“All these bunnies running around, how come Uncle Norman isn’t out here with his shotgun?”
“Shotgun for what, baby?”
“He loves to hunt, I mean.”
Aunt Pauline straightened, a long weed in her hand. She called over to me, chiding my foolishness. We don’t eat no rabbit in this family. That was crazy talk, she and Miss Rose explained, they don’t eat no rabbit, they don’t eat no squirrel, and they don’t eat no possum. ’Cause all them creatures is kin to rats. Aunt Pauline returned to pulling weeds, as Miss Rose said, a body needed some pride. No matter how poor she was, she didn’t want to eat rats, and none of they family, neither.
“So we leave the rabbits alone,” Miss Rose said. “We let ’em eat the clover and that’ll keep ’em away from our garden and away from the poke salad.”
“What’s that?”
“Poke is sorta like spinach, but it grow wild. It’s some out there, going toward the creek. Dear Pearl used to love her some poke, but I never did get the taste for it. Maybe ’cause if you don’t cook it right, poke’ll poison you. And you know rabbits can’t cook nothing! They get on my nerves, shonuff, but rabbits is still God’s creatures. And sometimes, we creatures got to look out for each other. Hold on, baby.”
Miss Rose raised her hoe and swung, separating the head of a long snake from its body. I belatedly screamed, and Aunt Pauline stepped over green things toward us. She picked up the two pieces, dripping blood, then dropped them again. She told my grandmother, wait, and then walked to the house. After some minutes, she returned with a dish towel and wrapped the snake pieces in the cloth. She walked to the edge of the garden plot and dug a small, shallow grave with her hoe.
I looked at my granny, but she shook her head at me and put her finger to her lips as Aunt Pauline waved us over to the hole where she’d placed the snake’s dismembered body. She bowed her head. Miss Rose followed suit, but I stood there, looking at the bloodstained dish towel until my granny put her fingers on the back of my neck and gently pushed my head down.
“Father God,” Aunt Pauline said. “Father God, we want to ask your forgiveness for causing the death of this creature. He didn’t mean us no harm. He wasn’t nothing but a rat snake crawling in this garden. I don’t know why he was here, Father God, but he gone to Glory now. We ask that You receive him into Your loving arms. We ask that You bless the soul of this poor rat snake right now. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”
“Amen!” my granny said. “Bless him, Lord!”
Other days, I joined the two of them in peeling peaches, which I didn’t like. I never could get the skins to peel thin enough, and it was boring work, because all they did was gossip: Elder Beasley needed a new deacon. Mrs. Alconia Jones knew she couldn’t afford that new double-wide. Mr. Albert Booker T. Crawford Sr. chased young girls down to the American Legion, though he’d lost his nature.
And they talked about my big sister, right in my face.
“Pauline, I want you to keep Lydia in prayer. That girl’s mama don’t even know where she is. She just up and disappeared.”
“Um, um, um. You know the Devil don’t never sleep.”
“Say that! Ain’t it the truth?”
I was afraid to show my anger, but I fidgeted. Instead of sitting on this porch while they low-rated my big sister I could have been up in the Vineyard. I could have been losing my virginity to Chris Tate right that minute.
“Don’t mind the baby,” my granny said. “I think her womanhood finally coming down and it’s making her peakish.”
“Miss Rose, why do you have to say stuff like that?” I asked. “Dang!”
“But you is peakish, ain’t you?”
“I’ve already got my womanhood.” I inserted nastiness into my voice. “I got it three years ago, for your information.”
“Ain’t no excuse for you, then. So why don’t you take your mean self for a walk? Go down to the creek and keep them ghosts company. Mean as you is, they probably scared of you.”
Aunt Pauline laughed. “I know that’s right!”
I walked to the side of the house and picked up a long stick, in case of snakes. It didn’t matter to me whether they were poisonous or not. And if I ever got up the courage to kill one, I damn sure wouldn’t pray over it. At the creek, there was a half circle of citronella pots on the bank, and a patch of dirt where the grass had died. I heard a car and got ready to run, but it was only Baybay James and Boukie Crawford, driving an old Eldorado. Baybay turned off the ignition, but the radio stayed on. When he climbed out, he was inches taller than I was. Seventeen and some change, he’d grown so much since the last time we’d played together.
