Clover

by Dori Sanders

  Since the doctor didn’t make such a big deal over my leg and put me in the hospital, I figured as long as I was there it might be safe to tell him about the poison I got into my eye.

  Well, that bolted Sara Kate right out of her seat. She was upset that I hadn’t told her about it. She fastened her eyes on me. I do believe her eyes change color when she is angry. They didn’t move. It was like they were held in place with scotch tape. “Why didn’t you tell me, Clover?” she asked.

  I hung my head. “I was afraid you would take me to the doctor,” I whispered.

  The doctor sat down in front of me, looked under both my eyelids and shined a bright light in my eyes. He said there was no damage to the eyes. But I should always let someone know if I got something in my eyes. He explained that sometimes you need to wash out the eye with special solutions.

  I looked up at the doctor. He was smiling. “I won’t be afraid next time,” I said.

  Sara Kate half-smiled. “I should certainly hope not, young lady. Now thank the good doctor and let’s get on home.”

  I must have groaned in my sleep or something, because when I woke up Sara Kate was by my side, tucking the sheets about me. Trying to brush my hair off my forehead. Like it could possibly fall there in the first place. She, of all people, should know that after she messed up my hair with that perm, there is no way it can fall anywhere.

  My hair will fall when Aunt Everleen fixes it. She straightens it. One day at school, a little girl with her blue-eyed self had the nerve to ask me if I ironed my hair on an ironing board.

  Sara Kate stayed in my room for a long time. I think she was waiting for me to fall asleep. It was a bright moonlit night. I could see her as plain as my hand before my face. She stood by the window staring into the still night.

  I could also see the brown marks on the ceiling. Rain marks from a leaky roof. Poor Gaten. He fixed the roof, but didn’t live long enough to paint the ceiling. I study the brown splashes and marks. If you let your eyes work on the ceiling for a while, you can make all kinds of monsters out of them.

  The next morning I was up before sunup and already bright orange-colored clouds were spread out in neat rows getting ready for the sun. Right across the doorway was the biggest spider web I’d ever seen. Smack-dab in the middle was a big spider. I was all set to cream the thing, when I thought about Sara Kate. Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to kill it. That was the first time something like that happened to me. Sara Kate’s thinking is rubbing off on me for sure.

  Come to think of it, Gaten may not have been so keen on killing spiders, either. I remember him telling me the story of Robert the Bruce. He said, according to legend, “Bruce, hiding from enemies in a wretched hut, watched a spider swinging by one of its threads. It was trying to swing itself from one beam to another. Bruce noticed the spider tried six times and failed. The same number of battles he had fought in vain against the English. He decided, if the spider tried a seventh time and succeeded, he also would try again. The spider did try and was successful. So Bruce tried once again and went forth to victory.”

  I believe I remember every single story Gaten ever told me. That man knew so much stuff, I wonder how his head held it all.

  Now as far as killing goes, Sara Kate is not behind everything I don’t kill. I won’t kill a snail, for instance. Never have. There was one crawling on the steps right then. Its slow moving body left a nasty slimy trail. But, by dog, I didn’t rub him out. I couldn’t have stood the squishy mess he would have made. I watched the big spider hurry away, and went in to cook breakfast. A part of me was little by little starting to obey and care for Sara Kate without my even knowing it.

  When Sara Kate came into the kitchen, I was standing on the little stool my daddy made for me, stirring a pot of cheese grits. I can solid cook grits. Gaten couldn’t stand nobody’s lumpy grits. I’ve been cooking since I was eight years old. Sara Kate made coffee while the ham and canned biscuits finished cooking. I crossed my eyes and watched her double image sip a cup of black coffee. Gaten and I always put canned Pet milk in our coffee.

  Sara Kate spread somebody’s homemade peach jelly on a buttered biscuit and put it on my plate. “Please don’t cross your eyes, Clover.”

  When she is ready to eat, Sara Kate just lights in and starts eating. She doesn’t ask any kind of a blessing for the food she’s about to receive.

