Vonetta and Fern didn’t stay mad at each other for long. They never did. Even Vonetta and I got back to the way things were. Not completely, but enough. We didn’t really talk about things.
Still, I braced myself to answer their questions about the baby, but no one asked me anything. Vonetta didn’t say a word about it, but Fern went to Big Ma to ask why Pa and Mrs. needed to have a baby. Big Ma said, “Never you mind. That’s your father and his wife’s business,” and then she sent Fern out to the coop with a pan of chicken feed. Fern mistook the chickens clamoring about her for their need to talk, so whatever she had to say about the new baby she said to the chickens.
There was nothing I could do to stop Miss Trotter from telling her history to Vonetta, or to stop Vonetta from telling Ma Charles. Even when Miss Trotter got the best of Ma Charles there was a gleam in Ma Charles’s eyes when Vonetta “repaid” her with Miss Trotter’s words. One sister said her father knew every flower, leaf, and root, while the other said he never messed with that stuff, but instead went to the colored doctor and dentist in town and bought penny candy for her. They might as well still be in Miss Rice’s classroom pulling each other’s pigtails.
The dueling between the two sisters went on and on, from one side of the creek and, thanks to Vonetta, back over to the other side of the creek. It seemed the sisters shared their father equally but they were determined to prove which one was the right and true daughter of Slim Jim Trotter. Vonetta was sure to soak up every word, every expression, to reenact later.
Miss Trotter began the latest round of family history and pigtail-pulling. “So, you see, dear one,” she said sweetly, “it was her mama’s fault the law went looking for my father on the charge of bigamy.”
Fern’s eyes popped when she heard the new word. Bigamy. I’d have to tell her later it wasn’t the singsong word she might have imagined.
“Found him and jailed him. Took his government work papers. They were going to send him to the Creek Nation in Oklahoma. State capital is Oklahoma City.” She threw that one in like she was back in Miss Rice’s classroom. “Send him back to the reservation. But first there would be a trial at the courthouse in town.” She stopped to chuckle. “What they didn’t know was my father walked between worlds. No jail could hold him. And he became a crow and flew between the bars and flew to me and became himself and said, ‘Chickweed’—that’s what he called me. ‘Chickweed.’” Vonetta nodded like Miss Trotter did. “‘Papa’s gotta fly away. But I’ll come back to you, my chickweed. I’ll come back.’”
When we asked Miss Trotter if he came back she said no, and Vonetta matched her sorrow when she retold it to Ma Charles. “Never did.”
“Hmp,” Ma Charles said at the end of Vonetta’s retelling. “Is that what she told you? Hmp.”
“Ma, don’t start,” Big Ma said.
Ma Charles waved her away. “Hush, girl. If someone tells it, I’ll tell it. I have a right.”
“Right on,” Fern said.
“That’s right,” Ma Charles agreed. “Now hear this—especially you,” she said to Little Miss Ethel Waters. “My father was a God-fearing colored man. He didn’t turn into a crow like some demon. No sir!”
“Ma, please,” our grandmother pleaded, but Ma Charles was determined to tell her family history, so Big Ma’s pleas turned to anger. “This is your doing,” Big Ma said to Vonetta. To me she said, “And you keep bringing them over the creek.”
I shrugged. “Nothing to do here. So we help milk the cows.”
“Nothing to do?” Big Ma repeated. “Is that so? Well, I thought I’d let you have the vacation your Pa and stepmother wanted for you. There’s plenty of ironing if you’re bored. Teach you what wash day is all about.”
But Ma Charles wanted her say and told our grandmother to hush and gave her side of the story.
“My papa didn’t turn into a crow. He knew what these colored trials were for. Entertainment! White folk would get wind of colored trials and would come into town dressed like they were going to the theater with President Lincoln and fill all the seats in the courthouse. The coloreds were allowed to sit up in the balcony or in the back if they were a footman or maid. And the county attorney would ask questions in such a way as to encourage the colored person in the witness box to roll their eyes and shuck about and say words they didn’t know the meanings of. And the judge would allow the people in the gallery to laugh a bit before banging the gavel and calling for order. They couldn’t just take away my father’s work pass for good and put him on a train to the Oklahoma reservation. Not a half-colored man with two colored wives. No sir! They had to bring them all in court. Have the wives make grand Negro spectacles of themselves, calling each other ‘that over-the-creek woman.’
“I might not remember everything about my father, but I knew he stood taller than most men. So instead of making a mockery of my mother and me, and our holy union as a family under God, my father spared us from being the town joke. He even spared that over-the-creek woman. He waited until the sheriff went home and he unhinged the door to the jail cell with a pocket blade they didn’t bother to take from him. He unlocked the front door and made his way over to us. He kissed me on the head and told me to mind my ma. And I’m the one he called Chickweed. Me. Not her. And that was the last I saw of him. My papa.”
She took out her handkerchief from her bra and dabbed her eyes.
“See that?” Big Ma said. “No one needs to know this. You all just had to upset my mother.”
We didn’t hear the end of that for a week.
Still, Vonetta told Miss Trotter Ma Charles’s side. Using all of Ma Charles’s expressions. She even took a hankie she tied to the strap of her undershirt and cried into it.
To all that Miss Trotter said, “He called me Chickweed first.”
When Ma Charles had told her side of the story, Vonetta had no pity for her own great-grandmother’s tears. But when Miss Trotter’s tears fell, Vonetta placed her hand to her own lips, as if to tell herself to hush, to stop carrying their tales back and forth. I didn’t see it often, but I recognized a true look of sorrow and regret on my sister’s face, and for that alone, I was glad.