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

by Susan Straight

  “The couch?” she asked. “They’ll just throw them on the floor, but that’s okay. And see this green vase? Look.”

  Marietta lingered at the wall of baskets—every size, from matchbox squares to huge clothes hampers. And all colors, weaves, materials, but when she examined them closely, the sheaves and twine and straw were usually loose and very simple. The patterns were painted on, the colored straw dyed green and red and yellow. She ran her fingers down the rough weave of a trashbasket, thinking that Aint Sister would snort. Made in China—Made in Taiwan—Made in Philippines. Marietta turned when Carolanne called her.

  “How about brass?” Carolanne said, holding up candlesticks and bowls to catch the light. They were etched with tiny marks and patterns.

  “Those thing too beautiful,” Marietta said, surprised.

  They bought the brass decorations, several pillows, and a wicker trunk with brass fittings. “I need something for my bedroom, for keep picture and thing,” Marietta said.

  “Didn’t you want some baskets?”

  “No—look how much we spend already.”

  “But you gave me all the ones you brought with you from South Carolina.”

  “They was for you,” Marietta said. “We need for go on to the store.”

  After the riot of colors and touching at Pier 1, she was already tired of shopping, and the huge supermarket was cold and confusing as ever; she hated the smell, like a refrigerator that had been washed with mop water already cloudy from floor dirt.

  The carts fought and women stared and everything was too hard to distinguish—there were walls of shampoo, rows and rows of cereal boxes and cans. Baking soda was near chocolate, grits were by the cereal, and rice was in with the spaghetti. She stood, bewildered, by the medicine section, where tiny bottles and boxes were lined up so close the antlike script ran together. Carolanne grabbed the bright green jar of Mentholatum and said, “You see those new cards they have—for kids! Like ‘I’m proud of you’ and ‘Here’s a hug.’ When Freeman can read, I’ma start buying those.”

  He came staggering to them in the bright room of the day-care center, still walking uncertainly, like Nate and Calvin that summer when they sometimes raised puffs of dust with their behinds. “Doggie,” he said to Marietta, pointing at the wall where posters of cats and dogs and lions hung. Then he wandered back to the group of children playing on the carpet; his brown face bobbed into the heads immediately. The other children were all white or Asian, and his head was the only one with curls. He looked up for a second and Carolanne said, “It’s like he doesn’t even care that we’re here.”

  “No,” Marietta said. She remembered those checking looks and then the seeming disinterest. “You walk out, he start for cry. He know where we are.”

  “Where’s the truck?” Carolanne said in the car, and he pointed out the window. “Good boy! You are so smart.”

  “Where tree?” Marietta asked, and he jabbed a finger toward the palm.

  They brought the trunk and bags to Marietta’s first, and Freeman ran to swim on the black couch he loved. He rubbed his cheek against the cool leather until Marietta carried the trunk into the living room, and then he stood peering into it while she moved her wooden box from a kitchen cupboard to the place of honor in the trunk.

  She had kept all her things in the kitchen cupboard because she couldn’t think of a better place. Carolanne saw the spider and the jars of tea, turning them curiously in the harsh fluorescent light. She said, “I’ll be right back,” and in a moment she came from her place carrying a small table. She put it in the corner near the sliding glass door and arranged the jars on it, then stood back. “I can’t use this table cause Freeman always messes with it,” she said. “Look—this can go here.” She took the spider and put it on the edge of the marble fireplace. “These colors are great.”

  Marietta looked at them and quickly walked over to move them back to the cupboard. “This tea—for me drink, maybe I get sick,” she said. “And spider for cook outside, over fire. Who gon make a fire in there?”

  Carolanne said, “This is great stuff—look, you’re supposed to display collections of antiques like this.”

  “It just medicine,” Marietta said, holding the jars. “I don’t see you display no Mentholatum and aspirin.” She heard her voice hard, and she saw Carolanne’s mouth twitch into her cheek. She was hurt.

  “Nate said you’ve had that stuff all his life and he’s never seen you drink it,” Carolanne said.

  Marietta couldn’t stop. “Maybe he didn’t see me every minute I been alive.”

