Sweet Potato Jones

by Jen Lowry

  It was so hot since we closed up the shed. Shacks were safer than the main house, because no one would think to go in here to check for people like us. We’d tried staying in the shade of the forest behind the abandoned house to beat the humidity, but the blistering summer heat pure wore us down to the core. We’d been lying down in here for hours to conserve our energy. If it wasn’t for the pulled-back, metal roof that must have taken damage from a storm, we would’ve probably suffocated by now.

  Daddy asked, “Who wants some chicken and taters?”

  He waved the bag in front of us, and the sight of the grease stains on the paper made my mouth water.

  He frowned. “What you doing with that map? You think you getting a head start without me?”

  It was almost as if he could sense Maize’s urgency to flee, because as he spoke, he looked directly at him. Maize crossed his arms defiantly, even though he had never once spoken his feelings outright in front of Daddy. He gave them all to me late at night when nobody else was alive to the world to hear it.

  I said, “Bell just prayed us into the ceremony. We ’bout to choose. Well, Bell’s ’bout to do it for us.”

  “Without me? That’s always been my job. This time I promised we would do it all together, and here I come walking in to find y’all huddled up making plays without the coach.” Daddy’s shoulders slumped, a tired smile trying to spread across his face but not quite making it.

  He handed me the bag to distribute the food, and I suddenly had to push back the bile forming in my throat. His smell came too close to my nostrils, and it mixed in with the scent of the grease wafting through the thin paper. I gave the biggest pieces to the kids and took a leg for myself. I turned to face the wall to eat, trying to block the sight of his body. I knew if I covered my face, it would be disrespectful. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wished he could have at least stopped in at the rest stop and washed up a bit before coming home.

  Bean spoke through a mouthful of chicken breast. “We got done praying. That’s all you missed.”

  “Prayin’, huh? Well, that’s ah right, then.” Daddy fidgeted.

  We stayed the whole summer out of sight at the edges of civilization. He said he was trying to gather his wits about him and needed time to himself, like Jesus going out to Gethsemane to pray, without stranger church folks trying to help us or give advice or split up us kids and take us away. I knew Bell had been missing the whole church experience, probably mostly for the fresh choir robes and the singing. I was glad for the break, in all honesty. God hadn’t done nothing for us, and by now, I figured it was probably too late for him to show up. Why show up for him on some forced Sunday morning with fake smiles and a made-up backstory? I was over it completely.

  Bell was a little harp. Whenever and wherever, a song would swell up in her spirit, and she’d release it. Talk about walking guilt strings along the pathways of your heart. Bell could do that to you, and she was starting on a gospel one this time. Daddy hung his head down, and it wasn’t long before his baritone voice jumped in on the old-timey chorus.

  Take it to the altar, where you are, just stop and pray

  Let the spirit move you as you go about your day

  Fill me with your promises, Jesus, never let me fall

  Take it to the altar, hear the sinner’s call

  Bean hummed along some, too. I guess you could have called Maize and me the cynical ones. Let them sing for us.

  “You already invited Jesus. Now let’s get to it.” Bean was rubbing his hands together. I could see the sweat beading up all along his forehead as he rocked back and forth in anticipation.

  Both flashlights lit the map. Daddy’s solemn, deep eyes scanned each of our faces. He had this loving look on him like this was a tender moment for him. Wonder where that had come from? If he loved us enough, wouldn’t our lives be different? Even though I hated like all get out to admit it, that look was one that endeared him to me, no matter what our life had measured up to. Daddy didn’t have a formal education past high school but wasn’t a stupid man. Why did he choose to be this wandering soul, unable to put down roots? Questions left again to the mysteries of life.

  He looked around at us as if he could figure out the latitude and longitude of our next living arrangement by the contours of our faces. I hated maps. I knew what they meant. Maps meant moving. Traveling on. Migrating. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder.

