AFTER AUNT BELLE LEFT MY ROOM, I SLEPT FOR HOURS. And I didn’t care if Ma Pearl got mad at me. She could have come in and beat me with that black strap of hers, and I wouldn’t have cared. Aunt Belle had disappointed me so badly that I didn’t really care if I just suffocated in my hot room. The air was thick and muggy from what I assumed was middle-of-the-afternoon heat. I had no idea what time it was, but Queen’s bed was made. Not neatly, but made, nonetheless. Since we didn’t have church, she was probably already gone to visit her mama and her six siblings, which she occasionally did on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, although it was more like babysitting while Aunt Clara Jean went from house to house gossiping.
My body was stiff, and my head ached. Too much sleep. My body wasn’t used to sleeping past sunrise. I got up and stumbled through Fred Lee’s room, hoping someone was kind enough to have left me a basin of water so I could wash my face. There was none. I’d have to go outside to the pump and get my own. But at least someone, obviously Fred Lee, not Queen, had emptied the pot of the previous night’s contents. One less chore for the day.
On my way to the kitchen, I couldn’t help noticing the voices coming from the parlor, which was to the right of the front room. The voices belonged to Papa, Ma Pearl, Aunt Belle, and Monty. They were talking about the missing boy.
In the front room was a large rectangular mirror that Ma Pearl had gotten from Mrs. Robinson. Though the mirror was cracked straight down the middle, it still served its purpose of showing reflections—?twice. It hung on the wall next to a large picture of a longhaired, smiling Jesus—?also courtesy of Mrs. Robinson. Through the mirror I could see Papa perched in his chair, directing his attention toward the settee, where I assumed Aunt Belle and Monty sat.
“I knowed he did something,” I heard Ma Pearl say.
Standing on tiptoe, I could see that she was sitting in the chair next to the window, her arms folded defiantly across her bosom.
“Since when did speaking to a woman become a crime?” asked Aunt Belle, her tone icy.
“Any fool know it’s a crime when you is colored and the woman is white,” retorted Ma Pearl. “That boy oughta knowed better.” She paused, then said, “His mama oughta taught him better.”
“The boy is fourteen, Mrs. Carter,” said Monty. “He was born and raised up north. Things are different there. Negro youths and white youths attend the same schools even, so it’s only natural the boy would assume a few words to the woman wouldn’t harm anything. He was probably only being polite.”
“Things ain’t no different up north,” Ma Pearl said. “Y’all jest fool yo’selves into thinking they is. Colored is colored, and white is white. I don’t care where you run to. Chicago. Saint Louis. Detroit. It’s all the same. You a fool if you think they ain’t. They jest ain’t got the signs posted, is all.”
“Mose’s boys said his nephew didn’t say a word to the woman, as far as they know,” Papa said. “It’s her white word against his colored one.”
“But he did whistle when she came out of the store, according to one of the boys,” said Monty.
In the mirror, I saw Papa shaking his head. “Po’ Mose,” he said. “If them boys would’ve told him ’bout the boy doing the whistling, he could’ve been ready. He could’ve sent him on back to Chicago, or at least he would’ve had his shotgun ready. He wouldn’t’ve let them come in his house like that and walk ’way with his kin. He wouldn’t’ve,” he said, shaking his head. “I know Mose. He wouldn’t’ve just let ’em take that boy like that.”
Papa himself had two shotguns. I wondered if he had them loaded and ready. Many Negroes, according to Papa, had armed themselves with shotguns and pistols. But I’d never heard of one using them to defend himself against a white man. It seemed the only folks Negroes shot were one another. Sometimes in self-defense, and sometimes just out of plain anger.
“And that boy’s poor mama,” Aunt Belle said quietly. “Lord, she must be some kind of sick with worry.”
“Imagine how Mose felt when he had to call her,” said Papa.
Ma Pearl threw in her nickel’s worth. “If the boy’s mama was so worried, she woulda kept him up there in Chicago. Any fool know Mississippi ain’t no place for quick-tongued niggas.”
“Woman, you’re just plain evil!” Monty cried. “How can you say something so cruel? That poor woman’s son is missing. In Mississippi at that. White men with pistols came in the middle of the night and took him from his bed. Didn’t even want him to take the time to put on a pair of socks, for God’s sake. And you have the nerve to blame his mama for letting him come down here?”