Raina J. León

Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in Black Arts Quarterly, Womb, Boxcar Poetry Review, Salt Hill Journal, Xavier Review, MiPoesias, Torch:  Poetry, Prose and Short Stories by African American Women, Poetic Voices without Borders , Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, Constellation Magazine and Tiger's Eye Journal among others with forthcoming work in OCHO, African American Review, and Poem Memoir Story.  Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006).   It will be published in 2008. 

                                                          Sisters

The year was 1943.  I was six years old, and Dottie was only 14.  Mrs. Johnston, our grandmother, had sent us into town to buy "a good three yards of crisp cotton for new Sunday dresses.  Easter was only a few weeks away, and she would need to pay the seamstress in installments.  In her good grace, Mrs. Johnston – we always called her that under her strict instruction – had left the color up to us.

            “Dottie, you think I could get a nice yellow dress with a green sash this year?” I said, twirling my thumb through my hair. 

            “Do you want to look like a chick, pecking at the communion wafers?  Mrs. Johnston would throw her handkerchief,” said Dottie.  That was her way of showing anger, but the Reverend Johnston’s belt soon followed.  We were not the type to be spared the rod. 

            “Then maybe white with a blue sash, like yours from two Sundays ago?”  I said, pulling on her skirts.

            “Mrs. Johnston wouldn’t approve.  She wouldn’t want you looking anything like me,” she said.

            “But I do, Dottie,” I pulled her down and pointed.  “My nose looks like your nose, and my hand looks like your hand and my eyes…”

            “Little girl, keep these comparisons to the house,” she looked around to see if anyone had heard.  “Let’s go on to the store.” 

            “Look at this,” I said instead, running to the window to the bakery on Main Street.  In the glass, my face was reflected, light as buttermilk, light brown hair ,wild as ever, and right at mouth level there was a big swirl of red and white, a lollipop the likes of which I had never seen. 

            “Oh, those rolls sure do look tasty,” said Dottie, looking at the sugar glazed buns on a tray, as she licked her lips. 

She was caramel-sweet colored herself with her hair pulled back in tight cane rows.  Mrs. Johnston didn’t approve any creams to straighten the hair for a child, though Dottie had been begging for months.  She was beginning to look like every bit the woman, already tall and lean with wide eyes.  I used to love to tickle her eyelashes when we were in bed until they would pop open, so I could see the dark pools readjust to the light and twinkle.  Dottie even had to wear a coveted brassiere.  

“Do you think we have enough money for the fabric and a treat,” I said, pleading with my eyes.

Dottie counted the coins in her hand. 

“No.  Mrs. Johnston only gave us just enough.  Let’s go on to the store,” she said, taking my hand. 

“But, Dottie, I want to get some candy, and you want a sugar bun.”  I tugged at her hand.  A tantrum was imminent.

“Sylvia Clarice, you better straighten up and come on to this store,” she tugged back.

“You can’t do nothing!”

“Oh, yes, I can, little girl,” she insisted and began to raise her hand.

A man passing by stepped close.

“Oh, can you?  I think that little white girl is right,” he said lightly with a lisp. 

Dottie was silenced and stared at the man.  It was Paul Shoemaker, the mortician for white folks in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, well-respected by all the white men in town and feared by the coloreds.  He owned a funeral home for coloreds, too, but no one born and raised in town took their loved ones there, not the ones who died naturally.  There were rumors that he would do things to corpses. 

In addition to his duties as a business man and on the town council, he was a high-ranking Klansman, and proud of it.  The colored people who died of suspicious causes, like being hung or burned or shot when the murderers couldn’t be found, they went to the Shoemaker Funeral Home to be tortured again, or so they said. 

“Mister, we were just going to the store to buy some fabric,” Dottie said in a rush, letting go my hand.

“Mister, but I want a candy,” I rushed to hold his hand, tugging him down to my level.

“You know we don’t have enough,” Dottie said directly to me with an anger and fear in her eyes that I brushed aside.

