Coming of Age in Mississippi (26 page)

“Goddamn! Can’t see no fuckin’ peace ’round here,” he said, slamming the screen door.

Something inside me popped.

“You mothafucka! I’m
tired
of you! What’s wrong with you, you can’t see no peace? What have I done to you?
You’re
the one. Can’t nobody see no peace for you going around here cussin’ and fussin’ all the time.” I ran up on the porch and picked up the piece of broken mirror Mama had left there. “I’ll kill you! You son of a bitch! You
need
to be dead!” I screamed, rushing to the screen door.

I was so mad I was stone out of my mind. When I ran for the door, Raymond immediately latched it from inside. He stood behind it looking at me like he wanted to strike me. But he knew if he opened the door I would cut him with the mirror. I was crying like crazy. I could hardly see for the water in my eyes. As I was jerking on the door, Mama came up behind him.

“What’s wrong with you, Essie Mae? Put that mirror down! You losin’ your mind or somethin’?” she yelled at me.

“I didn’t do nothin’! I came out on the porch for you and this fucker come talkin’ ’bout um driving him crazy, he can’t see no peace for me! What in the shit have I done? Um getting tired of this shit around here! Um gonna leave right now! Open this door! Let me get my clothes!” I cried, jerking on the door again with all my might.

They wouldn’t open it and I ran around to the back door and found it latched too. All the other children came running to the house from down the hill, where they had been playing, as I ran to the front of the house. When I came up on the
porch, Mama was opening the door, but Raymond forced her back into the house when he saw me and latched it again.

“Open this door!” I screamed, pulling and kicking at the wooden frame.

“Shut up your mouth!” Mama yelled. “What’s wrong with you? Shut up! People all up in the quarters can hear you.”

“I don’t give a goddamn about people hearing me! Nobody in this fuckin’ town ain’t no good no way. Um
tired
of this shit! What have I done to Raymond? What have I done to him!! I know what his problem is! I know what’s wrong with him …”

“Shut up, gal! Shut up! Everybody is listenin’ to you!”

“I
told
you once, Mama! I
told
you he wasn’t no good. He ain’t
no
good! I hear him fussin’ at you
every
mornin’ and you don’t say
nothin’
to him! What do you say? You just sit there and take it and let him walk all over you! Um
tired
of him walkin’ all over you and treatin’ us like we’re dirt or somethin’. If you don’t want me to get my clothes,” I screamed, “I’m just gonna leave without them. I don’t need them no way. Um just gonna go away, Mama. Um just gonna go away and kill myself!” I walked down off the porch. I was so mad, I was talking to myself.

“That’s all right, Mama, um goin’. Um leavin’ this town. Ain’t
nobody
no good here, black or white.”

“Where you goin’, gal?” Mama yelled from the house with a tone of sorrow in her voice.

“I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know,” I muttered to myself.

As I walked toward Miss Pearl’s house, they were all standing out in the yard staring at me. I wanted to kill all of them. “They ain’t worth it,” I thought, walking by them. As I passed, they stared at me like I had lost my mind. I turned the little curve in front of Miss Pearl’s and walked up toward the highway. My cousin, Miss Clara, and all of them were standing out in the road.

“Essie Mae! What’s wrong wit’ you? What’s goin’ on down there?” Miss Clara asked, walking toward me. “Come on in and tell me what’s wrong,” she said, leading me to her house.
She took me inside and wiped my face with a towel. I lay on her sofa and cried for a while as she patted me on the back.

“Essie Mae, what happen? What were you screamin’ and carryin’ on ’bout?” her husband, Mr. Leon, asked.

“I had a fight with Raymond and I’m not gonna stay there anymore.”

“Did he beat you?” he asked angrily.

I just shook my head no.

“You want me and Clara to take you to Diddly?”

“I wanta get my clothes,” I said. “But Mama them won’t let me in the house.”

“You want me to go and get your clothes?” Leon asked.

“No! Raymond and Mama won’t give them to you. They will just get mad with you.”

“Then why don’t you just leave them and let Diddly git them,” he said.

“My daddy won’t go down there. And I don’t want him to go because Raymond would be mad with Mama if Daddy went there.” I sat there thinking for a while. “I know what. Take me to the sheriff. He would come back with me and I’ll get my clothes ’cause Mama ain’t gonna give them to nobody else.”

