Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (26 page)

“She never sent me any clothes. She didn’t even write, though I wrote to her.”

“She can’t — I thought she and Mrs. Smithfield — Laphet, come meet my daughter,” Poppa said. He introduced me to a short, thick-necked man, one of his roommates. Miss Thessalonia, watching us, smiled at me. I smiled back, and asked Poppa about her. “She thinks she’ll be the new Mrs. Massey, but she won’t,” he said quietly. “She’s worse than a boll weevil on a cotton ball. I can’t handle you and Society, let alone another woman.” He said louder, “Can’t no woman take your momma’s place.”

I was glad he said that. I wouldn’t want anybody as my stepmother. “Poppa, how’m I gonna go to school if I have to nurse Aunt Society?” I blurted out before I’d planned to.

Poppa shuffled around in his seat. “We’re banking on her getting well enough for someone else to sit with her.” He leaned toward me and took my hand. His eyes were so warm, gazing into mine, that I leaned forward to be even closer to him.

“Society’s had a hard life, Cece. She raised me, so I got to do as much as I can for her. Our father — your Grandpa Massey — believed that females were only good for gutting fish, scrubbing floors, cooking food, serving men. I never held to that, but see, she got her thinking about girls from him. Pappy’d be gone menhaden fishing for weeks off the coast of Louisiana. When he first got home, everything’d be copacetic, but the longer he stayed the worse he got.”

I heard a soft snore from Mrs. Bivens, gone to sleep in the chair with her pipe in her mouth. “I hope she keeps her mouth closed so the flies don’t go in,” said Mr. Laphet. “Don’t drop that pipe and set the porch on fire.”

Some of the other folks laughed softly. Poppa didn’t. “Listen. When Pappy drank that white lightning, he got meaner than a shark, see, and he didn’t care who he bit,” Poppa told me. “He beat Momma so bad one time he made her go blind in her right eye. He took Society out of school in second grade to help Momma raise us boys. Society’s dream was to be a teacher, but she never got back in school.”

When Miss Thessalonia bent toward our way, we walked over to a rose-draped gazebo where Mrs. Bivens could see us when she woke up, but out of Thessalonia’s earshot. “Aunti Valentina told me that Aunt Society was cooking when she set fire to your house, and burned up Grammaw and Grandpa Massey. Is that what really happened?” I asked when we’d gotten comfortable.

Poppa shook his head. “Aunt Society banked the fire and emptied the ashes from the cookstove, as always. A few live coals fell through the floor cracks to damp ground, where they always died. She was very careful about fire. We went to bed, but Pappy stayed up, drinking and smoking his pipe. He set himself and the house on fire.” He cleared his throat. His eyes looked very sad. “We kids got out, but Momma tried to save Pappy, so we lost them both. Society blames herself for not watching Pappy.”

“So Aunti Val told a falsity?”

“No, she tells what most everybody else believed at the time.” He sat quiet for a few minutes, and so did I, thinking over what he’d revealed. He began again. “Anyway, I believe Society worried and missed us so when you went to New York and me into the sanitarium that her nerves brought on those strokes.”

Just then I saw Mrs. Bivens leave the porch. Poppa and I waved at her. “C’mon,” he said. “I wanted to show you all around my new home.” We started with the room he shared with Mr. Laphet and two other men. The room had bay windows with pretty blue and white cotton curtains that swung gently over his bed. His Bible and some mementoes lay on a small table by the bed. He told us that he attended church every Sunday, which was good, too. Sometimes he played left field on the baseball team.

“This is really nice, Poppa,” I said. “You can sure get some peaceful rest here.”

Miss Thessalonia headed our way. “Mrs. Bivens, help me out here,” Poppa whispered. When the woman reached us, Mrs. Bivens asked her to show her where the women stayed and to bring us some sweet tea. Miss Thessalonia hesitated, then smiled and they went off.

Back at the gazebo I told Poppa about scrubbing floors, which I hadn’t said anything about in my letters. “Aunti Val was fun most of the time. Miss D — I’ll tell you about her, too — said Aunti’d been married, but I never knew that.”

“Not much to tell. They got married, she kissed him, then he died.” He laughed. “No, that’s not funny. But it became kind of a legend about how great her kisses were. They both were good singers, two of Raleigh’s best. They were going to storm New York and be big stars. They visited up there a few times. After he died, she moved to New York to try it alone.”

“She promised to come the end of this month. Maybe you’ll be able to move home by then, she’ll stay, and maybe we can all be together like a family again.”

