by Jim Grimsley
“Yes, sir,” Piggy sighed, “soon as I get me a shirt.”
“You’re getting to be big enough you can lay down in the mud with them.” Mr. Taylor shook the almanac and raised it in front of his face again.
“Hush, Daddy,” Piggy said.
THE SUN HAS given me a headache again, so I sit in the cool house to sip a cup of water. I am not one of those who will waste a slice of lemon on a glass of water; I drink mine plain from the tap. My children buy their water bottled from the grocery store but I fail to see the sense in that. My water comes from a well drilled in the backyard, same as when I was a girl, only now an electric pump raises it out of the ground and sends it cascading through my pipes and spigots.
I have a clean white kitchen, with wood cabinets for my china along one wall. I have a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer in the kitchen as well as an upright freezer in the utility room, visible from where I stand. From my garden I have frozen enough corn and peas to last through the winter, eating no more than I do. Pots and pans of every description line my shelves, and three sets of dishes, water glasses, tea glasses, juice glasses and even, tucked away at the back, a pair of wine glasses and a shot glass for whiskey. Food cools in the refrigerator, enough to last for weeks. My own little Saturn sits in the yard, in case I need to shop for more. In my closet are dresses, blouses, coats, shoes, skirts, pantsuits, nylons, a box of jewelry to which I occasionally add new necklaces, bracelets, or brooches. I bought a separate box for my rings. I have a dishwasher, a washer-dryer, a humidifier. Carefully placed furniture fills every room and carpet warms the floor wherever I want it. All these things belong to me. I have collected them through my whole life, helped by my second husband, Ray. My first husband, Bobjay, I forget whenever I can.
I go through the whole litany, sitting at the kitchen table sipping the water. The pounding in my head subsides.
BEFORE WE CHANGED clothes, June Frances showed me her treasures. She had a ring from the fair given her by her father, the gold band tarnished and flaking, but you could see how bright it used to be, the band, and the heart-shaped setting with its real diamond points, as June described them. “The purple stone is an amethyst,” she said, “but not a real one.” She had a locket of hair from her Grandmother Beatleburg, the best I could make the name out, tucked inside a tarnished locket that opened when she pressed a clasp at the top. The tiny bundle of hair was the same color as June’s, which was to say, it hardly had any color at all, it was the color of mud or dirt, a kind of dingy brown. The hair had a surprising weight when June let me hold it. She kept back the locket itself, which might be damaged. I soon surrendered the hair, tied with its bit of blue ribbon. She hid the locket carefully under the rest of her treasures, the seashell from Morehead City, the rock from Cherokee in the mountains, the fool’s gold from Asheboro, the clay doll from Williamsburg. “We never went to Williamsburg,” June sighed. “My cousin sent me that. It is in Virginia.”
June spoke exactly and precisely, and I imitated her. “Did you go to all these other places?”
“Well,” she considered, “not exactly, but my parents went to Morehead City and Piggy went to Cherokee on a church trip.” The fool’s gold had been given to her father by his brother Alvin, a tramp and a bum, according to June’s mother, a man who showed up now and then with his pockets full of useless junk, to beg another handout, to eat all the food in the house and take up space sleeping on the couch.
“That must be worth something, if it’s gold.”
She shook her head, pursing her lips together. “It’s not worth a thing. That’s why they gave it to me.”
Her bedroom had plain white walls, plaster with cracks running all through it and raw wire where the electricity had been added through the house. Someone had painted the wires once but the paint had flaked in places. The ceiling had shadowed from smoke, but the room was clean, the floors had been swept, the mess shoved as far into June’s room as it would go.
From the open door drifted the sound of Frog Taylor at the bottom of the steps. “You girls get down here and help me. I’m tired after all that sitting around in church.”
I giggled and June gave me a rolling-eyed look. “She is so corny.”
I zipped up my borrowed overalls, which fit pretty good except for the thick roll of extra length around my ankles. June packed her treasures carefully into their secret hiding places, and changed clothes herself, taking her own sweet time, I thought. But I feared to go downstairs without her, so I waited.
