When she awoke, she saw men and women working in the fields and rice paddies. She saw shanties standing near the tracks with goats and chickens in the yards. Children sitting on porches or playing games in the muddy earth. Some of the hovels were occupied by folks of color; others were white. These were the sharecroppers and tenant farmers that came to work the land when the plantations were divided up after the Civil War. They were all visibly poor, whether colored or white. Maizie looked down at her fashionable dress and shoes and straightened her stylish hat, realizing she had so much. She no longer felt poor or homeless, but she could relate. Her memories were sketchy, but she remembered clearly how poverty felt—the shame, the humiliation. Sugar glanced at Maizie and said nothing while Maizie took it all in.
When the train arrived in Vicksburg, Slick Jones was there to greet them. He was a thin man with kinky, graying hair. He walked with an energizing rhythm, his laughing eyes as warm as the summer sun. He escorted them to a boardinghouse where Maizie and Sugar were given Southern hospitality and room and board. The house was clean, the furniture old and sparse. Meadowlark stayed at Slick’s place so they could jam, talk about the old days, and drink Slick’s home-distilled liquor.
The following morning, after a simple breakfast of grits and honey, Maizie and Sugar walked down the street to Slick’s place. Sugar looked on while Maizie rehearsed with Meadowlark and Slick, getting comfortable with the songs on the program.
In the afternoon, Meadowlark and Slick put up small handbills and larger announcements all over the neighborhood and a bit beyond. Sugar joined them briefly to give Maizie a break. They placed handbills and posters in store windows, on lampposts, near a city park, on vacated properties, and outside the church where they were performing. Sugar was helping to nail a handbill near a small park, when she noticed a woman who came again and again to stare at a handbill nailed to a tree. Suddenly a strong breeze blew the handbill from the tree across the green, and the woman ran to retrieve it. She bent to pick it up, studied it and placed it in her pocket. She was a white woman, a rarity in that neighborhood. Sugar could only guess that she was interested in the concert. The woman stopped walking, removed the handbill from her pocket, and again studied the images on the paper. She smiled, carefully returning it to her pocket.
The next morning Maizie and Sugar were up early. After breakfast they walked to the fellowship hall of the church for rehearsal. It was a typical spring morning in Vicksburg, cool with the promise of higher temperatures in the afternoon.
“Have you been to Mississippi before, Sugar?” asked Maizie.
“No, I sho’ haven’t. Stayed in Kentucky my whole life before I come to Glidewell. Think I like Glidewell better,” explained Sugar.
“Why?”
“You know, child, Mississippi has a lot of racial problems. Hard for the colored man to feel free. It ain’t easy anywhere in the South, but here just seems worse. There’s no place like Glidewell. You know that fence around Glidewell is like a line of soldiers making us feel protected somehow. I sho’ do like seeing it.”
“Yeah, I noticed how colored folks here seem awful shy with white folks,” said Maizie. “Like afraid, almost.”
“That’s true. Men have been hanged for just looking at a white woman.”
“Yeah, like my dad. I wonder what they think of me?”
“Well, I do believe colored folks think you got an advantage ’cause of your blue eyes and light skin. They knows you got some colored in you. You can rest assured of that.”
“What about the white folks? Do they know I am colored?”
“Well, some probably see that you colored. ’Cause people here look for that. Your daddy dark?”
“My mama said he was light. You think it matters, Sugar? I’m both, white and colored.”
“You are who you are, is all. You can be proud you part colored and proud you part white. If it don’t matter to you, others should have no mind to care one bit.”
“But people do, don’t they? It’s confusing. I don’t think of myself as being one way or another. I feel guilty ’cause I have it good and these folks don’t.”
“Now don’t you go sayin’ that. There ain’t no reason for you to go feelin’ bad about being at Glidewell. If you feel guilty, should I feel guilty? No, that ain’t right. You and I work hard for our good life. You and I learned to get along.” She paused for a moment, looking at Maizie. “If you’s askin’ Sugar, I’d say you are makin’ the good things happen in your life all by yourself, ’cause you’s smart and a hard worker. I think good things happen ’cause people love you ’cause you’s Maizie. That’s all.”
As they neared the church’s fellowship hall, Maizie stopped and gave Sugar a hug. “Now why’s you hugging me, Maizie girl?”
“’Cause I feel better. Funny how words can make you feel better.”
Sugar took Maizie’s arm and the two continued on their way.
Meadowlark’s trio, dubbing themselves the Bluesy Band, were to give three concerts: Meadowlark playing and crooning, Slick on his drums and saxophone, and Maizie singing, her voice ringing in the crowded church hall, largely filled by the colored residents of Vicksburg and a few whites who loved the delta sound. The audience of music lovers was enthusiastic, and by the end of the second concert the trio had perfected their delivery and were anxious for their third and final evening.
Meadowlark began the concert by playing some of his new jazz compositions on the well-used upright piano. The old instrument didn’t do his music justice like the grand piano at the Glidewell ranch, but his music filled
