Broken Ground (5 page)

The knocking grows more insistent. I start toward the sound, but from behind her desk, Miss Berger shows the flat of her hand:
Stop
. She hurries to answer. So stealthily does she slip behind the shelves that she appears to be going into hiding.

Moments pass, during which I hear bits and pieces of a whispered exchange. Then Miss Berger emerges. Two women and an old man follow her.

No wonder they knocked at the side door.
Whites Only
: That's the library's unwritten rule, implemented by Alba's Powers That Be, to Miss Berger's fury, and these folks—the women wearing carefully pressed if well-worn dresses, along with hats and gloves; the man wearing a faded gray suit and carrying a battered gray fedora—are Negro. I would have distinguished them as
colored
until a few weeks ago, when I used that word in conversation with Miss Berger and she set me straight. We were deciding which books we might donate to the traveling library, a truck that passes through the Negro side of town about once a month. Miss Berger chose a volume,
The Souls of Black Folk,
by Mr. W. E. B. DuBois—a thinker and spokesman for his people, she explained, adding that I'd learn a great deal if I read his work. “Mr. DuBois would say that
Negro
is the current, correct term, preferred by himself and other members of his race,” Miss Berger said, and laid
The Souls of Black Folk,
our library's only copy, atop the stack of other donations. As the book was up for donation, I wasn't sure how I'd be able to read it. I mentioned this to Miss Berger, and she said that we'd get another copy as soon as soon as the budget allowed. “But given the choice of here and there, I choose there,” she said quietly. “It's a crime to keep the work of Mr. DuBois locked up inside this place, languishing on a shelf. This book needs to be shared with those who might not otherwise have access to it.”

Could it be that one of our three visitors selected
The Souls of Black Folk
from the limited offerings of the traveling library? I wonder about this as Miss Berger hustles them into her small, windowless office and then beckons for me to follow. I have to edge my way into the room, which holds a cabinet of library supplies, the two-burner unit, the often contrary loose-leaf copy machine (manufactured in 1902), rolls of dated maps, three towers of moldering books in need of repair, and a crate that serves as both umbrella stand and Lost and Found. The room barely contains Miss Berger and the two other women, who are nearly as tall as she and big-boned to boot. In comparison to them, the elderly man seems a bird, perched on the edge of the table that holds the copy machine. When I tuck myself in beside him, he leans away from me. He's uncomfortable standing shoulder to shoulder with a white woman. He grips the rim of his hat so tightly that his fingernails pale. I wish I could reassure him, but I don't know where to begin. His female friends regard me, their expressions flat and unrevealing, as Miss Berger closes the door, and the small space becomes still more claustrophobic.

“Well.” Miss Berger expels a long, shaky breath. “Here we are. But what happened to ten o'clock tomorrow night, as we'd planned?”

“This couldn't wait.” The taller woman's voice is grim. She shoots a smoldering glare down her long, hawkish nose—a glare which rakes over me, then Miss Berger, then fixes on me again.

“Now, Minah.” Miss Berger's voice is firm and calm. “This is Ruth, my reliable colleague. You can say what you need to say in her presence. No need to beat around the bush.”

“There's real trouble this time. Can't afford any unnecessary risks.” The woman—Minah—doesn't take her gaze from me.

Miss Berger says, “Ruth's not a risk, and, Minah, you know there's always trouble.”

“This is different.” Minah sucks in a breath. “Wolf's at the door.”

For one long moment Miss Berger holds perfectly still, and I swear I can hear the beating of hearts other than my own. Then, “Say it,” Miss Berger says.

Minah turns to her friend. “It's yours to tell, Susan.”

“No, it's Papa's.” Susan, round as a barrel, has a lushly plump face that shines with perspiration. She reaches across our tight circle to touch the elderly man's sleeve, and he gives a nod of permission. “But since he can't . . .” Susan clears her throat. “Papa was walking home from the Thorne place last night around about eleven. They kept him late, chopping wood and such.”

The man's scarred, arthritic hands don't look like they could wield an ax. But I must underestimate his strength. You don't get calluses like he has from doing nothing.

