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Joe, she’d say, and he’d come around the corner, blues harp in his mouth, eyes shining with devilment or laughter or sometimes unshed tears. It was his love of stomp-your-heart-flat music that drew him to Shakerag.
Cassie had begged to go with him, but he’d said, Women don’t go to places like that. Besides, Daddy would disown me if I took my wife to a Negro juke joint.
“I’ve already been there when I interviewed Tiny Jim, and nothing bad happened to me. Even when I drank a glass of sweet tea from their cup.”
“For God’s sake, Cassie. Be serious. Exposing beautiful white women to randy young coloreds is causing race riots.”
“No, the riots are caused by ignorant, hysterical women and hot-tempered men who settle differences with guns and lynching ropes. You’re not ignorant and I’m not foolish. Please, Joe.”
She finally wore him down on his birthday. To avoid unnecessary talk, they took care that nobody in their neighborhood knew where Cassie was going, and, aside from a few raised eyebrows in the juke joint, nothing happened. In their society, white was not merely a color but a privilege, one Joe took for granted and Cassie agonized over.
That evening, he’d driven home with one hand so he could hold his harp to his mouth with the other. The only sound in the car was an old Delta blues song whose words Cassie didn’t know until Joe alternately played and sang.
That was the only time he ever took her, and she’d finally stopped asking to go. She couldn’t remember when. Or why. Or even if she’d ever wondered.
The lyrics Joe had sung on that otherwise silent car trip home suddenly played through Cassie’s mind. Ain’t no use cryin’, baby. The world done stomped us flat. Ain’t no use cryin’, baby. Your tears won’t change all that.
Li’l Rosie had composed that particular blues song. Cassie remembered because she’d asked Joe. She’d wanted to know who knew her so well she’d written lyrics especially for Cassie.
Or had the lyrics been for Joe? Had he been trying to tell her something, but she had looked the other way, shut her ears and walked around him?
Maple Street came into view, but as far as Cassie could see, there was only one maple tree on the entire street. The neighborhood was made up of one wooden saltbox house after the other, mostly unpainted, with a scattering of them featuring washed-out and peeling paint. The rest of the view came to Cassie in snatches—skimpy yards, many of them overgrown with Johnson grass and honeysuckle that will strangle anything in sight if it’s not cut back, old tires stacked under tired-looking oak trees, sagging porches with swings on rusty chains.
Still, they were homes for somebody, raggedy havens where men with grease under their fingernails and women with detergent-cracked hands could lie together on a squeaky bed frame and forget the world outside. The houses sat back from the street on long, narrow lots. Cassie leaned down so she could peer at the numbers tattooed over the front doors.
The frame house she was looking for was painted a pastel blue faded the color of an old chambray shirt, blue gingham curtains at the windows, navy blue shutters, the one on the left side of the small wooden porch pulled loose at the top and hanging crooked. Several scrawny petunias and a few caladiums pushed their way through weeds that were trying to take over the flower beds. The gardener in Cassie wanted to grab a spade and set to work. The reporter saw the dying gardens as a metaphor for their owner.
On the porch an empty swing with a beautiful patchwork quilt thrown over the back swayed as if it had just been vacated.
When she stepped out of her car, an old woman weeding caladiums next door glared at her with such outright hostility, Cassie had to look behind herself to make sure she wasn’t trailing trouble like a blood-stained shawl. She waved and smiled, but the woman stomped inside her house and slammed the door.
What kind of reception would be waiting inside this Shakerag house? When the front door opened, Cassie startled like a cat with its tail in a washing machine wringer.
Miss Queen stood poised behind the screen door. It could be no other, for she looked much the way she had when Cassie had seen her at Tiny Jim’s, pounding out the blues on his old upright. It had been so long ago she couldn’t remember. Ten years? Fifteen? Miss Queen’s face was a map of years, her dress sprigged voile from a vanished era. She had dressed for Cassie. Suddenly she was glad she was wearing her yellow linen dress instead of her usual garb of slacks and a blouse. It seemed more respectful somehow.
