A Matter of Souls (4 page)

Freddie Boy's left sleeve was ripped away from the jacket; his hard, muscular arm was twisted back underneath his body. The angle was unnatural. His right hand was draped across his body, bloody and raked with oozing cuts. He clutched it in a fist at his groin.

Mamie sucked in a breath, but the air had gone. Her lungs burned.

He had fought. Tried to protect himself.

Both legs were bent where there were no joints. His right foot seemed to turn up, pointing to his face. What else was shattered inside him, along with his spirit?

She could not see his chest move. She could not see past the matted hair if his temples still pulsed. He did not move. She did not touch him.

It was no use wondering who had done this to him or why. She knew the beginning of Freddie Boy's story as clear as she'd known the end of the story on the radio.

Mamie held her muscles taut, and she swayed. Her eyes ached. Her womb ached. She pressed her eyes shut and recalled her baby boy's tiny new body placed warm upon hers; he had been bloody then, too. But he had screamed, and she thanked God that he was alive. Now he wasn't making a sound.

Mamie wondered if it was better that he be dead than broken up like this.

She tilted her head, and the tears streamed steady over her face like rain. All of a sudden her sorrow was so strong she could not hold herself upright against it. She slowly laid her body out on the cold, damp ground beside her son.

“Mamie Lee! I been at the house for you!”

Sounded like Alfred. Mamie raised her chin just to see across her son's still chest.

It was Alfred's lankly self, loping though the grass. There was a fire in his step, and a fire in his eyes that lit up Mamie's night.

Alfred was standing over them.

“We ain't givin' them our boy, Mamie,” he said, lifting her up to rest beside him. She inhaled his man-ness.

“We ain't lettin' them take our son.”

“Alfred!” Mamie touched him with her palm and looked back at Freddie.

She was his mother! It was a sin before God that she could think her son better off dead! A great pain seized her heart, and she regretted her awful notion. She pulled
away from Alfred, feeling him move behind her, and gently touched her fingertips to their son's mouth.

“He's warm!”

“You stay with him. I'm gonna get help. You don't leave him, Mamie.”

She slipped her arm under Freddie Boy's neck and gingerly raised his head as she lowered hers. She kissed the temples. She recalled his smiling little-boy face, the screeching voice begging her to “touch Eskimo noses” with him.

More tenderly than she ever had, Mamie rubbed her nose against her son's.

“Remember that song you used to sing?” Alfred was hovering over her, urging her.

“I don't remember no song, Alfred!” She wondered anxiously why he didn't go on, like he said he would.

“Yeah, you do now. Sing to him, Mamie. He'll hear you. You got a sweet, sweet voice. Remember that song? Sing it to your baby boy nice like you can.”

That was Alfred to a T. Plying her with compliments to distract her mind. But he must be right. Alfred was right about the truck, wasn't he?

She ever so lightly placed a hand on Freddie's forehead. Yes, warm.

And then Alfred reached over her shoulder, putting his calloused hand on top of hers.

“You sing to him, Mamie,” Alfred whispered.

Mamie licked her lips and found them dry; she forced
spit back down her throat to ease its tightness. Whatever song did Alfred mean? No lullaby came to her, so she opened her mouth, ready to go on whatever came out.

“Earth has no sor-row… that heaven can … not… cure …” The old hymn rolled out. But that was the ending, not the beginning. Mamie sniffed. She had to sing a beginning!

“Come …ye… disconsolate…”

“Mmm…”

“Where-er …you … lan-guish …”

The sound Freddie made was so faint that she was not sure she'd heard anything at all. Mamie choked in her singing, yet managed to keep humming. She strained to pick up more, wishing she could see the air going in and out of his lungs to be sure.

“Breathe, baby. Breathe for Mama. It's gonna be all right.” Mamie looked off into the night, loving the breath back into her son.

Giant round yellow eyes were coming toward them. Flashing eyes, signaling to her. Maybe the White boys had come back and she would die together with her son. Mamie was not afraid.

The lights stopped. She heard voices calling out to her.

“Mamie! Mamie Lee Holmes!”

Bodies, people were walking out of the light.

“We come for you, Mamie!” She saw the grizzled white top of Reverend Bell's head. He loomed out of the light. She blinked, seeing his sons and the shimmering pink face
of Doctor Waskom behind him. Mamie threw her head back and gasped for breath.

This was the doctor who'd set Freddie's broken arm when he was ten, who had handled him like he was any hurting child. The tears blinded her to the flurry of what went on around her next; she only was sure that she did not let them take Freddie away from her arms.

“W-Where's Alfred?” she hiccupped, finally allowing the doctor to put himself between her and her baby. Reverend Bell took off his coat and threw it over her hunched shoulders.

“Mamie, honey, Alfred ain't here.”

Mamie looked at him for a minute, then turned back to the doctor.

“He'll live? Our boy will make it?” she asked. The doctor was grim-faced as he met her eyes.

“Can't promise, Mamie,” he answered. “If he does, he won't ever be the same.”

Mamie believed him. She believed that if Freddie survived, he would live hard, and hurt, never use that mind or those gifted hands the same way again.

Maybe his life wouldn't be much different from what it would have been if none of this had ever happened, she thought. His life would have been hard, and hurtful, and hardly ever right, even if this night had never happened.

“You hear me, Mamie? Child, Alfred ain't here. My wife saw you wandering in the middle of the night and sent us after you. Mamie?”

