Coming of Age in Mississippi (7 page)

“Eleven. I’ll be twelve next week,” I answered.

The saleslady acted as if she was mad and so did Mama. So I took the bed with the little brown posts. Then Mama picked out a green three-piece sofa set for the living room. Mama asked for an icebox and they didn’t have one. I was
glad because then I hoped she would buy one of those nice big refrigerators like the Johnsons and the Claibornes had. But she didn’t. She gave the lady a down payment on the furniture and we left. On the way home she kept telling me I shouldn’t want everything white folks had. She said that Miss Ola’s bed cost more money than our house had cost. “Miss Claiborne and Miss Ola done ruined you,” she said. I often got the feeling that Mama didn’t like Mrs. Claiborne acting like I was her daughter. The way she said they had “ruined me” I knew for a fact that she didn’t like them treating me like their equal. I remember once I had told her that I ate at the same table with the Claibornes and she asked me, “What they say to you when y’all be eatin’?” So I told her, “We
just
eat and
talk!
” “
Eat
and
talk!
” she said. “What you gotta talk about with them white folks?”

After the furniture was delivered, we settled down. There were only a few things that kept us from being middle class—the outdoor toilet, the wood stove, and the tin bathtub. However, we did have mahogany furniture and Raymond had a small bank account from the service and a car.

Now that we had moved into Raymond’s house, he brought James to live with us. James was now four years old. He had gotten used to living with Miss Pearl, and he wouldn’t stay with us in the beginning. Every night he would cry until Mama and Raymond sent him over to Miss Pearl’s to spend the night.

When we went back to old Willis High that September, I was twelve years old and in sixth grade. Adline was in third grade and Junior in second. We no longer carried one sandwich apiece to school, we were now able to carry two, and they weren’t always peanut butter either. Sometimes we had bologna. Everything at school seemed to take on a different look. I got a big kick out of showing off my bologna sandwich and drinking the cola I bought from the snack bar each day.

But my new happiness didn’t last very long. We had been
living in the midst of Raymond’s people for about three months and none of them had befriended Mama. Adline, Junior, and I had been accepted, at least by the children. All of us had become friends in school. Raymond’s sister Darlene was my age and in the same grade and his sister Cherie was the same age and grade as Adline; then Raymond had five or six little nephews that Junior played with. But the adults hardly spoke to Mama. Miss Pearl and Raymond’s older sisters would pass right by her without saying anything, and Mama would be so hurt. Sometimes she would sit on the porch and stare over at their house as if she wished she could just go over there and talk to them. I think Mama thought she could somehow make the adults accept her through us. So she began to make us study our lessons at home twice as hard as before. I was still doing my homework alone, but every night now Raymond would drill Adline and Junior again and again over the same lessons. “Little man, where is your book?” he would say to Junior, or “Come on, Junior, you ain’t got time to be playing.” After he had finished with Junior, he was often too disgusted with him to go on to Adline and he would tell me to help Adline with her lesson before I started mine. Within a month I was helping both of them, because no matter how Raymond drilled Junior he just didn’t learn anything. Now I had very little time for my own homework. But I still managed to keep my grades among the highest in my class.

After Raymond had given Adline and Junior up and told Mama, “They are the dumbest little things I ever saw,” Mama started in on me. She was always telling me things like, “Y’all gotta do good in school. Y’all can’t let Darlene and Cherie be smarter than y’all. They already think they is better than y’all ’cause they is yellow.” When she said this to me I knew she didn’t mean “y’all,” she meant me. She had given Adline and Junior up just as Raymond had.

I was already making better grades than Darlene. However, now that I realized Mama was depending upon me to
keep my grades higher, I tried even harder. Soon a visible strain of competition developed between us. I remember in class we would try to outdo each other in answering more questions, working more problems, and even trying to outread each other. Cherie and Adline got along well together. Neither one of them was the competing kind. But after a while Darlene and I didn’t get along very well at all. She worked twice as hard as me and she hated like hell that I still made better grades.

