Betsey Brown Read online

  “Good afternoon, M’am. These boys here your younguns?” The biggest police, with black curly hair that most covered the pockmarks on his face, spoke.

  “Why, yes, Officer. They are.”

  “Well, they been riding on private property at the Catholic school round the way, M’am. That’s trespassing.”

  “I see,” Jane answered, her face as red as the white folks’.

  “I can tell by the looks of you and hereabouts, that you all’s not from here, but I wanta letya know we don’t take to nigras goin out their way to be in our way, if you know what I mean, M’am.”

  “No, we aren’t from around here.”

  “Well, on accounta you special, in a sense, we are gointa let these boys by this time, but only this once.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” Jane wanted to pull the posts from the porch and beat the policemen to death. Talkin bout nigras and ways down here and special. As they went on their way, she grabbed Charlie and Allard to her, thanking God they hadn’t whistled at some girl like poor Emmet Till.

  “Charlie, you a delinquent. You a fool up round them white girls. Must be you like white tail,” Margot shouted off the second-story porch, where her mother’s hands couldn’t reach her. Vida was mumbling round the collard greens and fatback that there had never been no trouble with the law in her family. Never nothing to do with the law. As they passed under her tree, Betsey heard the police talking under their breath bout how different all the children looked, how was more than darkies in somebody’s bed. But they were special kinda nigras, not them common types of colored.

  “Charlie and Allard gonna go to jail,” Sharon taunted.

  “All of you be quiet! Do you hear me? Be quiet.”

  “Well, how do you expect them to act, when you at work all day and they never see their father. You all put too much store by making money. One of you should be back here looking after these chirren.”

  “Mama, not now. Please, not now.”

  “Well, when you going to do something about these chirren? When they all in jail?”

  “Charlie’s a hoodlum,” Margot screamed down the back steps.

  “Shut up, Margot. Allard, zip your fly. Charlie, go wash your face. Everything’s going to be awright.” Turning to Charlie, Jane said, “We’ll talk when Uncle Greer gets home.”

  “When Greer gets home, all these chirren woulda been in the bed.”

  “Mama, please, not now.”

  “Well, it’s your house.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  With that Vida rubbed her eyes, which were tearing and pulled her apron to her chest as she walked to her room. No one took her seriously. No one understood what the children needed, especially colored chirren, when them white folks be in they crazy ways.

  Jane sat at the kitchen table, gazing blankly at the cupboard where she kept the regular china and the keepsakes from Great Aunt Jane: two candelabra and a crystal butter dish. Jane couldn’t get it through her head why Greer was never home when everything went crazy. As she recalled, fathers were supposed to take care of police and discipline and order. “I swear I can’t do this by myself. Good lord, I can’t do this by myself.” Jane lit a candle for Aunt Jane’s memory and was about to pray on her situation when Betsey touched her shoulder.

  “Mama, what kinda nigra is a special kinda nigra, and aren’t they supposed to call us Negroes?”

  “Yes, Betsey. And no, I don’t know what kinda nigra is a special kinda nigra. But you’re right, darling, we are Negroes with a capital N.”

  Jane hugged her daughter, hoping Betsey didn’t know all she could do about the Negro problem was set the table for dinner.

  3

  “God dammit, Greer! Do you understand anything I ever say to you?”

  Jane looked at her wedding picture, satiny, a patina of thirteen years veiling her young foolish face. She wanted to push the gilded edges of the damn thing through Greer’s head the way he used scalpels to take bullets outta the hoodlums he loved so much.

  “Did you hear me? Where were you when I needed you? Me? Jane, your wife! Not some lowly sick acting-the-fool stinking niggahs so dumb they can’t find the goddam clinic! Do you hear me? I am talking to you!”

  Greer looked up from Digest for Surgical Procedures and nodded his head. Jane froze. She held her breath and started again. She was going to be decent about this one more time.

  “Where were you when the police brought our children home? Don’t you realize what could have happened to them? Where were you, dammit! Answer me!”

