The Earth Painter

by Melissa Turner Lee

  Dad just shook his head. There had only been a handful of times he had spoken up to Mom that I could remember, and no matter how wrong she was, he always backtracked.“Why does it have to be that way with her? I’m still surprised she hasn’t painted over my mural yet.”

  “Me, too. Every morning she says she’s going to.” He looked at me apologetically. “I’ve stopped discouraging her. It’s just easier to say nothing. I mean, she’s going to do what she wants anyway and I’m tired of being on her bad list.”

  I knew he’d cave.

  We were at the school so I jumped out and shut the door.

  I walked in to see people staring at me, only to turn their heads away to talk to the person next to them. I assumed news about what happened to me had gotten around the school. I guess being almost a murder victim would make you famous.

  I thought I was past the awkward phase of being a new student. I no longer carried my Kindle with me, but the people looking and pointing got to be a bit much, so I pulled out my script and got to studying it.

  In drama class, Ms. Jones told us that we would start blocking the first scene. I was glad when another new student asked what she meant by blocking. She told us it was walking through the movements and where we stood. I had no idea hitting your mark meant you had an actual mark on the floor you had to make it to.

  I looked like an over achiever because of studying the script to avoid people. By the time we were walking through it, I knew the lines. Plus there was something about being someone else for a little while that was freeing. Out in the hall, I didn’t feel comfortable having people watch me, but up here, I felt free to do whatever because I wasn’t me. I was Lady Oliandra.

  I didn’t notice Theo, Geo and Bio coming in, but when I glanced out into the dark auditorium, there they were, a few rows back—watching. Geo’s leather clad arms were crossed in boredom. Bio, on the other hand, was watching Theo watching me. You could almost see calculations, formulas or whatever sciences used to measure and understand something.

  Theo leaned forward, his arms resting on the seat in front of him. The darkness kept me from seeing his eyes and dimples, but I could tell he was smiling. He had this look of pleasure to the point it was almost an aura about him.

  It was like when Mom decorated a room. The way she would keep wandering back in that room just to look at it. If a pillow or candle was not exactly as it should be, she would move it and sigh with that same look of pleasure. When it was all as it should be, she was in bliss.

  “Holly. It’s time for your line.”

  I looked over at Trish, the freshman playing the witch keeping me captive. “Sorry.” I pulled out my script and found my place.

  The bell rang soon after. Ms. Jones called out to us, “After school rehearsals start next week so we can work with non-drama students who got parts. We have eight weeks people. Also, run by the home arts room sometime this week to let Mrs. Powel get your measurements. She and her class will be making our costumes.”

  Theo and the sciences were gone. The room around me was dim, and my heart felt heavy. I gathered my things and followed Anthony down the hall. Wayne was waiting by the lockers.

  Anthony opened his locker and pulled out a green lunch bag with the big recycle symbols on it. “Here.” He handed it to Wayne who was pulling out plastic zipper bags from his locker.

  “What do we have today?” Wayne opened the reusable plastic container from Anthony’s bag and examined it. It was that same look Bio had today watching Theo.

  “Organic hummus, zucchini sticks, and gluten free crackers. And there’s raw goat’s milk in the thermos.” Anthony’s nose wrinkled as he said it. Then he extended his open palm and cleared his throat at Wayne.

  “Oh, right.” Wayne reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of dollars and handed them to Anthony. Then he moved the food items from Anthony’s container to his baggies before pouring the milk into a thermos and putting it all back in his locker.

  “What are you two doing?” I just had to know what was up.

  “My mom tries to feed me the most natural healthy load of garbage she can find. I sell it to Wayne who does experiments on it. Then, I eat the good old sad diet I originally grew up on.”

  I felt my forehead wrinkle. “Sad diet?”