“You got it all figured out, huh, baby?” He patted my cheek. “I don’t know if I’ll be home by then, but we’ll keep praying on it. I’m ten times better than I was. It’ll be good to see Valentina, if she makes it.”

“Miss D said Valentina was a butterfly and Momma was a rock.”

“True on both counts. Count your blessings, Cece. Don’t count your maybes.” He stood up. I saw Mrs. Bivens and Miss Thessalonia coming toward us across the yard. “You’re
my
rock and butterfly both, girlio!”

When ole white Lissa brought us safely back home at dusk, Aunt Society and Mrs. Smithfield were dozing on the front porch. Aunt Society seemed happy to see me, and I told them almost everything.

A few days later I went to the mailbox. Hallelujah! A letter from Aunti Val, with a postcard from Big Willie inside! The coal camp they’d stayed at in West Virginia was so awful his daddy and other miners had a big fight with the sheriff at Blair Mountain. People got killed. “My goodness!” I sat down in the swing.

Big Willie wrote at the end of the postcard, “I’m in the mines picking up coal that’s fell off the coal cars. I ain’t forgot about that fair. We be back maybe by then. Write me here.” He gave an Eagle Rock address. My heart beat fast. I wanted to see that ole skinny bald-headed boy!

Now for more good news. I skipped over the pleasantries in Aunti Val’s letter, and then read, “I can’t come in August, but will by the end of September. Promise.”

“Doggone you!” I shouted and stamped my foot. “You promised! I need you!” School’d be going on almost two weeks by then. Now what was I going to do?

A few days later while chasing sugar ants out of the kitchen pantry, I knocked a small sack down onto my head. Papers falling out of it scattered across the floor. As I picked them up, I smelled that familiar Tunisian Dreams perfume. Momma? I recognized Aunti Val’s fancy cursive handwriting on envelopes addressed to Momma. Letters from one sister to another? After checking around for Aunt Society, I hastily tucked the sack into my waist and hurried into my bedroom, where I nervously stashed it under my pillow to read that night, when I was sure she’d be asleep.

Seemed like it took me forever to get her washed up and tucked into bed. Finally in my own bed, I opened the mysterious sack and again Momma’s fragrance from the papers swept over me like her hand had moved around my head.

“Oh my goodness’ sake,” I whispered as I unfolded a torn sheet of paper. “Mr. Nathaniel Chavis’s funeral program.” What I could make out said that his funeral was held at St. Paul AME Church and that Momma and Poppa sang. It said Aunti Val and Mr. Chavis had been childhood sweethearts and had been married little more than one year. Poor Aunti. One year a bride, the next a widow. I remembered how she cried when I asked who the man was in that photograph. I guess she hadn’t told me much about him in order to avoid sad memories. After he died, she moved to New York and became “Lassiter” again, until I suggested that she use Chavis for
Shuffle Along.
I hoped her taking back his name was a sign she was finally healing.

In the first letter I read, undated, Aunti Val hoped to get a position with a famous German concert singer “here in New York” — Madame Mercifal, of course. In another, Aunti wrote, “Nathaniel’s death is too fresh in my heart for me to be with you and Taylor and Celeste now that your little Emmanuel has left this world. Our family is draped with so much tragedy! I suffer so because I know I’m disappointing you, but I pray that Taylor’s sister will come after all and that you’ll regain your health sooner rather than later because of it.” That would have been four years or so ago, since my baby brother had just been born and passed on.

Taylor’s sister was Aunt Society, who at the time was still in Morehead City. Was this what Miss D meant when she accused Aunti Val of not helping the family “before when they needed you”? I found myself defending Aunti Val. She was still grieving. How difficult it would have been for her to return to so much sadness. I paused before opening the next letter. I almost felt like I was intruding into my aunt’s and Momma’s privacy. Who had saved these letters? And why? Poppa? Momma? Had they been left for me to read? I didn’t know, but they were a far greater treasure than anything I had brought back from New York.

Aunti Val must have sent one of Momma’s letters back with her own, because at the top of a letter from Momma was “Sister, I agree” in Aunti Val’s hand. In that letter Momma had fussed, “She scorns the use of toiletries to perk up her skinny-legged, horse-faced self and doesn’t want me to, either.”
Aunt Society again, no doubt,
I thought, giggling low. “She bosses Taylor like he’s still a little boy. Had I known she’d be such a pest, I’d have never agreed to ask her to move here. Though careful with my words, I set her straight three times today about her mean tones speaking to my sweet little Celeste.” Praise God for Momma sticking up for me! Then at some point after that, Poppa was sent to war.

