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

by Susan Straight

  “When’s Milton season?” he murmured, and his lips, hidden under the mustache, weren’t soft like Sinbad’s, but tighter against hers, and the hairs prickled. His head wasn’t bent; his mouth was straight and hard on her. “Can’t you be Marietta and not Big Ma a couple nights a week?” he said when he pulled away.

  She didn’t answer. He pulled the backs of her shoulders toward him again, and she didn’t mind his mustache as much this time. He fanned out his fingers across her back and kissed her harder, until her lip burned from the sharp hairs and pressing. “I have for be up early,” she said. “I have long day at work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll stop by on the weekend,” he said. “I’m sure you can find a few hours for me then, huh?”

  The house where she worked the next day was huge, with a circular staircase that had a banister to be polished, with marble floors in one large room, with a chandelier collecting dust on the pear-shaped droplets of glass. And the windows, as always—she washed them last, when the afternoon wind tossed the tree branches outside in the walled garden. It was strange not to hear the wind, the rubbing leaves. She wiped the glass, tasting her lips with her tongue and biting them with her front teeth. Milt just pressed, moved, on her mouth; Sinbad had somehow softly twisted her lips open, tasted the undersides, even his teeth gentle. She shook her head. Sinbad lips dead. They spirit, kiss women all over the world. I still here. She moved to another window, watched the silent wind, remembering her mother’s house and the wind that lived inside with them—lifting her collar in summer as she stirred rice by the open door, pushing through the cracks to raise her mother’s hair when they sat in bed winter nights.

  The wind had scared Nate and Calvin when they were tiny, and they would hold her in bed while it screamed through the trees, coming hard off the water. It always reminded her of the hurricane, the first night with Sinbad, and she had to work hard to forget him then. Months would pass and she’d be fine until summer when she knelt to pick tomatoes in the row behind the house and she felt hands smoothing across her back, between her shoulder blades, the same place where Milton rested his fingers last night.

  Nate and Calvin would explore her blouse, press palms lightly on her to feel the texture, and then one or the other would lay his cheek and whole chest across her back where she bent, while palms patted her gently. It seemed that they were marveling at her, draping themselves on her all that summer when they were past one and just walking. Then a caressing hand would rub dust into her neck to see how much could cling there, while they both laughed.

  But after they were asleep, she imagined other palms traveling her back, the callused fingers exploring her rib cage and the slope at the base of her spine. Testing, smoothing, pulling—it was weeks again before she could forget those few nights with Sinbad.

  Milton’s hands covering her shoulder blades—they fit? Calvin’s breath, puffing against her neck when he nestled against her on the couch, hadn’t made her think of anything for a long time. But she wasn’t sure about Milt—maybe he was part of the reason Calvin cut himself. She saw the razor blade, imagined it rusty and the cuts swelling despite the sugar, despite the ointment Tiny Momma added.

  That weekend, after Milt had come over in the afternoon and watched football with Jesse and Baby Poppa, she told the boys, “I’ma go to a movie with Milton. You two think he okay?”

  Calvin shrugged and said, “He ain’t funny like Jesse.”

  “What you mean?” she asked.

  “He don’t never say nothing funny,” Nate said. “Jesse make you laugh. Milton just sit and look. Stare at you.”

  Calvin laughed. “He Jesse best friend, huh, Mama? Best friends ain’t zactly the same—they different.”

  “Not like you and Nate,” she said. “Sometime friend opposite, cause they get along that way. Milt get along with me okay.”

  “He boring,” Nate said, and she frowned at him.

  “You ax fe opinion, not fe get smart-mouth,” she said. “He grown, and you ain’t, so I don’t want to hear nothing disrespect.”

  She watched Calvin’s face when Milton came to get her and Tiny Momma walked with the boys down to her apartment, but he smiled and waved. When she had hugged him goodnight, she felt the last week’s shallow cut, only a beaded line of scab on his arm, dry and raised on his skin.

  Thanksgiving brought several jobs, and she worked at Mrs. Despres’s house for three days, moving the furniture carefully and lemon-oiling the legs of chairs and the tabletops. Mrs. Despres said, “I trust you with my heritage, Marietta, because you’re understanding about its importance. Mozelle has told me many times about how you appreciate working here.”

