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

by Susan Straight

  Marietta said, “You turn soldier yet?” because Mrs. Ray and Randy looked at her expectantly.

  “No. Just school,” Randy said. “But I want to play with the monkeys now. Can you bring em?”

  She nodded and went back upstairs, Mrs. Ray right behind her. The woman said nothing, just looked around, and then she went out onto the second-floor piazza. “Randall?” she said. “Big Randall. We have to go back to the hotel.”

  Mr. Ray came, with Mr. Thomas. “What?”

  “We have to go back to Charleston, to the hotel, until this is all done. Look—the beds haven’t even been washed, I can smell. And the women aren’t done with the drapes. It’s dirty in here.”

  “Miss High-and-Mighty can’t sleep in a dirty room, huh?” Mr. Ray said. “I remember when you slept in a lot worse places than this, before I got you out of there.”

  “Remember all you want, honey,” she said, sweeping out into the hallway. “I’ll be at the hotel while you think back on the good old days.”

  Mr. Thomas told Marietta, “You’d better expedite the process. I think you and the others will need to be especially thorough, since you’re not accustomed to working inside a house. I’ll have Laha check your progress this afternoon.”

  She walked all the way to Laha’s house in the evening, and the children’s laughter and shouting flew across the road. During the day, only Laha’s youngest boy, who was five, was home, along with Mary’s boy, who was also five. Nate and Calvin played with them while Laha’s mama watched. But the rest all came from school, and the house and yard were filled with tickling, singing, sticks and dogs. Nate and Calvin cried when she tried to pull them toward the road.

  It was dark, and Jerry said, “You got too long fe walk in the night. Let we go ax Johnny take you back.”

  Nate and Calvin were thrilled to ride in the huge cab of Big Johnny’s truck, swaying on the seat when he turned the corner into the lane. “Sister house dark don look right,” he said when they had slowly driven that far, the moss and leaves brushing the top of the truck.

  He waited, letting the boys touch the dashboard, while she ran inside and lit the fire already laid out in the fireplace. “I preciate it,” she told him, leaning into the cab to smell the pipe smoke and fish.

  They kept trying to tickle her, and when she asked if Laha’s children had taught them that, Nate said, “Tickoo, tickoo baby.” Calvin slapped his palm over his open mouth, the way Mary’s boy loved to, making Indian sounds.

  “You bring them boys in the morning,” Mr. Ray had said before he left the house. “They can keep Randy out of his mother’s hair.”

  She let them run down the lane ahead of the adults, their coats stiff-tight around their chests. Their shoe soles flashed quick, and they didn’t turn around until the crumbled gate wall. “Hide-go-seek,” Calvin said.

  Randy was waiting in the kitchen. “Miz Ray say he too ceptible for cold to be outside today,” Laha told Marietta.

  But Randy said, “Monkeys! I got a jacket, I can go in the yard!” and he ran outside with them behind him.

  Laha shook her head. “He do what he want.”

  “He so thin,” Marietta said. “Why he never get fat?” His arms were straight as broom handles all the way to his elbows, no padding of strength or plumpness anywhere. His knees poked through his corduroys where he squatted with Calvin.

  “Miz Ray tell me he born early, stay in hospital a month fore he even go home. He always been meager,” Laha said, turning to her pots. “You better keep a eye. Miz Ray upstairs.”

  Mr. Thomas said, “The azaleas need fertilizing, the edges of the grass must be trimmed at the paths, and the granary must be arranged so that guests may view all the tools of the rice harvest. They will be here in one week.”

  “I take care for azaleas,” Marietta said quickly, and the others looked surprised. “I plant em, so I know how take care.” I look in the ground for grave, she thought.

  She scratched the earth around the azaleas and scattered fertilizer, probing deep with her digging stick and hoe. What I look for? Wood? Wood be rot now. Iron? He bury, why he have iron marker? He know where they rest. She watched the boys and Randy, sitting on blankets near the piazza and playing with army men and plastic tanks. She could hear Randy’s voice piping like a squeaky wheel, and the boys’ tumbling chatter.

