Midnight Without a Moon

“Mr. Pete shook his head. ‘I don’t want that kind of life for Callie and Christopher.’ He gestured toward the open window, suggesting the cotton fields beyond it. ‘They deserve better.’ ‘Better than what?’ Papa asked, his eyebrows raised. […] When I was little, watching Mama pamper Sugar and Li’Man, I used to think if I had light skin and long hair like Sugar’s, she would love me that way too, maybe even let me live with them.”

Anna believes her stepchildren, Sugar and Li’ Man, are deserving of “better” but her own children are not. Constantly reminded that the women around her believe her deep skin tone renders her unattractive and unworthy, Rose does not consider that culpability for her decision lies with her mother and not with Rose herself.

“And Aunt Clara Jean never would tell a soul who Queen’s daddy was. Folks said he was white. And that wasn’t too hard to believe, seeing that Queen was light enough to pass for white if she wanted to, and seeing that her long hair never needed the heat of a straightening comb. Plenty of folks in our family were yellow, but Queen was different. And with the way she never lifted a finger to even wash a plate, she acted like she was white, too. Folks said that when Queen was born, Ma Pearl took to her like ants to a picnic. They say she snatched that newborn baby from Aunt Clara Jean’s bosom and claimed her like a hard-earned prize. That’s because Ma Pearl favored pretty. And to Ma Pearl, light equaled pretty, even if the person was as ugly as a moose.”

Colorism is a pervasive theme throughout Midnight Without a Moon, crystalized in Jackson’s depiction of the relationship dynamics between Queen, Rose, and their grandmother, Ma Pearl. Both of Ma Pearl’s granddaughters were born to unmarried teen mothers, a frowned-upon set of circumstances for the period, but only Rose feels like she is punished for being born.

“As I stumbled clumsily between the dusty rows of green cotton leaves, I couldn’t help but resent them. Levi Jackson, a fine young man, had spent most of his life tending to that field, brining that cotton to life every year. Now he no longer had his. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream until my anguish was heard all over Stillwater—all over Mississippi—all the way to Chicago, straight to my mama’s ears. I don’t know why, but I hated her at that moment. I hated her more than the nameless face that had shot Levi Jackson for no good reason. But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t open my mouth and take a chance on throwing up and killing any of Mr. Robinson’s precious cotton.”

Though she is overcome with grief, Rose, like most other Black people in Mississippi, is expected to suppress her own feelings and needs for fear of the consequences that might result from inconveniencing a white person in a position of power and influence. Rose has been habituated to deprioritizing her own needs so that she doesn’t undermine her employers’ profits.

“‘The Robinsons is good white peoples,’ she said. ‘So we ought not ’sociate with Negroes who stir up trouble.’ She said we were lucky. Mr. Robinson let us keep hogs, chickens, and a cow on his place when other landowners wouldn’t. […] So we should’ve been grateful for Mr. Robinson’s generosity, especially the way he kept our house furnished, always allowing Mrs. Robinson to buy items she’d soon tire of and then pass them on to Ma Pearl. Even Mr. Robinson himself said he’d run any Negroes off his place if they caused trouble. ‘Any [Black person] bold enough to drink that poison the NAACP is pouring out is bold enough to find another place to stay,’ he’d said. ‘Including you, Paul,’ he’d told papa. And ma Pearl was taking no chances on getting ‘thowed off’ Mr. Robinson’s land.”

Rose, Aunt Belle, Monty, and Reverend Jenkins are all frustrated by Ma Pearl’s deferential, reverent behavior toward white people and her criticism of those Black people who do not behave as she expects them to, but Ma Pearl and Papa lived through a time of terror that affects the way they interpret the escalation of danger accompanying these early days of the Civil Rights Movement.

