I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots

by Susan Straight

  Pushing the thick curve of magazine back into the hole, she fit the metal over it. Her feet made no sound on the padding of oak leaves and pine needles, and when she brushed a branch or vine, the wetness and green of summer made them fall back without a crackle for Aint Sister to hear. For weeks, rain had hung in the air day after day, collecting on necks and foreheads, making fingers slide. “Either too much wet or not enough,” they all complained. “Cain nobody breathe when it like this.”

  She heard the shaking and mumble of the road already—the heat making things vibrate, the road shimmering and women grumbling—and she pressed against the bushes to look into the backs of the stands, to wait for a car that would distract the eyes watching for her. She heard her name, she knew she would, in the tilting shade of Aint Sister’s.

  “Marietta no help out here. She mama need fe whup that girl, but she ain get the strent.” Aint Sister’s heavy voice was too deep to come from a face thin and hard as an apple someone had forgotten at the bottom of a box, Marietta always thought.

  “Josephine no better, huh?” Rosie said, her voice trailing off to fly on the last word, the way she did.

  “She ain make it through too many more summer, now,” Aint Sister said, and Marietta felt new cold on the back of her ribs, pricking under the dress. She knew drops of sweat fell from her leaning forehead to nudge the sand. “She got that pressure, them headache. Pressure do that, go right fe she head.”

  A car roared past, sucking away the air for a moment, and Marietta didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to move.

  Rosie said, “You want some more iced tea?” in a company voice, and Marietta remembered the cousin visiting from New York—Janey, the one with hair swirled high and stiff, not hidden under a scarf.

  “Josephine no bigger now than the day I birth that baby,” Aint Sister said. “She call out ‘Marietta’ and I beena think, Huh, this girl never fit no name like that. Name frilly and sweet, make me think fe lemon pie, and baby bigger than the mama, seem. See she now, tall and wild fe tree. Rip and run, no sense.”

  “Won’t settle,” Rosie said, her words wet.

  “Look just like she daddy,” Aint Sister said. “Tall and dark so like Freeman.”

  “Ain she like him?” Rosie trilled.

  “Wasn’t he a island people?” the woman named Janey said. “I never did see him, but I only come for visit a few time.”

  “You beena see Freeman,” Rosie said. “He never taken no time for talk.”

  “Huh,” Aint Sister said, and Marietta heard the shaking head in the word. Her father—no one ever talked about him in front of her.

  “One a them blueblood mens, look like he directly from Africa.” Aint Sister stopped, and the dry sweetgrass rustled from the bags at their feet. “Bullet head. Hair so tight it a scrape you hand you try fe comb it. I know. You see Marietta hair so short? Ain none a Josephine in she child.”

  Marietta pressed her cheek into the sand on her shoulder, rubbed the grains with her jaw. “Somebody tell me he get kill before the baby even come,” Janey said.

  It was quiet. Mary said, “I only little myself that time.”

  When no one spoke, Rosie said, “He catch he some a anything, Freeman. Johnny always tell me Freeman think he too good cause he from the island. Didn’t want on the boat with nobody here. And every time, have more fish, more shrimp. Girl, I don care if all em come back with small-small bit on some bad day, Freeman go off lonesome and he boat too full. Like he and them fish have a consolation, and they say, ‘Follow here…’”

  “But how he die?” Janey pressed, and Marietta felt the water leave her skin like a spiderweb being lifted; she wanted to crack through the branches so they would see her, but she wanted to hear her father’s name.

  “Freeman never go long with nobody, just Josephine,” Rosie whispered. Aint Sister’s impatient puff of air came through her nose, but she didn’t speak. Footsteps crushed the sand, and Marietta watched Pinkie peer into her mother’s stand, then go back to Aint Sister’s.

  “That girl still gone?” Pinkie asked. “She stay with Josephine?”

  “What you think? She run wild.” Rosie’s words flew again.

  “Slow too much today. Where them lady?” Pinkie said. “I beena had one say she come back for get three.”

  “Huh. Almos kill bird don make no stew,” Aint Sister said, and Marietta could hear that she was happy not to talk about her father. Freeman.