  Jane picked up his stethoscope and threw it at him. Greer caught it in his left hand and went right on reading.

  “I was at the Johnsons’. He’s been bleeding again since he left the hospital and I wanted to check on him. He’s an old man, Jane, he can’t get up and run to the clinic on one leg.”

  “But I suppose your children could be in jail or dead on accounta poor Mr. Johnson, who’s got so many benefits he’s forgotten what money looks like.”

  Jane walked round the bed to Greer and pulled the Digest from his hands. “Did Mr. Johnson pay you something today? Or you so holy you can give your services away? Who do you think you are, St. Francis? I have a house full of children who need clothes, shoes, dental work, eyeglasses, dance classes, food, and a father. And where is their father? Why, seeing Mr. Johnson! Mr. Johnson doesn’t live here, Greer. We live here with five children and my beloved mother who was right that the race definitely needs some improving!”

  Jane began to beat the dresser with the Digest. Then she started tearing it to pieces, when Greer slowly wrapped her in his arms, saying: “Aren’t the boys all right?” Jane didn’t respond. “Aren’t the police going to leave them alone, if they act right?” Jane said nothing. “Look, honey, they’re not in jail. Charlie was just having a little fun.”

  “Charlie was having fun, was he? Well, this is St. Louis, Missouri, my dear. You ask Chuck Berry how much fun the police let Negroes have when it comes to white girls.” Jane snatched Greer’s loosened tie from round his neck.

  “I am going to tell you one more time. I cannot run this house as if I were the father and the mother. Now I know you are a doctor, and you have a public responsibility, but if you don’t put this household first in your life, I swear ’fore Jesus you’re going to be in for a big surprise.”

  Greer knew Jane in these moods. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t see he was working himself half to death to keep the family exactly the way she wanted. She didn’t understand that poor colored people didn’t get decent treatment at the clinic, and by going by to see them he was building a clientele for his real practice. Damn, Greer thought, for such an intelligent woman, Jane didn’t have much foresight.

  “I got home as soon as I could.” With that, Greer took his tie out of Jane’s hands and picked up the latest issue of MD Magazine.

  Jane sat at her vanity table staring at Greer, who had the audacity to read when her boys had been touched by southern police. What gall! What an ass she’d married! What ever was she going to do? She took the emery boards from the top left drawer and started doing her nails. She was going to play bridge, but before she did that she was going to have a scotch and soda and play a game of solitaire with the prettiest hands a woman with this many problems could have. Not another word passed between them, not one that was spoken, at any rate, not a word anyone else would understand.

  Betsey thought she understood it. She thought she knew that the problem was there were too many of them. Too many children. Too wild. Too much noise. Too trying for her delicate mother’s nature. Why, Mama wasn’t raised to tend to a bunch of ruffians like Sharon and them, especially not Charlie, who’d awready been put out of schools in the north. No, Betsey knew when her parents were arguing it was most likely on accounta the children. Then there was the problem of the white people and money. White folks and money seemed to go hand in hand. Whenever a Negro mentioned one, he mentioned the other, like the white folks had took up all the money
and were hiding it from the Negroes, like they kept the nice houses for themselves, and the good schools, and the restaurants and motels. Just for themselves.

  “You did not win,” Charlie screeched down the back stairs. The basketball ricocheted from one wall to the other all the way down the stairway.

  “Betsey! Would you see what’s the matter,” Jane called tiredly from her manicure and highball.

  “He did too!”

  “He didn’t.” Margot and Sharon began tustling with each other over the issue of whether or not Allard had won, when it was clear it was none of their business.

  “He didn’t what?” Betsey screamed into the house from her terrace, where she’d gone to escape the chaos of the house.

  “Betsey! Didn’t I ask you to see about these children?” Jane leapt up, exasperated. “Betsey, where are you?”

  “That’s not yours.” Margot tried to pull the ball and jacks from Sharon.

  “Who threw this ball down the stairs?” Vida hollered up.

