“I beena forget how far they live now. I remember gone time, everybody house close. Hear everything—hear baby fe cry and when somebody have trouble. I de call and nobody hear now, all too far away. Everybody live by the road. But they fe come now, all fe come. Stay till day-clean, don worry.”
Her voice grew gentle, smoother in her chest, and Marietta heard that it was for her mother. “We stay till day-clean, fe help you go when that time come. You soul go easy on the journey and we be here till then.”
They would all sit with her mother until the sun rose, talking to keep her mother company until her spirit could leave her body with the first streaks of light. Marietta imagined how her mother’s breath had looked when it left, how her soul would sound. The women would crowd the room, she knew, sitting wherever they could, getting up to clean the table again, cook something, talk and sing. Then, when the sun showed and the spirit had flown, they’d turn to her.
The woods would have liked to creep all the way to the pump and over it, to take back the outhouse and the porch and then the house, twining into the windows and pushing up the floorboards. Every year she had to swing the ax and clear the baby trees, the bushes and creeping trails of leaf that came closer. But she always left the baby palmetto and the crepe myrtle near the back window of the bedroom, because she liked to see the patterns they made at night. The palm fronds waved like her own fan in the moonglow, and then vines and moss grew over the trees like a cage, meeting the moss that dangled off the edges of the roof.
The shutters were open now, to catch the tiny breeze, and Marietta crouched in the mesh of branches and leaves, listening. She wanted to stay near her mother, too, look out the window and wait for gold morning, wait for that whisper Aint Sister said you could hear when the spirit flew. But she couldn’t sit with the voices and clucking and hum, the eyes cutting her way now and then trying to decide.
“Josephine ain sell nothing but that little one yesterday,” Mary said. “How it gon get better? People ain buy nothing this week, why they buy next week?”
“You don know what them people fe do. Why you gon expect the worse?” Rosie said.
“Well, all this rain been done wreck Tally crop this year. He field too much flood. He ain get nobody fe work this whole month, and all he gon need is clean the mess when it fe dry. That give we two day, lucky,” Pinkie said.
“This baby just kick and fight me all night!” Mary said. Marietta imagined the baby’s feet against the slippery insides, wet and covered with membranes like the pig’s parts she’d seen slide out of the belly, and she pressed her palms against her own stomach, sickened. Crystal used to say that you could see the baby’s foot push all the way out against the skin, pop out the mama’s belly in a lump.
“He know you disturb,” Aint Sister said absently. “He near time fe come.”
“Definitely a boy, way you carry,” Laha said.
Aint Sister blew air out her nose. “I ain fe worry that one yet. I worry bout the one out there in the tree. Beena just she and she mama all to now. Josephine mama been dead. All other people dead out.”
Marietta lifted her chin from her hand and bit the piece of bark she held. All people dead out. Just Aint Sister.
“She mama name Christmas,” Pinkie said. “Mmm-hmm. Too pretty girl.”
Aint Sister said, “Long-long black hair, she braid all round she head. My cousin. She die when Marietta small-small, we beena take the baby fe funeral. Christmas been done buy her a plot in Charleston, say she never come back fe Pine Garden even when she dead.”
“Josephine never belong to no bury society,” Laha said. “Every penny for feed Marietta. Weren’t nobody else in the family?”
Aint Sister was quiet while her pipe smoke floated out the window and wreathed the vines above Marietta’s head. “Christmas have two boy. One die early. The other still live fe Charleston when we gone to she funeral. But he wild, Hurriah. Wouldn’t be no good with a girl. Hurriah ain no good with grown woman, he so wild.”
Rosie and Laha laughed, and Rosie said, “He not the only one.”
Aint Sister said, “I don know Hurriah believe Marietta he sister child anyhow. He ain see she since she so small.”
“If you seen she and been a stranger, you believe it?”
“Who gon believe? Nobody. She so much like she daddy. He blood powerful too much, crowd all Josephine out,” Pearl said. She never spoke, just sat knitting the baby sweaters she hung from the wall in the store, little bulky coats Marietta saw on the new babies.
