by Ellen Morris Prewitt.
Down at the Memphis Cotton Museum, deep inside the well of the Cotton Exchange, three-quarters of the way up the colossal chalkboard, perched on descending rungs of the ladder, settled in the exact spot where God had sent them, the Three Marys waited to learn if the strength of their foe would prevent the birth of Hope.
That is: Mary, more commonly known as Miriam, who hid Moses in the bullrushes to protect her baby brother from slaughter. Martha’s Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and refused to help her sister Martha with the dirty dishes. And Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s disciple who first witnessed the resurrected Christ. Each with her own issues—Miriam so frequently left out of the triumvirate of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; Martha’s Mary tagged for all history as a selfish navel-gazer; and Mary Magdalene branded as a prostitute instead of the disciple without whom there would have been no resurrection. Yet God had chosen them as the birthing team. His Meta-Midwives. Sent by God to help Hope descend Heaven’s staircase.
“Why do the fellas down there look like they’re covered in chicken feathers?” Martha’s Mary pointed to the floor of the Cotton Exchange.
“Not feathers,” answered Mary Magdalene. “Cotton lint.”
“Why are they dressed so funny?” asked Moses’ Miriam.
“Because plaid vests were hip in 1978. You’re looking at the last traders on the floor of the Cotton Exchange.”
“You mean 1878?” asked Miriam.
“1978,” repeated Mary Magdalene, who did not like to be corrected.
“How do you know so much about the Cotton Exchange?” Martha’s Mary asked.
“Reading.” Mary Magdalene held up a Cotton Museum brochure.
The Three Mary’s stared at the ghosts, all men, who milled—no, ginned—on the floor of the Cotton Exchange, separating the good risk cotton from the bad risk cotton as ruthlessly as the cotton gin yanked fibers off the cotton seeds. Here, in the physical space where everyone had once gathered and decided the price at which “white gold” would be sold, all ears were cocked for the familiar snickety-snick of the ticker-tape. The ghostly traders had once used the ticker-tape to determine the cotton market at that precise moment of each day. They now waited for the shout: “Time to place your bets, boys!” when the fate of the world would be decided.
“Don’t be melodramatic,” scolded Mary Magdalene.
“Don’t lecture God,” warned Miriam. “Didn’t work out well for my brother.”
“Listen.” Martha’s Mary stared at the ceiling.
Above their heads on the upstairs level of the exchange, the ghosts—all men—roamed the empty offices that once housed the cotton insurers and shippers and commodities dealers. Meanwhile, outside on Cotton Row, the ghostly classers panted in the bright sunlight like out-of-work vampires. Cotton classers cain’t class cotton without bright sunlight. “Fair to middling,” the classers grumped as around them the spirited factors and merchants danced the cotton dance that swirled until 1978 when the Internet killed the Cotton Exchange.
The floor of the Exchange—and the walls, too, where the chalkboards kept track of the information that fueled the broker’s buying strategies—was a miracle of anti-Einsteinian dimensions, proving the nonrelativity of space and impact. How could such a small square contain the entire financial apparatus of the world’s largest spot market on cotton? Compressed into the tiny space like a squeezed cotton seed, the Exchange produced the oil that made the Southern economy flow. Memphis banks grew on the cotton market, and Memphis hotels grew on cotton travelers (the King Cotton Hotel survived to host Christmas parties into the 1970s). Memphis department stores grew fat on cotton wives—a private seamstress on retainer was one thing but department stores spanning entire city blocks!—and Memphis mansions of land owners rose like stalks of high cotton. Yes, Memphis grew on cotton.
And who grew the cotton?
You’re thinking enslaved men and women, but it was leased prisoners, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, “the labor,” they called it. The Cotton Exchange didn’t come into being until 1874, post-bellum. The Labor was growers and choppers and pickers of cotton. These men toiled in the blazing sun from spring ‘till fall, breaking only when the cotton was laid by, awaiting harvest time when they’d go at it again. Meanwhile, inside the Exchange, the elite fraternity of cotton men—the revolving door on the Cotton Exchange warns: “Private: Members Only” (What, they were afraid tobacco men might sneak into their fraternity and steal their cotton secrets?) unbuttoned their jackets and rolled up their sleeves because, man, it was hot in here.
The sign could’ve read “White Members Only,” but why be redundant? The cotton economy dehisced along racial lines just as surely as the cotton boll split into five, sharp-pointed burrs that drew blood from the cottonpickers’ fingers.
Cotton owners: White.
