Monty stared up at Ma Pearl. “Woman, have you lost your mind?”
“Talk to yo’ girlfriend. She done lost her mind talking to me like that in my own house.”
Monty cradled Aunt Belle’s head. “I can’t believe you hit your own daughter,” he said, staring at Ma Pearl as if he wanted to do the same to her.
“Hit you, too, if you talk to me like that in my own house.”
I rushed over to Monty when I saw him struggling to get Aunt Belle to the sofa. We lifted Aunt Belle, who was still moaning, onto the sofa. “I’ll put some cold water on a towel for her face,” I said.
Ma Pearl pointed at me. “Don’t you take not one chip of ice from my icebox either. You better make do with pump water.”
At that moment Papa entered the parlor. He had washed up and changed his clothes as he prepared to eat supper. “Pearl,” he said, his brows raised, “what’s going on in here?”
“Paul, you wouldn’t believe what that gal just said to me.” Ma Pearl pointed at Aunt Belle and said, “She done called me everything but a child of God.”
“Mr. Carter,” Monty said, “I assure you that Belle was only responding to Mrs. Carter’s antagonistic ways. Under normal circumstances, there is no way she would use such fresh language in the presence of her elders.”
“Hold on a minute, son,” Papa said, his palms raised. “I’m a country boy. Speak to me with plain words.”
“Ma Pearl started it,” I said. My hands shot up to my mouth, knowing they were already too late to stop the words.
Ma Pearl stormed toward me.
But rather than Papa, Monty stopped her. “If you even think about putting your hands on this child, woman, I will deal with you myself.”
A lump rose in my throat.
Papa grabbed Ma Pearl by the shoulders. “Pearl, it’s time for you to head back to the kitchen. Rose, go get that wet towel for Baby Susta’s jaw,” he said to me.
After having subverted Ma Pearl, I knew to use the front door and walk all the way around the house to the pump rather than get water from the bucket in the kitchen. By the time I returned with the towel, Papa was sitting in his chair with his unlit tobacco-filled pipe in his mouth.
Aunt Belle was stretched out on the sofa, her head resting in Monty’s lap as he and Papa chatted. The Sears and Roebuck catalogs were, again, neatly stacked in the corner.
I handed Monty the towel, and he placed it on Aunt Belle’s jaw.
“You all right?” I asked her.
“Um-hmm,” she replied, half moaning, her words garbled. “I bith my tongue. But I’m okay. She’s beath me worth with that blat strapth of hers.”
The black strap of terror, its sting worse than that of a thousand hornets. I shivered as I recalled the many lashes I had received from it myself.
“She had no right to hit you with her fist like a man,” Monty said.
“I shouldnth sassth my mama,” Aunt Belle replied. “I was raisth bettha.”
Monty smoothed a curl from her face. “Stop trying to talk and rest that swollen jaw. Can’t have you looking like Frankenstein.”
“Donth makth me laugth,” Aunt Belle said, chuckling. “It hurths.”
“So they ain’t going to prison,” Papa said softly.
His words snapped Monty and Aunt Belle out of their banter and back to reality.
“No, sir, Mr. Carter, they’re not,” Monty said, the grimness returning to his face. “A jury of their peers found them not guilty. They get to go home, back to their families, back to being the good citizens of Mississippi that they always have been.”
Monty’s sarcasm hung in the air like thick perfume. Good citizens of Mississippi. Good citizens who had put a northern Negro in his place and sent a message to the rest of the country: Mississippi makes its own rules, and nobody can make us do otherwise, not the NAACP, not the Negro press, not even the president of the United States. We can kill all the Negroes we want. You can make us have a trial, but you can’t make us find our white citizens guilty.
“Mr. Carter, you registered to vote?” Monty asked, his eyes squinting, challenging Papa.
Papa removed his pipe and shook his head no, even though he knew Monty already knew the answer to that question. “What good would it do, son?”
“Do you know why that jury was all white, Mr. Carter?”
“?’Cause they always is,” Papa answered.
Monty grimaced. “Because there are no Negroes registered to vote in Tallahatchie County, Mr. Carter. That’s why the jury was all white.”
Papa placed his pipe back in his mouth as he considered Monty’s words. The only noise in the house at that moment was the distant clanking of pots and pans as Ma Pearl released her fury in the kitchen. Finally a hearty laugh rocked Papa’s lanky body. I had never seen him laugh so hard, not even when he occasionally read the funny pages. When he finally composed himself, he asked Monty wearily, “Young man, do you really think they woulda ’lowed a colored man in that jury box?”