I am rising from my morning nap when I hear the knock.
I figure it is Theron, the farmhand. Isaiah used to work the land for Mr. Dennis like the others. We lived in a cabin down the row, and every month we received our share minus debt payments. Then Mr. Dennis took to drinking, and with the drinking came the gambling, and in a desperate month he offered all the sharecroppers two acres for $50. My husband had lucked on a turning plow a few years earlier and was yielding more crops than he owed. I’d ride to market to sell them for him, and as a result, he was the only one who had the money. That two acres stretched to four, then ten, then fifteen, and after five years, Mr. Dennis was in the ground and my Isaiah was on top of it. Now since Isaiah’s death, Theron tends. He comes by if some of the corn stalks produce small ears, or the greens have wilted, but I look through the tiny circle drilled into the door and it is not him. No, it’s just that white woman from yesterday, Sarah or Scarlett, I’m not sure I care which.
“Good day. Can I help you?” I open the door an inch and peer through a crack.
“Yes, ma’am, I just came to offer you a jar of jam. I made it last week. I’m trying to have a baby you see, and my mama wrote me and said the more I act like a mother the more God will get the picture, so I’m pruning and canning and ironing and washing as if I got a house full of kids, and it ain’t but me and my husband, so it all just goes to waste.” She pauses then, and for the first time looks up in my eyes. Hers are big as dresser knobs, blue too. I know some people find them beautiful. Still she carries an odor, seems intended, like she sprayed rose water between her legs but the flowers had died, and I step back.
“I saw your little boy with you the other day is the thing. Seems like maybe he might be interested.”
I laugh, not just laugh but holler. People stand in line for my jam; they compete over who can bring me the most berries come their respective season; they find me the largest jars so I can carry out their orders first; when I’m done, they open the jar at my table, long before they reach home because they’ve been dreaming about the way the sweet melds into the tart, the way the juice creams; they poke fingers into the fruit because they can’t wait until the bread is sliced; they don’t just spread it on bread, they spoon it into beans and rice or potato salad because they can’t leave a good thing alone. So I lean my head back and let my body shake, let my tongue flick out and my jaws collapse on themselves.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
I shrug. Let her wonder.
“I was just being neighborly.” She seems embarrassed now and maybe I feel a little guilty. Not any more than a touch.
“Why don’t you come on in?” I say.
She seems to sigh and stays by the door.
“Suit yourself,” I say, and let the door swing back on its hinges, but she catches it and steps inside.
“It’s so clean in here.” She follows close behind me like she might get lost if she’s off a step.
“Yeah, that’s how I keep it,” I say.
“And it smells so good. Smells like you were baking bread.”
“Always got some on.”
“That’ll go nice with this.” She pats the jar in her arms, and I roll my eyes.
“Care for some coffee?”
“Tea would be better.”
I fix her a cup and we sit. “So you and your husband aiming to be in the family way,” I say more than ask.
She nods. She doesn’t seem like too much more than a child herself, stringy hair, gap in her teeth, scrawny like she doesn’t get enough cow’s milk. I have five cows out back, and we eat cream in our eggs every morning. If she was one of mine, I’d get up and scramble her some.
“I had three children, two girls, one boy. Only one of them is with me now. Trust me, the more girls you have, the better. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, my own mama came to me in a dream, said, this girl inside you is going to be your friend. And that’s how it was. Three years old, giving me advice about her father. I’ll never forget that, told me I needed to communicate how I was feeling, otherwise he wouldn’t know. It was simple, simple as a child, but it changed things for me, let me tell you that.” I look up. I have no idea why I’ve been rambling so.
“Where is she now?” she asks.
“Who?”
“Your oldest daughter.”
“Oh, she followed her husband up north. He had people up there and big dreams. He was always a dreamer. If they were catching fish, he wanted the trout; if they were riding in a carriage, he was fiending for baling wire to repair the Model T Ford. I was there when he was born, see, one of the other sharecropper’s sons. They’ve been sweet on each other since they were at the breast. What could I tell her? Stay here? I miss her every day, but I’m glad she didn’t settle.”
She pushes the jar of jam over to me. “Try some,” she says. She is so proud I twist open the top. I move to slide my bread out of the oven, carry it over, slice it where the steam still rises, pass her some, watch her spread her concoction across the cooked dough. I don’t need to taste it to know her contribution is subpar, loose where it should be tight, spare where it should burst forth.
She gasps from her first bite. “This bread, it’s divine, it’s heavenly. I barely taste the jam with the bread like this against it.”
Well, she said it. I eat around the dark red mass. That bread is good, some of my best, and I ooh and aah over the creation, vague enough so she doesn’t know what I am complimenting, and she doesn’t see that I throw the majority of her goo out to the pigs. She doesn’t leave a crumb on her plate.
I peel back the white curtain shielding my kitchen window and peek through it, see Major leading Aristide Taylor toward the door. Major has started dressing fancier since he met Eliza. Though he runs the fields, today he is wearing a hat, vest, jacket, and trousers held up by suspenders. Aristide used to sharecrop too, but he owns the farm west of ours now. Just a little plot of land, but it’s something. I don’t know why they’re coming, but Carla, or whatever, would have to leave. I move toward the door.
