Mississippi Noir Read online

  “What about Ed?” Cissy set the ham inside the oven and wiped her hands on a dishtowel.

  Ed Jenkins was a Pullman porter for the Illinois Central Railroad. He was seven years younger than Elnora and fine as a shiny copper penny, but—

  “Ed don’t pay for nothing here. I do. You can stay if you want. Plenty of room.”

  “If you sure—”

  “Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.” Elnora stirred the greens around the cast-iron pot with a wooden spoon. The salt pork would season them real good. Later, she’d make a batch of hot water corn bread. “Tell me why you can’t get the baby from Graham Lee. Why you want me to do it?”

  “He said next time I come for her I ain’t coming back.”

  Elnora tapped the spoon hard against the side of the pot. A bit more force would have snapped the spoon in two. “That white boy threaten you?”

  “No’m,” Cissy said. “Well . . . truth is, I don’t know. He don’t make it easy for me to come back and you know Hattie and me can’t stay with him. It ain’t gon’ ever work out like that.”

  “He needs to stop acting a fool.”

  “I was hoping you could talk some sense into him. Maybe get his uncle to go with you.”

  Oh, Elnora thought. So now they’d come to the gist of it. Rayford Drew had installed indoor plumbing in her little three-room shotgun house and everybody had an idea how that had come about. Well, they were wrong. She’d spread her legs once for a white man, and despite his best attempts, that man wasn’t Rayford Drew Donner.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “He’s scared of his uncle,” she said quickly, “and Mr. Donner is just as tired of this going back and forth too.”

  “You shoulda gone to him then.”

  Cissy bowed her head. “I’m scared of him too.”

  “Lord Jesus.”

  Elnora stood at the back door and looked out. Her yard wasn’t much. She had a small garden and a few chickens in a pen. The addition of the bathroom had rendered the outhouse unnecessary so it had been boarded up. When Ed came back through, she planned to ask him to take it down, lime up the hole, and sell the wood for parts. Her neighbors’ yards didn’t fare with fancier trimmings either. Outhouse, garden, a few scraps of this and that. That’s how it was in the colored section of town.

  When she had worked as a cook for the Tennant family over on Line Street, well, that had been a different story. Fancy linens, fancy furniture, fancy food. Fancy everything. Elnora shook off the unevenness of it with a toss of her head. It was 1936 and some progress had been made. She earned a living doing hair right there in the living room that would soon belong to her, and she only cooked for white folks when the pay was good, not because it was her daily job. Times were changing. People just had to have their eyes open to see it.

  “Will you ask him?” Cissy had taken rest at the square wooden table in the center of the stuffy kitchen. “Please?”

  “You ain’t got to beg. I’ll get your baby back.” Elnora turned from the door to look Cissy square in the eye. “But you got to promise me something.”

  “What? Anything.”

  “You got to leave that white boy alone.”

  Cissy nodded. “I’m done with Graham Lee. That ain’t a promise. It’s a fact.”

  The sincerity and conviction couldn’t be denied. Elnora had no choice but to believe her. So she had one question left.

  “You sure Hattie’s with her daddy?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” The question seemed to stun her. “Wouldn’t nobody else want her.”

  III

  Romano’s was a few doors down from Grenada Hardware on the corner of 1st and Green, right off the square. The Italian family had owned a grocery store there for as long as Elnora remembered. Unlike many, their treatment of coloreds didn’t set her teeth on edge. She knew better than to call the owner by his birth name in mixed company, but if they were conducting business one-on-one, the talk was between “Elnora” and “Salvatore” and not “Aunty” and “Mr. Sal” as dictated by society.

  With the greens and ham still needing a few more hours, Elnora left Cissy in charge of supper and checked the first place she knew to look for Rayford Drew—in his upstairs office above the grocery. The ringing bell announced her entry and Sal waved.

  “You’re lucky. I was about to lock up.”

  “I’m not here to shop,” she said. “Is he upstairs?”

  Sal frowned. His whole body managed to tighten with the act, from his slick dark cap of hair through his stocky build down to his scuffed work shoes. Red darkened his forehead. “He’s up there. I don’t want any funny business.”

