A Matter of Souls (12 page)

She practically ripped off her shift; she didn't care, somehow. She took her time pulling on starched underpants and slipping the petticoat over her head. The dress
had bell-shaped sleeves that stopped right at the child's elbow; ribbon was woven through eyelet holes all around their edges and tied into tiny bows.

She took her time and buttoned every button from her waist to her neck. There was a lace pinafore with a fine scalloped hem. She slipped on the stockings and buttoned the boots.

And then she turned to the tall looking glass and saw herself.

It was serious, her solemn brown face. Round at the chin and only a little wide above her brows. Even, smart eyes, she thought. Her mouth was kind of small. But her hair!

She patted it furiously, but it did not match the rest. She darted around the room, opening drawers and wardrobe doors until she found an old comb. She examined it closely to make sure none of Mistress's horrible long, yellow hairs still clung to its teeth. Then she combed and combed and parted and patted until the sides were all going down and there was a nice tuft falling to one side, just over her left eye. She pushed it up.

She opened the door with both hands and walked like a lady with small, deliberate steps. She ran her brown hand along the banister as she walked downstairs. She felt bright, like all the people in the Colored choir.

Something had changed.

“Damn you!” Annie Cook was hustling away the tea tray as the child passed into the parlor. The child jerked
her head at Annie Cook and smiled.

In the back parlor, the mistress met the child's direct eyes with surprise. “Oh!” Mistress said.

“Come right here, I have a stool for you to sit on,” said the picture-taking man.

“Girl, I'll have you know that as soon as this foolishness is over, you will remove that dress from your horrid little black body and wash it!” The mistress's voice was rising again.

“Smile,” the red-haired picture-taking man told the child.

But she could not. She looked straight at the camera.

“Oh, William, this is so useless! She's nothing!”

“Now, you know there's going to be a flash on the count of three …”

“Miss Maddie, if that lil' heifer done tol' you somthin' 'bout me, she's a lie …” Annie Cook was hovering in the doorway.

“One…”

The child thought with longing of the Colored choir outside. Where had their beautiful voices gone?

“Two…”

She wanted, at that moment, with her whole heart, to
belong
somewhere.

“Three!”

She wished and she prayed her need with her whole heart.

FLASH!

The bright white light stunned her, and she fell off the stool. She felt herself tumbling, tumbling. It was surely taking a long time for her to land on the rug and find her feet! It seemed to the child that ages had passed before the beautiful boots were firm and flat on solid ground.

And there was singing again … it was a different tune.

The Colored choir had come back! But how could she hear them from the back parlor? The child was confused. She rubbed her eyes. She was no longer inside the wide front door. She was outside.

“What child is this … ” the voices were singing. The child blinked. A group of colored people was standing on the street across from her. At first they seemed to be the same as before—joyful brown faces, bright clothes, welcoming voices.

Then she narrowed her eyes. The clothes were different … she could see some of the grown women's knees! And the noises around … automobiles like she had never seen before whizzed past. There were buildings in the distance with huge pictures painted on their walls. And those buildings! They were towers of brick and stone and glass!

She looked up high and saw bright blue sky.

“Honey, where are you supposed to be? Are you alone?” Someone was speaking kindly to her.

The child lowered her chin slowly.

A Colored woman and a man were crossing the street. The man had a curly black beard circling his honey-brown face. The woman had almost no hair at all, but she had
glittering beads hanging from her ears, and her eyes were full of love.

Soon, the entire Colored choir had surrounded the child.

“You hungry?”

“Where are your people?”

“You must be freezing!” Somebody draped her shoulders with a soft purple shawl. The threads in it sparkled like diamonds. She felt herself grinning.

“We want to help you,” the honey man said.

“This child is so beautiful … like a work of art! What's your name, Baby Girl?” The woman leaned to touch the child's shoulder, and when she did, the child knew all of it was real.

The brown child thought hard and then said in a firm voice, “Jolly. My name is Jolly!”

“
Tis the season to be Jolly
!” The Colored choir sang the same joyful song that they had in her old life, but this time it was just for her.

J
immy Lee smiled at the birthday card signed with his cousin Son's boyish scrawl. “Crazy kid, can't wait to be a man,” he chuckled and tossed the card aside. Then he slicked back his hair and looked down to check his shoes.

The shoes were brand-new two-toned wing tips. The softly pointed toes were ivory-colored calfskin, and gleaming red-brown leather—“oxblood,” the salesman called it—spread across the instep like wings beating the sky on a cloudy day.

Jimmy Lee grinned at those shoes, straightened his skinny blue tie, and looked at the calendar from Harris Funeral Home that was tacked up on the wall next to the medicine cabinet.

