Trina Sims waited at the train station. She leaned back easy on the hood of her car. She crossed her legs at the ankles and folded her long brown arms softly at the waist. She felt good standing out in the sun, even if she wasn’t sure how long she would have to wait. It had stormed hard the night before. The morning air was clear and clean. She took in a long deep breath and pushed her new sunglasses up tight to her face.
There were other women waiting in the parking lot, but there were no other black women. Some of the people were waiting by themselves, just like Trina, but none of them had on sunglasses. Trina’s glasses were round and shiny with somebody’s long fancy name written out on the side of them.
She didn’t know or care whose name it was as long as it was there. The name on the side meant they were not just regular sunglasses. That was important to Trina, who didn’t see herself as just regular either.
Trina was a brown-skinned woman with short pressed hair. All around her eyes this morning she looked like a movie star or at least somebody who had a good secret to tell. She smiled when she thought about herself as somebody with a secret. Thinking this gave her private space away from everybody else in the world. She liked having a little room so she could make good decisions and think for herself. She liked wearing her sunglasses, and she didn’t care what anybody else thought.
The 9:25 train was late this morning, and lots of people were waiting behind the wire fence for any sight of it. Sometimes she could feel them looking at her. Sometimes she thought she could feel them trying to figure out who she was and where she was from. Nobody had ever seen a black woman with such fancy sunglasses around Bluebell, Kentucky. Trina just kept her eyes in front of her and decided to let them go on and wonder who she was. She wasn’t trying to move into the neighborhood. She was only visiting. Trina just kept staring at the spot where she hoped the train might soon come to a stop.
Bluebell, Kentucky, was the only train station for a hundred miles, so strangers passed through all the time. Some folks sat inside their cars and waited. Other folks were outside, leaning back, feeling good in the sun, just like Trina. Nobody spoke to her while she stood there. But she could hear them talking to each other about how a hot April meant a hot summer. It was good and warm, just like Trina liked it. It was perfect weather for sunglasses.
Standing out in the sun and waiting on a train that was bringing a stranger made Trina think about how everything was about to change in her life. How she was quitting her job at Moore Farm and going into business for herself. It was an old dream that she hoped was about to come true. The classes she had been taking at the county training school had given her the courage to finally do it. She didn’t know what the future would be. She only knew she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life doing what she had been doing for 10 long years. Here she was 29 years old and still helping grown people take care of their own lives. She didn’t want to reach 30 thinking the only thing she was good at was helping rich people count their money every day. The more she thought about it, the more she smiled to herself. Her own life could use a little help, and maybe she could start with her cigarette smoking habit.
She lifted a cigarette out of the pack that had been resting on the hood of the car. She lit it with the silver lighter that her fingers had been playing with inside her dress pocket. Her lips let the smoke go up, and the wind quickly took it behind her somewhere. Just as she looked down at her wrist to see what time it was, she finally heard the train coming.
Some of the children who had been playing in the parking lot ran toward the fence to see. They moved against the wire wall like a flock of small birds. They pushed their tiny feet and fingers through the holes and held on, hoping to see what they had only been able to hear so far. The train pulled to a stop right in front of them. They let go of the fence all at once and ran to the opening in the gate. Trina watched the gate wave a little from their weight and tremble finally to a stop.
One by one, the travelers climbed down out of the train door. In their arms they had bags and sacks of different things. A small crowd of waving people moved toward the gate to greet them, but Trina never left the hood of her car. From her pocket she pulled a picture of the woman she had been sent to pick up, looked at it quickly, then put it back. Behind her dark sunglasses, her soft brown eyes bounced from one face to the next looking for the right one. Then a young white woman with thick red hair pulled back in a ponytail got off the train. Trina squinted her eyes and fixed her glasses back up tight on her nose. The woman walked down the steps and came closer. Trina could see she was holding a piece of yellow paper tight in her hand. She was carrying a suitcase and wearing a yellow sweater that was too warm for the hot day. The woman was the last one off the train.
