One Night in Mississippi (3 page)

Mississippi, 1946

My mother spent
thirteen hours in labour, sweating and screaming in my parents' bedroom with Aunt Louise at her side. The radio was on, tuned in to the country station because that was the only station we could pick up and at that not very well. Hank Williams's voice scratched and warbled through the static, but it couldn't drown out the sounds.

I went back and forth to the kitchen, bringing buckets of water from the well, which our father would pour into a pot and heat over the stove, or else fetching a fresh blanket when the one our mother covered herself with had soaked through to the point that it needed to be rinsed out and hung from the clothesline in the backyard.

The rest of the time I sat on the porch, staring out past the thin red line of the county road and into the stand of pine trees in the distance beyond. Glenda and Etta had been sent off to a neighbour's house during the birth. Though Glenda was a year older than me — seven to my six — Papa apparently thought that seeing Mama in pain was OK for me, but not for my sisters. I didn't remember Etta's birth, don't know if I was there or not, but this time around I was present and I prayed hard. I prayed for a boy, because then he would be able to help in the fields in a few years' time, unlike my sisters who were mostly given just house and yard work as chores. I went through names in my head, weighing each one, and in the end, I decided on Henry. I hoped it was a boy, and that they named him Henry. I got half my wish.

Aunt Louise guessed that Graden must have been near ten pounds at birth. He was big to begin with and he kept growing at an impressive rate, leading Ma to sometimes chide that he was “too slow being born and too fast growing up.” I'd prayed for a brother who could help in the fields, and I got more than I could have expected. By the time Graden was eight, he could pull as much cotton in a day as I could, though still not as much as Papa. By the time he was twelve, I had a hard time matching him. Walking in the row beside him, we would sometimes talk, sometimes sing, but even when we were silent I could see his lips move. I asked him one time what he was doing.

“Lessons,” he replied.

“Lessons?”

“Yeah. I'm trying to memorize all the states.”

“What for? You ain't ever going to leave this one.”

“You don't know that.”

“Do too. This is where your family is. You got a head full of stuff that you don't need.”

He didn't look up, just kept trudging along, working his fingers through the bolls, and depositing the cotton in his sack. He was silent for a few steps, and when he did continue to speak, it was with his head down, as if he didn't want me to hear the words coming out of his mouth.

“You know there's places up north where black men have jobs. They get dressed up and go to work and get paid, just like white folks.”

“There's places like that right here in Mississippi. It don't mean nothing to you though.”

“Maybe it does.”

“Now hold on. All that schooling's messing you up. Papa gets paid. How you think he bought this patch of land? People get rich off cotton.”

“
We
don't. If you hadn't dropped out of school, you might have learned that.”

I stopped to argue, but Graden just kept picking, and I had to bend back to my work to try to keep pace.

The next morning, Graden was not at breakfast. Mama asked if any of us had seen him. The girls both said no, but Etta fidgeted nervously. Papa looked up from his plate and fixed me with a stare.

“We got a lot of work to do today. If your brother ain't around, it's going to be a long day.”

A long day in Papa's mind meant working well into the night. He finished his breakfast and walked out the back without saying another word. Mama cleared his plate, and Glenda got up to help her. When Mama's back was turned, Etta shovelled a few bites of potatoes and a piece of bread into a napkin and quickly wrapped it beneath the table. When she saw that I had noticed, she gave me a look like a puppy begging for table scraps.

I didn't say anything. She walked out to the front where I knew Graden would be hiding beneath the porch, waiting for the house to empty so that he could dash unnoticed to the road and off to school. Etta came back into the house without the napkin. She gave me a shrug and made a childlike effort at an innocent face, then continued to help Mama with the dishes.

When Graden returned home that afternoon, he changed his clothes and came out to help in the fields, and when the work was done, I could hear the paddling he took from Papa in our parents' bedroom. He limped into our room with tears on his cheeks, but I had no sympathy for him.

“Serves you right. You know I had to work twice as hard while you were running off.”

Graden lay face down on his bed. “School's important.”

“Not getting whipped by Papa, that's important. What are you learning that's worth that?”

“I could show you. I can teach you, if you want.”

“Don't need you teaching me anything. I'm not the dumb one.” I rolled over and went to sleep.

