We walked home slowly. Daddy and Mama were behind us, holding hands. The country ground felt good beneath my feet but I remembered my red rose box, the pink room, patio furniture, marshmallows, and flowers tucked behind one ear.
I asked Daddy if we could get a book.
He said, “We gotta book, the Bible.”
“I want a real book like the ones at Aunt Olivia’s house, like the books in the library in Lake Charles.”
My request was met with a smile and the next day he brought me, in his torn back pocket, a well-used copy of Tom Sawyer. That was how we came to have books of our own. I finished it in one week and after that, when he was home, he bought me a different torn, worn book. He said he bought them for three pennies each from a blind man who used to pass for white. Those books kept the ambition hovering around me. I learned many things from those frayed pages, and though the words rolling off my tongue still sounded Louisiana country, the words themselves started to change.
Emma Snow, the girl with seven braids, taunted us after school the first day back. “Who you think you is just cuz you went somewhere on a train? Summer vacation in Hollywood. Your mama ain’t even got but one washtub and you’s still colored.” Three other girls who sat in the one-room schoolhouse with us sneered.
One boy hurled mean words toward us and threw a rock that grazed my temple. “You ain’t no better than nobody else cuz you still gotta sit in the back of the bus just like the rest of us.”
I hoped we weren’t going to have to fight.
Ruth pulled one of Emma’s seven braids. “Pickaninny!”
“I ain’t no pickaninny!” Emma balled up her fist.
Ruth ducked and I grabbed her hand. We ran toward home. Fast, faster, faster.
“Chickens! ... Ragamuffins!” We heard them say.
“Dumbbells!” I screamed.
We stopped running and Ruth said, “It’s cuz you talked about it too much during lunchtime. You made it sound like a fairy tale, like Cinderella. Now we ain’t got no friends at school. They gonna try and beat us up every day.”
So I was to blame. “When you go somewhere nice you oughta be able to talk about it.”
“Not if you got only one pair of shoes, Leah.”
I looked down at my black patent leather shoes. Dust covered them. I reached down, took one off, shined it with my dress, put it back on, shined the other. I didn’t feel highfalutin, like I thought I was better. I just knew there were better things to come.
Ruth made me promise never to talk about it again, even if our teacher, Mrs. Redcotton, asked. “Otherwise, we gonna have to fight someone every day.”
I made a promise and kept it.
By the end of the week we were welcomed back into our small circle of friends and on Friday after school, Ruth and I, Emma, Lester, and the three rust-colored girls walked to town. Emma Snow walked ahead of me with Ruth and I wanted to tell her about the dog whose name was Chili. I wanted to say to Lester, the boy with the orange kinky hair who’d thrown the rock, that there are places where women wear flowers in their hair and grass skirts. I wanted to tell the three rust-colored girls who’d sneered that one day I was going to make my mama and daddy proud. I wanted them to know that we had been to the Pacific Ocean, where there were no whites-only beaches. Instead I smiled and laughed. I never did like to fight.
The seven of us walked through our small town and passed a dress shop that had a Whites Only sign. The others kept walking but I stopped to look at the cardboard sign and wondered what they had in that shop that was so special. The white lady who owned the shop, Miss Lucy Love, looked up from where she was sitting, resting her big feet, and yelled through the open screen door, “Get away from that window, gal! Didn’t your mama ’n daddy teach you nuthin! You kin read, cain’t you? Read the sign, gal! Whites only ... and you sure don’t look like no white gal to me.”
I walked away slowly but I kept my head up. I wanted to tell her that God must have given her the wrong name, Miss Love.
Summer turned into a cool fall and fall into a frosty winter.
It was December, after Christmas, when Ruth’s box came, and I had two shoe boxes filled with books, a dictionary, and all A’s except for geography, because I had a hard time remembering the capitals of all of the forty-eight states.
Ruth’s box was pink, no roses, just pink with a white pearl handle. Her bed jacket was lavender, slippers too. I found myself thinking that it wasn’t so special but that was probably because I was getting used to the finer things.
