In Love and Trouble Read online

  She was angular and lean and the color of poor gray Georgia earth, beaten by king cotton and the extreme weather. Her elbows were wrinkled and thick, the skin ashen but durable, like the bark of old pines. On her face centuries were folded into the circles around one eye, while around the other, etched and mapped as if for print, ages more threatened again to live. Some of them there at the church saw the age, the dotage, the missing buttons down the front of her mildewed black dress. Others saw cooks, chauffeurs, maids, mistresses, children denied or smothered in the deferential way she held her cheek to the side, toward the ground. Many of them saw jungle orgies in an evil place, while others were reminded of riotous anarchists looting and raping in the streets. Those who knew the hesitant creeping up on them of the law, saw the beginning of the end of the sanctuary of Christian worship, saw the desecration of Holy Church, and saw an invasion of privacy, which they struggled to believe they still kept.

  Still she had come down the road toward the big white church alone. Just herself, an old forgetful woman, nearly blind with age. Just her and her eyes raised dully to the glittering cross that crowned the sheer silver steeple. She had walked along the road in a stagger from her house a half mile away. Perspiration, cold and clammy, stood on her brow and along the creases by her thin wasted nose. She stopped to calm herself on the wide front steps, not looking about her as they might have expected her to do, but simply standing quite still, except for a slight quivering of her throat and tremors that shook her cotton-stockinged legs.

  The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule. Did he say, as they thought he did, kindly, “Auntie, you know this is not your church?” As if one could choose the wrong one. But no one remembers, for they never spoke of it afterward, and she brushed past him anyway, as if she had been brushing past him all her life, except this time she was in a hurry. Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back, gazing with concentration at the stained-glass window over her head. It was cold, even inside the church, and she was shivering. Everybody could see. They stared at her as they came in and sat down near the front. It was cold, very cold to them, too; outside the church it was below freezing and not much above inside. But the sight of her, sitting there somehow passionately ignoring them, brought them up short, burning.

  The young usher, never having turned anyone out of his church before, but not even considering this job as that (after all, she had no right to be there, certainly), went up to her and whispered that she should leave. Did he call her “Grandma,” as later he seemed to recall he had? But for those who actually hear such traditional pleasantries and to whom they actually mean something, “Grandma” was not one, for she did not pay him any attention, just muttered, “Go ’way,” in a weak sharp bothered voice, waving his frozen blond hair and eyes from near her face.

  It was the ladies who finally did what to them had to be done. Daring their burly indecisive husbands to throw the old colored woman out they made their point. God, mother, country, earth, church. It involved all that, and well they knew it. Leather bagged and shoed, with good calfskin gloves to keep out the cold, they looked with contempt at the bloodless gray arthritic hands of the old woman, clenched loosely, restlessly in her lap. Could their husbands expect them to sit up in church with that? No, no, the husbands were quick to answer and even quicker to do their duty.

  Under the old woman’s arms they placed their hard fists (which afterward smelled of decay and musk—the fermenting scent of onionskins and rotting greens). Under the old woman’s arms they raised their fists, flexed their muscular shoulders, and out she flew through the door, back under the cold blue sky. This done, the wives folded their healthy arms across their trim middles and felt at once justified and scornful. But none of them said so, for none of them ever spoke of the incident again. Inside the church it was warmer. They sang, they prayed. The protection and promise of God’s impartial love grew more not less desirable as the sermon gathered fury and lashed itself out above their penitent heads.

  The old woman stood at the top of the steps looking about in bewilderment. She had been singing in her head. They had interrupted her. Promptly she began to sing again, though this time a sad song. Suddenly, however, she looked down the long gray highway and saw something interesting and delightful coming. She started to grin, toothlessly, with short giggles of joy, jumping about and slapping her hands on her knees. And soon it became apparent why she was so happy. For coming down the highway at a firm though leisurely pace was Jesus. He was wearing an immaculate white, long dress trimmed in gold around the neck and hem, and a red, a bright red, cape. Over his left arm he carried a brilliant blue blanket. He was wearing sandals and a beard and he had long brown hair parted on the right side. His eyes, brown, had wrinkles around them as if he smiled or looked at the sun a lot. She would have known him, recognized him, anywhere. There was a sad but joyful look to his face, like a candle was glowing behind it, and he walked with sure even steps in her direction, as if he were walking on the sea. Except that he was not carrying in his arms a baby sheep, he looked exactly like the picture of him that she had hanging over her bed at home. She had taken it out of a white lady’s Bible while she was working for her. She had looked at that picture for more years than she could remember, but never once had she really expected to see him. She squinted her eyes to be sure he wasn’t carrying a little sheep in one arm, but he was not. Ecstatically she began to wave her arms for fear he would miss seeing her, for he walked looking straight ahead on the shoulder of the highway, and from time to time looking upward at the sky.

