Gathering of Waters (17 page)

A confession, printed in black-and-white in a national publication, and there wasn’t anything any court in the land could do about it. Milam and Bryant had been found innocent of murder and could not be trialed for the same crime twice.

Double jeopardy.

Hemmingway took her distraught daughter into her arms. “That’s man’s law, baby. Man’s law don’t outweigh God’s law. Don’t you worry, they’ll get theirs.”

And they did.

Even the most racist of Mississippians didn’t condone what Milam and Bryant had done to Emmett.

The brothers were ostracized by black and white alike. Friendless, stigmatized, and unable to make a living, the brothers closed the store and moved their families to Texas to start new lives.

They could run, but they could not hide. Their photos had been splashed on the front pages of every major newspaper in the country, so they couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized.

In Texas, white people pointed and blared, “Look at the child killers!”

So misery became as much a part of their lives as oxygen.

A decade later, Milam moved back to Mississippi and took a job as a machinist. He arrived at work on time, performed his duties, and at the end of the day returned home to his whiskey and cigars.

He contemplated suicide, but never had the guts to do it. At night he closed his eyes and prayed for death, but always woke up to a brand-new day.

When they found the cancer in his liver, he refused all treatment that was available to him. He thought that untreated, the end would come quick.

He thought wrong.

J.W. languished in excruciating pain for years.

When he died in 1980, the autopsy revealed that he had tumors in every major organ of his body.

In 1994, at the age of sixty-three, Roy Bryant died of complications from diabetes and liver cancer.

At the telling of this story, Carolyn Bryant was still alive, but not so well.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

H
e was dark-skinned and charming. A twenty-five-year-old dreamer who loved to clown, play cards, and smoke cigars.

His name was Maximillian May, but because he had a passion for fishing, his family and friends had dubbed him Fish.

When he spotted Tass out in front of her house scattering dirt, bits of string, and flower petals with a straw broom, he stopped his car, climbed out, walked right over, and reintroduced himself.

“Tass Hilson, right? You remember me? Fish May?”

Tass looked at his hands and his eyes, and said, “Uhhuh, I remember you. How you been?”

The conversation started there and continued in the house after Hemmingway came out and asked if he would like to stay for a meal.

At the dining table, Fish explained that he was living in Detroit, working in the salt mines, but waiting on a job at the motor plant to come through.

“I ain’t gonna be there long though, gonna work for myself.”

“Oh yeah? Doing what?” Hemmingway asked as she scooped a second helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

“Real estate.”

“Real estate?”

“Yes, ma’am! Buying, selling, and building.”

Hemmingway glanced at Tass, who was thoughtfully studying the line of Fish’s jaw.

“Building? You know how to build a house?”

“Yes, ma’am! I’m a builder’s apprentice.”

“Apprentice? What’s that?”

“It’s like a student.”

“Oh. Ain’t that something,” Hemmingway crooned, and looked at Tass. “Don’t you think that’s something, Tass?”

“Yes, it is.”

After Fish left, Tass helped Hemmingway wash and dry the dinner plates.

“Well, he has certainly grown into a nice young man.”

“Uh-huh,” Tass mumbled.

“He seems to like you.”

“You think so?” Tass asked with an air of disinterest.

“Did you see how he was looking at you?”

“No.”

Hemmingway tossed the sponge into the sink and turned sober eyes on her daughter.

“He ain’t coming back, Tass.”

How many times had her mother said that to her? Too many to count. And each time Hemmingway uttered those words, Tass was reminded of how silly the statement was. Of course he wasn’t coming back. He had been dead and buried for two years by then.

Tass was only seventeen and still had a year of school left. Now, seventeen might seem too young for a mother to be pushing her daughter into the arms of an eligible bachelor, but in 1957, in rural Mississippi, with no prospects of ever going to college, but certainly the opportunity to become some white woman’s maid, the act was as common as cotton.

Tass reached for the sponge and squeezed it until it was free of every drop of water.

“I know that.”

“You gotta move on with your life, Tass.”

Tass dropped the sponge back into the sink. “I know, Mama, I know.”

