River, cross my heart (17 page)

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The only way for a baby to stay a baby is to die, and each day of a child's life marks the death of the day before — a day the mother mourns.

Releasing Johnnie Mae's hand and falling into step beside her, Alice continued down to O Street. She felt an oddness down in her vitals—some kind of a fluttering feeling. She was thinking about the coming child and she felt ashamed of herself in Johnnie Mae's presence. She felt a little ashamed that having Johnnie Mae might not be enough.

Alice paused for a moment on the top step of their house. Exhausted, she reached down to catch a second wind. She called out to Willie and Ina as she and Johnnie Mae came through the door.

Ina's intentions were as pure as daylight. Alice knew that and Alice knew that she couldn't possibly have managed to have a Thanksgiving dinner for her own family and cook and serve for the St. Pierres if it hadn't been for Ina. But coming into her kitchen and seeing Ina bustling about, basting the turkey and turning out biscuits onto a pan for baking, gave her a small, unhappy feeling. This feeling was so small and spiteful that it didn't have a name, and in a good person's soul it wouldn't last very long or do much damage. It was the small feeling that had to do with not quite knowing who she was in her own kitchen. Ina moved aside quickly, handed Alice an apron, and exclaimed over the extras Alice and Johnnie Mae had brought from the St. Pierres'.

This act — this giving-back to the wife and mother control of her own domain — was thought by Ina, and not disputed by any of the other southern women, to be her due. If the colored woman couldn't claim much of her own in the world abroad, at least her kitchen was her legally sanctioned

bailiwick. Here she was the boss. And no other person — no daughter or sister or cousin or man—could cut her hair in this precinct. She determined the measures and the portions. She was the chooser. She gave the most succulent piece of chicken to the husband or the child, determining which piece of the meat which person got.

Willie, because he liked the leg and thigh, got the fat plump pieces rather than the other ones ever so slightly drier because they had stayed in the pan too long. The driest pieces Alice put aside for herself out of the widely held notion that the cook accepted responsibility for all mistakes. She was the one who gave Johnnie Mae the breast that was the size she could eat, rather than the one slightly larger that would turn off her appetite. Cracking the wing pieces apart and separating them for Clara because Clara hated to rip them apart but loved — loved only—the tender, sweet wing meat. She carried the portions and preferences in her head and as strict as it sometimes was, it was also thrilling control. She said which and how much for them and for herself and always retained the power to give herself less. She, the loving, dutiful mother, could account for every meal her two children had eaten and every meal her husband had had since he married her. And the limits of her energy and the skill and resourcefulness and cleverness oi her buying and cooking for them—and for Alexis and Douglas St. Pierre — determined how they would be fed.

"Take those clothes off and lie down a few minutes. I'll call you when dinner's ready," Mama said, for she could see that Johnnie Mae was more worn out than hungry. A little nap would give her a second wind.

Papa sat listening to the radio with his ear up close and his face turned away from the women as they crisscrossed the room putting dishes on the tahle. He'd done his part by setting up the table in the front room, and now he was sulking about the late dinner. The last few days he'd argued that their working for the St. Pierres on Thanksgiving Day made a comment about him that he didn't like. People would think he didn't give a thing to keep his family, that his wife and daughter had to work on Thanksgiving Day—cooking in someone else's kitchen. A family woman, a woman with a husband and children, should be able to pass up a day's work on Thanksgiving Day. On a day like that a woman ought to be in her own kitchen.

Alice had answered him again and again that she was doing it as much as a favor as anything else. Douglas St. Pierre was having his important friend from Harvard College and Miz St. Pierre couldn't take a chance on hiring out a stranger. Alexis had appealed to her like a friend or neighbor.

That part galled Willie. Alice was letting Alexis St. Pierre put a claim on her for friendship.

A whiff of Clara's fragrance—a sweet yeastiness—struck Alice like a glimpse of the girl as she walked the candied sweets to the table. Their color was the color Clara's stomach had been early on when Alice had wrapped her.

All the day's smells had been so bounteous. Since early— since just at sunrise—Johnnie Mae had been inhaling the odors of cooking food. The richness and the complex mingling of sweets and sours and pungents had been absorbed under her skin. Now the food heaped on her plate made her feel like gagging.

