Rest
Benita N. Jones
Lynette was forever holding her baby.
Lena was a sweet-faced infant, her little brown lips always turned up in a smile, her face peaking between the crook of Lynnette’s arm. Baby’s face and mother’s arm were the same brown, like the crust of a cake left in the oven just a minute too long.
There would be no more babies for Lynette after the White doctor butchered her insides delivering Lena. Big Ma tried to tell her son to trust the midwife, that the midwife knew best how to turn the baby, knew how to help Lynette breathe through the pain. She tried to explain to her son that Lynette crying and screaming and carrying on like that was natural, that the sticky, thick smell of blood—copper, mixed with sweat and musk—was the smell of life. But poor Cato was too proud to hear his mother’s wisdom. And since poor Cato’s money was too green for the Colored hospital and too black for the White hospital, the best he could afford when his daughter gave birth was the White doctor who made house calls to Colored folks. Cato gave that White man all his hard-earned money, let that White man’s face be the first sweet Lena would encounter coming into this world. And that was how Lena came into the world, tiny brown feet first, on a wave of red gushing from Lynette’s womb, into White hands.
With her insides all torn up, all Lynette could do was rest. Now she spent all day with Big Ma, just holding on to Lena. Meanwhile, Big Ma had earned her rest. She had spent a lifetime cleaning up behind White folks, then moved in with Cato to raise Lynette and clean up behind him when the girl’s mama ran off. Now she spent her days beside Lynette and Lena, gazing over the field that spanned across from their perch.
“The men are back today, Big Ma.”
“Uh huh.” Big Ma had watched them doing their work, flinging scoops of loam as dark as her skin. But Big Ma kept to herself, mostly; she didn’t bother with the men and the men didn’t bother with her. Today, she was fussing with the bouquet of lilies that Cato brought to “his girls” he called Big Ma, Lynette, and Lena.
“But Big Ma, what are they doing?”
“Girl, I told you. The men dig in that field. Planting seeds, I reckon.”
“Doesn’t look like planting to me.”
“What you mean?”
“Well, they look like they are digging something up from the field, not planting something in the field.”
“Girl, you don’t know the first{thing] about working in a field. Your daddy made sure you wouldn’t know a thing about that life. Hard work, rough hands, common sense. That’s how you got that baby, ain’t it? The first smooth talking boy who turned your head at that school got your nose open so wide, then he got up your skirt and made you do wrong, didn’t he? And then you had to leave that school, have that baby, and now you back here with me.”
“Big Ma, please. How can anything be wrong that made my beautiful Lena?” “Don’t ‘Big Ma, please’ me. You just as simple as your daddy.”
“I’m fine not being at school, Big Ma. I didn’t like it there, anyway. I like it here, with you. I missed you when I was gone.”
“Well…you here now. You here, too soon. And we both just sitting here having this idle chitty chat all day.”
“It’s not just chit chat, Big Ma. I learn more from you than I ever did at school. And family should be together. And we both need to rest, so we might as well do it together.”
Big Ma had hated to see Lynette leave for the normal school, but she knew schooling was her chance. Lynette had a chance to do better, to be better. Better than her Big Ma, who had never been out of the county. Better that her simple daddy who Big Ma sent up north to learn a trade. But instead of going off and making a better life for himself, Cato came back to the inland low country too soon, wearing shiny shoes and dragging along a knocked up, siddity woman who wilted in the low country heat as soon as she birthed Lynette. Big Ma saw Lynette’s mama leaving as a blessing; Lynette was Big Ma’s second chance to try to raise up a child with some common sense, a child who understood how to make a better life for herself. When Lynette had an opportunity to leave the county and study at the normal school near the coast, Big Ma wanted the girl to have the chance to see more of the world than she had. She hadn’t wanted her back so soon, not like this, with her whole future changed.
“But Big Ma, seriously. What are they doing? I thought when you plant seeds, you put them into the ground. Don’t those men over there look like they are taking things out of the ground?”
Big Ma stopped fiddling with the lilies and looked beyond Lynette’s quiet gaze. She had noticed a change in how the men seemed to be working but hadn’t mentioned her observations to Lynette. The men in the fields seemed to be moving closer and taking things out of the ground, even though it wasn’t close to harvest time. What really worried her, though, was the new man among the group—a White man. A rare sight where they were, and rarely a good sign.
“Well, baby… planting is hard work. Men’s work. The men you see out there—they plant seeds deep into the ground when the season is right. Then the season turns, and the same men come back and reap what they have sown. Reaping is a part of the planting cycle. We just watching the men do their reaping. Watching the natural cycle.” Big Ma hoped she sounded believable. She could not let Lynette know how much she didn’t understand about what was happening around them. She also did not want Lynette to know what she suspected was happening.
Lynette looked down at Lena’s sleeping face. “I don’t know, Big Ma… what those men are doing doesn’t look natural to me.”