  Cain be dig up no big hole here. And I dug hole fe these plant, me and Pinkie and them. Somebody see if grave here. She circled the fertilizer around each bush, looking back at the boys, at the trees, thinking about the woods and all the places the women could have been buried. But where he take em, where he want keep em? All land he got, land I ain even see—maybe they way at the other end, in secret place. She scratched the soil angrily, quickly, moving along the paths and around the edges of the lawn where the plants made a small hedge against the woods.

  The boys played fine until after lunch, when Nate and Calvin wanted to wrestle with Jerry. “Uh-uh,” he told them sharply. “Go on—I busy. Go play with that boy now. Stop.” He pushed their tickling hands away and left, so they turned back to Randy.

  “You can wrestle with me!” he shouted. “I wrestle at school. Come on, little monkeys.”

  Marietta caught Calvin’s elbow. “You don be rough,” she said. “He ain’t like you friends. Don’t hit, remember? Never hit nobody.” She saw that they had forgotten the granary and peach juice, the switch.

  Pinkie said, “They gon play like they want. They ain remember—they baby still. Don worry—we keep a eye.”

  “Mr. Thomas say for we go in the granary,” Mary said, appearing from behind the house. “Say fix them tool first, so he can check.”

  They took all the things they had used out of the granary, and Marietta sniffed inside the cold bricks. The dust had settled, tramped down, by people coming in and out, and the granary smelled more of sweetgrass than anything else. She touched the iron mesh, feeling the rough rust on the strands of metal.

  “They suppose to go in order how we use em,” Mary said. “That what he want.” Marietta laid the hoes, the rice hooks and the flailing sticks on the grass.

  “Huh, use them damn hoe every day,” she said. “Where that go?” Pinkie and Mary laughed, and Pinkie said, “You best hush. He come now.”

  Mr. Thomas moved things around with his foot, studied them, and took out a bag from his pocket. “I saved some of the clayed rice for display, too,” he said. “Hmm—let me think about the proper order for a moment.”

  The women stood watching him. Pinkie said absently, looking at the hollow trunks for pounding rice, “Aint Sister palm trunk best fe pound. She use that when I small-small.”

  Mr. Thomas said, “Is that so?”

  Pinkie looked startled. “I sorry, sir,” she said quickly. Marietta thought, She best not say she know what work better. He suppose for know everything.

  “I’ve never been able to find one like that,” he said, and he went to his car quickly for his notebooks.

  “What you done start?” Mary said to Pinkie.

  “That man crazy,” Pinkie said.

  “Marietta?” Mr. Thomas said, walking back to them slowly. “You live near her cabin, correct? Are her things all sold or given away by now?”

  “Nothing give or sell, sir,” Marietta said. “They she thing.”

  “Come and show me the mortar,” he said. “Pinkie and Mary may take a short break. We will drive my car.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t really like to walk in sand, as it hurts my calf muscles to no end. And to avoid damaging the lawn, we can go down the highway. I see that you approach the house through the woods, but we’ll go around.”

  Nate and Calvin saw her leaving, and they scrambled up from the blankets, calling, “Mama! Let’s go car!”

  Randy said, “I’m coming, too!” Marietta looked at Mr. Thomas, but he didn’t see anything except his book.

  “You sit in front with Mr. Thomas,” she told Randy. “They in back with me.”

>   It was strange, passing the bare shoulder of the road where splinters of wood and scattered palm fronds were all that was left of the stands. The woods were so dark, the sandy side of the road so light, and the space where the women had all walked up and down was even lighter. Then Pearl’s store, where Rosie had laid her baskets out along the wall. She stayed in the store with Pearl almost every day now. The houses along the wide dirt road, and then so quickly, the bridge clattered. In seconds, they were turning down the lane, and Mr. Thomas said, “My God, it’s tight driving in here. I hope nothing scratches the car.”

  Aint Sister’s house looked even smaller from the car. “There she house,” Marietta said. When she got out of the car and stepped into the yard, then the door was in the right place again in her eyes. The window shutters had been nailed shut, like they were for a hurricane, but the door was unlocked. No one would bother Aint Sister’s things.

  He stared at the jars of tea, lined up on the shelf, the different colors murky and shadowed in the dim light from the doorway. In the firelight, they always glowed clear and jeweled. The bed was still made up, and the clean tin plate and spoon sat on the table. Mr. Thomas saw the palm-trunk mortar near the fireplace, and he rushed over to touch it.