  Wayne closed up his locker. “S-A-D. Standard American Diet. Anthony’s mom used to feed him like everyone else then got all organic. I was interested in her claims and Anthony wanted to eat pizza every day. I’m currently feeding two sets of mice to compare them. One set I feed a typical American’s diet and the other group I feed Anthony’s lunch. I expose them to different germs and note their immune reactions. At the end of the year, I will dissect a sample from each group too.”

  “Poor samples.” And this is the human boy who likes me.

  We headed down to the cafeteria. Anthony bumped me with his elbow. “Don’t tell my mom about my arrangement with Wayne.”

  It felt like déjà vu. “I’ll only tell if you’re in danger. Will you lock me in a freezer if I do?”

  Anthony laughed. “The only thing my mom is more passionate about than diet is crimes against women. She’d be mad at me about selling my lunch, but she’d kill me if I hurt a woman.” Then he got quiet for a second before speaking again. “Is it true you were sleeping with Shelby’s boyfriend?”

  I stopped where I was and grabbed Anthony’s arm. “Oh. My Gahhh… No! Where did you hear that?”

  “It’s just one of the rumors going around about why Shelby did it.”

  So I spent my lunch telling my friends the whole mess about Shelby. They promised to set people straight when they heard any other story.

  I’d already called to quit the day before, but when I went by the Bantam Chef to pick up my check, the owner asked me to go to the office. He had some papers from his lawyer and an envelope.

  “After consulting with my attorney, we came up with a settlement we think is fair. We’ve changed our closing policy to make sure nothing like what happened to you ever happens again. By accepting this check and signing these papers, you waive your right to any future lawsuits against us.”

  I sat there in shock. “I wasn’t planning to sue you. I never blamed you guys. It was Shelby.”

  “But your Mother sounded like she had a different take on things. So just to take care of it, and because we are so sorry that happened to you, please take the check and sign the papers. That way, it’s all done and behind all of us.”

  I signed the papers, shook his hand, and walked out without opening the envelope. When I sat down in the car next to Dad and opened it, I could hardly breathe. There was enough to buy a car.

  Chapter 22

  Dad and I kept the check to ourselves until we figured out how to deal with Mom. She had a bad habit of spending money.

  I got an email from Mrs. Strickland that night. She wanted me at her place after school the next day. She gave me directions. It was out just a bit in Cooley Springs. Too far for dad to take me, so I asked if I could ride with Anthony.

  The next morning as I was heading out with Dad, I saw Mom pushing all my furniture to the center of my room. She had sheeting plastic ready to cover them. I bit my lips together and closed my eyes tight. I wouldn’t live there with her forever. There was just a little bit of time left before I would be out from under her smothering control. I breathed in and let it out. But there was a pain in my chest as I said good-bye to Charleston again.

  The day was uneventful. Fewer people looked at me. I hoped that meant that what I’d told Anthony and Wayne was getting out there too. Play practice was nice. Theo wasn’t there, which was disappointing.

  I rode with Anthony to his house. The drive was kind of long so we had time to talk.

  “Sorry, I’m driving so slow. My mom bought me this hybrid car and then put a thing on it that tells her how fast I’m traveling at any given time. You’d think a couple of lawyers would buy some big house in the city, but not mine. They bought a farm.

>   I giggled at the way he said it. “You live on a farm?”

  “Yep. We are the only Christian, hippie, black farmers I know.”

  I wasn’t sure it was ok to laugh at that. “So why do lawyers want to farm?”

  “I told you my mom is all into natural living. So they got the idea to start organic farming when my mom got pregnant with my sisters. That way they knew all the food they fed us was clean.”

  Anthony got a weird look on his face. “You know, she even did a home birth. She and my stepdad invited me to be in the room with them, and the midwife and I said, ‘Hell no!’ A boy does not need to see his mother giving birth. I’m not sure a man who’s not a doctor needs to see that either. Some things need to be private. You know what I’m saying?”

  I just giggled in response.

  “Now my mom is this homeschooling, goat milking, organic farming hippie who only takes on causes for cases. Thank heaven my stepdad still works at a real law firm or we’d be broke.”

