Chapter 3 Tabitha Cooper
Georgetown, South Carolina
March 1915
Tabitha Cooper measured herself against men. ’Specially, their height. She was tall for a woman, five foot nine by eighth grade, and that was where her height settled. There weren’t many tall girls in her school, so she was seen—all the time. Seen enough for a nickname, which she didn’t need. Her family already called her Bitta. Still, one of the boys in her seventh-grade class called her Giant. She was probably about five foot seven then. Taller than all the girls and most of the boys whose voices were still squeaking. She knew about squeaky voices. She had a brother close to her age. Anyway, Giant stuck at school. The kids said it to tease her, but her mama taught her to accept the power of the word. Mama was big on words and their meanings. She said giants were taller than everyone else, and because of their tallness, they had a unique view of the world. They saw things others didn’t. Giants were feared, and people fearing her a little was a healthy thing. It kept folks in line the same way it kept them in line with God. So, Tabitha learned to be proud of her height. It was a gift from God. But on many days, it seemed like the only one she had. Until she met Joseph McCoy.
Tabitha had been working her after-school job at the North Market, a general store and pothouse when she met Joseph McCoy for the first time. She’d cooked a rice, oyster, and okra purloo that day, and he could not get enough of it. He kept coming back. She’d gotten used to him stopping in. They only had food on Fridays and Saturdays, so when he came in on a Monday, Tabitha could tell he hadn’t walked in for no good reason. He rarely purchased from the store, and today he hadn’t stopped to look at anything.
“You are looking mighty fine today, Miss Tabitha.”
He had asked her for her name the first time she had served him.
“I’ve got to know the name of a woman who can cook this fine.”
He smiled, and Tabitha didn’t think she’d ever seen anything more beautiful in her life.
Joseph was tall, and she appreciated being able to look up to him. If she didn’t have to hitch her neck back a little to look a man in his eyes, she wasn’t interested in him. Tabitha believed God had a man for her who would be her giant. She didn’t want to be the only one with vision.
She lowered her eyes and busied her hands with the garden pruner she’d just taken out of the box. Putting inventory on the shelves was one of her jobs.
She avoided his eyes when she replied, “That’s fine of you to say, Mr. Joseph. What can I get for you?”
He didn’t like that she called him Mr. Joseph, but he looked to be about thirty years old. She couldn’t help it.
“I need whatever that is in your hand,” he replied.
She looked at him now. He was being too direct for her not to. She observed him in his brown suit and shiny shoes. He wasn’t working on a farm. His smooth hands made Tabitha think he’d never worked a day in his life. “If you don’t know what it is, sir, how you know you need it?”
His eyes danced with amusement, and he raised a hand to stroke the shiny black hair of his mustache. “Tell me what it is.”
“It’s a pruner. It cuts stems and leaves on plants. This one is new. We just got it in from A. Fields. They are a German company. This one is made of cast iron.”
“Do we not make cast-iron pruners in this country?”
“We do, but this is the best.” Tabitha dropped her eyes again. Selling like this wasn’t in her nature. The customers who shopped here didn’t need someone selling to them. It was a small general store with inventory for the Negro customers who didn’t want to travel downtown to the larger general store. Everyone who came in here knew what they wanted before they entered. Tabitha cleared her throat and finished sharing her knowledge of the thing. “At least the catalog we order from says it’s the best.”
“If you believe it, I believe you.” One side of his mouth lifted lazily like he was smiling inside. “I’ll take it.”
She was confused by his purchase. “What did you come in here for? You weren’t looking for a pruner?”
“I came in here to ask you if you would have dinner with me.”
Tabitha looked away. Shyness overtook her again. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you want to eat with me?”
“I do not, sir. I don’t know you.” Tabitha said the words more firmly than she felt them. She wasn’t sure how she felt. He made her nervous, but it was an excited tickle in her belly that made sweat break out on her forehead and back.
“Dinner is for getting to know each other.”
“I can’t keep company without asking my papa’s permission.”
Joseph frowned like he’d never heard of such a thing. Of course he had. He just wanted what he wanted. That’s what Mama said about men when she warned her to be careful.
“You’re almost twenty-one now, aren’t you?”
“I’m seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in a month,” she replied, suddenly wishing she was older so Papa would be less ready to say a direct no.
“Seventeen. I wouldn’t think you could get so pretty in seventeen years.”
Joseph slipped his hand in his jacket pocket and removed a bill. “For the pruner.”
Tabitha reached for the cash box to make change. He interrupted her fumbling.
