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

by Susan Straight

  Soul Gardens

  July

  HER LEGS TINGLED FROM sitting on the leather couch. She watched the soap operas, the people who moved their mouths so much more than they needed to for each word. She tried to listen to Oprah, but the clapping prickled into her ears until she turned off the television. She heard Carolanne’s door open and close. Nate and Calvin only came home every two days or so, for an hour in the evening if there was no meeting. They had been at training camp for ten days, living with the other players in the Ram’s compound twenty minutes’ drive from the condominiums.

  She slept on the couch, covered with the blanket she had made, and the telephone rang, startling her. When she said, “Hello?” a man’s deep, strange voice said, “Hello. I have a very important message for you concerning financial security.”

  “I’m not interest today,” she began, but he kept talking while she spoke. She stopped, tried again, and the voice kept on until she hung up, angry.

  She thought she’d better tell Carolanne, because whoever called Calvin would probably call Nate, too, and Carolanne could tell Calvin whatever it was that the man had been saying. Maybe the phone was broken and he couldn’t hear her trying to talk—the message could be important.

  She hadn’t been next door for days, ever since the fishing trip when they’d come back so late and Carolanne wouldn’t leave her bedroom. Now she knocked and Carolanne answered, wearing shorts and a big T-shirt. “Excuse me, Carolanne,” Marietta said. “Some man call for Calvin, talk about some financial thing, and when I try tell he no, he keep talking. Maybe you should come listen to the phone.”

  Carolanne looked puzzled for a moment and said, “He wouldn’t stop talking?”

  “Uh-uh. Didn’t even hear me, seem.”

  Carolanne puffed air through her nose. “Yeah, cause he was a machine. Didn’t he sound funny to you? Like he wasn’t real?”

  Marietta chewed on her cheek, embarrassed. “What?”

  “They have machines, and when you say something, they click on. It’s a computer. You didn’t know that?” She sounded derisive, like she was talking to a child.

  “How I know? Calvin always answer the phone.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to answer it, put on your machine.” When Carolanne began to disappear behind her closing door, Marietta said quickly, “How Freeman?”

  “He’s fine. He comes up the stairs and points to your door all the time. But we don’t want to bother you, or eat the wrong kind of food or anything.” She closed the door further.

  Marietta said, “I feel bad what you think, that I want you and Nate fight.” She stopped, moving closer to the crack. “I think you good for Nate.”

  Carolanne said, “You don’t know nothing about me.” She closed the door.

  The answering machine filled the house with clicks and whirring and then Calvin’s disembodied voice, too high and metallic, floating from the table every time the phone rang. People called to sell them mini-blinds, carpet-cleaning systems, and home security. She turned off the machine and unplugged the telephone. Lemon cake—she smelled it baking, washed the bowl of sticky batter, and thought she’d made it almost to force tears from her eyes. I ain’t no Tiny Momma. I need for go. Nothing I do right, now.

  But Carolanne knocked after a few hours, Freeman beside her leg. “I want you to come over for dinner tonight,” she said harshly. “I made something special, just like you did for me. Five o’clock, okay?” She turned her face to Freeman. “You want to visit?”

  “Dig Ma,” he said, pointing.

  Marietta sat, tight between her shoulder blades, at Carolanne’s bleached-wood table. “Just two courses here,” Carolanne said, and she placed a pitcher on the table near Freeman. Thick cut glass, with pink liquid. And a platter edged with roses and gold. A raft of hot dogs sat square in the middle.

  “You gave me red and white. Well, here’s pink. Yeah, you trying to teach me some kind a lesson with that little dinner. We had pink a lot at my house, okay? This is strawberry Kool-Aid. But taste it—I made it like my auntie does. Stretch that bit a sugar far as it’ll go. And I always had to cook the hot dogs—see, you know when they’re done cause they split open. I was about seven, so that was the only way I could tell.” Marietta was silent, watching the liquid seep into a pool around the hot dogs.

  “Look, I even went out and bought the pitcher and the plate, just for this occasion,” Carolanne said, louder. “And I wore a color-coordinated outfit just for you. Pink everything.” Her dress was pale, and her lips had been colored rosy.

  Marietta said, “When you plan for tell Nate you having a baby?”

