Marsha Hunt - Like Venus Fading

If the sun wasn’t too high or the mosquitoes too hungry on Mamie’s porch, Mother would let me climb onto her lap and make requests. ‘Do the one about Hannah.’ If she hadn’t already, she’d clear her throat and swim fearlessly into the verse with a power that she displayed at no other time. It was like sitting on a mountain that speaks. ‘There was a certain man of Ramathaimzophim of the hill of the country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephramite …’ She could lower her voice until the syllables swayed back and forth with the ease of a porch glider; slow, so slowly the cadences would rise and fall. Forward then backward, high, then low, carving a road into my psyche like the radio jingles did. ‘Whose name was Elka-nah, the son of Jero-ham, son of Eli-hu, son of Tohu.’

Mother’s voice was as round as her belly, as soft as her lap, as smooth as her hair when greased and straightened with tongs. So I was often lulled to sleep by her reciting the story of Hannah as I had been in the days when Lilian was learning to recite Hail Holy Queen. Repeating the lines over and over, Lil would entrance me with the phrase ‘Poor banished children of Eve’.

During those mornings when I trekked through the open fields alone, I would often repeat Mother’s verses, and once Lilian heard and challenged me in Mamie’s front yard: we were to see who could say all the names in Hannah’s story, and the winner could tickle the loser to death. But we never got that far because Mamie, in the yard feeding the turkeys, heard us. She yelled, ‘C’mere, Reenie.’ I thought I was in trouble for making fun of the way Mother recited ‘Elka-nah, the son of Jero-ham’ and the rest. But Mamie said, ‘Come on in and do that again.’ When she grabbed my arm to pull me into the kitchen, I looked less frightened than Lilian who was terrified of her.

Mamie’s gruffness was straightforward, but unlike Mother she would slap us without warning. So when she sat at the kitchen table and told me to stand by the stove, I didn’t know what to expect. I hoped that my Mother would rescue me but suspected that she was out back picking runner beans.

I began meekly and Mamie snapped, ‘Speak up!’

‘There was a man of Ramathaimzophim of the hill of the country of Ephraim …’

‘Do it like your mama does … Go ’head … like you did in my yard.’

I knew where Mother paused for effect and recited as she did. And Mamie applauded and laughed until tears streamed down her dark cheeks and glistened on that black mole beside her nose. The more I recited, the more she laughed and her frolicking spilled into the yard until Lilian stuck her head in the screen door. ‘Set down,’ Mamie told her.

I was a show-off but everything I did my sister tried to do better, and that afternoon was no different. Competition was fierce but whereas Lilian knew the words, I knew Mother’s phrasing.

Mamie McMichael had an instinct for what would please a crowd. To her everyone, kids, grown-ups, old people, was a potential audience. I’ve seen her arrive at a church for the first time, ask some deacons to help bring her piano from the rig, and proceed to organize the service. Merely after eyeing a congregation, Mamie would whisper something like, ‘Ruthie, do “Punishment and Blasphemy” or “Hezekiah’s Prayer”.’ Once I heard her warn in a church, ‘Whatever you do, don’t do no Proverbs, ’cause this minister only knows Psalms and Proverbs, so these folks can’t take ’em from nobody else.’

When Mamie took Mother aside after hearing Lil and I do some of Mother’s verses, Mamie said, ‘Mark my words, them children could make us rich.’

The nuns had trained us well to learn by rote and the radio had taught us to listen. Mamie was impressed that we learned Bible verses and the little hymns she taught us so quickly. We’d stand at her piano and try the odd harmony and she’d get excited. ‘Ruthie,’ she’d tell Mother, ‘folks will love these girls at church. All you have to do is press their hair and get some ribbons.’

Mother beamed like a natural-born stage mother but said, ‘They too young to hot-comb their hair.’

As it turned out, performing in those small churches was no different from standing before a cluster of parents at a St Anthony’s pageant. My sister and I wore enormous red bows in our hair but Lil made me refuse to wear her white Holy Communion dress. ‘Suppose it gets ruined,’ she’d whispered so that Mother couldn’t hear. ‘You’d have nothing for your Communion.’

Of course, I hadn’t forgotten that I’d missed mine. In fact it’s what troubled me most nights. That and Mother selling Hortense’s things …

If Lilian kept the torch of our Roman faith burning, Mamie McMichael kindled another flame. She kept us thinking about our presence before a crowd. How to smile and charm and to test our new-found skill, was like a fix. We learned to pick out eyes in the churches and work to them. We learned to modulate our voices and sell songs, even if they were only children’s hymns, and the buzz of getting ready for our performances was more fun than any game of chase or ‘Simon Says’. Performing is a vanity, but Mamie taught us that it was righteous. Being examined and admired and then getting paid by a ‘little collection from the congregation’ hit my sister like an addiction. Maybe that’s why she turned to drink after we split in ’42 and she couldn’t get a singing job.

Sure, Mamie gets some credit for my success, but it was the dollar signs rather than God that interested her. Yet tonight I’d give anything to hear her play that version of ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ that she’d arranged for Lil and me. Nobody could play it like Mamie McMichael.

It was soon after Mamie’s mule had to be shot when Mother announced that we were moving to Los Angeles, and Lil and I were speechless, because California hadn’t been mentioned since it fell from Miss Hortense’s lips. But after our two short months of performing in churches, Mamie had devised a plan which meant moving west, and while the details were never shared with us, we were about to live them.

We were luckier to get out of Mississippi than I realized, because for decades to come what had happened to Buster would be nothing out of the ordinary. In fact when Mamie would down a glass of sweet Mogen David wine once in a while, she’d reminisce about old times and end up saying, ‘Least they didn’t slice off Buster’s dick, and they left his eyes.’

Mamie believed that I owed her everything for my success because I couldn’t credit the white men who made me bend over or lay down before they would provide a few yards of the sticky tarmac that led me to stardom. Acting schools should offer a course in how best to be degraded by the studio bigwigs. It would be way more useful than Shakespeare. But if Mamie were alive, she’d chastize me for suggesting that anything more than luck and talent helps girls get ahead. She’s owed, but less for her music than for lending Mother the fare that got us to California that August of 1930.

Our trip from Mississippi took days longer than Mother had expected, because we kept missing connections, and although I can’t recall our eight-day journey or name the states that we passed through, I’m positive it was in Texas Mother, Lil and me huddled together like three hobos waiting for a bus that didn’t come until dawn. When we finally reached Los Angle-less as Mamie pronounced it, it was a Saturday night and the slim crescent moon didn’t light our way from the bus station to downtown. Before the Koreans and the Mexicans took over that part of town, anybody not white was welcome. Mamie had warned Mother that the city was as segregated as any below the Mason-Dixon line, so we arrived fully aware that our ‘place’ in the scheme of things was going to be ‘no place’. When we couldn’t find a ‘Coloureds Only’ sign on any of the toilet doors in the train depot, Mother made us pee behind a bush outside.