Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (27 page)

I scanned the front page for stories about West Virginia coal miners. I’d watched for such news after I got Big Willie’s postcard. “Let’s see. Oh, no!” Anger, revulsion, and fear rose in my throat and almost strangled my words. “Aunt Society, they lynched another Colored man, Jerome Whitfield, over in Kinston, and on a Sunday morning, after they said he assaulted a White woman. Says she told them, ‘Please don’t kill him here in the yard.’ They hung him in the woods, then shot him over a thousand —”

“No more.” Aunt Society held up her good hand. “So sad. Just awful. Ku Klux Klan did that. Kluxers’re servants of the devil.”

“I wish Mr. James Weldon Johnson and his Colored people’s group would stop them.” I tightened my lips. I’d read about Mr. Johnson’s organization in the
Brownies’ Book
magazine, and how it was formed by Colored and White people to help Colored people get treated better. Or maybe Mr. Garvey and his army could do something.

“Can’t nobody stop Kluxers.” She looked at me fiercely. “They White men doing whatever nasty thing they want. Kluxers be in Raleigh, hear? They kill Colored
girls,
too.”

Something
else
for me to worry about. I folded up the newspaper. I didn’t feel like reading. I didn’t even want to look at advertisements. When our White mailman walked up to the porch smiling and waving a fat letter at me, I stared at him. Was he a Kluxer, too? But he was nice!

I carefully took the letter. From Aunt Valentina! Inside were the Statue of Liberty photographs, and a letter from the
Brownies’ Book
office, which I read first. Miss Fausett wrote that she was sorry, but none of us Butterflies won. My shoulders slumped. Then, at the bottom of a sheet listing the honorable mentions, there was my name, and “Forsythia”! I let out a Miss D–style whoop, which caused Aunt Society to jerk.

When I explained, she smiled. “I planted that forsythia bush when you were born,” she said. “And I started to feel better when you played your bush piece.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I moved on to the photographs. There I was with Miss D and the cardboard Miss Liberty, then me, Miss D, the officer, and Aunti Val. “Simply fabulous!” I said aloud. I showed them to my aunt with my thumb over Aunti Val’s face.

Then I began reading Aunti Val’s letter. Miss D had moved to South Carolina to be with Gertie and her folks, who’d got back together. Good; at least Miss D was closer. I wished I had her new address. And then I read, “A few of us have put together a small traveling production of
Shuffle Along,
with the producers’ permission. We’ll perform it at your Negro State Fair. I thought I would be there in September when I last wrote you, but now I’ve learned that the fair will come in October. It’ll be so grand. I’ll arrive by train into Raleigh the day before the fair begins, be in the parade the next morning, and present it that afternoon. We’ll stay at the Stackhouse. You can’t imagine how happy I’ll be to see you and Taylor and everybody.”

“Fabulous!” I said at first, grinning. But wait a minute. Since the fair wasn’t until late October, that meant she wouldn’t be here for another month. I let out a big sigh.

Aunt Society opened her eyes. “What?”

“Aunt Valentina’s coming for the Great Negro State Fair,” I said. “But she —”

“Her? Here?” Her face turned into one fierce wrinkle. “No. No!” She slammed her good hand on the arm of her wheelchair, then jerked the chair around and rolled back into the house.

Well, telling her
that
had surely been a mistake. I listened to her rattle through the house. But she had to know that Aunti Val was coming sometime. She would return in style, a star. Performing at our fair was a smart thing. I was positive she would land some kind of big job, like at Raleigh’s Shaw University or Saint Augustine’s School, or Durham’s National Religious Training School and Chautauqua. She could teach drama or dance or singing, maybe. After that, she’d have no reason to return to New York, except to pack up and say good-bye to her friends.

With Aunti Val back I could have a whole family again. I could go to school, too, since she could find somebody to take care of Aunt Society, I was sure. Aunti Val was coming back to help
me,
anyway. Helping me would help Aunt Society. She could move in with us until she found her own place. Aunt Society would just have to get used to it, unless she wanted to move back to her own little dark house. Still — October!

Now, how could I get word to Poppa? I found Aunt Society sitting at the kitchen table, staring out at the back porch. “Would you like to go for a walk? It’s such a pretty day,” I said as sweetly as I could. “We can go over to the Stackhouse and call Poppa. You can talk to him.”

