A Thousand Never Evers (12 page)

Mama sits at the kitchen table and listens cotton-eyed while I describe the secret book box. By the time I’m through, Mama’s got worried teardrops in her eyes, and I just know if those tears fall down her cheeks into her mouth, they’ll taste bitter like horseradish. She cuts her eyes at me real mean. “Telling someone’s secret is just like telling a lie,” she says. “You told me. That’s bad enough.”

The balloon blowing up in my chest, it sinks.

“What?” I ask. I’m more than a little confused, because from all my experience, when someone keeps a secret, they’re keeping the truth from getting out. So telling a secret’s like spreading around the truth. What could be wrong with that?

But I reckon Mama doesn’t see it my way because she says, “If you say one word of this to anyone—and that’s Delilah included—I’ma send that cat of yours to live with Aunt Adelaide up in Baton Rouge!” She leans forward, reaches across the table, and lifts my chin with her finger. “I’ll take that scoundrel there myself.”

After I get in bed, I
tweet, click, click,
and Flapjack pounces through the open window. I snuggle up with him under the sheet, but I don’t bother to scare him with what Mama said. He’s got nothing to worry about. I’m not going to tell a soul.

CHAPTER 18

September 28, 1963

I’ve gone three and a half days without telling Mrs. Tate’s secret to anyone else. I’m sitting on my swing, thinking about how much I’ve matured, when Uncle Bump moseys out of his shed and asks me to join him fishing down the bayou. It being Saturday, I tell Uncle Bump I can’t see why not. I’ve already calculated twenty-two fractions, including improper ones, and I’ve already learned my Latin roots, like
vis,
which means “to see.”

As soon as I change out my dress into my T-shirt and jeans, Uncle Bump and me set off for the river. He carries two poles and a jar of worms. Of course, I haven’t been fishing in years, so I forget how disgusting the whole thing will be.

When we get to the bank, I get a sick feeling because I’ve seen some catfish and they’re bigger than cats. I don’t want to kill no catfish.

“We’re just gonna catch them baby ones,” Uncle Bump says.

But I don’t want to kill no babies either.

Still, I can tell Uncle Bump’s glad for the company. He’s all about showing me the night crawlers. They’re wiggling inside the glass jar. He pulls out one of the worms, stabs it with the metal hook, then ties the hook to the line, and casts the line into the water. Then he hands me the pole and fixes up his own.

Once Uncle Bump and me are standing on the bank holding our poles, there are no worms to look at and I like it better. We stare out at the river without a pull on our lines, while the fall wind sends ripples across the water, making it look rough and wild. And I reckon I get to thinking about things besides fish, because soon, I let out a sigh loud enough for Uncle Bump to hear.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothin’.”

“That ain’t a nothin’ kind of sigh,” he says. “Between you and me, I think your brother will be back.”

The dandelion sun peeks out from behind the cottony clouds. To know Uncle Bump hasn’t given up makes me weak all over.

Uncle Bump tells me whenever he goes to work at the General Merchandise Store in Franklindale, he stops to talk to my brother’s friends who live nearby. He also sent another letter to Aunt Adelaide up in Baton Rouge and spent a pile of change at the pay telephone booth to see if any of the civil rights groups had word. “It’s tough,” Uncle Bump says. “But no one’s heard a thing.”

I stare out at the water two more minutes before I’m ready to talk. Truth be told, I tell Uncle Bump things most twelve-year-old girls won’t tell their mamas. I can say anything, and I know he won’t get worried or mad. Sure I got some hope from Delilah’s ghost ceremony, but some days I can’t help it, my faith dwindles to a drop. “It’s hard to keep believing,” I say.

Uncle Bump wraps an arm round my shoulders, pulls me close. And I’m more than grateful he’s by my side.

Staring out at the water, I can’t help but picture the bayou, Buck Fowler, my brother’s sneaker. But I don’t want to think about it anymore, so I do like Mama and switch the subject.

“When you were my age, did you ever like…you know?” I ask.

“Well, sure, sure I did!” Uncle Bump tugs on his pole and lowers the line.

“Who?” I ask.

“Who what?”

“Who’d you love?”

“Oh!” Uncle Bump says. “Hmmm…Loved my mama. Loved my papa. Loved my sister. Even loved that old man across the tracks.”

“Not that way,” I say.

“Ouch!” Uncle Bump tries to pick a splinter out of his thumb.

“Well, who’d you love?” I ask.

But he’s silent like God cut off the supply of nouns, verbs, and adjectives in his throat.

