We Are Taking Only What We Need

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  I grabbed one of the chicken legs, some corn, as many of the green beans as I could stomach. I couldn’t let Mark and Shelia cut their eyes to my full plate, both thinking that the mystery of the big ass was finally solved.

  An African woman and her little girl were on the other side of the bar. They were in American clothes, but you can spot an African anywhere. They always look peaceful, like they know what’s going on more than you do. The woman’s little girl had a head full of fake hair braided into about a dozen shoulder length plaits; each one had either a small green or red bow.

  “Don’t stick your fingers in the corn,” she said, but when she pronounced it, it sounded like cairn. The little girl looked up quickly at me, embarrassed that I saw her, and put both hands behind her back. I grinned at her. This slop should tempt somebody.

  The African woman loaded her plate with food, going through the bar like somebody was going to tell her to stop at any minute and she had to get all she wanted or go home. The woman dipped a slotted spoon into the pinto beans, carefully stacking them to the side of her plate beside a mound of yellow cabbage, like the final piece of her sculpture. She must not eat like this all the time. Her body was lean, skinny even, and flat as a twelve-year-old boy’s. Her dark brown skin was as clear and smooth as cowhide. I bet she was beautiful back where she was from. I wonder if she’s surprised that even the black people here don’t get it.

  This girl I work with whose sister-in-law was from somewhere in Africa said the mothers over there have to keep their babies in long-legged cribs, each foot of the furniture in a plate of gas. I thought it was some kind of voodoo thing, but she said they had to keep the fire ants away from the babies. I wanted to ask the woman if she had to keep her little girl in one of those cribs, but she wouldn’t look over the food bins to me. Besides, sometimes Africans are touchy.

  I got back to the table last and had to sit at the end of the booth beside Daddy. The rest of them had plates like the African woman’s, plates that looked like they’d needed help carrying.

  “Boring as hell,” Greg said. “That’s the worst part of it. It was all right. Can make a man out of you, though. Quick.” Greg was talking like he’d done some real time and not just laid up in the jail for just under two weeks. Still, he was the only one of us to ever spend any time in lock up at all. I wanted to ask him questions, just the things you wonder, showers and eating, what it feels like to hear the doors close and lock, but I couldn’t ask about any of that. I was proud not to know.

  “There was this guy in there, crazy,” Greg whistled. “He should have been in a hospital or something, but they didn’t give a damn.”

  “I believe that’s Donna Perkins’ boy,” Daddy said.

  “No, it wasn’t Dougie. I know Dougie. If you talk to him a little bit, you can settle Dougie down. No, this was a little guy, a kid, too. A screamer,” Greg laughed. “It’s not funny. I’m not laughing at him. But just as soon as the lights went, he’d get started. You’d have thought somebody was killing him.” Greg ate a few bites of his mashed potatoes, his eyes on the plate. Nobody knew what to say. “Carl Banner’s back in,” Greg said between bites.

  At least three years ago, Shelia spent some time with dumb-as-a-rock Carl Banner. Until he started running with this white girl Greg knew from high school. When Shelia found out, she flopped around the house for days, all her junk and stank covers in a ball on the couch. I don’t think she turned the television off for a week. Greg stopped chewing and stared at Shelia. You could tell he was worried that he hurt her feelings. But Shelia didn’t suck in her breath, or let her eyes well up or anything, but kept on eating her pork and gravy.

  Nobody cared what I thought. I might as well have been a piece of furniture, a cheap restaurant chair or one of these plastic checkered tablecloths these Sizzler people ought to be ashamed of (next thing they’ll be making us wear bibs). Like my Daddy’s friend Hubey always says when he’s talking about lost causes, “I got mad yesterday and didn’t nobody care.” Nobody did. I took apart the chicken leg with my fork and chewed tiny bites to make it last. I couldn’t let them see me run out of food and just be sitting there with nothing to do or say.

  “Look here,” Mark said. “Come by the house tonight, and I’ll make you a tape.”