  “You tire, Sister?” Rosie said. “You like for me take you back, you rest?”

  “Ain nobody tire,” she said. “Only my hair tire—all too many thought under there.” Marietta saw Mary shift her feet, and she prayed for a car, one going so fast it would swerve in the dirt to stop, make the women gasp and stare. She didn’t want to hear any she-she talk, and they would start on Mary’s coming baby, their voices settled and comfortable.

  But after the swirling rush of the next car, Aint Sister said harshly, “I don know what taken she fe marry that man.”

  “Whaaat?” Rosie sang.

  “Josephine. She already thirty then, and he, I don know. Older. Josephine mama kept she in Charleston, bring she back here when they house burn down. I don know where she see Freeman. But she been on the island with he sometime—them peoples don took to she. Clannish.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Pinkie said.

  “Josephine light as butter, so pretty,” Janey said. “She mention her mama were cousin to you.”

  Aint Sister was silent again. Marietta held her breath, thinking of the butter glowing on the stove, shining pale in the rice she cooked. That was all her mother ever wanted for dinner. Her mother’s skin glistening wet, just as gold, in the light from the fire. Aint Sister was oak-leaf pale, Rosie and Laha and Pearl red-brown as molasses. Big Johnny was dark, but only Marietta was blueblack. That was what they called her. She pressed her elbows to her sides.

  “Josephine have too many weakness,” Aint Sister said softly. “She have the sugar, have it too bad. That worse than she pressure.”

  “I know it,” Rosie said.

  “I see that baby taken too much out she, way back then. The sugar come with the baby sometime. Baby too big cause a the sugar, and mama ain never well since.”

  Rosie’s voice went down into her chest, and Marietta saw her stretch. “She need for make that girl do some work, stead a lay up in the tree and run wild. Have she for do basket right.”

  “She just look too big for playin,” Janey said. “She what—sixteen? Seventeen? Where her friend-boy? So tall, though.”

  “No, she just thirteen. Go on fourteen,” Aint Sister said. “I know. I know all you day born, everyone on this place. Marietta eleven August.”

  Pinkie said, “A girl need for help. A boy different. She spend all too much time in the sun, blueblack as she daddy sure.” She stopped abruptly to watch the two cars.

  Rosie and Mary got up slowly and walked to their stands. The white people stayed in their cars for a minute, and then the big-armed man with his elbow facing them leaned out the window and said, “This is great, this is perfect.” He turned off his engine. The woman stepped out and the car doors clapped.

  In her mother’s stand, she swung her hand to lift the pepper of flies off the peaches, and she saw one of the men waiting impatiently like they sometimes did. He was a dark shape behind the wheel, keeping the engine running; the hood of the car glinted in the sun, shaking just a little like water in a bucket. She didn’t sit; she heard them coming, but she stood with arms folded. One woman stepped inside the drooping tin cover and hesitated when Marietta raised her chin to watch with half-shut eyes. Then Aint Sister’s fingers were digging into her arm to pull her down onto the chair. The woman smiled with her lips, no teeth, and her head turned from side to side like a turtle.

  “These is some a the finest work on the highway,” Aint Sister said, but the woman had already shifted to her leaving feet.

  Aint Sister’s fingernails were thick and yellow against Marietta’s skin. “
Sneak round,” she hissed, and Marietta looked at the black-pink feet of her doll, the tiny toes and straight ankles poking out from a pile of sweetgrass beside her. Aint Sister went to meet the woman in her stand, and the smaller woman skittered past the doorway like a bird, going to the window to talk to the waiting man. He rumbled the engine in a burst of thunder and she ran back to the stand.

  She was so small that her eyes were straight across from Marietta’s and Marietta was on the chair; her hair so pale and wispy Marietta could see her ears through the strands. She moved around the stand, darted from basket to basket, then went to the doorway to look at the cars. Doors chunked now, and the other couple was already back inside. Marietta ran her finger around her forehead to catch the sweat at the edge of her headscarf.

  “How much is this one here?” the woman said, voice skittering too, but she ran to look at the cars. Did she want an answer? Marietta swallowed to wet her throat. When she hadn’t spoken all day, her voice came out deep and rusty. Now the woman fingered a roll basket, with a brown-and-cream pattern.

