Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (29 page)

can’t be doing what you needs to be doing.Then he wins, you

see? He can’t win unless you let him because he ain’t got no

power on his own.”

“So, basically, what you’re saying is that worrying about

Daddy and Aunt Carol or Grandma Sophie diverts my attention

from other things, better things?”

“That’s it! That’s my girl!”

“Yeah, but Livvie, I don’t think I’m ever gonna forget what

I saw.”

“I know that, chile, but listen up, every time that picture

comes back in your head, ask the Lawd to help it go away. He

will.”

“Livvie?”

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189

“Mm-hm?”

“Your grandfather was a slave?”

“Yes, chile, he was. They carried him off from Africa when

he was a young man and he nearly died on the way ’eah. The

old people didn’t like to talk about slavery. It was a terrible

time.”

“It must’ve been horrible.”

“It ain’t over, Susan.We still got our troubles, but I just keep

to myself and don’t get all messed up with all this fool talk about

integration and such. I don’t want to eat at the lunch counter in

Woolworth’s over to the city. I’d rather eat in my own house!”

“Well, I ain’t got the money to eat there. It’s probably greasy

anyway.”

“Yes, but you
could
eat there. I can’t.You
could
use the bath-

room there. I can’t. It ain’t ever gone change and iffin it does,

gone be a miracle for sure.Wait till all these old buckra narrow

minds die and find heaven full of colored folks! Won’t that be

the day!”

“I don’t know, Livvie, I’m not gonna even be fourteen until

next month. I don’t know about all this stuff.”

I was embarrassed. I knew what she said was right but there

wasn’t anything I could do about it. Suddenly I was very glad

that Daddy had built the new bathroom. If Livvie had ever been

told to use the outhouse, she would have quit on the spot.

Maggie says that when colored people die and go to

heaven, their skin turns white. I used to believe that when I was

little, but now I knew that it was another dumb lie made up by

white people.

For a long time I had always thought plantation life must’ve

been full of music. Long days and hard work, and somehow in

my mind, all of it was set to music. Slaves singing, ladies dancing,

beautiful carriages and horses bringing people to parties at night

with lanterns all over the yard—that sort of thing. How stupid

and naive could I have been? Their music was born of pain, pain

caused by people of my race.

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“Well, I’m gonna go help Maggie put the porch back

together, okay?”

“Susan, come back ’eah, chile.”

I turned to face her.

“Listen to Livvie, I tell you what’s on my mind, not to make

you feel bad. I want you to
think.
Gawd got His special purpose

for you, just like He does for every one of us. He done give you a

very good mind.The world you have when you grow up is gonna

be the one you make.You use your mind and make it better.”

“I will, Livvie, I promise.”

By sunday morning it seemed that the entire Island knew that my

momma had twins. Every hour somebody came over with a

gift for my new sisters. Most people brought two pairs of

booties—in fact, we had fifteen sets of two already—and every

last one of them wanted to know what the twins’ names were.

They didn’t have names yet. But, in the tradition of the family

reputation of lying through our teeth,Timmy and I decided to

quit explaining.

“I’ll get it,” I screamed when I heard the knock.

It was Mrs. Wilson, the red-headed schoolteacher from

Sullivan’s Island Elementary School. She was divorced but since

talking to her was only a venial sin, I launched right in.

“Hi!” I said.

“Oh! Susan, I’m so glad I caught y’all at home! I thought

you might be at church.”

“No, ma’am. We went to Mass at eight o’clock this morn-

ing. Timmy and Henry had to serve on the altar, so we all just

got up and went.”

“Well, that’s nice, dear. Listen, this is for your new sisters.”

“Thank you. Booties?”

“Yes, I made them myself! How’s your momma?”

Make that sixteen pairs of two and still counting. The day

was young.

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191

“Good. Coming home Tuesday.We’re going to see her in a

few minutes.”

“Well, please send her my best. Did she name the girls?”

“Yes, ma’am. Posie Sue and Rosie Sue. Momma likes flowers,

you know, and she named them Sue in my honor. Isn’t that nice?”

Her face went blank.“Well, I always say people should name

their babies whatever they want,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, I think so too.”

By the time we left for Charleston, my sisters had some of

the craziest names you can imagine. Itchy and Scratchy,Timmy

told Mrs. Fisher, because Daddy said the twins were all bumpy

and rashy. Sneezy and Wheezy, I told Mrs. Mosner, because their

noses were runny, but don’t worry, it’s not on the birth certifi-

cate, I told her. Daphne and Delilah,Tara and Scarlet, and Lucy

and Ethel were some of our favorites. We were laughing so

much in the car Daddy started screaming at us.

“Shut the hell up! I’m trying to drive!”

Silence prevailed and we spent the rest of the ride looking

at the damage from the storm. Trees were still down every-

where; the roads were covered in a wash of sand.The water was

still high on the causeway. It was incredible how much damage

could happen in just a few hours. Unfortunately Mount Pleas-

ant had electricity again, which meant school would be open

Monday.

When we reached the parking lot at the hospital, Daddy

gave us a talk on our manners.We gave our word not to behave

like a bunch of banshees. I had avoided talking to him and was

wondering how I could avoid it for the rest of my life.

We took the elevator up to the maternity ward and waited

outside Momma’s room until Daddy said we could go in.

“Momma?” I said.“Hey! You alright?”

“I’m tired but I’m fine! Come give your momma a kiss,” she

said,“and meet your new sisters.”