“The first time he’d brought over a copy of Jet magazine, Ma Pearl caught a glimpse of it while we sat in the kitchen flipping through it. Unfortunately, all she saw was the shapely, bathing-suit-clad model in the centerfold. She yanked the magazine out of Hallelujah’s hand, flipped through it herself, and immediately judged it preachy and pompous. ‘A bunch of high-class northern Negroes trying to make everybody else feel bad ’bout how they lives,’ she said. She tossed the magazine back to Hallelujah with, ‘Preacher oughta be ’shamed of hisself letting you read that trash full o’ half-nekked womens.’ She never said that the fashion magazines Queen got from Mrs. Robinson were trash. Yet they too held plenty of pictures of bathing-suit-clad beauties, except they were white.”

Jet is a frequent symbol appearing throughout Midnight Without a Moon; it’s the medium through which Hallelujah and Rose receive much of the information they acquire about the ongoing fight for racial justice, their source of news with a northern, metropolitan perspective, and their insight into Black culture on a national scale. Ma Pearl’s pontifical approach to instilling values and dictating appropriate topics of conversation renders Jet all the more important to Rose as a means of accessing her culture.

“I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear such nonsense coming from him. He, like Papa and Mr. Albert, was the kind of Negro who stayed in his place, which was probably why Mr. Albert chose to have Levi’s funeral at Little Ebenezer Baptist Church rather than at our church, Greater Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. He knew that Reverend Jenkins wouldn’t have been afraid to speak the truth about how Levi died. God didn’t call Levi home, I wanted to shout at Reverend Blake. A white man’s bullet did.”

Rose is frustrated by what she feels is the timidity of Levi’s eulogy because it feels like an extension of the complaisance standing in the way of progress toward equality. Rose’s one complaint about church is the hypocrisy present in those who attend and their behavior outside of services, as exemplified in the behavior of Ma Pearl, and Rose feels that church should be a of authentic engagement.

“Like me, Mr. Aaron Montgomery Ward Harris was as dark as midnight without a moon. With his hand interlocked with Aunt Belle’s creamed-coffee one as they sat together on the settee in the parlor, I couldn’t help but think of a piano and how the keys worked together to make music. Aunt Belle and Aaron, or Monty, as I had decided to call him, looked happy, like two people making music.”

Rose knows few other people who share her skin tone and has been conditioned to associate this feature with ugliness and unworthiness. Seeing Aunt Belle and Monty together gives Rose hope that her deeper complexion is not the deterrent her female relatives have tried to convince her it is.

“I could now understand why people like Mr. Pete chose to leave. He had his own land, on which he grew plenty of cotton. He had a nice house in Greenwood. He was better off than a lot of white folks in Leflore County, or even in Mississippi. Yet if he did something as simple as register to vote, like one of them, he could be killed. At first, after seeing Mama and everyone else leaving Mississippi for a better life up north, I wanted to go only because I wanted that kind of life, too. But after hearing that white folks in Mississippi would kill anybody, regardless of age, for simply wanting to exercise their right to vote, I wanted to leave before I was old enough to face the life-and-death decision of whether to stand up for my rights or just sit back and leave things the way they were.”

Rose is often certain that the right decision is obvious, and she is often frustrated when adults behave otherwise. When she realizes how complex, weighted, and potentially perilous the consequences of decision-making can be, she begins to appreciate that she too is gradually becoming responsible for decisions that will affect the rest of her life.

“Why should I care what happened to her? […] she deserved whatever she had coming. I couldn’t believe Ma Pearl was making me leave school and letting her stay in. She wasn’t doing anything with her life but throwing it away. I, at least, had dreams. […] I flipped my pillow to the cooler side, rolled over to face the wall, and tried to sleep. But it was no use. Everything and everybody raced through my mind, especially poor Hallelujah, who was in love with Queen, and probably Miss Johnson, too, only because of their light complexion. Why was everybody so afraid of blackness?”

The night that Rose confronts Queen for sneaking out is the same night that Emmett Till is kidnapped and murdered for whistling at a white woman. While Emmett is paying the ultimate price for an innocently meant gesture, a young white man is taking advantage of the disproportionate status between himself and a young Black girl, able to later discard her without consequence when the results of their actions become inconvenient.