  Mom had some friends all into organic living, so that didn’t bother me. It was the way Anthony said it that had me laughing. “So how come you aren’t homeschooled? And milking goats?”

  “Because I didn’t go nuts when my mom did. My mom had me while she was still in law school. She was all, ‘I am woman hear me roar,’ back then. She decided she didn’t need anybody’s help. She was an educated, strong, capable African-American woman.

  “So back then, she pretty much worked all the time. I spent all day in daycare and all night with sitters and ate lots and lots of drive-thru kid’s meals.” Anthony stopped and sighed. “The good ole days…. Anyway, she would come home late, wake me up to kiss me and tell me that she loved me and that she wanted me to learn how to be hardworking and self-sufficient just like her.

  “But about eight years ago things changed. One of the senior partners had a teenage son who was charged with murder. He’d been in lots of trouble with drugs. His mom knew people in the system. Insisted he was going through a phase and always got him into a treatment center instead of jail time. Only this time, he was in a group who robbed and killed an old woman for drug money.”

  I sat up and looked at him. “Oh, my gosh.”

  “Yeah, it was a pretty gruesome crime. The woman was beaten and stabbed repeatedly. She was like ninety. Her husband was beaten too but survived. Mom and my stepdad, along with just about everybody at the firm, were put on the case to keep the senior partner’s son off of death-row. That’s how my mom and stepdad got to know each other.”

  I looked out at the country road in front of us. “Wow.”

  “My mom came home the night he was sentenced to lethal injection, woke me up and held me. She cried and cried while she rocked me. I was too old for that, but her crying threw me so I didn’t try to stop her. My mom never cried.

  “Soon after, Mom married my all natural stepdad and started living all kinds of green. She cut back on her case loads, and life was pretty normal until she got pregnant and I got stupid.”

  I looked at him. “You got stupid?”

  Anthony shook his head. “Yeah, I got caught at a friend’s house where pot was getting passed around. I never got offered any, and I don’t think I would have tried it anyway. I was kind of surprised when they pulled it out. The guy’s mom came home in the middle of it, and all our moms got called. Mom left the firm, became earth-mother-farming-lady and has stayed in my business ever since.”

  We pulled onto a long gravel driveway lined by wired fence. I could see little goats on the other side. Chickens were on the other side of us, running around in a little pasture too.

  “I’ll take you to my mom, then I have to go water and feed the chickens. Mom likes me to have open air chores before I start homework.”

  Anthony led me into the backyard. His mom had a goat by the teats, milking it. The streams of milk hit the metal pail in a rhythmic pattern.

  “Mom, Holly’s here. I’m going to gather the eggs.”

  Mrs. Strickland looked up and smiled at me. “Good to see you, Holly.” She glanced at Anthony. “Take her into the kitchen first and get her something to drink while I finish up.”

  Anthony walked me into the kitchen. It was clean but plain. He opened the fridge. “We have iced tea sweetened with agave, fresh squeezed lemonade made with agave and coconut water.”

  “What’s agave?”

  “It’s a syrup that doesn’t spike blood sugar as fast as real cane sugar,” Mrs. Strickland answered from behind me as she came in the door.

  “Tea is fine.”

  Anthony poured me a glass while his mom stood over the sink and poured the milk from her pail into a glass jar and then put it in the fridge. Anthony handed me the cold glass of drink and walked outside.

  “How is it? Can you tell any difference from sugar sweetened?” She pulled off her smock and hung it on a rack by the door next to her rubber boots she had already removed.

  “No, it’s good.”

  Mrs. Strickland motioned for me to follow her and I did to the adjoining room that was obviously an office. “Have a seat here with me and let’s get to know each other a bit. So tell me why you guys moved here from Charleston? That’s got to be hard…spending your senior year in a different school.”