  She dabbed at the corners of her mouth all dainty, like the women eating in fancy dining rooms in television movies. She raised her eyes and caught me staring at her. “Is there something wrong, Clover?” she asked.

  It’s funny how easy it’s starting to get for me to tell Sara Kate exactly what’s on my mind. “I was just wondering why you never, ever ask a blessing before you eat. Aunt Everleen says you should never stray away from the way you were raised up.”

  Sara Kate smiled. “In my family we never offered a blessing before meals, Clover.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself that was a mighty strange way to be raised up.

  “Clover,” she asked softly, “did Gaten offer prayer before meals?”

  “Gaten wouldn’t a bit more eat without saying a blessing, than he’d eat without washing his hands,” I said.

  “Does it make you unhappy that I don’t ask a blessing?”

  “No, I still say mine. Even if I do have to say it to myself.”

  Sara Kate laid down her fork and dabbed the corners of her mouth. I have to hand it to her, like Gaten, she eats really proper. There was a sad look in her eyes. “Clover,” she said quietly, “I don’t know how to say a blessing.”

  Someday I’m going to teach her how to ask the blessing. For sure I won’t teach her one as long as Aunt Everleen’s blessing. The food on the table gets cold sometimes before she finishes. She doesn’t overlook a thing about the food. She gives thanks to the one who plants, weeds, gathers, cooks, and on and on.

  Sara Kate hasn’t asked me to teach her the blessing yet. But she will always ask me to say it before we eat. She always bows her head and closes her eyes. I know, because I always peep up at her every single time. I don’t know if Sara Kate doesn’t want to learn a blessing for fear she’ll have to start calling on the Lord or what. One thing about her, she is not one bit religious.

  I guess I’m going to have to hold all those things that happened here of late inside for a while. Especially the spider thing. If Everleen knew that on account of what Sara Kate would have thought, I didn’t kill a spider, she would declare I am natural-born crazy. Talk about having a doctor examine your head, she would hurry up and carry me to one.

  It’s Sunday again. The air outside is heavy with the smell of coffee and fried country ham. Inside, Sara Kate is still in her housecoat. She is drinking coffee and canned pineapple juice, and reading the Sunday Charlotte Observer newspaper.

  Poor Gaten would have starved to death on what little cooking Sara Kate does. Sometimes I do wonder how she keeps on living. Everleen gave her a little peanut butter jar full of peach jelly and it looks like it’s going to last her forever. She keeps it in the refrigerator and will stand there with the door open, eating one tiny teaspoonful. The jelly would go good on a hot butter biscuit. I have to give Daniel credit. Sara Kate is strange, strange.

  I’m really hungry. I want to make me a bologna sandwich, but we don’t have any white bread. There is no peanut butter. Sara Kate’s spoon-eaten every bit of it. It’s for sure I will have to go to my aunt’s to get something good to eat.

  I take the shortcut to Everleen’s house. She’s got to open up the peach shed at one o’clock, but she still had time to make a fresh peach cobbler for me and Sara Kate and one for her uncle Noah.

  The crust on the cobbler was so juicy and good Sara Kate and I ate off the whole top. Now we have to get Everleen to put on a new crust. Gaten and I used to do it all the time.

  I hate for Everleen to send me over to Noah’s house on a Sunday. It was late one Sunday when he shot his sister that time. There was a
boom, boom sound at his house. Then you could hear his sister screaming, and screaming like she was about to die. She was on the floor when we got there. Bright red blood was running from her hand onto the old worn wood floor.

  As it turned out his sister didn’t end up hurt all that bad. At the hospital they took out shotgun pellets from her hand, but missed one in her head, and gave her a tetanus shot and sent her back home. The next morning when she saw a group of her neighbors gathered in the road to talk about the shooting, she walked right down there and said all secretive-like, “Did you all hear about me getting shot last night? My fool brother shot me with his shotgun.” Well, sir, all the snuff spit they’d been holding in their mouths flew right out. You could have knocked them over with a feather. She took all the gossip right out of their mouths. The woman should be on the stage.

