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The Circle Unbroken

By Nancy Massand

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When Mount Zion Church burned down over in Neshoba County, my Uncle Cal in New York City phoned and ordered my father to get the whole family up there on the next bus. “Your church’ll be next, Amos, you watch!” he said. “You get on out of there!”

Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. The movement was his life. “I’ll die before I let those devils run me out of my church!” he roared. He sounded like he was getting all riled up in a Sunday sermon. “God put us here for a reason, and Meridian, Mississippi, is where we stay! It’s a battlefield down here, Cal, and my church is on the front line!” Then he slammed down the phone.

As usual, I was full of questions. “Daddy, what do you mean, battlefield? I thought you and Mama were just teaching folks how to read.”

“Mavis. How many times do I have to explain this to you? The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution! The history they’re not teaching you in school! Don’t you remember?”

Of course I did. It’s all he ever talked about those days when he wasn’t in the pulpit, and most Sundays he managed to work it into the sermon somehow, too. Daddy’s church, being one of the freedom schools in that summer of 1964, was in the thick of things, but I was not. “Too young and too pretty,” he’d say, and he’d march off with Mama and my three older brothers. They were all over eighteen, and twenty-one-year-old Marvin was registered to vote already. That and being male tipped the scales in their favor and made a whole lot of difference to Daddy. To me, it was just plain unfair.
“You say you’re a freedom fighter, Daddy. What about my freedom? Why do I have to sit here at home every night while you guys get to change the world?”

“Your freedom? What exactly do you want to do that you’re not free to do now?”

“Go with you! I can read just as well as anyone else in this family! And I could teach people, too. You treat me like a baby!”

“You are a baby, Mavis. My baby. And you’re staying right here where it’s safe. No arguments.” As if to punctuate his decree, the doorbell rang.
“Well, go answer it, girl.” He winked. “I believe it’s for you.” He put on his suitcoat and called upstairs for Mama and my brothers. I sighed and opened the door.

There they were, in all their lavender-smelling glory. Old Miss Tillie and Miss Lillian from the church. If it wasn’t them it would be someone else Daddy had pressed into service, even though at sixteen I was way too old for babysitters. The closest I ever got to the movement in my own hometown was seeing it on the news, even though Daddy said marching for change was our civil right. He also said the government of Mississippi saw the movement as a threat to the southern way of life, but I couldn’t see how. Aside from spending way too much time with the old church ladies instead of with my family, my southern way of life was pretty much the same as it had always been.

Until the rock smashed the front window that very night.

Mama and the boys came downstairs, ready to join Daddy like they did almost every night now. “Be good, sugar,” she said, and kissed me on the head like I was a little girl.

“Yes, Mama,” I said. But I rolled my eyes when they all turned to leave. The church ladies saw it, but I didn’t care. They did their best to entertain me all through dinner, but I just wasn’t interested in who was wearing what or who was in a family way.

After about an hour of this I’d had enough. “Let’s play Parcheesi,” I said.
We set up the game on a card table in the living room. It was boring, but better than listening to their gossip. In the middle of the third game we heard a big ruckus out in the yard, with brakes screeching and men hollering.

I jumped up from the sofa to see better, but Miss Tillie yanked me back down with the strength of a wrestler and turned off the lamp with her free hand. I stared at her in disbelief.

“Stay down, Mavis!” she hissed. Miss Lillian grabbed my other arm to hold me still and put a finger to her lips.

Two cars with a bunch of white men had pulled up right out front. They sat there for a while, smoking and gunning the engines. “Just sit quiet and don’t move,” Miss Lillian whispered. She squeezed my arm tighter. “They’ll go away soon.”

Then one of them got out and stood on our front walk. I could see him by the porch light, but I didn’t recognize him as anyone from town. He flicked his cigarette into the garden, took a long swig from a bottle and smashed it on the pavement. Then he swaggered a little closer to the house and put his thumbs in his pockets. “Hey, preacher! Get yourself out here. We got some business to talk about.”

Miss Tillie told me to get on back in the kitchen, but I was too scared to move. Four other men got out of the first car and stood by him, two of them with shotguns. They walked up the steps to the front door and rang the bell, over and over. Miss Lillian moved over next to me and started to pray, real loud. I guess she figured if God didn’t hear her maybe the men in the front yard would, and it would shame them into leaving a poor old lady alone. “Lord Jesus, forgive these poor children of Yours. They know not what they do. And if I die by their hand tonight, save Pastor Amos’ poor little chile. She’s her daddy’s pride and joy and I promised him I’d watch over her like my own.”

