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

by Susan Straight

  When the players stretched and trotted, spread out over the field in the glaring lights, she wasn’t sure if they were the tallest on the field, but when they were lined up at the bench and then standing in the huddles, Nate and Calvin were above the rest. Nate was six-six now, Calvin six-seven. Calvin’s waist was wider, his legs bulging at the thigh pads, and Nate’s arms were rounded with muscle. She was light-headed, and couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even concentrate on the plays with the men shouting in her ear. She couldn’t tell Nate under her breath to watch for the run, couldn’t remind Calvin to drink enough at halftime.

  One of the white boys said it just after halftime, when the score was still 0-0. They all heard it, she and the men, where they sat close to the sideline because they had been too late to move around and get seats higher up where she wanted. They were near the end zone. “Nigger,” one of the white boys said to the quarterback. She couldn’t see Calvin’s face. The white boy, a defensive lineman, said it again after the play was over. “Good fake, nigger,” he said to Calvin.

  James, the quarterback, set his thin face in a smile. So did Calvin, she saw, as he turned to walk back to the line of scrimmage, and Natty, the wide receiver who lined up closest to Marietta and the men. Baby Poppa and the others were silent. Natty’s hair edged out from underneath his helmet like a sponge, the round Afro squashed underneath. She saw Calvin’s teeth. James threw a pass to Natty on the next play for seven yards, and Calvin slammed into the white guard, smiling. He was shorter than Calvin, but as wide; Calvin lowered his shoulder on the next play and shot forward, catching the guard in the chest, and Natty caught the short pass in the end zone. Smiling—they all smiled. “Niggers are bigger, and white boys got no heart,” Natty sang softly when he and Calvin came to the sidelines.

  “Lord have mercy,” Baby Poppa whispered. “Mercy on me.”

  Twenty-one to seven. Nate’s knuckles bled, and he had smashed into the quarterback three times; Calvin’s pads were black with mud, but she hugged them on the field, the plastic shields resounding and slapping all over against people’s shoulders and chests. “Whupping,” Nate crowed. “It was a spanking.”

  “My hand stinging,” Calvin said.

  After they’d gotten on the bus, she and the men started the long drive home, but she smelled them on her blouse and coat. My boys. Football mud—not fish mud. She listened to Baby Poppa and Jesse and Joe. “Them white boys wasn’t too white after they done rolled in the mud like pigs, huh?” Jesse said.

  Baby Poppa always stuck to the strategy. “I thought their quarterback would have been decent if he’d had some protection.”

  “Who gonna protect him from Nate?” Joe hollered. “Only Calvin!”

  “Still, he had a fairly accurate arm.”

  “But he was too worried about his ass!”

  “White boys talking bout nigger this and nigger that. They better retire that shit and go home!”

  “I know the scouts was there watching Nate.”

  Marietta said nothing, watching the country darkness fly by. Nate and Calvin, grappling all these years in the field, dancing around each other, each the only one who could force hands open or mouths to laugh. They were going away.

  The coaches came like boyfriends, sitting awkwardly in their cars, waiting on the piazza with hands folded and dangling between their legs, soda or Styrofoam cups of coffee perched on the floor beside their shoes. They brought hats, brochures, shirts, and game films. They called on the phone every few minutes until she took the receiver off the hook. The letters piled up in the corner, hundreds of them, until Nate and Calvin stopped opening the envelopes.

  Some talked only with Nate, being excruciating polite to Calvin and to her, but relaxing with Nate, their words flowing smoother and their hands flying around the apartment. They took both boys out to eat, and often brought back more food; she found wrappers with see-through flowers of grease everywhere in the kitchen. Then they all sat in the front room again for hours.

  She studied the coaches’ faces. Most of them had noses that had fallen to fatter, rounded tips; their cheeks were heavy and square to their jaws; their hair showed faint toothmarks from combs and cream. They looked a little like Mr. Ray would now, she imagined, but that didn’t frighten her the way she’d expected it would. They were more than careful with everything they said to her, and inside she smiled. She knew they knew about mamas.