“Thank you so kindly for the jam,” I say.
“It was my pleasure.” She is still sitting though. “Jam always tastes better when you can share it,” she says. “I reckon all food is like that. I was intending to make some biscuits tomorrow. Maybe I can come by and share a dozen. If they come out right, that is. I ain’t never made them alone; normally my mama is right there standing over me, so they could forget to rise in the oven for all I know.”
“Sure,” I say just to shut her up. “That’d be real nice.”
“It’s a date then.” She stands, and crumbs fall off her skirt and hit the floor. “I’m so sorry.” She kneels down to pick them up.
“Don’t worry about it.” I almost grab her hand, and on second thought just gesture toward it, then toward the door, hoping she’ll connect the two motions and see her way out.
When I open up, the men walk straight in. Their shoulders are touching, but they are steady arguing.
The white woman looks from me to them several times but she still won’t budge.
“This is my son, Major, and Aristide Taylor,” I tell her because I still can’t be sure what her name is.
“Charlotte,” she says, holding her hand out.
“She lives next door. She was just leaving.” She is barely over the threshold when I close the door. I turn to offer the men lemonade, but they don’t even hear me.
“You know I respect your daddy, but that cotton you aiming to sell is picked right off my property,” Aristide is in the middle of shouting. He’s a big man and when he talks he settles his hands on the tip of his belly.
“Now, we been over this before, Aristide,” Major interrupts him.
“I know what happened last time and I’m mighty sorry, but you better check again. This time I’m certain.”
Soon as I hear the fuss is about land, I move for the deed. Disputes like this come up from time to time, and Isaiah taught me it’s better
to let the paper do the talking. I skim it before I bring it in. Major is looking at me while I walk, and before I can tell him what it says, he snatches it from me.
I can see the gist of it from his face, which falls. He is embarrassed to be wrong, embarrassed because his father never was.
“All right, you right. I reckon some of it’s on yours,” he says.
“I told you I was right, boy.” This from Aristide.
“Well, all right, I’ll give you half my earnings from it, then.”
“Don’t want half your earnings, I want the crop itself.”
“Hell no, you ain’t getting no crop.”
“Watch your mouth, Major,” I say.
“Half the earnings and that’s that,” he repeats.
Aristide pauses. “Your daddy never woulda done it that way,” he says. That is the worst thing anybody could have told Major, and wrong as I think my son is, I wish Aristide hadn’t said it.
Major has been knocked off his footing now and it takes him a while to gather his thoughts again.
“It’s getting late, Aristide. Why don’t we just talk about this later?” I walk him toward the door.
“That’s fine, Josephine, but I’m telling you, you know I love you, loved your husband, but that boy of yours ain’t right about that cotton.”
“I hear you, Aristide,” I say, “but let’s talk about it tomorrow,” and he repeats himself two more times before I can shut the door.
I turn back to Major. He is at the table now, sitting with his head in his hands.
“You think I’m wrong, Mama? You can say it if you do.”
I sit across from him. “It’s a complicated issue, son. Your daddy always followed his instinct. He said it was the same as following his heart, and his heart always told him to treat black people better than he would have wanted to be treated. There was the golden rule and there was Isaiah’s rule, remember that?”
Major laughs. “Yeah, I remember.” His face hardens fast. “The thing is, Aristide don’t respect me, none of them do, and if I don’t put my foot down now, they never will.”
I don’t say a word. Major has always been the most literal child. I’d have to give him reams of instructions for a simple task. To my daughters I could say, go get ready for the day, and they’d know to wash their face, brush their teeth, pull on their skirts, make up their beds, but I’d spell out every step for Major: walk to the bedroom, open the dresser, dig through for a shirt. Another thing is, he’s easily influenced. I called him Major to protect him. A white man referencing him would have to extend him respect, whether he meant to or not, just by virtue of saying his name. Still I had so much trouble with him when he was younger because he’d let boys with no hair on their chest explain to him how to be a man. It was hard enough before his father died, but then with Isaiah gone my job doubled. I’d forget about my grief most nights, I’d go to bed with worry skating across my heart, worry over Major. Even now, if it was one of my daughters, namely my oldest, all I’d have to say is Don’t confuse weakness with strength. You want somebody to do something for you, you bend over backwards to do it for them. That is how it goes with respect. But Major wouldn’t understand that, so I just rub his back and it heaves under my palm. He is not crying the way he would when he was a young boy, but this is the closest he can get to it.
He stays for dinner that night. Jericho and Theron come over and I suggest a game of cards to get our mind off Aristide and his cotton. When we’re halfway through one round, the ribbing starts.
“I’m thinking about going to see my brother down south next month,” I say to Major.
“You ain’t got no brother, Josephine, stop all that cheating now,” Theron snaps back.
“No, no, I’m not cheating, brother. I just want to say that my brother got a bad heart, real bad heart, and I’m gon’ see about him.”
