Writing to Save a Life. John Edgar Wideman
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self, you need another person to tell you the truth. It could be a woman or a man who tells it to me but harder, Mama, to believe a woman and nobody, no man or woman or chicken with a talking mouth can bring back my child. My sweet Bo gone. They killed my baby.
They said Emmett bad, Mama, and say that’s why he’s dead. Bad like his bad daddy, like father like son they said and I need someone to talk to me, hold my hand. I need kind words doesn’t matter who says them, and when this half brother or cousin or friend or whatever of my Albert, this Wealthy, his odd name, comes to the door, I ask myself is he the answer to a prayer I only halfway allowed myself to pray, prayed so softly under my breath, couldn’t hear myself praying it was so quiet and so deep down inside me because I wasn’t sure I wanted God to hear either, maybe just overhear, didn’t want God to get the wrong idea that maybe I blame Him or always expect nice things from Him or like I know better than Him what’s right or wrong for me or think I deserve His special attention when I don’t because this whole wide world like you say Mama ain’t nothing but a stool for Him to rest His feet on. Just bear the burdens the Good Lord give you to bear, girl, Mama says. He ain’t never gon burden you with more’n you can handle, she says. And sure enough here comes this man Wealthy. He doesn’t know me, never knew Louis, never met Bo. Here he is out the goodness of his heart in my mama’s apartment in a polka dot tie and a nice gray suit he wears like he’s in the army, all buttoned up, pressed and starched soldier sharp like Louis grins picture perfect clean in his army photo. This Mr. Wealthy not a strapping man like Louis or Albert. A smallish, tight fist kind of man, iron creases in his clothes and straight-backed as an arrow and proper the way he took a seat on the chair Albert carried in from the kitchen and Mr. Wealthy straightens his neat little self, tugs his silver tie, as if one too few polka dots showing. Tugs a pant leg straight after he crosses a short leg over his knee.
No ma’am. No thank you, ma’am. Nothing to drink for me, thank you, Mrs. Till, the first thing he says after he said, Pleased to meet you, ma’am, though I’m truly sorry we are meeting under these unhappy circumstances, Mrs. Till. Same words she heard from the lemon-colored undertaker, Mr. A. A. Rainier, who buried Emmett, undertaker smiling his sad, droop-mouth smile at people so he gets that check when they’re grieving for somebody or somebody grieving for them. Mr. Rainier says pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. So and So, sorry it’s under these circumstances, fresh graveyard mud on the wingtips of his shoes, spit-shined like Mr. Wealthy’s shoes, Mr. Wealthy with one narrow foot standing at attention in the air, the other foot patting Mama’s living room rug after he crosses his little leg over his knee and begins to speak.
Don’t you believe a word those dogs say, Mrs. Till. Excuse my language, please, ma’am. Albert told me many times what a fine young man you were raising. Albert very fond of your son, Emmett. You all have my deepest sympathy, Mrs. Till. You and your family and Albert, too. Wished I could do something to help and thought to myself it’s not much but it’s the least you can do, Wealthy, go on over there with Albert and tell Mrs. Till about the army. Army something I know, Mrs. Till. I’m a veteran. I know the army and I can tell you from experience. Army lies. Tell a person every kind of lie there is. Bad business they put in the newspaper about your late husband, best not believe a word of it.
Army and the government lie. Lie, lie, lie all the time. When the sneaky Japs bomb Pearl Harbor, plenty of us colored men in a hurry to join the army. We want to enlist because it’s our country, too. Only country we got, and it’s a man’s duty defend his country. Signed up like Old Uncle Sam pointing his crooked finger at everybody said sign up. But the army lies. They don’t want colored soldiers.
Treat us like slaves. Like animals. Yes they did. And nothing we could do about it. Behave like they say you better behave or they lock you in the stockade. Beat you, kill you quick as they kill the enemy we all spozed to be together in the U.S. Army to fight. Treat us colored soldiers like they own us, like they got the God-given right to kick us, spit on us and the only right we got is salute and say, Yes, sir. Here’s my behind, sir. Kick it again, sir. Dirty dog duty or days we’re mules and horses and elephants carrying Uncle Sam’s war on our backs.