  Carolanne didn’t look scared or surprised. She only said, “Come on, I have to take you someplace. Here, baby.” She picked up Freeman and held him at her stomach. “We have to go quick, cause it’ll get dark in a few hours.”

  “I ain’t feel like shopping,” Marietta said. “When you gon tell him?”

  “We have to drive,” Carolanne said. “And I’ll tell you.”

  She talked in a steady stream after they passed under the sign that pointed the way to Los Angeles. “I’m just gon say it all. I was twenty when I had Freeman, okay? All my girlfriends from the Gardens been had babies. I was late.”

  “The Gardens?” Marietta interrupted.

  “I’m from the Gardens. That’s where we goin now, we gon pay my house a visit. So—I was twenty, and all the white girls at USC looked at me like I was contagious and shit. I couldn’t stay in the dorms with them tripping like that. Ignorant nigger bitch from the ghetto—them damn girls never even had a hickey on their necks, them Polo shirts all buttoned up cute and lookin at me like I would give them a baby. The girls in the Gardens talkin, It’s about time—I was a sidity bitch thought I was too good cause I went to SC.”

  She paused. Freeman nodded asleep in the car seat behind them. “Okay. I knew what I was doing—I knew I was fixing to get pregnant. I wanted Nate bad. He could pick me up like I wasn’t nothing but a baby. Once he carried me across this lawn at school, after a dance, because it was wet and I had on leather shoes. He was always laughing, and he was gon get him some money.”

  “Carolanne,” Marietta said. “You can’t hide no baby. You have for tell Nate.”

  “Listen,” she said. “You see how he is. He’s so nervous and jumpy, throwing shit around, acting like I’ve never seen. I’m only three, maybe three and a half months. They got five preseason games and then the final roster cuts, all in August. It’d be crazy as hell to tell him now—he’d go off, get even more nervous. I’ma wait till after final roster cuts.”

  “How Nate not gon know you pregnant?” Marietta said, disbelieving.

  Carolanne smiled. “Look at me. My aerobics instructor only gained fifteen pounds with her first baby. If you keep in shape… and Nate hasn’t been trying anything with me anyway. It’s like he’s too nervous even to fuck—excuse me. But he ain’t touched me. Anyway, we’ve been fighting too much, and he’s glad to be in camp.”

  Marietta looked out the window; first, her mind flashed with images of Nate above Carolanne, his fingers clenched on the sheet, her nails at his back. She shook her head, embarrassed. Nate think something wrong with Carolanne, she tell me something wrong with Nate. Both of em sneak around like child hide cigarette in he jacket. She felt Carolanne’s breath float toward her across the seat, and she focused out the window. They had left the freeway and were heading down wide, long boulevards now. Everywhere the faces were black, like Red Man’s neighborhood, but here were only storefronts with iron bars much more square and dense than the gates in Charleston. Heat rose up and shimmered over railroad tracks and asphalt, and sometimes she saw houses that were small, stucco boxes with more black bars lined up over windows and doors. No bushes, no grass, no trees—just the shine of the evening sun off windows and metal and signs. “Where the Gardens?” Marietta asked, confused.

  “We just got to Watts—we’ll see Gardens in a minute,” Carolanne said. “Ha, yeah.
Every damn one a these projects is named after some garden. You got Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Gardens. Here we are—my lovely home—Soul Gardens.”

  They drove into a fenced collection of brick buildings. A sign said SOLANO GARDENS but Carolanne pointed to the low wall surrounding the huge trash dumpsters. Painted writing was slanted so crazily that Marietta squinted at it. “That says ‘Soul Gardens’,” Carolanne said. “You can’t read it, huh?”

  There had been a strip of lawn around the edge of each building, but it was dry-tufted and bald in places, like a sick dog. People sat outside on the asphalt in chairs and stared hard at Carolanne’s car. A group of men sat with their legs sprawling out of open car doors, and when Marietta looked at them, two got up and stared harder, their faces blank until Carolanne leaned out the window and said, “Hey, girl,” to a woman with a plastic shower cap on her hair, standing near the hood of the car.

  “Carolanne, what you doin here?” the young woman said, smiling and coming toward them.