  I was over the answer that pleased Mom—the one I couldn’t repeat and look someone in the eye. “My dad lost his job. He was a sales rep for a medical supply company. Their competitor came up with a piece of surgical equipment every hospital wanted. Suddenly, my dad had no market.” I thought about all the people around here who were out of work. Chesnee was pretty desolate since the plants shut down. “Shut downs and layoffs seem to be happening all over these days.”

  Mrs. Strickland sighed. “Yes, but at least your family had a house here to come to. Not everyone is so blessed.”

  I thought about Grandma’s old two bedroom mill house. I wasn’t sure Mom had ever seen moving into it as a blessing. “Yes, I guess it was. At least we didn’t end up homeless.”

  Mrs. Strickland shook her head. “Some people here will be if some things don’t change. I’m thinking about running for city council too. Someone needs to bring jobs into Chesnee. We used to have three mills. They built many of the homes back in the day. Thus, the little mill villages. I know three of the local churches are starting food closets, but that’s just a Band-Aid. We need a cure—jobs are what we need.”

  She opened her file drawer and pulled out a file. “This is what I want you to work on today.”

  I opened the manila folder and saw a photograph of the white Victorian house that sat on the main street. “This is the place by the gas station. My mom loves that house.”

  She smiled. “So do I. It’s been vacant forever, and there’s rumor it might be torn down. It’s one of the original structures in Chesnee. I’m going before the City Council to seek to have it declared an historical landmark to the city. I plan to apply for grants to restore it and maybe make it a museum. I want the restoration done by the people of Chesnee, too. It could create a few jobs if only for a few weeks. That’s something to somebody with kids and Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner.”

  “And you want me to look up and find reasons to keep the house?”

  “Yes. I have a laptop over at that small desk and a box of old photos and documents I borrowed from a local historian. I’ve got a case I’m working on for a lady who’s boss was harassing her sexually. He thought he could get away with it because she could never afford an attorney. But I work for free on cases like this.”

  I looked at Mrs. Strickland in her flannel shirt and scarf covered head as I stood. She was so different from my mom. The only time my mom ever got involved with a charity was to socialize or to look good. “May I ask something?”

  Mrs. Strickland smiled at me. “Certainly.”

  “Why would an attorney want to goat farm?”

  She laughed. “If you had told me fifteen years ago that I would be a full time mom and farmer and a part time attorne
y, I would have laughed in your face. As far as I was concerned, I was at the top of the food chain. I’d graduated at the top of my class had a baby alone without ever going on the system and was a tiger in the courtroom. This little black girl from Chesnee could walk into any courtroom and shake hands with any big, fat, white man across the aisle from me and know I was just as good if not better than him.

  “Then one day I met Tameeka. She was part of a class action against a store that had locked its employees in at night to clean up and it caught on fire. A couple of people died before they could unlock the doors to get them out. After the fire, Tameeka worked at a slaughter house and couldn’t get off to come into the office so I was sent to her on her lunch break.

  “I walked into that place and my nose automatically wrinkled. I didn’t want to touch a thing. Tameeka walked into the break room and extended her hand to shake mine. I waved her off and asked her to have a seat, but she just stood there and said, ‘What? You too good to shake my hand?’

  “I remember looking at her all wide-eyed and shocked. Most people were intimidated by me. She went on to ask me if I was a vegetarian. I told her no, but that I was more accustomed to buying my meat at the store where all the bone and skin to remind me what animal it was had been removed.

  “She put her hands on her hip, still refusing to sit with me and said, ‘Somebody’s hands did that for you. It didn’t just get that way. I’m proud of the work I do here. I got two kids to feed and dress.’

  “She put her hand to me again. ‘I wear gloves when I work, and I wash my hands. They are just as good as your hands. If you think you’re better than me, you can just go on.’

  “What she said bothered me. I could shake hands with any big, fat, white man lawyer and know I’m his equal. But, somehow, thought I was better than the trash man or the janitor. Now, after spending all day milking goats, I can also shake hands with anybody else who needs my help and know they are my equal too. That’s an even better feeling. My hands are no better than anyone’s.”