more accurate word. I assume the risk of allowing my fiction to enter other people’s true stories. And to be fair, I let other people’s stories trespass the truth of mine.
I go with Mamie Till back home to Chicago. It’s a week or two after the Mississippi murder trial and its ugly aftermath. No kidnapping charges filed against the two men who abducted and killed her son. Why Mamie Till is asking herself. Mrs. Till, dead Emmett’s mother, dead Louis Till’s wife, must be thinking that terror never ends. Terror is truth and truth is terror and it never ends, she thinks. Truth of that big stinking crate with a box inside with Emmett’s dead body inside the box. Terror of the box closed, truth of the undertaker prying it open with hammer claws. Terror of not looking, truth of looking. She must bear both for Emmett, for love, for justice, a look inside the box she cannot dare until she prays hard and a voice whispers, your heart will be encased in glass and no arrow can pierce it. Truth of listening to herself say, I want the world to see what they did to my baby. Terror of standing beside Bo’s open casket at the funeral while she sees in the eyes of mourners who file past the terror and truth of what they see. Terror of lost Emmett. Truth of how he returns. There’s my heart underneath that glass lid. Terror of sleepless sleep, sleep, sleep, sleeping all day, never truly asleep. Truth of being wide awake forever, day and night. Terror and truth of nightmares sleepless sleep brings . . .
She talks to herself. After the ceaseless terror and truth and terror, she’s still alive in her mother’s apartment in Argo and must decide to live or die, and decide again the moment after this one. Yes or no again. Her eyes rest on a man who sits on a chair Albert carried in from the kitchen. This man, the half brother of her lover Albert, has the strange name, Wealthy, and she thinks maybe he might have been sent by God, to help her. She needs to believe, needs help. Too many nights alone, too much wandering and fumbling around here in these rooms alone day after day, bone tired, going crazy, if truth be told. No sleep, then more tired and nervous fumbling around here after Mama goes off to work in the morning. I’m all alone with my own self, she thinks, but keep bumping into Bo, my sweet Bo, everywhere and then it’s not him I hear, I smell, I follow. I reach out to touch him, but Bo’s gone, gone, and I drop down on the sofa or armchair, try to nap, to forget and can’t. Wear myself out trying to make up some person who will tell me what to do next, tell me to stop holding my breath, tell me how to breathe again, tell me not to wait for the worst thing on earth to be over because it’s never over, always more terror and truth and then more.
Mr. Wealthy looks like a nice man and I surely do need somebody nice, a nice somebody to say words I can’t say to myself. Say breathe. Say the thing you must do next, Mamie Till, is this. The voice of a new somebody. Not you, Mama. Not nice Albert. Somebody I don’t know who says words I need to hear. No face, no color, no man or woman I can imagine, though I think it should have to be a man because a woman’s too much like me, she would try to make me feel better because she’s a woman, a mother who understands bleeding inside for her child and moaning inside and watching how everything outside minute by minute pays you no mind, gets no better, gets worse and you’re more scared every minute for your child but nothing you can do, just watch and hurt and bleed and try to tell yourself it’s not as bad as it seems, everything going to be all right like the songs say, by and by, but that lie don’t fly, you are just talking to your own dumb self, you need another person to tell you the truth. It could be a woman or a man who tells it to me but harder, Mama, to believe a woman and nobody, no man or woman or chicken with a talking mouth can bring back my child. My sweet Bo gone. They killed my baby.
