River, cross my heart Read online

  When Johnnie Mae looked up and saw the house on O Street her legs locked. Burning urine threatened to flow down her legs and soil her white ankle socks. She stood stock-still, squeezing her thighs together, staring at the black funeral bunting hanging on the door to her house. Aunt Ina, holding her firmly against the right side of her body, crushed Johnnie Mae's face underneath her breasts. A stale-sweet powder fragrance permeated the fabric of Aunt Ina's dress.

  Aunt Ina brought Johnnie Mae back to the family's house dressed in a black wool dress that she had altered to the girl's size but that had the appearance of an older woman's dress. Johnnie Mae's willowy, athletic body seemed to have shrunk since Clara's drowning—as if some essential part of her had drained off. Walking along the street, she appeared to be sinking down into her dress as she progressed toward the house. Once or twice Aunt Ina had to urge Johnnie Mae to pick up her feet.

  Aunt Ina gasped, "Lord, have mercy, Jesus!" when her urgings failed to move Johnnie Mae up the steps to the front

  door. The girl just stood on the sidewalk and looked at the door. She was perfectly still except that her lips trembled. Ina feared that she'd not be able to get Johnnie Mae into the house.

  Press Parker, whose big old paws scooping under the water hadn't been able to bring Clara back to the surface, came up behind Johnnie Mae and Ina. He lifted the girl into his arms and carried her up the steps. He placed her on the threshold and smoothed the wrinkles he had made in her dress.

  Press Parker built coffins for B. Jenkins Funeral Home. He had hiccuped uncontrollably the night before while hammering the short planks of pine for Clara's little box. The pine was young and unfinished-looking. Several long pulls on a bottle of corn whiskey eased Parker's hiccups. He drew out a pair of ornate brass handles wrapped in chamois from a metal chest in his work shed. They were a keepsake he'd never breathed a word about. Foraging through the underbrush behind the Mount Zion cemetery looking for dead wood and what-all-else, he'd seen the handles sticking up out of the ground. The shifting and settling swampy earth had probably loosened them from the coffin of a rich man buried when the cemetery had been part of the old Methodist burying ground. Parker had been saving the brass handles this long while for the oak casket he planned to build for himself. But he felt like he ought to add something special to Clara's box, since he'd been the first to get to the river and had not been able to save her. The handles added heft to Clara's coffin and made him feel better about her. His hiccups stopped and the whiskey did its best work around dawn, when Parker lay his head against Clara's box.

  The round black-and-yellow faces of oxeye daisies looked

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  out from every comer of the front room. Here and there red

  columbine, their hell-like flowers drooped over as it in prayer, broke up the monotony of so many daisies. Early that morning, Ella Bromsen had gone on a long rambling tramp through the held behind Georgetown University to collect flowers for the Bynums' parlor. She'd left her house just before dawn and made it up to Holy Hill as the sun rose. She'd skirted behind the buildings and crossed the campus's open fields awash with trash tlowers. She'd carried the wildtlowers, still damp, wrapped in the fullness o her skirt.

  Both ot Johnnie Mae's parents were seated in the front room when she and Aunt Ina came in through the screen door. As they entered, Willie stood up abruptly and crossed the room. He cried out sour, mewling sobs and grabbed Johnnie Mae to him. His arms, grasping her around her rib cage, forced a low grunt from her. Alice looked up at the sound of Willie's crying and Johnnie Mae's gasp. When she broke tree of her tather's embrace, Johnnie Mae crossed to her mother.

  Johnnie Mae had not seen her mother or father — certainly did not remember seeing them — since the drowning. She had not spoken to them. How would their voices sound? How might her own sound? Her throat and mouth felt like plaster. Could thev understand how quicklv things had happened? Would she be able to tell them what had happened? Would they know that she had tried to save Clara? Johnnie Mae dove and dove and tried to save her sister. But Clara had ridden a whorl oi water to the bottom of the Potomac.

  Even- muscle in Johnnie Mae's bodv hardened against what her parents' questions must be. What had they meant by swimming there? How many times had she been told not to

  swim in the Potomac? How could she have let Clara fall into the river? Why had she taken her eyes off Clara even for a second?

