The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (21 page)

Now the next thing she wanted, she wanted everybody to have a toothbrush. People didn’t have money to buy bread with, but Miss Lilly wanted them to have toothbrushes. She gived everybody a week. The end of the week, nobody had a toothbrush. Some of the children had been rubbing soda over their teeth; some of them rubbed charcoal over their teeth; but none of this was good enough for Miss Lilly. She wanted them brushed. She went to the store and asked for two dozen toothbrushes. She was go’n pay for them herself and the children could pay her back when they got the money. Clarence Samson, the brother who used to run the store, told her he didn’t have no toothbrushes and
he wasn’t ordering none. People found out he was ordering toothbrushes for niggers they would tar and feather him and run him out of the parish on a rail. Miss Lilly asked him what if he said he was ordering the toothbrushes for white folks. Clarence said they would laugh at him so hard he would pack up and leave of his own. Miss Lilly didn’t argue with him, she walked out of the store, and that weekend she went to Bayonne and got a brush for every child.

Poor Miss Lilly.

One evening Miss Lilly was coming from down the quarters when she heard Oscar Haynes’ two boys, Tee Bo and Tee Lo, crying up there in the tree. It was getting dark, she couldn’t see them, but she could hear them plain as day. One cry a little while and stop, then the other one start off. This one a little while, then the other one. Miss Lilly stood at the gate looking in the yard. Oscar had green moss burning under the tree. People used to keep a smoke like that in the summer to keep away mosquitoes, but tonight it wasn’t mosquitoes. Miss Lilly stood at the gate a while, then she came in the yard. Oscar and Viney and them sitting out there on the gallery. Nobody saying a word. Just sitting there in the dark. Up in the tree Tee Bo and Tee Lo crying. One a little while, then the other. One a little while, then the other. When Miss Lilly got closer to the tree she saw the two sacks up there.

“What’s going on up there?” she asked.

“That’s you, Miss Lilly?” Tee Bo said. Miss Lilly could hardly understand him with his mouth pressed up against the sack.

“That’s me,” Miss Lilly said. “What’s going on up there?”

“Daddy smoking us,” Tee Bo said.

“Come out of that tree,” Miss Lilly said.

“These sacks tied,” Tee Bo said.

“Stop fooling with me,” Miss Lilly said. “Come down from there.’

Nobody on the gallery said a thing. Just sitting there
in the dark. Not even looking at Miss Lilly out there in the yard.

“Do I have to come up there?” Miss Lilly said. “Come out of there.”

“These sacks tied, Miss Lilly,” Tee Bo said.

Miss Lilly made two little jumps to reach the sacks, but didn’t come nowhere near reaching them. Then she went up to the gallery and looked at Oscar and them sitting there in the dark. She wouldn’t say a thing. They didn’t say a thing. Acting like she wasn’t even there.

“All y’all crazy?” she asked.

Nobody answered.

“I asked is all y’all crazy?” she said again.

“No business sassing old people,” Aunt Julie said. Aunt Julie was Oscar’s mama.

“No business sassing old people?” Miss Lilly said. “You whip children when they sassy old people, you don’t smoke them. Get them children down.”

Nobody answer.

“You hear me?” she said to Oscar.

“I’m hearing everything you saying,” Oscar said.

“Well?” Miss Lilly said.

“You better go on up the quarters to Miss Jane,” Oscar said. “Teacher or no teacher.”

“I leave when them children come down,” Miss Lilly said.

Oscar didn’t say another word. When he got up, Viney said: “Oscar be careful. The law on her side.” He didn’t say nothing to her, either. He came on down the steps, picked up Miss Lilly with one hand and started with her toward the gate. Miss Lilly screaming and kicking now. “What you doing to me? Put me down. Animal, animal. Put me down. Help. Help.” Oscar pushed the gate open and set her on the ground, then he gived her a big whack on the behind and went on back in the yard. Just before he went on the gallery he throwed another piece of green moss on the fire to keep the smoke going up the tree.

Miss Lilly went from house to house, trying to find somebody to go down there and make Oscar stop smoking his children. When she couldn’t find nobody down there she came up to the house and asked me to come go with her to see Robert Samson. I told her the same thing Robert Samson was go’n tell her—leave it alone. She asked me if I knowed what I was saying. I told her I knowed what I was saying—leave it alone. She said she still wanted to talk to Robert. I took her over there. Robert told her to stick to her teaching and let people raise their children the way they wanted to. We came back home. Miss Lilly taught the rest of the year, then she went home to Opelousas and never came back.

