I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots

by Susan Straight

  She think everything plan out, Marietta thought. I rather sit in the tree and read. She looked at the sharp-nosed girls staring down from the walls; their faces were yellowed, the newspaper was so old, but their eyes were still half-lidded and cool, their clothes belted tight.

  She couldn’t listen to the low, long voice anymore, not another story or another “don” for her. She pushed open the front door. I don’t care she see me go. She grabbed the flashlight from the porch. Aint Sister said, “All them basket crowd…” and Marietta knew she thought she was headed for the outhouse. She walked through the cleared space and sat behind a pine tree to wait, light off and clutched tight in her hand. She would wait until she could get the box.

  The fireglow in the windows turned red, and Aint Sister yelled, “Girl, you best fe get on back. I tire fe play with you. You near grown. Get on back here.”

  Between tree trunks, Marietta could see her tiny figure framed by the doorway; her shouts flew lower than her screams had the night before, circling the trees, and finally she went back inside. When Marietta came out into the clearing, all she could see was the swaying beam of the lantern and the tiny bobbing pink of the pipe.

  After the two lights had been around the curve for a long time and it was completely black, Marietta stood up slowly. Too afraid of the woods to get her magazine, she realized she was leaving. She would take what she could carry. Where you fix for go? she thought.

  At the steps, the smell of smoke hung under the roof, and she closed her eyes. She couldn’t smell the sweat or sweet hair oil or coffee breath, nothing of her mother, and for the first time she lay where her mother’s form had always pressed down on the mattress. Scraping her face against the mattress cover, she felt water rush out of her eyes and nose, so much that she thought of Fix’s face and then her father’s, and then she screamed into the buttons by her cheek, screaming from her chest like a mule. Hoarse and long—she couldn’t stop until the breeze blew a branch across the window and she jumped, afraid it was a spirit, more afraid it was Aint Sister coming back for her.

  Swinging herself sideways, drawing in long breaths that made her feel like a child, she reached under the bed for the box.

  It was polished wood, reflecting dully in the flashlight beam. She hoped her father had made it. The dried flower petals inside, broken and almost dust now, slid into the corners. They were sweeter than dry straw or even sweetgrass. Her father’s face looked at her. She put it in her dress—if she was running, she couldn’t be wearing a dress. Running? Running wild. The wild man, too wild to take care of a girl—he was her family. His name was in her hand, on the browned scrap of paper kept in the box along with a key black from age, two smooth black stones, and a greenish penny. Hurriah Turner. Charleston.

  If he was wild, he wouldn’t care that she was too. She could take care of his cooking and cleaning, and he wouldn’t care what else she did. She could buy magazines and read them, go fishing in the river she’d heard Big Johnny and them talk about. Two rivers on either side of Charleston. Head down the waterway and see the big bridge.

  She picked up the black shoes and ran a rag around the toes and heels. They turned darker again. Leaving them on the table for Aint Sister to find, she thought they looked lonely there. She pulled on her father’s boots and checked for the fishing knife in the long, thin pocket on the outside of the right one. Pacing back and forth, room to room, she found a pair of brown knit pants her mother wore under her dresses in the winter cold. She had to hurry. The pants, the dress, the boots—she was hot, but she rushed back to the stove and took the big cast-iron rice pot from the back. In the big cloth bag where they always packed the dried peas, she put the rice pot and a sack of rice. A spoon in the pocket on her left boot. Matches. Then she held the wooden box and knew it was supposed to be on her mother’s grave.

  They would bring things there soon: beautiful Milk of Magnesia bottles, her mother’s favorite blue; shells to outline the grave; cracked flowered dishes her mother had admired. And Marietta should put the box there now, to stay close to her mother’s spirit.