Cotton workers: Black.
Exceptions only prove the rule.
To the cotton owners belonged the money, for whites had created the cotton world (they called themselves planters, but how many had poked even one hole in the damn dirt?), and, as in every economic system ever laid down by man, the money flowed to those who designed it.
In celebration of their world, white cotton planters created their annual Cotton Carnival, so happy to be celebrating the killing they were making off King Cotton. Every year, the planters processed in kingly crown and scepter while their wives swayed in queenly hoop skirts. In its hey-day, the Cotton Carnival extravaganza equaled the blow-out Mardi Gras of Memphis’s perpetual New Orleans rival—hey, hey, give a huzzah for Memphis!
But what are we to think of the Cotton Makers Jubilee, the African American cotton festival? Why are those whom cotton exploited walking in their own parade, riding in their own floats, crowning their own King and Queen Cotton? Maybe they thought it fitting for those doing the real work to be feted. Or maybe the Jubileers were simply tired of seeing the white folks have all the fun.
It was a fun time, both Cotton Carnival and Cotton Makers Jubilee. The Royal Barge arrived with the white King and Queen, the honored couple triumphing up Union Avenue beneath a sparkling arch. The white Royals shook hands with the waiting Black Royals, everyone looking so grand.
The ticker tape dinged.
The waltzing ghosts dissipated.
The Three Marys held their breath.
The data the Three Marys had entered into the ticker tape was not the traditional information cotton brokers used to determine the price of cotton: chances of rain, state of the boll weevil, the price of cotton in India. The ticker tape had been reset, elevated. It was now a Global Economic Indicator designed to forecast, via white tape imprinted with black letters, the current strength of the world’s devotion to mammon, otherwise called the global economic system.
The global economic system was a living breathing entity that like all institutions could care less about anything other than protecting its own existence. Yes, the system tolerated dabblers, those folks found on the edges of the system ladling lunch at soup kitchens and checking vision at once-a-year free medical clinics, the men and women who frequently stood between the poor and the rider of death. Hey, the system liked those folks. For when a particularly horrible breakdown exposed the system’s deadly gears, those in charge could point to the indefatigable givers. “It’ll be all right,” the system soothed. “Look, they’re hosting a sock give-away!”
What the system couldn’t stand—what caused the system to growl and claw in a frenzy of self-preservation—were those who pressed for us to examine the system. Those who dared to ask, really, whether we should be elevating the pursuit of mammon to god status. Those who actually believed we could love our neighbors as ourselves.
For them, the system held no tolerance.
Them, the system would kill.
The Three Marys knew how difficult it could be when the economic boat was rocked. Miriam, sister to Moses, might look lovely in her braids and bangles, but her vision was seared with the blood of the firstborn, Pharaoh’s response to God’s freeing of the Israelites who stoked his economy. Martha’s Mary, so intentional about rejecting the housewife’s uncompensated toil in favor of her contemplative life, had withstood derision and, ultimately, isolation. Mary Magdalene—who before she believed her Jesus risen, believed him dead—had watched history turn her discipleship into a prostituted lie because what sells better than sex and money?
The mouth of the Global Economic Indicator opened.
“Hope can’t fight an entire system,” said Miriam.
“God knows what’s best for a clean birth,” assured Mary Magdalene.
“She won’t be careful,” said Martha’s Mary. “Hope is too exuberant.”
“And frail,” Miriam said.
“If you think Hope is frail, you haven’t been paying attention,” sniffed Mary Magdalene.
A strip of paper spit from the mouth of the ticker tape.
“Who’s going to read it?” asked Martha’s Mary.
No one volunteered because they understood the X factor:
XXXOOO
loves and kisses.
XXX the eyes of the dead man
OOO rest in peace
What would it be?
Would Hope be strong enough to defeat the global economic system? Could she persuade the world to reject the rule of mammon and embrace the Kingdom of Love Thy Neighbor? Would the wail of birth split Memphis in two?
Or would a wild-hyena howl of survival issue from the global economic system?
One by one the Three Mary’s slipped on their surgical gloves.
God’s Meta-Midwives, the birthers of change, prepared themselves for action.
If the choice was love, the Three Mary’s would be ready to catch the birthing baby.
If the choice was mammon, Hope would pirouette and ascend heaven’s staircase for good, never to touch her feet on Memphis soil.
As to the outcome, the Three Mary’s dared not venture a guess, for who were they to predict the most unpredictable force in the universe, the strength of love in the human heart?