Scarlet Sister Mary

To
William George Peterkin

I

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 racehorses 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 the 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 upstairs, 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.

II

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 washday, 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 barefooted 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 excitement 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 woodpile 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 crapshooter, 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 birthnight 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 woodpile, 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 hardworking, 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’ shine and 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’t 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 headkerchief. 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 eyesight 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 Ben asked from the doorway. “Wid earrings a-danglin an’ a headkerchief 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.