The Darkest Child Read online

  “I think she is afraid of you.”

  “She ain’t scared of me,” Tarabelle said, then grunted. “She oughta be, though, but she ain’t. She the only friend I ever had.All y’all always had friends, ’cept me. I thought something was wrong wit’ me.Did you know that, Tan? I ain’t friendly like Mushy. I ain’t smart like you. And I ain’t pretty like Martha Jean. I ain’t never knew what I was s’pose to be. Then Mattie wanted to be my friend. She liked me better than she did you. I knew you’d be mad, but I didn’t care. It’s time for me to have friends, too.”

  Jack Crothers drove by in his truck, slowed, and asked if we wanted a lift.We declined and continued on, in no rush to get to the fair.We strolled by Skeeter’s house and I purposely avoided glancing in that direction. I was captivated by this loquacious side of Tarabelle, by her having taken me into her confidence.

  “Sometimes, Tan, I be walking to work and I go by that creek. I be thinking ’bout walking right on out in it. Then I think the water ain’t gon’ cover my head, and I’m just gon’ be wet and look stupid and won’t even be dead.You ever think about dying?” she asked.“When Judy died, I wished it was me.”

  “Why do you wanna die, Tara?” I asked. “I wanna live to get old—older than Miss Janie. I wanna do things.”

  “Ain’t nothing to do.And anyway, I’m too tired to do anything. Sometimes I think I won’t take another breath, but then I do, and I don’t even know why.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t feel that way if you could get out of Pakersfield. If Mama hadn’t torn up your ticket and you could have left, maybe you wouldn’t feel that way.”

  Tarabelle blew a quick breath through pursed lips. “Shoot,” she said, “Pakersfield ain’t got nothing to do wit’ nothing. I’m glad Mama did it. First, I was mad, but after I thought about it, I didn’t even care. I don’t wanna go nowhere and live wit’ Mushy. She just like Mama. Just like her.”

  Outside the Tates’ house, Miss Dorothy was putting a lot of energy into sweeping down her four wooden steps. She did not wave or speak as we neared her, but glared at us with reproachful eyes.

  Tarabelle stepped from the walk and crossed the yard until she was standing at the foot of the steps. She glared up at Dorothy Tate, and shouted, “You mad! You mad ’cause you can’t do nothing wit’ that ol’ drunk husband of yours. I wish you’d come on down here trying to start something wit’ me. I’ll break that broom over yo’ neck.You hear me, Miss Dorothy? I’ll break that goddamn broom ’cross yo’ neck.”

  Dorothy Tate slowly backed up the steps, then closed the screen door behind her. She was probably as shocked by Tarabelle’s language as I was, but for once, I understood. I remembered the night Melvin Tate and Crow had brought Mama and Tarabelle home. Miss Dorothy must have known about it, too. She held her broom steady, and watched my sister from behind the safety of the screen. I had the impression that Miss Dorothy did not want to fight, but she would if Tarabelle was stupid enough to break through the screen.

  I stepped into the yard and grabbed Tarabelle’s hand, but she snatched it from my grip, and remained where she was until Miss Dorothy disappeared from the door. Finally, she returned to the walk. She was breathing hard and walking fast.

  “Tan, do you know what I do when I go out wit’ Mama?” she asked.

  “I didn’t at first,” I said, “but I think I do now.”

  “Mama think people don’t know,” she said angrily, “but everybody know. I can tell the way they look at me that they know.They look at me like I’m dirt—like they better not get too close.”

  We left Motten Street and crossed Atler Avenue, hearing for the first time the sounds of the fair.We stopped at the wire fence that surrounded the grounds, and Tarabelle leaned against a pole and stared straight ahead at the crowd. I glanced along the rows of parked cars, searching for Jeff ’s father’s car.

  “I don’t think I wanna go in there, ”Tarabelle said, after a minute of looking.“You gon’ be running ’round wit’ that boy?”

  “I don’t have to,” I answered.

