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

by Susan Straight

  “Ain’t none of em a safe way to go,” Tiny Momma said. Miss Alberta nodded her head.

  “I can’t believe she refusing to fly,” Mr. Taylor, another neighbor, said. “Don’t you know the newspapers say flying is actually safer than driving on the freeway, Big Ma?” She looked into his wire-rimmed glasses. He was probably only a year younger than she was, and she always felt strange when he called her Big Ma—but his son did, everyone had, for so long now that she forgot her name sometimes.

  “But them boys already bought a car to take her back in—you seen that Lincoln,” someone said behind her, and she could hear the raised eyebrows in the approving voice. “Black, with a wine-red interior—mmm, mmm, mmm.”

  “Gon take you days to drive, you know. No tellin who you might run cross, and y’all in that brand-new Lincoln, po-lice love to stop you,” Jesse said.

  “Shoot, won’t take no days to get to California with Nate and Calvin drivin!” Joe said. “The Cook twins! I can’t believe Nate went first round. Probly got more money on that signing bonus than this whole street make in a lifetime. Two hundred thousand—just for breakin out a pen.”

  “But them Cook boys, they ain’t just cooks, now. They master chefs. I ain’t playing. Calvin gon chop-block you. And Nate, he fry yo ass every time. Don’t nobody get by for free!”

  They had been doing this all day. Marietta looked at the clock again. “And how that gon work?” Miss Alberta said.

  “Calvin’s a offensive lineman, Miss Alberta,” one of the boys said. “He gotta block the dudes tryin to get to the quarterback. Or the running back.”

  “Huh.”

  “And Nate, he like Lawrence Taylor play for the Giants. Huntin dudes down, man. He sack any quarterback, I don’t care who it is.”

  “Nate playin gainst his own brother?” Her voice rose.

  “Naw, Miss Alberta, he don’t… oh, I’ma show you when the season start. I’ma show you on TV.”

  “She don’t know nothin bout football. Baby Poppa coulda explained it to her,” Jesse said. They were all respectfully silent for a moment, and Tiny Momma hummed when she pinched the heads off the shrimp.

  He suppose for be here, sit in that folding chair by Joe and argue bout Calvin should be done got more attention. He suppose for puff up stead a me—he done did it, in the field. He they poppa.

  She had found him, two years earlier. Nothing had happened that day, nothing! She went over and over it. He hadn’t sat sweating and hollering in front of a game with Jesse, slapping his leg if Nate misread a play or Calvin let someone slip past. He hadn’t held his neck tense as a dried sunflower, talking about, “This is it, they can’t fool around now. They never played anybody competitive in Charleston—they won’t make it out there if they don’t want it worse now.” No Rose Bowl to make his snaky temple veins jump. Their sophomore season was over then—it was spring.

  And no cold or headache or pain in his leg. Nothing at work—no angry guests or woman who wanted ice ten times in an hour, no stopped elevator or spills in the lobby.

  He just didn’t come to the bar. And when she opened the closet door, he lay curled on the floor between his chair and the large mop bucket. The mottled tin so close to his cheek made her scream; he was so small with his arms hunched in to his chest, where his heart had hurt him.

  She picked him up and carried him to Mr. Powell’s office, where she could lay him on the couch, the leather couch, instead of the hard floor.

  Nate and Calvin flew out from California for the burying. Baby Poppa always said he didn’t care about a funeral or headstone—“Give me the good stuff while I’m breathing.” But Tiny Momma had paid a policy for him, secretly, for over forty years, and the funeral was elaborate, with a marble marker as tall as he was.

  His picture watched them from the wall now, the team photo from the junior league, in which he’d stood by the coach, smile even in line with Nate and Calvin. His jacket was creamy-pressed, his hat cocked back on his head, and his face was all sickle moons in the bright sun.

  Marietta rinsed the shrimp in the sink, listening for the car. She glanced up at the picture, telling Baby Poppa again, They still have fe make it, they still have fe want it worse. Professional get cut in a second. With all the crowing and hollering the men had done, she knew she couldn’t say that to anyone but him.

