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

by Susan Straight

  “Who?”

  “You mama. My mama people. Africa woman.”

  Aint Sister kept her lips clenched around the pipe stem. Finally she said, “Why you ax?”

  “I wonder.”

  “They suppose to bury at graveyard, far back from you mama. Old-time part.” The boys screamed. “But Maussa take she body, Bina, and put she near the House somewhere. Nobody know. When they die, he take my mama and she sister somewhere there, too.”

  “Why he take em?”

  “Cause they his. Want keep em.”

  Marietta watched the feet raise dust at the edge of the yard, where she swept everything into the trees. “What he name?”

  “Who?”

  “The man.”

  “Maussa.”

  “That all?”

  “That all. Don ax no more. Time them two go bed.”

  “Where you think they bury?”

  Aint Sister sucked her teeth. “I don think. You don think on that fe you work in them field—uh uh. No. Don ax no more.”

  The boys ran to touch her toes and then chased each other away, screaming again; their tiny voices sat in the branches like birds. “You tell them story for everybody else, all them year I sit by the road,” Marietta said. “Why you don’t want tell me?”

  Aint Sister blew out smoke. “I see now how you listen. You listen about black, about skin and tree, and you ain let that go. Peoples listen about gone time, know it gone time. You listen and think hard too much. Make you face hard fee wood. You ain know story, just think. Hold you mad fe kill any glad.” She stood up and called, “Come fe give Gran kiss. Give she sugar.”

  Marietta tried to look at her father’s picture in the light from the stove, and then she went out onto the porch again to sit in the rocker and see his face by moonlight. But it was dark as the Africa woman’s, Bina’s. She knew the long cheeks, sharp by the eyes, well enough. Her face. Maybe Bina’s arms were black as hers, but they were short, high on her apron. I take she frown, Marietta thought. She saw the half-face floating before her. The gate was down, the fallen oak gone—spirits roamed the lane now, rising from the ground where paths cut across and azalea roots reached deep.

  She rocked faster and faster, every night as the air grew hotter, and she stopped speaking to all but the boys and Aint Sister. When Mr. Ray and the guests came near, she nodded and felt air on her teeth, but she sat under the tree in silence, hoed the trenches and raked the floating weeds and debris from the rice field with only her boots sucking at the mud. When she was close to the House, she saw women’s bones white under the benches, the hedges, the grass; in the fields, faces floated on the stagnant water, burst in her eyes when she tried to close them at night. Dark faces, Nate and Calvin, half-faces and round heads, eyebrows like window ledges—they floated until the boys called, “Mama, Mama,” anxiously in the morning.

  “People can only take so much history, Thomas. Then they want some TV.” Mr. Ray’s voice carried across the field.

  “You would think that if guests did all that you had planned, tramping through the woods and hunting and boating, they would sleep early and well,” Mr. Thomas said, looking at Pinkie’s hoe.

  “These are New Yorkers, the ones we want. They never sleep early. They want some TV and then they want to read all night, dammit,” Mr. Ray said. “I want you to get your connections in Charleston to come up here and see about running electricity this way. The damn generator costs me an arm and a leg, and it breaks down half the time.”

  “Well, you’re surrounded by water, with all the rivers and creeks, and you know you’re fairly well off the highway, too. And don’t forget that…”

  Mr. Ray broke in, louder. “I know it ain’t authentic, Thomas, but this place ain’t got most of your money. If people want TV, they’re gonna get it. Even my wife is saying she ain’t coming to stay this summer if she can’t watch TV. Talk to your city utilities friends and pull some strings, all right? Just get me a figure.”

  Pinkie told Big Johnny and Pearl the next night about Mr. Ray and the electricity. Big Johnny had been to McClellanville to ask about lines being run down to Pine Gardens, but he said people just laughed. “We too far from nowhere,” he said. “But if they gon come for Mr. Ray, they come down the road for we.”

  Pearl had always smiled and shared stories with Mr. Ray when he first came to her store, and she went to speak to him, too. “Mr. Thomas one a them old-time Charleston mens, talk to anybody they do something for he. And Mr. Ray have money—that all he need,” Pearl told Aint Sister. “I gon get me ice machine, refrigerator, I know it.”