Babies. If she were still tiny, crying, her feet small as spoons and kicking in the air, they would all want her. But they would go around and around tonight, and they all knew who would take her. Aint Sister—and she’d never do anything right for Aint Sister. If she scratched her head, Aint would snap, “You find that bug yet? The one you fe chase round you ear?” And her father—everyone would whisper in those scared-and-something-else voices, because now that her mother was gone she would look more like him every day. She closed her eyes and lips and made her face as hard as his in the photo, and as if they saw her, Aint Sister said, “Freeman never know how fe make people comfortable. He face never right around nobody.”
“Wha-a-a?” Rosie said. “Why you say that, Sister?”
“She talk fe them peoples like Freeman,” Pearl said. “Blueblood.”
“Everybody act scare fe Freeman,” Aint Sister said. “Except that buckra kill em.” She stopped abruptly, and Marietta felt the watery tingle on her back again.
“What I gon do with she?” Aint’s voice hurried along, trying to pass quickly over what she had said. “Don go long with nobody, scare peoples on the highway she know it or not.”
“Sister, what you talk about man kill Freeman? He drown cause he out fe fish and snowbird get he. Just like Fix,” Laha said.
“Them white folks never stop for neither of em,” Rosie said. “Probably say they ain see nothing.”
His face, Fix Green’s, floated into Marietta’s head even though she put her fingers on her eyebrows and pushed—his face bloated and water rushing out of his mouth and ears in streams when they pulled him up. She had been hanging around the waterway when she heard the men shouting that they’d found him. One of the big white yachts filled with people from the North who sped down the waterway in winter, getting away from the cold in New York, Big Johnny said, that was who got him. Fix was rowing at the mouth of the creek, where it spilled into the waterway, and the snowbirds had swamped his small boat. But Aint Sister had never said that Marietta’s father died that way; she just shook her head and said, “Fishing. He die fishing.” And Marietta had never asked her mother anything since she showed her the photo from under the bed and her mother snatched it so quickly she left an ashy scratch on Marietta’s wrist.
“I remember when they find Freeman, find he battoe. Everybody fe look,” Rosie said. “Cause he go everywhere fe fish. Ki, yeah, Fix daddy Morris find he! Up in that creek past the House, yeah?”
Aint Sister said nothing. Marietta pushed harder at the bones over her eyes, trying not to see her father’s hard face soft-blurred from days underwater, like Fix’s.
“Nobody never know why he want fe go up there,” Laha said.
“What you say bout some man kill he?” Rosie said. “Nobody never mess with that crazy nigger.”
Marietta heard a chair scrape, and Aint Sister went out onto the porch, lipping her pipe hard in the quiet.
“Josephine never get over Freeman,” Pinkie whispered. “She must been make up she mind fe die, miss that man so like she angry. She tell me once, say she never eat fish cause water take he fe dead.”
Aint Sister came back into the room. “All my people gone now. Dead out.”
“You forget Marietta, Sister,” Laha said.
“No, I ain forget she one minute. How I forget and she be on me now, fe me raise? But she ain remind me fe Josephine, and I never see my cousin Christmas fe she face. Josephine hand and little finger like Christmas. I neve
r see that again, cause Marietta blood all Freeman.”
“She not so bad, Sister,” Rosie said. “She take good care fe she mama all this time.”
“She do,” Mary said. “She can come fe help me with the baby.”
“I never say she bad,” Aint Sister said harshly. “I say what I gon do with she, look like she do, run wild? How I fe keep she on the highway? Never make no basket.”
“She work too hard in the field,” Pinkie said.
“But ain enough work in the field no more,” Mary said.
“I never say she bad,” Aint Sister said again, and Marietta’s chest was so tight she couldn’t push back her shoulders, couldn’t let the air come in deep enough. “I say she in the wood right now, talk fe some tree.”
“I give you shoe, Marietta, but you know we have fe special order when they that big—you know, fe that size.” Pearl leaned over the counter.