  She bit back a smile at the very idea. “No funny business. Is he drinking?”

  “Maybe,” Sal said. He locked the front doors and flipped the Open sign over to Closed. “I’ll go up too.”

  “I can handle him.”

  “He could be drinking.” Sal untied his white apron, tugged it free, and tossed it onto the counter. The fabric landed in a heap beside the register. “If he’s sober, I’ll leave. Come on.”

  Elnora and Sal had practically grown up as siblings. Their mothers had taken in wash together. With two strong-willed mothers, the children had no choice but to either get along or pretend. They never had a reason to pretend.

  Since he’d locked the front door, taking the outside steps was not an option. He led her to the back storeroom where another staircase hid among canned goods and fresh produce waiting to be stocked for tomorrow’s shoppers. Sal pulled a string. Light from a single bulb filled the space and the tight staircase. She followed him up.

  To her surprise, Sal didn’t bother knocking. He simply marched in. Rayford Drew sat behind a desk. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone and revealed a damp undershirt. Tendrils of silver curled along the edges of his hairline, disappearing into the sandy brown hair that framed his boyish face. At forty-five, only the wisps of gray and the wisdom in his eyes offered any hint of his age. A ledger was spread before him. An unopened bottle of shine was not too far from his right hand. A glass waited beside it. The whir of a metal fan stirred the air and lifted the pages of the ledger. Overall, the fan was no match against Mississippi humidity in April.

  “See?” she said.

  “Not yet,” Sal muttered, then turned to Rayford. “Elnora is here for you.”

  Rayford Drew made a show of looking around Sal and taking in Elnora from head to toe. She was mindful not to be self-conscious of the pair of sensible black shoes on her feet or the lightweight blue cotton dress that failed to hide the curves of her hips, backside, and bosom. She was thankful that she’d kept her hair pulled up in a bun and hoped that would contain whatever wayward thoughts entered his mind. But judging by how his hazel eyes lit up and the faint smirk that rested on his mouth, she knew the matronly bun had failed her.

  “I can see that she is,” Rayford Drew said. “Thanks, Sal. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Sal looked at Elnora. If she wanted him to stay, he would. She gave a slight shake of her head and he stomped to the door.

  “I’ll be right downstairs.” Sal gave the other man a hard, meaningful look. “Cleaning up.”

  His heavy footsteps trailed down and away. Elnora lingered at the door. The office wasn’t quite the mess it’d been on her last visit. A Corner Drugs calendar hung over a metal filing cabinet. Two wooden guest chairs were opposite his desk. One held a stack of papers, but the other was free of clutter. A gray pinstripe suit fresh from the cleaners hung on a hook and a pair of shiny black shoes was on the floor right below.

  “Don’t be shy.” Rayford Drew held up the bottle. “Have a snort.”

  She shook her head.

  “I made it myself.” He laughed when she remained firm. “Come on. Sit down.”

  She chose the empty wooden chair and pulled it to a respectable distance, realizing that sitting down was a first, as was his offer for her to do so.

  “How’s that toilet working o
ut?” The words came slow.

  Elnora squeezed her hands together in her lap. Several days of strong humidity had already set her disposition on a wayward course. Then Cissy showed up at her door with her sorrowful tale. Holding her tongue in check for Rayford Drew and his penchant for insinuation would require more control than she was capable of.

  “Graham Lee took the baby again.”

  “Well. Shit.” He ran a hand over his face. “Here I thought this was a friendly visit.”

  “Help me get her back.”

  “That stupid sonuvabitch.” He reached for the shine, but didn’t open it. “I’m tired of this shit, Nora.”

  “I’m not keen on it either.”

  “Where’s the gal?”

  “Does it matter?” She folded her arms.

  He stared at her for a moment. Whether or not he resented her defiance, she couldn’t be sure. His eyes had darkened and were unreadable, as was his posture. Gone was the lustful man appreciating the form of a shapely woman. The calculating, decisive Donner sat there in his place. He closed the ledger, then took both it and the shine to the filing cabinet, which he locked.

