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

by Susan Straight

  Inside one of the crates, she found two cans of pork and beans, a can opener, and a grimy spoon. Taking her own spoon from her boot, she rubbed it with the clean dress until it shone in the harsh light of the bare bulb. The beans were cold and congealed against her teeth, and she ate so fast she felt the half-chewed mass stop at her chest until she straightened and tried to calm herself.

  No broom, no washtub, no stove. Uncle must don’t eat here, she thought. Only sleep here. Where he eat, where he wash he clothes? She hugged her knees again. No one she knew went to sleep without taking a bath each night. She saw the five large washtubs set in back of Laha’s house, heard the men at the store teasing Laha when she bought another one after she’d had more children. “I finish when I finish,” she said. Her kids filled the tubs with water from the pump in the morning, and the tubs heated all day in the summer sun for warm baths in the evening.

  Marietta’s mother had kept her tub on the porch, and she liked the water hotter than sun-warm. Every night, Marietta dragged the tub into the kitchen and put all three pots on the stove to add to her mother’s bath and her own.

  She picked up the rice pot. The bathroom was down the black hallway—what was inside? Checking to make sure her knife was still in her boot, she went out to the piazza, empty now with water sheeting from the roof and pounding the yard. She smelled the bathroom when she entered the hallway. But inside, with the bulb on, she saw a toilet. Her mother, Laha, Pinkie, all of them talked about getting toilets someday. The damp floor smelled the same here as the outhouse. The sink was brown-tinged and black hairs curled in tiny circles around the faucet. But she turned the metal knob and water sputtered into the sink. She filled the rice pot in a few seconds, then sat carefully on the cold toilet seat. Her legs peeled away when she stood; she pushed the handle down, and water swirled around in the bowl, muddy brown. The smell was wetter, worse than the outhouse somehow, and she jumped when heavy, clomping shoes went past the door. When it was quiet again, only the toilet murmuring, she hurried back to the room.

  Dipping her dirty dress in the potful of water, she sat on the bag again and dabbed at her bare arms and legs. She wore the clean dress, curled herself onto the burlap sack and a few of the cleaner-smelling shirts from the crates. The tangle of sheets and mattress seemed foul with something. What would she say to him when he came through the door? Was he covered with dirt, like those men who floated up and down the waterway with no home? She lay with her shoulder pushing the hard floor and listened to the rain.

  Knocking woke her. She started up, but then she thought, My uncle don’t knock. He live here, got key. She listened to the banging that came again, the footsteps stamping down the piazza. Someone shouted on the street below, and she sat up for a long time, hearing others laugh and shout and walk up the wooden steps.

  On the third day, the other can of beans gone and her eyes dry in their sockets from thirst, she retied her scarf in the room filled with her air. Even pulling on her boots left her hot and sleepy. She had lain on the bag or sat on a crate, looking out the window, for hours, making sure no one could see her in the glass. People came to pound on the door during the day and night, but no one tried to open it. She wasn’t even hungry anymore, and her muscles felt long and tight, but the heat of her eyes and her slow thoughts meant she had to buy food.

  The sun hung on its way down, and a few men stood in the long, narrow yard. They looked up when she started down the steps, and she stopped. I ain’t keep my eye down all day. They know I scare for who come in the room. She stared back at them until they curled their lips and turned; she would look back until everyone wavered, she wouldn’t stay in the room and hide. When she started down the street, she fixed her eyes on those looking at her basket, her boots, her face, until they pulled in their cheeks and ducked.

  The store was on the corner, she remembered. She had five dollars—what Aint Sister had left her to pay Pearl. She could buy a broom, and fill the rice pot with water to throw on the floor and sweep out the dirt. You clean, you plan for stay. That not you room for clean. But he don’t come back, you have for go home. Aint Sister be worse, angry too much, and she fix for you every day. She never forgive.

