Clara

By Lonnie Coleman

The moving, dramatic story of two women—one Negro, the other White—in a small Alabama town and how they influenced each other’s lives for better or worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classica Libris
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9791220211406

Book preview

CLARA

Dedication

To

John and Jenny Rembert

1920

I guess things never do go off just the way you plan them. Take my wedding, which is a case in point. But there I go, it’s like Aunt Aster is always saying: Lilian, you don’t know how to tell a story. You always start in the middle and expect people to know what you’re talking about. But it’s so hard not to start with the exciting thing. I want people to know right away, I can’t stand their not knowing!

I don’t know where to begin, I really don’t. I guess I just have to pick a place. Doing that, I’ll pick 1915. Sister and I… I call her Sister because her name is Netta and I for one hate to remind her what an ugly name she has. I don’t know why Mama and Papa picked such a name for their first child. Thank goodness they learned better before I came along and were careful to pick a pretty name like Lilian for me… and they never shortened it to Lily or Lil, thank goodness again.

Sister was born in 1895, and I was born in 1900, both of us on the farm just outside a little town called Pluma which is about the middle of Alabama. Nobody knows Pluma unless they were born there. The train between Birmingham and Mobile goes through twice a day, the Up-train and the Down-train, we call them. But there’s no reason to tell about Pluma. It’s just a tacky little country town, at least compared to Bloomingdale, which is huge, almost forty thousand.

I started off with 1915 and then jumped all around. Go back to 1915. That was the year Mama and Papa died in the epidemic and Sister and I went to live in town with Aunt Aster. Aunt Aster was Papa’s sister, and she was a spinster, Lord love her. She wasn’t mean to us, but oh Glory how she tried to make ladies out of us. Of course, Sister was too grown to put up with such foolishness, being twenty years old already. Within four months she’d married this boy Pil Jackson. I can’t stop calling him that no matter how much it hurts Sister’s feelings. All I can say is, if people don’t want others to call them Pil, they shouldn’t be named Pilsbury in the first place. Pil was a Pluma boy, and we’d never paid much attention to him, because he worked in the grocery store learning to cut meat, while everybody else went to school. His mother was a widow and ran a boarding house for railroad men, a big faded-yellow house near the depot. Pil never was included in Pluma society, but it seems without anybody noticing it he had gone to Bloomingdale and got a job as a butcher in a store there and had done real well for himself. He came back to town to visit, and it was him and Sister right off. It wasn’t a bit exciting. Everybody knew it would happen almost from the beginning but nobody cared much. First thing you know people were talking just matter-of-fact about when the wedding would be. So far as I was concerned, the only interesting development was that Sister would live in Bloomingdale and I would visit her.

I must say that Aunt Aster behaved like a perfect lady. I mean, never raising an objection about Sister’s marrying Pil, even though he was far from being on our social level. Maybe she was just as glad to get rid of a big girl like Sister, who people were beginning to say might not ever get married. Or maybe she knew there wouldn’t be any use arguing. Sister don’t argue back often, but when she does you might just as well let her have her way. I found that out a long time ago, and I guess she’ll never change. It’s what they call stubborn in children and character in adults.

Before Sister left she promised to have me visit her often in Bloomingdale. Even so, I didn’t, and when I did, it wasn’t much fun because it seems like Sister stayed pregnant all the time, and we almost never went out anywhere. Nine months to the day after she and Pil got married they had their first child, born on January 12, 1916, a boy they named Aldeen for our Papa, which was shortened almost immediately to Deen. That’s bad enough but it was all I could do to get Sister not to name him for Pilsbury. It was only when I pointed out that people would inevitably call father and son Big Pil and Little Pil that she hit on Aldeen. I swanee, that Sister of mine is stubborn. She got so mad finally when I didn’t like the sound of Aldeen either she told me to shut up and wait until I had children of my own to name. She said also that names weren’t supposed to be pretty-sounding, that they were supposed to mean something. I asked her what did Aldeen mean, and she said, Not that way, silly, mean something in terms of family, and everybody knows men in our family have been called Aldeen for I don’t know how long.