  She did, a month later, when the lines were run into the House and then down the highway. Pearl got electricity, and the line ran down the crossroad, ending at Big Johnny’s house. People on the crossroad accepted electricity when the man came around, and in a few weeks, when Marietta walked to Pearl’s store, she heard television voices coming from the open doorway at Big Johnny’s and Pearl’s. The line above the road hummed in the night sky, and the complete quiet didn’t return until she and the boys had turned onto the narrow lane in the trees.

  But the television didn’t make Mr. Ray happy, because only a few weeks later, she and Pinkie and Mary saw his face gripped like a fist when he talked to his wife, to Mr. Thomas, even to the little boy who had been only eyes on Marietta at the landing. He wore jeans now and rode his bicycle up and down the road beside the rice fields.

  “Where are the damn history lovers?” Mr. Ray shouted at Mr. Thomas, who stood by the fields day after day, consulting his notebooks. “I’ll tell you where they are—they’re somewhere else cause of all the damn trouble down here.”

  On the way home, Pinkie and Mary said to Laha, “He talk bout trouble, trouble. I don see nothin.”

  Laha said, “They talk bout trouble in Charleston. I don’t know.”

  On the piazza the next day, he shouted, “Goddamn city niggers, them goddamn bighead city niggers.” Marietta heard his wife scrape her chair on the piazza. She had asked Marietta to plant zinnias, had told Mr. Thomas she always had zinnias in the summer. Marietta knelt near the side of the house, around the corner, tamping dirt around the baby plants.

  “That’s why I don’t stay in Birmingham,” he shouted. “Cause them damn niggers were crazy, stirring up trouble, and look at these Charleston niggers now. Thomas is always saying how happy they are, how they’re different. They don’t look any different to me.” He threw his cigarette out onto the lawn; Marietta heard the tiny sizzle. “They’re keeping the tourists away. Who wants to come all the way here to see niggers marching in the street, waving signs in your face? Trying to eat with white men.”

  “It’s not violent like it was at home,” the woman said. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “Not with this fat-faced nigger King looking to stir it up. He’s gonna spread it around.” He was silent, and Marietta inched forward on her knees to finish the zinnias. She waited until she heard doors slam before she went around the edge of the lawn toward the rice fields, where Pinkie and Mary sat on the road. “Time fe go,” Pinkie said. “Jerry and Willie late.”

  When they began to walk toward the House, because it was Saturday and pay time, Mr. Thomas stopped them at the beginning of the parking area. “Mr. Ray is very upset,” he said. “He’d like to talk to you all for a moment before distributing your pay.”

  They stood before him on the lawn; he stared at them from the piazza. His wife was gone. “That all of em?” he said, and his words were blurred. His face was glazed with sweat, and he held a glass of ice and gold. The June evening beat down on their heads, and Marietta saw him catch his cheeks between his teeth before he started.

  “Charleston niggers are marching and fighting and they’re gonna make us broke. You, too, cause if I go broke, you ain’t got jobs. They think they’re better than you, and they’re gonna wreck everything. You know that, huh?”

  Marietta saw Stan’s grin, the girls’ pointy glasses, their hands steady on the counter ed
ge. Pinkie spoke beside her. “City peoples too crowd, sir,” Pinkie said, nodding. “That why they bad peoples. Not here—we fine. Plenty room here.”

  He focused his eyes on Pinkie, then on Marietta. “Yeah, plenty room cause ain’t no paying guests here.” He looked past them to Jerry. “Well, Jerry, what you think about this marching and carrying on?”

  “I don’t know nothing bout that, sir,” Jerry said. “Charleston too far.”

  “Yeah. Well, I want to tell y’all to treat people right when they come here, that’s all I’m saying,” Mr. Ray said, resting his drink on the railing. His voice was quieter. “Make em feel at home. Cause they might worry about foolishness they see on TV and in the paper, and I don’t want no guests disturbed. You all understand?”

  Marietta rushed to Pearl’s to see the television. People crowded into the store, watching the Charleston people lining the sidewalks, carrying signs, singing. Every night she stared, looking for Stan and the girl, their friends, and once she was thrilled to see them, a glimpse of crescent mouth and then the girl’s hair held back by a wide band, her mouth set. She couldn’t help staring for Sinbad’s face a few times, but she knew he was gone—in Texas, New York, maybe even California.

