Betsey Brown (20 page)

“You mean you threw her into the street?”

“Smack-dab in the middle of the street, if ya know what I mean.”

Then Carrie smiled a wicked nostalgic smile that tickled Betsey's sense of mischief and daring.

“Wow! That's what you did? Humph.”

Betsey was totally engrossed with the woman, or the twich of a woman, Carrie'd thrown out onto the street. Now, that was really somethin.

“Yeah, Betsey, that's what you gotta do when somebody say somethin that smarts ya or makes ya feel real bad. You gotta call em out and then they won't do none of that no mo'. Make em know ya get mighty upset, if somebody is fool enough to come round bein hurtful, like that teacher of yours. Now if that t'was me, I go call her out bout these colored poets. Make her take a step back. That's good for white folks all the time, don'tcha know?”

“Me? Fight the teacher?”

“Well, you in the right, aintcha?”

“I don't think I know how, Carrie. I can't fight.”

Carrie's heavy bosom was justa rumbling round in her housedress, while she listened to Betsey's descriptions of her very own shortcomings.

“I don't mean like in no boxin ring, darlin, but with them words you be throwing round. Surely you could put that ciddidy old woman down. And then carry your pride out withcha in all them long hallways. Then see, when it comes time for somebody to be messin with ya, they gonna know you just gonna call em out.”

“Everybody would know not to mess with me?”

By now Betsey was jumping up and down in space like “Sugar” Ray Robinson or Althea Gibson. Betsey the Champ. Humph. My, my, my.

“Well, sho' aint nobody gonna come looking for trouble, lessen they a fool awready. But that don't happen if ya don't always stand up for yourself.”

There was in the kitchen a silence that bound Betsey and Carrie one to the other like blood kin. Something had been passt down.

Perky Betsey Brown picked up her satchel and most ran out the door, shouting, “It's almost lunch time. I think I'm gonna go on back to school.”

“I thought you wasn't never going back to that terrible mess of a school,” Carrie said, leaning on the kitchen table like nothing had transpired since Betsey's sudden appearance.

Running backwards out the door, Betsey screamed, “I still got my pride, you know.”

Carrie watched Betsey running down the street like she'd been chased by a ball of fire. When she turned from the window, she whispered to herself, “ ‘Speak up Ike, 'spress yo'se'f.' That's Dunbar, the colored American poet, I guess.”

Just after midnight, when the spirits roam freely with the moon as their guide, Jane opened the door to her house, her husband, her home. She relaxed gainst the closed door, near to wrenching throbs in her chest, her palms sweating like dew. She was cold. She was hot. The staircase so long and winding. How could she make it to the top of the stairs without rousing her children?

Greer was enough motivation. She thought of his arms, his chest covered with twidly nappy black hairs, his hands stroking her hair from right to left, the moustache across his lips. Jane climbed those stairs with feline grace, a cunning she'd been unaware of for many years. But this time she had to make certain that this man, this particular colored man, was hers forever and ever. Just let some nurse look sideways at him and whoever that child was would be somebody else by the time
Jane was through. No, more than that, Jane wanted Greer to feel how she'd grown. To actually grasp her new understanding of him, what he stood for, for their people, for the children.

Oh, Jane'd come home to stay this time, no matter what the current crisis might be in North Carolina or in her own bedroom. Jane Brown wasn't ever going anywhere without this man whose thoughts so provoked her, made her see anew who she was and who they were.

Greer didn't ask where she'd been and Jane offered no information, but an avalanche of passion swept through St. Louis that night. Thunderbolts. Tremors. Sweet rains dusting thirsty bodies. Jane never opened her eyes. She could see his face every time he touched her.

The secret of Jane's return was not very long-lived. The children scampered this way and that, elated that their momma was home with them. There was so much everybody wanted her to know. Greer promised a grand celebration and lifted Jane off her feet nigh to the ceiling so she could say the party was not just for her homecoming, but for the progress of the race. Everybody cheered.

Vida whispered to Carrie, “I think you ought to be a bit more proper, now my child's back. Ya hear?”

