“My God, Opal. You are so beautiful,” Jimmy Earl whispered, stroking my face. No Bean. Just Opal. I sighed. Hearing him say my name like that, well, it was like no feeling I’d ever had before. It wasn’t quite light outside, and he and I were sitting underneath one of the peach trees in the orchard. The smell of ripe, juicy peaches filled the air. I was wearing a new dress. It was purple and yellow—my two favorite colors. For the first time ever, I wore my hair loose in soft curls cascading down my shoulders. Jimmy Earl was wearing the same suit he had worn to his Grandpa Muldoon’s funeral, but he had loosened his tie and taken off his jacket. I had never seen him look so relaxed.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. I tried looking around, but the fog was so thick, I could hardly see anything. I couldn’t even really see any of the houses in Colored Town. It was as if there was nothing and no one but me and Jimmy Earl. “You and I are friends, Jimmy Earl. This isn’t right.” I was trying to call up whatever reason was left in my mind. I thought about Cedric. I knew it would tear him up to see me carrying on like this, but I wanted Jimmy Earl’s kisses and his embrace.
He lowered his head and brushed his lips against mine. “This is completely right. I love you, Opal. I’ve loved you since we were little kids playing out in Gran’s yard together.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. His words were making it harder and harder for me to do the right thing. Part of me wanted to move away, but another part of me liked being right where I was. A gentle breeze tickled the sides of my face. I could smell rain in the air. Maybe this drought is about to be over, I thought.
Almost out of nowhere, Jimmy Earl took out a knife and began slicing one of the peaches. I hadn’t even seen him pick one. Everything about this moment felt magical. He fed the slice to me. I closed my eyes as the juice began to run down the corners of my mouth. Jimmy Earl began kissing my lips, softly licking away the peach juice, and all I could do was moan.
“Opal! Opal!”
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “It’s Granny.” I tried to open my eyes. I was panicked she was going to find us together, but it was like my eyes were glued shut.
“Opal,” I heard again, and this time I felt strong hands shaking me, almost roughly.
I opened my eyes and saw Granny standing over me.
“Girl, what you moaning and groaning about? You having a nightmare?” she asked.
I sat up in my bed, twisting and turning. I couldn’t believe what I just experienced was a dream. It felt so real, right down to the scent of Jimmy Earl’s cologne. I had never had a dream like that before. I felt ashamed. I couldn’t even look Granny in the face.
“I’m fine, Granny,” I mumbled.
“Well, you need to be getting up and getting ready for work,” she said. “Myron will be here in a minute. M.J. done already left to feed the animals up at his family’s farm. Today ain’t gone be a day for dragging around. Miss Peggy is having that quilting circle today with her church girls. We got to go on and get ready for them. They ain’t but a bunch of girls, but they always bring a big appetite with them.”
“Yessum,” I said. I watched Granny as she walked out of my room. I knew better than to stay in the bed daydreaming, so I got up and peeled off my sweaty gown. Granny had brought me some warm water in a basin, so I quickly washed myself off. I tried not to think about the dream as I put on my work clothes, but it was hard because it all still felt so real.
In just a few days I was going to turn eighteen, and I had only been kissed by one boy: Cedric Perkins. And up until that crazy dream I had about Jimmy Earl, Cedric was the only somebody I had dreamed about in a romantic way. Those dreams had been tame compared to this. In my dreams with Cedric, he and I had only shared chaste kisses. Nothing remotely like what I just experienced in my dream about Jimmy Earl. That dream took me to a place I wasn’t even sure I wanted to visit again. In that dream, Jimmy Earl was a man and I was very much a woman, and it scared me. Terribly. I told myself I never wanted to dream anything like that again. But I couldn’t stop myself from touching my lips. It felt like I could still feel the heat from his kisses.
I tied a fresh head scarf onto my head and walked out into the living room. The pallet I had made for M.J. was gone. Granny was still in her room, so I tried to be quiet as I fixed myself a plate of leftover biscuits and cheese. I wondered what my dream meant. Granny wasn’t very superstitious . . . She said God wasn’t the author of confusion. But she did think dreams were different. “Look at how Joseph interpreted dreams in the Bible. No, dreams are our way of understanding things,” she would say. But I knew without knowing that she wouldn’t take kindly to this dream. Times like this I wished I had a mama.
