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

by Susan Straight

  The next morning, while she looked out the door for Laha and them to walk past, she heard a car crushing the sand, growling closer. Nate and Calvin stopped chewing the pieces of bread she’d given them and stared at the trees. It was the big, black car—Mr. Ray’s car, cutting slowly through the woods like a fish through tight reeds, floating and humming.

  He and Mr. Thomas got out and looked at her house, at the clearing and yard. “Morning,” Mr. Ray called to the boys, who had run out to the steps. “We need you to go get your mama. Come on with us to your granny’s house. Go get her.”

  The car inched backward while she and the boys walked, facing the windshield and Mr. Thomas’s eyes. Mr. Ray’s head and elbow hung out the window and he said, “Goddamn! Like a tunnel in here! You’re right—we’ll have to move the damn thing.”

  They left the car in the lane past Aint Sister’s house and waited for Marietta to come to the porch. “I want you to take all the jars and stuff out and keep them at your place,” Mr. Ray said. “We’re gonna move this cabin over to the main house, but we might want to put some of that stuff back inside for looks. Authentic stuff, but nothing anybody’d steal.”

  “You move a house, sir?” Marietta said, catching her breath.

  “Yes,” Mr. Thomas said. “This would be an original slave cabin, one of a very few extant slave dwellings in this area, and no one can even see it back here. Since your aunt is no longer living, it seems a shame to let this valuable piece of history go to waste, abandoned to roaming animals.”

  Animals? Aint Sister’s spirit might come to eat, or to rest; that was why everything was left waiting for her. Marietta had been listening for a breath of something, but she wasn’t afraid because the boys had been passed over the coffin. The spirit should be comfortable and pleased that all possessions were still hers or in her family. And no one came down the lane anymore, not to see Marietta, but they would still say, “Aint Sister place in the wood. Back there.”

  “Let’s go,” Mr. Ray said impatiently. “Find something to carry them in, or the boys can help.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but Aint Sister leave she house somebody,” Marietta said. “House go from peoples to peoples in family. She my people.”

  He smiled. “And this is my land. All the way to the bend, where the third gate used to be. Yeah, your house is my property, too. I want this one on the big place, and in fact I hadn’t even paid attention to this part of the title until Mr. Thomas here informed me of the buildings. But this’ll be a great addition—it’s gonna be a great spring, I can tell.”

  “Bad luck fe move house, sir,” Marietta tried again, but he raised his chin slowly.

  “In fact, I’ma have to start charging you rent for the house you and your boys there occupy. Of course, you can always get the rent deducted from your pay. Well, let’s get on with this. Find a box or something. Thomas, what the hell is this?” He was staring at a chicken beak near his foot.

  She didn’t go back to the House after she had carried the things to her front room. The men didn’t return. She walked back and forth in front of the fireplace, on the porch, Nate and Calvin playing with Aint Sister’s plates and spoon and pots, with the ancient black iron spider she used to set in the fire, to cook something slow right over the coals. The graywood boards were slick against her soles, her head swollen with anger.

  Bina house. Christmas house. Aint Sister house. Mama house. My house. All-two house gone—nobody land, nobody wood.

  She watched the boys under the table. My boy—nobody boy. I whup em for make em weak, make em smile? Let em watch my face, they don’t learn that. They see they grandaddy face. I make my face soft? They got he blood, no matter I do or no. Sister say I hard fe wood. Cain get straight wood from no crooked timber?

  Dark crept into the clearing, then the house, and she built the fire higher and put the boys in the washtub near the hearth. They flicked drops into the ashes to hear them hiss. Their thick Sinbad eyebrows, her heart and bones and bodies—she was no threat, since a hard woman was only ugly and stubborn. But big boys—could she do anything to change their faces, or were their bones settling even now into square, even stares? Africa woman—she stone in the tree, wait for me.

  Blueblack—blueblood. The deepest blue of the hottest flames; the sapphire blue of the glass on her mother’s grave; the murky gray-blue of the oyster shells. The blueblack between the trees before night.

