The Emancipation of Evan Walls by Jeffrey Blount

Author:Jeffrey Blount
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63393-810-6
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2018-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Sunday mornings at our house meant sausage, applesauce, sweetened iced tea, and Mama’s locally famous homemade rolls. Probably every black person in Canaan knew about the rolls. Mama got calls to make them for all kinds of events, from church bazaars to weddings to after-funeral dinners. But on most Sundays, she made them just for us. I loved waking up and smelling them baking, my mouth watering with the thought of butter melted in them and then dunking the whole thing into some cold White House applesauce. It was the most pleasant meal of the week. We all woke up fresh and happy.

“There’s just something special about the Lord’s day,” Mama would say before turning on the television set to a station airing her favorite religious show. The gospel music and the minister’s hellfire and brimstone became a backdrop to our breakfast and a prelude to Reverend Walker’s rote sermons. We would chatter about last week’s goings-on and about what the week would hold. It had all been very nice and very family-like—until everything changed.

I didn’t wake up to the normal Sunday morning delights the week after my beating from Daddy and Aunt Mary’s revelation. Mama wasn’t singing the gospels along with the television. In fact, the TV wasn’t even on. There was just a deadly silence broken every now and then by the clinking of silverware. I heard Daddy shuffling around his bedroom and Mark turning on the shower. I took a deep breath and shook my head, still feeling some pain, wondering at the whole mess I’d brought on.

Aunt Mary had left after our discussion and told everybody about my going over to Eddie Gleason’s and the beating I got. She added other things that never happened but were, in her mind, the appropriate embellishments to make steeper my fall from grace.

The black kids at school became even more vicious. It was a daily bloodletting. I dreamed of Christmas vacation, thinking I would be rid of the steely knives in the other black kids’ eyes. Every time I passed one of them or a group of them, my wounds opened deeper. There was never enough time between stabbings for the wounds to heal. They passed me in the halls singing their arrangement of the guards’ chant from The Wizard of Oz. “Oh-reee-oh. Ohhhhh-re-oh!”

The teachers, especially the black teachers, were no help. Like the adults at my church who allowed me to be stoned on my way to summer Bible school, the teachers turned away from my pleas for help until I no longer pled. Some white teachers tried, but they made only a small effort. I think they thought I deserved it, too, but they didn’t matter much to me. I never expected anything from them anyway.

Dee and Eddie expressed their friendship even more vigorously. They knew my penchant for going off alone to sulk my way back into shape, so they allowed me to come in and out of their lives as I pleased. They put no pressure on me and remained good friends.

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