  There is not a one of Noah’s old hound dogs in sight when I walk up on his porch. Maybe he’s shot them, too. They say, when the crows cry caw, caw in the spring, Noah claims they are asking, “Is the corn ready?” So he gets his shotgun and tells them, “The corn is not ready. But my shotgun is.”

  Part of the porch is painted bright green. The other half is just old unpainted planks, gray with age. A step is broken half in two.

  His sister is long gone now. Right after the shooting she took everything she owned to Gastonia, North Carolina. But she left the bloodstains behind. She never washed them up. She told her brother they would vanish at night like daylight swallowed up by the dark. “When the daylight comes,” she’d warned, “they’ll come back to haunt you for your sins.” Everybody says it’s the Lord’s truth, too. You can see them stains as plain as your hand before your face. Noah has scrubbed and scrubbed, but he can’t wash them out. The house smells like a chicken scalded in hot swamp water.

  Through the screen door, I can see Noah sitting near the window with his shotgun across his lap. Imagine fooling around with a gun on a Sunday.

  Trouble sure can change a person. Noah used to be a right nice-looking man, his hair parted in the middle and all slicked down. And so much after-shave lotion and stuff, he smelled twice like a woman. Now he has turned into a picture of pained ugly. I think about the blood spots on the floor. A big family Bible on a table next to him is opened to a page with a picture on it. Cobwebs are everywhere. The room looks like it has been decorated for a Halloween party with spider’s lace. An electric fan on the floor stirs dust balloons. They float all over the place. Maybe after all these years, Noah is trying to get saved. After the shooting he needs to do something.

  I can hear his commode running. I need to go in and jiggle that handle. Gaten used to always check on stuff like that when he came over. Shucks, in the good old days I used to pick Noah’s flowers in his yard, then sell them to him.

  With Noah sitting there with his shotgun on his lap, I’m not about to touch that handle. I’m afraid to take the pie in and afraid to leave. I’m so scared, my hands are shaking.

  Noah’s mouth is stuck out like a twist clasp on a change purse. He cocks his shotgun when I drop the pie. I duck down and take off like a jack rabbit.

  When I get to a patch of trees, I duck behind a bush and look back. Noah’s old lazy hounds, Thunder and Lightning, are sneaking towards the pie. I think about the story of Epaminandos and how he stepped in his mother’s pies. I don’t turn back because I cannot bear to look.

  Noah’s sister’s blood is still on that floor. A shotgun pellet still buried in her skull. And Everleen says Noah won’t kill a dove. She claims the Lord’s doing so much for Noah after they started praying for him at prayer meetings. “The Lord will help him,” she said, “’cause Noah won’t right in the head.”

  If Everleen wants to keep giving Noah stuff to eat she’s going to have to take it herself. I’m not setting foot over there again.

  I know what Everleen will end up saying. And it solid gets away with me when she does it. I can hear her now. “Now what would your daddy say, Clover?”

  My father is dead, yet he speaks. Yes, even from the grave his hand reaches out to me. But not to comfort, only to correct.

  13

  I can’t figure out if Chase’s daughter and niece came along to show off their new play shorts or to brag that they had been to camp. Those yellow and blue shorts are some kind of pretty. So is the girl in the yellow shorts.

  “We went to camp last week,” they whine through their noses at the same time. I’m not too crazy over the way Sara Kate talks, but it’s way yonder better than theirs.

  “I started to go to camp this summer,” I say, “but I had to help sell my daddy’s peaches. My daddy would have sat up in his coffin if we’d let all his peaches hit the ground. I went to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark last summer.”

  Sara Kate looked at me and drew quick breaths. Two, to be exact. Sucking in the same way she did when she thought I wasn’t telling the truth when I said I didn’t put the snake in her garden basket. I’m beginning to learn her better and better every day. There is no way she can fool me now. She doesn’t a bit more believe I’ve been to Norway and Denmark than a man in the moon. I can’t see why she’s getting so bent out of shape about three little towns somewhere down below Columbia. Grandpa said Norway was so little, you could spit clean across it.