  Marietta kept her cloth moving, but she frowned when Mrs. Despres left. Mozelle? Oh—Tiny Momma’s name. She remembered when Mr. Ray had called Aint Sister “Eva.” She whirled the oil around on the long dining-room table, where Mrs. Despres would have twenty people for dinner, where she would have vigilant eyes on the glasses and drops of water scattered by the guests who would leave her to flutter around the empty rooms and touch the shiny surfaces and delicate lace.

  Marietta needed more money. Baby Poppa kept mentioning that the night man might leave soon, that he was unhappy with the hours. But nothing was certain, and the boys were eating platefuls of food, outgrowing jeans and shirts monthly, needing pencils and paper and balls and shoes. The rent would go up on the first of the year, Tiny Momma had heard.

  And Milton paid for dinners, for movies, even asked her a few times if she wanted to stop at the store to buy food or soap. “I can help you out a little,” he said, but Marietta didn’t want to owe him too much. She had grown to like the smell of his car, and she liked kissing him and feeling the bend of his elbow around her neck when they sat on a street in the leathery air. She didn’t like sitting on the couch with him, where he pressed her onto the cushions; the vinyl seat of the car wasn’t as frightening as her own front room with the refrigerator hum and occasional cries of Nate or Calvin.

  She didn’t want Milt to own her. Jesse and Colleen and Tiny Momma said: “You two so serious, now? I see that car pull up late. When y’all get settle? He just a lonely bachelor till he see you.” She just shook her head.

  “Not enough room for nobody else in this place,” she said.

  “So you two can move somewhere else,” Jesse said, but then Tiny Momma would cut in.

  “No, she ain’t taking my boys far, now. Don’t even think that.”

  “Everybody got a plan but me,” she said sharply, and they all dipped their chins at her. “I can plan my own.”

  She wasn’t sure if she liked expecting him, waiting for him, wondering what he did during the day and at night. He lived with his grandparents, Jesse said; he’d never mentioned taking her to meet them, or told her where his parents were. They probly light like he, probly fall out he take me over there. And fall out again when they see Nate and Calvin.

  She didn’t think he only came to her for fooling around, because she didn’t even let him do much, afraid she would get pregnant again. He had to have patience or another girlfriend, she thought, but Jesse said he only talked about her. Still, she didn’t like the familiarity she felt, and she wasn’t certain why it made her so nervous. Sometimes she let him kiss her and start to work at the buttons on her shirt only because she didn’t want to talk.

  One day before Christmas, when the boys had gone around the corner to the store with Robert, Carmen’s son, Marietta sat outside because the sun had come out unexpectedly to warm the wood all day. She laid newspaper by her feet to catch the walnut shells. Tiny Momma had asked her for a pound of walnut meat so she could make a cake. It was Tuesday, and she knew Milton would come around, but she had just settled herself with the bowl when his car came down the street.

  “Hey,” he called up to her. “Jesse home yet?”

  “He don’t live here,” she said, but then she relented. “He up there. I see him few minute ago.”

  He would come over in half an hour or
so. She watched him go into Jesse’s, and she thought, I make some coffee, give he one a them tea cake Tiny Momma bring for the boys. Too early for eat a meal. You plan for he come round regular now, huh? She dropped the shells and picked at the walnut meat, just wondering where the boys were, when a police car cruised to stop next to Milton’s car. She started, wondering what trouble Milton was in, and then Robert and Calvin got out of the back seat. She dropped the bowl and heard the nuts clack on the wood.

  “Mama! Nate hurt!” Calvin cried, running up the stairs. She turned him back to the yard and the policeman said, “Mrs. Cook? This your boy?”

  She said, “Where Nate, Nate Cook?”

  “He ran out into the street and bounced off a car, so we took him to the hospital,” the policeman said. “This little boy here’s been crazy trying to fight us, wanting to come here first, but anyway, the other one’s not hurt real bad. Kids bounce like rubber.”

  Marietta grabbed Robert’s arm. “Why you ain’t watch em?”