  Her father’s picture—her reflection in Sinbad’s eyes—Nate and Calvin’s still-soft faces, their baby skin plumped over his own, her own stark features. Hard bones of forehead and cheek and outlined lips.

  Blueblack—cause trouble. Mr. Ray wanted them to learn from her, how to hold their faces right and hand things to him or Randy. How to show teeth. He wanted her eyes to open wider when he spoke, her face to somehow seem lower, closer to his, not inclined so that her lips and lids were flat and angled above him. The boys’ mouths now, always moist and laughing, her own teeth always smooth and wet behind her shut lips, her eyes comfortable behind her lids.

  She had counted the dollars in her mother’s box under the bed a hundred times, but when they were asleep, she sat near the fire and counted again. How much for a room with a kitchen and bathroom in Charleston? She stared at the Mason jars on the table—the gleaming, clean jars full of gold and silver and ruby liquid. Opening one, she smelled the whiskey—snakeroot had to steep in whiskey. She sighed, running her palm around the rice pot. How much could she take this time? Then she remembered—she couldn’t take the stone. She couldn’t go back and get it. She couldn’t leave the boys sleeping alone.

  But the stone, Mary—Bina stone. She went into the bedroom and looked at the boys sleeping. Aint Sister, she prayed, come fe watch em now, just fe short minute. Watch no spirit come in here. Please.

  She ran in the dark, flashlight slanting crazily in the trees, and because she wasn’t sure what to sing to keep haints away from the road, sang what Sinbad had always murmured musically to women, the only thing she could remember right now. Please, please, don’t go, she sang. No, I going, she thought. I gone.

  At the gate, she turned off the light and didn’t even let the song stay in her mind. It wasn’t very late—lights were still on upstairs. In they bedroom. He bedroom. She inched around the edge of the yard, close to the azaleas, crouching when she heard noises. When she passed the path to the landing, she ran to the woods and went to the spot where she’d laid the stone. Mary—her fingers felt the letters. Bina—I cain change you, but I take you home. She lifted it up and started toward the azaleas, but she heard someone then, and she saw a glowing ember floating through the dark.

  Maussa come get she! Spirit stand on the landing, see me. He smoke cigar, remember me from battoe. She crouched in the azaleas, smelling the dirt she had turned, and then the sharp smoke floating from the tiny fire, bobbing closer to her. Come on. I ain’t run, I got stone fe knock you. This spirit stone, even knock spirit. She shivered against the leaves.

  The pink ash flew toward her suddenly. She saw the silhouette of a man in the light from the bedroom window—Mr. Ray. He had flicked his cigarette at the azalea bush, and it smoldered near her foot. He went around the front and she heard the door close.

  She ran then, around the edge again, but fast, before he could look out a window. The stone was heavy, clicking against the flashlight, and she clutched it to her chest, bumping her breastbone.

  At the house, she left the stone on the porch and hurried inside to check the boys. They snored peacefully. One more small minute, she begged Aint Sister. Watch fe me, please. Watch fe Africa woman.

  Down the lane, past Aint’s dark house and Pinkie’s smoking stovepipe, she passed the big Angel Oak, silent in the cold. No fire in the bricked circle in winter, no smoking and bubbling murmurs from people sitting around the coals. She kept on to the bury ground.

  Spirit, Haint, please rest now, I bring someone fe join you. No harm now, please. She took a breath and entered the bury yard, the trees
and moss ghostly, protecting the souls. Between Aint Sister’s grave and her mother’s, she placed the stone, resting her palm on it for a second. You blood here. My blood gone now.

  She knew Little Johnny would be watching TV in the front room, but she listened to make sure he was alone. Big Johnny and Rosie must be out for visit, she thought. The TV light flashed silver and blue in the window. Marietta knocked on the door.

  “Johnny,” she whispered. “It Marietta.”

  “What you want?” he said when she was inside. He was surprised, his teeth silver, too, when he squinted in the television glow.

  “You daddy truck here?”

  “He and Mama gone to Laha’s. They walk. Why?”

  “I need you drive me somewhere. Hurry start the truck, I pay you three dollar.”

  Johnny looked at the TV. “You crazy. I ain’t drive nowhere at night.”

