The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  The other boarders weren’t sure what to do or whether they could begin eating. Soup, in summer or not, wasn’t half as nice if it was lukewarm.

  Pat cleared his throat and said in a voice loud enough for Miss Caroline to hear, “I also answer to Patrick Hearn.”

  The table erupted with welcomes and greetings for “Patrick Hearn.” Mr. Bean said that the young man would soon be joining his place of employment as a proofreader. Young Mr. Hearn is now the private secretary to the city’s head librarian, Mr. Bean added, in a tone that said that Patrick Hearn was worth a second glance.

  The younger men at Mrs. Haslam’s would call him “Pat.” That was what I called him too, when we became acquainted.

  Mr. Wheeler, who wasn’t at all young and who worked as a clerk at a tobacco warehouse—he smelled of cigars though he never smoked—greeted Pat the next morning at the breakfast table as “Paddy.” Pat refused to acknowledge the man, as if he hadn’t heard a word of what Mr. Wheeler was saying to him. Mr. Wheeler didn’t seem to notice and kept on talking. In between bites of his coddled eggs, Mr. Wheeler said that he was barely out of the cradle when “your people”—Mr. Wheeler meant the Irish, but Pat didn’t look up from the newspaper that he was reading—started coming in droves to Cincinnati. They were a sorry lot back then, Paddy. Their children roamed the streets like strays, Mr. Wheeler continued. Not a one of them in school. The Civil War changed them for the better. Every last man and boy fought for Ohio’s Tenth, along with us native-borns. That war gave them discipline, Paddy. It taught them hard work. That is what I say, whenever I hear people speaking ill about the Irish; that they are taking over the city’s police force and fire brigade and such. Who better suited than their kind for these jobs is what I say, Paddy.

  Every time Mr. Wheeler said “Paddy,” Pat would turn a page of the newspaper, rustling it like a dried cornstalk.

  Miss Caroline was also at the breakfast table, and I saw the crumbs around her lips formed into a half smile. She took her coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar, and she always drank two cups with breakfast. Mrs. Haslam used to say that spinsters had the biggest sweet tooth, followed by widows and children. Mrs. Haslam complained that she had to buy an extra pound every month just for Miss Caroline and Miss Beryl. Miss Beryl, a spinster too, had already left the boardinghouse by the time I’d started, but Mrs. Haslam always brought her name up whenever she complained about Miss Caroline, as if there were still two.

  Pat and Miss Caroline, in spite of their shouty beginning, became friends. Both didn’t abide chatter, especially in the mornings. She was devoted to the pages of the Cincinnati Commercial but also read the Cincinnati Enquirer when Pat began to write for it. They traded newspapers at the end of each day, and the next morning at breakfast Miss Caroline would silently point to the stories that he’d written. I didn’t understand that this was a game they played until Pat told me that the Enquirer printed his stories without his name. He had a term for it.

  Yes, that’s right, Miss. A byline.

  Listen, Miss Caroline may not be as important in the world as Pat, but it’s because you don’t know her story yet. She, as with most spinsters I’ve known, was of independent ways. Miss Caroline and Pat had that in common. They also didn’t have a lot of money by the standards of white people, but the money they had they spent on books and on their underthings.

  You’re taking notes now, Miss?

  Well, I can tell you how I met Pat—I know that he made a name for himself as “Lafcadio Hearn” but that wasn’t the man I knew—and what he wore underneath his clothes, those two stories don’t have much to do with each other. Why I left him, now that had to do with the state of his underthings.

  Charlotte had tried her best to warn me, but I didn’t hear her like I should have. Charlotte did the laundry at Mrs. Haslam’s back then. She took over the work from another gal, around the same time that Pat came to stay. Charlotte—Mrs. Haslam and the boarders called her “Lottie”—was from Kentucky, like me. We didn’t look much alike—different as a buckeye and a peanut—but Charlotte was a sister to me from the moment that we met. I liked hearing her stories even more than Pat would like hearing mine. Charlotte and I, we grew up with stories that were brambly, full of leaves, and with branches going every which way. When you reached the middle was when you were rewarded with the juicy berries, the sweetest fruits.

