The Fallen Fruit, page 4
“Politicians will say anything to get the Negro vote.”
On the far side of the carriage, an old biddy and her grown granddaughter spread their family’s business.
“When I get off this train, your daddy’s gonna get it,” the older woman hissed.
In a quieter voice, her granddaughter replied, “Granny . . .”
“That dirty fool has been sleeping with your cousin under our very noses.” She made loud smacking noises. “Our neighbor told me he noticed Henry coming and going while everyone was at work. Bentley heard both of their voices coming out of the bedroom window. Lord knows my son ain’t a Christian man no more—now he’s a filthy philander.”
Millie stole a glance at her uncle, but he kept his eyes on his book. Perhaps he’d heard it all. Dirty gossip hung from every clothesline on the farm, so she wasn’t one to judge.
At least she would’ve kept private Bridge business to herself.
To take up the time, Millie considered pulling Oswald into a conversation, but he crossed his legs and closed his eyes. His dark skin appeared dry and wrinkles lined his brow so she let him sleep. The last time she’d seen Uncle, he’d looked like Pa, or at least a younger version of him, without the creases alcohol had cleaved into his face. Perhaps if her father hadn’t taken up liquor, he would’ve worn a tailored suit and expensive shoes like Uncle.
Uncle Oswald slept until they reached Union Station. The conductor’s call startled him awake—and brought Millie’s apprehension back. Now her new life would truly begin. Without a word, Uncle got off the train and she followed. Commuters spilled around them. She couldn’t help but stare down the long, covered train concourse.
Colored men, women, and children wearing fine clothes or the simplest garments strode away from them while three women waited. The woman at the end had to be Aunt Alma. She had a stern expression, about as stiff as the pleated wool poplin dress she wore. The two younger women beside her, who appeared to be around Millie’s age, took after their light-skinned mother. They brightened at the sight of Uncle. Those had to be her cousins.
“So this is Alfred and Dinah’s girl?” Aunt Alma’s gaze jumped from Millie’s worn shoes up to her faded gingham housedress. Her aunt’s stony assessment came to a stop at her waist, where two black buttons were missing.
Uncle gestured to the women. “Amelia, this is your aunt Alma and your cousins Henrietta and Rosalind. Girls, greet her.”
Unlike their mother, Henrietta and Rosalind smiled. Henrietta appeared statuesque, with wide eyes, narrow hips, and long arms. Her shorter older sister, Rosalind, was stockier, her hips fuller.
Like their mother, they were dressed in fashionable dresses with ribbons and shiny buttons. Extravagant wide-brimmed hats adorned their heads. Millie touched her straw hat, hoping her braided hair hadn’t escaped the flat bun Aunt Ursula had made.
“Where are her things?” Aunt Alma asked, her voice wispy. “Mr. Parks is waiting to collect them.”
“This is all I have.” Millie slipped her scuffed suitcase behind her back.
“She doesn’t have any trunks, Alma.” Uncle began to walk away. “Let’s go.”
Millie had always assumed Uncle Ozzie was a man of means, but she had no idea how much money he had until they reached the family car, a Model T. The jalopy her brother had used to drive back and forth to town never shined like this one. She gawked until Mr. Parks, who now held her suitcase, opened the passenger door. Uncle got into the front seat while the others got into the rear. Millie scooted onto the back seat last, and her aunt sniffed with displeasure.
“Smells like the farm arrived with you, my dear.” Barbs covered her endearment.
“Don’t listen to Mother,” Henrietta whispered to Millie. “She’s trying to work her way into the Lenox Social Club, but at the rate she’s going, she’ll never make it.”
Uncle Ozzie didn’t live outside the city but near a busy street. Every house and building had electricity.
Henrietta must’ve seen Millie’s widened eyes, for she said, “This is U Street. Isn’t it amazing? Rosalind said the main drag in Harlem is better, but nothing compares to home.”
