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

by Susan Straight

  “This is beautiful,” Carolanne said. “Did you buy this one where you got the ones you gave me, when we just moved into the condo?” She ran her fingers over the sides of the grass. It was darker than sweetgrass, too, but Marietta had tried to make the pattern clear.

  “I make it. Them other one made by someone back home in South Carolina.”

  Carolanne tilted her head and looked at Marietta. “Are you serious? You made this? This is great, it looks so African, like something I see in books. You know, you could probably sell these for a lot of money, to a boutique or something. Maybe even a museum.”

  Marietta smiled. “That thing no good at all. My mama laugh at it. But it good enough for hold baby stuff, like you call it. Open the other one.”

  Carolanne pulled the ring from the tiny box. Marietta was ready for a fake smile and “Oh, how pretty.” The stone was an emerald, big and green as a June bug, and Marietta thought Carolanne would think it was tacky, as she always said. But she hadn’t been able to resist it at the store, and even though it had cost a lot of her saved money, it reminded her so much of Carolanne’s eyes. She said quickly, “I seen in one a you magazine they wearing big jewelry now, call f-a-u-x, but this one real. It look like you when I see it.”

  The ring was huge on the thin gold finger, but Carolanne just laughed. “If I wear it, Tina Brigham and them want one, too. But I ain’t wearing it to Soul Gardens, okay? I’d like to keep all my fingers attached to my hand.”

  Freeman came back from the bathroom with the toilet paper trailing behind him, and they both jumped up.

  Marietta saw Carolanne stop at the counter where the Sports Illustrated was still open to the picture of her. She hadn’t been as angry as they’d all thought she’d be. She said now, “I’m glad they didn’t use me. My face is all puffy from being pregnant, and I look a lot better in color, anyway. I hate black-and-white photography.” She studied the picture closely again and said to Marietta, “You do have a great collarbone.”

  “I rather have eyebrows,” Marietta said, surprising herself.

  “Eyebrows?”

  In the bathroom, Carolanne was tender and commanding, showing her how to stroke on black powder Marietta had bought, embarrassed, at the drugstore. Carolanne even said, “Here, you can have this eyebrow pencil, too, I’ll get another one. Just be careful to blend—so it looks natural.” She brushed with her fingertips, and Marietta saw the brows arch a little. She touched them herself, the ends soft and pointed.

  Carolanne frowned and said, “You know, you could always get a curl,” and Marietta had to laugh.

  The boys were carrying the wood to stack on the side porch, and Marietta sat with Carolanne on the steps, watching Freeman raise dust with the dry hose, when Roscoe drove past slowly. He looked at Marietta, at the boys, and kept driving. He didn’t smile or wave.

  “What that dude lookin at?” Nate said, brushing splinters from his palms.

  “He the one give me the wood,” Marietta said. She stared after the truck—Roscoe’s eyes had been blank, casual.

  “Uh, oh,” Calvin said. “Some dude try to sweetmouth Mama? Bring she wood, next gon give she vegetable seed!”

  Carolanne said, “He doesn’t look bad, for an old man. I like his eyes.”

  “You all best hush,” Marietta said, going inside to make dinner. “He ain’t that old.”

  While she fried the fish, she couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t stop and say something. Why had he looked at the boys that way? She thought about his son, but still—he’d been happy to meet the boys that first day. She turned the four little bluegill she and Freeman had caught the day before, and Carolanne came into the kitchen, herself again.

  “You got those at that city lake, huh? You don’t know what’s in those fish—they probably live on poison and toxic waste. Freeman might as well eat old tires.”

  Marietta let her talk. Super Bowl Baby. She knew what she wanted to ask Carolanne, watching her round belly touch the counter, and she knew she wouldn’t. Marietta had thought about when Freeman came, when this one would, and she knew Carolanne had gotten pregnant whenever Nate did something big, something that would make him famous. Maybe make him restless. Carolanne had conceived Freeman just before the Rose Bowl, and this baby the month of the NFL draft. Marietta remembered Calvin telling her, whenever she prodded him about a girlfriend, “Mama, I gotta be too careful. These women want a baby, like it’s a job. Like have a baby for Patrick Ewing or Tony Dorsett, you gon get two grand a month for a long time. Depend on how much the dude make. I don’t know—I’m just looking.”

