Robert Johnson’s First Memories

Robert Johnson’s First Memories

A short story by James Snell

Memphis, Tennessee, May 22, 1917

“Are you ready for school?” Sister Carrie asked.

I didn’t understand why she asked me that question every morning. I was always ready. Ready and waiting. I loved Mrs. Hooks’ school.

“‘Course I’m ready,” I said.

I only have flashes of memory of things that happened before I started school. For me, my memories—life itself—started when I got to school. I don’t remember even walking there that first day or who walked with me.

***

“You lucky to be going to kindergarten,” Papa told me that first day. “You got Mrs. Julia Hooks to thank for dat.”

Indeed, that first day, Mrs. Hooks herself came to the school. She was very grandmotherly, I thought, although I didn’t have a grandmother.

I may have been nervous about going to school. I don’t know. I don’t recall what I had ever felt or thought before—before Mrs. Hooks spoke. I don’t know if I wanted to go to school or not. But then she spoke. And played music.

She was a well-dressed old woman. Nicest dress I’d ever seen. But simple. I remember I loved her solid purple hat; no flowers or ribbons, just elegant purple felt. She stood before us and clapped her hands together once. Not too hard. Not stern. She just had a way. She had our attention.

“You can sit now,” she said, smiling. “I’m going to play Show Pan for you.”

Show Pan is what I heard. Years would pass before I saw that name in print. Mrs. Hooks played Chopin. I’m sure I must have heard lots of music before that, as I became aware, after my memories started, that there was music all around me. But not like this. This started my memories. This beautiful music.

When she was done, she stood up from the piano, and walked as close to us kids as she could. She leaned forward and looked down, panning her eyes over us, making sure to look at each one of us before she spoke. Then, in the sweetest voice, she said, “You can learn. You can learn to read and write. You can learn music and art. You can learn, and you can be somebody. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Mrs. Hooks was speaking to me. That’s what I felt. She awakened something in me. And she awakened my memory. She made me want to learn and read and write. And I did. And, after that, I seemed to remember everything.

***

On that May morning in 1917, as I walked with Carrie, the morning air cooled my skin, and I could smell things growing. I skipped most of the seven blocks, stirring up the dirt on Ayers Street, as we headed to the Carnes Avenue Colored School—the school Papa just called, Mrs. Hooks’ school. The sky was bright, but Memphis was quiet, as we walked to the school up on Peach. When we got there, I could read the handwritten sign on the door: Closed today, and my heart sank.

I didn’t skip as Carrie walked me back down Ayers. I walked in the house and saw Papa sitting in his old barber’s chair. I saw in his face that same sinking feeling I had outside the school. He slapped the arm of his barber chair with the newspaper and said, “Da whites takin’ a holiday.”

Papa, who became Papa Spencer later, after I learned Mr. Johnson was my father, didn’t sugarcoat the world for us kids. He unfurled the abused newspaper and held it up where I could see the large headline. I couldn’t yet read what it said but the thick black letters made me shiver. “They gonna lynch Ell Persons today,” Papa said. “Dats why evry thin closed and da streets quiet.”

Ell Persons is the first name after Mrs. Hooks I knew that wasn’t family. A couple of weeks after my sixth birthday, Ell Persons drew me out of my little world on Court Avenue, a mile from Beale Street, where the blues was being born.

“Do you think he done it?” Carrie asked.

“That po’ ol’ man?” Papa snapped. “He’d have mo’ sense than to come wid in ten feet of a young white girl. The whites just gotta get someone. Heuz easy pickins.”

For the rest of the morning, we all just sat around. Papa in his chair. Carrie on the divan. Me and the other kids on the floor. The day grew warm in our solitude. My body had no plan to do nothing but that’s what it did—until Mr. Paul, who lived around the corner, rapped on the door.

Papa got up and ushered him in. “They dun it,” Mr. Paul reported. “Theys dun burnt him alive.”

“Oh, Lawd,” Papa cried out, his palms pressed to his temples—it seemed to keep his head from coming apart. “They’s no laws for us.”

Mr. Paul left, leaving behind a sadness that mixed with the humidity and hung like a plague over the Spencer household. Carrie went to the kitchen and made food for us, trying to make the day seem normal. Poor Papa, who was always moving, always working, just sat motionless in his chair for hours, not speaking, looking a million miles away.

At long last, Papa got up from the chair and said, “Let’s walk to town. I need to see other people.”

