Alligator Bayou

by Donna Jo Napoli

  I shake my head. “I was just looking at the flowers. They’re waking up.”

  “See why we came at dawn? Ain’t they the best?”

  “The best, all right. But why are there three kinds?”

  “The flower come out white, then the next day it open pink, then the next day red, then it fall off. All in three days. Next week the flowers will be gone. And last week, wasn’t hardly any. That’s why I waited till now to go to Milliken’s Bend.”

  “That why you invited me to come along?”

  “Company make sense, seeing as we going the same place.” She lifts her chin and turns me a smooth cheek, but I can tell I caught her. I imagine touching her cheeks.

  “They look like silk feels,” I say.

  “Them flowers? You ever touched silk?”

  “My mother had a silk shawl that belonged to her mother. Mamma was from Rome—how she ever wound up in Sicily, I don’t know. Anyway, she had this shawl in a box and once, when I was little, she wrapped me in it. I remember how it made me feel.”

  She stops. “Wait here.” She runs into the field, disappearing between two rows.

  I watch up and down the street. A wagon’s coming. I duck down the row she went in. “Patricia? Patricia? Where are you? There’s a wagon on the road. Stay hidden.” I flatten myself on the ground with my chin on the dirt and watch the narrow span of road I can see between the plant rows.

  Patricia wriggles up beside me. “You fool,” she whispers. “I told you to dive to the other side. Now if they come after us, they don’t have to bust up.”

  Come after us? We didn’t do anything.

  It seems like forever for that wagon to get here. It rolls on by. Men. I can’t see how many. Crates piled high. Gone. I get to my knees.

  Patricia pulls me back down. “Stay put awhile. Let it get a good distance away. Here.” She shoves something into my hand.

  It’s a deep brown husk with an almond-colored inside. “What is this?”

  “The outside of a cotton boll. Old, from last autumn. They’s tons of them on the ground. Dig around. But most fall apart, beaten up by the winter. This one whole. Feel inside. Feel the lining.”

  I run my thumb inside the cotton-boll husk. “It’s so soft.”

  “Like silk.”

  “Like you.” I kiss her cheek.

  She pushes me away, then stands and checks the road. “Time to go.”

  We walk. “Charles told me he chops cotton in autumn,” I say.

  “For Mr. Coleman.” She says it with a sneer.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “His soul fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

  “That’s how I feel about him, too.” I go tight all over, just thinking about how Mr. Coleman acted in the grocery when we didn’t wait on him first.

  “Why you talking about Charles chopping cotton, anyway?”

  “I want to chop cotton, too.”

  “Whites don’t chop cotton.”

  “Sicilians aren’t white. Ask Sheriff Lucas.”

  “Eye-talian.” She closes her lips in a smile that makes her cheeks bulge like big sweet onions. “But Eye-talian ain’t the same as colored.”

  “Then I’m nothing. So no dumb law says I can’t chop cotton.”

  “White folks’ heads full of rules ain’t never been writ down as law.”

  “Well, they can’t have it both ways. They can’t block me from white things and Negro things at the same time. I want to chop cotton, so I’m going to chop cotton.”

  “Ain’t you bold. And foolish. Listen here, Calogero. Cotton bolls stick to your fingers. And you got to bend a million times, so your back and neck hurt.”

  “But it’s beautiful,” I say. “I want to work in the cotton fields. Italians work on the plantations down near New Orleans.”

  “Ain’t no one ever seen no Eye-talian chopping cotton here. But maybe they hire you. Maybe.” Patricia pulls a little cylinder wrapped in paper from her pocket. She unwraps it, pulls it into two pieces, and hands me one. “Eat real slow.”

  I look at her. She chews her half. I stick it in my mouth. It’s soft and chocolatey and chewy. “Yum.”

  “Slow,” she says. “Ain’t no more where that came from.”

  I make it last as long as I can.

  “Tootsie,” says Patricia. “The name of the candy.”

  “Did you buy it in the penny-candy store in Tallulah?”