“I done said that’s enough of that,” Theron says, but he is grinning. He is a slight man and even his smiles seem to come out in a whisper.
He bids a five, calling spades, and I raise my eyebrows. My own hand wouldn’t have warranted it.
Major and I bid a three and four and Theron leads off with a spade.
“All that mess you was talking in the beginning about your brother.” Theron pokes a finger in his hunk of coconut cake and swivels off a piece of icing, jabs it in his mouth.
“Oh, please, I wouldn’t have had to say a word. We been whippin’ y’all behinds since we started partnering up. Just last week we ran a Boston.”
“On who?”
Jericho adds a spade, then Major.
“We ran one.”
Then I play an ace and it’s my hand.
“You ain’t ran one on us. We what and what now.”
I lead out with an ace in trump and Major is right behind me with a joker.
I call a diamond then, knowing Theron doesn’t have a single one. He tries to tell Jericho by throwing out a ten of clubs but Jericho is just learning; he keeps on with the diamonds and Theron lays down his final high club.
Major goes before me this time with an ace of diamonds, and winks at me.
I lay the joker down and Theron rises to his feet hot. “You cheating with him,” he starts. “You cheating with him.”
And the whole while we are shouting we are laughing. It is like old times I tell you, and the men are drinking whiskey and half the cake is gone, and I intend for it all to be eaten tonight. I start to deal again, but before I can get my hand steady, Major says he has to get back.
“Eliza waiting on me is the thing. I got to get back, see about her.” He stands. I watch Jericho lick his fork clean, then cut another sliver straight from the platter, haul back a glass of milk. I expect him to head back to my room now to get changed for the night but he walks to the front door behind his daddy.
I don’t have the sense to hide my hurt.
“You leaving?” I ask like a woman half my age. “Okay, no problem,” I say. “No problem,” I repeat. I walk to the door and see them off, waving all the while. I take my time with the dishes. There isn’t anything on the other side of the chore waiting for me. I had made a plate for Eliza. Heaping piles of potatoes and okra and I am regretting it now. Some people get so much.
THE NEXT DAY THE WHITE WOMAN IS BACK. I KNOW IT is her because of the timid way she knocks like maybe she is at the wrong house after all. She has caught me again right after my nap and my hair is everywhere so I tie on a scarf before I hurry to the door.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask, holding the door to my body like there’s something I don’t want her to see.
“You remember our date?” she asks me.
“Date?” I ask.
She laughs, a little giggle, and there is something about that silly spurt of a sound that makes me want to pull my shoulders back.
“I guess that’s not the right word, but I was just being funny. You remember yesterday? I told you I’d bring the biscuits by if they came out all right? And they came out fine. Nothing like your bread of course, but better than my mama’s. She never was such a good cook to say she did it so often. Whenever I think about her she’s standing in front of a stove. Ain’t that sad? Every memory I have of my mama finds her with her back to me, hunched over. I think that’s sad,” she says when I don’t answer.
She moves while she talks. She can’t stay still, can’t stay silent neither. It’s not that she says anything strange, just too much, like she doesn’t know the ways of the world.
“She was taking care of you all,” I say. The door shifts back a little.
“I’m just going on and on,” she says, “and I haven’t even offered you a taste. Would you like to try them?”
“Sure.” I let my grip on the door loosen, just enough for her to slide in. I don’t want her there, and I do. It was nice to have company yesterday, but I am not stupid. I know who she is, who I am in comparison.
She sits down and I pull out the plates, just like the other day. Just like the
other day, I dread having to taste her food.
“Seemed like there was a disagreement yesterday. Did you sort it out?”
“It will get sorted.”
“Land issue, huh? It’s amazing to me how riled up people get about it. It’s not a living thing, it’s not breathing, but people give it all this power.”
I shrug. Receiving it sure seemed powerful to us.
“You find it hard not going somewhere, doing something, day after day?” she goes on. “If I had a child, there would be something occupying me. But as it is, I just float around from one empty corner of the room to the next. Sometimes when my husband leaves, I want to jump into his coat pocket, beg him to take me with him.”
If she had hit me with that ten years ago, even five, the words would have been incomprehensible to me, white people jibber jabber. I might have nodded and smiled thinking, Bless her heart. And I’m not saying I respect it today. But I empathize. Old age has been the biggest shock of my life. I don’t have any models for how to live it out right. My own mama taught me how to clean between my legs, to fry fish in a lean fire.
But nobody taught me how to sit down.
I slice a biscuit for her, then me, half because I don’t eat white people’s food. Never had the occasion to and don’t intend to start now, but manners are manners and right is right. I have to admit the biscuits are a sandy brown, and wispy on the inside. I pick a bite off and place it on my tongue. A grunt of surprise catches in my throat.
“You say you used your mama’s recipe for this?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she nods. “Did it turn out all right? Sometimes I forget the little things, vanilla, or once I mistook salt for sugar, didn’t catch the mistake until the first bite.” She giggles again. “What did I miss here?”
The Revisioners Page 7