by Kia Corthron
“You ready to call the troops over?” my mother asks her sister and best friend. Aunt Pearlie is two years my mother’s senior. “I notice I got one soldier’s mouth a-waterin right here.” She winks at me, wearing the red rose brooch I got her for her own March birthday last week. Well there went the Sopwith savings—start over.
Aunt Pearlie’s a great baker. The cake is moist, the icing dream creamy.
“It ain’t gonna be like this for your birthday,” Aunt Pearlie warns Chris-Joe who’s ten, the baby of the family. “They sayin the sugar rations gonna hit startin May. You might get a cake an you might not.”
“Aw,” grumbles Chris-Joe, demonstrating how it is never too early to whine.
“It’s delicious,” says my mother.
“Ice cream too,” says Aunt Pearlie. “People with a sweet tooth sure gonna feel the sacrifice. Guess you be havin a string bean birthday.”
“Aw!”
She smiles at her youngest. “I hid a little sugar away. It oughta still be good come July the twenty-sixt.”
“Least with the victory gardens we never be short on vegetables,” my mother says. “My peas been really tasty, an now I got some nice cabbage. That an a little pork’s a meal.”
“You ain’t gettin your wish,” Buppie, who’s fourteen, informs Deb Ellen.
“You don’t even know what my wish was.”
“It’s the rations. Applies to birthday wishes too.”
“Oh you’re a regular Jack Benny.”
“I’m knittin him some socks,” Aunt Pearlie tells my mother. “His letters, he’s always complainin bout his cold feet. You think they’ll let him wear em? Or they say he just gotta stick to the army socks.”
“I’m sure they’ll let him wear em.”
Jack is eighteen, Aunt Pearlie’s second oldest boy, in France.
“Got up early, felt like I had so much to do. Harry called, said he just had the news on, talkin bout the West Coast blackouts. Harry said he didn’t really believe we need to keep lights out for fear of enemy planes targetin us, said he thinks it’s just the government wantin to keep us reminded we’re at war.” Like my parents, Uncle Harry had served in the Great War and was of the opinion that entitled him to criticize the government whenever he damn well pleased.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” my mother says. Then shrugs. “Even if it is, keepin us reminded we’re at war seems plenty good reason to me.”
“I don’t wanna be reminded!” wails Chris-Joe. “I want my cake!” His ma pops him in the lips.
“Toldja I saved some sugar but keep it up, it’ll go to Artie Ray’s birthday September. Hear me?”
“B.J.’s teachin me the sign language, Aunt Bobbie,” says Deb Ellen.
“I saw,” says my mother.
“He learnt me some words. An the letters. An with the letters he learnt me, I learnt him a couple words.” Around the table are Ma and Benja, B.J. and me, and Aunt Pearlie and her brood: Lily who’s got to be twenty now and her husband Pete John and their toddler girl, Lily holding the newborn baby and Lily’s big and pregnant again. Then Todd Joseph seventeen, Lee Frankie sixteen, Artie Ray going on fifteen, Buppie fourteen, Deb Ellen newly thirteen, and Chris-Joe almost eleven. The three absentees are Ty the firstborn, working at the mill, Jack in the service, and Uncle Harry who got some wartime weapons job in Birmingham and now stays most of the time with his brother and family there. Pa calls Aunt Pearlie The Baby Machine, not when my mother’s around. He also calls the whole family The Hillbillies, which isn’t exactly fair since they live in the valley like us.
“Benja, you heard back from your soldier?” asks Aunt Pearlie. Over at the Methodist church some lady headed up this letter-writing campaign, soldiers with nobody to write to them. Benja signed up fast.
“Not yet. I wrote eleven days ago.”
“Be patient. Sometimes a while fore I hear from Jack, but jus when I start to worry a letter always comes.”