  “Whatever,” Carolanne said, angry, and she pulled Freeman up from the trunk, where he was half-fallen inside. “Leave that stuff alone. We have to go home now.”

  Marietta sat on the couch when they had left, looking out the huge sheet of glass. No reprimands from Aint Sister, no humming complaints from Rosie or Pinkie or Tiny Momma—no questions about what she wasn’t doing or cooking or watching. She went to the trunk and opened the wooden box, took out the picture of her father. Freeman. Another Freeman next door. She held the shell Calvin had brought from Pine Gardens to Charleston, all those years ago. Go knock, she thought. Take she something. But don’t tell she what for do. Just help. She try she own way.

  In Carolanne’s living room, she said, “I don’t mean for say something so hard,” and Carolanne nodded. Freeman let Marietta hold him long enough to smell his hair and neck before he got down, carrying the shell. She watched his round face, not as dark as Nate’s, much darker than Carolanne’s. He had Nate’s large black-shined eyes and eyebrows, and Carolanne’s delicate mouth. His arms were padded around the elbows when he knocked into her, pulling out the cars and bears and trucks from his toy chest to bring them to her and then take them back. Rosie’s large basket held plastic blocks, and the smaller baskets were on the counter separating the kitchen from the dining area; they were filled with the peppermints Nate liked.

  Carolanne got a bottle of bubbly water from the kitchen and sat on the couch. “I wonder when he’ll listen for the ocean,” she said, watching Freeman put the shell into a truckbed and move it to a bowl. Marietta smiled. “I have to change these shoes,” Carolanne said, and went to her bedroom.

  Marietta listened to the television and Freeman’s chattering at the bears and trucks. Carolanne’s living room was peach-colored, with paintings of deserts and huge flowers; she had put tall vases filled with plumes of fluffy grass and stark branches in the corners. The dining-room table had a pale green vase in the center, filled with white flowers.

  “Go take that in your room and play,” Carolanne said, coming back to collapse into one of the armchairs. Freeman had gotten the xylophone. “Go on, you make too much noise with that.” He got a grasp on it and went obediently to his bedroom.

  Marietta waited for the phone to ring as Oprah came out into the audience. Every day Calvin’s friend Tiana, who was still in college, one-rang Carolanne, who called her back long distance, and they watched the show together. Long pauses and then, “Gi-i-rl, you hear what he said?”

  Marietta went into the bathroom and closed the door. Freeman’s plinking still came through. When she sat on the toilet, a shard of deep blue, like a piece of the glass she had always looked for, caught her eye. In the wastebasket, a white plastic wand had blue staining the tip. She leaned down to pull it out, then found a small box. Home pregnancy test. Results in minutes. Turns blue if positive.

  Carolanne appeared at the door with Nate a few days later, carrying a stack of large baskets shaped like buckets; Nate held two trees, which she put inside the baskets and placed near the couch. “Here’s more,” she said, bringing in some of the dark green and purple baskets Marietta had touched. “I saw you looking at them, spending a lot of time over there,” Carolanne said, smiling. “You should always get what you want.”

  She couldn’t ask Nate if he knew. Of course he didn’t know. She couldn’t make herself ask Carolanne about what she’d seen, either. The boys stayed in
Calvin’s living room most of the days, and Carolanne slept, grew angry when Freeman whined and stiffened and cried in the car seat and the stroller at the mall. But she went to aerobics class every day, and her belly was shined tight in the leotard she wore.

  Maybe the shouting she heard from their place, drifting through the walls and screens, and the way Nate spent hours with the other players, had nothing to do with Carolanne. It had to be because both of the boys were so nervous—obsessed with workouts, running sprints, and blocking, studying plays and tapes, and it seemed as if Nate didn’t want to talk about anything else. “Preseason,” he said over and over. Maybe Carolanne feel neglect, maybe she tell he and he ain’t excited. But how I ax Nate?

  Almost every afternoon, their friends came before weight lifting, several huge men ducking in the doorway to greet Calvin and Nate. She couldn’t believe she was cooking for four or five men with necks so thick they could probably swallow whole fish; why was she cutting it into pieces to fry it?

  “Where you live?” she asked the one they called Rock, the smallest.