  But how could she walk all that way, past Big Johnny and Rosie’s, where everybody would be sitting under the Angel Oak, where pipe smoke and words lifted and shivered into the thick branches? She suddenly realized that she couldn’t walk to Charleston, either. Not on the highway. She had always been afraid of the highway when it was enveloped in night. All the children had been warned over and over not to play near the asphalt, but this fear was of the drivers who saw black faces as sport, like slow possums. Marietta and the others had heard about Willie’s father, who was so drunk coming home from a woman near McClellanville that he didn’t see the car playing chicken with him. They found his body in the bushes days later. And Pinkie’s left hand had a crooked little finger, the one she had thrown up to stop the bottle flying at her head. “That finger mind she how fool she been, walk lonesome at night,” Aint Sister always said.

  She could take a battoe, one of the small boats tied near the landing. Big Johnny hardly ever used his battoe since he had the outboard. She began through the woods, the flashlight swaying and the bag heavy on her back. People always said not to take a battoe on the waterway, like Fix, but they went out at night sometimes when the people on the big yachts slept somewhere and the waterway was quiet. She could row in the moonlight, maybe get close by morning so she could see where to go.

  Laha’s oldest brother had gone on a boat to Charleston, about ten years before. She had heard them talk about it over and over. He and his cousin were driving a truck on the highway and a horse ran wild into the road. Laha’s brother couldn’t stop the truck. When the horse was dying, a white man rode up on another horse, cussing the boys. He shot the horse, then shot the cousin. Laha’s brother had run into the woods, found the house at night, and they gave him a small boat. “A goddamn nigger let the horse loose, and this goddamn nigger killed him. A horse worth more than both of em,” the white man shouted. Big Johnny had told Laha’s brother how to see his way to Charleston.

  She stood by the landing and untied one of the battoes. The water lapped and shivered. She stepped into the battoe and settled her bag, and then she was floating, touching the water with the paddles. The banks were tall with dense trees, and the floating felt good—nothing under her. She had been in a boat many times when she was smaller, before she had to stay in the stand or go to the fields.

  Watch for the creeks, she remembered them saying. She passed the spot where she had fished that day, where the marsh met the waterway, and then she slipped past the woods behind her mother’s house. She dipped the paddle, but the water was taking her. Watching the woods, she saw a small cleared space, another landing, and she tried to remember… the landing for the House, behind the gates, the tunnel of oaks that led to the House. And Marietta froze—a small white man stood there, leaning against the pole on the landing. He stared at her, not moving, and the battoe slid past, so close she saw a cigar in his hand. Then the trees rose dark again, and she pushed harder with the water.

  Charleston

  THE BRIDGE ROSE TOO high above the water, and cars knocked air against her where she walked near the edge. Marietta kept her eyes on the road, afraid to look backward to the bushes that hid the tiny battoe near the ramp, afraid to look ahead at the dazzling sky that stretched long and treeless. The fall of air below her and the blankness above made her dizzy when she breathed. It was morning now, and she prayed that none of the people flying past her would swerve or swing out a bottle to send her into the blue.

  Staring at them and their cars might make it worse. She watched the concrete just in front of each boot toe, the sun hot on her scarf knot and neck, but the water was still there at the side of her eyes. Who would find her body when she floated in this huge river? The black, damp leather was heavy over her feet and shins, thumping soft, and she let the steps blur together, forgetting to listen for laughing in the car windows. Her father’s feet, bobbing in the creek—in the boots? No—the boo
ts had been dusty and forgotten in the leaning shed. Why wasn’t he wearing them? She would sink to the bottom of the river in his boots, and the crabs would eat her, eyes first.

  When she tried to focus her eyes again, swaying, the water was closer to her, and the mud of a small island glittered under the bridge after a few minutes. But the span lifted high again, and she had to look away until she felt the gradual slide toward land. When the cars slowed, Marietta smelled the stink of marsh and smoke, and she stepped off onto hard dirt.

  Three men sat with feet dangling off a wall, like boys at home with strings looped around their fingers into the creek. But asphalt was under their feet, and they didn’t even look up at her. One passed a long bottle to another, and she heard him laugh soft and mumbly as Laha’s kids blowing through straws into their sodas.