  Nate and Calvin smiled, sometimes politely if they were bored, sometimes really laughing at a story a coach told; they ate hamburgers or chicken, chewing while their eyes stayed on the coach. She saw by their shoulders and their mouths that they weren’t intimidated at all. Nate puffed up a little when they recited his statistics in wonder, and he’d correct them if they got a score or the number of sacks wrong, but he didn’t run his mouth. Marietta was proud. For the most part, he and Calvin listened as silently as she did, and Nate always said, “Long as you know me and my brother go together, full ride for him, too. We a package deal.”

  While the coach was nodding vigorously and saying, “He’d be a great asset to the program, too,” Calvin would look over at Marietta and widen his eyes slightly in question. She’d raise her head to let him know he didn’t have to worry or recite his own statistics.

  Many times the coaches took the boys to the high school to watch game films on the projector, and they came back praising Coach Terrell and what he’d done with such a small program. Coach Terrell only came twice—he had never spoken much to her. She could tell that he didn’t like women, mamas, that they usually bothered him like sprained ankles, or holes in a field, or summer flies. “They only get three official school visits,” he said, uncomfortable on her couch.

  “We’re quite aware of the regulations,” Baby Poppa said. “The boys haven’t narrowed their choices down to three yet.”

  “What we looking at?” she said.

  “Head coaches are coming from Georgia, Penn State, Michigan, they say. Nate likes Penn State’s guy, but I know what you have planned.”

  “The man from USC coming next week,” she said. “We gon have to see.”

  “Where you want to visit?” she asked the boys when they came in that night.

  Nate said, “We going to LA, to USC.”

  She said, “I know. But you can visit two other places. Get you a free trip. Maybe you think I wrong to choose for you.”

  Nate shrugged. “Anyplace fine with me.”

  “You choose one, Calvin choose one for visit.” She turned back to the sink.

  Baby Poppa said, “Do you both think your mother and I are being too firm in our support of Southern California?”

  Calvin said, “They want me, they like what I can do, and some of these dudes only want Nate for real.”

  “You’re right,” Baby Poppa said carefully. “Historically, USC has groomed great offensive lines, and they nurture their linemen, give them attention. They know you’re crucial to their running game. But it’s also a school full of rich white kids from California. I’m talking about the possible distractions for both of you. You’ll be far from here, maybe lonely, maybe less motivated to work hard. What about you, Marietta?” he said.

  “What you ax me?” she said.

  “They’ll be far away from you. How will you handle that?”

  “I be busy,” she said harshly. “When I ain’t busy?”

  He stared at her for a minute.

  Nate said, “We know what we gotta do, Poppa. But I ain’t sayin girls is a problem. I’ma have to check that out for myself, especially with them California ones in bikinis.”

  “Yeah, we ain’t gon be on the beach, Nate, we gon be on the field. All summer, man, daily doubles,” Calvin said.

  “This is a professional enterprise,” Baby Poppa said.

  Nate interrupted, “But I heard the girls love to come to practice. I can handle that.”

  Baby Poppa rolled his eyes. “You’ve made me feel so much more confident, Nate,” he said.

  One weeken
d, there was a crowd of them in the street, awkwardly trying to avoid each other, waiting outside while one sat on the couch, then waiting a few anxious moments to ring the bell after the other had left.

  Marietta and Tiny Momma and the boys laughed at the parade of handshakes and smiles and offers: “Can I run out and bring you something to eat?” Tiny Momma had finally learned not to offer the coaches her cakes and macaroni and rice and chicken, because there were so many men that they ate most of her leftovers.

  But two of them were important: the head coach from USC, John Garland, and the linebacker coach from Penn State, a blond man named Jim Hart.

  Hart spent hours with Nate, but more and more he talked to Marietta. Baby Poppa came to her in surprise at the bar that Monday night, when she told him that Hart would be back next weekend. “I think he likes you,” Baby Poppa said. “He looks at you the way Milton did.”