  “I done been knocked up before, fooling ’round wit’ men,” she said.“Mama took me to Miss Pearl, and she got that baby out my belly wit’ a wire hanger. Hurt real bad, too. They made me drink corn whiskey in orange juice. It taste awful—worse than cast’oil. Then Miss Pearl scraped that baby out. Never was no real baby no how—just blood and mess . . . and pain.”

  Rapid puffs of breath escaped my mouth, and my heart pounded as though I had been running long and hard. My face felt warm, and my head light. I braced myself against the pole, unable to speak.People passed, spoke, and waved with no idea that innocence had sloughed from my body and lay in a heap at my feet.

  “How did you know a baby was there?” I asked, when I was able to speak. “I never saw you gain weight or anything.”

  “You don’t get fat ’til later. First the curse stops, then you start to be sick, and you be tired from throwing up all the time.”

  “Oh,” I said, and did not know what else to say.

  “You go on now, Tan, ”Tarabelle said. “I’m gon’ stay here ’til I make up my mind what I wanna do.”

  Disengaging myself from the pole, I tramped slowly along the gravel shoulder beside the fence until I reached the ticket booth, then I glanced back at Tarabelle. She was standing motionless, like a sign of despair mounted to a post, and I could not leave her like that. I retraced my steps.

  “Tarabelle,” I said, barely above a whisper, “you said you never knew what you were supposed to be.Well, you’re brave.You’re the bravest child our mother has.”

  She moved then, and her eyes seemed to bore right through me. “You really think so, Tan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.You go on now. Go on to the fair.”

  Moving across earth sprinkled with sawdust, and through air heavy with an assortment of aromas, I stepped out of a babbling crowd at the merry-go-round. Almost immediately someone touched my arm, and I glanced up to see Martha Jean. She was holding a cone of cotton candy and a small stuffed animal.Velman stood directly behind her.

  “Hey,” he said.“We’re gonna get on this thing when it stops.You wanna ride?”

  I shook my head.“No. I’m looking for Wallace. Have you seen him?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him. He’s caught up to me about six times already, asking for a dime. Last time I saw him he was at the Ferris wheel, and the girls are over there wit’ Harvey and Carol Sue.” He pointed toward the funhouse.

  I started in that direction, but he stopped me by placing a strong hand on my shoulder. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said.“We’re married, me and Martha Jean. Did you know?”

  “When?” I asked, surprised that my mother had allowed it.

  “Today.We’re celebrating.”

  The merry-go-round stopped, and Velman ushered Martha Jean toward the throng of youngsters rushing for horses. “Congratulations,” I shouted, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the marriage.

  I saw Mattie standing at a hot dog stand.When she spotted me, she quickly turned her head, but I approached her anyway and purposely brushed my arm against hers.“Hey, Mattie,” I said.

  “I ain’t talking to you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I ain’t got to, that’s why.”

  “I don’t want you to talk to me,” I said. “I want you to talk to Tarabelle.”

  “Where she at?” Mattie asked, now turning to face me, and trying to appear angry when we both knew there was nothing to be angry about.

  “Out by the fence where the cars are parked. Something’s troubling her. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Probably you,” Mattie mumbled as she stepped around me, holding a hot dog that was barely visible beneath layers of yellow mustard. She walked off toward the main gate.

  For a moment, I stood by the hot dog stand trying to decide which way to go. Finally, I walked the entire length of the grounds, staring up at the colorful, triangular flags flapping in the win
d above tents and food stands. Night fell gently over the grounds, and I found myself in a chatoyant glow of swirling, twirling lights. Despite Tarabelle’s gloom, Sam’s incarceration, and Martha Jean’s marriage, I felt strangely carefree. I inched a dime from my sock, and rode the Ferris wheel.

  At the top of the ride, I looked down and saw a large crowd gathering at a game booth beside the root beer barrel.When the ride ended, I rushed toward the gathering. Jeff was in the crowd, staring intently ahead, and I walked over to him.

  “Hey,” I said.“What’s going on?”

  “Hey,” he said in surprise. “I thought you weren’t coming. Hambone’s preaching again about the evils of the white man. He’s making sense, though.”

  Hambone’s background was a corkboard filled with balloons. It was one of those games where you tossed darts in an attempt to bust a balloon, and Hambone was holding three darts in a hand that was raised above his head.