“It’s not a big deal,” I tell him, even though it’s a huge one. That’s because everyone has the kind of love I want. Sure I’m only in seventh grade, but that kind of love is all stopped up in my heart. Maybe I don’t know how to act with a boy. Maybe I don’t know how to dress or what to say, which is bad enough, but what makes it eighty-five bushels worse is that Delilah always wears the perfect dress and says, “Thrills, chills, and charges!” at the exact right time, so any boy I love loves her instead.

“Seems something particular’s on your mind,” Uncle Bump says.

I nod but I won’t look in his eyes. I don’t want him to see all the pain whirling in mine. I fix my gaze on the swirling water.

“Cool Breeze?” he asks.

I swallow. I was going to tell him, but it would’ve taken hours to get there.

Uncle Bump nods. He knew it all along.

“He’s everything,” I say.

“Ain’t that something! I never met a person who was everything.”

“Well, I have!” I say. It’s not just that Cool Breeze is the only other student from Kuckachoo going to seventh grade, but he can run a mile in four minutes fifty-nine seconds flat, not to mention he has the cutest dimples, and he can solve equations faster than Mrs. Jacks can write them on the board. “Thing is,” I say, “he’ll always like Delilah.” Then I think about my Latin root and say, “To him I’m just in
vis
ible.”

“Why’s that?” Uncle Bump asks.

Tears sting the back of my throat. I swipe under my nose, but it doesn’t work, because a couple of them fall right down my face. “Every boy likes Delilah. Nothing ever changes,” I say.

“That’s right,” Uncle Bump says. “Nothing does change.”

My breath is high in my chest, running. I can’t believe he agrees. The future’s stacking up in front of me, day after day, the same. Nothing changes. Me and Cool Breeze walking to school, back and forth from Kuckachoo to Weaver, three whole miles in each direction, the two of us together with nothing to say, Cool Breeze not even knowing I’m there.

“’Cept for one thing,” Uncle Bump says.

I wait for him to say what it is, the one thing. But wouldn’t you know it, his fishing pole bends. He yanks hard to pull in the line.

Right now I don’t care anything about catfish. I want to know what’s the one thing that will change. “What is it?” I ask.

Uncle Bump doesn’t hear me. He’s too busy breaking out a smile bigger than the Magnolia State. That’s because he’s got a catfish huge as a dog on the line. When he gets it onto the bank, I can see it’s got whiskers.

“What’s the one thing?” I ask again. Then I turn away, my back to Uncle Bump and that fish, because I don’t want to see the part that comes next. The part where the poor fish thrashes on the bank and Uncle Bump helps it to its death.

After he packs up the dead catfish and the live night crawlers, we walk back and Uncle Bump asks, “If you ain’t got the belly to fish, then why do you eat it?” And I can’t answer that question straight, because I like smoked Delta catfish with brown sugar much as anyone.

It’s not till we get all the way home I ask him to tell me once and for all: What’s the one thing that will change? What’s the one thing that’ll break me out of this dreadful existence?

“You,” he says. Then he sets to work building a fire to smoke that catfish.

Later, after I swallow the last bite and lick the brown sugar off my fingers, I’m still wondering just what he means.

CHAPTER 19

October 13, 1963

Ever since Delilah gave up jumping double Dutch, she’s taken up beauty. I don’t mean just thinking about it and talking about it. I mean really working at it. Just this morning Delilah’s cousin Bessie gave her some of Dr. Fred Palmer’s Skin Whitener, so now Delilah has it in her mind I need a new look.

Here we are sitting on her front steps. She opens the jar of cream and dips her pinkie in. “It’s gotta last me till I get to New York and make my own money,” she says, and rubs one tiny drop into each of my cheeks. “Even this little bit should help.”

Bessie also let Delilah borrow a plastic case with a rainbow of eye shadows inside it. Now Delilah holds the case up to my face to figure out which color matches my brown eyes best.

“You’ve got blue tones in your skin,” she tells me.

“No, I’m brown,” I say.

“You don’t understand,” she says, and laughs. “You’ve got cool blue tones and I’ve got warm red ones.” She’s still explaining the whole theory when out the corner of my cool eyeball, I catch sight of Reverend Walker harrumphing down the lane.

“Look!” I say, and point.

There’s a large parcel of folks gathered round him and one thing’s clear: something juicy’s going down.

“You’ve gotta let me do it later,” Delilah says. “It’ll bring out your features.”

“Only if you make me pretty as a speckled pup,” I tell her.

