Whenever Raymond and Elma quarreled like this, Jessie tried to entertain Cinnamon and Memphis. Disturbances made him uneasy. He may not have been the quickest of Elma’s children, but he was a sensitive child who watched over his sisters carefully. Of all the children, Jessie was most prone to following his instincts, like his great-great-grandma Bette. So while Elma and Raymond carried on about the failures of their marriage and Raymond’s failures as head of household behind the closed doors of their bedroom, Jessie captured the girls’ attention with a game of marbles on the kitchen floor. His thumb poised above his favorite veined silver-starburst, he prepared to obliterate his opponents with a three-ball knuckle knock-out when Elma appeared at the kitchen swing door, still wearing distress on her face. “Jessie? Girls? Why aren’t you ready? Jessie, you’re the oldest. Why don’t you have your sisters dressed and ready to go? Lord, sometimes I just don’t know what to do with you.”
The children pummeled Elma with a thousand questions as she primped and plied their traveling clothes.
“Do we have to wear black? I don’t have anything black.”
“Are they really rich, Mama?”
“Will they be nice to us? Or mean?”
“Now, why would your own family be mean to you? Raymond, see what you’ve done? Scared the children half to death.”
“Oh hush, Elma, I’ve got a right to my own feelings.”
“Well, not right now. Right now, children, we’re going to where your mama grew up. It’s really beautiful. It’s so green, and the folks are really friendly. We’ll see cotton fields, rice paddies, indigo, and cane fields. Charleston is a beautiful city. Sailboats on the bay, fresh clams and fish to eat right out the ocean.”
“You might even see a niggah or two hangin’ from a tree.”
“Raymond! Must you keep tryin’ to frighten them? Keep your bitterness to yourself. I don’t want to hear any more talk like that. I won’t have it!” She turned to the children, enveloping the three in her outstretched arms. “The South is truly beautiful. You’ll be surprised. All we’re going to see is our Ma Bette goin’ to meet her Maker.”
“Well, let’s get the hell on out of here! If we’re goin’, let’s do it now before I change my mind and we stay right here.”
“Nobody is staying here. We’re going to Charleston.”
“On a fancy train, Daddy?” Memphis exclaimed, jumping in place and clapping her hands.
Jessie sobered, serious, pensive. “Do you really think we’ll see a lynching, Papa?”
Before either parent could respond, Cinn interjected, “You might see more than that. You’re goin’ south! You got to get off the sidewalk when you see white folks! You got to bow down to all the white folk you run into! You got to jump back and hold your hat!” Cinnamon threw her arms out, shoved her hips back, and slid one foot rearward to meet the other, making the other children burst into laughter.
“Cinnamon, stop that! Raymond, look what you’ve done! Filled their heads with foolishness.”
“Dead niggahs are only ‘foolishness’ to you, Miss Mayfield of the Mayfields.”
“That’s enough, Raymond. I’m going out that door with my children in ten minutes. You can come with us or keep your damn self right here.”
“Ooo, Mama cursed, she’s really mad,” Memphis whispered.
“Come on girls, Jessie, let’s go.”
“Isn’t Daddy coming with us?” Cinnamon blurted.
Trying to keep her temper, Elma answered, “I have no idea.”
Once she had maneuvered her broad hips through the subway turnstile and had gotten everybody safely on the first car of the A train, Elma looked over her shoulder to see if Raymond had decided to come with them, but there was no sign of him. With a deep sigh she wondered what had come over her husband. When they first got to New York they had been so happy, and when they moved to the Bronx, it was a new start. Now, as they tried to make ends meet, all they did was fight. “Well, we’re on our way, children. We should be in Charleston by tomorrow morning.” They got to Penn Station and boarded the southbound train with no time to spare.
