by Dori Sanders
Now, the morning of the Sunday after the episode, Mae Lee stirred and sleepily opened her eyes. It was still half-dark outside. She reached out from under her warm layer of quilts and fingered the source of the cold wet thing pressed against her face. It was her littlest girl’s nose. Her face and hair were dotted with melting snowflakes.
“It’s snowing, Mama, snowing like crazy,” Amberlee whispered excitedly. She slipped under the warm covers.
Mae Lee bolted upright. She had planned to be out of bed bright and early to gather a few turnips for dinner, before other farmers started passing her fields, going to church. Like her mama, so many of them felt it was a sin to harvest on the Sabbath. Now she would never find the turnips. It was probably just as well. Her children hated them anyway. She made a roaring fire in the fireplace and turned the oil circulator down. She needed to save oil. She scooped up the wild hickory nuts her son, Taylor, had hidden in the wood box and gave them to him to crack open and pick for brown sugar hickory-nut fritters.
By midafternoon, the children were hungry again. When the snow stopped, they begged to be allowed to go back to their cousin’s house. They didn’t say why; they didn’t have to. Besides the food, there was a TV set at Warren’s. Mae Lee felt regret over her rash vow. She shook her head sadly. Never cut off your tongue to spite your lips, she thought.
She was sifting the words of her vow through her mind again and again when Warren came to the door. He was not his usual self. “Well, what’s the excuse?” Warren asked. “Dinner is almost on the table.” He looked at the empty wood box. “I’ll bring in more firewood from the porch while you get the children ready.”
Mae Lee suddenly realized that her rash solemn vow not to eat at Lou Esther’s table again had not included her children. She had only spoken for herself. She had vowed, “As heaven is my witness, I will not set my foot under Lou Esther’s table for Sunday dinner again”—nothing about her children. They were free to go.
She didn’t have to lie to make an excuse for herself.
Dallace, her oldest, held her head high as her mama buttoned the top button on her coat. “Mama, tell Taylor not to eat up everything on the table this time. I hate it when Cousin Lou Esther’s face turns into sour milk because he wants more chicken or something.”
Mae Lee dropped her head in shame when she saw that Warren, standing in the doorway, had heard. She wished he hadn’t.
“Oh, good Lord,” he groaned, “so that was the fire that started the kettle to boil. I should have known Lou Esther said or did something. I still can’t believe that my own cousin wouldn’t at least tell me, though. Try to overlook Lou Esther, Mae Lee. You know how she is. She says things without thinking. She didn’t mean no harm.”
Taylor looked at his mama. “They better hold my hands then, Mama, ‘cause I’m mighty hungry.”
His mama pulled him close. “Eat all you can hold, son, and tote home all you can’t.” With a hug and the whisper “Eat, eat” to each one, she waved good-bye.
Afterward she scrounged for food in her kitchen. There had been more than enough for breakfast, even some leftovers. As always her son had been hungry, hungry, and had eaten every scrap of food in sight. Her mama had always said, “If there is a hungry child, a mother’s hunger pain leaves.” But Mae Lee’s hunger pains were rising, increasing like the chill factor of winds that multiply the cold. She had a strong craving for fried chicken. It seemed that if it was Sunday, you should have fried chicken or fried something. They may not have had it during the weekdays, but nearly always for Sunday dinner. She thought briefly of her brood of young chickens in the small henhouse, feeding on cracked-corn mixture, warm in the dull glow of a smoky, slow-burning kerosene heater. All she had to fry was one of her biddies. The very thought of a fried biddy doused her taste for chicken. She glanced at the almost empty Coca-Cola jug in the kitchen corner. There was enough kerosene to last the night, but she’d have to head for the general store the next day. Monday was her day to deliver fresh eggs and shop for her week’s groceries.
She made a batch of hot-water cornbread pancakes and loaded them down with homemade butter and sugarcane molasses. The homemade butter was from Mrs. Whitfield’s house. After Starlight had died, she never owned another cow. She always got a week’s supply of milk and butter in exchange for her children feeding and watering Mrs. Whitfield’s cow. Her children wouldn’t eat the butter at first; they claimed they saw her cat in the butter. Mae Lee told them cats didn’t ever go near butter, but in the future Mae Lee made sure she was at Mrs. Whitfield’s house from the time the butter-making started until she got her share. “I’ll get the churn ready and churn the butter for you, Mrs. Whitfield,” Mae Lee would offer, and would then use the wooden press to make a fancy mold.
