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

by Susan Straight

  “I don’t never smell nothing from here,” the woman said, her circle of heavy braid so far below Marietta’s chin. “And nothing to hide it between your door and mine—next to you a old man never eat. Don’t never eat.” Her don’ts were sharper than Aint Sister’s—fingers on a porch railing, impatient, clicks against her front teeth. But the lemon cake in her hands was shiny-glazed. “I make this to welcome you, but I couldn’t invite you inside cause my husband sleep. He work at night, and need his sleep. Here, sweetheart, this for you.” She had to bend only a little to place the plate inside Nate’s hands.

  Marietta saw their nostrils widen and knew she couldn’t keep this tiny woman away from them. The boys turned their faces up to her so high that their mouths had to fall open, and she told them, “Go on, give it here for I cut we all a piece.” She turned to the woman. “Thank you, ma’am. You like for sit down?”

  “I likes to have chilren close by.” The woman smiled. “I glad to see you and these boys. It bad luck if you don’t bring some food to a new neighbor, but I never see y’all and always dark in here, nobody cooking.”

  They sat at the off-balance table, its spidery metal legs clacking against the floor whenever somebody moved an elbow. The cake was thick, dense, the yellow so buttery and the clear lemon glaze stinging sour-sweet on the tongue. “They can call me Momma like everybody else do,” the woman said, watching the boys collect yellow crumbs on their cheeks.

  “That you husband, say to call he Poppa?” Marietta asked.

  “Mm-hmm. But they really calls him Baby Poppa. He so small, and peoples only remember my baby.” She had eaten a few bites of cake, but now she sat with her hands curved up in her lap, straight as a schoolgirl. “When we come from Bamberg, we had a little girl, only tiny baby. One month old. And we come here cause Poppa cousin had him a job at a hotel, say the job waiting on him. But my baby pass on to the promise land, she got that fever when that fever were goin round. Take so many chilren, that fever.”

  “I too sorry hear that,” Marietta said. “Lose a baby worse than all. People tell me that before, but I don’t believe cause I beena lose my mama. But now I have these two, I know they right.” She stopped, embarrassed by how much she had said, and brushed specks from the oilcloth.

  “Baby teach you plenty, huh?” The woman smiled, her front teeth small and square as the checks on her dress. “But they been call him ‘the baby poppa’ all that time she were sick, and then they just kept on. Cause he taken it so hard, oh, harder than any man I ever seen. And we won’t able to have no more, cause wait and wait, but weren’t no more baby in me. Look these two—they want some more cake. Act like they never eaten no cake.”

  Marietta saw how she did it—not like Aint Sister, who came straight out and said what she didn’t like—this woman didn’t look at her, just said something light in a maybe voice, but she was handing them another piece of cake. She gon get she way, what she want, Marietta thought, staring at the cheeks, the spongy braid, the eyes much rounder and slower than Aint Sister’s. Her hands were just as thin. Don, don, don—she watched the woman smile at the boys. Marietta made up her mind looking at the woman’s cheeks, smooth and full in the center, too round for her tiny body.

  “They ain’t have too much cake before. We come from up the way, like I tell you, Pine Garden. Hard time up there. My husband dead.” She waited.

  “You ain’t had a job wait for you when you come?” the woman said. Marietta shook her head. “Where you fixing to look?”

  I work in a fish market before. I try the store and restaurant, but nobody need help. I want ax you bout them factory across the way.”

  The woman shook her head now. “Girl, you better know somebody work in there to get you a job. And you gotta have experience. Them jobs hard to come by. You try the hospital? You ever work in a hospital?”

  “No. Where you husband work?”

  “He the night man at that big hotel, the one you seen with the pretty door and all the glass. You ain’t seen it? Yeah, he been there twenty years. But ain’t no openings there.”

  “You stay home?” Marietta asked.

  “Shoot, no, I got a lady for day work. You been seeing me home cause she gone to visit her cousin for the holidays. She coming back after New Year’s.”

  “You know any day work?” Marietta said.

  “Well, these Charleston lady very particular. They likes references, all that. You done domestic work before?”

  “I work in the field, but day work can’t be no harder than that.” Marietta remembered cleaning the House when Mrs. Ray came back. “I done a little domestic, too. But mostly work in the field.”