  The thoughts swam black in her head, filled her eyes, and she was inside the store before she could be nervous. She looked at the crowd of cans and plastic. In the far corner, she saw a broom. Her palm felt cool and dry on the handle, and she smiled to the straw. But what could she eat? No stove or fire—she hated the metal taste and thick jelly-sauce of canned food. A soda, which would have to last sip by sip, and two tins of sardines, fish for make me strong.

  Her eyes slanting down at the man behind the counter, she showed him her basket. He said, “Take em out so I can see you ain’t hiding nothing.”

  “How much?” she said, slamming the tins and bottle on the counter. Her heart beat fast.

  He said nothing, just handed her the receipt and opened his palm for the money.

  Pushing through the door, she gripped the broom, dizzy again: she saw Aint Sister, leaning against a pale blue truck. “Don sweep at night, bring bad luck,” she said, her headwrap moving. “Wait till day-clean fe break new broom.”

  Marietta jumped, bumping the broom against the wall; it knocked the basket out of her hand and onto the street, where the sardines thudded into the gutter. She swayed for a moment.

  “You de fall out, child?” the voice said, close to her now, and the fingers were sharp as always at her elbow. “What wrong?”

  The white headwrap, the hard neck and small eyes, but the skin darker than Aint Sister’s—Marietta stared at the woman’s hand around a pipe. “You look same my aintie,” she whispered.

  The woman laughed then. “I look fe everybody aintie, everybody granma. That me,” she said. She let Marietta sit on the curb and picked up the basket and the food. “You go fe sell basket at market? I never see you.”

  Marietta shook her head. “What market?”

  “You not from here? Where you from?”

  “I look for my uncle,” Marietta said. “Hurriah Turner. I come from up the way. Pine Garden.”

  The woman took a deep pull on her pipe and turned the basket around slowly. “Pretty-pretty. You beena make nice work.” Her voice was faster than Aint Sister’s, but her smoke smelled the same, and Marietta answered without thinking.

  “It ain’t mine, it my mama’s,” she said, and her throat swelled shut. Three days, four days—when had she said that to the small woman whose money was in her boot right now? She pushed at her eyelids, ashamed that she couldn’t stop her face from trembling. And if the woman hadn’t moved to hold her, she would have been able to stop herself quickly. She hadn’t cried in front of anyone for years—not since she was small and cut her foot on a piece of glass, kept on walking without pain until she smelled her mother’s hairdress at her cheek, felt the softness of her elbow folds. Then the gash throbbed. She leaned into the woman, forcing her eyes open wide to dry the veil of water sliding over them.

  When the tears went back inside, she took the basket and said, “That my mama work. I can’t make no basket.”

  “You tell me, I beena forget, I so old. Who you fe look now?”

  “Hurriah Turner.”

  “Oh, Lord,” the woman said. “That you uncle? He always in there, eat every night when sun de red fe down.” She pointed across the street. “Like so now, dark the light. You ax Sinbad fe you uncle?”

  Marietta shook her head again. “Man tell me Hurriah Turner live for green house, but my mama have paper say number 61.”

  “Come we de ax Sinbad. Frank never crack he teeth fe nothin. But Sinbad a sweetmouth man. He love fe talk.”

  Marietta followed her across the street to the fish market. The same man stood at the cash register, three lines deep in his forehead, and she looked at him closely this time. He was all stripes. His hair had a gray streak down the middle and straight back from each temple; heavy black glasses made a line down the center of the temple-gray. And
his mustache was a finger below his nose, his teeth wide and white under than when he lifted his lip and squinted at the older woman. “Your nephew didn’t come back and get that truck running?” he said. “He went out the back with Sinbad, say he looking for a part.”

  “Lord God, Sinbad gone and I need some smile. Sinbad good fe smile. This Hurriah niece, you know that?”

  The man had looked down again, counting money in the register. Marietta smelled fish frying in cornmeal, the hot oil swimming in the air. Two girls sat at one of the tables in the room, staring at Marietta and hiding their mouths with red-tipped fingers. Their straightened hair glistened in the light. Marietta wanted to sit, to hide her boots; the smell of the food made her stomach tighten.

  “You been in here with that piece a paper, huh?” the man said, and she turned back.

