The Cherokee Rose, page 3
“Well, well, if it ain’t Jinx Micco. Didn’t think I’d see you around ’til dinnertime.” Deb held a coffeepot in one hand, made the rounds refilling mugs, and took her own sweet time circling back to Jinx. “Coffee?” Deb said. She knew Jinx didn’t drink it.
“I’m saving myself for Coke, and I’m here because I can’t shake what you said about my last column.”
Deb was a regular reader of “Indian Country Yesterday” and one of Jinx’s biggest fans. But she had given Jinx flack for the piece on Afro-Creek Christians that mentioned a mission-school student back East. Deb had taken offense—unwarranted offense in Jinx’s mind—at the nature of the subject matter, probably because she was a descendant of Cow Tom, a famous Black Creek interpreter from the nineteenth century. The subject of race among the Creeks made Deb touchy.
Deb placed the coffeepot on the burner.
“Are you going to tell me what pissed you off?” Jinx said to Deb Tom’s back. “If you were mad enough at me to forget my dessert, don’t you think I have a right to know why?”
Deb held her stance for a moment, then turned to face Jinx. “You didn’t have to be so hard on her. Telling the story like Mary Ann betrayed her own mama. The way I read it, you made that lone girl responsible for the entire downfall of traditional Creek religion.”
Sam Sells, a retired breakfast regular who always took Deb’s side, turned his eyes away from his eggs to glare at Jinx.
Jinx lowered her voice. “The story wasn’t even really about her. It was about the Methodist missionaries’ failed attempts at converting Southern Creeks in the early 1800s. I had to explain that Creek traditionalists rejected Christianity, and that the Black people Creeks owned as slaves were the first to accept the faith, because that’s the way it happened. Those first enslaved converts paved the way for Creek conversion to Christianity. Mary Ann Battis was just an interesting example of the larger phenomenon. A part-Creek child of a Native mother and Black father who wanted to stay behind with white missionaries while her mom was removed to Indian Territory? It made for a punchy conclusion. That’s all. I think you should forgive me and let me order pancakes and a Coke.”
Deb was staring, unimpressed with Jinx’s argument and command of the facts. “That’s exactly what I mean. You see her life as no big deal, but she was big to somebody. What you wrote might be all anybody remembers about that girl. They’ll say she was a sellout who rejected her own mama in a nation that reckoned kin along the mama’s bloodlines. And they’ll say she was Black, because that’s the secret sauce of your tribal traitor story.” Deb threw her hand on her hip. “Benny,” she called back to the kitchen, “go ahead and get Jinx’s order up!”
Jinx blinked, diving for cover into the glass of icy Coke that Deb set before her. After a long moment, she looked up again. “I don’t care that Battis was Black. I mean, I do care, but I don’t care. She was just as much Indian as you or me.”
“Don’t you dare try that color-blind crap on me. I know you too well, Jennifer Inez Micco, ever since you was a baby. And I can’t say I’ve noticed you calling any of your other Indian figures, no matter how mixed with white they were, ‘part-Creek’ in your column.” Deb paused, then dropped the grenade she had been hiding in her apron pocket all along. “Like auntie, like niece.”
“What?” Jinx exploded, causing Sam Sells to slosh his coffee over the top of his chipped ceramic mug. Deb’s other morning diners were craning their necks to get a look at who was making the commotion. Her mother would hear about this before ten o’clock, Jinx was sure. “Are you calling my aunt a racist?” Jinx wasn’t afraid to use the race card either. If Deb could deal it, she could play it.
But Deb was Deb; she stood her ground. “Angie Micco was a lot of things, some good and some bad. But one thing she wasn’t was open-minded about people who were different.” She looked intently at Jinx. “Any kind of different.”
Jinx chipped her words off the ice of her thoughts, gripping the sweating glass, empty now of soda. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, honey. I think you do. Here’s your breakfast. Now, eat up and get over to work before it’s too late.”
