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

by Susan Straight

  Don’t turn—wait and see do they speak. It just Willie—he like for wander. Spirit don’t come in the day, don’t make no sound. She stared at the rotted landing wood. He was spirit—cain no man stand on that wood. The feet stopped, shifting and mashing leaves, and she heard, “When we get this place, I’ma buy you a big nigger like that. Just for you, take you fishing and hunting. They know all the best spots.”

  A white man, his whisper hard and carrying like their words always did, even when they didn’t try. She turned very slowly, watching his mouth open as her belly swung around. He wasn’t a spirit. He had a little boy beside him, holding a BB gun to his chest. The man wore a plaid jacket and a cap; he stared at her stomach, at the white scarf around her hand, and she saw instantly that it would have been all right if she were a man. He would’ve said something joking—“Boy, you think the fish better here than down your way?” Like Mr. Tally and Mr. Briggs said to Big Johnny and them when they met.

  But her belly, attached to her size—the man was silent for a long minute, and his son said, “Daddy? She got a baby in there?”

  “You lost, gal?” he said, not moving.

  “No, sir. Just catch some fish for my dinner.” She said it carefully, clearly, lowering her head.

  “You live round here? I ain’t seen you.”

  “I live down the road, close by.”

  “Well, you better get home. It’s gon be dark soon, and this private property.” He cradled the shotgun in his elbow. “This is hunting land, you know, dangerous to be slipping around where people can’t see you.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I going, sir.”

  He turned away and walked up the bank, his son looking back, head swiveling like a bird’s. “She got a baby in there, huh?” he said, voice high as a bird’s, too. “Like Aunt Doretta?”

  Marietta walked quickly back up the path and toward the gate. She had left the crab at the edge of the water. The lane was deep in shadow, and she told the baby, “You gon eat rice. Plenty, don’t fuss.”

  Stopping by the roadside when she had passed the second gate, she picked up small broken pine branches. Private property—was she off it? Her arms full of lightwood when she entered the clearing, she headed for the steps and the woodstove.

  A few fat chunks, too—it would be cold tonight. She found the ax under the porch where she’d kept it and dragged one larger branch from the edge of the clearing into the yard. The smooth ax handle felt good in her hands, sliding up and back with each stroke, but her back ached and her head was light from hunger. She took the wood inside and closed the door.

  Spooning up hot rice, she thought of the first nights she’d spent in her uncle’s room, sitting on the floor and scooping huge mouthfuls of grain. This room was empty of breath, too, but it was still her air, and maybe the breath of the wind that had blown the squares of newspaper off the cracks they were supposed to cover. She didn’t feel afraid, not of spirits or the quiet or anyone pounding at her door. She was only afraid that Aint Sister would come and find her. That was why she’d waited for night to start the fire, to hide the smoke from day.

  The white man said the land around the House was private property; was it his, or was he just working on it? She listened for a car to maybe pass down the lane; maybe he’d moved the fallen oak. He must know Pearl and them, say he ain’t seen me.

  After she had arranged all her clothes in a pile on the floor near the stove, she listened again, but no car came. Where did he live? The House was still abandoned. Marietta felt the cool night creep up through the wooden boards; she put more wood in the stove, seeing with her eyes closed herself as a girl, huddling curled like a dog on this floor, telling her mother, “I don’t want sleep with you. Stove warm, and don’t push me. Leave me lone.”

  She was huge and forward-jutting as the lady she’d seen once on an old ship in the Charleston harbor, a lady painted and gowned, her golden hair cascading down to her outthrust bosom. Marietta stood by the pump, looking at the completely overgrown path to the creek, and knew she couldn’t put her belly forward and cut through the brush and vines. Carrying the water, she felt her stomach ring in a tight circle. She would have to see Pearl.

  On the porch, eating warmed rice, she put her hand on the baby, who rode high and quiet now. She leaned back and closed her eyes again. What I say to Pearl and them in the store? Don’t say nothing—just hand the money. No—tell em, say I been marry and the daddy dead. Say, he die just like my daddy—I don’t want hear or say no more. They stop and don’t ax… A hand traced her belly skin, a slow arc like the baby’s fingers or toes did, seeming to test the covering, and then the hand pressed harder. From the outside—“Lord God, Marietta, I feel all-two of em!”