Jessie made quite a few friends on the train, helping people with their bags, inquiring about their travels. “He may be a slow talker, but he has no trouble doin’ it,” Elma mused. He met people on their way to Washington, Richmond, and Tallahassee. He told them that he rode the New York City trains almost every day, but he had no idea that his country was so big! Hour after hour the train roared by the makeshift shantytowns along the tracks. Jessie was appalled but confident that his family would never have to live like that. His father took any and every job that came his way. Working at the movie house, neighborhood carpenter jobs, even hauling, trying to save as much as he could. Everybody in his family had a job. He was an usher at the Majestic Theater. Cinnamon was such a prodigy she gave music lessons at the settlement house and won singing contests every chance she got. Memphis was just Memphis, a professional baby as far as he was concerned, but pretty soon she would have to get a job too, even if she was only eight. No, his family would never be living by the side of a railroad track, with a blanket over their heads for a roof.
Once they passed Washington, D.C., the family was shuttled to a Colored car directly behind the locomotive engine. For the children’s sake, Elma camouflaged the move. “I do believe I saw some people we know gettin’ on in Washington,” she told them, “goin’ down to pay respects to Ma Bette, I believe. Let’s join them up front.”
“Colored car, just for us,” Cinnamon quipped. She was old enough to realize that her aunt, without the presence of her children, could have ridden comfortably undetected in the Whites Only section.
Memphis skipped along. “Colored car? Do they have Crayolas?” She halted at the entrance. “Eww, smells stinky like cigars.”
“You’ll forget that soon as you get a whiff of my ginger cookies,” Elma said as she settled the children. The seats were torn, the backs broken on some. The car was filled with smoke. Cinders danced in the fetid air. The windows were coated with a dull film. It was good that Elma had fried some chicken ’cause “Colored” weren’t allowed in the dining car either. Jesse wiped the window with his jacket sleeve. Cinnamon leaned over and taunted her young cousin, “Oh yeah, we goin’ south to see Ma Bette. Mixin’ jars of flowers and herbs and goober dust. We gonna wear clothespins on our noses so we could talk to the dead. Ma Bette might sit up in her grave!” Cinnamon lunged forward and sent Memphis into a spasm of terror.
The conductor who checked their tickets wore a visible scowl every time he passed by. “He thinks you’re white, Mama El,” Cinn observed. Elma, who traveling alone would have masqueraded, only then felt the sting.
After sixteen hours of a long, hot overnight ride, the train finally arrived in Charleston mid-morning. The quaint seaside city looked charming from the train, but when Jessie bumped into a white man, Elma quickly pulled him out of the way and apologized. “See, told you,” Cinnamon whispered in his ear. Luckily the family had come to meet them and Elma placed Jessie in their midst so he would attract no more attention. Eudora looked splendid, regal and well-groomed, with a broad-lace collar and a simple black dress that hung loosely on her gaunt frame, her blue eyes muted by the shade of her hat. Francina and Roswell Jr. were themselves. Francina was plumper than ever; Roswell, graying at his temples, looked drunk. There were lots of superficial kisses and hugs. Jessie was confused, not only by the relatives but by his mother’s actions, jerking him sharply when that white man bumped into him. Jessie thought that the Diggses and Eudora looked wealthy, and his thoughts flashed back to the shantytowns they had passed. The world was a strange place. A place where some folks had nothing and others had everything they could dream of, and some were even colored.
Eudora beheld each of the children, one by one, and took pleasure in the inspection. She could tell by the girls’ threadbare dresses and Jessie’s worn jacket that the Minors weren’t doing so well in New York. Though her nose was red and running
and her eyes watery from grief, she managed to smile warmly at her family. “I can hardly believe Memphis is so big,” she said, then frowned. “Where’s Raymond, Elma?”
Elma just shook her head. “I have no idea, Mama. He was coming, but then he must have changed his mind.”
“Oh, I see,” Eudora said, quietly perturbed. “Well, you missed the wake. At least you made it to the funeral and brought the children.”
Elma looked blushingly at her mother’s fine linen dress and broad-rimmed hat. Who’d have ever believed that Eudora would end up doing so well! Elma felt embarrassed for herself and her children, embarrassed that after all her mother had sacrificed, she had done nothing with her education and had made so little of her life in New York. But when she looked again at Eudora’s tense, rigid face, she immediately regretted her self-absorption. In losing Ma Bette, Eudora had lost the only real mother she had ever known. “Mama, I’m so sorry about Ma Bette.”
