The Darkest Child (12 page)

seventeen

I
n my daydreams, Plymouth School stands atop the highest mountain in Georgia. A paved road runs up one side, levels off in front of the school, then runs down the other side, past the football field, and on into oblivion. In reality, my mountain is just one in a series of small hills that, when combined, forms Plymouth.

During the lunch recess for the upper grades, I sat with my daydreams and my best friend, Mattie Long, at the top of the bleachers overlooking the football field. Below us, near the bottom, Edith Dobson and her circle of friends ate their lunches and talked the way they always did, but today, for some reason, they seemed to draw Mattie’s attention.

“I’d like to pull her hair out by the roots,” Mattie said. “She’s having a party. That’s what they down there talking ’bout. They been whispering ’bout it all morning. I can’t stand her.”

In the section of bleachers across from us, Jeff Stallings sat with his elbows resting against the concrete behind him. He seemed to be studying the sky, or maybe lost in a daydream of his own.

“Mattie, what do you think of Jeff Stallings?” I asked, partly trying

to pull her attention from Edith, but mainly because I wanted to know.

“He just another nasty ol’ boy,” she answered. “I think he strange.”

“He’s smart,” I said in Jeff ’s defense.

“He strange.”

“Okay, but do you think he’s cute?”

“Boys ain’t never cute,” she said, glancing over at Jeff. “They s’pose to be called handsome, but I ain’t never seen no handsome one.”

“What about Harvey and Sam? All the girls think they’re cute— I mean—handsome.”

“They look like white boys,” she said, frowning at me. “That don’t mean they handsome. It just mean they got light skin.”

Laughter rose from the lower bleacher as Edith and her friends packed away the remains of their lunches. The boys on the field continued to run with their football, but other students were beginning to make their way back toward the doors of the school. “You like him?” Mattie asked.

I turned once more to glance at Jeff.“Yeah, I guess I like him,” I said.“He’s always real nice to me.”

“Too bad,” Mattie informed me.“He’s a senior, and he ain’t thinking ’bout you.” She reached down into her sock and pulled out a stolen stick of white chalk. On the concrete between our feet, she scribbled, TQ + JS.“This ’bout close as you gon’ get to him,” she said.

I was trying to erase the initials from the concrete with the sole of my shoe when Mattie nudged me. She glanced toward the aisle, and I turned in that direction to see Edith smiling down at me. I covered the scribble with my shoe.

“Tangy, I’m having a party on Saturday,” Edith said. “I’d like for you to come.You can stay overnight if you want.”

The heel of Mattie’s shoe pressed hard against my toe as she prompted me to refuse the invitation.“I’ll have to ask my mother, ”

I said.

“I’m sure she’ll let you come,” Edith said, “after all, we’re almost family. My mother says if your manners are anything like Harvey’s, you’re welcome at our house any time.”

Mattie sat still until Edith and her friends were out of the aisle and back in the schoolyard, then she bumped my shoulder roughly with her own.“Why didn’t you just tell her no?” she asked.

“Maybe I wanna go.”

“Well, go then.They gon’ pick at you.That’s the only reason she invited you.”

The bell rang, signaling the end of our lunch recess. I sat a moment longer, watching Jeff stand and stretch, then I joined Mattie for our walk back to class. I compared her appearance and my own to that of Edith and her friends. There was actually no comparison. Despite all the washing and scrubbing every Saturday, my blouse was dingy, and the single skirt and two dresses I owned always hung limp and wrinkled on my frame.

Mattie was no better. She had the one dress that would not hold a hem. No matter how often she repaired it, the thread always unraveled and the hem pouched at her knees.The strings in her shoes were broken and knotted into stubs, something I had not noticed before the invitation. She stood about three inches taller than I, and I figured she must have gotten her height from her father, along with the short, kinky hair that she never took a hot comb to.

“I’m not going to the party,” I said.

Mattie smiled.“I knew you wouldn’t go without me.”

I would have gone, though, because I liked Edith, regardless of how Mattie felt about her.

We entered the building through the main doors and moved swiftly across the lobby. It was a large area that served as an auditorium by placement of folding chairs, a gymnasium by removal of folding chairs, and a lunchroom when the weather kept us indoors. Opposite the main doors, at the far side of the lobby, was a small stage with a podium that stood against drawn wine-and-gold curtains. It was where I would stand to give my graduation speech— another one of my daydreams.

