Scarlet Sister Mary

Front matter

Scarlet Sister Mary

By Julia Peterkin Author of Black April

Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers

Chapter 1

The black people who live in the Quarters at Blue Brook Plantation believe they are far the best black people living on the whole "Neck," as they call that long, narrow, rich strip of land lying between the sea on one side and the river with its swamps and deserted rice-fields on the other. They are no Guinea negroes with thick lips and wide noses and low ways; or Dinkas with squatty skulls and gray-tinged skin betraying their mean blood; they are Gullahs with tall straight bodies, and high heads filled with sense.

Since the first days of slavery they have been the best of field workers. They make fine mechanics and body servants for their masters. Their preachers and conjure doctors have always known many things besides how to save men's lives and souls.

The old owners of Blue Brook must have been careful to buy slaves that were perfect, for they built up a strain of intelligent, upstanding human beings, just as they bred race-horses and hunting dogs that could not be excelled. The slaves destined to be skilled laborers were sent across the sea to learn their trades from the best workmen in the world, and the house and body servants came into close contact with masters and mistresses who were ladies and gentlemen and not common white trash, or poor buckras. When the war between the states freed them and broke up the old plantation system, the black people lived on in the old plantation Quarters, shifting for themselves and eking out a living as best they could. The lack of roads and bridges afforded them little contact with tae outside world, and so, instead of going away to seek new fortunes, new advantages, easier work and more money, they kept faithful to the old life, contented with old ways and beliefs, holding fast to old traditions and superstitions.

When their time is out and death takes their souls back to their Maker, their bodies are laid with those others lying so thick in the old graveyard that room can scarcely be found for another resting-place.

The world made by the old plantation is drawn to a simple pattern. The loamy red fields are bordered by quiet woodlands. A cluster of ancient cabins near the river is sheltered by a grove of giant moss-hung live oaks. A great empty Big House, once the proud home of the plantation masters, is now an old crumbling shell with broken chimneys and a rotting roof. Ghosts can be heard at sunset rattling the closed window-blinds up-stairs, as they strive for a glimpse of the shining river that shows between the tall cedars and magnolias.

The earth's richness and the sun's warmth make living an easy thing. Years go by without leaving a mark or footprint. Sometimes black years come in determined to break the tranquil monotony. Earthquakes tumble down chimneys, storms break trees and houses, floods wash the earth so bare that its very bones are exposed, droughts burn up crops and weeds with impartial cruelty, but the old plantation is swift to hide every scar made by all this wickedness. New chimneys are quickly built and houses mended; trees thrust up young branches to fill empty spaces; new crops and weeds thrive under gentle rains and hot sunshine.

Life fills and enfolds everything here, never overlooking in the press of work to be done the smallest or most insignificant creature, and silently, with weariless patience and diligence, strange miracles are wrought as youth rises out of decay and death becomes only another beginning.

Chapter 2

Mary had grown up in Maum Hannah's old house in the Quarters like a weed, and, although she could remember her mother faintly, Maum Hannah and Budda Ben were the only parents she knew. Maum Hannah was old and Budda Ben was crippled, but Mary had laughed and played through most of her fifteen years with clothes enough to wear and food enough to eat and pleasure enough to keep her happy. She worked almost every day in the fields, picking cotton, stripping fodder from the corn, planting or gathering potatoes and peas; never working too hard, for she could always stop and rest, or laugh and talk with the other field hands.

Fetching water up the hill from the spring was no burden for her lithe young body for as soon as she had grown big enough to toddle back and forth holding to Maum Hannah's apron, she had helped fetch water, first a tin can full, then a small bucket full, until at last she could come up the hill with three full-sized buckets, all filled to the brim, one balanced on her head and one in each hand.

Helping wash clothes every week was fun, for all the Quarter women gathered together at the spring on wash-day, and their cheerful bustling about as they dipped up water and filled the tubs and big iron pots, and cut wood to keep the fires burning bright, made the work a frolic instead of drudgery.

At fifteen she was a slender, darting, high-spirited girl, a leader of the young set, and all ready to be married to July who was, perhaps, the wildest young buck in the Quarters. The girls Mary's age were much alike, with slender, well-shaped bodies, scarcely hidden by the plain skimpy garments they wore. They went bare-footed all the week, but every Sunday morning, after undoing their black woolly hair and rewrapping it into neat-rolls with white ball thread, they put on shoes and stockings and hats and Sunday dresses and went to church.

Mary looked much like the others, who were all her blood kin. But while most of them were slender, she was thin. While the others were a dark healthy brown, Mary's skin had a bluish bloom. Instead of being round and merry, Mary's eyes were long and keen, sometimes challenging, sometimes serious, sometimes flashing with impudence under their straight black brows, even when her mouth was laughing.

