Coming of Age in Mississippi Read online

  During the harvest, Daddy’s best friend, Bush, was killed. Bush was driving his wagon when his horses went wild, turning the wagon over in the big ditch alongside the road. It landed on his neck and broke it. His death made Daddy even sadder.

  The only times I saw him happy any more were when he was on the floor rolling dice. He used to practice shooting them at home before every big game and I would sit and watch him. He would even play with me then, and every time he won that money he would bring me lots of candy or some kind of present. He was good with a pair of dice and used to win the money all the time. He and most of the other men gambled every Saturday night through Sunday morning. One weekend he came home without a cent. He told Mama that he had lost every penny. He came home broke a few more times. Then one Sunday morning before he got home one of the women on the farm came by the house to tell Mama that he was spending his weekends with Florence, Bush’s beautiful widow. I remember he and Mama had a real knockdown dragout session when he finally did come home. Mama fist-fought him like a man, but this didn’t stop him from going by Florence’s place. He even got bolder about it and soon went as often as he liked.

  Florence was a mulatto, high yellow with straight black hair. She was the envy of all the women on the plantation. After Bush’s death they got very particular about where their men were going. And they watched Florence like a bunch of hawks. She couldn’t even go outdoors without some woman peeping at her and reporting that she was now coming out of the house.

  Mama had never considered Florence or any of the other women a threat because she was so beautiful herself. She was slim, tall, and tawny-skinned, with high cheekbones and long dark hair. She was by and far the liveliest woman on the plantation and Daddy used to delight in her. When she played with me she was just like a child herself. Daddy used to call her an overgrown wild-child and tease her that she had too much Indian blood in her.

  Meantime, Mama had begun to get very fat. Her belly kept getting bigger and bigger. Soon she acted as if she was fat and ugly. Every weekend, when she thought Daddy was with Florence she didn’t do a thing but cry. Then one of those redhot summer days, she sent me and Adline to one of the neighbors nearest to us. We were there all day. I didn’t like the people so I was glad when we finally went home. When we returned I discovered why Mama had gotten so fat. She called me to the bed and said, “Look what Santa sent you.” I was upset. Santa never brought live dolls before. It was a little baldheaded boy. He was some small and looked as soft as one of our little pigs when it was born.

  “His name is Junior,” Mama said. “He was named for your daddy.”

  My daddy’s name was Fred so I didn’t understand why she said the baby’s name was Junior. Adline was a year old and walking good. She cried like crazy at the sight of the little baby.

  While I stood by the bed looking at Mama, I realized her belly had gone down. I was glad of that. I had often wondered if Daddy was always gone because her belly had gotten so big. But that wasn’t it, because after it went down, he was gone just as much as before, even more.

  Next thing I knew, we were being thrown into a wagon with all our things. I really didn’t know what was going on. But I knew something was wrong because Mama and Daddy barely spoke to each other and whenever they did exchange words, they snapped and cursed. Later in the night when we arrived at my Great-Aunt Cindy’s place, all of our things were taken from the wagon and Daddy left.

  “Where is Daddy goin’?” I cried to Mama.

  “By his business,” she answered.

  Aunt Cindy and all the children stood around the porch looking at him drive the wagon away.

  “That dog! That no-good dog!” I heard Mama mumble. I knew then that he was gone for good.

  “Ain’t he gonna stay with us?” I asked.

  “No he ain’t gonna stay with us! Shut up!” she yelled at me with her eyes full of water. She cried all that night.

  ———

  We were allowed to stay with Aunt Cindy until Mama found a job. Aunt Cindy had six children of her own, all in a four-room house. The house was so crowded, the four of us had to share a bed together. Adline and I slept at the foot of the bed and Mama and the baby at the head. Aunt Cindy had a mean husband and our presence made him even meaner. He was always grumbling about us being there. “I ain’t got enough food for my own chillun,” he was always saying. Mama would cry at night after he had said such things.

