If looks really had the ability to kill, Monty would have died instantly with the way Ma Pearl stared at him. “This ain’t yo’ bizness,” she said. “This between me and mines. If I say she got all the school’n she need, then she got all the school’n she need. Seventh grade. That’s way mor’n I ever got. When she finish the pick’n, she can help me out round the house.”
Tears stung my eyes. And a pressure filled my head so quickly that it felt as if it could explode. Plenty of folks who worked in the fields kept their children out of school until the harvest was over, but Ma Pearl was talking foolishness if she expected me to quit school altogether. I had no choice but to speak up. “Miss Johnson said I was one of the smartest students at the school,” I said, my voice shaking. “She said I could even go all the way to college if I wanted to. I can’t quit school. That would be a waste.”
Ma Pearl grunted. “Waste?” she said, her brows raised. “What’s a waste is a strong gal like you goin’ to school ’stead o’ work’n like you should be. You thirteen. Too old for school.” She sniffed and added, “Besides, what that lil’ foolish teacher know? College ain’t free. So how a po’ Negro like you s’posed to go?”
My eyes met Papa’s. “Can’t you find somebody else to help pick the cotton?” I pleaded.
“I said you ain’t goin’ back. Cotton or no cotton,” Ma Pearl interjected. “I need you here at this house takin’ some o’ the load off me ’stead o’ runnin’ up there to that school gittin’ too smart for yo’ own good.”
Monty gestured toward Fred Lee and Queen. “What about these two?”
Ma Pearl’s nostrils flared. “Don’t try to tell me how to raise my grandchi’ren.”
“Papa,” I pleaded again, my voice cracking.
“We’ll talk about this later, Rose Lee,” he said quietly.
I was so lost in my misery, I hadn’t concerned myself with what Aunt Belle’s friends might have been thinking until they began to shift nervously on the sofa. When I saw how they stared at me with pity, my tears crested and flooded down my cheeks. Ma Pearl had not only crushed my spirit. She had also totally humiliated me in the presence of the sophisticated Saint Louis spectators.
Chapter Twelve
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24
WHILE REVEREND JENKINS READ FROM THE BOOK OF ISAIAH, I removed a scrap of paper from my Bible, took a pencil from behind my ear, and scribbled a note to Hallelujah: “Ma Pearl said I can’t go back to school.”
Shock raced across Hallelujah’s face. What? he mouthed. He removed a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled on my note. He handed it back to me.
“Has she lost her mind?” the note read.
I pushed back a chuckle. Laughing was not allowed in church, especially on Wednesday nights, and especially while Reverend Jenkins was reading. We had only begun having Wednesday night services since the beginning of the year. We were Baptist, and Baptist folks usually went to church only on Sunday.
All. Day. Long.
But Reverend Jenkins had made a covenant with the Lord that year and promised to be holier, like the folks at the Church of God in Christ. So he added Wednesday nights to the torture of our church attendance.
Reverend Jenkins’s voice boomed from the pulpit: “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’”
I snapped to attention. The preacher always seemed to say just the right words at just the right time. That was exactly what I felt like: a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep before my shearer. And I couldn’t even open my mouth to defend myself.
I responded to Hallelujah: “She lost her mind a long time ago.”
“Queen, too?” Hallelujah wrote back.
When I first read the note, I giggled, imagining he meant Queen had lost her mind like Ma Pearl. Of course, in my opinion, she had. But I scribbled back, “No. Queen gets to go.”
Hallelujah mouthed, What? He lowered his head and wrote.
I suppressed a smile when I read “The way she hates school!!!”
I wrote back, “Don’t be surprised if she drops out at 16.”
“What did Mr. Carter say?” Hallelujah wrote.
The scrap of paper was out of space, so I flipped through my Bible—?the Bible Reverend Jenkins had given me for my twelfth birthday—?for another. I scribbled, “He said we’d talk about it later.”
“When?” wrote Hallelujah.
I shrugged and wrote, “Don’t know. It’s been 3 days already.”
I had never known Papa to lie to me. But that’s exactly what I had begun to fear he’d done. I couldn’t believe he had sided with Ma Pearl to keep me out of school.
Hallelujah wrote, “You think Preacher could talk to Miss Sweet?”
I didn’t want to tell Hallelujah what Ma Pearl really thought of his daddy. “That boy ain’t nothing but a educated fool,” she’d say of Reverend Jenkins. “Can’t preach worth a lick. Now, Reverend E. D. Blake over at Little Ebenezer, that’s a preacher.”
Reverend E. D. Blake wouldn’t know a Holy Scripture if it came and sat at the table with him and offered him supper, I wanted to tell her.
I wrote back, “She’s made up her mind.”
“Can he talk to Mr. Carter?” wrote Hallelujah.