“Or they thought they were doing good,” I said.
Alicia put a knuckle to her eye. Ty was still, his silhouette so dark I could not make out his face.
Miss Pope pushed the stack of materials toward us. “Stay as long as you like. I already had my dinner.”
TWELVE
Jackson
2016
Of all the movement stories that haunt me to this day, Medgar Evers’s murder is right up there. I have never driven through Jackson without picturing his bloody body lying in the driveway, his wife and children crouched in terror on the bathroom floor. I remember seeing him on television and thinking him courageous and charismatic. I was thirteen years old when he died, and the news marked a line into adulthood for me. If you lived in the Deep South in the 1960s, you had very few illusions about the dangers of movement work. Folks either walked right into it or stayed clear. Some just watched from the sidelines for fear of losing their jobs or worse. Even with all that we went through in Alabama, Mississippi was still its own kind of place. Nina Simone had said a mouthful when she sang “Mississippi Goddam.” In that Mississippi delta with its flat swaths of farmland, Evers had marched right up to the doors of the lonely cabins sprinkled in the middle of those farms and registered voters.
I always believed the movement leaders had to be a little wild-haired. Like that fearless Fred Shuttlesworth. I swear, that man was from another world. This might surprise you, but I thought we had turned a corner by the seventies. I knew racism still existed, but I was hopeful that Black Power and education would sustain us and keep it at bay. We’d been to hell and back, so the seventies had to get better.
When I arrive in Jackson I’m not just thinking of Evers, I’m also thinking of Fannie Lou Hamer and her use of the phrase Mississippi Appendectomy. I didn’t even learn about that phrase until I got to medical school and was under the mentorship of a Black female. As soon as I heard it, I felt a sharp pain in my body. Hamer had been sterilized without her permission in 1961, and the procedure was so common, women had labeled it. I wish I’d known about that term when I was your age, Anne. I wish they’d taught us that in nursing classes at Tuskegee. Maybe it might have changed some things.
I’ve been on the road since 6:30 a.m. and I need caffeine, but I’m so eager to see Alicia that I don’t stop for coffee. I find her community not far from the shopping plaza, a redbrick entry sign bearing the words Riverwood Plantation. I wonder if the plantation fantasy bothers Alicia or if she thinks about it at all.
The houses in Riverwood Plantation are newer construction brick homes. Alicia’s house is the fourth on the right. Three cars and a van are parked in the semicircular driveway. Alicia’s husband owns a body repair shop. They have three grown children—all boys, all married, all college graduates. Two from Mississippi State. One from Tougaloo. Six grandchildren. Husband is on the deacon board, Alicia a missionary. The Southern American dream.
When Alicia ended her nursing career after having children, I was not surprised. A lot of Black women in the South had that dream of becoming a housewife back then. We called it “sitting down.” Alicia had always been traditional, and she’d dreamed about having her own family. My upbringing was different. Mama had never worked, so I had been raised knowing that I wanted a career.
I ring the doorbell, but Alicia opens so quickly she must have been watching through the window. I’m punctual, if not a couple of minutes early. The first thing I notice is that her eyebrows are still penciled—dark and perfect. Before I can get a really good look at her, she envelops me in a red flowered housedress and citrusy scent. “Lord, it’s really you,” she says breathlessly. “Ooh, girl, you lost all that weight. You feel like a feather.”
The hug is tight and I release into it, unprepared for her warmth. She pulls me by the hand into a great room with a vaulted ceiling. The furniture is covered in florals. The draperies, too. Above a fireplace filled with artificial flowers hangs a flat-screen television. A white toy poodle looks up from the couch.
“That’s Coco. She’s seventeen years old and don’t get up and come to the door much anymore.”
“I didn’t know you had a dog,” is all I can think to say. I start to tell her about my rescue dog but think it might sound forced, so I remain quiet. We sit next to each other on the couch, and from my end I can see into the kitchen. The counters are covered in clutter. I look back at Alicia. She’s observing me checking out her house.
“I wonder what your house looks like, too,” she says.
“A three-bedroom bungalow in midtown Memphis. It has a nice porch. A garden out back. That’s all I need for me, Anne, and Mama.”
“How’s your mama?”
“Mama doing alright. After Daddy died, I moved her to Memphis to live with me. She and Aunt Ros can visit each other more now.”
“My mama live not too far from here with that old buzzard.”
From the few checkins we’d had over the years, I know that Alicia’s mama, after a twenty-year affair, had finally divorced her daddy and married the pastor. “You still haven’t forgiven them?”
Alicia purses her lips. “I forgive but don’t forget. Daddy is much more generous than I am. He married a retired schoolteacher. They moved to Florida.”
“Good for him,” I say.
“How’s Anne?”
“Just graduated. Majored in anthropology. You know kids these days. Girl, they major in things for fun.”
She laughs, big and genuine. “I told my boys I didn’t care what they majored in as long as they came home and worked for their daddy.”
“Your boys doing alright?” I say, though I’m thinking that is terrible parenting. It brings back my own indecision about the medical field, largely brought on by Daddy’s pressuring. I try to focus. It was always easy to judge Alicia.
“They fine. My son supposed to be here in a minute. He bringing us some fried catfish from over at the restaurant his wife manages. I figured after driving you’d be hungry. You eat yet?”
“No, but fried catfish for breakfast, Alicia?”
“What’s wrong with that? Fried fish and grits for breakfast is still a good way to start the day.”
“Girl.”
“Uh-oh. Here we go. May I have your attention, please? Dr. Townsend is in the building.”
We laugh and the ice thaws. When her son drops off the food, he doesn’t come inside, and I’m grateful we are left to ourselves. I start setting the breakfast room table.
“Girl, this fish is alright,” I say, once we’re seated. It is really good.
“Told you.”
When we’re done, Alicia leans back in her chair and pats her mouth with a napkin. Her lipstick is smudged across her chin. I don’t wear makeup anymore, so I don’t have to worry about such things. The only thing I’m fastidious about these days is my diet.
“I hear India came home from the hospital yesterday,” she says, turning the conversation abruptly.
“What’s her diagnosis?”
“Cancer.”
“Cancer,” I repeat softly. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know. She’s getting treatment.”