  Charlotte’s stories always took awhile to tell because her words were slowed and spent by the late afternoon when we would see each other, as her day had started as early as mine. I would be out on the back steps, which led from Mrs. Haslam’s kitchen door down to the backyard, peeling potatoes or topping and tailing runner beans, when Charlotte would come by to deliver her bundles, each one wrapped in butcher paper. Charlotte rued that the paper was more costly than the laundry soap, but there was no way for her to skimp on the packaging. She said that if you pay to get your laundry done, then you want to believe that your garments have never touched anyone else’s.

  “Same washtub,” she said.

  “Same washtub,” I repeated, laughing low right along with her.

  When I first knocked on Mrs. Haslam’s kitchen door, I knew that her house, despite needing a new coat of paint, was aiming for a better class of boarders. There were no laundry lines or poles in the backyard. That meant the boarders would have to send their laundry out, which was an added expense for them. I’d worked at houses where the boarders took their turns at the backyard pump and washtub and, worse, at houses where the boarders never did. You can tell a lot about a person once you’ve seen their laundry hanging out to dry. Moth holes, careless mends, cotton, flannel, or wool, they all tell you what a person chooses to keep closest to them. Most of the time, it’s what they have to keep closest to them because their choices in life are spent up or spent elsewhere.

  Charlotte knew her numbers—one to ten, like I did—but she never learned her letters. None of us could, back then. So she drew a little picture for each of her customers at Mrs. Haslam’s and the other boardinghouses where she found work. The tag on Miss Caroline’s bundle had a snowflake drawn on it. Charlotte smiled when she showed it to me, and then she explained why. I’d been at Mrs. Haslam’s for about two years by then, and Miss Caroline had been there from the start. Still, I would have never guessed.

  “Miss Caroline’s underthings are bedecked with lace,” Charlotte whispered. She claimed it was French lace, but I wasn’t certain how she would know. The lace didn’t speak to her, did it? Charlotte had never met a Frenchwoman or a Frenchman for that matter, but lace from France she insisted she knew because the finer trimming shops in the city displayed them in their windows. She never thought that she would see some at Mrs. Haslam’s. Lace as delicate as just-fallen snowflakes was how Charlotte went on to describe it. After spending the better part of her time waxing about that French lace, she added at the very end, like an extra yolk in a cake batter, that Miss Caroline’s underthings, every single smock and drawer, were sewn from heavy China silk. Charlotte then left me, slack-jawed, to finish her rounds for the day.

  When I saw Charlotte again, I had to promise to bake her a cobbler—it was high summer, so she asked for blackberries, as any gal from Kentucky would—if she would unwrap the snowflake bundle so that I could see and touch.

  I shivered.

  Charlotte, right alongside me, shivered too.

  Then we both laughed because it was only cloth, but it made us feel joy.

  On Tabb Plantation where I was born, we young ones would bathe in a shallow stream that ran along its border. It must have been the property line because we were told never to wade to the other side. There was a time in the year, right after the crab-apple blossoms had dropped, when the water felt like that to me. Silk on my skin, and when we were young, our skin was also silk. That was how I would describe that stream to Pat. It was in the first story that I would tell him. Looking back now, it was an odd place to
begin.

  “Silk?” Pat asked.

  “Silk,” I said again, nodding my head.

  Pat closed his eyes when he listened to my stories. I thought at first that I’d lulled him to sleep, so I stopped talking. His eyes opened, and his good one had a look in it, as if I’d denied him something good to eat. He explained that he listened best in the dark, and I believed him.

  “I’ve longed for that stream,” I told him. “Never longed for Tabb or for what it meant to be born there,” I told him too.

  That’s right, Miss. My last name isn’t Tabb.

  My mother was hired out to Foley Plantation before I was born, and Mr. Foley purchased me when I was young. He gave me to his daughter and her new husband, who owned Salee Plantation between Dover and Augusta, if you know that part of Kentucky. I was their wedding gift.