“Good afternoon. I’m Cassie Malone from The Bugle.”
Miss Queen unlatched the screen door, but not before she’d put a gnarled hand to the white lace collar at her throat. When Miss Queen stepped onto the front porch, Cassie thought of the Titanic—a ship capable of taking care of thousands of families, a ship that nothing could fell save an iceberg.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Queen. Queen Dupree.”
Cassie climbed the steps onto the porch, and the old wooden floorboards creaked. Through the screen door drifted the mingled smells of lemon furniture polish and freshly baked pies overlaid with the strong fragrance of barbecue. The legend at work or proximity to Tiny Jim’s? Either way, the scent gave Cassie the shivers.
“I remember you from Tiny Jim’s.” Cassie offered her hand to Miss Queen. “You and your daughter used to play piano there.”
“Yessum.” Queen peered closely at Cassie, squinting in the way of the nearsighted, but she didn’t take her hand. Cassie felt foolish. Coloreds didn’t shake hands with whites, not in this ancient, dignified woman’s world. “I seen you there some years back.”
In the way of old people comfortable with who they are and not about to put on airs to impress anybody, Queen didn’t try to hide the fact that she was studying Cassie. Did she pass muster? She wished she’d taken the time to go home and put on a dress without wrinkles. For Pete’s sake, she hadn’t even bothered to comb her hair. She must look as if she had on a Halloween wig.
“I came to see your daughter.”
“Yessum. Do come in, Miss Cassie. She’s waitin’ on you.”
Queen led her down a hallway filled with pictures. The centerpiece was Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the place of honor on his right was the photograph of a little girl with cheekbones slashed high, eyes too big for her thin face and lips compressed tightly together as if she were daring the photographer to make her smile. Something about her eyes made it hard to look away. The arresting shade of green? The frank stare?
Other photographs chronicled her life from laughing babyhood to gap-toothed schoolgirl. Betty Jewel’s daughter, Cassie guessed. Who would take her picture in her cap and gown? Her wedding gown? The pink quilted robe she’d wear home from the hospital when she had her first baby?
Cassie hoped her story would make a difference. Shouldering the awesome responsibility, she followed Queen into a sunlit room where a gaunt woman sat in a rocking chair, staring out the window. Though it was so hot in the house Cassie was beginning to sweat, the woman was wearing a shawl.
“Betty Jewel, honey, look who’s done come to see us. That newspaper lady.”
Betty Jewel’s shoulder blades stuck up through the crocheted shawl like the wings of a skinny-legged bird. The flesh had disappeared from her bones, leaving behind too much skin. But when she saw Cassie, she lifted her chin. It was pride Cassie saw.
“Hello, Cassie. Please do sit down.”
There would be no yessums and Miss Cassie this or Miss Cassie that from Betty Jewel Hughes. Dying strips you of all pretense, carves you down to the essentials.
Betty Jewel’s voice, rich with melodious cadences, was mannerly, but her eyes said keep out. Her posture said don’t mess with me.
Cassie sat in a straight-backed chair closest to the oscillating fan. Words weren’t enough here. She needed to take action. She needed to lasso a couple of guardian angels and say, Look, do something.
“I’m gone leave you two young’uns by yoself so’s you can talk.”
The old woman slipped from the room, leaving Cassie with her purse in her lap, wondering why she felt Betty Jewel’s hostility like a cattle prod. She had to know the consequences of Cassie being here, the gossip she’d endure from the Highland Circle crowd, as well as the suspicions and tongue-waggings of Betty Jewel’s neighbors.
“May I call you Betty Jewel?”
“Suit yourself.”
If Cassie’s maid or her gardener spoke to her like that, she’d fire them on the spot. But in Betty Jewel’s home, Cassie was the outsider. Nothing insulated her in this shack in Shakerag, neither wealth and position nor the color of her skin. It looked as if she had finally let her crusading zeal get her into a situation she might not escape from unscathed.
