Dodging Chinaberries ~ Mississippi Hot ~ Boots and Julia ~ Old Devil and Matsuu
Dodging Chinaberries
“Cut it out, Frank! Right now! I could lose an eye!”
From his perch high up in the tree, my cousin pelts me with chinaberries, all the while shrieking his adolescent battle cry. With every chinaberry torpedo, he adds a sound effect. PSHEWWW, a bullet screaming through the air. EH,Eh,Eh Eh, a Gatling gun—his favorite. Frank can imitate a million sounds: the rev of a car engine, a squealing tire, an exploding bomb. It’s pretty clear—I’m under attack.
I try to dash from Mamaw’s back screen door to our playhouse, the old chicken coop in the yard, without getting a chinaberry goose egg. I dodge, running-back style, and scoot to the overhang for protection. It’s summer 1960; twelve-year-old Frank, eleven-year-old me, and my ten-year-old sister Lily are inseparable.
Papaw, Mom’s father, is sick—well, he’s dying—from cancer. Dad drove us down from our home in Ohio to Crystal Springs, Mississippi, so Mom could help take care of him. It seems like everyone feels sorry for us kids. They should feel bad for Papaw ‘cause he’s not doing so good. They’re trying to protect us. But we know he’s going to die, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The grownups pretty much leave us to wander over acres of pastureland, gravel pits, corn and cotton fields. We’re free from morning till suppertime.
We discovered The Shack on our first day, and now, right after breakfast, we hightail it down the footpath from Frank’s house to Mamaw and Grandaddy’s. Past the big oak tree and the barbed-wire-fenced pasture on our left. Past a field bursting with black-eyed peas on vines sparkling in the sun. Out of breath, we laugh as we burst through the door of the old coop.
It was cruddy dirty when we first discovered it, but we swept and picked up. Chickens hadn’t lived there for years, but their droppings seemed to be everywhere—and feathers too. And it doesn’t smell like chickens, but what it does smell like is DDT. I know where the white stuff is stored. There’s a big pile of fifty-pound bags in a shed behind the barn. They say DDT doesn’t smell when it’s sprayed, but when you’re right up on top of it, say playing “king of the mountain,” the sour nose-wrinkling scent of the pesticide burns our eyes. It must have been stacked in our playhouse a while back because we can still smell it.
None of us is five feet tall yet, so we don’t have to duck to go in through the door. The windows need curtains, so we scrounge scraps of fabric from Mamaw’s rag bag to use, plus another piece to cover the hole in the front door. Nothing matches, but there’s a little bit of orange in each—and some blue too. Our kitchen table used to be a spool for barbed wire, and we sit on milking stools we found in the barn. Strips of barn siding set on big old nails make shelves, and I find two pieces of rusty chain to hold up a section for a drop-down desk.
Sometimes we get bored, so we transform The Shack into an airplane. If we stand on the spool table, we can squeeze through the old chimney pipe hole on the side of the wall, grab the limb of the chinaberry tree for support, and pull ourselves up onto the roof— now the cockpit of our private plane. A stick, sometimes two, wedged in between the sheets of tin control the altitude and stuff—and we hand up a stool as one of us dangles over the edge so the pilot can sit. We munch crackers with peanut butter, our in-flight snacks, and take turns being the passenger. Then we switch. Stewardess, passenger, pilot. Frank always wants to be the pilot, never the stewardess, but sometimes, if he’s hungry, he’ll settle for passenger.
Without warning, Frank screams one of his Tarzan yells and begins throwing everything off the roof—sticks, milking stools, snacks—everything. When there’s nothing left to throw, he grabs the berries that hang from the branches of the chinaberry tree. Chinaberries are not soft like blueberries. They’re hard, like acorns. When one hits you full force, it stings.
That’s what I’m dodging when, during a lull in the barrage, I skirt around the tool shed and lunge for The Shack. At last, Frank stops yelling and agrees to come down off the roof and listen to me.
“Gooood Nie-eeght, Ja-yen! What’s so important?” he asks after a spectacular leap lands him, and he somersaults paratroop style to my feet.
“Canning pears!” I say like I invented it. He gets up and turns to scramble back onto the roof.
“Wait, Frank! Wait a minute! We need someone to climb the pear trees and pick all the fruit! That should be you, right?”
“Well, ye-ah, I guess I can do that. But I’m not canning anything!”
“Course not. We’ll do the canning. You do the picking.”
