‘So you and your husband and your brother have your own cooperative plan,’ he said finally.
‘That’s right.’
Doctor Copeland jerked at his fingers and tried to pop the joints again. ‘Do you intend to plan for children?’
Portia did not look at her father. Angrily she sloshed the water from the pan of collards. ‘There be some things,’ she said, ‘that seem to me to depend entirely upon God.’
They did not say anything else. Portia left the supper to cook on the stove and sat silently with her long hands dropping down limp between her knees. Doctor Copeland’s head rested on his chest as though he slept. But he was not sleeping; now and then a nervous tremor would pass over his face. Then he would breathe deeply and compose his face again. Smells of the supper began to fill the stifling room. In the quietness the clock on top of the cupboard sounded very loud, and because of what they had just said to each other the monotonous ticking was like the word ‘children, children,’ said over and over.
He was always meeting one of them--crawling naked on a floor or engaged in a game of marbles or even on a dark street with his arms around a girl. Benedict Copeland, the boys were all called. But for the girls there were such names as Benny Mae or Madyben or Benedine Madine. He had counted one day, and there were more than a dozen named for him.
But all his life he had told and explained and exhorted. You cannot do this, he would say. There are all reasons why this sixth or fifth or ninth child cannot be, he would tell them. It is not more children we need but more chances for the ones already on the earth. Eugenic Parenthood for the Negro Race was what he would exhort them to. He would tell them in simple words, always the same way, and with the years it came to be a sort of angry poem which he had always known by heart.
He studied and knew the development of any new theory. And from his own pocket he would distribute the devices to his patients himself. He was by far the first doctor in the town to even think of such. And he would give and explain and give and tell them. And then deliver maybe two score times a week. Madyben and Benny Mae.
That was only one point. Only one.
All of his life he knew that there was a reason for his working.
He always knew that he was meant to teach his people. All day he would go with his bag from house to house and on all things he would talk to them. After the long day a heavy tiredness would come in him. But in the evening when he opened the front gate the tiredness would go away. There were Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia and little William. There was Daisy, too.
Portia took the lid from the pan on the stove and stirred the collards with a fork. ‘Father--’ she said after a while.
Doctor Copeland cleared his throat and spat into a handkerchief. His voice was bitter and rough. ‘Yes?’
‘Less us quit this here quarreling with each other.’
‘We were not quarreling,’ said Doctor Copeland.
‘It don’t take words to make a quarrel,’ Portia said. ‘It look to me like us is always arguing even when we sitting perfectly quiet like this. It just this here feeling I haves. I tell you the truth--ever time I come to see you it mighty near wears me out. So less us try not to quarrel in any way no more.’
‘It is certainly not my wish to quarrel. I am sorry if you have that feeling, Daughter.’
She poured out coffee and handed one cup unsweetened to her father. In her own portion she put several spoons of sugar. ‘I getting hungry and this will taste good to us. Drink your coffee while I tell you something which happened to us a piece back. Now that it all over it seem a little bit funny, but we got plenty reason not to laugh too hard.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Doctor Copeland.
‘Well--sometime back a real fine-looking, dressed-up colored man come in town here. He called hisself Mr. B. F. Mason and said he come from Washington, D. C. Ever day he would walk up and down the street with a walking-cane and a pretty colored shirt on. Then at night he would go to the Society Cafe. He eaten finer than any man in this town. Ever night he would order hisself a bottle of gin and two pork chops for his supper. He always had a smile for everybody and was always bowing around to the girls and holding a door open for you to come in or go out For about a week he made hisself mighty pleasant wherever he were. Peoples begun to ask questions and wonder about this rich Mr. B. F. Mason. Then pretty soon, after he acquaints hisself, he begun to settle down to business.’
Portia spread out her lips and blew into her saucer of coffee. ‘I suppose you done read in the paper about this Government Pincher business for old folks?’
Doctor Copeland nodded. ‘Pension,’ he said.
‘Well--he were connected with that. He were from the government. He had to come down from the President in Washington, D. C, to join everbody up for the Government Pinchers. He went around from one door to the next explaining how you pay one dollar down to join and after that twenty-five cents a week--and how when you were forty-five year old the government would pay you fifty dollars ever month of your life. All the peoples I know were very excited about this. He give everbody that joined a free picture of the President with his name signed under it. He told how at the end of six months there were going to be free uniforms for ever member. The club was called the Grand League of Pincheners for Colored Peoples--and at the end of two months everbody was going to get a orange ribbon with a G. L. P. C. P. on it to stand for the name. You know, like all these other letter things in the government. He come around from house to house with this little book and everbody commenced to join. He wrote their names down and took the money. Ever Saturday he would collect In three weeks this Mr. B. F. Mason had joined up so many peoples he couldn’t get all the way around on Saturday. He have to pay somebody to take up the collections in each three four blocks. I collected early ever Saturday for near where we live and got that quarter. Course Willie had joined at the beginning for him and Highboy and me.’
‘I have come across many pictures of the President in various houses near where you live and I remember hearing the name Mason mentioned,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘He was a thief?’
‘He were,’ said Portia. ‘Somebody begun to find out about this Mr. B. F. Mason and he were arrested. They find out he were from just plain Atlanta and hadn’t never smelled no Washington, D. C, or no President. All the money were hid or spent. Willie had just throwed away seven dollars and fifty cents.’
Doctor Copeland was excited. ‘That is what I mean by--‘In the hereafter,’ Portia said, ‘that man sure going to wake up with a hot pitchfork in his gut. But now that it all over it do seem a little bit funny, but of course we got plenty reason not to laugh too hard.’
‘The Negro race of its own accord climbs up on the cross on every Friday,’ said Doctor Copeland.
Portia’s hands shook and coffee trickled down from the saucer she was holding. She licked it from her arm. ‘What, you mean?’
‘I mean that I am always looking. I mean that if I could just find ten Negroes--ten of my own people--with spine and brains and courage who are willing to give all that they have--’ Portia put down the coffee. ‘Us was not talking about anything like that’
‘Only four Negroes,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Only the sum of Hamilton and Karl Marx and William and you. Only four Negroes with these real true qualities and backbone--’
‘Willie and Highboy and me have backbone,’ said Portia angrily. ‘This here is a hard world and it seem to me us three struggles along pretty well.’
For a minute they were silent. Doctor Copeland laid his spectacles on the table and pressed his shrunken fingers to his eyeballs.
‘You all the time using that word--Negro,’ said Portia. ‘And that word haves a way of hurting people’s feelings. Even old plain nigger is better than that word. But polite peoples--no matter what shade they is--always says colored.’