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

by Susan Straight

  But Aint Sister was too quiet, and her back was twisted awkwardly when she rocked. She stayed home all the next week, when the threshing began, saying, “Cold get in my lung. I cain get it out less I sit by fire.”

  The boys straggled down the lane until Marietta and Laha picked them up. Mr. Thomas was frantic by the time they reached the yard, pacing and talking to himself. “A rain will ruin it, just one rain!” he said when he saw them. “Threshing is a long and tedious job, and we need to commence immediately before the rice is endangered.”

  The only good thing about threshing, she decided, was that they never left the yard, so the boys could stay in her sight, playing with rocks and sticks by the trees. She and the others beat the heads of the rice with flailing sticks for days, and Mr. Thomas brought parties of people on day trips to watch the work. They came in cars, then stood patiently while he talked to them, explaining everything from planting to harvest. When the shadows were under their feet, Marietta and the others moved to the tree and the city people went inside for dinner. The afternoons were quiet and laughing, with Jerry and Willie wrestling the boys on the lawn after Mr. Thomas drove back to Charleston.

  The days slid by like dust riding on the creek surface. Mr. Thomas brought three fanner baskets from inside the house; they weren’t new, but they weren’t Aint Sister’s. The designs were different. “He must beena buy em in Charleston,” Mary said.

  “Aint Sister basket historically accurate,” Marietta said, “yeah?” But he think he got some better, she thought. He don want give she money.

  “The fanning, or winnowing, and pounding are left,” Mr. Thomas said. “Mr. Ray won’t be back until shortly before Christmas, when I’ve booked a historic Low Country holiday tour. We’ll need the rice harvest and processing done by November, so that you will have time to spruce up the grounds for Christmas.” He paused. “Marietta, while the others prepare for the winnowing, may I speak to you now?”

  He stood near the granary, where Aint Sister’s baskets were piled inside because the weather had turned cold and no guests were around to look. “Your aunt is ill, I hear. Is she in grave condition?” he asked.

  “She lung full of water, she think. She ain’t heal fast since summer,” Marietta said, looking down at his hat brim when he ducked his head.

  “How old is she?”

  “She born in 1880.”

  “She’s eighty-three, then. And healing slowly. Well, I wanted you to tell her something for me. I feel as if I should give you this, and this message.” He handed her twenty dollars. “Please convey to her my apologies for not using her fanner baskets in the winnowing process. I have chosen to use baskets that my elderly nurse made, years ago, even though they are in a different style, because they inspire so many memories.” His voice grew distant, his gray eyes shifting to the yard behind her. “I think it was her many stories which began my consuming passion for history, and seeing her baskets used in the way she often described so nostalgically gives me great satisfaction.” He let his words trail off, and Marietta wondered again at the rolling pebbles of his smooth voice, tumbling around her. She put the money in her boot and nodded.

  “I tell she tonight,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “I’d like the money to be kept confidential, if that’s possible.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Try not to tell the others about the money. Mr. Ray has discouraged lending among employees.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s begin the work, then.”

  The breeze came cool off the ocean, fall chilly, when they stood shifting the fanner baskets to throw the rice into the air for just a moment, then let it fall back onto the wide, flat rim of the fanner. The chaff blew away and the grains rustled against each other, back and forth. When Mr. Thomas was satisfied, he went inside, leaving them with the piles of rice and Nate and Calvin’s shouts as they squatted near a crab Jerry had caught for them.

  Pinkie said, “This how they beena get rice fe eat in slavery time. My mama and Aint Sister tell me.”

  “What?” Mary said.

  “They tie up they skirt like Mr. Thomas tell we do when we go in the field, and when they beena fan rice, they let some fall in they dress. Shake it out when go home, and that be rice fe we. They whisper when they fan, Mama say, whisper, ‘Some fe you, some fe we.’ Sister tell them old-time story.”

  All day, Marietta heard Aint Sister’s voice as she tossed the rice gently. “Don sweep at night!” Now she remembered the rest of it: Sweep at night, Maussa gon see rice you beena drop on floor when you let you dress down. Day-clean, he see rice by you door, beat you fe steal.”