  But they did not ask anything. They seemed to know all the details or were satisfied with what they'd been told by others. They did not seem to blame Johnnie Mae. But who could they blame but her? And blame seemed necessary. Their eyes were soft, pitying—not angry. There was a slightly perplexed expression, the same in both pairs of eyes, as if a question were there but not the courage to ask it.

  Reverend Buford Jenkins, the mortician who was pastor of Mount Zion Church, approached the Bynum house and his quarrelsome stomach started talking back. "I do wish I had some soda," he muttered as acid churned around in his gut and the inside of his mouth became dry. The condition oi Clara's remains had disturbed him and challenged his abilities to cosmeticize. A child ought to look like a sleeping angel resting on a bed of satin and flowers. But in the hours before they pulled Clara's body free oi the water, before the river let them take it back, her small body had slammed against submerged rocks. It was snagged on a forked branch that was caught on pilings beneath the water's surface and had not actually been far from the place where the girl went under. There was no way to make a sleeping angel. Clara looked dead — and bruised. For the sake oi sensibilities and to preserve the reputation oi his business, Reverend Jenkins intended to convince the Bynums not to have an open casket.

  Jenkins came into the house belching quietly and settling his clothes. The Bynums' parlor was stifling with sympathy. Neighbors ringed the grieving parents like a necklace. Some neglected their own families to cook, wash, look after callers,

  and comfort Willie and Alice. Each woman put her hand to a special dish: candied sweets, corn pudding, collards, fried chicken, fried fish, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, cake or pie. Each tried to outdo the other in cooking and ministering to the grieving parents. They and most of the recent migrants from Carolina subscribed to the trusted country wisdom: Starve the fever and feed the cold, hungry, sorrowful, lonely, and confused.

  Alice Bynum had not eaten anything in the days since Clara's drowning. It was a plate of Bertha Howard's fried chicken and candied sweets that finally woke her palate. When this first helping of food got down to her stomach her bowels rumbled and sweat coursed out of her pores. A sense of what had happened began to return with her appetite.

  Alice slumped into her chair at the sight of Reverend Jenkins. "Sister Bynum, I'll need to know your particular wishes," he said. "It's my feeling that we shouldn't have a viewing of the body, Sister Bynum."

  Alice looked blankly toward a worn spot on the rug. The women on either side of her, who had gasped at the reverend's words, patted Alice's hands. Her lips parted slightly as if she were going to speak and Eva Copsey put a glass of water to her mouth. "Have a bit of water, honey, please," she said.

  Alice didn't speak. She didn't drink the water either. Her mind wanted to scream out some reply, she wanted to push the glass of water away, but she felt her tongue drop to the floor of her mouth and lie motionless, and her lips closed firmly. Instead of speaking, she removed an embroidered handkerchief from her pocket and put it over the rug's bare spot. The women exchanged compassionate looks. A strangled sound came from Ina Carson.

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  Reverend Jenkins, practiced in handling the grief-stricken, stood with his hat in his hand and let his words settle on the women. "Sisters," he said finally, sweeping his eyes along all the women's faces. "May I please have a glass of soda for my stomach? I have a particular need for it."

  The men walked back and forth between the rooms and in and out of the doors, back and front. They took turns at seats around the kitc
hen table where Willie Bynum had settled. He sat bent over at the waist with his head between his knees. Now and then, Willie brought his head up and leaned back against his chair. The men brewed strong coffee and put shots of whiskey in the cups. Someone fiddled with the stove.

  Willie held his coffee cup as if he were holding his own skull, massaging it between his fingers. Someone filled the cup each time it became nearly empty. The men had been in the kitchen like this — heads bowed, keeping the fire lit despite the season, pouring the coffee—since coming back from the river with Clara's body. Several shivered as if chilled to the bone, yet sweat ran down their faces.

  Reverend Jenkins came out to the kitchen on the heels of Ina Carson. She was the one who jumped up to get the reverend a glass of bicarbonate of soda, and she had slyly crooked her finger at him to pull him along behind her. When she had him trapped with his back to the kitchen sink she started to question him.

  "Her mama and papa and you yourself can see her," Reverend Jenkins said, because he knew very well why Ina had him cornered at the sink. "But all and everybody shouldn't look on the baby like she is now. I can't do anything else with her."