We bombarded her with homemade cards and signs, crawl-

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

ing over her to see the twins.They were in the bed with her and

when I saw them I started crying. So did Maggie.They were so

beautiful. Momma was so moved that she started to cry. Then

Daddy grabbed the Kleenex box and started passing them out.

That made us laugh. He pretended to cry, making fun of us, but

he was so loud he scared the babies and they really started cry-

ing. The more they screamed the redder they got. Maggie

picked up the blond and I picked up the brunette. I couldn’t

believe they calmed down.

“You girls are going to have to help me when I come home,

you know,” Momma said.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Momma. I love babies,” I said,

thinking of my plan.

“They look like Susan and me,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, that one doesn’t have any eyebrows,” Henry said.

“She’ll get them later, bird brain,” Maggie said.

“Boy, she’s got some grip!” Timmy said. The baby I held

had her tiny hand wrapped around his finger. “Gonna be a

wrestler!”

“I hope not!” Momma said.

“All right, you kids go wait in the waiting area and I’ll be

along soon,” Daddy said. He was so pleasant it made me forgive

him for the moment, making me hope things would be better.

We lined up like good little soldiers, kissed Momma on the

cheek and the twins on their heads and filed out. There was

something magical about the moment. Maybe the twins would

bring us good luck. Maybe Daddy would go back to loving

Momma. Momma looked pretty good, I thought, considering

what she’d been through. Remembering the babies’ names, I

giggled to myself.

T h e g r e at j oy of my sisters’ birth and the plans to tell it all over

school were dwarfed by the terrible news of the following

Monday morning.When my brothers and I arrived at school we

were told by our teachers to go directly to chapel for a special

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

193

Mass. We were told that somebody had bombed a church in

Birmingham,Alabama, killing four little girls. Many others were

seriously hurt. It was a Negro church.We were absolutely stunned.

The nuns were crying and there was a mood of despair that

crept through the pews like poison gas, rising up from a dark

place.The hideous news changed us forever.

Until then, I had no clue whatsoever that the Civil Rights

movement was so dangerous. It had always just seemed so far away,

like Vietnam. And I couldn’t imagine who would kill children

because they were colored. If grown-ups wanted to fight each

other, they would, but what kind of a person bombed a church?

And how deep must be the hatred that drove the person to

commit such an unforgivable crime? Who would kill people

while they prayed? I had a hard time trying to concentrate in

my classes. I kept seeing the grief-stricken faces from the news-

paper that someone was passing around.Visions of children lying

in coffins tormented me all day. For some inexplicable reason, I

didn’t want to face Livvie when I got home. I knew she would

be angry.

She was grieving as though those children had been her

own. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, humming

a church song. I found her ironing when I came in the back

door with Timmy and Henry after school.

The boys each grabbed a cookie from the plate on the table

she had set out for us and ran upstairs.

“Chocolate chip! Thanks, Livvie!”Timmy said.

“My favorite!” Henry squealed.

I put my books on the table and reached for a glass to pour

some milk for myself.

“Want some milk?” I said.

“No, chile, I don’t want nothing today. No, nothing today.”

She looked long at me and went back to her ironing, humming

a little, but her eyes were incredibly sad.

“We had a special Mass in school for those girls in Alabama,”

I said quietly.

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“It just don’t make no sense,” she said.“People killing like this.

Bombing the Lawd’s house. Lucifer got to be stopped! Somebody

got to stop him.”

“You’re right,” I said.“What can we do?”

“Beg Gawd to help,” she said.“Gone take the mighty power of

all His angels to stop this kind of thing. I’m fearing it’s gone come

this way. Hatred is a terrible thing. Like cancer. Eats you up.”

“You’re right,” I repeated, at a loss for words for once in my

stupid life.

“My cousin Harriet come to my house this morning with

the paper.When I see them faces of them mommas and daddies

crying for they children, make me cry.That’s all.”

“Me too.”

She looked at me and realized my eyes were red too, but

she was suspicious of my honesty. Couldn’t she see that I was

frightened by what had happened in Alabama? It meant the

trouble could come here and children here might get blown

up too.

“This ’eah is trouble for my people, not yours, Susan. We

gone fight the fight, because every back is fitted to the burden,”

she said, slamming the iron on the board for emphasis. “We

done carry burden since we come to this country in chains.

Ain’t much different now.”

The last thing I’d let her do was shut me out.

“You’re wrong about that, Livvie. I mean, I don’t usually

disagree with grown-ups and I never thought I’d disagree with

you, and I’m sorry to say so, but you’re wrong.”

“Oh, yeah? Let me ’eah this now. Now they burning babies!”

“I know that, but I didn’t do it! Listen, God made all of us,

right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“And the only difference between you and me is our skin

color, right?”

“Yeah, I reckon so.”

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195

“And kids are kids, right?”

“They sure enough are.” She was patiently watching me bum-

ble my way through this and giving me all the rope I needed to

hang myself.

“Well, if a colored man blew up a white church and killed

some white kids, that wouldn’t mean all colored people are bad,

would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“It would mean that there was one crazy sumbitch out

there, or maybe a bunch of them, but not every colored person

was crazy, right?”

“You may be right, but please don’t say that curse word.

Ain’t fitting.”

“Okay, so this means that there are a bunch or maybe even a

lot of bad guys in Alabama who don’t want integration, but not

everybody feels like that.”

“I already told you. I don’t care about integration. I just

want peace, that’s all. Just want to live my life in peace and serve

the Lawd.”

“Me too. But, Livvie, a lot of people do care about integration.

I mean, Sister Amelia, my teacher, said plenty today that made a lot