Clover

by Dori Sanders

  Aunt Ruby Helen said Everleen didn’t know beans about a balanced meal. Not a woman who cooked macaroni and cheese, corn pudding, fried okra, potato salad, turnip greens, candied yams, and fried chicken for an ordinary Sunday dinner.

  I know what the real problem is. It’s money. Jim Ed will go to a machine and pay sixty cents apiece for Pepsi. Everleen only buys them from the grocery store when they go on sale.

  We’ve been having a lot of customers come to the stand this year. Everleen says they think they might get a glimpse of that beautiful white woman Gaten married. Jim Ed says it’s because the peaches are fifty cents cheaper at our stand.

  Before I leave for home Aunt Everleen combs my hair and makes me hide behind some bushes and change into clean clothes. She always keeps me a set of clean stuff, just in case I get dirty.

  Everleen starts stacking peck baskets and telling me all the things I should or shouldn’t say to Sara Kate. “Now, remember, Clover,” she warns, “we never repeat the things we talk about here at the peach shed. This is family talk.” Then she turns right around and says, “Now, remember Sara Kate is family, so be nice and tell her her cooking tastes real, real good. You know how white women are. They want you to brag on ’em all the time. To tell them you love ’em. They don’t care whether it’s the truth or not. So you be nice, baby girl.”

  Everleen knows good and well I’m not about to tell that woman I love her. I do put some nice peaches in a basket to take her, though.

  “Don’t you go carrying peaches to her, Clover,” Daniel fusses. “Sara Kate don’t hit a lick at a black snake all day long. If she wants some peaches she can bring her uppity self up here and get her own peaches. It wouldn’t hurt her one bit to help Mama sometimes.”

  I put the peaches back. I got sense enough to know they are not Daniel’s words, they’re his mama’s. The only thing on his mind and tongue is a dirt bike.

  Here of late everybody is getting on my nerves so bad. Clover, do this. Clover, don’t do that. Say this to Sara Kate, don’t say that. It’s no wonder my leg hurts all the time. I guess it knows my heart sure can’t hold all the hurt in it. So I guess it’s trying to help it out. Everleen says I’ve lost my hearing, completely lost it.

  I might lose what little eyesight I got left in one eye for real, though. I got some peach spray in it this morning. I washed it out right good, but it still kind of burns. The warning below the poison skeleton on the bag said it could cause blindness if it got into the eyes. I would have hurried up and told Gaten if he’d been here. I know if I tell Sara Kate she’ll rush me to the doctor to have it checked out. So would Everleen and Jim Ed. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll tell one of them about it after a while.

  Sara Kate must have known we were talking about her. No sooner than I’d put the peaches back, she wheeled up and threw on her brakes. A cloud of dust blew everywhere. Everleen puffed her lips out and pushed them into a wide upsweep over her nostrils. Her mouth looked like a gorilla’s mouth.

  “Hi, Everleen. Hi, Clover,” Sara Kate says.

  I say, “Hey.”

  Everleen pulls her lips down. “Hey, Sara Kate.”

  A nasty old yellow jacket is sucking away on a piece of candy I laid down. I know better but I still start to smash him.

  “Don’t kill that yellow jacket,” Aunt Everleen fusses. “You know if you kill one of them their whole family will swarm in and try to sting you to death. We may not be as allergic to them as your uncle Jim Ed, but we sure don’t need to invite them just because he’s not here.”

  The truth is I did know if you kill one yellow jacket more will come. But I didn’t really know why until I read in the newspaper recently that when you squash a yellow jacket they release some kind of chemical, pheromone or something, that signals a defense alarm that alerts other yellow jackets and they swarm in and sting anyone that’s around.

  Everleen is some kind of mad. All you have to do to tell when she is mad is look at her mouth. She is right pretty when she’s not mad. She pulls a towel off her shoulder and starts dusting off peaches right fast. Sara Kate knows she’s brushing her off. She turns to me. “I made your favorite supper, Clover, so don’t fill up on peaches again.”

  Poor Sara Kate. She doesn’t know it, but it’s Everleen’s good cooking I’m always filled up with, not peaches.

  Sara Kate is trying to be friendly. “The peaches are so-oo pretty.”

