Pease River Revival

Chapter 2

Fall revival season sashays in every year with majestic expectations, as lofty as autumn’s colorful show in prairie sumac and hackberry. Preparation for attendance, music, preacher, and rededication to Jesus begin when the county fair shuts down. I will do my part, having written two new songs and sewn a new frock to match a hat that my St. Louis aunt sent via postal service. My ensemble is green like the triple leaves of cotton plants when they present yellow blooms. After searching through Sister Miller’s scrap baskets, I found yellow crochet pieces that she let me use. We are friends now that I am thirteen. When I practiced the new songs yesterday, she cried and hugged me close to her big bosoms that lay heavy on top of her large waist. Mama is lean as quail breast; the muscles on her extremities rival those of our boys on the football team. But she has no breasts; and I worry, wondering whether it is a family trait. Ida Olive’s relatives have never visited us, and Daddy has no money for travel. I want to travel but, so far, I am too poor to think about it. I travel through literature.

“Now, Merlina Rea, we must finish canning before three. Your new songs will inspire our revival preacher. By the way, I need to call the parsonage and press Sister Hooten about the preacher’s arrival. Since we’re putting him and his wife up here, I want to have fresh bed linens ready.” Mrs. Miller and I jar the remaining black-eyed peas from this mornings’ harvest; then, we clean the kitchen and fill jars with fresh well water and mint leaves in preparation for her nap. When the days are hot, she takes to the swing Brother Miller fashioned under large elms and sleeps until she hears his truck or mule wagon return from the fields. I never again saw a supper as quickly cooked and set at the dining table as Sister Miller did every evening from April through late Fall. Mama says that Sister Miller takes naps and easily puts bounteous suppers together because there are no children under foot. I know that Sister Miller has little else to do beyond keeping her home beautiful and growing a kitchen garden. Once a week she plays bridge with the Kongenial Kard Klub – the spelling as seen in local newspapers – occasionally traveling as far as Hamlin or Lubbock. The only part of her life that I envy, Jesus please forgive me for Envy, is the indoor bathroom, complete with instant hot water, porcelain tub and toilet, and clean tile floors.

While the farmer’s wife dozes, I have a little time to visit friends. Mama is in the vegetable garden again, after working most of the day in the orchards and fields with Daddy. I recognize her big floppy hat, the long sleeve faded shirt made from flour sacking and long skirt made from patches of discarded woolens. I would be there with Mama if not for Mrs. Miller calling me in to help with canning and cleaning. Thank you, Jesus.

Pearl and Lincoln arrive, the first of three or four families who harvest cotton with us every year. I knock on the screen door and announce, “Merlina Rea here to see you!” They welcome me as always, and I watch them hang clothes in the wardrobe, stuff others inside a drawer, and set a few pictures on the shelf above the bed. “The bed linens are new; well, not brand new. But new on this bed and better than you slept in last year. Mrs. Miller replaced all her bed linens after a shopping trip in Dallas. Mama and I laundered them this week. See the lavender sprigs? It was my idea to grow lavender, and the Millers gave me an entire field row for it. The happy plants grew and bloomed, so plentifully that I’ve been using these empty cottages to dry whole bouquets. The women in Mrs. Miller’s bridge club bought several. I saved the money. Are Noma and Myrtle coming with Hobart and Hazel? I can’t wait for evening choir!”

“We so happy to see you growin’. The bed is nice! And smells so good. If you any lavender to spare, we’ll hang it here. Place get smelly after we come in from fields. Cottage! When you learn that word? We saw Hobart and Hazel last week near Quanah. Them girls growin’ jest like you!” Pearl and Lincoln share talk like jazz musicians share melodic schemes.

I am familiar with jazz. Every Friday evening, the Meyer family sits around the radio, listening to American Jazz on KFDA out of Amarillo. It is the last hour of music on a Friday, following several comedies and news on KGNC. Saturday mornings are early on the farm. Mama says that Baptists must not drink or dance but, we can tap our feet to radio music on a Friday night. Saturday night is all about preparation for Sunday church. Whether Daddy likes Mama’s strict schedules and rules, I am not sure. What I have figured out is that he abides nicely until he cannot; then, Daddy rides with other farmhands and cowboys into Amarillo or Abilene for a weekend. Mama is silent on his return but, they labor and love side by side until his next retreat.

“Help us with these greens ‘n ‘tatoes, Merlina Rea. We was blessed with an abundance from the last farm. We’ll use storm shelter per usual. Caught catfish out o’ cattle tanks on our way here so will cook ‘em right away. Lincoln, you git that fire goin’ whiles we do this. Git outa that rocker! I want a fire and ‘tend to cook soon I’m ready. Move yo’ fat butt!” Pearl scolds Lincoln, although she does not need to. I think she does it to make me laugh.

While they eat and set fried fish aside for the others, I bring tied lavender bundles from Mama’s lean-to and hang one in each of the colored cottages. I feel like a fancy hotel manager who prepares bedrooms for exclusive guests. Just then, the arrival of two farm trucks interrupts the afternoon’s lull, their cabs and cabooses nearly overflowing. The occupants hastily disembark, and late summer’s quietude bids goodbye for several days as old friends and new family gather for harvest and revival.

“Noma! Myrtle!” We race into each other’s arms. “Pinch me, Noma. Pull my hair, Myrtle. I am dreaming; I just know it.” Before I can stop myself, I cry; and we cause a stir among the adults who are busy unloading their few belongings. Three girls crying and dancing around like we stepped into a swarm of fire ants.

Hazel yells in our direction. “Now that you got that outa your systems. Go fill these water buckets. My goodness. All you got is legs and arms; just missing your heads!” When we get to the well, I unload my surprises.