We were all happy to get out, too. We lined up behind Papa, like baby chicks following their mama. I was particularly glad to get out. I really missed school and hadn’t known what to do with myself all day. Papa was taking us to Schwab’s drug store. I loved that place. I would sneak over to look at all the Hoodoo stuff. I was hoping Papa would buy us ice creams, too.

As we made our way down Beale, there was lots of other people who seemed to be doing the same thing. The further we went, the busier it got. Schwab’s was crowded like a Saturday afternoon. Papa scolded us to stay together. He looked down at me, and said, “Robert, doh int you be sneakin’ over to da Hoodoo.”

But he did buy us ice creams. We took them outside and sat down on the end of the store porch, dangling our feet as we ate the cold vanilla before it melted away. I decided missing this one day of school wasn’t so bad. At least, not up to that moment.

Then, things changed. I had just taken my last bite of ice cream—I remember that last bit of cold on my tongue—when a big green car came weaving down the street, squeezing its horn. There was hooting and hollering coming from inside the car, though I couldn’t make out what they were shouting about. As the car approached the drug store, something came flying out of the window, landing not more than five feet from me.

It was a black foot. The blackest foot I’d ever seen. It didn’t look right. It was mangled. Then, the smell hit me. A burned smell—the most awful, burned smell. There was a scream inside me, but it couldn’t come out.

The car had stopped as though to wait to hear my scream. I looked past the burned foot to the green car and saw what I had never seen before. In the face of a white man, I saw pure evil. He had his head out the window and was laughing—a most terrifying laugh.

“Boy, I cooked ya dinner,” he yelled. Then he laughed again.

The car sputtered and took off. As it pulled away, a larger object came flying out of the back window. It rolled up next to the sidewalk, just past where Carrie sat. My eyes had a mind of their own and followed the object until it came to rest.

There was no mistaking what it was. It was the burned head of a black man. I could see an eye and an ear through the mangled, burned flesh.

Then, the scream came. The scream became me. And I became nothing but a scream. I jumped up from the sidewalk, just a bundle of scream on skinny legs. Papa rushed toward me from somewhere. Like a mother hen, he was all wings, as he gathered us kids around him, and herded us back in the direction of Court Avenue.

We all screamed and cried, even Papa. I’d heard him angry before. I’d heard him sad before—like that morning as he told us they were going to lynch Ell Persons. But I’d never heard him cry. He cried, even as he told us to “Come on, come on. Hurry. Come on, chillin.”

May 1918

Ell Persons was never far from the conversation during the year after the lynching. Papa began reading things other than the Memphis Commercial Appeal. He brought flyers home from the furniture shop. He started talking about how Mr. Church was bringing a national organization to town to stop the lynchings.

It all seemed talk until one day in the Spring of 1918, Papa began talking excitedly about the “mass meeting” that was coming. When I tried to picture what a mass meeting would be like, it made me uncomfortable. But when I learned there would be a parade down Beale Street to Church Park, I warmed up to the idea.

At last, the day came. Mrs. Hooks’ school was closed for the day. But this time, we were told in advance. This time, it was closed because of black people, not white people. After breakfast, Miss Mollie—what I called Mama Spencer because I always knew she wasn’t my mama—got all us kids dressed up for church, although it wasn’t Sunday, and we weren’t going to church.

“All the black folk in town is going to march,” Miss Mollie said. “But it ain’t no parade. And you got to be quiet. It’d be a silent march. You gots to act like you prayin’. Prayin’ for poor Ell Persons and others who’d been lynched by white folk.”

After all the kids passed inspection, we were lined up, with Miss Mollie leading, and Papa behind us. We made our way off Court Avenue and headed down to Beale.

If my memories hadn’t started with Mrs. Julia Hooks, or with the burnt body parts of Ell Persons, they might have started that day, when we got to Beale Street. As far as I could see, there were carriages and automobiles, moving slow, like a funeral, flanked by family after family—most dressed up like we were. They stopped the street cars for the event. But for the rumble of the automobiles, there was no sound. To see so many people and not hear a word is something I’ll never forget.

The significance of the occasion washed over me. It moved like electricity on my skin. I didn’t have to fully understand it to feel I was a part of something important. Papa and Miss Mollie had told us to be quiet, and, for once, we kids had no trouble obeying. We marched along, in silence, with an endless procession in front of us, and more wagons, cars, and people filing in behind us. It might be the only time in my life I ever felt anything I’d describe as religious. It was a religious experience.