“Well, that’s not this girl’s fault,” Shoemaker said, pulling at his waistcoat. 

Dottie shivered.

He pulled a small change purse and handed me a whole dollar coin.  “And keep the change for yourself,” he said.  I ran into the store.

“Whose maid are you?” He said to Dottie, backing her against a wall.  The street had begun to notice, and the white men paid attention. 

“No one’s maid,” said Dottie with a quake.

“Mister.” 

Dottie was confused.

“You forgot the Mister.”  He put up his arms to trap her and looked down to speak.  His breath was hot and smelled of old chewing tobacco.  He pushed himself in on her, closer. 

“I’m no one’s maid, Mister Shoemaker.”

“So you know me?” He said, almost flattered, looking around.

“Everyone knows you, Sir.”

“Well, then you know what I can do.  I tell you, a businessman like me does not like to see little nigger maids forgetting their place.  Best for you to go about your business and go back home.”

“Yes, sir,” Dottie slid out along the wall, as I ran out with a lollipop, a bun for Dottie, and change in hand. 

“Where do you live again?” He asked while Dottie pulled me away in the direction of the store.  When she didn’t answer, he smiled.

By the time we had bought the fabric and returned to the house at the bottom of the hill with its green cement porch, the reverend was already sitting in his rocker, the belt on the porch post in front of him.  He was facing the mountain, far away, so he didn’t see us, but we could see him, holding his Bible with his left hand on his lap.  His white-haired head was bowed, and he mouthed the words of the reading.  His creamy skin, even paler than mine, showed ruddy in the light.  His cigarette sizzled absently in his right hand.  His coat was next to his belt, his white shirt was open and the way he pushed himself with his right leg back and forth, one who did not know better might have thought him on a brief respite from the day’s toil.  We knew better. 

“Take all this by the side door.  Mrs. Johnston will have supper ready,” Dottie said as she straightened her dress, heading to the front porch alone.  She knew that she would be the one to bear the strap.  I only ever had to iron the church linens standing up and tend the coal stove through the night.  That leather had never touched my skin, and she and I knew that it never would. 

I slid into the cold side of the bed.  The lights were out, and Dottie laid face down.  She had been sent to bed without supper, but when she passed the kitchen to go to the back room, I saw the marks of the strap on her legs, criss-crossed and throbbing red. 

            The pillow was wetted through. 

            “Why did he beat you?” I whispered, curling into her.

            She turned away.

            “Why did he beat you, Dottie?” I stroked her hair.

            “Mr. Shoemaker came by in his car, and Reverend Johnston told him we were sisters.  When he realized he gave a dollar to a colored girl, he asked for it with interest.  A whole two dollars.  Said he’d take it out of my salary if I became his maid.”

            “He wants you to be his maid?”

            “No, little girl.  He wants something different, and the Reverend knows it.  He gave him two dollars from the collections.”

            “But that’s for the poor people,” I said, not believing. 

            “And he’s sending me to New York to live with …” She didn’t have to say it.  There was only one person who lived in New York City that the Reverend knew and that was our mother, Belle Johnston-Harris, who he described as a harlot.  During services he would often have the congregation pray for her while we bowed our heads, pretending he spoke of someone else.  I hadn’t seen my mother in 3 years, though I knew everything there was to know.  She had a shotgun wedding when she was 14 and pregnant with laborer’s child, black as a mountain night at that – not good enough for the fair-skinned preacher’s daughter - which meant the Reverend got out his shotgun.  Billy Harris took the first train to Youngsville and Belle got a new last name, no wedding involved, and a train ticket for going east.  While in Philadelphia, she met another colored man, a soldier in the Army, this one light enough to pass.  Next thing you know, I was on a train headed west with my sister Dottie and the Reverend now had two children to raise.

            “Mama?” I asked with wonder, but Dottie just turned over again, back into the pillow and cried.  I could swear I heard a conductor’s whistle in the night.