The Way it Was

I wrote this short story today. I'm not absolutely decided on the title. let me know what you think..or don't think...


Jonah was from one of those towns where it wasn’t hard to imagine what it was like before Rosa Parks sat on a bus or Martin Luther King Jr. made long speeches; the kind of town where everything was in black and white like those old silent films Jonah’s Grandpa Henry had shown him growing up, except in film, people seemed extraordinarily happy for no apparent reason; they were always dancing, or tripping, or running around in circles. In Olli, Alabama, there only seemed to be cotton fields around the next corner, and though Jonah liked them when they were white and soft looking, they didn’t make him extraordinarily happy, as a matter of fact, he couldn’t really think of anything that made him happy for no apparent reason other than Sunday lunches at his Grandpa Henry’s: fried chicken, and greens, and sopping cornbread in pea juice. He liked the company, and the old record player that didn’t work, and he liked forgetting about the lines people drew in town. That’s another thing about those silent films, the people were white- only their hats were black, or their shoes, or their cars- you never saw any black people in those films; if you did, it was probably a white guy with black paint on his face, a clown of some sort, pretending to be something he wasn’t.
On occasion, some stranger would pass through, and quickly, so it always seemed: There were always the same faces, and if not the same faces, similar faces, because all of the new ones looked just like the old ones. In fact, when Jonah looked through his most recent senior yearbook, he could have sworn girls and boys from his parent’s albums or grandparent’s albums had snuck their way into his. If he looked at those neat little squares with those little faces, he could forget the time, sometimes the year. Was it really 2006 or was Rosa still sitting, her back straight in 1955, or were people still clapping in 1963 with Dr. King? He knew that if he walked outside he could catch the bus and sit at the very front if he really wanted, and he could go to school, and he could smile at the white boys and girls in the hallways, but even so, he forgot what year it was sometimes: It seemed to him that people weren’t allowed to have prejudice openly, not like before, but they could have preference, and as long as he had lived in Ollie, people had preferred to stick to their own kind.
Like any summer, the cotton fields were being plowed by tractors, not backs, and Jonah spent days with Grandpa Henry, or throwing basketballs at the red brick on the side of his home. And children, at least, were free to choose sides while outside of school, and unlike red rover where the other side has the opportunity to join hands with their counterparts, the children didn’t run to the other side; they didn’t call out to the other side to join them.
It was on a Tuesday that Jonah was throwing the ball hard against the wall when his neighbor, Mrs. Maude began nagging him. He counted the number of times he hit a brick that had a black spot on it, but he’d forget the number each time she’d yell over, lifting her head from behind large clay flowerpots. “I need sum o’ that coan meal, but Ernest aint come in yet,” or “if I had that coan meal, I coud fry okre fo Ernest,”she’d say just before she’d purse her lips and begin again to shove bulbs into the potting soil. 15, 22, 25, he’d count again. “Jonah, I said thata needs coan meal fo Ernest,” and she cupped her red mouth so he’d have to hear her over the thump of the basketball. Mrs. Maude was late into her eighties, and Jonah knew she probably really did need corn meal, and Mr. Ernest probably was really gone visiting someone or another, so he walked over to get her money. When he left her carport, she smiled and smiled, her lips stretching as far as they could in a, “I knew he’d come around” sort of way.
Ollie didn’t have much: a small baseball park that was really a few mounds of red dirt in someone’s field, a gas station, a school, two or three churches, and two stores- Jonson’s and Smith’s. No one had ever told Jonah not to go to Jonson’s, but as far back as he could remember his mama and friends and pastor had only ever gone to Smith’s- that’s just the way it was. There weren’t any signs or laws or anything really, black people just went to Smith’s and white people always seemed to go to Johnson’s.
The bell rang when he walked in, and Mr. Eddy Smith- the great grandson of Edward Smith, the original owner- asked him how his mama was doing, and her tomatoes: “I dunno how Mrs. Maude grows them tomatoes in this helluva summer,” he said like always, his hands on his hips. “Well, if ya have any trouble finding anything, just holler.”
“If they don’t got buttermilk, they don’t got nuthin,” his mom had always said, but it didn’t matter much if there was buttermilk corn meal or not because there wasn’t any. Jonah stood on the isle, scratching the back of his head, looking from the sticker that said, “corn meal: $2.37” to the empty space between the self rising flour and brown sugar he grew up eating out of the bag. “Dammit.”
Jonah forgot what year it was. He was sort of aware that it was 2006, but in the back of his mind it was still 1955, and he couldn’t go to Jonson’s. But when he parked his car outside of the small white building, he didn’t see any police, or flyers, or dogs, and he knew he could walk in. He could just walk in like he walked into school every day, and he could smile at the white people, and he could use their red or blue baskets, and he could buy their buttermilk corn meal. He watched a white woman carrying several bags in one hand walk out of the swinging doors, her son by her side. Jonah wasn’t sure if he was exaggerating things, but it looked like she was sort of panicked, and took her son’s hand in hers, and rushed him to the car. She was even kind of rough with her groceries; she just flung them down and then got in her car and drove away.
Sitting there, watching the little boy, he thought of this kid Thomas Frye. They both had Mrs. Kensington in kindergarten, and Jonah liked him a lot. They’d sit together on the alphabet rug and talk about the Power Rangers, and they’d swap milk at lunch, just because. They liked the same books, and they both had relatives named Ruby: Jonah had an Auntie Ruby and Thomas Frye had an Aunt Ruby. Jonah remembered wanting Thomas Frye to spend the night with him, but his mom had said it wasn’t right, and when he saw Thomas at school, Thomas Frye told him his mom had said the same thing. You two don’t got nuthin in common boy, ya’ll come from diffrent people, Jonah thought, but he couldn’t remember who said it, his mom or Thomas Frye’s. Jonah watched the little boy and knew no black boys had every spent the night at his house.
Jonah sat there awhile, watching the people walk in and out, several watching him while they carried bags to their cars. He knew he could go in, he knew he could; he kept saying it over to himself in his head, There’s no reason I can’t go on in. No one’s going to get on to me, but he couldn’t get out of his car because there was a line there, a little white line and Jonah knew that if he went in, they’d stare or he’d stare. He knew that if he went in, he would be messing up someone’s preference, or maybe his preference. There was a line around Johnson’s, and he couldn’t make himself go in.
When he got home, Mrs. Maude was still working in her yard, her blue floral dress was scrunching up around her hips and breast, and she seemed happy. “There’s Jonah boy, I wuz worried you’d been in uh accident.” When she pursed her lips at his empyt hands, he told her how Smith’s didn’t have any corn meal. “You think they’d know to keep sumthin as simple as coan meal in the stoe,” she said when he handed her back her money. When Jonah went back to throwing his basketball, he watched Mrs. Maude continue to dig, and shove, and pull, and he knew that Mrs. Maude hadn’t even considered asking him if he had gone to Johnsons, because she never would have expected him to; just like his teachers, and his preacher, and his friends, and his mamma wouldn’t have expected him to, because that’s just the way it was.