“What y’all doing out here?” I asked.
“We just riding,” he said. “Miss Rose let us come out, long as we clean up our trash and don’t get in no trouble.”
“But where’d you get a car?”
“My daddy. You like it?” He ran his hand over the hood.
“It’ll do.” I waved at the passenger in the car, but Boukie was silent. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I guess he shy.”
Baybay went to the trunk and took out a blanket. He told his friend, come on out and speak, like he had some home training. Come on, now.
“A’ight, I’ma get out,” Boukie said. “But you tell this girl, don’t nobody like no tattletale. I still ain’t forgot that whipping you made me get when you lied on me.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did!”
“Fine, Boukie. But how many times you gone keep bringing that up?”
“As many damned times as I want. How ’bout that?” He pulled out a packet of weed and papers and began to roll a joint. I sat cross-legged on the blanket as they stood, smoking. Boukie told me, no, I couldn’t have none. So don’t even ask.
Baybay stayed out of it, when Boukie talked smack. As a best friend, he couldn’t openly dispute, even though he had been trying to court me since childhood. When we were little, he’d put his arm around me in lover’s solidarity, but I was of the opinion that he showed his teeth too much, which reduced him to a simpleton. I didn’t want him for my man.
I walked over to Boukie and punched him in the arm, so he’d know I was full of contempt and painful possibility.
He stuck his tongue out. “That ain’t hurt.”
* * *
I don’t remember when Boukie Crawford and Baybay James had become my playmates. They were like the orchard in the field that my grandmother called her yard; it was no use trying to investigate where any of them had come from. They simply existed.
Baybay’s mother worked full-time caring for the elderly and paid my granny to babysit her son. She dropped him and his best friend off five times a week. It was a two-for-one financial arrangement since the boys were inseparable.
Boukie and I constantly squabbled even then. I annoyed him because I wouldn’t disobey my granny’s orders. No playing in the ruins of the plantation house. No going down to the creek without my sisters, and no climbing the pecan trees, either: the last time I’d fallen, resulting in stitches at the town hospital. Boukie didn’t care, though. He liked to sell wolf tickets in word and deed: he squinted his eyes and talked smack.
When Baybay came up with the idea about the peeing contest, my competitive side came out. They weren’t grown men like Gandee, so they didn’t scare me. I was eight and they were nine, but I was chunky where they were lean. And I’d already beaten up Boukie a few times.
Moments later, I stepped out of my shorts and day-of-the-week panties—Thursday—but the sound of the screen door paralyzed me. Piss ran down my legs while Miss Rose walked down the steps.
“Ailey, why you naked? Did you have an accident? I thought you stopped that last year.”
She called my name a few more times, and I wept in fear. My mother didn’t spank or hit, but down south the rules were different. She had told me my granny had a right to chastise me however she saw fit.
When I was able to unstick m
y tongue, I saved myself.
“Boukie the one made me take my panties off.”
Miss Rose processed that information, then walked a few yards through the field, until she found a peach tree. She broke off a long switch, came back, and stripped it of its leaves, as the boys howled. Boukie got the worst of it. When my granny went back into the house, he told me that God was going to get me, “’cause you made us get a whipping.”
“I ain’t make you get no whipping. You and Baybay the ones started it.”
“But you was in it,” Boukie said. “So you supposed to get a whipping, too. We the Three Mouse-tears.”
“The what?”
“The Three Mouse-tears. We supposed to stick together. Ain’t that right?” Boukie turned to Baybay who nodded his head and showed his teeth, though tears dripped off the bottom of his chin. “You better tell Miss Rose you was in it. If you don’t, you a lie, and that’s a sin.” He solemnly clasped his hands together in a convincing imitation of Elder Beasley, down to church.
“But I don’t want no whipping,” I said.
“A’ight, then, you better watch out for Jesus. And we ain’t playing with you no more, neither.”
