Letters to Missy Violet (3 page)

I think Miss Glover had already started to give Ruby Dean special care, because she would give her things to do like collecting papers and passing out books. Ruby Dean did a good job, too, and Miss Glover praised her in front of the whole class.

Miss Battle just says, “Ruby Dean, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just lazy.” She makes Ruby Dean go up to the blackboard to do arithmetic. Ruby Dean is afraid of arithmetic the way most people are afraid of snakes. And when she walks up to the front the floor boards creak and the kids laugh. Then poor Ruby just stands there in front of the board scratching her head and rocking from side to side. Then Miss Battle says, “Ruby, this lesson is not that hard—even the first-graders can do it.” Then she scolds her for rocking. “Stop that rocking, child. You're not a boat!” she hollers, and the children laugh some more.

When I tell Mama how bad Miss Battle treats Ruby Dean, she says Miss Battle is just trying to get her to learn. But Mama did say she could do it in a more Christian way.

One week, Miss Battle didn't get a chance to pick on Ruby Dean at all because she had her hands full with a little girl named Nettie. Nettie had never been to school before and every day when her papa dropped her off she would cry and cry and cry. Nothing Miss Battle said or did made her stop crying.

Miss Battle made her stand in the corner and promised to give her a licking, but even that didn't do any good. Nettie just hollered louder. But then a funny thing happened one day: Nettie was crying and Ruby Dean got up from her seat and went over and put her arm around the little girl's shoulder and talked to her in a real soft voice and the little girl stopped crying. She lay in Ruby Dean's arms like Ruby Dean was her mama. Miss Battle told Ruby Dean to go on back to her seat, but when Ruby Dean did, Nettie started crying all over again.

“What is it now?” Miss Battle squawked, and the little girl said she would be quiet if she could sit next to Ruby Dean.

“Go ahead, then!” Miss Battle hollered, but this time Miss Battle sounded like she was going to cry.

Later that day, Miss Battle said to Ruby Dean in front of the class, “Ruby, I see you are good with children,” and Ruby Dean looked all bashful. Then Miss Battle said in a real sweet voice (and we kids couldn't believe it was Miss Battle speaking), “Ruby, would you like to assist me with the first-graders at recess?” And Ruby Dean said, “Yes, ma'am,” with a big ol' sunshine smile on her face. That day everybody went home happy.

When I told Mama about the little girl and Ruby Dean, Mama said Ruby Dean showed true Christian charity and she hoped Miss Battle had learned something from Ruby Dean's kindness.

I found something out about Miss Battle that makes me think she's not so bad after all. She keeps little packages of fruit and nuts and sweet bread in her desk drawer to give to the children who don't have any food to bring from home. She thinks nobody sees her slipping it to them at recess time when all the kids are running and playing and making noise. When lunchtime rolls around the children pull out their snacks like it came from home. I guess Miss Battle doesn't want them to feel bad about being poor.

When I told mama about it she said most everybody in Richmond County is poor, colored and white alike, except for people like the Cantwells and the Kestenbaums and the Delacroixes, who came up from New Orleans some years ago. And one or two well-to-do negroes. But she said some are poorer than others and its very kind of Miss Battle to look out for those children and for me to keep my mouth shut about it.

I still don't understand Miss Battle—after she does good she goes right back to being mean. I guess that's all the news about school for now. Say hello to your brother for me.

From your best helper girl,

Viney

 

September 20, 1929

Dear Viney,

I hope this letter finds you and the family doing well. I was sorry to hear about your new teacher leaving so soon. Maybe she will return to Richmond County someday. Miss Battle is a fine teacher too. She is stern but that is because she wants you children to learn so bad, not because she is mean. I have known Irene Battle for a long, long time. She comes from a fine family of quality negroes who were house servants for the Landy family. People who taught their slaves how to read and write, something uncommon and against the law in those days.

Yes, Miss Battle was born in bondage same as I was, and we were both still young children when freedom came. And since most all the Landy slaves knew how to read and write already when they were freed, many of them were put to use by the Freedmen's Bureau as instructors, helping others learn to read and write.

So you see, Viney, Miss Battle knows how important education really is, and she's been teaching for a very long time. Please give her my regards. I hope you will still like school. Schooling is very important, so learn how to read well, Viney. The world is changing all the time.

Give a special hello to Charles for me. Tell him to write another letter and let me know how he is doing in school. Don't you two fight. And don't you forget to memorize your roots and herbs so you won't forget all I taught you this summer. Remember the game we used to play when we'd come in from the woods?

Give all the family my love. Tell your daddy to stay off that foot as much as he can. And again I thank him for looking after Duke and the cow. Hope to hear from you again soon. Be a good girl and say your prayers.

Yours very truly,

Missy Violet

Not long after Missy Violet wrote to me about Miss Battle, some of the sharecropper farmers came to school with Mister Waters and ganged up on Miss Battle. They were upset because Miss Battle has been giving us a lot of homework, a lot of reading and writing. She says we must get ready for the essay contest. The sharecropper farmers say so much homework keeps their children from getting their chores done on the farm.

Mister Waters did most of the talking. He got real loud again, just like he did with Miss Glover. But Miss Battle, she can talk loud too. She dressed Mister Waters down good fashioned in front of the class. Told him that colored folks were doing fine things every day now. Becoming doctors and lawyers and teachers and inventors because they were able to get education.

“Let these children get their lessons out, man! And stop being a stumbling block!” she shouted at him. She said we might not all get educated, but some of us would, and I think her words must have scorched Mister Waters like hot coals because he stopped fussing and left. He even let Cleveland stay in class that day. Hooray for Miss Battle!