  Her arms were stiff-coated with mud and fish scales. She thought of the battoe; maybe Uncle Hurriah would have a truck to go and get it. She could hear men shouting in a wooden building nearby, and the sounds of machines humming. Uncle Hurriah. What would he say if she appeared this way, smelling of Pine Gardens? She looked until she found a water tap in the shade of another building, and she watched that no one came outside. Washing her arms and face, pulling her dress down over the pants, she felt her stomach small as a fist, her head empty as a bubble. Too hungry. The bag pounded against her back when she kept walking.

  What should she do first? Maybe Uncle Hurriah was at work. She walked with her head down, but now that she was level with the water again, she was more afraid of the faces and buildings, and she turned toward the blue to follow along the river. Each time she looked up, she saw black faces or white faces, hats and thumbs and newspapers and eyes flickering onto her, darting up and down. Eyebrows jumping up to their foreheads or pulling together over their noses: Damn… Biggest… You see them… Boots… Spear… Where the hell she—

  Street signs were everywhere, and she sang, “Sixty-one, sixty-one, sixty-one” to herself, the number she had memorized from the-small, cramped writing on the paper with her uncle’s name. But the faces and the signs blurred, and all she could see was ships in the water, people’s mouths, bells and laughter echoing in her head. Biggest damn—you see that? She walked faster and faster, the bells louder and louder, and she could smell rain in the sky, far away, maybe a few hours over the water. The people began to disappear, and she smelled food.

  When it was quiet and she stopped, she finally saw something she recognized—the walls and black lace gates and piazzas where the women in the magazine leaned over and smiled. She looked up—the streets had gotten narrower, and the only sound was a mockingbird hidden somewhere in a tree; oleanders made black-green hedges, and then she heard another click-click-click, one too regular for a bird.

  He was around the next corner, a small old man clipping the oleander that reached through a gate. White pearls of hair stood separate at the edge of his forehead. He watched her, his light brown skin wet with sweat, and she said, “Scuse me, sir, I look for this street.”

  When she had pulled out the paper from her dress, he puffed air just like Aint Sister. “What you doin way over here downtown?”

  “I just come from up the way,” she said. “I don’t know where for look. I come off the bridge.”

  He looked at her boots. “Go back where you came,” he said, and she took in a breath. He don’t even know me, and he tell me go home. What Uncle Hurriah gon say?

  “Back up that street,” he went on, impatiently. “Up, up, maybe two miles, and you see colored folks. That street you lookin for go off to the left. It ain’t hard to find.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but he had already begun the clippers chirping again.

  She saw his sliver-grin, his head thrown back to look up at her scarf, when she moved the bag over her shoulder. His eyes were half-closed.

  A clot of noise rushed up to her head and stayed between her ears when she walked slow enough to see each street sign. She kept her chin level and looked straight at the teeth and eye whites of the black people she began to see, the people hanging in doorways and alleys, staring. The sky began to darken, and she breathed the clouds into her throat until she saw the sign above her, a small corner and then she turned, her wrist leading her around the sharp walls. A small grocery store with cans in the window, women’s faces and curlers hanging in the next glass, but she didn’t see any houses. A wafting rush of clothes washing, and then she saw the “61” over a doorway. She stood in the open space, and silvery eyes, tailfans and curled shrimp, looked back. The smell hung in the air, the smell she’d tried to wash off, the smell she’d left last night.

  She went inside slowly, toward the hand wiping the counter, back, forth, never stopping. “Help you?” the man said, unsmiling.

  “I look for my uncle,” she said. “Hurriah Turner. He left piece a paper with my mama, say he live here.” The man’s face set harder when she said her uncle’s name.

  “Hurriah live down the street,” he said, and then he turned away, dismissing her.

  “He leave this number,” she whispered, dizzy from hunger—the strong fish air didn’t make her mouth fill with liquid, it went through her nose and into her head, dark and lapping water under the landing, under the battoe. She pushed her palm against the glass, covering a red crab claw. “Why he write this?” she said louder. She couldn’t believe she raised her voice, but she said it again, hard, and he looked back at her. Then he lifted his shoulders.

  “He live down the street, but he get his mail here. Go the other side a the alley, the green house. Green house.”