  When I told Pat how I came to be at Salee, his good eye blinked and blinked. He said that my condition then was full of sadness. I told him it wasn’t sadness that I remembered about those days. It was toil and no pay—

  I haven’t told you how Pat and I became acquainted yet? Is that so, Miss?

  I didn’t know you were in a hurry. Are you talking to someone else this morning about Patrick Hearn?

  I didn’t think so, Miss.

  No one else in Cincinnati can tell you about the man I knew.

  If I were you, I’d help myself to a cup of coffee, have a listen, and take some more notes. Pat always had pages of them. You haven’t been writing that much down, Miss.

  Mr. Anderson tells me that you’re with the Enquirer. Now, if that paper didn’t give Pat a byline, you probably don’t have one either. Pat was always on the lookout for a story that no one else had too. He said that’s how reporters make a name for themselves. Isn’t that right, Miss?

  To be forthright with you, I didn’t know that young white ladies did newspaper work.

  Times have changed? I’m sure you’re right to say so, Miss.

  Mr. Anderson says that I was ten and eight when Pat and I met. He says the year was 1872.

  Mr. Anderson has had to figure it all out—my birth year, my age, my comings and goings, and Pat’s as well—because Mr. Anderson says that the Probate Court will want to know once we put forward my claim.

  Mr. Anderson says that Pat was five tens and four when he passed. May he rest in peace.

  I know his passing was two years ago, Miss. But the letter from his book publisher didn’t come to me then. It got here less than a month ago. Without it, Mr. Anderson and I would have never known that Pat had left me nothing. That was why Mr. Anderson went to your paper, Miss. We’re both glad to know that the Enquirer is taking an interest.

  His full name is William I. Anderson, Miss.

  Yes, you could say that we’re related. We’re all God’s children.

  Everyone these days, they know their date of birth—year, month, even down to the day—and their age. Before the war, we were “young,” which meant we weren’t being put to work yet, or we were “grown,” which meant we were working. Then we were “old,” which meant we were headed to the Hereafter soon. No numbers needed.

  Folks now, they know their numbers well past ten, and some, like Mr. Anderson, even know their letters. But I tell them we’re still in the same washtub. Mr. Anderson doesn’t like it when I say such things.

  He’s like you. He says that times have changed. He says he’s an oculist.

  He’s an optimist? I’m sure you’re right, Miss.

  Mr. Anderson tells me that I’m five tens and three or, as he says it, “fifty-three” this year.

  I asked him to show me what fifty-three looks like in tally marks. He did. I felt every one of those lines and slashes, each one a heavy coat worn on top of the other. Even on the hottest Cincinnati days, when the Ohio looks like it’s steaming, I can’t take those coats off, not a one. If that’s what fifty-three means, then he’s right. I’m fifty-three this year.

  Look around you. This is what I’ve to show for all those years. A two-room cottage at the back of someone else’s house. At least it’s rent-free, I tell myself. Mr. Anderson owns the main house. He’s done well enough for himself. He doesn’t need to collect an old lady’s rent.

  Pat was two tens and two when we met, Mr. Anderson says.

  I would have said that Pat was the younger one. His heart wasn’t fully grown back then, and it made him shy or not enjoy the company of people. I couldn’t tell which at first.

  From the start, Pat didn’t lounge on the front porch with the other boarders and Mrs. Haslam, taking in the breeze or the moonlight. After supper, he would smoke his pipe on the back steps instead. It being summer, I kept the door to the kitchen wide open, and Pat would look in and nod. When some white men nodded, they meant they might need something from me at any moment, so I better be prepared. Pat nodded like he wanted to say, Good evening, Miss Alethea, it’s a fine night, and the stars are beginning to glow. Why don’t you come out and sit awhile with me?

  After a week or so of nods, Pat introduced himself to my back, as I stood at the sink, my arms elbow-deep in grease and water. I turned my face toward him and politely replied that I already knew his name. I addressed him as “Mr. Hearn,” and he shook his head, as if I’d given him the wrong answer to a question. I’d seen his cloudy eye by then, and it didn’t bother me one bit. His right eye was dark brown and lively, with lashes as long as my own, and I learned early on to look only at it. He agreed to be called “Mr. Patrick” that evening, but soon he was Pat to me. If Mrs. Haslam ever heard me calling a male boarder by his given name, I would have been let go faster than you could say “Pat.” That’s why I made sure to say his name soft, under my breath, like a secret or a prayer.

