by Randi Pink
“Where is it?” Izella forced each words out of her mouth slowly and deliberately so as not to scream them at her.
“Where is what?”
“You know what!”
“Oh.” Ola pointed at her jewelry box. “I put that old dirty penny in the top. You better be glad I didn’t spend it.”
Izella went to grab it, and she noticed her hand was shaking. She was losing control of herself and her emotions. She needed to get away from Ola before she said or did something she couldn’t take back. Izella grabbed the penny and took off running through the kitchen.
“Where you going, cow?” Ola yelled after her.
“To take Mrs. Mac her bread,” Izella yelled back.
“Good! Go by yourself, then,” said Ola. “I’m going to the rec center! And put my penny back where you found it when you get home!”
* * *
The short walk to Mrs. Mac’s house was a terrifying thing.
Soon as she stepped out the back door, she happened upon a long black snake racing across her yard. He was shiny like a greased-up tire. And Izella would swear he stopped at the hedge, stood straight up, looked her dead in the eye, and smiled. When she blinked one good time, he was gone on. She hurried along to jump Mr. Turner’s back fence to find his son, Stanley, sipping on white lightning.
She tried to pretend she hadn’t seen him. They shared a birthday, she and Stanley. He was exactly a year to the day older than her, and every year Evangelist made her knock on his door to wish him a happy birthday. Izella never did like Stanley. He never helped his mama with groceries. Izella watched him sit and sip as his mama dragged a head of peaches up the sidewalk. And, too, he smelled like his daddy—liquor and sweat. She didn’t want to speak to him, but he hollered out to her.
“Hey!” he said, holding up a flask. “Want some?”
Another stupid, Izella thought. Why was everybody around her so stupid?
“No, thank you, Stanley,” she said. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Suit yourself,” he said before lounging back. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Something cracked inside her body. A twig broke open her angry floodgates, and she lost control. “What I’m missing, Stanley?” she started, fuming. “What I’m missing? You mean sitting in the dirt all day drunker than Cooter Brown? Is that what I’m missing? You mean sweating stink, too? And letting your poor mama all but wipe your tail, huh? Oh, and stumbling to walk a straight line? If that’s what I’m missing, stupid, stupid Stanley Turner, then I’ll keep right on missing it.”
Stanley stared off in the distance, never making eye contact with Izella. He looked sad and slumped like a walrus. She was immediately sorry for going off like that. He didn’t deserve it. Well, even if he did deserve it, it hadn’t been for her to say.
“You see that black racer snake going across a minute ago?” he asked without acknowledging her rant whatsoever.
“I saw,” she replied before sitting down next to him on his stoop. “Thought I was the only one who had.”
Stanley, glassy-eyed and slurring, looked her directly in the eyes without blinking and said, “Racers don’t usually mean no harm. They in after gopher rats and rabbits. Once, I saw one take on an opossum, and get bit up so he passed on, but not before eating up that opossum.” Stanley laughed to himself at the memory and took another sip. “But when they stand up on the tip-tails and look at you, you got some bad things coming. Bad, bad things coming.” He then took a long, slow drag from his flask. “You sure you don’t want a little help getting through it?”
“I’m sure,” Izella said before reaching into her bag and pulling out one of the two loaves of bread. “Have a loaf to soak some of that stuff up.”
“See you later on.” Stanley took it, smiled, and lifted his flask. “And a happy early birthday to you.”
The rest of the walk to Mrs. Mac’s took on the color gray. Gray mad skies opened up to drop a drench of rain onto Valdosta. Two gray cats trying to find shelter were nearly hit by a car. And the car that almost hit them was pewter gray. Izella ran for Mrs. Mac’s front porch, where it was dry, and there the woman sat, creaking back and forth on the swing.
“Too wet to go straight back home, child,” Mrs. Mac said in a low voice with no anger. She spoke to Izella differently than she spoke to Ola. She liked her—that much was obvious. “Don’t just drop off the loaf and leave. Stay awhile.”
Mrs. Mac got up from the swing and opened the screen door.