* * *
*
Jinx trekked to the small public library building and stowed her messenger bag. Only schoolchildren and members of the Freaky Friday paranormal romance book club ever found their way into this outdated branch. She longed to chat with visitors about local history. But spending her half-days helping low-maintenance patrons kept her mind clear for evenings, the time when she did her writing and cataloged her great-aunt’s historical files. Her library income paid the taxes on Angie’s house, which didn’t sit on tribal land in their checkerboard Oklahoma town where former Creek Nation lots had gone to white residents over the years. It also paid for her fruit-pie habit at Deb’s, her Twizzlers habit at the 7-Eleven, and her daily Coca-Colas. For a part-time job, it wasn’t bad.
When Angie Micco left her house and everything in it to Jinx, no one in the family had minded. From the time she was a tiny girl, Jinx had gravitated to Aunt Angie, circling her ample form like a small moon to its planet. There were photos of Jinx as a sixth-month-old sitting on Aunt Angie’s lap, sucking on the end of her great-aunt’s thick eyeglasses. At family feeds and cookouts, she toddled behind Aunt Angie, clasping soggy fry-bread chunks in her fists. Everyone said it was Angie, not the kindergarten teacher, who taught Jinx to read. At picnics in the arbor, the two of them would settle on a blanket all their own, reading old Indian Territory newspapers and reacting to the goings-on of historical figures Aunt Angie had taught Jinx to know. Except for Jinx’s mother, who would pause beside them now and then to smooth back Jinx’s hair and refill Angie’s coffee mug, the relatives had left them to their studies.
For Jinx’s twelfth birthday, Aunt Angie gave her a series of early-edition Creek history books that had been sold by the tribal college after it updated its library collection. When Jinx turned sixteen and finally asked Aunt Angie an American Indian history question she couldn’t answer with certainty, Aunt Angie had smiled and said it was time for Jinx to leave the nest. At seventeen, Jinx went off to college on scholarship at the University of Tulsa. “That one’s a smart cookie, trained by Angie,” everyone back home had said. Four years later, Jinx set off for graduate school to pursue her doctorate in history. Aunt Angie, then seventy-six with dyed purplish hair and the same oversized eyeglasses, had ridden shotgun next to Jinx on the cross-country trip to North Carolina, telling Jinx what turns to make and which lane to drive in, even though Aunt Angie herself hadn’t driven a day in her life. Eight years later, Jinx had yet to earn her degree. When her mother called to say Aunt Angie was gone, Jinx packed up the notes and files for the dissertation she would never finish and returned straight home to Ocmulgee.
“There you are, Jennifer!” Emma Langlier called when she spotted Jinx enter the empty reading room. Jinx’s cheery co-worker was dressed in a floral sundress and flat-soled sandals with her hair neatly clipped, while Jinx’s oversized cargo-style khakis, loose T-shirts left untucked, and cherry-red Converse high-tops with a hand-beaded design on the tongue sometimes caused older patrons to do double-takes.
“Why don’t I read to the daycare group this morning while you catch your breath?” Emma offered. “Can you believe the school year is about to start? All those kiddies with their new lunch boxes and stuffed pencil cases!”
Jinx smiled her thanks, thinking about the implications of a busier workday. “Great. I’ll be right around the corner. I’ll process returns and neaten up the nature section. It’s still a mess after that summer camp squad rifled through. I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
Jinx made her way to the cramped office where Emma’s kitten calendar hung from a bulletin board and her pointelle knit sweater draped the back of a chair. Emma would be busy setting out puzzles and selecting stories, and their branch director rarely came in on Friday mornings. Silently promising that she would pay the time back by doing post-story-hour cleanup, Jinx sat at the computer and surfed the Internet.
