Betsey Brown (5 page)

Betsey sat in her tree just thinking away when Jane and Greer pulled up. Home at last. But Greer just waved to the children who'd come running and left Jane by the front stairs with a mess of groceries. Greer honked the horn as he drove off. Betsey could hear Little Willie John blaring from the car radio. That must have been the reason Jane was shaking her head so. Jane could only take so much common Negro music. Just so much of it, and then she'd had enough.

As she looked down the driveway, Jane put her hands on her hips underneath her suit jacket, closed her eyes, looked bout to cry. When Betsey'd looked around to the back of the house, she saw why her mother was in sucha state. Two big white police
were walking Allard and Charlie up the back driveway. Trouble. Trouble. Vida could feel it and came hustling to the back, peering through the screen door.

Jane believed she could feel her blood flowing. Police in the South meant lynchings and beatings and the deaths of Negroes, while white folks laughed. Fire-bombings and burning crosses. Police in the South meant danger to her. Now, her two boys, well, Charlie might as well be her boy, were being escorted up the driveway by two huge red-faced white policemen. In New York she would have called them cops, but here in St. Louis, she knew they were police, just like she knew to say “Sir.”

Charlie and Allard, who'd been riding with him on his new three-speed bike, didn't look Jane in the eye, and with good cause. Charlie'd decided to reel and free-hand himself and his little cousin all over the grounds of the Catholic girls' school. Up and down the hills, round the Virgins, flesh and statue, through the rows of nuns on the way to chapel and up and down the stairs of the dormitories. Oh, Charlie'd had a grand time, and the priests had called the police cause not only was it trespassing, but colored weren't allowed to do anything at that place, not even the cleaning. Irish ladies with rose-colored hair and graying faces did that. They were pleasant enough, but only if you minded to stay in your place.

“Good afternoon, M'am. These boys here your younguns?” The biggest police, with black curly hair that most covered the pockmarks on his face, spoke.

“Why, yes, Officer. They are.”

“Well, they been riding on private property at the Catholic school round the way, M'am. That's trespassing.”

“I see,” Jane answered, her face as red as the white folks'.

“I can tell by the looks of you and hereabouts, that you all's not from here, but I wanta letya know we don't take to nigras goin out their way to be in our way, if you know what I mean, M'am.”

“No, we aren't from around here.”

“Well, on accounta you special, in a sense, we are gointa let these boys by this time, but only this once.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Jane wanted to pull the posts from the porch and beat the policemen to death. Talkin bout nigras and ways down here and special. As they went on their way, she grabbed Charlie and Allard to her, thanking God they hadn't whistled at some girl like poor Emmet Till.

“Charlie, you a delinquent. You a fool up round them white girls. Must be you like white tail,” Margot shouted off the second-story porch, where her mother's hands couldn't reach her. Vida was mumbling round the collard greens and fatback that there had never been no trouble with the law in her family. Never nothing to do with the law. As they passed under her tree, Betsey heard the police talking under their breath bout how different all the children looked, how was more than darkies in somebody's bed. But they were special kinda nigras, not them common types of colored.

“Charlie and Allard gonna go to jail,” Sharon taunted.

“All of you be quiet! Do you hear me? Be quiet.”

“Well, how do you expect them to act, when you at work all day and they never see their father. You all put too much store by making money. One of you should be back here looking after these chirren.”

“Mama, not now. Please, not now.”

“Well, when you going to do something about these chirren? When they all in jail?”

“Charlie's a hoodlum,” Margot screamed down the back steps.

“Shut up, Margot. Allard, zip your fly. Charlie, go wash your face. Everything's going to be awright.” Turning to Charlie, Jane said, “We'll talk when Uncle Greer gets home.”

“When Greer gets home, all these chirren woulda been in the bed.”

“Mama, please, not now.”

“Well, it's your house.”

“Yes, it is.”

With that Vida rubbed her eyes, which were tearing and pulled her apron to her chest as she walked to her room. No one took her seriously. No one understood what the children needed, especially colored chirren, when them white folks be in they crazy ways.

