Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (28 page)

“Oh my!” they cried together.

Evalina hopped up, singing “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and cutting Charleston steps until Angel Mae shushed her. “
You
know that song?” I asked in surprise.

“You don’t have to live in New York to know it,” Evalina replied. “Take us when you go, please. Maybe photographers’ll take our pictures with her, and — and maybe one’ll get printed in the
Carolina Times,
or the
Independent,
or the
Chicago Defender,
or even the
New York Amsterdam News
!”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, trying to keep calm myself. For once Evalina didn’t constantly talk over me. I guess maybe she’d learned something.

Then they started talking about school. They didn’t know about Aunti’s New York offer, of course, and I didn’t tell them. They meant school here in Raleigh. “I don’t even know if I’ve passed seventh grade,” I said.

They looked surprised. “Well, of course you did, you goose,” said Angel Mae. “Mrs. Bracy said your name with the rest of us on the last day of school. Didn’t you get your grades?”

I shook my head. Angel Mae reminded me about going to the fair with the group on opening day next month. “But you’ll be in school with us by then, so you’ll know all about that,” she said. When I mumbled off something, she looked at me funny, but let it go.

After they left, I searched around the house for letters from school. Finally I went into Poppa’s room — well, Aunt Society’s room for now — and asked her if she’d seen such a letter. I knew that since she couldn’t read, she probably wouldn’t have recognized it, though. She waved her hand around the room. I picked through a stack of papers on the dresser, and found a large envelope. Fingers trembling, holding my breath, I opened the envelope and found my report card.

“Mrs. Bracy passed me!” I screamed. Praise God for Mrs. Bracy giving me the benefit of her doubt! My certificate was there, too. I waved them around, then showed them to my aunt. “I’m in the eighth grade now!”

“Good,” she said. “Now ain’t that enough?”

“No!” I said sharply. I went to my room, holding my certificate. I wasn’t like her, content with a second-grade education. I — I stopped. That hadn’t been her fault. With a hot face, I returned to her room and took her weak hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. School’s just so important to me,” I said. She didn’t look at me, but patted my hand holding hers. “You need anything?” She shook her head.

I paced in my room.
Think, girl, think!
The thought of scrubbing floors frowned me up. I never wanted to scrub anybody’s floors again. But if I could scrub floors to help Aunti Val follow her dream, I certainly ought to do it for myself. Like Aunti had said, it was honest work, and it was better than being up to my elbows in fish guts. I could pay somebody to stay with Aunt Society while I went to school. Then, until eight or nine at night, I’d scrub floors and iron for people, come home, put her to bed, do my homework, and sleep, too.

In my best handwriting I began composing a letter to Mrs. Bracy. “I hope this letter finds you in the best of health and teaching well as you always do. Thank you so much for promoting me into the eighth grade. I am eternally grateful to you for this.

“Can you think of a nice, patient lady who can spare me a few hours each day from Aunt Society so that I can attend school? I’m willing to scrub floors and iron for anyone who’ll hire me, so that I can pay for her services. Also, I still have the schoolbooks you so kindly lent me, and plan to return them to you. Remaining your faithful student, Celeste Lassiter Massey.”

The part that I did not tell her was that perhaps this same person could take care of Aunt Society if I moved to New York. If I had to scrub floors in New York in order to keep on paying her, then I’d do that, too.

After sticking Mrs. Bracy’s letter in our mailbox, I found two pieces of clean cardboard and carefully wrote “Will Scrub and Iron. Reasonable Rates” on each one. I tied them to sticks and stuck them in the front yard, where I prayed everybody but Aunt Society would see them.

Mrs. Smithfield did. She pounded on the screen door. “Girl, are you out of your mind? You’ve got to be preparing yourself for school, not breaking your back on your hands and knees.”

“How? When I’ve got to stay here and take care of
her
?” I had to jump a little salty myself.

“Do your father and aunt know about this?”

“They will if you tell them. Besides, Aunti Val’s coming to the fair next month and I’m sure she’ll help me find someone. See, if I can get ironing jobs, I can pay for someone to sit with Aunt Society. Aunti Val knows lots of folks down here, still, and she might be able to —”

“Miss New York’s finally getting down here, is she? Humph!” She huffed her short self back down the steps. She didn’t tell me to take down the signs, though, so I left them up.