  At night, Marietta and the boys stayed at Aint Sister’s house, eating dinner there, building the fire high for Aint in her rocker. “Cold stay in there, my chest, don spread but don left,” Aint Sister said when the boys had gone to sleep on the pallet near the fire. “I gone soon, before Christmas.”

  “Don nobody know when they gone,” Marietta said. She didn’t want to say that, but she didn’t know how to comfort anyone but the boys. “You get better,” she said.

  “Some old woman get hag when they ready fe go. I not get hag, but I know. When you old, you know. I want you tell Big Johnny bury me by you mama.”

  “You ain’t need fe tell me nothing,” Marietta said, trying to get up and find more wood, but Aint’s hand was sharp-fingered as when Marietta was small.

  “Tell he where. Lord God, I want fe bury by my mama. But she by the House. Put me by you mama and my cousin Christmas. We so close, me and Christmas, like them two when we small-small,” she said, looking at the boys, feet nudging in sleep. “We talk so nobody hear we. We laugh like them two.”

  “I look fe grave,” Marietta said into the fire. “I beena look since you tell me. But you ain’t tell me no clue.”

  Aint Sister started. “Don search fe no gone time, I tell you. Make you soul hard, same fe you face. Look you face hard fe wood—that not the way fe raise them two.”

  “How you know they ain’t bury by here?”

  “This house build fe Africa woman. When she have twin, them two girl, he make somebody build you mama house, even then the girl only baby. When they fourteen, he make em marry somebody he choose.”

  “But slavery time over then,” Marietta said. “That too late.”

  “Ki, over then, but Maussa got gate all round here, four, five gate, and nobody come this far back tell em that time gone. Not till them two girl have baby and catch fever. When they die, he take em fe bury. My house, you mama house far from all peoples, far from street. All them house gone—only we two stand now. Them other house burn.”

  “Where the street?”

  “He have some house by crossroad, some house way deep near field. Only we house and Africa woman lonesome.”

  Marietta stared at the embers near her feet. The Africa woman, Bina, her face silvery to the sky, her white scarf and hoop earrings showing on the other side, silhouetted against the sheaves of rice. Never opening her mouth, like Marietta, only working and watching, but at night listening to the strange words of the white man who came to her house. Then hearing her children talk like him. “Marietta,” Aint Sister said. “Don look fe gone time, look fe time now and them two. Stop you face like that. Get me that tea, heh?”

  When Aint Sister had wrapped her fingers around the hot glass jar and finished the tea, Marietta helped her to bed. She emptied the slop jar into the outhouse, hurrying from the dark yard back to the reddish doorway, and then she made her pallet near the boys, watching the breathing embers for a long time.

  “Pounding isn’t really pounding, in the literal sense.” Mr. Thomas frowned at them. “You cannot do it too vigorously, or you will crush the rice, but you must grind the grains hard enough to remove the outer husk and the inner cuticle.”

  They stared at him, then looked down, as usual, and waited for Pinkie to try what he said and hear him scold, “No, no. This way.”

  The fanned rice was po
ured, a bit at a time, into fat, hollow wooden stumps, and Pinkie ground the grains with a long wooden pestle. The smooth round ends rubbed the rice until the husks came off.

  It took two days before they could do it right and he was satisfied enough to leave them, and two more until they did it without concentrating so that they could talk. At lunch, the boys mashed hands into her stomach and tumbled over her legs; their big cricket heads banged on the tree roots when they played rough with Jerry. She lined up her spine against the trunk and listened to the voices humming around her, the voices grumbling in her head. Trouble made for man—ain gon fall on the ground. Gon fall on somebody. You daddy blood—in you, in them two. Never hold you face right round nobody—that you job. Don live in gone time—that fe me remember. What you do fe them two?