  “Y’all crazy? Only boys ’llowed in there—white boys. And y’all better put on a cap and knickerbockers even if you stand outside and ask to buy at the back window.”

  “So Charles bought it for you?”

  “Where Charles going to get knickerbockers?”

  “All right,” I say. “How’d you get this candy?”

  “Miss Clarrie. She visited New York City last summer. A store run by a Mr. Hirshfield. And Mr. Hirshfield got a daughter go by the nickname Tootsie. She like these candies, so they got her name now.” She runs her tongue over her top teeth. “Miss Clarrie gave five to each of us for Christmas. I been eating mine slow.”

  “And you shared the last one with me.” So she didn’t mean what she said about her heart, after all. I move close to her. “Thank you.”

  She pushes me away. “Don’t mention it.”

  Why is it this girl brings up kisses all on her own sometimes and other times pushes me away? I feel half crazy. I want to run. So I do. I run a circle around her.

  She doesn’t even look at me.

  In the distance the plantation bells ring. People are waking for work.

  The road follows a bayou on one side now, and a ditch on the other, with a meadow beyond. I look up and down the road and panic flickers in me. “Where can we hide if someone comes along?”

  “Behind the first cypress you reach. Ain’t no one going to come after you in a swamp ’cause of the ’gators. ’Less they on the hunt for you anyway.”

  “Are there really ’gators in this little swamp?”

  “’Gators in every swamp, Calogero.”

  I flinch. “Sicilians don’t go in swamps.”

  “Oh yeah? I heard different. I heard you acted pretty brave in the skiff.”

  “That was before I knew what was going on. I have a confession. I hate ’gators. I mean, I love eating them. I love the way you make them. But hunting them?” I shiver.

  She laughs. “They’s worse things than ’gators, Calogero. At least a ’gator stay in the swamp and don’t get you by surprise. When you dealing with a ’gator, you know who you dealing with.”

  I think of Joseph, talking about ’gators. He said they were honest. That’s sort of like what Patricia’s saying. But I don’t want to think about ’gators now. I’m spending the day with Patricia. With my girl. I sneeze.

  “Do plants make you sneeze?” She points. “The tall purple flowers on the ditch bank, they asters. They don’t bother nobody. But them others, they goldenrod. Lots of people sneeze at them.”

  “You know plants, too, besides birds.”

  “Just the plants I like.”

  We walk fast. And soon we’re past the bayou and between cotton fields again. A fat bird and her chicks are pecking by the roadside. “Partridge,” says Patricia.

  Then the road passes through woodland with a ditch bank on both sides now. It’s cooler in this stretch of shade. Pine scents the air. Squirrels race chattering through the ferns and up a trunk. “You like squirrel stew?” asks Patricia.

  “I never had it. But if you made it, I would.”

  She laughs.

  “I mean it.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  The towns ahead and behind are clearly awake now, because lots of people pass on the road, and we’re ducking behind trees every few minutes.

  A bird calls. “A warbler,” says Patricia. “Ain’t too many of them around here. Oh, hear that? A bobwhite. Good eating. Plenty of them over by the levee in the blackberry canes.” She laughs. “I said too much. I�
��m showing off. ’Cause of your smooth talk.”

  “I love blackberries. I’ll go picking with you.”

  “Oh no you won’t. Not over there. I ain’t never seen such a sight of chiggers as Charles had when he got done blackberry picking there last season.”

  “What are chiggers?”

  She laughs. “A boy who don’t know about chiggers, well, that boy blessed. And I ain’t going to unbless you. Wild coffee grow by the levee, too.”

  “Does it taste good?”

  “Sometimes on a Friday when the money gone and there ain’t no more till we get paid after sundown Saturday, we run out of regular coffee, and my mamma will make a pot from a single bean. Like tan water. So it’s good to have wild coffee beans, too.”

  I love the way she talks. “I could listen to you all day.”

  “Ha! You saying I talk too much?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m serious.”

  And so we chatter all the way to Milliken’s Bend.

  twenty

  We stop at the edge of town. “Should we go to Miss Clarrie’s now?” I ask.

  “Business first.”