  “Me and Marcus stay in Santa Ana, Miz Cook,” he said. “We got an apartment.”

  “Just you two?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How I know that—how I guess nobody there for cook?” she asked, rolling her eyes. She liked him. “And you?” She turned to the one they had introduced as Incredible Bulk. His real name was Jeffrey, and she liked that; he was light, with a round head and clean face. He looked like a Jeffrey, so that was what she called him. “Jeffrey, where you live?”

  “I live with my dad, in L.A. I have a brother in San Francisco, and my sister’s in San Diego.” He was so polite and careful that she smiled.

  “And you gotta come visit Calvin,” she said, “when you hungry.”

  “I like fish, ma’am.”

  “Miz Cook,” Rock said. “My uncle lives in Rio Seco, and he go fishin all the time. Maybe sometime you and Calvin can drive out there with me, if you like to catch something.”

  “Well, I have for catch a shark if I feed all you.”

  “You can’t eat shark, man,” Jeffrey said.

  “We use to watch guys throw sharks on the dock every day, man,” Nate told him. “Do whatever you want with em.”

  “I forgot, you two are swamp boys,” Rock said. “Talkin that secret talk when you don’t want me to dig what you saying to each other. Hmmm.”

  They ate on the couch or the carpet, watching kung fu videos or game tapes or ESPN. She brought them plates, and then she sat at the dining-room table alone, listening. She really didn’t mind all the cooking, because she liked to listen to them talk. She tried to decipher the language, careful with the context like when she had stared at the pictures and words of the magazine under the tree. At first, she couldn’t understand half of what they said, especially Rock and Jeffrey, who spoke some kind of California language.

  “Oh, man, we livin large. We can choose the ride, the crib. Females for me and Calvin, and look but don’t touch for my man Nate. Homeboy tied down in the desert with rope, and the ants are on they way.” Rock patted Nate’s shoulder, and Nate backhanded him in the chest, but he said nothing about another baby. Marietta knew he didn’t know.

  “Shut up, man, we ain’t livin no large yet. We ain’t made the cut. August 29—roster time. Then I’ma talk smack, okay?” Nate stared at the screen.

  Where had he learned to talk like this? His voice was still soft, but the words were fast. Marietta didn’t look at them; she watched for bones in the fish, chewing softly so she could hear.

  “You talkin too much yang, Nate, man. I heard Wilson jammin you up yesterday,” Rock said.

  “Shit, he been around forever,” Jeffrey said.

  “Yeah, and he was saying, ‘Nate think he great, talking bout fate, but when he go up against me, we talking checkmate.’” Rock laughed.

  “Why blood always smackin in rhyme like that?” Nate said.

  “That’s his personality, you know, he get plenty pub for that. See him in the paper all the time—fans eat it up.”

  Nate stood up and paced. “Well, damn, that’s all I’m tryin to do. Stand out so coach notice me. I’ma be the linebacker give everybody trouble. Trouble Man. Y’all call me that. I like that.” He sang in a high voice like Marvin Gaye, from a record people had played back in Charleston, Marietta remembered. “I come up hard, baby, but never cool; I didn’t make it, baby, playin by the rules. Come up hard, baby, I had to fight; checkin trouble, sugar, with all my might.”

  “Listen at blood!” Rock laughed. “Little old voice out them big-ass lungs.”

  “Hey, I come up serious hard, man,” Nate said.

  “Shit, man,” Jeffrey frowned. “You didn’t live in the jungle.”

  “Shut up, Bulk, you said you from L.A.,” Calvin said.

  “Yeah, my hood called the Jungle. Like you two boys never seen.”

  Nate said, “Yeah, well, we from the woods, man. Like you never…”

  Calvin interrupted them. “Man, don’t none a that count if we can’t make it on the field. I think y’all better slow down with talkin big smack till we catch up to the plays.”

  “Aw, brother, you always been scary,” Nate said. “Remember…” Marietta clicked her glass hard on the table when she stood up, embarrassed now, and they stopped when they heard.

  “I didn’t move here to California for do day work,” she said.

  “Excuse me, Miz Cook?” Rock said, and she had to shake her head. He didn’t understand her language.