  “Let’s go.”

  IV

  The dark blue 1935 Pontiac coupe still carried the scent of leather on its seats. He handled the vehicle with ease even over the bumpy gravel road that led them off the highway and into the backwoods of Holcomb. Elnora had spent summers picking cotton out there and farther into the Delta. Sometimes the work even took her and the other children her age out of school. She’d hated the work and would never forget the oppressive humidity, relentless sun, and painful blisters that riddled her small fingers. Her twelfth summer found her working in the kitchen alongside a cousin at the country club. She hadn’t been out to Holcomb since, but those memories remained.

  “All this is Donner land,” Rayford Drew said, puffed with pride. “From that marker all the way back beyond those trees. Has been for over a hundred years.”

  She didn’t comment on who had worked their asses off to make it so.

  He turned off at a mailbox. The bushes had hidden it from view. They continued on for half a mile. A cozy one-story cottage stood amidst a grove of pecan trees and honeysuckle bushes. A Dodge pickup was parked near the door. Rayford Drew pulled up beside it.

  Other than the eerie quiet, Elnora noticed that the clouds didn’t loom as dark out there. They hung back as if they were saving their full power for Grenada and beyond. If Graham Lee had the baby, she supposed she’d rather Hattie not have clouds hanging over her head.

  Rayford Drew headed inside first, calling for his nephew as he trudged across the porch. The silence, other than the elder Donner’s loud voice, unsettled Elnora. She sensed something was off before she crossed the threshold and discovered the front room in disarray. Rayford Drew’s voice echoed as he searched the rooms.

  Plates and drinking glasses lay broken and scattered on the hardwood floor. A cotton sheet was in a puddle near an overturned end table and stuffed chair. A slip of paper caught Elnora’s attention. She stooped down and pulled it from underneath the sheet. It was half of a photograph. Someone had ripped the black-and-white image in two. Her unease turned to dread the longer she stared at the photo.

  “What is it?” Rayford Drew asked.

  She hadn’t heard his return. Nor was she surprised when he took the photo from her. He stared for a moment before handing it back to her.

  “Don’t mean a thing.”

  “That’s the three of them,” she said. “Him, Cissy, and little Hattie.”

  “How do you know? Half of it’s missing.”

  True, Graham Lee was torn off the photo, but his pale hand rested on Cissy’s knee plain enough for Elnora’s two eyes. Cissy was sitting up straight and pretty in that white lace dress she wore last Easter, a slight smile on her face. Hattie’s dress matched her mama’s and she was plump and happy, as a baby should be on her mother’s lap; a toothless grin revealed that she had not one care in the world. Who would want to ruin an image as innocent as that?

  “That’s him in that picture,” she stated. “Where is he?”

  “He couldn’t go far.”

  “Why you say that?”

  Rayford Drew went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. “That’s his truck. He’s probably fishing with his cousins or something. Maybe he didn’t take her.”

  Elnora wasn’t sure about that. She stuffed the photo in her pocket and started to straighten the room. He stood at the door watching, neither protesting nor assisting. Inside the sheet, she felt a bundle and quickly shook it out. A little rag doll rolled to the floor. She recognized it immediately.

  “That’s Hattie’s,” she said.

  “Well hell.” Rayford Drew rubbed his neck. “He couldn’t have gone far with her.”

  “Gone far?” She wondered if he was blind or just didn’t want to see. “Look at this room. It’s tore up! Something happened here.”

  V

  Elnora didn’t like trouble. Some people catered to it; they went out searching for it when things were too good and easy in their lives. Not Elnora May Harden. She avoided trouble like it was a black cat crossing to her left at midnight with a full moon shining bright in a cloudless sky. Omens were nothing more than bullshit, but she wasn’t about to test anyone’s theory. Still, trouble often had a way of finding her. Either whipping up a storm in her life or raising hell in the life of someone she loved. By now, she should have realized that trouble was as unavoidable as a hot Mississippi summer and a Baptist preacher who overstayed his welcome.

