Playing With Matches (15 page)

I waited.

“They had an elephant trainer, and a man on stilts. The fella who owned it was the ringmaster, too. Most of all, I loved the way those people lived, travelin’ in vans, pulling popcorn machines and midway games. They set up housekeeping behind the big top.”

I found voice to ask, “Were there really trained chickens?”

For a time she said nothing. Then, “There were. They were tiny little things billed as
pygmy chickens
. They wore pink ruffles and swung from a trapeze and walked tightropes, and twenty or thirty would pile up on the backs of fancy ponies. They had this little playground too, with a seesaw and a merry-go-round. After the show, people could come outside and watch.”

I wiggled over on my side and put one arm across Auntie. She laid her big hand on my elbow. I could not think why she’d kept this such a secret. Or why she was choosing to tell me now.

“They had these trailers they kept dark inside. They’d outfitted the walls with shelves for nesting hens. We called the shelves
pans
, a dozen setting hens bunched on a pan. Two, three hundred chickens in one trailer. Then we went in and took the eggs, kept them under hot lights, and hatched them out.”

I pictured fuzzy yellow chicks. If they’d grown up to be pygmies, I couldn’t imagine how small the babies must have been. “And you taught them to do tricks?”

She shook her head. “There was no such thing as a pygmy chicken, Clea. After a chick hatched, we bundled it tight in gauze strips to keep it from growing. We gave ’em just enough feed and water to stay alive.”

I felt my eyes scrunch up at such cruelty to something so
cute
.

“Sometimes, they grew knobby and deformed, and we kilt
those right off. The rest lived and slept and shat in their bindings. We—we drugged ’em heavy to keep them from screaming.”

“Chickens scream?” I said, my voice cracking.

“They surely do.

“When enough time passed, and we knew they wouldn’t grow no more, we unwrapped each one and cleaned it up. We were poor teachers, and the chickens were bad at learning. But we got paid for every one that performed and, in the end, if they wanted to eat, they had to do tricks—hens and roosters, ducks sometimes. If one died, we threw it out for the dogs.”

I pressed my face to Auntie’s arm.

“—And, my goodness, people loved those shows. Rich men came in big limousines, smoking fat cigars. Some gave us their whole paychecks to stay late, squattin’ by the pens, feeling for bones and plumpness under the feathers. That ringmaster did terrible things to those birds, squeezin’ the life out of them. Sometimes he fired ’em out of cannons. Lord, feathers and bones and bits went everywhere.

“Folks wagered to see which ones would survive. The old man hired kids to clean up the mess. Later, lots of folks came down with tuberculosis from handling those birds.”

I snuggled closer, laid my temple on Auntie’s collarbone. I felt as though I’d fired that cannon myself.

“But the birds were the least of it,” she said, sighing. “It was the 1960s and ’70s, and folks were really coming to see us Negroes.”

I lifted my head to look, but her eyes were closed, her lashes bristly.

“You see, times were changing in the South. Us colored was s’pose to be able to ride in the front of the bus. Eat at cafeterias and soda fountains. But there was so many white folks that held
on to the old ways; they paid good money to see us pretend civil rights had never happened. And there we was, our eyelids painted glittery white, down in the circus ring, actin’ like field hands with a make-believe outhouse and buckets of slop, barefoot and wearing mammy bandanas. Like a hundred years had not gone by.”

A white man had paid my auntie to do that
. She was big and fierce, defiant and defensive. So protective had Auntie been of me in times of tribulation, it hardly seemed possible.

“So we obliged. That’s what we was, Clea June, without an ounce of self-respect. Clown slaves to them customers, and to them damned chickens. It pains me to recall how some of us walked on our hands with those birds balanced up there on the soles of our feet.”

“Did you do that? I mean, did you walk on your hands?”

She snorted. “I could not. Sometimes I carried a microphone, though, flippin’ those birds like they was flapjacks in a skillet, bowin’ to ’em, sayin’
Yassuh, boss
and
No, ma’am, Miss Sally
. I was ashamed, you see that?”

“Yes.”