“You keep the extra, pretty lady.” His index finger was on her chin, lifting it so her eyes met his again like he wanted. He smiled, slowly and nice, like one of those handsome men in a picture show. “Buy yourself something.”
Tabitha moved her chin away from his warm fingertips. “I cannot.” She slid the change—five dollars—back across the counter. Her fingers trembled as she clumsily put his purchase in a bag and handed it to him.
Joseph took the bag but not his change. He walked backward as he spoke. “You talk to your father. I’ll stop by on Friday to find out his answer. If he says yes, we can have dinner and go to the show.” He was confident, and she didn’t think he had a reason to be.
She looked down at the five-dollar bill, pulled it across the counter, and slipped it into her pocket. She wasn’t sure this was proper. She didn’t know what to do with it except keep it until she saw him again.
Once she finished at the store, she got on her bicycle and rode home. Her best friend, Dot, was sitting on the porch talking to Mama. Dot lived a piece down the road and visited most days when her mother didn’t need help with the wash and folding. Like Mama, Dot’s mother took in laundry for white families on the other side of Georgetown. Although Mama didn’t do nearly as much as Dot’s mother. It didn’t seem Mama needed to, and that was because Papa made enough.
People complained about the pay for Negro men at the mill. Most of the men who worked at the mill didn’t have much of anything. Tabitha’s family did. Their rented house was nicer than most of the houses the Negro families lived in. Papa had a new wagon, and they had two bicycles. Their stove was the best Tabitha had seen. It was better than the stove some white folks had. Sometimes Tabitha helped Mama tote wash. She’d seen their kitchens. Some of the Negro mill workers thought Papa had better pay on account of his nearly white skin. Papa was the whitest Negro man in the city of Georgetown. But it wasn’t true that Papa had better pay at the mill. Papa and Mama managed their money better than most. At least that was what Mama said was the reason they seemed to have more.
As Tabitha got closer to the house, Dot stood and leaned over the porch railing and waved. Tabitha waved back. She could tell by the movements of Mama’s hands that she was shelling peas. Mama liked to have Papa’s dinner on the table when he came home from working at the lumber mill. Mama, however, did not cook. It was Tabitha who prepared all the meals, so if she was just getting the peas ready, Papa wasn’t going to be home before nightfall.
Tabitha stopped at the steps and got off the bicycle.
Mama looked up at her but then down at her work. “Reverend Clydesdale told me to tell you that he liked the catfish stew.”
“I saw him. He came in the store and told me so.”
Mama liked to give Tabitha’s food away. Tabitha thought it was Mama’s way of showing the world that Tabitha was worth something.
“You want me to help?” Tabitha asked, looking at the peas Mama had yet to shell.
“I offered,” Dot said.
Mama looked at Tabitha again. “No. This clears my mind. You girls go on. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
Dot followed Tabitha into the house. They went to Tabitha’s room. Behind the closed door, Tabitha told Dot about Joseph and showed her the five dollars.
“I don’t think I can keep it.”
Dot did not agree. Her eyes were as big as saucers when she said, “He gave it to you.”
Dot dropped down on Tabitha’s bed and opened one of the fashion magazines Tabitha’s sister, Retha, had given her. Retha lived in Columbia with her husband, Clifford, and their twin boys. Clifford made a good living as a federal land surveyor, so Retha had money for magazines and books. Those things were her sister’s passion. Retha gave Tabitha all her old magazines and brought her novels whenever she came to visit.
Nervous to hear Dot’s thoughts, Tabitha asked, “What will Papa say?”
“He might think he’s too old. That’s what my daddy said about Isra’s first man.” Isra was Dot’s older sister. “Your daddy is older than mine. He gon’ be old-fashioned. I say you need to start somewhere, or you’ll never get yourself a husband. Plus, you have to be careful about your daddy. He might not...” Dot’s words trailed off. She shook her head, but her eyes said she was sorry she’d started words she couldn’t finish. “Never mind.”
Tabitha didn’t have to think hard on what Dot was being coy about. Papa might not care because Tabitha wasn’t always on his mind.
Charles Cooper, the man Tabitha called Papa, was not her father, and everyone knew that. Tabitha sensed something was different about her from an early age. Papa and Mama looked like most any white people Tabitha passed on the street. Tabitha’s brothers and sisters were the same. Only Tabitha was dark. By the time she was seven, she knew... Papa wasn’t her father. She just needed someone to tell her. One day Mama did.
“You behave,” Mama said. “Your daddy... he has hard days sometimes.”
“He’s not my daddy,” Tabitha said.