It was not the last time that Graden skipped field work in favour of school, far from it. Despite my protests, and Papa's whippings, he continued to do so any time that he felt he was falling behind in class. Rather than deter him, the punishments only seemed to strengthen his resolve. Papa had not gone to school past fourth grade, and Graden endured each whipping with a sorrow not for himself, but for our father's lack of understanding. Each time he returned to the room sorer than the time before, and each time he offered to teach me. I had only lasted in school to the eighth grade myself, and even at that I hadn't put in much effort. As the eldest son, I had set myself to farming and hadn't looked back. I refused Graden's offer of lessons each time he made it, but I was beginning to grow curious about what was in those books that made him willing to endure so much pain.

Skipping field work wasn't the only trouble that Graden got into as a boy. He was always getting caught sneaking bits of food to the mule or, when we could afford one, to the pig, or sometimes even to the foxes and coyotes that crept as far as the edge of the bush.

More than once Papa admonished him. “Them animals is good for two things — eating and working.”

Each time he was caught, Graden would find his portion of dinner to be a little smaller than everyone else's, but he never let that discourage him. One day he found a crow with a broken wing behind the barn, and when he brought it to the house, Papa took one glance and told him it was going to die. Graden stubbornly went to work on nursing it back to health.

He built a makeshift heater — an old cigarette tin set over a low-burning lamp. He tied the bird's wing against its body with twine, lined the tin with wild grass, and set the bird within it. He fed it kernels of corn and bits of bread, read to it, and hid it under his bed when he left the room, knowing that if our father found out, he would be annoyed that Graden was wasting food and lamp oil. I made fun of him, told him that when his pet crow was healthy maybe he could get on its back and fly away to all those other states he had memorized, or that maybe when it died Mama would cook it in a stew or a pie, but my teasing never drew a response.

Papa was right, of course. The bird only survived for two days. I came into the room one night and found it still and stiff in the nest he had crafted for it. Pressing its wing between my fingers, I could feel that the feathers had already turned coarse and brittle. Seeing it lying there, fragile and useless, I was angry at Graden. Angry at him for sneaking off to school while Papa and I worked. Angry at him for his big words and big ideas, and for the way he seemed to feel sorry for us if we didn't agree with them. Most of all I was angry at him for wasting time on this stupid little bird. There were flocks of birds around the farm all the time, and there was nothing special about this one except that it had been foolish enough to crash into the barn and break its wing. And Graden had been foolish enough to give a damn. I decided to teach him a lesson. I poked my head out into the hallway.

“You almost ready for bed?”

“Yep,” he called back from the kitchen. “I'm just helping Etta with something. I'll be right in.”

“All right then. I'm tired. I'm gonna put the light out.”

I didn't want to touch the bird again, but I cupped it in my hands and lifted it out of its tin. I laid it carefully inside Graden's pillow case, then brushed away a few stray blades of grass that had stuck to the dead crow's body. I changed quickly and put out the light, then crawled into bed. It wasn't long before I heard him crack open the bedroom door.

“You awake?” he whispered.

I pretended to sleep. He hesitated, then came in and closed the door behind him. I heard him scuffling about the room as he looked for his bedclothes and changed in darkness.

I stared up at the ceiling waiting for a screech or a cry, but there was neither. He must not have noticed it at first. He lay down for a bit, and I could hear him shifting to get comfortable. It was only after several turns that he made a throttled, hiccupping sound. I could just make out his form, sitting upright and patting his pillow.

“What is it?” I whispered.

I waited for his reaction, ready to mock him and his stupid bird, ready to tell him to get his head down out of the clouds.

Instead of answering me, he climbed out of bed. I heard the same scuffling sounds as he got dressed and, when I squinted in the darkness, I could see that he had kneeled down. I couldn't clearly make out what he was doing, but he appeared to be patting the floor. I heard a scraping noise and realized he was looking for the cigarette tin. The bedroom door cracked open, and he tiptoed outside.

I waited a few moments, then grabbed a shirt, and followed him. The backyard was bathed in bright moonlight. In the far corner, I could see Graden on his knees on the ground, digging a hole with his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Burying it,” he replied.

“It's just a bird. Leave it.”

He turned to look at me, standing on the porch. I expected anger from him, but there was none, and the anger I had felt earlier seemed suddenly far away.

“I'm … sorry. It was me.”

The words felt stupid coming out of my mouth. Who else would it have been? He turned away and continued digging.

“I didn't kill the bird, though.”

“I know.”