  “Most of ’em is split wide open. And there’s no size to ’em. It’s a poor crop,” Everleen snaps.

  “They are kind of small,” Sara Kate agrees. “May I take a few of them?”

  “You asking me for peaches? Part of this orchard belonged to Gaten Hill. In case you’ve forgotten, you did marry him.”

  Sara Kate turned redder than a Dixie-red peach. You can tell when she’s mad, too. I guess everybody’s got some kind of way of letting you know they’re mad without saying so. She starts toward our pickup truck. “Be sure you’re home in time for supper, Clover.”

  “I’ll ride back with you,” I say. I need to tell her about my eye. Then without so much as a word, she turns back, grabs a peck basket, and marches toward the orchard. She is walking fast, her head high. She is pounding her feet on the hard baked ground harder than necessary.

  Everleen rolls her eyes and grunts, “If that woman don’t act like she owns this place, I’m not setting here.”

  When Sara Kate storms back, she just hops into the truck and speeds away. She forgot all about me. Everleen hugs me. A quick but soft hug. “Miss High-and-mighty wouldn’t even let you ride home in your daddy’s truck.” She draws a deep breath and adds softly, “That is, it was his truck.” Her eyes fill with tears.

  Jim Ed drives up in his pickup. “Don’t block what little air is stirring,” Everleen fusses. “Park over yonder. The dust just settled down after your high-and-mighty sister-in-law drove from here like a bat out of hell. And here you come raising up another dust storm.”

  Everleen is having another one of her fussing spells. But her husband won’t fuss back. He’s scared she may get one of her bad headaches, or get mad and quit on him.

  A funeral procession led by a police car with its flashing light passes along the highway. Jim Ed puts his straw hat over his heart and bows his head. Everleen starts to cry all over again. She crosses herself and mumbles something. She doesn’t know why she’s doing it. It’s something she saw on TV and copied it.

  “I can’t see why you crying, Mama,” says Daniel. “The cars got North Carolina tags and all the people are white, you don’t even know them people, Mama.”

  Everleen is really crying hard. “You don’t have to know people to feel sorry for them.” In my heart I know she is crying for my daddy, because his brother, Jim Ed, is crying also. I’m going to cry, too.

  Sara Kate had the table set real pretty. She put peach leaves around the peaches she picked. It made the peaches look like they were still on the tree.

  There was a postcard from my aunt Ruby Helen beside my plate. At the end it read—“P.S. Wish you were here.” If I had gone to live with her, I would have been in Bermuda instead of eating Sara Kate’s soupy grits and chicken. I sure hate that I told her I had a taste for some grits.

  Sara Kate spooned the watery stuff on my plate, and some chicken swimming in tomatoes and green peppers. I drank my ice tea first. Her eyes were all over my face. Darting like the eyes of a trapped rabbit from my eyes to my mouth. The grits slid through my fork like water soup. If she cooks me grits again I will die, just plain die. “Sara Kate,” I blurted out, “you sure can’t cook grits.” Sara Kate was hurt. I could see the red hurt under her skin. She’s got the thinnest skin I’ve ever seen. Her eyes misted over, but she held the tears back.

  I remember all the stuff Everleen said about her. Like white women being so easy to hurt and all. “You have to remember,” Everleen had said, “the most of them have been sheltered and petted all their lives. The least little thing just tears them up.” I take a bite of the chicken
. It’s got the strangest taste. But I eat it anyway. “This chicken is some kind of good, Sara Kate,” I said.

  Sara Kate offers to put more chicken on my plate when I finish. I shake my head, no. “Clover,” she says sharply, “you know how your father felt about shaking your head for an answer. Now, would you like more chicken?”

  “Uh, uh,” I mutter. There was no way I could have gotten a no answer out of my mouth. It was crammed too full of grits and that tomato chicken. That was the first time Sara Kate ever laid something my daddy said on me.

  Sara Kate’s back had been turned to me when I’d walked into the kitchen. The radio was playing “Song Sung Blue.” Her slim body swayed from side to side. A body moving not to music, but to sadness. There is a big difference, you know.

  I’d tiptoed up behind her, and shouted, “boo.” She jumped like I had scared the living daylights out of her. She wasn’t the least bit mad, or scared for that matter. I could see she had been crying. Her green eyes were all puffed up and red. She has started crying an awful lot here of late. Just up and cries for no reason.

