River, Cross My Heart

2

That morning it was hot as soon as the sun got up. Johnnie Mae rose just after. Heat entered the house uninvited—in fact, had never left from the night before. July in Washington is simply hot.

Alice Bynum's crisp, precise movements were creating the only breeze. Johnnie Mae slid out of bed and hurried downstairs to the kitchen to gather up under the tall, graceful woman whose mobile hips fanned the kitchen between sink and stove. Her mama heard her footsteps on the stairs and called out, "You're up, Johnnie Mae? Good morning. Empty the slop jar and then see about the milk." Her voice was busy but affectionate.

"Yes, ma'am," Johnnie Mae answered. She went back upstairs to the room she shared with her younger sister and scooted under the bed with the still-sleeping Clara in it. She retrieved the slop jar and walked with it gingerly down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back screen door to the outdoor toilet. "That Clara can't hold her bladder ten minutes, much less through the night! And then again she sleeps late. Turning over after everybody else is up and stirring!" Johnnie Mae muttered under her breath, mindful that Mama Alice did not approve of carping and complaining.

"Just go on about your business and hoe the row that God has given you," Alice Bynum would say briskly on her way from one task to another. "If looking after your sister is your obligation in life, then be thankful you have a sister."

Johnnie Mae perched a moment on the toilet seat, let her early morning urine patter down into the abyss, and thought about her mother's endless string of obligations. Obliged to rise up out of bed before husband and daughters to straighten up the neat but rickety little frame house; obliged to stay up long past dark to knit socks, sweaters, and scarves; obliged to think up excuses for the landlord and grocer when accounts were past due; obliged to wear a whalebone corset under a fussy dress on Sunday and sit there all day fanning and singing; obliged to make the biggest and sweetest three-layer chocolate cake ever known for the church bake sale and for anybody's and everybody's birthday. And obliged to clean from top to bottom and over again the house of the woman she worked for. "Doesn't she ever do something she wants to do?" Instinctively Johnnie Mae knew that if the answer to this question was no, then it didn't bode well for a life of ease for her. For everybody always said, "She's the spitting image of her mama. That girl is just like Alice!" The toilet gave a satisfactory whoosh as Johnnie Mae rose from the seat.

"Morning, Daddy," Johnnie Mae called to her father, who was bent over his tomato plants, as she expressed water from the hydrant to wash out the chamber pot.

"Morning, Maezie," Willie answered without turning toward her, continuing to stake his beefsteaks. His attention was riveted on the backyard crops, especially in the nervous growing season of Washington. "It's hard to know what kind of weather we're bound to have in this town" was his favorite lament. That explained the great many vegetable failures. "Too damn hot when it ought to be cool, too damn cool when it ought to be hot! This a backwards town, I tell you! Not like Carolina. No, sir, not like Carolina!"

For Willie Bynum and others of the migrating Carolinians rumbling into Washington, D.C., the city was best described as "not like Carolina." But ever since the family moved to the lopsided two-story house on O Street, with the big yard out back, Willie had, in spring and summer, spent his spare hours tending tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, lettuce, squash, corn, and greens. Willie's garden provided a modest boost to family finances and reminded him of Carolina. "Looks like we'll have a bumper crop this year, Maezie," he said now, straightening up over the last staked plant and spitting a ball of mucus and tobacco juice between his feet.

"Johnnie Mae, what about the milk, girl?" Mama called out. Her sharp, authoritative voice pulled Johnnie Mae's eyes away from the pale yellow maggots crawling over and under one another in the uncovered garbage pail.

"Yes, ma'am," she answered respectfully and blew a tiny black ant from the back of her hand.

The screen door banged as Johnnie Mae reentered the house. "Don't slam that door, girl! What'd I tell you about that!" her mother scolded.

Johnnie Mae hadn't meant to slam the door; nonetheless she hoped the noise had awakened Clara. "Old lazybones, crybaby, silly little rat," Johnnie Mae grumbled to herself. Mama always said that Clara was delicate and needed her sleep and couldn't be ripping and running around. But Johnnie Mae didn't believe there was really anything wrong with Clara. It was all just an act that Clara put on for the folks. She liked being thought of as shy and sickly so she could get out of doing her share of the work.

Johnnie Mae was the red-brown one, with hair that was half straight, half nappy and that would stay plaited all day if it was brushed and oiled. Mama said it was good hair. Clara was the pecan-colored one with nappy hair worn in two small braids that crept loose all day. Mama never said that Clara had bad hair, but she said that Clara's hair wasn't "good."