They said Emmett bad, Mama, and say that’s why he’s dead. Bad like his bad daddy, like father like son they said and I need someone to talk to me, hold my hand. I need kind words doesn’t matter who says them, and when this half brother or cousin or friend or whatever of my Albert, this Wealthy, his odd name, comes to the door, I ask myself is he the answer to a prayer I only halfway allowed myself to pray, prayed so softly under my breath, couldn’t hear myself praying it was so quiet and so deep down inside me because I wasn’t sure I wanted God to hear either, maybe just overhear, didn’t want God to get the wrong idea that maybe I blame Him or always expect nice things from Him or like I know better than Him what’s right or wrong for me or think I deserve His special attention when I don’t because this whole wide world like you say Mama ain’t nothing but a stool for Him to rest His feet on. Just bear the burdens the Good Lord give you to bear, girl, Mama says. He ain’t never gon burden you with more’n you can handle, she says. And sure enough here comes this man Wealthy. He doesn’t know me, never knew Louis, never met Bo. Here he is out the goodness of his heart in my mama’s apartment in a polka dot tie and a nice gray suit he wears like he’s in the army, all buttoned up, pressed and starched soldier sharp like Louis grins picture perfect clean in his army photo. This Mr. Wealthy not a strapping man like Louis or Albert. A smallish, tight fist kind of man, iron creases in his clothes and straight-backed as an arrow and proper the way he took a seat on the chair Albert carried in from the kitchen and Mr. Wealthy straightens his neat little self, tugs his silver tie, as if one too few polka dots showing. Tugs a pant leg straight after he crosses a short leg over his knee.
No ma’am. No thank you, ma’am. Nothing to drink for me, thank you, Mrs. Till, the first thing he says after he said, Pleased to meet you, ma’am, though I’m truly sorry we are meeting under these unhappy circumstances, Mrs. Till. Same words she heard from the lemon-colored undertaker, Mr. A. A. Rainier, who buried Emmett, undertaker smiling his sad, droop-mouth smile at people so he gets that check when they’re grieving for somebody or somebody grieving for them. Mr. Rainier says pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. So and So, sorry it’s under these circumstances, fresh graveyard mud on the wingtips of his shoes, spit-shined like Mr. Wealthy’s shoes, Mr. Wealthy with one narrow foot standing at attention in the air, the other foot patting Mama’s living room rug after he crosses his little leg over his knee and begins to speak.
Don’t you believe a word those dogs say, Mrs. Till. Excuse my language, please, ma’am. Albert told me many times what a fine young man you were raising. Albert very fond of your son, Emmett. You all have my deepest sympathy, Mrs. Till. You and your family and Albert, too. Wished I could do something to help and thought to myself it’s not much but it’s the least you can do, Wealthy, go on over there with Albert and tell Mrs. Till about the army. Army something I know, Mrs. Till. I’m a veteran. I know the army and I can tell you from experience. Army lies. Tell a person every kind of lie there is. Bad business they put in the newspaper about your late husband, best not believe a word of it.
Army and the government lie. Lie, lie, lie all the time. When the sneaky Japs bomb Pearl Harbor, plenty of us colored men in a hurry to join the army. We want to enlist because it’s our country, too. Only country we got, and it’s a man’s duty defend his country. Signed up like Old Uncle Sam pointing his crooked finger at everybody said sign up. But the army lies. They don’t want colored soldiers.
Treat us like slaves. Like animals. Yes they did. And nothing we could do about it. Behave like they say you better behave or they lock you in the stockade. Beat you, kill you quick as they kill the enemy we all spozed to be together in the U.S. Army to fight. Treat us colored soldiers like they own us, like they got the God-given right to kick us, spit on us and the only right we got is salute and say, Yes, sir. Here’s my behind, sir. Kick it again, sir. Dirty dog duty or days we’re mules and horses and elephants carrying Uncle Sam’s war on our backs.
Don’t you believe a word they putting out about Mr. Till, God rest his soul. Any the fellows went through the war, tell you what I’m telling you, Mrs. Till. Say just exactly what I’m saying. No different for colored over there in the war than things here today, in this United States of America. This Chicago. White man lie and say you’re guilty—you’re guilty. Case closed.
Now I’m not saying terrible things didn’t happen in the war. But not just colored boys doing wrong. All the lies they put in the newspaper you’d think it was just us doing wrong. Just colored soldiers guilty. Not the truth, Mrs. Till. Never met your husband, but he was a soldier in the same colored army I served in, Mrs. Till. So the
