Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (26 page)

"I'm your Uncle Artis, your daddy's brother."

Artis, who had had a few drinks and didn't know Clarissa was passing for white that day, put his hand on her arm. "It's me, your Uncle Artis, honey . . . don't you know me?"

The perfume saleslady came around the corner, saw Artis and shrieked, "YOU GET AWAY FROM HER!" She ran to Clarissa and held her. "YOU GET AWAY FROM HER . . . HARRY! HARRY!"

The floor manager came running. "What's the matter?"

Still holding on to Clarissa to protect her, she shouted for the entire floor to hear, "THIS NIGGER WAS PAWING MY CUSTOMER! HE WAS GRABBING AT HER! I SAW HIM!"

Harry yelled, "GUARD!" and turned on Artis with slits for eyes. "Did you touch this white woman, boy?"

Artis was shocked. "Naw suh, that's my niece."

Artis tried to explain, but by that time, the guard had spun him around like a top and had his arm behind him and he was on his way out the back door.

The saleswoman comforted Clarissa. "It's okay, honey, that nigger's either drunk or crazy."

The group of lady shoppers who had gathered around offered sympathy. "Just another drunk Negro... See what happens when you're nice to them?"

Artis, who had skinned his hands and knees when he was thrown out in the concrete alley behind the store, caught the south-side streetcar and walked back behind the wooden sign that said COLORED. He sat down, wondering if that girl had been Clarissa, after all.

Years later, after Clarissa was married and had children, she came into Brittling's Cafeteria, where he was working carrying trays, and tipped him a quarter; but she didn't recognize him, and he didn't recognize her.

AUGUST 10, 1954

Mishaps Galore

Must be getting old or crazy . . . my other half, Wilbur, came home three days in a row, complaining of a headache . . . and is there anything worse than a man who has a little pain? Guess that's why we have the babies . . .

I, myself, was having a terrible time reading the paper, so yesterday morning, I went to Birmingham to get my eyes checked, and, lo and behold, I had on Wilbur's glasses and he had on mine. We are getting different colored ones next time.

I don't feel too bad. I heard there was a fire the other day over at Opal's beauty shop, and Biddie Louise Otis, who was hooked up to the permanent wave machine at the time, started screaming bloody murder because she thought it was her head that was on fire. But it was just some old hair in the wastepaper basket that was burning. Naughty Bird, Opal's shampoo girl, put out the fire and it was fine.

Don't forget to vote. Nobody is running against Grady Kilgore, but it makes him feel good, so do it anyway.

By the way, Jasper Peavey got another write-up in the
Railroad News
, and we know Big George and Onzell must be proud.

. . . Dot Weems . . .

P S. The Dill Pickle Club had its annual Icebox Follies again and it was hilarious as usual. My other half sang "Red Sails in the Sunset" again. Sorry, folks . . . I just cain't get him to learn a new one.

SEPTEMBER 14, 1986

Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode were taking a walk out behind the nursing home when a flock of Canada geese flew over, honking happily through the fall sky.

"Oh Evelyn, wouldn't you love to be going with them? Wonder where they're going?"

"Oh, Florida or Cuba, maybe."

"You think so?"

"Probably."

"Well, I wouldn't mind going to Florida, but I don't care a thing in the world about going to Cuba. Smokey used to say those geese were his pals, and when we'd ask him where it was that he'd go off to, he'd say, 'Oh, I just go where the wild geese goes . . .’"

They watched them fly out of sight, and continued on their walk.

"Don't you love ducks?"

"They're pretty, all right."

"I just love ducks. I guess you could say that I was always partial to fowl."

"What?"

"Fowl. You know—poultry, things with feathers, birds, chickens, roosters."

"Oh."

"Cleo and I would have our coffee out on the back porch every morning and watch the sun come up and listen to the birds . . . we'd always have about three or four good old hot cups of Red Diamond coffee and toast with peach or green pepper jelly, and we'd talk—well, I'd talk and he'd listen. We bad so many pretty birds come to the house: redbirds, robins, and the prettiest doves . . . you don't see birds like you used to, anymore.