  “I don’t know, Grandma,” Betsey hollered down.

  “Well, come along here and get it. It certainly doesn’t belong in the kitchen.”

  “Grandma, I didn’t have anything to do with that ball!”

  “I’ma tell on you. You pull my hair one more time, ya hear?”

  “Give it back then.”

  “I will not either.”

  “Allard, put those matches down! I see you. Where’d you start the fire?” Betsey ran after Allard, who’d only set a small fire on the third floor to get back at Charlie who was a big bully anyway. By the time Betsey’d put the fire out, the second floor was going crazy.

  “I’ma tell Mama. You tore my dress.”

  “If you do, I’ma knock one of those buck teeth of yours out!”

  “Where’s my basketball?”

  “I’ma tell Mama.”

  “Mama, Mama, please make her stop.”

  “Mama, please make her stop.”

  “Mama, Allard got holdt to some matches again, but everything’s awright.”

  “Sharon, stop it, I say.”

  “You’re hurtin my arm!”

  “Mama, please, come help me,” Margot cried.

  “Mama, she’s lying on me,” Sharon moaned.

  “Mama, I didn’t start a big fire,” Allard explained.

  “Aunt Jane, tell Grandma to give me back my basketball.”

  “Mama, please! Come help.”

  Jane shut the door to her room and played solitaire, betting against herself. Greer’d fallen asleep. He’d been on call two nights in a row. Betsey went to her terrace for some cloud peace and air. The children just went on like children will do. Jane’s thoughts veered to her wedding vows, “in sickness and in health.” Wasn’t anything about in madness or white folks.

  Betsey took a deep breath cause the South may be full of ugly things but it’s not in the air. The air is flowers, leaves and spaces divine, when you’re up high enough to climb onto a sturdy branch of your very own oak tree. If she climbed out to the middle of the tree, Betsey thought, she’d be a bird and sing a colored child’s bird song, a colored child’s blues song or a hot jump and rag song. From the middle of her tree, where she was sure she was not supposed to be, Betsey listened real close for her city to sing to her so she could respond. Everybody knows any colored child could sing, specially one from a river city. A hankering blues-ridden, soft-swaying grace of a place like her home would surely answer her first melody.

  From her vantage point through the myriad leaves, Betsey saw what looked to her mind like a woman in need of some new clothes and a suitcase. Who ever heard of carrying one’s belongings in two shopping bags, while wearing a hat with five different colored flowers on it? And she was singing a Mississippi muddy song:

  humm hum, hum hum, hum uh

  well, my name is bernice & i come a long way

  up from arkansas & i’m here to stay

  i got no friends & i aint got no ma

  but i’ma make st. louis give me a fair draw

  hum hum, hum hum, hum hum, uh

  there’s some pretty young men

  in these mighty fine jobs

  got pomade in their hair

  & they move like the light

  i’ma set my sights

  on a st. louis guy

  with some luck by my side

  i’ma dress up my best

  & bring me a st. louis mess of a man

  humm hum, hum hum, hum hum, hum uh

  i’ma show them white folks in arkansas

  that a good woman can get what she want

  how she want and when/ humm humm, humm humm

  my name is bernice & i come a long way

  i’ma makin my business in st. louis to stay

  The song moved as if it weren’t usedta having shoes on its feet. The lips blurred like the slurs of her lines, losing definition into flat pimply cheeks and a head of hair in need of pressing underneath that hat. Bernice hadda way about her. A country honor that came from knowing hard work too soon, and being rid of it too late. The children’s noises coming from this big ole house gladdened her heart.

  “I told you to give me my jacks!”

  “No ball playing beneath the chandelier, do you hear me, you piece of northern trash! Even if you are my grandchild, you aint right.”

  “Mama, Mama, please come see to Sharon.”

  “Jane, you best come out your room and see to these chirren ’fore they tear your house down.”