  She felt nervous all the time, but she knew it wasn’t just the draft. They would be leaving in a day, all three of them, and she didn’t really believe they would go, but she knew she was really seeing Nate’s wife in her worry mind.

  His wife: they had gotten married last year, during Christmas break, before USC played in the Rose Bowl. “How you get this money for fly out here?” Marietta had demanded of Nate, and he just smiled. “Don’t worry, Mama.”

  Carolanne—that was her name. She had spent the day and a half they were here hugging Nate. When they got back from the courthouse, Marietta had watched Carolanne’s long red nails, her arms completely outstretched across Nate’s chest, like a kitten climbing a tree trunk. She was very light-skinned, and her eyes were green as a mallard’s head. That was all Marietta remembered. That and her little belly—Carolanne was six months pregnant.

  The people were just about gone now, some because they’d only come to be polite to Jesse and Tiny Momma or to have a few beers; the last few waited for the boys. She was tired of the voices. She waited for it to be just her and the two women, eating shrimp at the same placemats where they had liver and onions, peach cobbler, oxtail stew in winter. They wouldn’t care about football; they wanted to talk about Marietta’s grandson, Freeman. Nate’s boy.

  “I sure wanted to see him,” Tiny Momma said again.

  “But he only what—fifteen month? It ain’t good for them babies to fly, hurts they ears,” Miss Alberta said. “Ain’t good for nobody to fly.”

  Marietta looked out the window again. Even the two women—she wanted them to go soon, too, so that the boys could breathe in sleep and she could look at the magazines, think, plan what she should prepare to see. She wanted to lay out the pictures of California she had been collecting from Baby Poppa’s magazines, the ones they had fingered all these years.

  “Can’t sleep good anyway,” Nate said, rubbing his back the next morning. He had the floor last night; Calvin would have it tonight.

  “You still ain’t have for come in that late,” she whispered. She didn’t want one of the men to hear her and admonish her for scolding famous athletes again.

  The men had come back because it was Sunday and the boys had brought more cases of beer and Coke, more fish and shrimp. They leaned against the wall outside in the folding chairs, sat on the rickety wooden railing, putting their feet up on boxes and crates. They hadn’t tired, and now they started on the Giants and 49ers and Dolphins.

  “Did you see it, though, Big Ma?” one of the boys called to her where she stood in the doorway. “You watch the draft on TV?”

  “Man, them guys been on TV whole lotta times already,” Andre, one of the older teenaged boys, said. He squinted at Nate in superiority. “You got two interceptions when you played Oklahoma, huh, Nate? And I seen you guys getting interviewed after the game.”

  Marietta remembered—she had watched college and pro players act a fool in front of TV cameras for years, talking about, “Hi, Mom!” and dancing or clowning. When the boys were in high school, she had told them she never wanted to see them grinning and entertaining folks like old-time Negroes in the movies. “Just do you job,” she said. After the Oklahoma game, they stood shoulder to shoulder and she could hear it in the interviewer’s voice—he wanted something funny and colorful from these twins, a new dance or handslap. Stiff as soldiers, fighting laughter, they smiled into the camera, rubbing their shoulders hard. “We just did what we were supposed to do. We did our job on them, huh, Calvin?”

  Jesse answered everyone, proud. “She seen the highlights at our place. I thought Big Ma was gon cry when she seen Nate go first round.”

&nbs
p; She felt her smile go deep into her left cheek, so she wouldn’t say anything. Jesse always talked about people like he knew them better than they knew themselves. She hadn’t cried in front of anyone since her mother died. She was so good at it now that tears didn’t even begin to form and drop down behind her eyelids to make her lips shake, the way women’s did. Trained, her eyes, and they never betrayed her in public.

  But hearing Nate’s name three days ago, April 23rd, in the first round, had made her work at it for a moment, to think about the possibility of water rising near her nose and eyebrows. Then she worried about Calvin. He went in the fourth round, and the relief was like a rope had been lifted straight out of her spine.