Her eyes were closed, but mine weren’t. I watched the rest of the men get out of the second car as the first group started banging on the door with the butts of their shotguns. One of them walked right up to the big window and looked in. I covered my mouth with both hands to keep from screaming, my eyes wide. The living room lamp was turned off, but the light was still on in the kitchen behind us. He saw me wedged between the two ladies on the couch, my knees drawn up to my chin. “Wal, ain’t you the pretty little gal,” he drawled. “I kin see why your daddy don’t let you out of the house!”
I covered my eyes and whimpered. The ladies put their arms around me, shielding me with their bodies, and the banging on the door got louder.
“I said come on out here, preacher!” one of them bawled. “We’re willing to be reasonable if you shut down them readin’ classes, but if you don’t stop teachin’ your niggers to read, maybe we’ll take your gal for a ride and teach her a thing or two!” The rest of them hooted, and someone fired a shot into the air.

I froze, clinging to the two old ladies like a baby, too scared to think what to do next. Then the rock shattered the window, barely clearing our heads and smashing into the wall behind us. Screaming, we raced upstairs, afraid they were going to bash the door open any second. “The bathroom!” I cried to the ladies as we ran. “It’s the only room with a lock!”

We waited in there for over an hour, even after the men’s voices faded away and we heard the revving of the motors and the squeals of the tires. We didn’t dare tiptoe down the stairs or even show our faces in the bathroom window. We stayed behind that locked door until we heard Daddy’s voice calling us from downstairs.

The men hadn’t done any real damage besides the broken window, just trampled Mama’s geraniums and put dents in the front door. Daddy said they were just likkered up poor folks from the outskirts and not worth being scared of, that the real danger was the “civilized folks,” people who ran the government and the churches, who hid their faces behind white hoods. Even so, his judgment was sure and quick. Daddy was like that. Some people called it keen insight, and others said he had a powerful gift of discernment. Whatever it was, his gut reactions had always served him well. In fact, in his whole life he only made one bad call that I know of, but this was not it. “You’re going to visit your Uncle Calvin and Aunt Caroline for a while,” he said. I knew better than to argue, and besides, I did not relish spending the rest of the summer hiding in the bathroom with the church ladies.

I’d never met my cousins or Aunt Caroline, and barely knew Uncle Cal. He had come to our house only twice that I could remember, for our grandparents’ funerals back when I was a little girl. Daddy said Uncle Cal had quarreled with their father as a young man and gone up north looking for work, since he decided not to enter the ministry like Daddy and Granddaddy. He did stay true to his faith, though, and helped out in the youth group at his church in Harlem. That’s where he met Aunt Caroline. Money was just as tight on a bus driver’s salary as it was on a preacher’s stipend, so we rarely got to see him. But the quarrels were long since reconciled, and family was family, no matter what.

When Daddy phoned him to tell him about the rock, Uncle Cal didn’t hesitate for a second. I could hear him from the other side of the room, since he talked so loud Daddy had to hold the phone away from his ear. Daddy told him he could save a pile of money on long-distance bills if he’d just holler a little louder, but Uncle Cal said he was hollering as loud as he could, and he couldn’t help it if his older brother was going deaf. “Can you hear me, Amos? You send her right on up, and don’t you worry about her none. You know we don’t have a lot, but praise God we got enough to share with whoever comes under our roof. All the rest of you come, too! You and Violet and the boys. You all have a home here, any time.”

Daddy declined, saying the boys were all as big as he was and he needed them in the work. And Mama would never leave his side, even if he ordered her.
“You’re a fool, Amos!” Uncle Cal’s voice was booming again. “Your freedom schools are just a crazy idea cooked up by northern white boys who are half your age and don’t know squat. Don’t you read the papers? Two of them white boys just went missing last week. Their names are on the front page. Do you think yours will be if they go after you?” Daddy wasn’t budging, so Uncle Cal changed his tone. His voice was still loud enough to hear, though. “Come on up here, all of you, just for a few weeks. You know, ‘til things calm down a little. Call it a vacation.” Daddy held firm. He didn’t want his congregation to lose confidence in him.