As Mr. Leon and Miss Clara drove me to Ed Cassidy’s house, they acted like they were scared, but I wasn’t. I figured the sheriff could get my clothes if nobody else could. I was old enough to leave home. I had bought all the clothes myself out of what I had earned.

Mr. Leon and Miss Clara waited in the car for me as I walked up on the sheriff’s porch. I was still crying as I knocked. Mrs. Cassidy came to the door.

“Yes?” she asked. “What can I do for you?” She stood on the other side of the screen door staring at me suspiciously.

“Is Mr. Cassidy home?” I asked, tears still running down my face.

“Yes, but he’s eatin’ dinner. Is it serious?” she asked.

“Yes, it
is
serious and I would like to see him now,” I said.

“Well, I’m sorry, he’s eatin’ dinner right now. He’ll be out in a little while. You can sit in the swing and wait for him,” she said, going back into the house.

“How long is it gonna take?” I asked.

“Fifteen twenty minutes,” she answered without turning around.

When she went back and told him, he came right out. I guess she must have told him I was crying.

“What happened?” he asked, looking at me as though he was trying to remember my name.

“I just had a fight with Raymond and I left home. They won’t let me get my clothes and I bought them. They’re my clothes and I want them and I’m gonna take them. Now if you don’t come and go back with me to get them, I’m goin’ back by myself and if Raymond touch me, I’m gonna kill him, and it’s gonna be
your
fault ’cause I told you. I want my clothes so you better come go back with me.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doin’?”

“I’m old enough to know what I’m doin’. I was old enough to go to New Orleans and Baton Rouge and work and buy them. I’m old enough to send myself to school too. I don’t owe Raymond nothin’ and I want my clothes from there.”

“What your mama think about this?”

“Mama ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.”

“Wait a minute till I finish eatin’, then I’ll drive you down there and talk to Ray. Are you sure you wanna leave home?”

“I know what I’m doing!” I said sharply.

He gave me a funny look and went back into the house. I told Mr. Leon and Miss Clara, who were still sitting in the car, that they could leave me. They drove off and I went back and sat on Cassidy’s steps and waited for him to finish his dinner. As I sat there crying, I thought of how much I hated Raymond and wanted to kill him and how much I hated Centreville. Sitting on Ed Cassidy’s steps, remembering how he took Jerry out in the camp area to be beaten up by Withers them, I hated him more than all the whites in Centreville. I
hated the thought of him taking me anywhere. But I knew Mama and Raymond wouldn’t let me get my clothes if I went back alone.

In a little while, Cassidy came out, backed his little pickup truck out into the street, and opened the door for me to get in. I jumped up beside him without even looking at him. As he drove through the quarters, all the Negroes were sitting out in their yards or on their porches. They all stared at me sitting up in Ed Cassidy’s truck.

“I know Ray,” Cassidy said. “This ain’t like Ray. We never had no trouble outta Ray. I can’t understand this. What’s goin’ on there? Ain’t Ray your daddy?”

“No, he ain’t my daddy!” I answered coldly, knowing he knew Raymond wasn’t my daddy.

“Where is your daddy?” he asked.

“My daddy live in Woodville.…”

“Are you gonna go live with your daddy?”

“I don’t know!” I snapped, hinting that I wasn’t interested in talking to him. We drove along for a while in silence.

“Well, look like everybody is out this evening,” he said, looking around at the Negroes staring at us as we went by. I didn’t answer or look at the Negroes. I kept my eyes straight ahead of me, fixed on the road.

When he got to our house, he stopped right at the front gate. Raymond was sitting out under the pecan tree and most of the children were out in the yard. I jumped out of the truck.

“Wait, I’m gonna get my clothes. I’ll just put them in the back of the truck,” I said to Cassidy as he got out of the truck too.

“Hey, Ray! Come over here a minute. I wanna talk to you,” Cassidy called to Raymond.

I stood by the gate for a while and looked at Raymond as he shuffled toward the sheriff, half grinning like he was scared of him. Instead of coming through the gate past me, he
went through the driveway. I ran up the walk into the house. Mama was standing right inside the living room as I entered.

“What you have to go git Cassidy fer? All them people up in the quarter was sittin’ out there lookin’, I bet. Everybody’s gonna be talkin’. What you call yourself doin’?”

