Crossroads: Tales of Southern Literary Fantastic - Softcover

I
 
In the end, Pearl never tried to kill anything or anybody, but no one wanted to believe that after all these years because small things, like the way a woman's flesh slowly moves beneath her skirt or her lips curve upward over a gap-toothed smile, can mark that woman for life. The food on her plate that comes from nowhere but makes a full belly is a sign and talk that has slowed down to a bare whisper can hurry up loud again. Talk runs like water down a road leaving mud in its rutted wake.
It's simpler than that, though. No one could explain Pearl or how she and Brother got here, what cabbage leaf their mother, Rosalie, had overturned to retrieve them and no one was going to know because the mother was gone now. Rosalie was dead and had been for years so how was somebody going to find out who had been walking in and out of that back door for thirty years? Pearl wasn't talking. Rosalie dead. Brother gone up North someplace, the best thing for him really.
So Pearl starts working in the white folks' kitchen when she didn't have to. Pots and pans can stop bullets, an apron is a second, rougher shell of skin and you can say "no matter" to what happens outside or what is said. If you don't need the money, you can take it, as long as you conjure nothing with your body or hands but a meal. Because then you can prove the daughter is nothing like the mother.
She got to be working some root just like her Mama cause how her mama get her own house? How she get all that land?
And how Pearl still staying on that place? Where she get the money?
Ain't no man coming out the back door now but you can bet they's one sniffing round. The mama ain't never had no shame, you know that girl don't either.
And if they ain't sniffing, what's wrong with that girl Pearl? Why can't she find nobody? She think she too good for a colored man or she saving it for somebody else?
Umph. It's a scandal. Something in that milk ain't clean.
 
2
 
Pearl is glad she is finally five and the first day of school isn't at church either. Pearl and Mama and Brother come to Red Mound Primitive Baptist early most Sundays so they can get a good seat and there are so many colors of people, a field like flowers in it. Different colors like her and Brother and Mama. The best part is the singing when Sister Jones stands up and closes her eyes and then starts singing a song about running along and running along and the Hand of God comes out of the mountains and sweeps the sinner away like dust and sometimes Mama starts crying, "Jesus!" in the middle of the song and sways her body back and forth. The worst part is after service, Mama smiling peace at the women, never the men, and speaking, "Hey y'all." And there is smiling back with mouths and the women fan away heat with handkerchiefs but the women's eyes cut at Pearl and Mama and Brother. And the women suck their teeth when Mama walks on past them down the middle aisle. Mama holds her head straight above the buttoned-up collar and she won't look down at Pearl or Brother. Mama's fingers squeezing Pearl's small hands and making red marks on her skin.
The first day of school Mama calls softly to Pearl in bed, "Pearl. Pearl? Get up now," and walks around gathering clothes, heating water in a tin pail to wash Pearl's and Brother's face and hands. Ten more minutes and then again, still softly but a little louder. "Pearl. Come on now, baby." Grits and fried chicken and biscuits with cane syrup sweet and hot lemon tea and Mama is singing a made-up silly song and laughing and promising all the letters to Pearl. Pearl will be just like Brother, so smart and eating those books like they were cake. Yes she will. Mama lets Pearl wear her favorite dress that is too short, coming up to her calves and Brother making a hooting sound at the sight of Pearl's legs. Mama says, "Stop it now. My baby girl looks good to me!"
Pearl knows the way to school; she has walked down the road every morning with Brother and Mama before she stays all day this first time. Mama thinks two miles is too long for the both of them to walk alone and too long for Pearl anyway so Mama picks Pearl up in her arms and strides fast across the dirt road. "Mama, I can do it; put me down!" Mama not listening and kissing Pearl a hundred times on her forehead and Mama looking at Brother beside them and ruffling his loopy curls with her long fingers and then putting them back in place. The first day, Rosalie drops them off at eight and picks them up when Teacher rings the big bell at two and those hours in between Pearl longs for Rosalie. Brother sits on the other side of the room out of reach, his round glasses sitting on the tip of his nose. He reads a book because Teacher lets him do as he pleases since he has moved past the other children. Pearl tries to sound out the words like Mama taught her. Where are the letters Mama has promised Pearl will be hers?
At noon, Pearl follows the other children in looking underneath the seat for her lunch pail and then the door to the schoolhouse is opened. A white man opens the door and comes inside, points his finger at several children in the room. He does not remove his hat. "You and you and you and you." Pearl looks over at Brother shaking his head back and forth at her and his finger at his lips. "You and you and you. Come on now, y'all; I ain't got all day." He points to a child, a girl, sitting in front of Pearl and Pearl rises with her. "No, uh-uh, not you." Pearl scuffs her shoes back and forth on the floor and then sits down. The children leave with the white man on a wagon heading for Mr. Big John Pinchard's fields and they won't be back until November.
These are the lessons Pearl remembers about a father: first rule of thumb is there is nothing wrong with a rich man as long as he is sweet. As long as he walks the miles after dark to see your mother, his shiny shoes coated with red dust, the brow of his face streaming with sweat. Waits for your mother to finish feeding chickens and slopping hogs and says a grateful "Thank you, Rosalie" for the pail of hot water she brings to him to wash the dust off those shiny shoes. Wipes his mouth with a clean white handkerchief after every bite of her simple food. Smiles and watches his children eat that food as if his nourishment depended on their own. Reads to Pearl and Brother from the big book he brings with him each evening. Kisses the heads of his ivory son and yellow daughter and pull the covers up to their chins. Opens the quilt of his and Rosalie's bed when the thunder and rain starts and lets his frightened daughter climb in between them. Rises well before dawn, holds the mother's slender chocolate and cream hand over his heart and then quietly closes the door of the house. Promises the mother that she and their children will never have to work the fields, that the house and the land will always belong to her. As long as he keeps his promises.
 
3
 
When Pearl took over for Aretha as cook, the whispers got louder. Even though Pearl kept to herself and fanned away men like so many dragonflies, only worked hard and brought home honest money, they would not let her the daughter forget the mother. She is too young to have moved that quickly through the ranks in five short years. From freelance washerwoman to maid to cook, and by the time she was twenty-four, there was Pearl. And there was Aretha "retired" at the young age of sixty-three. A joke really since Aretha had at least twenty more years of work left in her.
Aretha's footprints on the floor of the Pinchard kitchen, her mother's footprints before her and if the old folks' had been there, they could have told about the women in Aretha's family back to the plank of the ship, the ones who had stirred their spoons in Pinchard stew but now Mr. Big John had taken to his sickbed and Aretha was out. The doctor telling Mr. Big John straight out for a while now...