The march down Beale Street took a very long time. The procession would come to a stop, for reasons I could not see. Then, it would commence again, but slowly. At some point, as we got near the park, the procession merged into a crowd. There were people fighting to make their way into the park. Papa came up and led us all, joining those looking for a better spot to see what was coming in the park. Papa and Miss Mollie persuaded folks to let us by.

Eventually, we seemed to clear the crowd, and I saw a big wooden stage outside the auditorium, filled with important-looking black men in three-piece suits. Papa looked around and seemed satisfied at the spot at at which we had arrived. Miss Mollie set down the picnic basket she had prepared, and directed us, by pointing, still silent, to sit around the basket on the grass.

I was thankful for the stuffed biscuits Miss Mollie brought. As long as we sat there listening to church songs and prayers and speeches, I might have starved to death.

To this day, I secretly like church songs. They are music, after all. There were very good singers that day—better than any I’d heard in the little church we went to.

Now, the prayers; they always frightened me. My mind couldn’t help but imagine the God they were talking to. The prayers that day seemed to be nice ones. But my mind had been spoiled for prayers by all the frightening ones I’d heard. My seven-year-old mind had formed an impression of God, and he wasn’t nice.

The speeches were long and soaring. I understood some of them. I heard Ell Persons’ name a lot. I heard fiery words about the horrors of lynching. They kept talking about the advancement of colored people. I didn’t know what advancement meant, but I got the gist of it: that black people needed to free themselves from the terror inflicted by white folks, away from the evil I had seen the year before outside Schwab’s. I didn’t understand much else of what these men—who sounded mostly like they were from somewhere far away—talked about that day. But they talked long and serious and loud.

At last, the speeches, the prayers, and the songs ended, and the crowd moved away from the park. I remember thinking, at last, we can go home. But that was before I heard her—a woman on a corner singing and playing a guitar—a woman who would forever change me.

***

Heading away from Church Park, Papa and Miss Mollie both acted like mother hens, keeping us kids tight together so we wouldn’t get lost in the crowds. The crowds were no longer silent—quite the opposite. The street was so packed with people, there was no room for wagons or cars. Occasionally, a car would come through, squeezing its horn impatiently, and people would reluctantly move aside and let it pass. The sidewalks were filled with people selling things, sounding like hawkers at a carnival.

And on every corner, there were people playing music. Some by themselves, but mostly in twos, or even with a whole band. Papa allowed us to stop at each corner and listen to a song. Then, he would get a coin out of his pocket and leave it in the hat all the musicians placed in front of them.

We were about halfway down Beale when we weaved through a big crowd surrounding a woman playing. I could hear her before I could see her. I liked all the music I heard. But this wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard. I let go of Miss Mollie’s hand and wriggled through the throng around the woman. I didn’t stop until I found myself right in front of her.

From that moment until I was made to leave the corner, I saw and heard nothing but the woman. It was just me and her. Her voice had soared above the crowd and called me in; now it enveloped me.

I had heard others—mostly men—playing a guitar before, particularly on Beale Street. But I had never heard a guitar sound like this woman’s. As Danny Boy traveled through my ears, through my veins, and into my heart, I couldn’t take my eyes off her elegant ringed fingers moving on both ends of the guitar. At that time, I knew only about music what I had been taught at Mrs. Hooks’ school, but I noticed she was playing two different things on that guitar. And her voice was singing yet something else.

I sat down on the ground, elbows on my knees, hands to my cheeks, and bathed in the music. After Danny Boy, she played Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. She gave voice to what I had seen in these streets the year before, and what we were all gathered for that day.

The moment she let the last troubled note go, her fingers and hands went to town on that guitar. Now she was beating out a rhythm and playing two things on that instrument. I can’t imagine how I must have looked. I know my eyes went wide, my jaw dropped, and I found my hands slapping my knees to the tune she played.

When she had finished the fast song that had everyone around me dancing, I stepped right up to her guitar, looked up, and said, “Who are you?” I don’t know where that came from. I couldn’t recall ever speaking to a stranger before. But something inside of me took over, and I just had to know, Who is this woman?

Her mouth broke into a huge smile, showing gold teeth, her bejeweled hand arose from her guitar, palm up, and she said, “I’m just a kid like you. But I am The Kid, she said with emphasis. “Kid Douglas, at your service.” She laughed, then brought her hand down, strummed the guitar, and flew into her next number.

About that time, Papa’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, then slid under my arm and lifted me up off the ground. “Boy!”

I looked up at Papa. The grimace slowly left his face, replaced by a gentle look. He leaned down, looked into my eyes, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Robert, we gotta go now,” he whispered. I felt he saw the music inside me.