  Bean’s hands were clamped firmly over Bell’s eyes. He released them, and they all bent over in fascination at where Bell’s petite finger had fallen. I was the last to grudgingly look at our fate. No more North Carolina sights for me. We’d never stepped foot out of North Carolina. We had miles to go on this one, all the way to Virginia. Crossing borders this time.

  Daddy said, “Well, there we go. Almost to the end of the Earth. Let’s get it going first light.”

  “Already?” My voice sounded more exhausted than I’d ever heard it. Must have been all of this heat and humidity bearing down on me, and the weight of Maize on my soul like a seven-hundred-pound bench press. Maybe it was simply the thought of traveling three hundred country miles.

  Daddy said, “No better day than the one before us. Besides, summer’s ’bout over, and you know what that means.”

  Maize’s face wore a pained expression.

  “Lights out,” I said it like we were in a place with an actual switch that connected to current.

  I cut off my flashlight and settled back down on the tarp with Bell. Bean decided he was going to stay snuggled up with us, and I minded it so much but couldn’t deny him. The sweltering heat was a beast, not to mention the smell now pervading all of my senses. But I didn’t have the courage to ask that little boy to move.

  Now, despite how I’d managed to get my family through everything we’d endured up to this point without cracking, I had a feeling I was about to get like Maize—tired and fed up.

  Stopping by the Iron Skillet restaurant with all the youngins was usually the free ticket to ride. Daddy had a sense for finding the old truckers who liked picking up hitchhikers with stories to tell, and they’d load us all up in the cab. Sometimes Bean would get to pull on the horn. Bell would always say extra kudos in the nightly prayers for the nice ones who treated us like we were normal human beings. I sure wasn’t giving any extra praises for the ones that let Bell Pepper turn the radio station to what she wanted to hear—which was always country music, for Pete’s sake. Wasn’t our life a walking, talking country song from the minute we were conceived?

  On the road, we heard about a homeless shelter in Newport News. Trucker number two told us about another hitcher he’d helped once who had been there, coming back along the road into North Carolina. I almost choked on my water when the trucker said he thought the name of that place was The Home. Funny, that was what Maize wanted and what Bell had prayed for. Goose pimples rose on my arms.

  When we arrived in that place of all things new, we hit one city road that merged into another, snaking into the heart of the skyscrapers. The city looked nothing like what I was used to. It was all metal and concrete and iron—no trees or rolling fields of corn as tall as a bus. It was a dull gray. The feeling of loneliness hit me even harder when I realized I wouldn’t have trees to hide in.

  When we hit that six-mile bridge, I thought I had seen it all. There was nothing like the experience of crossing that monstrosity on truck brakes. My heart drummed as we jolted and inched forward, the brakes screeching. Something told me I wouldn’t see the other side of that road. Once I had crossed, one way or the other, we’d either live or die in this place. Living and dying were much the same, so it didn’t really matter, in the end.

  Newport News was a beautiful sight as you crossed over that James River Bridge. Bean pressed his face to the glass, straining to see all the flashy, fishing boats skimming along the edges of the marsh and the Navy building ports loomed fierce in the distance. Mansions jutted from the shorelines and the tall banks
, and I thought of all those folks riding high up there, and how they must have had a fresh view of life every morning as they read their paper and drank cappuccinos in monogrammed coffee cups.

  We didn’t turn onto those fancy subdivision roads but told Mr. Bill, our nice trucker chauffeur, that we needed a stop near a gas station, if he didn’t mind. We had to fill out the lay of the land while Daddy figured out how to get to the closest shelter. The Home, if that was what it was truly called, would just be a temporal thing.

  Mrs. Betty Atkins, the director, patted Bell on the shoulder. She said, “You must be one blessed family indeed. A room happened to be made clear for a family. Looks like we’ve got a family in need.”

  Daddy said, “You sure do. You mean you’ve got us a place we can all bunk?”

  “The number seven. Usually they don’t last a day when the word hits the street that our family unit has an opening.”

  Bell lit up like a sparkler stick exploding and nudged me in the side. “I told you that prayer was the way to go.”

