I couldn’t, wouldn’t waste another minute dreading wash day and ironing the white sheets. Maybe it was the short time I had spent with Cecile and the Black Panthers last summer. It was harder to do what I was asked without speaking up when I didn’t want to do it at all. Maybe it was how Mrs. half-jokingly said, “The slaves have been freed, Delphine,” whenever she saw me doing things the long, hard way. The way Big Ma had taught me. Maybe it was three years’ worth of dread. I could feel things bubbling up inside of me. Besides, I saw no reason why anyone should have to starch and iron white or any other colored sheets when there were such things as wrinkle-free permanent-press sheets. I remembered how Big Ma’s face turned to wet marble, her lips grim and pursed as she starched and pressed, one iron working hard up and down a sheet while the second iron sat in flames atop the stove, waiting.
I loved Ma Charles as much as I could love her without having been around her much, but I couldn’t slave over those white sheets. There was something about those sheets that made me grown enough to take the whipping I had coming to me for the disrespect I was about to show my grandmother and great-grandmother.
The sun was at its highest point, which meant the sheets were dry. I made up my mind. I didn’t have to be told to go and pull the sheets down off of the line. I took them down, folded them in tight rectangular squares, and brought them inside, where my grandmother, the ironing board, and two flaming irons waited for me.
I didn’t have a “Free Huey!” chant to keep me brave and moving forward. Just This is the last whipping. The last whipping. I imagined a mob of Black Panthers saying it with me.
Deep inside I knew it wasn’t the whipping I dreaded. Big Ma couldn’t really hurt me with a switch or a belt. I had already felt the sting of a belt-whipping and carried each blow in my memory. And then, that was it. Once I knew how bad each blow could be I felt my skin toughen. I could take it and maybe not even sniffle. It was how Big Ma would look at me afterward that made me queasy and feel the regret. I had to speak up for myself.
“I got you started with the starch and both irons are hot. Only way to press cotton is with a hot iron.” She was already sweating.
“Big Ma . . .” Everything sounded good and strong in my head. But my mouth struggled to open.
“Not too much lavender and don’t let it burn. Go on.”
“Big Ma . . .”
“What, child?”
“Ma’am.”
“A mercy, Delphine. What is it?”
“I don’t iron sheets at home. Not even Pa’s shirts.”
Big Ma stopped what she was doing. “Is that so?”
The last whipping. This is the last whipping.
I still couldn’t look her in the eye.
Big Ma’s right hand found her hip.
The last whipping. The last, last one.
“You might as well speak up. Your mouth is already open.”
“Yes, Big Ma.”
“The ruination of all things. The collapse and ruin of all things civil. I blame your mother. And your father. And that women’s-libber. And what they’re teaching and not teaching in school. I tell you, it’s all falling apart. Mark my words. Children will stop minding grown people and worse. Much worse. You’d be different if you grew up here like your cousin, and not up there.”
Instead of feeling the victory of standing up for myself, I felt tall, stupid, and worthless. Even worse when my grandmother shook the box of cornstarch into the spray bottle, spilling clumps of white powder on the floor. I bent to scoop some up but she stopped me.
“You had your say, now go on,” she told me. “Take your sisters and git.”
“We don’t have nowhere—”
“One don’t eat chicken or ham. One don’t forgive. The other don’t iron. Just git, Delphine. Take your sisters and git.”