Before the red-haired woman walked all the way through the gate, she slowed down and turned around a few times. She stopped and looked at the few cars that were left outside the gate. Then she walked toward Trina. Trina dropped her cigarette on the ground, blew out the last of the smoke, and bit her lip. Without looking she moved her foot around on the ground, hoping to step on the butt and put it out. She didn’t turn around yet, even when she heard the young woman moving around right behind her.
“Hey! Hey you! Hey! I’m here for the job at Moore Farm. Did Miss Dorothy Moore send you to pick me up?”
Trina, in her fancy sunglasses, slowly got up and turned around. “Are you Jennifer Bryan?”
The woman acted like she wasn’t sure how she felt about Trina saying her name. “Yeah . . . Jenny, Jenny Bryan, yeah, that’s me. But they told me to expect a man named Fuller. Dorothy Moore said somebody named Fuller was coming to get me. She said to be sure and ask for him.”
Trina put her hands up in the air. “Easy, Lady. Just calm yourself down. I don’t usually do the pick-ups. Fuller was coming, but one of the new horses got out this morning. He got changed to fixing fences, and I got the call to come get you.”
“You work for Miss Moore?” the woman questioned Trina.
“I do. But not for long.” Trina moved to the back of the car and opened the trunk. “My name’s Trina, Trina Sims. I’m the one leaving the farm. It’s my job Miss Moore wants to hire you for. How you do?” Trina held out a hand to shake.
But Jenny Bryan held on tight to her bag with both hands. She looked away from the black woman standing in front of her holding out her hand. Then she looked around at the almost empty train yard. Trina dropped her hand quickly and turned away. She moved some old clothes from one side of the trunk to the other side. Her voice had completely changed the next time she spoke.
“Miss Moore said that the place where you come from, Stone Creek, only has white people living there. Is that true?”
The woman with red hair looked at Trina. “Yeah, that’s true. But that don’t mean nothing.” She laughed nervously.
“Daddy used to say ‘everything means something.’” Trina waited before she went on. “In fact, Miss Moore said your town won’t let black folks live there. Is that true?”
“Yes, that’s true. But. . .”
“She said you might be nervous about me coming to pick you up. You’re not nervous are you?”
Jenny didn’t answer her right away. She laughed out of the corner of her mouth. “Nervous! I ain’t nervous. It’s just been a long trip, and I didn’t know it was you coming, that’s all.”
“Look, Jennifer, Jenny Bryan, or whatever your name is, before we get in this car and move an inch, let’s you and me get this out right now. I don’t bite my tongue. I say what’s on my mind.” Trina stood up real straight. “Just because you ain’t never been around black folks does not mean you got to learn how to think and talk all over again. We didn’t fall out the sky like something from another planet. God put us all here at the same time in the same way. Black folks drive cars and eat grits just like other folks, and sometimes we even wear big fancy sunglasses, if we want to.” Trina pushed her glasses back tight on her face.
The woman with the ponytail looked away, then back at Trina. Trina mumbled something to herself and left the trunk open. She went back around to the driver’s side of the car and got in. She turned the key to wake up the engine. The old Buick started up easy with a tiny puff of gray smoke. Trina pushed the pedal down a few times until the engine sound was smooth and strong. She lit another cigarette and watched in the mirror as Jenny Bryan threw her things in the trunk, closed it, and got in slowly beside her.
The 1976 baby blue Wildcat pulled out of the parking lot and started out on the highway toward Taylorsville. The car had been a gift from Trina’s brother, Melvin, who was always taking something old and rusty and making it pretty again. He was the one who gave her the sunglasses too. He said the glasses and the car went together like a hand and a glove. He was the one who had told her that the glasses made her look like she was somebody from somewhere else, which meant she had lots of secrets to tell.
Jenny kept looking over at Trina. She probably wanted to ask her whose fancy car this was because she knew it couldn’t be hers, Trina thought.
