A Matter of Souls Read online

  “Doctor don’t know, Cov. Said you gotta try. Maybe you walk like old times. Maybe not. Now, get up.”

  Beesi heaved, and Covington gave it his all, and he was standing, his arm around her neck. He was dizzy for a bit, but Beesi was perfectly still, as if she knew.

  “I’m up,” he said. She produced a cane from somewhere and thrust it into his hand, then slowly unwound herself from him.

  “Try,” she said.

  Covington started with his right foot, then pulled his left leg along, feeling tingles from his thigh to his calf. His ribs hurt, his head hurt. Beesi walked backward in front of him. He sighed. She was going to make him go all the way into the sitting room.

  Covington snorted. If she was going to be stubborn, he was going to be determined.

  He wasn’t sure how long it took. Sweat moistened the back of his neck; he was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. At the doorframe, he leaned to rest.

  Beesi stepped to one side.

  Under the front window was his workbench. Next to it was his stool.

  “Come, come.” Beesi took his hand and nestled close, almost like she was becoming Covington’s left side. He sat down hard on the stool and swallowed as he looked down. There were his tools, placed just as he liked them. Lasting pincers, small hammer, awls … and tucked underneath one of the smoothing sticks was a scrap of brown paper.

  Covington slowly slipped it out and held it up close to his face.

  It was his sketch of the dove-colored wedding shoe.

  “Beesi, I—” The emotion stopped him. Beesi got down on her knees and looked up into his eyes.

  “She gonna wait. They all gonna wait, for Covington’s Fine Shoes.” Beesi squeezed Covington’s right hand and drew the muslin window curtain back.

  Covington saw his shingle hanging there, all of a piece, letters perfect and paint fresh. He grabbed Beesi’s chin and kissed her, once, twice, three times.

  “We’ve got a powerful love, Adebesi,” he whispered.

  “Powerful, Covington,” she murmured back, brushing her lips against his eyes and forehead.

  “We got somethin’ powerful.”

  Girl! Put some more coal on that fire. I told you not to let it burn down so low. There’s a chill in here! I don’t want to look like a snow queen in my portrait. Hurry up, why don’t you?” The plain young woman rustled only slightly in the direction of the little brown child in the corner of the room. The shining pleats of red silk that pooled around the young woman hardly moved.

  The child blinked away sleep. She was so tired, she’d been dozing. It took her a minute to gain her senses, but she knew that her mistress wouldn’t dare reach out to strike her. This time. She would never risk putting a hair out of place, not after the hours she’d spent carefully arranging her curls and painting her face for the picture-taking man.

  And besides, he had said the mistress must be still as stone while he was preparing to make his exposure. But she could move her lips.

  “Well? And can’t you see that our guest needs some warm drink? You tell Annie Cook to send in a plate of sweets, too!”

  The tall, red-haired man winked at the child as she jumped from the low, round stool where she was sitting. She took a chance and offered him a quick grin in return.

  “How dare you get familiar with my company!” Mistress screeched, and a dainty pump flew past the child’s head, almost landing on the hearth. The child darted her eyes to the fireplace, and the man laughed in genuine enjoyment as he bent to retrieve the shoe.

  The child knew the mistress would take this as humiliation and make her pay dearly for it later on. It was almost worth it, she thought, crossing the soft wool carpet into the hall. That man had a laugh like music, and his eyes were like clear blue skies. She heard him speaking in low tones to the high squeaks of Mistress’s complaints.

  In the wide center hall, the child heard singing. It was an odd, welcoming thing, to hear singing in the middle of a December morning. Something made her bare feet move toward the front of the house rather than the rear, toward the kitchen. She drew back the lace curtain to see a group of people huddled across the street.

  “’Tis the season to be jolly …” they were singing. The child pressed her small nose against the cold glass.

  They were Colored people! She stared. They were Colored people, just like she was, and they had on pretty and plaid wool coats and bright hats and mufflers. They had smooth, full faces and nice eyes, and they were singing to her from across the street!