She tried to melt her unbending hostess with a smile. “I don’t mean to be nosey. I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your help, and I certainly don’t need you poking into my private business.”
“Look, I’m no do-gooder who just barges in. Your mother invited me.” Cassie felt her temper rising, and it showed. At the rate she was going, she’d be back on the street before her hubcaps got stolen from a flashy car that obviously didn’t belong in this neighborhood any more than she did.
“Mama shouldn’t have told you to come here. She may sound like some shuffling, obsequious old mammy, but she’s a proud African queen. And so am I.”
The naked expression on Betty Jewel’s face made it painful to look at her. Cassie catalogued the facts. A woman that well spoken had probably attended one of the Negro colleges down in Jackson or the Delta. No doubt Queen had sacrificed to make sure her daughter had a better chance in life. And now Queen’s daughter was making the ultimate sacrifice to ensure her child’s future.
Giving up a daughter in order to save her was a choice of biblical proportions.
Reining in her temper, Cassie held out her hands, palms up. “Look, I’m out of my element here, and you must be feeling as uncomfortable as I. Can we please just start over?”
Betty Jewel bowed her head and stayed that way for a long time. Was she pulling herself together? Regretting her rudeness? Wondering if she’d insulted the wrong person?
Negroes were being lynched for less. With racial violence flaring all over the South, had Cassie jeopardized the safety of this family simply by being here?
“I’m sorry.” She stood up to leave. “I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
“No, wait.” Betty Jewel’s eyes were wet with unshed tears. “All I can say in my defense is that cancer has made manners seem superfluous.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t say I know what you’re going through, because I don’t. But I lost my husband a year ago, so I can certainly understand pain.”
“You and Joe never had children, did you?”
Her familiarity with Cassie’s life was startling until she remembered all those evenings Joe had spent at Tiny Jim’s. Though Joe would never spread his personal life among strangers, he was a well-known public personality. And in a town as small as Tupelo, the gossip grapevine flourished.
“No, we had no children.”
The conversation reminded her all too vividly of the many ways she and Joe had found to blame each other for their childless state. Joe was dead. She wanted him to remain perfect, but a thick blue fog clouded the room, seeding discontent and making sanctifying the dead impossible. If you weren’t careful, you could get lost in that kind of fog and never find your way home. Searching for something solid to hang on to, Cassie spied the piano.
“Tell me about yourself. You play, don’t you?”
“I’m dying. What else is there to know?”
There was no barb in the remark, only soul-searing truth. Cassie took a notepad and pencil from her purse. “Please understand that I’m only here to write a story that might help you find a home for your child.”
Inscrutable, Betty Jewel slipped a pill out of her pocket, then washed it down with a sip from the yellow plastic glass on the table beside her. “Does it make women like you feel good to help women like me?”
Cassie felt as if she’d been slapped. She had better things to do than seesaw between rage and pity with Betty Jewel, even if the woman was desperate.
“You don’t even know me. If you did, that’s the last remark in the world you’d make. I consider us the same.”
“You mean equals? Like I can walk through the front door of your white house and go into your white bathroom without you going in there after me and scrubbing it down with Dutch Boy?”
Anger and admiration warred in Cassie. She thought of Bobo, her gardener, and Savannah, her maid. Had she ever invited them to sit down at her table and enjoy a glass of iced tea? Cassie was beginning to feel like a hypocrite until she remembered how she inquired about their children, went to their homes with soup when one of them got sick.
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly like that.”
Betty Jewel fell silent, her steady stare saying that when you’re dying your life is reduced to the essentials. Eat, sleep, breathe. Tell the truth. The dying don’t have time for lies.
“I’m sorry, Cassie. I’ve been rude and arrogant, and I’ve misjudged you.”
“Thank you. Now will you please give me something I can put into a story?”