“Why, Mr. Whitfield is going to be tickled pink when he sees this on the dinner table,” Mrs. Whitfield had said once. “Mae Lee, I know you always say you don’t have time to cook for anybody but your family, but you don’t suppose you’d have time to make up a fresh batch of those good buttermilk biscuits of yours? Daddy—” she paused and smiled, “that’s what I call my husband sometimes—loves fresh buttermilk biscuits. But I can’t seem to make good ones.” Her eyes saddened. “I actually can’t make any kind at all, Mae Lee. My mother didn’t cook. And ‘Cook’ didn’t want me fooling around in ‘her’ kitchen, as she called it, when I was growing up.”
She sat nearby on a high stool while Mae Lee made the biscuits. She had a couple of dollar bills sticking out of the eyelet-trimmed pocket of her pink housedress. Mae Lee hoped they were for her. She was fresh out of sugar and coffee.
Mrs. Whitfield traced her fingers lightly across the smooth countertops. “My husband,” she began softly, “would be glad to pay you whatever you’d charge if you’d agree to come in the late afternoon just to cook.” When there was no immediate reply from Mae Lee, she hurriedly went on. “There would be no cleaning whatsoever. I just love to clean house.”
Mae Lee glanced about and thought to herself, If you love to clean so much, why in the world don’t you do it?
“Even Daddy says you work too hard on that farm,” Mrs. Whitfield volunteered. “Farming the land is too hard for a woman—too hard.”
At least you won’t ever have to do it, Mae Lee thought. Mr. Whitfield was the county solicitor, but everyone knew that she was the one with the money. Ellen Whitfield didn’t want for anything.
Mae Lee rolled out the biscuit dough. Her body rocked as though the rolling pin needed an extra push. “Farming is not too hard when it’s your farm, your land, Miss Ellen. You see, that farm is mine, so it’s not too hard at all.”
She didn’t offer Mae Lee the money in her pocket. Mae Lee had, after all, turned the cooking job down. Anyway, her butter was good, and she needed the milk for her children. In a small way, Mae Lee kind of thought that one reason why the Whitfields kept the cow was to make sure her children had milk.
Over a steaming hot cup of sassafras tea, Mae Lee envisioned what her children might be doing right now at her cousin’s house. Maybe dinner wasn’t ready when they got there. Perhaps they were sitting in the warm company room with the fancy doily-laden, deep wine velvet davenport, looking through Sears catalogs and watching TV. Lou Esther would most likely be in the same room, juicily licking her fingers to flip the catalog pages, sticking torn paper bag pieces between the pages to mark something she was sure to order. Mae Lee thought of the identical rose-colored butcher linen dresses they’d both ordered once. Looking through the wish-filled pages together, each had been careful to seem disinterested in the smoothly pleated skirt and rosy pearl buttons that fastened the simple top, lest the other decide, too, that it would be perfect for Sunday church. And that was exactly where they’d met, with their shocked faces greeting each other from opposite ends of the pew.
Her cousin’s wife was probably getting up and down to make the few steps to the small kitchen to stir the trays of homemade ice cream freezing in her Kelvinator, and taking her time t
o put dinner on the table, not in the least concerned that Mae Lee’s poor children would be starving. With fresh snow on the ground it would be quicker to make snow cream. Her children probably would have preferred it. Eventually the food would be ready, however, and with Warren home that Sunday there would be plenty for them.
The following spring Mae Lee realized how very right her cousin had been about the need to hold on to what money she had. She had to write and ask her mama for some money for seed, plants, and fertilizer. She didn’t tell her mama that she’d had old Hooker Jones plow up every foot of clear farmland and plant produce. She knew all too well that her mama would once again urge her to try and find some good man to marry before she wore herself out working. Her mama would also fuss that Hooker Jones was too old for such a heavy work load. Once the farm work was caught up, she and Hooker planned to sell the corn, beans, okra, tomatoes, watermelons, and other field-fresh vegetables from his pickup in the back lot behind downtown Main Street.