She was grateful for the seat at the end—she had the best vantage point to take in the other vehicles and carriages honking and avoiding the pedestrians lining the streets. They drove past a hot sandwich vendor on the sidewalk and a truck selling tamales. The wonderful scents wafted through the car. They passed a YWCA, two banks, and even a hotel. A sign displaying the afternoon viewing times for a local theater’s showing of a Charlie Chaplin movie stood tall beside an advertisement for The Stocking Store. From one end to the other of the wide boulevard lined with shade trees, Millie saw mainly Negroes, many of them finely dressed. She breathed in the city and sighed. This colored neighborhood felt like a town tucked away in a vast metropolis.
Millie and her brother had always wanted to visit the capital.
Thank you, Isaiah, she thought.
They left the bustle and turned eventually onto a quieter street called Willard. Elegant yet narrow three-story houses were lined up on both sides of the street. Even though the homes were uniform, they had charm, with iron fences and ornate doorways. The car pulled up next to a beautiful light-green house. Mr. Parks opened the door and Millie peered at the many windows until Henrietta touched her shoulder.
“C’mon!” she said.
Millie got out of the car, and Henrietta clutched her hand to pull her up the steps to the small porch. Aunt Alma and Rosalind followed as they entered a parlor. Right beside the door, a set of steps led up to the next floor, while the rest of the first floor lay ahead. Every surface in the parlor gleamed.
“Etta, see that she changes into more suitable attire before dinner,” her aunt said stiffly before the older woman marched up the steps. “Rosie, fetch the maid to bring me some tea.”
Millie never got a chance to say another word to her uncle either. He disappeared down the hall off the parlor.
It was Henrietta who tugged Millie again to climb the stairs to the second floor. “You’ll be sharing the room with me,” she said. “Are you seventeen, like Father said?”
They reached the landing and headed to the second door.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I turned seventeen back in January.”
It was the last birthday she’d celebrate with Isaiah.
After Henrietta opened the door, Millie slipped into a room she wouldn’t even have known to dream of. Henrietta had two beds covered with pink-and-yellow paisley bedspreads. Matching curtains adorned the single window, which brought in late spring light. Between the beds stood a single chest of drawers, a desk, and a wooden chair with a padded seat.
“You can have the bed closest to the window,” Etta said. “I emptied the two bottom drawers in the dresser.” Her cousin explained where to find the bathroom and such, but Millie missed much of it as she collapsed on her bed. She leaned up to search every corner of the room, but she couldn’t uncover a single sign of an emergency suitcase, pack, or bag.
She’d just arrived, and the topic of the family curse had yet to come up. The one thing she’d learned from her elders was that every Bridge man bore someone who’d fall. Did that mean her uncle’s family already had lost a younger or older sibling? Or even worse, were they oblivious?
“Was the trip rough? How early did you have to be at the train station?” Henrietta asked, pulling Millie into the present. Millie had also missed Rosalind’s entrance into the room.
“Not early,” Millie replied. “I get up before dawn on most days.”
“I’m sure you would,” Rosalind quipped. “Have to milk the cow and all.”
Millie leaned toward Henrietta. “Do you have a brother or sister who has fallen already?”
Etta stole a glance at her sister. Rosalind hurried to the door and closed it.
“We don’t talk about that,” Etta whispered.
“Why?” Millie asked. “What happens if—”
“Mother said it doesn’t matter anymore,” Rosie said firmly, her brows drawn together. “And I say it’s backcountry foolishness. Mother doesn’t want to hear it and neither do I.”
Henrietta reached out and patted Millie’s hand. “Rest easy. I promise that everything’s fine.”
Fear pulsed through Amelia. Did their mother truly believe the curse wasn’t real? Had her uncle failed to convince her?
Etta gave her a forced smile. “If you’re my age, then that means you just finished high school, right? Rosie couldn’t pass Howard University’s entrance exams last year so she’s trying to take them again in September.”
With that remark, Etta’s older sister glared at her.
Etta grinned at Rosie. “Father told us you came here to take the exams and attend Howard to become a physician?”