When Mister Waters left Miss Battle talked to us for a while about sharecroppers. She said she didn't want us to get the wrong idea about men like Mister Waters. She said he was a good man but he just couldn't believe that things were going to get better for colored people. She said he just didn't understand how important education was. “There are lots of people like that, children,” Miss Battle told us. “But that doesn't mean that things won't change.”

Miss Battle said that men like Mister Waters were smart men with their own brand of education. Instead of getting their knowledge from school and books they got their knowledge from life, which means that they know a lot of things. Miss Battle said that the share­cropper is a mechanic because he has to know how to fix farm machinery if he has any and if he doesn't he still has to know how to repair harnesses and shoes for his horses and mules.

She said he is part blacksmith, carpenter, animal trainer, and breeder. He has to know about all kinds of trees and the crops that grow on his land. He has to know something about insects and plant diseases and sprays to control insects. He even has to be a midwife and a doctor to the animals on the farm. And then she told us how a sharecropper farmer saved her neighbor's cow.

She said one day her neighbor's cow was eating some apples and she was gobbling them up so fast without chewing them and an apple got stuck in her throat. A sharecropper farmer was passing by in his wagon and saw the cow choking. The farmer took a piece of rubber hose, put a stick through it, and pushed it down the cow's throat but it didn't move the apple. So the farmer pushed his hand down the cow's throat and got hold of the apple and pulled it out. The cow didn't like it at all and stepped on the farmer's foot. But if the farmer had not done that the cow would have died.

“Sharecroppers and farmers are very special people, and I don't want you children to forget it,” Miss Battle said. It sure was a surprise to hear Miss Battle put in a good word for Mister Waters and the sharecroppers. Miss Battle is beginning to sound a bit like Miss Glover . . .

I don't know why, but I keep getting into trouble lately. Right after I got into hot water with Mama about writing that letter to Missy Violet about Miss Olette's daughter, I got into trouble again following behind Charles. This time I really did get a whupping—the worst I ever had. The trouble started one day while some of us kids were passing by the church on our way home from school. Charles said he knew a big secret about something that was inside the church. But before anybody could ask what it was, Charles blurted out, “It's a dead body!”

“Why don't you quit fibbin',” Arma Jean said, because she knows how Charles likes to make up stories. Nobody ever believes him except maybe Jeff Brown. He thinks Charles is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

“Why don't you tell the truth sometimes and shame the devil,” I said to Charles, and his face started getting all red.

“If you don't believe me, why don't you go inside and see for yourself!” he told me.

“Y'all wanna go inside and see?” Cleveland asked, and silly us went inside. Arma Jean, Cleveland, Jeff Brown, Charles, and me. Ruby Dean was the smart one that day and went on home.

The church door was locked so we had to climb in through a window. “The Lord gonna punish us for this,” Arma Jean said when our feet hit the floor.

“Aw, we ain't gonna touch nothin'—we jus' gonna look,” said Charles.

“Yeah, yeah, we jus' gonna look,” squawked Jeff Brown.

The lights inside the church were off, but we could still see the long, shiny black casket with the silver handles standing before the pulpit. We all stayed close together and walked up to the casket.

“Wow!” Cleveland whispered.

“Didn't I tell ya! Didn't I tell ya!” Charles hollered.

“Shhhhhh! We in church!” I reminded Charles.

“Dontcha wanna go up and see who it is?” he whispered, but his voice made an echo in the church.

“Noooo!” Arma Jean and I both said at the same time.

“I wanna see!” squawked Jeff Brown.

“Hush! You not suppose to disturb the dead,” Arma Jean said.

“Yeah. They might come back and haunt you,” Cleveland said.

“No they won't,” said Charles, like he knew all about dead people.

“How you know?” asked Cleveland.

“'Cause the Good Book say, ‘The dead know not anything.' So how is he gonna know who lookin' at him?” Charles answered.

“Where it say that?” Cleveland wanted to know.

“Missy Violet read it to me from the Bible so I wouldn't be afraid of the dead,” Charles answered.

“We still got no business in here disturbin' this dead man,” Arma Jean said.

“Y'all a buncha scaredy-cats!” Charles said, and laid his hand on top of the casket. Then he slid his hand back and forth, back and forth. “Man, this feel smooth and slick like a brand-new Cadillac,” he said, showing off. Then Cleveland went over and touched the casket, then Jeff Brown, then Arma Jean, then me. I don't know why I touched it. I guess I did it because Arma Jean did.

“I bet you a quarter you won't lift up the lid,” Cleveland dared Charles.

“It's a bet!”

“I hate boys,” Arma Jean said. “Always darin' each other and showin' off.”

Just then, Charles, Mister Biggity Showoff, lifted up the lid. It made a loud CLICK, and a smell like old flowers and turpentine floated up from the casket. And even with the lights off we got a good look at the dead man inside. He was very big and long, and his skin was the color of Brazil nut shells. He had on the nicest suit I'd ever seen on a colored man, and a ring with a large red stone was on his pinkie finger. Charles touched his face. “He feels cold and hard,” he said. Then he laid his hand on the dead man's chest and frowned. “Feels like tissue paper,” he said. Then all of us were touching the dead man's chest and face and hands. Arma Jean and I jerked our hands away when we touched his chest because it did feel all crinkly like tissue paper.

Charles said that he'd heard that sometimes the undertaker scoops out all of the dead person's insides and stuffs them with tissue paper so they wouldn't be so heavy. Ugh!

All at once, Mister Charles Elister Paxton Nehemiah Windbush Biggity Showoff reached in the casket and pulled the dead man's eyelids up. He must have accidentally twisted the dead man's head too, because all at once his head wasn't facing up toward the ceiling anymore but was facing us! Big, mean, scary gray eyes were staring right at us! Somebody slammed the casket lid down, and we scattered all over the church. Arma Jean and I finally got through the window. I got a splinter in my knee going over the sill.