  All he said when he got up close to her was “Follow me,” and she bounded down to his side with all the bob and speed of one so old. For every one of his long determined steps she made two quick ones. They walked along in deep silence for a long time. Finally she started telling him about how many years she had cooked for them, cleaned for them, nursed them. He looked at her kindly but in silence. She told him indignantly about how they had grabbed her when she was singing in her head and not looking, and how they had tossed her out of his church. A old heifer like me, she said, straightening up next to Jesus, breathing hard. But he smiled down at her and she felt better instantly and time just seemed to fly by. When they passed her house, forlorn and sagging, weatherbeaten and patched, by the side of the road, she did not even notice it, she was so happy to be out walking along the highway with Jesus.

  She broke the silence once more to tell Jesus how glad she was that he had come, how she had often looked at his picture hanging on her wall (she hoped he didn’t know she had stolen it) over her bed, and how she had never expected to see him down here in person. Jesus gave her one of his beautiful smiles and they walked on. She did not know where they were going; someplace wonderful, she suspected. The ground was like clouds under their feet, and she felt she could walk forever without becoming the least bit tired. She even began to sing out loud some of the old spirituals she loved, but she didn’t want to annoy Jesus, who looked so thoughtful, so she quieted down. They walked on, looking straight over the treetops into the sky, and the smiles that played over her dry wind-cracked face were like first clean ripples across a stagnant pond. On they walked without stopping.

  The people in church never knew what happened to the old woman; they never mentioned her to one another or to anybody else. Most of them heard sometime later that an old colored woman fell dead along the highway. Silly as it seemed, it appeared she had walked herself to death. Many of the black families along the road said they had seen the old lady high-stepping down the highway; sometimes jabbering in a low insistent voice, sometimes singing, sometimes merely gesturing excitedly with her hands. Other times silent and smiling, looking at the sky. She had been alone, they said. Some of them wondered aloud where the old woman had been going so stoutly that it had worn her heart out. They guessed maybe she had relatives across the river, some miles away, but none of them really knew.

  Strong Horse Tea
/>   RANNIE TOOMER’S LITTLE BABY BOY SNOOKS was dying from double pneumonia and whooping cough. She sat away from him, gazing into the low fire, her long crusty bottom lip hanging. She was not married. Was not pretty. Was not anybody much. And he was all she had.

  “Lawd, why don’t that doctor come on here?” she moaned, tears sliding from her sticky eyes. She had not washed since Snooks took sick five days ago and a long row of whitish snail tracks laced her ashen face.

  “What you ought to try is some of the old home remedies,” Sarah urged. She was an old neighboring lady who wore magic leaves round her neck sewed up in possumskin next to a dried lizard’s foot. She knew how magic came about, and could do magic herself, people said.

  “We going to have us a doctor,” Rannie Toomer said fiercely, walking over to shoo a fat winter fly from her child’s forehead. “I don’t believe in none of that swamp magic. All the old home remedies I took when I was a child come just short of killing me.”

  Snooks, under a pile of faded quilts, made a small gravelike mound in the bed. His head was like a ball of black putty wedged between the thin covers and the dingy yellow pillow. His little eyes were partly open, as if he were peeping out of his hard wasted skull at the chilly room, and the forceful pulse of his breathing caused a faint rustling in the sheets near his mouth like the wind pushing damp papers in a shallow ditch.

  “What time you reckon that doctor’ll git here?” asked Sarah, not expecting Rannie Toomer to answer her. She sat with her knees wide apart under many aprons and long dark skirts heavy with stains. From time to time she reached long cracked fingers down to sweep her damp skirts away from the live coals. It was almost spring, but the winter cold still clung to her bones and she had to almost sit in the fireplace to be warm. Her deep sharp eyes set in the rough leather of her face had aged a moist hesitant blue that gave her a quick dull stare like a hawk’s. Now she gazed coolly at Rannie Toomer and rapped the hearthstones with her stick.

  “White mailman, white doctor,” she chanted skeptically, under her breath, as if to banish spirits.

  “They gotta come see ’bout this baby,” Rannie Toomer said wistfully. “Who’d go and ignore a little sick baby like my Snooks?”

  “Some folks we don’t know so well as we thinks we do might,” the old lady replied. “What you want to give that boy of yours is one or two of the old home remedies; arrowsroot or sassyfras and cloves, or a sugar tit soaked in cat’s blood.”

  Rannie Toomer’s face went tight.

  “We don’t need none of your witch’s remedies,” she cried, grasping her baby by his shrouded toes, trying to knead life into him as she kneaded limberness into flour dough.

  “We going to git some of them shots that makes peoples well, cures ’em of all they ails, cleans ’em out and makes ’em strong all at the same time.”

  She spoke upward from her son’s feet as if he were an altar. “Doctor’ll be here soon, baby,” she whispered to him, then rose to look out the grimy window. “I done sent the mailman.” She rubbed her face against the glass, her flat nose more flattened as she peered out into the rain.

  “Howdy, Rannie Mae,” the red-faced mailman had said pleasantly as he always did when she stood by the car waiting to ask him something. Usually she wanted to ask what certain circulars meant that showed pretty pictures of things she needed. Did the circulars mean that somebody was coming around later and would give her hats and suitcases and shoes and sweaters and rubbing alcohol and a heater for the house and a fur bonnet for her baby? Or, why did he always give her the pictures if she couldn’t have what was in them? Or, what did the words say … especially the big word written in red: “S-A-L-E!”?