“I’ll try,” she says.

Truth be told, I doubt any makeup can turn me into a speckled pup, but I still want Delilah to fix my eyes. I hate the way they look so plain like the rest of me, but I must admit, they’re awful good for seeing.

Delilah and me join our neighbors in the lane. Since church let out just an hour ago, you’d think the reverend would be tired of talking. But that’s not the way it’s fixing to be. “Praise Jesus,” he says. He holds a large cardboard poster in his hands. The second I see it, I know exactly what this ruckus is about.

A few days back, I was making Ralphie his favorite treat in the Tates’ kitchen while Mrs. Tate and her friends were drawing up posters in the living room. I held Ralphie on my hip, as I stirred the pot of applesauce on the stove and listened to them talk.

“Between his new shop in Muscadine County and his poor mama in Florida, Mr. Mudge hasn’t made it back to Kuckachoo for three weeks!” Mrs. Worth said. “He gave me the garden keys. He said with the grand opening scheduled for early November, there’s no way he’ll make it back to town for the picking.”

“What a shame!” Miss Springer chirped.

She sure didn’t sound sorry Mr. Mudge wouldn’t make it to the picking.

“Well, at least the garden was laid by before he left,” Miss Springer said. “After that, there’s nothing to do but wait for everything to grow anyhow.”

“Well, I stopped by the garden just yesterday,” Mrs. Tate said. “The corn lining the gate is taller than me! I couldn’t see a thing past it.”

Then, out of nowhere, Miss Springer asked, “Have you heard the rumors?”

“What rumors?” Mrs. Tate asked.

“’Bout Mr. Adams’s will,” Miss Springer said.

I almost dropped poor Ralphie on the floor.

“Well, I was down at the Very Fine Fabric Shop the other day. Dorotha told me she overheard the girl who cleans the shop tell someone that in his will Old Man Adams left half his garden to the Negroes,” Miss Springer said.

“You can’t be serious!” Mrs. Worth said.

I pressed Ralphie close to me with one hand, stirred the pot round and round with the other.

“I am serious,” Miss Springer replied. “And knowing how that man felt in his old age, I can believe it’s true. This is a
community
garden. It seems Mr. Adams wanted the whole Kuckochoo
community
to participate.”

Well, if that didn’t send Mrs. Worth into a tizzy! “You don’t know that and I don’t know that. We’ll never know what Mr. Adams intended. By the time he wrote up his will, that salty old buzzard was nothing but a colored-loving cuckoo,” Mrs. Worth said.

Words fought inside my throat. They climbed all over each other trying to get out.
I know what the will said! He left us the land too!
I could hear the words inside me, screaming out, over and over. But who was I to interrupt a white ladies’ conversation?

My hands got so shaky, though, I had to set Ralphie on the floor. And of course, he went running out the open back door into the yard. I turned the knob on the burner to low and chased after him, so I didn’t get to hear another word those ladies said. But I can tell you one thing: they sure had a good fight, the three of them, before they finished drawing up their posters.

Now Reverend Walker holds one and shouts, “We need to be moving that movement—that movement that’s brewing in Birmingham, that movement that’s mixing life upside down in Jackson—we need to be moving it right here to Kuckachoo.”

The reverend turns the sign round so we can see it. Then he reads it out loud:

The Kuckachoo Garden Club

invites you to a picking party!

TUESDAY. SUNRISE

Free vegetables! Bring sacks!

He points to the purple writing at the bottom of the sign and reads:

P.S. Negroes invited to pick at noon.

“This garden’s supposed to be for everyone!” Mrs. Montgomery shouts.

“I hear you,” says the reverend.

“What you sayin’?” Brother Babcock asks.

“I’m saying sure our empty bellies can go growling for another thousand years. We always got by on less than nothing. However”—the reverend raises a finger in the air—“we can’t go hungering for our dignity one more day. We’re not gonna pick at noon to gather no scraps!”

And it’s clear that at long last the reverend’s finished thinking about the garden. He actually does have a plan.

“We’re going at the crack of dawn just like every other Kuckachookian,” he says.

“Praise the Lord!” yells Delilah.

I reckon she belongs in the amen corner! And dog my cats, suddenly she’s all about that picking. “I’ll do your eyes later,” she tells me.

Well, that’s fine with me. I don’t need any more color on my eyes. I’ve got all the color I need right in front of them. I’m seeing blue and red stars, I’m so angry about this garden.