  Mark was all the time talking about his house, which wasn’t a house at all but a double-wide trailer at the top of the hill. Mark wasted hours making improvements to it. You would have thought he lived in a castle the way he talked. You would have thought that rusty old mess was all he ever wanted. Serena, Mark’s longtime girlfriend, was just as bad. She decorated every open inch of the place with ruffles and white baby dolls. In my more generous moments, I had to admit it did look sweet.

  “Serena won’t be at work tonight. She’d like to see you.”

  “I can do that,” Greg grinned.

  You can’t take back worry. You can’t. But if you could, I would have sucked up every second I spent thinking about Greg in that cell. Every second I wondered if he was all right. I would have taken my visit back. That wasn’t nothing. Jail is a scary place for decent people. Even the Randolph County jail, and it’s new. Gray walls, gray floors, gray everything. You walk in the door to the visitor’s area, and you feel like you’re on the way to lockup yourself. At the end of the hall is a shoebox-sized opening in a bulletproof cubby big enough for one person to sit in. I had six pairs of underwear to give to Greg, Right Guard deodorant, a razor, some candy in a big bag, Oreos, undershirts from the Family Thrift, and socks. I knew he wouldn’t read, not even a magazine, so I didn’t bother. I thought for a long minute about bringing the Bible, but Greg wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t either, at least I didn’t think I would, but I didn’t want to be responsible for him turning into a Holy Roller, or worse, a Black Muslim.

  “I’m here to see Greg Perkins, please. I’ve got some stuff for him.” I tried to sound cultured like I didn’t come to these places on a regular basis, like I was a notch above the whole thing. I could only see the woman’s eyes and the fluff of her hair resting on her brown forehead. The sign clearly says that you can give inmates only three pairs of underwear, no socks, no treats, but sometimes, my Uncle Jerry claimed, if you caught the right woman on the right day, she would take pity on you and make sure that your loved one got some of the things you left. Sharon Alexander was on tonight. She knew me, at least she knew Daddy. She might let the extra underwear slide.

  “Honey, you can’t leave nothing but the BVDs. Didn’t your daddy tell you that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he did, but I thought since I wouldn’t be back in town until the weekend, I could leave them.” I didn’t tell Miss Sharon that I just lived twenty minutes away in Harmony. She probably guessed anyway. She’s probably heard every lie, every half-truth and weak-assed story there is.

  I could see Sharon’s eyebrow arch up, but I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or irritated. Could go either way.

  “Put the deodorant and things under the socks, the underwear on top. I might have to have those Oreos for myself.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sharon,” I said. I meant it. Greg can get deodorant and those things from vending machines—expensive toothpaste—but how nice of Sharon not to make us, at least not entirely. Who would have thought I’d need a friend in such a lowdown place?

  “How’s your daddy?”

  “He’s fine. The same as usual, I guess.”

  “You tell him Sharon Alexander said hey.”

  “I will, ma’am,” I said, though I was sure I would forget until the unhappy time I saw Sharon at this jail again.

  “You want me to tell them to bring him on up?” Sharon asked.

  I’d meant to come just too late for visiting hours. I had already planned to tell anybody who asked that I’d tried but came at the wrong time. Just missed him, I’d say and twist my lips into a sad shape. “Yes, ma’am, if you could.”

  “It’s Greg, right.”

  “Greg James Perkins.”

 
Sharon buzzed open the door to the visitors’ area. Two women, by their looks sisters, were already sitting in the visitors’ chairs. Both women had blonde hair dyed the color of straw, their fatty arms dimpled and exposed in tank tops. The woman closest to me looked up and smiled, like we are in it together. I looked away.

  The room was small, nothing like the prison rooms you see on television. Of course, this was just a little county jail, used to drunks and beaters. The big-ticket criminals don’t hang around with these babies but grow up to the hard-core places as fast as they can move them. There were four booths, separated by a thick plastic shield. Each one of them was hardly bigger than a phone booth, with a chair on the visitor’s side and one on the prisoner’s side. The big plastic windows made me think we were all here to see newborn babies. I wished it was so. This room might be the most depressing place I’ve ever been in, except for the nights I spent on the reclining chair in the hospital with Mama Lou listening to her moan I’m so sorry in her sleep. We don’t have long to wait before the door opens into the little room.