Waiting for someone to respond to my signs, I wrote to Big Willie at the Eagle Rock address about the fair date, and hoped he could come back, and get in school. He and I had things to share about where we’d been and what we’d seen and done — or had done to us — that kids I knew here wouldn’t understand.

After checking on Aunt Society, who was resting in her room, I returned to the porch and looked for jobs in the newspaper. I found two ads from folks needing day work, but the addresses were so far away that I’d spend all night trying to reach their homes. On the front page I scanned the headlines. My eyes fell on “Negro Lynched by Mob at Pittsboro Early on Sunday.” Another one, right down the road! A boy named Ernest Daniels was hanged from a tree and shot to death after a White woman said she caught him in her bedroom. Bloodhounds tracked him down and lawmen put him in jail, but other White men overpowered the jailer and killed that boy.

I threw down the newspaper. When would this stop? Couldn’t they have just sent him to prison? He didn’t steal anything, didn’t hurt anybody, yet they killed him! Why couldn’t anybody do something? I already knew; we Colored would bring the horror to our own doorsteps if we intervened. But if I were grown and a doctor, maybe at least I could get to somebody who’d been lynched and try to help him, if he wasn’t already dead. Or would I dare?

I decided I didn’t have to wait to be grown and a doctor to do one thing, though. I wrote a letter to Mr. James Weldon Johnson in care of the
Brownies’ Book
magazine right then, and asked him to help us Colored in North Carolina about lynching.

When the mailman came around the next day, he took my letters and tipped his hat. I prayed that he mailed them both.

But while I was shelling butter beans on the front porch a little later, I began to wonder. What if the mailman read my letter and told the Kluxers? Would they come after me now? I broke out in a flush and began eyeballing every car that passed our house. When one slowed, my hand flew to my mouth, but then I realized that they were reading my signs.

Mrs. Bracy stopped by. She hugged me, sat down, and then asked about the signs, too. “Well, I haven’t got any takers,” I said. “I might as well pull them up. But I got to do something if I’m gonna get into school. I just wrote you a letter, too.”

“I’ll watch for it. This is going to be a rough — Oh, hello, Society! How are you, dear?” she said when Aunt Society made her way to the porch. “You seem to be pretty chipper.”

“Taking it slow, day by day,” Aunt Society said. She straightened her apron dress around her knees.

Mrs. Bracy glanced at me. “I hope you can go with us to the fair on opening day, to see the exhibits the girls have entered. There’s room on the bus for you.”

“I can stay by myself,” Aunt Society said, “for a few hours, I reckon.”

I perked up at that! I smiled so much I thought my mouth would break. She was getting better! Mrs. Bracy talked with Aunt Society a little more, but I could tell that she wanted to talk with me privately. After a few more minutes, she said good-bye, with another long look at me.

Aunt Society fanned herself with her hand. “She was nice,” she said. “Who was that?”

I stared at her. “That was Mrs. Bracy. You didn’t recognize her?”

“No. What does she do?”

Something clicked in my head when she said that. She couldn’t be left alone, no matter what she’d told Mrs. Bracy. I went out to the front yard. As I pulled up the signs, I saw Mrs. Bracy come out of the Smithfields’ house. She walked back over to me. I thanked her for passing me into eighth grade. I told her that was part of what my letter said.

“I didn’t want to say much with your aunt there because I didn’t want to upset her,” she said quietly. “Our schools hold to the same policies as the White schools, you know, so you’ve got to get into school or the authorities could send a truant officer over here if they wanted to. I’m glad, though, that your aunt can stay by herself a bit now. She must be improving. “

“I thought so, too, but she didn’t even know who you were,” I said flatly. “I wanted to try to work, so I could pay somebody to sit with her. But it seems like she’s starting to lose her memory. Aunti Val’s coming for the fair and I was hoping she’d help me find somebody, but now I don’t know.”

I tucked the signs under my arm, remembering Big Willie and the coal mines. “Mrs. Bracy, I know kids who are out of school but truant officers don’t bother them. Why can’t I be like them?”