Marietta stared past her to the baby coats. “How I gon go?”
Pearl crossed her arms and frowned. “Black,” she said, “all I can do.” She searched behind the counter until she found a pair of men’s black oxfords, with a band across the tongue. Dull leather like a thirsty dog’s nose, dusty under her fingers. Marietta slid her feet inside.
“You cain be walk round in them shoe after. They not pay for. Don look right nohow—you bring em back and we order you some lady shoe.”
Marietta felt the drops of sweat on her neck and forehead when she began the walk to Aint Sister’s. The thick stockings she had taken from her mother’s small chest-of-drawers were much too short. She put her hands in the hot pockets of her mother’s black dress and stepped high to keep the shoes out of the dust.
They were silent until they reached the church, where her mother lay in the pine box Big Johnny and Jerry had nailed together last night while the women sat up. Outside the white wooden church, everyone stood in the packed-dirt yard, waiting for her and Aint Sister.
If any cars had stopped at the highway, no one had been there in the stands. All day, they had been cooking and waiting, because Aint Sister wanted Josephine buried the old way, when the sun began to set in the open grave.
Marietta wouldn’t listen, when they cried and rocked and held their hands up. The voices circled like a net over her. Once a month, the preacher came from McClellanville to lead meeting instead of Joe Pop. Marietta would hide until her mother left for church; all the talk and shouting, hours and hours that filled her ears to bursting when she was small—she hated the praise house and the others’ skin tight-pressed to hers. Aint Sister would make her come now. Marietta watched the fingers stiff and palms facing her mother, who lay paler than gold, her lips thin as the edges of shells, baby shells. Close up tight. They sang and cried, and she stared at her mother’s hair, the fringe of broken strands waving around her forehead. Tiny jagged hairs around her ears, the ones she used to press down with petroleum jelly. The cries pounded against her back, and then people were walking slowly past her mother, some touching her face, some bending far over her. All black, their clothes and feet and hair, hats swaying near her mother, Laha and Rosie and Aint Sister’s hands pulling her up.
Outside, the coins of light between the oak leaves turned silver, shining quarters above her, and the line of people walked toward the graveyard in the woods. She saw the splinters of pine wood slant away from the box. Water stood in the open grave, and Marietta panicked then, shouting to Big Johnny, “Don’t put her in the water! Don’t put her face in no water!”
The men bailed out a few more buckets of water, and the sandy earth still glinted damp, shinier by the minute. “Fill up again!” Marietta screamed, and then, “Wait!” She couldn’t stop her mouth, curled with sobs.
“Hush, now,” Aint Sister said, holding her arms. “That only a little bit. You know you cain keep all water out. It always that way.”
“She hate the water. She cain go in the water—wait, I get it out,” she shouted, and Laha came to stand in front of her. “Marietta,” she said. “Water sink back down in a minute, soon as they put the dirt in. Hush.”
Big Johnny bumped the box, and her mother’s face shook a little. Marietta pressed close, hearing Laha’s children gasp ragged in fear, and she remembered all the times she’d been afraid of when they would pick up a child and pass him over the coffin. Once, twice, three times. Hand the baby or child over the granma or uncle, the family sending the child back and forth so the spirit wouldn’t bother him, wouldn’t hover over her unformed self. And she jerked back suddenly, thinking that this was her time, finally, that the hands would grip her now and push her into the air close by her mother’s still mouth and hands. Her own face would be only inches away, swinging over the breathless nose, and she closed her eyes backing into Aint Sister’s fingers, fighting.
The fingers let go. She looked down at Aint Sister’s black straw hat dipping near her shoulder, at the other hats, the feathers and straw and ribbon of the women, the soft felt of the men. Only a few of the men’s hats were higher than her own eyes, and no one came near her as the box slid onto the ropes over the grave.
Aint Sister’s hand pulled heavy at the crook of Marietta’s arm when they walked back up the road. A little wind moved the pine branches high up in the air, and Aint Sister said, “The Lord sigh cause she home now. She relief.”