“June Frances, I’m not going to call you down here again.”
“We’re coming, Mama,” June singsonged at the doorway. Sighing, she slumped to the bed and pulled socks over her bare feet. She went downstairs like that, in her socks, but I went barefoot, as usual.
WHEN I AM in the kitchen in the morning, sliding the milk out of the refrigerator, taking it by the handle, thinking about the weight, who am I doing this for? I must be doing this for somebody, I cannot possibly be lifting this milk out of the refrigerator for myself. Because I have been serving people out of one kitchen or another all my life, I stop and think. Because I am alone now. I am the one who wanted milk, though later it will upset my stomach, like beans do. I want the soothing silky taste, but not poured into a glass and drunk, no. Poured into a white cup with a smooth handle. The white milk in the white cup. I lift it to my lips.
I am barefoot, but now it is because I like to be, and sometimes I wear only socks, scrubbing the sock bottoms happily across the linoleum, and sometimes I wear socks and slippers, and sometimes I wear slippers but no socks. Freedom is a great thing, and consists of a thousand insignificant details.
All night I have been remembering. The memories have torn loose and float free in my head. I am entering Frog Taylor’s kitchen. June Frances stomps down the stairs behind me, deliberately making the biggest noise possible. A cloud of good smells surround me and my flip-flop stomach. Mrs. Frog is standing with a wooden spoon dipped into some delicious-looking gravy and she offers me a lick. June pushes me forward toward it, landing in the room with her own peculiar heavy bang.
“June Frances, what have I told you?”
“Not to jump in the kitchen because I might break something.”
“And what else?”
“To be like a lady and not make so much noise when I come down the steps.”
“I wish you could do those two things for me.” She spoke in a listless way, and heaved her chest a bit with the languor of her breath. She moved her arms in the same weighted way, from breadboard to sink, carrying a bowl of raw turnip greens. “It would make your daddy and me the most happiest people in the world.”
“There is no such word as ‘most happiest,’” June sniffed.
“Be that as it may,” Frog said, and turned to the sink again. “June, you need to dice those potatoes. It took you so long to change clothes, I had plenty time to finish peeling them. And Ellen, sweetheart, I wish you would take the tops off those strawberries, all right? Us women always have to work.”
A bowl of strawberries sat by the pump. Red and ripe, they gave off scent even before I pinched out the tops. I could smell them halfway across the room. I washed my hands carefully and set to work. The smell rose to cloud my head; I had never inhaled any odor as tempting as that. The only time I could remember eating strawberries was on a cake at Nana Rose’s funeral.
“When you get the tops off, you should wash them under the pump and then slice them in half.” This was not Frog, but June herself, who had suddenly become bossy. “I like my strawberries sliced in half like that.”
“Well,” considered Frog, “Ellen can wash them. Then we’ll see.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ellen might not like her strawberries sliced like that,” Frog reminded somebody, but it was hard to tell who.
“These come out of our strawberry patch,” June informed me. “I picked them.”
“June, honey, you need to be working and not talking. Your daddy and you
r brother are hungry.”
“Then they can come in here and cut up these potatoes.”
“You watch your mouth, young lady, before I knock a knot on you.” But the threat was voiced aimlessly as Frog stirred the gravy.
“I do not see why we have to wait on them all the time,” speaking in that clipped way again, as if she were reciting a line from a radio show.
“Hush, June. I bet Ellen has to help with the cooking at her house too, don’t you, honey?”
“Yes, ma’am. My daddy and my brothers, they don’t hardly do anything.” I blushed, conscious that I might have said too much. The ends of my fingers stuck together with red from the strawberry tops. I held them to my nose and took a deep breath.
“Do you complain about it all the time to your mama, like my June Frances does to me?”
“No,” I said, though it was not really true; in my head I did complain, all the time. But I would never have said anything, or else Mama would have knocked me with the firewood again.