After Miss Lilly, then came Hardy. Joe Hardy was one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. A little short, oily-face black man with a’ open crown gold tooth right in front. Telling poor people the government wasn’t paying him much, so he would ’preciate it if they could help him out some. Poor people selling all their little gardening to give Joe Hardy money; selling eggs, selling chickens, killing hogs and selling the meat, to give Joe Hardy money. This wasn’t enough for him, he had people raising onions and potatoes for him. Used to take the children out in the field in the evening to hoe and plow his onions and potatoes. Telling the children that one of the lessons our great leader Mr. Booker T. Washington taught was for children to learn good honest labor.

But that wasn’t enough for Hardy either. Now he had to start messing with the young ladies at the school. Every time you looked around he had one of the young ladies staying at school helping him correct papers. One day he kept Marshall Bouie’s daughter, Francine, up there. Marshall and two of his boys came looking for Hardy. They found him and Francine sitting at the table talking. Night already. Lamp burning. Papers stacked to the side—him and Francine sitting at the table talking. When Marshall walked in, both Hardy and Francine jumped up. Marshall told Francine
to go on home, he would deal with her later. Then he told Hardy to blow out the lamp and close up the school, because he wanted Hardy to come go somewhere with him and his boys. After Hardy had propped that post behind the door, Marshall marched him through the quarters back to the graveyard. The two boys tied Hardy to one of them little pecan trees, and Marshall took a stalk of jobo cane, and every time he hit Hardy you could hear Hardy from one end of the plantation to the other. Manuel Ruffin cut Hardy loose round midnight. He said he just got tired listening to Hardy moaning over there. He said he knowed he wasn’t go’n get any sleep, so he got a butcher knife out the kitchen and went over to the graveyard and chopped him loose. Soon as Hardy got loose, instead of him going on where he came from, no, he want go to Bayonne and tell the law on Marshall. Sam Guidry sleep, now—Hardy woke him up. “A man tried to beat me to death.” Guidry: “Look like he did a halfway job.” Then Guidry told Hardy he knowed all about him, and as a matter of fact he was thinking about talking to him one day himself. He told Hardy he had no intention of ’resting Marshall; on the other hand he was giving Hardy about one minute to get out
his
parish. He told Hardy he was going back inside and wash the sleep out his eyes; he was go’n put on his gun belt, then he was coming back with that four-batt’ry flashlight to look for him.

Nobody down here know if Guidry found Hardy that night. Maybe he just told him that to scare him out the parish. But after that night nobody round here ever seen or heard of Hardy again.

For a year and a half we didn’t have a school on the place at all. Going into the second year we got that LeFabre girl.

Mary Agnes LeFabre comes from a long line of Creoles back there in New Orleans. Her grandmother was one drop from being white herself. Her grandmother had been one of those ladies for white men. They used to give these great balls before the war, and the white men used to go there to choose their colored women. They didn’t marry these women, but sometime they kept them the rest of their life. The one who took this girl’s grandmother was called LeFabre.

She named all her children after him. Some of them didn’t want these children to carry their name, but old man LeFabre didn’t mind. When he died he left them money and property—even slaves. And for the rest of her life, Mary Agnes was trying to make up for this: for what her own people had done her own people. Trying to make up for the past—and that you cannot do. ’Specially somebody pretty like she was. She was medium height, but a little thin. She reminded you of some of these dagoes round here who call themself Sicilians. But she wasn’t fat like most of them get. She had long black hair, black as any hair I have ever seen, and it used to come way down her back. Sometimes at night when she got ready to comb it I used to ask her let me help. She would sit on the floor in front of me—that same Mary Agnes LeFabre.

After the war, the family moved from New Orleans to Creole Place. What brought them to Creole Place, I don’t know; maybe they had people there already. You had always had some mulattoes there, since long before the war, and now it got to be a settlement for them.

The people at Creole Place did everything for themself. Did their own farming, raised their own hogs, their own catties, did their own butchering. Had their own church—Catholic; built their own school and got their own teacher. The teacher had to come from there just like the priest had to come from there. Gived their own dances, their own parties, and people like them was the only ones invited. No matter how white you was if you didn’t have Creole background they didn’t want you there. Same for them who left. Some went North and passed for white; others joined the colored race. But no matter what they did, once they left they couldn’t go back.