  “You daddy take the truck day-clean,” she said, moving to stand near the screen. “I pay you five dollar.”

  “Five dollar ain’t enough to get kill for. Daddy be vex past reason.”

  “I have for get something by McClellanville,” Marietta said, hard. “I go get my boy ready. You come in half hour, come on get we. You be back too fast. Please.” She stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder, and she saw that he was afraid of her. “One hour you come.”

  He nodded, said, “I come, okay?” When she let him go, his eyes fixed back on the silver-blue light.

  Charleston

  “YOU AIN’T GOT NO JOB, you don even know where you go,” Johnny said, repeated like a verse, while she told him where to turn. The fish market was closed, plywood covering the windows, and she felt a stab in her chest—maybe Frank dead, no, maybe he just move he brother farm. Eat mullet every day.

  The old house where she had stayed was dark, no one out on the piazza in the winter cold. Hurriah? He wander, he dead, he come back? No—he gone still. She told Johnny, “Turn right.”

  “You crazy. Plat-eye get you,” he grumbled. “Talk bout go McClellanville and lie. Haint change you out.”

  She was tired of his voice, and she wanted to hear the boys’ sleeping breath in the huge cab so she could think, remember the streets; she turned to him and said, “Plat-eye get me, change me fe hag! Spirit from the House change me, make me crazy. So close you mouth, I tire for you teeth. Just drive where I ax you!”

  He clenched the steering wheel hard and folded his lips on each other. She looked back at the streets. Someone had come into Frank’s one day looking for a room, and Frank had told him, “Go over there past King, up the way. That neighborhood cheap, but it ain’t so wild like here. They got a bunch a rooms up there.” She had walked this way a few times, and she tried to recall where she had seen the street with a long line of rooming houses and signs hung over piazzas.

  The narrow streets ended in dead ends, in alleys, but finally she saw the slightly wider street she remembered, with tall apartment houses all the way down, and then the huge vacant lot that stretched to fences and factories. “Go slow,” she told Johnny, and she looked at the piazzas and wrought-iron railings for signs.

  “I ain’t see nothing,” he said. “You crazy. You ain’t know nobody in Charleston—cain nobody find you in you house so far back in the tree.”

  “I spirit—my friend fly in the tree fe see me,” she said. “We stay here till day-clean, when they put the sign out. Lean back and sleep—I keep a eye.”

  He snorted and grumbled, but after a long hour his head did nod crooked on the seat, and Marietta tightened the blankets over the boys, wedged into her legs. She smelled the truck cab, thinking of how angry Big Johnny would be in the morning. But I ain’t go back again. Pine Garden gone. My house gone, my people gone. I stay here now. Lil Johnny tell em I crazy, I haint. Haint disappear day-clean, like I gone.

  When the sky turned purple, she got out of the truck, arranging the boys close and warm for each other on the seat. She took out the pot filled with grits and rice and jars, took out the baskets filled with bedding and clothes, the boxes of tea and plates. Each thing she picked up off the truckbed clean and careful, like picking fruit, so Johnny wouldn’t wake. She piled them in the dirt of the vacant lot where they were parked, and before the sun rose, she waited for the day-work ladies to open their doors.

  Dim gold lights came on in windows, and a few men walked down the street in their heavy boots, heading toward the main street away from her. No one looked back to the lot. Soon the women came out in their coats, and then the older woman she had been waiting for hung the signs over her railing.

  She ran down the street to the apartment house and knocked on the door. It was still gray-dark, and the cold air stung her ears. “Ma’am?” she said when the woman’s face peered around the door edge. “I look for room, one with toilet and stove.”

  “Just you?” the woman said.

  “No, me and my two boy. Small-small boy, not three yet.”

  “Huh. You sure early.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I got a room with kitchen and bath. One bedroom.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Here?”

  “No, down the way. Let me get dress and I be with you directly.” She closed the door.

  Marietta ran back to the truck and woke the boys. “Look, we take walk,” she said when they snarled and squinted. “Look, we go see lady got candy.”

  “Candy?” they murmured, rubbing their eyes. “Candy?”

