When Sunday finally came, I thought I would burst from excitement. Plus, we didn’t have to go to church, as Ma Pearl wanted to have the house ready and the food cooked by the time Aunt Belle arrived.
I sat on the front porch, my legs dangling over the edge. I didn’t worry about sweat, splinters, or even snakes as my legs swung anxiously back and forth under the raised porch. I simply enjoyed the scent of collard greens and candied yams floating from the kitchen. I could even smell the buttermilk in the cornbread. Ma Pearl usually cooked on Saturday night, with Papa believing that Sunday was the Sabbath. But this time he made an exception and let her cook on Sunday. So, long before the sun ever left China that morning, she was up fixing chicken and dressing and whipping up cakes—?coconut and caramel.
It was straight-up noon, and the sun nearly burned a hole in the top of my head. But as soon as I got up to grab my straw hat to avoid heat stroke, I saw a black car coming down the road with a cloud of dust surrounding it. I knew it was Aunt Belle. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen.
I burst through the screen door and yelled, “She’s here! Baby Sister’s here!”
Queen dropped her magazine and bolted from the chair by the window. If I had been a monkey, she would have crushed my tail, as Papa liked to say. She was out of the screen door before I could even turn around good. She raced across that porch and bounded down the steps faster than Li’ Man and Sugar had that day they told me they were going to Chicago.
It’s a good thing she didn’t collide with the car, as fast as she was running.
Aunt Belle’s car (or rather, Great-Aunt Isabelle’s car) pulled slowly into the yard and stopped under the ancient oak tree. Except this time Aunt Belle wasn’t driving. A man was. And he was the blackest man I had ever seen in my life. So black that it looked like only a bright yellow shirt and a set of grinning teeth were positioned behind the steering wheel. And just as Ma Pearl predicted, the car held three other northern just-gotta-see-Mississippi spectators as well.
By the time I reached the car, everybody—?Ma Pearl, Papa, and Fred Lee—?had come out of the house. While Ma Pearl and Queen and I swarmed Aunt Belle’s car like bees on a hive, Papa and Fred Lee remained on the porch. I could tell they were studying the stranger in the driver’s seat as his wide grin revealed teeth that were whiter than Ma Pearl’s bleached bloomers.
Aaron. That was the stranger’s name. Aaron. Like Moses’s brother in the Bible. Except his name was much longer: Aaron Montgomery Ward Harris. “I was named after the famous Aaron Montgomery Ward who created a mail-order catalog,” he said. “Like those you have stacked there in the corner.” He smiled proudly as he nodded toward our collection of Sears and Roebuck catalogs. “But feel free to call me Monty.”
Like me, Mr. Aaron Montgomery Ward Harris was as dark as midnight without a moon. With his black hand interlocked with Aunt Belle’s creamed-coffee one as they sat together on the settee in the parlor, I couldn’t help but think of a piano and how the keys worked together to make music. Aunt Belle and Aaron, or Monty, as I had decided to call him, looked happy, like two people making music.
The three northern spectators were a man and a woman—?newlyweds, James and Shirley Devine—?who looked to be around Aunt Belle’s age, and a girl, Ophelia, who looked to be about Queen’s age. Ophelia was the sister of the sophisticated Shirley. And she was a Goliath of a girl, big boned and as ugly as an ogre. But sitting crossed-legged on the sofa, wearing a cream-colored pantsuit and as much makeup and the same hairstyle as her full-grown older sister, she made even Queen appear homely.
And she made me feel five years old. Papa allowed me to wear pants only when I went to the field, and even then, they belonged to Fred Lee. And makeup? Never.
The country people—?Queen, Fred Lee, and me—?sat on raggedy chairs brought to the parlor from the porch. Ma Pearl and Papa sat in the matching blue chairs, one near the window, the other near the door, while the sophisticated Saint Louis folks sat on the settee and sofa.
“Where y’all staying?” Ma Pearl asked. That was always her first question to Aunt Belle. Never “How was the trip?” Or “How’s everybody up there doing?” But always “Where y’all staying?”
“Monty has folks in Greenwood,” Aunt Belle answered. “We’ll be staying with them.”
Aunt Belle had said she could never go back to sleeping under a tin roof or peeing in a pot after having enjoyed the luxuries of living up north. Yet with hope, and without fail, Ma Pearl had me scrub everything from top to bottom and from left to right, anticipating a different answer from her youngest child.
Ma Pearl addressed Monty. “You from here?”
“My mother grew up around Money,” he answered. He grinned and added, “Mississippi, that is,” then chuckled at his own joke.
“You ain’t no kin to Mose Wright ’n’em, is you?” Ma Pearl asked.