An Elderberry Fall (8 page)

The train to Petersburg ran several times a day. Some brave folks caught the early train to Petersburg to work and the late train home at night. Most students stayed the entire week and only came home on the weekend. I figured I would come home on Thursday after my class was over. It felt strange that I was carrying this out.
That I was doing all of this without the consent of Simon or my momma. I was doing it for me. I wrote a letter to my neighbor Hester, who had chosen to finish college in Washington, about it. She said to do my best to get away from the ways which the white folks had inflicted on coloreds. She said colored folk deserved to be happy too. She had always been the wiser of us two.

Nadine's husband was standing in front of the train when I arrived on the train platform. He glanced over at me, smiled, and threw up his hand and waved. As I started up the steps to the colored car, he called out, “Hey, neighbor, where are you headed?”

Hastily, he walked over to me. I was standing at the last car. Wrong but customary that most colored people sat in the rear cars. “I'm going over to Petersburg for the day,” I answered.

The last time I had seen him had been months earlier when he was sitting on the front porch watching Nadine prance back and forth. Nadine grinned every time he tapped her on the rear end. I thought it was a strange way of showing affection, but I would since my husband was never home with me.

There was something dignified about Jessie in a uniform. His mannerisms were serious and professional. Colored folk could never be anything but serious considering that most white people still resented that the slaves had been freed in 1864.

“If you need anything, let me know. I will be in the rear of the last car. I'll look for you when we reach Petersburg.” He walked away with his shoulders leaning back and his chest sticking out. The uniform had that effect on most men; it gave them a sense of entitlement. Lord knows, colored men needed something to make them feel special.

“Thank you,” I replied, and sat down in a seat beside a middle-aged lady who had her head back and eyes closed. She never mumbled a word when I accidently pushed against her. “Good morning,”
I said. She didn't even say good morning. She kept her eyes closed and never flinched.

It was early, though; the sunlight had just begun to break. I was also sleepy. The jerks and swerves of the train could wake a dead person, and the rumble was subtly annoying. She was dressed in a formal maid's uniform. My guess was she worked in Petersburg, and probably at some white person's mansion. For a minute, I remembered going with Momma to Mrs. Ferguson's and how she would scrub her clothes clean with her bare hands, and then dry and iron them before returning home. Once she was home, she'd do the same for us. She even made sure Mrs. Ferguson's dinner was warming on the stove and the table set before putting on her hat for the trip home. Mrs. Ferguson was an uppity white woman. I never cared for her, and especially the way she'd look down her finely chiseled nose at the people making her life easier. I doubt she liked me either.

The trip was quick. And when the train screeched as it came to a stop, the lady sitting with me adjusted her hat, picked up the bag in between her legs, and headed to the door.

I arrived in Petersburg about forty minutes after the train had pulled off from the depot in Richmond. The train made multiple stops along the route picking up people who were either going to Petersburg to work or to Norfolk for an extended stay. All of the riders in my car were colored. The white patrons were in the train up front. Even though they were separated from the coloreds as if we were diseased, I could see them through the train window smiling and talking. As I was getting off the train, Jessie rushed over to assist me down the steps. “I hope to see you again soon,” he said, as if he really meant it.

“We will probably see a lot of each other, since I will be going to school down here.” He turned and smiled.

“By the way, when will you be back in Richmond? I see your wife and children almost every day sitting on the porch across the street.”

He seemed a bit rattled by my comment. A frown seemed to appear immediately above his thick eyebrows. “Nadine is not my wife, and they are not my children.”

“I'm sorry. I just thought…” He cut me off.

“Don't be. She had the children before we met. I was going to marry her, but she turned out to be a different kind of woman. She's not the marrying type. Now the children, they are some good kids.”

“Sorry to hear that. You take care,” I said, in an attempt to end the conversation. I could tell he wanted to talk more. He moved in closer to me and whispered in my ear, “You are a beautiful woman.”

I shrugged my shoulders and struggled to release a smile. His manner seemed a bit inappropriate, since I was a married woman. So I said, “See you later,” and took off in a rapid stride down the road in the direction of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. When I reached the corner, I turned and glanced back at Jessie. He was still watching me, peering straight at me.

The school was set up the same way the Union school had been. It was a short walk from the train station. Most, if not all, of the students were women. All of them yearning, like me, to teach school. I sat with my legs crossed and poured my heart out to the administrator. She was a serious woman. Had walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in the Women's Suffrage March in 1913, and understood how it was for women and young people of color in America. “Women need a purpose in life. We're not secondhand citizens,” Mrs. Middleton said.

“Yes, ma'am,” I replied. “I want to help the people around me to learn, so they can dream bigger than the farm.”

She was a founding member of a women's organization called Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

“Being on a farm is somewhere to be proud of living. Most of us come from farms,” she added.

“I've always wanted to teach, and I can't wait to get started.”

“First, you need to fill out these forms for our records.”

She handed me two documents to fill out. As I sat at the desk answering questions, Mrs. Middleton watched me. I felt she was analyzing me, sizing me up. I sat as poised as possible, and tried to be as ladylike as I possibly could. Momma always said appearances were important. In Mrs. Middleton's office were books on everything, from geography to mathematics.

When I turned in the last form with my address and family information on it, she gave me a book to read. She told me to come back in two weeks when classes started. I smiled.

I stopped by a rooming house across from the campus. The colored lady who ran the house told me I could stay there, share a room with another student, if I helped her prepare the food for the other students who had money to pay. I agreed. I had been cooking most of my life anyway.