“Deal.”
I can climb trees just as easy as Frank, but I let him think he’s special that way. Lily and I dig up as many jars as we can find. Some from Mamaw, some from an old box in the tool shed.
“Do you know how to do this?” she asks me, her big brown eyes looking at me like a little sister who thinks her big sister can do anything. I won’t disappoint.
“No. But we’ll figure it out. I think we need sugar…and water.” There’s a pitcher in The Shack left over from our lemonade. The old water pump in Mamaw and Grandaddy’s backyard still works. Oh, by the way, Mamaw is Frank’s grandma, not mine. My Papaw’s wife died years ago, so I don’t have a grandma on Mom’s side of the family. We all share Mamaw and Grandaddy; they’re Frank’s daddy’s parents, which means I have two Mississippi grandpas—Papaw and Grandaddy.
Lily holds the pitcher under the spout and I pump up and down. It takes about four pumps; then the water begins to flow and fill the pitcher. And—I feel guilty about it—but we sneak a couple cups of sugar from Mamaw’s kitchen. I hope she wasn’t planning on baking a pie. Frank picks more pears than we can ever use, but we cut them up anyway. With the jars full as they can be, we add sugar water, put on the caps, then display them on our homemade shelves. Thirteen multi-sized jars of pears. “Fruits of our labor,” I giggle.
Just in time ‘cause someone rings the dinner bell from the porch at Frank’s house. We run up the footpath into the house to wash up. Black-eyed peas, fried chicken, green salad, and biscuits with lots of iced tea to wash it down. Yum. And homemade pies for dessert—one peach and one rhubarb. I don’t care for rhubarb, but I love peach.
We sit at the table, we three kids, with Frank’s mom and dad—my Uncle Doug and Aunt Marguerite—my mom, and Aunt May. Aunt May is 43, but her mind never got past age 3, maybe 4. Sometimes, a visiting uncle or aunt joins us. Papaw doesn’t come to the table anymore—being so sick. He’s had skin cancer for almost thirty years—all that time a farmer in the hot Mississippi sun. I never saw him with a real nose. He removes a triangle-shaped bandage from a big box every morning and tapes one real careful over the opening where his nose used to be. Probably somebody helps him now. He used to use a rubber fake nose sometimes, but I like the bandage. The rubber nose looks silly. Also, he only has one ear. He has other scars too from the cancer, but the missing nose and ear are the ones you notice.
Now, he takes his dinner in his sick room. It’s just off the kitchen-dining room. Mom’s sister, Aunt Marguerite and my Uncle Doug added the room to the low ranch house when they knew Papaw would be giving up his farm and coming to live with them. My mom or one of her sisters helps feed him. At the table, dinner conversation is usually about how he is doing or about Uncle Doug’s job as the town funeral-home director and resident undertaker. Frank, Lily, and I fill in the conversation with our day’s adventures. Like the pear-canning—but we don’t tell about the borrowed sugar.
Afterward, we help clear the table and play out on the carport till bedtime. Aunt May too. She loves to chase us around with the fly swatter. Especially if it’s somebody else’s birthday. We giggle as she runs in circles behind us muttering, “Ain’t nobody’s birthday buh mine! Ain’t nobody’s birthday buh mine!” When the sky darkens, and we spend more time swatting mosquitoes than running from May, it’s time for bath and bed. We don’t complain ‘cause we’re dirty and exhausted.
Morning can’t come fast enough. Only Aunt Marguerite’s biscuits with lots of honey and butter keep us from bolting out the door first thing. They’re piled on a platter in the kitchen and smell warm and buttery and homemade. We gulp down two or three with a big glass of milk before we race up the path. I arrive first. Lily’s legs just don’t move as fast as mine, and Frank usually gets distracted. He always needs to stop and pick up a rock for a good throw, or he runs back to the house cause he forgot something for Mamaw.
I explode through the door of The Shack to see the “fruits” of the previous day’s work—thirteen jars of pears—covered in ants. Dozens, no, hundreds of black ants. What could have gone wrong? Some had even gotten inside the jars! We must have missed a step or two in our canning process.
It is pretty clear no one’s gonna eat those pears. And there are no pigs to slop anywhere on the farm. Ol’Mac, the sheepdog and the mutt Trixie won’t eat them. Lily and I load the jars into a wheelbarrow and truck them far from The Shack. The mound of pear jam grows as we open each one and dump it. I bet the birds liked it. And I bet they were on a sugar high for a week.