  “Look around you,” he said. “They’ve stored away everything that’s worth having, from the lemonade to the game prizes. It’s all junk, things they wouldn’t dare give to their own kind.Things they intentionally hold until Negro night.Three days they give to the white people before they open the gates for coloreds. I’m willing to bet if you scrape the coating off of some of them candy apples, you’re gonna find worms and rot. Hot dogs on stale bread, maggots in the onions.Throw it down! Don’t let your children eat it. Don’t give these crackers another dime.”

  “What’s wrong wit’ you, Hambone?” Harvey asked. He was standing about three feet away from me, and he had the girls with him. “People wait all year for the fair to come. It’s the one thing the children have to look forward to.Why you wanna mess it up for everybody?”

  “Yeah,” Maureen Milner agreed.“I done ate two of them apples and ain’t seen no worms. If you so worried ’bout bad stuff, don’t eat nothing.”

  Some people nodded and agreed with Maureen until Hambone brought his hand down, turned toward the corkboard, and threw a dart. It hit a target, and the balloon gave a moderate pop.The man working the booth threw his arms over his head and gasped, causing the crowd to roar with laughter.

  “What’s funny here?” Hambone asked, spreading his arms and still gripping two of the darts.“Don’t you know your ignorance is what’s holding you down? As long as you remain ignorant, they’ll treat you any way they want. I know most of you have been right here in Pakersfield all of your lives.You don’t even realize you’re being mistreated. I call that ignorance. Most of you can’t even read the newspaper and you won’t bother to get someone else to read it to you.You don’t know what’s going on.You don’t even know that the rest of the world ain’t like this little backwards cracker town.”

  “Some of us do know what’s going on,” Jack Crothers said. “It don’t mean we gotta get our heads bashed in ’cause they doing it someplace else. It’s easy for you to stand there and talk.You ain’t got no children to care about.You get things stirred up ’round here, then you’ll go back to Chicago. Leave us alone! If you don’t like it here, you oughta leave before you get some trouble started.”

  “Trouble?” Hambone questioned, then gave a short laugh. “Nigger, you in trouble.You just don’t know it.You say you care about your children? Is that what you said? Then you need to take a good, long look at that school they building for your children. They’re throwing it together with the worst material they could find. Did you know that? When it falls, it won’t be on a white child’s head.You think about that for a minute.”

  I could tell by the silence that no one had given much thought to the new school. I hadn’t, either. I just assumed it would go up and stand forever like everything else. I saw Harvey glance down at Laura and Edna. He placed a hand on Edna’s head before glancing over at Carol Sue.

  “Oh, yeah,” Hambone said.“You hadn’t thought about that, had you? There’s something wrong when a man puts all of his trust in another man, especially when that other man don’t care if you live or die. The white man don’t give a damn about none of us, no more than what we can do for them.And we’re doing everything for them.”

  “What do you expect people to do?” Jeff asked, his voice startling me. I had thought him too reserved to speak out in a crowd.

  “I expect you to come together as a race,” Hambone answered. “I expect you to stop staring at the ground every time you speak to a white man that ain’t a drop better than you. I expect you to be the men you were born to be, and to demand your God-given right to be human.”

  “We’ve got wives and children to feed,” one man yelled.“Who gon’ pay our wages when we go making all these demands?”

  “What wages?” Hambone yelled back. “There’s not a dozen of you here who can feed your children without your wives going to work. And what is she doing? She’s getting calluses on her hands from scrubbing the white man’s house, tending his children, washing his clothes, and cooking his meals. I see your wives cutting through town every morning, going to East Grove, Meadow Hill, and some as far as North Ridge.They wash clothes and cook supper for the white man, then you wanna knock them around when they’re too tired to have your supper on the table on time.”

  “I wish some man would come hitting on me when I’m tired,” Maureen said. “It’d be the last somebody he’d hit.”