  The houses sat sideways on the street, their narrow sides and flat walls facing her; as she went past, she saw feet on some of the piazzas. The spindle-railed porches ran the length of each house, facing the back of the next building, and shoe soles looked over the railings. Big booted feet perched in V’s on the wood, small black shoes crossed over each other.

  The green house was pale, the piazza railings dark with dirt. Marietta stood at the edge of the yard and looked up at the soles. They receded, gray and speckled, gritting hard on wood. A man peered down at her. “What you want?”

  “I look for Hurriah Turner.”

  “He ain’t here. Ain’t seen him in damn near a week. Why you want him?” The man’s red-brown face was heavy in the cheeks. Another man laughed somewhere on the piazza.

  “He my uncle. I come for give he message,” she said.

  The man said, “Shit, old Hurriah ain’t told me he had some a them country folk. You can leave him a note. Come on up the stairs.”

  At the top of the creaking wooden steps, she saw him and the other man, sitting in the shadows at the far end. She breathed deep through her nose and said, “I blige for wait and tell he. Message bad news.”

  The man stared at her boots, at the bag. “So? I don’t need no girl hang around, and ain’t even convince you his family. What you want?”

  “He my mama brother. She pass two days ago.” She spoke as hard as she had to the man in the fish market, tilting her head up and making her eyes flat. “I need for wait and tell he, huh?”

  “You one a them island niggers, huh. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” She thought quickly. “I have thing for give he, from my mama, just he to get it.” She heard her words growing shorter and faster, like Aint Sister and Pinkie when they didn’t like a stranger.

  “Yeah. Lotta thing for Hurriah.” He laughed. “You can wait a week. He be floating around. I don’t give a shit who in the room long as I get my money, and the rent due in a week. Then you gon have to get on whether he come back or not.” He went down a long hallway in the center of the piazza, slammed a door, and came back to give her a key. “Hurriah room on the end. Bathroom down this hall, second door.” He went back to his chair.

  She turned the last knob, and the dark, hot air inside didn’t move. Eyes were on her back, on her bag—she closed the door quickly and leaned against it. Their voices came through the crack at the
bottom: “Hurriah living in the bottle this month, he gon get one hell of a surprise one night when he come home.”

  “Shit, she surprise Jesus when she get to heaven.”

  “Look bout as much like Hurriah as I look like the Pope.”

  “Hurriah musta been drunk as a skunk to get in with that. Shit.”

  When she let the tears run, dripping off her face and into the front of her dress, she thought the water leaving her head would make it clear and free for thinking, but the faster she cried, screwing up her face to push out the heat, determined not to make a sound, the more her head filled with a rush and whirl. She stood there for a long time, her chest aching with the effort, her shoulders sore from rowing. The ache stayed even after the tears slowed and her face began to dry. She looked around the room now that the dimming wasn’t so dark. One long and narrow room with two windows that faced onto the street—the windows she’d stared at. The light was brown as tea coming in through the ancient pulled-down shades, a mattress lay in one corner, and three wooden crates by the wall were filled with a tangle of clothes and newspaper.

  The walls were gray, smudged with dirt that rose from the floor like morning haze. She could tell that no one had been inside, no one had even opened the door for days, and she moved quickly to the windows. Pushing them open, she felt the wind that comes before rain. Her own breath could swirl through the room now. It was bad luck to live in a place where no one had drawn air for a long time, Aint Sister had told her again and again. She thought of her mother’s breath wafting out through the cracks in the walls of their house, her own air still lingering near the fireplace. She blew hard. She would live here until her uncle came.

  The windows turned pink and then the rain finally came, pouring heavy and blowing into the room. Marietta sat on her bag in a trance, watching the water drip down the windowsills and make clean lines on the dirty walls. The room still smelled like a man—smoky, musty, like feet. Around her, on the wooden floor, dirt was trodden into the cracks, not light everyday dust but hard-packed long-time dirt. It wasn’t her dirt. And the mattress was brown with grease and sweat. She kept her knees pulled up, only her feet on the floor, and watched the rain until the sky turned black. She stood to pull on the light chain.