Winter Birds (38 page)

“I have no intention of stirring up trouble,” I told her. “But I want to teach my pupils more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. I want them to know the history of their country and the vision of its founders. I want them to understand what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States say about the rights of all men.”

“Well, Miss Langham, that all sounds real pretty,” Cameron the third said, “but you can leave your personal opinions out of the classroom. We don’t pay our schoolteachers to undermine what we’re teaching at home.”

“I am teaching freedom, sir, and respect for all human beings,” I said. “Is that different from what you’re teaching at home?”

He stood up so fast that the chair almost tipped over backward. His wife stood up, too. “And one more thing,” he said. “Cameron tells us you’ve started reading a new book to the class after recess.”

I nodded. I had finished a biography of Booker T. Washington the week before and had started one about Mary McLeod Bethune the next day.

“It looks like to us, Miss Langham, you could find a book about a white person and read that to our children,” Cameron the third said. “In fact, we would strongly suggest that you do just that the next time around.”

The truth was I was already beginning to wish I had not started Mary Bethune’s biography. Hers was a story with far too much religion in it. In the chapter I had read aloud that day, in fact, Mary had announced as a little girl her desire to go to Africa to be a missionary. But no white man, banker or not, was going to tell me what book to read to my class. I would finish the book now even if I had to clench my teeth through phrases such as those I had already encountered: “God was on their side” and “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord!” and “to take the gospel of Jesus to lost souls.” To be sure I would survey my choices more carefully in the future.

At the end of that school year I resigned from the school in Clarksdale and moved to Greenville, where I taught for the next five years. During that time there were no black students at Carrie Stern Elementary School. This was the school where we sang the state song at the end of each weekly assembly program. “Way down south in Mississippi,” it ended, “folks are happy they have been born.”

My father wrote a piece about the state song around that same time and printed it up on handbills that he distributed and posted around Methuselah. He sent me one through the mail. The title of his article was “Way Down South in Mississippi, Are ALL the Folks Happy They Have Been Born?” Daddy dealt specifically with the various ways Negroes were discouraged from voting in elections. He was fond of using irony, which many of the local readers did not comprehend. He suggested that in lieu of a poll tax Negroes could be made to pay for the privilege of voting by giving up a finger each time. Once their fingers were used up, they could start on their toes.

Though Daddy became morose as he grew older, he never did lose his zeal for speaking the truth through the printed word. He never made much money from his business, at least by his report, but as it was a pastime that kept him away from home, my mother rarely complained. She suspected that he kept the profits a secret, that he had cash hidden somewhere in the shop, but I will say this for my mother: She knew how to keep her tongue. She was not a discontented, fractious woman. She had a boardinghouse to run, and she gave herself to it. It was the only world she knew.

When Daddy died, Fillmore took her to the back room of the printshop and showed her the loose brick behind which Daddy kept a box. She used some of the money to bury Daddy. I never knew what became of the rest of it. She and Fillmore drew up an agreement whereby he could buy the business by means of monthly payments. I do not know where this money went.

In addition to these things, I also backtrack and tell Potts the story I told Mindy the week before, of how my father hired Fillmore over three white boys, how they became in many ways like father and son.

Patrick’s eyes are full of admiration when I finish speaking. It is clear that he approves of my standing up to Cameron number three, that he imagines he would have done the same as my father in hiring a Negro boy in the year 1954, that he is amazed and delighted over Fillmore’s good character.

“Those would make such interesting experiences to write about!” he exclaims now. I suspect that he is already making plans to do so. In the wake of his creative writing class, he is struggling to write a story, which he hopes will make him famous. I have heard him read various false starts aloud to Rachel, then declare them too “derivative.” This is a new word Patrick picked up from his creative writing teacher.

One thing in Patrick’s favor: Over the past months he listened to this teacher, who used the word
derivative
, among others, to describe Patrick’s story “Terror in the Afternoon.”
Wordy
and
contrived
were other words he used. The teacher wrote down a list of stories for Patrick to read and study on his own “to see the power of nuance in realism” and spoke to him at length in his office one night about the “two kinds of simplicity—one producing art and the other banality.” All of this Patrick repeated in painstaking detail to Rachel.