  “You didn’t say how much?” She held up the roll basket. “This one’s the same price?” When Marietta’s lips opened and she felt the cool on her teeth, the woman said, “No, it’s not going to be big enough. It has to be a big, impressive present.” She held her head back to look up at the fanner basket, flat and round. Aint Sister always said, “We use fe fan the rice this way and that, let them husk fly in the wind. Lady tell me peoples buy em fe keep magazine.”

  The horn blared out, so sharp and mean compared to the boat horns Marietta heard soft through the woods at night. And the man put his foot on the gas again; the woman never looked at Marietta, but she blinked and moved from basket to basket, twitching her hair off her shoulders, saying, “No matter what, it won’t be right. Their mothers could never approve a gift—that would be against the rules, right? That would be approving me, and we couldn’t let that happen.” The horn sounded again, longer.

  She threw her head back again, and her throat was white and curved as a gull’s. “What the hell,” she said, her voice trembling. “You didn’t say how much this one was.”

  “Ma’am?” Marietta said, and her own voice was a dark growl after the high trickling words.

  She stared at Marietta now. “Your big basket here. Is it expensive enough to satisfy a mother-in-law? Or do you have the same rules here? Is your mother-in-law ever satisfied?” She frowned at Marietta—at what, the voice, the face? “Could I see your big basket here?” She spoke slowly. “Is that yours?”

  Marietta stood up, not looking at the face—the eyes would widen a little so white showed, and the mouth would close. She felt a puff on her shoulder because the woman let out breath when Marietta moved. The basket in her hand, she lowered it, smelling the sweet dry.

  “It ain’t mine,” she said. “It’s my mama’s.”

  The hands were tiny on the curving sides, and the brown checks of pine needle wavered. “And how much is it?”

  “Fifteen.” Marietta could say the word, after so many times, without even moving her mouth.

  “Fif-teen?” Her lips stretched straight in emphasis.

  Marietta took a deep breath. “I said fif-tee. Fifty dollar.” The words came out smoother now, not gravelly. She looked down into the woman’s water-colored eyes, at the line through the middle of her hair. Then Aint Sister’s voice shot past her elbow. “She just play, she only a chile. It fifteen, that one, and the other is ten and seven. They really the best one on the highway, got a lot a care in each one.”

  The woman’s thin fingers landed again on the tiny dark squares. “That doesn’t seem bad. They’re made by hand, after all.” She put the fanner basket down carefully, casually, and picked up a smaller one. She walked toward the car and Marietta saw the man throw his head sideways, impatient, like a bird tearing at a fish. But he gave her money, and after she’d left, the seven dollars in Aint Sister’s dress pocket, Aint turned to Marietta. “I should beat you fe you mama,” she hissed, the wrinkles in her neck hard as ropes, and Marietta turned to slide out the back of the stand. The car tires left the crunch of sand and were silent on the road when she ducked into the woods.

  Even in the trees, the hanging mumble followed her. Flies and bees rested in the heat, but they lifted to buzz when she swept past their leaves, and in the close tunnel of her trail, sounds were louder until even the droplets of moisture in the hanging moss seemed to breathe. She began to run, elbows swinging wildly and knocking into vines and branches, until she heard quiet coming closer: the water.

  Not the waterway, the salty coast where she watched speedboats skim past—the trees opened abruptly onto a still, wide creek. The creekwater was brown and deep-clear, like Aint Sister’s eyes when the day was almost over, the sun going across the highway, and sometimes she turned to look; if Marietta was in the right place, she saw light way inside the eyes. “Don be in my face, nosy,” Aint Sister would snap, and when she turned her eyes were flat again, closed. “You best fe check what peach done gone bad.”

  Marietta crossed her thumb over all four of her fingernails, held them down in a row, and said, “Don, don, don.” She pushed out the fingers with a sharp flick, like Pearl did at the store when somebody said something she didn’t want to hear. “I let them words go.” Flick. Standing still at the edge of the water, she listened. Only water could sink all the sound and leave things clean. The creek trembled full with the tide coming in; the water could shimmer blue or black for a moment if the sun changed or a cloud shifted, but it was colored dark by the tree roots along the banks.