  Marietta frowned and said, “Huh. You seeing things.” She had brought no magazines, and she rubbed her palms across the table. “Coach Garland spend a lot of time with Calvin, and Calvin like him. I was worry we like the school and they don’t like the coach.”

  “I worry that you’ll like the coach and not the school,” Baby Poppa said, and she knew he was joking.

  “I don’t know what you talking about,” she said.

  But he was right, and when Jim Hart came back the next weekend, she saw that he looked at her face, not just her scarf; he looked at her hands, didn’t just smile and turn to the boys for real words.

  “Penn State could offer your sons a completely different environment from what they’re used to,” he said. He was maybe forty, round-faced and tall. “I was a linebacker at Wyoming, the state where I was born,” he went on, “and what I loved when I began coaching was the opportunity to see other parts of the country, to see how other people live.”

  Marietta hesitated. She used her Pine Gardens voice with most of the coaches, partly so they would think she was too ignorant to bother much, and partly so she could talk to Nate and Calvin half-privately. But with Jim Hart her voice became more like Baby Poppa’s, the way she often heard it practiced in her head but rarely out loud.

  “Where else have you coach?” she said.

  “Well, I coached at San Jose State for a while, in California, and then I went to New Mexico State. I came to Penn State four years ago. I think we have the best program, and I think I’ll stay. I’m confident that I can offer Calvin and Nate a great opportunity with us.”

  She smiled at the way he kept tacking on the things he was supposed to say. “You like to travel, huh?”

  “Well, I’m single, and I have to recruit, but yeah, I like to come into a city and figure things out, see how people act and talk.” He paused. “This has been one of the best trips I’ve made, because Charleston is not only fascinating, I’ve had a great time hearing you talk.”

  “I don’t talk too much,” she said.

  “The South had always made me nervous,” he went on quickly, “but you and your neighbors have made me feel right at home. I did want to, uh, let you know that there might be more opportunities for you, too, in Pennsylvania. I mean, Nate has told me that your husband is deceased, and that you work nights. Maybe you could move up to the area with the boys and find a job with better hours.”

  She looked at his gray eyes, the color of oyster shells, and his round head, with straight hair over his ears. Either he wanted Nate very badly or he was being particularly nice to her. She said, “I’m not unhappy here. I want the boys to go where they want.”

  “Well, I know there are so many more restrictions in the South, on your social life and just the attitudes in general,” he said, hurrying over his words.

  “Restrictions everywhere,” she said.

  “But in Pennsylvania things are just less formal, and they’re freer,” he said.

  Marietta smiled again. He said, “I think the boys would really benefit from the climate.” She thought, He safe again.

  That night, when she lay on the couch, she couldn’t help but think of his face, his hand shaking hers for a long time at the door while the boys were off with Coach Garland. Was Hart just trying to get the boys through her? It seemed, in his fumbling words and leaning forward on the cushions that he really thought Pennsylvania would be better for her. He had even given her his phone number at home again, saying, “You can always call me about setting up job prospects. I’d really like to see you in, uh, less restricted circumstances.”

  But when she tried to picture herself in an apartment in Pennsylvania, alone, with the boys living at the college and her in the snow, maybe this coach or someone else coming to visit her, she couldn’t help seeing his cheeks, pale after he had shaved, the pores even and tiny as grains in cooked grits. She saw Maussa then, the haint, short and round, with the cigar between his lips. Had he loved the Africa woman? But in love was ownership, moving bodies and spirits around to plant them where men liked. This coach ain’t no maussa, but he like for move people round. He not a bad man, but he don’t know more than me. She saw the tiny darker hairs between his knuckles when he put his hands on his knees, nervous.

  The boys said Coach Garland was nicknamed “The Silver Fox” because of his hair and his smooth words, and she thought the name fit. He saw her only for an hour, the three of them at a coffee shop; he drank black coffee while the boys ate eggs and Marietta listened over her cold tea. And the strangest thing was that she couldn’t remember half of what he said, about California or the school or the offensive line, because while she watched his confident lips bare his teeth, his straight silky hair combed high over his beaked nose, she kept feeling sorry for Jim Hart. He called every day, asking if the boys had decided, if she had thought about what he’d said. She watched Calvin duck his head in laughter at Coach Garland’s words, and she heard Nate say, “I heard you got plenty of summer jobs out there.” Suddenly she wanted them to sign the letters of intent, so that the endless stream of nervous, sweating pale men would stop sitting on her couch, imploring her boys with their eyes; even though at first she had marveled that men who looked like Mr. Ray wouldn’t fill her with fear, now she wanted the quiet back in her kitchen.