  But Carolanne had seen something else in Nate, she knew. Something in her voice when she told Marietta about Nate carrying her. Marietta put the fish, greens, and rice on the table. Slices of ham for Carolanne, who said that was what the baby craved. That and peanut-butter cookies. They ate at the table in the dining room, and Freeman looked at Carolanne when he dropped bits of fish and ham on the floor. “So?” Marietta said to him. “You go clean it up. You know where the broom stay.”

  “I still can’t believe you bought this house, all the way out here, and all you say is you like the trees,” Carolanne said.

  “Yeah, Mama. You had a peach tree one time, huh?”

  “She said Nate use to get sick off them peaches,” Calvin said. “No sense back then, no sense now. He ate five banana in a row yesterday, look like a fool.”

  “I had leg cramps, man. Shut up. I needed some potassium. So why you like these tree, Mama?” Nate said.

  She chewed, not knowing how to explain. She motioned that her mouth was full. Them little toothbrush tree by the condominium, all so scrawny you pull em up in a second for lightwood. She said, “I got a plum back there, got a fig, apricot. I like for have shade cause it so hot around here. Don’t worry why I like a tree.”

  They complained that there was nothing to do, so they made her come to the movies. She sat in the dark theater, holding Freeman, who fell asleep, listening to the huge sounds of car crashes and shooting surrounding them, hearing Nate whisper to Carolanne and Calvin. But she closed her eyes to the giant flashing screen and saw Roscoe, his eyes half-lidded. What he do now, tonight? He drive someplace else, laugh and talk like he do for somebody young. He don’t like for look straight in my eye.

  She watched the late-night sports roundup with the boys. Carolanne and Freeman slept, and she was glad to be alone with Nate and Calvin, talking about who won the Atlanta game, and who had the most sacks for the league so far. They seemed more comfortable now, watching other players and highlights. Nate talked about the team, what they had to do for the season, and not just himself. Calvin said, “Letey better than that dude, man, look how many interception he get.”

  “That just what Rock like,” Nate said. Marietta nodded. I know wood don’t make all that big difference, she thought. But I try. I hope Carolanne don’t laugh at she ring. I want them see me when I not there. I try.

  All day Sunday, football games marched back and forth on the TV, and no one went outside. Marietta let them eat in the living room so they wouldn’t miss any of the plays or scores, and then suddenly the windows were dark and the boys said they had to get home. Carolanne had been quiet, napping on the couch, and she said, “These guys got two road games—you know that, Mama. I gon take Freeman home for now, since I’ll be by myself. I miss him. But I’ll bring him back after Houston, in two weeks.”

  “Yeah, we turn up the dirt with that machine next time,” Nate said. “I hope you water it some, cause it like cement now and you ain’t gon get no rain.” He put the strange things that looked like eyelashes back on the windshield wipers.

  “Give Big Ma kiss,” she whispered to Freeman’s cheek close to hers. She breathed in his smell, holding him hard. “You get fishing pole when you come back. Give me sugar, one more time.”

  After they’d gone, she swept out the porch, and inside she looked at the empty fireplace. It was blackened and clean. You gon have for tell he, not no sit and wa
it. Maybe you do something wrong. Maybe he have somebody else all this time, just talk like Sinbad. Just for hear he voice.

  She waited until early evening the next day. Monday Night Football would start at six, and it was still grayish light when she walked down Picasso Street. Her brows tingled from the pencil’s tip. She knew people would be at Red Man’s—maybe Roscoe would, too. I thank Red Man for the wood, anyhow. Pepper wood. That some big tree. People were sitting under the drifty-thin branches of the pepper tree in Red Man’s yard, near the gnarled trunk.

  “Hey,” Red Man called. He and Mary, the older woman named Miss Ralphine from across the street, and Lanier and his wife, Mozelle. They had barbecued yesterday, Red Man said, and they had plenty left over.

  “You watch all the games with your boys?” Red Man asked her.