“Mary Ann Battis” got no hits when she typed it into the Google search bar, but the name of the mission where she had first gone to school returned a series of articles. Jinx opened a link concerning Alabama state historic sites that described the Asbury Mission School in Fort Mitchell, next to a photo of a historical marker. The Methodist mission school in the Creek Nation, located on the Georgia-Alabama border, had been destroyed by fire in the early 1800s. Most of the children were relocated to nearby white Christian homes, but advanced students had been transferred to a Moravian mission school in the Cherokee Nation, housed on the estate of a wealthy Cherokee chief named James Hold. When Jinx googled “James Hold,” a score of tourist websites popped up profiling the “devil-may-care” Cherokee “entrepreneur” and describing his “showplace” plantation on the Georgia “frontier.” Jinx clicked on a link to a recent newspaper article about the Hold Plantation museum, titled “State Cuts Pull Rug from Under Cherokees, Friends of the Hold House,” and skimmed.
Apparently, the historic Hold Plantation was going to be pawned off by the state like a broken turntable that month. It wasn’t as bad as when the United States government had put the Creek Council House up for sale in 1902, but it was bad enough. This plantation was the last place Mary Ann Battis was known to have lived. Traces of her might still exist among the household items or museum records.
Jinx sighed, lifting the loose tendrils of hair along her temples that always worked free from her haphazard braid. The Cherokee home would probably fall into the hands of some rich white man like most Indigenous land of any value.
“It’s time for magic!” Jinx heard Emma chirp to the children now gathered in the multipurpose room. “Mary Poppins, picking up from where we left off, a snack, and then we’ll make tissue-paper umbrellas!”
Jinx sat up straighter in her chair, entertaining an idea. Maybe the door had not yet closed. If the article was accurate, the house was still on the market. She could try calling and asking if materials could be identified, photographed, scanned, and emailed. Jinx printed out the pages from her search, circling the number of the state office that still owned the now defunct house museum. Then she scooped up and re-shelved the pile of book returns in the bin so Emma would not have to.
* * *
*
Jinx didn’t stop by Deb’s that night. She warmed a can of pork and beans and ate it with toast and a hunk of commodity cheese her cousin had brought over. Then she sat in her great-aunt’s desk chair and reread the text of last week’s “Indian Country Yesterday.” She sighed in momentary relief. Her argument that Black and Black Indian Christian converts like Mary Ann Battis had furthered the cultural assimilation of the Muskogee nation was sound. Her readers could intuit that she questioned Battis’s choice in shunning Creek family life in exchange for the Christian faith. But her facts were correct—of that Jinx was certain. If Deb Tom wanted to claim that her writing wasn’t PC enough, that was fine with Jinx. She didn’t deal in sanitized history.
Jinx opened a dog-eared book on the history of the Green Peach War. She compiled more facts in her notebook, glancing up at the windows and walls at frequent intervals, distracted by the strange undercurrent in the air. She sighed, craving fruit pie and feeling uneasy. Maybe Aunt Angie had information on Mary Ann Battis in her collection of papers. She flushed with embarrassment, glad that Deb Tom was not there to witness it, as she realized she had not seen Battis’s example as important enough in her column to hunt for multiple sources.
Jinx turned to her great-aunt’s filing cabinet. Battis was there. The wafer-thin folder held four microfilmed letters from the Creek Agency records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Jinx shifted toward a shelf and pulled down the general Creek history books, searching for Battis in the indexes. She found her listed in two studies. The authors disagreed about whether the girl’s mother or father had been Black and whether her Black parent had been enslaved or free. But the authors, like Jinx, agreed that Battis chose to remain with the missionaries while her Native family suffered the trial of compulsory removal. It was the only conclusion that could be reached from the documentary record. There was nothing new here—or at least, nothing Jinx could see.
She closed the file on Chief Isparhecher, opened the top drawer of her great-aunt’s metal filing cabinet, and slid the folder back inside. Then she opened the second drawer to put the Battis folder in place.
Jinx looked from drawer to drawer, realizing for the first time that these files were not in alphabetical, chronological, or even thematic order. She slung open every drawer then, running her fingers along the razor-edged folders like a blind person speed-reading Braille. Could it be that her great-aunt’s biographical files were organized by race, with full-bloods positioned at the front, mixed-bloods placed in the back, and Black Creeks stuffed into a segregated second-tier drawer? Could it be that Jinx with her almost-PhD had come along and maintained the same color-coded filing system two generations later? Deb Tom’s accusations against her great-aunt—against her—rang in Jinx’s head.