“You fixed it,” Izella said, amazed that the door had all three hinges and screws in place. “How?”
“Not me, child,” said Mrs. Mac, grinning. “I’ll fix you some tea.”
Drenched, Izella followed her inside the home. She shouldn’t have, but she did.
It was altogether different in the light of day. Clean, organized, and with everything in its place, it looked like a museum of artifacts. Masks framed the walls, some carved from oak and others from stone. The couch that had been covered was now bare. Its wooden legs intricate with cherubs, and the gold-threaded trim stitched with detail and designs. Izella had never seen anything like it. But the most dramatic piece, by far, was the mahogany curio of men.
Izella stood in front of it and stared. “What is it?” she asked.
“My collection,” said Mrs. Mac without looking up from making the tea. “I’d always wanted fifty. But forty-nine was all I got to.”
Izella stepped back to look over the entire collection. They had personality, each of them, like they were alive or had been once. One wore a tilted fedora, another dark sunglasses, and another had thick sideburns and an inch-high Afro.
“Did you kill them all?”
Mrs. Mac laughed outright before walking over with two cups of tea. She handed one to Izella, but Izella just looked in it skeptically.
“You think I’m going to kill you, child?” Mrs. Mac asked, smiling through all of her teeth and setting the cup down on the coffee table. “No, I didn’t kill them. But I didn’t let them live, either.”
Izella sat across from Mrs. Mac to get a good view of who she was dealing with. A loud, horrible crash of thunder shook the teacup, and Mrs. Mac grinned even wider. “Somebody’s mad as hell up there today,” she said.
“Who are they?” Izella asked. “The men.”
“They all got thrown in”—Mrs. Mac motioned toward the basin she’d used to mix Ola’s baby’s potion—“that washbasin over there.”
Izella remembered the moment Mrs. Mac had rubbed her hands together and said, This baby needs to be thrown into the wash. Then she’d got rid of Ola’s baby girl.
“What does it mean?”
“It means,” Mrs. Mac started. “You haven’t touched your tea. It’s getting cold.”
Mrs. Mac took a slurp of her own tea and looked over the cup at her.
“Who are they?”
“You know who they are, child,” she spat. “Don’t act stupid like that sister of yours. You ain’t never been no fool. Don’t waste your mind acting like one.”
“The baby was a boy,” Izella said almost to herself. “Not a girl. They all were—boys.”
Mrs. Mac was right. Izella knew who they were. Every single one of them. She knew that night when she’d first seen them. She just didn’t want to accept that what she thought was the truth. These were all the babies that’d been thrown into the washbasin. Or what they would’ve become if they hadn’t been. Izella jumped up and kicked over her tea.
Mrs. Mac laughed again. “You a spitfire,” she said. “I’ll give you that much.”
“You’re a witch!”
“I ain’t no witch, child,” she said without as much as a hint of anger. “I’m just an old cripple lady trapped in a house, waiting on one stupid girl and one smart girl to bring me my bread. I’ll tell you what, though. That sister is taking you down with her. Soon, too.”
“What does that mean?” Izella asked, unable to resist the urge to scream at this horrible woman’s teeth. “Ho
w will my sister take me down with her? You fixed it! You changed it!”
Mrs. Mac turned up her teacup and then set it down on the table. “I did my part, child. But I didn’t near fix it. Your stupid sister…” She shook her head. “Check her bottom drawer when you get home.”
Mrs. Mac stood and stopped in front of her curio of men. Anger crept into her face, and her smile sunk into a dangerous glare. She stared at Izella, who, for the first time, felt real terror at the sight of her.
“I did my part! Go tell that gal to get me my fifty!”
* * *
Izella took the long way home—sidewalks only. She didn’t want to risk seeing the Turner boy or any snakes. The sky had cleared up, and her world turned back blue. She burst through the door to find her mother sitting on the couch. But Evangelist never sat and did nothing. Something was going on.