  “I did!” he said, snatching his arm away. “Nate seen a dime in the street and he didn’t look. He too quick for me.”

  The static voices over the radio barked out the car’s windows, and Jesse, Milton, and Colleen came down the stairs. Baby Poppa looked out the door, awakened from his nap. Marietta ignored them and pushed Calvin to the car. “Take me to the hospital, please,” she said to the policeman.

  Milton and Jesse yelled, “Where you going? You need a ride, Marietta?” She slammed the heavy door and Calvin started to cry again.

  Nate was still waiting in the emergency room, the other policeman with him, and his nose was swollen, his arm stiff. He sobbed into her shirt until the policemen left; he finally went to a room to see a doctor. “He got knocked on the pavement, mostly,” the doctor said. “Burns and scrapes—here’s ointment. I think his arm’s okay—bruised pretty bad, but he fell on it right, on the good side.”

  She didn’t understand half of what he said, but Nate had recovered enough to defend himself. She called a taxi, and while he said, “Mama, I look, but that car come round the corner. I seen money, Mama, in the street,” she sat silent, looking at the red lights of the ambulances. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened, what had happened, how the car had thrown him onto the sidewalk. She didn’t want to think of the bill.

  His arm had started to ache as the taxi drove home, and he began to cry again. Calvin cried, too, and they both fell asleep for a few minutes in her lap, in the back seat. She felt them start upward when the car stopped, and they walked like zombies toward the stairs.

  Doors opened and light spilled out everywhere; Tiny Momma and Jesse and the others all ran to see Nate. Milton came to hold her, though, and she pushed him away gently. “They need for rest,” she told him. “We see you all tomorrow.” Tiny Momma followed her in the door, as part of the “we,” and Marietta was glad she’d come to make coffee and hold one boy.

  It wasn’t until the front room was silent and empty, and she sat on the couch, that she began to shake. Nate’s skin, pink-raw under all the scraped skin, now glistening under ointment—his eyes swollen from crying and nose with rims of blood she had rinsed, pink, too—everything pink and frighteningly exposed. She had seen his eyes closed, his mouth empty of air, in that moment when the policeman stepped from the car, she had seen water streaming from his ears or blood from his mouth, and everything inside her shook hard—her heart against bone, her hands on the cup of coffee.

  Milton’s voice came through the door. “Marietta? You need some company?” he called. She opened the door and he said, “You okay?”

  “I ain’t hurt, Nate hurt,” she said shortly, and he didn’t move past her.

  “Can I help you with something, maybe just talk?” he said. “Take your mind off everything?”

  She stared at his mouth, his eyes, the way he didn’t ever smile now, just watched her as if waiting, and she thought, I don’t want nobody more worry bout. Worry bout them two hard enough—and Tiny Momma, Baby Poppa old—they gon die. I see too many buryings already. No—ain’t nobody bury now.

  The whole idea of dying made her angry, made her see Nate’s face again the way she’d been afraid it looked, and she couldn’t stop her voice from cracking, like it had when anyone talked to her at Frank’s. “I don’t need no help—I need for you stop coming round every minute. I have too much thing fe do with you always here. I talk to you later.”

  After she had closed the door, she didn’t hear his car start for a long time, and she thought, So go see Jesse and them—they need company every second. They cain live without talk. She kept seeing the police car behind Milton’s, remembering that at first she’d been afraid for him.

  It rained for several days after that, and she was glad to keep the boys inside, talking only to Baby Poppa or Tiny Momma, running back and forth from the bus. No money for Christmas, not with the hospital bill and the way the boys ate; only enough for clothes and maybe a few toys. She hoped Baby Poppa would get more books, that Tiny Momma would make plenty of cake. She avoided Milton for weeks, telling him she had a cold, that the boys were sick now, that she had night jobs. And then Baby Poppa came one morning to tell her that she did have a night job.

  “If Mr. Powell approves you, that is. He’s the manager, and he wasn’t confident about hiring a woman,” Baby Poppa said, leaning forward on the couch. “I’ve been waiting since I started watching the boys for you, telling Mr. Powell that if Lee quit I had the perfect person to replace him. I knew Lee would quit—he’s your age, and he likes to be out drinking and dancing during those hours.”