[tiny bottle]
Amos and Purlie needed rest. They had been digging since before sunrise. As they dug deeper into the ground, the sun soared higher into the sky, burning through their battered straw hats. The work went faster when they were coordinated; they sang to both keep and pass the time.
“There will be peace in the valley for me.” Purlie’s sweet tenor soared from the trench the men had been digging for hours.
“Someday!” Amos called back in a booming baritone.
“There WILL be peace in the valley for me.”
“Oh Lord I pray!”
“They’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,”
“No trouble, that I see,”
“There will be peace in the valley for me,”
“For me!”
“Oh well, I’m tired and—"
“Woo wee, you boys sure do sing pretty!” Mr. James interrupted their verse, peering into the hole, a sweaty grin across his flushed face. “Time to break for a lil’ lunch, boys!”
Amos and Purlie emerged from the hole just in time to see the man slam the door of his pickup. “Where’s he always getting to during lunch?” Purlie asked, watching the truck speed away.
“Who cares?” Amos shrugged. “Someplace cool where White folks is and we ain’t. Now come on and eat.”
Amos and Purlie settled under a tree with their lunch buckets. Both men stretched their legs, relieved to finally rest their bodies. Their heavy boots were caked with mud, the tan color of their pants barely discernable under layers of dust. Sweat plastered their plaid shirts to their arms, chests, and backs. The men sat in silence, sans the sound of mosquitoes buzzing and Amos chewing large bites of cold biscuits and salt pork.
Purlie fanned himself with his straw hat. “I don’t like this, Amos. I don’t like what we doin’ out here. I don’t like it one bit.”
Amos kept chewing. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You know this ain’t right.”
Amos sighed and dropped a half-eaten biscuit into his bucket. “Purlie, you know we the right men for this. First, we the best diggers in the county. We know this soil. Dug it before. And you and me—we understand respect. Tradition. No other hands could do what we being asked to do.”
“It still ain’t right, Amos. It’s sacrilege!” Purlie sputtered.
“Purlie, I don’t know what that word is you usin’, but I call it progress.”
“Now you just wait, Amos, you sound like that damn James…”
“No, now you wait.” Amos’s deep voice was firm. “Don’t you dare curse out here, talking about sac-ri-lege.” Purlie stopped fanning himself and glared at Amos. “This is good paying government work, Purlie. And with what we doin’ out here, more Negro men will get more good paying government work behind us. Steady work. So that my wife won’t have to keep buying groceries on credit, so that my babies won’t have to do this same hard labor that I done all my life. A better life for those babies your mama has at home coming up behind you. Progress for all our people, Purlie. I don’t like this thing any more than you do. But for things to get better, we got to change how we do some things, some things have to move on.”
“But Amos…”
“But nothing.”
“No, hear me out. Don’t it still just feel… like they watchin’ everything we doin’ out here?”
“They, who? That ole cracker James? Oh hell, he think he some fancy so and so just because he don’t have to dig—”
“Not him, Amos. I ain’t thinking ‘bout James. Them. Our people… my mama said everybody out here is watching us.”
“Purlie, see what your mama say at the end of the week when you pay off that debt at the store, buy a few sweets for the rest of her babies, and still have enough left for them to eat good all the next week too. Now stop frettin’ and eat so we can finish digging this row today.”
Purlie’s stomach growled as he watched Amos finish one last ham biscuit. Purlie didn’t want Amos to know just how much he needed money—he was ashamed for Amos to see that he only had two slices of stale molasses bread in his lunch pail, and no meat. Purlie understood he was lucky to have this job and that he was the right man to do this work. And he was pleased he was going to be a part of building something. He had wanted to stay in school—he had been good at math and had heard about men who understood how to design buildings and structures, even whole cities. But he had a sturdy back and strong arms, so when his daddy died and with so many other mouths under him, Purlie left school and went to work as a digger. While Purlie’s body made him good for digger work, his mind was active and ill-matched for the quiet, lonely nature of his task; he sang to remind himself that life could be bigger than his shovel. Purlie didn’t feel the loneliness doing this government job, though. He knew he had an audience. No matter how hungry his mama was, he knew she was right — folks were watching what he was doing. He sang now to make sure everyone watching him could hear that he understood progress had a cost.
***
Lynette kept her silent watch over the two men in the distance. She watched them settle under a tree, eat a bit, talk a bit. Lynette recognized the man with the sweet tenor, but she could not remember his name.
“I can’t remember things these days, Big Ma.”
“Having babies will do that to you. You forget the things you should let go. Makes room for what you need to remember.”
“What do I need to remember?”
“How to be the best mama you can to your baby.”
“How do I do that?”
