“But Ida—”
“Mean! Filthy!” With a droll little grimace, Ida Rhew wrung out the dish towel. “And before too long, all yall fixing to hear is want, want, want. ‘Give me this thing.’ ‘Buy me that one.’ ”
“Those kids weren’t Ratliffs, Ida. That were here the other day.”
“Yall better watch out,” Ida Rhew said resignedly, going back to her work. “Your mother des keeps on going out there, giving out yalls clothes and toys to this one, and that one, and any one that wanders up. After while, they not even going to bother with the asking. They just going to go on and take.”
“Ida, those were Odums. Those kids in the yard.”
“Same difference. It’s not a one of em knows right from wrong. What if you was one of them little Odums—” she paused to re-fold her dish towel—“and your mother and your daddy never do a lick of work, and teach you it aint a thing in the world wrong to rob, and hate, and steal, and take anything you wanted from another? Hmmn? You wouldn’t know anything but robbing and stealing. No, sir. Wouldn’t think they was a thing wrong with it in the world.”
“But—”
“I’m not saying there’s not bad colored ones, too. It’s bad ones that’s colored, and it’s bad ones that’s white.… All I know is I aint have time to fool with any Odums, and I aint have time to fool with anybody always thinking about what they don’t got, and how they going to get it from another. No, sir. If I don’t earn it,” said Ida somberly, holding up a damp hand, “and I don’t have it, then I don’t want it. No, maam. I sho don’t. I just goes on by.”
“Ida, I don’t care about the Odums.”
“You ought not care about any of them.”
“Well I don’t one bit.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“What I want to know about is the Ratliffs. What can you—”
“Well, I can tell you they chunked bricks at my sister’s grand-baby while she’s walking to school in the first grade,” said Ida curtly. “How about that? Big old grown men. Chunking bricks and hollering out nigger and get back to the jungle at that poor child.”
Harriet, appalled, said nothing. Without looking up, she continued to fiddle with the strap of her sandal. The word nigger—especially from Ida—made her red in the face.
“Bricks!” Ida shook her head. “From that wing they’s building to the school back then. And I reckon they’s proud of themselves for doing it, but aint nohow it’s correct for nobody to chunk bricks at a little one. Show me in the Bible where it say chunk bricks at your neighbor. Hmn? Look all day and you aint going to find it because it aint there.”
Harriet, who was very uncomfortable, yawned to mask her confusion and distress. She and Hely attended Alexandria Academy, as did almost every white child in the county. Even Odums and Ratliffs and Scurlees practically starved themselves to death in order to keep their children out of the public schools. Certainly, families like Harriet’s (and Hely’s) would not tolerate for one moment brick-throwing at children white or black (“or purple,” as Edie was fond of piping up in any discussion about skin color). And yet there Harriet was, at the all-white school.
“Them mens call themselves preachers. Out there spitting and calling that poor baby every kind of Jigaboo and Jungle Bunny. But aint never any reason for a big one to harm a little one,” said Ida Rhew grimly. “The Bible teach it. Whoso shall offend one of these little—”
“Were they arrested?”
Ida Rhew snorted.
“Were they?”
“Sometime the police favor criminals more than the one against who they commit the crime.”
Harriet thought about this. Nothing, as far as she knew, had happened to the Ratliffs for shooting guns down at the creek. It seemed like these people could do pretty much what they wanted and get away with it.
“It’s against the law for anybody to throw bricks in public,” she said aloud.
“Don’t make a bit of difference. Police aint done a thing to the Ratliffs when they lit the Missionary Baptist Church on fire, did they, when you’s just a baby? After Dr. King come to town? Just drove right by, and chunked that whiskey bottle with a lit rag in it through the window there.”
Harriet, all her life, had heard about this church fire—and about others, in other Mississippi towns, all confused with each other in her mind—but she had never been told that the Ratliffs were responsible. You would think (said Edie) that Negroes and poor whites would not hate each other the way they did since they had a lot in common—mainly, being poor. But sorry white people like the Ratliffs had only Negroes to look down upon. They could not bear the idea that the Negroes were now just as good as they were, and, in many cases, far more prosperous and respectable. “A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth,” Edie said. “The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own character. Well, of course, that won’t do. That would mean having to assume some responsibility for his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he’d much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way.”
Ida Rhew, lost in thought, continued to polish the stove top though it no longer needed polishing. “Yesm, it sho is the truth,” she said. “Them trash killed Miss Etta Coffey sure as they’d stabbed her in the heart.” She compressed her lips for several moments as she polished, in small, tight circles, the chrome dials of the stove. “Old Miss Etta, she righteous, sometime she praying all the night. My mother, she see that light burning late there at Miss Etta’s, she make my daddy get out of bed and walk himself right over there and tap at the window and ax Miss Etta has she fell, or do she need help to get up off the floor. She holler at him no thank you, her and Jesus still got business to talk!”
“One time, Edie told me—”
“Yes, sir. Miss Etta, she dwelling at His right hand side. And my mother and my daddy, and my poor brother Cuff that die with cancer. And little old Robin, too, right up amongst them. God keep a place for all His children. He surely do.”
“But Edie said that old lady didn’t die in the fire. Edie said she had a heart attack.”
“Edie say?”
You didn’t want to challenge Ida when she used that tone. Harriet looked at her fingernails.
“Didn’t die in the fire. Hah!” Ida wadded the wet cloth and slapped it down on the counter. “She die of the smoke, didn’t she? And of all the shoving and hollering and people fighting to get out? She old, Miss Coffey. She so tender-hearted, she not able to eat deer meat or take a fish off the hook. And here ride up these horrible old trash, chunking fire through the window—”
“Did the church burn all the way down?”
“It was burnt good enough.”
“Edie said—”
“Was Edie there?”
Her voice was terrible. Harriet dared not say a word. Ida glared at her for several long moments and then hiked the hem of her skirt and rolled down her stocking, which was thick and fleshy-tan, rolled above her knees, many shades paler than Ida’s rich, dark skin. Now, above the opaque roll of nylon, appeared a six-inch patch of seared flesh: pink like an uncooked wiener, shiny and repulsively smooth in some spots, puckered and pitted in others, shocking in both color and texture against the pleasing Brazil-nut brown of Ida’s knee.