But what I really loved to hear was the menfolks holding a “lying” session. That is, straining against each other in telling folk tales. God, Devil, Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Sis Cat, Brer Bear, Lion, Tiger, Buzzard, and all the wood folk walked and talked like natural men. The wives, of the story-tellers I mean, might yell from backyards for them to come and tote some water, or chop wood for the cook-stove and never get a move out of the men. The usual rejoinder was, “Oh, she’s got enough to go on. No matter how much wood you chop, a woman will burn it all up to get a meal. If she got a couple of pieces, she will make it do. If you chop up a whole boxful, she will burn every stick of it. Pay her no mind.” So the story telling would go right on. And I often hung around and listened while Mama waited on me for the sugar or coffee to finish off dinner, until she lifted her voice over the tree tops in a way to let me know that her patience was gone: “You Zora-a-a! If you don’t come here, you better!” That had a promise of peach hickories in it, and I would have to leave. But I would have found out from such story-tellers as Elijah Moseley, better known as “Lige,” how and why Sis Snail quit her husband, for instance. You may or may not excuse my lagging feet, if you know the circumstances of the case:
One morning soon, Lige met Sis Snail on the far side of the road. He had passed there several times in the last few years and seen Sis Snail headed towards the road. For the last three years he had stepped over her several times as she crossed the road, always forging straight ahead. But this morning he found her clean across, and she seemed mighty pleased with herself, so he stopped and asked her where she was headed for.
“Going off to travel over the world,” she told him. “I done left my husband for good.”
“How come, Sis Snail? He didn’t ill-treat you in no ways, did he?”
“Can’t exactly say he did, Brother Lige, but you take and take just so much and then you can’t take no more. Your craw gits full up to de neck. De man gits around too slow to suit me, and look like I just can’t break him of it. So I done left him for good. I’m out and gone. I gits around right fast, my ownself, and I just can’t put up with nobody dat gits around as slow as he do.”
“Oh, don’t leave de man too sudden, Sis Snail. Maybe he might come to move round fast like you do. Why don’t you sort of reason wid de poor soul and let him know how you feel.”
“I done tried dat until my patience is all wore out. And this last thing he done run my cup over. You know I took sick in de bed—had de misery in my side so bad till I couldn’t rest in de bed. He heard me groaning and asked me what was de matter. I told him how sick I was. Told him, ‘Lawd, I’m so sick!’ So he said ‘If youse sick like dat, I’ll go git de doctor for you.’ I says, ‘I sho would be mighty much obliged if you would.’ So he took and told me, ‘I don’t want you laying there and suffering like dat. I’ll go git de doctor right away. Just lemme go git my hat.’
“So I laid there in de bed and waited for him to go git de doctor. Lawd! I was so sick! I rolled from pillar to post. After seven I heard a noise at de door, and I said, ‘Lawd, I’m so glad! I know dats my husband done come back wid de doctor.’ So I hollered out and asked, ‘Honey, is dat you done come back wid de doctor?’ And he come growling at me and giving me a short answer wid, ‘Don’t try to rush me. I ain’t gone yet.’ It had done took him seven years to git his hat and git to de door. So I just up and left him.”
Then one late afternoon, a woman called Gold, who had come to town from somewhere else, told the why and how of races that pleased me more than what I learned about race derivations later on in Ethnology. This was her explanation:
God did not make folks all at once. He made folks sort of in His spare time. For instance one day He had a little time on his hands, so He got the clay, seasoned it the way He wanted it, then He laid it by and went on to doing something more important. Another day He had some spare moments, so He rolled it all out, and cut out the human shapes, and stood them all up against His long gold fence to dry while He did some important creating. The human shapes all got dry, and when He found time, He blowed the breath of life in them. After that, from time to time, He would call everybody up, and give them spare parts. For instance, one day He called everybody and gave out feet and eyes. Another time He give out toe-nails that Old Maker figured they could use. Anyhow, they had all that they got up to now. So then one day He said, “Tomorrow morning, at seven o’clock sharp. I aim to give out color. Everybody be here on time. I got plenty of creating to do tomorrow, and I want to give out this color and get it over wid. Everybody be round de throne at seven o’clock tomorrow morning!”
So next morning at seven o’clock, God was sitting on His throne with His big crown on His head and seven suns circling around His head. Great multitudes was standing around the throne waiting to get their color. God sat up there and looked, east, and He looked west, and He looked north and He looked Australia, and blazing worlds were falling off His teeth. So He looked over to His left and moved His hands over a crowd and said, “Youse yellow people!” They all bowed low and said, “Thank you, God,” and they went on off. He looked at another crowd, moved His hands over them and said, “Youse red folks!” They made their manners and said, “Thank you, Old Maker,” and they went on off. He looked towards the center and moved His hand over another crowd and said, “Youse white folks!” They bowed low and said, “Much obliged, Jesus,” and they went on off. Then God looked way over to the right and said, “Look here, Gabriel, I miss a lot of multitudes from around the throne this morning.” Gabriel looked too, and said, “Yessir, there’s a heap of multitudes missing from round de throne this morning.” So God sat there an hour and a half and waited. Then He called Gabriel and said, “Looka here, Gabriel, I’m sick and tired of this waiting. I got plenty of creating to do this morning. You go find them folks and tell ’em they better hurry on up here and they expect to get any color. Fool with me, and I won’t give out no more.”