  “You think she a lie?” the old woman said. “Where you from?” she asked again.

  “Pine Garden.”

  “See! Hurriah mention that place, I hear he tell, say he beena happy in hell but not Pine Garden.” She smiled in triumph.

  “Way he carry on, he be in hell soon enough,” Frank said. He frowned at Marietta. “Hurriah use this number cause he like to travel, specially when something ain’t going right. He go all over, sometime he come back here and tell me he been in Arizona, California. All kind of places. He travel and work in the fields. Like to be in a different place so new people can hear him play.”

  “He play that box so sweet till you fe cry,” the woman said, softer, and she stroked her lip with her finger as if she heard guitar strings now.

  “He always come back, and I keep his mail,” Frank said, sharp again, looking down at his money. “But too many people be asking for him. I can’t keep em straight, who he know and who he don’t.”

  “Lord God, where that Michael go?” the older woman said. “Look, dark the light now and I have fe take my foot and go.” Marietta stared at the shrimp, heard Aint Sister complaining about how fast the sun had set and how she didn’t want to walk home in the dark. “I know where that boy gone with Sinbad. I gon find him now.” She stopped at the door. “We de bring you corn Thursday. Day-clean, now.”

  Frank said, “In the morning, Miss Pat. I ain’t island folks, huh? Have to stop and think about everything you say.”

  “I see you by and by,” Miss Pat said to Marietta on the sidewalk, and then she walked around the corner.

  When Marietta reached the yard, she saw three men in the corner, cigarettes glowing, and the hallway light was a yellow finger in the doorway shadows. In the room, she opened the sardines, eating slowly and crunching the tiny bones. She nudged the grains of rice in their bag, watching them turn and fall on each other. She took the rice pot to the faucet.

  Pushing the mattress out onto the piazza, the crates after it, she poured potfuls of water onto the wood floor and swept out the flood of black water onto the piazza. “Watch, please,” she called to warn the men, and then she flung the sheet out into the air, where it shattered into drops on the dusty yard. Sweep at night I want, she thought. Sweep out my uncle dirt. He ain’t come back, I sweep when I want.

  At home, night was pure black unless the moon shone into the open windows. But here headlights swept the walls at night, and the street lamp shone. She lay on her pallet. “The week be finish up. I need for find a job so I can stay, save money for move to better place.” She couldn’t sell baskets at the market—she only had one. Maybe she could find Miss Pat again and ask for work in her fields, wherever her island was. Maybe Miss Pat lived on the same island where her father was born. She slept, woke again, and heard water still dripping off the piazza. It wasn’t raining.

  Poking her head out the door, Marietta saw a woman shaking out a mop, dropping it into a bucket; then the woman sat on a chair in her doorway and lit a cigarette. The smoke joined the gray dawn and disappeared.

  Marietta walked silently in her bare feet down the piazza, and the woman jumped when she saw her. “Shit, you scare me,” she said. She was small and plump, with nut-brown cheeks round and full, but her mouth was small as a dime.

  “Who you?” the woman said.

  “Hurriah niece,” Marietta said. “I stay in he room, wait for he to come back. I want to know can I borrow you mop and bucket sometime?”

  “Shit, take em now, cause I won’t be mopping for another week. Gotta mop somebody floor every day, and I ain’t hardly interest in mine.” She stared at the back of the next house. Her feet were small, too, propped in house slippers on the railing.

  “You do day work?”

  “Why else I be mopping?”

  “You know any lady look for somebody?”

  The woman looked hard at Marietta. “You do day work before?” Marietta shook her head. “Where you work?”

  “Pick bean, tomato, corn.”

  “Huh. Nobody want to train you, not now. These ladies so particular till you can’t please em. You best to find something else.” She got up abruptly and closed the door, but she pushed her face out after a moment. “Bring me back the mop—don’t be leaving it out. Somebody steal it in a minute.”

  Marietta decided to walk back to that leafy, gated street where the houses were so big. Morning haze hung over the streets. She smelled the saltwater, the pluff mud at the edges, the coffee floating from windows and doorways. People were eating grits, drinking coffee. She had finished her soda this morning.