“The Thorne place is way out, west on Central, where it's just dirt road. You probably know that.” Susan's hands are the opposite of her father's, fleshy and dexterous, working the air. “So Papa has some miles to walk at the end of each day. He passes the Homestead.” Susan hesitates, and her hands go still. “Well, you do know about the Homestead.”

“Indeed,” Miss Berger says.

Everyone knows about the Homestead—the first claim staked in this area during the Land Run. Rumor has it that Timothy Bradford, the man who took possession of the place, was actually a Sooner; he jumped the gun and snatched up prime property before others had crossed Territory lines. Timothy Bradford's descendants still live on the Homestead, though they've long since leased portions of their fields to tenant farmers. After three generations of wealth, they're as strapped as any other local landowners, I've heard, with harvests being what they've been in these last years.

“Papa smelled the smoke.” Susan's hands, working again. “Then he saw it rising above that windbreak of cottonwoods off the side of the house.” She lowers her voice. “Papa's no fool. He didn't go close. But he heard them singing. He heard their horses neigh and stomp the ground.”

Miss Berger looks at me. “Do you understand, Ruth?”

Minah interrupts the answer I do not have. “No time for explanations, Sarah. Not now. White people get hungry enough, desperate enough, they get blameful. Next thing we know, it'll be Tulsa 1921 all over again.”

“Papa and me, we did our time in Tulsa,” Susan blurts. “We came here because of it. We don't want another Tulsa.”

Thanks to Miss Berger, I know about Tulsa 1921, too. But before Miss Berger informed me, I'd heard nothing about the race riot that occurred over the last day of May and the first day of June that year. That's when a mob of white people attacked the Greenwood District, the wealthiest Negro community at that time in the United States—“it was also known as ‘the Black Wall Street,' ” Miss Berger said—and burned it to the ground. “The violence went on for sixteen hours,” she continued, her eyes glittering with some emotion I didn't fully understand. “In the end, eight hundred Negros were admitted to white hospitals, because their own hospitals were in ashes. No one ever figured out how many people died—somewhere between fifty-five and three hundred. That's what I've heard, though the authorities put it at thirty-nine. Ten thousand folks lost their homes. Thirty-five city blocks were destroyed. All because Dick Rowland, a nineteen-year-old Negro shoe-shiner, startled Sarah Page, a seventeen-year-old white elevator operator, in the elevator of Tulsa's Drexel Building. That's the so-called justification for the riot. That and the history of these United States.”

I was eight years old in 1921. It seems like a long time ago to me, and the Tulsa of that time like a backward place indeed. A race riot like that wouldn't happen now—not one that big, for the world to see. At least, that's what I've thought until today, until right this moment, when tension such as I've never known charges this cramped, airless room. All I want to do is get out of here, run far. But there's no way out. Not without pushing and shoving, making a general fool of myself and disappointing Miss Berger. Not without ignoring Susan's papa, who has balanced his gray fedora atop the loose-leaf copy machine and, like his daughter, now shapes the air with his hands. As he gestures, he opens and closes his mouth, trying to speak, emitting grunts instead. I catch a glimpse of where his tongue should be, but isn't; it's a pink nub of muscle instead. And now Susan responds to her father with similar gestures—sign language, I realize. They're
talking
to each other.

“'Case you were wondering,” Minah says to me, biting out the words, “that man could talk good as you before the riot. But during it, he said something someone with a knife thought he shouldn't have, and that was the end of that.”

Nausea rolls through my gut.

“Papa wonders about this new mayor.” Susan is focused intently on her father, ignoring Minah and me both. “He's heard some good words.”

Miss Berger nods. “Your daddy's heard right. He's a decent man, Mayor Botts. Or he wants to be. That's my perception. We'll talk to him.” Susan and Minah cut eyes at each other, and Miss Berger corrects herself. “Sorry.
I'll
talk to him. Botts seems to be more . . . well, as mayor, he has to keep up certain appearances, but he's got enough Choctaw running through his blood to understand situations like this better than any city official before him. And he's thick as thieves with the new sheriff, who swears up and down he's not like the old one.” Miss Berger turns to Susan's father. “Any other suggestions or questions, Jubilant? Please share them if you have them.”