Millie’s breath faltered. Not only did she have a willfully ignorant aunt, she had another problem. She’d assumed she’d attend college someday, but she’d thought she would have more time. Maybe she would find a job, work in a factory for a year or two. But was she even ready for the rigors of college? Other than studying the books Uncle Oswald had sent, she’d completed only two years of high school.
Rosie must’ve caught Millie’s apprehension, for she said, “You’ve been studying all this time, haven’t you?”
“Of course.” Her smile faltered and Rosalind caught it.
“I’m sure you’ll do well.” Rosie folded her arms. “A smart girl like you won’t need to find a job.” She shrugged. “And if all else fails, you can work with Clara as one of our housemaids.”
The bite in her cousin’s tone nipped at Millie, but she simply forced herself to smile and get up to unpack her bag. She presented her back to them. It was better that way. Telling Rosie what she truly thought—that the girl should mind her viper’s tongue—would get her into trouble.
Mother, did you hear what our dear cousin said to me? Rosie would probably say over their supper. She’s a heathen, I tell you.
Millie stuffed her dresses into the drawers to still her trembling hands. She kept working. Her uncle had brought her here for a reason.
From the corner of her eye, she caught Rosie waltzing out of the room. Millie expected her to take her backhanded comments with her.
Chapter 4
Amelia Bridge
June 1920
“Are you certain you want to walk, Miss Amelia?” Clara asked Millie that morning. “Didn’t you walk last week?”
“It’s absolutely beautiful outside,” Millie replied. “The fresh air will do me some good.”
The others had departed for the day, leaving only Millie and her uncle at the dining room table. Clara whisked away the dishes before Millie could offer a hand. While her uncle continued to read the latest news from The Washington Bee and drank from his never-empty cup of coffee, Millie got ready to leave.
“Young ladies shouldn’t be out in that heat.” The woman—who appeared to be no older than Millie herself—put her hands on her ample hips and looked Millie up and down as if Millie would come back five shades darker.
Ever since Millie had arrived, Aunt Alma had droned on and on about parasols and how Millie would never find a nice light-skinned gentleman if she kept gallivanting on her little trips down the street.
“Amelia doesn’t have to walk.” Her uncle took a ghost’s sip from his cup. “She can go with me.”
Millie edged closer to the door off the dining room. The spears of summer sunlight beaming through the parlor’s bay window beckoned for her to explore.
Before she could throw a gleeful goodbye over her shoulder, Uncle Oswald abandoned his newspaper and headed out of the house. She hurried after him.
“Miss Amelia, you forgot your parasol.” The sharp-eyed maid put the light-pink umbrella in Millie’s hands before she could reach the door. “Have a pleasant walk, Miss.”
Once outside, Millie spotted Mr. Parks scurrying out of the car to open the back door.
“Is Miss Amelia joining you at the clinic already, Dr. Bridge?” the driver asked.
“Not today,” her uncle replied. “My niece wants to go to the park.”
Mr. Parks’s head tilted to the side in amusement.
They settled inside. After Mr. Parks started the car, her uncle asked, “Will you be carrying on with all this wandering once your schooling begins?”
“You think I’m wandering?” she replied.
“Feels like you’re searching for something.”
“I guess I’m a bit restless.”
“You’re searching for the middle ground, but you’ll never find it. Mark my words, the life you had at the farm is no more.”
The car cruised down U Street until the tiny park appeared. She waited for Uncle Oswald to say more, but he didn’t fuss like Aunt Alma. He had even fewer words after she got out of the car.
“Stay out of trouble” was all he said.
“Yes, sir.” The car pulled away, and her quiet march into the park began. She passed a gentleman in a threadbare suit. She gave him a nod but got none in return. Not everyone brushed her off, but the city added grit to most folks’ eyes. In many ways, the capital was like the Virginia countryside, full of sinister and kind creatures, but she missed the sounds of home. Every morning Millie woke before dawn and waited to hear the rooster’s call. She waited to feel the darkness pull her back into slumber, but she lay there and couldn’t sleep. In this land of perpetual light and little starlight, she longed to lose herself on the farm with the familiarity of her pack on her back. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear Isaiah trudging around the cabin, preparing breakfast before they did their chores. The muscles in her hands recalled the weight of the milk bucket, her back the pressure from the worn sack. But most of all, she heard Isaiah’s voice rise like a choir, singing of the things she needed to remember the most during their morning walks through the orchard.
