And I Said No Lord: A Twenty-One-Year-Old in Mississippi in 1964

5. In the Streamline and Maggie's: The Street and the Field

123 5in the streamline and maggie’s the street and the field 124 When Ray walked into the Streamline a little before noon, we played the pinball machine for a while before sitting down. He was lucky and won two dollars. I asked him, hesitantly, if he would take me around the neighborhood. I was careful, I thought, to emphasize that I didn’t want to offend anyone; I especially didn’t want to offend him. He offered to take me to his mother’s house a few blocks away. It was a little three-room cottage. The front room was a bedroom. On a dresser was a small shrine that Ray’s mother had made with candles, an open Bible, and a collection of religious pictures and cards. Above it was a translucent-colored crucifixion scene with a light behind it. On the walls were Ray’s graduation picture, an amateur oil painting of an oval black face with bright red thick lips, and Mrs. Carter’s bible school diploma. Ray’s mother walked in, and after Ray explained who I was she smiled and apologized for the mess the scrupulously neat house was in, saying she was ashamed for it to be seen so dirty. “Joel likes your altar very much, Ma,” Ray said softly, his voice low and controlled. I nodded. Mrs. Carter smiled briefly and disappeared into the back of the house. Ray and I walked around to the backyard. Through the fence at the edge of Mrs. Carter’s land, up to which were planted neat rows of vegetables, I saw three or four children playing. I asked Ray if he 125 mother a birthday present.” This time he said it he was looking directly at me, as if, I thought, he were daring me to say something, anything. I offered him money. He protested, laughing, his wide mouth spread open and unmoving, his teeth perfectly even, his eyes unmoving. I shrugged slightly, and he offered to take me to where he lived. He called it that: “where I live”—not home. As Flower Street, with its rows of white and shuttered houses and grassed front yards, turned into Bank Street, the feeling of living changed all within a short block, just as the road changed from macadam to dirt past the new brick high school. The houses were two family, side to side. Tiny and identical, they were arranged, front to back, living room, kitchen, hall and bathroom, and bedroom . Each cottage had its little front and back porches. There were no sidewalks, but occasional dirt paths, rutted and twisting, wound around rocks and the roots of dying trees. Between the path and the road, also dry rutted dirt, was a ditch, dug to lay the drainage pipes and then never filled in well enough to withstand rain erosion. The ditches contained papers and garbage mingled with the loose dirt half-covering the pipes: beer cans, bottles, milk cartons, candy wrappers, an orange rind. Occasionally , a single warped plank spanned the ditch between the unpaved road and the unboarded walk. The paint of the houses, always old and once white, knew them. “No. Uh,” he hesitated, “it’s hard to talk to a lot of these people.” His voice lowered again, to a pride and reserve. “They’re kind of wild.” I didn’t ask what he meant. As we walked back along the narrow dirt street toward Lynch Street and the cafe, I felt Ray beginning to speak. “It’s, uh, my mother’s birthday tomorrow.” A short pause. “Gee, I sure do wish I could buy her a present. I stiffened and looked up at him. He didn’t turn his head; his eyes were fastened on something in the distance, and there was a trace of a turning up of the corners of his mouth. Naively, I wondered what had happened, and then what I had done. Bewildered , I lowered my eyes to the ground and stared at the dusty road and the stones and the weeds as we walked slowly. “Didn’t you win two dollars at pinball this morning?” I asked. “Aw, I’d want to get her something better than two dollars.” His glance passed over my face to the ground, off into the distance again, then back to the ground. “Shit, I’d rather not get her anything than get her something only worth two...