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  After he downed the glass of soda, Jenkins asked five or six of the men collected in the room to come with him to bring the coffin to the house. Willie rose to join them.

  "Brother Bynum," Jenkins said, placing his open palm gently on Willie's chest.

  Willie blew breath out of his nostrils like a dray horse. Lexter Gorson, who'd sat most of the day in a corner oi the kitchen, caught Willie's arm and sat him back down. "Brother Bynum, this one row you don't need to hoe."

  Johnnie Mae sat on a hard chair near the radio in the front room, drawing herself in and away from the constantly moving mourners. When she closed her eyes she could identify the gender o{ each by the fragrances wafting past. The men smelled oi tobacco, starch, wisps ot whiskey, and perspiration. The women smelled o talcum, toilet water, butter, and baby urine. Johnnie Mae folded her arms over her chest and clamped her two knees together rigidly. If no limb were hanging loose, she thought, then no one could pat or grasp or stroke her. Each oi the women in the room came over to her corner, bent down to look into her face, extended a soft, moist hand toward her. Johnnie Mae sank back into the chair.

  There was a parade of baking powder biscuits through the Bvnums' house in the days after Clara's death. Even- woman who paid a call brought a pan oi biscuits. And there were some women who made good baking powder biscuits, some who made heavenly ones, some who made rubbery ones, and some whose biscuits were as hard as rocks. If Saint Peter paid a nickel for each time a woman said in reply to a compliment that her mothers or her grandmother's biscuits were the finest, the lightest, the fluffiest, the most delicately browned

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  she had ever tasted, there would be nickels under every pillow in town.

  "My mama was a boss baker. She showed me. I do it just the way she did. She didn't have a recipe. She didn't need one." There was pride in their voices when they accepted compliments on their biscuits. And following the custom of female modesty, they were required to give credit to someone other than themselves for their mastery of the craft.

  And while a biscuit can be made with no more than some flour, some baking powder, some salt, some milk if you have it, some water if you don't, and a wish, it is in the firm but gentle touch that the excellent biscuit is created.

  As president of the Ladies of Olives burial society, Miz Elva Bemis had brought the requisite pan of biscuits. Everyone who tasted them agreed that Miz Elva Bemis's biscuits were fluffy enough to rise by themselves on Judgment Day.

  Miz Elva had come expressly to press on the Bynums the money for Clara's dressing, laying-out, and plot at Mount Zion. Both Alice and Ina had joined the Ladies of Olives soon after they'd got settled in Georgetown and had faithfully paid their dues each week. Neither had thought that she would be the one who would need help. But the Ladies of Olives had helped Ina with Cap, and now they were helping to put baby Clara to rest. "Lord, Lord, Lord" was all Miz Elva said when she handed Alice the bundle of bills wrapped in newspaper.

  Miz Elva, legs unsteadied by arthritis and leaning on a cane, crossed the room to Johnnie Mae and pressed three striped peppermint balls into her hand and pushed one against the girl's lips until she opened her mouth. Miz Elva smiled and shook her head encouragingly when Johnnie Mae sucked the

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  candy. Holding her cane in her left hand, eyes closed, and face turned toward the ceiling, she said in a tinny voice that rose above the mourning hum, "Don't forget the little sweetness of life. Do, Jesus! Don't forget now!"

  Reverend Jenkins had just come in from the kitchen. He grasped Miz Elva Bemis's hands and Johnnie Mae thought he meant to do the patty cake with her. He, too, closed his eyes and answered, "Yes, Lord. Thank you, Sister Bemis." Several "Amens" reverberated through the room. Miz Elva Bemis crossed to Alice and put three peppermint balls in her lap.

  "I've got something to say to you, Sister Alice," Elva Bemis continued. Alice raised her gaze from her lap in response to the gentle authority o{ the old woman's voice. Miz Elva's lips and the soft, crinkled skin around them opened and closed like a drawstring purse over her snaggled, protruding teeth.