“What can you eat here?” Isaiah had always asked her.
Millie had searched the forest floor, past the fungal dead man’s fingers, over the poisonous crawling berries to the oyster mushrooms. The pearl-white mushrooms spread out like umbrellas protecting the lichens from the rain.
“Those,” she’d said, pointing to the oyster mushrooms. “And those too,” she’d added once she spied the wavy tops and golden-brown stalks of chanterelles hiding among the ferns.
Her brother had towered over her and drawn the branches away so she could pass under them. “Which plants are better for stomachaches, garlic or mint?”
“Both,” she’d said proudly.
Millie missed those days. Here in the city, the patches of greenery were smaller. She only had to turn her head slightly to glimpse concrete and stone. Gone were the plentiful cottontails. Gone were the bears. Edible plants were here, but she found fewer of them. In many places, she uncovered green-speckled poisonous mushrooms and deadly fruit on the spiny stalks of horse nettle plants.
Millie was as far from home as she was from her brother.
* * *
Before Millie could take her college entrance examinations, or even have her expensive tuition paid, Aunt Alma had an ultimatum.
“You’ll learn proper etiquette, dear. I won’t have you sully the Bridge name among my friends,” she said crisply.
As Henrietta had mentioned upon Millie’s arrival, Aunt Alma wanted to get into the Lenox Social Club, an elite gathering of the upper-class Negro women in the capital. To ensure Millie fit her standards, Auntie had hired an etiquette tutor from New York. That stern mulatto tutor drilled lessons so deeply into Millie’s head, she couldn’t sit still without hearing a particular instruction. “Keep your chin up,” she often heard. Or the lovely order for her to: “Cross your legs at the ankle.”
The rules bit at Millie worse than early summer mosquitos.
“Mimic your aunt,” the tutor had instructed. “When you court a fine gentleman someday, you’ll thank the heavens for her connections.”
She found it laughable how Aunt Alma could give advice to anyone. The woman cared more about what others thought of her than her less fortunate peers did.
Especially when it came to Millie’s attire.
On an early summer afternoon Aunt Alma had ushered them out of the house for shopping.
They strolled down U Street, having just departed from Ware’s Department Store. Pedestrians hurried around the four of them, including a keen-looking gentleman in a double-breasted gray suit. Rosie’s head tilted with interest, but she kept in time with her slow-going mother. After three hours of shopping and fittings, Millie was in no hurry either. So she lazily strolled beside Etta behind a chatty Rosie and her aunt.
“Granddaddy Foster worked himself to death as a laborer in Boston,” Etta said to Millie.
“Your granddaddy sounds like mine. Most of my kin only know the farm. Some folks left for the city but”—Millie gestured toward the flashy businesses lining the boulevard—“none of them lived like this.”
“I suspect Mother cared more about the company she kept after she married Father and moved here,” Etta said. “Over the years, she’s lost herself in making sure Rosie and I go to the right schools. That we vacation in New York or Martha’s Vineyard. That we join the right social circles so we can meet the right people.”
Even with her rural upbringing, deep down Millie understood that there was an “us” and a “them.” Especially among the colored folks. Ma hadn’t needed to mention the invisible line in church separating parishioners in polished shoes from those who walked in barefoot.
What she didn’t understand was why some Negroes needed to separate themselves. Whether they had fair or dark skin, curly or straight hair, folks still needed to breathe, and in the end, they died too. Just like everyone else.
“Aunt Alma ain’t—isn’t lost,” Millie said, quickly correcting herself. “She knows exactly what she wants to do: keep up appearances through spending money.”
Etta flashed a smile. “Shopping wasn’t that bad. Didn’t you have fun? You’ll need those clothes for school.”