Perhaps someday my nephew will write something of worth. Perhaps he never will. Perhaps his great love of words—of his own words—is a handicap he will never overcome. But each time I hear him say to Rachel, “No, no. This won’t work. It’s too derivative,” I am reminded of the miracles I have read about. I envision myself among the multitudes, astonished to witness that the lame can walk and the blind can see.

These are things I have read about the mockingbird: Though known as the King of Song, it is not a composer, only an imitator. It is said that besides other birds, the mockingbird can mimic sounds such as rusty hinges and factory whistles. Though having nothing new to say, it nevertheless gives full-voiced recitals all for the love of song. Perhaps Patrick is destined to be only a mockingbird.

But perhaps he may one day trick some into thinking he is the real thing. And surely this is true: Though derivative, one mockingbird’s performance may be superior to another’s. One may develop a keener ear than another, produce a finer interpretation of the original piece. Well, we shall wait and see.

Over dessert Potts unburdens his heart. To think that he has reserved this until now, that this has been lodged within him through the consumption of Rachel’s brisket, her rice and gravy, her lima beans is a remarkable thing to me. He has asked questions to be answered at some length, has listened to the answers with close attention and asked yet further questions, has waited until this moment when Rachel places before us what she calls chocolate molten lava cups. I cannot help wondering if Rachel feels, as he speaks, that a volcano has indeed begun to rumble.

Perhaps he was wrestling with whether or not to bring up the matter, watching for signs to guide him. Rachel’s spoon is halfway to her mouth when he says, “I need your advice on a matter.” He glances first at Patrick and me but settles at last on Rachel.

Since my husband shattered my illusions about life and love, I have found few people to like, fewer still to trust. Though an odd time for such a realization, it comes to me in a flash that I am sitting at a table with three people I trust. One of them I do not like very much, and one has served time in prison, but I trust them all. Cicero Potts, whom I both like and trust, holds Rachel’s eyes a moment longer and then speaks again. “My brother needs help.” I wonder if Rachel hears the difference between “advice” and “help” and if she senses in what is coming that something may be required of her.

She nods as if to encourage him to continue, then lifts the spoon of chocolate molten lava to her mouth. It is a sumptuous dessert, yet one Rachel has pronounced “easy as child’s play” to prepare. It is part cake, part pudding. Served warm with a dollop of ice cream, it is altogether satisfying.

Though the word
brother
is one Potts often uses for black and white alike, he speaks now of his real brother. It is his older brother, he tells us, the one who lives here in Greenville in the same apartment building where Potts lives. In the past Mitchell has had trouble keeping a job. “It’s not that he lacks intelligence,” Potts says, “but he sometimes lacks an understanding of people, especially of the people who hire him.” Mitchell wants to reorganize every place he works, wants to tell his bosses better ways to do things. He cannot keep still and wait for opportunities but speaks up immediately, frequently, and loudly. “He makes some good points,” Potts says, “but his presentation stinks.”

Patrick chuckles and says, “I’ve known people like that.” He obviously doesn’t think he is one of them.

“But this isn’t the real problem,” Cicero says. “Mitchell was living with a girl up until a couple of days ago, and now she’s left without a trace.” He pauses again, then takes a deep breath and says, “And that isn’t the real problem, either. When she left, she didn’t take her baby with her.”

Again he catches Rachel with another spoonful midway between her plate and mouth. She stops and looks at him. In that instant she must know, as I do, where this is leading. She does not flinch, however, but nods again.

Before Potts can continue, Patrick interjects, “Were they married?” This is typical of the way Patrick’s mind works, latching onto details that are neither part of the problem nor the solution.