"One day, Cleo was going out the door and he pointed up to where all the old blackbirds were sitting on a telephone wire in front of our house, and he'd say, 'Be careful what you say on the phone today, Ninny, you know they're up there listening to what you say. They can hear through their feet.'" She looked at Evelyn. "Do you believe that's true?"

"No. I'm sure he was just kidding you, Mrs. Threadgoode."

"Well, he probably was, but whenever I had a secret to tell, I’d look out the door and make sure they weren't sitting up there. He should have never told me that, knowing how much I love to jaw on the phone. I used to talk to everybody in town.

"I guess at one time we had upwards to two hundred fifty people living in Whistle Stop. But after they stopped most of the trains coming through, people just scattered all over like birds to the wind . . . went to Birmingham, or wherever, and never came back.

"Where the cafe was, they’ve put a Big Mac, and they've got some supermarket out on the highway that Mrs. Otis liked to go to because she clipped coupons. But I never could find anything I was looking for in there, and the lights hurt my eyes so bad, so I just walk over to Troutville to Ocie's grocery store to pick up whatever little bit I need."

Mrs. Threadgoode stopped. "Oh Evelyn, smell that . . . somebody's cooking barbecue!"

Evelyn said, "No honey, I think that's somebody just burning leaves."

"Well, it smells like barbecue to me. You like barbecue, don't you?  I love it. I'd pay a million dollars for a barbecue like Big George used to make, and a piece of Sipsey's lemon icebox pie. He made the best barbecue.

"He cooked it in a big old iron drum, out in the back of the cafe, and you could smell it for miles around, especially on a fall day. I could smell it all the way over to my house. Smokey said he was coming in on the train one time and he smelled it ten miles up the tracks from Whistle Stop. People drove all the way from Birmingham to get it. Where do you and Ed get your barbecue?"

"We get it over at the Golden Rule or Ollie's, mostly."

"Well, they're all right, but I don't care what you say, colored people can make barbecue better than anybody in the whole world."

Evelyn said, "They can do most everything better. I wish I was black."

"You mean colored?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Threadgoode was completely baffled. "Lord, honey, why? Most of them want to be white; they're always trying to bleach their skin and straighten their hair."

"Not anymore."

"Well, maybe not now, but they used to. Just thank the good Lord He made you white. I just cain't imagine why anybody would want to be colored when they don't hafta be."

"Oh, I don't know, they just seem to fit in with each other . . . have more of a good time, or something. I've always felt . . . well . . . stiff, I guess, and they always look like they're having so much fun."

Mrs. Threadgoode thought about it for a minute. "Well now, that may be true, they do have a lot of fun, and they can let go when they want to, but they have their sorrows, just like the rest of us. Why, you've never heard anything sadder than a colored funeral. They scream and carry on just like somebody was tearing the very heart out of them. I think pain hurts them more than it does us. It took three men to hold Onzell when Willie Boy was buried. She went crazy and tried to jump in the grave with him. I don't ever want to go to another one of those for as long as I live."

"I know there's good and bad in everything," Evelyn said, "but I still can't help but envy them, somehow. I just wish I could be free and open like they are."

"Well, I don't know about that," Mrs. Threadgoode said. "I just wish I had me a barbecue and a piece of pie, and I'd be happy."

OCTOBER 15, 1949

Naughty Bird Peavey was sixteen when she first laid eyes on Le Roy Grooms. She knew immediately that he was her man; and she told him so. He was employed as a cook on
The Crescent
, which passed through Whistle Stop on its way to New York, via Atlanta. One year later, a little girl was born, whom Le Roy named Almondine, after the trout dish featured on the pullman dining car menu.

Le Roy was a handsome, good-natured boy who traveled a lot and made many stops along the route; and when Naughty Bird found out that he had moved in with an almost white, but not quite, high yellow octoroon woman in New Orleans, it just about killed her.

She was desperate when she saw the ads in the Slagtown News:

SKIN TOO DARK? WANT TO HAVE A COMPLEXION THAT CHARMS?

Then try Dr. Fred Palmer's Skin Whitener

CLEAR LIGHT SKIN WINS KISSES

Men admire a lovely, smooth skin. Use

SUCCESS OINTMENT,
to have a lighter, more beautiful skin in 5 days.

