When I was halfway out the door, she stopped me. “Go’n empt’ that slop jar too,” she said, turning up her nose. “That thing stank worse then skunk spray. You and Queen piss through the night more’n anybody I know.”
You mean Queen pisses through the night more than anybody you know, I wanted to say. I sleep through the night because you work me like a donkey all day.
But I was smart enough not to talk back to Ma Pearl. Like I said, there was no sense in arriving in 1956 before the rest of the world got there. So I kept my mouth shut as I went on to the back room to fetch the slop jar and take it out to the toilet to pour out the queen’s pee.
Chapter Four
MONDAY, JULY 25
HERE’S HOW I FIGURE THINGS HAPPENED EARLIER that Monday morning before the sun ever rose over Stillwater, Mississippi:
God called his faithful angel Gabriel to his big shiny throne and said, “Gabe, I have a special job for you today.”
Gabriel honored his boss with a bow and said, “Master, whatever you wish is my command.”
Then God said, “Take a great big bucket and fly over to the sun. Fill that bucket with as much heat as it will hold; then go down to Stillwater, Mississippi, and pour it over a girl named Rose Lee Carter. Then bake her. Bake her real good, until she learns not to complain so much.”
And I know old Gabe did just what God ordered, because by midmorning I was so hot I could hardly breathe. That sun beat down on me like I owed it money from six years back. Sweat dripped in my eyes so bad that I couldn’t tell cotton from weeds, and I know I was chopping down both.
But even with my impending heat stroke, I felt I had a right to complain just a little bit after what Ma Pearl did that morning. Before I could get my clothes on good, she was calling me to get to the barn to milk Ellie while Queen slept. And it didn’t help one bit that that cantankerous cow (Ellie, not Queen) wouldn’t cooperate. Milk squirted everywhere except the darned bucket.
Queen claimed she’d been cramping all night and hadn’t slept a wink. It’s a wonder she didn’t bleed to death as much as she had the cramps. Queen was two years older than me. Well, almost three, seeing she would turn sixteen that October. And like me and Fred Lee, she lived with Ma Pearl and Papa instead of with her mama, my aunt Clara Jean, and her family. That’s because Uncle Ollie, Aunt Clara Jean’s husband, wasn’t Queen’s daddy, like Mr. Pete wasn’t mine. Matter of fact, Queen didn’t even know who her daddy was. Nobody did, except Aunt Clara Jean, of course. And Aunt Clara Jean never would tell a soul who Queen’s daddy was.
Folks said he was white. And that wasn’t too hard to believe, seeing that Queen was light enough to pass for white herself if she’d wanted to, and seeing that her long hair never needed the heat of a straightening comb. Plenty of folks in our family were yellow, but Queen was different. And with the way she never lifted a finger to even wash a plate, she acted like she was white too.
Folks said that when Queen was born, Ma Pearl took to her like ants to a picnic. They said she snatched that newborn baby from Aunt Clara Jean’s bosom and claimed her like a hard-earned prize. That’s because Ma Pearl favored pretty. And to Ma Pearl, light equaled pretty, even if the person was as ugly as a moose.
Folks said that when I first came out of Mama, my skin was as pink as a flower. Mama said she took one look at me and declared, “I’m go’n call you Rose, ’cause you so pretty like one.” But Ma Pearl said, “Don’t set yo’ hopes high for that child, Anna Mae. Look at them ears. They as black as tar. By this time next year, that lil’ gal go’n be blacker than midnight without a moon, just like her daddy.”
Of course Ma Pearl was right. Before my first birthday rolled around, on February 4, 1943, I was as black as a cup of Maxwell House without a hint of milk. And according to Aunt Clara Jean, I was the ugliest little something Stillwater, Mississippi, had ever seen.
Of course, my dark skin is what sentenced me to the field. “Queen too light to be out there in that heat,” Ma Pearl always claimed. But like Goldilocks’s claim about Baby Bear’s porridge, my dark complexion was just right.
As I gripped the hoe between my callused palms and stared down at what seemed like a mile-long row of cotton, I wanted to cry. Thanks to Mr. Albert and sons, I now had to suffer at least four full days in the field instead of three.
I usually didn’t go to the field on Monday and Thursday mornings, the days Ma Pearl worked for Mrs. Robinson. While she kept their house, I kept ours. And Queen, even though she was almost sixteen and pretty much grown, did nothing—?except sit around and read magazines that Mrs. Robinson had tossed out.