After school, I walked with Mattie until we reached her house on Cory Street in Plymouth. Usually, at this time of the afternoon, her mother would be in the side yard taking clothes from the lines, but today she wasn’t there. Mrs. Long was the smallest adult I had ever seen. She spent her days washing and ironing clothes, and eating Argo starch straight from the box. Her lips were perpetually white, and she had a lazy left eye as a result of too many beatings.Mr. Long had a reputation of being one of the meanest drunks in Pakersfield.

Mattie’s sister, Tina, was standing beside the steps when we entered their yard. She had a thumb shoved into her mouth, and stood with her head bowed. On the porch, Mattie’s younger brothers, Lobo and Bennie, were giggling and peering inside the house through a front window.

Tina removed her thumb and glanced up at Mattie. “We can’t go in,” she said.“Daddy’s at it again.”

“Drunk?” Mattie asked.

Tina shook her head and shoved her thumb back into her mouth. She was ten—too old to be sucking her thumb.

Mattie raced up the steps, shoved her bothers away from the window, and looked inside. She stood for a minute with her hands on her hips, then she kicked the front door several times, and yelled, “Dogs! Nothing but dogs!”

In Plymouth, the houses were set close to the ground and the porches were small.There were only four steps leading up to Mattie’s porch, and I stood at the bottom watching her. Her anger was unsettling and I felt awkward witnessing what amounted to a tantrum. Her hands struck the heads of her brothers in a series of loud slaps, then she grabbed them and roughly pulled them toward the steps.

“Sit here!” she barked. “Don’t go back to that goddamn window, or I’ll break yo’ arms.Y’all know better.” She hit them again until they were both holding their heads and crying.

When she stepped back into the yard, I found it difficult to look at her. “I’ve got to get on home, Mattie,” I said.

“I know,” she said, and her voice was calm, as if I had only imagined her rage a few seconds ago.“I’ll walk wit’ you as far as Duluth Street.”

As we began to walk, I stole a glance back at the house and saw Mattie’s little brothers sitting on the steps watching us, and Tina standing in the yard sucking her thumb. I wondered what Mattie had seen through the window, but I knew better than to ask.

“I ain’t going back to school next year,” she informed me as we reached the corner of her street and turned onto Lawson Street. “Daddy say I ain’t got to, but Mama want me to go. I’m sick of school.”

“What will you do if you quit?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders.“Get a job or something, I guess.”

“I don’t want you to quit, Mattie. I want us to graduate together.”

She laughed. “What make you think you gon’ graduate? I thought you said yo’ mama was gon’ make you quit.”

“I’ll find a way to go,” I said, and was surprised by the bitterness in my voice, and the anger I suddenly felt toward my best friend.

I made another comparison. I compared Mattie’s life to my own. She had obvious advantages, which included a smaller family, two parents, and a mother who encouraged her to attend school. The main advantage, though, was the beatings. In Mattie’s house they were fierce and frequent, but only bestowed upon her mother.

“I can’t see where it makes no difference,” she said. “After you finish school, what you gon’ do? You’ll get a job doing the same thing somebody doing that ain’t never went to school. My daddy say a colored woman ain’t shit. He say they ain’t good for nothing. Can’t do nothing but stand around putting a whole lot of weight on a man.”

“We can teach,” I said. “And Mushy works in a hospital.There are things we can do, Mattie.”

“Mushy don’t work in no hospital in Pakersfield. I think my daddy right, so what’s the use going to school?”

I fell silent, thinking of the number of people who thought like Mattie. The first-grade classrooms, of which there were two, were filled to capacity every year, but by the time those students reached the seventh and eighth grades, their numbers had dwindled by nearly a third. Each year, the graduating class ranged between ten and twelve students out of the seventy or so who had begun first grade.

“. . . so I kicked her in her back,” Mattie was saying. “She was sitting there, too beat up and tired to cry, and it made me sick. So I went over and kicked her in the back. I was shame later, but sometimes I just get sick of it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I was aware that Mattie had been speaking, but I hadn’t been listening to her. She had my undivided attention now.

She stopped walking and turned to face me, then she gave an irritable sigh before speaking again. “I’m talking ’bout my mama,

yo’mama, and my daddy. Mama all time saying how Daddy taking her money and giving it to yo’mama. Every time she get mad, she say mean things ’bout Miss Rosie.And every time, Daddy beats her up.Mama don’t know when to keep her mouth shut.”

“Did you say you kicked your mother?” I asked incredulously. “Mattie, you kicked your mother?”

