The season closed and people went away like they had come, in droves. Tea Cake and Janie had decided to stay since they wanted to make another season on the muck. There was nothing to do after they had gathered several bushels of dried beans to save over and sell to the planters in the fall.
So Janie began to look around and see people and things she hadn't noticed during the season. For instance, during the summer when she heard the subtle but compelling rhythms of the Bahamian drummers, she'd walk over and watch the dances. She did not laugh the saws to scorn as she had heard the people doing in the season.
She got to like it a lot, and she and Tea Cake were on hand every night till the others teased them about it. Janie came to know Mrs. Turner now. She had seen her several times during the season, but neither ever spoke. Now they got to be visiting friends.
Mrs. Turner was a milky sort of a woman that belonged to childbed. Her shoulders rounded a little, and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it. Tea Cake made a lot of fun about Mrs. Turner's shape behind her back. He claimed that she had been shaped up by a cow kicking her from behind. She was an ironing board with things thrown at it.
Then that same cow took and stepped in her mouth when she was a baby and left it wide and flat with her chin and nose almost meeting. But Mrs. Turner's shape and features were entirely approved by Mrs. Turner. her nose was slightly pointed and she was proud her thin lips were an ever delight to her eyes even her buttocks in bas-relief were a source of pride to her way of thinking all these things set her aside from negroes that was why she sought out janie to friend with janie's coffee and cream complexion and her luxurious hair made mrs turner forgive her for wearing overalls like the other women who worked in the fields She didn't forgive her for marrying a man as dark as tea cake, but she felt that she could remedy that.
That was what her brother was born for. She seldom stayed long when she found tea cake at home, but when she happened to drop in and catch Janie alone, she'd spend hours chatting away. Her disfavored subject was Negroes. Ms. Woods.
I have often said to my husband, I don't see how a lady like Miss Woods can stand all them common niggas around her place all the time. They don't worry me at all, Miss Turner. Fact about the thing is, they tickles me when they talk. I mean, you got more nerve than me.
When somebody talked my husband into coming down here to open up a eating place, I never dreamt so many different kinds of black folks could collect in one place. Dead, I never would have come. I ain't used to associating with black folks.
My son claims they draws lightning. They laughed a little, and after many of these talks, Mrs. Turner said, Your husband must have had plenty of money when y'all got married. What make you think that, Miss Turner?
To get hold of a woman like you. You got more nerve than me. I just couldn't see myself married to no black... man.
Too many black folks already. We oughta lighten up the race. Now my husband didn't have nothing but his self. He's easy to love if you mess around him. I loves him.
Why you Miss Woods, I don't believe it. You just sorta hypnotized, that's all. No, it's real.
I couldn't stand it if he was to quit me. Don't know what I'd do. He can take most any little thing. and make summertime out of it when times is dull.
Then we lives off of that happiness he made till some more happiness come along. Well, you different from me. I can't stand black niggas.
I don't blame the white folks for hating them because I can't stand them myself. Another thing, I hates to see folks like me and you mixed up with them. Us ought to class off. Us can't do it. We's a mango people, and all us got black kin folks as well as yalla kin folks.
How come you so against black? And it makes me tired. Always laughing.
They laughs too much, they laughs too. Loud! Always singing old nigger songs. Always cutting the monkey for white folks.
If it wasn't for so many black folks, it wouldn't be no race problem. The white folks would take us in with them. The black ones is holding us back. You reckon?
Of course, I never thought about it too much, but I don't figure they even gonna want us for company with Tupou. It ain't the poorness, it's the color. and the features. Who want any little old black baby laying up in the baby buggy looking like a flying buttermilk?
Who wants to be mixed up with a rusty black man and a black woman going down the street in all them loud colors and whooping and hollering and laughing over nothing? I don't know. Don't bring me no nigga doctor to hang over my sickbed. I done had six children. Wasn't lucky enough to raise but that one.
And he never had a nigga to even feel my pulse. White doctor always gets my money. I don't go in no nigga's store to buy nothing, neither. Colored folks don't know nothing about no business.
Deliver me. Mrs. Turner was almost screaming in fanatical earnestness by now. janie was dumb and bewildered before and she clucked sympathetically and wished she knew what to say it was so evident that mrs turner took black folk as a personal affront to herself Look at me. I ain't got no flat nose and liver lips.
I'm a featured woman. I got white folks'features in my face. Still and all, I got to be lumped in with all the rest. It ain't fair. Even if they don't take us in with the whites, they ought to make us a class to ourselves.
It don't worry me at all, but I reckon I ain't got no real head for thinking. You ought to meet my brother. He's real smart.
Got dead straight hair. They made him a delegate to the Sunday school convention, and he read a paper on Booker T. Washington and tore him to pieces. Booker T.? He was a great big man, wasn't he? Supposed to be. All he ever done was cut the monkey for white folks, so they pumped him up.
