Coming of Age in Mississippi (23 page)

After five minutes of talk with her about how bad we needed that money, we were outside waiting for Buck.

I worked at the chicken factory for about a month. Within that time I saw the entire place. I shall never forget the slaughterhouse—the men pulling feathers from the bloody chickens, sloshing in blood up to their knees, the globs of blood dripping off their rubber aprons right into the boots they wore. The taut faces of the two men who stood at the door haunt me still. They stood there grasping chickens by the neck and knifing them one after the other, their eyes sparkling with what looked to me like pleasure. During the breaks I often overheard these same two men cracking jokes: “I musta killed three thousand of them motherfuckers already,” one would brag. “Shit, I hear them fuckers squawking all day and all night. They’re driving me crazy,” the other would say. I felt sick every time I looked into the slaughterhouse or saw the men who worked there.

But there was something even more sickening to me—those rotten chickens that came in with sores all over them. I would see women take them, cut the knots and rotten sores
off and box the remaining parts. These women would often have terrible rashes break out on their hands from the hot blood and diseased flesh.

I couldn’t think of eating chicken for years after working in that factory and I still don’t eat boxed chicken today.

When I entered school that fall, I realized that the chicken factory had not only turned me off chickens but on to life. Now that I was back with the same old classmates and teachers, I was bored. The little games we often played in class seemed so stupid now. And all the girls seemed silly and the boys childish. Even my teachers seemed dumb. I used to sit in class when some lesson was being explained and say to myself, “Everybody knows that,” or “Can’t you talk about something new?” I was making straight A’s without studying half as much as before. I think Darlene bored me more than the rest of my classmates. She had been my only rival for years. Now she appeared just as dumb as the others. Often when I got bored in class, I would look at her and hate her because she wasn’t giving me any competition anymore. I missed the excitement of looking for ways of beating her. Now I felt as though I was in a class all by myself, and I didn’t want it that way. I was lonesome.

After I gave up on the class, my only outlets were basketball, gymnastics and tumbling, and the church. I intensified these activities and never missed a day’s practice. Then I
bought a piano for fifty dollars from a classmate. Now that I had the piano, I practiced all the time. Within a few months, I became the regular pianist at Centreville Baptist. I played for Sunday school and B.T.U., and the church paid me four dollars each Sunday. I was still working for Mrs. Hunt, so I was now earning a lot.

At the end of the year, for the first time in the history of the school, Mr. Hicks sponsored a Gymnastics and Tumbling Night. I was the only girl tumbler on the program. When it was over, several people from the audience came backstage and crowded around me and said, “We just wanted to see if you had any bones in your body.” This made me feel so silly and embarrassed, I almost didn’t feel human.

But Mr. Hicks, my coach, was beaming. Mama came backstage that night beaming too. In her own little way she was trying to be extra nice to me.

“Put your clothes on before you git a cold. Look how wet you is!” she said, helping me get dressed.

“Mama, how do you like your daughter? She is something special, huh!” Mr. Hicks said to Mama.

“Sho’ is,” Mama said, blushing.

All the way home that night Mama was talking about Mr. Hicks. “They sho’ need some mo’ teachers like Mr. Hicks. That was the best program they ever had here yet.” She said a million little nice things about Mr. Hicks and not a word about me. But I knew she must have felt good about me being star of the program.

Stunt Night was held a few days before my class program. And I had what I thought were my two best aces coming off on the class program. I had written a one-act comedy called “Mama’s Apron String.” The play was about three teen-age girls whose father was in the service and who were under their mother’s watch twenty-four hours a day. Every night one of the girls could be seen pulling a trick on her mother as the others covered for her. They each managed a date a week without their mother ever knowing about it. The play ended as one of
the girls was slipping out one night and discovered that on the nights they were supposed to be playing tricks on their mother, she was actually tricking them and having three dates to their one per week. The play was a hit that night—especially among the teen-age girls who were looking for ideas.