So Gabriel run on off and started to hunting around. Way after while, he found the missing multitudes lying around on the grass by the Sea of Life, fast asleep. So Gabriel woke them up and told them “You better get up from there and come on up to the throne and get your color. Old Maker is might wore out from waiting. Fool with Him and He won’t give out no more color.”
So as the multitudes heard that, they all jumped up and went running towards the throne hollering, “Give us our color! We want our color! We got just as much right to color as anybody else.” So when the first ones got to the throne, they tried to stop and be polite. But the ones coming on behind got to pushing and shoving so till the first ones got shoved all up against the throne so till the throne was careening all over to one side. So God said “Here! Here! Git back! Git back!” But they was keeping up such a racket that they misunderstood Him, and thought He said “Git black!” So they just got black, and kept the thing agoing.
In one way or another, I heard dozens more of these tales. My father and his preacher associates told the best stories on the church. Papa, being moderator of the South Florida Baptist Association, had numerous preacher visitors just before the Association met, to get the politics of the thing all cut and dried before the meetings came off. After it was decided who would put such and such a motion before the house, who would second it, and whom my father would recognize first and things like that, a big story-telling session would get under way on our front porch, and very funny stories at the expense of preachers and congregations would get told.
No doubt, these tales of God, the Devil, animals and natural elements seemed ordinary enough to most people in the village. But many of them stirred up fancies in me. It did not surprise me at all to hear that the animals talked. I had suspected it all along. Or let us say, that I wanted to suspect it. Life took on a bigger perimeter by expanding on these things. I picked up glints and gleams out of what I heard and stored it away to turn it to my own uses. The wind would sough through the tops of the tall, long-leaf pines and said things to me. I put in the wo
rds that the sounds put into me. Like “woo woo, you wooo!” The tree was talking to me, even when I did not catch the words. It was talking and telling me things. I have mentioned the tree, near our house that got so friendly I named it “the loving pine.” Finally all of my playmates called it that too. I used to take a seat at the foot of that tree and play for hours without any other toys. We talked about everything in my world. Sometimes we just took it out in singing songs. That tree had a mighty fine bass voice when it really took a notion to let it out.
There was another tree that used to creep up close to the house around sundown and threaten me. It used to put on a skull-head with a crown on it every day at sundown and make motions at me when I had to go out on the back porch to wash my feet after supper before going to bed. It never bothered around during the day. It was just another pine tree about a hundred feet tall then, standing head and shoulders above a grove. But let the dusk begin to fall, and it would put that crown on its skull and creep in close. Nobody else ever seemed to notice what it was up to but me. I used to wish it would go off somewhere and get lost. But every evening I would have to look to see, and every time, it would be right there, sort of shaking and shivering and bowing its head at me. I used to wonder if sometime it was not going to come in the house.
When I began to make up stories I cannot say. Just from one fancy to another, adding more and more detail until they seemed real. People seldom see themselves changing. It is like going out in the morning, or in the springtime to pick flowers. You pick and you wander till suddenly you find that the light is gone and the flowers are withered in your hand. Then, you say that you must turn back home. But you have wandered into a place and the gates are closed. There is no more sharp sunlight. Gray meadows are all about you where blooms only the asphodel. You look back through the immutable gates to where the sun still shines on the flowered fields with nostalgic longing, but God pointed men’s toes in one direction. One is surprised by the passage of time and the distance travelled, but one may not go back.
So I was making little stories to myself, and have no memory of how I began. But I do remember some of the earliest ones.
I came in from play one day and told my mother how a bird had talked to me with a tail so long that while he sat up in the top of the pine tree his tail was dragging the ground. It was a soft beautiful bird tail, all blue and pink and red and green. In fact I climbed up the bird’s tail and sat up the tree and had a long talk with the bird. He knew my name, but I didn’t know how he knew it. In fact, the bird had come a long way just to sit and talk with me.
Another time, I dashed into the kitchen and told Mama how the lake had talked with me, and invited me to walk all over it. I told the lake I was afraid of getting drowned, but the lake assured me it wouldn’t think of doing me like that. No, indeed! Come right on and have a walk. Well, I stepped out on the lake and walked all over it. It didn’t even wet my feet. I could see all the fish and things swimming around under me, and they all said hello, but none of them bothered me. Wasn’t that nice?
My mother said that it was. My grandmother glared at me like open-faced hell and snorted.
“Luthee!” (She lisped.) “You hear dat young’un stand up here and lie like dat? And you ain’t doing nothing to break her of it? Grab her! Wring her coat tails over her head and wear out a handful of peach hickories on her back-side! Stomp her guts out! Ruin her!”