Miss Lutherine came to the door and Ruth told her, “Come in and stop standin there like a cat waitin outside a mouse hole.”
Miss Lutherine looked round and asked, “What was in that big box I saw the postman come here with?”
Ruth answered, “Miss Lutherine, you is a very nosy woman.”
Mama heard Ruth from where she was standing, baking a cake in the kitchen, and invited Ruth to go out back and pick her a switch for being a sassy mouth. Ruth dragged her feet, walked out the back door, and the screen closed quietly. Miss Lutherine grinned, went into the kitchen, inhaled pineapple upside-down cake, and sat down. I went out on the front porch and sat there daydreaming until Ruth sat down beside me, rubbing welted legs.
Ruth said, “Miss Lutherine is a nosy woman. She’s the most nosiest woman in Sulphur, pro’bly the most nosiest in Louisiana.”
I was sympathetic. “I know.”
Ruth made a statement in her softest voice. “I shouldn’t get no whuppin for tellin the truth.” She continued, “I’m gonna tell Father Murphy, next time I go to confession, that Mama gived me a whuppin for tellin the truth and then I’m gonna ask him for a paper with the Ten Commandments on it so I can give it to Rita Hopper, my mama.”
I got up, opened the screen door, and said, “Mama, we goin down by the creek.”
Mama looked out the open window. She frowned. “Storm comin, I smell it. You hear thunder, see lightnin, don’t go up under no tree.”
“We won’t,” I replied. I grabbed Ruth’s hand and we took off like two wild dogs, looking for trouble.
We were still running when we heard the sound of a rifle and went around to the back of Hank De Leon’s house to see what he was shooting at. It was a possum, just like I thought, nearly dead and ready for skinning. We watched it shiver as its last bit of life left. Hank skinned it, took the pelt, rinsed it in clear water, and hung it in his tanning shed with twenty or so others.
Hank was old enough to be our daddy’s daddy. He had a pot-belly and skin the color of a peanut shell. He wore his wavy hair in one braid at the back and a necklace made from bird feathers around his neck. He burned sage, morning and night, to ward off evil spirits, spoke in tongues, and carried holy water, blessed by the archbishop, wherever he went.
Hank said, “One day I’ma make you a possum coat, Miz Leah, you too, Miz Ruth.”
Ruth said, “Our aunt Olivia, who lives in Los Angeles in a very big house with upstairs and downstairs, has a colored maid just like white folks in Baton Rouge and a sable coat from a sable-tooth tiger.”
Hank replied, “Sable ain’t no tiger, more like weasel, little gal.”
“Can we have that possum to take home to our mama?” I was growing tall, feeling hungry.
Without saying a word, he put the possum in a potato sack and gave it to me.
“I ain’t gonna eat no possum I watched die,” Ruth said.
Hank shook his head. “Y’all run on home. I hear thunder.”
I looked up at the sky, shades of black and gray, clouds heavy and ready to burst, moving fast, faster, and Ruth and I ran, possum in the sack, dripping a bloody trail. We passed Miss Lutherine, standing in her door like she was expecting company, hoped lightning would strike her twice, and made it to our front porch before the first nickel-sized raindrops fell.
It rained hard for six days and six nights and we ate possum stew. Even Ruth.
On the seventh day, the sun crawled in through holes in the white eyelet
curtains and I woke up.
Elijah pounded on the front door. “Y’all all right?”
Ruth opened the door. “We been eatin possum stew for five days outta six and I didn’t wanna eat no possum that died while I was lookin at it but it was mostly all we had cept for some pineapple upside-down cake, potatoes, onions, and carrots. Yesterday, we had butter beans.”
“Hurricane hit Franklin head on, tore it up. We was a little luckier.... Where’s your daddy?” he asked.
Mama looked worried. She bit her thumbnail and said, “Ain’t seen him. He was workin over in Lake Charles. Be home soon, I reckon. Willie sure to be home after while.”