It was not only his twenty-first birthday; it was Election Day, and he could vote for the very first time. Jimmy Lee had put in for the day off weeks ago, when he first found out at the secret meeting that the voting place was being switched. The Colored folk weren't supposed to know.

But Jimmy Lee's daddy, his uncle Booker, and a couple of the other Colored vets who'd come back after D-day with life and limb intact, well—they'd found out. And they were of a mind that a grown man who'd gone overseas and fought in muddy ditches for his country ought to have a say in picking out the next man to run that country.

Jimmy Lee remembered feeling so proud that night, watching his daddy's determined face shining in the glow from the flashlights.

“Please don't go,” his pretty young wife begged as she walked in next to him. Jimmy Lee turned to look at her. Willa was the best choice he'd ever made, up until today. He smiled and touched her cheek gently.

“I gotta,” he said.

She followed his long, lanky body as he moved out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, and into the front room that was their bedroom and living room altogether. They could really afford something a little better, since they were both working steady, but in this town, the only place for Colored people to live was this little huddle of shotgun houses set behind the gas station.

One day, Jimmy Lee told himself, he would do better than this. He would buy Willa the house she deserved.

He stopped at the crib near the window. Little Bernadette was curled up into a pink ball of nightgown and blankets.

Jimmy Lee was still amazed that he was somebody's father. And he took it seriously. He'd had some practice, looking out for Son, but he was already a knuckleheaded kid—not a sweet baby girl. Jimmy Lee had big plans for Bernadette, like her going to college instead of straight to work like he and Willa had. And traveling, and eating in fancy restaurants, and …

“There ain't nothin' else I can do to change your mind?” Willa stared up at him with wide eyes. He could see himself in those eyes; he could see himself inside the fear that was looking at him.

He shook his head. This time he didn't smile.

“There ain't nothin' else I can do, except this, to change it for her, Willa. You know it well as I do.”

He opened the door and stepped out. He moved fast. The dirt road puffed up around him. He didn't notice the dusty powder settling on his shoulders and his shoes. He didn't notice because he was moving with purpose.

Around corners. Up the paved street. Onto the sidewalk. Past the post office, where the voting was supposed to be. Where the newspapers and radio said the voting was supposed to be.

He saw his father's fedora in the middle of the clump of brown-faced men stopped at the steps of the public library. Jimmy Lee saw two White men, both men he knew, both
vets like his daddy, scowling down at the men from his neighborhood.

Jimmy Lee hurried to be a part of them.

“What y'all boys doin' here, Bernie?” one of the men called out to Jimmy Lee's daddy.

“We here to vote!” his daddy called back.

“You boys don't want no trouble, now.” The other man folded his arms and moved real easy-like, blocking the door.

“We here to vote!” Jimmy Lee's uncle Booker shouted from the crowd. All the brown men began to make noise. A White lady stuck her head out of the library door, but quickly yanked herself in again.

“You musta got it wrong, Bernie. Ain't no Coloreds votin' here today!”

“That ain't right!” Jimmy Lee heard himself yelling.

Jimmy Lee shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was getting mad, getting hot. He had waited for this day! Dreamed of it. He was a husband, a father, an upstanding member of his church. Willa had baked him a yellow cake with jelly icing. He had dreamed of all that.

And he had dreamed of entering his legal manhood by walking up to vote in his church suit and his brand-new oxblood shoes.

Yeah, Jimmy Lee was hot.

When the brown men moved forward toward the library, Jimmy Lee moved with them. He only faintly heard the screech of car wheels somewhere behind him.

But he did hear the unmistakable sounds of the shotguns being pumped. And there was all of a sudden a crash, like something breaking, and smoke rising up at the same time as a thunderous booming sounded behind him. Shots blasted against screams and running feet. One shot, two. Many.

Jimmy Lee saw his father go down.

For one crazy second, Jimmy Lee imagined the evening yet to come. He saw ahead to his family all around and pictured himself bouncing Bernadette on his lap and laughing at the grape jelly smeared all over her face.

And then he felt a strange, burning explosion inside his chest, and he was lifted, lifted into the air, right out of his oxblood shoes.

It was November 6, 1956. Jimmy Lee's twenty-first birthday. His last.

T
he boy hung at the edge of the crowd, soaking up the energy thrown off by the fear and excitement of the moment. He followed the group of Colored men dressed to the nines and moving as one body, because he had no mother to beg or threaten him to stay away. The danger made his skin itch and tingle, but the righteousness of it, the righteousness of this march through the dusty streets of the unimportant Mississippi town, the boy never doubted. Thanks to his father, the boy's notion of justice was sharp as a straight razor.