  “Say something.” Rayford Drew took his eyes from the highway long enough to glare at her.

  Ahead of them, cloudy skies loomed over Grenada, but only sunshine glowed brightly in the country town they’d left behind. She resented the difference. It was unreasonable, but she didn’t care.

  “Nora—”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “More like ruminating,” he said. “Worrying over nothing. He knew that gal would send somebody for him, so he took off with the baby. When he gets tired of playing daddy, he’ll bring her back. You’ll see.”

  “It’s that simple.”

  He chuckled. “Graham Lee ain’t complicated. He never has been. Just got too caught up with that gal—”

  “That gal has a name,” she said, maybe more forcefully than she intended. His lean hand’s grip on the steering wheel tightened and she considered apologizing. But the words lodged in her chest. She’d done enough bowing, scraping, and apologizing for her daughter to last a lifetime. The best Elnora could do now was speak softly. “Her name is Cissy.”

  “They can’t have a life together,” he said.

  “I know that. She does too.”

  “Problem is Graham Lee,” he said. “He has a head like a brick. It doesn’t come from the Donner side. No, that’s his mama’s family. Those stubborn Perkins. You can’t tell them shit.”

  “Where could he take Hattie that folks wouldn’t ask questions?” Elnora asked. “She’s light, but she ain’t light enough to pass.”

  “Stop your worrying. He’s stubborn and fool-headed, but he won’t let a thing happen to that little girl.”

  Rayford Drew dropped her off at the corner where Clay Street intersected Boone Alley. The short walk home felt like a miles-long journey without little Hattie in her arms or anything meaningful to report. With evening and the supper meal closing in, her neighbors were rounding up their children from their yards or trudging in from a long day at work. They waved and mumbled the usual greetings, but none of them had an inkling of the weight she bore. She wasn’t about to confide her troubles. She needed to get home and talk things out with Cissy. It could be that Rayford Drew knew his nephew well and understood the inner workings of the younger man’s mind. She hoped that was the case.

  * * *

  Anticipation gleamed in Cissy’s eyes when she woke from her nap. About an hour earlier, Elnora had arrived to find the greens and the ham done. A
plate of hot water corn bread sat warming in the oven. And Cissy was asleep on the bed in the front room. Instead of waking her, Elnora eased onto the rocking chair, pushed her shoes off, and just watched her sleep. It had been a long time since she’d had that privilege. She didn’t often dwell on the past, but giving away her only child had been a grave mistake.

  “You find her?”

  “No,” she said. “Rayford Drew took us out to Holcomb—”

  “That’s where he usually takes her. To that little house out there.”

  Elnora nodded. “That’s where we went. No sign of her or Graham Lee. Except I found this.”

  She pulled the torn photo from her pocket. She watched Cissy closely as the younger woman gazed at the image and frowned.

  “We took this in one of those photo booths. Up in Memphis.”

  “It’s torn.”

  “I see,” Cissy said. “Graham Lee is ripped clean off. Some don’t like the thought of us together. Not even in a silly, stupid picture. But look at Hattie. Don’t she look pretty?”

  “Yes, she does.”

  Elnora went to her bedroom that separated the kitchen from the front room and took the little rag doll from where it rested on the pillows. Back with Cissy, she handed the doll over.

  “This is Hattie’s. This is the one you made for her.”

  Elnora pressed her lips together to keep from speaking out of turn or saying the wrong thing. If the torn photograph meant nothing, surely the little rag doll meant something. The sight of the doll wrapped in the sheet had put Elnora on edge. She didn’t want to tell Cissy what she was thinking, how she was feeling. That something wasn’t right. That the house had felt cold and empty. That she didn’t know how to fix this.

  Cissy looked at the doll as if she didn’t know what else to make of it. Like it had no right to be in her hands when she was without her daughter. “Where he take her, Cousin El?” she asked, looking up with eyes that were lost and unbelieving. “What Mr. Donner say about that?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t know.”

  Sudden anger hardened her soft features. “He know! He just don’t want to say. He helped Graham Lee steal Hattie.”