My second ace took the audience by storm. When seven girls, including me, walked out on the stage dressed in extra short black crepe-paper skirts over black bikini panties that started below our belly buttons, and black paper bras, the whole auditorium rocked as we swayed into what I called “An Exotic African Café Style Dance.” Principal Willis almost had a heart attack before he could get up front to stop us. He came running up the center aisle waving his arms with saliva dripping from his mouth. He was opening and closing his mouth as he approached the stage. I don’t think anyone heard him, because the air was filled with the boys’ wolf whistles and the old ladies’ cries of disapproval. The principal scrambled straight up on the platform and headed for us as though he was going to push us backstage. Looking at the audience, I said, “That’s all, folks,” and wiggled off as everyone roared.

I looked back as I headed down the steps backstage. The audience was leaving and I saw Mama coming after me through the side entrance with fire leaping out of her eyes.

“Put your clothes on, gal. Let’s go home,” she yelled at me. She seldom called me “gal,” so I knew she was real mad with me. “You got some nerves comin’ out on that stage naked like that,” she said.

“I told you about the dance. I told you it was an African dance,” I said.

“What you know about some African dance? You don’t know nothin’ about Africa. Ain’t never seen a African in your life,” she shouted.

The rest of the girls were scared stiff. They were mad as hell with me. So were Principal Willis and my teacher. Everybody stayed out of Mama’s reach backstage. I guess they thought she would have hit them or something worse the way
she was slinging my clothes and pushing me around. All this time my teacher was hiding behind the curtains. She wasn’t only hiding from Mama but from the principal too.

All the way home that night Mama kept saying, “You just gittin’ besides yourself ever since that stunt night and people talkin’ ’bout how good you is. People ain’t doin’ nothin’ but making you git besides yourself.”

Two days later school was out and I was on good old Greyhound, sitting in the back of the bus as usual headed for New Orleans and Aunt Celia’s. I hunted around three weeks for a job. Before I realized it, I was walking into the chicken factory again out of pure desperation. When I was told they weren’t hiring anyone, I was glad. I was just about to give up on New Orleans and write to my cousin Ivory Lee in Kansas City when one night Winnie came to me.

“One of the boys that wash dishes with me is sick,” she said. “He gonna be outta work for two weeks. I told Mr. Steve that you may wanta work in his place. It don’t pay but twenty-six dollars a week. You kin work the two weeks anyway and if Ivory Lee say you kin come you would have made your bus-fare.”

I knew I wouldn’t like that job but I decided to take it. “I will do good if I can stand it two weeks,” I thought.

The first time I walked in the side door of Maple Hill that read EMPLOYEES ONLY, I wanted to walk right out again. It was so cramped and hot in the little narrow kitchen. I saw Winnie standing there stacking dirty dishes into a dishwasher. Her clothes were wet to her waist and big drops of sweat were dripping off her face. Two cooks kept colliding with each other in the little space between the stoves and steam table. One was a big tall red man who weighed about three hundred pounds or more. The other was about four feet high. Waiters were running in and out of the doors leading from the kitchen to other parts of the restaurant. They picked up plates of food
as fast as those two cursing cooks put them down. A tall boy entered and set a big aluminum tray of more dirty dishes on an iron stand at Winnie’s side. They were all too busy to notice me standing there in the door.

“Shit, Howard, that mothafuckin’ steak is raw,” the little short cook said to the big one.

“Who’s running this goddamn kitchen, Mike? Keep your mothafuckin’ mouth closed ‘fore I ram your head in that hot grease,” the fat one said.

“That’s
my
order, Waite,” a tall skinny waiter yelled as he ran after an old waiter who had just picked up a plate from the kitchen.

“Like shit this your order, Percy. Go ask Howard!”

I stood there thinking, “What kind of place is this? It’s worse than the chicken factory. Shit, I’m goin’ home.”

“Essie Mae! You jus’ gitting here?” Winnie called. “Come on help me wit’ these dishes. Lunch hour done started and these dishes is pilin’ up like crazy! Mike, you’n Howard look. This is my oldest grandchild,” Winnie said, pointing to me. “Ain’t she pretty? Jus’ like I was when I was her age.”

“Mama, I shoulda known you in your younger days,” Howard said, giving me a fresh grin. “You sure you looked this good, Mama?”