“When a single black man carried on that way, it was like all of us disrespectin’ ourselves. This one fella, he had a shoe-shine box, and he went around polishing those chickens’ feet. That nearly kilt me, ’cause that’s what my daddy did. But those people in them seats kept on clappin’ and throwin’ quarters on the ground.”

Listening to Auntie, my heart was heavy, pressed down with a sorrow I knew something about.

“The rest of the time, we was half killin’ those birds in the chicken trailers, spinning down and down. Some folks stood all they could and tried to run away. Every time, though, he caught them and beat them bad.”

I could not imagine how this story might end.

But Auntie was done, and she got up off the bed. “Enough for tonight. You turn over now and go to sleep.”

“But—you can’t just stop there.”

“It’s my life,” she said. “And I can. Hush, now.”

20

T
he next day, the rain came. I walked home from school, watching cracks in the road fill up with water, and realized it was the first time in a long while that my eyes had seen anything.

I could not wait for bedtime, and feared Auntie would have a change of heart and not tell more of the story. But she had begun and seemed determined to plow through.

We lay, that night, listening to rain on the roof.

“Where was I?” she said.

“Chickens. And performing, and some folks running off. Oh, Auntie,” I said, bundled against her dark bulk. “Weren’t you scared?”

“Mighty scared.”

“Did you try to run away too?”

“Not at first, baby girl. I told you—I’d already left home, and look where it got me. Truth was, I’d run away to join the circus ’cause I didn’t want to be somebody’s maid. My sister Shookie worked in a laundry, steam in her face and bleach in her lungs. Always folding other people’s clothes. Me, I couldn’t stand to watch my daddy shine shoes, not one more day.

“My fam’ly cried on the day I left, but I thought performing
would be rich-making and fine. And if I saved my money, before long I’d be wearing diamonds and rubies. Instead, my daddy and my sister were sore ashamed. I took in money, all right, but I made myself small with what I did. Then one early mornin’, I’d had enough. I went into the trailer and apologized to those chickens.”

I felt my eyebrows fly up.

“Yes, ma’am. For all I’d done. For what I
hadn’t
done. Then I said my prayers and crept into the ringmaster’s tent and stole his whip. I beat that man within an inch of life.”

I reached up and laid my palm against her round cheek. “He deserved it,” I said, but Auntie only looked sad.

“He rolled on the floor and put his arms over his head and cried like a baby. I guess the rest of ’em heard, or maybe they looked in and saw, ’cause all of a sudden there was a hundred black folks pilin’ out of those tents—the cookshack, the privy, the elephant pens. I had turned ’em loose.

“The po-lice came. They had a bullhorn and billy clubs. Said we were makin’ a public racket ’cause we was camped in a parking lot. They started swingin’ those clubs, breakin’ bones and splittin’ heads, and they hooked up fire hoses and sprayed water on us. A lot of folks slipped and fell on the paving.”

“Were you hurt, Auntie? Was anyone?”

I could hear wheels of remembering turning in her head.

“Firemen tried to wash off the streets before news reporters came, and the TV people, ’cause the red blood was all mixed up with that water. Folks were wet and bleeding, and trying to figure which way to run. Another thing—somebody had turned those chickens loose. They got trampled and smashed under people’s feet.”

I moaned and sorrowed in my heart for those birds.

“Some black folks came rushing out of their houses and ran right into the middle of things. They tried to help—Izzie Thorne was there. Then others too—white folks—and there was a lot of screaming and crying, and fistfights broke out everywhere. That big striped tent was in rags, and—”

“Miss Izzie
Thorne
?”

Auntie nodded. “By startin’ that fiasco, I’d done everybody wrong. Them that could walk got up and ran in all directions.”

“Wait,” I said. “Did Miss Thorne work for the
circus
?”

“No. She lived down the street, and she came running out, took some in and kept us hid.”

“What happened to the man you whipped?”

“He was lookin’ to have me arrested. His arm was broke and some of his ribs. The po-lice drove up and down the streets. They figured anyone who didn’t live in that town was suspect, ’cause no matter what that ringmaster told ’em, the po-lice said, ‘No one woman could inflict this much hurt.’ ”

At the corner of her mouth, Auntie grinned a little, and I grinned too.

