‘A little, ma’am. I can sign my name and make the sounds of letters... I know that a “p” and a “h” together sound like a “f.” ‘ I thought about Domaque quoting the Bible and about my father then. My father always told me that I should learn to read. Maybe it was because I was so weak but I felt about ready to cry.
‘Reading is one of the few things that separates us from the animals, Ezekiel. You’d know all about the man they named you for if you could read.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And all you have to do is to keep on reading those sounds and asking Domaque and others about how you read. Maybe you can have someone read to you. Then you read it to yourself...’ she said and then she drifted off into a daydream.
We finished eating and she told me to go find a couch in the parlour to sleep on and that she’d come out there later to see how I was. But first she put a brown powder in some tea and gave it to me.
‘Josephine Marker makes this out to the swamps. She’s a real wonder at flu powders and the like.’
I was nervous about drinking any tea that Jo had a hand in making, but I took it to be polite.
After that all I remember is laying down on the yellow couch. When I opened my eyes again it was night.
Miss Dixon was standing at the open door in a long white dress, and the moon was shining in on her. There were so many chairs and tables around that it was like being in an auditorium after a big function when all the chairs and whatnot are stacked for storage.
‘You still got a fever, Ezekiel,’ she said out of the open door. ‘But I’ll get some more tea and all you got to do is to go back to sleep and you’ll be fine.’
‘Thank you, ma’am, I mean fo’ the sleep, I mean.’ I was very uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to spending much time with white people and I knew that colored people are always in danger of doing the wrong thing when they have to deal with whites. It was fine in Fifth Ward down in Houston, or in little colored towns like Pariah, usually, because there weren’t any white people around for the most part. The only time I had ever spent around white people was when I was working, and then how I was to act was clear because whites were always the boss. That was easy because all I ever said was ‘yes’ and ‘no;’ but mainly Yes.’
‘That’s all right, Ezekiel.’ She turned from the door and came back to the brown chair, about three pieces of furniture away from me. The room was dark except for the moonlight. ‘You know I’m a good woman if they let me be.’
‘I’m sure you are, ma’am. You sure been good t’me.’
‘You think so because you’re not from around here, but if you lived here you’d be like all the rest of them.’
‘Dom speaks mighty well on you, ma’am.’ I was wishing that I could be away from there. Why did she have to talk to me? One wrong word and I could be in jail or worse.
‘Domaque and his momma live in the swamp, so they’re different,’ she said.
‘They sure are diffrent but they still like you.’
Miss Dixon laughed. It was a nice laugh and she almost seemed like a normal person to me.
She said, ‘You don’t see, Ezekiel. What I mean is that Domaque and Josephine don’t mind me because I don’t own the bayou lands.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘I own just about everything else. My family owned it at first. The Dixons, the MacDoughs, and the Lambert family owned all of this way back. But they married each other and they died or they moved away and I’m the only one left. Our families had sharecropping and plantations down this way for more’n a hundred years... Now it’s all back to the tenants. I don’t even collect rent but they know that the land is mine.’ She looked over at the window as if all the people of Pariah were there, looking in. ‘They know that one day I’m going to die and some strangers are going to come down and reclaim my property.’
‘Why cain’t they just buy the land from you?’ I really wanted to know.
‘The country people are poor, Ezekiel, they couldn’t get the cash to buy. But even if they could — this is my land,’ her voice became hard, ‘for me and mine. I can’t just hand it over to strangers.’
She was quiet for a while and I didn’t dare to speak.
Then she said, ‘I’ll get you some covers and that tea.’
When she’d given me the blankets and medicine she said good night and went up to bed.
I was feeling tired but better and I could think for a while before going to sleep. I thought about that grasshopper crushed in that jay’s beak and about Miss Dixon; how she was like a bird too.
A lot of people might not like how I acted with that white woman. They might ask: Why didn’t he get mad? or Why would Mouse be breaking his butt to get money out of a poor farmer when this rich white lady would be so much of a better target?
Mouse was just doing what came natural to him. But there’s a reason I wasn’t angry then, why I’m still not angry and why the people of Pariah didn’t rise up and kill that woman: It’s what I call the ‘Sacred Cow Thinking.’
Miss Dixon lived alone out in a colored community that hated her because she owned everything, even the roads they walked on. But Miss Dixon, and every other white person, was, to that colored community, like the cow is to those Hindus over in India. They’d all starve to death, let their children starve, before they’d slaughter a sacred cow. Miss Dixon was our sacred cow. She had money and land and she could read and go to fine events at the governor’s house. But most of all she was white and being white was like another step to heaven...
Killing her would have been worse than killing our own children; killing her, or even thinking of it, would be like killing the only dream we had.
Chapter Eight
The next morning we had breakfast but I pretended to be sicker than I felt and lay back down on the yellow couch after we ate.
It was nice that she took me in but it was strange too. I felt in danger whenever she looked at me.
At noon I was saved by a knock on the door.
‘Domaque Harker,’ Miss Dixon said through the closed screen.
‘How you do, Miss Dixon?’
‘Very fine, and how are you?’
‘I’m fine too, ma’am.’
‘And your mother?’
‘I ain’t seen her in two, three days, ma’am, but I’m sure she’s fine and would wanna know that your health is fine too.’
Dom was speaking slower than he had when I was with him. I figured that Miss Dixon was teaching him how to talk as well as read.
‘And what story are you working on now, Domaque?’
‘I’m workin’ on Noah’s tale, ma’am.’
All of this talk was still through the dosed screen.
‘And how does that go?’
‘How Noah saw the storm comin’ an’ how he gathered all the married children an’ all the pairs of animals. How he rode the storm of God’s righteous anger in love of his wife and his chirren an’ their chirren...’
‘That’s the way you have to do it. Make it your own.’
She opened the door with that and Domaque shambled in. That skinny woman and barrel-shaped hunchback looked so strange standing there amongst the umbrella stands and mirrors. To look at them you would say that they had nothing in common. But there they were understanding each other so well that they could have been good friends, or even blood. They would never even sit down at the same table to break bread. But they’d get together and tell each other stories and laugh and be happy. I remember feeling loneliness watching them.
Miss Dixon asked us to stay to dinner but Dom said that we had to be going, being polite I guess. She gave us some sandwiches and fruit in a paper bag to eat on the way.
I was hoping that she’d let me keep her uncle’s suit but she didn’t. My clothes smelled all the worse for the few hours of cleanliness that I’d been given.
She waved goodbye from the front porch like a mother sending her kids off to school. I felt bad about leaving in some ways. I had never stayed in such a fine house and I liked it; but I was glad to be clear of that strange white lady.