We trek back to The Shack. I can see Frank up on the roof with a stash of chinaberries. Lily and I turn the wheelbarrow on its side and hide behind it. PSSSSSHEW! Clank, Zap. The berries hit the barrow and whizz all around us. We can wait. He’ll get bored soon enough.
Mississippi Hot
Mississippi is hot, very hot. Papaw has air-conditioning in his sick room, but the rest of the house gets by with a couple of room units and fans. One super-scorching day, Aunt Marguerite says, “You kids go on and get your swimsuits. Here’s some towels. Frank, your daddy’s gonna take ya’ll to the town pool.”
I love swimming. I love water. I will stay in the water until my skin turns purple from cold, or puckers from exposure, or until threatened with being yanked out by the hair. So, I don’t mind missing “shack time.” We pile into the car.
I can see the pool from the parking lot. That is, I can see heads and arms bobbing and flailing. It looks like every kid in Crystal Springs has the same plan to cool off. I run from the car through the gate, throw my towel on the ground, reach the water’s edge, and jump in at full speed to melt into the cool water. All the icky stickiness of Mississippi hot disappears. I plan to stay put. I’m drifting underwater pretending to have a tea party when arms, legs, and bodies begin to disappear. Pretty soon, it’s all water and no people. Just me. Up for air, I see Frank at the corner of the deep end, gesturing wildly.
I look around, “What’s wrong with you? This is great.” The pool is empty! I think, Why am I the only one in the water? I know it’s not rest period.
The lifeguard still sits in his chair, and he’s not yelling at me, so I ignore Frank, take a deep breath, sink to the bottom like I like to do, and become a mermaid. Back up on the surface, I see a few more people in the pool. Okay, good. That’s better. Submerged again, I wind myself around the ladder, now my sunken ship. Up for another breath, I see three Negro children nearby, bobbing up and down. Everyone else is standing at the edge of the pool, looking at the four of us. Three young colored children and me.
Frank desperately waves again, now from the corner of the shallow end. I look at him and shake my head. “No.” I mouth. He’s nuts, I’m not getting out, no way, and sink back down. Underwater is just about my favorite place. Sometimes I worry that I’ll forget where I am and start to breathe. Sometimes I believe I am breathing, but maybe it’s just a dream, like those flying dreams when you wake up and realize you weren’t up in the sky, only just in your bed.
On the surface to gulp a real breath, I see the three other children climbing up the steps from the shallow end. They pick up their towels and walk out through the gate. My sister slides into the pool and swims over to me, looking around like someone is going to yank her under by the leg.
“Uncle Doug is here to pick us up.”
~
On the way home, Frank starts to tell his dad about the colored kids in the pool. I don’t let him finish because what does it matter what color they were? “That’s crazy, Uncle Doug! What is wrong with people?”
Uncle tries to explain things away with, “Well, you’re not up in Ohio now; this is Mississippi.”
I think my head is going to pop. “Because we’re in Mississippi?” My voice gets higher and higher. “That’s a reason to behave so awful? Well, that makes no sense at all!”
We don’t talk about it at the dinner table over catfish, hush puppies, and lots of iced tea. We don’t talk about it—not ever.
~
Back in Ohio I had heard in school and on the news about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and racial stuff. But I never saw anything like at the swimming pool in Crystal Springs, Mississippi before. It became my own personal particular ugly.
~
The next day is Mississippi hot again. Under the shade of a giant oak tree, Frank practices his sound effects while Lily and I cut Ol’ Mac’s long shaggy hair. The big old sheepdog looks terrible, but maybe he’ll be cooler. It’ll be almost two weeks before he comes out from his hiding place under the porch.
Boots and Julia’s IT
Mom’s Cousin Boots has a convenience store in close-by Martinsville, Mississippi. The store’s name is “IT.” Uncle Doug has some errands to run, so he thinks he’ll stop by “IT” and see how Boots and his wife Julia are doing. We kids tag along.
Boots is at the register, and Julia, feather duster in hand, is trying to keep the grit on the shelves from settling thick on boxes of cornmeal and cans of lard. Uncle Doug gives us each a nickel to buy something so the grownups can visit some. I pick out a stick of candy and go stand in line to pay. Before I can straighten the glasses on my face, I’m at the register; the six people ahead of me not there anymore. They had moved behind me.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to cut. Please, go on ahead.” But no one budges. They shuffle their feet a little and don’t look each other in the eyes. Cousin Boots stands at the register watching his regular customers interact with his young white cousin.