  We got twenty weeks here, so Daddy took the little pocket planner Mrs. Betty gave him, and she helped him circle the date. If that wasn’t some kind of warning to us all, I don’t know what was.

  Daddy marked the calendar on the week of Christmas. What a gift that would be—back out on the street like Joseph and Mary, looking for an inn. I couldn’t think of that right now. I was a one-day-at-a-time survivor, not a long-term planner with goals and a vision.

  Come to find out that our school was a charter called The Dream Academy. Daddy was transported down there to fill out all of our paperwork, and he brought me back a school calendar, all the manuals, and lists. At first, I knew that Daddy was telling a fat one, because the thought of us all being side-by-side in K-12 buildings made my heart swell with gratefulness. It was too good to be true. Having Bean and Bell away from me wracked my nerves to the core.

  I snuck down to Mrs. Betty’s office and asked if she could pull up the school on the internet, so I could see pictures of it myself. When I saw it with my own eyes, I had to ask the good Lord to forgive me for calling Daddy a liar.

  Later that night, in my bunk, I visualized the calendar taking human form and sauntering toward me with a smug look of contempt. Calendars were never friends—more like my nemesis. I tried to Jackie Chan it, but it was so much stronger than me, forcing me into submission. I found myself totally spent of all emotion. Could I ever move again? I was so battered and bruised on the inside with the kind of scars that rarely heal on their own. That obnoxious calendar raised its hand in victory, the pages somersaulted by, and I remembered my birthday was coming up in those twenty weeks. I’d be eighteen.

  Once, I remembered Momma making me a cake and all the birthday jazz that goes with it, including a balloon tied up on the chair at the head of the table. I had been so blissful then, and now I couldn’t even remember which birthday that was. We didn’t have photos or mementos with dates. We didn’t have that luxury on the road.

  Maize waved his hand in front of my face. “Are you praying out loud?”

  I smirked. “Need to be, don’t I?”

  I didn’t realize that what was rambling through my head was coming out of my mouth. Sometimes I had an awful bad habit of that.

  He glanced around our tiny room. “It’s not the worst place ever.”

  And he was right. This one had all the other places beat. At least we had a private bathroom. That I could be eternally thankful for. Even if I had to share it with five people, at least those people shared my genetic makeup and stink pool.

  Bell was lying on her bottom bunk, listening to the iPod her teacher gave her on her birthday this year. Mrs. Betty was lovely enough to recharge it for her. She’d been without her music player all summer, since we didn’t have no access to no plugs, and now she was crawling her legs up the wall like an itsy-bitsy spider, sliding back down in time to some unheard melody, probably some kind of musical. She was into that. The whole Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz thing. Let’s escape our current situation by making like we could be anywhere else in the world, over some rainbow—but not here. Never here.

  Bean was out with Daddy, and I was secretly relieved. Bean was the one who couldn’t sit still, and Daddy knew it. He would take him on long walks to wear him out before bringing him back into a cramped-up little space. They were on some kind of adventure that had taken them nearly all day and evening, out looking for restaurants within walking distance of The Home.

  Daddy was a cooker. Not a high-priced chef, now. He was just a cook man. He’d always loved that, and with us not actually having our own stove or burners, he liked borrowing other people’s. Daddy met Momma like that, going down to the farm to buy some fresh produce for some hotel he used to work at in Johnston. Right after him and Momma married, the restaurant turned into a nightclub, and they went to only serving fruit, yogurts, and them little cereal boxes that you have to peel the lid off. Daddy’s days making them fine-dining meals were over.

  Momma wanted him to work at the hog plant, but the wages weren’t enough to bring home the bacon unless he worked the hours away from us, and he wouldn’t compromise the time. He wanted to find new hotels or restaurants to cook some fancy bacon-wrapped scallops in, but Momma never wanted to leave.

