Tomato Girl

by Jayne Pupek

  “Oh, I see. You say that now, but you wait …”

  “Mama!”

  “Go on, then.” She swatted my behind with her dishrag. “I’ll get the onion myself. And tell your father not to be late for supper.” She opened the top cabinet above the stove and handed me an empty oatmeal box.

  Mama saved every kind of box, jar, and can. She used these as hiding places for her special things. Sometimes Daddy found her treasures and took them back to the store because she hadn’t paid for them. Mostly she kept ink pens, stockings, and sewing goods. He ignored those because they cost so little, but the jewelry, perfume, and fur stole had to be returned. Sometimes she’d cry hard enough that Daddy would work out an agreement with the shop owner to pay for it, but usually, Mama just pouted, or said she hadn’t really wanted the thing anyway.

  “Have Daddy saw this in half,” Mama explained, “and poke holes in the lid. Put some brown paper in the bottom. It should do nicely for your chick.”

  I kissed Mama’s soft, warm cheek and ran out the door.

  Overhead, dove-gray clouds hung in the sky. A few cool raindrops hit my face.

  If I ran as fast as I could, I’d make it to the store before the Easter chicks arrived.

  DADDY WAS STACKING cans of paint in a pyramid along the wall when I plowed through the front door. “There’s my girl,” he said and smiled at me.

  Back then nobody else in the world was his girl. Only me.

  I locked my arms around Daddy’s thick neck and kissed his rough, salty face. “I haven’t missed the truck, have I, Daddy?”

  “No, should pull up any minute. Here, you help me sort the new brushes until Mr. Nelson comes.” He pointed to the cardboard box on the floor. An open flap showed a box full of red- and black-handled brushes, their fine white bristles wrapped in clear plastic.

  I loved Daddy’s store. He didn’t really own it, Mr. Morgan did, but Mr. Morgan hardly stopped by anymore because of his arthritis. Daddy ran it for him, and I thought of the store as ours. I spent hours after school sweeping the narrow aisles, sorting shiny nails and bolts into their bins, hanging new paint brushes on hooks. Sometimes I closed my eyes and wandered the aisles like I was blind, naming things just by touch and smell. This was a world where I felt safe, like being wrapped in a favorite blanket. Here everything had its own special place, and no one broke into tears for no reason or hurt themselves on purpose. This was a place like school, where things happened the way you expected, and the day at hand was much like the day before it. Each spring I watered seedlings and pulled dead buds. I arranged snapdragons in rows near the counter where we sold seed packets. We carried green hoses that hung on the wall like vines, and shiny watering cans with thick gray spouts. As soon as the frosts passed, we stocked more gardening supplies, and right after that the first produce came. Daddy bought from local people: flowers from the colored women on Gratton Street, corn from the sheriff’s brother, and fancy mushrooms from the minister’s wife.

  Most everything else came from the tomato girl. She kept Daddy’s store stocked in fresh vegetables all spring and summer. In the fall and winter, she brought in jars of sweet pickles, corn relish, and tomato preserves. Whenever she showed up with more produce, I placed it in the baskets so the nicest vegetables were on top, throwing away any with worm holes or bruises. In the front window, the sun ripened her tomatoes, turning them a deep red.

  Everyone in town loved her tomatoes. Rumor was she spread blood and coffee grounds on her garden every full moon to make her tomatoes ripe and extra sweet. Other folks said it was her tears that gave them their unusual taste. She was rumored to be orphaned and infirm, but nothing people said about her made much sense to me. I listened to what people said, but wasn’t sure which parts to believe.

  Sometimes when the store wasn’t too busy, Daddy let me work the cash register. I remembered to thank folks for shopping at Morgan’s General, but often made mistakes giving them change. Most of the customers helped me when I lost count, but I still almost gave up. “There’s too many ways to make a dollar,” I complained. Daddy made me keep at it though. “You can’t quit when things get a little tough, Ellie. You must keep at them until you get them right.”

  A job he never had to tell me to do twice was tending the Easter chicks.