  He would explain shortly to her that the only way she could get the goods pictured on the circulars was to buy them in town and that town stores did their advertising by sending out pictures of their goods. She would listen with her mouth hanging open until he finished. Then she would exclaim in a dull amazed way that she never had any money and he could ask anybody. She couldn’t ever buy any of the things in the pictures—so why did the stores keep sending them to her?

  He tried to explain to her that everybody got the circulars, whether they had any money to buy with or not. That this was one of the laws of advertising and he could do nothing about it. He was sure she never understood what he tried to teach her about advertising, for one day she asked him for any extra circulars he had and when he asked what she wanted them for—since she couldn’t afford to buy any of the items advertised—she said she needed them to paper the inside of her house to keep out the wind.

  Today he thought she looked more ignorant than usual as she stuck her dripping head inside his car. He recoiled from her breath and gave little attention to what she was saying about her sick baby as he mopped up the water she dripped on the plastic door handle of the car.

  “Well, never can keep ’em dry, I mean warm enough, in rainy weather like this here,” he mumbled absently, stuffing a wad of circulars advertising hair driers and cold creams into her hands. He wished she would stand back from his car so he could get going. But she clung to the side gabbing away about “Snooks” and “NEW-monia” and “shots” and how she wanted a “REAL doctor.”

  “That right?” he injected sympathetically from time to time, and from time to time he sneezed, for she was letting in wetness and damp, and he felt he was coming down with a cold. Black people as black as Rannie Mae always made him uneasy, especially when they didn’t smell good, and when you could tell they didn’t right away. Rannie Mae, leaning in over him out of the rain, smelt like a wet goat. Her dark dirty eyes clinging to his face with such hungry desperation made him nervous.

  Why did colored folks always want you to do something for them?

  Now he cleared his throat and made a motion forward as if to roll up his window. “Well, ah, mighty sorry to hear ’bout that little fella,” he said, groping for the window crank. “We’ll see what we can do!” He gave her what he hoped was a big friendly smile. God! He didn’t want to hurt her feelings! She looked so pitiful hanging there in the rain. Suddenly he had an idea.

  “Whyn’t you try some of old Aunt Sarah’s home remedies?” he suggested brightly, still smiling. He half believed with everybody else in the county that the old blue-eyed black woman possessed magic. Magic that if it didn’t work on whites probably would on blacks. But Rannie Mae almost turned the car over shaking her head and body with an emphatic “NO!” She reached in a wet crusted hand to grasp his shoulder.

  “We wants a doctor, a real doctor!” she screamed. She had begun to cry and drop her tears on him. “You git us a doctor from town,” she bellowed, shaking the solid shoulder that bulged under his new tweed coat.

  “Like I say,” he drawled lamely although beginning to be furious with her, “we’ll do what we can!” And he hurriedly rolled up the window and sped down the road, cringing from the thought that she had put her hands on him.

  “Old home remedies! Old home remedies!” Rannie Toomer cursed the words while she licked at the hot tears that ran down her face, the only warmth about her. She turned back to the trail that led to her house, trampling the wet circulars under her feet. Under the fence she went and was in a pasture, surrounded by dozens of fat white folks’ cows and an old gray horse and a mule or two. Animals lived there in the pasture all around her house, and she and Snooks lived in it.

  It was less than an hour after she had talked to the mailman that she looked up expecting the doctor and saw old Sarah tramping through the grass on her walking stick. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home with the smoke climbing out the chimney, so she let her in, making her leave her bag of tricks on the front porch.

  Old woman old as that ought to forgit trying to cure other people with her nigger magic … ought to use some of it on herself, she thought. She would not let her lay a finger on Snooks and warned her if she tried she would knock her over the head with her own cane.

  “He coming all right,” Rannie Toomer sai
d firmly, looking, straining her eyes to see through the rain.

  “Let me tell you, child,” the old woman said almost gently, “he ain’t.” She was sipping something hot from a dish. When would this one know, she wondered, that she could only depend on those who would come.

  “But I told you,” Rannie Toomer said in exasperation, as if explaining something to a backward child. “I asked the mailman to bring a doctor for my Snooks!”

  Cold wind was shooting all around her from the cracks in the window framing, faded circulars blew inward from the walls. The old woman’s gloomy prediction made her tremble.

  “He done fetched the doctor,” Sarah said, rubbing her dish with her hand. “What you reckon brung me over here in this here flood? Wasn’t no desire to see no rainbows, I can tell you.”

  Rannie Toomer paled.

  “I’s the doctor, child.” Sarah turned to Rannie with dull wise eyes. “That there mailman didn’t git no further with that message than the road in front of my house. Lucky he got good lungs—deef as I is I had myself a time trying to make out what he was yellin’.”

  Rannie began to cry, moaning.

  Suddenly the breathing of Snooks from the bed seemed to drown out the noise of the downpour outside. Rannie Toomer could feel his pulse making the whole house tremble.