  "Sister Alice, you all have not been in Georgetown very long. You came to us a short while ago. We don't know all o{ you all's people, but we know you are Christian people. And we know you are good working people. You all are members of the church here. Your little girl will rest in hallowed ground here. She'll rest with the saints. Sister Alice, you already got a kin person up there. Brother Cap Carson, Sister Ina's husband, is up there. My baby, Sally, is up there. My husband and four of my boys are up there. Miz Nan Dockery and others of the Dockerys are up there. The Harrises, the Chaneys have got people up there. Why, Pearl Stewart that was a Nevins lies up there with her husband, Mr. Arthur Stewart."

  Belle Dockery, who credited her grandma Belle Peatly with the invention of sweet potato biscuits, came and sat in

  the front room with a pan of string beans to snap. "My grandma Belle Peatly is up there in Mount Zion," she said.

  Miz Elva kept on in her trembly voice. "All of these people that've been here in Georgetown awhile have people up there. We'll put this baby up there too." Her voice rose on the refrain of "up there," and scattered voices about the room answered "Amen." A spell got working in the parlor and the men came in from the kitchen to join it. The men and women — some standing, some sitting — bowed their heads and murmured "Amen." Folks slapped two palms together and continued the refrain. Miz Elva Bemis got truly happy and her tongue danced along the roof of her mouth, vibrating at the back of her throat. Her voice left spoken word and ululated, "Up there! Up there!"

  Wearing a simple long black skirt, a black blouse with small cloth-covered buttons at the neck, and a black kerchief on her head, Ella Bromsen looked as demure as a postulant as she entered the church leading her blind father, Mr. Butter Bromsen. Most everyone among the colored of Georgetown came to the funeral. Lexter Gorson recovered himself from drunk-enness, plastered his hair down with carbolated petroleum jelly, wiped off a threadbare suit with too-short pants and a moth-eaten coat, and entered the church quietly. Mahmoud Hadad removed his shapeless hat at the church door, hitched his pants, and sat at the back with his four black-haired sons. The Bemis family, the Copseys, and the Howards came with their numerous children, all wearing white shirts and blouses with black arm bands. Belle Dockery's ten streamed in after

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  her. Mabel, her oldest, fell against her mother's broad back as the procession riled past the flower-shrouded bier.

  Ina Carson, whose right arm was twined around Johnnie Mae's back to keep her walking upright, drew herself to a height and marched into the church. The Epworth League marched two parallel lines of solemnly dressed young people down the center aisle just before Alice
Bynum was escorted in, surrounded by white-clad members of the Women's Society of Christian Service. Willie followed them in a black-crow suit of clothes.

  After all the others filed in, Ann-Martha Pendel slipped onto the bench next to Lexter Gorson with a series of grunts and huffings. She appeared uncomfortable in a black dress with coarse lisle stockings rolled below her knees. After a moment on the bench she pulled herself up and stood near the door.

  Reverend Jenkins's voice, like a huge, calloused hand struggling to be soft, caressed his audience.

  "The Lord giveth . . . and the Lord taketh away."

  The listeners moaned and shivered. "Amen." Cardboard fans slapped and shushed, pushing hot air through the nave.

  "When the old folks pass we're mostly happy. We're sorry to see them go, but happy for them that this hard, hard life is done. They gonna get their reward."

  "Amen, uh-huh."

  "Papa, you rest from plowing now, the furrows are straight. You've seen the end oi the row. Mother, sit down now. Just bake a cake for baby Jesus now. No more scrubbin' to be done."

  "Amen."

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  "But when a baby dies—well, we don't know. There's no sense of finish. The candle didn't burn down after glowing all the night. A cold wind came through and it blew out long before the dawn."

  "Yes, Jesus!"

  "The cold wind! The cold wind!"

  "Amen."

  "The people we love, we only borrowing them. They don't belong to us. They belong to the Lord. Mother, you've lost the fruit of your womb. It's going to take some hard grieving to recover yourself. Father, you've lost the fruit of your loins. Gird yourself, the seas are going to be rough before you see dry land. Brother Bynum, Sister Bynum, you have lost the precious fruit from the topmost branch—a branch that, Lord willing, was going to extend down the ages carrying your hopes and aspirations. That fruit was dashed to the ground through Jesus's divine hand. We do not understand this. Our hearts are torn asunder with grief. We do not understand, Lord. But Lord, we do not question your divine wisdom."