The dinner was ready, and the men came in, and suddenly the kitchen seemed crowded and small, with Piggy’s rounded shoulders hunched forward over the table and Mr. Albert’s bony elbows and big hands and feet tucked into as small a package as he could make. Everybody passed everything politely, and I listened to them all and asked for things like they did. June, for instance, said, “Please for some biscuit,” to her mama, and her mama passed her the plate, and June reached for one. Or she said, “Please for some sweet tea,” or, “Please for some more gravy.” So I did the same, though I was shy to speak the first time and missed the squash when it came by.
“Ellen needs to try some of this squash.” Frog had been watching and lifted the bowl over my plate, allowing me to dish out as much as I wanted.
We ate. I had never eaten so much in my life, so many bowls of steaming food, the roast pork so tender it melted beneath the smooth gravy, the potatoes carefully mashed, mustard greens cooked with bits of ham and flavored with pepper vinegar on my plate, fresh biscuits fluffy and smooth, squash fried with onions. We ate from blue willow plates and drank from tea glasses into which ice had been chipped to keep our drinks cool. I shoveled food into my mouth like someone drunk and giddy, tasting everything. Only now and then, watching the others, I got cautious, afraid I was making a fool of myself.
“This girl can eat,” Mr. Albert said.
“You want some more potatoes, honey? And have you more of this gravy. It’s not even worth saving, as little as it is.”
“Please for some,” I replied, holding my plate.
When dinner ended, my belly was smooth and round as a stone.
I KNOW THE Taylors pitied me during that meal. I believe, looking back, that I knew it even then. I could feel their pity like moistness in the air. This sympathy made itself evident in the words Mr. and Mrs. Taylor said, half-joking, before and after we ate. Lordy, would you look at this child put away the food. I have never seen a girl eat so much. Are you sure you aren’t a little boy? She’s so skinny you could poke a thread right through her. They must not feed her at home. We need to keep her on the farm where we can fatten her up.
“Does your mama cook good food like my mama does?” June asked.
“Me and Nora cook, mostly,” I answered. “Mama don’t like to.”
“You must be two good girls to do all that work for your mama,” Frog pointed out.
“You’re probably lucky Velma Louise stays out of the kitchen, is what I figure,” said Mr. Albert.
“Hush that,” Frog said.
I had never heard anybody use my mama’s name like that, so casually, right out loud, as if there were nothing special about her at all. This was not like when Daddy said her name, even when he was angry; when Mr. Albert said, “Velma Louise,” it was as if my mama were not there, but instead some stranger had taken her place, someone Mr. Albert could recognize but I could not.
“My mama cooks real good,” I said in a small, shy voice.
They were spooning strawberries into their mouths but stopped. “Well, honey,” said Frog, “I’m sure she does.”
“She just don’t like to.”
The words trailed off into nothing.
MEMORIES OF MY mother drift in and out, mingling with images of June Frances, of her family, of my visits to her house, both that very first Sunday and all the times later. Mama drifts across the bare gray planks of our kitchen, dressed in a loose, faded housedress; but it is as if this happens again now, in my kitchen. She has pinned back her hair and rolled the sleeves of the dress onto her shoulders, exposing dimpled flesh. She is wearing no underwear, I can tell by the sag of her breasts and the way the back of the dress outlines her buttocks. She is angry with me, the expression on her face sullen as a boy’s. “You spend too goddamn much time with them Taylorses,” she mutters. “You need to stay home and help your mama like you ought to.”
“I can do my chores before I go. I made the beds and I ironed the sheets and the pillowcases and I got the beans to soaking.”
“You don’t care about your mama half as much as you care about them Taylorses.” She looks at me directly, her eyes large and mournful. “I know you don’t. It’s because you think they’re better than we are.”
“Mama, don’t be like that.”
“I know how you are. You set up there with that Frog Taylor, and you talk about me.” She stands facing me with her hands open and slack. One of her front teeth has begun to darken and the others are stained with snuff juice. She reaches for the can to spit. “I know you’re ashamed of me.”