“Uh, Trina,” Jenny Bryan said. “I know I was asking you a lot of questions back there. I didn’t mean nothing by it. You gotta be careful these days, that’s all. It didn’t help any that you got those big old sunglasses on. I can hardly see your face. I didn’t know who you were. You could have been a murderer or crazy or anything.”
Trina’s voice didn’t wait her turn. “You come in here wearing that big yellow sweater hot as it is, and I don’t ask you why. But maybe that should make me scared of you. Maybe you’re hiding something up your sleeves from me.” Jenny touched the sleeves of her sweater and pulled them down a little more.
Trina kept on talking. “A big yellow sweater on as hot a day as this. And anyway you still don’t know who I might be. Anybody could be a murderer or crazy. That’s not the point. The point is you come riding in here from a place where being me is against the law. And even though I knew your name, it still wasn’t enough. The real point is you coming from a place where nobody like me can lay a head down at night across town from somebody like you and just plain go to sleep like everybody else. But somebody like me has to stop what I’m doing just to be sent to pick you up from the train station. Just because you decide to leave your fantasy world and come out here looking for a job in the real world.”
Jenny had turned away and was trying her best to leave the car by way of her eyes. But Trina’s hard words kept bringing her back inside of herself. “Come on, now. Let’s be real about it. The reason you didn’t want to get in my car was because I’m black. It didn’t have anything to do with my sunglasses. I wasn’t born this morning.” Trina held the wheel tightly with both hands as they went around a curve too fast. The tires made a loud screeching sound, and she slowed down and apologized.
“I’m sorry. I don’t usually drive so bad. Now I bet you really think I’m trying to kill you don’t you?”
“No, Trina, listen, I’m sorry. You’re right about what happened back there.” Jenny Bryan smiled and talked nervously. “I didn’t make the rules in Stone Creek, Trina. They were there when I got there twenty-five years ago. I guess I was just kinda born right in the middle of them. I never really thought about them too much. Never had to.”
“There’s an old rule that says, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That’s a good rule, Jenny Bryan. Those things y’all got in Stone Creek are some kind of man-made law, something made by one man to keep another man in his place. A golden rule is way bigger and more important than any law. At least that’s what my mama taught me. She said a rule comes from God, and a law is what is man-made, and there’s plenty of corrupt men walking around. So you might not have made the laws in Stone Creek, Jenny Bryan, but it seems to me you agree with them because you stay there and live by them. Don’t y’all know what year it is? Ain’t y’all heard of Martin Luther King Jr., or at least Oprah Winfrey? Everybody, everywhere, at least has heard of Oprah.”
Jenny hesitated before she answered, and Trina started laughing out loud.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I’m laughing at you, girl. Come on now. You know good and well that everyday at three o’clock every white man, woman, and child with a television set in Stone Creek runs home and pulls the curtains and locks their door and watches Oprah in secret.”
Jenny let out a little laugh but not as big as Trina’s. Trina beat the steering wheel around the whole curve of the mountain. Slowly she got herself back together.
Trina shook her head and pushed her glasses back up on her face. Suddenly she looked hurt and a little lost. “You know what, Jenny Bryan? There are some things I hope I never understand, like how there happens to be, in this day and age, a big old town full of people who hate me just because God gave me the brown skin out his closet and gave them the white one. That’s the saddest thing I ever heard of in my whole life.”
Jenny’s eyes went back outside through the window. And at that same moment Trina began to whistle, low at first, but then sometimes she would blow strong and pretty just like her Uncle Jack had taught her to do when she was a little girl. She always whistled when she needed to work something out in her head. A few more miles down the road and they both leaned back into the seat and relaxed a little. Trina seemed to forget about her sadness. She was tapping her finger against the steering wheel.
“It takes too much energy to stay mad. You ever notice that, Jenny Bryan?”
“Never really noticed that, not really, but I think you’re right.”
When Trina’s eyes saw the sign with one arrow pointing to “Taylorsville 50 miles” and the other pointing the opposite direction to “Luketown 10 miles,” she suddenly got an idea.