Well, everyone to his own taste, said the old maid as she kissed the cow. Four months after Deen was born Sister was pregnant again, but she lost this child in the seventh month. It would have been a little girl. She got herself pregnant again and this time she went straight through it. A little girl was born to her in May 1918, but this one was sickly and died before they got her named. There Sister was, pregnant three times and only one child to show for it, and that one about as uninteresting a little boy as you could hope to see. I never could feel much for Deen, he looked so much like his daddy right from the beginning. That isn’t to say Pil and I didn’t get along. We did. At least there never were any cross words or anything, but Pil never understood the little jokes I made, and when I laughed, he frowned. I got so tired seeing him sit there after supper, by the fireplace summer or winter reading his paper, and when he got through he always turned the cuffs of his pants down to shake out the sawdust from the meat market. What conversation he had was all about the store, what beef was bringing and how the packing house was putting more salt on the side meat before they sold it to him so it’d weigh more. Sister seemed to take an interest in all this, but not me. What I wanted was a little fun in life and not for everybody to always be so solemn. I was a pretty girl if I do say so. I was what they called in high school a snappy brunette, I guess on account of my eyes. You’d think they’d have planned little parties when I went to see them, but they never did, or if anybody came to see them, it was married couples like themselves, and everybody sat around and talked about the practical things in life or maybe about politics which I never could get myself interested in.

I had originally hoped that one of those times when I visited Sister in Bloomingdale, I would meet a handsome young man who would fall in love with me and have money or a good job at least and I would marry him. But the more I visited the less that seemed possible so the less I visited. It wasn’t easy to get there anyway, in spite of Pluma and Bloomingdale being only forty-seven miles apart. Bloomingdale didn’t have the good sense to get itself built on the main railroad line between Birmingham and Mobile. I had to get the Up-train to a tookie little town called Millsburg and wait there four solid hours for another train to take me on the other eighteen miles to Bloomingdale. Aunt Aster didn’t like me to travel alone, but I got around her by saying it was all right since the whole trip took place in daylight and promising to stay right in the station at Millsburg. She used to fix me a good lunch, and I’d eat it sitting in that ugly little station in Millsburg, with the rusted stove in the middle of the floor summer or winter, and the sound of the telegraph clicking. I don’t know why it was always clicking, because you couldn’t imagine anybody in the outside world having anything to do with anybody in Millsburg. One time on a nice spring day I ventured to walk around between trains. I got so depressed looking at that dead little main street I decided I’d never do it again. I guess I’m too sensitive, but just walking around in it made me feel like I belonged there, and I’d have to take out my ticket and look at it to reassure myself. As long as I stayed in the station I could at least feel like a stranger just passing through. So I went back and sat in the waiting room and listened to the telegraph.

Like I said, if Sister had ever done much to make my visits gala, it would have been worthwhile, but she didn’t. It was life as usual all the time I was there. Tend to the house, tend to Deen, everything scheduled around when Pil got off to work and when Pil came home for dinner and when Pil got off from work at night. It was dull as dishwater, but Sister seemed to thrive on it. People used to say she was a pretty girl, but I always thought her name suited her right down to the ground. From the time she was thirteen you could tell she was destined to be somebody’s wife and mother, and I don’t know why any of us worried about her getting married, because it was written all over her.

Maybe I’m not being fair. They say sisters are jealous sometimes and almost never think each other is pretty, but I don’t believe that. Goodness knows, I’ve never been jealous of Sister, and she’s always been sweet as pie to me. We never had any real fusses, but we never had any real good times together either. We were just sisters.

Things went on like this, me visiting less and less until finally Sister wrote me in October 1919, she was pregnant again. I didn’t have anything to do, so the next day I went off to see her. I finally got there tired out and it was the day after that we finally settled down and had us a good talk. She said she sure hoped this one was a little girl and that nothing happened and it lived, because she’d just set her heart on having at least one girl and one boy. I said I hoped so too because she seemed to want it that way. Then we got to talking about names, and we got as close to an argument again as we ever got, because I suggested several perfectly lovely names, and she said they were all too fancy and besides they didn’t mean anything in our or Pilsbury’s family. I pointed out to her that names had to start somewhere and she might as well start a new one in our family, but she said the old ones were good enough for her. Lo and behold, I finally got it out of her that she was determined to name this one Aster if it was a girl as she hoped it would be. I just gave up. I knew that no matter what the child looked like I’d always have to think of Aunt Aster when I spoke its name, and that’s a crime to commit against any child. Not, as I’ve said before and as I continually feel, not that Aunt Aster is so bad. She’s just an old maid, and nobody could have had a duller life than she. When I told Sister this, she got mad and said, Nobody’s ever done a thing for Aunt Aster, and I know it’d make her feel good if I named my child after her, so I’m going to and nothing you can say will stop me.