She had hardly known sorrow until lately. Three years ago, when she was twelve, Maum Hannah had made her seek God's pardon for her sins, and she had to go off by herself and pray for days without laughing or talking; but that was not so very hard, for whenever she got weary of praying she lay down flat on the warm pine straw in the shade of the tall thick trees and thought of pleasant things until she went to sleep. She was asleep when a vision told her all her sins were forgiven. Not that she had many sins, for here in the Quarters she seldom had a chance to sin.

She dreamed she was walking up a long steep hill toward sunrise side, carrying a pack of clothes on her head. The higher she climbed the heavier the pack grew until her neck fairly ached with the burden but just as she reached the top of the hill she saw a great white house, much like the Big House except that it stood in an open field in the sunshine. When she got right in front of it a tall man dressed in a long white robe came out of the door and without a word walked up to her and took the pack of clothes off her head. Then he said, in a deep solemn voice that sounded like Budda Ben's, "Go, my child, and sin no more." The words woke her up and her heart well-nigh burst with excite- ment as she ran to tell Maum Hannah. That night she told her dream before the deacons at prayer-meeting. After they asked her a few questions about it, and she gave her promise always to try to live as right as she could, never to dance again or sing reel songs, not to lie or steal or be mean or do anything low, they said she might be a candidate for baptism.

Maum Hannah made her a long white baptizing robe, and she was baptized the next first Sunday in the creek back of Heaven's Gate Church. She was terribly scared, for the water was cold and black and the tree roots along the bank looked like snakes, but Reverend Duncan was strong and she knew he would not let her fall. Her baptizing robe was put away in the bottom of the cupboard to be used for her shroud when she died, and her name was no longer Mary but Sister Mary.

She missed dancing, and whenever she heard the big drum beating and the accordion wailing she felt sad, but shouting at prayer-meeting was pleasure and the old hymns and spirituals were beautiful. When the people all sang them together in the fields while they worked, she joined in and felt so holy that cold chills ran up and down her spine.

This last year had been a bad-luck year. Troubling things had happened, things she could not even talk over with Budda Ben, who was always kind to her no matter how cross he was with other people. But Budda was a cripple who knew nothing about love or pleasure.

When Budda was a tiny baby Maum Hannah fell with him in her arms and broke his body badly. He had been a cripple ever since. His legs were hamstrung and could not stand straight. He had to walk half-squatting with a stick, and sleep with his knees doubled up close to his chin. He had to work sitting down and most of the time he sat on the wood-pile cutting wood and fat lightwood splinters, or mending shoes worn out by strong firm feet.

He could not even stay a member of the church. He tried to pray, for God knows he needed help, but the children plagued him and called him names, until agony made him curse. Then he cursed everything: the children, his mother and God himself. His mother was to blame. She crippled him. She fell because she was afraid. Afraid her husband would see her going to meet another man, Budda Ben's own father. She was the one to suffer, not he. He had never done anything to God or man to bring such a misery on himself.

Budda Ben hated July. He declared July was a wicked sinner, a crap-shooter, a poker-player, a gambler, a dancer who sang reels, and carried his "box" (guitar) everywhere he went playing wicked tunes for the sinners to dance by at birth-night suppers and parties and playing on Saturday afternoon at the crossroads store for the boys and men who loafed there when the week's work was over. He sang songs with bad words and he was no fit company for Mary to keep. Budda Ben and Maum Hannah wanted her to marry June, July's twin brother, who had loved Mary all her life, and who was hurt to the heart now because she chose July instead of himself.

Mary prized June's devotion for he was steady and kind, a faithful friend, who helped her do all her tasks: bringing in the wood Budda Ben cut at the wood-pile, fetching water from the spring, or bringing broom-sedge out of the old fields for the winter's supply of brooms, setting out plants in the vegetable garden and hoeing the rows clean. June often helped her scour the floors Saturday morning when July went rabbit hunting. He was far more thoughtful than July and as much unlike him in looks as in disposition. July was tall, lean, quick-spoken. June was short, big-chested, heavy, slow.

They fought all through their boyhood, for they were evenly matched, and to this day they would fight again at the drop of a hat, not with weak scuffles or wordy quarreling, but with terrible blows of clenched fists that brought blood.

Yet they loved each other, and to meddle with one of them meant to meddle with both.

When Mary told June she was going to marry July, he drew his thick black eyebrows together and his hands doubled up into hard fists. Something like surprise filled his eyes. "July?" he asked. "You is gwine to marry July?" Then he grunted and shrugged his big round shoulders. "July ever was a lucky boy. E ever was. I never had a luck in my life."

