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

by Susan Straight

  Calvin and Nate showed their backs when they watched TV with Rock and Jeffrey, shirtless or in tank tops, and their muscles fascinated her, almost frightened her. Their skin stretched tight over miniature pillows, at their shoulders, their biceps, even their backs when they leaned past the coffee table. Rock not so big—he a defensive back, she thought. Like me. But look them other boy. Lift weight every day, till they got stretch mark like a woman. The broken lines of paler skin webbed out from their armpits; she imagined hard bags of grits, packets of rice, growing under their skin. Laha’s Jerry and Big Johnny had flat arms until they strained with a shovel or an ax, and then their muscles were ropy-long. But Nate’s arms bulged even while he sat and worried about weight lifting.

  “I gotta get up to four twenty-five today, man. I gotta bench four twenty-five. I gotta get bulked up. I been eating and lifting forever—it takes too long.”

  “You ain’t the Incredible Bulk, man,” Rock said.

  “Yeah, I had to sacrifice to get this way, homeboy. I could help you out, but you don’t want to…” Jeffrey said.

  “I ain’t gotta be you, man,” Nate said. “I just gotta weigh two-eighty in August. Coach said that’s what he wants. He keep talking bout college was only twelve games a season, and we got twenty.” Nate stuffed meat and rice into his mouth, three and four times a day, whole plates of whatever Marietta gave him, and he grumbled, “All Carolanne want to do is buy something from the deli or make one a them Lean Cuisines. I gotta get bulked, I told her.”

  “You pacing round here losing weight from worry,” Marietta told him.

  “That don’t have nothin to do with weight, Mama,” he said. “It’s hard.”

  Rock came over almost every day before lunch and scared them about next month’s training camp; it was late June now, and they listened to him over chickens and regiments of glasses.

  “Naw, man, double-days gon kick you ass—just like they suppose to. And the veteranos gon kick you ass at night. They get you on the field and they get you in the dorm. Last year they dogged Leroy, man, they put cold spaghetti in his bed, like worms, and then somebody locked him in our room so he was late to practice. Coach was hot.”

  They paced around after lunch and Nate said, “I can’t be thinkin so much. Let’s hit the flicks.” They would all go to the movies, leaving her with the television.

  She washed the dishes to the endless talking of soap operas. In Charleston, she had half listened to the soaps with Tiny Momma on days off, but her eyes had really been on the bowl of peas or the hole in the jeans. On a cleaning job, there was often a TV in the kitchen with the housekeeper and one somewhere else for the woman of the house, but Marietta caught only scattered sobs and shouting between rooms while she worked.

  She sat on the black leather, careful to pull a shirt behind her, and stared at the glitter of the women’s eyes and lips, their hair standing away from their faces stiffly. The men’s hair was careful and thick, too, their chins pointing at the women. She concentrated. Things seemed slower and louder than she remembered from her glimpses, and their mouths moved so much more than anyone’s she knew, but she put her feet up and rested her hands on her stomach. The couple on the screen began to kiss, their mouths wide against each other; they moved through the room and fell onto the bed, and the pink satin straps fell from her neck when she arched back for his lips. Marietta looked out the sliding glass door. Tiny Momma and Miss Alberta always loved this part.

  Maybe she should call Tiny Momma. The phone rang and rang—it was already five o’clock there. Tiny Momma was probably at the store, now that the heat had faded a bit.

  Carolanne was getting her nails done before she went to get Freeman.

  Marietta tried to force herself to relax, keep her hands still. She looked at her own nails again. The women on TV had colored, carefully pointed nails like Carolanne’s. She saw Carolanne’s nails on Nate’s arms, back in Charleston that first time; she saw the glossy drops on the bare back of the man on the screen. When she turned the channel with the remote, she saw more soaps, more lips, and on MTV the colors changed suddenly to bluish-gray and white—shadowed forms, but they were still man and woman tangled in sheets, then an alley, then writhing in the back seat of a car.

  She smelled Sinbad’s cologne in the back of her throat. Milt’s palms, wood and oil and bergamot hairdress, passing her face to hold the back of her head when he kissed her. The car—the close air—teeth on her ear and lips in Sinbad’s bed.

  She stared at the couple, their pale skin in the moonlight, turned them to more lush-haired actors, to ESPN. A soccer game.