Jubilant flashes his hands. “Don't wait,” Susan translates. “Talk to Botts soon as possible.”

Jubilant picks up his hat, then runs a brittle finger along the bottom of the rim, wiping away the red dust that must have settled on the copy machine without either Miss Berger or me noticing. The fedora has left an imprint on the machine, as perfect a circle as any crown.

“I'll go straight to the mayor's house.” Finally, Miss Berger opens the door and, as air drifts in, gestures broadly, ushering us from the office. “I promise I'll talk to him tonight.”

Minah, Susan, and Jubilant leave the way they came, out the side door. Miss Berger doesn't waste a moment after their departure. She snatches her pocketbook from beneath her desk. She's nearly to the front door when I manage to catch up to her. “Wait! What was happening at the Homestead? Who—”

“KKK.” Next moment, Miss Berger is out the door.

I stay nearly two more hours at the library, searching out and reading everything I can find about the Ku Klux Klan and the Tulsa race riot. Turns out, even Miss Berger hasn't been able to acquire much on these topics.

THE LITTLE TIME
left passes, leaving only a handful of hours before I board the train for California—the hours of tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night, to be exact. The day after tomorrow, soon after dawn, Miss Berger will drive me to the station. Perhaps then we'll have a chance to talk more about her visit to Mayor Botts. So far: “He listened.” That's all she's said. I try to bear in mind that we haven't had time for conversation, with so much for me to finish up at the library before I go. Not that Miss Berger is demanding extra work from me, but as a thank you to her, I want to do it. I want to give the place one last, thorough cleaning and spruce up the grounds. I want to set every shelf in order, type up the story-time schedule for the fall, make necessary adjustments to the card catalog. I do these things. And I catch and release two last mice.

Now it's the end of today, closing time, the last time for me. I flip over the sign. My fingers are stained with ink from all the typing. My cuticles are torn from the scrubbing, dusting, weeding, and pruning. My hands are shaking.
Closed
has never felt more
Open
, on the precipice of a great unknown.

I turn, startled to find Miss Berger not at her desk but standing right before me, as she did on the dust-ridden, windy morning of my return last spring. She takes my hands in her own, contains their shaking. “You'll tell them tonight?”

It takes me a moment, but then I nod. I'd prefer to relay the news of my departure only after I'm entirely packed. But I know I shouldn't. In fact, I can't. It's not only that it wouldn't be fair to Mother and Daddy. There's a practical component: I've tried packing in the dark dead of night. Mother or Daddy always awake at the sound of me stumbling over or bumping into or dropping something. Bleary-eyed, they'll charge to my room (Daddy) or waver in the doorway (Mother) and ask what's what and why. I always make up some sorry excuse about end-of-season cleaning, to which the reply is always
Do it in the light of day, why don't you?
Tomorrow I will pack in the light of day. Tonight I'll tell them what's what and why.

Miss Berger catches her breath at some shift in my expression. “Oh, Ruth. Don't worry so. It will be all right. If they don't want this for you, know that I want it for you enough for both of them.”

Throat tight, I manage another nod. Satisfied that my hands are steady again, Miss Berger releases them.

I FIND MOTHER
and Daddy at their typical posts in the front room after dinner—Mother in her rocking chair, thumbing through her dilapidated book of handwritten recipes; Daddy in his easy chair, working on the Sunday crossword puzzle. They are listening to Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette, singing on the
National Barn Dance
show out of Chicago. Chicago sounds a stone's throw away; the radio signal always comes in loud and clear on nights like tonight, when, perfectly centered and framed by the open window, the bright moon hangs in the star-studded sky. A clean-cut hangnail moon tonight, and Chicago just down the road. But California—I don't believe we've heard a peep or a rasp of static from California. It might as well be on the other side of that moon.

I sit down on the overstuffed sofa—the fabric coarse and stiff, nothing like the lesser island of Charlie's and my once-upon-a-time life. I take a deep breath. “I'm going to college.” There. I've said it.