“What’s wrong, Evangelist?” Izella asked. Her mother must’ve found whatever was in the bottom drawer. There was no other explanation for it. Sitting in silence was torture for a busybody like her mother who was always doing something with her hands. Even when resting, she knitted or crocheted or scrubbed something. Sometimes Izella thought she saw Evangelist make a spill just so she could have a reason to clean. To Izella’s surprise, Evangelist smiled.
“Nothing’s wrong, Babygal,” her mother said. “Where’s your sister?”
“She’s at the rec center.” Izella told the truth. It felt good to tell the truth for a change, even if it wasn’t the whole one. “She’ll be home before the streetlights.”
“I wanted to tell y’all when you was together, but I can’t wait much longer. I feel like I might burst if I don’t say it out loud, and you always had a way with listening.” Izella knew her rants well, but this one seemed altogether different. “You promise to act like you surprised when I tell you and your sister together?”
Izella nodded.
“It’s Mr. Melvin,” Evangelist said, hiding her wide smile behind her hands. “He asked me for my hand.”
It was the right thing, Izella thought. Mr. Melvin, the gentleman storyteller, was built from the floor up to be Evangelist’s husband. He could handle her like no one else Izella had seen—with care but also with strength.
Evangelist, with all of her giving, was a master at shutting people down. Instinctively, she knew just the right thing to say to make another person hang their head and shut their mouth. Izella and Ola were trained from birth to do what their mother wanted, strategically avoiding her wrath, but outsiders could be flattened by Evangelist’s words. Men especially were susceptible to her judgmental tongue.
Once, Izella had witnessed Evangelist turn down a proposal outright from a man who was still legally married. He was on one knee when she called him a male harlot and dismissed him from her presence in Jesus’s name. It’d seemed harsh, but it was the absolute truth. He’d slept with all of Valdosta before that proposal. That was another thing about Evangelist. She told the truth, even if it hurt.
Now here she was. Gushing like Ola over a man wise enough to handle a strong woman’s strength. Izella felt happy for her.
“That’s wonderful, Mama.” She grabbed both of her mother’s hands and kissed them.
The smile on her mama’s face was the sweetest thing Izella could remember. Evangelist just sat in her chair grinning. No snap peas set in her lap. No laundry to tend. Or daughters to pray for. Finally free of things to do and people to see. Actually, there probably were things to do, but she didn’t seem to care. She was in love. Evangelist had gotten a turn to be in love herself, Izella thought. After all the folks to feed and clean up after. It was her turn. And nobody deserved a turn more than Prophetess/Evangelist Flossie Murphy.
“Go on and clean up for dinner now,” Evangelist said, smiling into the hardwoods. “And don’t forgot to act surprised.”
Izella scuffled on to the bathroom. She was covered in filth from the muddy day and needed a good scrubbing. After throwing cold water on her face, she ran herself a warm tub bath and thought of finding her mama smiling at the end of that awful day. From fighting with stupid Ola at sunrise to the shiny racer snake at noonday. That drunken Turner boy when the sun heated up Valdosta to the sky opening up gray on the way to Mrs. Mac’s creaky porch swing.
And then it hit her.
“The bottom drawer,” she said to herself, unable to believe she’d let it slip her crowded mind.
She abandoned the running bath and took off for her room down the hall. She wouldn’t be that long. Check the drawer and come on back in for a warm, well-deserved sit-down in the tub.
Izella opened the drawer to find nothing out of the ordinary. Just stupid Ola’s stupid pastel panties and girdles. When she dug around a bit, she felt a solid piece of something wrapped up in a tube sock. She lifted it out and held it in her hands.
It all made sense when she pinched the toe of the sock and pulled it off the solid piece of something. Ola was a lying girl and a stupid one. Izella held on to the untouched bottle of Mrs. Mac’s elixir so tightly that she thought her grasp might shatter it in her hands. Not even a sip was missing from the bottle. It was so full that the liquid hit the lip of the rim. After all of that. Everything she’d gone through to get her sister out of the mess she was in. She didn’t have the decency to do her tiny part and drink the stuff.
Izella didn’t cry. It wasn’t her way. But she sat there long enough to overflow the tiny bathroom with warm tub water.