Big Ma thought hard before she answered her granddaughter. But she wondered if she’d done right by Cato. When she held him in her arms for the first time, the midwife had asked her what she most wanted her son to be in this world. She thought about all the things she wanted him to have—faith, health, freedom—and what it would take for him to have all those things, and more. “I want him to be wise,” she answered. The midwife nodded. “There is power in a name. Name him what you want him to be. Name your son Cato.” But Cato had not been wise. Her son had brought into her home a woman who was in the family-way who didn’t want a family. Then he had brought her Lynette to raise, after she’d already raised him. Now, he brought her flowers like that was supposed to make up for all he’d put her through. She couldn’t help but wonder what type of trouble he’d bring her next.
Lynette prodded. “Tell me, Big Ma. Tell me how I can be the best mama to my Lena.”
“Well, baby, you can only be the best mama you can be for the child you got. You got to be willing to make mistakes. Realize you don’t know everything. Learn from your child. Try to do the best you can by who your child shows you she wants to be. You already on the right path cuz you named her good – Helena. Her path gonna be guided by light.”
“Where do you think her light will guide her?”
Big Ma looked across the field where the men had started their digging again. Each day, they seemed to be moving a little closer to where she and Lynette spent their days at rest. She suddenly felt like she wanted to cry, but she didn’t have any tears. “Only God knows that. Only God.”
Lynette smiled at the baby resting in her arm, then looked up with a start. “Isn’t that man out there singing called Purlie? He left school…didn’t he have to go to work when his daddy died?”
“Yep, that’s Purlie. He went to work as a gravedigger.”
Big Ma went back to fiddling with the flowers.
“A gravedigger…” Lynette repeated, lost in thought. What was a gravedigger doing taking things out of the ground?
***
The sun was dropping low to the west. “Ain’t we near Cato’s people?” Amos asked.
“A few rows yonder,” Purlie responded. “It’s a shame the way Cato lost his mama, then Lynette and the baby like that.” Purlie looked towards the edge of the graveyard where Cato had laid his mama, Mrs. Lily, to rest a few months ago. Purlie remembered how Lynette stood with her head bowed beside the grave that he and Amos had dug, one hand in her daddy’s and one resting on that round belly she’d brought back with her from her time away. Purlie had waited patiently, his own head head bowed as he listened to the pastor say a final prayer for Mrs. Lily’s soul. After Lynette and her daddy finally moved on, Purlie picked up his shovel and performed his own final ritual, covering the box that held Mrs. Lily’s body with soil.
Purlie had heard his mama whispering with a few other women that Lynette would not be going back to school because she had gotten herself into trouble. Now, Lynette and her baby girl, Lena, were both gone too. Lynette closed her eyes when that White doctor yanked Lena out of her. The tiny baby never made a sound, but the White doctor claimed the baby came out with her eyes open; the women who brought pies to poor Cato whispered to each other that the baby probably took one look at that White doctor’s face and decided she was better off going on to Glory with her mother. Purlie and Amos dug one grave for both next to Mrs. Lily’s, Lynette resting in her coffin with Lena resting in her mother’s arms. Three white wooden crosses in a row.
“Are Cato’s people getting moved?” Purlie asked Amos.
“I dunno, son. I reckon all these souls got to be dug up so the government can clear this whole place for the new lake. Shame to dig up folks we just buried. Ole Cato gonna let his folks stay under the water if the government didn’t offer him enough money to move ‘em, though.”
The steady “thunk, thunk” of dirt hitting the tops of wooden coffins had become a steady beat as natural as Purlie’s own pulse during his time as a gravedigger. There was no natural beat in the new work, though. Purlie and Amos were digging up graves, disturbing souls from their rest. “This is a whole lotta trouble just for the government men to make a lake, Amos. Disturbing folks like Mrs. Lily, and poor Lynette and that baby.”
“These souls out here have had their chance, and now they in a better place. And nobody gon’ be more respectful than the two of us moving these grave. But this is more than just a lake, Purlie. Things in the low country ‘bout to get better for us. Electricity! Lights! Heat! Imagine how things could have turned out different for Lynette if things had been better. And for that baby, who never even had a chance. Maybe one day, thanks to what we doin’ now, your babies will have a better chance...”
Amos was still talking, but Purlie didn’t want to hear any more. He felt a breeze move through the graveyard; it rustled a lone bouquet of flowers, laid to rest in front of three wooden crosses.
***
The white man had worked hard, standing in the sun all day, supervising the colored boys digging up and moving the graves, making way for the reservoir the government was going to build out here. But he felt important, even charitable, being a part of this project to help the poor coloreds in the low country. He lifted his hat and wiped his forehead, tried in vain to stop the sweat dripping into his eyes. He could not feel anything close to a breeze, even this late in the day. The sweat made his vision blurry, and he could barely see the two figures in the deep hole in front of him. He turned his head and spit into the dirt. He shouted down to the dark figures in the hole. “Quittin’ time, boys! Now let’s get us some rest.”