  “Huh. Yeah, well, you might see how hard.” She looked at Marietta’s hands. “Who watch them boys?” Marietta was silent, remembering them running in the yard with Randy. “You wasn’t studyin bout take em with you, now? Huh. Well, I gon go now. I ax round, see maybe I get somebody help you. I got my dishes to wash still. You all keep that cake.”

  They avoided calling her anything. She kept instructing the boys to call her “Momma,” but when they were out of earshot, Nate would say, “You the mama. She little.”

  Calvin squinted, concentrating hard, and said, “She tiny. Tiny like bird.”

  “She like granma.” Nate said it as a challenge to Calvin.

  Calvin shook his head. “Nuh-huh. Granma small. She tiny.”

  When the woman waited for them to come up from the field, where Marietta let them play while she watched out the window, they called her “you.” “You make some cake? You want my mama?”

  She called them to her door, and Marietta went. “Come in, let me see them two.” Inside, her front room was covered with crocheted blankets and doilies, and Marietta smelled greens’ steam heavy in the air.

  “Come here, look what Momma got for you,” she said, going to the table. She pulled two pairs of pants from a shopping bag. “Look what I find at my lady house. Nice and thick for rest of the winter. You know, yesterday was New Year’s, so she back today. You all eat that Hoppin John I bring you? You ain’t eat that, you ain’t have no luck. Nineteen sixty-four. The New Year. Mmm-hmm.”

  Nate and Calvin took the pants and walked around the table, dragging the corduroy dutifully. They wanted cake. “Thank you, ma’am. You ain’t have for do that,” Marietta said.

  “Didn’t do nothin. Just found em in a closet,” she said, looking at the boys, not at Marietta. “I try to think on somebody for you, but tell you the truth, I’m not so sure, cause it look like a hard time for you all get use to me. See, ain’t nobody said ‘Momma’ once. Call me ‘ma’am.’”

  “You mean you see some day work, uh, ma’am?” Marietta said, not knowing how to answer the question of who was a mama.

  “Well, I tell you. My lady so old, so feeblish I ain’t got much to do over there except she have a party or a tour. Good thing, too, cause I ain’t young, neither. I just got the three room, really, in that big house. I go in the kitchen, cook her dinner, the bathroom and wash her towels, and make up her bed in the bedroom. Do laundry. All them other room close up until spring, when them tourist come. They tour the house, you know. Historic house.”

  Marietta waited impatiently, then forced herself to relax, breathe. No hurry—listen. She like for talk, and she ain’t talk like Aint Sister. She ain’t tell me what for do yet, she just love for talk. She watched the woman’s hands, listened to her voice twist with the crochet yarn, dipping with her wrist and needle.

  “Go on and look that TV, sweetheart,” she said to Calvin. “Pull that knob there. Yeah, that one. See? TV light up. Go head and look. Well, I come home bout two, after she eat her dinner. She eat earlier than most, you know. Most these folks eat they big dinner at two, but my lady want eat earlier. And Baby Poppa come home from the hotel round three in the mornin. You go down there see his hotel with that pretty door yet? No? Well, he sleep till I goes in at seven, and then he up awhile. Maybe he watch them two boys in the morning, and I get em when I come
in, so he sleep some more.”

  Marietta blinked at the pause in the voice. The quiet settled like a fly after a long journey around the porch. Baby Poppa?

  “See, now, that’s what I was thinkin. You ain’t happy with that, but you know, everybody round this street like for Baby Poppa watch they chilren. He take em walkin, play in the field maybe. He keep a close eye. See now, you just ain’t comfortable.”

  “I never see no man watch no child,” Marietta said and stopped. Her words weren’t coming out right. “I only worry bout he keep up with em.”

  “Huh—Baby Poppa faster than you think.”

  “And I worry bout how much.” Marietta looked at the boys’ heads near the glowing screen.

  “How much?”

  “How much I pay you?”

  The woman lowered her head disdainfully. “We here anyway.”

  “But I like for pay.”

  “Huh. You give me that big basket, round one, to hold my yarn. I teach these two how to help me ball it up. That’s how we start, huh? And they call me Momma.”

