clamored to touch the hem of her garment or scrambled to stay out of her way. But not Miss Vivian, who had been working on dresses for Mrs. Wicks since her grandmere taught her to sew inside the first Taylor Made.
“We need our young people to come back here, be leaders here,” Mrs. Wicks said. “Take my boys, for example—”
“Stay still, Brandy,” Miss Vivian repeated calmly as she slid pins into the fabric around Mrs. Wicks’ waist.
“I’m being still, Vivian. Anyway, Raymond remembers my Joseph, I’m sure. He tutored my son in math all through high school, and now, Joseph is home, recently promoted again. At the bank, you know. Anyway, I thought Raymond and Matthew would come back as professional men, too—become real Negroes of high esteem in New Jessup. They are both from old families, and that helps, I suppose, but . . . well, maybe not everyone is meant for professional life. Matthew though,” she said, and tsked.
Miss Vivian’s quick eyes flicked up from sticking pins. She had worked her way to Mrs. Wicks’ generous left thigh and was making progress around the curves when Mrs. Wicks launched into another brag about her sons—the banker and the business student, both destined to lead a community full of Campbells, Taylors, Royals, Greenes, and others who had cast their buckets, and used those buckets to drain the swamp. So it didn’t surprise me one bit when Mrs. Wicks shouted, “Ow! Vivian, you stuck me!” Miss Vivian, still with eyes on the dress, scolded her quietly to keep still again. Mrs. Wicks rubbed the pinprick and frowned, but Miss Vivian would never stick her hard enough to draw blood and ruin the fabric. “I didn’t mean any harm.” Her voice trembled with indignation.
“Who says you did, Brandy? I warned you a number of times to keep still.”
“Vivian, honestly. I’ve known you too long to be playing silly games with these pins.”
“Yes, we have known each other a long time. And I dare say that folks like me, and others without a college degree, have also become your Negroes of high esteem.”
“Of course. No one is saying otherwise.”
“But what you are saying isn’t far off from all that talk that almost tore our community apart in the swamp—that the educated few should lead the uneducated masses. We lost a host of our professionals back when my parents, and yours, refused that thinking and the purse strings that came with it. In a community rich with talent and creativity of all sorts,” she scoffed, “who are the few, and who are the masses?
“Now again, just the other day, some young people were outside my shop distributing flyers about desegregating the schools because they think we should. But I never wanted my girls in an integrated school, nor did you want your boys in one, Brandy.”
Without changing a note in her voice, Miss Vivian’s words set me to high alert, and I readied myself to tell whatever truth the moment required. So when she asked whether Clifford and Bea would be attending school across the woods, I said, “No, ma’am. Not in my lifetime. And what group would push for such a thing here, of all places?”
She shrugged.
“The name escapes me now. Some alphabet soup organization with which I’m unfamiliar,” she said. She had mentioned the NAACP, the SCLC, and the NNAS in plenty of prior conversations, so I figured she would call their names. “Earnest already knew about it when I gave him the flyer, but it does make you wonder why the few outside my window get to make decisions for the rest of us. Who ordained them?” she asked.
With icy, casual disdain, her accusation flowed into a dressing room where pins pricked and words drew blood. Ordained. It was easy to understand why folks felt the way they did about the NNAS—there was hardly a headline about integration around the country with its name unattached. But New Jessup was baptized in the wellspring of self-reliance. It wasn’t the NNAS who brought me through the water, raised Raymond from a baby, or ministered to us, taught us to appreciate, and maintain, our way of life. Our wishes and sacrifices for the community were as inseparable from New Jessup’s own desires as a splash was inseparable from the river.
“Well, thank goodness Cap already knew about it,” I said.
“Oh yes, he’s never far behind an instigator. You remember those articles,” she said coolly, without looking up from her work.
“And did you ever see what she wrote about us?” Mrs. Wicks asked. “Such an ungrateful child this world has never known.”
“Yes, well, all the more reason it was better that Earnest ran her out. We don’t want the sheriff coming through here indiscriminately, thinking we all share her views. But you are right, Brandy . . . no one wins when we lose all of our young people,” she said, tugging the hem to straighten the seam on Mrs. Wicks’ dress. With a satisfied nod, Mrs. Wicks bunched the skirt in her hands and descended the pedestal to change into her next outfit. Miss Vivian came over to my mirror and shifted some pins around on my dress while she waited for Mrs. Wicks to return.
“I know Patience was your friend, and it was hard to see her go,” she said. “But I hope you understand that if there are people who need to be dealt with—” She shrugged the last of her thought as she moved another pin, and I readied another half-truth for the community.
“Yes, ma’am, I suppose you’re right. But whoever it was outside here, they’ll move on just like the rest of them. Ain’t nothing for them in New Jessup.”
“There is nothing for them here,” she corrected, another lesson atop the lessons already playing in my head: Hold your head high. Stand up straight. We hold ourselves with distinction here at Taylor Made. “And I know I’m right,” she said.
We moved on in conversation the way you do when you have minutes, instead of days, to wander through topics at your leisure: my airplane outfit and our DC itinerary; Bea’s diet; Miss Vivian’s war with the abomination polyester; whether I had tickets for Mrs. Wicks’ school benefit dance. After more than two hours in the mirror, with Mrs. Wicks finally gone, Miss Vivian wrote the mile-long order onto my account—dresses, suits, new jewelry, and a new handbag for my first time ever leaving Alabama.
“You come back in two weeks, and we’ll have all of this finished for you, Mrs. Campbell,” she said. A formality she considered—judging by her smile—to be a playful pinprick, it nonetheless stuck me to bleed.
“Miss Vivian . . . what’s this ‘Mrs. Campbell’ business?”
“That is your name?” she said, like she was reminding me.
“Yes, ma’am, but whatever happened to just plain old Alice?” I asked.
“I’d consider it a great personal failing of mine if you believed yourself to be ‘just plain old’ anything,” she told me. “Still, if it’s ‘Alice’ you prefer, then you’ll get ‘Alice’ from me.”
Miss Vivian was still on my mind when Raymond’s question about the window or the aisle seat jolted me back into the plane. The sun was shining through the window onto seats 22A and B. The light was bright, bright white enough to make the back of my right eye throb. Across the aisle, a white man growled at a boy sandwiched between him and his wife to keep still. I twirled my pearls, realizing that there would soon be thirty thousand feet of blue sky between solid ground and my shoe leather. But standing there, watching that man, as we moved to take the seats across the aisle, the whole sky had already opened up between me and New Jessup. Because sifting through and deciphering between the good, middling, and dangerous was something I had not had to do for four years—not since my time in New Jessup had given me freedom from perpetually wondering about whitefolks’ intentions.