Jane sat at the kitchen table, gazing blankly at the cupboard where she kept the regular china and the keepsakes from Great Aunt Jane: two candelabra and a crystal butter dish. Jane couldn't get it through her head why Greer was never home when everything went crazy. As she recalled, fathers were supposed to take care of police and discipline and order. “I swear I can't do this by myself. Good lord, I can't do this by myself.” Jane lit a candle for Aunt Jane's memory and was about to pray on her situation when Betsey touched her shoulder.

“Mama, what kinda nigra is a special kinda nigra, and aren't they supposed to call us Negroes?”

“Yes, Betsey. And no, I don't know what kinda nigra is a special kinda nigra. But you're right, darling, we are Negroes with a capital N.”

Jane hugged her daughter, hoping Betsey didn't know all she could do about the Negro problem was set the table for dinner.

“God dammit, Greer! Do you understand anything I ever say to you?”

Jane looked at her wedding picture, satiny, a patina of thirteen years veiling her young foolish face. She wanted to push the gilded edges of the damn thing through Greer's head the way he used scalpels to take bullets outta the hoodlums he loved so much.

“Did you hear me? Where were you when I needed you? Me? Jane, your wife! Not some lowly sick acting-the-fool stinking niggahs so dumb they can't find the goddam clinic! Do you hear me? I am talking to you!”

Greer looked up from
Digest for Surgical Procedures
and nodded his head. Jane froze. She held her breath and started again. She was going to be decent about this one more time.

“Where were you when the police brought our children
home? Don't you realize what could have happened to them? Where were you, dammit! Answer me!”

Jane picked up his stethoscope and threw it at him. Greer caught it in his left hand and went right on reading.

“I was at the Johnsons'. He's been bleeding again since he left the hospital and I wanted to check on him. He's an old man, Jane, he can't get up and run to the clinic on one leg.”

“But I suppose your children could be in jail or dead on accounta poor Mr. Johnson, who's got so many benefits he's forgotten what money looks like.”

Jane walked round the bed to Greer and pulled the
Digest
from his hands. “Did Mr. Johnson pay you something today? Or you so holy you can give your services away? Who do you think you are, St. Francis? I have a house full of children who need clothes, shoes, dental work, eyeglasses, dance classes, food, and a father. And where is their father? Why, seeing Mr. Johnson! Mr. Johnson doesn't live here, Greer. We live here with five children and my beloved mother who was right that the race definitely needs some improving!”

Jane began to beat the dresser with the
Digest.
Then she started tearing it to pieces, when Greer slowly wrapped her in his arms, saying: “Aren't the boys all right?” Jane didn't respond. “Aren't the police going to leave them alone, if they act right?” Jane said nothing. “Look, honey, they're not in jail. Charlie was just having a little fun.”

“Charlie was having fun, was he? Well, this is St. Louis, Missouri, my dear. You ask Chuck Berry how much fun the police let Negroes have when it comes to white girls.” Jane snatched Greer's loosened tie from round his neck.

“I am going to tell you one more time. I cannot run this house as if I were the father and the mother. Now I know you
are a doctor, and you have a public responsibility, but if you don't put this household first in your life, I swear 'fore Jesus you're going to be in for a big surprise.”

Greer knew Jane in these moods. He didn't understand why she couldn't see he was working himself half to death to keep the family exactly the way she wanted. She didn't understand that poor colored people didn't get decent treatment at the clinic, and by going by to see them he was building a clientele for his real practice. Damn, Greer thought, for such an intelligent woman, Jane didn't have much foresight.

“I got home as soon as I could.” With that, Greer took his tie out of Jane's hands and picked up the latest issue of
MD Magazine.

Jane sat at her vanity table staring at Greer, who had the audacity to read when her boys had been touched by southern police. What gall! What an ass she'd married! What ever was she going to do? She took the emery boards from the top left drawer and started doing her nails. She was going to play bridge, but before she did that she was going to have a scotch and soda and play a game of solitaire with the prettiest hands a woman with this many problems could have. Not another word passed between them, not one that was spoken, at any rate, not a word anyone else would understand.