  They usually arrived one week before Easter. One hundred of them. Most were dyed blue or pink, because people like things to make sense that way, blue for boys and pink for girls. But some of the chicks were purple, orange, and green, and those were my favorites. Daddy called them the Life Savers chicks because they matched the candies.

  My father had built a special glass display case at the front of the store, tall enough for small children to see into, but not reach inside. The display case stayed there all year, but we changed it each season. During the summer, Daddy filled the case with white play sand and added toy buckets and bright beach balls. In the fall, we placed pumpkins and leaves inside. When December came, we set up a village snow scene with a train and painted houses, some with tiny wreaths pinned to their front doors. Daddy always said I had Mama’s knack for making things look pretty.

  In April, Daddy cleaned the display case and lined the bottom with newspapers and pine shavings for the Easter chicks. My job was to feed and water the chicks, then change their dirty newspapers and bedding. Each chick had to be cleaned with a soft cloth or brush if it got dried corn mash or poop on its down feathers. Their tiny nostrils had to be kept perfectly clear, so they could breathe, which was sometimes a hard job because chicks are messy when they eat, dipping their little heads too far into the bowl.

  I loved the way the chicks smelled, like corn and baking soda, and how they stood on pipe-cleaner legs while they pecked at my hands with their little orange beaks. Whenever I came near them, they chirped, fluffing up their soft down. Within a few days, they took me for their mother, peeping when they heard my voice or footsteps.

  As Easter neared and mothers and fathers scooped up chicks to fill baskets, my brood became smaller. Any that were left, Daddy bartered away. Sometimes he traded them for birdhouses made by the blind carpenter on Gale Street. Once or twice he’d given them to shopkeepers who overlooked Mama’s borrowing without asking. Most often, my unsold chicks went to the tomato girl, a trade for her spring produce.

  This year, Daddy said if I kept his secret, I could keep a chick for my own.

  THE BIG BLUE farm truck pulled up in front of the store. “They’re here,” Daddy called to me as he walked outside. I left my paintbrushes in their cardboard box and followed him.

  He and Mr. Nelson stood on the stoop and talked about the weather for what seemed like forever. Mr. Nelson explained that on his way there he’d had to stop to wrap tarp around his flatbed to keep his turkeys from drowning. “They turn their heads right up in the rain,” he said, tilting his head to show us. “The only thing dumber than a bird in rain is a man in love,” Mr. Nelson joked.

  My father didn’t laugh.

  A few minutes later, Daddy and Mr. Nelson carried in four wooden crates, each holding twenty-five dyed chicks. Daddy turned on the heating lamp and left me to move the tiny chicks into their new home. They would go on sale tomorrow, and I knew that immediately my little brood would begin to dwindle. For the rest of today, though, they were all mine. Daddy never sold them until he saw that they could stand and eat on their own. Any that seemed too weak would be kept in a box in the back office and fed a special gruel with powdered vitamins mixed into it.

  While Daddy locked the cash register, I knelt next to my chicks. They felt a bit damp from the rain, and I quickly moved them to their place under the lamp to prevent a chill from settling into their small, thin lungs. I’d never lost a chick, not even last spring when the shipment arrived during a late frost.

  As I finished moving the last of my brood, a tiny green chick stumbled over his feet and brushed against my hand. He wasn’t bright green like a lime or lollipop, but a softer shade, the color of pistachio ice cream. Daddy s
aid he’d climbed out of the dye too soon for the color to deepen.

  The chick pecked at my thumb, and then stepped onto my finger. He wobbled, but caught his balance as his tiny clawed toes gripped my skin. With his head tilted, he chirped as if to say, “I did it! I did it!”

  I laughed and kissed his soft head.

  I knew then that this chick would be mine, and today I would carry him home.

  “WE BETTER GET to the house,” Daddy said, looking at his wristwatch. He rolled down his sleeves, buttoning the cuffs.

  “Don’t forget the holes,” I reminded Daddy, handing him the box lid.

  Daddy took his knife from his pocket and poked six or seven holes in the cardboard lid. With his thumb, he brushed the openings clean so that no dust would fall on my chick’s head.