  The fence of black people squared around buildings and snaked down the streets. Lips squared to shout at them from the sides of the streets, to spit and curse and throw things. But their eyes in the long lines were impassive. Pearl said, “These children crazy,” and Marietta wanted to shout, “They not crazy. They carry book, they smile at me once.” She wouldn’t let herself smile, watching the marchers, listening to the voices on television ask, “What do these Negroes want?”

  “They want to eat where they choose, to be served with dignity and respect,” one of the older men who always spoke said.

  “That them preacher mens,” Rosie said. “They gon take em off to jail, heh?”

  “Get all them chilren in trouble,” Aint Sister grumbled. “Make peoples vex and get in trouble.” She slapped at Nate’s hand when he tried to reach for a packet of candy in the store.

  The older men, in their suits, were shown in a court building soon after, and Willie said, “They gone now. They have fe give up.”

  But the marchers kept on, and though Marietta and the others tried to avoid Mr. Ray, no guests had come to keep him in his boat or driving in the morning to Charleston. He grew angrier each day about the smell of the water on the rice, telling Mr. Thomas he didn’t know anything about money or land or business. “Nobody gives a damn about history!” he shouted. “In Birmingham, this would be over. The niggers would be taken care of right, but you Charleston aristocrats think you’re too good to do anything right. You need to tell your friends to knock some heads in.”

  Mr. Thomas said nothing, and Mr. Ray slammed into the house, where his wife spent all her time. The boy followed Jerry and Willie to the barn, the landing, his voice asking and asking, and Marietta remembered his father telling him, “I’ma buy you a big nigger.”

  On July 12, the boys on television fought their way into a city pool, and then they twisted and arched in the arms of police. A policewoman was injured, and people in the crowd screamed. “Mr. Ray gon be too vex day-clean,” Pinkie said, and Pearl shook her head. Marietta clutched her box of soap, seeing a cigarette coal nestled in hair, seeing Mr. Ray’s blunt reddish fingers on the piazza railing.

  In the morning, she took the boys to Aint Sister and waited for Laha and the others on Sister’s porch. “Bye,” she called to Nate and Calvin, who waved without looking back at her. They never watched her walk down the road like they used to. She heard Nate say, “Gran sugar!” Calvin laughed. Was it a kiss, or the sugar they wanted poured into their palms?

  They had to hoe this last time very lightly, catching the weeds that loved the long-flooding water just as much as the rice. The morning heat sucked up the moisture from the trenches and wrapped a veil around her legs. Mr. Thomas came again before lunch. “Tomorrow or the next day we will begin the lay-by flow. This water will hold up the rice heads until harvest. It is essential that your hoeing today be thorough, and equally so tomorrow, if you do not finish today. It appears that you won’t.”

  It was too hot to eat, and Marietta slept with her back against the tree until Mary pushed her elbow. “Look, here come Rosie and Laha girl Janey.”

  They ran up the lawn, Rosie panting, her cheeks jouncing up and down with each step. Nate and Calvin! Marietta ran, too, and Rosie said, “They okay, Marietta! They not hurt!”

  “What!?”

  “White boys in a car done wreck all the stand,” Janey said. “Yell bout nigger something, come off the road and drive all through stand. But Nate been play in the tree like always, and Aint Sister take Calvin fe get he. They at them bush when the car come. Piece a wood hit Sister in the back, she in the bed.”

  She ran all the way, boots knocking her legs, and found the boys screaming at Aint Sister’s house, with Pearl’s and Laha’s kids and even Belle around Aint Sister in the bed. “Mama!” they screamed, and she pushed their faces into her legs. “Nate run in tree just like you, try fe sneak all too much,” Aint Sister said softly. “We beena get he, or car take we, too.”

  The stands were a tangle of boards and palmetto fronds, and baskets had flown across the road or been flattened by cars. Marietta and Mary and the others stacked the wood in the butterfly weed. Rosie whispered, “I get headache and don’t come today. So slow fe buy, no one come, nothing fe sell this week. Give me headache, and I stay home today.”

  They stayed in the kitchen corner at Aint Sister’s, a sweet straw smell fighting the smoke, and Marietta weaved through the people who came to sit around the square table and watch Aint’s bed.

  “Marietta, make me pea and bone,” Aint Sister called, and soon the others went home to cook, too.