  Mama soon got a job working up the road from Aunt Cindy at the Cooks’ house. Mrs. Cook didn’t pay Mama much money at all, but she would give her the dinner leftovers to bring home for us at night. This was all we had to eat. Mama worked for the Cooks for only two weeks. Then she got a better job at a Negro café in town. She was making twelve dollars a week, more than she had ever earned.

  About a week after she got the new job she got a place for us from the Cooks. Mrs. Cook let Mama have the house for four dollars a month on the condition that Mama would continue to help her around the house on her off day from the café.

  The Cooks lived right on a long rock road that ran parallel to Highway 24, the major highway for Negroes and whites living between Woodville and Centreville, the nearest towns.

  To get to our house from the road you entered a big wooden gate. A little dirt road ran from the gate through the Cooks’ cattle pasture and continued past our house to a big cornfield. The Cooks planted the corn for their cattle. But often when Mama didn’t have enough money for food she would sneak out at night and take enough to last us a week. Once Mrs. Cook came out there and put up a scarecrow. She said that the crows were eating all the corn. When Mama came home from the café that evening and saw the scarecrow, she laughed like crazy. Then she started taking even more corn. She had a special way of stealing the corn that made it look just like the crows had taken it. She would knock down a few ears and leave them hanging on the stalks. Then she’d drop a few between the rows and pick on a few others. I don’t remember everything she did, but before that season was over, Mrs. Cook had three more scarecrows standing.

  Right below the cornfield, at the base of the hill, was a swampy area with lots of trees. The trees were so thick that even during the day the swamp was dark and mysterious looking. It looked like an entirely different world to us, but Mama never let us go near it because she said it was full of big snakes, and people hunted down there and we might get killed.

  Our little house had two rooms and a porch. The front room next to the porch was larger than the little boxed-in kitchen you could barely turn around in. Its furniture consisted of two small beds. Adline and I slept in one and Mama and Junior in the other. There was also a bench to sit on and a small tin heater. Our few clothes hung on a nail on the wall. In the kitchen there was a wood stove with lots of wood stacked behind it, and a table. The only chair we had was a large rocking chair that was kept on the porch because there was no room in the house for it. We didn’t have a toilet. Mama would carry us out in back of the house each night before we went to bed to empty us.

  Shortly after we moved in I turned five years old and Mama started me at Mount Pleasant School. Now I had to walk four miles each day up and down that long rock road. Mount Pleasant was a big white stone church, the biggest Baptist church in the area.

  The school was a little one-room rotten wood building located right next to it. There were about fifteen of us who went there. We sat on big wooden benches just like the ones in the church, pulled up close to the heater. But we were cold all day. That little rotten building had big cracks in it, and the heater was just too small.

  Reverend Cason, the minister of the church, taught us in school. He was a tall yellow man with horn-rimmed glasses that sat on the edge of his big nose. He had the largest feet I had ever seen. He was so big, he towered over us in the little classroom like a giant. In church he preached loud and in school he talked loud. We would sit in class with his sounds ringing in our ears. I thought of putting cotton in my ears but a boy had tried that and the Reverend caught
him and beat him three times that day with the big switch he kept behind his desk. I remember once he caught a boy lifting up a girl’s dress with his foot. He called him up to his desk and whipped him in his hands with that big switch until the boy cried and peed all over himself. He never did whip me. I was so scared of him I never did anything. I hardly ever opened my mouth. I don’t even remember a word he said in class. I was too scared to listen to him. Instead, I sat there all day and looked out the window at the graveyard and counted the tombstones.

  One day he caught me.

  “Moody, gal! If you don’t stop lookin’ out that window, I’ll make you go out in that graveyard and sit on the biggest tombstone out there all day.” Nobody laughed because they were all as scared of him as I was.