  “You know they had to see what everybody do,” Marietta said. She hesitated. She thought she wanted to give him the tickets—Carolanne had told her yesterday that she and Freeman wouldn’t be going to games. “It’s too boring for him,” she had said, “and I’m not fitting in them little seats.”

  Red Man and Roscoe and she could go, Marietta thought. She wanted to sit next to Roscoe, but she liked the idea of sitting by Red Man just as well so she could hear him hoop and holler after each play. He knew almost as much as Baby Poppa.

  Before she could say anything, Mary said, “Come on inside, get you a plate. I think it’s gon rain, and Lord know we need it. I’m not gon complain.”

  They sat in the dim living room, with plates on their laps, and their voices wove around her. “These is some good greens, Mary.”

  “Lord, I hate to wash greens.”

  “Me, too. All that grit, and you gotta check em over two time. Take so much greens to make a good pot,” Miss Ralphine said.

  “And my daddy use to set up there and say, ‘Don’t complain—them greens keep you alive.’” Mozelle laughed. “Me and my sister be done sat at the table two hours cleanin em. Men love a pot a greens cause you don’t never see no man having to wash em.”

  Red Man came in and said, “Hey, the game gettin ready to start.”

  Marietta listened. She heard Pinkie and Laha and Rosie, Big Johnny and all the others, but she wasn’t wild Marietta, that girl say hi to tree fore she say boo to you. So tall she ain’t got no sense. And she wasn’t Big Ma; she knew she could be quiet and no one would mind. But every time the door opened and a kid or neighbor came in, her heart jumped like she was sixteen again.

  And when Roscoe did finally walk inside, he was with a bearded younger man. “This is Lobo, remember, the one want to be a poet back when he was teaching school with Nacho and them?” Roscoe said. “Call himself Brother Lobo back then, when he thought he was a militant.”

  He introduced Marietta last, after the others had all said, “Boy, I ain’t seen you, ain’t you the one…”: “This is Marietta Cook, mother of the famed Rams twins,” Roscoe said, and the younger man nodded.

  “I’ve seen you a few times,” he said. “I notice you always wear a scarf.”

  Marietta looked away from Roscoe and said without thinking, “We keep we head cover where I from.” She didn’t know why she had said it like Aint Sister.

  The younger man got excited, saying to Roscoe, “Her head covering, her face, her speech. See, it’s the African way of putting the community first, the collective. I told you about my theory…”

  “Don’t pay him no mind,” Red Man interrupted, touching Marietta’s arm. “He look for Africa in everything.”

  “He find Africa in the way Red Man wrap baling wire around a starter,” Lanier grumbled. “I find lazy.”

  “You can find your way out, nigger. If you don’t like my ways you don’t like my food,” Red Man hollered, and everyone laughed.

  Lobo went into the kitchen with Mary to get a plate of food, and Red Man moved into the big leather chair by the fireplace, where he always sat to watch television. Roscoe said, “You have a nice visit with the celebrities?” He stayed standing.

  Marietta thought, He make me tell he. I see that. He scare as me. “Mmm-hmm,” she said. She took a breath. “But I have enough football,” she said. “We watch too much yesterday.”

  He squatted beside her chair. “Does that mean you plan to leave, or are you staying here with the experts?”

  “It turn cold,” she said softly, hoping no one would hear but him. “I fixing to build fire.”

  “That’s my wood, you know.” He smiled.

  “You need for watch it burn, too?” she said. “Where Hollie?”

  “I went to get her at Mrs. Rollins’ and Rachelle wanted her to spend the night over her house. Rachelle is Mrs. Collins’ daughter, and she loves Hollie to death. Hollie loves Rachelle’s nail polish and makeup collection.” He shook his head.

  “Freeman gone with he mama,” Marietta said. “He can’t stay up for fire anyway.” Her face was hot, but Red Man and Lanier were shouting at the screen already, and when she stood up to take her plate into the kitchen, Mozelle and Miss Ralphine didn’t laugh.

  The wind blew outside, and Roscoe said, “You walked down here?”

  “I too old for walk that far?” she said, remembering his face passing the yard.