After dessert, evening’s settling so Deb Ellen and company pull out the sparklers. I don’t know how they smuggled them in, what with all the rations, but those Joneses always seem to have their ways. As soon as B.J. sees them he starts agitating Ma to go home. She tries to tell him the mini combustibles gonna be taken to the other side of the field but he doesn’t care, he wants to leave. He’s always been terrified of even the tiniest firecrackers. Finally she gives up, and stands to kiss Aunt Pearlie and all those nieces and nephews goodbye. Todd Joseph and Lee Frankie take the cue to also stand, both got the early shift at the mill tomorrow. Lily stays at the picnic table to talk with her mother and give the baby a bottle, while Lily’s husband Pete John tosses a big ball with their little girl, and I and the other cousins go off with our handheld pyrotechnics. There are a dozen in the box and five of us. Two apiece and the birthday girl will get a third. A lingering mystery over who gets the final one. “Draw sticks?” I suggest. No one answers. I’ve noticed this with Aunt Pearlie’s kids, on occasion ignoring me. Maybe not deliberately rude, but like some unspoken agreement between them not to discuss that final sparkler yet, something they all understand instinctively and for which I have to play catch-up.
The five of us ignite the first round, which we all find satisfying, if over way too soon. Then Deb Ellen slips off into the woods to pee, and with only boys left the conversation naturally turns to sex.
“Who you doin?” asks Buppie.
“Margaret Laherty.” The first girl who came to mind. Well, after Lucille, but they all surely saw her picture in the paper with me for the debates, and I am not setting myself up for the rest of the evening or the rest of my life filled with Randall-and-Fatty jokes. The only other girl I thought of was Lily who I’ve always had a cousin crush on, but I’m sure not going to mention that to her brothers. As if they don’t already know. I pray they don’t remember Margaret Laherty from elementary. None of the boys are in school anymore except Chris-Joe the baby, couple years behind Margaret and me. The others all stopped after sixth, working odd jobs around town. Ty had got on at the sawmill when he was twelve, and by a very close call nearly wound up with a three-finger hand like Mr. Wright. After that Aunt Pearlie put her foot down to Uncle Harry, none of them goes into the mill till they’re sixteen.
“Oh yeah?” Buppie wears a pleased smirk in response to my choice in women, and I am thus relieved in my certainty that he has no idea who Margaret Laherty is or he would have most assuredly let out a big laugh over my imagining she would ever give me the time of day.
As Deb Ellen returns, lightning bugs start blinking. “Hey!” She dashes back to our picnic table. Artie Ray lights a cigarette and doesn’t share it.
“Well,” he says, “we sure were glad your pa didn’t come. Otherwise we’d have to hide the booze.” They all crack up. A reference to the embarrassment last Christmas when my father’s behavior incited the mass exodus of extended family before dinner. Deb Ellen returns with a big jar, grass in the bottom and holes in the lid. She begins running around, collecting fireflies.
“You excited about high school?” Chris-Joe asks me.
I shrug. “Guess so.” They apparently haven’t heard from Aunt Pearlie that Pa’s of a dissenting opinion on the matter.
“He thinks he’s goin to high school.” Buppie smirking at his little brother.
“Ma said I can!” Chris-Joe says.
“No Jones ever went past the sixt,” Buppie remarks.
“Ty didn’t go past third, and Pa didn’t go at all,” says Artie Ray. “Pa signed on at the mill when he was ten. Ty didn’t till he was twelve so Pa used to call him ‘the princess.’” Buppie snickers.
“Benja’s in the tenth?” Chris-Joe.
“Eleventh.”
“All of em!” Chris-Joe in a bitter pout, stomping off a few yards away. “All of Aunt Bobbie’s kids goin to twelfth!” I never before thought of my family as so erudite.<
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“Not B.J.,” Artie Ray reminds him.
“He doesn’t count!” Chris-Joe throws a stone, barely missing Artie Ray. Artie Ray stands, a warning. “Hey boy.”
“Lily was engaged at sixteen,” says Buppie, “married at seventeen, a ma at eighteen. Now she’s a ma twice over goin on three.”
“I’m a uncle!” says Chris-Joe, suddenly over his angry spell and coming back to our throng.
“I’m a aunt,” says Deb Ellen, “but I sure ain’t gonna be no ma. Yaw can have all the kids ya want.”
“You keep up your tomboy ways,” says Artie Ray, “ain’t no man gonna wantcha.”
“Then I sure will keep up my tomboy ways.”
“I want another sparkler,” says Chris-Joe.
“In a while,” says Buppie.
“Why?”
“Cuz we’re savin em! Savorin em! You use it up now, then cryin the blues cuz they’re gone already.” Chris-Joe starts bawling. “Oh you definitely ain’t the one gettin that third sparkler.” Chris-Joe starts howling. “Shut up!”