  The boys had all gone straight for her bed, because Nate and Calvin remembered lying in it, giggling while Aint Sister used to say, “Get out my bed! I come fe get you now!” Randy jumped onto the flat mattress and said, “It don’t bounce right.”

  Mr. Thomas slid the mortar toward the door. The outside of the trunk was rough gray and wrinkled, like an elephant’s feet and legs she had seen in a schoolbook long ago; the mortar was that thick and round. Inside, the pounding pestle had made the spongy wood slick as a baby’s wet back. But now Mr. Thomas left the mortar and looked around the room. He poked inside the fireplace.

  “How old is this cabin?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir.” She shrugged, wanting to tell the boys to stop messing the bed. “Build for Aint Sister gran.”

  “Who?”

  “Aint Sister—Eve—the house build for Eva mother mother. Come from Africa.” She bit her lips and said, “Scuse me,” going into the bedroom. “Hush,” she told the boys, her throat closing. “Get up now.”

  Randy ran back into the other room, banging the spoon into the plate. “Who eats out of a pie plate?” he said. “It stinks in here.”

  “Let’s put the mortar in the trunk,” Mr. Thomas said, straightening up from where he’d been examining the fireplace. “I’m glad Pinkie told me about it.”

  Pinkie don tell you nothing. Pinkie just talk—talk fe pass time, Marietta thought, panicked. Aint Sister voice even come now. “People say don’t take thing from dead,” she said out loud, hesitant, when he moved toward the mortar.

  “But why isn’t the house locked then?” Mr. Thomas said.

  “Cause she spirit might want fe use something,” Marietta whispered, not looking at him.

  “Don’t you think she would have wanted people to see something she kept all these years? This is a piece of history, and it cries out to be seen in its proper context. History belongs to everyone,” he said, brushing off his palms on the porch. The boys raced past him and he watched them with the same distant, curious glance he always gave them.

  Jerry and Willie rolled the mortar out of the trunk and then frowned at Marietta. Pinkie and Mary widened their eyes when they saw it in front of the other mortars by the granary. After Mr. Thomas had gone inside to talk to Mr. Ray, Marietta said, “He don’t listen. He too busy talk history. I cain say nothing for he listen.”

  “Next spring’s gonna be so much better,” Mr. Ray said loudly on the piazza, stretching his arms from his waist. “It’s finally gonna come together.”

  Mrs. Ray blew on her coffee. “I bet.” Marietta waited; Mr. Thomas had told her to go onto the piazza, because Mr. Ray wanted something.

  “If I can’t smell honeysuckle in the bedroom, I won’t stay here all damn summer,” Mrs. Ray said.

  “I know, look, she’s here right now. Tell her what you want. Where’d you have Thomas put the plant?” Mr. Ray said.

  “You can tell her,” Mrs. Ray said. “The plant’s in back, I guess. Laha and I have to start the Christmas decorations.” She went inside, and Marietta followed Mr. Ray around to the back.

  “She wants honeysuckle in the bedroom, I mean, she likes the smell,” he said. “I guess you can plant it here, and get Jerry to pick up a trellis for the side of the house here. That’s the bedroom window, up there.” He looked at the ground. “Look, don’t worry about the trellis. The thing can start climbing up right there.” He pointed to the lattice woodwork at the base of the house.

  “Nate, Calvin,” she called when she went to get the shovel and the fertilizer. “Stay round here.” Then Mr. Ray came around the corner.

  “I got all three of em,” he said. They ran behind him. “I’m going down to check on things at the landing.”

  “You two stay here,” she said to the boys, and they whined. “No—go get you trucks and sit,” she said. “Now.”

  Randy said, “I want em to come, my daddy’s gonna watch us. Come on,” he called to them, and they ran after him.

  “You two,” she yelled, but they ran faster, trying to catch him. She ran after them to the landing, where they stood watching Mr. Ray walk out to the end and look down into the water. A fast boat skimmed past, and he waved—Nate and Calvin waved, too.

  “Them two have for come back with me,” she said. “I don’t like em near the water, cause they cain swim.”

  “No, Daddy, I want them to stay here,” Randy said, looking straight at Marietta. “I want em to stay with me. You said they can’t come over at Christmas.”