  “‘Day work’ mean ‘maid.’ You all pick up you dish, cause I ain’t get pay for that. And don’t forget you glass on the floor.”

  But sometimes she heard Nate and Calvin talk like gone time, like Pine Gardens. They spoke like children when they wanted to hide something from the other players, and the past was a secret code. “He long-eye at the track,” Calvin said. “Wilson.”

  “What?” Nate said softly.

  “Somebody sweetmouth you today. You ear was close. You gon know who talk fe you, fast-fast. Sweetmouth fe you too much.”

  “So?”

  “Coach see. Wilson beena hot the fight—better for he, not you, cause you fe get bighead. Use you vex, man—vex help you fe beat he August.”

  “What the hell you saying, Calvin?” Rock would frown. “Speak English, man, you in America.”

  “Yeah, Rock,” Calvin smiled. “We in America, living large. Living big large, for now.”

  Freeman spoke his own language, too. After Nate and Calvin returned from weight lifting in the evening, Marietta went next door to give her grandson a bath. That was one thing Carolanne let her do, because she said Freeman whined and got water all over her clothes.

  Before the bath, he had free run of the living room, just like the boys had roamed the yard frantically as dark fell, knowing their day was almost finished. “Ah-in,” Freeman said, touching Calvin. That was as close as he could get to the name. His only clearly pronounced words were “Daddy,” “doggie,” “duck,” and “ot-ot,” for food that he wasn’t supposed to touch yet because it was still steaming.

  Marietta could hold him now, but she had no name. Nate kept telling Carolanne that his gran should be watching him, because she’d keep the best eye on him, probably better than the day care, where there were so many kids, but Carolanne shook her head.

  “He’s seventeen months. He needs structured playtime, that’s what all the books say. He needs organized activities with other kids, so he can get used to social situations. He sees Gramma every night.” Carolanne didn’t have a name for her, either. She was Big Ma around Freeman, but when she and Marietta were shopping, she said, “You need some milk? Uh, here, you passed the toothpaste.”

  Structure play, Marietta thought. I send he out in the yard with some pot and pan and spoon. He find out what for play he ownself. But ain’t no yard, and ain’t none of you pot and pan you let near no ground. Flower and gold all round the edge—they too fancy.

>   She had kept Freeman one afternoon when he had a cold, while Carolanne went to aerobics. Marietta looked at the blouse she wore over her leotard. “It’s too cold in the studio,” Carolanne said. And when she had come in the door unexpectedly, Freeman was shrieking with laughter while Marietta danced a headless whole chicken toward him. “Chicken gon get you!” Marietta said, and then with the other hand made the trout wiggle-swim in the air at him. “Fish get you, too!”

  “My God,” Carolanne said. “He’s gonna have nightmares about seeing animals and then eating them.” The rise of her lip made Marietta as hot as she had been near the women who were silent while she cleaned around them all those years.

  Nowhere for walk, get a ice cream. No fish in the creek, I mean the landscape. She said nothing, just watched as Carolanne said, “Show him that book, Nate, the one he likes you to read. The doggie one.”

  “Mr. Thomas took his dog Walter for a walk in the park every day,” Nate read, and Marietta looked over his shoulder at the big, shaggy dog with his tongue hanging out.

  “Where the doggie, Freeman?” Carolanne said. “Show me doggie.”

  “Oh, da,” Freeman said, pointing at the window. He had seen dogs being walked in the street.

  “No, baby, in the book. Where the doggie?”

  He stared at the book, but didn’t point. “Shoot, he tired,” Nate said. “Me, too.”

  “No, he never picks out the dogs in his books,” Carolanne said. “He always does at the wall in day care. See, this isn’t a learning situation for him, it’s a play thing. That’s why I like the day-care center.”

  Marietta looked at the shaggy dog again, but all she said was “Come for take bath, Freeman. Time give Mama some rest before you go bed.” In the tub, he poured water into her palms, watching it disappear. Kneeling, she soaped him all over, and when she ran her hands down him to wipe off the excess bubbles, she thought there was nothing smoother in the world than a baby’s back, with no spine showing, no muscle, nothing but a blind fall of skin, straight as could be.