“We’ve all got to go sometimes,” said Roswell Jr. “That’s how I make a living. Colored people seem to die a lot these days. Really good for business.”
Eudora and Elma ignored Roswell as best they could. Francina called for their driver, and the whole passel of the Diggses and Minors were off. Roswell rode up front with the driver, while Elma, Eudora, and Francina as Ma Bette’s nearest kin rode in the back seat, the children in the jump seat behind them.
As the late-model sedan sped along, Elma whispered to her mother, “Mama, I’m really proud of how well you’ve done for yourself. Everything you wanted for me and Lizzie you’ve earned for yourself, and you deserve it all, Mama.”
Dora patted her on the knee. “Don’t you just love these children, though?”
“I’m always telling them about Ma Bette and the farm,” Elma said. “They all feel like they know you.” Elma turned to the children, “Jessie, Cinnamon, Memphis, say a proper hello to your grandma.”
“I’d rather they call me Nana if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course, Mama. Hey, you children back there, Grandma wants you to call her Nana. It’s special, don’t you think?”
“Nana, Nana, Nana,” the giggling Northern children squealed.
Eudora grew serious and asked, “When’s that heathen Lizzie coming home anyhow? She’s not here for Ma Bette’s funeral! That’s terrible, shameless!”
“Well, Mama, she did send me a cable,” Elma chided, ever her sister’s defender. “She’s in South America and would never get here in time. She didn’t believe that Ma Bette wanted a Christian funeral, anyway.”
Eudora was miffed, but she put her disappointment with Lizzie out of her mind. She looked lovingly at her grandchildren and said to Elma with concern, “That Cinnamon’s a stocky one, but those other two children are skin and bones. Daughter, what are you feedin’ them? I’m tellin’ you now I’m gonna fatten them up like a good Southern Nana is bound to. That’s part of my responsibility, to pass all the recipes down and get me some hearty-lookin’ grandchildren. What you say to that, Elma?”
“Mama, that sounds just fine to me,” Elma replied, happy that her mother wasn’t going to let the news about Lizzie ruin the day.
Jessie had a million questions for his new Nana. “Where are the slaves, Nana?”
“Well, there aren’t any more slaves now.”
“Well, where’d they go?”
“Will you let me answer one question, boy, before you ask another? They’re in our blood, son. That’s where they are. They keep us strong. Your Ma Bette was a slave. The last generation to be slave, the first to be free.” Eudora turned to Elma and said, “I just love this child, Elma. There’s nothing wrong with this boy. I hate to say it, and you know I do, but I believe he’s got a lot of Ma Bette in him.”
Elma and Eudora spontaneously burst into laughter, thinking that Ma Bette, even from the grave, was ridin’ right along with them.
Ever since the mention of her mother, Cinnamon had quieted. She had been too young when Lizzie carried her away from Charleston to remember anything but snatches. In the dance of morning sunlight, glimpses of memory came to her as the sleek polished automobile rode through the town. She noticed that people in the market stopped what they were doing and lined the streets, a glimmer in the eyes, slight smile on the lips, black skins shining, touching the ground as Ma Bette’s descendants passed by.
The Azula Street Church was overflowing. At the chapel door Roswell began to greet the mourners and those who had come to pay their respects to Ma Bette. Charleston’s aristocratic colored families showed up out of respect for the Diggses. Those who came to pay respect to Ma Bette were dressed in white and had a dozen white doves to let loose when the coffin came out of the church. Lijah-Lah had brought a boatload of old-timers from the island. They had goober dust, cowrie shells, and rice to throw into the air so that Ma Bette would pass on to the Other Side with food, money, and a free spirit. Elma smiled at Ma Bette’s friends and patrons. Eudora ignored them. Jessie wanted to stay outside with the strange people in the white cotton dresses, so plain compared to the fancified folks going into the church.
When the service was over, some of Roswell’s professional pallbearers carried the coffin from the church. The birds flew singing, the goober dust went lazily through the air, the cowrie shells grazed the coffin, and the people in white began a strange dance in a circle. Their feet never left the ground, but they rhythmically made a circle in the street and sang, occasionally shouting. They clapped their hands, made random turns, and closed their eyes as if they could tell where they were going through the Lord’s eyes. Jessie was drawn to them. He wanted to sing and dance, too, but Eudora caught him by the sleeve and whispered that he was not to go over there.