Then near the end of summer, poor Hooker’s wife Maycie fell sick again and was unable to help gather the crop. Half the time Hooker had to take care of her, and when the cotton-picking season started Mae Lee was forced to help. As soon as she got her children off to school, she made a daily morning trip to the little house where she used to live to take food to Maycie, before heading to the cotton fields to pick.
The warm sunshine from the mid-October sun streamed down through the clear skies. It was midafternoon. Mae Lee stood and stretched her aching back. She took off her sweater and tied it around her waist. She glanced at her half-empty burlap cotton poke. If she stuffed the cotton into it well, she wouldn’t have to empty it until she reached the end of the long cotton row. Next year, she thought, I’ll ask Hooker to shorten the cotton rows.
Mae Lee worked alone, her hands moving from one cotton boll to the next as fast as they could go. At the rate she was picking, before the end of the week she’d have another bale of cotton ready to be ginned. The entire cotton crop would be finished before it was really cold, because once again it was a poor crop. It had rained almost every day during the late summer and early fall. The cotton was damaged and wouldn’t bring a good price. Cotton was at its best if there was dry weather in the weeks prior to harvest. She remembered the years before DDT, when the boll weevil wiped out her daddy’s cotton crop. Her daddy tried growing tobacco. The boll weevils didn’t like it, but the young boys in Rising Ridge sure did. They stripped the leaves and smoked the green tobacco.
Even though the poor cotton yield meant little profit, Mae Lee didn’t mind too much. She and Hooker had made good money with the summer produce crops, and with the profit from the cotton, though small, they would both come out all right. Best of all, Mae Lee would be finished picking cotton sooner. She hated to pick in the cold, and the fall days would soon be getting really cold. She hated it most when she had to brave the frosty mornings. The cotton work gloves, with the fingers cut off so her bare fingertips could grasp and pull the cotton from the bolls, were usually wet from dew or frost. They did little to keep her hands warm, and nothing at all to keep the hard, pointed, knife-sharp outer bark of the open bolls from puncturing and piercing her stiff, bleeding fingers.
From a distance Mae Lee watched her children walk up the narrow dirt road home from school. Taylor carried his baby sister’s little primer. Little Amberlee was a year younger, but taller than her brother. Her older girls walked behind. She waved and called out to them. They didn’t hear her. She was a little concerned that Taylor had not rushed to the cotton field where she was, the way he usually did, but instead had waited to see her at home.
Afterward, while she finished preparing the supper that Dallace had started for her, she watched Taylor slide into a chair. Mae Lee wanted to cook at least a part of the supper every night. Her daughter wasn’t quite thirteen years old, too young to have to be the head cook in the house.
Mae Lee hugged her oldest daughter, “Smells good, Dallace. Now you go get your schoolbooks and study your lessons.”
Taylor propped his elbows on the table and cupped his small face in his hands. He was small for an eight-year-old. “Mama,” he blurted out, “where’s my daddy? I wish my daddy would come back home, Mama.”
At all times Mae Lee hated that question, but she hated it most at night. She poured cornbread batter into a large, black cast-iron skillet and slid it into the oven. She was in no hurry to answer her son’s question. She closed the oven door, and looked directly at Taylor. “I don’t know, baby, I really don’t know.” She lifted his little face upwards. “I’m going to go and feed the chickens, and when I come back inside I want to hear you helping your little sister read from her primer.” Outside, Mae Lee fed her chickens and cried. When she went back inside Taylor was asleep in his chair.
At the supper table Taylor asked to be excused when he finished eating two wedges of hot buttered cornbread and a glass of buttermilk. He didn’t eat any vegetables. Mae Lee thought he was too tired and sleepy to eat, so she made a little pallet for him on the floor near the new oil circulator, so he could rest until time for bed.
Mae Lee washed her children’s socks and underwear and hung them on the backs of chairs to dry. She didn’t want the dirty clothes to pile up. She was still feeling a little guilty about doing the washing the Sunday before. Her mama wouldn’t have washed clothes on a Sunday no matter what. But it had been such a bright warm day. Mae Lee would have picked cotton that day if there had been no one to see her and think she had no respect for the Sabbath.
