Читать книгу Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League - Jonathan Odell - Страница 15

1955

Chapter Eight

UP TO THE BIG HOUSE

Even though she couldn’t find her voice to say it, Hazel figured their entire cottage could easily fit into this one room, and she was not alone in reverential silence. She and Floyd turned slowly in the middle of the empty parlor and neither spoke, as if a house this grand might not want to carry voices as common as their own. That the house was now theirs may have been a reality on paper, yet this minute, as they gawked openmouthed, that truth felt as hollow as the cavernous rooms themselves.

“Well, punkin,” Floyd said, whispering for a reason unknown to him, “it took me six years to keep my promise. But I did it. I got you out of that slave cabin and put you up on the hill.”

He looked at her with that sweet expression she remembered from before they married. It was the way he looked at her over ice cream during that magical month of planning their escape.

“You proud of me?” he asked.

The question comforted Hazel. He still cared what she thought. “I’m real proud, Floyd,” she whispered back. “It’s a dream come true.”

Floyd stood a little straighter. “Like I always say,” his voice stronger now, “success is a dream with sweat on it.” He spoke the last part loud enough to send the saying echoing lightly off the walls. He must have approved of the way it sounded, because he said it again, louder. “Success is a dream with sweat on it,” he shouted, and smiled at Hazel proudly as his voice rang throughout the house.

Hazel smiled weakly. There was no doubt about it. Floyd had been sweating big time. He broke all records selling farm implements, single-handedly putting enough machinery into operation to free up thousands of field hands. He had been such a standout that the Senator convinced his brother-in-law, the president of the bank, to loan Floyd the money to start Delphi Motors. The Senator had taken a liking to Floyd.

On one occasion, the Senator had slapped Floyd on the back and said that already, with nothing more than a few well-turned phrases and that shit-eating grin of his, Floyd had changed the Delta landscape more than Ulysses Grant had during the invasion. Floyd had replaced the primitive hollers of the coloreds with the smooth hum of machinery. The Senator said there was no telling how far Floyd could go if he was his own boss. Now, thanks to the Senator—plus Floyd’s positive thinking, of course—he was selling Mercurys and Lincolns and Ford trucks out of a business he ran himself.

While the boys scampered through the house, making their bare feet screech against the slick hardwood floors, Hazel stood there holding fast to Floyd, the same way she had that late afternoon when he showed her what lay beyond the bluffs and she struggled to make sense of it all.

The walls around her were the pinkish color of mimosa blossoms, and all along their length were the empty, lighter spaces where portraits of the previous owner’s ancestors had hung. It occurred to Hazel that it might be easier living with the ghosts of slaves than of rich people.

“How we going to fill it up, just the four of us?” she asked. “This house got rooms I don’t even know the names of.”

“That’s why I’m taking you to Greenwood. So you can outfit this house with the grandest things you can find. Like I always say, ‘If you want to attract money, you got to smell like money.’ ”

Choosing the curtains for the little slave cabin had stretched Hazel’s imagination to the limit, but this assignment made her head swim. She had no idea how rich folks went about filling up their homes, never having been inside a house this grand before.

“Now, I mean it,” Floyd said. “When we go to Greenwood, buy only deluxe. We got an image now.” His eyes narrowed. “Oh, that reminds me.”

Hazel braced herself. She could feel one of Floyd’s “lists for success” coming on.

“You got to stop tussling with Johnny and Davie in the yard right out in plain view. I’ll find you a colored girl to watch them. And another thing, don’t let the boys go out the house looking like Indians. Put shirts and shoes on them. Even in summertime. We ain’t in the hills no more. People are going to be watching us close now.”

Stamping like horses, Johnny and Davie, half naked and already brown as berries, their feet stained green with spring grass, giddyupped into the sitting room. Hazel got that old sinking feeling again in her chest. A good mother would have known better. This was supposed to be getting easier, she thought. Lurleen and Onareen turned out children like canned tomatoes and never seemed to give being a mother a second thought.

With his arms outstretched, his frail blue eyes pleading, Davie bounced up and down at his father’s feet, calling out, “Catch me! Catch me!”