  As the child watched, one man in the middle, a broad-shouldered, honey-colored man with a gap right between his front teeth—that man lowered his songbook and looked at her.

  A sudden draft blew in from underneath the wide front door, and the child dropped the curtain in fright and shivered in her cotton shift.

  The singing stopped, and she was sorry that it had ended. With one timid finger she lifted the corner of the lace and twisted her head to peek out.

  The Colored choir was gone, and the slate walk in front of the stately house was cold and empty.

  The child took a deep breath, wondering how a body could manage jolly when her life was just plain misery.

  She rushed into the kitchen and set the heavy kettle on the front burner of the stove. She lingered there because it was warm.

  “Girl! Ain’t you got nothin’ better to do than slouch front a’ the stove?” Annie Cook stuck her wide, dark face in from the food pantry. The child could see a few tiny, shiny specks, like Mistress’s diamonds, flicker on Annie Cook’s cheeks. She was in there eating sugar out of a tiny copper pan.

  The child turned her back, reaching into the glass-front cupboard to take out two pink Limoges cups and saucers.

  Something hard hit the back of her head. Even with her cottony black hair standing every which way, she felt the blow. Her eyes stung with tears as the pan clattered to the floor. She looked around to see Annie Cook’s empty hands and satisfied sneer.

  “Sassy lil’ heifer! You betta think twice fo’ you open yo’ mout’ t’ Miss Maddie!”

  The child blinked through blurry eyes and carefully arranged the teapot and sugar bowl on the round silver tray.

  Why did people around this house throw things? As long as she could remember (in all her nine years), one or the other person was always yelling at her, telling her to move faster, or listen harder, or do better. Nobody ever asked how she got the roses to grow taller than she was (she talked to them), or how she knew to put what book at Mistress’s bedside (she’d taught herself to read them), or if she was too tired or too hungry to do anything (when she always was both).

  She knew she didn’t belong to these people—to the mistress, who was unmarried and unmarriageable. The girl had not belonged to the mistress’s sad, sickly mother or her mean, rich father. There had been a brown houseboy, Jeff, who was older than the old man, and more sour. The girl remembered the way Jeff limped around on cold mornings, his leg stiff and twisted from an old fracture that never healed right. The young mistress had turned him out when her father died. Jeff couldn’t stand females or children anyway. And Annie Cook was always too busy cooking food, sneaking food, or stealing food for her grown children to pay the child any attention.

  So the child watched and listened and practiced reading in secret. She had no mother or father of her own, but she didn’t belong to these people.

  The child used to listen to the old man pontificate as his old man friends smoked and argued with him. She used to bring his newspapers and dust real slow while he exclaimed out loud to his wife who wouldn’t listen about the world going to hell in a handbasket because Colored people had actually started turning out to vote.

  He ranted because that W. E. B. Du Bois, “with his uppity light-skinned self,” wanted Colored people to be worldly, and that other one, Booker T. Washington, “with the nerve to have the name of a patriot,” wanted Coloreds to learn a trade and get paid the same as White men.

  The child figured out
that what made the old man mad was that Colored people wanted.

  “It’s about time!” The mistress had composed herself when the child returned. She was giggly and shy with the redhaired picture-taking man as the child placed the tray on a side table and poured tea.

  “Say! Madeline, how about letting me take a picture of our little waitress here?”

  The child felt a strange tremor run up from her heart to her throat. The mistress was silent, stunned by her guest’s request. The child lowered her head and passed the photographer a cup and saucer.

  “What is your name, child?” he asked in his direct, not-of-the-South voice.

  “Girl,” she whispered, not looking at him.

  “Madeline?” he asked. The child looked at his shoes.

  “Oh, I forget if she ever had a name,” the mistress huffed. “She’s just a girl. And I think you are perfectly ridiculous, William. Who would want a picture of a pickaninny?”