“Ma Pearl threw in her nickel’s worth. ‘If the boy’s mama was so worried, she woulda kept him up there in Chicago.’ […] ‘Woman, you’re just plain evil!’ Monty cried. ‘How can you say something so cruel? That poor woman’s son is missing. In Mississippi at that. White men with pistols came in the middle of the night and took him from his bed. Didn’t even want him to take the time to put on a pair of socks, for God’s sake. And you have the nerve to blame his mama for letting him come down here?’”

This exchange marks the first time that Rose has seen anyone challenge Ma Pearl’s flawed belief system and accuse her of being morally corrupt for holding views that are prejudicial toward people in her own community. It is a significant moment for Rose to witness someone, especially Monty, who Rose admires, resist and challenge Ma Pearl’s assertions.

“I didn’t see one picture of a woman with dark skin among those listed as ‘the most beautiful women in Negro society.’ Also in Jet I saw an advertisement for a product that could make my skin light. After that, I started bleaching my skin with the stuff Aunt Clara Jean used to keep her complexion ‘even.’ […] I’d return home thinking that in no time at all, my skin would be pretty and caramel like the rest of the women in my family, with the exception of Aunt Ruthie. […] As I stood before Ma Pearl’s dresser and studied my reflection in the clouded, mirror, I felt black as a crow and uglier than a mule.”

The fixation on lightness as the ideal standard for Black feminine beauty that has been praised and prioritized in Rose’s own family is also prevalent in Black culture on a larger scale. While Jet does not declare deeper skin tones unattractive or undesirable, the message being sent is obvious to Rose, as the women in Jet’s pages declared most attractive are almost exclusively light skinned.

“But it wasn’t just the storm clouds that darkened my morning. It was Aunt Belle; she had left without bothering to say goodbye. The minute she found out about the Chicago boy’s funeral, she sent word to Reverend Jenkins that she and her northern comrades were leaving—heading to Chicago. I figured that’s probably where she was at this very moment—in Chicago—preparing to attend a funeral for someone she’d never met while the folks who loved her sat under the heavy weight of a thunderous Mississippi sky.”

Rose resents that her aunt has been present in Mississippi yet absent from their company for most of this trip, which has been devoted to activism in the wake of Emmett’s kidnapping and murder. Rose admires her aunt’s passion and commitment, but she is frustrated by the ease with which her aunt is able to leave Mississippi and escape the consequences that those who are stuck there have no choice but to endure.

“My clothes clung to my sweaty body, and all I wanted was a cool bath in the tin tub. But since it was only Tuesday, I knew I wouldn’t get one. I’d have to wait for Wednesday, then again on Saturday. In the meantime, I had to make do with a wash-up, a bird bath, as Ma Pearl called it. Besides, there on the front steps sat Hallelujah, waiting for me. Friend or not, I resented him sitting there in his freshly pressed clothes, that fedora atop his head, his penny loafers shining—not even a drop of sweat on his nose.”

Linda Williams Jackson uses descriptive language to emphasize the intense physical demands on Rose’s body that accompany picking cotton, especially when her hours in the field increase. Rose loves Hallelujah, but she is jealous of the lackadaisical attitude he often demonstrates, a product of the leniency she does not enjoy at home.

“I recalled what Mr. Pete had said to Papa before they left for Chicago: A Negro can own all the land in Mississippi and still be treated worse than a hog. ‘You know that’s why Mr. Pete left, don’t you?’ Hallelujah scoffed. ‘What good is it for a Negro to own acres of cotton if the white man owns the scales?’ I laughed and told him how I always thought Mr. Pete was rich. ‘No such thing as a rich Negro in the Mississippi Delta,’ he replied.”

In talking with Hallelujah, Rose realizes that even those Black people who are able to amass considerable personal property and resources remain paralyzed by what those in power will allow them to do or become. Rose has never thought about how even money and independence might only take a person of color so far in Mississippi.