  “What?” He stopped, said, “Well, I brought Lobo from his place downtown, so I got the truck. You want some fish?”

  “From the market? Well, she cook it too hard for me,” Marietta said.

  Roscoe said, “We can buy it and you can cook it.” In the truck, he said, “You know, she probably has to cook it hard so people can’t get food poisoning. I guess she has to guard against that possibility, right?”

  Marietta looked out the window. He heard everything she said, all the time: he thought it over, considered it, remembered it. He listen for me talk, look at my eye. She was scared.

  While she was buying the fish, he went next door to a Mexican bakery and brought back a paper bag. Then he stopped at his dark house for something else, and when they were in her kitchen, he showed her the package of bacon.

  “This is from Lanier’s pigs,” he said. “He and Red Man and me, we split a pig. He feeds those animals religiously, and it’s rare that he kills one. But I’ve got some ham and bacon here. Real bacon.”

  They ate bacon, fish, rice, and the Mexican sweetbread, which was heavy and vanilla-flavored, sprinkled with sugar. She started to lay the fire while he brought in the wood, and he went to make coffee. “I can’t sit down without coffee,” he said, and the smell of new smoke and coffee filled the house.

  When the fire had crackled down to a steady burn, and they sat on the couch, Marietta was so afraid that she couldn’t hold the cup. She watched it sway on the table until the black stilled, and then she couldn’t look at him, so she concentrated on the embers instead. She stopped her fingers from touching her eyebrow. Maybe I say something bout the ticket, she thought, but Roscoe said, “I’m too old to make flowery, hey-baby speeches.”

  She thought. “I too old for listen.” Each word was important for him. She had to be careful.

  “You used to here and gone men?”

  “What?”

  He looked at the fire, too. “Some women are—that’s the only kind they really like, no matter what they say. They want exciting. They want trouble.”

  “I ain’t custom to nothing right now,” she said slowly. “What you custom to?”

  “I’m accustomed to disappointment. How poetic.” He smiled.

  She didn’t know what to say. He had his words already chosen, the right ones. “Why you didn’t stop when you pass?”

  “Because I don’t want to intrude on you and your sons.” He bit his lips. “And they make me nervous—they make me think about things I don’t want to sometimes. But I guess what I did can’t be undone.” He leaned closer. “I still don’t have an answer—about what you want.”

  When she didn’t answer again, he said, “I like to cook—I want you to try my chili beans, and my enchiladas. I like to read, and tha
t’s boring. Ain’t nobody like to read what I do, and I don’t bore people with poetry, so don’t worry. But I’m not dangerous—not exciting enough for some women.”

  “Nate and Calvin dangerous enough for me watch,” she said.

  “I’m not gon lie,” he said, and he was beside her cheek. “I like other things. I want to see your hair, and your shoulders. Like in the magazine. I bought one, too.” He pulled her face softly. “I hope you show me,” he whispered. “But I’ll take the parts I can see right now. If you let me get custom to that.”

  She put her mouth on his lips, imagining with her eyes closed that she could feel their outline pressing, and even then she was afraid of his hands, that they would clutch at her back and pull too hard. But all she felt was his thumbs just behind her ears, in the tender skin, holding her still.

  They talked about rain for days, Red Man and Roscoe and Mary, but it wasn’t until the next week that the sun didn’t wake her. She looked, wondering, out the bedroom window, and clouds hung in the branches of the plum tree. The first wet sky she had seen since she came to California. Everyone said this had been a drought year, unusually sunny, but she had told Roscoe the sky here couldn’t hold water, she didn’t believe it; the sky couldn’t be anything but blank, hard blue from day-clean to out-the-light. He teased her about the old-time talk, always wanted to hear something translated to the way Aint Sister would have said it, and he shook his head, laughing. “Your family just spouted poetry all day long, huh?” he said. “And nobody thought twice about it.”

  She dressed and drank a cup of cinnamon tea. Maybe the fish would be happy today—or maybe California fish didn’t like gray sky any better, the way other fish did. She remembered the tickets then, that she had forgotten to ask Red Man and Roscoe if they wanted to go to the home games with her. The boys played New Orleans on Saturday.