Because my grades were going so well, I decided I could afford to go out for the junior high basketball team, the only extracurricular activity offered for sixth graders. Mrs. Willis, the principal’s wife and one of the most active teachers at Willis High, was my coach. She was the eighth grade homeroom teacher, she managed the snack bar at noon, and now she had organized a junior high basketball team. Because I was the tallest girl on the team, she worked with me more than with the others, drilling me mostly in jumping and rebounding. I would practice an extra hour each day after school plus the two evenings a week that I wasn’t working for Mrs. Claiborne. By the time we got ready for our first game, I was the best player on the team. I was also the most scared player because Mrs. Willis expected so much of me.

Our first game was to be played on a Thursday in November at some little country school I had never heard of. I kept hoping it would be called off. It rained that Wednesday and on Thursday morning it was cold and cloudy—I remember I got out of bed and prayed that the outdoor court at the other school would be too wet for us to play. But it wasn’t. In fact, when Mrs. Willis called up to ask about the court, the coach told her that it was in good shape and that he was still expecting us.

We arrived late. The other team was already warming up. Once I looked at those girls out there, all the little courage I had managed to muster up was completely gone. These were the biggest girls I had ever seen. They were even larger than
the girls that played on our high school team. They looked like grown women.

“These are some mighty big girls,” Mrs. Willis commented to us as if we hadn’t already noticed them. And I felt my blood stop circulating. “What you all gotta do,” she advised us, “is guard them close and if possible get them to foul a lot. Try to keep them from that goal too.” Then she looked at me and started to say something but changed her mind when she saw how I was shaking.

The referee blew his whistle, and the girls from both teams went to the center of the court and surrounded him. I found myself standing there too. “All you girls know the rules of the game?” he asked and we nodded yes. “Well, remember you have only five fouls and you are then taken out of the game and you can only bounce the ball three times before it’s passed on to the next girl.” When the game started, the referee blew his whistle again and passed the ball to one of the girls on my team. She passed the ball to the other forward opposite her and the forward passed it on to me. I was supposed to pass the ball back to her and fall back to play the pivot. But I didn’t. I just looked up at the big girl that was guarding me and froze. “Play that ball, Moody!” I heard Mrs. Willis yell. I held the ball up as though I was going to pass it. But again I froze. “If you don’t play that ball …” I heard Mrs. Willis say. I looked toward the goal and the only thing I could remember was that I was supposed to shoot. I didn’t bounce or pass. I ran straight to the goal with the ball held high above my head, and shot it. All the time I was running, the referee was blowing his whistle and the spectators standing around the court were laughing like crazy. Mrs. Willis took me out of the game in the first quarter. We lost. And everyone blamed me and made fun of me all the way back to school. I had enough embarrassment from that game to last me a year.

Every day after that I would sit in my classroom after the lunch hour and watch the other girls on the team practice. Once or twice Mrs. Willis asked me to come back to the
team. But I wouldn’t. It was one thing to play ball among people you knew but I didn’t like playing outsiders.

Just before Christmas, I came home from Mrs. Claiborne’s one evening and found Mama’s sister Alberta at the house. As I walked in, she was running around like she was lost. Mama was in bed. I looked at Mama and she had big drops of sweat dropping off her face. Her eyes were closed and she was biting her lips as though she was in great pain. I stood there looking at her for a long time before Alberta saw me standing there.

“Essie Mae, come here and help me find some clean rags,” she said to me.

“What’s wrong with Mama, Alberta?” I asked her.

“She is about to have the baby,” she answered, plowing her way through the clothes in the dresser drawers.

“Look in that big box behind the door in Junior’s room,” I said. “Mama’s got a lot of rags in there.”

“I hope Raymond hurry up,” she said. “Toosweet is going to have this baby and I don’t know what to do,” she continued, almost crying.

When she said that, I ran back in the room to look at Mama. Her eyes were still closed and she was lying flat on her back clutching the sides of the bed. I looked at her belly and saw it move. I thought sure the baby was coming. I opened my mouth to call Alberta but the words wouldn’t come, I was so scared. “Essie Mae! Come out of there! Go outside and see if that water is getting hot!” Alberta yelled to me. But I couldn’t move. “What is she going to do with hot water?” I thought. “Get to the yard and look at that water, Essie Mae!” Alberta pushed me all the way through Junior’s room to the kitchen door. I walked outside and found a big fire burning around the washpot. It was now dark and the fire lit up the whole yard. I just stood there staring at the pot full of water
and the big blaze leaping up around it. The whole scene was like killing a hog at night.