The disappointment in his voice was clear. I would have preferred his anger. There was nothing more to say. I left the porch and went to kneel down beside him, wordlessly pushing aside handfuls of dirt. After laying the bird to rest, Graden delivered a short prayer. When we returned to our bedroom, it wasn't Graden who cried, but me. It was the first time that I broke my brother's heart, but it wouldn't be the last or the most painful.

Ontario, 2008

The guard at the border
told me that I would know how far north I had driven by the size of the animals on the roadside signs. I had never liked highway driving, and I was in no hurry to reach my destination. I stuck to regional roads. My route took me east first, through small towns straddling the Thames River, its surface a jumble of cracked ice. There were yellow diamond-shaped signs warning drivers to watch for ducks crossing.

When I did merge onto the 401, the yellow signs changed to deer. I drove past towns with European names — Dresden, London, Paris. I spotted one deer, chewing grass at the edge of a copse of trees, but it looked uninterested in testing the road.

By the time I reached Hamilton, I was tiring. I pulled off at a truck stop that sold T-shirts and stuffed beavers and offered the use of shower stalls. I ordered smothered chicken and ate in silence in a corner booth. It had started to snow. The men there were mostly what I thought they would be — gruff and weary and alone, sitting each at their separate tables with their heads hung over their meals. I stayed for coffee, then checked into a hotel a little farther down the road. I paid upfront so that I could be off early in the morning.

Past Toronto, the route turned north. After a hundred miles or so, the highway narrowed from six lanes to two, the radio stations switched from rock to mostly country, and the billboards began advertising snowmobiles, ATVs, and small boats instead of cars and trucks. I passed an eighteen-wheeler overturned in the ditch, its trailer ruptured, its back wheels still spinning slowly in the wind like the legs of a turtle on its back.

The highway was exposed on both sides, and the wind whipped snow from the fields across it in thick sheets. I pushed on through Barrie and Orillia. The warning signs changed from deer to moose, and I knew I must be getting close. I slowed crossing a bridge to look at the shacks set up on the lake by ice-fishermen, so many that it looked like a village. The car slid beneath me, but not dangerously so.

When I finally reached my exit, the snow had stopped, but enough had accumulated that the words on the sign were obscured, and I had to look closely. I entered the town of Amblan, then pulled off to the side of the road to check my directions. Etta had arranged for a room for me, even though she hadn't wanted me to go.

It was Etta who had tried to bring me back into the family. Shortly after Graden's funeral, I'd left Mississippi. I was twenty-five and out on my own for the first time in my life. I made my way north slowly, going as far as I could with the money I had, then settling in a place just long enough to earn what I needed in order to move on, travelling sometimes by bus but more often in the back of a truck. In Chicago I met a school teacher who suffered from a mild palsy. I cooked and cleaned and ran his errands, and in return he let me have the apartment in the basement of his house. He began teaching me history and literature and science in the evenings. I earned my high school diploma at the age of twenty-nine and was accepted at Loyola University. The old man passed shortly before classes began and I struggled, but continued. It was the only way I knew.

Eventually, the man's daughter came from Washington to claim the property, and I moved into a hostel. I hadn't spoken to or heard from my own family in four years, but in my second year I found a postcard in my campus mailbox. It was from Philadelphia. The picture on the front showed the Liberty Bell, reflecting the colours of sunset. The note on the back was brief.

Am married now and living in Philadelphia. I tried to invite you to the wedding but had considerable difficulty finding you. I was excited to hear you are in college! You have been hard on yourself. Much time has passed. I hope you are well, and I hope you find your way to visit us. Love, Etta.

A few simple words wiped away the years and distance, but only for a short time. After rereading the postcard several times, I began to take note of the things not written. “
I was excited to hear you are in college!”
“I” not “we.” No mention of the rest of the family sending their regards or of being missed. Etta had scribbled her address and phone number in a corner. I didn't reply, but I kept the card. It took the better part of a year before I finally called her.

The first visit was brief. I stayed only four days, meeting her husband and her two-year-old daughter. They welcomed me warmly, but I spoke little. Neither of my sisters had been beautiful, but Etta had grown into an understated elegance that made people look past her features. She was educated and cultured, but still occasionally revealed her roots with a country phrase that brought disapproving looks from her husband. I stayed in their house as a stranger. I left from there for Kentucky, knowing her less than when I'd arrived, but I wrote to her nonetheless and with the safety of several states between us, I opened up.