  Nate and Calvin’s faces were rapt in the TV light. “You ain’t find no day work for me?” Marietta asked.

  “Well, next Saturday you gon go with Loretta. She live downstairs. She got a rich lady on the Battery, and they havin a party so she need extra help. That how you gon get reference, get regular work.” Before Marietta could count her remaining money in her head again, before she could calculate the days until the rent would be due, Momma continued, “And go look in the pot. I bring some extra chicken—my lady so feeblish she don’t eat nothing but the breast now.”

  Calvin called her Tiny Momma. Nate hid his giggles behind his hand, waiting for Calvin’s whipping, but Tiny Momma smiled. And Calvin said, “My mama big.” Baby Poppa said, “‘Big’ isn’t a very descriptive term for your mother.”

  Marietta sat on the piazza during the afternoon sun, hunched over in embarrassment at the eyes of the neighbors, and when she let Nate and Calvin play with the other children in the street, she soon heard them say, “Nuh-uh. That Tiny Momma. My mama big.”

  She circled the apartment’s two rooms, thinking about how to buy a bed, waiting for Saturday. That morning, she woke before dawn with a shaking stomach. Putting on her best dress and the flat black shoes, she carried the boys to Tiny Momma’s warm doorway and nodded to Baby Poppa. “Your eyes are fearful,” he said. “I haven’t had a complaint yet.” He sat there in his robe and slippers, his red face with the two small grins curving sideways around the real one.

  Tiny Momma handed her a biscuit and they went downstairs to walk with Loretta to the bus. It was filled with other domestics, and they murmured against the cloudy windows. “She ain’t got no uniform,” Loretta said to Tiny Momma.

  “Your lady got some extra in a closet somewhere,” Tiny Momma said.

  Loretta raised her eyebrows and turned away, and Marietta stared out the dark glass, knowing what she thought. Not that big—ain’t nobody got nothing to fit that big.

  The other women began to get off, and Loretta didn’t move. Tiny Momma left, and the bus was almost silent. “We on the Battery, the last stop almost” was all Loretta said.

  These houses looked across their street to the ocean, which was gray and choppy in the dawn. The piazzas were shadowed the length of each house, three stories high; some of the roofs had circled towers, and rounded archways lined some piazzas. Marietta could hardly swallow, and still Loretta was silent until they went in through the garden of a gray-and-white house and neared the back door.

  “I’m fixing to cook all day, so you suppose to do the heavy cleaning. Momma said you never clean before. You got no idea?”

  “I clean couple time. Just show me.”

  Loretta smiled once they were in the kitchen. “Well, you gon have to learn quick. When Miz Simmons having a party, she subject to nerves all day.”

  The woman who came into the kitchen had hair in a smooth helmet and lips that were pale pink, silvery-frosted as a winter morning. She said to Loretta, “I can’t believe how much we have to do.” Then she saw Marietta and smiled. “Well, and you’re here to help?” Marietta nodded. “Uh, you’re a friend of Loretta’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She my neighbor. She good with cleaning.”

  “Let’s get her started, and then we’ll have to discuss serving, Loretta. You don’t seem to have given that any consideration.” Marietta saw Loretta’s face grow hard when she turned to the stove.

  Loretta told her to begin on the paneled woodwork in the living room and dining room. The squares and grooves had to be cleaned carefully, and Marietta pushed the toothbrush bristles gently into the corners and the carved sunburst on the mantel. The dents and notches and baseboards—she stretched and knelt to brush the dirt and then rubbed lemon oil into all the wood. She washed the floors and polished brass fittings. After lunch, she washed the windows, only the squeaking of her rag and the noise of the TV in the study close by to let her know anyone in the house was alive.

  Loretta’s kitchen was closed off, muffling the pots, and Mrs. Simmons stayed upstairs. Marietta heard the telephone’s ringing, tiny as a dropped bottle on the street, but she heard no voices. She listened closely to the rushes of noise that burst from the study. Edging closer to the half-open door, she saw that Mr. Simmons was watching football. The cheering sounded like wind, pausing between gusts and roaring again.