Betsey thought she understood it. She thought she knew that the problem was there were too many of them. Too many children. Too wild. Too much noise. Too trying for her delicate mother's nature. Why, Mama wasn't raised to tend to a bunch of ruffians like Sharon and them, especially not Charlie, who'd awready been put out of schools in the north. No, Betsey knew when her parents were arguing it was most likely on accounta the children. Then there was the problem of the white people and money. White folks
and money seemed to go hand in hand. Whenever a Negro mentioned one, he mentioned the other, like the white folks had took up all the money and were hiding it from the Negroes, like they kept the nice houses for themselves, and the good schools, and the restaurants and motels. Just for themselves.

“You did not win,” Charlie screeched down the back stairs. The basketball ricocheted from one wall to the other all the way down the stairway.

“Betsey! Would you see what's the matter,” Jane called tiredly from her manicure and highball.

“He did too!”

“He didn't.” Margot and Sharon began tustling with each other over the issue of whether or not Allard had won, when it was clear it was none of their business.

“He didn't what?” Betsey screamed into the house from her terrace, where she'd gone to escape the chaos of the house.

“Betsey! Didn't I ask you to see about these children?” Jane leapt up, exasperated. “Betsey, where are you?”

“That's not yours.” Margot tried to pull the ball and jacks from Sharon.

“Who threw this ball down the stairs?” Vida hollered up.

“I don't know, Grandma,” Betsey hollered down.

“Well, come along here and get it. It certainly doesn't belong in the kitchen.”

“Grandma, I didn't have anything to do with that ball!”

“I'ma tell on you. You pull my hair one more time, ya hear?”

“Give it back then.”

“I will not either.”

“Allard, put those matches down! I see you. Where'd you start the fire?” Betsey ran after Allard, who'd only set a small
fire on the third floor to get back at Charlie who was a big bully anyway. By the time Betsey'd put the fire out, the second floor was going crazy.

“I'ma tell Mama. You tore my dress.”

“If you do, I'ma knock one of those buck teeth of yours out!”

“Where's my basketball?”

“I'ma tell Mama.”

“Mama, Mama, please make her stop.”

“Mama, please make her stop.”

“Mama, Allard got holdt to some matches again, but everything's awright.”

“Sharon, stop it, I say.”

“You're hurtin my arm!”

“Mama, please, come help me,” Margot cried.

“Mama, she's lying on me,” Sharon moaned.

“Mama, I didn't start a big fire,” Allard explained.

“Aunt Jane, tell Grandma to give me back my basketball.”

“Mama, please! Come help.”

Jane shut the door to her room and played solitaire, betting against herself. Greer'd fallen asleep. He'd been on call two nights in a row. Betsey went to her terrace for some cloud peace and air. The children just went on like children will do. Jane's thoughts veered to her wedding vows, “in sickness and in health.” Wasn't anything about in madness or white folks.

Betsey took a deep breath cause the South may be full of ugly things but it's not in the air. The air is flowers, leaves and spaces divine, when you're up high enough to climb onto a sturdy branch of your very own oak tree. If she climbed out to the middle of the tree, Betsey thought, she'd be a bird and sing a colored child's bird song, a colored child's blues song or a hot
jump and rag song. From the middle of her tree, where she was sure she was not supposed to be, Betsey listened real close for her city to sing to her so she could respond. Everybody knows any colored child could sing, specially one from a river city. A hankering blues-ridden, soft-swaying grace of a place like her home would surely answer her first melody.

From her vantage point through the myriad leaves, Betsey saw what looked to her mind like a woman in need of some new clothes and a suitcase. Who ever heard of carrying one's belongings in two shopping bags, while wearing a hat with five different colored flowers on it? And she was singing a Mississippi muddy song:

 

humm hum, hum hum, hum uh

 

well, my name is bernice & i come a long way
up from arkansas & i'm here to stay
i got no friends & i aint got no ma
but i'ma make st. louis give me a fair draw