Betsey Brown (6 page)

 

hum hum, hum hum, hum hum, uh

 

there's some pretty young men
in these mighty fine jobs
got pomade in their hair
& they move like the light
i'ma set my sights
on a st. louis guy
with some luck by my side
i'ma dress up my best
& bring me a st. louis mess of a man

 

humm hum, hum hum, hum hum, hum uh

 

i'ma show them white folks in arkansas
that a good woman can get what she want
how she want and when/ humm humm, humm humm

 

my name is bernice & i come a long way
i'ma makin my business in st. louis to stay

 

The song moved as if it weren't usedta having shoes on its feet. The lips blurred like the slurs of her lines, losing definition into flat pimply cheeks and a head of hair in need of pressing underneath that hat. Bernice hadda way about her. A country honor that came from knowing hard work too soon, and being rid of it too late. The children's noises coming from this big ole house gladdened her heart.

“I told you to give me my jacks!”

“No ball playing beneath the chandelier, do you hear me, you piece of northern trash! Even if you are my grandchild, you aint right.”

“Mama, Mama, please come see to Sharon.”

“Jane, you best come out your room and see to these chirren 'fore they tear your house down.”

Bernice waddled up the stairs from the curb, glanced at Betsey in the tree, took a breath and hummed her song. She had been walking round this rich colored neighborhood all day looking for work, and she was determined to stay in St. Louis. She was going to help this family out. She was what was missing, an eye on these hincty misbehaving brats. Bernice kept on up the stairs to the front door in time to the yelps and hollers
careening through the screens of every floor. Seemed like not a child in there could talk decent. All of them screaming and hollering like they were out on the farm. Bernice rang the front door bell.

“Mama, there's somebody at the door.”

“Mama, there's a colored woman at the door.”

“Mama, there's a fat lady at the door.”

“Jane, you've got a visitor.”

“Aunt Jane, there's something at the door.”

Jane tied her robe round her waist, while looking at Greer asleep in his clothes. That damned green surgical outfit sprawled all over her fresh linen. But that was the man she'd married. She bent over and gave him a peck of a kiss, a long caress where the evening shadow was beginning to appear on his chin.

“Jane, I say, you've got a caller!”

By the time Jane reached the front door, all the children were crowded round her like the woman who lived in a shoe. It was claustrophobic. She had a hard time opening the front door for all the feet pressed up against it. What she saw was a heavyset, no-funny-business country woman with the most peculiar hat.

“Good evening, M'am.”

“Yes, may I help you? I'm Mrs. Brown.”

“Yes, M'am, Mrs. Brown. I see you've got some chirrens and I thought you might be in need of some he'p. I'ma hard-workin gal. I come up from Arkansas to raise myse'f up. I'm ready to tend after em, and see to they meals and hair and such.”

Jane smiled, thinking the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

“Well, come in, Miss, uh . . .”

“My name is Bernice Calhoun, M'am.”

“Well, Miss Calhoun, please come in. This is Allard. Here is
Sharon. This is Margot. And my nephew Charles. Oh, I wonder where Betsey is? Mama, have you seen Betsey?” Jane called.

“No, I haven't,” Vida answered from the kitchen.

“Miss Calhoun, have you worked with children before?”

“Why, yes, M'am, in Arkansas.”

“Do you have any references you could show me?”

“Well, I could tell you the names of the families I worked for, and you could call them. But down south they's mighty informal, so I don't have anything writ down that I could show you.”

“Oh my.” Jane sighed. “I think the best thing to do, Miss Calhoun, is for you to give me the names and addresses of your former employers. I shall write them. In the meantime, you may work here on a probationary basis, till I've heard from them.”

“Oh, that's fine, M'am.”

Vida was approaching Jane to say she had no idea where Betsey was. Instead she interrupted, “Who's this?”

“Oh, Mama, this is Bernice Calhoun, who's going to stay on to help with the children. Isn't that wonderful? Miss Calhoun, this is my mother, Mrs. Murray.”

Vida took one look at Bernice and went back to the kitchen, shaking her head about what the race had to offer.