  She heard the clack-clacking in the yards, but it was faint and faraway. A woman stood outside one of the gates, though, polishing the brass plate on the side. Marietta stopped beside her and said, “Ma’am?”

  The woman started, white showing all around her eyes. “Girl, you scare me half to death! What you want?”

  “I look for day work, ma’am. You know somebody need girl?”

  The woman drew her chin back toward her neck and said, “You ain’t hardly dressed for looking to work.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “No. I don’t know nobody.” She turned back to the gate.

  Along each street, the servants she saw looked as if she embarrassed them. Blueblack—country—huh. And the white people, the men coming out the gates going to work, women going somewhere with scarves and black glasses, didn’t see her at all. The shoe tips and glasses tips were all pointy and shined, and the eyes didn’t swerve—not like the white people at home, Mr. Tally and Mr. Briggs, who always saw you no matter where you were, always smiled and said, “You doin a good job, gal?” or “Hot today, ain’t it?” And you had to smile back and answer, “Yessuh.”

  After a few hours, she couldn’t even feel her feet, just her hips moving her forward. Nothing in her hands—no grocery bag in the bend of her elbow, no purse on her wrist, no newspaper tucked in her armpit. She stared at the people walking past her, making their eyes widen only a little too round, and she remembered that night, sitting in the small battoe, rocking and floating through the dark. Looking into the black woods, streaks of silver from passing creeks with the moon flashing on their water. Afraid of the not-seeing, and her powerless voice all she could use if something flew out at her—a spirit, a man. The darkness that sent streaks of cold through people and paralyzed them where they stood on the road—only animals moved through blackened forest and could see the paths. Animals and spirits. Her face—that was what people saw, so dark reminding them of night, the time of animals and plat-eyes. There were her eyes, moving, and if she smiled, her teeth would be white as the moon. She scared them, and they looked away first.

  She knew she smelled fire. A knot of embers pulsed in the far corner of the yard, shadows passing in front of it now and then, and she leaned over the railing to smell cooking meat.

  Grabbing her rice pot, she slid the bag of rice under her arm and filled the pot from the bathroom tap. But in the yard she realized that she had no wood, so she went upstairs for one of the wooden crates. In the yard, she smashed it with her boot.

  “What the hell you doing?” the landlord called from
the far corner. “You can’t be breaking things.”

  She didn’t answer him. The wood splintered, she arranged it, lit the match, blew. He came to stand over her. “Shit, girl, you heard me. Only one fire lowed in the yard. I can’t have everybody building fires.”

  She said nothing, just squatted and blew softly, imagining she was in the woods, and he pushed at her shoulder. “You don’t understand English, country gal?”

  Marietta raised and whirled around, her face even with his. “You put it out,” she said, her voice cracked and deep as always; she imagined her father, his lips square, his hands, “and I knock you blind.”

  “Crazy bitch,” he said, turning so hard he brushed her. “Think she somebody. You be out on your ass tomorrow night, cause you ain’t got no money,” he called. “Be building fires back in them woods you come from.”

  She felt a chill—had he known what she thought? But she bent to put the rice pot on the fire, even though it was too high still. The flames licked the black iron, pitted and coarse, and the base of the pot seemed to pull them right inside.

  Awake all night, she ate the whole pot of rice, handful by handful, and looked at her father’s picture. I don need no mirror, she thought. They say that me right there. The box filled the air with dry-flower scent, and that was as good a picture of her mother, because when she smelled it Marietta saw the tiny, soft forehead hairs, flattened with oil in a veil along her ears, and the eyelashes moving all in one curve.

  When the cars had stopped passing, and no more footsteps scraped below her window, she waited for day-clean. She would look for Miss Pat.

  The last grains of rice between her teeth, she heard sliding quiet outside the door. This wasn’t the people who tromped up the stairs and banged, calling out, “Hurriah? Hey, nigger, come on.” The shoes stopped slowly and a hand tried the knob.