From the time Clara was born, she had seemed like a doll baby to Johnnie Mae, who loved to comb and brush and plait and replait her sister's hair. Johnnie Mae liked to stand behind Clara's chair in the kitchen and section the hair, rubbing in a fragrant pomade, looping and twisting the sections over and under with deft fingers. Johnnie Mae was tall for twelve years old. She stood straight. Her athletic body was always primed for movement. Clara was six, slightly plump, and easily winded.

"Come get your coffee, Willie! Come and get a bite. It's 'bout time you were gittin' down there, isn't it?" Mama called out. She skimmed cream off the bottle of milk, then poured a glass of milk for Johnnie Mae and one for Clara, who just then sidled into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. Mama poured a few drops of cream and two big spoons of sugar into her coffee. Sugar was the only real extravagance Alice Bynum allowed herself. Papa, Johnnie Mae, and Clara helped themselves to biscuits and bacon, and Mama slid fried eggs onto the sides of their plates.

"You picking up clothes for Miss Ann-Martha today? Watch out you don't get heatstroke running up and down. It's going to be a hot one today." Mama slurped down the dregs of her coffee. She put her work shoes in a paper bag and patted her hair down. "Go by Aunt Ina's and set awhile."

Johnnie Mae fought to keep her face respectfully immobile. It took effort not to indicate how tired she was of hearing the same instructions each morning as her mother got ready to leave for work. She knew full well all the watching out for heatstroke was her responsibility. In wintertime it was watching out for chills and uncovered ears, feet, and head. In Mama's lexicon, every season had its dangers, and Johnnie Mae was her mother's lieutenant in charge of "watching out." At the door Mama turned, as usual, to issue a final directive. "Clean up the kitchen before you leave this house, hear me?"

Papa added nothing to Mama's list of orders. He put bacon inside the last two biscuits and stuffed them in his pocket for later. He followed her out the front door.

Clara sat at the kitchen table, twirling a slice of bacon. With both parents out of earshot, Johnnie Mae turned her displeasure toward her "obligation." "Finish up that milk and help me wipe this place up!"

Ann-Martha Pendel was the freckled, laughing, meriny woman who did washing for white people. In summer, her laundry room was the overgrown, weed-choked yard behind her house at 32nd and P streets. Drying sheets hung on rope lines that extended from the porch roof to several tall but measly trees at the rear boundary of the yard. As they fanned out over the yard, the sheets created a labyrinth. Ann-Martha was to be found somewhere in their midst, arms pumping up and down on a wooden scrub board.

Miss Ann-Martha, with no husband or children, was considered a colored woman of independent means and uncertain morals. Alice Bynum, resigned to the expediency of her daughters' work as Ann-Martha's runners, had warned them—especially the maturing Johnnie Mae—against engaging in idle talk with the woman. "No need to sit about jawin' with Ann-Martha Pendel. Just make the runs and collect the money, hear me?" Of course, Johnnie Mae knew you didn't have to sit around jawing to catch the tenor of Miss Ann-Martha's moral behavior. The careless way her breasts flopped underneath her shift and the slackness of her lips when she spoke out of the side of her mouth were unmistakably the signs of low moral character. Even a child could see that.

Johnnie Mae didn't particularly like the musky smell of the woman and usually tried to stand as far from her as was practical. Yet Ann-Martha managed to whisper conspiratorially, out of Clara's earshot. "A yella gal can rule the mens if she's smart, especially colored mens. A brown gal got to work a bit harder. A blue-black gal is got no chance. You remember that!"

The full import of this foolishness would be lost on Johnnie Mae even if she could understand all the broken-up shards of words Ann-Martha used in her chuckling conversation. What'd she mean by that? Best to ignore her talk and tend to the laundry only.

Johnnie Mae and Clara loaded the clean bundles for delivery to Miss Ann-Martha's customers and pulled the wagon back through the maze of hanging clothes. As usual, Clara couldn't resist hurling herself face first and giggling into the ballooning sheets at the back of the yard, beyond Miss Ann-Martha's line of vision. Johnnie Mae fussed at Clara. "Come on, girl, we got no time for foolishness!"

Grown folks often noticed Johnnie Mae Bynum's industriousness and commented on it. "That girl is just like her mama—always busy," they said. White folks, too, took note of the brusquely respectful little colored girl who collected and delivered laundry. Her back was always arrow straight as she approached the back doors of Miss Ann-Martha's customers. Mama's advice rang in her ears. "Don't have too much to say to them. Just yes-ma'am 'em and no-ma'am 'em and go about your business. And don't be grinning like a Cheshire cat if they offer you a cookie." Waiting solemnly while they inspected the clean clothes and handed over the dirty bundles, Johnnie Mae gravely counted the nickels and accepted a cookie or a bun with glancing but polite acknowledgment and a slip of a smile.