“I’m going to keep you right near me, young man. That’s not the path you’re going to take. No sirreee.”
Blanche Diggs went out of her way to have a beautiful repast in honor of Ma Bette. Eudora and Elma were touched. In the same parlor that Eudora first beheld as a girl fresh off the island, her grandchildren sat wide-eyed, looking at the massive amounts of she-crab soup, crab gumbo and rice, okra and tomatoes, cornbread, and fancy liqueurs. The sweet tea even had strawberries in it!
Glass in hand, Roswell approached Elma. She braced herself for more rudeness. “Such an eccentric, that Ma Bette,” he began. “She deserves a grand going-away fete, don’t you think? I know you’ve never liked me, Elma, but I’ve got a lot of respect for you, your mother, and Ma Bette. Your people have real fight in you.”
Elma was taken aback and puzzled. She had really thought Roswell held her family in contempt, less than trash. Well, you never really know. She thanked Roswell for his graciousness, only to look toward the front door and see Raymond standing in the threshold, his old confident self.
“Elma, my angel. I’m sorry I missed the funeral. I hope you’re not too disappointed, but I did get here.”
Elma was more disturbed than surprised. She prayed Raymond hadn’t lost his job and regretted that she had pestered him so. “I’m delighted to see you, my diligent husband. Handsome, too.”
Roswell, a bit uneasy with the two of them making eyes, asked Raymond if he’d like a drink.
“Why, yes, cousin Roswell, I’d love a brandy.” Raymond rocked back on his heels with swagger. “A double if you don’t mind.”
Roswell motioned for one of the bartenders to bring two brandies to the handsome couple by the door.
“Papa, Papa!” Memphis came running to Raymond. He grabbed her and tossed her up like a bunch of colored balloons. Only Cinnamon was quiet, holding back, standing beside Elma.
“Look, Cinn, it’s Papa,” Jessie encouraged and coaxed the girl from behind her aunt.
Raymond greeted Eudora with a peck on the cheek. “So sorry I missed the service, Mother. Couldn’t be helped. I had some very important clients with an emergency.”
“Come on, darlin’.” Elma took his arm. “Let’s go see the rest of the family.” When she had him aside, Elma lit into
him with soft-toned ire. “Raymond Minor, what’s the matter with you? Everyone knows about us. We’re not fooling anyone.”
“Elma, don’t ruin this for me, for us. Nobody here thought we’d ever make it in New York. Let’s not give them the credit for seeing it was just pipe dreams. Please, Elma, let me have this moment.”
Elma looked into her husband’s eyes, and nodded her head. “All right, Raymond, all right.”
Not for a minute did Eudora believe the charade Elma and Raymond were playing. While Raymond’s pressed white shirt looked new, the suit and jacket as well, the children’s clothes were faded, their shoes worn thin, and Jessie and Memphis were just too skinny. It was then she began flirting with an idea. “Elma, honey,” she began, “since you’ve got so many children in that one apartment in New York, why don’t you let me keep Jessie down here with me?” Before Elma could open her mouth to respond, Dora pressed her case. “He could go to that fine new boarding school just opened for the Negro youth. The Avery Institute is a fine school for young men. Your cousin Francina’s teaching there now. Our Jessie could really get his footing there. And you and Raymond could get yourself a fresh start.”
Elma and Raymond looked at each other for a minute. “Mama, we don’t need a fresh start. And that’s that.”
“You can’t fool me, Elma. What’d he do, rent that whole outfit?”
“Mama!” Elma was incensed at her mother’s outburst. Family was family, but if it came to a choice between her mother and her husband, she knew exactly where she stood. “We’re going out to the farm now. Memphis isn’t feeling well. Too many of Francina’s bon-bons, I’m sure. We’ll speak of this at home.”
Eudora didn’t say anything. She knew Elma was right. There was no need to embarrass her own child in front of the Diggses and the whole funeral party, but she still wanted Jessie. She had made up her mind. That was a boy with some get up and go. She could really raise him to be somebody.