She had fallen asleep, and forgotten to move Taylor into his bed, when she heard him call out to her. “Mama, Mama, I hurt, I hurt, Mama.” She rushed into the next room. Her son looked at her as if he was afraid. She felt his forehead. He was burning up with fever, and was talking crazy, out of his head, jabbering like a two-year-old.
She glanced at the clock. It was after twelve, the middle of the night. She covered her sleeping children, her little stairsteps she called them. She gently shook her oldest child. “Dallace, honey,” she whispered, “Taylor is sick. I’ve got to get him to the doctor. I’m going to Church Granger’s house. Take good care of your sisters and don’t open the door for nobody but your mama.”
She pulled on her pants and field boots, tied a belt around her cotton flannel gown and pulled it up under her heavy sweater and coat. She wrapped her sick child in blankets from his bed and hurried through the chilly October night to the Grangers’.
The bright moon cast eerie shadows from trees alongside the narrow path. She could feel the warmth of her son’s feverish body. He was breathing harder. Her brisk steps quickened into a slow steady trot.
It seemed that, almost before she knocked, the front porch was flooded with lights and Church Granger was at the door. Maybe the dogs had barked. She didn’t remember hearing them.
“My baby is sick,” she cried. “I’ve got to get him to the doctor!”
Church turned quickly, walked to the foot of the stairs and called up to his wife. “It’s Mae Lee, Liddie. Her son is sick. I’m taking her to Dr. Bell’s.”
“Wait,” Liddie called back, appearing seconds later at the top of the stairs. Mae Lee watched her pull her robe about her as she hurried down the steps. She looked at the sleeping child in Mae Lee’s arms. “Oh, Mae Lee,” she moaned, “you had to carry him all the way here.” She peered beyond Mae Lee. “Where are your children? I’ll go get them and bring them here.”
“No, no,” Mae Lee hastily responded. “My Dallace won’t open the door. They’ll be all right. She’ll take care of her sisters.”
Liddie turned to her husband. Her eyes were anxious. “Hurry, Church, hurry.”
Church Granger tried to take the heavy child from Mae Lee’s grasp, but her hold on her son was firm. The child felt almost weightless in her strong arms.
He drove faster than Mae Lee had ever ridden in her life. She held on to her son and pressed imaginary brakes to the floor every time he rounded a curve, but she didn�
��t ask him to slow down. Instead she studied the moon that seemed to travel along with them, and tried to think about setting out to find her son’s daddy. He had asked about his daddy. Taylor needed his daddy. She nestled her chin against his warm head. “I’ll find your daddy,” she whispered. The long country road seemed to stretch forward forever into the moonlit night, like the sometime worries of motherhood, long roads with no end.
As they drove on, Mae Lee thought about how concerned Liddie Granger had seemed over her little Taylor and her little girls at home. She remembered the day Liddie had been so worried over her own crying baby, she’d driven down to the cotton field where she and her mama were hoeing to ask for help. Mae Lee’d been furious seeing Liddie Granger drive her fine car down from her big fancy house on the hill. Now she couldn’t believe that she had been so angry with Liddie for causing her mama to stop hoeing and go check on a crying baby.
At Dr. Bell’s house, Church remembered he should have telephoned so he’d have been waiting for them. He called out to the doctor’s barking dogs. “Be quiet, Duke, now, now, Trouble. Duke, Trouble, calm down, hush up.”
“It’s me, Bland,” he called out, banging on the door, “Church Granger.”
Dr. Bell took one look at the sick child. “Get me some cold water, Church,” he said. “There is ice in the refrigerator.” He put cold cloths on the boy’s forehead and an ice bag at the back of his neck. He slid a thermometer under Taylor’s tongue. When he pulled it out he shook his head. He didn’t reveal the temperature. “Taylor’s throat is really inflamed, Mae Lee. Nothing to be alarmed about, but I’ll give him an injection of penicillin and keep an eye on him for a while.” He took a small bottle from his medical bag and broke the snap seal. Tears rolled down Taylor’s cheeks as the doctor injected his behind, but he didn’t cry out. His mama obliged on that.
Church watched with Mae Lee as Dr. Bell changed the cold compresses once the heat from the child’s body had warmed them. “Mae Lee,” Church said, “I’m glad you came directly to me without waiting. I wish you had a phone so you could have just called us. With your parents gone, don’t you struggle with those children alone. When you need help, call on me or Liddie.”