  5

  There is a lot of sadness sewed up in Sara Kate. A sadness I can’t figure out. Like it’s hidden on some shelf too tall for me to reach. I’m beginning to think it’s not because Gaten’s gone. It’s because she is stuck with me. Now I’m starting to think, maybe I ought to run away. Then maybe she won’t be so sad all the time. I can see she’s got her own set of sorrow, a set just like mine.

  Sometimes I believe she really loved my daddy. It doesn’t make me love her more, though. Still, something in me wants to like her—to have her like me, too.

  I guess I kind of wish I could play with her like Daniel plays with his mama. He puts his hands over her eyes and in that strange, new, high-pitched voice of his, cranks out, “Guess who?” Everleen will guess and guess till she has to finally give up. Then in that voice that changes every time he opens his mouth, Daniel will say, “It’s me, Danny, your son.”

  If Sara Kate had done some of all the crying she’s doing now at Gaten’s funeral, she wouldn’t have seemed so curious. There wouldn’t have been so much talk about how easy she took her husband’s death, either. Everleen says white folks don’t cry and carry on like we do when somebody dies. They don’t love as hard as we do.

  We’re just different, I guess. Miss Katie’s still mourning over Gaten and she’s not even kin. After Gaten was killed, she tried to cook but the pans fell to the floor. So she took to her rocking chair. Sometimes I would go and sit on the floor beside her. To tell you the truth, it was about the only place I could find space to sit. Anyway, she made me cry, too. I’m glad she’s getting over Gaten.

  People in Round Hill don’t know it, but Sara Kate didn’t really get over Gaten dying as fast as they think she did. Sara Kate was powerfully sad after my daddy died.

  After the funeral she lit a candle and sat alone in the dark. I haven’t been able to quite figure out why. People I know in Round Hill don’t light candles when folks die. I didn’t ask Sara Kate about the candle. I didn’t even tell Everleen about it, either. I guess, in a strange sort of way, I don’t want anybody thinking like, well, that Sara Kate was strange and everything. Maybe in a sly way I was trying to protect Sara Kate even if I can’t stand her sometimes. Somehow, I really believe it was because I’m trying to please my dead daddy.

  I’ll probably find out about this candle business when I’m watching TV. I don’t care what people say, you can so learn a lot of stuff from TV.

  Daniel said if his grandma had watched enough TV, she would have known that the movie 57 Pick-Up wasn’t about a pickup truck, and would have never gone with him to see it. She liked to have died when they started spitting out all them nasty cuss words. And when the half-naked women started prancing about, she was more ashamed to leave than to stay. So she slid down in her seat, pulled her hat down over closed eyes and prayed and prayed that if the Lord would forgive her that time she’d never set foot in a movie place again.

  Sara Kate’s got to be bad lonely working in the house all day, all by herself. Sometimes she writes little notes on fancy flowered paper. I never see her mail them. I think she likes the pretty stamp too much to use.

  She hurries up and mails the letters to the places that send the pictures of all them little sad-eyed dogs and cats. On the outside of the envelopes they beg, “Will You Please Help Save Them?” I do believe she sends money every time the little pictures come in the mail. It didn’t take them people long to find Sara Kate in Round Hill.

  Everleen says all white women give money to the animals if they have it to spare. She says it’s because they feel so guilty over the way their people treated us. They think by being extra kind to animals, it’ll get them into heaven. But Everleen says the Bible says “the animals are born to be destroyed.” She thinks the Lord would smile down more on Sara Kate if she took some of that money and helped out the poor children right in Round Hill. Everleen knows her Bible.

  I guess if I had extra money I’d feed kids before I’d feed the animals.

  Sometimes Sara Kate plays the piano in a room empty now except for one new chair. It’s covered in cloth that feels slick. Sara Kate bought it. She calls the cloth chintz. Everything else is pretty much like it was when Grandpa died. He made Gaten promise never to sell the mirrored umbrella and hat stand in the front hall.

  I like it when Sara Kate plays. The house seems to come alive. Gaten used to play tapes of the same kind of music. Miss Kenyon used to play classical music also. Maybe that’s why Gaten was in love with her too.