  “Mr. Ray,” she started, but he interrupted her.

  “I hope you ain’t thinking that I don’t know how to watch no kid,” he said pleasantly. “Let em stay, and you get on back to the honeysuckle. We’ll bring em back in a while. Look, they get a kick out of the water.” He stared into her eyes until she looked away, at the blue. “They’re big boys.”

  She stomped on the shovel, driving it deep into the ground near the base of the house. The honeysuckle plant was in a large pot, and she dumped it out onto the grass furiously. They ain’t his boy. They my baby. They ain’t big. They ain’t his. I have fe whup em for he, teach em lesson for he. Monkey. They learn for be good little niggers. He buy two stead a one. Two little nigger for follow Randy.

  She hit a rock and flung the shovel onto the grass. Now she would have to dig the rock out, or the honeysuckle roots might not be happy. Have for make honeysuckle happy, too. Grow big and strong to the window. She wanted to kick holes in the wooden latticework that skirted the base of the house; she picked up the shovel instead and plunged the point against the rock. Goddamn a rock. Probly big, too.

  Scraping the dirt from around it, she saw that it was a flat, round rock, a little larger than the shovel blade. She rocked the point of the shovel around the stone, and finally it shifted enough so that she could reach in with both hands and lift it out. The dirt fell off the top and she saw MARY carved into the smooth face.

  Mary. Africa woman. She name Bina but he call she Mary. Marietta stared at the blank white wood in front of her, with nothing special to mark this wall. She looked up at the window where the honeysuckle was supposed to reach. The bedroom. He bury she by bedroom, so he look out see her anytime. He keep she. Keep she close by. Marietta touched the carved letters. Who carve em? He make somebody carve she name, but don’t bury she so nobody can see. Nobody never know where she rest.

  Suddenly she remembered that the boys were still gone, somewhere near the water. Mr. Ray want keep em, like he keep she. Whatever he want, he get. Get my baby. She cut across the lawn to the trees, sliding through two azalea bushes, and ran through the thick brush and vines as quickly as she could toward the water. She heard them after a few minutes, heard the boys’ voices. Mr. Ray was quiet. She walked slower, silent
, and watched from the trees where they walked along the water. Mr. Ray kept looking out at the boats passing. Randy and Nate and Calvin followed him, throwing rocks and twigs into the water. “Big rock,” Nate said. “Go boom.”

  Calvin said, “Go boom-boom-boom,” and threw another.

  They came to the landing, with her following their voices, and then they started up the lawn. She ran back to the spot where she had entered, scratching her arms with branches, pushing through the growth, and she emerged just when they came close to the freshly dug hole.

  “You hiding in the woods?” Mr. Ray said, his face testing, tilted to one side. “You looking for something? Maybe you don’t trust me?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. I find rocks in the hole, ain’t good fe plant flower, so I throw em in the wood. One more.” She walked over to the stone and picked it up with both hands again. “I get em out the way, like Mr. Thomas say. No trash in the yard. Excuse me.” She walked back through the azaleas carefully, the stone cold in her fingers, and when the trees hid her, she knelt down on the leaves. Africa woman. Rest in the tree. I come get you later. Rest in my tree. Tree in we blood. It better here, better than window watch you. Tree watch you now.

  Mr. Ray was standing near the hole when she came back, brushing her hands. “You digging it plenty deep?” he asked. “I hope the damn plant grows all the way inside the bedroom.”

  She looked at him and nodded. “Yes, sir. Plenty deep.” After he went around the house, and Nate and Calvin began to crush the clods of dirt near her feet, Randy said, “I’m going to the barn where Jerry and Willie are. Come on, monkeys.” They didn’t look at him, and he said, “Stay then, stupid monkeys.”

  She dug a huge hole, fast as she could before Mr. Ray or Mr. Thomas came to look, wider and wider, looking for two more stones. September and October. But she felt only soft dirt against her shovel, through her sifting fingers, and she knew the daughters were somewhere else. He ain’t need see them when he want. He put em away, cause they he blood, he think. But Africa woman spirit run. She took a last look at the trees after she had set the honeysuckle in its hole and filled in all the dirt. I come back. She took the boys’ hands and led them around the front.