by Jen Lowry
The smile didn’t fade. It was stuck on him like the Joker. I knew what that meant. He’d landed him a job, and by the looks of it, it fit him to a T. I knew automatically that it wasn’t no landfill cleaning crew job or some dumpster duty like he’d done for the summer work, scraping by with enough money to keep us all fed each night on a bag of gas-station delights.
Bean was hiding behind Daddy, thin as a rail. He could very well have disappeared; except I could see the edgings of two brown bags poking out behind Daddy’s knees. Not one handheld bag, but two big, brown, grocery bags.
Daddy twisted around, lifting Bean about four inches off the ground, making him almost drop the extra-large brown bags in his hands. I knew the look on Bean’s face meant there was food in those bags. My little toothpick of a brother was always on the lookout for food. That boy could eat a whole refrigerator full, maybe even the spare parts and door handle, too. Bean opened up the bag to collards, fatback, a mess of black-eyed peas, hoecakes wrapped up in wax paper, and a thick slab of half a ham that even seemed to look like the shape of a smile. What had Daddy up and done? Held up the store?
Daddy said, “This was an advance on my first paycheck on Friday.”
We pulled out Styrofoam plates and little spork packets and went to town. We were all silent, sure the story was coming but too busy gulping down the helpings to worry about all that now. We’d have the whole night for Daddy to illuminate us since we weren’t fortunate enough to have cable or satellite systems or those game boxes. All I could focus on was how delicious it was and how on every Friday night, when Daddy brought home the paycheck, he’d been promised a whole ’nother heaping two bags of food.
Daddy’s smile was contagious, and I couldn’t help but give him a mirror-imaged one right back. He said, “It’s good people, Sweet Potato. I’m telling you, good people.”
I asked, “What’s the name of this place?”
I was always interested in the names and makings of restaurants—the romanticized story of how it all began. Names intrigued me, I guess. I wanted to believe somewhere out there in the universe names meant something other than how Momma named us all by the way she put up the picket signs at the beginning of every summer selling season.
Sweet Potatoes
Maize
Beans
Bell Peppers
Bean yelled, “Soul Food!” He made that funny, little snort-laugh I adored.
Bean kept cutting in anytime Daddy would try to tell us the story, but I did learn that the owner of the restaurant, Mrs. Sunshine Patterson, was a godly woman who believed in the spirit of helping others. Since we were in a world of need, she’d held out her hand to Daddy. I loved that name, Sunshine, and I couldn’t wait to see what her face looked like. I imagined her being a white lady with golden-orange hair colored from a box and a plump figure as round as the sun, wearing those flowered-up housedresses and bedroom slippers.
Daddy said that Mr. Patterson was the head cook, with Mrs. Patterson running the front. They had a son who bussed the tables and helped on the line when needed and a niece who was a waitress. So, it was a family-owned-and-operated business. Letting Daddy in was something she said that they had never done, but something in her spirit told her it was right. That let me know that it was religious type place. Maybe seeing Daddy like this every day, feeling the tiny twinge of hope inside me, staying in this room and sleeping on this actual cot … maybe God was coming to visit me.
Some Soul Food was just what we were about to need, and I didn’t even know how bad.
Loving your family should be the easiest thing to do, besides breathing. But sometimes, for me, it took effort. And I’m not talking about the energy it took to break sweat. I’m talking about full-out exertion that causes me to almost faint with exhaustion. It’s actually just a little too difficult to gulp down, like castor oil. Love should be there, as part of the natural flow of creation. Something just springs out of us when we are born and makes us snap right into the missing pieces of the other half.
That’s how I imagined it should be, anyway. Maybe it was, for other folks. But for me, I didn’t quite know yet. I knew it was mighty hard to love.