  “Donny,” one of the sisters said, excited to see the scraggly man come in. “You lost weight.”

  “I coulda told you that. I eat out of the vending machine. I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Well, you ought to at least try to eat what they’ve got. You can’t live off of Snickers and popcorn,” the other sister said, but in her tone is play, like they are used to having this conversation, plastic shield between them or not.

  “Did you tell J.B. to fertilize my yard? If you don’t tell him in the next few days, won’t be no need,” Danny said, his face predicting the answer from his sisters.

  “You’re gonna stop telling me that. I told J.B. thirty times, I can’t help if he does it or not.”

  “If I get out of here and see a patchy yard, you and you,” Danny looked from one sister to the other, “both of ya’ll will be planting sod, you hear?”

  Both women laughed at the man who looked like their brother. His pointed finger no threat.

  “Hey, Dee,” Greg said as he entered the room. He sounded fine but looked scared. I know enough about him to see the stiff way he carried his body and know. His hair wasn’t combed, wasn’t the glistening waves he loved to slick back like a fifties singer, but high and dirty, the curl picked out and straight up in the air. I might could have held it together if he’d been allowed anything to wear but that orange jumpsuit. That and the nasty hair broke up something hard and steady in me.

  “Hey, Greg. You okay?” I said, but I’m not sure if I say it out loud.

  “Is Daddy getting me out?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a lot of money.”

  Greg laughed, “I did it this time, didn’t I?”

  “Are you eating anything? Do you have enough to eat?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Is the food all right?”

  “Is anybody with you Dee?”

  “I left some underwear and things like that.”

  “Dee, listen,” Greg leaned close to the plastic partition, his eyes yellow with sleep, a panic in the set of his eyebrows. “Is anybody coming?”

  A LONG TIME AGO, before Mark showed up at the house when it was just me, Shelia, and Greg, our mother came back to us. We got off the bus at the top of the road, walked in the kitchen, and there she was. It had been a year or more since we’d seen her last, but you wouldn’t know it.

  “My babies,” Mama said, drawing us to her with her arms. Greg was the first one to wrap himself to her chest, but we all followed. Daddy was there too, his work clothes still on, standing in the hallway watching Mama like she was something good to eat.

  The next morning, none of us knew what to expect, and it felt like Christmas except in reverse since all of us were ready to be robbed of the best thing we had. But there she was, watching television in the living room, her bare toes hidden between the cushions of scratchy couch.

  “Are we going to school?” I said.

  “Don’t you always go to school?” Mama laughed. I was about to cry until she motioned me to her, held my face in her two hands, and I forgot to be ashamed. “You tell me what you want for dinner.”

  At four o’clock we ran from off the bus, the driver yelling slow down out the bus window. Dinner was on the table, dry pork chops and canned corn, brown-and-serve rolls that Mama must have baked too high since the tops were gooey and the bottoms burned. Daddy was already sitting at the head of the table like his rich uncle had finally got out of the poor house and gave him the kingdom.

  After dinner we heard Mama sniffing and whimpering through the walls, crying and then screaming to Daddy. “Dinner was terrible,” she said. “I’m thirty-two years old and all I’m getting out of life is a good meal.” In a few days, days that let us get comfortable with her, let us stop thinking about her as a miracle, she was gone. We were all shocked. Daddy didn’t come out of his room that first day at all. But nobody took it harder than Greg. I was a child too, ten years old, but even I could see Greg was hurting. For days, he looked for Mama. I’d catch him in the basement, in the far-off place near the creek where we burned our trash or waiting on at the edge of the yard, like he was going to be the first one to see her when she came down the road. Finally, one day I found him in a field a little ways down the road from the house, asleep in the tall, itchy grass.

  “Come on, Greg. Let’s go,” I said and held out my hand, ready to lead him home.

  “Is Mama back?” he said. I thought about what to tell him, a boy, a child of six. I could have said a hundred things to make it better. Start with love. Start with love. “She’s never coming back. Never in your life.”