  Bernice waddled up the stairs from the curb, glanced at Betsey in the tree, took a breath and hummed her song. She had been walking round this rich colored neighborhood all day looking for work, and she was determined to stay in St. Louis. She was going to help this family out. She was what was missing, an eye on these hincty misbehaving brats. Bernice kept on up the stairs to the front door in time to the yelps and hollers careening through the screens of every floor. Seemed like not a child in there could talk decent. All of them screaming and hollering like they were out on the farm. Bernice rang the front door bell.

  “Mama, there’s somebody at the door.”

  “Mama, there’s a colored woman at the door.”

  “Mama, there’s a fat lady at the door.”

  “Jane, you’ve got a visitor.”

  “Aunt Jane, there’s something at the door.”

  Jane tied her robe round her waist, while looking at Greer asleep in his clothes. That damned green surgical outfit sprawled all over her fresh linen. But that was the man she’d married. She bent over and gave him a peck of a kiss, a long caress where the evening shadow was beginning to appear on his chin.

  “Jane, I say, you’ve got a caller!”

  By the time Jane reached the front door, all the children were crowded round her like the woman who lived in a shoe. It was claustrophobic. She had a hard time opening the front door for all the feet pressed up against it. What she saw was a heavyset, no-funny-business country woman with the most peculiar hat.

  “Good evening, M’am.”

  “Yes, may I help you? I’m Mrs. Brown.”

  “Yes, M’am, Mrs. Brown. I see you’ve got some chirrens and I thought you might be in need of some he’p. I’ma hard-workin gal. I come up from Arkansas to raise myse’f up. I’m ready to tend after em, and see to they meals and hair and such.”

  Jane smiled, thinking the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

  “Well, come in, Miss, uh . . .”

  “My name is Bernice Calhoun, M’am.”

  “Well, Miss Calhoun, please come in. This is Allard. Here is Sharon. This is Margot. And my nephew Charles. Oh, I wonder where Betsey is? Mama, have you seen Betsey?” Jane called.

  “No, I haven’t,” Vida answered from the kitchen.

  “Miss Calhoun, have you worked with children before?”

  “Why, yes, M’am, in Arkansas.”

  “Do you have any references you could show me?”

  “Well, I could tell you the names of the familie
s I worked for, and you could call them. But down south they’s mighty informal, so I don’t have anything writ down that I could show you.”

  “Oh my.” Jane sighed. “I think the best thing to do, Miss Calhoun, is for you to give me the names and addresses of your former employers. I shall write them. In the meantime, you may work here on a probationary basis, till I’ve heard from them.”

  “Oh, that’s fine, M’am.”

  Vida was approaching Jane to say she had no idea where Betsey was. Instead she interrupted, “Who’s this?”

  “Oh, Mama, this is Bernice Calhoun, who’s going to stay on to help with the children. Isn’t that wonderful? Miss Calhoun, this is my mother, Mrs. Murray.”

  Vida took one look at Bernice and went back to the kitchen, shaking her head about what the race had to offer.

  “I can’t figure out where Betsey is right now, Bernice, but she’s my oldest girl and she’ll be a big help to you.”

  Bernice pursed her lips, thinking now would be the time to get in good with Mrs. Brown. Show her what a sharp eye she had for chirrens.

  “Might she be that one out there, up in that tree, M’am?”

  Jane forgot the time of day. She stiffened and ran out on the front porch to the far end. Right above her head, in the middle of a huge tree, sat her daughter, Betsey.

  “Betsey, you come down from there right this instant! How do you expect to set an example behaving like a jackass? Come down from there, right this minute! Do you hear me, Elizabeth!”

  When Jane called Betsey “Elizabeth,” it was serious. Betsey cut her eyes at Bernice Calhoun, who didn’t realize what a mistake she’d made. Honeying up to Jane wasn’t going to do her any good. Jane wasn’t home half the day, Betsey Brown was. Now, Betsey Brown was more than mad cause some fool Mississippi song had given away her sacred hiding place. Made her mama call her Elizabeth.