  The photographer put his hand on the child’s chin and made her look at him. She saw those eyes like skies.

  “Let’s clean her up, get her dressed in something presentable …” He removed his hand, almost respectfully.

  “That is, if you’d like to be photographed.” He was speaking directly to the brown child.

  She looked at the mistress, a storm of pale fury in her holiday finery—and feeling frisky, almost cheerful—the child grinned back at the picture-taking man and nodded.

  “Well! I am most certainly not paying for this, William!”

  “Never mind. This will be art, and art is for the future; don’t you know that? Now I know you have some of your childhood frocks that you just couldn’t part with, selfish Maddie that you are. Shall I …” He turned toward the hall and the stairs leading up to the mistress’s boudoir.

  The mistress popped up and grabbed the child by her arm.

  “You shall not! Come, Girl.” She dragged the child, twisting her arm, up the stairs.

  The child didn’t care, for once. Something had changed.

  Keys clinked and locks clicked on the trunks the mistress drug out. She muttered and fussed to herself, of course, as she examined and tossed silks and linens and cottons onto the bed.

  The child stood in the cold room, wide-eyed at the treasures.

  Finally, the mistress stopped. A pale yellow cloud floated before the mistress’s face for a second before she thrust it at the child and spun away.

  “Hurry up! Don’t make William wait.”

  The child hugged the dress against her body. It was really for summer, she knew, because it was cotton. But it had a sheen to it, so that as she moved in the sunlight, she could imagine that it was silk. After she heard the mistress’s feet on the stairs, she went back to the trunk. There was a petticoat and there were stockings; there was a pair of shining black boots with a beautiful pattern pierced into the hardly worn leather.

  She practically ripped off her shift; she didn’t care, somehow. She took her time pulling on starched underpants and slipping the petticoat over her head. The dress had bell-shaped sleeves that stopped right at the child’s elbow; ribbon was woven through eyelet holes all around their edges and tied into tiny bows.

  She took her time and buttoned every button from her waist to her neck. There was a lace pinafore with a fine scalloped hem. She slipped on the stockings and buttoned the boots.

  And then she turned to the tall looking glass and saw herself.

  It was serious, her solemn brown face. Round at the chin and only a little wide above her brows. Even, smart eyes, she thought. Her mouth was kind of small. But her hair!

  She patted it furiously, but it did not match the rest. She darted around the room, opening drawers and wardrobe doors until she found an old comb. She examined it closely to make sure none of Mistress’s horrible long, yellow hairs still clung to its teeth. Then she combed and combed and parted and patted until the sides were all going down and there was a nice tuft falling to one side, just over her left eye. She pushed it up.

  She opened the door with both hands and walked like a lady with small, deliberate steps. She ran her brown hand along the banister as she walked downstairs. She felt bright, like all the people in the Colored choir.

  Something had changed.

  “Damn you!” Annie Cook was hustling away the tea tray as the child passed into the parlor. The child jerked her head at Annie Cook and smiled.

  In the back parlor, the mistress met the child’s direct eyes with surprise. “Oh!” Mistress said.

  “Come right here, I have a stool for you to sit on,” said the picture-taking man.

  “Girl, I’ll have you know that as soon as this foolishness is over, you will remove that dress from your horrid little black body and wash it!” The mistress’s voice was rising again.

  “Smile,” the red-haired picture-taking man told the child.

  But she could not. She looked straight at the camera.

  “Oh, William, this is so useless! She’s nothing!”

  “Now, you know there’s going to be a flash on the count of three …”

  “Miss Maddie, if that lil’ heifer done tol’ you somthin’ ’bout me, she’s a lie …” Annie Cook was hovering in the doorway.

  “One…”

  The child thought with longing of the Colored choir outside. Where had their beautiful voices gone?

  “Two…”

  She wanted, at that moment, with her whole heart, to belong somewhere.

  “Three!”