Granny was good for so many things, but she wasn’t comfortable talking about boys and love. Anytime I would bring up boys, she’d say, “They ain’t nothing but trouble. Trust God. He’ll send you a husband when the time comes.” But that response never satisfied me. I wanted to ask things like “How do you know when you’re in love?” or “What is that warm, funny feeling that passes over you when a boy touches or kisses you?”
I wanted to learn about courtship, and all Granny wanted to talk about was marriage, but even then, she remained vague. “A wife’s job is tedious at times, and often you feel like the mule out in the fields—but every now and then, a good husband will let you know that you are appreciated.” I never said anything, but that always sounded awful to me . . . to the point that I almost decided marriage wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to feel like an old mule. I wanted to be loved and cherished by the man I married. I wanted to be his partner. Not his workhorse.
I wanted what Uncle Myron had with Aunt Josephine: a love so pure and so enduring that it existed even after Aunt Josephine’s death. I wanted the tenderness I saw between Uncle Little Bud and Cheryl Anne. I wanted the laughter and flirting I saw happen with Uncle Lem and Aunt Shimmy. Those were the qualities I wanted in my eventual marriage someday. I wanted what I had seen in the relationships my uncles had with their wives.
“Gal, get on out here. Your uncle is here to take us to work. Don’t make us late,” Granny said.
“Coming, Granny.” I didn’t know she had gone outside to wait for Uncle Myron. I quickly gathered my things and joined Granny and Uncle Myron in his baby, a 1930 Model A he had bought for cash from old man Little Jack Parsons. Mr. Little Jack was the wealthiest white man in Parsons, so much so that the town was named for his family. He had told Uncle Myron to pay him over time, but Uncle Myron hated the thought of being in debt to anybody for anything, especially white people. He had bragged that Mr. Little Jack was so shocked to see a Colored man with that much cash that he had stood there with his mouth open so wide, every fly in Henry County had flown in. Everybody had laughed, of course. Anytime we could get an inch over on white folks, it was cause for celebration.
“Good morning, Uncle Myron,” I said.
“Morning, chile,” he replied, opening the front door for me to sit beside him. Granny refused to sit in the front of anybody’s car. She said cars weren’t nothing but death traps, but if she had to ride in one, she wanted to be as far away from the front as she could manage.
When Uncle Myron had tried to make her sit in the front seat when he first bought his car, Granny had said, “No, give me the back seat. Leastways I’ll have a chance if we get hit head-on. And anyway, those rich white ladies always sit in the back. They must know something the rest of us don’t know about these contraptions.”
There was no arguing with Granny once she made up her mind about something. Every now and then Uncle Myron would try to coax her into riding up front, but Granny was just like what the Bible says; she was “steadfast and unmovable.”
“Did y’all rest all right last night, Mama?” Uncle Myron asked once he got back inside the car. He started easing his way out of the driveway. “I don’t think I slept a wink.”
“I slept just fine,” she said. “I prayed and left the night in God’s hands. And when you do that, you know that God don’t need you up and about wrestling with something you had just asked him to handle. Now, Opal seemed to be a tad bit restless. What had you all riled up in your sleep, baby girl?”
Before I could make up something to say, Mr. Tote came out of his house and asked to ride with us to Miss Peggy’s. He climbed in the back with Granny. I was thankful for the interruption. I didn’t want any of them to see the shame on my face. There was no way I could have explained what I was going through in my sleep last night. I didn’t even know how I was going to face Jimmy Earl, let alone explain to my granny and my uncle that I was having unsavory dreams about a white boy. No, that was a dream I would take to my grave.
I listened as Mr. Tote, Granny, and Uncle Myron talked about last night.
“Sure am sorry about your chickens, Miss Birdie,” Mr. Tote said. “I know how you loved them little critters. I can get you some more little chicks if you want me to. I can have you a new coop built by sundown, and new little chickens in there to wake you up by tomorrow morning.”
“That is mighty kind of you, Mr. Tote, but I think I’m gonna take a rest from owning chickens for now. Last night . . . well . . .” Her voice trailed off. I could hear the pain. I turned around in my seat and reached for her hand.
“There is a special place in hell for those people,” I said. “I pray that in hell they will lift up their eyes one day.”
“Opal,” she exclaimed, pulling her hand back from mine like it had just burnt hers. “Don’t say such a thing. As Christians, we want everybody to find their way to God. We don’t wish eternal death on nobody. Them chickens meant a lot to me, but another human’s soul will always outrank some critter. Always. Now repent of such wicked thoughts. The hell we pray for somebody else is very well the hell we will have to contend with, and we surely don’t want that. Tell the Lord you’re sorry.”