Potts shakes his head. “No, no. She was barely more than a baby herself, just looking for somebody to fill in a gap until something more interesting turned up. Mitchell wouldn’t listen to me, thought she loved him and all that, said this girl was different, this time it was the real thing. Gave her everything she wanted and loved that baby like it was his own. Kept saying he wanted to be a family man now, said he meant to keep his mouth shut and hang onto his job so they could get them a bigger place. Wanted Lawanda—that was the girl’s name—to have another baby.”

“Where was he working?” Patrick asks. He has been taking bites of his chocolate molten lava in rapid succession so that now his dish is almost empty.

But before Potts can answer, Rachel asks, “What’s he doing with the baby?”

“He didn’t go in to work today,” Potts says. “You can’t leave a three-year-old by himself.” By this we know that he is using the word
baby
loosely, as women often do, and that the child is a boy.

And then to address Patrick’s question, he tells us that Mitchell is working at the Sunnydale Nursing Home, on the custodial crew, that he’s held this same job since he took Lawanda in. “But he’s scared he’ll lose it now,” Potts says. “He knows he can’t keep calling in sick.”

“I could help with the boy,” Rachel says.

“Well, we’d need to talk about it,” Patrick says. “Rachel’s having some health issues,” he tells Potts. I am fully prepared for Patrick to enumerate the issues with all the precise terminology, but he does not, most likely because Potts holds up a hand and says quickly, “Oh, by all means I don’t want to put any pressure on you, brother. I wouldn’t take advantage of our friendship that way.”

“But I could at least help out tomorrow, couldn’t I?” Rachel asks Patrick. “That way Mitchell could go to work tomorrow, and then we’d have the weekend to talk it over. Wouldn’t that be okay?”

“I’m not sure you’re up to that,” Patrick says. “A whole day with a three-year-old? It would be a lot of work, you know.”

“Oh, I know that,” Rachel says. She looks at Patrick evenly and repeats, “I know that.”

Somehow I hear my own voice. “I’ll be here, too.” All three of them look at me, but no one is blunt enough to say what they all must be thinking: And how could
you
help with a three-year-old?

Someday perhaps I shall write down a list of all the ways a man or woman may face off the specter of death, especially the tricks a religious person may use to occupy his time in the winter of his life. I will muse over this belief that seems to govern many people’s behavior: that what they do in this world will matter in the next. Perhaps I will put this heading at the top of my list: “To Burn This Night With Torches.” From
Antony and Cleopatra
I will borrow the words of Antony as he broods over his falling fortunes, as he thinks about the battle to come, a battle in which he fears he will lose his life. And yet he rallies. The battle is tomorrow. For today, he says, let us eat supper and drown our worries with drink. Let us burn torches to keep the night at bay.

And so, says Rachel by her offer to help, our lives are not ours to keep but to lose. For today let us take care of a child. Let us burn a torch through the night, for who knows how many tomorrows we may have? Let us sow and harvest before the winter comes.

A picture fills my mind as a memory falls upon me like a warm rain. It is a picture of a field of grain. Curiously, the memory is from the biography of Mary McLeod Bethune that I read to my pupils more than fifty years ago. Though Cameron is the only child whose name I can recall from my few years in Clarksdale, Mississippi, I suddenly remember the name of Mary Bethune’s grandmother. It was the same as mine—Sophia.

When she was still a child, Sophia was taken from her mother and sold to another slave owner in South Carolina. But she never forgot the stories her mother had told her, stories of Africa. In her old age Sophia sat by the fire and repeated these stories to her children and grandchildren so that they, too, might never forget. She sang songs in a strange language. She told of the village in Africa where her mother lived. She told of the day that everyone in the village was herded onto a slave ship. It was harvest time and the grain was ripe, but there was no one left to reap what had been sown.

Chapter 30

Stones Have Been Known to Move

The gentle eastern bluebird has suffered from competition with house sparrows and starlings for nesting holes. Whereas flocks of bluebirds were once a common sight around orchards and birdbaths, their numbers have greatly declined. Well-placed nest boxes are one way man can help the eastern bluebird population
.