But you know what the old folks say. The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his behind. So that's the way it was with Booker T. My brother hit him every time they gave him a chance to speak.
I was raised on the notion that he was a great big man, was all that Janie knew to say. He didn't do nothing but hold us back, talking about work, when the race ain't never done nothing else. He was an enemy to us, that's what. He was a white folks nigger. According to all Janie had been taught, this was sacrilege, so she sat without speaking at all.
But Mrs. Turner went on. I done sent for my brother to come down and spend a while with us. He's sort of out of work now. I want you to meet him more special. You and him would make up a swell couple if you wasn't already married.
He's a fine carpenter when he can get anything to do. Yeah, maybe so, but I's married now, so take no use in considering. Mrs. Turner finally rose to go after being very firm about several other viewpoints of either herself, her son, or her brother.
She begged Janie to drop in on her any time, but never once mentioning tea cake. Finally, she was gone, and Janie hurried to her kitchen to put on supper and found tea cake sitting in there with his head between his hands. Tea Cake, I didn't know you was home.
I know you didn't. I've been here a long time. Listening to that heifer run me down to the dogs and try to toll you off from me. So that what she was up to? I didn't know.
Course she is. She got some no-count brothers she wants you to hook up with and take care of, I reckon. Shucks.
That's her notion. She's barking up the wrong tree. My hands is full already. Thank you, ma'am.
I hate that woman like poison. Keep her from around this house. Her look like a white woman with that merinous skin and hair just as close to her head as 99 is to 100. Since she hate black folks so she don't need our money and her old eating place. I'll pass the word along.
We can go to that white man's place and get good treatment. Oh, Ned. whittle down husband of hers and that son he's just a dirty trick her womb played on her i'm telling her husband to keep her home i don't want her round his house one day tea cake met turner and his son on the street he was a vanishing looking kind of a man as if there used to be parts about him that stuck out individually but now he hadn't a thing about him that wasn't dwindle and blurred just like he had been sandpaper down to a long oval mass.
D.Cate felt sorry for him without knowing why, so he didn't blurt out the insults he had intended, but he couldn't hold in everything. They talked about the prospects for the coming season for a moment. Then TK said, Your wife don't seem to have nothing much to do, so she can visit a lot. Mine got too much to do to go visit and then too much to spend time talking to folks that visit her. My wife takes time for whatever she wants to do.
Real strong-headed that way, yes indeed. He laughed a high, lungless laugh. The children don't keep her in no more, so she visits when she chooses. The children? Tea Cake asked in surprise.
You got any smaller than him? He indicated a son who seemed around 20 or so. I ain't seen your others.
I reckon you ain't, cause days all passed on before this one was born. We ain't had no luck at all with our children. We lucky to raise him.
He's the last. stroke of exhausted nature. He gave his powerless laugh again, and Tea Cake and the boy joined in with him.
Then Tea Cake walked on off and went home to Janie. Her husband can't do nothing with that butthead woman. All you can do is treat her cold whenever she come around here. Janie tried that, but short of telling Mrs. Turner bluntly, there was nothing she could do to discourage her completely. She felt honored by Janie's acquaintance, and she quickly forgave and forgot snubs in order to keep it.
Anyone who looked more white-focused than herself was better than she was in her criteria. Therefore, it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negro than herself in direct ratio to their negroness. Like the pecking order in a chicken yard, insensitive cruelty to those you can whip and groveling submission.
to those you can't. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them, it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity, as all good worshipers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel.
All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering, men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion it is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom half-gods are worshipped in wine and flowers real gods require blood mrs turner like all other believers had built an altar to the unattainable caucasian characteristics for all her god would smite her would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts but she would not forsake his altars behind her crude words was a belief that somehow she and others through worship could attain her paradise a heaven of straight-haired thin-lipped high-nosed boned white seraphs the physical impossibilities in no way injured faith that was the mystery and mysteries of the chores of gods beyond her faith was a fanaticism to defend the altars of her god it was distressing to emerge from her inner temple and find these black desecrators howling with laughter before the door oh for an army terrible with banners and swords so she didn't cling to janie woods the woman she paid homage to janie's Caucasian characteristics as such. And when she was with Janie, she had a feeling of transmutation, as if she herself had become whiter and with straighter hair. And she hated Tea Cake first for his defilement of divinity, and next for his telling mockery of her.
If she only knew something she could do about it, but she didn't. Once she was complaining about the carryings on at the juke, and Tea Cake snapped. Oh, don't make God look so foolish, finding fault with everything he made.
So Mrs. Turner frowned most of the time. She had so much to disapprove of. It didn't affect Tea Cake and Janie too much.
It just gave them something to talk about in the summertime when everything was dull on the muck. Otherwise, they made little trips to Palm Beach, Fort Myers, and Fort Lauderdale for their fun. Before they realized it, the sun was cooler. And the crowds came pouring onto the muck again.