Baybay gave me a farewell hug, a kiss on the cheek, and whispered that he loved me, but Boukie ignored me for two whole hours, until their ride drove up to collect them.
Three days later, I made a mistake and drank orange juice with my breakfast—something I tried to never do on Sundays given my fear of the wasp-infested church outhouse. I was sitting in the amen corner when that orange juice hit me, and the urge to pee came down. It was right after Elder Beasley preached and one of the church sisters caught the Spirit, the wood floor of the church shaking with the Holy Ghost, and before Baybay’s mother gave him and Boukie the inevitable pinch for being mannish.
Before too long, I wiggled around on the pew.
“What’s wrong?” Lydia held a church fan and, like our granny, rocked as she fanned.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“Can’t you hold it?” she asked.
“I’m trying.” Wiggle, wiggle, oh, wiggle.
Two of the church sisters thought I’d gotten happy, and wasn’t that a blessing for such a little girl? Just like Jesus when he was a little boy. They rushed over to fan me, because the Spirit could take the air from your body.
“Let it go, baby. Just give it over. He’ll take care of you.”
Thankfully, a lady on the other side of room hopped up with the Spirit, and she was fat; no telling what sort of damage if she fell out on somebody. They left to attend to her, allowing Lydia and me to walk to the outhouse.
She saw the wasp only after I’d worked down my lace tights. She told me to stand motionless. It worked its way over. Zigzagging. Twirling. Flip-flopping in the air. I wanted to do what Lydia ordered but I was frightened. I ran away from the wasp and fell over, but not before peeing on my tights and my patent leather shoes, and I got stung anyway, right on my booty.
At the outhouse, the boys were waiting for their turns to go, and when Boukie saw me running out with my dress up, and then falling down with my business exposed, he laughed, pointing his finger in spiritual accusation. Ever the gentleman, Baybay put his hands up to cover his eyes, but I could see he was peeking through his fingers.
The next morning, Baybay’s mother dropped the boys off as usual, and Boukie went back on his promise never to play with me again, and Baybay followed suit. We still ran around, made mud pies, and fell from trees, but every so often, Boukie made sure to remind me, no longer were we the Three Mouse-Tears. And in a few years, he was right, because Mama told me I couldn’t spend time with Baybay and him anymore. Young ladies had to be careful.
* * *
Before they drove off, Baybay had asked me to ride with them, but by the time he showed up in his Eldorado, a week had passed. There had been several phone calls to secure permission to spend time with my former playmates. There had been a round of calls to Uncle Root from Baybay’s grandfather, Mr. J.W. Then another round of calls from those two men to my granny. After that, Miss Rose had placed a call to Mama. She stayed huddled on the kitchen phone for twenty minutes before she put me on the phone.
“Ailey, I don’t know about this. But your granny and Uncle Root told me it’ll be all right. So I’m going to have faith.”
“It’s just Baybay and Boukie. It’s not like they’re criminals.”
“But they are boys. And boys are always up to something. I’m not trying to have you come back here full of somebody’s baby.”
“Mama, that is so nasty.”
“You know what else is nasty? Being a teenage mother. So I want you to promise me that you’ll be a good girl.”
“I promise. I totally do, Mama. Can I go now?”
“Wait just a minute. And another thing: you watch those boys. Any kind of ungentlemanly behavior—I mean the smallest thing—and that’s the end of your time with them. Because I don’t want to have to leave your daddy on his sickbed and come kill somebody’s knucklehead son and then hide the body. But I will. And that’s my right hand slapped by Glory.”
“All right, Mama. Okay. Can I go now?”
“Yes, you may. I love you very much.”
I thought that would be the end of the warnings, but when the boys showed up at the farm that Saturday, my granny was full of vinegar.
“Y’all listen to me good.” Miss Rose looked over her glasses. “Either one of y’all try some funny business with my grandbaby, I’ma cut off some privates, and then kill somebody.”
“Miss Rose, please! You’re embarrassing me!” I tugged on her arm, but she moved forward, poking her finger into Boukie’s chest.