“They put in a second outhouse. We got one for the women and one for the men! Because I started my monthly blessings last winter. Mama told the Millers that I would be coming to their fancy bathroom unless we had better situations at the cottages. So, look!” Facing in opposite directions are two new outhouses with a fence on which climb sweet pea and honeysuckle. Each of the outhouses is also larger than the old one, with room for shelves and hooks. “Now, come here!” I show them the bath shed. Inside it is a large aluminum tub, wood floor with a linoleum rug, a small wood stove for heating water, and shelves of toiletry supplies.

My friends hug me as though I masterminded all this as a present for them. Ida Olive and I got these extras because the Millers are good people, easily convinced to supply the materials for improvements on their property. We put metal roofs on all three buildings. After they built the new toilets and bath shed, the Millers gave leftover paint to the project. I painted the interiors. Daddy finished the outside wood with linseed oil as instructed. Before Mrs. Miller’s friends came around for the first spring social, I painted pictures on the toilet doors so that no one could be confused about which toilet is standing optional. Mama and I remind Daddy quite often that we like having our own toilet because it stays cleaner than when we had to share with him and other men. In that respect, Mama and I are better off than Mrs. Miller. While lugging full buckets back to the open cookfires, we giggle, predicting their reactions to the new buildings.

Grandma Clara is among the first on my tour, quietly walking back and forth a few times as if to clarify something. She is the oldest one here to pick cotton; Hazel says Clara was born a slave. I cannot see how that’s possible because I expect to see markings on her face or arms. But Grandma Clara has the most flawless dark skin I have ever seen. When she walks with me to view the vegetable garden, she asks, “What the Millers and they friends say ‘bout all this?”

“Oh, Brother and Sister Miller are pleased. We did all the work after they supplied the lumber and other stuff. Daddy says all this makes them look richer. But when her friends came around for the spring social, a few said that her generosity with farmhands and Colored is foolish. I overheard them because I was cleaning up after the night’s rainstorm. Others said they would consider the same improvements on their farms. So, her friends had some differences of opinion. Will you answer a question for me?”

“Course, Merlina Rea.” Grandma Clara walks along the rows of bean, tomato, squash, and kale, filling her apron pockets.

“What’s a yella? And I did ask Mama. She says that I’m too young to understand.” We walk slowly toward the cooking fires where the aroma of grilled greens and potatoes calls Mama and Daddy to end their workday. We eat and socialize with the colored farmhands every time the Millers call for their help, especially when cotton is ready for harvest.

“Merlina Rea, you ask the right Colored. A yella is a person whose pale skin keeps their secret of colored heritage. Not every n***o with pale skin wants to hide their birth secret; but everyone who can keep the secret lives a better life among white folk. My folks are dark skin, very dark as you can see. We work in the fields for half the year and in hotels and diners the rest. My firstborn son, Silas his name, is a light Colored who worked many years delivering mail in California.” Before we return to the cooking circle, she stops me. “But why you want to know? Where’d you hear such?”

I feel a little afraid. Grandma Clara might think I was spying on the women that day. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. And I truly didn’t mean to overhear their talk. But Sister Miller’s friends do talk loudly.” She stands in front of me still, as if the heat her large body shares with me will ignite my voice. “I saw two ladies point to my Mama who walked by a couple of times, though my Mama didn’t look their way or talk to them. I could hear them talking about her, She don’t fool us even if she fools her blue-eyed man. She’s a yella, that one. Where I grew up, she’d be our help in the house, not in the fields. Prolly she’s in the fields cause she’s more black than shows. Likely a mulatta, and a lucky one. Grandma Clara keeps her eyes on me during the space between my answer and her thoughts.

She don’t fool us even if she fools her blue-eyed man. She’s a yella, that one. Where I grew up, she’d be our help in the house, not in the fields.Prolly she’s in the fields cause she’s more black than shows. Likely a mulatta, and a lucky one.

“Merlina Rea, lot o’ women despise they selves. They always jealous, always bickerin’ among themselves, always shovin’ others aside whilst hopin’ they git seen. This is your early lesson in women folk’s meanness. The evil that eats at their souls is the ugly you see in their faces long afore they men get old with them. Don’t be like them. They the real reason it took a war to set us dark-skin folks free. Learn from your mama how to be a good woman. Your mama will show you how.”

By the time Grandma Clara’s counsel is complete, we are in the cooking circle. It’s a live circle around two open fires where food boils and crackles, alive in talk with old friends, who married and who died, why that family moved North and that family returned East, which farms folded and which increased acreage, which farms bought the new cotton harvesters and which farms no longer grow cotton, towns to pass wide of altogether and towns to find winter work and shelter. I try to hold onto at least one conversation while several others throw me into gleeful fits. During the evening, one family at a time would visit the bath shed. I notice that they heat more quantities of water at the cooking fires. Although embarrassed to admit it, I enjoy the many kind words, thanking me for the bath shed. I wait for these evenings all year long. Too soon we start the back-breaking toil, gathering cotton by hand and filling sacks. Until the harvest is over, this is our fellowship before we barely have energy to talk or cook and clean up after coming in from the fields.

First, we will rededicate our lives to the Lord in revival meetings that begin without delay. The friends with which we feast and laugh this evening will meet with many other Black farmhands under a tent on the outskirts of town; Mama and I will meet at the Old Time Religion Baptist Church with white towns people and local farmers who like Ida Olive’s musical inspiration. The Methodists and Pentecostals will also have revival; all the deacons from local churches, only three churches in our small town, schedule revivals so that any person who values spiritual wakening can attend one meeting after the other for three weeks continuously. Every year, churches rotate the revival order because the one who has revival meeting before cotton harvest is the best attended.