  “Shoot, you guys been in every newspaper around the country—bet you be in Sports Illustrated next,” Andre said to Nate. She could hear Calvin drop his shoes to the floor behind the bedroom door.

  “We was in there, that little section at the back, when we first went to USC,” Nate said.

  “The Cook twins! High school, college, and both goin to the Rams! Ain’t no way,” Joe said.

  “What are the odds, man?”

  “Lucky the Rams needed a star like Nate, man, they defense was rusty. All them veterans need to retire, Nate, they gettin too slow. You gon have to jack it up.”

  The sharpness of the lemon cake Tiny Momma took out of the oven cut through the room. “Calvin, hurry up!” Marietta shouted at the door. “You two was out too late. We suppose to been gone two hour ago.”

  “Aw, Big Ma, Nate and Calvin stars and you sound like they still schoolboys.” Jesse laughed. “You got celebrities to love now.”

  “I don’t need they heads any bigger,” she said. “They still have fe do what they suppose fe do.” Nate laughed.

  “Big Ma don’t give nobody a break,” Joe said.

  “You all stop,” Tiny Momma said. “That why them boys done so good, cause she raise em serious. She doin her job.”

  Miss Alberta fanned herself with a newspaper. “Mama job don’t never end,” she whispered, and only Marietta heard her.

  Calvin dangled his legs out of the car to put on his huge white tennis shoes. She left the women in the apartment and ran her hand down the peeling paint of the railing on the way down the stairs. People were still admiring the Lincoln at the curb. Did she really want to go up the highway today, to see who was still there? To say goodbye? She pulled on her earrings and straightened her shirt. That was all she wore now—straight-waisted men’s shirts, medium, and pants with flat shoes.

  “So when you gon get married?” Jesse said to Calvin.

  “Man, Nate’s married enough for both of us. Huh, Nate?” Calvin smiled.

  “Shut up,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, and you didn’t call Carolanne last night like you was told to. She gon be hot.”

  “So? We was at Lee’s house. She’ll live.”

  “Shoot, you ain’t even told her about the car. You two gon have a serious throwdown when we get back.”

  Nate smiled wide at Marietta. “So? My money. My car. My mama. Carolanne ain’t the only woman in my world.” Marietta slid into the back seat, the leather cool, hearing Sinbad say those words.

  “Where y’all headed?” Jesse asked.

  “Mama want to pick up a few things before we go tomorrow,” Nate said. “Where we goin, Mama?”

  “Out to the highway,” she answered. “Go on to the water and then north.” The car sped quietly through the neighborhood, and she thought for a minute about taking them by the fish market. But it was just a new beauty salon the last time she’d walked by there, and Sinbad’s window was still covered with plywood.

  People stared at them from Sunday-morning railings and corners. Nate and Calvin were suddenly silent, and Nate turned on the radio. She realized she hadn’t been alone with them at all. “Don’t play the music so loud I can’t think,” she said.

  Nate got onto Highway 17. “You know where we going?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Calvin said.

  “We going for buy some gift for you wife, Nate,” she said, watching the trees and water. “She fixing up this place for we live, and I don’t have nothing for bring she, no fruit or cake, nothing I can carry cross the country. None of the thing you suppose for bring in a new house.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Mama. She got plenty money to buy whatever she want,” Nate said.

  “I know—you keep tell me over and over. She cain’t buy one a these. She need one for my grandson keep he toy inside. If he got toy.”

  Calvin shifted in his seat to look at her. “You always sound like you think California is gon kill you. You don’t want to come out there?”

  “Of course I want to come. Four year a long time and you two only visit in summer. Only see you on TV.”

  Carolanne make my voice sound wrong like I ain’t want fe go. Carolanne. Name frilly and sweet as lemon pie—just what they fe say my name. She ain’t like me already, ain’t gon like me now. I ain’t let Nate go hardship last year and get he some money fast. But he and Calvin stay together, before she. And she ain’t like that they beena run out here first thing this week, when they get that bonus check.