I want tell you a little story just to show how these people looked at things, and this story is true. People here at Samson right now who can back me up. Etienne, Pap, either one of them can back me up on this. Sappho Brown rode through Creole Place and saw the mulattoes hanging lanterns and crepe paper up in the trees. That was Friday. He figured they was go’n have a dance that Saturday night so he told Claudee—Claudee Ferdinand—let’s go there. Now Sappho and Claudee white as any white man in this parish, but they knowed good and God well they didn’t have no business going there messing round with them Creoles. Both Sappho and Claudee’s daddy was white, but not Creole white. Poor white—no quality. Everybody telling them not to go. “Please don’t go down there messing round with them people. You know how them Creole mulattoes act.” But telling this to Sappho and Claudee was like talking to a block of wood. “We just as white as them. Whiter than lot of them. Anyhow, they go’n have so many people there they won’t even see us.” They get on Joe Sipp horse and head out.
Creole Place five, six miles from Samson, going toward Baton Rouge. Just before they come up to the dance they tie the horse under a tree and walk the rest of the way. Nothing for them to do soon as they get there but start messing round with these girls. They don’t know five words of Creole between them, but the girls speak some English, so they start messing with these girls. By and by the mulattoes get them surrounded. A tall, skinny mulatto in a white cowboy hat did all the talking. “Who you know here?” Sappho said before he could say we don’t know nobody here, we just stumbled in, we don’t mean no harm, and we don’t mind leaving—Claudee said: “Jacques. Us know Jacques.” If you’re at a Creole dance you got to have somebody there called Jacques. “Us know Jacques.” The tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Fetch me Jacques.” Jacques come up—white shirt, khaki pants. Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Jacques, you know these common niggers?” Jacques. “Non. Can’t say I do, Raphael.” Claudee said: “I didn’t mean Jacques, I meant Jean.” Sappho said he started to tell Claudee to please shut his mouth and let’s get out of here while they was still able to, but, no, now he know Jean. Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Jean what?” Claudee said: “Jean—oh—er—Jean LeFabre. Jean LeFabre. Yeah, that’s the Jean. Jean LeFabre. But he might not be here tonight. When he told me ’bout the fair he told me he wasn’t feeling too good. Headache.” The tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “But yes. He got the headache over. Fetch me Jean.” Now Jean come up. A little bowlegged mulatto—thick glasses. Jean: “What now, Raphael?” Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat: “Them two niggers, Jean?” Jean: “Kee?” Tall mulatto: “Know them?” Jean went up to Sappho and looked at him a while, then he went up to Claudee. He looked at Claudee longer, and everybody, even Sappho, was getting the feeling that maybe he did know Claudee. Then he backed away, shaking his head. “Non.” Claudee: “Come on, Jean, you know you know me.
Stop fooling the people. You told me ’bout this dance in Bayonne.” Jean: “Bayonne? Bayonne? Alcee Bayonne. He live yet? Tell me about Alcee Bayonne and Ad-de-line.” Claudee: “Who? What? What you talking ’bout, Jean? Town. No man, Jean. Town. Town. Way up the river. Buy meat. Rice. Many people live.” Jean: “Bayonne? Town? Meat? No copron.” Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “ ’Nough of this. Langlois, fetch two plow lines off that wagon.”

Sappho said he was running before the tall mulatto mentioned the plow lines, he just started running faster when he heard it. He said the first person he knocked down coming in the gate was a lady and a fat one at that. She was soft soft and smelled sweet sweet and powder flew up in his face when he hit her. The other person he knocked down was a man—short and hard because the man gived him a jolt right in the pit of his stomach. Claudee didn’t wait for the gate to clear up, he went over the fence. When he hit the other side he had left a chunk of his leg on that barb wire the size of his thumb. Now, they was on that road for Samson. Sappho said he was already passing Joe Sipp horse when Claudee hollered at him to untie the horse. He said to himself: “You untie him. You the one walking back there.”

Behind them the mulattoes had got on their own horses, and Sappho and Claudee cold hear them hollering and shooting pistols in the air. Sappho said even before Claudee said field he was already heading that way, he just picked up more speed now because he knowed Claudee was following him. He said he heard Claudee say: “Oh, I’m losing blood. Lord, I’m losing blood.” Sappho said he thought to himself: “Just don’t lose time and expect company, brother.”