"You eatin' your dinner, Johnnie?" her father said in his plaintive inquisitiveness. "All this food and nobody got an appetite."

"What're you talkin' about, Willie? We eatin' as hard as we can," Ina said.

"Johnnie Mae is just peckin'. She must've ate up at Miz St. Pierre."

"We didn't eat up at Miz St. Pierre," Mama said, rolling a swallow of water in her mouth. "We saved ourselves to eat dinner at home."

"Couldn't work all day and not eat. Sittin' on the side in the white folks' kitchen like a backyard chile. This girl ain't no backyard chile. This chile ain't no backyard chile. I'm raisin' her. I'm feedin' her, ain't I?"

"I wanted us all to eat together," Mama said quietly, trying to deflect a fuss.

"Now what you hollerin' about, man? This is Thanksgiving. We all sittin' here together eatin' our dinner. What you hollerin' about?" Ina said.

"Alice, you raisin' this chile like you dohV it alone. I got somethin' to say about workin' in the woman's kitchen on a holiday. If she care about her husband's friend, why can't she cook her own dinner?"

"Now, Willie, you know Miz St. Pierre can't manage a big dinner for people." Alice answered him sweetly, hoping to edge him away from his annoyance.

"Why she can't? Why she can't do it?"

"Oh, don't talk silly. You know they don't know a thing about working hard enough to do all that," Ina countered.

"All she knows is to wring as much out of a colored woman as she can."

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"Aw, don't let it worry you and spoil your dinner. She'll pay for her easy life. There'll he less heaven tor her, that's all. And she'll be sorry she spent this short lifetime without toiling when she sees the half measure she's gonna get in heaven. I intend to be there with my feet up and my head on a downy pillow, much work as I've done in this life, and you, too." Ina averted the strife handily, and all of them finished the dinner laughing and easy.

Still somewhat reticent with adults, Pearl was not in January the scared rabbit she had been in September. She walked briskly out of the classroom and threaded her way into the crowded hall before Johnnie Mae could catch up to her. For the first time that Johnnie Mae could recall, Pearl Miller was walking purposefully ahead instead of measling along behind her or standing still. What kind of bug did she have in her drawers? Johnnie Mae noticed that Pearl's eyes were now on level with hers. She was holding her chin up and not ducking her head. Pearl Miller seemed to have developed a new, curvy body. The knobs on Pearl's chest had blossomed and she now wore a brassiere. Pearl Miller was becoming a new person!

Johnnie Mae's breasts were still little more than nubbins, but they had become more noticeable. Neither her mother nor her aunt Ina had discussed it with her, but they'd decided between them that Ina must now get to work on a brassiere for Johnnie Mae. It was no longer appropriate for her to be going around wearing undershirts like a boy or a baby child,

her nubbins bobbing around for any to see. She was coming on to be a woman.

Mama said that everybody matures at her own pace and even- girl gets her monthly and develops a bosom. It's just a matter ot time. Mama was brusque in her way oi talking about these "woman" things. According to her, some subjects aren't worthy of a whole lot oi ruminating. The things that make a woman a woman didn't bear much conversation. Only a slattern would till her days running off at the mouth about what's up underneath people's clothes. A decent woman had too many other things to do with her time. All she said that morning before school was that Aunt Ina had something for her to try on. So Johnnie Mae must come home right after school let out.

The thing was simply made of white cotton and delicate eyelet lace on the straps and cups. It was small, and even with it on, her breasts made hardly a ripple on her blouse. Aunt Ina saw the bit of disappointment on Johnnie Mae's face when she looked at herself. "Just give it time," Aunt Ina said. "Don't try to hum' up to be a woman. You're going to have to be one for the rest of your life."

To Johnnie Mae, time seemed to be having its own sweet wav with her. Here was Pearl Miller, who used to be a sack of potatoes and a scared rabbit to boot, now looking like a grown woman! And her chest still looked like a boy's!

Johnnie Mae came straight through to the kitchen. Mama stood at the stove with her back to it. Johnnie Mae stared at her mama's stomach. She saw the rounding and couldn't

162 - Breena Clarke

believe how foolish she'd been not to have seen it sooner. How could she not have noticed something so obvious? Her own mother, someone she saw every day, looked unfamiliar. Mama's face was puffy along the cheeks and her waist was completely gone. Now that Pearl had pointed it out she could see it clearly.