She abandoned the study, snapping off the lamp. She brushed her teeth and pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. Her bedroom—her great-aunt’s bedroom—was shadowy and still. And then a cool breeze floated through a window, mixing with the flat interior air. Jinx turned in surprise. It was early September in Oklahoma, where even nighttime breezes were sticky and warm. The curtains fluttered as she watched. She reached out to touch a lace-edged hemline that left a faint trail of dust on her fingertip.
* * *
*
When Jinx walked into Deb’s Diner early the next morning with her messenger bag slung over her shoulder, Deb looked at her for ten yawning seconds. “Sit,” Deb finally said.
Sam Sells was having sausage and biscuits smothered in gravy. He nodded a silent greeting at Jinx from beneath the rim of his John Deere baseball cap. Jinx breathed, feeling the tightness in her gut loosen.
Deb placed a glass of Coke before Jinx on the counter, along with a napkin and fork. “I did some asking around through the dinner shift last night. Nobody talks about Mary Ann Battis much these days among the Freedmen descendants,” she said. “There’s still some pain there from a story long forgotten. Mary Ann’s daddy—they called him Battis—was a Black man who took his own freedom. I always heard he came through Alabama Creek country on a forged government passport back in the 1790s. And her mama, well, she lost touch with the girl once the family came out here to Indian Territory. Her mama got one letter and never heard tell of poor Mary Ann again.”
Jinx had not touched her glass. She shook her head. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s only part of the story. The rest of it, we don’t know either. But you could find out for all of us. You could find her grave and pay your respects. Look for people whose elders might have remembered her. Get your information from more than one source.”
Jinx didn’t glance at the fluffy pancakes that Sadie, one of the waitresses, had delivered to the counter. Deb was watching her too intensely, waiting to see if Jinx would accept her wild assignment. Traveling to commune with the dead and pounce on strangers to help corroborate a loose story were not among Jinx’s usual research methods. But the Cherokee plantation for sale and those hypothetical house-museum records were already occupying her thoughts. Jinx realized she was curious, and more than that, she was chagrined.
“Wait right here,” Deb said after watching the range of emotions cross Jinx’s face. “I might have something for you.”
Jinx nodded, cutting into her pancakes.
By the time Deb returned, huffing and puffing from her exertions, Jinx had finished her meal. She was sure Deb had walked all the way back to her shotgun house down the long alley from the restaurant.
Deb was holding a wrinkled manila envelope twined shut with a thin red cord. She leaned forward on the counter, exposing cleavage in the deep V of her neckline. “This was part of my great-grandfather Cow Tom’s papers. The family kept them stashed away in a cardboard box all these years. I take them out from time to time, share tidbits with the Freedmen descendant groups, but I never could make heads or tails of this letter. I bet you can if you set your mind to it.” Deb paused. “It might just be the push you need to finish that degree.”
Jinx snapped her head up. “I didn’t finish because my great-aunt died. I had to come home.”
“No, baby. You didn’t finish because once things got tough out there, once those university folks challenged what you thought you knew, you tucked tail and ran. Your auntie’s death was hard on you, I know, but it was also an excuse for you to give up.” Deb softened. “Angie Micco was right about one thing. You were born to study our people’s history.” She handed over the envelope. “Open it.”
Stung by Deb’s blunt words, Jinx hesitated, but she couldn’t resist the call of that envelope. She untwined the thin cord and drew out a saffron page. The paper was cracked and brittle, flaking at her touch like the salted surface of a pretzel stick. She worried about the oil of her fingertips damaging the document. If this had been an archive, she would have been asked to wear white gloves before handling something so fragile. Down the counter, Sam Sells waved to Sadie for a refill of coffee, and behind it, Benny fried eggs and wiped his brow with a forearm. Jinx scanned the paper, taking in its prominent features: shape, texture, date, script. Antiquated cursive loops, beautiful in form, trailed across the page.
April 18, 1826
