Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 29

Chapter Twenty

To further express her disdain for Charlotte, Hemmingway prepared a dinner of overcooked chicken, underboiled potatoes, and freshly sliced tomatoes blanketed in salt. After dinner, they returned to the drawing room where Hemmingway served them bitter coffee.

At the end of the evening, Cole walked Charlotte to her waiting carriage. “May I call on you in Greenwood?”

“Yes, I would like that.”

Hemmingway stood in the doorway glaring at them, and when Cole stepped up onto the veranda, she chirped maliciously, “Seems to me she say yes to everything.”

“What?”

“Careful now,” Hemmingway mumbled as she walked off, “I’ve only known whores to be that agreeable.”

The next day the stock market crashed. Hemmingway didn’t quite understand what it all meant, but from the way the white people in town were running around like chickens without heads, she took it as an omen.

“You see what kind of bad luck that woman done brought on this town?”

Cole was sitting in his office with his ear hovering near the radio. The broadcast came from WJDX, located on the top floor of the Lamar Life Insurance building in Jackson, Mississippi. “Shush!” he warned.

The announcer said: “Lines as long as the Mississippi River have formed outside of banks all around the country, as people scramble to withdraw their money.”

“Shouldn’t you be in Greenwood trying to get your coins?”

“Hemmingway, please!” Cole snapped.

He wasn’t very worried. He had some money in the bank, but not much. Lucky for him, last year he’d had a nightmare that ripped him from his sleep. In the dream, he’d gone to the bank to withdraw money, and was advised by the teller that all of his money had combusted. She reached down, opened a drawer, and removed a handful of ash, which she slid across the counter. “This is all that remains.”

Cole was so disturbed by the dream that he went to the bank and withdrew all but eighty-five dollars. He brought the money home, stuffed it into jars, and buried them. As for stock, he owned none.

“She evil, I tell ya!” Hemmingway roared.

Evil or not, Cole Payne was smitten, and he began courting the granddaughter of General Custer.

Within weeks, the scab covering his heart curled, withered, and dropped away. Once again, his heart drummed free and wild, and love responded like an animal in heat.

He proposed to Charlotte Custer on Christmas day.

Hemmingway was tightlipped when Cole brought her the news.

“Well, aren’t you happy for me? For us?”

Hemmingway shrugged her shoulders.

“Why don’t you like her?”

“Don’t matter if I do or if I don’t. You the one gotta lay down with her, not me.”

“You watch your mouth, Hemmingway Hilson!”

They were married in February of 1930 and Charlotte Custer-Payne moved into that house on Candle Street. She placed her delicates into the dresser drawers, hung her finery in the chifforobe, and set her parasol in the umbrella stand.

You already know that from the very beginning Hemmingway didn’t like Charlotte. Well, I’m sorry to tell you that the middle didn’t get any better.

Hemmingway continued to sabotage their meals, and when Charlotte addressed her, Hemmingway refused to respond. Any orders that Charlotte wanted carried out had to come from Cole.

A year into the marriage, Cole was at wit’s end. For the umpteenth time, he cornered Hemmingway and reprimanded her about her behavior. The young woman innocently batted her eyes and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The tension continued to build between the two women until it exploded in a screaming match that sent Charlotte flying from the kitchen in tears.

“She is the help! The HELP—and she talks to me like I am her employee!” she screamed into Cole’s flustered face. “I want her gone, out, now!”

What could he tell his sweet, pretty young wife? Certainly not the truth, which was that he kept the often rude and always stubborn Hemmingway in his employ as a penance for his wrongdoings. Instead he said, “I promised her mother that I would look after her.”

Charlotte was speechless and hurt. She picked up a bottle of perfume and hurled it against the bedroom wall.

Charlotte took the issue to an acquaintance, and after a long, thoughtful moment, the woman said: “White men and Negro women been a problem since forever.”

Charlotte shuddered at the implication, but back on Candle Street she spat those same words in her husband’s face. Cole was shocked and began to stutter his defense.

Charlotte cut him off with a sweep of her hand. “If you don’t get rid of her, Cole, I swear I will smash everything in this house, and,” she added with fierce conviction, “that semen sack between your legs!”

Cole, of course, acquiesced and hired a man who owned a mule and wagon to cart Hemmingway and her belongings to a small house he owned, near the center of town. Hemmingway would live there for the rest of her years.

The years inched by, and in 1936, after Cole sold off the store and the house on Candle Street and moved to another part of the state, the postman walked right up to Hemmingway’s front door and placed an envelope in her hand. The contents included the deed to the house and ten crisp hundred-dollar bills.

Hemmingway hid the money away and continued to support herself by cooking and cleaning for other families on Candle Street. And like her mother, she made and sold johnnycakes. For the most part, she kept to herself.

In 1940, people began to notice that Hemmingway Hilson was putting on weight … in her midsection.

Not quite out of season, but no spring chicken— Hemmingway was nearly thirty years old. She didn’t have a husband and no one had ever seen her keeping company with a man.

Immaculate Conception?

“Nah,” someone laughed, “that only happens to white folk!”

People began placing bets on her due date—if she was in fact pregnant. She hit the waddling stage quick, so was further along than anyone had suspected.

Someone suggested that Cole Payne might be the father, even though he had moved away years earlier. That insinuation raised the stakes to include wagers on the infant’s color.

“Maybe she ain’t pregnant, maybe she’s just fat,” said the fat woman who looked pregnant.

The talk swirled and bubbled in a cauldron of gossip, but no one was bold enough to approach the often-salty woman and ask, “Hemmingway Hilson, you expecting?”