Pearl had said matter-of-factly, "Your mama's having a baby, isn't she?" Johnnie Mae had been struck dumb at the idea. No one had told her a thing. Now 7 she put her hand tentatively on her mother's stomach. The belly was thick and tight. She was shocked, not only at the obvious swelling there but that her mother allowed her to touch it. Johnnie Mae took her hand off, backed to the other side o( the table, and looked at her mother's stomach from across the room. Mama seemed to her to be standing way far off on the other side of a valley. She was visible, but removed a distance from Johnnie Mae. Mama's words, too, seemed to be straining across a chasm. "I'm going to have a baby, Johnnie Mae."

Johnnie Mae looked at her mother's face then quickly down at the floor. "Don't act a baby, Johnnie," her mother said. "You're a woman yourself nearly. It's natural for us to bring another child. It'll add to our joy." Mama's words were strange — not unintelligible, just unfamiliar. Yet there was a familiarity. The conversation had gone like so many of their talks. Mama said Johnnie Mae was a woman, but she spoke to her, as always, as if she were a child. Despite her mother's smooth, calm delivery, there was an undercurrent to her words. Was Mama frightened? If it was the state of natural circumstance for a woman to be in the family way then why was she trembling a bit, sucking in her bottom lip?

When Papa came into the kitchen, Johnnie Mae and her

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mother were on separate sides of the room. Again there was a shift, a realignment of the tectonic plates of the family ground. The earth beneath them was shifting and they would be moved by it as they'd been moved by the death of Clara. They would be a different grouping with a new baby. Would it be a boy? They always say a man wants a boy. How would Papa feel about her after he'd gotten his boy?

Johnnie Mae wanted desperately to be grown-up. She wanted to have a glorious bosom and the calm, smug womanliness that everybody said would come to her one day. But she was scared that even though she wanted to move away from these people, this new baby might knock her completely out of their lives.

H

"Never take advice; can't keep still all day, and not being a pussy-cat, I don't like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I am going to find some." Johnnie Mae began chapter five of Little Women with her elbows flat, her shoulders hunched, and her chin resting on the kitchen table. Dinner and dishes were over and the family — Mama, Papa, Aunt Ina, and Johnnie Mae—were sharing each other's breaths in the kitchen before bedtime. The women passed the time sewing up holes in socks. Papa sat back in his chair, working a toothpick in his teeth.

Wormley School had few books other than the hand-me-down texts given to the colored schools by the school board. Miss Clementine Chichester, the librarian at the Mount Zion Church community center, had highly recommended Little Women to Johnnie Mae. Miss Chichester, a college-educated woman who did laundry work for very rich families, took it as her mission to disabuse colored people o{ the notion that the only fit book for them and their children to read was the Bible. Georgetown's alley residents were her biggest con-

stituency and she considered it her calling to promote health, hygiene, and education in those precincts. A cadger and an irrepressible social reformer, Miss Chichester visited the homes of wealthy Georgetowners on her laundry rounds and hauled off any unwanted books to build up the center's lending library.

Miss Chichester was impressed with Johnnie Mae's reading ability and urged her to borrow a copy of Little Women, with the caveat that the book must not be put down in a pan o{ gravy, that her hands must be washed before opening it, and that Towser must not be allowed to chew on it. She praised it, promised Johnnie Mae that she would enjoy it, and that, upon her signature in the record book, it could be kept for a full two weeks.

Alice's and Ina's talk around the stove was full of the doings and goings-on of Miz St. Pierre and Miz Mary Ann Clarke. Johnnie Mae drew down into the book and let their voices play above her head. She fancied herself like Jo, a girl with too much moxie to sit around chattering about other people's business.

When folks talk about a person talking up a blue streak they usually mean somebody like Miss Mary Ann Clarke. Ina's best customer, she was a tall, angular woman who talked constantly while having her fittings in the front parlor. Miss Mary Ann Clarke talked so hard and fast that she hardly seemed to be breathing. The stream of words flowed endlessly outward. Never mind if someone thought to answer her. Answering wasn't at all necessary when Miss Mary Ann Clarke talked.