  “YOU REMEMBER THAT TIME Mama came? Remember?” And I started to cry fat ugly tears that wouldn’t stop, tears I hadn’t expected. “It was only for a few days, remember?” The women beside me looked at me with pity, their conversation stopped, their words caught up in the air.

  “Don’t start that shit,” Greg said, but his voice cracked. He remembered. “Don’t even start it.”

  I wanted to hold on to Greg like somebody should have those many years ago. In the movies they put their spread fingers on either side of the glass, trying to get as close to touch as they could. Like that could ever be enough.

  “Just tell Daddy to get me out,” Greg said and motioned for the guard to take him away.

  * * *

  “What’s Serena cooking tonight?” Shelia asks, her face looking all open and revealed like a topless sandwich. That’s exactly what she looked like. A topless sandwich.

  “I’m getting some dessert unless I’ll miss something good,” Shelia says. They all laugh. They were patient with her, no matter what she did.

  “I’m getting some too,” I say.

  The dessert bar was across from the main warmers of food. A bakery/dessert bar they call it, but all they had baked were a few hard cookies and some yeast rolls at the most. A young black guy I didn’t recognize was working the bakery box, surrounded by glass partitions so customers could see him knead the yeasty bread and take the trays of cookies out of the large ovens, like baking was a spectator sport. I glance at him for a second—enough to figure that he won’t stop his work to take me in. He goes back to shifting the made cookies to the right stack, the blackened trays he places beside the ovens.

  “You better watch that ice cream, girl,” the man says to Shelia. “You know what happens,” the man grins at Shelia, his eyes running the distance from her thighs to her face.

  “Can’t I have a little?” Shelia teases.

  I wanted to tell her that everybody knows that Polo, her boyfriend, sees his old girlfriend when he’s not with her. I wanted to tell her not to think she’s so special.

  Shelia starts to walk away from the ice cream bar.

  “Come back and see me,” the man calls to her, watching her swish away.

  I am left with my ice cream and two white women, one middle aged and one younger, in front of me now, in line to load their
bowls with candy toppings.

  “The moon is eclipsing Pleiades tonight,” the younger one says, her skin the color pink of her cotton-candy sweater. She raises her eyebrows to the other like this information is interesting. “I read it in the Journal Patriot.”

  “I’m not much into reading the stars,” the older woman smiles and stirs the aluminum bins like they are pots on a stove.

  “Oh, I don’t either. No horoscopes or anything like that. Goodness,” the woman in the pink sweater chooses a spoon and stabs it into the gut of her mound of ice cream. “Anne says we need to get the birds together,” she says.

  “A play date? For birds?” The woman grins, her smile ugly as a keloid on her face. “That’s a new one on me.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a play date. I guess you could call it that,” the first one laughs and then they both do. “I guess that’s what it is.”

  “What kind of bird do you have?” I say before I realize I’ve said it.

  “Excuse me,” the older woman says, trying to remind me that I wasn’t part of their conversation.

  “A Quaker parrot and a budgie,” the younger woman interrupts but concentrates on the M&Ms like getting them in her bowl is brain surgery.

  The older woman glances at the younger one, a smirk in her eyes, like I’m not a 3-D person who can see what she does, like it would take so much for her to show me the smallest kindness.

  “Just move,” I say too loud, the move a sorrow in my mouth. “I don’t have all day.”

  The man behind the glass snorts, not bothering to shade his grin with his hand or look away. Both of the women look at me now. The younger one closes her mouth and walks away. The older one considers standing her ground, but gives up, leaving her ice cream on the counter like she was trying to prove she was there.

  I don’t bother with the toppings but take my plain vanilla scoop back to the table. None of them have paid any attention to me and for once, I’m glad. Shelia is talking and waving her spoon as she explains. Her ice cream forms a growing puddle in the plastic bowl. She is going to Tennessee to the mountains, to Pigeon Forge with Polo. They have a room and will be able to hear a creek, walk to a pancake house, travel in happiness along mountain roads in a rental car. They are looking forward, hoping, can’t waiting. Everybody watches Shelia. They nod and chew, her story in harmony with what they want to know about life.