Sharon was busy speaking to Carrie from the other side saying, “No cursing or drinking, neither, now Mommy's home.” Margot got the last word in; “Don't mention nothin about Mr. Jeff.”

Betsey was hugging her mama while the rest of the brood frolicked bout the living room. “Oh, Mommy, it's not the same as when you were here, but the house sure does run good.”

“Don't you mean the house runs well, Betsey?”

“Yeah, Mama, that's exactly what I meant.”

There'd be no bad feelings or scolding bout anything this day. Not the Sunday Jane Brown came back to her house. Why, Vida wept like she was the abandoned child insteada the sturdy rock of a woman that she was. She wrapped her thin-skinned tawny arms round her baby and kept murmuring bout her prayers to bring her baby home. Jesus never fails you, never lets you down, she sang.

Sharon and Margot pulled Jane's billowing skirt to brag, “We don't fight in bed no more.”

“You mean anymore, don't you?”

“That's right, Mommy, we don't.” They giggled all the way back to the kitchen.

“Aunt Jane, Aunt Jane.” Charlie leaped as if he were dunking a basketball. “I don't steal things from any store anymore.”

Then Allard chimed in, “Mommy, I make up songs like Chuck Berry, insteada burning up everything.”

Margot and Sharon came running back with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches oozing from their hands, when they announced, “Oh, Mama, we could sing most good as the Shirelles, really.”

Betsey felt things were getting a little out of control, so she quite sedately added, “We sing Christian gospel songs like Paul Robeson, too.”

“Yeah,” Charlie frowned. “Not like that man at the church Carrie takes us to.”

Allard jumped up to shout, “Yeah, the one where we could play the tambourine and getta spirit.”

Now it was a Brown family tradition to have “showtime” before a Sunday evening dinner. This one was a very special one, since Jane'd come home. Carrie disappeared into the kitchen to do her job and think on this Jane Brown woman.
Meanwhile the children lined up like the Fisk Jubilee Singers singing, “Oh Lord What a Morning.” Then Allard careened cross the floor like Chuck Berry roostered, squealing, “Roll Over Beethoven.” Margot, Sharon, and Betsey sang “Tonight's the Night” in a routine that would have put the Ronettes to shame. Greer brought out his conga drum and for a change, Jane led the merengue line all over the house. This mad, joyous house that was hers. Even Vida got up to do a sassy little two-step.

Slowly Jane slipped from the carnival mood of her household to think of more serious and practical matters. Carrie, for instance, or the girls reaching puberty with no direction.

“I think you boys, yes Allard, all of you, should go on out to play. We've done quite enough for the Negro race today.”

Jane smiled watching these wiry gangly short-haired gremlins running for their basketballs. Boys will be boys she thought to herself, as if she'd ever thought anything else.

That was curious: what had she thought would happen to her household while she was gone. She'd speak to the girls first, then her mother, and finally, that Carrie woman.

Actually, Jane asked Carrie to please retire to her room while she visited with her daughters, even if a certain Mr. Jeff was lingering by the back porch. Oh, Jane was a self-contained woman, but a terribly observant one as well. She got so beside herself she stopped Carrie, who was on her way to her room, to have a short talk.

“Carrie, I realize you are at a disadvantage in this situation, since I myself didn't hire you, but I would like to know who gave you permission to stay the loneliness of one gardener, meaning Mr. Jeff, in the presence of my children. Not to mention the fact that you have been taking them to some niggerish
church to get the Holy Ghost. We are Presbyterians and that is not something Presbyterians get, the Holy Ghost. Plus, you've got them swishing and swaying, doing those dirty dances like the po' children in the projects. You are turning my children into heathens or hoodlums and I will not stand for either. If I were you, I'd mind my place to hold it more securely. Is that clear to you, Carrie?”

“Yes, M'am. That's plenty clear, Mrs. Brown. I know you and me are hardly the same. But I don't see why you'd begrudge me the excellent company of Mr. Jeff. I didn't come here to be meddlin with the way you want your younguns raised, but you weren't round, Mrs. Brown, so I just did the best I knew how. I'll continue with you long as you know my heart's in the right place. I love these chirren like they was my very own, Mrs. Brown, I swear 'fore God, I do. But I'd like to remind you very respectfully, Mrs. Brown, that I'ma full growed woman, working hard to do my job.”