The flashlight wasn’t as bright as the almost-full moon. The silver finger flashed only in the shadows where the moon couldn’t reach, but Aint Sister moved it back and forth anyway, talking the whole way, and when the beam cut across the clearing to the porch, Marietta saw in the black window squares and closed door that she was already gone from her house, already sleeping beside Aint Sister, hearing old-woman snores, or lying on a pallet in the front room near the fireplace. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop the ring of water tight around her eyes, blurring the front steps. She stumbled and the edge of wood slammed into her shin.
“Watch you feet. You follow in somebody footstep.” Aint Sister was so small her shoes barely whispered across the porch boards. “I need me some coffee fe finish up. We have two thing left, have fe do.”
Marietta followed her to the fireplace, where she took out the clean pots and clanked them onto the hearth.
“Too hot for burn fire,” Marietta said.
“Hot don matter. Only fire get rid fe death smell in the air. Not no stove fire. Go fe get some lightwood, one big chunk, too.”
Marietta brought an armful of branches and one leg-thick log. She laid out the fire and Aint Sister told her, “You go get them match. I never fool with em. Gone time, we never have match. Never let no fire go out or we beena get whup. You see my fire bank right, don never die. Better fe cook in the fireplace. I ain never like fe cook on no stove.”
The fire licked out at them for a minute, and Aint Sister nodded. “See? She blow a little down the chimbley, say, ‘Clear out death. Now I relief.’” Aint Sister went into the bedroom and pulled the soft, tangled sheets from the bed. “I make some new one,” she said, and began to rip the thin cloth and feed the pieces to the fire. “I tell you, we need coffee now. Go on fe get fresh water. Don be linger out there.”
Marietta waited by the pump, listening to the drip of water after she stopped moving her arm, hearing the woods, the animals and rustling, the crack of flames inside the house. She could wait in the trees until Aint was finished, be patient until she gave up and went home. But with no light—she thought of the trees and the plat-eye spirits behind them. Fix—people said he walked by the waterway and moved boats. Aint Sister’s voice rolled outside under the popping fire. Marietta picked up the bucket and smelled burning hair, the awful acrid smell of her mother’s hair caught in the sheets and turning to ash.
Don’t remember the box, please, please, Marietta prayed, sitting on the floor while Aint Sister pushed her stick into the fire. Rag by rag, it took so long to burn the sheets and clothes, and she didn’t want Aint Sister to pick through the box under the bed, to hold up the photo of her fathe
r and shake her head. She didn’t want to hear any more stories, see the curl of Aint’s lip when she saw the flat stare into the camera. Please, please, forget, she tapped into the floorboards with her shoe.
“You take em back to Pearl day-clean,” Aint Sister said abruptly. Marietta remembered, slipping the shoes off.
“I got shoe—I don’t need these,” she said. She knew Aint Sister would frown. “My boot is all I need.”
“You cain go fe school in them boot.”
So? She smiled, thinking Aint Sister was on the wrong track. “I ain go to school. I can read better than them anyhow.”
“What you talk bout, you read better? You ain even go there half a last year. You go go this year. Oh, yes, you fe go every day.”
“I got better thing for read than Mrs. Green. All she got is them old book.”
“See that mouth on you? You need fe get respect fe you teacher. You ain too grown fe whup.”
“But I too big fe whup,” Marietta said, and stopped her smile. Mrs. Green never came near her with the strap she used on Laha’s boys and the others. She never said anything directly to Marietta, only talked about her to the other kids.
“She has to sit in the back, she’s so big,” Mrs. Green would say, shaking her head. “Sit back there refusing to talk, pretending she can read.” Marietta would turn the pages of the encyclopedia slowly all day. The blood-red books sat on a shelf in the back, near her. “Do you see what a bad attitude does to a girl?”
“We gon get you some shoe,” Aint Sister said, “so you don miss no more time. And you better wish people start fe buy basket rest of summer.”
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots Page 4