  “Came to visit Auntie,” Carolanne said.

  “You don’t never visit her,” the woman said accusingly, and then she leaned into the car. “Look how big he gotten! He so pretty, look at them eyelashes.”

  “I know,” Carolanne said. “They definitely mine, huh? This my mother-in-law, Niecie. Marietta Cook.”

  Marietta nodded, uncomfortable with the people staring.

  “How you doin?” Niecie said.

  “Well, let me get on over there,” Carolanne said. “I see you in a while.”

  “All right then,” Niecie said, backing away from the window.

  Carolanne’s car cruised slowly around the buildings. “You right,” Marietta said. “I don’t see much garden.”

  “The city men won’t come to water the grass, cause of the shooting. And every time they hire a maintenance man, first time he try to scrub off the graffiti, they kick his natural ass.”

  She carried Freeman from the car and he began to wake up when they reached a closed door. Carolanne knocked. “It’s only me, Auntie. Carolanne.”

  A girl about five opened it. “Hi, Auntie Carol,” she said, but she stared at Marietta.

  “What you talkin bout, ‘It’s only me,’” came a voice from the dim room. “You ain’t been here for weeks, how I know who the hell ‘me’ suppose to be?”

  A very short, plump woman sat deep inside the brown couch; the carpet was brown, the curtains were closed, and the room so dark that she seemed even pinker to Marietta, and her legs were almost hidden in the cushions. Her hair was braided in cornrows that stopped at her neck.

  “Hi, Auntie,” Carolanne said, trying to put Freeman down, but he whined to stay in her arms. “This my mother-in-law, Marietta Cook. My Auntie Mary, who raised me to be so good.” She smiled.

  Marietta said, “Nice to meet you,” and the woman said, “Same here.” Marietta sat on the folding chair by the door, the metal warm under her pants.

  “Come here, baby,” Mary said to Freeman, but he pushed his face into Carolanne’s neck, and she said around his cheek, “He sleepy. We can’t stay too long.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Mary said. Her voice was deep and dry, hoarse as Marietta’s when she hadn’t spoken. But three other children lay on the carpet, watching TV and not looking up. Only the little girl stood near Marietta, watching her. “Carolanne have to be runnin around, doin a lotta shoppin,” Mary said to Marietta. “And ain’t no shoppin round here.”

  “I seen Niecie,” Carolanne interrupted.

  “She just had her a boy. Last week.”

  “I didn’t even remember she was pregnant,” Carolanne said lightly.

  “He was only four pounds, but they gon let her take him home Friday.”

  “I just seen her drinking that Bacardi with Darrell and them. She crazy to do that to a baby.”

  “She didn’t tell nobody she was pregnant,” Mary said. “We just thought she was getting big off all that beer. She hide it good as you did. Huh.”

  “So she got two boys and a girl now.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “What she name him?”

  “Ain’t even name him yet. They lookin for his daddy, cause she need to know how to spell his name. Some nigger name Doshio or somethin. His mama Japanese.”

  “Yeah, I know who he is.”

  “So Freeman go to you?” Mary said suddenly to Marietta.

  “You mean he let me hold him?” Marietta said carefully.

  “Uh-huh. He so sometimey, he only let me get him a coupla times. I bet he go to you cause he see you all the time. He comfortable with you.”

  “Oh, Auntie, don’t start. My mother-in-law live next door, okay? I can’t be driving out here all the time, you know that. I gotta take care of my business, my house.” Carolanne sounded like she had said this so many times that she let her voice trail off while she looked at the TV for a moment, swaying with Freeman automatically.

  “So, Quita called and said you guys needed clothes for school,” she said, looking at the floor, and the kids raised their heads.

  “Yeah, I need shoes,” one of the girls said.

  “I want some Nikes,” the boy said.

  “You know I like to buy they clothes, so I brought somethin,” Carolanne said, turning to the couch. She went into her purse and took out an envelope, and her aunt put it under her thigh without even looking inside.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said. “Them clothes is ridiculous. Same price as grown folks’ clothes.”

  “I know. Well, we didn’t have no dinner yet, so I better be takin this cranky boy on back.”