  Pat soon called me “Mattie,” which he said was short for “Mattie de Maysville.” He was fond of giving names to people and places, though they already had them. “The Virgin Mother Hen” was what he called Mrs. Haslam, though he knew that she was a widow and childless. She did have a way of moving her head up and down, like a well-fed yardbird pecking at grain, when she spoke. He called Miss Caroline “Miss Silk Purse,” which he said was short for “Miss Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear,” after I’d told him about her snowflake bundles. It was too good of a story to keep to myself. He wasn’t taken aback as I’d been. Miss Caroline was from Boston, he said, and her family had long been in the China trade, which explained the silk. The French lace he couldn’t explain.

  Pat’s thick glasses—he never wore them in public—were his “eye can’t see!” He pointed at his left eye and then slapped his knees when he told me that one.

  As for Mattie de Maysville, Pat said that de followed by the name of a place was how French noble people told the world where they were from. I stored that away to share with Charlotte. “You might know lace, but I know French,” I remember teasing her.

  Maysville, Kentucky, was where I’d gone first, after Freedom. If you weren’t young or old, you were on the move back then. Most of us were walking north, east, or west. Those who headed south were searching for kin.

  I was grown. I’d been helping Molly, Mr. Salee’s cook, for about five years. My hot water cornbread was almost as good as hers. My stack cake wasn’t, but that’s because she kept her back to me whenever she added the spices to the stewed dried-apple filling. Molly, as with most cooks, wasn’t always forthright. She showed me only what helped her, and the rest she kept to herself.

  But this is your home, Mr. Foley’s daughter had said to me when I told her that I was leaving. Then she warned me that if I changed my mind I wouldn’t be taken back in. I thought it over for about the length of a blue jay’s song, and I left. I traveled light because Mr. Foley’s daughter said that my clothes were still the property of Mr. Salee. The homespun skirt and blouse and the hand-me-down work boots that I had on that morning belonged to him too, but I could consider them as gifts, Mr. Fo
ley’s daughter said.

  Molly stayed. She said that she was too old to wander the roads and turnpikes of Kentucky, but she really wasn’t. At most, Molly was ten years older than I was. She would head back to the mountains and find her siblings, if she were to go anywhere, she figured. Before we parted, Molly gave me a knitted shawl the dark green of pine needles that I’d never seen her wear, and she said into my ear, “One small spoonful and two blades.” I knew right away what she meant. It was the amount of cinnamon and mace that she added to the stewed dried apples, when her back was turned to me. It was her way of wishing me good luck and Godspeed. I repeated it back to her—one small spoonful and two blades—to let her know that I’d heard her and to wish her the same.

  I soon met folks who knew where Maysville was, and I walked with them. We followed the banks of the Ohio River, heading eastward. We were still on the Kentucky side of it, but that mighty river, in their minds, had already become a shallow stream. Some of them opined that the Ohio no longer seemed so wide nor its currents so fast. They took turns challenging the river. We could cross you now! they were saying, each in their own way. I listened as they talked and laughed at that river.

  I told Pat that it was their laughter that made me feel free. I wasn’t sure that he took in the fullness of my meaning, but he blinked and blinked and that was a sign that he was trying.

  Mr. Anderson figures that I was ten or ten and one at the time, Miss.

  Pat said that Maysville was where I was born again as a free person. He said that I’d chosen Maysville, and the first place where you choose to live was where you are truly from. I asked him if his name was “Pat de Cincinnati.” He shook his head no.

  I didn’t have the cold heart to correct him. I didn’t choose Maysville. I returned to it. Tabb Plantation was nearby, and I went there to look for my mother. I didn’t find her. The old folks who were still there didn’t know of her whereabouts because I couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like. An old woman looked me over for a good long while and said, “Your face is your father’s.” I asked her what she knew about him, and she told me.