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The Sinner in Mississippi

By D. L. Lane

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Chapter One
None of them would ever see me cry

THE DATE WAS July thirteenth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-six—the day I turned seventeen. There’d be no party, and I’d get no wish. If I did wish, it would be to spend my morning in a good bed, wrapped in clean, crisp-white sheets while the smell of breakfast cooking enticed me out of a lazy slumber. But my reality consisted of a horrible crick in my neck while surrounded by the scent of stale hay and a stomach so empty it forgot how to protest the point.
If my prayers had worked, I wouldn’t be spending my birthday as a stowaway in the loft of our old, rickety barn. Nonetheless, a stowaway I had become, so I decided to leave the job of talking to God to other girls and stared at a spiderweb instead. The intricate woven threads, delicate and glistening within the fractured beams of the sun, stretched perfectly between the rafters above me. My current accommodations were thanks to Daddy Bruce, Danny Joe, and a handful of their friends who had come home loud and rowdy the night before. But I was grateful for their noisy warning. It allowed me time to sneak out my bedroom window, under cover of darkness.
As I’d tiptoed across the yard, I listened to them argue ’bout who was man enough to hold their own in a fight, and when the sounds of a tussle broke out, it became apparent they’d been on a binge. By the time I got to the back of the barn, the sounds of fighting were louder. I wasn’t happy to leave my bed, ’cause even though the moon bounced out from beneath the cloud cover, giving off moments of muted light, I knew the inside of the barn would be darker than a tomb. Although, what did that matter? Neither the darkness nor the boogeyman had anything on my daddy when he’d been boozing. No. The best thing for me was to stay out of sight—unless I wanted to taste the leather of Daddy’s belt.
Or worse.
When one of Danny Joe’s friends staggered around the side of the barn, undid his fly, turned on his unsteady heel, and started to relieve himself on the corner of the empty tool shed, I’d gently pushed one of the loose wall planks aside and wiggled myself through, glad when the moon decided to make its reappearance. The rays shone brightly through the open loft door from above, giving a heavenly spotlight to the makeshift stepladder.
Trying to be as quiet as possible, though I doubted I could ever make as much of a ruckus as was going on outside, I’d climbed to the loft and settled in, making myself at home. Eventually, I heard nothing but the sounds of the night and drifted off to other places.
The faraway hum of a tractor roused me, followed by the morning sun kissing my cheeks with its warm caress of the day to come.
Bone tired, I rubbed my blurry eyes with the heels of my palms and considered my aches and pains. For an instant, I’d almost forgotten my night’s lodgings, but they once again became all too clear when my eyelids fluttered open and I focused past the dazzling web overhead, noticing the barn swallows. They had made a nest in the peak of the roof, closest to the loft door.
The birds flew in and out, making their morning chatter, causing the sound to echo off the walls.
Holding my hand in front of my face, I spread my fingers wide to study the nest from different angles. I’d close one eye and watch the illusion of the nest shift, then switch and close the other eye to see it move again between my fingers, content with my little picture show.
As the light in the barn changed, the dust particles glittered and skipped on air.
“Mississippi!”
My body jerked at the sound of Daddy Bruce bellowing my name.
“Where the damnation are ya, girl? Don’t ya know it’s hotter than hellfire out here! I need ya to get your skinny little backside on over to Harlow’s and fetch your brother and me some cold beer!”
I sighed. Times were hard for everyone, but likely they were even harder for my family. Daddy Bruce had always been a stubborn, self-centered, tyrant of a man, but after Mama died, he’d become more of a bully, and many called him a “no-account drunk.”
“Mississippi! Don’t make me come-a-huntin’ ya, girl!”
No reason to try to hide. He would eventually find me, and it was better to face the music sooner than later.
“I’m coming!” I stood and scurried down the ladder.
The barn doors flew open with a bang, the commotion snapping my head in that direction.
Daddy Bruce stood there, shirtless, the sun shining on his broad, bare shoulders, sweat trickling down his face.
Lord only knew the last time Daddy had a good shave.
Slowly, he strummed his dirty hand along the black suspenders holding up his baggy trousers. “Well… Don’t ya look a sight?” He cleared his throat and spat out something nasty. “Pluck that hay from your hair and straighten yourself up before ya go to town. Don’t want Harlow to think you’re trash, do ya?”
That would be a wasted effort. Everybody in our small parish, except for a few, believed I was trash, suspecting I gave favors to men in exchange for things my family and I needed to survive. Many times I’d heard some of the good churchgoing women whisper as I passed. “There’s nothin’ but a sinner in that there, Mississippi.”