  Mary said, “Yeah, well, if you had called, I coulda fix somethin for you to eat. But probably nothin fancy.” She leaned her head back on the couch and lifted her chin at Carolanne.

  “Whatever,” Carolanne said. “I’ma come by the first of September and see what clothes y’all bought. If they need somethin else, if the shoes too much, call and let me know.” She looked at Marietta. “You ready, uh, so we can eat?”

  In the car, she said, “We stay here even close to dark and Nate find out, he’ll swallow the car keys or some shit like that.” She drove back down the maze of buildings, waving a couple of times, but she didn’t stop. At the street light, Marietta heard the rush of cars passing the project.

  “This is a noisy street,” she said, for something to say. She saw the woman on the couch, sunk deep like she never left the recess of the dark material, saw her eyes hard and angry at her and Carolanne. The asphalt, the wrought-iron bars, the large black dumpsters and black writing all made it seem as if dark were already falling here. Marietta thought of the projects in Charleston, the ones they’d built long after she came—always women and kids in the doorways. No porches. Gardens?

  “Yeah,” Carolanne said. “When I was first pregnant with Freeman, I used to sit on the couch, three-thirty, four in the morning, cars going by. Eat a whole box of cereal—Cap’n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, anything crunchy. Just throw it down, dry, no milk. Whole handfuls, and I be lookin at the cars, seein people stop and buy some rock, come home from work, whatever. We lived upstairs then, before Auntie moved. I’d wait till a car go by so she wouldn’t hear me eating all the kids’ cereal and start hollerin. All them kids in there my sister’s, I mean, my cousin’s. They’d all be crashed on the floor, dead sleep, wouldn’t nobody hear me eatin but Auntie.”

  “You knew you was getting pregnant,” Marietta said. “Why you do it? You was in school, smart, why you didn’t wait?”

  “You didn’t wait. Auntie didn’t wait.”

  “No, I don’t even know you auntie, but I know it wasn’t nothin like that for us,” Marietta said. “Uh-uh, you had school.”

  “Yeah, what was I gonna do? Major in English and be a teacher? Right.” Carolanne’s voice changed. “Major in Business and try to be the one nigger they need? Major in Chemistry—I can’t hang with all that math. Work my ass off so I can get some job? Nuh-uh. I wanted a rich boy. Don’t know how I got with Nat
e, shit, I wanted some rich boy from back East who didn’t know nothin bout Watts. Cause anybody from L.A., shit, you talkin bout a serious attitude they find out my address, don’t matter what I major in. And Nate asked me to dance at this party, and I heard that voice, I knew he wasn’t from here. I don’t know. He just bogarted his way into my life.”

  “Bogart?”

  “Just went on ahead, outta turn, did things his way. He kept callin, teasin me. Wait. I’ma show you.” She was quiet until they stopped at a few more lights on the avenue, and Freeman cried. “Hungry boy, wait a minute,” she said. She pointed at a car turning quickly ahead of everyone when the light switched green. “There, he did it, see?” Carolanne said. “He just bogarted.”

  When they were back in Anaheim, Carolanne stopped at Taco Bell and bought some burritos. She handed the bag to Marietta and said, “Let’s go home and eat.”

  Marietta looked down into the bag, where the burritos were wrapped in paper, lying side by side. She stared until the memory came to her—Nate and Calvin rolled tight as the burritos in thin blankets to keep their arms and legs from flailing when they were just born; Aint Sister had swaddled them so she could hold them both while they nursed.

  Carolanne microwaved the burritos and some leftover chicken, staring at the clean stove. “I remember Auntie Mary’s mama, Gramma Rose, always talking bout, ‘I been in sorrow’s kitchen too long.’ I always thought, nuh-uh, not me. I ain’t planning to be in nobody’s kitchen.” Marietta stood near the humming, glowing box that made her nervous, remembering Sinbad’s voice. Sorrow’s kitchen. The microwave beeped insistently and Carolanne jerked away from the stove.

  Freeman sucked white strings of chicken meat into his mouth. Marietta looked at Carolanne’s tired face: all the colors seemed stark, the red cheeks, gold forehead, the purple shadow melted to dark creases in her eyelids. “I think you best tell him,” Marietta said. “Maybe he calm down.”