Fish courted Tass with all he had. He sent letters, thin greeting cards painted with smiling cats holding bouquets of flowers, and boxes containing stuffed animals, perfume, and fashion magazines.

He drove from Detroit down to Mississippi twice in four months. On his second visit, Tass allowed him to kiss her, but the dizzying, drunken feeling she’d experienced when she’d kissed Emmett didn’t return. Disappointed, her heart began to slip back into hiding.

“He’s a fine catch,” Hemmingway pushed. “Not one man here in this town can hold a candle to him.”

“I know, Mama, I know.”

The letters and packages continued to come, and then one day a man from the telephone company knocked on their door and presented Hemmingway with a pink service order.

“I ain’t order no telephone,” Hemmingway said.

The white man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed the perspiration from his forehead, and then snatched the slip of paper from Hemmingway’s hand. After scanning it, he said, “Maximillian May,” and shoved it back at her.

Hemmingway refused to accept the paper and folded her arms defiantly across her breasts. At that point she was so angry that she didn’t even recognize the name.

“He don’t live here!”

“Look, lady, don’t give me a hard time about this, okay? Just let me do my job and install the goddamn telephone line.”

“I will not!”

The man swabbed his forehead for a second time. “Look, I ain’t coming back out here again, you hear me? It’s today or never.”

Hemmingway eyed him. “Like I said, I ain’t order no phone, I ain’t got no money for no phone, and so I don’t want no phone.”

“Look, lady, you ain’t got to worry about paying for anything. The person on the order,” he said as she shook the paper in her face, “he already done covered that, and he’s the one who will pay the monthly charges.”

Hemmingway leaned back on one leg. “What name you say was on the order?”

That evening, Hemmingway and Tass sat and stared at the black rotary phone waiting for it to ring.

“This is so nice of him,” Hemmingway kept saying.

“You see, Tass, I told you he was a good man.”

When it finally did ring, both Hemmingway and Tass nearly jumped out of their skin. Tass answered the phone with a meek “Hello,” and Fish’s jovial voice boomed from the other end.

“I installed this phone for your mama, so you two can talk when I marry you and move you to Detroit.”

That was his proposal and Tass, not really caring if she stayed or left, lived or died, said, “Okay.”

A month after she graduated and three days after she turned eighteen, Tass Hilson became Tass May.

Remember those ten crisp hundred-dollar bills? Hemmingway used three of them to pay for the wedding. Fancy invitations and a church ceremony, followed by a reception at the colored social hall.

Tass looked lovely in her white, laced, trimmed wedding gown. Instead of a veil, she wore a wreath of pink flowers in her hair. Padagonia was her maid of honor, and although she was not one for dresses, for her friend she happily donned the lilac-colored frock and white panty hose.

Tass asked Moe Wright if he would walk her down the aisle, and he agreed, and broke down in tears when he presented her to Fish.

Tass and Fish jumped the broom and shared a long, hard kiss and guests whooped with joy.

At the social hall, the new couple and their guests danced, ate, and drank until the sun went down.

It was a beautiful day.

When it was time to go, Fish wrapped his arm affectionately around Tass’s waist and said, “We gotta get on the road, baby.”

“No tears now,” Hemmingway warned as she dabbed her own wet eyes with a napkin. “You ain’t going to the moon. It’s just Detroit.”

Fish loaded Hemmingway’s belongings into the trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat and lit a cigar. In the rearview mirror he watched Hemmingway and Tass clinging to one another and rocking. The mother was the one who finally broke the embrace.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Hemmingway squealed, and clapped her hands. “Wait a minute.”

She rushed back into the hall and returned seconds later, carrying a small clay flowerpot filled with dandelions. “It’ll be like bringing a little bit of Money to Detroit,” she said.

Tass smiled, and reached out and stroked her mother’s arm. “Thank you for everything.”

In the car, Fish glanced at the pot Tass clutched in her lap and laughed. “That ain’t nothing but a weed. We got weeds in Detroit!”

“I know,” Tass said as she laid her head on his shoulder. “I know.”

And that’s how I followed Tass Hilson-May all the way to the Motor City.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

H
er new home was an old Victorian on a broad street lined with oak trees. Across from the house stood a three-story redbrick hospital.