  Marietta said, “Mr. Powell ax me question? He want reference?”

  “I told him you had a reputation for excellence, and that you’d been working in the Charleston area for some time. If you don’t mind, and you probably do, Mr. Powell will probably just look at your physique, since he’s nervous about hiring a woman. That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  For once, she didn’t tighten—she thought about herself, about this Mr. Powell’s eyes, and she shrugged. “Ain’t no problem for me,” she said, smiling.

  “We’ll go down tomorrow, on the 28th, and if he approves, you can start work on January 1, 1967. An auspicious beginning,” Baby Poppa said.

  That afternoon her house was clean and smelling of coffee; she drank a hot cup, watching Jesse out in the street with Jesse Jr. and the boys, rolling a football to his son and getting Nate and Calvin to chase after it. The field was muddy with rain. She had cleaned huge houses around the smell of cedar and pine, watching women hang red ribbons and taste eggnog and wrap gifts. This hotel a regular job—regular pay. Next Christmas I buy Nate and Calvin something good. Maybe even for they birthday.

  “I walk,” Baby Poppa said.

  “I know,” she said, heading down the street with him. The boys were with Tiny Momma. They passed the stores on King Street, kept on toward the historic area.

  “Why are you avoiding Milton?” Baby Poppa said. “Did he do something wrong?”

  She told herself, He got the right. He can ax—don’t vex cause he ax. “He ain’t do nothing wrong. I just busy.” Poppa waited. “I don’t need nobody else for care about right now. Too hard with Nate and Calvin, too hard with you and you wife. Four all I can worry bout.”

  “But with a man to help worry, some of the burden would be lifted from you,” Baby Poppa said seriously, looking straight ahead.

  “Maybe,” she said. She thought for a moment. “But I don’t think Milton that kind. He want me—I don’t know he want worry, too.” She tried to change the subject. “How you talk at the hotel?”

  She thought he hadn’t understood, but of course he did. “Well, you have to look at the faces to judge which Negro they want,” he said. “My schoolteacher voice—some of them don’t mind. Oh, I wanted to go to college, when I kept growing in mind but not in body. I wanted to be a teacher like my great-aunt Helen, who sent me letters and books. My grandmother’s sister. But they only
hired women teachers then, and colored could only teach at colored schools, of which there were few. Everyone made fun of me on the farm, but here, well, you have to look closely at their faces, but of course you can’t let them see you look that closely. You know all this.”

  “Maybe I don’t know these hotel people, these guest,” she said, but she remembered Mrs. Ray talking about going back to the hotel because the House wasn’t clean and ready for her. This hotel? Another hotel? “In Pine Garden,” she said, “we talk what they call ‘old-time talk.’ Nobody understand if you don’t want em hear.”

  “You still do that now,” Baby Poppa said. “I’ve heard you speak your other language. Even Nate and Calvin do it. But I don’t think you’ll have to talk to anyone but me at the hotel. And that’s the way you like it, right?”

  “Me and Calvin,” she said. “But Nate favor his daddy. Love to talk, love hearing them word fly out.”

  “It took me some time at first to tell them apart, and I don’t just mean Nate’s mouth always open,” Baby Poppa said. “But anybody who knows them can see.”

  “Calvin eyes bigger. Nate mouth bigger.” Marietta smiled.

  The lobby of the hotel was lit by a huge chandelier, which cast shifting sparkles onto one wall. The marble floor gleamed near the door, and the wood floor was thick with wax. The deep-cushioned couches were wine red, and heavy draperies touched the floor. Before they crossed the floor to the office, Marietta touched Baby Poppa’s arm. “In summer, I be home with em all day. And after school now. Thank you, Poppa. I need something for count on, and I gon make you wife so much chicken for pay her back she tired of my chicken.”

  Baby Poppa was Larkin here. He was the doorman, bellhop, elevator operator, and general handyman during the night hours. They were early tonight, to see Mr. Powell, and Marietta watched nervously while Baby Poppa went to a door behind the huge lobby desk. The white man at the desk, thin and pale, put things into the mail and key slots behind him and then registered two men who didn’t even see Marietta where she stood in the hallway.