  She asked them several times. “You still go long with it?” she said to Nate. “You sure?”

  He was serious now. “Mama, long as me and Calvin go together, it’s cool.”

  “Nate gon shine anywhere,” she said, almost to herself, for the hundredth time. “But USC got what Calvin need. The man want both of you, I can tell he serious. Baby Poppa like he staff.”

  “California. You could come out there, Mama. All kinda jobs,” Calvin said.

  “Yeah, Coach Hart was talkin bout you could come to Pennsylvania, too,” Nate said. “He said he could find you a job, too.”

  “I done did my job,” she said. “Now I gon rest by myself for a change and let them coaches feed you, they want you so bad.”

  She loved turning away the other coaches who still came, watching their faces fill with gentle instruction and no wariness when they first saw her on the piazza or the couch, sitting down, her hair hidden by the headwrap. They spoke slowly, as if she were a child, and they were sure to mention climate, academics, wholesome campus life, tradition, and meals. After she’d told them briefly and politely that Nate and Calvin were in Los Angeles and she wouldn’t consider the schools they were describing, after they smiled and began again patiently, she explained her admiration for USC’s offensive line and closed her mouth. Their eyes became smaller, then larger in disbelief—the mouths were crooked when they lost the polite smirk.

  “He really got to you,” one of them said, disgustedly. “Garland really sold you a line.”

  She didn’t have to smile. “I decide three year ago, before I ever see a coach,” she said, and then she added, “Afternoon,” as she stood up, looking over their heads or shoulders at the street. Or if it was getting dark, “Evening.”

  Leaving

  1983

  “
HEY, BIG MA, WHEN them boys coming back? Didn’t they just go out for some ice?” someone said.

  “Mmm-hmm, probly got to showin off that new car. I know they talkin to the guys at the icehouse, cause they use to work there, remember?” Jesse answered.

  “Probly buyin some crab. They use to crave some crab when they was little.”

  “They wasn’t never little!”

  Everyone laughed at Jesse’s joke, the people who were left from the crowd that had been shifting in and out all day. The men and boys who had lined the railing along the piazza were down to five or six, framing the doorway to let in dancing fingers of late-afternoon light around their shadows. Carmen and Jean from downstairs sat in borrowed chairs, but most of the other chairs had gone back to apartments with their owners by now, and Marietta was impatient for the rest to leave.

  “Yeah,” she said, “they use to work there, and they don’t get back here soon, I’ma let both of em sleep there. Cool off all this bighead foolish.”

  She knew as soon as she said it that their faces would shift just a little, their eyes find other eyes and smile. “Big Ma don’t never relax,” they were thinking. “Uh-uh, she cain’t even sit back and enjoy nothin.” She knew she couldn’t have said anything else. She didn’t know how. All the visitors were here for Nate and Calvin, and she rarely talked to more than one person in an entire day. She was aware of every word she said now, in the little quiet.

  Jesse fished through an ice chest for another beer, and she heard water slosh against the cans. The sodas and beer in all the tubs and coolers were floating now, floating the way that voices had bobbed tightly in the small front room. In and out the door they had come all day, knocking up against each other the way they did at funerals, weddings, barbecues, and new-baby days. But all the voices, smells of food and hairdress and beer had been in other rooms up and down the street. She had been to some celebrations with Tiny Momma, but no one ever had reason to gather in her place; no one had been encouraged to sit awhile and talk except Tiny Momma and Miss Alberta, who had moved into the apartment next door the year before. They sat beside her at the kitchen table, shelling shrimp and drawing fingernails up the bellies, arguing with everyone.