  The June bug I’d caught just before they drove up is digging its prickly legs into my hand. Sara Kate would die if she knew that I am planning to tie a string around the June bug’s leg and make a helicopter. I guess I’d better turn it loose when she’s not looking. I don’t know why she got so upset over that old black snake. Looks like she’d have been glad I didn’t kill him. Of course I didn’t put that live snake in her basket. I won’t let her know it, but I’m a little bit scared of snakes myself.

  Yellow shorts whispers something to blue shorts. They giggle.

  “I remember when you went, Clover,” says Chase. “You told me if I lived there, I’d never stop shooting, because they have some kind of birds in Norway and Denmark.”

  Sara Kate’s eyes are coming closer together. The green seems to darken. She’s not too hot on Chase killing birds. I sure don’t know how she ended up marrying Gaten. He hunted all the time, and like Grandpa would shoot anything but a dove. Maybe she didn’t know that about my daddy.

  Anyway, Chase’s kinfolks are having a cookout on the weekend and they are begging her to come. They don’t say boo about me coming. Maybe it’s because I look so bad. You see, Sara Kate fixed my hair. And that woman can’t fix my kind of hair. I can’t get it through her head that she can’t set my hair when it’s wet. My head looks like a puffed up fighting cock. They are looking at me like I’m a piece of moon rock or something. I really wish I were pretty.

  My poor daddy. He always had a hard time with my hair. For years I had to ride the school bus, because my aunt messed over my hair too long to have me ready in time to ride with him. My hair would have still been a problem for Gaten. Because sure as there’s a hell, Sara Kate couldn’t fix it. After the peach season is over, Aunt Everleen is going to have a perm put in my hair.

  Yellow shorts is telling Sara Kate about all the good stuff they are going to have at the cookout. “We are going to make two churns of homemade ice cream,” she says.

  “Please, please come, Sara Kate,” blue shorts begs.

  “I’m sorry, my dears,” Sara Kate says in that smooth breathy voice of hers, “but I’m not sure yet what plans Clover may have made for us.”

  Chase grins his slow grin. “Clover, surely you wouldn’t have anything planned that would be more fun for the two of you than the cookout?”

  Sara Kate and I exchange looks. “It sounds like fun,” I say. “Well, good,” Sara Kate smiles, “then it’s settled. We’ll be delighted to come.”

  Yellow shorts and blue shorts are giggling and jumping up and down like a pair of hoptoads.

  So we went to the cookout. I had a good time, but it sure isn’t the way I want to spend the rest of my life. I got too many curious questioning stare
s when I walked about between the two of them with Sara Kate holding my hand.

  Chase seemed to have been having a good time. I suppose he really was. Chase Porter happens to be a man who does whatever he wants and whenever. He said he doesn’t give a damn what people say or think.

  Come to think of it, maybe I didn’t stand out so much after all. After a few weeks of sun Sara Kate could almost pass for one of us.

  I guess it’s the way she wanted to look. Even after she sloshed on a hundred different kinds of creams, moisturizers, anti-wrinkle cream, and sunscreen, she still added a suntan lotion. Seems to me the sun was enough. She spends so much money on stuff to block out the sun. Looks like if she didn’t want the sun to hit her she wouldn’t go out of her way to tan.

  It’s funny how the sun works. It may darken her skin but it sure takes the color out of her brown hair. It will be blonde if she’s not careful.

  It was barely getting dark when Chase drove us home from the cookout. I sat on the front steps waiting for Chase and Sara Kate to finish whatever it was that they were so seriously talking about. When they finally got out of the pickup they still stood talking at the edge of the yard.

  I didn’t hear Chase ask Sara Kate to marry him, nor the answer she gave him. All I know is in my presence she kissed him good-bye and said her decision not to marry him did not mean her caring for him had changed. “I think for now,” she added, “loving each other is all Clover and I can handle.”

  Sara Kate made a pot of tea and poured a cup for each of us. She watched me dangle my legs from the kitchen stool.

  “It’s a good thing you were able to wear shorts to the cookout, Clover,” she said. “You’ve outgrown practically everything. You will definitely need new school clothes. Maybe we should start shopping soon.”