“Most roads flooded, most electric out. I see Willie, I’ll be sure and let him know y’all is safe and sound, warm, dry, fulla possum.” Elijah patted Mama’s shoulder, turned, and walked away.
He drove off, hand waving, and we ate butter beans for breakfast, passing the hours with indoor chores and tales of storms and swollen creeks. We were getting ready for dinner when we saw Daddy walking, overalls muddy, sack full of food slung over his left shoulder. We ran to him and he put the bag down. He kneeled in the mud, pulled us to him, kissed the tips of our noses, and called us pretty gals. Mama stood on the porch, pinning her loose black hair up with gold bobby pins.
We ate French bread, fried pork chops, carrots, and creamed potatoes, and Daddy drank a bottle of beer that Elijah had brought by two weeks ago while Mama frowned. Ruth and I washed the dishes and excused ourselves to our room, where I was reading the second to the last chapter of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne.
I told Ruth, “I’ma need glasses, all this readin.”
Ruth turned up the oil lamp and said, “So, Mrs. Redcotton wears glasses and she still gotta husband.”
Daddy knocked on our half-open door, came in, sat down next to us, and in less than five minutes he fell asleep, snoring. Ruth and I covered him, turned out the light, and went to Mama’s room. She was purring sweetly and we climbed into her bed and talked about hot air balloons and how we were going to go around the world in eighty days.
Mama woke. “What y’all doin in here?”
“Daddy fell to sleep in our bed, snorin so loud we couldn’t wake him.”
Mama turned over, closed her eyes, and sleep found her.
In the darkness sleep found us too.
Eight
Morning came and the sky was blue like heaven. Daddy went to find more work in Lake Charles.
Mama came to me and Ruth with a letter. Mama said it was from Aunt Olivia.
She said, “I been thinkin on this. I been thinkin on it for bout three weeks. Rain came and I had time to think some more.” Mama usually took a while to say something if it was important. So Ruth and I sat still while she stumbled around with her words. “Your aunt Olivia and her husband, Bill, are goin for a visit to New York City, come summertime.”
Ruth stood up, walked over to the open window, looked out, and said, “Clouds comin again.”
A gust of wind blew the curtains up against Ruth’s face and Mama told her, “Come away from that window fore you get blowed away like dandelion snow.”
Ruth walked away from the window, sat down, and Mama continued, “They want y’all to go with em.”
“Who?” I asked.
Mama replied, “You and Ruth.”
I threw a question. “What bout you?”
Mama let the question jump by, a jackrabbit in the moonlight. “Miss Lilly gonna need my help.” Miss Lilly had fallen and she was broken in many places. Mama wouldn’t leave her. “Some other time.... I’ll see New York City some other time....” Her words trailed behind her as she stood up and walked to the window.
Ruth looked down at her bare feet and said, “We gonna need more than one pair a shoes.”
Mama shut the window. “Olivia been sendin me a little somethin for y‘all ev’ry month.”
Ruth walked over to Mama and took her hand. “Then why we still got only one pair a shoes?”
Mama let go of Ruth’s hand and embraced her with one arm. “Cuz you both got big growin feet, little Miss Hopper.”
I joined them at the window and asked, “We gonna have to ride the train by ourselves?”
Mama smiled, put her other arm around me, and replied, “God didn’t give you a spirit of fear, Leah.” For a moment she was silent and then she told us she would make sure she went to church to light two candles before we left; that way we would have a special blessing.
“I don’t need no special blessin cuz I gotta angel who’s always with me, nighttime and day,” Ruth said.
“How you know that?” Mama asked, her eyes full of light.
“Cuz I remember when you prayed and put her there. Leah got one too. She just don’t remember because her mind is fulla all those books she been readin.”
I said, “I wanna special blessin.”
Mama patted the top of my head and said that most everybody can use all of the blessings they can get.
Ruth picked up a doily from Mama’s big chair and put it on her head. She held out her arms and began to twirl, and the doily fell from her head like a snowflake.
“Put my doily back where it belongs, Ruth Hopper,” Mama said.