  She watched Nate try to hide from Jerry, behind an azalea bush, but even from the tree she could hear his giggles. The boys couldn’t hide from anyone, with their laughter and screams bubbling like soap up from their chests. Nate ran all the way up the grass to hide by her back. Already now, at night and when they woke, they pushed away when she tried to hold them in her lap for a minute. She missed the arms at her neck and the warm bellies pressed to hers, but she thought about what everyone said, about coddling, and she wanted them to be tough. Nate sprang from her side and ran again when Jerry came after him, calling, “Plat-eye come fe get you!”

  “You take care my grave when I gone,” Aint Sister told her each night. “Don forget we grave, don forget fe pass them two. They my family.”

  “You stay by fire, you be fine,” Marietta would say. “Here you tea.” But soon Aint Sister was tired of sitting by the fire, and she walked slow and crabbed from the door to the porch to the bed, restless. She shook her head at the peas and bone, at rice, at grits. Marietta stared at the grains of rice on her plate, the husks on her arms, the cracked grains in her boots when she shook them out.

  “I too full,” Aint Sister said. “My heart get full—all them gone peoples come fe visit, stay in there and full up my stomach, too. Give that plate fe them two. They still hungry. I too full.”

  Rosie and Laha and Pinkie came, Pearl came, for weeks while Marietta pounded the rice and listened they sat by Aint Sister all day; Laha had nothing to cook until the holiday tour, Rosie stayed inside during the cold winter and sewed, so when Marietta came at night, the two rooms were full of women and scraps of cloth and tangles of thread. Calvin collected the thread and made webs on his fingers.

  “I gone soon,” she kept saying, but she didn’t go to her bed and lie down. Aint Sister began to go back out into the yard, just before dark, carrying her flashlight, to check on her roots. “My muscle and vein get lock up, I stay in bed,” she said when Marietta scolded her. “I come back inside soon.” One night Marietta sat by the fire watching the boys, growing sleepy over the mending she hated—the rips in their pants, tears at the elbows of their shirts. They had been spilling water from their Mason jars, hitting each other, bumping her all night. She checked Aint Sister, emptied the slop jar, and settled down in front of the fire.

  The floor was warm now, but as the fire lowered to a sparkly rustle and the wind licked the windows, the room would get cold enough to wake someone, and she would put more wood on as if she were dreaming.

  But when Nate cried and she stood up to feel her way in the total dark, she heard twigs breaking outside. Opening the door, she saw the tiny light bobbing in the trees. Then it fell. She rushed out to her aunt, who lay face down—the spirit Aint always told her about, had it rushed her, knocked her onto the ground? She said, “Aintie?” Nothing puffed against her cheek when she put her face by the quiet mouth; nothing beat against her arms when she picked up her aunt and carried her back into the house.

  “Spirit steal she breath,” Pinkie said, rocking back and forth by Aint Sister’s bed. “Spirit stalk she, take she down.”

  “Them white boy take she when they wreck the stand,” Big Johnny said, spitting off the porch.

  “Old people hold a hurt,” Pearl said. “She tell me that pain stay in she breath all the time.”

  “But spirit seek she since she gal,” Pinkie said. “She born with that caul, see too much spirit. Sister see too much.”

  Nate and Calvin were silent, staring, not afraid but interested at Aint Sister’s silence and lack of slapping, at her pipe cold on the table, at the people who stood in the two rooms all day and night, voices rising and falling. Marietta sat in the corner and watched Laha and Rosie do what they had done to her mother. She nodded when someone asked about the fireplace or the pots or Aint Sister’s clothes hanging from pegs on the wall in her room. She had already told Big Johnny what she was supposed to, and he had looked at her as if she knew nothing. “Where else she bury?” he said. “I done mark the spot already.”

  The hearthstone where she cooked was clean. The clothes hanging on the wall were washed, arranged the way they always were. The pots were in the fireplace, lids tight. She sat in the church with the boys, hearing the songs and shouting with her own mouth closed and her eyes back in the house, where everything had to be perfect, she thought. Sister spirit happy? Aint tell me what for do. Nate’s elbow rested on the bag beside her. The singing and voices rose and fell, and no one looked at her, at her eyes half shut and her still lips. They know me now. I grown now. I ain’t change. She watched their faces, Rosie and Laha and Pearl and Jerry, when the procession to the bury ground started slow. They looked straight ahead and sang.