“Yeah, I kicked her, and it wadn’t the first time. I told you I was sorry after I done it, but she makes me sick. If she gon’ say all them things to Daddy, she oughta be ready to fight, but she won’t even hit back.”

“Why does Miss Lucille think your daddy is giving money to my mother? My mother never has any money.”

Mattie gave a bitter laugh—a sign that she had not left all of her anger on the front porch of her house.“How she pay the rent then? How she buy food and stuff? And she got all them fancy clothes like some white woman. My mama say half the men in Triacy County pay yo’ mama’s rent. She say Miss Rosie do nasty, filthy animal things wit’ men, and they give her money to do it.”

“Then I’m glad your daddy hit her,” I said angrily. “I hate your mother.”

I didn’t truly hate Miss Lucille, but I had said it, and it was too late to take it back. I dropped my books to the ground and stepped back, keeping my gaze on Mattie. I assumed the stance that Tarabelle always took when she boxed with Sam, and I brought my fists up, ready to jab.

Mattie stared at me, then she grunted.“I ain’t fixin’ to fight you, Tangy. I hate her, too. Leastways, I hate her most of the time.”

She resumed walking, glancing back at me several times, waiting for me to catch up. I snatched my books from the ground and followed. After a while we were walking side by side as though nothing had happened. I glanced over and saw that she was looking at me, a half-smile on her face, but I could not return the smile. We reached the library on Duluth Street and Mattie stopped. Neither of us knew what to say to the other.

“Well,” Mattie said.

“Well.”

“See ya,” she said as she turned for home.

“See ya,” I echoed.

eighteen

O
ur first correspondence from Mushy was delivered by Velman Cooper nearly an hour after the post office had closed. He stood on our porch, shifting his weight from foot to foot, holding a white envelope in his hand.There was a broad grin on his face as he nodded a greeting to Mama.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said. “I got a letter here for Miss Martha Jean Quinn.”

Mama glanced at the envelope in his hand.“You work for the post office?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Um hum.” She nodded her head slowly.“Since when they start delivering mail out here?”

“No, ma’am,” Velman said, and gave a short laugh. “I just saw this here letter in the box and thought I’d bring it out.”

I placed a finger to my lips, trying to silence him, but he didn’t see me.

“How you know Martha Jean?” Mama asked.

“I met her at the post office.You got some fine daughters, Mrs.

Quinn.”

“Daughters?”

“Yes, ma’am. Martha Jean and Tangy. Oh, yeah, and Mushy.”

There was something about Velman Cooper’s mouth that had troubled me from the very beginning—from the first time I had seen him. It was a mouth that was too big. It opened and closed before his brain had a chance to warm up.

Mama turned and stepped away from the door, allowing me a clear view of Velman. I tried to warn him with a stare, but he seemed not to get it.

“Bring Martha Jean out here,” Mama said.

I found Martha Jean in the kitchen and told her, in a rush of signs, that Velman Cooper was at our front door and we were in a world of trouble.

“Come on over here,” Mama said, beckoning to Martha Jean as we entered the hallway.“This boy say he got a letter for you.”

I raised my hands to interpret my mother’s words.

“Quit that!” Mama yelled.“She know damn well what I’m saying. She done had sense enough to go out and invite this boy to my house.”

Velman’s smile faded when he saw the terror in Martha Jean’s eyes as she approached our mother.He extended the letter toward Martha Jean, but Mama intercepted and snatched it from his hand. She opened it and withdrew a birthday card.Without bothering to glance inside the card, she ripped it and threw the pieces over Martha Jean’s head.

“Ma’am, I didn’t mean no harm coming out to your house,” Velman apologized.“Nobody invited me.”

“Why did you come, then?” I snapped, and for the first time he looked directly at me.

His lips formed a circle that blew a long stream of breath into the cold air, as his hands moved nervously about in front of him. My mother stood between us, with her thumb and forefinger pressed into Martha Jean’s cheek. Martha Jean’s lips were opened and fixed like a gulping fish. Her head bobbed up and down to the flex of Mama’s wrist.

“Please, don’t do that, ma’am,” Velman pleaded. “I’m sorry. I won’t come to your house again, but please don’t do that.”

Mama stepped toward him, pulling Martha Jean with her.“This my child,” she said.“I birthed her and she belongs to me.You keep yo’ hands off her.You hear?”

It seemed he wanted to say something. He scratched one side of his face and his mouth opened, but before he could form a word, Mama released Martha Jean, gave her a savage, backhand slap across her face, and kicked the door shut in Velman’s face.