I’ve often wondered ’bout the verse in the Bible Mama used to quote, particularly when those same churchgoing women would prattle on regarding some poor soul in need of saving. “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone.”
But who was I to argue the point? Perhaps there was a sinner inside me, but if so, it would be of my daddy’s making, driven by my need to eat and his desire to drink.
“Did ya hear me? Don’t just stand there lookin’ at me like you’re stupid. Go fix yourself up.” The order came as he swiped glistening beads of sweat from his brow. “And ask Harlow for some chewin’ tobacca for your brother. Have him put it on our tab.”
My skin crawled. I hated that ‘tab,’ and adding tobacco would come at a cost. But if I had the choice between letting Harlow paw at me or give in to Daddy’s friends for their mean amusements, I’d pick portly Harlow Brown.
As soon as I got rid of Daddy, I made my way to the rusty pump, then rinsed out the bucket that hung off the end and gathered some water before taking it inside to clean up. I probably did look a sight, but I wasn’t washing up for Harlow’s sake. I hoped to see Bobby-Ray Kincaid.
Bobby-Ray was an old friend who lived in town with his aunt and uncle, Lulu and Jasper Kincaid. His uncle was nice enough, I supposed, but Lulu tended to be a bit on the snooty side, especially when it came to the lady's gardening club and her never-ending appointment as chairwoman.
When Bobby-Ray and I were young, he used to wait for me so we could walk to school together. His aunt didn’t like it, something she made known to the Lord above and any neighbor who’d listen.
“For heaven’s sake, Bobby-Ray,” she’d snap, her sour face peeking out her front door. “Those Singletons are nothing but trouble.”
But Bobby-Ray paid her no never mind.
Time after time, I’d find him standing outside the fence of his aunt’s prized rose garden, holding his cap in his hand.
Every day I could make it to school, he’d walk beside me, and on the days the weather was too bad for me to walk, I pictured him dressed in his warm winter coat, still waiting for me to round the corner.
I dropped out of school when I was twelve, and I didn’t see him much anymore unless he was working for Harlow. But no matter how much time passed, there’d be things I’d never forget ’bout Bobby-Ray. Like his greenest of green eyes and those deep-set dimples when he smiled. He even bought me a Sarsaparilla once. More than likely, it took his day’s wage to purchase it, but he laid his money on the counter, then handed me the bottle and walked me to the door in a gentlemanly fashion. The thought of how he looked that day, his pomade hair slicked back tight to his head, proudly smiling as he escorted me to the front door of Harlow’s, always filled me with a sense of happiness as well as a touch of sadness for a friendship lost.
Pouring the water from the bucket into the basin, I figured it best to think on something other than Bobby-Ray. No time for idle thoughts, especially with Daddy Bruce needing his devil-drink.
With a moan, I squeezed the sore muscles in my neck, then started picking musty straw out of my hair. A few moments later, I figured I’d done the best I could, and I sat down at Mama’s scarred white vanity, using her brush to swipe through the unruly mess. It was going to take me a little while to get all the tangles out, and spending time in front of the mirror was an unfortunate necessity I didn’t enjoy.
In my opinion, a person shouldn’t be forced to see too much of themselves.
Unwavering in its attack, the reflection looking back at me did resemble my mama. There was no denying I inherited her traits. Just like her, I had long, reddish-brown hair, fair skin, and a few freckles scattered over the bridge of my nose.
With a tilt to my head, I determined my lips were probably a little too full. And my blue eyes were a bit too dull, but I didn’t remember a time when they shined, except maybe before Mama passed.
After working out the last snarl in my hair, I placed the brush into a drawer, then got up and peeled off the dirty clothes stuck to my damp body. The heat was sweltering. Placing a rag into the basin of cold water, I rung it out and swiped it over my face, neck, and shoulders, being sure to rub extra good in the crook of my arms, where dirt tended to gather.
Like a gift from above, a breeze blew in through the open window, sending a cool sensation over my wet skin. I closed my eyes for a moment and pretended to be somewhere other than the run-down, old shack of a house until the sound of mischievous chuckling broke my daydream and made me focus.
“Maybe we could get a penny a peek.”
That was Alistair’s whispered voice.
“Naw,” Danny Joe muttered. “We’re a far piece from town.”
“It could still work.”
“But she’s way too bony. After they got a look at her, they’d probably want their money back.”
Alistair chuckled. “Sippi will fill out someday.”
Their penny-a-peek idea was ’bout me, I realized.