When I eventually moved to Philadelphia, into an apartment above a flower shop, I thought that I might have found a place to settle. It was the spring of 1980, and I was a forty-year-old man who had not planted solid roots anywhere. I began eating supper with Etta and her family two nights a week and accompanying them to church on Sundays. Gradually, I became friendly with the shop owner, who would give me my pick of the flowers that he couldn't sell. I brought them to Etta on each visit — lilacs that were cut too short, tulips whose petals drooped slightly, blooms with tiny flaws that were otherwise unapparent, picked up by the shop owner's trained eye.

We rarely talked with each other about family. Etta kept in constant touch with Mama and Glenda, and whenever the subject did come up, she would reel off updates about their lives while I sat and listened in silence. They knew that I was living nearby, but if they ever asked about me while they were talking to Etta, she never mentioned it.

Sitting on Etta's porch one night, sipping lemonade and looking out over the front yard, I was reminded of the night before Graden's body was brought home, both of us sleepless and sitting out in front of our old place in Mississippi.

“I wish I could have been at Papa's funeral.”

“We couldn't find you. I tried, but that was before I was able to track you down.”

“Thing is, I never was trying to hide. Just didn't think anyone was looking. It must have been awful hard work keeping the farm going those last few years with both Graden and me gone.”

“You sound like you're fixing to blame yourself for that.”

“Blame has a way of finding the right place.”

“Well, that place ain't with you. Papa lived a hard life long before any of us came along. There's plenty of fifty-three-year old farmers with two healthy sons that never lived to see fifty-four. You gotta stop putting all of this on yourself.”

“I should have been with him.”

“We still talking about Papa?”

Etta set down her lemonade and reached for my hand.

“Papa's not your fault. Graden's not your fault. It doesn't matter that he was out there to fetch you home. Those men had their eyes set on him, and they would have gotten him anyway, if not that night then on some other.”

I stared at the street running past Etta's house, half-expecting to see that dusty white pickup come trundling along with its horrible package in the back. I leaned over and kissed Etta on the forehead, then stood to go back in the house.

“There's plenty of blame for me to take, Etta. There's all of it. Seems like you're the only that don't see it.”

Glenda visited a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I dressed in a heavy brown cotton suit that had been given to me by the teacher in Chicago. It was the only suit I owned, and it fit poorly. I struggled to button my shirt with my crippled right hand.

I didn't know if Glenda would greet me as long-lost family or as an unwelcome presence. She did neither. She was cool, polite, and cautious. She'd grown heavy since I'd last seen her. Her legs and arms were thick, and her hair had turned to grey, but her face was mostly unchanged — her cheeks dark and leathery, her forehead wrinkled at the brow, her eyes set in a squint that made her look perpetually annoyed except on the rare occasions when a broad smile broke out and transformed her entire face.

We hugged each other stiffly inside the doorway and did not touch again before leaving. Our words to each other were guarded. It was that way between Etta and me at first as well, and we had worked through it, but this was different. There was a stillness on both sides, whereas with Etta, the awkwardness had been all mine.

After dinner, Etta's husband and daughter went for a walk, and Etta, Glenda, and I remained at the table. Etta served coffee and peach pie. The conversation started and faded and started and faded again, each change of topic preceded by a weighted hesitation. They spoke mostly of cooking and farming and marriage. Etta tried to draw me in, urging me to tell them where I had been, what my life had been like at school, and what I'd done since then. I began slowly, leaving myself out of the story, talking only of places and dates. I directed my words at the crumbs on the saucer in front of me. Years went by in a matter of a few sentences. Glenda merely nodded. Etta excused herself to clear the dishes, and when she left the table cradling plates and cups, Glenda looked passively through the spoiling chrysanthemums I had brought for the centerpiece and said quietly, “You've been gone a long time.”

“Yes.”

“You know Mama's in a home?”

“Etta told me, yes.”

“She misses him, still.”

“I do too.”

Glenda scoffed. “That why you ran off and left everything behind?”

“No, I just … couldn't stay there.”

“You think you've suffered more than the rest of us.”

I couldn't look up at her. I rubbed the remaining fingers on my hand. “I was supposed to take care of him.”

Glenda pushed back her chair and collected the remaining plates. I could just hear her over the clatter of utensils.

“Maybe you should have stayed gone.”

I didn't reply. She walked into the kitchen, and I stayed at the table alone. After church on Sunday, I said goodbye to Glenda as formally as we had said hello, then returned to my apartment to write a letter to Etta. By Thanksgiving I had moved out of the apartment and was on my way out of Philadelphia.