Midnight Without a Moon

Thirteen-year-old Rose Lee Carter is walking on a dirt road to the home of her elderly neighbor, Miss Addie, to deliver eggs in rural Stillwater, Mississippi. When she hears the distinctive sound of Ricky Turner’s truck accelerating, she jumps out of the way, falling and breaking the eggs. Rose, furious, picks up a rock and throws it at the truck. Ricky reverses and confronts her, using racial epithets and spitting tobacco juice onto her legs. Rose recognizes 14-year-old Jimmy Robinson, son of her family’s employer and landlord, inside the cab. Ricky hurls a glass bottle filled with tobacco spit in her direction, threatening to shoot Rose next time. Rose walks home, recalling that when they were young, Jimmy and her brother, Fred Lee, were once close friends.

The new car belonging to Rose’s mother’s husband, Mr. Pete, is parked outside her grandparents’ house when Rose arrives home. Her mother’s stepchildren, Li’ Man and Sugar, announce that they are moving to Chicago. Their mother, Anna, abandoned Rose and Fred Lee in their grandparents’ care when Mr. Pete, newly widowed, proposed to her. Claiming her own seven- and five-year-old son and daughter were “big now. […] Two babies is enough for me to care for” (13), their mother began calling her children “Sister” and “Brother” and raising Mr. Pete’s children as her own. Anna gave birth to Rose at 15 and Fred Lee at 16. She was considered “ruined” by their community, but Mr. Pete is believed to have ignored her reputation because of Anna’s exceptional beauty. Rose realizes that this move to Chicago means she will now see her mother even less frequently than every two weeks.

Ma Pearl, Rose’s grandmother, stops Rose before she can enter the house. Ma Pearl demands to know how Rose got so dirty, insisting she avoid her parlor until she is presentable. Rose does not want to incur her grandmother’s wrath over the broken eggs, so she claims she fell. While Mr. Pete explains his new job in Chicago, Ma Pearl fawns over him. Sugar and Li’ Man earn Rose’s envy as she is forced to watch her mother dote on them. Rose’s grandfather, Papa, who never approved of the age difference between his daughter and Mr. Pete, questions why Mr. Pete sold his landholdings in Mississippi only to work in a factory and live in an apartment. Mr. Pete insists that he wants a better life for his children, only possible in the north. When Rose’s mother adds that living in Chicago will allow Sugar and Li’ Man to attend the same schools as white children, Rose wonders why she isn’t considered worthy of the same opportunity. After Rose’s mother and her new family drive away, Rose breaks a promise she made to never again cry over her mother and sobs on the couch over what she realizes is a second abandonment.

Before dawn, Ma Pearl charges into Rose and her cousin Queen’s bedroom, announcing a change in the day’s plans. Their neighbor Albert Jackson and his sons, Levi and Fischer, often assist Papa in the fields, allowing Rose to help at home. Instead of working in the fields in the afternoon, today Rose will report to the fields early. When Rose asks why, Ma Pearl replies, “Stay outta grown folks’ bizness” (29). Rose asks if Queen will milk their cow, Ellie, since Rose must leave early. As usual, Queen, will be allowed to spend the day however she likes, listening to the radio, perusing magazines, and lying in bed. When Ma Pearl expresses that Anna and Pete were right to leave, Rose knows something is wrong. The only information her grandmother will provide is the suggestion, “Colored folks just oughta stay in their place. It’d keep us all outta a whole lotta trouble. One Negro do something, white folks get mad at everybody” (31). Ma Pearl says voting is not a right that Black people should expect to take advantage of. Rose recalls recent violence amidst efforts to encourage Black voter registration, specifically the murder of a reverend named George W. Lee.

As Rose toils in the sun with Papa and Fred Lee, she reflects on her goals. She plans to move to Chicago, obtain a medical degree, and return to Mississippi to serve her community. Once established, she will buy Papa a new car and house, one she may or may not allow Ma Pearl to share. Queen, fair-skinned, is favored by Ma Pearl, who considers her elder granddaughter “too light to be out there in that heat” (36). Rose, who is of a much deeper complexion than most members of their community, is considered by Ma Pearl to be suited to the task of field work. Ma Pearl also works as a cook and housekeeper to the Robinsons, but Queen has no responsibilities.