  “Johnny, you go now,” she said, shaking him. “I get my thing. Here five dollar. I ain’t lie bout no money.”

  “Huh?” His head swayed for a second while he looked at the vacant lot. “What you say?”

  “Say go home, hurry so you daddy don kill you. Here—take you money. Go!”

  “You crazy—you stand in some street with all you thing and want me go?”

  “I don need you. I take care weself now, so go.” She glared at him with the look she had used all night, and he shook his head.

  “Mama kill me I tell she how I left you,” he said. “Stand in street.”

  “Tell she I fine. Tell she I gone,” Marietta said harshly, pulling the boys away from the truck. She glared at him until he started the truck. “You go down to this street, turn left. When you see King Street, you go right. You see sign for bridge, or you ax someone for bridge to get on the highway. Go on now.”

  When the truck had turned the corner, she saw more people coming out to the street, carrying paper bags and purses and lunches. Women dressed for day work, men in dark uniforms and coats. Children came out onto the piazzas and ran back inside. Marietta took the boys’ hands and led them down to the house where the sign hung.

  “I got a two-room place, up closer to the main street,” the woman said inside her apartment. “Bigger for all three y’all.”

  When Marietta found out how much it was, she shook her head. “We look fe one room,” she said. “My thing outside—we can go see the room?”

  She led them back down toward the vacant lot, raising her eyebrows at Marietta’s tiny pile of boxes and pots. “That all you bring?” she said. “This room ain’t furnish. It only got a table they left behind. But I let you have a bed from my other place, if you interested.”

  Marietta counted her money again silently, pulling the boys up the stairs to the piazza of the old building at the end of the street, and said, “I think on it, ma’am.”

  The light through these dingy shades was the same honey-heavy beam and shadow she remembered from her uncle’s room. The linoleum rug had worn through to the wood floor in spots, and the walls were filmed with smoke and grease. The whole apartment looked cloudy, like creek-water with sand stirred up from the bottom. After the woman had taken the money and closed the door, Marietta watched the boys. They ran from end to end, patting the walls.

  The previous tenants had left a couch, too. The landlady was surprised to see it, but she said the people had left in a hurry. Marietta laid the oilcloth she had brought on the too-soft c
ouch and tucked it into the crease at the back, and then she watched the boys run and poke and yawn until they grew sleepy enough from the long night to let her lay them end to end on the crackly cloth.

  She touched her things in the middle of the floor and strewn about by the boys. Aint Sister’s jars of tea nestled inside one peach crate. Marietta knew she would never drink them, and they were heavy, but she had wanted to keep the gleaming, gold-topped jars so nobody would peer at them and shake his head, so nobody would laugh and say, “Old nigger remedies, huh?”

  Her pots—she put them on the sticky round table, white with flecks of color that didn’t move under her fingers. Taking out the shells she had let Calvin put inside the rice pot, and then the small metal trucks Nate had chosen, she put their keepsakes on the windowsill, so they could reach them. She had an end apartment again, and the two windows looked out over the vacant lot.

  She heard noises in the wall, gurgling and banging, and she went into the kitchen. She had forgotten about the water! The white enamel sink, dotted with black nudges where things had dented it, and the faucet that filled it with water in seconds. She listened to the whine of water coming from the pipe, and then ran to the bathroom.

  Her mouth opened—a long white tub! Well, not white, it was brown-smoked around the edges, but when she bent and turned the taps, hot and cold water came out. She knelt and traced her fingers around the curves. And I feel too sorry I leave that wash pot for Laha, too sorry I tell Johnny give she all my thing. Nobody need no wash pot! Them boy gon swim in there, swim in warm water. She turned to the toilet, and then she closed the bathroom door. Nobody come bang on my door, nobody come fe get me. I sit here long as them two let me. The toilet seat was cold and damp under her, and a roll of thin, moist paper sat on the floor by her feet. She stood up and the rusty water swirled when she pushed the shiny handle down. Lord God. Water everywhere. The hissing toilet, the rushing water in the bathtub, the stream in the sink—she stopped and listened, eyes closed.