“Sorry, Lord,” I mumbled. I turned back around and stared straight ahead as Uncle Myron continued to drive us through Parsons. I didn’t pay attention to anything we passed by. I didn’t care what Granny had to say about those awful men who came and terrorized us last night. I hated them. I hated them for thinking that they were so much better than us that they could treat us any kind of way and get away with it. I hated that they made our menfolk feel less than human . . . less than men. They made it clear that our men were useless when it came to protecting us, and for that, I despised all of them and prayed hell truly was where they would lift up their eyes someday; to be honest, I didn’t feel bad for thinking that way at all. They were evil, and no matter what Granny had to say, as far as I was concerned, they didn’t deserve to go anywhere else but hell.
“Well, us deacons are gonna go have a talk with that new sheriff, Sheriff Ardis,” Uncle Myron said. “It’s ’bout time he earn his keep around here. He keep telling us he’s gonna stop them rednecks from ripping through our town, causing havoc. It’s time for him to stand up and do what he promised he would do. He said he was a man of integrity and a man of his word. Now is time for him to prove it.”
“Deacon Myron, I mean no disrespect, but you ain’t so green that you really think that white man is gonna stand against another group of white men for the likes of us, is you?” Mr. Tote asked.
I nodded my head in agreement but kept quiet. I didn’t want Granny or Uncle Myron getting angry with me. Like Mr. Tote, I didn’t trust nothing white folks had to say, either, for the most part. Other than Miss Peggy, Jimmy Earl, Miss Corinne, and Doc Henry, I had not witnessed any white men or women doing much standing up for us. This new sheriff seemed nice and all, but I had no faith in his ability to make much of a difference. Them Klansmen who rode through Colored Town would just as soon kill the sheriff as they would Granny’s chickens. They didn’t care about no human lives but their own, and they especially didn’t care none about Colored folks’ lives or those of our sympathizers.
“We are taxpayers, Mr. Tote. We live peaceable lives and we don’t mess with nobody. We are hardworking, and all we ask is that folks leave us alone to live our lives without fear of violence. If the sheriff can’t give us safety in our own community, then we don’t need him in the office of sheriff,” Uncle Myron said as he made his way past Doc Henry’s house. The lights were off, and Doc Henry’s car was in the driveway. That was a good sign. If anybody had gotten hurt last night, Doc Henry would have been all over the countryside seeing about folks, Colored or white.
“That sheriff means well, but he ain’t no match for these crazy white folks in that Klan,” Granny said. “One good white man by hisself can’t right all the wrongs in the world.”
“If we want safety in our community, we better stock up on some rifles and some bullets and make our communities safe ourselves,” Mr. Tote said. “Slavery been done ended, yet most of us still carry ourselves like slaves. Either we men or we ain’t. Maybe if some of them peckerwoods would have felt some buckshot in their behinds last night, Miss Birdie’s chickens might still be alive.”
“Mr. Tote, you are speaking foolishly. The last thing Colored folks need to do is start shooting at white folks. There’ll be another civil war in this country before you can count to three,” Granny said. “The best thing we can do is stay out of their way and keep ourselves on bended knee every chance we get. God is the only one who can fix this situation. He’s the only one that can make this situation right.”
“Well, no disrespect to your God, but he ain’t done nothing to fix things so far. What makes you think your God is gonna all of a sudden start doing right by Colored folks now?” Mr. Tote asked in his quiet, thoughtful way.
My ears perked up. Mr. Tote didn’t make no secret that he wasn’t a practicing Christian. He liked sitting on the porch playing the spirituals, but he made it very clear that he thought God was something white folks made up to keep Colored folks in line. And when he got really tipsy, he sometimes got into shouting matches with folks over God and whether or not he was even paying any mind to the plight of Colored people.
“Don’t you start with me, Tote Johnson,” Granny warned. “I’m not interested in hearing you blaspheme the good Lord this morning.”
“Ain’t starting with you, Miss Birdie. And I ain’t got to say nothing ’gainst your God. He doing a good job of showing us all whose side he’s on. That’s all I’m saying,” Mr. Tote said. “He let us get stolen from our homeland and then become slaves, and now, here we are, running from the Klan when all we trying to do is live. So is you telling me that the God that let all that happen is the God you want us to worship and fall out over at church every Sunday?”