  I scooped up my green baby and tucked him inside his oatmeal box. All the other chicks were warm, dry, and fed. Only two had seemed too small and weak to eat all by themselves, so Daddy and I fed them with a dropper, then placed them in a box in the office. In a day or so, they’d join the others.

  DADDY AND I walked the four blocks to our house. The rain had stopped, and the clouds that had hung overhead like plump mushrooms a few hours earlier were thin and distant now.

  A pale pink light softened the sky as we crossed Elm Street and turned onto Grace. I hugged the box in my arms and hummed to calm my chick. I hoped he wouldn’t be afraid in a new place.

  We passed the small brick post office and the row of painted houses where mostly renters lived. Mama sometimes talked about renting one and turning it into a coffee shop for artists and writers. She wanted to paint the walls bright colors, hang spider plants from the ceiling, and place matchstick blinds in the windows. Writers could sit at small round tables and drink coffee with cinnamon on top while artists gathered at the back to sketch nude women. Mama had said her own figure was good enough that she could even model herself. I worried that Mrs. Roberts would find out about the naked women and stop Mary from being my friend, but Daddy said not to give it a thought. He’d already warned the landlords and banks about Mama’s behavior. Erratic was the word he’d used with other people, but I knew Daddy meant Mama has her moods. To make her happy, Daddy let Mama keep dreams that would never come true.

  Daddy once said he’d picked the best house in Granby considering Mama’s moods. Having boarders for neighbors meant there were fewer regular folks who saw the odd things Mama did. Transients, Daddy had explained, are not as nosy as townsfolk, and I guess he was right. None of the boarders ever asked about anything Mama did; most folks only knew she suffered headaches and crying spells.

  As we neared the row of dark hedges marking the edge of our yard, I walked faster. I couldn’t wait to show Mama my new chick. She’d help me name him. Maybe she’d stand at the kitchen sink and mix warm water and cornmeal to make his bedtime gruel, then press a handkerchief with her iron so he’d have a warm blanket in the bottom of his box. I’d seen her do these things when I’d once brought home a wounded sparrow.

  Mama, like me, loves fragile things, but she can hurt them when she’s troubled. Sometimes something comes over her, and she doesn’t realize what she’s doing, or how it will turn out bad. She once poured bleach in the fish tank because she’d dreamed the black mollies grew wings and teeth. The fish all went belly-up, and Daddy had to flush them down the toilet. Later, Mama stared at the empty tank and cried, but Daddy wouldn’t let her fill the tank with more fish.

  Another awful time, Mama wound tape around our parakeet’s beak because the bird wouldn’t be quiet. Each time Paco chirped, pain shot through Mama’s eyes like swords. She’d only meant to quiet him, but she wrapped the tape up too high on his beak, covering the holes where Paco breathed. The little blue parakeet died. I’d found him that evening when I came home. Daddy dug a small grave in the yard to bury him, but explained we could not mark it or ever talk about the parakeet again. “It will upset Mama when she realizes what she’s done,” he’d said. “And other people wouldn’t understand. This is best forgotten.” I’d nodded then tucked away my sadness, like a handkerchief in my pocket. Keeping secrets came easy after so much practice, but some things you just can’t forget no matter how hard you try.

  Mama had been in a very bad mood then, but lately she’d been better. I couldn’t imagine her hurting my chick. Besides, I was older now and knew to look after him. If I covered him with a blanket when I was at school, he would be perfectly quiet and Mama wouldn’t even notice him.

  “Slow down, Ellie, before you fall,” Daddy warned from behind. But I was already up the steps and through the front door.

  “Mama! Mama!” I called, leaving the front door open as I hurried to the black-and-white-tiled kitchen where my mother would be setting out the heavy bowls for supper.

  A sharp, burning smell stung my nose.

  The pot sat on the stove. Dried broth spotted the front of the oven where the stew had boiled over. The knob had been left on, scorching the pot and spilling grayish white threads of smoke.

  Mama was gone.

  The onion.

  I remembered the onion.

  Fear shot through my body. It reminded me of the time the dentist’s drill slipped and hit my gum. The jolt had sent my body forward in the chair.