That rule applied to Momma especially. And not for being a user, which was number one on my list for hating her. But a mighty close second was for calling me Sweet Potato Jones. What on God’s green Earth did she think when she sprouted us out? I mean, come on. Who names their youngins after blessed vegetables? Daddy had never been able to give me a proper history of it, so it never settled right with me. The names. I mean, really, Momma. At least once a day I looked up to the sky and asked Momma why would she have done such a thing to us poor youngins? And she never answered me, and I’m sure God’s still laughing about it. Think about that page in the Book of Life waiting for us. Sweet Potato Jones, Maize Jones, Bell Pepper Jones, and still-up-for-grabs Bean Jones. Why, God?
Daddy said that Momma wasn’t right in the head. He told us once she was born that way, and he loved her all the same, because there was something about the way she smelled, and her name to him was like a spring day. Momma’s name was Marigold. So, one might guess she’d name all us kids after flowers, not food. My name would have been so much better as “Rose” or “Violet.” The possibilities of smell-good names were endless. I even Googled them once when we were at the library, to read down the list of what she could have called us. Bell Pepper would have definitely been “Lily.” Maybe Bean would have been named “Cactus Jack.” Didn’t that sound like a Wild West showdown kid? That’s Bean to a T. Maize—well, I found “Cornus.” Even went to see what a picture of a cornus looked like, and the way the sprigs all jump out at you kinda looked like Maize’s hair. He begged Daddy to let him get cornrows once, said he would take care of it and Daddy wouldn’t have to pay anybody to help him keep it up. Daddy gave him the boy-you-must-be-crazy look, and that was the end of it.
Without Daddy knowing it, we’d overheard him the last time we’d gone down to the Tabernacle Faith Church. He was in the pastor’s study, but the door was cracked. We had all been fitted for our choir robes because we were going to be having a fundraising service for the building fund, and the church was chaotic. I guessed Daddy thought we were off being taken care of. Instead, we all lined up at the door to patiently wait for him to take us back to the old train depot where we’d found an empty room to lie a spell. He said something to that preacher man that he’d never spoken aloud to any of us youngins. He said he’d blamed himself for years on end for Momma’s trip to Heaven. He said if he had stayed in Smithfield like she wanted and worked at the hog plant, it wouldn’t have been this way. With her being right down the road from her own folks, she wouldn’t have left that farm for nothing, not even for a loaf of bread. But Daddy said that was why he forced her to move on and branch out in the world. That branching out wasn’t Momma’s style, I guess. Her limbs weren’t strong enough for a mighty wind, so she snapped right to pieces.
As soon as I shut my eyes, at least a couple nights out of the week, those words would come to haunt me, and I’d hear the cry in his throat as he confessed. Daddy never did the drugs like Momma. If he did, he sure didn’t show the signs of it. He was the one taking care of us when she’d go out to have her fix or go downstairs to check the pipes. Now, I got the meaning behind the pipe inspections, and I hated how she thought we were all naïve to her lifestyle choices. Her destructive path to what? To lie in a grave while I took care of her youngins for her? Bell was a baby. Bean, too. I was up to Daddy’s belt buckle then. I remember the force of the hug he gave me after she went on. His silver belt buckle left a mark on the corner of my eye that will always be there to remind me of the day my world stopped turning.
Even after a night of restlessness, I still had my duties. Daddy went off to throw out some biscuits and gravy at Soul Food at an early six o’clock a.m. That left me there with the kids all day long. At least Bell was a complete angel, and I never once had to worry about what she might
get into. Bean and Maize—well, a whole ’notha story.
The Home had a small backyard for the kids of the establishment, and there were about three other families that had kids around Bell’s and Bean’s ages. No one was as old as me. I was the one that always had to carry the torch and watch out for the little ones, but I guess it could’ve been worse. I might have had cleaning the urinals or some other menial task like that. They had a small sandbox in the corner by old piles of Chiquita banana boxes lining the chain-link fence, and a basketball court where the net was gone off the rim. At least it would keep Bean and Maize busy all day long. Give those boys a ball, and that was it.
