Sweetness Read Online Free

Eddie. “We had a bunk bed, with Walter on top and me on the bottom. There were no posters on the wall. Pretty simple.”
    In black Columbia, neighbors watched neighbors and everyone knew everyone. The houses were modest and the businesses limited. (“We didn’t have shops on the black side of town,” said Eddie. “We had joints. Clubs, barbershops, places like that.”) The community pulled together to keep its children out of trouble and away from any of the white sections of town where potential conflict awaited. Doors were left unlocked, and friends could drop in unannounced. “Whenever I fried chicken, Walter would smell it, come on in, grab three pieces, and eat,” said Earnestine Lewis, a neighbor. “He was a very nice, very mannerly little boy. Always ‘Yes m’am, no m’am.’ ”
    Both Alyne and Peter spent Mondays through Fridays working at Pioneer Recovery Systems, a plant where military-supply parachutes were stitched together and shipped off in bulk to the U.S. government. Their workdays were split—Peter, a custodian, usually clocked in before the morning-to-early afternoon shift, then returned home and Alyne, who did assembly line work, would take the four to eleven P.M. block. When she wasn’t at the plant, Alyne held jobs in the houses of various white families, looking after their children, cleaning their laundry, mopping floors. On weekends, Peter made extra money by setting up a wood block on a corner of Owens Street and shining shoes for fifty cents a pair as blacks strolled to church. He also manned a five-acre garden on the outskirts of town, often bringing one of his sons along to operate the hand plow. (“We didn’t have a mule,” Walter once complained. “It was hard work.”) Alyne, meanwhile, spent her Saturdays cooking pancakes at the Columbia Country Club, where whites ate and blacks labored. “She made the most delicious pancakes you’ve ever tasted,” said Earnestine Lewis. “I used to tell her, ‘Miss Alyne, you could be famous if you put those on the market.’ ” In later years Walter would bemoan growing up poor, but among Columbia’s blacks the Paytons were comfortable. As the one in charge of family monies, Alyne religiously collected the weekly paychecks and deposited them in the local bank. The Paytons made few frivolous purchases, and worked as many hours as humanly possible.
    One of the results, of course, was that both parents were permanently exhausted, with the slumped shoulders and baggy eyes to prove it. “We didn’t have a babysitter,” Alyne said. “They were always with me unless I was at choir or usher rehearsal [or work]. Then [my husband] would be home with them.” Every Sunday morning, whether the children wanted to or not, Alyne dressed Edward Charles, Walter, and Pam in their most dapper outfits and walked them four blocks to the Owens Chapel Baptist Church, a nondescript redbrick building with a crucifix hanging above the entranceway. The pastor was Reverend Eli Payton, a distant cousin. Sunday school began at nine A.M., followed by services from ten thirty to one o’clock. The three children sang in the choir, and in the tradition of old-school black Southern Baptist ways, the services mixed hellfire preaching with transcendent singing. Alyne’s children stood alongside their mother, Edward Charles occasionally looking away to stomp atop his brother’s shiny brown loafers or elbow Walter’s rib cage. When services ended, the family returned home for lunch, followed by the weekly two P.M. episode of Tarzan on channel 3. “When Tarzan was over,” Walter once wrote, “the kids in the neighborhood burst from their houses, screen doors slamming, parents yelling, ‘Quit slamming that door!’ and all of us bellowing the Tarzan call.” At five P.M. they’d return for evening services, which lasted another three hours.
    Though she held no elected position or official post, Alyne was a central figure in Columbia’s black community. She