  “Then I’ll meet you in a half hour,” I say. “Is that all right?”

  “No, sir, it is not all right. I want to go in every shop that say I can, and for them that don’t, I want to window-shop.”

  “I’ll window-shop with you.”

  “No, sir, you will not. Don’t act like a booger that you can’t thump off. We will not be caught together. If we pass one another, we can say, ‘Good day.’ I’ll see you at Miss Clarrie’s at eleven. Listen for the church bell. Her house up the road behind the church, way way up and to the right. They’s a birdbath out front.”

  And she runs off.

  I walk down the business side of the main street of Milliken’s Bend. All the homes are on the other side, neat and orderly. They’ve got gardens and shrubs out front and trees with purple blossoms and wide, waxy leaves. A chicken’s pecking in the flower bed over there, clucking nonstop. This is the prettiest town ever.

  The smell of teas and spices and coffee makes me stop in front of the first open shop door. But I don’t dare go in, because I saw Patricia enter. She told me to stay away from her. A man sits on a chair on the sidewalk whittling soft driftwood with a butcher knife. He’s making a toy horse. Rocco would love that. If I had pennies on me, I’d buy it for him. I can almost hear his squeal of delight. I blink back tears. The man looks at me, then looks down again, but it’s not unfriendly. Just quiet.

  The next store smells like tobacco. A sign says the man will roll a cigar for three cents. Francesco rolls our cigars himself, but the ones in the window look tighter. Maybe they’re better. Maybe once I get my hands on some pennies again, I’ll buy Francesco a store-rolled cigar, too.

  I enter the third store. “Calogero!” Salvatore races over and we hug and dance around the grocery store. “It’s been so long. I miss you. How’s Cirone? Come on into the back and see Papà.” He pulls me into the rear of the store.

  “Calogero!” Beppe puts down a crate and runs to me. We hug and he slaps my back. “You look good,” he says in Sicilian. “And how’re my brothers-in-law?”

  “Everyone’s fine. You look good, too.”

  “Business is good. Almost no one around Milliken’s Bend shops at the plantation stores anymore. They know they get better fruits and vegetables at better prices from me.” Beppe’s strutting just like Francesco; I can’t help but smile. “And if they can’t afford it, well, we figure something out. Come with me, so you can see for yourself.” He leads me out onto the front sidewalk and points. “A man with a family of four children, he put new shingles up on this roof. See how good they look? When it rains, not a drop, not one single drop comes through. So I’ll feed his family for the winter months, when there’s hardly any work. Good business, right? And with other people I trade other things. Yesterday I ate hominy with black molasses. Have you tried that?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not bad. Not good like spaghetti. But not bad.” He touches his lip in memory.

  “Hello, Beppe,” comes a voice in English.

  We turn to see a well-dressed man. He gives a quick smile.

  “Ah, Mr. Ward. A pleasure,” says Beppe in passable English.

  “My wife ain’t feeling well. She asked me to pick up a few things.”

  “Not feeling well? Sorry. Sorry, sorry. You come. We choose sweet things. You take home chamomile. Boil it. Make tea. Then she feel better. You see.” Beppe goes back in the store with Mr. Ward.

  I stay out on the sidewalk with Salvatore.

  Patricia comes out of the tobacco store. What was she doing in there all this time? She sees me and walks on past with “Good day, Calogero.”

  “Good day, Patricia.”

  “Good day, Patricia,” echoes Salvatore in my ear. And his English sounds just like anyone’s. No accent.

  I watch Patricia from the back as she turns into the next store. She doesn’t give me a second glance, but I know she feels my eyes on her. My arms and chest get warm.

  “You in love with her?” asks Salvatore in English.

  Well, I deserve that, gaping after Patricia like a fool. I turn to face Salvatore. “You’re too little to ask that.”

  “I may be ten, but I ain’t stupid. And you ain’t stupid, neither; she’s pretty.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  When Mr. Ward leaves the store, Salvatore and I go inside again.

  “I came to invite you to the festa of Santa Rosalia,” I say in Sicilian to Beppe.