I got mad too and said pretty sly, You wouldn’t be thinking maybe about Aunt Aster’s money, would you? Because it’s a well-known fact that Aunt Aster is worth every bit of thirty thousand dollars, not including the house in Pluma and the farm outside a Negro family runs for her.

Well, you never saw anything like it. Sister wouldn’t speak a word to me the rest of that day. And when Pil came home he asked her what was the matter and she wouldn’t tell him. If she wasn’t, I certainly wasn’t either, so things went on that way during supper and after supper too. Poor Pil sat and read his newspaper and then went off to bed. Sister washed the dishes and I dried, neither of us speaking a word, but when Deen kept bothering her about something, I forget what, she gave him a good slap and he went off squalling to Pil.

I didn’t really care, but after all it was a visit, so next morning I said to Sister, I apologize. She didn’t answer. She turned her head away, and first thing I knew, I heard her cracking pecans in the kitchen for a pie. I went off and made up the bed in my room and swept and then took the broom and started cleaning up the front porch where Deen had been eating peanuts and leaving shells the day before. I do hate a messy child, and while I was sweeping Deen came out on the porch and kept getting in my way. Wanting to help, he called it. I told him to go on off and play by himself like a good boy but he wouldn’t. He kept hugging around my leg. I’d push him away and keep sweeping and he’d come back, and finally my left stocking came down and just fell, garter and all around my ankle. I swung the broom at him, but he was too quick for me and all of a sudden I heard somebody laughing and looked up in horror to see it was a young man. I could have just sunk through the floor. When I say young man, I don’t mean boy, I mean grown man, just not old. And here was this young man, and one of the best-looking young men I’d ever seen in my life and me with a broom in my hand and one stocking down around my ankle. He started up the steps, but he didn’t come all the way when he saw how obviously upset I was. He stopped laughing quick too. You must be Pil’s sister-in-law from Pluma, he said and before I could make an answer he went on, I’d be much obliged if you’d tell Pil’s wife I’d like to speak with her a minute? Without saying a word I turned and ran into the house and told Sister. When she went out on the porch I stood just behind the door where he couldn’t see me and fixed my stocking.

Sister said, Good morning, Mr. Sayre, won’t you come in? in such a way I knew he was a person of some importance.

Thank you, Mrs. Jackson, but I won’t. I’m on my way to the house, and then I got to go to town to see about a load of potatoes. Pil asked me to stop in and say he might be a little late for dinner. He’s got an order of meat due and he doesn’t want to leave til it gets in.

Would he like for me to send his dinner to him?

No, he said don’t do that, he’ll be along, he just doesn’t know when.

All right. Much obliged for telling me, Mr. Sayre.

Good day, ma’am.

When Sister came in the door, I was so anxious to ask her about this man I forgot all about our not speaking to one another. Who was that, Sister?

She looked at me, surprised. That’s Mr. Carl Sayre. You mean you never saw him before? You been in the store…

That’s the Carl Sayre owns the store?

Now, you heard Pilsbury and me speak of him any number of times.

You never said he was good-looking and young. I just naturally thought he was an old man.

Sister said, I never thought about his being good-looking or not.

And I bet she hadn’t. That’s just the way she is. I wanted to shake her. Why didn’t you ever make a point of introducing us? I’ve asked you time and again if you knew any eligible young men.

Oh, you’re being silly. I can’t stop in the middle of the room and talk all day. I got to finish those pecans.

I followed her back to the kitchen and sat down with her and helped her shell pecans.

Now I don’t know when to put on the spareribs to cook. I do hate for Pilsbury to get off schedule.

What about this Carl Sayre, is he married? I asked.

I don’t know how that concerns you one way or another, but if you must know, he isn’t. He just came home from the war. Didn’t get to France. He lived with his ma for I don’t know how long in that big gray house with the green shutters on India Street. The store was hers. He ran it. She died, now it’s his and everything else she had. Pilsbury takes care of the meat department for Mr. Sayre and a Mr. Rothman is sort of in charge of the grocery side, that is, when Mr. Sayre isn’t there. Of course, he’s boss of the whole thing. Though Mr. Rothman did kind of run it for him while he was away to war. His ma died six months ago, just before he came home. There, will that hold you?

I paid absolutely no attention to her tart tone. He’s not married. Does he live by himself?

Well, of course. He don’t keep house if that’s what you mean. There’s this colored woman worked for his ma and she sees to the house. I’ve never been inside. Lilian, if you want to do something, put on six big potatoes to boil and let me finish these pecans, you’re breaking them all up.