  Carolanne’s nails in Nate’s short hair when she bent over him on the couch—Marietta shook her head and stood in the space between the condo doors to listen for Carolanne’s car.

  She paced, and the boys paced, too. She had fed them fish, always fish, but this fish she bought from the store in the plastic wrap and Styrofoam trays didn’t seem to calm them, stop them from twisting around the room like they had swirled in her belly. She went to the fish counter at the big supermarket and bought red snapper from the ice, piles of not-fresh shrimp, but Nate grew more and more unpredictable. He snapped at Calvin, at Carolanne, and Marietta thought, She beena tell he bout the baby.

  If a baby in there. Carolanne’s stomach was only slightly pouched, just a bend, and Marietta thought that could be Freeman’s seat from when he was born, the little shelf women kept near their hips for their just-walking babies. Aerobics, dance lessons, her eyes still brilliant green sometimes and gold others, but always bright. Maybe there wasn’t a baby.

  But Nate threw a chair at the wall one night; Calvin was gone somewhere with Rock, and Marietta was on the couch, napping, when she heard the crash of something against the plaster. She ran next door, thinking something had fallen—was Freeman all right?—but Nate answered the door.

  “Sorry, Mama, soon as I do it I know I scare you.” He tried to put his arms around Carolanne, who was crying, and said, “I got too much on my mind.”

  Carolanne pulled away from him and snapped, “You gon have a lot of blood on your head you do that again, cause I’ll knock your ass out when you sleep. I don’t play that shit, nigger. Don’t you ever do that shit in front of my son.”

  Marietta had never heard Carolanne’s voice like that, that language, and she went out onto her balcony even after Calvin came home. She couldn’t sleep well at night anyway, not in that big bed. She was used to warm, noisy naps on a couch, with voices through the window.

  She could see all the lights on the hills across the freeway. Gold street lights, silver house lights—they flickered in the heat, and then red tail-lights were blinking rubies when a car headed up the streets. She couldn’t do anything for Nate. What could she give Carolanne? All day, she made work for herself, saying she didn’t like the harsh-chalky smell of the dishes when they came out of the dishwasher, so she washed them herself, dried and put them away. She crocheted like Tiny Momma had finally taught her, and she tried to read Carolanne’s magazines—fashion and decorating and cooking. But when she had finished a blanket for the leather couch, to keep Nate from sticking, she saw that there was nothing crocheted in the kind of decor Carolanne had told her would be perfect for the condo. Nothing so homemade, or so yellow.

  She sat with her feet up on the balcony railing, listening to the stream. I be thirty-nine in August, when preseason game start. Near forty year old.

  She tried to watch Oprah and Phil with Carolanne, tried to make conversation. The baby with water on the brain, the women who had been raped, the men who cheated on their wives and mistresses—after someone spoke, applause like clicking marbles, before each commercial, after each commercial, the people clapping like machines. No girls came over to talk to Carolanne; she talked on the phone with Tiana, she called her aunt and sister in L.A. often.

  Nate said Carolanne’s mother had died when she was young. Carolanne painted her fingernails, cut out recipes, looked at the shopping channel, and pu
shed buttons on the phone. She told Marietta that Nate was angrier every day, refusing to do anything she asked. “He doesn’t want to change. He wants his life-style to stay just the same, hang out with the boys, dress like a slob, play with Freeman for three minutes, and then watch ESPN. That’s not a life-style.”

  When Carolanne slapped Freeman’s hand lightly to make him stop pulling the leaves from the plants in the living room, he smiled as she lectured him. Nate popped him hard, and he wailed, ran in circles. “Yeah, do it the old way, Nate,” Carolanne hissed. “Don’t explain what he’s doing wrong—just hit him and tell him ‘Because.’”

  Marietta couldn’t watch. One night she told them, “You all come over here for eat tonight. Them boys be gone for training camp soon. I make something special.”

  When they were sitting at the smoked-glass table in the dining room, she put down four large dishes and turned to Carolanne. They all looked at the bowls—grits, rice, tomatoes, watermelon.

  “Okay. This it—remember, Nate? Carolanne don’t know. This it. Winter the white one. Summer the red one. All we have for eat sometime, maybe a week, maybe two. Calvin? You remember?”

  “So?” Nate said. “Pass the rice.”