  “Do, do, do,” she whispered, excited, digging around in the wooden crate she kept behind a tree. A net, torn and mended many times, ragged with holes now, lay in a heap at the bottom. One of the men had lost it, and she had pulled it from a tangle of reeds only a few days ago. Picking up the heavy net, she smelled the dried water and fish in the cord, and a blooming rose in her chest. She would throw the net today; her mother might sleep for a few more hours, and Marietta could bring home enough shrimp and fish to sell to Pearl. Her shrimp would lie plump and curled for people to choose.

  She brought home mullet all the time, fried them and felt the crunch of meal grit and the salty soft fish against her teeth, but her mother wouldn’t touch them. Marietta caught the mullet on her line, and it was all they had to eat with the rice and grits besides the greens she picked behind the house, or cowpeas, maybe tomatoes. Unless Rosie brought a piece of ham or some crab and shrimp from Big Johnny—and then Marietta would have to hear the clucking and frowned instructions.

  She’d throw the net farther down the creek, where the water swirled and began to meet the marsh. But she pulled her cane pole from beside the box first, pushing the end deep into the mud on the bank and propping it with the crate. Brushing her finger past the strange, furry insect she had tied onto the line, she felt the tickle and wondered if it would work today. Another man buying a basket had left this behind—it had fallen off the little ledge at the bottom of his car door. She had watched the bright thing in the sand, waiting for it to move, and then she remembered seeing pictures of white men standing in rivers, fishing with these bugs. She squatted on the small hummock near the edge and whipped the insect out over the water.

  The quiet after the line dipped into the water was glassy blue, to the edge of the black mud and sharp green reeds. Flies were here, too, but they cut past and then were gone or landed, not hovering; no blurring dust and humming throats. The slurp of water was licking-sharp against the mud, the click of dragonflies fighting over her head, a bird screaming and then empty air. Only near the water the reeds and grass stood rigid, listening.

  She couldn’t see the traces of blue in her skin. She lay sideways on the hummock of drier earth, not caring about the dress, and looked closely at her arm. Her wrist, the skin inside her elbow, the smooth back of her hand were deep black with a sheen of sparkles like the shifting gold in the silt at the water’s edge. Darker than the w
ater sliding past her—black as the standing pools in the deep woods.

  One picture of her daddy was hidden in her mother’s box under the bed. Marietta had taken it many times when she was alone, going outside to see it in the lighter yard; the house was always gray-dark inside, with the shutters closed. Her father stood close to the camera, not smiling, so near she could see only his face and the thick, straight neck. No lines marked his skin, no hair stood out from the sharp curve of his face. He had eyebrows she couldn’t see, maybe only a few hairs like she had over her eyes. No darker wells under his eyes like Rosie’s, no freckles or paler patches on his cheeks—smooth black. She couldn’t tell how tall he was; only wooden boards, nothing to measure him against, were behind him. His face filled the tiny photo.

  She touched her eyebrows. She’d always wanted her mother’s smooth, thin brows, arching over her eyes like markings on a bird’s wing. Dark, perfect against the gold forehead. The only thing she’d wished for were those lines to stand out above her eyes and make her face looked more finished, somehow. Her lips were black, too, like her father’s, everything blended into a sameness. The inside of Laha’s lips were red as crab claws, a sliver of wet when she talked. She looked at the black of her arms and thought of the way Aint Sister’s voice had sounded. Blueblood from Africa. Blueblack.

  Something plopped in the water, but her pole was still. She lifted her toes dripping from the creek; her gleaming black foot, at the end of a dust-covered leg, was long as a man’s. Her feet kept her from school. “I never see no feet that big on no girl,” Aint Sister said. Pearl laughed. “Don nobody got shoes for fit them feets.” She’d had a pair of sneakers until last year, but suddenly nothing fit, not her dresses, not the shoes, and her mother had said, “You cain go to school no more, not till we find you some shoe. You need for stay here and help me anyway.”