At the first railroad crossing Trina made a quick right off the paved road onto a dirt one. The speed of the turn made Jenny jump. She had noticed the sign and how Taylorsville was pointing in the other direction. Her voice was too loud again.
“This ain’t the way, Trina.” Jenny looked afraid. “Where—where are we going?”
Trina smiled and patted the steering wheel. “Melvin, that’s my brother, he said when I wear these glasses I look like I might be from some kind of secret place. I love when he says that about me. Imagine that, me, little old plain me, from a secret place.” Trina smiled again. “Do you think he might be right, Jenny Bryan?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I know he’s right. I know it.” Trina took in a deep breath. “We are going to the place where I was born, Luketown, U.S.A. I need to pick something up from Mama on the way back to Taylorsville. You don’t mind do you? You ever heard of Luketown, Jenny Bryan?”
Trina smiled again. “Well, I think it’s time you see Luketown. Something tells me it’s a lot like Stone Creek.”
The two women looked at each other and then turned away. Trina was smiling and Jenny was not.
The old Buick took the last curve. Jenny saw “Luketown Population 196” painted on a wooden sign that sat on the side of the road. The end of the curve put them on a wide dirt street lined on both sides with tiny shotgun houses all painted ice-cream colors. The yards were full of green plants and chairs. Cars of all shapes and sizes ran from one end of the long street to the other. It was quiet, and people were everywhere.
“Welcome to Luketown, Jenny Bryan. The first and only all-black town in the great tobacco state of Kentucky. Sweet home to black folks for over one hundred dark and lovely years.”
Jenny Bryan wasn’t smiling. In fact she was holding onto the car seat with both hands. Her fingernails were cutting into the plastic. She was looking all around her now. Her eyes seemed scared of whatever was moving around in her head, more than what was coming and going on the quiet, tree-lined main street of Luketown, Kentucky.
Trina drove up the old dirt street about two blocks before pulling the car over to the side. She stopped right next to a tiny wooden shop. The sign outside read “Queen Ida’s Hair-Doing House of Waves.” A dog was barking and running a cat across somebody’s yard. “I won’t be long, Jenny Bryan. We’ll be back on our way before you can say Stone Creek five times.”
Trina cut the engine and made her quick steps up to the front door. She waved and spoke to people she knew. Before she went inside she looked back one more time to check on Jenny Bryan. She knew it was the first time the red-headed woman from Stone Creek had ever been to an all-black town. Trina thought she might be a little scared at first, but she knew that sitting there would be just the chair Jenny needed to see the secrets of Trina’s most favorite place in the world.
Sitting in the car alone, Jenny felt her heart pounding loud like a drum. As she waited, she looked around to try and see what kind of a place this was, this place that a woman she had never seen before had brought her to.
Up and down the long street black people were everywhere doing something. She had never seen so many black people before. She had never been away from Stone Creek before this morning. She had grown up hearing stories from her grandpa and her own daddy about how proud they were of their all-white town. They told Jenny that back in 1907, white men had killed or run every black man, woman, and child out of Stone Creek. Her daddy told her that they planned to keep it that way. Jenny sat there now wondering for the first time if that was a true story.
Jenny had never thought about it much until now. She had never felt sorry for black people, but she didn’t hate them like her daddy did either. She decided that the truth was that she had never felt anything at all for black people. Trina was the first black woman she had ever met face to face. Up until now, that’s just the way things had been in her life, and she had accepted that way without question.
And here it was just the first few hours after leaving home, and Jenny was already thinking about things she had never thought about before in her whole 25 years of life. She pushed her long, yellow sweater sleeves up a little. The big blue bruises that were inside her arms were still there. She took a deep breath and pulled the sleeves back down quickly. She knew how long it usually took before they disappeared. She just hated that they were there this weekend while she was away.
This morning as the train had moved away from Stone Creek, Jenny knew she had to leave it for good. She wanted to get this new job and start a new life. She was scared but not scared enough to give up her idea of leaving Stone Creek. She just had to make sure that Taylorsville was the right place.