  “So you all worry every day bout you should be buy this, you gotta have that, all you three worry every minute. Have for go shopping, buy a new tape and new shirt. Carolanne don’t know what for do with sheself, think so hard how she spend some money today. You make yourself crazy, Carolanne. Always talk bout life-style.” Carolanne opened her mouth, her forehead angry, but Marietta said, “I finish. I just want recall for you how we come up.”

  She left, relieved and ashamed, and walked around the cars in the garage below the condos. She hadn’t learned to drive yet. Maybe Calvin could teach her someday. A woman drove past and looked at her, eyes wide, and she went back inside the garage to sit inside the cool front seat of the Lincoln.

  She didn’t go next door for a few days, because she didn’t know what to say to Carolanne. She waited for Nate to tell her something, but he only asked for more chicken. Calvin let Rock in, and Marietta said, “Well, Mr. Rock, I think we need you for take us.”

  “Excuse me, Miz Cook?”

  “That all you ever say for me,” Marietta said. “I speak clear now. My boy too worry every day. You make em worry. I think you all need for take a day off tomorrow and we go where you say you uncle and them fish. Where that place?”

  “Rio Seco. I don’t know, tomorrow’s Saturday. Y’all think you can hang fishin in the city instead a the swamp?” Rock laughed.

  Nate shrugged, but Calvin said, “I know I need a break.”

  “Jammin,” Rock said. “You can follow me in the Lincoln.”

  “We gon take Freeman, Nate,” Marietta said. But when she went early the next morning to get him, nodding carefully to Carolanne, she saw that Nate hadn’t told her.

  “Where you guys going?” Carolanne said, looking at their clothes.

  “We give you a break day. We gon go fish with Rock,” Marietta said. Nate picked up Freeman and walked toward the open door.

  “Uh-uh, don’t even trip like that,” Carolanne said. “He ain’t goin nowhere by no water in this heat, get burned black and he can’t even swim.”

  “He need some color,” Nate said. “You raise him like a sissy, won’t let me do nothin. He goin fishin.”

  After Freeman’s feet swung clear of the doorway, Carolanne turned to Marietta. “I don’t know why you want to do this shit. You didn’t want Nate to marry me in the first place, and now you want to break us up.”

  Marietta breathed deep. “I ain’t do nothing. You two doing it. I didn’t even know you and Nate was gon get marry when you come to Charleston.”

  “You wouldn’t let him go hardship when we needed the money, you made him stay his senior year. Go ahead—catch some damn fish. I don’t want to see none a you anyway.” Carolanne slammed the bedroom door.

  “Let’s go, man,” Rock said.

  “I gotta wait for Bulk,” Nate said.

  “Bulk ain’t comin, he ain’t never seen a lake in his life,” Rock said.

  “No, he just comin by cause I have to give him somethin,” Nate said, and they sat on the couch for a few minutes while Marietta changed Freeman’s diaper.

  When Jeffrey came in, Nate smiled and the others joked with him. Then Nate said, “Uh, come in the bedroom, man, you gotta see Calvin’s new suit,” and Jeffrey followed him, saying, “Yeah, Calvin, I heard you tryin to get live with the double-breasted.” But something was too careful about Nate’s eyes. His words were practiced, and she knew he was hiding something.

  Calvin bounced his knee nervously and then said, “I’ma tell him we gotta go.”

  They were waiting in the Lincoln when Jeffrey drove away. “Just get in here and I’ll drive,” Nate said to Rock.

  “Naw, man,” Rock complained, but Calvin said, “I’ll sit in the back, man, let’s get on the road.”

  They headed the opposite way from Los Angeles, winding through steep hills, and she thought again that the California she had always seen in the magazines wasn’t here. The slopes were brown and gold, and then they crossed over a riverbed. She looked down and saw a wide, sandy stripe with a thin, silver streak of water slicing down the center.

  “That’s the Santa Ana River,” Rock said proudly.

  “That ain’t no river!” Nate said. “That some rain running down a gutter.”

  “Shut up, man, it’s the only river around here. The L.A. River is in concrete and shit—this is a real river,” Rock said. Calvin and Marietta laughed, too.

  “We gotta go by and get my uncle,” Rock went on. “He gon talk to you all day about our defense, Nate. Get off here and turn left.”