I could hardly wait til dinner was over, and that took forever, because Sister has very determined ideas about nobody eating before the man of the house does. So we waited… and waited… and waited. It must have been three-thirty before Pil had come and gone and the dishes were done and Sister got off to her room to try to make Deen take a nap.

While she was busy with Deen, who was cross and whimpering, I put on a shawl and called through two rooms to her: I’m going for a little walk, Sister.

On a gray day like today? she said.

Then Deen let out a holler and neither one of us said anything else. I was out the door and gone before she could quiet him. It was the first time in his life he’d ever been any use to me. Gray day or not, I didn’t care. It was windy and dry brown leaves from the trees scratched across the sidewalk and collected in the gutters. There was a Negro woman on the corner mailing a letter and I asked her, Can you tell me, Auntie, which way is India Street? She told me, and on I went, remembering Carl Sayre’s face every step of the way. It was the face of an actor or an interesting foreigner, not a man who runs a grocery store. The eyes were dark and deep. He had a black mustache and heavy black eyebrows, the eyes looking deeper because of the brows, and the lips redder because of the black mustache. His nose was big… not nigger-big, but thin and proud, and his jaws were lean.

Sister had said that big gray house with the green shutters on India Street, and there was no mistaking it. It was set back from the sidewalk, two stories with little attic windows above that. There was a bird bath on one side, and colored bottles and shells along the walkway to the front porch which curved and hugged around two complete sides. Three big oak trees stood in the yard, and that porch brought to mind lots of people or a big family all in rocking chairs on a summer night, rocking back and forth with the wind in the oak trees.

Of course, I didn’t expect to see Carl Sayre. I didn’t want to. But ever since he’d come to Sister’s that morning I’d felt we were destined and I’d been filled with this curiosity about him which naturally I couldn’t indulge with Sister, her being so unromantic and pregnant to boot. But I wanted to know all about him, so I had to come and see where he lived. Here it was. I stood there musing to myself: every day he walks up and down this pathway and crosses the porch, and maybe slams the door if he’s in a hurry, so that the stained-glass panes shake.

Then I noticed a Negro woman sweeping the porch. She had on a red-checkered gingham dress and some kind of rag tied on her head. That dress was so tight (somebody’s hand-me-down, I guess) it made her big titties poke out in front so she didn’t even look respectable. She noticed me standing there finally and stopped sweeping and just stared, big as you please.

To be pleasant I called out to her, This where Mr. Sayre lives, Auntie?

Her lips poked out and she grunted. Don’t call me Auntie. You and I no kin I knows of. With that she went back to sweeping. I wanted to march right up those steps and give her a good pop. I call all Negro women Auntie just as a form of politeness, whether they’re young or old, but when one of them is biggety to me after I’ve tried to be nice, I’m liable to forget I’m a lady.

I stood there a minute trying to think of something to say that would put her in her place and finally all I could think of was, You watch your manners, girl, because the day may come you’ll be working for me.

She pretended elaborately it was no more to her than if a fly had buzzed. She didn’t even stop sweeping but said over her shoulder: Don be loiterin.

I remembered I was a lady just in time to stop myself from saying more. I simply drew myself up, shook out my shawl, gave her such a look as she wouldn’t soon forget, and walked away.

I didn’t trust myself to speak of any of this to Sister when I got home. After supper Pil settled himself in front of the fireplace like an old dog. Sister and I finished up in the kitchen and I helped her get Deen ready for bed. She was trying to teach him the Lord’s Prayer, but every time he got as far as on earth as it is in heaven, why off he’d go in a fit of giggles. When a child laughs about nothing, it’s funny sometimes, and sometimes it’s exasperating. We had gone through the stage of thinking it was funny, and Sister was getting that mean look around her mouth. Anyway, I knew her mind was on Deen, and it was a safe time to bring it up.

I said, While I was walking this afternoon, I happened to pass Mr. Sayre’s house on India Street.

You did? Deen, get back on your knees, and if you laugh this time, I’ll let the Booga-man get you.

There was a Nigra girl on the porch sweeping.

That was Clara. Now start, Deen. ‘Our Father’…

That was in October 1919. Carl Sayre paid evening calls twice before I left Bloomingdale. Each time without announcing his intention to do so he just showed up after supper. There was nothing in his first visit to indicate his particular reason for coming, though it was plain as day to me, but he