The Cigar Factory by Michele Moore

Author:Michele Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2016-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

With the days a little longer, Binah and Meliah Amey went after work to pull grass from behind Magnolia cemetery. Binah would dry it in the sun before using it in her coiled baskets that she sold to the buckruh in the office on East Bay Street downtown.

Meliah Amey straightened up, stretching her back. She studied the gigantic steel monster crawling across the sky high above the marsh. Maybe when the two sides were married it wouldn’t seem so scary. She pictured a car driving off the unfinished bridge and out into the air. “I don’t ever wanna ride in a automobile going cross that bridge,” she said.

“Nobody we know own a car,” said Binah. “Looks like you ain got to worry.”

“How your people feel about the bridge?” Meliah Amey asked.

“They like it fine, but they not going to pay no toll to cross the water when they can take they boat for free,” answered Binah.

Meliah Amey went back to pulling grass. An e luke’luke bird took flight when she got too close. She looked over to Binah, who looked different. She’d taken to wearing colorful scarves upon her head. And earbobs, too. But she was studying her head about something and not saying a word. It was nearly first dark and they were in a cemetery and Binah hadn’t even noticed. Meliah Amey kept on pulling grass, filling her croaker sack, cutting her eyes now and then to Binah, trying to figure out what might be wrong. Binah had been transferred to the department making cigar boxes on the fifth floor a few months back, and Meliah Amey didn’t talk with her at work much anymore.

“How you like making cigar boxes?” Meliah Amey asked.

“Everything hurry up, hurry up,” she said. “You got to make sure the label don’t go on crooked.”

Ever since the cigar-making machines came into the factory, everything was hurry up, hurry up. And nobody got paid any more money for all the hurrying. Well, maybe the white girls making cigars were getting more money. Meliah Amey heard there wasn’t anything hard about their jobs now that the machines did all the difficult parts like the cutting and the rolling. She heard the white girls just had to stand there and feed tobacco into the machine, and how hard could that be?

“Ee time fuh gone,” said Meliah Amey. They secured their croaker sacks full of sweetgrass and started for home. Meliah Amey couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Mek so yuh worry?” she asked as they walked through the cemetery.

Binah replied, “I got misery een my haa’t.”

“You get a letter from Ray?”

“Ray hol’ me cheap,” she said. Binah stopped beside a grave marker for one of the Ball family members, her eyes filled with tears, “Enu fole, enu fole.”

“Who baby you carrying, Binah? Who the Tata?” Meliah Amey demanded to know, fearing the answer.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Meliah Amey,” she answered. “It may be Sam Maybank.”

“Who de odduh man, Binah? Who yuh t’ink de Tata be fuh true?”

“Mr.

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