Carrie dropped her head slightly and slowly trudged up the servants' staircase, which was actually just the back staircase, but when Jane was in a mood it was the servants' staircase and Jane was in a mood.

“Girls, girls, sit down and we'll discuss the facts of female life. You're all reaching an age when things start to happen to your bodies and new strange feelings might come from your very souls, no, you'll think they're coming from your very soul, but they are, actually, carnal, no, feelings having to do with, growing up.”

Betsey asked abruptly, “Mama, you gonna talk about sex? Is that what you're trying to say?”

“Not exactly, Betsey, not about sex per se, but more about how to be a lady. What's fitting for a young girl who will
become a lady eventually. Things like always holding your knees together when you are sitting. Always sit with your back straight and your hands in the shape of a delicate flower, just about there.”

Blushing, Jane gestured toward the girls' privates.

“Hold your head high. Never lower your eyes or everyone will know you gave it up. Oh, that's not what I mean. I mean people will think you're fast or something, or not a virgin. Oh, for God's sake just do what I say and before you know it you'll be sashaying down the Champs Elysées with a handsome new husband. A young man who appreciates manners.”

The girls exchanged curious looks. “Our manners, Mommy?”

“Yes. Your manners, you see, will attract the nice young men who don't respect girls who come across too easily.”

From the position Jane had prescribed, Sharon whined, “But Mommy, this is like sitting in school. I awready know how to do this.”

“Mama, when can I wear stockings and high heels? I'm too big now for socks with lace.” Jane shook her head no. “But Mama, you're not keeping up with the times. Couldn't we just go to Saks and look at them? Could we? Could we please, Mama?”

“Mommy, it's all right with me, I don't like boys anyway,” Margot said quite matter-of-factly.

“Margot, now you sound like you've got a good head on your shoulders.”

It was Betsey and Sharon who were giving her trouble.

“Mama, you mean to say we gotta stay with our heads high, knees locked, back straight, alla that, just to get a date?” Betsey couldn't believe it. Sharon was morose. Margot liked the whole idea.

“No, you stay that way to stay out of trouble. Oh, I nearly forgot the most important thing. Girls, come close and listen to what I say. Every month something's going to happen. Now it will be strange at first, but you'll get used to it after a while.”

With that, Jane hustled the two youngest up to her bedroom, where they wouldn't be disturbed by the boys who were to know nothing about this. It was a woman's secret, according to Jane.

Betsey had let on to her mother that she was listening to every single word Jane said, but in reality Betsey Brown was peeping out the window watching Eugene Boyd and Charlie play ball. Now Betsey sped past Carrie hovering over the stove, when Carrie said intently, “Betsey Brown, you come right on back in here. There's some things I want to say to you, now your mama's brought the subject up. I need to talk to you.”

Eugene was opening the back screen door and all Carrie had to say was, “Eugene Boyd, you take your fresh behind and that basketball right on away from here this very minute. You hear me talkin to you, don'tcha?”

Eugene threw Betsey a kiss she pretended landed just beneath her left eye. She sighed one of those sighs her mama'd been warning her about.

“Now, Betsey, you and the Boyd boy got plenty of time for what got him running over here every afternoon and you chasing round him and the basketball like you a referee or something. Now I want you to know you don't need to sit like a statue if some boy takes a whistle at ya. You just smile and go on. They's no trouble worse than fear. You aint 'sposed to be fraid of men and young boys, but what young beau wants to hear you saying, ‘My mama said you only after one thing and my knees are locked, so there.' ”

Betsey was laughing cause she knew what a kiss could do by now. She and Eugene had a special place by the roses in the far reaches of the yard where they cuddled and kissed and saw stars in broad daylight. Yeah, Betsey Brown sat there justa laughing. But Carrie went on.

“A kiss or two can undo all that mama talkin. Go on ahead and enjoy bein a girl, but be careful. You'll get your share of hugs and squeezes. Young boys can be as sweet as you can imagine. Just hold off from those no-good niggers with the devil in they eyes. Now that's my advice.”