She stared at me so long I hoped she wouldn’t ask for names. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. “Well, glory be! Of course!” she said. She pointed her finger at me. “You can be a hardship case, like farm children still working in the fields. And medical emergencies. At least for a while. I’ll talk with the principal tonight, and see if we can’t get some of your classmates to bring your homework to you for the next month, say until after the fair. You know how to use your brain, Cece.” She patted me on the shoulder and went back over to the Smithfields’.

I threw the signs into the air and danced the Charleston. I was actually glad to be a hardship case!

The days marched into October, closer to the forty-third Negro State Fair, and Aunti Val. Our fair was held a week later on the same grounds as the big North Carolina State Fair, the one mostly for White people, sponsored by the North Carolina State Agricultural Society. Our fair was organized along the same lines as the White one, but was sponsored by our Colored North Carolina Industrial Association. Mr. Berry O’Kelly, the mayor of Method, was president. I’d never been to Method, but I’d learned in school that it was founded by Colored people right after Emancipation and so was very historic.

Angel Mae and Swan took turns bringing and picking up my homework, so that was a blessing. I missed being in the classroom with them, but I was grateful to have such good friends. Homework in eighth grade was much harder, and Angel Mae and Swan didn’t always explain the lessons clearly. I hadn’t even met my new teachers.

Still, it was better than no school, because I didn’t dare leave Aunt Society alone at all now. These last few days I’d fix her lunch or dinner, but she’d not eat, or say she already had. Other times she didn’t eat until after I told her to ten or fifteen times. I also had to make sure she swallowed all her pills. Not that she refused to take them. She just didn’t swallow them until I told her to. She kept forgetting to do so many things. When I told Mrs. Smithfield, she allowed that Aunt Society was probably succumbing to old age due to her strokes.

Angel Mae told me that she and Evalina wanted me to take them to meet Aunti Val when she reached the Stackhouse from the train station. I shook my head and nodded toward my aunt’s room. “Can’t leave her. She’s not doing so good.”

“I thought she was getting better,” Angel Mae said.

“She was, until I told her Aunti Val was coming.” They laughed, but I didn’t. “It’s the truth. That’s when she started going downhill again.”

Chapter
Twenty

T
he evening before Aunti Val was to arrive, Mrs. Smithfield came over. “Good news, Cece. Mr. Smithfield said he’d stay with Society while you go meet Valentina at the Stackhouse,” she said.

“Oh, hallelujah!” I grabbed her around the neck and hugged her until she squirmed.

“Listen, I had to promise Alton that I’d bake a Lady Baltimore cake just for him,” she said low as she straightened her hair and dress. “He’s doing this for
you
because he feels bad for giving Society that bell. He thought it’d be funny to have her ring it. “

While she was in with Aunt Society, I ran over to Evalina’s house and told her. Her mother, Miss Josie, sat and listened and shook her head. She and Aunt Society hadn’t spoken to each other for years because of Miss Josie’s ducks’ and guinea hens’ poop.

The next afternoon finally arrived. My heart thumped so fast I could barely breathe. The star was on her way! I wore my organdy frock and my pumps, with my hair twisted into a neat bun, and cologne behind my ears. I wished they were pierced so I could wear Momma’s pretty baubles.

I went into the kitchen, where my aunt sat at the table, to make sure she was situated before Mr. Smithfield came. “Angel Mae, Evalina, Swan, and I are going to the Stackhouse for a few minutes, but Mr. Smithfield’ll sit with you,” I reminded her for the fifth time that day.

She drank some sweet tea. “Why?” she asked.

“Well, the fair starts tomorrow and we want to — uh — see the people coming in,” I stammered. She hadn’t asked that before.

“Which people?”

I hesitated. She’d know soon enough. “To see Aunti Val,” I said.

Silence. She drank some more sweet tea and stared out the back porch door.

Mr. Smithfield arrived at the front porch with a newspaper and his cigars. “I want an autograph,” he whispered.

“All right. Thank you so much!” I whispered back, and took him to my aunt. “Aunt Society, I won’t be gone long. Aunt Society?” I stood by her until she lifted her good hand briefly, then dropped it into her lap.

“Just go,” she said in the coldest voice I’d ever heard. “Just go. Just go!”

“She’s mad at me,” I told my friends at Evalina’s, blinking back tears. “She hates Aunti Val.”