My eyes popped open as I twirled around. “Danny Joe!” I picked up the lumpy pillow from my bed and hurled it in the direction of the open window. “You and your buddies get out of here!”
The second the horrible thing hit the frame, my brother stood up and ran, followed by the tops of at least three heads scattering from view, the boys’ cackling laughter drifting in on the wind.
In Daddy Bruce’s house, privacy was a hard thing to come by, and I’m sure they saw everything I had to offer, skinny and pitiful as I might be. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time I caught one of my brothers spying on me. Only a couple of days after Mama died, Daddy landed himself behind bars for being drunk and disorderly, and James Henry had set off to bail him out. I’d gone to the outhouse and caught Danny Joe trying to watch me do my business!
Poor Mama’s body hadn’t even had time to settle in the ground, and Daddy Bruce and the boys were headed for their worst.
Mad, I stomped over, pulled the moth-eaten curtains the rest of the way closed, and completed my wipe-down bath. When I finished, I put on the best dress I had, but it was a little tattered around the bottom edge and too big in the chest. I couldn’t complain, however. At least I had quite a few hand-me-downs from Fawna-Leigh, and this dress was still pretty with faded light-pink flowers on an off-white background.
I’d saved some old newsprint and wadded it up before I shoved it all inside the toes of Mama’s Sunday church shoes. Carefully, I tucked my right foot inside the first one, tapping my heel to test it, then slipped on the left shoe. I hoped stuffing the toes would put a stop to the rubbing, but no matter what, I was happy to finally be able to wear those shoes. It didn’t matter if they were a little too large, ’cause I’d been barefoot for most of the last summer. After that, I had come to appreciate shoes, too big or not.
Quickly, I looked around to make sure the coast was clear of snoopy family, then snuck over to the corner by my bed, praying the floorboards didn’t squawk. Glancing down, I counted seven planks to the left and picked up the loose wood.
Beneath the plank, wrapped tightly in a piece of cloth, was one of my mama’s cherished imported perfumes. She’d won a set of three at the Bethel Church bazaar only a month before she died.
After Mama passed, Daddy Bruce sold off many of her few belongings, and her white, leather-bound Bible, a family heirloom she inherited, went missing as well. So I wasn’t going to let him take her collection of English perfumes. When I challenged him, he started in on a rampage, breaking anything he could get his hands on. I snagged the last bottle, held on for dear life, and prayed for God to turn me into a bird so I could fly far, far away.
He never saw fit to give me wings. Instead, my misbehavior earned me ten punishing lashes from Daddy’s belt. But I didn’t give up the goods. I endured, and when Daddy finished ‘teaching me a lesson,’ I cleaned myself up the best I could, then tore a piece of material off a discarded flower sack and wrapped the perfume in it before hiding it away. I used it only sparingly, but soon it would be gone. Perhaps three or four drops remained inside the sparkling bottle, but just like me, that perfume beat the odds of its survival.
Oh, and another wondrous thing? One dab of that sweet-smelling liquid placed behind my ear gave me entrance into the world of make-believe. In that world, I pretended to be a proper lady, even though a proper lady was something I knew I’d never become. Even so, while the scent danced around me, I took a second and inhaled before leaving my daydream behind.
Hastily, I rewrapped the bottle in its shroud and placed it in the dirt. Just as I covered my secret hiding place with the old worn floorboard, the clang of the screen door came from the other room. The familiar click-clack of wood hitting wood reminded me I better get to moving. More than likely, Daddy would be coming to see what was taking me so long, impatient to tie another one on.
Kneeling, fingers clasped in front of her face, my mama would pray and pray for Daddy’s salvation. But her tearful pleas fell on deaf ears ’cause God never stopped him. Prohibition didn’t put an end to his dreadful ways either. For those few years, you could find him at Johanna Dellicort’s barn, tossin’ ’em back ’til the police raided her and, according to Fawna-Leigh, she was ‘sent down the river.’ But that didn’t slow my daddy none. No, he just set aside his hatred for the colored folk and took right up at Beetle Dupré’s place.
Me and that barrel-chested gentleman with his booming Creole accent might not have shared the same skin tone or had anything in common since I was a little white girl, and he was a grown man of color who ran something called a speakeasy, but we got along just fine. After Mama passed, afraid I would starve, he would sneak food over. But all his kindness stopped when someone put a knife in his chest, sending him to meet his maker.
“Mississippi!”
Daddy.
“The day’s gettin’ on, girl!”