  That kind of music is great to listen to. But it isn’t hitting up on nothing for dance music.

  I guess Gaten would have been happy with Sara Kate in this house. I know one thing, if Gaten could see her feeding dogs—much less stray dogs—out of the bowls we eat out of, he would just up and die again.

  Sara Kate may think she is so clean, but this letting dogs eat out of dishes will never set with me. Me and Gaten didn’t eat after no dogs. I bet if Jim Ed and Everleen knew about all this, they’d never eat a bite in this house.

  I don’t think Gaten would have liked all those little yellow notes stuck all over the refrigerator, either. Gaten couldn’t stand a messed-up place.

  I guess in her own way Sara Kate’s not all that bad. Everleen even bragged about the way she took care of Aunt Maude. She is my great aunt and is some kind of old.

  Well, after she had a stroke, she fell in her kitchen. Trying to stir up her a bite to eat, she said. It was some kind of big bite. Stewed chicken and dumplings, green onion tops and onions smothered in fried fatback drippings, green crowder peas with snaps, cornbread and grated sweet potato pudding. She made the pudding because she wanted to try out a new rum flavor she bought from a Rawleigh Product salesman.

  Everleen was going to take her in, but Sara Kate offered, since Everleen was working so hard at the peach shed. That was one time Sara Kate came in real good. I couldn’t help out too much with Aunt Maude, because she kept mixing me up. After her stroke her mind was affected. She lost her marbles, that’s what happened. She forgot Gaten had been killed. Every day she would say, “Gaten come in yet?” Or she’d say, “Come on, Clover, let me comb your hair. Go and change them dirty clothes. Put on a dress. I want your daddy to see he’s got a little girl when he gets home from school.” Then she’d tell about the time when she was teaching school. They made a fire in the big wood heater and a big snake crawled out through the grate.

  Sara Kate makes mugs of coffee or tea in the microwave, does needlepoint and listens. She picks up enough of Aunt Maude’s slurred speech to laugh. Sometimes when she talks about Gaten as a young boy, Sara Kate cries.

  Poor Aunt Maude’s mind has got to be torn up pretty bad. She’s been eating Sara Kate’s turnips and things cooked flat-out in water, without a speck of grease. Once she zipped her lips and wouldn’t eat. And don’t you know Sara Kate fixed up her plate all pretty, dotted the greens with red Jell-o cubes and A
unt Maude ate it. You got to be in mighty bad shape in the head to eat greens and Jell-o.

  In no time Sara Kate had nursed her back to health. She got well enough for her daughter to come and take her to Greensboro to live.

  Maybe if Sara Kate could get ahold of poor old drunk Gideon she might cure him up. They didn’t do a thing for him down at that first place he went to. He is walking down the hot dusty road now, swaying from side to side. He said he’s learned AA’s twelve steps. It seems like he’s taking twenty-three steps to make his twelve. If he keeps on he’ll do a solo two-step dance.

  Gideon’s thin body looked like the frame of an undressed scarecrow. Leaning into the wind, his body traveled faster than his feet. Even so, that body had started to look like it housed a living creature. Gideon had spent seven days in a detox center. He’d been sober all those days and it showed. He showed off a white button he got at the AA meeting. His wife was so proud of him, she said it even tickled her bones.

  I am probably kin to Gideon, but not as close kin as he makes us out to be. Good old Aunt Everleen tries to tie us up to as much kinfolk as she can. She stretches out the family line just like she stretches out sadness. She needs kinfolk to worry about, to be sad over, and make unhappiness so big she can save some over, so it’ll be handy in case she needs it.

  If she could see Gideon right now, she’d just pinch off a little sadness and moan, “Poor Gideon, bless his heart.” Then she’d hurry up and bake him a little tin pie-pan cake. She calls it a sample cake. She never bakes a cake unless she makes a couple of samples first. She has to try out one, just in case the cake needs something. I’ve never seen her add anything to the cake batter. I think she just can’t wait until the real cake is done. I love her sample cakes.

  For a little while Gideon was sober. But then, that was yesterday. Today he is waving a notice from Duke Power Company. They are going to shut off his lights. Today Gideon is as drunk as a blind cooter.