  Aint Sister! A haint, long black coat that had floated without noise up to the porch—a spirit staring straight in her face, tiny hands on her baby! Marietta slid herself back against the wall, terrified.

  “You great-gran were a twin. Lord God! I smell you, girl, smell ashes smoke and think somebody beena burn this place.” Her hands were soft on either side of Marietta’s stomach now, pressing, moving. “You ain got but a month. And try fe hide, but I smell you. Why you hole up? Ain you get sense yet?”

  Marietta’s heart didn’t slow; it pushed harder at her chest bone. “I take care for myself,” she said.

  Aint Sister’s voice was low, chiding soft like she was talking to her chickens. “Girl, I think fe you every day. Every day. You my kin, run and never come fe me help you. Look you eyelid, look you fingernail. Never eat good! What you need?”

  Marietta closed her eyes again. Aint Sister’s knuckles rubbed lightly across the top of her head, where her hair felt thicker than ever.

  “Two?” Marietta said.

  “Praise God, two of em. How you don know?”

  “Just feel kick, kick everywhere. I think it hand and foot.”

  “What you need?”

  Marietta looked at the smooth skin of Aint Sister’s cheeks, the fan of tiny lines from each eye, the lips thin as dimes now, waiting. “They want fish,” she said. “All the time.”

  She brought the mullet, as Marietta had asked her to, and wouldn’t let anyone come to the house, as she’d begged her to. “You ain keep people away long,” Aint Sister said, turning the fish in the pan.

  “I don’t want nobody see me big. See the baby later all right.”

  “See all-two baby.” Aint Sister stirred grits. Marietta waited. “Where the daddy?”

  “Die.”

  Aint Sister’s lips disappeared and then came apart with a fff-ttt. “What you fe do all day till you time? How you plan fe eat?”

  Marietta thought hard—she knew she had to give in on something; she couldn’t ask Aint Sister to keep everyone away and not stay herself. “I make basket if you help,” she said.

  The circle expanding slowly in her hands, she listened. Aint’s voice wasn’t a growling hum now, on the porch or by the fireplace. She heard the stories rise and fall, heard people’s words the way they said them, and though she kept her eyes on the basket’s coils and not her aunt’s face, she saw the Africa woman. “You great-great gran, from the boat,” Aint Sister started. “She give you twin in you blood.”

  “The boat?”

  “Yeah, twin—I know you have twin you ever find husband.”

  “Who come from boat?”

  “Africa woman—from Guinea. Maussa get she from boat, just before wartime come. Guinea—that a people with straight nose, thin lip. He take she here, keep in he house. He wife dead out, child dead out. They get fever. He keep she close and she try fe run so many time till he put she in little box. He have a little box by the House, fe hold rice and corn on top, hold person below. Maussa make old woman sit outside box and talk to Africa woman, say, say, ‘Maussa never hurt you, only want you work. He give food and house you work.’ Africa woman stay in box.”

  “She my great-great gran? She you granma?” Marietta asked. “She live in box?”

  “No,
she come out. And he take she here, fe stay in my house. Build just for she.”

  “When my house build?”

  “You house?” Aint Sister raised her brows. “Huh. You mama house. Build after, cause Africa woman have twin. Maussa give she twin girl. My mama and she sister. One come before midnight—name September. My mama. Other come ten minutes later—next day. Name October. You mama granma.”

  “What the Africa woman name?”

  Aint Sister was quiet, her fingers flying to stitch pine needles into the design. “Name Bina. She Guinea people. Sit like this and tell me one time she name, how she come. Only one time. But Maussa call she Mary. Mary, from Bible. I call she Gran.”

  Marietta pushed the needle through, too. “What you real name, Aint?”

  Aint Sister curved her lips, a smile small as a fingernail. “Eva. Call me Eva then.”

  “Why you Sister?”

  “Cause I everybody sister. Nobody mama.” She wheeled the basket around and tilted her head at it. “And learn how fe bring baby cause I never scare, never forget. My gran teach me. And I bring all baby, so they belong fe me. Now I gon bring twin.”