“I can't figure out where Betsey is right now, Bernice, but she's my oldest girl and she'll be a big help to you.”

Bernice pursed her lips, thinking now would be the time to get in good with Mrs. Brown. Show her what a sharp eye she had for chirrens.

“Might she be that one out there, up in that tree, M'am?”

Jane forgot the time of day. She stiffened and ran out on the front porch to the far end. Right above her head, in the middle of a huge tree, sat her daughter, Betsey.

“Betsey, you come down from there right this instant! How
do you expect to set an example behaving like a jackass? Come down from there, right this minute! Do you hear me, Elizabeth!”

When Jane called Betsey “Elizabeth,” it was serious. Betsey cut her eyes at Bernice Calhoun, who didn't realize what a mistake she'd made. Honeying up to Jane wasn't going to do her any good. Jane wasn't home half the day, Betsey Brown was. Now, Betsey Brown was more than mad cause some fool Mississippi song had given away her sacred hiding place. Made her mama call her Elizabeth.

“I'll be right out, Mother. I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what got into me,” Betsey oozed, not fooling Jane at all. “I want to meet the company. I'm coming right now.”

Jane watched in amazement as her daughter maneuvered herself along the limbs of the tree to the edge of the terrace and through the window. In a flash Betsey presented herself.

“Hello, my name is Elizabeth Brown. How are you?”

Jane was proud of her daughter again. Bernice thought she'd made a friend.

“Betsey, I told you, Miss Calhoun.”

“Oh, M'am, the chirrens can call me Bernice.”

“I told Bernice that you would help her with the children and the running of the house. Show her to her room on the third floor and tell her about the neighborhood and the children's chores.”

Betsey took Bernice by the hand. Charlie reluctantly picked up her paper bags filled with God only knew what and up they traipsed through the back stairway to the top of the house. It was against Jane's principles to put a Negro in the basement. It was against the children's principles to accept somebody who was going to tell on them all the time. Betsey had some very special plans for Miss Calhoun.

“I hope you'll be very happy with us, Bernice. The girls are very smart and Allard never causes any trouble and Charlie is practically a grown-up awready.”

“Why, thank-ya, 'Liz'beth.”

“Uh, Betsey is just fine, Bernice, if you don't mind.”

“Well, I say to ya again, thank-ya, Miss Betsey.”

Betsey gave the secret sign of a fist behind her back with two fingers outstretched to indicate it was time for a children's meeting in the basement. Who did this Bernice think she was, giving away secrets like that? Why, Jane didn't even know about the tree reaching over the porch until Bernice came. Betsey was going to see to it that Bernice paid. Boy, would she pay. The line, led by Charlie dribbling the basketball down the stairs, headed straight for the bowels of the house.

Bernice didn't know it, as she examined the tilted curved ceilings of her new quarters. Jane didn't know it, as she curled up next to Greer behind the locked door of their room above the lilacs. Only the children in the darkest smallest corner of the basement knew what Bernice had coming her way. Vida in the kitchen over chicken fricassee could only think of her Frank and how much he liked the meat to fall off the bone over the rice and onions. And there was nothing any one of the grown-ups could have done had they known what was up in the basement.

The basement was a secret of its own. There were rooms that led to other rooms and back round to the first room. There were closets that went way back against the walls of the house until it smelled like the earth was coming right on in. There were rooms to have seances and see cats have kittens. Corners to whisper make-believe apologies and dreams. There was the smell of many folks having lived in the dark for many years, and there
was the children's favorite meeting place that no one bigger than them had ever seen. In the far left-hand corner of the longest closet with the lowest ceilings and plywood walls painted green long before Christ was born, the Brown children had their pow-wow.

“How's she gonna do something with us?” Betsey was riled, and her little temper was cavorting in the shadows with her small horde of followers. “She can't even talk. Imagine callin me 'Lizabeth. Why, that aint even a name, 'Lizabeth!”

“And she tol' on you too, Betsey,” Sharon chimed in.

“Mama didn't know nothing bout that tree,” Margot added.

“Not now, Allard. Now we've got to figure out a way to get this woman out of our house.”