Aunti Val wrote in her return letter, “I wish I could have stayed until you get back on your feet, but at least I got there for Christmas.” So she got here for the holidays. “Society lacks our Raleigh manners. I wasn’t surprised to learn that she can’t read and write, either.”

I stopped and reread that line. Aunt Society illiterate? Poppa did say she only got to second grade. Maybe that’s what he started to say about her and Mrs. Smithfield sending my clothes, but stopped. Oh, bless her heart. She couldn’t write back to me. I felt a flash of guilt for being upset that she hadn’t written to me in New York. But goodness gracious, she should have said something! I’d have taught her how long ago. Maybe she was ashamed. A lot of people couldn’t read or write anything except their names, I knew. I was finding out that my family was closemouthed about a lot of things.

A penny postcard in the sack showed a pretty young woman and a handsome young man hugging atop a player piano with “Spooning at Coney Island” handwritten on the back. Aunti Val and Mr. Chavis! That wasn’t the one he fell off of, apparently. Another showed Aunti Val standing by a seated fat White woman swathed in so many furs that she looked like a bear. On the back was a note: “Bon voyage! Valentina and Madame Mercifal.”

Aunt Society must have felt quite gangly around someone as pretty as Momma with her perfumes, thick black hair, and hazel eyes. Society must have felt downright clumsy whenever fancy Aunti Val flitted down from Harlem. From their letters and from Aunti Val’s own words, I knew Aunti Val and Momma probably said some really cutting things about Society, and probably loud enough for her to hear now and then. I decided to return the sack of letters back to the top shelf and not snap at Aunt Society anymore, no matter what she said or did. She’d had enough unkind things said about her.

By late August I was worrying less about Aunt Society, and more about my education. School opened September 13. Usually a parent came to school to register their children at the beginning of the term, but neither Poppa nor Aunt Society could do that. Nothing had come in the mail, unless it had gone to Poppa at the sanitarium, but I was sure he would have said something about it when I visited. Had my school and Mrs. Bracy, who was also the assistant principal, forgot about me?

And what about my school clothes? Almost none from last year fit. The ones I’d brought from New York were too dressy for everyday school wear. The nearly twenty dollars I had left would have to buy what I needed.

I walked over to the Smithfields’ to borrow an old
News and Observer,
our daily White newspaper, that they kept stacked on their back porch, then settled myself on our steps. Aunt Society wheeled herself out to catch a breeze with me. I thumbed through the newspaper, eyeing advertisements. “Almost fifty cents for girls’ silk hose, and two dollars for plain leather shoes! Everything’s so expensive. I hate to think what a middy blouse, a decent dress, a skirt, and undergarments’ll cost.” I sighed. “Not to mention a new coat.” I was tired of always wearing secondhand clothes, but better used clothes than none at all. I knew of a couple secondhand shops on Hargett Street, if I could ever get away.

“Like to see the newspaper?” I asked my aunt. She could at least look at the photographs.

“No. My eyes are too weak.”

“Aunt Society, I don’t mean to pry, but Poppa said you wanted to be a teacher,” I said carefully.

I saw her look away across the street like she was trying to remember. “Yes,” she said slowly, “long ago.”

“And that you had to quit school to take care of him and his brothers,” I continued softly.

“Water under the bridge, Cece.”

“But you know so many poems and stories, and can recite them so well.”

She tapped her forehead, smiling a little. “I had a good memory, till my strokes. Why?”

“I was just wondering,” I said softly, “why you didn’t write me back.” I didn’t want to upset her.

“Oh.” She shifted a little in her wheelchair. “You never knew that I can’t read or write a thing but my name, did you? But all I needed was hear a poem or story just once. I could repeat it word for word,” she said proudly. “Folks who don’t read got to be able to remember. Book learning’s all right, but you got to have the memory.” She stopped and sighed. “I don’t have the memory no more.”

This was the longest she’d talked since her strokes. I was impressed and touched by what she said. I started to ask how she’d parsed my papers if she couldn’t read, until I remembered that I’d recited my work to her. Then she’d light into me about how this or that was wrong. I’d change everything to satisfy her. But my teachers would mark
wrong
everything I changed. I finally learned to change everything back before I turned my papers in, and then I got good grades again.