* * *
Izella played sick for the rest of the night and woke up before the sun to watch Ola sleep. A thin ray of light lit up her face. Izella noticed it, clear as day, a tiny heartbeat pumping in the side of her neck. She wanted to pinch it off like a mosquito. Or swat it like a housefly. But it pumped on—pump, pump, pump.
Izella glanced at the two small bags on their bedroom floor packed for Tuskegee. The bus would leave early that morning. She didn’t want to go anymore. More than anything, she wanted to curl up and sleep until the world made a little sense like it had before. Before Evangelist had Mr. Melvin. Before Ola had Walter and a baby boy she didn’t want to get rid of. Before she was all alone with nobody. Ola was a stupid girl, but Izella knew she herself was a selfish girl.
The bottom drawer that held the solution to all of her problems was a few feet away. She went to sit in front of it.
“Time to get ready, girls!” Evangelist yelled out cheerfully. “Don’t want that bus taking off without us in it.”
Izella quickly opened the drawer, pulled out the sock, and popped up from the floor before Ola saw what was what. She tucked the elixir into the side pocket of her bag, and then Ola began to stir.
“She sounds like a schoolgirl,” Ola muttered in her early-morning voice. “You was sleep when I got in last night. How you feel about this Mr. Melvin business?”
Izella shrugged as she watched stupid Ola flick the crusty coal from her eye and yawn dramatically. She was scared to speak; even a nicety like good morning might bring all of the anger out her mouth. So she glued her lips together.
“You ain’t got to answer, then,” said Ola before swinging her legs around and dangling them off the side of the bed. “I don’t like it one bit. I give it a month.”
Izella nipped the tip of her tongue with her teeth to keep herself quiet.
“Suit yourself.” Ola kept right on talking. “Since you not saying nothing, I’ll go ahead and tell you that Walter’s been so happy lately—smiling and grinning like he used to. We kissed and hugged up at the rec center yesterday. It really did feel like before he went off to war. He’s got a whole new outlook. I do, too. Oh! And I keep seeing the number three around town everywhere I go. The number three bus go by and then three kids skipping down the sidewalk and then I pass three flowers grouped together. I think that mean we gone have three little ones before too long.”
Izella tasted salty blood in her mouth and smelled it, too. It smelled like fresh iron from the mines. She bit down harder, but it was no use. A geyser
was about to break on the inside. A gushing of mad. A full explosion building and building up from the white soles of her feet. She had never been so full of hell in all of her life. The devil himself stirred in her bones, and she could kill stupid, stupid Ola right there if she released him.
“Come on, girls!” Evangelist said. “Y’all got fifteen minutes to walk out the door. I made muffins for breakfast. Grab one and we need to go.”
Ola passed Izella as if nothing was wrong. “Dibs on the bathroom.” And she disappeared through the door.
Izella forced breath through her body and got dressed in any old thing.
* * *
“You haven’t touched your muffin, Babygal,” Evangelist said on the bus ride to Tuskegee. “It was good, wasn’t it, Ola?”
“It was!” said Ola. “Best muffin I’ve had in a long while.”
Evangelist chuckled. “Ola, you been really enjoying my food lately. Cleaning your plate like I never seen you do.”
“You got a way with it, Evangelist,” Ola complimented her. “I’ll take yours if you not gonna eat it, Izella.”
It’s not Ola at all, Izella thought. That hungry little boy inside is cleaning her plate for her. Greedy monster, stealing food and sisters. Izella handed her muffin to the little boy inside her big sister. As if he hadn’t taken everything else from her, now here he was taking her muffin. Sure she didn’t want it, but still. Take, take, take, little heathen, take, take, take.
They zoomed past the sign saying they were 157 miles away from Tuskegee. Smooth roads and a straight shot, Evangelist had told them. Easy road there, easy road back. It was the opposite of an easy ride.
Ola kept pestering Izella—blowing in her ears and pulling at her plats. She had no idea what a bear she was poking. Stupid, stupid girl. When they reached the Alabama Dixie sign, Izella had had enough.