“I was over there today,” says Artie Ray. “She got a letter from Jack.”
Chris-Joe instantly stops crying and Deb Ellen, that quick already holding a menagerie of a good twenty fireflies, turns sharply toward Buppie. “Where?”
“Lily’s, where’dja think?”
They all stare at him.
“Well don’t you even wanna know what he had to say?”
“I do!” says Chris-Joe.
“He said France is a dog pit, and the food tastes like dog shit.”
“He didn’t say that word!” Chris-Joe.
“He sure did. He wouldn’ta wrote that to Ma but he wrote it to Lily. He said they marched seventeen miles nonstop, then creepin in the trenches, moved ten yards over three days. Cold an half the time pourin, he signed up fearin he might get shot an die but now thinks what gonna earn him the Purple Heart is new-monia. Love, Jack.”
“He didn’t say love to the family?”
“I mean ‘Love to the family. Jack.’” Chris-Joe is relieved.
Deb Ellen’s eyes narrow. “You made that up.”
“His words, not mine.”
“‘Love, Jack. I mean, Love to the family, Jack.’” Her eyes rolling.
“Okay, he didn’t say ‘love to the family.’ I jus said that cuz it’s what he wanted to hear.” Meaning Chris-Joe, who now confirms this with “Aw!”
“I’m joinin the army,” says Buppie.
“I’m joinin the army!” says Chris-Joe. “If I get my growth spurt next year I’ll pass for fifteen.”
“Lookin fifteen’ll do you no good, fool,” says Buppie. “Fifteen-year-olds get in for lookin eighteen.”
“They let anybody in,” says Artie Ray.
“Not the army, I’ma be a flyer!” Chris-Joe starts racing around, his arms outstretched: plane. Artie Ray looks at Deb Ellen, her eyes still hard on him.
“Whatta ya blamin me for? I didn’t tell Jack to write to Lily steada us.”
“You made the whole goddamn thing up.”
“You know the way Ma and Lily can get into it.” Artie Ray looks at the picnic table in the distance. “Both of em actin like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths now, but one wrong word. Jack prolly thinks he better write to Lily separately since he never knows when her and Ma’s gonna fall out, stop speakin.”
“He could write to each of us,” Deb Ellen says.
“To eight of us?” the boys say in unison. Chris-Joe adds, “Plus Ma? Plus Pa?”
“He only writes to Lily separate cuz she’s in a separate household.” Artie Ray.
“I gotta go to the woods!” Chris-Joe hops away, holding himself.
“An cuz Lily’s his favorite sister.” Deb Ellen flashes a glare at Artie Ray.
“Oh he’s jus foolin on ya,” says Buppie, “don’t bite the bait.” From over on the colored side, another birthday happening: singing and the lit cake.
“Come on,” Artie Ray says, “let’s light up the sparklers.”
“I’m not ready yet,” Deb Ellen retorts.
“Then guess you’ll miss out.”
“I GET TWO MORE!”
“I get mine! I get mine!” Chris-Joe running out of the woods, still pulling up his pants.
“Jesus! Don’tchu see a girl lookin atcha?” asks Buppie.
“Nope.” Chris-Joe grins at Deb Ellen, who slugs him. He starts wailing.
“Oh Christ,” says Buppie.
“Well long as he’s blubberin, I’ll take his sparkler too.” Artie Ray moves toward the box.
“No!” Chris-Joe grabs his sparkler, lights it, smiling through his tears. As the four of us watch the shimmering in the boy’s hands, Deb Ellen, still sulky, gives each of her brothers the evil eye, her irises shining in fury. I have never seen her cry. She’s an athlete, the talent and the drive, skinning her knees and elbows and ignoring the blood to keep the ball in play. The only other time I have glimpsed this look in her was the night before Jack left, when Aunt Pearlie threw him that going-away dinner. He was in a bedroom, some intimate farewell time with Lily and her daughter, his godchild. I was coming back from the bathroom and overheard the private episode, stopping myself short, caught between trying not to pass by the doorway lest it appear I was eavesdropping and being stuck in a spot where I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. Deb Ellen had just barged in, grabbing Jack and now trying to pull him off the bed, wanting him to throw a football with her. He was patient, telling her to give him a few minutes, and when she wouldn’t stop he finally snapped at her to let go and leave him and Lily and the little girl alone. With her and Lily the only girls, I’d noticed moments with Deb Ellen vying for the attention, especially from Jack, no question her favorite brother. With his definitive reprimand, she’d stomped out, and saw me near the door.