Mamie jerked away from him, quivering. Alfred had been with her. She didn't care what anybody said. How? Somehow.

Awe shook her till Reverend Bell's coat fell away, till she could hear nothing but Alfred calling to her from far off.

“Come and get him, Alfred!” she murmured, so nobody else could hear. “Come on and take Freddie with you. Come on, come on.”

Mamie arched her head over her shoulder, listening for Alfred to answer.

“Give me that syringe! Hurry!” She heard the doctor instead. The doctor was frantic. She heard him pumping Freddie's chest, and she heard the pumping stop.

Reverend Bell wailed, “Oh, Lord have mercy on his soul!”

Mamie bowed her head.

She looked up at the sky and saw no stars. No moon.

S
he is black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem!” Hazel dropped the stack of envelopes she'd just pulled from the mailbox. She clucked at her own clumsiness and bent to pick them up, rising just in time to spy the source of that rich baritone voice. Next door, over the honeysuckle-draped wire fence, an intense pair of dark eyes was fixed on her.

“If Reverend Clark catches you flirting with scripture, JC—” She couldn't decide how to finish the reprimand, partially because it wasn't all that genuine. She resented his comment about being black, despite the fact that out of all six Reed sisters, she was sure enough the darkest in the bunch. But then, she took great satisfaction in his noticing her…
comeliness
.

“Girl, Reverend Clark got hot blood runnin' through his veins too. How come you think he can burn up the
pulpit like he does every Sunday? And speaking of Sunday, what you doin' next Saturday night?”

Hazel burst into tinkling laughter and slapped the mail against her thigh as she strode back up the sloping yard to Miss Clotille's porch. She never answered him. One thing she had learned well from Miss Clotille, her employer since she'd turned thirteen six years ago, was how to be coy. At the steps, she flung a broad smile over her shoulder.

JC continued to eyeball the scenery, propping his elbow up on the handle of the lawnmower he'd pushed from Miss Clotille's over to his next job.

“You as fine as plum wine, Hazel Mozella Reed! You hear me?” he shouted at the slamming screen door.

Hazel stopped at the mirror hanging over the marble hall table and took a long drink of herself. She prayed thanks every night for the natural waves—Indian hair, her grandmother Mama Vee called it—that fell back from her temples, even when she sweated her head. She had long ago learned to painstakingly arch her heavy eyebrows and believed they were now a “perfect accent to her high cheekbones and full, yet never broad lips.”

Hazel couldn't help but think of the words Madame Florence Ethel Ameal-Jones had used to describe the “Ideal Colored Woman” in the last issue of Miss Clotille's
Half–Century Magazine
. Yes, Hazel thought, I have all of those attributes except one, and I'm working on that! She leaned in closer to her reflection and tilted her head to look.

There
was
a difference! Clear as day, she could see that
there was. She raised trembling fingers to touch her cheek.

“Haaazelll? Is that postman late again?”

Miss Clotille was the only person Hazel had ever heard say “postman” instead of “mailman,” “etiquette” instead of “manners,” and “despise” instead of “hate.” Miss Clotille often described herself as “unique,” and Hazel agreed. “One-of-a-kind crazy,” Hazel's sister Jurdine called Miss Clotille. But Jurdine was just jealous that she wasn't getting culture and wisdom on her job plucking chickens out at Garrett's Farm.

“No, ma'am, he was on time. I'm coming!”

Hazel didn't rush, but she moved quickly. Her bare feet made no sound on the gleaming wood floor that she had polished yesterday. Miss Clotille kept telling her that it was unseemly for a young woman to go around without shoes in public, but Hazel differed with her on that point: she felt it was unseemly for a housekeeper to scuff her own floors on purpose.

At the door of Miss Clotille's bedroom Hazel paused to organize the various magazines and bills and invitations by size, and then she waited.

“Oh! There you are.” The faint dust of rouge rose up from the dressing table as Miss Clotille replaced her powder puff and turned to Hazel expectantly.

They always had their little ceremonies. Hazel supposed these were Miss Clotille's attempts—having no husband, no children, and no sisters or brothers—to mimic a regular family's routines. And though there were so many
things about Miss Clotille that Hazel not only admired but worked with great concentration to emulate, Hazel firmly believed she would hear a
Mrs
. and a
Mama
in her own near future.

Hazel handed over the mail and smiled.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Clotille said sweetly. “And would you call for Mr. Tom to bring the car for me at twelve thirty?”

Hazel crossed the room to open the huge mahogany chifferobe.

“Yes, ma'am. Now, I don't directly recall … you wearing the green or the purple to your luncheon?”

“Oh, Hazel!
Are
you wearing!
Are
you! And they're
teal
and
magenta
, my dear. I'll be wearing the magenta. It matches my lipstick.”

Hazel smiled again and took out the mentioned dress. She didn't mind being corrected. Working for somebody like Miss Clotille might be the best education she would ever get, since the chances were slim to none that her family could send her to college.

“I think the magenta is perfect, Miss Clotille.”

Mama Vee always claimed Clotille Henderson had been a woman when she was a girl, but Miss Clotille was well-preserved and determined, even if she was nearly sixty. She was tiny—the tips of her pink silk mules barely touched the floor when she sat at her dressing table. But what Miss Clotille lacked in stature had never held her back in any of the classrooms where she'd taught countless
corn-fed country girls and rough, cotton-picking boys. Hazel fervently believed that Miss Clotille prevailed because she had the power of that flawless almond skin.