“Did you ever see them again?” I asked, feeling sorry for a woman I barely knew.
Aunt Mattie shook her head. “Naw. To this day, I don’t know where they at. But a few years after the war, a woman on the next plantation over told me that he had sold them to other men who had sons so they’d have somebody to pester when they got old enough. By now I must have grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great-grandkids all over the place that I’ll never meet.”
The mood around me got dark. It didn’t seem like I was still in the same room with the rest of the rowdy guests. They were just a few feet away whooping and hollering, dancing, drinking, and talking all kinds of bullshit, and I wished I was doing the same thing. I didn’t want to be rude and get up and move, so I decided to stay put until Aunt Mattie finished telling her story.
“Did you have any other babies?” Yvonne asked.
Aunt Mattie shook her head again. “Just one. Ten years after we got our freedom, I got pregnant by a man I’d been in love with for years. He got kicked in the head by a mule and died a week before my son was born. I named him Aaron, after his daddy. He was a smart little rascal, but colored folks and smarts didn’t go together back then, not that they do much now either. When he got old enough, he spoke up about the way we was being treated and how we needed to get some education. He even taught hisself how to read and write and had just started teaching other colored kids to do the same thing. Well, the white folks told him to behave and act like a nigger. They beat him up a few times, but even that didn’t stop him. One night he didn’t come home after visiting the girl he was planning to marry. The next day, we cut his body down from the tree where somebody had lynched him.”
“Did they ever find out who done it?” Yvonne asked.
“Pffft! What’s wrong with you, girl? Everybody knowed who done it! It was them same peckerwoods that was so pissed off about losing the war and was taking it out on used-to-be slaves. They put the entire blame for the war between the North and the South on us!”
Yvonne blinked hard and sniffed a few times. I blinked and sniffed even harder. Aunt Mattie wiped a few tears off her face. The other two women who had been listening stayed quiet. I didn’t know what was going through their minds, but I had never felt so sad in my life. I motioned for Milton to replenish my drink, which he did immediately. Aunt Mattie sniffled a few times, but she perked up again right away. “Enough of that!” she said, clapping her hands. “So Joyce, where is Odell tonight? Do you know?”
“He’s gone out to check on his daddy,” I replied. “Lonnie’s been having all kinds of problems with his health lately.”
“Well, if Ellamae ain’t taking care of him, he ought to get rid of her,” Aunt Mattie snarled.
“She takes care of him, but she needs a break now and then. Taking care of that old man is a big responsibility. Ellamae depends on Odell to come out and help a few times a week. And when he needs a break, he goes fishing.”
“Hmmm. Fishing for what?”
“For fish!” I snapped harder than I meant to. Aunt Mattie flinched, but she stayed on the same subject anyway.
“That’s nice. You ought to go with him.”
“I don’t like to fish.”
“So what? I didn’t like to fish when my man was still with me. But every time he went, I was right behind him. Sometimes it pays off for a woman to stay close to her husband.”
“Well, I don’t think that. Odell doesn’t smother me, and I’m not going to smother him. Especially as close as we already are. Sometimes he knows what I’m thinking before I say it and I’m the same way with him. Now, if he likes to go fishing a few times a week by himself, I want him to do just that. But I don’t need to go.”
Aunt Mattie sucked on her teeth and gave me a dry look. “Maybe you should. For all you know, he could be doing something he don’t want you to see. . . .”
Yvonne and the other two women stayed as quiet as mutes. I was exasperated, but I had to keep standing my ground. I was not about to let this signifying monkey get under my skin without speaking up for myself. “He used to ask me to go fishing with him every time he went and I went a few times. I never enjoyed it so I stopped going. I told Odell that if he’s happy standing on a creek bank for hours at a time and don’t catch but one or two fish, if any, more power to him. I think he’d rather go by himself anyway. He works hard taking care of my folks’ business, so he needs to be alone when he wants to.” The way Aunt Mattie pressed her thin liver-colored lips together, I thought she’d decided to shut up. I was wrong.
“Humph. He sure is a busy man. And a right handsome one, too, you