“That night they come pounding on Izzie Thorne’s door. She opened it like nothing had happened. She acted like she didn’t know a thing. And all the while, there I was, living in her back bedroom. I hid in the closet—so I know how you feel, Clea girl, when you slide under your bed, and you can’t come out.

“I’d peek between the window blinds, though, and see them officers in the street. They wore helmets and had guns, and they weren’t afraid to shoot. We cowered down in those houses. My heart was broken. I saw I’d made trouble, that what I’d caused was just another riot. Accordin’ to civil rights laws, all that street fighting in the South was supposed to be over. But it wasn’t.”

“Auntie!” I breathed. “I’m so proud of you.” And I was proud
of Miss Izzie Thorne too, and understood things better now. In the years she had taught me, seeing me every day at school, it was no wonder it hurt her to look at me. “What happened after?”

“I was real sorry I’d made Izzie unsafe. I remembered back when coloreds were ridin’ the bus to Jackson, and I wished with all my heart that I’d not joined with the circus but had gone with them, learning to fight fists with peacefulness. But now I was terrified, afraid the fighting and bloodiness had got in my bones. So I come back here. We thought our generation would see the last of the problem.” She gave an odd snort that came up from her belly.

“Aunt Jerusha! You were like a—a freedom fighter!”

“Everybody fights for freedom, some way.”

“You were a part of the
sit-ins
?”

“Time for that should have been long past. The point I am makin’,” she said, turning to look me in the eye, “is that it was my fault blood run in the street that day. Pride, baby girl, surely goes before a fall. Leavin’ that circus, I felt I had to do what I thought was right even though it caused wrong. And I’m guessing that’s what you did too. Oh, Clea, I’m not saying you can strike a match and make your troubles go ’way. Because, after, you got to live with it.

“Sometimes, though—when you’ve put up with a thing until you can’t stand it no more—I know what it’s like to have to do
something
.”

I’d begun to cry, fat, rubbery tears, my mouth twisted up.

“Promise me,” she said, “you won’t strike a match again unless you’ve got to find your way in the dark.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Say,
‘I promise,’
Clea June. And keep your word to this old woman.”

“I promise,” I said.

“And you won’t tell nobody about the circus?”

“But—I’m proud of you. So why can’t I talk about it?”

“ ’Cause it’s nobody’s business but mine,” she said.

I understood, now, why Auntie had been so horrified that night, to see Claudie and me performing on the porch.

“All right,” I said. “But, Auntie, one thing—when you got here to False River, did you stand up at First and Last Holy Word and confess? Did you say what you’d done?”

“No,” she said softly. “I never did.”

21

I
f Auntie or Uncle knew I’d so thoroughly lost my way and couldn’t get back, they’d worry themselves sick. If Millicent Poole knew, she’d call Social Services.

I finished the school year, kept my head down and myself to myself. Because I slept by day and lay awake at night, sometimes I dozed off in class. When the teacher prodded me, everyone laughed. I also labored to keep my eyes open during Sunday church, and on particularly bad mornings, it was only Reverend Ollie’s bellowing and the choir’s foot stomping that kept me from sliding out of my seat and onto the floor.

Nobody wanted to miss evening services. Not only was potluck at six o’clock, Sunday-night church was for confessing sins.

Our church building was small. It had a double row of scarred wooden pews, a piano, a pulpit, and folding chairs for the choir. Weekly, Millicent Poole posted the numbers of the hymns we would sing, and, with the tithing envelopes, we marked those places in the hymnals while the Reverend welcomed us and prayed on and on.

After one church supper of spoon bread and baked ham, we sat in those hard pews, fanning ourselves and waiting for the
weekly confessions to begin. Before the night was over, the Reverend would spread his great arms and invite us all to the altar to confess any sins and be renewed in the faith.

On these occasions, Millicent Poole, who was Sunday-school superintendent and sat in the front row, would rise to her feet, the better to witness our angst. In the background, the come-on-down piano music would be lower than low, the twangy notes rolling, like sin-seeking fog, among the pews. That last chorus might go on forever, calling and calling,
Sinner, come home
.

When I was very young, I’d considered concocting a sin just so I could rise from my place on a Sunday night and bump knee after knee as I made my way up the aisle and into the Reverend’s embrace.