BEAUTY BEGINS WITH A FAIR FACE

So bring out all your natural beauty that

you can with White's Specific Face Cream (Bleach)

HAIR TOO KINKY?

Let modern science quickly end tight, scalp-clinging

twisty curls. Have gloriously beautiful, straight silky

hair with Genuine Black and White Pluko Hair

Dressing

Try Relaxa . . . and have straight hair in 7 days.

Say

GOODBYE TO HAIR KINKS

If your hair is short and kinky, just get NO-KINK

today. Temporarily makes hair lie down.

Naughty Bird tried them all, and more, but after a month she was still the coal-black, nappy-headed shampoo girl from Whistle Stop, and Le Roy was still in New Orleans with his high yellow girl friend.

So she took her little girl over to Sipsey's, went back home, got in the bed, and was dying of love.

There was nothing anybody could do. Opal came over to see her and begged her to come back to work at the beauty shop, but Naughty Bird lay there, day after day, drinking Turkey gin and playing the same song over and over. Sipsey said it would have been better for Naughty Bird if Le Roy had died instead of living with another woman, because after drinking Turkey gin for two months straight, Naughty Bird was not getting any relief.

Fortunately, Sipsey's words turned out to be prophetic, because Mr. Le Roy Grooms left this world for another when he was hit hard in the temple with a toy iron dump truck, belonging to one of the high yellow's little male children.

When Naughty Bird got the tragic news, she got up out of bed, went into the bathroom and washed her face, and fixed herself a breakfast of eggs, ham, grits and red-eye gravy, biscuits covered with butter and Eagle Brand table syrup, and had three cups of steaming coffee. She took a bath, got dressed, applied a little Dixie Peach hair oil, leaned into the mirror to apply a triple coat of tangerine-orange rouge and lipstick to match, and headed out the door and over to Birmingham, on the rove.

Within a week she was back with a surprised-looking young man in a plaid hat with a green feather, and a brown gabardine suit.

IO49 4TH AVENUE NORTH BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

SEPTEMBER 21, 1986

Evelyn had promised Mrs. Threadgoode that she would take her troubles to the Lord and ask the Lord to help her through these bad times. Unfortunately, she didn't know where the Lord was. She and Ed had not been to church since the children were grown, but today she felt desperate for help, for something to hold on to; so she got dressed and drove over to the Highland Avenue Presbyterian Church, where they used to be members.

But when she got there, for some reason she just drove on by and, all of a sudden, found herself across town, sitting in the parking lot of the Martin Luther King Memorial Baptist Church—the largest black church in Birmingham—wondering what in the hell she was doing there. Maybe it had been all these months of hearing about Sipsey and Onzell. She didn't know.

All her life she had considered herself to be a liberal. She had never used the word nigger. But her contact with blacks had been the same as for the majority of middle-class whites before the sixties—mostly just getting to know the maid or the maids of friends.

When she was little, she would sometimes go with her father when he would drive their maid to the south side, where she lived.  It was just ten minutes away, but seemed to her like going to another country: the music, the clothes, the houses . . . everything was different.

On Easter they would drive over to the south side to see the brand-new Easter outfits: pinks and purples and yellows, with plumed hats to match.

Of course, it was the black women who worked inside the homes. Whenever a black man was anywhere nearby, her mother would get hysterical and scream at her to run put on a robe because, "
there's a colored man in the neighborhood!
” To this day, Evelyn was not comfortable with black men around.

Other than that, her parents' attitude about blacks had been like most back then; they thought most were amusing and wonderful, childlike people, to be taken care of. Everyone had a funny story to tell about what this maid said or did, or would shake their heads with amusement about how many children they kept having. Most would give them all their old clothes and leftovers to take home, and help them if they got in trouble. But as Evelyn got a little older, she didn't go to the south side anymore and thought little about them; she had been too busy with her own life.

So, in the sixties, when the troubles began, she, along with the majority of whites in Birmingham, had been shocked. And everyone agreed that it was not "our colored people" causing ail the trouble, it was outside agitators who had been sent down from the North.