“No, Miss, you go on,” one of them says. “You Mr. John’s grandbaby, right?”
Papaw’s name is John Williams. “Yes,” I say, “but he wouldn’t want you to favor me any.”
“Oh no, Miss, you go on. And say ‘Hey’ to your Papaw for us.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
I’m not sure what is happening, but I know it isn’t right. I look at all the dark faces around me and I see in their eyes something I don’t recognize. I’m just a kid. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but whatever’s happening is because of me. I feel my lips start to quiver, and I don’t want to be embarrassed.
I pay my nickel and walk out, sucking on my candy stick to keep from crying.
Ol’ Devil and Matsuu
The only farm animal left on the farm is a cow named Devil. She lives in the barn a stone’s throw from The Shack. Grandaddy scolds us to keep our distance, but the temptation to spy on her overwhelms. Pigs are more fun to watch, but we’ll have to make do by spying on Ol’ Devil. The plan is to climb up on the barn’s tin roof, which is kinda scary, and peer down at her through the cracks. First, we hold on to the fencepost, put our sneakers between the barbs on the barbwire fence, and grab the edge of the roof. From there we can shimmy up the steep angle all the way to the top. And we must do this early in the day before the tin is too hot to touch.
From the barn’s high peak, we can see two shanties in the pasture where the sharecroppers live. Every day or so, we hear the voice of a feeble old woman as she walks at her ancient pace from her shanty to the other. “Matsuuu,” she calls out to her friend who sits in a rocker on his front porch. Her voice sounds like it comes from a far-off wounded animal.
“Matsuuuuuu.” It takes her an hour to cover the hundred yards, and every two minutes or so, she pauses to hail him so Matsuu will know she’s coming.
*
While the old woman is crossing the pasture for what turns out to be the last time, we’re straddling the peak of the barn roof, trying to scoot our bodies directly over Ol’ Devil’s stall. I want to see why her name is “Devil.” Our pockets are heavy, filled with stones, and now we drop them down through the cracks. Some of them hit her. All of them aggravate her. She begins to kick the sides of the stall and bellow like—well, like the Devil. We scramble down the roof before Mamaw or Grandaddy show up to ask us just what do we think we are doing to that poor cow?! I’m sorry we taunted her like that, and we don’t do it again. If cows can be grateful, I bet Ol’ Devil is—that we finally let her be in peace. I climb up on the barn roof lots more times that summer, just for the fun of it. The last time, my knee doesn’t quite make the roof pitch, and I slice it right into the edge of the tin roof. I limp back up to the house with a deep gash and a bloody leg. Aunt Marguerite’s a nurse, so she butterfly-bandages it. I can’t bend my knee for two weeks. Ol’ Devil’s revenge.
I can’t climb the roof for a while, but I can still make it to The Shack every day. I keep an eye out for the old woman on her slow trek. When we don’t see her for over a week, I question Frank, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell ya’. She died. Her funeral’s going to be at the Baptist church over yonder,” he motions to the small white structure with a steeple on the edge of the property.
I want to go. “That’s not a good idea,” my cousin says.
“Well, I’ll ask Mom or Aunt Marguerite or Uncle Doug then.” I don’t, and I feel bad about it. It seems disrespectful.
Summer draws to a close and it’s time to leave. Papaw is about the same—not getting better, but not, it seems, much worse. We say goodbye, and I remember to tell him his friends at the IT store said to say “Hello.” He’s happy to hear that.
School’s ready to start back in Ohio, so Dad arrives to carry us home in our big black 1959 Mercury station wagon. Mom and Dad take turns and drive us straight through on the new Interstate Highway System thanks to President “We Like Ike” Eisenhower, up Route 55 to Route 40 through Memphis and Cincinnati onto Route 65, finally to 71 and back home.
I’m sad to say goodbye to that hot Mississippi summer. I’d never see Papaw again ‘cause he died the next month.
I still think about those friends of his at IT standing in line and letting me go ahead. And about the three kids in the swimming pool. And I think about the old lady crossing the pasture to see her friend Matsuu. And Ol’ Devil, and, of course, The Shack.
It’s all jumbled up in my head. I just need a while to sort it out some.
Jan Callner 