  “Good. You bring em and I come see when you done,” Marietta said, smiling but keeping her head down, waiting to see if she was allowed to talk back—if she was grown enough to joke now. Aint Sister said nothing for several minutes, and Marietta closed her mouth.

  “Laugh now, heh,” she finally said to Marietta. “Promisin talk don cook rice.”

  They had gathered the hanging moss and cured it with hot water. When the spongy curls had dried in the sun, she and Aint Sister pushed them into the heavy mattress cover Aint had kept at her house all this time. “Fill too full, cause you heavy now,” Aint Sister said. “I beena think you dead out, gone under water like Fix and you daddy. Then week pass, and I feel you not dead. I know you fe come back sometime.” Marietta didn’t want to tell her about Uncle Hurriah, didn’t want to be scolded for seeking out the wild man. She didn’t want anyone to know where she’d gone, so she said nothing.

  She thought of the creek she hadn’t seen since she came back. When she filled the bucket from the pump, she splashed water on her face and arms, wondering if her net was still hidden in the box. But she was too big to walk far now, and still the babies turned and turned. She lay on the soft mattress, her head supported by pillows Aint had filled, and they asked for fish. Every day. She crunched the hot mullet between her teeth, thinking of Frank. Sinbad had never liked the mullet—he would eat shrimp sometimes, but he always went out and got a hamburger to eat with his plate of rice and peas and corn.

  “This my fish,” Sinbad would say, laughing at the people who shook their heads. “Round, brown, of uncertain origin, and caught swimming through the ghetto streets—the patty fish.”

  He would come into her head now, his face and the thin gap between his teeth, his voice always laughing. She didn’t ask him, didn’t stop him. When she saw his gold cheeks, the paleness of his chest in the light from the window as he rose over her, she wondered what the babies would look like. What color—her blue blood and his gold?

  The next day they fought her, bubbling angry and sliding, the round humps that had to be their behinds pushing out on either side. Thrashing all day, they made her tired, and when Aint Sister brought a large trout, Marietta leaned against the table over the dishpan to fillet the fish. The knife fell onto the meat of her palm. Blood grew straight as a toothpick, and when she sucked at it, stopped, sucked again, she suddenly craved the metallic saltiness, the satisfying weight of the blood in her throat. Turning away from the opaque flesh of the trout, she kept her mouth to the cut for a long time, sitting on the porch, sleepy and then full. The babies were quiet. They seemed to want the blood, to be lulled by it.

  They clamored to come a week later, the night she sliced open her thumb on purpose with the sharpened fish knife, closing her eyes to feel the blood slide down her throat and into them.

  “You best stop fool round and push!”

  “I ain’t wide enough!” She hated Rosie’s eyes there, and Laha’s, and those of Laha’s mother Miss Belle, who never left her house. But Aint Sister said they couldn’t be alone. Women needed to help, to wait and clean, and pray, especially with twins. They sat in the kitchen, but they looked through the doorway at her. She felt the pain lift her from the bed.

  “Nobody sixteen and ain marry gon be wide enough,” Aint Sister hissed. “But them two gon come out you like it or no. Push.”

  She held her breath and pushed, felt her eyes go even darker behind her lids, red blooms on black, and then Sister yelled, “Wait now!” Her hips bucked and Laha rushed in to hold her down. “Push now!” Her lungs met her hip bones, and she pushed.

  The boys were big as ten-pound sugar sacks in Aint Sister’s bony arms. They were reddish with blood, but even after she lifted them easily, washed each off, then brought them back to Marietta, their skins were so thin she thought she could see the blood right there underneath their chests.

  Rosie spoke to her now, for the first time. “Two boy. Big and fine, all-two. You a mama now.”

  Laha stood near and said, smiling, “You done done it.”

  They brought the babies to her and laid each at a breast. For a month, she lay there and water, cloths, food, mouths came to her. The boys’ skin grew thicker so that she wasn’t afraid of touching them, and there they looked exactly like her: dark-dark, their legs soft and knees wide as clamshells. Their eyes were a blurred purple, their hands darting shaky as a drunk man’s. But their eyebrows were Sinbad-thick already, straight and wide as windowsills over their eyes, and when they cried, she looked into their mouths and saw thin strings cut down the middle of their gums, where the two front teeth would have a gap.