“Not only can't she talk, she can't hardly walk,” Charlie quipped with the basketball twirling on his finger, then behind his back.

“So how's she gonna do something with us?” Allard decried.

“She's not. Just wait till morning.” And Betsey dismissed the crowd.

Betsey was not a vindictive child. She was a child of special places and times of her own. She tried not to hurt anybody or anything, but Bernice'd given the whole family access to her privacy. Now when they went looking for her, they'd all know to go to her beloved tree. Search its branches for the dreamer and make noises that would disrupt Betsey's current reveries. No, Betsey wasn't being evil, to her mind she was protecting herself. God only knew what else that Bernice would uncover and deliver over to Jane and Greer. Heaven forbid she ever found that long closet in the basement! That's where everybody practiced writing nasty words like “pussy” and “dick,” though only Charlie admitted to knowing where all these things were.
Margot just liked to write them in big red letters with nail polish she'd borrowed from her mother's collection of toiletries. Allard just liked making the letters, and then asking what the word was.

Meanwhile, in the upper reaches of the house, Bernice was hanging her limited wardrobe in the armoire next to a single bed just bout big enough to accommodate her rotund brown body. Yes, she thought, looking at the red dress with the lace on one sleeve, St. Louis was gointa be just fine. She'd have every Friday and Saturday night off, to meet some nice hardworking fella, maybe one of them from down her way, not too citified. Bernice looked out her window down on the garden, thinking how lucky she'd been to run into the Brown family. That poor Mrs. Brown, so frail, with all these chirren, and Mrs. Murray with her nose all up in the air on accounta a body didn't have good hair. She'd win them over. That's what she'd do.

In the morning the children tumbled down the stairs into a fine chaos. First, Betsey told Allard it was alright to rub the goldfish together. Then Sharon and Margot decided to swing on the curtain rod separating the living room from the parlor. Charlie decided he'd practice throwing his basketball around the chandelier. Of course, Jane and Greer were relaxing for a change, relieved to have Bernice handling everything. Even Vida had gone out to see to her dahlias in the back. So it was just Bernice and the Brown children.

“Look Bernice, somebody peed in the bed.” Margot came running through the kitchen with a dank sheet wrapped round her head.

“Bernice, you wanta see me make fires? We could use these matches right under here.” Allard crawled through Bernice's legs to the cupboard where the fireplace matches were kept. He
really liked those. They were so long and the fire was very tiny at first, till you threw it somewhere. Then whamo. Big flame.

Yet Bernice was undaunted. She was gointa stay in St. Louis, no matter what.

“Bring that nappy head on round heah. No, don't carry no comb, bring me a brush. A comb aint gointa go threw all that mess.”

Bernice'd made a breakfast of grits and eggs that no one ate, claimin the grits were stiff and the eggs too hard.

“Allard, didn't you say you wanted to climb out the window. The one in my room is open. Sharon, there's some money in Bernice's sweater pocket, if you want to buy some Snickers today.”

All this was going on while Bernice was trying to make some sense of the mass of braids on the girls' heads. Bernice shouted, “Put them goldfish down. I want my money in my pocket right now.” It didn't sit right with her. This Betsey was supposed to be her friend, and here she was undermining everything.

“Bernice, the fish are dying.”

“Well, put em back in the water, fool.”

“I'ma tell Mama you callt me a fool.”

“That's right Allard, you tell Mama.”

“Betsey, bring that head over heah, I tol' you.”

“Bernice, I'm hungry.”

“Well. Eat your breakfast.”

“I don't want breakfast, I want some chicken.”

“That's for dinner.”

“I want some chicken now!”

“Well awright, then. Charlie, get that basketball out this house.”

“Oh, Bernice, I spilled all the chicken grease.”

Bernice stood up with an Arkansas fire in her eyes screaming, “You better eat them grits cause that's all you gonna get! Put them goldfish down! I tell ya whoever took my money bettah pray for they soul! I aint going nowhere and y'all best mind, cause I'm in St. Louis to stay.”

“How you gonna do something with us?”