On the way back to the train station, I realized I had thought about everything but little Robert. How could I go to school with a baby? I didn't know how I would handle it, but I knew there would be a way.

I didn't see Jessie when I boarded the train heading back to Richmond. I was sort of indifferent about seeing him. I wasn't sure why he told me I was beautiful. Was it because he was lonely? Or had he been sincere? It sounded inappropriately good. I hadn't seen my own husband in over a month.

Robert was sitting in Mrs. Hall's lap when I got back home. His
jovial eyes gleamed as she bounced him on her knee. He glanced at me, smiled and then reached with both hands for me. He was so charming. My heart filled with love when I saw him, and I wondered how I could go to school and leave my little boy.

“Well, what happened down in Petersburg?”

“I enrolled, Mrs. Hall.”

“Good, child. When will you begin?”

“In two weeks.”

“Good; now how many days will you be in Petersburg?”

“I will be there for four days a week. I've got to find someone to look after Robert for me while I'm in school.”

“We'll take care of him for you. He's used to us. Let us help you.”

“Mrs. Hall, that is too much to ask of you.”

“I like having Robert. He is like the child we always wanted. My husband loves him like his own. Besides, you and Simon are like our children too. Now, before you say no, talk to Simon about it. Send him a letter.”

“I don't think Simon would want me in school.”

“Why not?”

“He thinks I should wait here until his career as a baseball player has taken off.”

“It is always about the man.” She giggled.

“What do you mean?”

“Honey, this is the twenties. A woman is supposed to be beside her man, behind her man, but never equal. In other words, women are supposed to cook, clean and open their legs when their husbands desire. There is more to life than being a housewife.”

“Did you want more, Mrs. Hall?”

“I wanted more, and I had more. I had my own business. When I met my husband, people couldn't understand our relationship, so I sold the business and we moved here.”

“So, you did that for your husband?”

“No, I did it for me. He never asked me to do anything I didn't want to do. We lived amongst a lot of racists. I didn't want to wake up and find my husband hanging from some tree. I moved here because it is safer. I will go anywhere with him. After all these years, we are still in love.”

“I hope Simon will understand.”

“He will. Besides, you will be done in no time.”

“Mrs. Hall, please don't say anything about this to Simon. I want to talk to him first.”

“My lips are sealed.”

I went up the stairs with Robert on my hip, shaking my head. Simply baffled.

S
imon came home just before the evening breeze had begun to stir up the leaves falling on the cool, dry ground, and as the sun descended behind the clouds. After traveling all over the map, going across the border to Washington and Baltimore, and even driving for three days to St. Louis, Missouri, he needed rest. The Colored League was expanding, but for some reason, Simon felt he hadn't found the right team for himself yet.

Every time I saw my husband, my heart started to do a love dance in my chest, pounding for his attention. And this visit was nonetheless the same. A smile wiped across my face at the sight of him. The reason he had chosen to be a ball player had become prevalent in my thoughts. Finally, and for the first time since I'd been in Richmond, I understood how much Simon longed to be on a team; I had that same unshakable desire to teach children how to read. However, I couldn't share my plans with him.

Simon's instincts were sharp, though. He noticed anything odd or awkward whenever he walked into a room, said he had warning senses. It was good, since I didn't pay that much attention to everything going on around me, partially, because I was a young girl taking on a woman's job with little or no guidance. My daily chores took up my time. Each day slipped into the next; the ritual of making
feeding bottles at night and fetching hen eggs in the morning, doing laundry, all had me captivated in motherhood and trying to be a wife. Mr. Hall kept the furnace burning through the crisp fall nights. I had never put wood or coal into a furnace. If the Halls had not been downstairs, Robert and I would be cold at night.

Simon picked up one of Robert's pullovers, and opened it up. “Baby, why are Robert's things packed in a bag over here beside the bed?” he asked, and threw his old duffle bag loaded with soiled clothes from red clay and dirt from roaming from second base to catcher beside our bed. For me, It would make sense to find a place on a team and stick to it. Washing his uniforms by hand was more than a chore. I'd have to boil water and get the water hot enough in the tub to tackle the red clay and grass stains. Even a capsule of bleach couldn't remove some of the stains engraved in the knees of his pants. Afterward, my hands were usually tired.

I had been pulling things out of the oak chifferobe the past two days, carefully folding Robert's diapers and the little T-shirts Momma had made for him, into tiny piles. I wanted to leave Mrs. Hall with everything she needed for Robert while I was away. The booties I had knitted would go as well. He didn't have a pair of hard bottom shoes yet. Simon had promised to order them from the Sears catalog for Christmas. With each garment, my hands trembled. I was doing something my momma and husband would say was unfit for a good mother.

“I'm just sorting his things. I'm putting the things Robert has outgrown in a separate bag, to be passed on to somebody who needs things for a little baby,” I lied.

“Why would you get rid of them? You can use them when you get pregnant again,” he said, removing his soiled clothes from the bag and placing them on the floor.

When I heard him, I bit my lip to keep from swearing. Why in hell would I want to have a baby at this time? He didn't know what it took to raise Robert.

Simon's words pierced my soul.
A baby!
He barely knew what it took to snap beans, slice meat, cook, and wash clothes all with a baby hanging on your hip. When Simon decided to be home with me, and work a paying job in Richmond, I would give him as many children as he wanted. Driving the model T all over the states did not leave much time for raising babies.