There in the car waiting on Trina, Jenny could hear the different voices of her family running through her mind clear as spring water. Her daddy had always told her black people were the worst of all people. She didn’t think she believed that, but for some reason all she could hear right then was his voice saying that. Jenny remembered the time when he had told her in a low serious voice that black people weren’t even really human like other folks.
She put her finger in her ear and tried to shake him out of her mind. As Jenny remembered some more of what he had said, she didn’t feel so safe. She rolled her open window up tight all the way. But at the same time her eyes couldn’t help moving down the whole wide street around her. She looked curiously at everything there was to see.
The big oak and maple trees that sat on both sides of the street were just getting their new leaves and starting to bloom. Black people of all ages were sitting out under the trees or leaning over their fences. They were talking and laughing with each other from one porch to another porch, just like people did back in Stone Creek.
One old woman was sweeping her yard the old way, with a hand-tied broom, just like Jenny’s grandmother used to do. She hadn’t thought about that broom in a long time. And there was an old man with an old cap and a long beard. He was popping open the top of a beer can and maybe cussing about the wars he had fought in. There were other people coming and going, walking and just plain living. Jenny’s heart began to relax a little.
From the front seat of Trina’s car and for the first time in her life, Jenny didn’t see anything so different about black people and white people. She leaned back in her seat and thought about what she was finally learning for herself and for her new life, with her own two eyes. She tried to understand what she was seeing because everything she had ever been told about black people did not fit this picture in front of her. She was still scared, but what she saw began to make her think just a little bit different than the way she woke up thinking that morning.
Slowly Jenny’s hand went to the window crank. She turned it down just enough to hear the air moving outside. With the sweet air came more of the sounds of life. There were young women out in front of some of the houses now. They were all shades of black and brown. Some had their hands down in the dirt, pulling up weeds and planting things. Some were leaning and talking to the other ones. Trina was so right. It could have been Stone Creek, Kentucky, except for the skin color. The work that was being done, the talk and laughter you could hear, the movements here and there were all a language Jenny easily understood.
There was a church down on the corner and on the other side of the street a place called the Fish Basket that had a bright red sign out front. The smell of catfish suddenly came through Jenny’s window. The hot fish smell made her remember how hungry she was. She thought about how good a plate of hot catfish and cornbread would be.
A rubber kick ball hit the side window, and Jenny covered her head with her arms, holding her breath. Two laughing boys no more than eight or nine had bumped into the car while playing. They had not seen her sitting inside. All Jenny could hear after that was one man’s strong clear voice up the street giving them two seconds to get their butts on home! They saw Jenny as they ran by and yelled out together “Sorry, Lady!” before they took off running up the street after the bouncing ball toward the loud voice.
Then finally the door to the little shop opened. Trina stepped out with a cardboard box of tiny jars in one arm and bags of something else in the other. An older woman all dressed up and wearing a freshly starched apron was holding the door open for her and waving at Jenny like an old friend. “The Queen” was sewn in big letters all across the top of her apron. Jenny slowly raised her hand and waved back.
Trina put her packages in the back before climbing in up front. Jenny had somehow moved to the middle of the car seat, trying to see everything all the way up the street. The shoulders of the two women brushed each other, and Jenny moved quickly back over to her side.
“Oops, sorry. Excuse me,” she said.
“Well, now, how did you get way over here in the middle? There must have really been something to look at out on Luketown Street while I was gone.” Trina smiled as soon as she sat down and started talking fast.
“That was my mama who came out on the porch. I mean, that was my new business partner.” Trina laughed. “You know when I was a little girl she made everything we ever needed. Everything. Even the hair grease we used, she made that too. And what she made always seemed to work better on our hair than anything we ever bought in the grocery store. They didn’t make things for black people back then. As far back as I can remember she has made jars and jars of it for other ladies too. Everybody has been telling her for years, Ida, you ought to go into the hair oil business.’ So that’s what we are finally going to do. That’s why I took that business class, and that’s why I’m quitting my job with Miss Moore, and that’s how you got here. Because me and Mama are going into the hair oil business.”