  Calvin and Nate crossed the air over the wood coffin, still silent, their eyes locked onto hers as she nodded the whole time for them. They left Jerry’s hands and came into Big Johnny’s without a sound. Three times each, their palms stiff by their sides, only their heads moving to watch her. They stood beside her, at her legs, as the grave was filled in and covered with plastic flowers, the large round clock set at the time Marietta told them, and the dishes with holes punched through their centers. People began to leave slowly, and when only a few women were left, Marietta bent down and helped the boys cover the grave with shells and the shiny spoons Aint used to stir her root teas. A velvet bag she had kept by her bed, fingering sometimes.

  Marietta walked to her mother’s grave nearby and picked up the pieces of bright blue glass that had washed a few feet away with the last heavy rain. She found them all and put the shards back in the rectangle outlined by shells, straightened the shells, and pushed the clock’s tiny feet firmly into the dirt. Calvin found more glass near a tree, and she didn’t tell him to give it to her; she let him push it in carefully, just as she had.

  She touched a few things on the grave that said CHRISTMAS TURNER. Aint Sister cousin—Christmas. And she brother Hurriah Turner. Uncle Hurriah. He must dead now, too. All Turner dead out. Only me and mine left—we Cook. Cook family. The boys were back near Aint Sister’s grave, with Rosie and Pinkie. Marietta pulled their arms gently to the road. Rosie and Pinkie were always the last to leave the bury ground, and she didn’t want to change anything.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that she’s gone,” Mr. Thomas said. He paused. “When an elder dies, a lot of history is buried, in addition to the actual person. I’m sorry.”

  The rice was finished. Mr. Thomas said they would have to bag it after Christmas, after this holiday tour. Old Carolina Gold—he said they would package it in bags bearing that name, he would instruct them on the process after New Year’s. But right now, Mr. Ray and his family would be coming in a few days, and the women needed to help Laha do heavy cleaning in the house, while the men would store the rice and clean the grounds. “The season requires special touches, too,” Mr. Thomas said. “We’ll be adding holiday decor, such as trees and garlands. We have much to do.”

  Marietta and the others followed Laha through the back door. “This the first time you see inside, heh?” Laha said, leading them into the kitchen. She sounded proud, Marietta thought, when she showed them the stove and ovens, the sinks. “I take care here, but Mr. Thomas want all wood r
ub down with lemon oil, all them floor clean, all the drape dust. I show you.”

  “You never see this chanlier, heh?” she went on, heading down the hallway, and Marietta stayed last, biting her lip at the smell she remembered from that day she had looked for the pictures. The velvet that held dust, the rugs, the no-breath air inside the rooms. Laha showed them the living room, the study and historical room. “Pinkie, you gotta dust and wash that floor,” Laha said, wheeling around. “We all work fast, we be done in two day. Wash, too, gotta wash them bedding.”

  Marietta stayed behind for a second, long enough to glance at the Africa woman and Aint Sister and the two women with pale faces—she had memorized their faces, and she only nodded at them before she caught up to the others near the stairs.

  “You see them photo?” she asked Pinkie once they began on the floors.

  “Where?” Pinkie said.

  “In that little room, the study.”

  “I look at all them drape gotta be beat and dust,” Pinkie said. “I ain see no photo.”

  “Look on wall when you in there,” Marietta said. “See Aint Sister when she small-small, see all she mama and cousin and gran.”

  “I ain want stay in here long,” Pinkie said. “This house have too many spirit in them drape, hide everywhere. My daddy always say haint fill this house. I want be done and gone quick-quick.”

  When loud voices floated upstairs as Marietta was on her hands and knees washing the base of the walls, she wasn’t sure who had come until the high voice called, “Where are the monkeys?”

  She went downstairs quickly. Randy was in the kitchen with his mother, while Mr. Ray stood on the piazza talking to Mr. Thomas. Laha was telling Randy, “Nate and Calvin stay at my house today, cause they mama work inside. They come fe play with you in few day.”