  They drove among warehouses and railroad tracks and suddenly they were in a neighborhood of black faces, small wooden houses with palm trees lining the streets and geraniums growing into the fences. Marietta felt her heart quicken, seeing an old truck like Big Johnny’s and shirts hanging on a backyard line.

  “We in the ghetto now,” Rock said.

  “Shit, you call this a ghetto?” Nate said. “Huh.”

  “Palm tree bigger here,” Marietta murmured to Calvin, and at a house with cars parked on the dirt yard and tangles of engines around the edges, Rock told Nate to stop. A man with a long nose and freckles on his reddish skin sat with several other men on folding chairs in the yard.

  “Can’t you tell which one is my uncle?” Rock said. “I told you his name.”

  “Red Man,” Calvin said. “Yeah, I can tell.”

  The uncle began asking Nate about the defense, the blitzes, and passing offense they might see in Cincinnati for the first exhibition game, but Calvin and Nate wanted to look at the old blunt-nosed truck parked the narrow side yard.

  “Mama, didn’t you use to tell us Big Johnny had a truck like that?” Nate said. “I saw it when we went back that last day before we left. I remember that big old hood, I guess. What is it, anyhow?”

  “That’s a ’47 Chevy,” one of the other men said. “Been here in Red Man’s side yard since ’48.” They all laughed.

  “Shut up, nigger, I wasn’t even here in ’48,” Red Man shouted. Everyone started to talk then, and it was an hour before they even suggested going to the lake. Marietta circled the yard to follow Freeman, keeping him away from rusted radiators, watching the way the men listened to Nate and Calvin.

  Finally, Rock got into his uncle’s car, but Red Man wanted to sit with Nate and Calvin to hear more about the season. They floated down the street in the Lincoln, and at the corner stop sign she saw an old white house sitting across the street, past a long dirt yard and a wallow of dried mud; the windows were covered with plywood, just like the House in Pine Gardens, but this one was only ordinary sized.

  “They was sellin that rock cocaine in there,” Red Man said. “Po-lice come and got em last week, closed up the house. An old woman use to live there, when I first moved to Rico Seco, but
I don’t know who own it now. Use to be a pretty little house. She had the best plum tree on the Westside.”

  Marietta had heard about “rock houses” on the news, and she said, “Who was selling it?”

  “Boys, just these dumb-ass boys from the neighborhood,” Red Man said. “Three of em. One was my partner’s son. Use to play basketball. They all downtown now.”

  Nate continued through the neighborhood and then across a deep ravine, dry at the bottom. She couldn’t believe there was enough water in this place for a lake, but she kept telling Freeman, “We gon see fish and duck.” They came around a curving road and she glimpsed the blue.

  Close up, it was greenish brown, murky as the creeks beside the rice fields. It was a man-made lake, with bare, hard-packed dirt leading to a sharp edge and the abrupt start of the water. The ducks were so lazy and well fed that they paddled past the bread kids threw near Marietta, and Freeman ran after them, pointing, shouting, “Duck-duck! Duck-duck!”

  The catfish were stocked by the county, Red Man said, but they were mean as ever, and he pointed to the regular line of men around the lake. Most of them were black or brown, she saw, and a few older white men. Loud cars drove around the lake with their stereos pounding, but the fingerlings rose and snapped at the gnats near the surface of the water when dusk came, and Marietta, Calvin, and Red Man still threw out their lines. Nate and Rock sat in beach chairs nearby, talking, and Freeman was covered with sticky ice cream from the cone Nate bought him when the tinkling truck passed.

  Calvin said, “We ain’t caught but a few bluegill. I ain’t seen no one get a cat.”

  Marietta just smiled, sitting in the folding chair Red Man had brought, watching the silver moments of leaping fish, listening to the men’s laughter. All day, she’d meant to take Nate aside and talk to him about what she knew wasn’t right, find out why he couldn’t calm himself and concentrate on next month, ask him what was wrong with him and Carolanne. She felt comfortable, away from the condo that didn’t belong to her, and she watched him for the right time, but he seemed to see her eyes and stay with Rock and Red Man. She smelled the water over and over, willing him to remember the sound of tiny things hitting the surface and the bubbles rising slowly from hiding crayfish at the water’s edge, hoping he would stop talking and listen.