  We used the toilets in back of the church. The boys’ toilet was on one side and girls’ on the other. The day after Reverend Cason yelled at me, I asked to be excused. While in the toilet I thought to myself, “I can stay out here all day and he won’t even know I’m out here.” I began to spend three and four hours a day in the toilet and he didn’t even miss me, until a lot of other kids caught on and started doing the same thing. About three weeks or so later about five of us girls were in the toilet at the same time. We had been out there almost an hour. We were standing behind the partition in front of the toilet giggling and making fun of Reverend Cason when all of a sudden we heard him right outside.

  “If y’all don’t come outta that toilet right this second, I’ll come in there and drown you!”

  We peeped from behind the partition and saw Reverend Cason standing there with that big switch in his hand.

  “Didn’t I say come outta there! If I have to come in there and getcha, I’m goin’ to beat yo’ brains out!”

  “Reverend Cason, I ain’t finished yet,” I said in a trembling voice.

  “You ain’t finished? You been in there over three hours! If y’all don’t get outta there—” Then he was silent. I peeped out again. He was coming toward the door.

  I ran out and headed for the classroom, followed by the rest of the girls. When we got around in front of the church we met up with a bunch of boys running from the boys’ toilet. We all scrambled in the door. There were only two students sitting in class. I sat in my seat and didn’t even breathe until I heard Reverend Cason’s big feet hit the bottom step. He came through the door puffing and shouting, but he was so tired from yelling and chasing us that he didn’t even beat us. After that he wouldn’t excuse us until recess. And then he would have to round us up and bring us back to class.

  Every morning before Mama left for the café, she would take us across the road to Grandfather Moody. I would leave for school from there and he would keep Adline and Junior until I came home. My grandfather lived with one of my aunts. He was a very old man and he was sick all the time. I don’t ever remember seeing him out of his bed. My aunt them would leave for the field at daybreak, so whenever we were there, my grandfather was alone.

  He really cared a lot for us and he liked Mama very much too, because Mama was real good to him. Sometimes my aunt them would go off and wouldn’t even fix food for him. Mama would always look to see if there was any food left for him in the kitchen. If there wasn’t, she would fix some batty cakes or something for him and he would eat them with syrup.

  Often when Mama didn’t have money for food, he gave her some. I think he felt guilty for what his son, my daddy, had done to us. He kept his money in a little sack tied around his waist. I think that was his life savings because he never took it off.

  Some mornings when Mama would bring us over she would be looking real depressed.

  “Toosweet, what’s wrong with you?” Grandfather would ask in a weak voice. “You need a little money or something? Do Diddly ever send you any money to help you with these children? It’s a shame the way that boy run around gambling and spending all his money on women.”

  “Uncle Moody, I ain’t heard nothin’ from him and I don’t want to. The Lord’ll help me take care o’ my children.”

  “I sure wish he’d do right by these chaps,” Grandfather would mumble to himself.

  Soon after school was over for the year, Grandfather got a lot sicker than he was before. Mama stopped carrying us by his place. She left us at home alone, and she would bake a pone of bread to last us the whole day.

  One evening she came in from work looking real sad.

  “Essie Mae, put yo’ shoes on. I want you to come go say good-bye to Uncle Moody. He’s real sick. Adline, I’m gonna leave you and Junior by Miss Cook. I’m gonna come right back and y’all better mind Miss Cook, you hear?”

  “Mama, why I gotta say good-bye to Uncle Moody? Where he’s goin’?” I asked her.

  “He’s goin’ somewhere he’s gonna be treated much better than he’s treated now. And he won’t ever be sick again,” she answered sadly.

  I didn’t understand why Mama was so sad if Uncle Moody wasn’t going to be sick anymore. I wanted to ask her but I didn’t. All the way to see Uncle Moody, I kept wondering where he was going.