Don’t you believe a word they putting out about Mr. Till, God rest his soul. Any the fellows went through the war, tell you what I’m telling you, Mrs. Till. Say just exactly what I’m saying. No different for colored over there in the war than things here today, in this United States of America. This Chicago. White man lie and say you’re guilty—you’re guilty. Case closed.
Now I’m not saying terrible things didn’t happen in the war. But not just colored boys doing wrong. All the lies they put in the newspaper you’d think it was just us doing wrong. Just colored soldiers guilty. Not the truth, Mrs. Till. Never met your husband, but he was a soldier in the same colored army I served in, Mrs. Till. So the bad they say he did, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but if the army say he did bad things, your husband finished. Never had a chance. Nothing a colored soldier can do about it. Nothing, Mrs. Till. Not until God rises up off His throne and stomps down those golden stairs and stops the lies.
Mamie Till wrote an autobiography. Didn’t give Louis Till much space in it. According to Mrs. Till, Louis was often brutal with her. Put his hands on her. Then absent. Then dead. Then he turned up ten years later at a very inconvenient time, an embarrassing boogeyman from Mamie’s past to haunt the trial of their son’s murderers. Mamie wrote that Emmett was Louis Till’s only accomplishment and in the end his only reason for being on earth. Must have been a bit more to her relationship with Louis than that, I believe. Probably adored the cute, mischievous little boy inside her handsome, mean man Louis. Maybe a tough guy was attractive to her. Maybe she thought she could stick her head in the lion’s jaws without getting hurt. Mamie also a down home, practical country girl. What sorts of men available in Argo, Illinois. What choices did she have. Most colored men and women newly arrived immigrants from the south, people marginalized economically, socially, in segregated enclaves. Mamie Carthan took a chance with Louis Till. Hoped she could tame him, mother him into a decent, dependable man. A project that was failing, she wrote. Then the army took Louis. Mamie Till probably lavished all her love on Emmett while she waited for Louis to return. After a telegram from the army said Louis Till dead, she could fall in love with him again in the person of his son. And this time love him without the worry of getting mauled.
Of course Mamie Till a lion, too. Like my mother she did not derive her sense of self-worth solely from her relationship with a son, though she would do anything in her power to protect him and demonstrate her love. If the Till offspring had been a daughter, Mamie Till would have loved her as much as she loved a Louis Till son. Like my mom, Mamie Till worked hard to maintain her integrity, dignity, honesty, her consistency in how she viewed herself, how she treated other people and expected them to treat her. Once I grew smart enough to appreciate my mother’s example, I attempted to emulate her but fell far short of her standards.
Mamie Till, a lion and a warrior. She risked her life in September of 1955 when she traveled from Chicago to Mississippi. Her son Emmett’s blood still fresh on the hands of the murderers she confronted at the trial in Sumner. Threats, harassment, disrespect did not chase her back to Chicago, though she admitted in her memoir she was deeply frightened each day by the ordeal of the trial, by cars that trailed the car she rode in from the courtroom to her motel, by bullets she lay in bed at night waiting to hear crash through the windows of her room. Soon after she returned home from Mississippi, she became a public spokesperson, a relentless witness who told her story to anyone willing to listen. First with NAACP officials sharing the podium as her sponsors, then alone, on her own two feet, traveling to welcoming cities or hostile cities across the country. She persisted in this work, until her death—speaker, writer, activist, dedicated crusader for civil rights, determined not to allow her fellow Americans to forget the terror, the injustice inflicted upon her son Emmett. Upon many, many other colored children of colored mothers.
Mamie Till remembers fixing Louis a sandwich. She wraps it in waxed paper, folds the edges like you gift wrap so edges even and neat. She’s out of rubber bands. Rubber bands not around like before the war. Hopes the sandwich will hold together. Tucks it into a brown paper bag, adds an apple, creases the bag’s top tightly shut. What kind damn sammich dat. She does not respond What the hell damn kind do you think, Louis Till. A T-bone steak sammich, hands ready