“‘You ever been to that store? The one where they say Emmett Till talked to the woman?’ He nodded. ‘You see her?’ Hallelujah turned his gaze from me and stared at the ground. ‘Twice.’ ‘She pretty?’ Hallelujah nodded. ‘Would you have done it?’ ‘Whistled at her?’ ‘Yeah.’ Hallelujah stared at me for what felt like an entire five minutes before he finally said, ‘Heck, no. I’ll fight, but I ain’t crazy enough to start one.’”

Emmett Till’s murder was indicative of the severe racial hatred of Black people and white male paranoia surrounding Black male sexuality and a response to the anger and tension felt as a result of the increase in Black voter registration. That Hallelujah would not have whistled at Mrs. Bryant demonstrates the vast difference between their experiences and frames of reference growing up in America as young Black men.

“‘Gal, Saint Louis done really ruint you!’ Ma Pearl snapped. ‘I didn’t raise you like this. That boy dead ’cause his mama didn’t teach him to respect white folks.’ […] ‘Miss Sweet!’ Reverend Jenkins yelled. […] ‘I understand there’s a certain bond between the older Negroes and the whites, but we’re living in a new time, and Mississippi needs to change with the times. Respect is something I agree with, but the constant bowing down to whites because of Jim Crow scare tactics has got to stop. True, the young man had no business whistling at Mrs. Bryant, but not because she’s white and he’s a Negro, but because he was a fourteen-year-old boy and she is a grown, married woman. That’s the kind of respect we need to teach our children. Respect for their elders, respect for authority, respect for their fellow human beings. Not respect based on some antiquated Southern way of life.’”

Reverend Jenkins insists that Emmett’s murder is proof that there are no rules that can truly guarantee a Black person’s safety in Mississippi. Placing the onus on people of color to placate and accommodate white feelings to ensure their own physical safety is no longer going to be tolerated, from either outside or within the Black community.

“Hallelujah sighed. ‘Preacher said it wouldn’t be good if everybody left. Imagine what this place would be like if everybody who could just up and went? I leaned back and stared at the sky. ‘Stars can’t shine without darkness.’ […] ‘I’m willing to bet […] if she had been able to open a shop here, in a place where our people are shunned and oppressed, it would have made her feel even more accomplished than she already does.’ ‘Stars shine brighter in the darkness,’ I said quietly. Hallelujah crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. ‘Dreams have more meaning when you have to fight for them,’ he said. ‘That’s why folks like my father choose to stay. They know they have a right to be here, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make those rights equal.’”

Hallelujah and Rose have each designed their future goals around the eventual objective of returning to Mississippi to serve their communities. Rose and Hallelujah are concluding that they do not need to leave Mississippi to pursue opportunities to facilitate change for Black people in the south.

“Ma Pearl snorted. ‘Northern and uppity is what you is, boy. Folks like you is the reason them peckerwoods is walking free rat now.’ […] ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy!’ Aunt Belle said. She threw up her hands. ‘Let me get out of this crazy woman’s house before I start to hate her. […] I don’t know why I’ve wasted so much time here in the first place. Mississippi will never change because of Negroes like you, Mama. You’re the same kind of Negro that helped those two men kidnap and kill Emmett Till. Won’t even register and exercise your right to vote. So in love with that white woman that she ain’t even got to wipe her own behind.’”

Linda Williams Jackson uses “uppity” as an insult hurled by Ma Pearl toward Aunt Belle meant to reflect negative opinions of Black people that Ma Pearl has internalized. It is Aunt Belle’s mention of her mother’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson as a contributing factor to Ma Pearl’s animosity toward her community that precedes the moment when Ma Pearl violently assaults her daughter.

“‘Ma Pearl started it,’ I said. My hands shot up to my mouth, knowing they were already too late to stop the words. Ma Pearl stormed toward me. But rather than Papa, Monty stopped her. ‘If you even think about putting your hands on that child, woman, I will deal with you myself.’”

Rose has never stood up to her grandmother before, even when Ma Pearl used the back strap of terror on her. The recent actions of Monty, Aunt Belle, and those like them who have lent their voices and placed themselves in danger to help others have had an impact on her that she does not appreciate until this moment.