“Oh, she’s just playing,” Mama said indulgently.
“Playing! Why dat lil’ heifer is lying just as fast as a horse can trot. Stop her! Wear her back-side out. I bet if I lay my hands on her she’ll stop it. I vominates (abominate) a lying tongue.”
Mama never tried to break me. She’d listen sometimes, and sometimes she wouldn’t. But she never seemed displeased. But her mother used to foam at the mouth. I was just as sure to be hung before I got grown as gun was iron! The least thing Mama could do to straighten me out was to smack my jaws for me. She outraged my grandmother scandalously by not doing it. Mama was going to be responsible for my downfall when she stood up in judgment. It was a sin before the living justice, that’s what it was. God knows, grandmother would break me or kill me, if she had her way Killing me looked like the best one, anyway. All I was good for was to lay up and wet the bed half of the time and tell lies, besides being the spitting image of dat good-for-nothing yaller bastard. I was the punishment God put on Mama for marrying Papa. I ought to be thrown in the hogslops, that’s what. She could beat me as long as I last.
I knew that I did not have to pay too much attention to the old lady and so I didn’t. Furthermore, how was she going to tell what I was doing inside? I could keep my inventions to myself, which was what I did most of the time.
One day, we were going to have roasting-ears for dinner and I was around while Mama was shucking the corn. I picked up an inside chuck and carried it off to look at. It was such a delicate, blushy green. I crawled under the side of the house to love it all by myself.
In a few minutes, it had become Miss Corn-Shuck, and of course needed some hair. So I went back and picked up some corn silk and tied it to the pointed end. We had a lovely time together for a day or two, and then Miss Corn-Shuck got lonesome for some company.
I do not think that her lonesomeness would have come down on her as it did, if I had not found a cake of sweet soap in Mama’s dresser drawer. It was a cake of Pear’s scented soap. It was clear like amber glass. I could see straight through it. It delighted my senses just as much as the tender green corn-shuck. So Miss Corn-Shuck fell in love with Mr. Sweet Smell then and there. But she said she could not have a thing to do with him unless he went and put on some clothes. I found a piece of red and white string that had come around some groceries and made him a suit of clothes. Being bigger in the middle than he was on either end, his pants kept falling off—sometimes over his head and sometimes the other way. So I cut little notches in his sides around the middle and tied his suit on. To other people it might have looked like a cake of soap with a bit of twine tied around it, but Miss Corn-Shuck and I knew he had on the finest clothes in the world. Every day it would be different, because Mr. Sweet Smell was very particular about what he wore. Besides he wanted Miss Corn-Shuck to admire him.
There was a great mystery about where Mr. Sweet Smell came from. I suppose if Mama had been asked, she would have said that it was the company soap, since the family used nothing but plain, yellow Octagon laundry soap for bathing. But I had not known it was there until I happened to find it. It might have been there for years. Whenever Miss Corn-Shuck asked him where his home was, he always said it was a secret which he would tell her about when they were married. It was not very important anyway. We knew he was some very high-class man from way off—the farther off the better.
But sad to say, Miss Corn-Shuck and Mr. Sweet Smell never got married. They always meant to, but before very long, Miss Corn-Cob began to make trouble. We found her around the kitchen door one day, and she followed us back under the house and right away started her meanness. She was jealous of Miss Corn-Shuck because she was so pretty and green, with long silky hair, and so Miss Corn-Cob would make up all kinds of mean stories about her. One day there was going to be a big party and that was the first time that the Spool People came to visit. They used to hop off of Mama’s sewing machine one by one until they were a great congregation—at least fifteen or so. They didn’t do anything much besides second the motion on what somebody else did and said, so they must have been the common people.
Reverend Door-Knob was there, too. He used to live on the inside of the kitchen door, but one day he rolled off and came under the house to be with us. Unconsciously he behaved a lot like Mayor Joe Clarke. He was roundish and reddish brown, and used to laugh louder than anything when something funny happened. The Spool People always laughed whenever he laughed. They used to cry too, whenever Mr. Sweet Smell or Miss Corn-Shuck cried. They were always doing whatever they saw other people do. That was the way the Spool People were.
r /> When Mr. Sweet Smell left his fine house in the dresser drawer that day, he came through the kitchen and brought a half can of condensed milk for the refreshments. Everybody liked condensed milk for refreshment. Well, Miss Corn-Cob sneaked around and ate up all the refreshments and then she told everybody that Miss Corn-Shuck ate it. That hurt Mr. Sweet Smell’s feelings so bad till he went home and so he didn’t marry Miss Corn-Shuck that day. Reverend Door-Knob was so mad with Miss Corn-Cob that he threw her clear over the house and she landed in the horse trough, which everybody said, served her just right.
But not getting married that day sort of threw Mr. Sweet Smell in a kind of fever. He was sick in the bed for several days. Miss Corn-Shuck went to see him every day, and that was very nice. He rubbed off some of his smell on her because she was so nice to come to see him.