  She wished and she prayed her need with her whole heart.

  FLASH!

  The bright white light stunned her, and she fell off the stool. She felt herself tumbling, tumbling. It was surely taking a long time for her to land on the rug and find her feet! It seemed to the child that ages had passed before the beautiful boots were firm and flat on solid ground.

  And there was singing again … it was a different tune.

  The Colored choir had come back! But how could she hear them from the back parlor? The child was confused. She rubbed her eyes. She was no longer inside the wide front door. She was outside.

  “What child is this … ” the voices were singing. The child blinked. A group of colored people was standing on the street across from her. At first they seemed to be the same as before—joyful brown faces, bright clothes, welcoming voices.

  Then she narrowed her eyes. The clothes were different … she could see some of the grown women’s knees! And the noises around … automobiles like she had never seen before whizzed past. There were buildings in the distance with huge pictures painted on their walls. And those buildings! They were towers of brick and stone and glass!

  She looked up high and saw bright blue sky.

  “Honey, where are you supposed to be? Are you alone?” Someone was speaking kindly to her.

  The child lowered her chin slowly.

  A Colored woman and a man were crossing the street. The man had a curly black beard circling his honey-brown face. The woman had almost no hair at all, but she had glittering beads hanging from her ears, and her eyes were full of love.

  Soon, the entire Colored choir had surrounded the child.

  “You hungry?”

  “Where are your people?”

  “You must be freezing!” Somebody draped her shoulders with a soft purple shawl. The threads in it sparkled like diamonds. She felt herself grinning.

  “We want to help you,” the honey man said.

  “This child is so beautiful … like a work of art! What’s your name, Baby Girl?” The woman leaned to touch the child’s shoulder, and when she did, the child knew all of it was real.

  The brown child thought hard and then said in a firm voice, “Jolly. My name is Jolly!”

  “Tis the season to be Jolly!” The Colored choir sang the same joyful song that they had in her old life, but this time it was just for her.

  Part One:

  Jimmy Lee’s Birthday

  Jimmy Lee smiled at the birthday card signed w
ith his cousin Son’s boyish scrawl. “Crazy kid, can’t wait to be a man,” he chuckled and tossed the card aside. Then he slicked back his hair and looked down to check his shoes.

  The shoes were brand-new two-toned wing tips. The softly pointed toes were ivory-colored calfskin, and gleaming red-brown leather—“oxblood,” the salesman called it—spread across the instep like wings beating the sky on a cloudy day.

  Jimmy Lee grinned at those shoes, straightened his skinny blue tie, and looked at the calendar from Harris Funeral Home that was tacked up on the wall next to the medicine cabinet.

  It was not only his twenty-first birthday; it was Election Day, and he could vote for the very first time. Jimmy Lee had put in for the day off weeks ago, when he first found out at the secret meeting that the voting place was being switched. The Colored folk weren’t supposed to know.

  But Jimmy Lee’s daddy, his uncle Booker, and a couple of the other Colored vets who’d come back after D-day with life and limb intact, well—they’d found out. And they were of a mind that a grown man who’d gone overseas and fought in muddy ditches for his country ought to have a say in picking out the next man to run that country.

  Jimmy Lee remembered feeling so proud that night, watching his daddy’s determined face shining in the glow from the flashlights.

  “Please don’t go,” his pretty young wife begged as she walked in next to him. Jimmy Lee turned to look at her. Willa was the best choice he’d ever made, up until today. He smiled and touched her cheek gently.

  “I gotta,” he said.

  She followed his long, lanky body as he moved out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, and into the front room that was their bedroom and living room altogether. They could really afford something a little better, since they were both working steady, but in this town, the only place for Colored people to live was this little huddle of shotgun houses set behind the gas station.

  One day, Jimmy Lee told himself, he would do better than this. He would buy Willa the house she deserved.

  He stopped at the crib near the window. Little Bernadette was curled up into a pink ball of nightgown and blankets.