“I’m talking more special to you, Albert Booker T. Crawford the Third. I know how the mens in your family is.”
As soon as we pulled out of the yard, he started fussing. “Why that old lady up on me like that? That won’t right!”
“Man, it’s cool,” Baybay said. “You know she just protective.”
“But I ain’t even did nothing!”
“I know.” Baybay lowered his voice. “But . . . you remember . . . you know . . . that thing that your cousin Tony did to somebody’s sister? She probably just remembering that.”
I looked out the window. This was too much, everybody bringing up stuff about Lydia. Maybe this had been a mistake, trying to hang out with these dudes. This was a lot of drama just to go for a ride.
“Exactly, though. Tony. Not me. I don’t even fuck with him.”
“Come on, partner, shake it off,” Baybay said. “We ’bout to drink us some wine, smoke a couple joints, and have us a very entertaining evening. Am I right?”
Baybay worked at the Cluck-Cluck Hut, and they gave him free chicken whenever he wanted. We ate a box while he drove through downtown, taking each corner slow. Through the square, past the old movie theater and the abandoned dime store. Then over the railroad tracks, where we stopped at the Six-to-Twelve Package Store, where Baybay motioned to Mr. Lonny the Wino. He was the old man who stood guard outside and cleaned up for the owner. If you gave Mr. Lonny a tip, he would buy your wine for you. But that day, a brown-and-tan car was parked on the corner when Baybay pulled up.
“Shit,” Boukie said. “There go the sheriff. Keep driving.”
“Naw, I’ma stop. If I drive off, it’ll look bad, and I’m not trying to get arrested.”
Mr. Lonny came to the car, and Baybay and he shook hands. The old man asked about the family, smiling his toothless grin. He patted Baybay on the shoulder and told him, God bless.
Then we drove back out to the farm. At the creek, we debated music.
“Can’t we listen to something besides James Brown?” I asked. “Prince or somebody?”
“Prince sing like a girl,” Boukie said. “And he wear high heels and ruffles and shit. Plus, a woman start messing with a Black man’s music, it’s all over.”
“I don’t believe I see a man in this car. Even though you’
ll probably be thirty when you graduate high school. You’ve been left back three times.”
“I only got left back twice, Ailey! My birthday come early!” Boukie waved his hand. “Man, forget you.”
He lay back on the crushed velvet and closed his eyes. I took off my seat belt and leaned over the seat, looking at the two boys. They had identical haircuts, low fades with a side part. Baybay’s dark skin and white teeth were downright pretty. The other boy was too light for me, but I couldn’t deny it: Boukie was handsome. His eyelashes were criminally long.
“Um, anyway, can’t we expand our horizons?” I asked.
“What you mean?” Baybay asked.
“Can’t we, like, listen to some classical music or some opera?”
“Sweetheart, you got to understand something. Mad Dog Twenty-Twenty, that’s my favorite wine. And Mad Dog and opera, they don’t go together. Opera make you want to drink some white wine in a Volvo. Some Chardonnay or something like that. But listen to this.” He turned up the eight-track and James Brown hollered. “Now, James make you want to drink some Mad Dog in a Cadillac, don’t he? This is an Eldorado, to be more specific, but James don’t sing Chardonnay music, and this ain’t no Chardonnay car.”
Happy Birthday
Every day, I looked in the mailbox, hoping for something from the City. Chris had promised he would write me three times a week, but there was nothing from him, even on my Sweet Sixteen birthday, which no one made special. Coco didn’t call, much less send a card, and neither did Nana.
On the farm, my granny baked me a chocolate cake from scratch, but she didn’t know she was supposed to sing the birthday song. And when Uncle Root gave me a package, I foolishly let my hopes get up, until I saw it was a hardcover book. He told me it was a first edition of The Souls of Black Folk. He nodded decisively, as if the matter of my happiness was settled.
I hugged the book to my chest, faking delight. “Wow. For real? Thank you so much.”
I’d been looking to my father to save the day, to send down one of his usual, inappropriately expensive gifts. Daddy only mailed me a check.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 16