“‘Mississippi is home, daughter,’ he said. ‘I’m a farmer. I loves the land. I loves the fresh air. My animals. The cotton.’ ‘Do you love working for that white man living in his mansion down the road?’ Monty asked, his sarcasm lingering in the air again. ‘Matter of fact, I do,’ said Papa. ‘I loved working for his daddy, too. Every white person aint’ full o’evil, son.’ […] Papa raised his brows. ‘Who told you life was fair? You think ’cause a man don’t live in a mansion he can’t be happy? […] This is where the good Lord saw fit for Paul Elias Carter to be born, right here in Stillwater, Mississippi. He knowed I’d love the land before I was even here. He shaped me in my mother’s womb and fitted me to farm. And with that I’m happy. With that I’m content. Ain’t no shame in serving others.’”

Compared to Ma Pearl, Papa is quiet and seemingly unopinionated, but he is very firm in his beliefs and values, as is evident each time he orders his wife out of the room when she begins behaving toward his family members and guests in a way that is outside the bounds of what he is willing to tolerate. His enjoyment of his occupation, despite the fact that he works another person’s land, and his contentment with his life, despite how humble it might appear to others, challenge the idea that economic success and professional gains are the only way to find fulfillment.

“My heart raced. I should have been smiling, leaping for joy at Monty’s words, but instead, my stomach churned with nervousness. Since the day Mr. Pete took Mama away in his train of a car, I had wanting nothing more than to go with them. To live a life up north. A life I could experience only from the way colored people up north dressed and, from the way they talked, even down to the way they laughed—which was vastly different from the way things were for colored people in the South. I couldn’t believe the door to that good life was suddenly standing open before me. Monty and Aunt Belle were asking me, Rose Lee Carter, to go back to Saint Louis with them.”

It is the first time that Rose has felt truly seen and encouraged to embrace her unique qualities and the first time that anyone has truly chosen her. Twice abandoned by her mother and constantly reminded that her grandmother sees her as a burden, Rose is being willfully and enthusiastically embraced by people she deeply admires.

“‘How could you do this to Ma Pearl and Papa?’ Queen rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t do anything to them. They did this to me.’ She shifted her weight and moaned in pain. ‘They lock us up in this house and won’t let us go nowhere but church and school.’ […] ‘He loves me,’ Queen said. ‘I know he do.’ […] I took a deep breath and let it out. But I didn’t respond to Queen. I knew for myself how Ma Pearl could dress up a story, but I doubted she was making things up this time. I was sure Jimmy Robinson had thrown Queen out of that truck. He had discarded her, just the way his mama discarded the things she no longer wanted. He discarded her and handed her over to Ma Pearl.”

Ma Pearl’s indulgence has contributed to Queen’s belief that she is superior to others and justified in meeting her own needs regardless of consequences. When Jackson describes Queen as “[d]iscarded” and “handed over to Ma Pearl” like Mrs. Robinson’s furniture, there is another parallel to be drawn. Both Rose and Fred Lee were also discarded and handed over to their grandmother by their teenage mother, and now 15-year-old Queen will likely be relying on her grandmother to raise a third generation of children.

“Fred Lee was right. I knew Aunt Ruthie was pretty. So why did I find it hard to believe that Reverend Jenkins would find her pretty too? For the same reason I couldn’t think of myself as pretty—my own grandmother had made me feel ashamed of my complexion, saying I was as black as midnight without a moon. But I had to remember my own strange words to Hallelujah on the night before the murder trial ended: stars can’t shine without darkness. And I was determined that one day, instead of fretting over being as dark as midnight without a moon, I would shine as bright as the morning star.”

It is through Monty and Aunt Belle’s example and Hallelujah's revelation that his father also found Ruthie beautiful that Rose is able to begin the process of embracing her skin tone as a distinguishing asset that will be embraced by the right person. In Midnight Without a Moon, darkness of complexion is criticized by those characters who reject progress and stifle Black autonomy; the enlightened characters Rose admires allow her to reject the cruel colorism visited upon her.