Bell was listening to her music again, singing quietly in the corner, and I was reading, as usual. Right now, I was into trying to memorize a poem from a collection book, one of those fancy, gold-letter anthologies I was fortunate to find on the dusty bookshelf. The worn books always caught my attention, because if someone loved them enough to hold them until they were ragged, then they must have been worth it.
I found a treasure when I caught on to a poem written by an Anonymous. Now, there was a name I could identify with in this great big world. They wrote “The Kissing Trees.” I needed to start to let things matter to me. I didn’t quite know how I could accomplish it, but I had to start somewhere.
Hope has wings
when Freedom sings,
finding peace in the
purest of things like
the joy of a morning
under the kissing trees.
Hope has wings
and other things like
you
Maize stuck out his tongue, sweat beading all on his forehead.
“What are you doing, you weirdo? Come play.” He threw the ball at me, knocking the book clear out of my hands. Copying down stanza one was as far as I got.
“That hurt! And I don’t want to play today. I’m at peace right now.”
I couldn’t help but stick out my tongue right back at him, as immature as it might have been. I could play a mess of ball with them, but I didn’t feel up to having Bean hanging onto my pants with all of these other kids around. They picked at my height, because I was right at six feet. Another attribute I got from Daddy, I guess. Bean always begged me to dunk. Even though I knew I couldn’t, he still thought I was as tall as the blue sky.
Maize’s eyes grew misty. “I know you loved our adventures in the woods. Do you remember that time when you made us a treehouse? How we didn’t topple out of that thing, I will never know. Now we are away from anything growing green except Daddy’s paycheck. I get that you miss the pines to hide in, but this flat dirt makes a savage court. Suit yourself, sis.”
He grabbed Bean by the arm, and they had at it for another round of Horse.
I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face. The slight nudging of Bell’s black Converse against my own let me know she was right by my side. It came to me. Peace that felt like a quieting somewhere in my soul. I folded the first stanza and placed it in my pocket. If hope had wings, I sure did wish that I could fly.
Mrs. Betty Atkins called us in for some lunch after a while, but I couldn’t find a way to eat. All I could feel was that yearning to fly like a free bird on wings of hope. Instead, I was the bird trapped with a broken wing for so long that I’d forgotten how to fly. Always behind the bars of another person’s cage, accepting a little piece of bread.
Bell graciously accepted the wrapped sandwich and apple, curtsying as she went through the line. I held out my hand robotically, trying not to give away all the thoughts I’d been collecting from poetry and memories.
Mrs. Betty Atkins smiled at me, but her face was pensive. Drawn lines etched her eyes. Seems like in her line of work the pitying eyes would have worn off by now. She’d been the director for twenty-three years, for goodness’ sake.
“Hey, sweetheart, are you okay?”
I could say, “Yes,” and really mean it, but somehow the words would not come. They stirred right below the surface.
Because why wouldn’t I be okay? It would have been ungrateful for me not to be. I wasn’t in an abandoned train depot or one of those renter shacks by the field that were so scary at night. We had our very own private bathroom, and Daddy was a cooker man, not a HAZMAT worker with a wage under the table. We had brown bags of food in our hands that included BLTs, apples, and Jesus Saves tracts. That meant Bean, Bell, and Maize would be okay. That had to be enough for me.
As the other residents chatted and talked about their transitional opportunities or upcoming job interviews, or how they had settled themselves with a new community service project, I couldn’t stomach the thought of having to hear all those endless possibilities. I pointed upstairs, and we trekked off to our room to eat in privacy.
Daddy popped in around nine-thirty, and to my surprise, he had each of us a small bag of candy from Mrs. Sunshine. I split all of mine between Bell and Bean, who now believed that Mrs. Sunshine must be a pure angel. From collard greens to cotton-candy bubblegum—enough to earn a place right next to Jesus. Daddy wanted to talk to me, too. And this time, it was up on the roof. He’d found a way to get up there from a pull-down staircase that Mrs. Atkins had had him climb to look for some extra light bulbs in an upstairs closet. She’d told him that the roof was a place where families could sometimes congregate to get away from the noise.