And as if this memory simultaneously comes back to Deb Ellen, her gaze now settles on me. Quiet me, here in the middle of some major Jones family dispute that I don’t even wholly understand. Maybe to her my silence comes off as superior. My heart skips a beat.
“It wa’n’t Ty’s fault.” Even with her staring right at me it takes a moment before I realize I’m the one she’s addressing.
“What?”
“Your pa. He mighta picked that Christmas fight with Ty, but Ty ain’t to blame.”
“Deb Ellen,” warns Artie Ray.
Oh yeah, Pa bringing up the chicken pox, the damn taboo. But something ominous in Artie Ray’s tone. Well whatever this little drama is, I want it to be done and over with. Fix my eyes on her. “If you got something to say, say it.”
She shrugs, looks away. “Maybe I don’t.” She’s not toying with me so much as just realized she stepped into a dangerous room she isn’t sure she wants to enter. She goes to the sparklers box. “Hah! I’m gonna light my other two together!” She strikes the fire. The double-flash is impressive.
“Yaw can fight among yourselves over that damn last sparkler.” I turn to leave.
“You know they weren’t married long before B.J. born.” I turn around. Artie Ray.
“So? The way I hear it tell your ma an pa wa’n’t married long fore Ty popped out neither.” My cousins make me lose my grammar.
“Yeah, the difference is Ty was still my pa’s.” I start to charge him. “Your pa liked Ty!” I stop short. They all stare at him, Deb Ellen no longer paying attention to the live torch in her hand. “My brother was three before your ma an pa got hitched, so still in the courtin stage, your pa prolly tryin to impress your ma, bein all friendly with her sister’s baby.” He stops. I wait. All of them staring back at me, my breath coming faster.
“So B.J. gets borned,” Deb Ellen taking it up, “an my ma an Grammaw at the hospital, gettin ready to bring him an your ma home. An your pa volunteers to babysit Ty, he’s four then, waitin
for all the women to come back with the new baby. But Ty, he has the chicken pox. An they bring baby B.J. home, an then baby B.J. gets the chicken pox.” And she stops.
“Yeah, and? Everybody knows that, God. Wasn’t anybody’s fault, the spots hadn’t shown up on Ty yet, they didn’t know he was sick. Pa. I know Pa blames Ty sometimes, like at Christmas, that’s not right, I guess he’s just upset and—”
They glance at each other.
“What!”
“Your pa knew about the chicken pox,” says Artie Ray. “Ty remembers. He went playin in the mud, and your pa give him a bath. He saw the spots on Ty’s chest. Ty remembers. Uncle Ben goes, ‘What’s all this?’ an Ty goes, ‘Itch! Itch!’”
“Lucky B.J. jus got deaf,” chimes in Deb Ellen. “Chicken pox coulda kilt a baby,” stating the blamed obvious. I look at their faces. Is this a joke? You never know with the damn dimwitted Joneses.
“So, wait a minute. You’re trying to tell me my father on purpose got B.J. infected.” They stare. “And why in the hell would he wanna do that.”
I’m regretful soon as the question’s passed my lips.
“You ever wonder.” Artie Ray all careful. “You ever wonder how come the engagement lass three years? Why it take your ma so long, ready herself for husband an babies?”
Truthfully I never thought about that before but sure won’t let on. Not that it matters: Joneses got the scent of the bloodhound, teeth of the Doberman.
“Wa’n’t her fault.” Oh Deb Ellen trying to be soothing now? “Everyone knows what happens to women in the navy.”
“Morons!” I’m laughing loud. “You’re saying my mother got pregnant with B.J. in the service.”
They stare.
“The war was over 1918! B.J. was born 1923! What, you think she carried him around five years?” They stare. “WHAT!”
“Somethin happened in the navy,” Artie Ray ventures.
“I know! I know what happened, I know. She miscarried. She lost that baby, I know!”
“It wa’n’t her fault,” assures Artie Ray. “They made her—”
“I KNOW!” They thought they were telling me something I wasn’t aware of and they were wrong, end of discussion, relief. So why do I feel sick?