  It was almost dark when we walked up in my aunt’s yard. A whole bunch of people were standing around on the porch and in the yard. Some of them looked even sadder than Mama. I had never seen that many people there before and everything seemed so strange to me. I looked around at the faces to see if I knew anyone. Suddenly I recognized Daddy, squatting in the yard in front of the house. He had a knife in his hand. As Mama and I walked toward him, he began to pick in the dirt. He glanced up at Mama and he had that funny funny look in his eyes. I had seen it before. He looked like he wanted us back so bad, but Mama was mean. She had vowed that she would never see him again. As they stood there staring at each other, I was reminded of the first time I saw him after he left us, when we lived with my Great-Aunt Cindy. It was Easter Sunday morning. Mama, Aunt Cindy, and all the children were sitting on the porch. We were all having a beautiful time. It was just after the Easter egg hunt and we were eating the eggs we had found in the grass. Mama was playing with us. She had found more eggs than all of us and she was teasing and throwing eggshells at us.

  As I was dodging eggshells and giggling at Mama, I saw Daddy coming down the road. I jumped off the porch and ran to meet him, followed by the rest of the children. He gave me lots of candy in a big bag and told me to share it with the others. As we walked back to the porch, I could see Mama’s changing expression. Daddy was grinning broadly. He had something for Mama in a big bag he carried with care in his arms.

  I don’t remember what they said to each other after that. But I remember what was in the big bag for Mama. It was a hat, a big beautiful hat made out of flowers of all colors. When she saw the hat, Mama got real mad. She took the hat and picked every flower from it, petal by petal. She threw them out in the yard and watched the wind blow them away. Daddy looked at her as if he hated her, but there was more than hate in it all. This was just how he looked out in the yard now as he sat picking in the dirt.

  I was very frightened. I thought at first he would kill Mama with the knife. Mama stared at him for a while, then went straight past him into the house, leaving me in the yard with him.

  “Come here, Essie Mae,” he said sadly. I walked to him, shaking. “They say you is in school now. Do you need anything?” he asked. I was so afraid I couldn’t answer him. He felt in his pocket. Out of it came a roll of money. He gave it to me, smiling. I took it and was about to smile back when I saw Mama. She came out of the house and snatched the money from me and threw it at him. Then Daddy got up. This time I was sure he would hit Mama. But he didn’t. He only walked away with that hurt look in his eyes. Mama grabbed me by the arm and headed out of the yard, pulling me behind her.

  “Ain’t ah’m gonna say good-bye to Uncle Moody?” I whined.

  “He told me to tell you good-bye,” she snapped. “He’s sleeping now.”

  That night we had beans for supper, as usual. And all night I wondered why Mama threw back the money Daddy gave me. I
was mad with her because we ate beans all the time. Had she taken the money, I thought, we could have meat too.

  Chapter

  TWO

  Now that school was out and there was no one for us to stay with, we would sit on the porch and rock in the rocking chair most of the day. We were scared to go out and play because of the snakes. Often as we sat on the porch we saw them coming up the hill from the swamp. Sometimes they would just go to the other side of the swamp. But other times they went under the house and we didn’t see them come out. When this happened, we wouldn’t eat all day because we were scared to go inside. The snakes often came into the house. Once as I was putting wood in the stove for Mama, I almost put my hands on one curled up under the wood. I never touched the woodpile again.

  One day we heard Mrs. Cook’s dog barking down beside the swamp at the base of the cornfield. We ran out to see what had happened. When we got there, the dog was standing still with his tail straight up in the air barking hysterically. There, lying beside a log, was a big old snake with fishy scales all over his body. Adline, Junior, and I stood there in a trance looking at it, too scared to move. We had never seen one like this. It was so big it didn’t even look like a snake. It looked like it was big enough to swallow us whole. Finally the snake slowly made its way back into the swamp, leaving a trail of mashed-down grass behind it.

  When Mama came home that evening from the café, we told her all about the snake. At first, she didn’t believe us, but we were shaking so that she had us go out back and show her where we had seen it. After she saw the place next to the log where it had been lying and the trail it left going to the swamp, she went and got Mr. Cook. For days Mr. Cook and some other men looked in the swamp for that snake, but they never did find it. After that Mama was scared for us to stay at home alone, and she began looking for a house in town closer to where she worked. “Shit, snakes that damn big might come up here and eat y’all up while I’m at work,” she said.