It was strange on the roof like I was sitting over creation, and I couldn’t help but hum that old Carpenters song that Momma used to sing on good days, “Top of the World.” The stars were starting to come out, and the longer I looked the more they seemed to materialize for my very own show. I could almost touch them. It was too personal, and the beauty of it made me sit back and wonder how things in this world could be so messed up and so perfect at the same time.
Daddy was pacing back and forth, rubbing his mustache sideways—the tic he had when he was nervous.
“Go ahead, Daddy. Spill the beans.”
He said, “Well, see, there’s this thing I need to talk to you about.”
He hesitated, and the silence was deafening. Were we about to talk about how he wished that things could be different, that I could have a Momma and I wouldn’t have to pretend to be one? All those words he should’ve been able to say to me, but never could. So many words between us unspoken as we tried to manage this life we led.
“Go on.” He needed the urging, because now he wasn’t budging, propped up against the industrial ducted fan unit.
He asked, “You gonna take care of the kids for me or not?”
Why ask me that? Of course, I would. They were the only reason for my existing and staying here.
“Do I have a choice?” Choices were for rich people. Not for a girl who owned one bag of clothes and borrowed everything else, including other people’s poetry books.
“Yes. You do.” He crossed and uncrossed his arms, looking down at his scruffy boots the whole time.
The ever-fear crept in. This time, it might be out of my control. “What is this? You giving me away?”
I was eighteen soon. Wasn’t there some law where I could choose not to go into foster care, because I was so close? Even though we had the prior threats from when school personnel had turned us over to social services, I’d never had to go to foster before. Why now? I was too old for this. And Bell, she was too young.
Daddy said, “No, child, good heavens, no, baby. I wouldn’t give you away, just like the man in the moon wouldn’t give away his change. I meant an arrangement.”
So, I wasn’t given away. That was a relief. If I had to leave my little cage, for all it was worth, to fly to another one, I’d rather be shot down in dove season than endure that kind of heart-wrenching pain.
“Arrangement? I’m listening.” But was I? My mind kept going back to that word. Choice.
“You workin’. How about that arrangement?” He was still looking at his shoes.
“You sending me o
ff to work?”
I knew once when a family had gotten too big on the road, this momma farmed off her kids like pure slaves. Never knew they did that anymore, and I was sure it wasn’t legal, but she put her boy with a group of workers and left him there on the side of the road. The girl had gone on a long dirt-road walk to where I never knew and couldn’t imagine.
We’d been staying in an abandoned tobacco barn nearby, and we’d witnessed the whole thing. Sometimes it still gave Maize nightmares, and honestly, me too. My heart stopped cold. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t think of that. I fell on my knees right then and there and began to pray aloud for my Father in Heaven to take me away from this choice. I’d make the decision to go to Mrs. Betty Atkins. I loved Daddy, but I loved my Bell enough to know that what he was saying was not going to pass with me. ’Cause if it was me, then it might be her, too. Daddy had lost it.
He shook me, tears streaming down his face. “Stop praying out loud, child! I’m telling you to work with me at Soul Food, taking shifts. If you want to stay home and take care of the kids at night, or I can work breakfast and lunches and you can work dinner shifts, either way on weekends. What is wrong with you, girl? I’m your Daddy.”
Even when it was simply a normal kind of part-time work arrangement that could be discussed between two adults, I still imagined a day would come when he would split us and give us away. Overreacting wasn’t my typical style, but this time I lost it. Composure, return. I lassoed my fear back in.
I hugged him fierce. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry. I let my imagination run wild for a second, that’s all.”
“I’m your Daddy.” He kept repeating it over and over. “I’m giving you a choice.”
It only took me a second to decide. “Shifts sound great, Daddy. I’ll do the after schoolwork and the weekends. It will do me good to have some kind of … work to keep me busy.” I desperately wanted to say, “Some kind of money for when I take the kids on my own to support them the right way.”