  A few of the women laughed and agreed with her, but Hambone kept his composure.“That’s right, Miss Maureen,” he said.“You go on and kill off your man, or let him kill you off. It doesn’t matter to the white man. He doesn’t care a thing about you.Tomorrow he’ll have somebody else plowing his fields and washing his clothes. And while you’re at it, go on over there and buy yourself a few more of them apples because I’m telling you, they’ll poison you just as soon as lynch you. Have y’all forgot about Junior Fess? They’re holding Sam Quinn for his murder, and we all know Junior was killed by white hands. Now, y’all think about that.”

  A somber mood descended upon us, and even the small children were quiet.The crowd was growing, and Hambone seemed to have everyone’s attention now.

  “Why don’t we see any white faces moving among us today?” he asked.“What’s gonna happen if one of us bump against their lily white skin? Not a damn thing, that’s what.They think we’re animals who’re suppose to work for them all day.They let you women touch their babies when you’re cleaning smelly diapers, but then you can’t sit next to them at the picture show or the soda fountain. Think about that for a minute.”

  There was no Reverend Nelson to oppose or silence Hambone and, without restraint, he managed to provoke the crowd into anger and action.

  “Let’s tear it down!” someone shouted.

  Hambone raised his arm, then turned and threw the last two darts at the corkboard. It seemed he deliberately missed his target. He shrugged his shoulder and faced the crowd once more. “There’re mostly children out here tonight,” he said, “so that’s not the way we’re gonna do it.We need to come together and plan. Now, who’s with me on this?”

  Hands began to go up as lights began to shut down.Whole sections of the fairgrounds fell into darkness. I saw Wallace and Maxwell move up to stand beside Hambone just as the far section of the grounds, where the Ferris wheel stood, went dark.All music stopped.The funhouse and the fortune teller’s tent disappeared into the night.

  “Hambone, look!”Wallace shouted.

  We all looked. Out of the darkness emerged a nightmare— about three dozen angry white men armed with bats and chains, shotguns and pistols. A tall, thin white man in a plaid shirt and overalls aimed his shotgun at the crowd.

  “Awright, you niggers clear on outta here!” he ordered. “And don’t drag yo’ feet about it.”

  We outnumbered them eight to one—mostly children. Despite that, we began to disperse and rush for the main gate. I moved along with Jeff, trying to keep Laura and Edna in sight as they hurried out between Harvey and Carol Sue. I could hear Ham-bone behind us, telling us not to run, not to be cowards. No one listene
d.We had nothing with which to protect ourselves from bullets and chains.

  “This land belongs to the county,” Hambone shouted.“We have just as much right to . . .”

  A shotgun blast silenced him. The stillness was so abrupt that I thought he had been shot. I glanced back and saw that Hambone was not injured. He was backing slowly toward the gate, flanked by Wallace and Maxwell.There was nothing to prevent the men from killing us.We meant nothing to them.They did not shoot us, but they marched forward with intimidating force.

  Cars and trucks began to pull out of the parking lot just as Jeff and I stepped from sawdust to gravel.The men followed us to the gate and stood watching as we scattered for safety.Another gunshot rang out, and I stumbled across the gravel, trembling and feeling weak in my knees. Jeff held me steady and led me between moving vehicles until we reached his car.

  I stopped beside the car and yelled for Wallace, knowing he could not hear me over the din of engines and the cries of terror. Tarabelle and Mattie rushed toward us, and Mattie practically dived onto the back seat of the car.

  “Let’s go, Tangy!” Jeff urged, but I could not move. Up by the main gate, Wallace and a group of young men had armed themselves with gravel and were slinging it at the grounds crew.

  “Jeff, look!” I screamed. “They’re going to kill Wallace.They’re going to kill my brother.”

  “Shit!”Tarabelle said, as she raced back across the lot toward the gate. It seemed she would be struck by one of the vehicles racing from the grounds, but she made it across intact. Another shot sounded, and the gravel throwing ceased momentarily.Then someone bellowed with rage, a high-pitched battle cry, and the gravel slinging resumed.

  Jeff shoved me into the car, then rushed around to the other side and climbed in.Tarabelle had reached Wallace, and I waited for her to grab him and drag him away from the mob. Instead, she stooped and came up with a fistful of gravel.The workers fired again, two shots this time, then raising bats and chains, they began to advance.