“I’m almost ready,” I called, expecting him to clomp in and drag me out by the arm, but I was able to grab my small change purse from the stack of crates I used as a table by the bed. Though I didn’t know why I bothered—there’d been nothin’ inside of it for years. But I figured it was only fitting to carry a purse when going to town.
When I stepped into the living room, Daddy Bruce was waiting, his leathery face showing the signs of age and bad living.
“Well, now,” he said, rubbing his stubble-covered jaw and leaning his shoulder against the doorframe that led into the tiny kitchen. “Ya cleaned up good.”
I didn’t say anything—no need to, especially if I wanted to get on my way.
“Danny Joe!” Daddy yelled. “Y’all come on in here and take a gander at Mississippi. She’d almost pass as proper.”
Danny Joe and his crew of thieving troublemakers came tearing into the house like animals. Big. Stinking. Unruly. All of them without a single wit or manner.
The five ‘boys’ took up the small space of the living room. They argued and fussed. Some stood while others flopped into the chairs as if they owned the place.
If Mama were alive, she’d swat the broom at them.
“Look at you,” Danny Joe said, his forehead sunburned and his fiery red hair dripping sweat. Drop after drop trickled off the tip of his freckled nose, hitting the front of his dirt-smudged undershirt. “I think you’re a might too scrawny to be proper in a saggin’ dress, Sippi.”
I tried to maneuver my way around him, and I almost made it to the front screen door when one of his buddies held out his oversized foot and tripped me.
Being off balance and wearing shoes that were too big left me with no options. I went plummeting down, my knees and palms scraping across the dusty wood floor. The flimsy blue material on the change purse had torn open upon impact.
A large sliver pierced my right palm.
Daddy Bruce, Danny Joe, and all the rubbish my brother called friends chuckled as if my tumble was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
“That’s how it should be,” Danny said, still laughing. “On your hands and knees.”
“That’s where my woman be,” the one I knew only by his nickname, Gator, said. “I’m-a figurin’ it’s the only way for scrubbin’ floors.”
“Or for other things.” Alistair Blevins, Danny Joe’s main man in crime, chimed in while grabbing the zipper on his ragged pants, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Every last one of them, the men in my own family included, was nothing more than a snake in the grass when it came to any sort of appreciation for the opposite sex. Women might as well be considered slaves, created to serve them and treated worse than a mangy dog, nothin’ but warm bodies to press their nasty parts against at night and punching bags to let out their frustrations on during the day.
“You’re a pig, Alistair.” My comment would probably get me in hot water, but I was unable to hold my tongue.
“You best be watchin’ that sassy mouth of yours, or someone’s going to teach you a lesson on how to keep it shut,” he shot back.
“Sippi never learns,” Danny Joe interjected with a slow shake of his head—as if he was disgusted by me. “Ain’t that right, Daddy?”
“Yup.”
“If she wasn’t so useless, Daddy could have married her off by now,” Danny Joe continued.
“She’s been nothin’ but a burden since the day she was born,” my daddy said. “Always talkin’ to herself like one of those crazies down at the poor farm, daydreamin' and such, instead of making herself useful ’round here. And unlike her mama, a good smack to the chops don’t straighten her up.”
I’ll light myself on fire before I give any of you my well-earned tears.
That thought sealed the promise I made to myself right then and there. None, not even Daddy Bruce, would ever see me cry.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Danny Joe said with a snicker. “Daddy even tried to get Madame Eugenia to take her off our hands, but she turned him down cold, didn’t she?”
My daddy nodded. “Mm-hm. Said”—he pitched his voice higher in an attempt to mimic the evil woman—“‘Mississippi is a poorly soul, too bony for any men-folk to pay top dollar for.’”
They all belly laughed at that.
Ignoring them, I picked the splinter out of my flesh, then lifted my chin and clutched the torn purse in my good hand as I got up from the floor. Carefully, but quickly, I swiped at my dirty, scuffed knees, and then I walked out.
Daddy Bruce trailed behind me. “Don’t forget the tobacca.”
Once I nodded, he left me and went back inside.
I took a shaky step off the front porch, imagining myself to be in an important event, like a grand parade. So I blocked out the ache in my knees and the lightheaded feeling from hunger, then walked with purpose, the cicadas chirping in the background my marching band.
Three strides in, and I winced. My palm throbbed.
Making a fist was a weak attempt to stop the pain, but I balled my fingers tight and kept going.
In due course, I came to the end of the driveway. Not ’til I passed the last fence post, walking into the road, did my long-hidden tears escape.
Ahead of me would be a good half-hour hike, plenty of time to cry it all out—or at least plenty of time to come to grips with the fact that, come what may, this was my life.
 

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