That was his bad call. For once his instincts were wrong, even though his motives were right. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out if Daddy had moved us all up to New York. Would I even have met Harris? Circumstances would probably rule yes on that one. After all, he was my cousin’s best friend. But would I have fallen in love with him? In my head, I’d say no. Daddy would not have allowed him to get within fifty feet of me. But in my heart, I’d have to say yes. After all, destiny has nothing to do with your mind. It’s a stirring in the heart, against all odds, against all reason, and once the seed has taken root, nothing can dislodge it.

***
Arriving at Uncle Cal’s on Saturday after an all-night bus ride was like moving back in with my own family. They had three boys, too, one a few years older than me and two younger, and Aunt Caroline said she was mighty glad to have a girl for a while. I slept on the sofa that night until they could move things around enough to make room for me, and she got up early the next morning to do my hair for church. Uncle Cal wasn’t a preacher, like I said, but he was an elder, and he saw to it that his whole family got to church early for Sunday school. Ebenezer Baptist Church was just three blocks away on 116th Street, so we all walked. That’s the first time I saw Harris.
The pews were packed, we’d sung the first hymn, the ladies had all got out their fans to settle in for the duration, and the choir stood for the anthem. Harris stepped out from the ranks of yellow robes and took the microphone, nodded to the pianist and closed his eyes, feeling the first few measures of the music. His brows pressed down and he seemed to grow taller as he threw his head back and breathed in, drinking deep of the energy I was starting to sense in the air. Daddy would have said he caught the Spirit. His head nodded with the beat as the music swelled. Then his posture relaxed as he exhaled and began to sway, leading from the shoulders and letting the rhythm work its way down until his body and the music were one thing. I fell in love with him the second he opened his mouth. When he sang about heaven he took me there, took us all. By the end of the song the whole congregation was on their feet, and Aunt Caroline drew me close to her like she was going to hug me. I know she probably meant to whisper, but it came out more like a hiss. “Close your mouth, child! You’re a young lady, not a catfish!” I blushed and looked at the floor, mortified at making a bad impression, but when we sat down I saw her smiling to herself and shaking her head. We were going to get along just fine.

***
Harris came home with us that day. It wasn’t Aunt Caroline’s doing. When Jacob, my oldest cousin, asked her if Harris could come for dinner, she just rolled her eyes and said, “Lord, help us.” She made the formal introduction then. “Harris Brown, this is my brother-in-law’s girl, Mavis Powell. You remember about Mr. Cal’s brother Amos, the preacher. Well this is his baby girl, and he’s entrusted her to my keeping for the summer. Do we understand each other, Harris?”

“Yes, ma’am, we sure do. Pleased to meet you, baby girl.” He locked eyes with me and smiled. This six-foot-six angel who could fill a sanctuary with a voice that reverberated with echoes of heaven, looking at me as if there was nobody else in the room. As if he knew me. Boys in Mississippi never looked at me like that, maybe because they were afraid of Daddy and my brothers. But Daddy and my brothers were not here now, and there were no boundaries.

Close-up, Harris was even more beautiful than he had looked in the choir. He took off his suit jacket, flung it over his shoulder, and loosened his tie. “So Jacob tells me you’re from Mississippi,” he said. “That’s where my pop’s from, but I’ve never been there.” Aunt Caroline narrowed her eyes when he took off his jacket, but he just kept on talking like he didn’t notice.
I hadn’t seen the lean muscles under that yellow robe, but now I had to open my eyes wide to take him all in. Clean-shaven, glowing, coffee-colored skin, deep-set brown eyes that you could drown in, chiseled cheekbones. I didn’t dare look down any further than his strong neck, scared it would make my heart beat even faster.

Mama used to tell me that the cat got my tongue whenever I was in a crowd. Harris wasn’t a crowd, but he had the same effect on me. When he asked me what town I was from, my mouth moved, but nothing came out. Aunt Caroline snatched me away, leaving him with Uncle Cal and the boys, led me down the stairs after shaking hands with the pastor and kept hold of my arm all the way home, keeping a fair distance between us and the rest of the family. She gave me the lowdown on Harris. I suppose she saw the inevitable and wanted to let me know what I was getting into.

Seems one Sunday on his way to church Uncle Cal had seen him in the park with some older boys who were up to no good. He grabbed Harris by the collar and muscled him into the Kingdom as only Uncle Cal and my daddy could do. Harris didn’t stand a chance, a scrawny twelve-year-old street kid up against the power of the Almighty in the strong arm of Brother Calvin. Uncle Cal could be very persuasive. And he didn’t just abandon him after Harris walked down the aisle and accepted the Lord; he brought him to church every Sunday for the next seven years, saw that he was properly instructed in the faith, brought him home to Sunday dinner on a regular basis and got him joined at the hip to Jacob. Then he introduced him to Sister Oletha, the choir director, and Harris found his place in the Kingdom. The boy could sing like an angel. Oh, he was still a handful, according to Aunt Caroline, due to the fact that his family was a useless pack of heathen and he had no discipline at home, but he was saved and sanctified and the good Lord had room for all kinds of folks at the banquet of the Lamb, and if Harris was welcome there he was welcome at her table, too.