Rose’s best friend, Hallelujah Jenkins, who appears as Rose is chopping cotton, is enamored of Queen. Like Rose, Hallelujah is motivated to seek higher education and bolster their community, but as the son of a preacher, Hallelujah receives more support. Always fashionably dressed and rarely required to work, Rose resents the leniency he is granted. Hallelujah is not his chipper self that morning when Rose wishes him happy birthday. He explains that he came to tell Rose about Levi, revealing that the 21-year-old was chased off the road and murdered after registering to vote. Devastated, Rose becomes physically ill. Queen storms outside and tells Rose and Hallelujah to be quiet so that she can sleep. When Hallelujah tells Queen what happened, Queen is callous, claiming she knew all along that the “uppity” Levi would eventually “get hisself” killed (46).

Albert Jackson is back to work in the Robinsons’ fields the following day. Rose can feel the sorrow and terror in the silence as they work. Hallelujah’s father drops him off and keeps Rose company as she struggles through her physically demanding task, not offering to help. Rose asks what Hallelujah is doing, implying disdain for his idleness and pressing him for information about Levi’s death. Hallelujah shares that his father, Reverend Jenkins, covertly involved in the NAACP, has enlisted the organization’s help in organizing an activist response. Hallelujah heard they might ask Medgar Evers to implore the sheriff’s office to take the murder seriously. Rose is curious about the NAACP, but Ma Pearl is adamantly against what she believes is a meddlesome organization. Ma Pearl insists the Carters are lucky to be employed by “good white peoples” like the Robinsons. Papa was informed by Mr. Robinson that he would no longer be employed or allowed to live on his property if Mr. Robinson discovered that anyone under Papa’s roof was associated with the NAACP. Rose wonders aloud why so many white people are concerned about an increase in Black votes, and Hallelujah says that with representation comes change. Rose doubts that change will ever be possible in Mississippi.

Hallelujah follows the Carters and Jacksons back to the Carter house, hoping to be fed lunch. Bashfully, Hallelujah greets Queen with a compliment, and she responds by telling Hallelujah to go to hell. Rose is resentful of the way Queen constantly belittles him. She frequently reminds Hallelujah that Queen is haughty and cruel, but her attempts to discourage his interest are always ignored. Taking note of the pristine condition of Queen’s clothes and her makeup, which Rose knows she would never be allowed to wear, Rose feels a surge in the current of anger she harbors toward her cousin. Ma Pearl places a pot of her sought-after beans on the table, and Rose complains that her grandmother included okra, which she knows Rose detests. Ma Pearl hits Rose so hard that Rose falls backward off of her chair and onto the floor. Crying silent tears, Rose returns to her seat, humiliated but afraid to leave the table for fear of more severe consequences. Papa reminds Rose that she has never gone hungry, so there is no justification for her complaint.

Rose grieves among the mourners at Levi’s funeral, who cry out in devastation and anger and channel their sorrow into impassioned renditions of traditional hymns. Rose is frustrated when the reverend of the Jacksons’ church deliberately omits the circumstances of Levi’s death from the content of his eulogy. The funds for the funeral, and the suit in which Levi is buried, were provided by Mr. Robinson, but Rose is unable to forget what she observed at the Robinson home a few days before. Arriving to collect secondhand clothes for Fred Lee, Rose encountered a gathering of community leaders, members of the “White Citizens Council.” She overheard the men declaring that the NAACP must not be allowed to “contaminate the good colored citizens of Leflore County” (68). Mrs. Robinson seemed embarrassed when she handed Rose the bag of clothing. Rose knows that Albert Jackson has already refused the assistance of the NAACP, insisting that their involvement would only escalate the situation and would not bring his son back. Rose thinks how, like her grandfather, he commits to maintaining a set of circumstances she herself finds intolerable.

Rose helps Ma Pearl serve lunch to the mourners gathered at the Jacksons’ home. Like the Carters, the Jacksons reside in one of the many spartan cabins on the Robinsons’ land. Mr. Robinson rents dwellings not used by his employees to Black tenants at inflated rates. Rose listens as Ma Pearl tells family friend Miss Doll that Levi deserved to be killed for being stupid. Miss Doll bristles at Ma Pearl’s maliciousness. The women concur that, though the culture of injustice continues to oppress them, the remote possibility of change is not worth risking one’s life.

Hallelujah asks Rose to come outside with him, where he shows her a copy of a Black-owned newspaper, the Southern Mediator Journal, which has printed a graphic photo of Reverend George W. Lee’s body. His face, patched up by a mortician, was blown apart by a shotgun blast. The local sheriff publicly dismissed the hundreds of tiny shotgun pellets as nothing more than dental fillings. Hallelujah is infuriated when Rose tells him what Ma Pearl said about Levi, comparing those like her to Judas, “who’d sell their grandmas for half a dollar just to stay in the white man’s favor” (76).