“Too early for all that, Mr. Tote,” Uncle Myron interrupted before Granny could get really wound up. I was a little put off. I wanted to hear how Granny was going to answer Mr. Tote because what he said made good sense to me. I was too scared not to believe in Granny’s God, but I can’t say I never wondered some of the same things Mr. Tote brought up.
Uncle Myron continued talking. “We ain’t having that conversation this morning, Mr. Tote, especially so soon after last night. Whether you believe in God or not is up to you. But last night, we were all spared, and that is worth us thanking somebody for it. So as for me and my family, we choose to thank the good Lord for his mercy and his grace last night and all the nights before and after. All of us could be dead this morning, and something bigger than us intervened.”
“Amen to that,” Granny said down low. I could tell she wanted to say more, but she didn’t. Uncle Myron had spoken, and I knew Granny always tried to let her sons be men, so in her mind, talking over them was a no-no, especially in situations like this.
“Didn’t mean no disrespect, Myron,” Mr. Tote said, as Uncle Myron pulled his car up to the barn. “Y’all have a good day, and thank you kindly for the ride.” Mr. Tote got out of the car in a hurry. I watched as he made his way into the barn. I knew he would be avoiding Granny all day today, and she’d be doing the same.
“Well, I’ll tell you what . . . ,” Granny started.
“Let it go, Mama. Mr. Tote always been how he is. No point in us going down to his level,” Uncle Myron said. Granny got quiet, but I knew I would be getting an earful all day long. She wasn’t ever gonna talk over her sons and grandsons, but she had no problem giving me and the other women in the family an earful.
Uncle Myron drove me and Granny to the front door of Miss Peggy’s house. Miss Peggy insisted we always enter into her house from the front door. She even gave Granny a key so we could come and go as we pleased. Granny said no other white woman in Parsons—or maybe even all of Georgia—did something so kind for their Colored Help.
When I first asked Granny why we were allowed to go inside from the front, she had smiled and patted me on my back. “Miss Peggy has always been a stand-up kind of woman. She never did believe in all that back door mess. She always treated us like we was human beings that mattered.”
When we got to the front door that morning, Miss Peggy jerked it open and pulled Granny into a full embrace. Miss Peggy nearly sank to the floor, but Granny held her up, keeping her from falling all the way down.
“What you doing up so early, Miss Peggy?” Granny snapped. “Ain’t no need in you being up this time of the morning. You know Doc Henry been saying time and time again that you need to be getting your rest. Who you think he was talking to? Those cows out there in the pasture?”
Granny’s tone was sharp, but her eyes were full of love and concern. She talked to Miss Peggy like she talked to me sometimes. Even though the tone sounded harsh, it was always filled with love. I hoped Miss Peggy took it that way too. I saw her smile and pat Granny on her face. I knew by that gesture that she did.
“I was worried about you and Opal,” Miss Peggy said, leaning against Granny. “I know Jimmy Earl said he ran them fools off, but for all I knew, they could have hightailed it back out there once Jimmy Earl left, and killed the both of you. Now, since y’all are both okay, help me into my sewing room so I can get it organized for today’s quilting bee with the girls.”
“Why are y’all meeting again so soon, Miss Peggy?” I asked, taking her other arm and helping Granny lead her to her sewing room. At one time it was her parlor, but since she started teaching some of the young white women from the community how to sew and make quilts, she just decided to start calling it her sewing room.
“We just got a few more meetings to finish this wedding quilt for Cindy Lou Murphy and Dale Thompson,” she said. “Do you know Cindy Lou, Opal? She’s around your age. Lord, it is hard to believe you gals are old enough to be marrying. Seems like y’all was just in diapers, and now y’all are husband hunting.”
“I don’t know Miss Cindy Lou, Miss Peggy. I hardly know any of the white young ladies in town other than in passing,” I replied.
“Well, you ain’t missed much with that one,” Miss Peggy said, and both she and Granny laughed.
“Opal, you wasn’t here the last time Miss Cindy Lou and the girls came to quilt, but she couldn’t pick up on Miss Peggy’s stitches to save her soul. Miss Peggy called her dull as dishwater, and Miss Cindy Lou was not happy. You reckon she’ll even come?” Granny asked.
“Of course she’ll come. For a free quilt, that girl would deal with my tongue and the devil’s,” Miss Peggy said. “And Birdie, I told you to stop calling those ragtag girls ‘Miss.’ They are your junior. Neither you nor Opal need to talk to them like they’re the Queens of England. You wouldn’t dare catch me calling somebody that age ‘Miss.’ I don’t even like you doing it to me.” Granny and I guided her to her favorite sewing chair near the window. She liked sitting there so she could see who was coming to the front door at any given time.