Tass pointed her finger at the structure and said, “That’s convenient. We don’t have to go far if we get sick.”

“They don’t treat colored folk in that hospital, baby.”

The neighborhood, once all white, was now speckled with brown families. At first, the whites moved out under cover of night, but now they left in broad daylight, in a steady stream of moving trucks.

The house was a mansion compared to what Tass had grown up in. Two floors, four bedrooms, and one bathroom. A parlor, dining room, and den were packed tight with all manner of things that should have been stored in a garage or toolshed.

The lace curtains covering the windows were dry rot. At the slightest touch, the lace disintegrated into dust. The wooden floors were black with age and dirt, and the throw rugs riddled with bald spots. Who knew what color the kitchen walls were beneath the layers of grease and grime? Every pot and pan in that house was filled with nuts, bolts, screws, and nails, and the kitchen sink was piled high with dirty dishes sprouting mold.

“I know,” Fish stammered when he saw the aston-ished look on Tass’s face. “It’s a mess, but I’m sure you’ll have this house spotless in a day or two.”

Tass stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Maybe you should have hired a maid instead of taking a wife.”

The first time Tass saw snow was on May 16, 1957, just two days after she’d arrived in Detroit. The sight of it was accompanied by thunder that clapped and marched across the sky, and fork lightning.

The snow began to fall an hour after the orchestra of
BOOM—BANG—Brrrr-RUMMM
drove people off the streets and into the safety of their homes. It came down soft, like tufts of cotton, and covered everything. It laid white sheets over the rooftops and the high school football field. It clasped hold to tree limbs, coated cars like flour, and sugared the daffodils and tulips.

Harsh winds swept the snow into molehills and mountains that blocked doorways and driveways. In a matter of hours Detroit was buried beneath twelve inches of late-spring snow and Tass was left wondering just how she would manage—newly arrived from the sweltering state of Mississippi without galoshes, winter coat, knit hat, or mittens.

She had set the clay flowerpot on the windowsill and now she stood there staring at the yellow blooms against the bright white of the snow and began to long for the time before that moment, when she wasn’t a wife—just Tass Hilson, daughter of Hemmingway Hilson, best friend to Padagonia Tucker, and fool in love for the first time in her life.

“What you doing, huh?” Fish called from their bed. “Come on, Tass, ole boy ain’t had his fill yet.”

She looked over her shoulder to see her husband waving his dick like a kid with a flag at an Arbor Day parade.

When it rained, the roof would leak and Tass would sob.

Pails, pots, and bowls were set out to catch the water. Tass caught her tears in napkins and spilled sick into the toilet. Her breasts swelled and her nipples started to look like water plugs. The scent of cooking meat turned her stomach. Her feet expanded like dough. The cravings for ice cream and salted peanuts nearly drove her out of her mind.

Tass called her mother and explained, “I’m gonna have a baby.”

And Hemmingway replied, “Awww, that’s nice.”

It was midnight when the first pain struck low in her womb, and Tass sat straight up in bed. Fish was across town, playing poker with friends. The second pain grew fingers that grabbed hold of her uterus and squeezed. Tass howled, stumbled out of the house and over to her neighbors. She banged on the door until her water broke.

The third pain balled its fist and punched her in the back, and Tass yanked a patch of hair from her scalp and nearly bit through her tongue. She waddled across the street and into the hospital that didn’t cater to coloreds.

Her bare feet slapped noisily across the marble floor of the brightly lit lobby. The nurse at the receiving desk blanched when she saw Tass coming toward her, panting and clutching a tuft of kinky hair in her hand.

“H-help me,” Tass yelped.

The woman opened and then closed her mouth.

The fourth contraction brought Tass down to her knees.

The nurse finally found her words and they spewed like sewage from her mouth: “Noooooooo niiiiiggers!”

Tass rolled onto her back, raised her knees, and began to push. When she screamed, the nurse threw her hands into the air and screamed too.

The first colored child ever to be born in that hospital was a big-head boy with dreamy eyes. They named him Maximillian May the second, but called him Sonny.