  It hadn’t simmered all day on the back of the stove, so the broth was thin, but she brought a plate to the bed. The boys slept on a pallet beside her. “Look my back,” Aint Sister said, and Marietta helped her roll onto her side. She unbuttoned the nightgown. A huge raised welt slashed diagonally across Aint’s back. “Where the piece a wood hit, knock my rib and lung. Rub some a that white vinegar on there.”

  Marietta felt how thin the skin was covering the curved bones. She rubbed very gently, and Aint Sister whispered, “Bring my tea, heh?” The reddish bloodroot tea—Marietta swayed the liquid, tilted it in the Mason jar.

  Aint Sister made her go to work the next morning. “I ain’t want Mr. Ray vex. I tell them two bring me something now, they do it,” she said, and Calvin watched her closely. “I need you tonight fe hot the water, get wood. Come by fe stay.”

  When Marietta got to the House, later than usual, Mr. Ray was waiting for her. She kept her eyes down, but he said, “Well, Laha has told me about the accident your granma had. I been telling people, ain’t no good gon come from this trouble people stirring up in Charleston.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I went out on the highway and seen that y’all probly don’t want to put nothing back out there till all this trouble settles down. And I want you to get your granma come over with you tomorrow. I have a proposition for her, to help her out. Ask somebody to bring her, huh?”

  Big Johnny drove Marietta and Aint Sister in the truck the next day, inching down the tight road past the gate facing the highway; Marietta never went down this way. He let them off before the parking area, and they walked, each holding a boy’s hand. Aint Sister shook her head at Nate. “Lord God, that smell!”

  The stagnant water on the rice fields sent up a heavy stink that rose and hung in the woods. Marietta was used to it. “That long-water time, on them field,” Aint Sister said. “I didn’t never want smell it again.”

  They went slowly up to the piazza, where Mr. Ray and Mr. Thomas waited. “Good morning, Eva. I heard about your trouble, and Mr. Thomas here has seen your baskets,” Mr. Ray said. “I think we might can work something out for you. Come on over this way.�
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  They walked to the granary, near the deep shade of an oak tree, and that cool air held the dust smell, the wet mildew and iron smell. Marietta picked up Nate and folded her arms under his behind, breathing in the sourness of grass he’d rubbed into his hair.

  “You can sit in this area here. The girls are gonna be doing something to the rice—what is it, Thomas?”

  “They’ll be flailing and winnowing and pounding,” he said.

  “They’re gonna work on the rice in the yard there, and you can sit here and do your baskets,” Mr. Ray said. “We’ll keep a few on display inside the house, in the historical room, and you can show the rest here. You understand? I mean, I got too much overhead right now, and I’m not paying you, but I’m giving you a sure opportunity to make money. If you don’t sell anything, I don’t owe you anything. You understand?”

  Aint Sister nodded, keeping her mouth curled and closed. He said, “But I’ll let you use this space, and when you sell anything, you can give me a third.” He picked up a basket. “How much you sell this one for?”

  “That twelve, sir.”

  “So you sell this one, you give me four. For the use of the space.” He looked at her again. “You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Scuse me, Mr. Ray, sir, my boy stay with her every day while I here,” Marietta said.

  “Yeah, that’s great. They can play around here, nice and safe, as long as they don’t bother guests. Maybe you can get em to help out. Look at how big those boys are! Just keep em in line.”

  Mr. Thomas said, “It looks fitting to have children around the yard, in the care of an older woman.”

  “Yeah, well, it better bring us some good luck,” Mr. Ray said.

  Aint Sister sat to the side, in the shade, but her baskets were arranged near the doorway of the granary. Marietta got her settled each morning with the boys, before she went to the rice fields, and she told Nate and Calvin, “Mind you gran. And don’t go in there, else I whup you sorry. You stay out that place.”

  The water on the fields was changed often, but never drained because the flood still held up the heavy heads of rice. Jerry and Willie spent most of the days checking the ditches and trunks while Marietta and the others shoed lightly, jabbing the blade around the plants when the water was lowered and catching floating trash on the flat of the blade when the new water flooded in. At lunch, they sat on the grass by the House, and Aint Sister came to sit with them. She walked slowly, rubbing her back. Nate and Calvin begged food from everyone’s fingers, and Marietta grabbed their arms to calm them when they ran in circles, whining and rubbing their eyes. They were sleepy as soon as they ate. Aint Sister and Marietta laid them on a blanket near the tree, where Aint could see them when they woke.