As I was standing out there Raymond drove up, hitting the brakes so hard he sent rocks sailing into the air. He ran around to the side of the car and opened the door to help some old woman get out. She was carrying a ragged-looking black medicine bag, and looked so dried up she could hardly walk. Raymond was leading her to the front porch when he noticed me standing in the yard. “Essie Mae,” he called to me, “what are you doing here? Go on over to Pearl’s where Adline and Junior is.”

I walked out of the yard and headed down the road toward Miss Pearl’s, but halfway there I turned around and went back. I stood behind Raymond’s car for a long time looking and listening. At first it was real quiet. They had cut out all the lights but the one in Mama’s room. I couldn’t see anyone moving around inside. A little while later I heard Mama screaming and hollering and carrying on. Raymond came running out in the backyard and got a bucket of hot water from the washpot. All I could hear was Mama hollering from the house. Except for her yells everything else was still.

I stood out there thinking how bad it must hurt to have a baby. I would never have a baby if I had to holler and carry on like Mama, I thought. And that old lady. What did she know about delivering babies? Suppose she did something wrong and Mama died from it? I would kill Raymond if she died. “He should have taken Mama to the hospital,” I thought. “Instead he went out in the country and got that old woman to deliver Mama’s baby.”

When Mama finally stopped yelling, I went over to Miss Pearl’s. Well past midnight Raymond came over there and told us we could come home. As soon as he said that, Adline, Junior, and I ran all the way home to see the little baby. For the first time we weren’t scared to run down that dark road that late at night.

I was the first one to make it home. When I walked in the
door, that old lady was sitting beside the bed with her little black bag at her feet. She looked up and smiled at me when I walked over to see the baby, and something started crawling all over me and I started to shake. “Why is she still here?” I thought. “Something must be wrong with Mama.” But then I saw that Mama was asleep.

“Is the baby here?” Adline asked as she came in the door with Junior following her.

“Stop all that noise!” Alberta said from the kitchen. Why was Alberta still here too, I wondered.

Adline, Junior, and I were all standing at the foot of Mama’s bed and the old lady just sat there smiling. “Mama
must
be sick,” I thought.

“Alberta, is Mama sick?” I asked as she walked into Mama’s room.

“Is you crazy? Sho’ she’s sick after just having a baby.”

Then Mama opened her eyes and saw all of us, me, Adline, Junior, and Alberta standing at the foot of her bed. “Show them the baby, Toosweet,” Alberta said, “so they can go to bed.” There it was lying right next to Mama. She lifted the cover back and Adline, Junior, and I walked to the head of the bed and peeped at it. It was a girl. She didn’t look like she was just born like most babies. She looked like she was already four or five months old.

“She is some big!” I said.

“She is big,” Mama said. “She weigh ten pounds and three ounces.”

“That’s as much as I weigh, huh, Mama?” that little stupid Junior asked.

“Your belly weigh that much,” Mama said to him.

“You weigh that much, Essie Mae, when you came,” the old lady said to me.

I didn’t know how she knew I weighed that much. I wanted to ask her but I was scared. Something about her gave me the creeps. “Your mama brings big babies,” the old lady said. “Every one of her babies weighed from eight to ten pounds.” I
looked at her shocked this time and I figured she must have delivered all of us. “No wonder she looks so old,” I thought.

“Aunt Caroline, you ready to go?” Raymond asked her as he walked in the door.

“Yes, I guess so, and Toosweet is going to be all right,” the old lady said.

“Y’all go to bed!” Raymond said to us, and he and the old lady left.

I got up early the next morning because I wanted to talk to Mama and get a good look at the baby before I went to work. Mama was asleep when I went into her room. Her face looked different, I thought—so calm and young. She hadn’t looked young for a long time. Maybe it was because she was happy now. She had never been happy before to have a baby. I remembered how she had cried all the time after Junior and James were born. I thought she’d gotten to the point where she hated babies.