Mama’s eyes were scary. “No. He’s not.”
“Where is my daddy?”
“I don’t know.”
Tabitha cried.
“You stop crying. You don’t need your daddy. You got me. Women hold up each other. You gon’ learn that one day. You let your sister be your best friend.”
Tabitha was confused. Didn’t all children need a daddy?
“You hear me?” Mama asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Then she said, “Retha, y’all go down to Miss Fran. Stay there for a spell.”
Retha, four years older than Tabitha, nodded with knowing eyes.
Miss Fran’s house was where they went when Papa was sick from shine. His drinking meant the house wasn’t safe for anyone until he fell asleep. That included Mama, but she stayed and managed to survive his temper.
When Tabitha was older, it was Retha who told her the whole truth. Papa and Mama split once. Papa went away. He traveled north a few times a year to tend to some business. None of the children knew what or where the business was, but they did know Papa was estranged from his family. Everything about his trips was secretive. But one year, after an ugly argument, he told Mama he wasn’t coming back, so she took up with a new man who put Tabitha in Mama’s belly. Then Papa came back to an expecting wife and the shame of it. It was that year that his drinking started—or so Retha said.
Papa called her Bitta, supposedly short for Tabitha, but she always felt like it was short for bitter because she was a bitter reminder that Mama had been another man’s.
Dot’s voice got her out of her thoughts. “Anyway, I think you should go to dinner with him. We have to think on getting married.” That was all Dot had thought about since they were little girls. Marrying and raising children. She didn’t have any other thing that she wanted to do, and she was already keeping company with one of the boys in school. “It’s not easy to find a husband with so many Negro people leaving to go north.”
“The Good Book says, ‘He who finds a wife finds a good thing.’ It’s not the other way around. Women aren’t supposed to find husbands.”
“The Good Book will have you be a virgin praying in the temple.”
“Don’t blaspheme the Word.”
Dot rolled her eyes. “You don’t go nowhere but school, the store, and church. So how he gonna find you?”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
Dot’s smirk was long and full of expected disappointment. “You won’t even go to bingo or dance at the hall.”
“I’m not going to meet a good man in the dance hall.”
Dot pursed her lips. “You met exactly who you gonna meet in the store. An older man. You could do worse. At least you say he’s nice-looking, and he’s not poor if he’s got five dollars to give away.”
She was right about both. Joseph had a carriage. He wasn’t from Georgetown. He told her his people were from Atlanta, but he lived in Charleston. He traveled to Georgetown for business.
“I need a dress,” Tabitha said, realizing she’d decided that if Papa said yes, she would have dinner with Joseph.
“You have time to go to Hudson’s and pick out one.” Dot popped off the bed. “I’ll go with you tomorrow.”
“How much is a tea dress?”
Dot walked to Tabitha’s closet. “Hudson’s has afternoon dresses for five, six seven... eight dollars.”
Tabitha thought about the five dollars Joseph had given her. Spending it all on one dress that would be for one outing seemed wasteful.
“I know you been saving.” Dot’s words interrupted her thoughts and reminded her of the money she’d saved.
Mr. Wilson said he would pay Tabitha fifty cents a week to work in the store after school. Some weeks she got all the money, but other weeks she didn’t. Everything depended on what he sold and which customers paid their bills. He had a lot of customers who ran up credit and some that never really seemed to do anything but add to what they owed. Mr. Wilson was good-hearted, but he wasn’t a good businessman—not all the time. But he always gave Tabitha an extra fifty cents if she cooked on Friday and Saturday. He was sure to make money on the meals he sold. People paid for her food.
Tabitha had saved sixty-two dollars in the two years she’d worked in the store. She still made her church dresses, and she didn’t spend money on things like makeup, perfume, and fancy shoes and hats. She did her own hair too. Even Retha told her she was going to be an old maid if she didn’t start being more feminine sometimes.
But now she had a man calling on her—a full-grown man. She just hoped his age wouldn’t have Papa running the poor man off with a shotgun—or at least that was the dream, that Papa would care that much.
“Do you want to go buy a dress tomorrow?” Dot inserted herself in her thoughts again.
“I’m thinkin’ on it.”
Dot rolled her eyes. “What are you saving for anyway? You don’t need a dowry. You need to give in to the beauty of the romance.”
Dot was in love with a love story. It made sense. She wasn’t a giant. Petite was the word people used to describe Dot. Petite, fair-skinned, with long hair and pretty legs. It didn’t matter how many men moved north; with Dot’s looks, marriage would find her. Her future was set. Tabitha had to figure hers out.