“Tangy Mae, get the belt!” she ordered.

I stepped into her bedroom and selected the thinnest belt I could find. As I came back into the hall, I could see Martha Jean cowering and retreating. Mama swung with her fists, landing powerful blows on Martha Jean’s chest.

“You slut!” Mama screamed.“You goddamn slut! I’ll teach you to go out and shame me.”

Martha Jean backed into the front room, giving Mama ample space to direct her punches. She aimed for Martha Jean’s head. Martha Jean threw an arm up to protect herself, but Mama gripped it brutally and forced it behind Martha Jean’s back.

Martha Jean brayed, and arched her spine against the pressure Mama exerted on her shoulder and arm. Effortlessly, Mama wrapped her other arm around Martha Jean’s neck and breathed into her ear, “Dumb bitch.You no-good, dumb bitch. I’ll break yo’ goddamn neck.”

I stood there horrified, holding the leather belt, the buckle dangling at my ankles, as my mother and sister struggled in a false embrace.

Edna, crouched in a corner beside Laura, used the knuckles of her hands to wipe away her tears. She either saw or sensed how dangerously close Mama was to trampling Judy. I saw it, too, but feared the slightest movement on my part would be catastrophic. I stood perfectly still while Edna took two small scoots forward, gripped the basket, and pulled Judy to safety.

Mama released Martha Jean. “Goddamn children!” she yelled. “All y’all can go to Hell. I’m sicka worrying ’bout y’all.” It seemed she was done with Martha Jean, then suddenly, gracefully, she pivoted and balanced herself on her toes. Her fingers curled and tightened into fists as she landed softly on her heels, and she began to jab.With artistic precision, she opened gashes, loosened teeth, and viciously rearranged my sister’s face. Martha Jean collapsed to the floor, and finally Mama snatched the belt from my hand.

I was beyond praying, and had resorted to begging God to help Martha Jean—to stop Mama from hitting her again.

Amen! Amen! God answers prayer. Ain’t my God a great God?

Hallelujah!

The belt looped through the air in a rush, but instead of striking Martha Jean, it cut into my shoulders, neck, and back. It knocked me off balance. It tangled in my skirt, frustrating my mother, forcing her to change her strategy. She unwrapped the leather from her hand, flipped it over, and brought the metal buckle down on my head.

I did not know why Judy was crying. I was crying from pain, Laura and Edna must have been crying from fear, because they had not been touched. Whatever sounds Martha Jean made were drowned out by our sobs.

“Y’all, shut up!” Mama screamed at us.“Y’all giving me a damn headache.”

She sauntered over to an armchair, sat, and leaned back to rest her aching head.We didn’t stop crying, though—not right away. Laura and Edna eventually hushed, even little Judy fell silent long before I could. I shed tears of pain, of despair, dry-sobbed from injustice, gave a feeble heave, then finally calmed.

From across the room, my mother smiled at me and slowly shook her head.“Tangy Mae, you oughta be shame of yo’self,” she said. “I was two seconds away from giving you something to cry about if you hadn’t shut up.”

She was still staring at me and shaking her head in disgust when Tarabelle came in from work, then she turned her attention to my sister.“ I think we got enough space out in the yard to plant a garden,” she said.“What you think, Tarabelle? We can grow our own beans and tomatoes. I’m gon’ buy some seeds the next time I’m in town.”

Tarabelle did not answer. She gazed at Martha Jean’s crumpled form on the floor, then briefly glanced at me, but did not ask what had happened.

We were all quiet now, even Mama. She sat silent for so long it seemed she had fallen asleep with her eyes wide open. Finally, she said, “Well, I gotta finish getting dressed.Tarabelle, you get yo’self together.You gotta make a run wit’ me tonight.”

“No, Mama, ”Tarabelle begged. “Please! I’m tired.”

God, look down on us. I am in a room where your daughters are weary.
They are moaning, and it is a most wretched sound. Can you hear it,
Lord? Do something! I never want to shed another tear as long as I live.

“I’ll go with you, Mama,” I heard myself say, although I had no idea where my mother was going.“I’m not tired. I’ll go with you.”

In a split second, my mother was across the room and standing over me. I spread my arms to shield Martha Jean, although I knew I was the one in danger.

“Look here!” Mama said.

I glanced up, and she slapped my face so hard that I bit my tongue, and the blood coated my palate and rolled down my throat.

“Who the hell do you think wants you?” she asked.

“Nobody, Mama,” I answered truthfully.“Nobody.”