"Ain' you glad I'm gwine to be you sister, June?" she asked him.

"Not so glad, Si May-e." June smiled a wry smile and looked far away.

Maum Hannah called July a trifling time-waster and complained that he never stuck to any work; that he never saved a cent or stayed in one place long enough to take root; that he was always courting girls, then leaving them high and dry, and often in trouble. He would never stick to Mary. June would. June was honest and hard-working, strong as an ox, and he would make a fine husband even if he could not play a box like July.

Whenever July came to see her at night while Budda Ben and Maum Hannah were both at meeting it made the old woman suspicious and unhappy. She'd sigh and say, "Company in de dark don' do, gal. Company in de dark don' do. When de kerosene is out and de moon don' shineand it's too hot for bright fire—just de dark and company—company in de dark don' do, gal."

Deep down in Mary's heart she knew this was true, but after she was married to July, she would help him to be steady and faithful. She would make him a home where he liked to stay. She would save his money, and teach him how to be a serious-minded man. He needed her to help him, for, in spite of his tall sinewy body and broad shoulders, July had a child's heart in his breast. He liked play better, than work because something inside him had never grown up.

He liked to tease her and plague her in all sorts of ways. One spring day while she was seeking peace and July was helping June mark his pigs, cutting every one in an ear before it was carried over the river to roam in the pasture with its mother, so that he might be able to tell his own hogs the next fall, July came where she was, caught her by the arm and held her. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he took his knife out of his pocket and slit the lobe of her ear. "Now, you is marked for life," he said and laughed gaily. Mary wept with the hurt, but Maum Hannah called July and asked him why he had cut Mary's ear. He grinned sheepishly and said he had marked her with an underbit.

"Is dat you mark?"

"Yes'm," he answered boldly, adding that he had marked Mary so he could tell she was his when she grew up.

"Well, son, May-e's mark is a swallow-fork. Two cuts. You stand still while de gal cuts you ear. Lend em you knife. I ain' got a sharp one in de house."

July took out his knife and stood still while Mary cut his ear this way and that to make the swallow-fork. He was marked for life, too. His blood flowed fast, but he grinned good-naturedly and said nothing.

That very night he told her he loved her and was going to marry her when she grew up and she felt that she could walk on air, or fly like a bird, or blossom like a flower, when she heard his beautiful words.

Last summer he went away to find easier and better-paid work and her heart sickened in her breast so she could hardly eat or smile. But now he was back, thin and bony, with new lines in his face; his clothes were worn out and his pockets empty, but his old happy grin was as bright as ever. No matter what Budda Ben and Maum Hannah said, July should never leave her again.

All the money he made was gone and June had to lend him some to go to town and buy his wedding clothes. He used part of it to buy Mary a present, a pair of hoop earrings to hide the cut in her ear. The big shining gold circles were wrapped up in a scarlet head-kerchief. When she stood in front of Maum Hannah's looking-glass and tied up her head with the kerchief as grown women do, and slipped the earrings through the holes which were bored in her ears long ago when she was a tiny child, to make her eye-sight strong, her fingers trembled with happiness. She had longed for earrings ever since she could remember and she had carefully kept the bored holes in her ears open with tiny straws so they could not grow up. July remembered that. Bless his heart!

"Who is dis all dressed up so fine," Budda Pen asked from the doorway. "Wid earrings a-danglin an' a head-kerchief makin' em look like: a grown 'oman? Who it is?"

Mary could hardly draw her eyes away from the wavy glass where her image was fairly dazzling. "Does you tink dey fits me, Budda? Does you like em, Auntie? Please stop a-frownin an' look at em, Budda Ben. I know you ain' never seen prettier ones." She said it all in one breath, then stopped to gaze in the looking-glass, Where her white teeth and black eyes flashed bright as the earrings themselves.

Chapter 3

Mary's wedding-day had dawned but instead of being up at first fowl crow and running around helping Maum Hannah get everything ready, she lay still in her bed in the shed room, thinking, pretending to sleep, watching the streaks of light creep in through the cabin cracks, while the old woman moved quietly about in the big room, rousing the fire in the chimney, filling the kettle with fresh water, stirring at the pots on the hearth and pushing them up closer to the fire so the breakfast victuals could cook faster.

Mary was happy over her wedding. God knew she had loved July all of her life; yet, when she thought of leaving Maum Hannah and Budda Ben and this kind old house where she had been born and where she had spent most of her life, something inside her breast ached.