She stared at Aunti Val’s letter still in my hand until I stuffed it into my skirt pocket. “Well, I reckon,” she said finally. I was so relieved that I hugged her. “Girlio, you just don’t know that woman,” she said, using Poppa’s nickname for me.

Oh yes, I do,
I thought, but I didn’t tell her that. “Here, let me smooth your hair.” I gently patted her thin white hair over the bald spot, and put her sun hat on her head. Her hair was soft and now smelled sweet from my last shampooing. When I’d offered to wash her hair, she hadn’t resisted at all. I think she even enjoyed my taking care of her hair now. At least she didn’t smell like pig grease anymore. I hurried to my room, got my cherries and lemonade perfume, and dabbed a bit behind my ears. When I returned with the bottle, she said, “No, none on me,” but I touched some behind her ears, anyway, sure she would like it. When we were ready, I helped her down the front porch steps, then bumped her chair down them. She eased herself into the wheelchair, and we headed out.

As we walked and rolled along, I found myself staring at the White people passing us in their cars. Were they Kluxers, too? I hadn’t thought much about the Ku Klux Klan until I’d read that story. When in the good Lord’s world would things change for us Colored?

Chapter
Nineteen

S
eeing a yellow rosebush at the entrance of City Cemetery, I told Aunt Society that she smelled like a flower. I hoped that would take her mind off thinking about Aunti Val and the Ku Klux Klan.

“Oh?” She touched her fingers behind her ear and sniffed them. “I do, don’t I?”

“Do you mind if I go by Momma’s and Emmanuel’s graves?” I asked. “I’ve been meaning to do that ever since I got back.”

“Well,” she said and sighed. “So many dead in there.”

“They’re all dead in there, Aunt Society,” I reminded her.

Right then she erupted into a loud, full-bellied cackling laugh that I hadn’t heard from her since she’d got tickled over a Punch and Judy puppet show at a park program a couple of years ago. She laughed so hard she had to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes with her good hand. “Go, go,” she said, still laughing.

I laughed, too, glad to hear her laugh, and pushed her through the cemetery entrance. I liked the tombstones’ granite angels, Bibles, intertwined doves, and other carved figures and tender wordings. Momma and I walked through here often when she was well. She’d point out the graves of people she knew, or the flowers and shrubs folks had planted in their loved ones’ memory, or one thing or another. Sprucing up grave sites was something folks did every year during the last weekend of May. We called that Saturday Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, to honor not only the war dead, but all the dead. Some placed colored glass bottles or shells around the headstones. Often relatives from other places came down for their annual family reunions that weekend. Aunti Val wouldn’t, though.

But today, for Momma and Emmanuel, only Aunt Society and I were there. Nobody had cleaned off their plots. I dropped to my knees and pulled weeds from around their graves. When I finished, I gently touched the headstones with my fingers. “There, that’s better,” I said softly. I silently promised them I’d be back.

Aunt Society pointed to a forgotten clump of weeds near the foot of Momma’s plot. I pulled it up. “Looks better,” she said, and I agreed.

From the cemetery we headed for the Stackhouse. Some elderly Colored people driving by waved at us, and we waved back. Aunt Society said she knew them.

“Let’s go back. I’m hot.” She placed her good hand against her forehead under her sun hat. So instead of our talking to Poppa, we turned around and went home, which was disappointing to me. After helping her to lie down, I chipped some ice from the block in the icebox, wrapped it in a towel, and placed it on her head. I wished I could slip out and call Poppa anyway, but remembering what had happened the last time, I stayed home.

I straightened the framed needlework of Colored menhaden fishermen on the wall opposite her bed. Aunt Society and Poppa had said the scene reminded them of Morehead City. Whenever I looked at the matching needlework on my wall, I thought of Poppa’s balloon story. I wonder if Gertie still remembered it.

That night in bed, while rereading Aunti Val’s letter, I found some more writing on the back, which I’d missed: “I think about you every day, Cece. Would you like to come back with me and attend school up here, if we can work things out about Aunt Society? Our schools are so much better, and you can start scouting out where you’d like to get your doctor training down the road. We’ll talk about it when I get there. By the way, I’m moving into Miss D’s place, so I’ll have lots more room.”

