Minetta Lane

Chapter 7: You Understand?

Chapter 7

You Understand?

“TIME FOR YOU to learn more about your family. You don’t need to understand much more about people came before me, but I should tell you more about me and Akua. Fair enough?”

“Yes, but I don’t have so much going back in time to tell you.”

“Here’s the thing. I’ll go backward, but you got to tell me about things moving forward—sound like a plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll go first after we start dinner. Help me set the table. Got some chicken and some potatoes.”

“Sounds tasty!” Bodee walked toward the table and considered what he would say about moving forward, because Juba might be angry at the location of his new part-time job. Maybe I’ll start with something else.

Grandmother and grandson ate in silence as they both decided how certain topics should be broached. The extra time to organize thoughts came to an end when Bodee took the last potato and eyed the final slice of chicken.

“You take the last piece of meat, and I’ll start. Go ahead, now. Still don’t know why you so skinny. Can’t see how you could eat any more.”

“It’s your good cooking, Juba!” Bodee smiled as he bit into the last piece of chicken.

“Akua born in Orleans when I just twenty-three. Your grandfather a slave too, but he died before I gave birth to your mother. To this day, I don’t understand what happened to him—too young to die the way he did, only forty years old. Found him dead one morning when I was six months pregnant. Same thing happened to Akua, but I wish I heard in time to be at the funeral—don’t hold that against you ’cause you couldn’t reach me, but I’m happy you got my letter and are here now.”

“Me too, but I feel bad about not knowing how to reach you. The answer was always no whenever I a asked to go visit you.”

“How many times you ask her?”

Bodee paused and remembered the slaps and his eventual submission to his mother’s will. “Not as many times as I should have.”

“Least you being honest, but you should’ve pushed back some more. You don’t seem to be so good at fighting back. I think this one of the things we’ll work on. Sometimes, you shouldn’t take no for an answer, but let’s go back to the family. Your grandfather passed before Akua came into this world.”

“Wow, so my mama never met her father, just like me.”

“Don’t mean nothing—lots of people never met their daddies, but things got bad after he gone. Master liked his work and if he lived I wouldn’t have run. I wasn’t of much use to Master after your granddaddy died and he told me he wanted to sell my baby soon as possible—said didn’t need another Darkey baby—told me to my face, and said I should be happy I’d never be sold because I’m like family. Didn’t even understand your mother was fixin’ to be the biggest part of my family—needed to escape.”

“Must’ve been hard being all the way down in New Orleans. You so far away from the North.”

“Yeah, it was hard. I thought the river was the best way out, right up the Mississippi, but I needed to wait for the right ship. Found one when your mother only a few weeks old. The captain drank too much, and three slaves did most of the work on the boat. One of them took a chance on us. Me and Akua hid below for the whole time in a little room. Put towels all around to block the sound of her crying. Got up into Ohio and across to New York. Spent some time in your favorite place, Weeksville, at the Berean Baptist Church. Those people helped us and after a while I came into this place on Minetta Lane.”

“Mama told me this part. She said most runaways kept goin’ up to Canada. Why you stay?”

“Times bad in Manhattan back in 1863—riots right before we got here. The Irish fought the Blacks and the rich. They roughed up the wealthy, but hung lots of Colored folks, so many afraid for a spell. Not me, though. I did a favor for someone who owned this here house, and he let us stay. I been here ever since and your mama stayed until you almost one year old.”

Juba paused and took a sip of water. “That all I got to say about goin’ backward. What you got to tell me about goin’ forward?”

“First, tell me how you figured which boat to take and why you thought you’d be safe in Manhattan?”

“Done told you . . . not gonna tell ’til you tell. Your turn.”

Bodee paused for a minute to consider what level of detail he’d provide as he arranged the bones on his plate. “I searched for work in some offices in Manhattan, but I can’t say many businesses were happy at the idea of working with a Colored man. Most managers didn’t want to talk to me.”

“So, no luck finding a job?”

“No luck.”

“I’ll ask you one more time, is there anything else you got to say going on with you, ’cause if there is and you don’t tell me, we got a problem. You can stay here as long as you need to, but if we start having problems, you got to go somewhere else.”

“Go somewhere else! Where? What do you mean?”

“Do you think anything will happen in this little neighborhood without Madame Juba knowin’ ’bout it? Do you think you could take a job in the Bend without everyone tellin’ me, without Silvy himself stopping by for permission? Everything runs through Blood and me.”

“I thought you might be mad at me. You said not to go inside, so I planned to wait for the right time to tell you.”

“Listen here, I told you not to go in that bar, but you did. Like if you a child and I told you not to go near the stove, but you did and got burned—you’d need to come for help right away because when something like that happens, there’s no such thing as the right time. I’m tellin’ you clear as day, you better be real careful in Snake Eyes—worst kind of people in this city drink in that saloon. Real easy to be burned in there even if you don’t touch the stove, and if you do, you come to me right away. I keep askin’ if you understand, and you keep sayin’ you do, but this one thing you need to promise me. At the first sign of trouble, you come to me right away.”

“For sure. This job is only until something else opens up.”

“Interesting, that’s the same I said twenty years ago when I moved to Minetta Lane. Time will tell.”