She had no father and her mother had been dead for years, but Maum Hannah had been like a mother to her, Budda Ben, Maum Hannah's crippled son, had been both a father and a brother, and this old tottering house was like a dear friend. She loved every board in its weather-beaten sides, every shingle in its warped roof, every rusty nail that held it together.

The house where she and July would live at the other end of the Quarter street was exactly like it, for it was built at the same time, by the same people and by the same pattern. Its roof was warped too, its rotted shingles were edged with small green ferns, the wide-mouthed chimney rising out of its ridge-pole took up a third of the inside wall in the same way. It was an old unpainted wooden cabin sitting low on the earth, heavy with years, yet able and strong in its beam and joists and rafters and sides, for it was built in the old days when men took time to choose timbers carefully and to lay them together with skill. Like this old house, it had held many generations. Red birth, black death, hate, sorrow and love had all dwelt inside it, sheltered by its roof, shielded by its walls. July's people had lived in it for generations, but this was the home where she was born. Everything here was part of her life. She was born in this same bed. The crippled table over in the corner, heaped high with clean quilts, had been there ever since she could remember. The cupboard where her clothes stayed and the leaning shelf by the window with the four sad-irons resting on it after their hard week's work had never been out of their places since they were put there by women who lived here before Maum Hannah was born. When Maum Hannah died they would all belong to Mary. Crippled Budda Ben was bound to die ahead of his mother who prayed to God every day of her life to let her outlive him, so that when he died she could see that his box was made right. Budda's poor legs must not be cramped when they were laid away in the ground for their last long rest. She knew how to pray and she would outlive Budda Ben as sure as the world.

He was snoring peacefully in the shed room next to Mary's as Maum Hannah went tripping quietly about the big room so as not to wake him. The shed-room door was open so Mary could see the wedding-cakes standing in a long white row in front of the jugs of wedding-wine. When Maum Hannah began examining them and talking softly to herself Mary couldn't help smiling to see how she peeped at one, then another, turning each around, appraising them all, grunting with pride in so much beauty. "My jaws pure leak water just to look at em," Maum Hannah murmured. The neighbors had baked and iced them all except the bride's cake which stood like a tall steeple in the center of the row. Maum Hannah made that one herself, and it was the tallest and loveliest cake Mary had ever seen: Its big bottom layer had been baked in a dish-pan and the other layers grew smaller as they rose higher and higher until the last layer came, and that had to be baked in a tomato can for no pan in the Quarters was small enough to be right for it. When it was all finished, iced white and dotted over with white spots, Budda Ben hobbled to Grab-All, as the crossroads store was called because it got every cent everybody ever had, and bought pink and white candies that looked like rice grains and sprinkled these all over the whole cake. Then it became too beautiful to eat. Maum Hannah said that the candy rice would bring good luck to the bride. Rice always does. Until yesterday, Mary thought rice brought luck to brides because after a woman marries she must cook rice for her husband every day, but Maum Hannah told her that rice sprinkled over brides and bride cakes brings many children and that Budda Ben's rice candy would bring many children to her.

It had taken many an egg and many a pound of sugar and flour to make so many cakes, but everybody on the whole plantation could have a good hunk to eat to-day. Maum Hannah had been saving eggs since early fall; and every scuppernong grape and bullace that could be picked and squeezed was made into wedding-wine.

Mary had worked hard all the week and now she lay still with half-closed eyes until all of a sudden Maum Hannah threw up her hands and groaned, "Do, Master, look down and see what a rat is done!"

Mary's heart flew up into her mouth. Cold chills ran over her as she ran to see what had happened. There it was, a great hole gnawed deep into the bride's cake's tender meat. Candy rice and rich yellow cake crumbs sprinkled the shelf and the floor. She wanted to cry out, to scream, but her voice froze in her throat and she fell into bitter dumb sobs. Maum Hannah's head shook gloomily from side to side. Such bad luck was hard to face. But her hand reached out and gave Mary's shoulder a comforting pat. "Don't fret so hard, honey. You eyes will get all red an' ugly. Wipe de water out em on you gown-tail an' go get me some eggs an' sugar out de safe. I aim to make some new icin an' mend dis cake so nobody won' never know it was hurt exceptin you an' me an' Gawd an' Satan. We won' even tell Ben. Satan is de one sent dat rat here to kill we joy an' make we have sin to-day. But I'll show em, e can' rule me, I done fought wid em too many times in my life to let em get de best o me now. Now, you go on back to bed an' get warm, whilst I whips up de icin. Gawd'll help me fix dis cake. He wouldn' have de heart to let Satan ruin a lil mudderless bride's cake on de weddin-day. No. Gawd promised to be a mudder to the mudderless, honey. You run jump in de bed an' get warm. I'll call you when I'm done."