A big hurt has begun to grow inside me, at the bottom of my stomach, a knot drawn tighter and tighter. I whisper, “I never said that.”
“You think nobody don’t know what’s in that head of yours, but I know. You think your mama is common and you’d rather have somebody like Frog Taylor for your mama, Frog Taylor with her big fat ass, that’s what you want. As much as I love you, you treat me like this. Go on. Go on over there. I can’t stop you.”
“Mama, please don’t be like this.”
“Go on over there, I said.” Tears are growing in her eyes. Her mouth trembles. The hurt in me gets bigger, catches fire. I ache all through.
So I stay, the one time. But mostly I do not stay.
Aching memories of my mother begin in those days, when I betray her in my thoughts. I feel the ache as bitterly now as I ever felt it then, when I began to stand in judgment of her. I see her in her thin dress, pinching snuff into her mouth, and I think: I will not live like this. She reaches for a pot to cook in, and I know the pot was not cleaned well, but my mother does not know or care. I sweep the floor carefully in the kitchen, and my mother drops biscuit crumbs onto the clean part of the floor and hardly pauses to notice. The feeling remains as vivid now, in the present, as if it had happened this morning.
JUNE FRANCES TOOK me to the little cemetery where graves were stuffed inside a broken wall. We glimpsed older graves we could not reach. I asked if her family was buried here and she said no, these graves had been abandoned when the land was part of somebody’s plantation and then split up and sold. Negro and white graves were all mixed here, because the family buried the slaves right next to the family; and though I was already old enough to doubt this tale, seeing how few white people want black people anywhere near them, I nodded and allowed her to continue.
We had paused near the vault of a grave that had been shoved up out of the ground by tree roots, clearly visible all around the rectangle of brick. June gestured to the bricks and said, “Here is another example of the restless dead.”
Alma Laura had joined us and was sitting on the top of the grave; given what June Frances had just said, I thought maybe she could see Alma Laura too and that was what she was talking about. “She’s always around,” I explained. “She never did die, really.”
June looked at me like I had gone daft. “This is a man’s grave,” she explained with her patient voice. “Honor Jeb Leigh. See?” She nearly stuck her h
and through Alma Laura to point at the letters on the tilted tombstone. “He was so restless in his grave he shoved it right out of the ground. This is evidence that he was perhaps buried alive.”
I blinked and looked at Alma Laura, who gave me the signal to be quiet. Since June was not the type to accept contradiction, especially when she was telling lies so big and bold, I followed Alma Laura’s advice. Though I knew from Alma Laura that, no matter how restless she was, she would never have made such a mess of her own grave.
“He killed a nigra slave with his own hands. He found the slave with a white girl.”
“Doing what?” I asked, though I had my suspicions.
“Doing what a nigra ought never to do with a white girl,” June shook her head sadly. “Then the farmer’s wife planted a tree over the grave, and when the tree grew tall enough to shade the grave, the wife died.”
“We lived in a nigger shack, in Holberta, one time.”
“It is not the same thing,” she explained, maybe a bit put out that her dramatic story had failed to scare me more. “And you should not say nigger, you should say nigra. It is not polite to say nigger unless you are talking about the very worst kind of nigger.”
By the time she explained this to me, that same day of my first visit, we had left the graveyard where Alma Laura was sitting, and walked toward the barn to meet the milk cow.
“I have to visit Esther every day,” June explained, “or else she gives only half as much milk the next day. Even Papa says so.” She called her daddy “Papa,” because it was more refined, though she explained this to me much later.
I UNDERSTOOD EXACTLY what she meant about the word to call colored people, and afterward, never used the word “nigger” again, speaking only of “nigras,” until my daughter taught me to call them “blacks,” or “Blacks,” as, for instance, “Now we will have to go to school with all the Blacks.” I made these changes in order to be considered a better quality of person than my own family, which has continued to call black people niggers to this day.