  Well, now that he’d been traveling around from one place to the next, Daddy seemed to always have a knack for finding some local place that needed an extra hand in the kitchen, even if it meant he had to wash dishes or peel the potatoes for the line cooks. He always kept his eye on the big-money job that he swore to us he would land one day, over some rainbow. Talked to us about his plans for opening his own little diner and calling it Mixed Vegetables. Our little inside joke. Not very funny, huh?

  Maybe today would be his day. With Bean at your side for eternal optimism and a sunny disposition, who could fail at finding a perfect job?

  Maize was apparently talking to me about how it would be to be in high school, and I was totally lost on everything that he said.

  “Sis, seriously. How is it going to be?” He shook my shoulders, almost knocking me off the bed.

  “What?” I breathed heavily, trying my best to focus on him. I was staring at the rusted fan making slow circles over my head, taking in little gasps of the coolness that was making its way down to me.

  “Freshman here! High school! Girls! You know! Have you even been listening to me for the past hour?” He threw the course schedules onto my lap.

  I hadn’t even had the energy to glance at mine. With a school called The Impossible Dream or something, what could it be like? Impossible to ever fit in. Impossible to have a chance. Chances didn’t happen to the Joneses. Messes did.

  “Oh, high school. Well, it’s middle school on speed. Does that mean anything to you?”

  How could I let him know the truth? How he would be tortured practically every day of his high-school existence for a name like Maize? How the coursework would get harder, and the projects would pile up, and the test demands would be out of this world? How he didn’t read like the rest of us or behave the way the teachers expected, he’d fail the second he walked in them doors, and there would be nothing I could do to shelter him from the cruelty of the world? And oh, how I wished I could’ve been his protector since the minute he was born, but truth be told I’d done nothing for him at all.

  “I can run fast if that’s what you mean. I’ve been ready to find me a place with a proper football team. That’s my ticket out of Pickville, U.S.A. Get on the team, and nobody will mess with me.”

  I rolled my eyes. But maybe that was his own way to cope. Sports was never the answer for my sweet, baby brother. It hadn’t been in the past. We weren’t stable long enough for him to finish out a season, or his grades were never too far away from the D list, and he’d never make it past a progress report. This time, he swore it would be different. Maize vowed he’d be new in Newport News. It had a solid ring to it. What could I be?

&nbs
p; Just plain ol’ me. There was no point in me trying to even set some kind of New Year’s resolution in August, because I knew how those always panned out anyway. I glanced down at my schedule. Daddy had me signed up for Foods, History, Trig, English, Financial Management, and Theater. Wait … drama class? Was that man crazy?

  I shoved my schedule at Maize. “Look at this! He actually signed me up for some drama class!”

  A sideways look crossed his face. “He wouldn’t have, would he?” Maize looked down at his paper and fell back on the bed. “Not me, too. With you? Oh, Lordy, I’ll be creamed.”

  “What?” I picked up his schedule.

  If it wasn’t torture enough, I’d have to endure a dramatic arts class where you would have to do some kind of public speaking or pantomime or actually communicate with another human being, I had to do it with Maize. Sixth period, too? Come on, people. They would say our names back to back, and that wouldn’t fly.

  “Daddy has lost it this go around.” I looked over to the calendar that was forcefully stuck on a too-big nail in the wall. Already, I was wishing my days away.

  I’d never done that. Even though Daddy was always on some kind of countdown in his life—to some midlife crisis, by the looks of my course schedule—I never tried to focus too much on the passing days. It was hard enough breathing in the one that God had granted me to try thinking about what the next one might hold. But drama class with Maize in a school called The Dream made the obsession with the calendar a little more understandable. Time to move on.

  Daddy burst in with a smile on his face as bright as the stars. That had to be why Momma loved him—a tall, proud, handsome man from a small, farming community on the outskirts of Johnston County. He told me once the families didn’t take too much to mixed marriages way back then, but she had to love that smile when he came up on her for the first time. When he smiled at me like that, I forgave him for not having that stable job. I forgave him for not giving me a proper home. I even forgave him for drama class.