Jenny’s eyes got wide and excited. “You—you’re going into business with your Mama? You’re not gonna have a boss or a time clock no more?” Jenny sighed. “I could never do that. It took me all of these years just to get up enough nerve to leave home for the first time.”
It was as if both women had forgotten about the bad air that had been between them when they first met.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Little Sister. You’ll be fine. You got to start somewhere. Little steps lead to big steps. Remember that, Jenny Bryan. It’s always scary when you step out and do something new. Don’t you worry about that. Just remember to step. That’s the most important thing.” Trina started up the car. But before she moved it she handed Jenny one of the bags from the back seat. “Do white folks in Stone Creek eat catfish?”
Jenny could smell the hot fish in her hands. It was hard not to let on how hungry she was.
“Oh, you do, do you? You mean to tell me that Stone Creek got something in common with old Luketown? Well, I declare. I wasn’t sure, but I sent James Jr. to the store for some anyway. All I know is no human being can come to Luketown and not have some of Mr. Ben’s catfish. Once you have some fish you’ll be going back to Stone Creek talking about how a black man named Mr. Ben and his fish sandwich saved your life.” Jenny suddenly noticed that Trina had taken her glasses off. She could see that she had laughing brown eyes just like the lady who had stood waving in the doorway at her.
After taking a quick bite of her sandwich Trina Sims turned the car away from Luketown, U.S.A. She blew the horn two long times before she was out of sight and then whispered like there was still one more secret to tell. “That’s how we say good-bye in Luketown, Jenny Bryan. The first one says, ‘all right now, I’m going on,’ and the second one says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back.’”
Trina looked over at her passenger, who wasn’t really listening, who was instead biting down hard on her top lip and a million miles away in thought. “Trina, you know what? Right before I left Stone Creek, we had a big meeting in town. I didn’t think much about it then. We always have a lot of meetings. But it sure is on my mind now.”
“Why you thinking about some old meeting when there’s all this catfish to get to know?”
“Because sometimes you have to get away from things in order to see them clear as a bell. I guess because you don’t always know when you are going to see something for what it really is.” Jenny looked at Trina. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“Makes plenty sense.”
Jenny was talking now, talking strong and clear like Trina had not heard her talk before. She kept talking. “Sometimes when you live in a small place everybody thinks they have to say and do just like everybody else. In a little place like Stone Creek it’s really scary to give birth to your own thinking. People can be so mean sometimes if you disagree with them. It’s already so lonely way out there in the country. And it can get even worse if you think of things for yourself. Most people I know don’t want to be left standing out there by themselves. Even when they know that’s the right place to be. So most folks just go along with everything, because that’s what everybody else is doing.”
“Jenny Bryan, girl, I don’t know who is doing all that deep thinking over there, you or that catfish, but what you saying got a whole lot of truth swimming around in it.”
After some moments of quiet, Jenny’s nose started moving around in the air.
“I keep smelling coconut from somewhere. Do you smell it?”
“It’s either Mama’s hair grease or it’s that coconut creme pie she sent by me for you. The Queen puts a little coconut in anything walking or sitting. She won’t tell me what else she puts in the hair oil, but I know the coconut is there. I’m taking my first load to Taylorsville today to sell after I get you settled in.” Trina laughed, and both of the women let the quiet settle all around the car.
“Luketown ain’t no secret place, Trina, but I swear y’all got some good secrets.”
“Oh, we got a few.” Trina smiled. “Some of our secrets, like Mama’s hair oil recipe, I think we’ll just keep to ourselves. But some of the other ones, some of the ones like you saw today when you were sitting there by yourself, we don’t mind you telling the folks in Stone Creek or anywhere else about. Because some secrets really are meant to be told. They have to be.”
The two women looked at each other and then looked away. Trina pulled back on the paved highway headed for Taylorsville, where maybe both she and Jenny were starting new lives.