The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

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      “Betty Jewel, honey, look who’s done come to see us. That newspaper lady.”

      Betty Jewel’s shoulder blades stuck up through the crocheted shawl like the wings of a skinny-legged bird. The flesh had disappeared from her bones, leaving behind too much skin. But when she saw Cassie, she lifted her chin. It was pride Cassie saw.

      “Hello, Cassie. Please do sit down.”

      There would be no yessums and Miss Cassie this or Miss Cassie that from Betty Jewel Hughes. Dying strips you of all pretense, carves you down to the essentials.

      Betty Jewel’s voice, rich with melodious cadences, was mannerly, but her eyes said keep out. Her posture said don’t mess with me.

      Cassie sat in a straight-backed chair closest to the oscillating fan. Words weren’t enough here. She needed to take action. She needed to lasso a couple of guardian angels and say, Look, do something.

      “I’m gone leave you two young’uns by yoself so’s you can talk.”

      The old woman slipped from the room, leaving Cassie with her purse in her lap, wondering why she felt Betty Jewel’s hostility like a cattle prod. She had to know the consequences of Cassie being here, the gossip she’d endure from the Highland Circle crowd, as well as the suspicions and tongue-waggings of Betty Jewel’s neighbors.

      “May I call you Betty Jewel?”

      “Suit yourself.”

      If Cassie’s maid or her gardener spoke to her like that, she’d fire them on the spot. But in Betty Jewel’s home, Cassie was the outsider. Nothing insulated her in this shack in Shakerag, neither wealth and position nor the color of her skin. It looked as if she had finally let her crusading zeal get her into a situation she might not escape from unscathed.

      She tried to melt her unbending hostess with a smile. “I don’t mean to be nosey. I’m here to help you.”

      “I don’t need your help, and I certainly don’t need you poking into my private business.”

      “Look, I’m no do-gooder who just barges in. Your mother invited me.” Cassie felt her temper rising, and it showed. At the rate she was going, she’d be back on the street before her hubcaps got stolen from a flashy car that obviously didn’t belong in this neighborhood any more than she did.

      “Mama shouldn’t have told you to come here. She may sound like some shuffling, obsequious old mammy, but she’s a proud African queen. And so am I.”

      The naked expression on Betty Jewel’s face made it painful to look at her. Cassie catalogued the facts. A woman that well spoken had probably attended one of the Negro colleges down in Jackson or the Delta. No doubt Queen had sacrificed to make sure her daughter had a better chance in life. And now Queen’s daughter was making the ultimate sacrifice to ensure her child’s future.

      Giving up a daughter in order to save her was a choice of biblical proportions.

      Reining in her temper, Cassie held out her hands, palms up. “Look, I’m out of my element here, and you must be feeling as uncomfortable as I. Can we please just start over?”

      Betty Jewel bowed her head and stayed that way for a long time. Was she pulling herself together? Regretting her rudeness? Wondering if she’d insulted the wrong person?

      Negroes were being lynched for less. With racial violence flaring all over the South, had Cassie jeopardized the safety of this family simply by being here?

      “I’m sorry.” She stood up to leave. “I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”

      “No, wait.” Betty Jewel’s eyes were wet with unshed tears. “All I can say in my defense is that cancer has made manners seem superfluous.”

      “I’m so sorry. I can’t say I know what you’re going through, because I don’t. But I lost my husband a year ago, so I can certainly understand pain.”

      “You and Joe never had children, did you?”

      Her familiarity with Cassie’s life was startling until she remembered all those evenings Joe had spent at Tiny Jim’s. Though Joe would never spread his personal life among strangers, he was a well-known public personality. And in a town as small as Tupelo, the gossip grapevine flourished.

      “No, we had no children.”

      The conversation reminded her all too vividly of the many ways she and Joe had found to blame each other for their childless state. Joe was dead. She wanted him to remain perfect, but a thick blue fog clouded the room, seeding discontent and making sanctifying the dead impossible. If you weren’t careful, you could get lost in that kind of fog and never find your way home. Searching for something solid to hang on to, Cassie spied the piano.

      “Tell me about yourself. You play, don’t you?”

      “I’m dying. What else is there to know?”

      There was no barb in the remark, only soul-searing truth. Cassie took a notepad and pencil from her purse. “Please understand that I’m only here to write a story that might help you find a home for your child.”

      Inscrutable, Betty Jewel slipped a pill out of her pocket, then washed it down with a sip from the yellow plastic glass on the table beside her. “Does it make women like you feel good to help women like me?”

      Cassie felt as if she’d been slapped. She had better things to do than seesaw between rage and pity with Betty Jewel, even if the woman was desperate.

      “You don’t even know me. If you did, that’s the last remark in the world you’d make. I consider us the same.”

      “You mean equals? Like I can walk through the front door of your white house and go into your white bathroom without you going in there after me and scrubbing it down with Dutch Boy?”

      Anger and admiration warred in Cassie. She thought of Bobo, her gardener, and Savannah, her maid. Had she ever invited them to sit down at her table and enjoy a glass of iced tea? Cassie was beginning to feel like a hypocrite until she remembered how she inquired about their children, went to their homes with soup when one of them got sick.

      “Yes,” she said. “Exactly like that.”

      Betty Jewel fell silent, her steady stare saying that when you’re dying your life is reduced to the essentials. Eat, sleep, breathe. Tell the truth. The dying don’t have time for lies.

      “I’m sorry, Cassie. I’ve been rude and arrogant, and I’ve misjudged you.”

      “Thank you. Now will you please give me something I can put into a story?”

      “There’s not going to be a story. That ad was a mistake, and I don’t intend to compound it with a news spread I have to hide from Billie.”

      Cassie started to ask, Why am I here? Then she remembered it was Queen who’d invited her, not Betty Jewel. Folding her notebook, she put it back into her purse.

      “I’m disappointed, naturally, but I didn’t come just for a story. I have lots of connections. Maybe I can help you that way. СКАЧАТЬ