Floyd lifted his son off the ground and threw him into the air, making Davie gurgle with laughter. At the peak of his rise, Davie yelled out, “Catch me!”

Hazel clutched herself. She hated this game.

Johnny noticed his mother’s dread. “Daddy, you be careful. Don’t drop Davie on his head.”

Hazel smiled sadly at Johnny, relieved yet at the same time a little ashamed that he had been the one to speak out.

“We just having some fun. No harm done.” Floyd set Davie down on the floor and then turned to Johnny. “Hey, Little Monkey. You wanna go next?” he asked, holding out his arms. Johnny took two steps backward.

Rebuffed, Floyd returned his attention to his wife. “Now, like I was saying, you got to help me, Hazel. We’re building us up a reputation. This house is only the start of it.”

Nodding her agreement, she looked up into his confident face. Floyd was already acting as if he had been born and bred in this house, when only a few minutes ago he was asking like a child if she was proud of him. It amazed her how things came so natural to him, in the way raising babies came natural to her sisters.

Floyd unveiled the next item on his list. “I think it’s time you learned to drive.”

Hazel’s mouth dropped open. “You gonna teach me, Floyd?” she asked, not believing her ears. She had always assumed that driving was beyond her, mainly because Floyd had never suggested it before.

“That and more. I’m going to get you your very own car. Brand-new Lincoln. Columbia blue. Special-ordered it.”

“My own car? For me?” Hazel began to tear up.

“Yep. That way you can be a rolling advertisement for Delphi Motors. I’ll put the trucks under the men, and you can help me put Lincolns under their wives.” He winked at her. “We can be a team.”

“A team,” she repeated. Yes, she thought, that was it! Exactly what she had wanted and didn’t know how to say until Floyd put it into words. He was so smart. Hazel wanted to be a team with him. The idea thrilled her as nothing had in years. Leave it to Floyd to find a way for her to catch up and travel by his side.

To her delight and Floyd’s amazement, Hazel took to driving like a duck to water. Two weeks with her new Lincoln and she was backing up the big car, passing on the left, even parallel parking. Her stops became feather light and her turns as smooth as butter. After all those hours riding around with the route men, she figured something must have rubbed off. Hazel didn’t mention that to Floyd. She let him assume that at long last there was something she took to natural. Others might be good cooks and good mothers or good salesmen, but driving a car was going to be Hazel’s special calling.

In no time she was confident enough to do the furniture shopping all by herself. She got behind the wheel and powered the mighty machine west on 84, taking the highway straight on into Greenwood. Once there she negotiated big-city traffic, insisted on her rightful turn at intersections, and competed for parking places with the most aggressive of men drivers. The Lincoln was making her into a new woman.

Floyd was nearly as excited about her success as she was. After the furniture started arriving and they began to get settled into the house, he lost no time setting the next phase of his team plan into motion. He told Hazel her team goal was to put at least ten miles a day on the Lincoln and to do it in public view. “You can be an inspiration to all the women in Delphi,” he told her. “Nowadays ever woman ought to have her own independent means of transportation. It’s the way the world is going.”

One evening he brought home a brochure and dramatically spread it out on the kitchen table. “Looka here,” he said.

What Hazel saw was the full-color picture of a very happy woman driving down the road in her Lincoln. “Try to look like her,” he said reverently. “She’s the sign of things to come.”

The beautiful woman wore a large off-the-face hat with a mile-long ribbon rippling out the window, a matching scarf, and white gloves just to the wrist. At first Hazel felt a little strange about the idea, hoping that Floyd wasn’t trying to trade her up into something that she wasn’t. Yet when she saw the look of respect with which he regarded the woman in the picture, she knew she had to do it. Taking the advertisement to Gooseberry’s Department Store, she suited herself up as close as she could come to the happy woman.

Hazel put shirts and shoes and bow ties on the boys, loaded them up, and in her new picture hat with a blue satin ribbon, silk chiffon scarf, and white gloves, backed away from their beautiful home and drove up and down Gallatin Street, from the bridge to the church and around the courthouse, looking happy, six times a day.