“There’s not going to be a story. That ad was a mistake, and I don’t intend to compound it with a news spread I have to hide from Billie.”
Cassie started to ask, Why am I here? Then she remembered it was Queen who’d invited her, not Betty Jewel. Folding her notebook, she put it back into her purse.
“I’m disappointed, naturally, but I didn’t come just for a story. I have lots of connections. Maybe I can help you that way. First, though, I’d like to meet Billie.”
A fierceness came over Betty Jewel that made Cassie think of a mama eagle protecting her young from snakes. “No. She’s going through enough pain without me adding to it with drama.”
The screen door banged open, followed by stealthy footsteps in the hall. Then a bony-kneed, big-eyed child drifted by. Billie. Full of contradictions. Defiant and tragic. Fearless and scared. Forced by her mother’s fatal illness to grow up overnight, she wore an expression that clearly said she’d rather remain a child because growing up was such a tragedy.
The look that passed between mother and daughter was almost beyond enduring. In the face of such devotion, there are things you can’t do. You can’t ask How long before you die? and Will you give your daughter up before or after? You can’t snap pictures for The Bugle, though a photo would be more compelling than that heart-wrenching, hopeful little ad. You can’t think of your empty bed and the empty crib in your attic and the long string of empty years ahead. You can’t think of anything except a little girl who has turned her stare to you, a little girl with eyes so green they remind you of deep rivers and lost love and the unbearable beauty of the human spirit.
With one last, big-eyed stare, Billie slid past the door and out of sight. Cassie was left feeling as if her bones had been rearranged.
It took a while for them to settle back into place, and when they did, she was filled with an unexpected resolve.
“Betty Jewel, what you’re doing is one of the bravest things I know. I want to be personally involved. I want to help you.”
“Joe always said the biggest thing about you was your heart.”
It was the kind of generous compliment Joe used to pass around. But Cassie found it shocking coming from this woman’s mouth.
“You knew him personally?”
“From Tiny Jim’s.”
“Of course.” Cassie pictured her husband in the juke joint, mellow with blues and beer, easygoing and approachable, talking about his wife to strangers as if the very telling could make her more real to him. On those long, lonely nights after the last miscarriage when she’d sometimes felt as if Joe were drifting away, as if she might meet him coming around a dark corner and not even know him, had he felt the same way?
“Cassie, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No. It’s okay. Everybody in town knew and loved Joe.”
A coughing spell bent Betty Jewel in two, and when she turned away Cassie saw patches of her scalp where radiation had stolen her hair. She wanted to cover her vulnerable baldness with a silk scarf, and at the same time she wanted to take a picture and spread it in on the front page under a caption titled Hero.
“Can I get you anything? Water?”
“No. I’m all right.”
Cassie gathered her purse. “I should go. If there’s anything I can do to help you, please let me know. Here are the numbers where you can reach me. Day or night.”
As she handed over the card, another fit of coughing bent Betty Jewel double. With her face covered by her hands and her head bowed, she looked like somebody praying. And maybe she was. Maybe Cassie was, too, though she was sitting there with her eyes wide open.
Should she call Miss Queen? Phone for an ambulance?
Still bent, Betty Jewel reached into her pocket for a bottle of pills and out tumbled a harmonica.
B-flat.
Silver with a pink rose painted on the side.
The pink rose Cassie had painted.
A keening built inside her, and she pressed her hand over her mouth to hold it back.
When Betty Jewel lifted her head, Cassie found herself looking at a woman for whom everything had been stripped away, everything except love.
From somewhere in the house, a tea kettle whistled and a shaky soprano sang a hymn Cassie remembered from childhood. Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying.
Long ago when Cassie had played church piano, she would read the verses at the same time she read the music. Not many people can do that. It’s a gift. Like knowing things before they happens.
Here is what Cassie knew: the harmonica had set events in motion that were beyond her control. She didn’t know the particulars yet, only that her fate was somehow tangled up with this woman.