Mike and Howard looked me over carefully, and within a couple of hours all the other workers in the restaurant got around to taking a look at me too. I started washing dishes without speaking to anyone. The dishes were coming in so fast that I really didn’t have time. Every two minutes the busboy brought in another tray. It got so hot in that little kitchen with everybody running around, and all the stoves and ovens burning full blast, I thought that if I could only last through the rush hour, I would be doing well. As I raked the food off the plates into the garbage cans, I thought about all the hungry people I knew, and how those white folks could just throw away so much food.

Around two o’clock the rush hour was over and we finally
had a chance to breathe. Winnie and I caught up on the dirty dishes and took a lunch break. We had our choice of any of the day’s specials. Suddenly I began to like the job.

During the lunch break Winnie and I sat at a little table in the pantry, where all the employees usually ate. As we sat there, I was again carefully observed by the workers. The place was flooded with men. Dorothy, the pantry girl, Winnie, and I were the only women working there. Four waiters and a busboy worked the dining room, two waiters and a cook worked the counter, and two cooks were in the kitchen. Every one of them was Negro except Mike, the owner’s son-in-law. From the way all the men stared at me, I got the feeling that they’d never seen a pretty girl before. Some insisted on being overly nice to me, in spite of the “hands off” expression on my face. Percy and Jack, the two tall young waiters from the counter, and P.J., a big husky waiter from the dining room, kept running in and asking me questions about school, and whether I was planning to stay long, and if I wanted them to steal me some ice cream, cake, or pie from the counter. I got tired of them declothing me with their eyes. Just as I was about to explode with anger, Winnie spoke up.

“Percy! Y’all leave Essie Mae alone! She ain’t come here to mess with you, she jus’ come here to work. You oughta be shame of yourself with a wife an’ house full of chillun at home.”

“Mama, why you gotta single
me
out all the time? Why you gotta broadcast to the whole world that um
married
anyhow?” Percy asked, annoyed. The rest of the men laughed. “What
you
gigglin’ at, Lily White?” Percy said to a Chinese-looking Negro who worked in the dining room.

“Trying to make ’em all as usual, huh, Percy?” Lily White said in a high-pitched effeminate voice. “That’s right, Mama, you protect your granddaughter from these
lechers
around here,” he giggled and walked to the other side of the room, shaking his ass at Percy.

“Yeah, Mama don’t have to worry ’bout
you
, hah, ’cause you think you got the same thing
she’s
got,” Percy said, pointing to me, as everybody laughed again.

I sat there unable to take my eyes off “Lily White.” He sounded so much like a woman I didn’t believe it. And he seemed to be flirting with Percy too.

“Don’t you let that bum ruffle you, honey,” Lily White said to me as though he were speaking woman to woman.

“C’mon, Essie Mae, ’fore them dishes start stackin’ up again,” Winnie said to me, picking up her plate from the table.

Winnie was supposed to leave at five but the dishes were coming in so fast that she decided to stay and help me until her replacement came. She kept looking up at the clock and saying, “Lola better hurry up an’ come. I been here since eight o’clock.” A little past six, a tall slim figure appeared outside the screen door.

“Mama! Open the door!” a frail girlish voice called to Winnie.

“It’s about time you got here, Lola,” Winnie said, going to let her in. Lola had long wavy auburn hair hanging down to her shoulders and wore what might have been a man’s or woman’s sport shirt with skin-tight pants. I was startled when she dashed into the men’s room.

“Winnie, is that a woman or a man?” I asked uncertainly.

“That’s a man. This place is full of ’em,” she answered.

I opened my mouth to ask her “full of what?” but I didn’t say anything because I was too stunned. Winnie finished stacking the dishes she had taken out of the machine. Then she went to the ladies’ room to change, leaving me at the dishwasher alone.

Shortly, Lola came out of the men’s room, pinning his hair up on his head with a few bobbies, then adding a comb to make a pompadour in the front. He caught me looking at him. “You Mama’s granddaughter?” he asked coldly.

“Yes,” I muttered, as Lily White appeared in the door.

“Where you been, comin’ in here two hours late?” he asked, swishing in the pantry doorway.

“What
business
is it of yours, long as I ain’t sleeping with
you,”
Lola snarled, throwing his head back, the comb falling out as he did so. He gracefully picked it up and replaced it.