“Miss Peggy, you know the rules that work for you ain’t the same for me and Opal,” Granny said in a quiet voice. “The world ain’t quite caught up to you yet.”
Miss Peggy grunted. “Well, it should. Especially when it comes to matters of civility. I guess next y’all will be calling Jimmy Earl ‘Mr. Jimmy Earl.’”
“I don’t see a thing wrong with that,” Jimmy Earl teased as he walked toward us. We all jumped. None of us had heard him come into the room. “In fact, why don’t all of y’all start calling me ‘Mr. Jimmy Earl’? You too, Gran. It has a nice ring to it,” he said, giving his gran a kiss on her cheek, and then he did the same with my granny, who swatted him lovingly.
I turned away. After my dream about him from the previous night, I didn’t even trust myself to make eye contact. I was afraid my face would show that something wasn’t right. In fact, I excused myself and went to the kitchen so I could get breakfast started.
I decided to go light. Boiled eggs, toast, and some of the homemade peach preserve I had put up last year. I knew I could have breakfast done long before Jimmy Earl had to go to work at the pharmacy. This was going to be his first day, and I wanted to make sure he went on a full belly. That was the least I could do, I quickly told myself. It wasn’t because Jimmy Earl was special to me or anything. Or at least no more special than he always had been.
“He’s just a boy,” I said out loud.
“Who’s just a boy?” Jimmy Earl said, entering the kitchen.
I almost made matters worse by groaning, but instead I came up with a quick fib. “My cousin Lucille wrote a story and she gave it to me to read. I was just thinking out loud.”
“Hmm,” he said. Like I figured, he quickly lost interest in what I had just said. The last thing Jimmy Earl was interested in was some story, especially one written by a girl. But then Jimmy Earl walked over to me where I was pouring the grits into the boiler. “Bean, are you okay? I mean really okay? After last night and all.”
I just nodded, afraid that I might reveal the discomfort I was feeling.
“I’m sorry for what happened. I’m especially sorry half of the troublemakers were my kin,” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder. I was prepared for his touch to feel awkward and strange, but it didn’t. It just felt like my old friend Jimmy Earl putting his hand on my shoulder. What a relief. The only thing I wanted to feel about Jimmy Earl was friendship. I hoped this also meant no more inappropriate dreams about my friend.
I looked up at him. “It’s okay, Jimmy Earl. They ain’t you, and you ain’t them. If it weren’t for you, me and Granny might not have lived through the night. So thank you.”
“You ain’t gotta thank me,” he said. “You and Birdie are family. In some ways, more family to me than my cousins, daddy, and uncles. Y’all take care of my gran and my mama like they was your own. I promise you this, Bean. I will always protect you and Birdie. No matter what.” Then he squeezed my shoulder one more time and cleared his throat. “So when is breakfast gonna be ready? A man needs his sustenance.”
I laughed. Now this was the Jimmy Earl I knew and loved. This Jimmy Earl was safe . . . like a brother. “Very soon, Mr. Jimmy Earl,” I said, and we both laughed.
“I’ll go check on Tote and the boys while you finish up. I want to get to work early. I don’t want Mr. Lowen getting anxious. Oh, and Bean. I’ll probably be late tonight. Getting ready for the big Founder’s Day baseball game.”
“Y’all are going to have heatstrokes out there trying to play baseball,” I mumbled. Sometimes boys did the craziest things.
“Aww, you worried about me,” he teased.
I threw a dish towel at him. “I’m not worried, Jimmy Earl Ketchums. Just don’t want to have to wait on your silly self if you do have a heatstroke. I have enough to do already.”
“Well, I will do my best to not have a heatstroke. Just for you,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He walked out of the kitchen, and soon I heard the screen door shut.
I smiled. Maybe, just maybe, things were going to get back to normal, or at least something that felt normal. I guess if you live in a world where angry white men can come out of the blue and burn down your property without any fear of payback, there is no normal. There’s just getting by from day to day.
I hoped that the worst was over. I hoped that the Klan wasn’t going to come back and mess with us anymore. I hoped Jimmy Earl and I would remain friends for the rest of our lives. That was my fervent prayer. That is what I laid at Jesus’s feet, hoping against hope that he really was up there listening to the prayers of girls like me.