I rubbed my eyes, staring at her words. Go to school in New York? Was this an abundance of blessings from the Lord, or a temptation from the devil? It’d be fabulous to go to school there, but naturally I’d have to leave Poppa and Raleigh. And Aunt Society.

But what Aunti Val was truly saying was that the only move she planned to make was into Miss D’s digs, not ours. Ole Truth popped me on the head right then and snapped,
Celeste, you big dummy, stop praying for your dream to come true. It’s plain that just ain’t gonna happen, and you were stupid to think that it would.
My cheeks started to burn. But since March I’d banked on Aunt Valentina coming to Raleigh to live with us because I wanted my family to be together. I guess I’d probably hoped she could fill in where Momma had been.

Face it, kiddo. That was your dream, not hers.

“Yeah. Well, that’s that,” I said aloud, heaving a long, sad sigh. I dropped the letter down onto my bed.

Then I picked it back up. But
now
here I was with this new, huge invitation! Should I stay in Raleigh to care for Aunt Society, be close to Poppa, and go to school here, or should I just take my little brown fanny back up to the Big Apple with Aunti Val and jump back into her exciting, crazy circle, where I could begin my journey for true toward being a doctor? I held my head in my hands. What would Poppa say? What would Momma say? What did I really want to do? What
should
I do?

September arrived with me more agonized over Aunti’s tantalizing offer and school than ever before. I needed to get into school
somewhere.
School here was only two weeks away and I still hadn’t found anybody to stay with Aunt Society. If I couldn’t find anybody to do it during the day now, how in the world would we find anybody to stay with her if I moved clear to New York? The poor farm, run by the state, was out of the question. But would Poppa consent to putting her in Miss Lucille’s old folks’ home? Miss Lucille’s was clean and decent enough. Momma and I used to go there sometimes with Christmas baskets for ladies and gentlemen she knew. But it was depressing to me. Old folks covered by blankets sagged in wheelchairs everywhere, or lay in their beds, picking at their quilts. Some cried when they saw us, because they hadn’t had any other company in weeks. Weeks!

Miss Lucille’s and the poor farm were where old folks got sent when they were sickly and had no home and no family to take them in. Aunt Society had family.

On Labor Day I straightened the house, myself, and Aunt Society in preparation for our annual picnic with the Smithfields. Usually Mrs. Smithfield brought food, Aunt Society and Poppa pitched in with our stuff, and Mr. Smithfield would bring Colored newspapers from cities on his train route. We’d set tables in the backyard clear of poop, and eat and talk. Then we’d have a checkers tournament, with even Aunt Society and me joining in. This time, though, Mr. Smithfield was on the road, and of course Poppa was away, and Aunt Society was sick.

Mrs. Smithfield came with all the food, some newspapers, and a lady from St. Paul church named Mrs. Edmund. We ate fried chicken, hot rolls, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, and banana pudding in the parlor. Mrs. Edmund was nice, smiling and nodding a lot, interested in everything Aunt Society said. Aunt Society behaved herself, and talked a little. I was relieved about that. Mrs. Edmund was the first real company she’d had since her strokes, other than Miss D.

After they left, Aunt Society went to her room to rest, smiling a little.
Well, that went well,
I told myself. I munched on a chicken thigh and looked through the newspapers, searching for news about New York schools and medicine.

What would I have been doing in Harlem? I imagined myself taking part in festivities in Central Park like I did on the Fourth of July, or watching another Marcus Garvey parade. Maybe Aunti Val would have taken me to Café Noir Le Grande for a big party. I laughed a little. Life in Harlem moved a lot faster than down here, that was for sure. I could have kicked myself when I wondered what Poppa was doing. While Mrs. Smithfield and Mrs. Edmund were here, I should have skipped off to the Stackhouse and called him!

Later on, Evalina and Angel Mae showed up. “I’m
so
glad to get away from Granddaddy’s awful tobacco worms,” Evalina said, dropping down on the steps. “We stayed out in that field all day! I drank so much water I ’bout dried up the well.”

I brought them some sweet tea and the
Brownies’ Book
contest letter and the new magazine. They were disappointed, but happy for me, sort of, over the results. They promised to tell Swan. “And guess what? Aunti Val’s bringing a performance of
Shuffle Along
to the Negro State Fair!” I announced.