  “That one, come first, name Nathaniel. This one name Calvin,” she said, and Aint Sister only nodded.

  She was almost slim again when Aint Sister allowed her out of the yard after her month’s confinement was over, and when the babies slept, she took the wooden box and walked down the lane. Past Aint Sister’s house, with the broom leaning in front and chickens talking distractedly. Past Pinkie’s white-board house, the patches of new tarpaper on her roof black as oil on the sand.

  The crossroads next, and the huge oak near Rosie and Big Johnny’s house overlooking a swept-hard yard, as always. Cigarette butts surrounded the big Angel Oak, where everyone sat in the evening to hear Big Johnny and Joe Pop tell stories. Marietta wondered if she would ever want to sit there with the others, listening to the voices in the dusk when they laughed and shouted and whispered about Buh Rabbit and Buh Buzzard, about Mr. Tally and Mrs. Briggs, about the spirits and haints roaming in the woods.

  She kept on, all the way to the church and the cemetery far behind it, where the trees stood guard over the graves and gave the spirits a place to live. Pine needles and oak leaves covered the long, raised gravesites and floated down to join the plastic flowers standing on wire supports. Clocks were set at the time people had died—round-faced clocks set at four-seventeen and four-eighteen on two graves. Big Johnny’s cousins, David and Julius, had been killed when their truck overturned on the highway. Eleven-forty—that was what the police had said the time was when Pinkie’s Crystal was shot during a robbery in New York.

  Marietta knelt beside her mother’s grave. She knew Aint Sister had put the Mason jar and the dish, with a hole in the center, at the foot. She opened the box and took out a small shiny-red alarm clock she’d bought once at the corner store in Charleston. She set the time for eight, when the sun would have started down. Beside the clock, she laid on the dirt a tiny blue bottle she’d found at Frank’s, and a silver spoon for her mother’s grits. Then she walked back home to feed the babies.

  They lay in the shaded sand, on a sheet, and the hum rose around her; dust fell like sparkles on their cheeks where they slept with lips crushed to the ground. She went behind the stand to nurse them, in case a car stopped, and then they lay in long cradle-baskets Aint Sis
ter had made for them. If Mr. Tally or Mr. Briggs was getting people in the morning, she woke in the dark and fed them, tied Calvin in a sling on her back and carried Nate, who fussed. Sitting in the stand might mean fifteen dollars, but not very often, and she made three dollars for sure in the fields, hoeing beans and corn, tying tomato plants to stakes, then picking the ripe fruit. Her breasts wet the front of her dress and milk dripped onto her boots with each step when the babies woke on their sheet and cried. Pinkie or Mary kept up her row, and she sat on the ground to nurse them, looking at the tall stalks of corn or the dry-curled tomato leaves above her. She imagined snakes near the blanket, spiders in their ears, and ran back constantly to see, but the boys lay sleeping or waving their hands or squinting at the rustle of plants. They cried when the sun shifted onto their faces.

  But when they began to wiggle and turn, when they could crawl? She didn’t want to think that far ahead, carrying them in her lap in the far corner of the bouncing truck while Laha came from Mrs. Briggs’s house, where she cleaned and cooked, and swung up into the truckbed.

  Suddenly they wanted to nurse every two hours, greedy and pulling hard, and that week Mr. Briggs came every day to the store. She cut the hoe in around the rows without thinking, listening for their cries, and she felt heat ringing her eyes. When she walked back, Aint Sister called to her from the porch. “How them two?”

  “They fine,” Marietta answered, still walking, thinking of the diapers she had to boil. But when they fell asleep, she lay on the floor to stay cool, feeling the heat settle into her cheekbones. Blood pushed against her ears; she listened to them breathe. The air caught harshly in their throats when they began to wake, their hunger and excitement building, she could hear, as their eyes opened. That was how they spent their time awake now—thrashing arms and legs, rapid breathing, sucking on her knuckles or a rag to get rid of their energy.