A scowling, down-on-her-luck white woman on Dumbarton Avenue was the first customer on the route. She resented a proud demeanor in a nigger. It just didn't suit her to see a colored child presenting herself so uppity, so businesslike.

"They say a Chinaman's opened up a laundry shop down on Water Street." Her nasal twang was razorlike. "He'll run Ann-Martha out of business for sure."

Standing straight, Johnnie Mae made no reply. Mama's words reverberated in her head: "Keep your mind on what you want, not on what they say." Clara, beside the wagon at the bottom of the steps, shifted from one foot to the other. Her bottom lip quivered. She was ready to run.

The woman went back into the house for the fifteen cents due, placed the coins on the porch rail, and held open the screen door for Johnnie Mae to carry in the three clean bundles and put them on the kitchen table. The woman bent down, whisked up the dirty bundle, and pushed it into Johnnie Mae's arms.

At the porch rail, Johnnie Mae heaved the bundle down the stairs into the wagon. Snatching up the money, she took the steps two and three at a time as she descended. At the bottom, grateful for a signal to move, Clara punched the laundry down into the wagon.

"You be careful of my laundry. Tell Ann-Martha I don't want no cat's paws on those shirts. If I see any, I'll take my business to the Chinaman," the small, raw woman hollered after Johnnie Mae, who jumped off the last step, picked up the wagon handle, and left the woman's yard as quickly as the rickety conveyance could be pulled over uneven ground.

Hanging on to the tail of the wagon and breathing out of her mouth as she struggled to keep up with her sister, Clara asked, "What's a Chinaman, Johnnie?"

Without turning around, Johnnie Mae answered in a flat, authoritative voice, "A yellow man with a pigtail."

"Oh. Yellow like Miss Ann-Martha?"

"No. Yellow with a long pigtail and funny eyes."

It was noon when Johnnie Mae and Clara turned down 30th Street toward Miss Ann-Martha's to drop off the dirty loads and collect their twenty cents. Mr. Pud Allen's street-cleaning wagon, drawn by a swaybacked horse, moseyed along ahead of them. When the horse deposited a stinking pile at the corner of 30th and N streets, Clara giggled and pinched her nose. Johnnie Mae laughed too and wondered what was the use of Mr. Pud Allen washing the street if his old nasty horse was letting loose every other block. At this rate, Mr. Pud Allen and his horse would always have a job of work.

Johnnie Mae handed Clara three pennies and pocketed seven cents. The rest, one dime, was for Mama's housekeeping. Alice Bynum allowed her girls to keep some of the money they earned hauling clothes for Miss Ann-Martha. In this, the Bynums were different from many of the other colored families in Georgetown. Most of the recent southern migrants kept all the money earned by their sons and daughters and pooled it with the rest of the household's earnings. There were no idle children among the colored families of Georgetown, except those too feeble or too young. And every child old enough to stand was old enough to work. If they worked for pay, they turned it over to their folks. The bigger girls had younger siblings to tend while their mamas cleaned, cooked, did laundry, or took care of the white people's children. Many of these girls also cooked and kept the house if their mama "lived in" and came home only one day of the week.

The clay brick sidewalk was as hot as a griddle when Johnnie Mae and Clara returned home to put away the wagon and then head up to Aunt Ina's. On the morning laundry rounds, Johnnie Mae had been thinking about the fragrant coolness of Volta Place and the quiet dark of Aunt Ina's parlor. The spreading, rounded crowns of ailanthus, white mulberry, eastern cottonwood, and red oak canopied Volta Place as it wandered west from the Wisconsin Avenue throughfare. The trees blocked sunlight and protected the large, rich folks' houses, the narrow carriage houses, and the alley dwellings of poor folks. Rosebushes—every variety—stood beside doorways and trailed along trellises. The smell of Volta Place was sweet—rose, lavender, lilac, sweet grass, and onion grass.

The smells wafting out of 3304 Volta Place were of chicken and cornbread fried in the early morning. Johnnie Mae and Clara were expected to eat at Aunt Ina's on summer afternoons. Clara especially was supposed to eat and "set awhile" out of the heat of high noon. Aunt Ina, once she had finished her early morning cooking, would position herself at the small window in her parlor. From there she would peep through the branches of the box elder as she sewed collars, buttonholes, buttons, and socks, looking to catch sight of Johnnie Mae and Clara rounding the corner from the avenue. Ina Carson was one of the few colored women in Georgetown with a sit-down job.