“Well, they won all right. They certainly left me feeling defeated.”
Defeated. That’s what we were. Every last Negro, not just in Mississippi, but in the nation. Even the northern Negroes, with their entourage of cameras and notebooks, NAACP leaders and prominent members, congressmen and dignitaries, couldn’t defeat the Jim Crow ways of Mississippi.
It made my heart sick to see Aunt Belle so broken and to see so many people’s hopes crushed. Aunt Belle had lost money while she was down here that additional two weeks. Monty, who had already used up all his vacation when he came with Aunt Belle in August, took time off without pay. He even said he risked losing his job. How many others, I wondered, had lost time and money for this trial, only to hear a Mississippi jury say, “Not guilty.”
“Less than an hour,” Aunt Belle whispered. “It took them less than an hour to come back out and tell that lie.”
“One hour and eight minutes, to be exact,” Monty said. He then added, in a southern drawl, “‘And that’s ’cause we stopped to drink sody pop. If we hadna been thusty, we coulda been done in a few minutes.’”
At Monty’s joke, Aunt Belle chuckled like a sad clown. “Did those fools really believe the NAACP would dig up a corpse and put it in the river?”
“Of course they didn’t,” Monty said. “You heard the attorney: ‘Every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to set these men free in the face of this preshuh. Yoah ancestahs would absolutely turn over in their graves if you don’t set these boys loose. We have got to use our legal system to protect our God-given freedoms.’”
Monty’s rendition of the trial in a southern accent obviously calmed Aunt Belle’s nerves a bit. She sat up and wiped her face with a handkerchief instead of her hand. “Well, their Anglo-Saxon ancestors are about to do a lot of turning now, because Negroes are not about to let this thing rest. Those two might have gotten away with murder, but things are about to change in Mississippi.”
“Not just Mississippi,” said Monty, “but the South.”
“Something’s about to happen,” I whispered.
“What?” Aunt Belle asked.
“Something’s about to happen,” I said, louder. “That’s what Miss Addie kept saying.”
“Miss Addie, the old midwife?” asked Aunt Belle.
I nodded. “She said something was about to shake up Mississippi.”
“Humph,” Aunt Belle said, her expression questioning. “Maybe that old woman really does have a sixth sense after all.”
“Well, whether the old lady is a soothsayer or not,” said Monty, “something’s gotta change.”
“You ain’t even from here,” Ma Pearl blurted out as she stormed into the parlor, wiping her hands on a dishrag. “Why you care so much about what Mississippi do?”
Monty nodded at Ma Pearl. “And a good afternoon to you too, Mrs. Carter.”
Ma Pearl snorted. “Northern and uppity is what you is, boy. Folks like you is the reason them peckerwoods is walking free rat now.”
Monty pointed at his chest and said, “It’s because of folks like me that there was ever a trial in the first place.”
“You dirn right,” Ma Pearl said, undaunted. “If that lil’ uppity Chicago boy hadn’t been up in that sto’ running his mouth, he would be with his mama ’stead of in a grave.”
“Lord Jesus, have mercy!” Aunt Belle said. She threw up her hands. “Let me get out of this crazy woman’s house before I start to hate her.”
Ma Pearl, her face like flint, her hands in fists, leaned toward Aunt Belle. “If you cain’t take the truth, go on back up there where you run off to in the first place. I ain’t never ast you to come back to my house. You the one keep running back this way.”
Both Monty and Aunt Belle seemed to spring from the sofa at the same time. But Aunt Belle faced down Ma Pearl. “We’ll be more than happy to get out of this hellhole,” she said. “I don’t know why I’ve wasted so much time here in the first place. Mississippi will never change because of Negroes like you, Mama. You’re the same kind of Negro that helped those two men kidnap and kill Emmett Till. Won’t even register and exercise your right to vote. So in love with that white woman that she ain’t even got to wipe her own behind. Before her stuff even hits the toilet, you there waiting with a wad of tissue in your hand to take care of it for her.”
WHAP! With every ounce of strength in her huge body, Ma Pearl swung her fist into Aunt Belle’s jaw and knocked her across the room. Aunt Belle crashed in the corner, scattering dust and Sears and Roebuck catalogs across the floor.
“Belle!” Monty screamed.
Sprawled on the floor, Aunt Belle moaned and rubbed her jaw. Monty rushed to her and lifted her upper body off the floor. He smoothed Aunt Belle’s hair from her face. “Baby, you all right?”
Still rubbing her jaw, Aunt Belle, with closed eyes, could only moan.