“And don’t you think for a minute that killer smile was just for you, girl. That boy was born smiling. At everyone. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a bad boy. . . not that I can see, anyway. He just loves everyone, and they love him right back. So don’t lose your head over him, you hear me?”
I said I did. I “yes ma’amed” her just like Harris.

“Lord, have mercy,” she said. And then we were home, and I let her boss me around the kitchen while the boys roughhoused in their bedroom. Sunday dinner was a formal affair, just like at my house. Aunt Caroline tied an apron around me and set me to work mashing potatoes while she fussed over the chicken and greens. Uncle Cal yelled for the boys to “Come-help-your-mother,” just like my daddy always did, and they exploded into the kitchen still shoving at each other until Aunt Caroline smacked Harris and told him to behave himself in front of company.

“Sorry, Miss Caroline.” He lowered his eyes and dipped his head a little. If she were a lesser woman he would have charmed her socks off, but Aunt Caroline was like that tree planted by the water that can’t be moved in the old gospel song. So Harris turned his attention to me.
“Here, baby girl, let me finish up those mashed potatoes for you. You’re such a little thing, you’ll wear yourself out.” I tried to thank him, but nothing came out. Again. He must have thought I was a deaf-mute.
Jacob rescued me and pulled me into the dining room to help him set the table. “He likes you,” he whispered.

“He thinks I’m ten years old!” I shot back.

“What are you talking about? You gotta be at least thirteen,” Harris said with a smirk. “And that’s okay, I got time. I’ll wait for you.” He was leaning against the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. I reminded myself what Aunt Caroline had told me, that his killer smile was not just for me. I glared at him. Glaring was something I did well. My brothers said that’s why I’d never had a boyfriend, that and my skinny chicken-legs. Back then I weighed about ninety-five pounds soaking wet. I glared, Harris smiled, and neither of us was about to back down.

Jacob broke the face-off by speaking up in my defense, informing Harris I was sixteen and practically a grown woman. Harris staggered back against the buffet with his hand over his heart. “What? Sixteen and not married yet? What’s wrong with those boys in Mississippi?”

Aunt Caroline caught that last remark and I bet they could hear her yelling all the way down home. But Harris just smiled at her and told her he didn’t mean nothing, he was only fooling. Then he asked her if he could introduce me to his little brother, who was in a bad crowd and needed to get married fast before the streets claimed him for good.

“No, you may not!” snapped Aunt Caroline, and flicked him with the dishrag before she sailed back into the kitchen. She was not a big woman, but she carried herself like one. When she sailed, the waves parted. Harris jumped out of her way and winked at me.

“Hope you know that was a joke. Faced with a choice between my bad little brother and me, she’ll have to choose me. Don’t worry, baby girl. You’ll be married before you’re seventeen. Believe it.”

I sure wanted to. In my mind he’d practically proposed to me, and I still hadn’t said a word.

Aunt Caroline came back into the dining room with my two younger cousins carrying platters. She planted herself in front of Harris with her back toward him and caught my eye, lowering her head and raising her eyebrows. “Remember what I told you, honey.” Her voice was sweet as slow-dripping molasses, but those eyes spit daggers. Then, just like that, her face lit up like a sunny sky after a cloud passed over.

“Come to the table, everyone! Dinner’s ready. Harris, you can sit on the other end of the table to Mr. Cal’s left; Jacob, next to Harris, and then Israel next to me. Mavis, you sit right here on my left, and Benjamin, you sit on her other side.” I guess she figured my thirteen-year-old cousin was the least likely to be an agent in whatever plans Harris was scheming regarding my future. We all held hands while Uncle Cal said grace, another reason why she’d taken care in the seating arrangement. Harris was as far away from me as possible without giving him Uncle Cal’s seat, which would have resulted in a mighty tempest. I was feeling more and more at home. Daddy’s place at the table was sacred ground, too. Then dinner began in earnest. It had been a long day already, since morning services had lasted about three hours, and we were starving.
 

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