  She finished the windows in the early afternoon and went back to the dining room to polish the brass fireplace screen, with its curved flames at the base. For the first time since the kitchen that morning, she heard Mrs. Simmons’s voice, imagined her smooth-flipped hair and her mouth.

  “All you’ve done is watch that damn television. Football. I’ve asked you to check the liquor cabinet, to go get ice, I’ve asked you to lay out your clothes.” She was nearly shouting, but her voice stayed deep in her chest.

  “Well, I checked the liquor cabinet.”

  “You drank all the gin. I’m aware that that is low.”

  “It’s your party. I just nod, pour drinks, and keep my mouth full. I’m practicing right now.”

  “That’s right. Who cares? I only have one maid to serve, so maybe you can do that, too.” Marietta moved the rag slowly, straining to hear.

  “There’s two of em here,” the man said.

  “See? You haven’t heard anything I’ve said all day. You came up to the bedroom twice and didn’t listen to a word. I can’t have that other one serve. I don’t know why Loretta even brought her, but of course Loretta doesn’t care, either. Did you look at what she brought? That woman’s so big and dark—she looks like a man, and sullen. She’d scare guests away from the front door if she answered it. Loretta knows better.”

  “She must be six foot. Not that hefty, though. Maybe one-sixty-five.”

  “That’s extremely helpful to know, Carl.”

  “Defensive back size. Yeah, I’d say defensive back.” He laughed.

  Marietta heard his feet scrape on the floor like he was pushing out of his chair; she stood behind the open door of the dining room. Her heart hurt, with her shoulders caved around her chest, trying to make herself small behind the paneled door. The liquor cabinet—he wasn’t leaving the room? She heard him go upstairs and the woman’s heels click toward the kitchen.

  Edging her way out of the dining room, she went back through the living room and around until she heard the heels click back again. In the kitchen, Loretta said, “She told me call somebody for serve. You can stay in here and help out with the dishes.”

  She stayed behind Loretta through the dinner, never leaving the kitchen, and she scoured the silverware and gingerly rinsed bubble-thin glasses. Mrs. Simmons gave Loretta the money to pay Marietta, and she never saw the shining helmet of hair again until all the voices had left. Mrs. Simmons looked at the plates and pots and her heels clicked across the floor, but she went back outside without saying a word. Loretta shrugged, handed Marietta five dollars, and they finished
the stove and counters.

  Sleeping on the couch that night, Marietta felt a racing tickle up her arm and onto her chest, the way only a spider’s legs could hurry, she shook for a moment. But then she realized where she was, and she hoped the spider stayed, spun a web in the corner of the ceiling like the ones she had caught sticky on the broom all day at Mrs. Simmons’s house. When the boys cut themselves, she would need the spiderwebs. She lay awake for a long time, seeing the silver-blond strands of hair spun together, hearing the rush of noise from the man’s TV and his silence in front of it. Defensive back—she had no idea what it was she looked like.

  And they did get cut, a few weeks after. She heard the screams from the vacant lot, where they were playing with the other kids just before dinner, and she rushed out onto the piazza. “Mama!” Nate yelled. “Calvin slip!”

  “There Momma!” one of the other boys said, pointing to Tiny Momma, who was already on the sidewalk with Baby Poppa.

  “No!” Calvin moaned, hobbling against Nate’s shoulder. “My mama big.”

  “There Big Ma,” the boy said when she passed Tiny Momma.

  She sprinkled sugar into the cuts, pressed spiderwebs over the gashes. “Men be drink beer in them field,” she told the boys. “Watch for glass. Baby Poppa cain see everything.” Nate ran heedlessly, but Calvin bent to pick up the brown and green curves of glass; he brought them to the front yard and tucked them near the base of the house.

  She had had only two other jobs, filling in for a woman down the street who was sick for a few days. The rent was paid, but they ate mostly what Tiny Momma brought. No one hired her for the domestic jobs she found in the newspaper or heard about from Tiny Momma. The women in the kitchens looked at her face, her shoulders, her feet, and they said, “I’d like someone with more experience. Well, you know, we prefer to hire older women. I require references. No, that position has been filled.” Marietta walked home past the wrought iron, the pillars, the stores and windows, and when she saw Tiny Momma peering out from her lit doorway or waiting on the steps with the boys, Marietta shook her head.