  The box with my new chick slipped through my fingers and hit the floor.

  “Mama!” I ran out the screen door toward the basement steps.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Mama’s body lay folded in half like a paper doll.

  Dark red blood stained her face.

  THREE

  GOD PROMISES

  I STOOD AT THE TOP of the basement stairs and screamed until Daddy came and pulled me away.

  I wanted to go down the steps and sit with her, but my legs wouldn’t move.

  An ambulance came. Its spinning red light sent splashes of color through the trees and made me dizzy. If the siren sounded, I knew my heart would split open and bleed.

  I watched from the top of the stairs as a short man with reddish-brown hair and glasses knelt beside Mama and placed a mask across her face. A colored man with white wool hair helped the other man lift my mother onto a long stretcher. They strapped her in place to bring her up the stairwell.

  Mrs. Roberts had shown me a picture of the risen Lazarus walking out of the tomb after Jesus rolled the stone away. I prayed to see Mama rise from the stretcher and walk up the steps on her own. I wanted her to laugh about how she’d tripped, and tell me the gash in her head didn’t even hurt.

  But she didn’t speak and she didn’t move.

  She isn’t dead, I told myself. Daddy had said she was just hurt. But maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe he couldn’t tell me. Daddy always wanted to make a bad thing sound better. He’d never tell you to be worried or afraid, even if there was good reason to be.

  The men slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. They made it look so simple, like sliding a pan into an oven.

  “You’ll follow us to the hospital?” the red-haired man asked.

  Daddy shook his head. “We don’t have a car.”

  He didn’t tell the man how the last time we owned a car Mama had taken off for three days. Sheriff Rhodes had found her parked near the river just sitting in the car, with no food, no belongings, only the nightgown she’d worn the morning she left. “I drove and drove and just couldn’t remember the way back,” she’d explained. Daddy said he couldn’t see how a woman could forget her way around a town she’d lived in for years. He’d wanted to know what man she’d been with and held her by her wrists to make her tell. That only made her cry. Daddy said he was sorry and cried, too. He sold the car the next day.

  “I could call a cab,” Daddy offered.

  The man scratched his cheek and said, “No, that’s fine. I can let you ride with her. But you’ll have to find a way home. They never release a patient with head injuries. They’ll keep her under observation for at least a day.”

  Daddy nodded and gripped my
hand as we climbed into the back of the ambulance.

  I sat on Daddy’s lap. He pressed my face to his chest to keep me from looking at Mama’s bloodied face. The siren blared when we came to the stop sign. I covered my ears with my hands. The red light flashed on top of the vehicle, sending swirls inside the ambulance. I closed my eyes to block out the light, but the red kept flashing behind my shut lids.

  I knew I should keep my eyes open, pay attention. Mary Roberts would want to hear all the details. This would be the sort of tale to impress even the toughest boy in class. But I knew I’d never want to talk about it.

  At the hospital, we sat on an ugly plaid sofa in the waiting room while doctors tended to Mama. By then, I’d started to believe that Mama wasn’t really dead. People came to the hospital to get well.

  An old man slumped in a lounge chair in the corner near the television. A string of drool ran from his lips to his chin.

  In the opposite corner, a tank of guppies gurgled on top of a bookshelf. I pitied the fish who had only this awful room to look at day after day. They must have seen more sadness than any fish on earth.

  A nurse walked over and offered Daddy coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Her thick legs bulged in her stockings and made a swishing sound when they rubbed together. She handed me a coloring book with seven dwarfs on the cover.

  “I don’t want to color.”

  “Here’s a nice picture of Snow White. You look a little like Snow White yourself with those blue eyes and dark hair.” She turned the page. “And here’s the witch with her apple.” She pulled out a fat red crayon and put it into my hand. “Don’t you want to color the witch’s apple?”

  I took the crayon, broke it in half, and shoved the coloring book back to her. “No, I don’t.”

  Daddy wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. He whispered to the nurse that I would be fine and thanked her again for the coffee. My father has always been kind and understanding. He’s a person with too much love inside.