Mary shivered with misery as she crawled back under the quilts. Maum Hannah whipped the egg whites stiff with sugar, and with many sighs and grunts and prayers, filled the ugly hole full, patted the icing smooth and neat, and stuck some of the wasted candy rice over it. Then she came to Mary's door and called softly so as not to let Budda Ben hear her, "De cake is good as new, honey. Get down on your knees an' thank Gawd."

The cake was mended. Nobody would ever guess it had been hurt. Mary was so happy she gave Maum Hannah a tight hug, then stepped out on the floor and started cutting a pigeon wing while she hummed the tune of "Black Annie, Black Annie Moore2" But Maum Hannah stopped her sternly. "Is you gone crazy, gal? Is you forgot you is a church member? I told you to kneel down an' thank God an' here you is singin a reel song an' crossip you feets. Dat's a sin, gal, a pure sin."

Mary grinned and gave the old soul another great hug and hurried back to the shed room to dress. But the morning was chilly, and Maum Hannah was thoughtful.

"You better fetch you clothes in here an' dress by the fire. It's mighty airish to-day. Come eat a tater first to hotten up you insides so you can move fast. Budda Ben put a lot o nice yams in de ashes when he banked de fire last night. Dey's all good an' done. A nice soft one'll do you belly all de good. A full belly makes a brave heart, an' you'll need a brave heart to-day."

The floor felt cold to Mary's feet, the big room was drafty, with its chairs and tables pushed back against the wall to make room for the wedding: guests. It looked almost as large as a church. She stood close to the great yellow fire, warming, but Maum Hannah jerked her farther away with a warning. "Mind, gal, dis fire's mean. Gawd knows e's old enough to have better sense, but e would just as soon catch you an' burn you as not. I done had enough worry-ation dis mornin to last me a long time."

"Fire couldn' catch me to-day, Auntie. Not me," Mary said but she stood farther back and ate her potato slowly while she looked around at all the things she had done to make the room attractive. Every board in the floor had been scrubbed white with lye and sand, her hands were still sore with the lye cuts. The walls were fresh covered with newspapers bought from Grab-All with eggs; circles of fringed papers sewed to barrel hoops and tied to the rafters looked like big lanterns as they swung gently overhead in the cold drafts of morning air which fell through the broken shingles in the roof. The wide rock hearth was newly reddened with clay, and the mantel-shelf had a newspaper cover which she had carefully scalloped and cut with holes to make blossoms and stars. That was lovely. She tried hard to get one more paper to fix a cover like it for the water-shelf where the cake and wine stood, but not another paper was to be had for eggs or peanuts or anything else. June whitewashed the shelf with the white clay that fell in lumps out of the side of the duck dam gully and it matched the whitened front door and window-blinds, and looked clean and nice enough.

Maum Hannah's bed in the corner of the room was freshly made up with clean things and the wedding-dress lay spread out on it, waiting to be worn. The wide white muslin skirt trimmed half-way up with narrow frills and the tucked waist trimmed with lace at the neck and sleeves made a garment that matched the wedding-cake in looks. Budda Ben had dug up all his buried savings to buy the cloth and to get the best seamstress on the plantation to make it, but it was worth every cent he paid out He said so himself when Mary tried it on to let him see how well it fitted.

She carefully licked off the sweet potato bits that stuck to her fingers, then squatted on the hearth close to the fire to warm good through and through before she put on her clothes. One good yawn, one good stretch, then she would dress fast and fetch the water and finish up whatever had to be done yet this morning. "You ever was like a cat, Si May-e; always stretchin. But after to-day, you ain' gwine have time to be gapin an' warmin, an' pleasurin youself in de mornins. You'll see."

Sister Mary stood up and slipped out of her night-gown, which dropped near to the pot Maum Hannah was stirring. The old woman looked up with a merry twinkle in her eyes. "Is you crazy, gal? Look how you duh fan ashes in de victuals. Fo Gawd's sake put on some clothes. You ain' to stand up buck naked like dat. You's a grown 'oman now. Is you forgot?" Mary laughed and stretched out her long slim body until every muscle was taut. What did she care if Maum Hannah saw her buck naked now when she had seen her so a thousand times? But Maum Hannah's laugh had cut off and she was leaning forward with her eyes blinking and gazing as if they could not see quite clearly. They were searching Mary's body from head to foot, marking each line, each curve, as if something astonished and distressed them. Mary crouched down and, picking up a garment, hurriedly put it on, but Maum Hannah's eyes were wise and keen. There was no use to be covering up now.