“What I’m doin’ is I’m leavin’ here because I am
tired
of this shit. Mama, I’m sorry. I just can’t take it. I just can’t take this stuff.”

“What stuff? What Ray did to you now?” she asked me with her eyes full of water.

“What has he
done?
You know what he’s done. Besides he can’t
stand
me. I hear him fussing at you every morning. Adline hear it too,” I said. Adline was standing there looking sad. When I mentioned her name, she began to cry.

“Don’t you take these clothes outta here!” Mama yelled.

“These are
my
clothes! I bought every one of them. Raymond or you didn’t pay a penny for them! I’m gonna take them outta here, every one of them,” I said as I snatched clothes off the wall, took them out of the cedar chest, and looked for my shoes. “Where my shoes? I want everything I got in this house! I’m sorry, Mama, but I’m never comin’ back in this house again. I wish you have a long happy life with Raymond. And if I ever see you again it won’t be here.”

Adline cried even more when I said I was never coming back and Mama began grabbing the clothes away from me. I could tell she wanted to hit me, but she was scared because Cassidy was outside. I jerked the clothes out of her hands.

“Looka there!” Mama wept. “Just a
wild
woman! Just crazy! People are gonna be talkin’ for
years
about this.”

“I just don’t care how people talk, Mama. I just don’t care. They can talk all they want. I’m just
tired
of this! These people just ain’t no damn good! Everybody in this fuckin’ town ain’t no good. I’m gonna
leave
this goddamn town right now!”

After I had piled all my clothes on the bed, I took them out by armfuls and threw them into the back of Cassidy’s truck. I ran in and out of the house with a load every few minutes or
so. Mama and Adline them stood at the foot of the bed without moving. Their eyes followed every move I made. Once I came out and threw clothes clear over the other side of the truck where Raymond and Cassidy were standing. I ran around to pick them up.

“Don’t look at me!” I screamed at Raymond as he looked down at me picking up the clothes. “I’ll kill you! Don’t you look at me! These are my clothes! I wish you had been in that house, I’da killed you!”

“All right, you’re leavin’ now, whatta you gonna still kill him about?” Cassidy asked me.

I didn’t even answer him. I just turned around and walked back toward the house.

“I ain’t tellin’ her to leave here. She is leavin’ on her own. Now if she leaves here, she betta not come back. Makin’ a big scene ’bout nothin’,” Raymond said, loud enough for me to hear.

“About nothin’!” I shouted. “You know what it’s about!”

“Calm down, girl! Calm down! I’ve had enough of this,” Cassidy said as I stood there puffing at Raymond. I looked around as I was going into the house for another load. Miss Pearl and everyone living down the road was standing out in their yards looking.
Everybody
was looking. When I had taken everything I thought I had in the house I got in the truck.

“I’m finished now, let’s go,” I said to Cassidy.

“Let’s go! Let’s go where? To Woodville?” Cassidy asked as he got into the truck.

It struck me then that I didn’t really know where I wanted to go.

“Take me up to Miss Clara and Mr. Leon,” I finally said, and we drove off, leaving Raymond standing in the road.

Miss Clara and Mr. Leon were standing out in the yard when Cassidy drove up. They helped me take my things out of the truck. Cassidy just sat there as we unloaded it and didn’t say a word. When we finished, I told him thanks and he left. I sat at Miss Clara’s a long time trying to decide what to
do. I wanted very much to finish the semester in Centreville so I tried to think of someone I could live with for the remaining six weeks of that semester. I couldn’t think of anyone. Miss Clara and Mr. Leon offered to let me stay with them, but I refused because they lived too close to Raymond and Mama and Miss Pearl. I didn’t want any part of that bottom again. I was about to panic when Miss Clara suggested that they drive me over to see my daddy and ask him to help me decide what to do.

As Mr. Leon drove to Woodville, I thought of all my daddy’s old habits—drinking, gambling, and women. I still remembered him rolling his dice on the floor and how he left Mama for Florence. I wondered what type of woman he was living with now—if she was yellow like Florence or brown like Mama. I knew Daddy wasn’t married to her and I wondered if he would be leaving her soon for someone else.

When Mr. Leon drove up in Daddy’s yard, I definitely decided not to live with him whatever happened. The little rotten-wood L-shaped house he had rented on my Cousin Hattie’s place reminded me of all the little shacks we had lived in before.