Ruth picked up the doily and replied, “Yes ma’am.”
I left them standing there and walked into our room. I opened the closet door and looked at the postcard from Paris that I had taped to the wall. I began to pray because it seemed to me that my wishes were coming fast, the way heat and sweat come with summer, and I was frightened.
Ruth walked in and peeked in the closet. “What you doin?”
“Prayin.” I finished my prayer and made the sign of the cross.
“You sposed to kneel down when you pray,” Ruth informed me.
I said, “God don’t care.” We heard the screen door open, rusty hinges singing, looked toward it, and saw Miss Lutherine.
I whispered, “Miss Lutherine pro’bly gonna lose her nosy mind when she finds out that we’re goin to New York City.”
Ruth added, “Pro’bly wind up in the sane asylum.”
“Insane asylum,” I corrected her.
We went into the front room, grinning from one ear to the next, and Miss Lutherine said we looked like two little fancy cats who’d just caught a mouse. Ruth was about to respond when she remembered what she got the last time and just kept grinning. We went out to the porch with our secret and started laughing out loud until Mama told us to get out the washtub and the washboard. “Y’all need to get Miss Lilly’s clothes on the line fore the rain comes again.”
Miss Lutherine sat, idle minded like the devil’s workshop, sipping the coffee Mama had poured for her.
Ruth and I filled the tub with water, then put in the borax and washed, up and down, up and down. Then we wrung out each piece by hand, changed to fresh water, and rinsed.
Ruth saw Mama in the kitchen window and said, “We need two washin tubs, one for washin, one for rinsin.”
I added, “Use the money Olivia been sendin us.”
Mama put one finger to her lips, not wanting Miss Lutherine to know and we knew to be quiet. Everyone knew that you could use a telephone, send a telegram, or tell Miss Lutherine and the gossip was bound to get where it was headed in equal time. Mama said that was what happened to some old maids and that she felt sorry for people who had no children. I supposed that was why she was letting us go to New York City, Olivia not having any children of her own. I supposed we were the next best thing.
We lifted our hands high toward the heavens, put the sheets over the line, eased a clothespin on each end and the wind blew them soft and dry.
I took one end, Ruth the other, and we folded them, making perfect squares. We washed more clothes, rinsed, hung them to dry.
We ran shoeless between the clothes, playing tag. The air was fresh, grass soaked, clouds heading west. The turquoise sky sat above us. Mama was making bread pudding and we could smell its sweetness. Saturdays passed too
fast.
Emma Snow came by with her new checkerboard, one of the sneering rust-colored girls, Penelope Adams, shuffling her feet behind her. Penelope was fat. There was no other word to describe her. Even her earlobes were fat. She wore her mother’s ruby ring that no one could get off her finger and glasses that had been broken and were held together by a piece of tape. She had kinky brown hair that grew long. Her clothes always looked as if they were going to burst and she liked to show her underpants to boys down by the creek after mass on Sunday. The boys all called her fatso. The girls called her Penny. Penny pulled jacks and a red rubber ball from her pocket, and Ruth and I played checkers and jacks with them while the clothes dried on the line.
I wanted to tell them that we were going to New York City, that we were going to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, that we would be staying in a hotel and that one day soon our mama, Rita Hopper, would have more than one washtub. Instead I told Emma to “King me,” and tried to imagine why any boy would follow Penny down to the creek to look at her underpants. Penny whistled while she bounced the ball and picked up five jacks. In the distance, I heard a gunshot and knew another possum was ready to be skinned. I won the first game and Ruth took Emma’s place. Then Ruth won and Penny took my place.
“Nathan Shine kissed me down by the creek yesterday,” Penny said.
“On the cheek or on the mouth?” Emma asked.
“On the mouth, twice. Then he said he loved me.”
“He don’t love you. He just wanted to look at your underpants.” Ruth snickered.
I felt sorry for Penny because she was fat. “Maybe he loves her.”
“Maybe he don’t,” Emma added.
The Red Rose Box Page 5