  “California got water, too,” she said to Calvin. “Palmetto, too. Just bigger street, freeway everywhere, but same thing, huh?” She leaned toward the window. “Slow down, Nate.”

  The gate that said PINE GARDENS was closed, locked. She wondered who was down that road. Nate drove toward the edge of the highway, tires half in the sand, and he raised dust. “Aw, man, on my black car,” he said.

  Three stands had been rebuilt, but they still sagged, and she saw for the first time the leaves and dirt and pine needles on top of the tin roofs. But it was too early in the season—it must be, because no one sat inside the bare slats. The wood leaned hungrily toward the highway, as if the sand were getting softer under it.

  Nate turned into Pearl’s lot. Marietta stared at the big Marlboro Man near the open door, and then she got out. She knew whoever was in the store had heard the tires on the gravel.

  Rosie sat behind the counter, close to another woman. Her eyes were half-lidded, stranger-cool for a minute, and then she saw Marietta. “Wha-a-a?” she said, the word trailing off high, and Marietta heard the stories about men and children and peach trees.

  “Rosie,” she said. “Remember my boy? Nate and Calvin?”

  “Marietta! No—uh-uh. And they taller than you, look just like you. I don believe it!” Rosie put her arms around Marietta, and the hands barely reached together.

  “What you fe do here?” she asked. “You come back?” She stepped to the doorway. “No—look fe that car! Where you get that?”

  “Nate and Calvin play football, sign with the Los Angeles Rams. We move out to California tomorrow. They buy the car for take we,” she said, feeling strange at all the words tumbling out.

  “We been in L.A. four years already,” Nate said, holding three dripping sodas over the scarred counter. Calvin tapped at the pig’s feet floating in the big jar.

  “Wha-a-a? Los Angeles? We beena think about you, Marietta. We wonder. Lil Johnny tell we you don have place, you in the street, but you never come back.” Rosie’s hair was edged with gray, like frayed cord showing around her forehead under her scarf.

  “Tell Johnny the Rams,” Marietta said. “He know.” She turned to the wall so that they couldn’t see that all her eye training was fading and heat was rising behind her cheekbones. Baskets were lined along the wall on a shelf, and she touched each one. Smelling the sweetgrass, feeling the dry rush slip through her fingers—“This what we want, Nate, for you wife. This what I bring she.” She took down the smaller ones, with the flexible handles, and then she pointed to the large, rounded ones. “Freeman can put thing in them two.”

  “Freeman?” Rosie said, her voice changing.

  “My gran,” Marietta said, turning. “Name after my daddy—Nate think of it.”

  “Girl, get in here,” Rosie called out the door, and
a child ran inside, stopping when she saw the tall men. She was red-brown, with touches of light dust in her braids, and Marietta thought of the hands that had tried to pat the dust from her head, slapping when she came back to the stand.

  “This is my baby gran, and my daughter-in-law, Tonette,” Rosie said. The younger woman nodded, and the girl hid her face in her mother’s knees. “I got four gran now. Lil Johnny work with he daddy on the boat, build he family place by Laha.”

  “Laha fine?” Marietta said, placing baskets on the counter.

  “Laha fine, Jerry, all she kids okay.”

  “She still work fe Mr. Ray?”

  Rosie laughed. “Girl, Mr. Ray been done go—that house all close up again. Don nobody go by there. Nobody in the tree now since you gone.” Rosie looked at her and smiled. “Marietta always in the tree.”

  Marietta put her tongue behind her teeth. “I gone farther now—California.”

  “California,” Rosie said, shaking her head. “What you fe work?”

  Marietta felt the defensiveness flash into her mouth anyway, felt like a child again. She looked at the little girl near her mother’s lap. “I ain’t have fe do nothing. Them two make so much money play football…”

  “Wha-a-a? I know I cain just do nothin. And ain likely fe find out!” Rosie laughed toward Tonette, and Marietta didn’t know how she was losing, but every time Rosie spoke, she felt like she was disappearing; when Rosie said “Marietta” it sounded strange. No one in Charleston called her that. She was Big Ma.