“We need to do this for Emmett Till,” the reverend shouts. “And for Medgar Evers. For the four young girls murdered last month in Birmingham—Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins. And for Elias Pickett, our very own son, wherever he may be.”

I’ve thought of Emmett. I’ve thought of Medgar. I’ve thought about those four girls, one my age, one named Addie like me. And Lord knows I’ve thought about my brother. But to think of them all at the same time, Elias along with the dead, it’s just too much. Too much to bear!

I stumble away from the crowd to the edge of the lane. But the reverend’s words boom across the dirt straight to me: “There comes a time when a man’s dignity’s worth more than his life. Oh Lord, this is our time!”

I know the reverend’s right. We can’t just sit by and let them steal what’s ours. They’ve taken our land, they’ve chased my brother away, they’ve taken too many lives. And even if I get beaten or put in jail, it doesn’t matter. I’m ready to fight.

Reverend Walker charges down the lane. Most of the men follow. As usual, they’re going to sort things out without us ladies and children, so Delilah and me hurry on over to my porch to sit beside our mamas. No doubt they’re fretful as we are, and I reckon we could all lean on each other after what we’ve just heard. But soon as I settle on the step, I’m sorry I’m there. That’s because Mama and Mrs. Montgomery, they’re shaking their tails at each other about whether we should go to the picking or not.

Mama says, “There’s no way for us to show up for the picking at sunrise without infuriating the white folk. If we do that, we may as well shoot ourselfs ’cause that’s what happens when you make white folk think twice before they even thunk once. If we go, we’ll get ourselfs killed.”

Mrs. Montgomery turns to me and says, “Looks like your mama’s turned into Eartha Kitt.”

I sure wish Mama looked like a beautiful actress, but right about now, her eyebrows are knitted together and the circles under her eyes look like mud puddles. I hate to say it, but Mama doesn’t look like Eartha Kitt at all, so I’m not sure what Mrs. Montgomery’s talking about.

But now Mrs. Montgomery says to Mama, “No need for the drama, Eartha. We should show up, but not till noon. That way, we’re taking up good on the offer but not losing out on the food we need.”

But Mama doesn’t like Mrs. Montgomery’s teasing. Her bottom lip quivers just like mine. “We’re not going,” she says. “We can’t go. Not you. Not me. None of us. Sunrise? Noon? The hour don’t matter.”

Truth be told, sometimes Mrs. Montgomery takes things one step too far. Even though she and Mama, they’re the best of friends, sometimes she hurts Mama real bad. “Since when can a Pickett afford to skip out on a free sack of beans?” Mrs. Montgomery asks.

I reckon that does it. Mama stands right up, hand on her hip. “Well, I don’t see you bringing out the lamb chops on a regular basis neither,” she says, and storms inside.

At dinner, Mama’s still steaming. She yanks the macaroni and cheese from the oven. “She ain’t got no sense ’bout how to protect her family,” she says, more to the food than to anyone. It seems Mama’s cooked up an extra-special meal just to prove our family’s got more than enough to eat.

“Mmm! Mmm!” Uncle Bump says.

I want to tell Mama that truth be told, I reckon Mrs. Montgomery’s right. We should be at that picking. What’s ours is ours. I want to tell her that Elias wouldn’t like to see her all scared, that Elias would want her to fight for our rights. But right about now Mama’s just a deer collapsing in the forest to lick her wounds. And nothing I say about the picking will do anything but hurt her more.

So I do what we Picketts do best: I change the subject. “Wow, Mama!” I say, and shovel in another spoonful of macaroni and cheese. “This sure is scrumptious!”

But what do you know? In the middle of my compliments, Mama goes and switches the subject right back. She stares at Uncle Bump. “You ain’t going, I ain’t going, and you, Addie Ann,” she says, “you ain’t going to that picking neither.”

Seeing Mama so scared scares me. I reckon ever since Elias left, her age is speeding up faster than the days and the years. And one thing’s clear: Mama isn’t about to let any more danger destroy our family, no matter how much dignity it might cost.

“’Scuse me,” she says.

The instant she leaves the table, I get a twisty feeling in my belly. No one has to say my brother’s name for us to know he’s all she can think about. Yesterday Mama met with the reverend, and even he had to admit Elias might be in God’s hands.

I don’t know why the reverend thinks that the more days my brother’s gone, the more evidence he’s never coming back. But I reckon it’s like Mrs. Jacks says: grown-ups only believe what they see in front of their eyes. If they don’t see something, it isn’t there. So even though the reverend’s a spiritual man, he can’t help it. He’s still a grown-up.