  “Saturday,” he says. “Like every year. I’m counting on it.”

  “Only we have to do it late this year. A week from Saturday, on the twenty-second. You’ll still come, right?”

  “Of course.” Beppe claps his hands together and shakes them happily. “I’ll bring my accordion. We’ll stay the night, singing and dancing till the stars go to bed.”

  “Sounds good,” I say. “All right, then.” I turn to go.

  “You’re not leaving! You walked all this way. Stay for midday dinner at least.”

  “I’ve got things I have to do.”

  “He’s in love,” says Salvatore.

  “In love?” Beppe pushes his lips forward.

  “Salvatore’s just being dumb.”

  “In love.” Beppe pulls a stool out from behind the weighing counter. He sits and looks thoughtful. “I’ve got to bring my Concetta here. I miss her so much.”

  “I hardly remember Mamma,” says Salvatore.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that.”

  I shake my head. “If business is going good, how come you can’t send for her?”

  “It’s not the money. I send her money every month. She doesn’t come because she’s afraid of the South. Back home they hear stories about America—she knows more about what happens to Sicilians here than I do. She says I should move to New York City. They’re going to build an underground railway system and they want men who know how to make tunnels. No one in the world makes better tunnels than Italians.”

  “Maybe you should go.”

  “I grow vegetables, Calogero. I trade them, I sell them. I wouldn’t know what to do digging underground. I wouldn’t know who I was.”

  I look at Salvatore.

  He’s looking straight at me.

  Is it worse to have a dead mother or a mother who’s alive, but on the other side of the ocean?

  “I’ve got to go.” I give Salvatore a special hug, and go back into the bright sun. No sign of Patricia. But it can’t be long till eleven. I might as well find Miss Clarrie’s.

  I walk to the church and up the road behind. There’s the house with the birdbath out front. It’s a tenant farmer’s shack. It doesn’t look good enough for a real teacher.

  If she sees me hanging around out front, she might get scared I’m someone bad. So I walk up and down the dirt path. Past the shack that has a mule tied by the side. Past the shack th
at has a big old pig. Up and down, up and down.

  The church bell rings and Patricia comes skipping up the path, like a little kid.

  “Did you buy anything?” I ask.

  “Well, naturally. I bought everything I saw. I got money galore.” She laughs.

  “Even if you did have money, you wouldn’t want everything you saw,” I say. “You wouldn’t want cigars.”

  “Sure I would. My mamma got a silver brandy flask, but she ain’t never touched a drop. It’s the having that matters.”

  “Patricia, is that you?” A woman stands under the front awning of the shack. It’s hard to describe her. The best word might be uneven. One shoulder is lower than the other. One arm hangs lower. Even one eye is lower. She looks like she’s melting, the right side sliding away faster than the left. She holds her floury hands away from her dress. And her hair is reddish and so wispy, it looks like someone’s half erased it.

  “Miss Clarrie, I brought a friend to meet you. Calogero.”

  “Hello, Mr. Calogero.”

  I come up and take my cap off. “Good day, Miss Clarrie.”

  She tilts her head, and now she’s so off balance, I feel like she’s going to fall. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” she says, the very same way Patricia said it out on the road this morning.

  I don’t know what to say.

  “She asking why you here,” Patricia whispers in my ear.

  “I’m coming to your school in September,” I blurt.

  “You are?” says Miss Clarrie.

  “You are?” says Patricia.

  “That is, if you’ll let me, Miss Clarrie.”

  “Oh, I will definitely let you, Mister…what was your name?”

  “Scalise. Scalise, Calogero.”

  “Scalise is your first name?”

  “Is it?” asks Patricia. Her fists are on her hips and one eyebrow is raised.

  I realize my mistake. “I’m sorry. I said it like in Italy. My family name is Scalise. My given name is Calogero.”

  “Is it all right if I call you Calogero?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Were you born in Italy?”

  “Sicily. I came to America last October, ma’am.”

  “His ship landed in New Orleans,” says Patricia. “He came by hisself. To live with his uncles. He snuck on a freight train. All by hisself.”