“Luke edward, you like gravy?” I ask him this one day when he got up. He was sittin dressed up at the table with sleep still in his eyes, and I was standin at the sink lookin at cabbage leaves for worms.
“Yeah,” he said, drinkin his coffee.
“I don’t see how you drink that coffee, been sittin here three hours,” I said to him. And that was so. Either me or Big Jim or David made a big pot a coffee early, when we got up. Actually they got up before me, but not because I was sleep. I just didn’t much like to run into those two—David or Big Jim—while they was so dedicated to gettin ready. They both had to go all the way cross town to work. To get there on time, so early in the day, they made some fast turns round the house. So I let them have all the mornin space. I usually just stayed on my cot where I was out the way and tried to think good things until they left. In the first months while I was tryina get my own routine, I prayed: Lord, let it be all right. Lord, don’t let me get mad. Lord, help me feel better. Granma’am, send for me.
Luke edward don’t care about drinkin old coffee, which probly was not a good sign for his opinion bout my gravy. I ask him do he know how to make gravy, and he say no. I told him I forgot how, and he ask me if I forgot since last night.
He talkin bout that juice I served over them meatballs. I said, “Luke edward, that juice I poured over them meatballs wasn’t no gravy.”
“Tasted fine to me,” and he start to pick sleep out his eyes.
BIG JIM SAY he like his meat crisp. He say, “People don’t always want gravy, Neesey. For example, like on steak. Now, you grill some onion on top a the steak,” he say, “now, that’s good.”
Me and Granma’am don’t eat no steak nohow, I am thinkin. Margarete is lookin straight at me while her husband sayin all this. She sees I have raised my hand to my lip and started to pull on it; I’m feelin disapproved of. She tells me, “Don’t worry, Neesey, all the food is good.” Big Jim acts like he ain’t complainin and puts in, “Yeah, all the food is good.” They see me not especially likin it that they say they don’t like the food I cook. Seem to me wasn’t much cookin goin on before, since if Margarete cooked a meat, she figured she had done somethin. She figured she had done enough. She seemed to feel that each one could get their own bread and mayonnaise. Least I cooked a vegetable and some rice or somethin to go under my gravy I made. Granma’am said that I’m a good little cook, and that I should do my best in Margarete’s kitchen, that that would be the best help to Margarete, that that would let her get off her feet some.
I have said what Big Jim thinks about the meat. And I have said Luke edward don’t half know juice from gravy. Well, Margarete has remarks too: she think I cook too many greens. She say it take some craziness to slave so hard over somethin that cook way down like that. You start out with a bushel, she say, and end up with a quart.
I believe in greens. Every Sunday I clean and cook five pounds, for Sunday dinner and the week. It takes good eyes and some dedication to cook greens. Maybe that’s what Margarete tryina talk about, the dedication part. I felt like I was doin best for the family, cookin greens regular, especially for Margarete. If you gone have a baby, you need to eat greens.
I thought maybe the taste bothered her, so I put in okra one time. Some people cook they greens that way. Margarete said she wasn’t complainin about eatin the greens, she just wasn’t gone cook none herself. She said she hate okra. So then I went back to plain greens.
I did stop short a makin gravy every meal. Well, truth is, I stopped short a soakin the meat. I continued to make gravy every night I had meat to go with it, but I mostly kept the gravy in a pot on the side. While I was adjustin my habits to fit Margarete’s house, I had to wonder why it is that I prefer to have gravy, even if it just sits in a pot on the stove. Me and Granma’am ate plenty leftovers, soft and soaked in gravy. Granma’am had got to the place where her teeth wasn’t so strong or so many anymore, so maybe we specialized in soft food to go easy on what few teeth she had left. We ate all our food in gravy, or mashed in butter, or slow-cooked.
THE GREENS AND gravy are only two problems I have with the meals. Breakfast is the third problem, especially after the baby. And then again after Luke edward has gone and David has moved. I don’t want to make breakfast for just Big Jim because that is Margarete’s job, I decided. Big Jim don’t want gravy, but he do want breakfast. Well, whether I make breakfast just depends. Every Saturday I cain’t bring myself to make breakfast, because if I make breakfast, other things happen. First off, I don’t get no schoolwork done until half the day is passed. And second, the scrapple or the bacon smell gets both the boys up, and that means that right away I need more breakfast than what’s already cooked. And sometimes Big Jim has the nerve to not want what I make: a few scrambled eggs, some toast from the loaf, some slab bacon. I think that’s a real good breakfast! But Big Jim has learned that I can make biscuits and that I know how to keep the lumps out a hominy grits. So he wants biscuits and grits, and for a while, while I was still confused about refusin to be cookin all this breakfast, he took to bringin the breakfast meat he wanted home with him from work on Friday nights. He would bring enough meat for both Saturday and Sunday, and I would make sure to add enough—fried potatoes, stewed apples, biscuits or breakfast cake—so that it fed everybody. But like I said, his Saturday and Sunday special breakfasts seem work for Margarete to do.
Lucky for me I had stopped with so much on the breakfast on the weekends, anyway, once the baby was born, and before Luke edward left. So Big Jim cain’t say that I don’t make breakfast for him because I am mad about him runnin Luke edward away. I stopped makin breakfast because I need that time to take care a his and Margarete’s baby.
If I did all the things they got accustomed to, and did all the things their baby needs too, then I would be mad all the time. And with me mad all the time, I would be teachin the baby all about bein mad, before she could even talk. That would not be good. So I give the baby a full breakfast, a bottle, and a washrag bath afterwards. And I let the grown folks in the house get breakfast for themselves.
Saturdays, after breakfast time, about ten, Big Jim goes out to meet his buddies. I don’t know what they do, but he will stay out until the evenin, when Margarete comes home from the shop where she works.
ME AND MAMA have always had a time with the men and the meals and what they want to eat and do. It used to be my job to get the boys in the house. At dinnertime, dark, when it was time to change activities. This started when they were little and so was I. Many a day I would stand ten minutes, and holler their names out the window. Not a bobbin brown head would come runnin. I would get on Mama’s nerves with all that, and then Mama would send me out to the schoolyard, where I would chase them down. I been walkin to the schoolyard by myself since I was four years old. I would call their names from our front door until I got right up to where all the boys would be, playin ball. David, Luke ed-ward. Da-vid, Luke ed-ward. DA-VID, LUKE ED-WARD.
“Don’t you hear me callin you David? Luke edward, why ain’t you answerin me?” I would not start to ask questions until I was a foot, at most, away from either one. I might stomp my feet, for effect.
They would keep playin, like I wasn’t talkin. I would tug on their coats and pretend like I could drag them home sometimes. If they were out runnin in their shirts and sweaters, I would go on my own and pick out their coats from the coat-and-jacket-mound piled high at the end a the field.
“Come on, David, Mama wants y’all to come in now.”
“’K, Neesey, get my coat.”
“I already got y’all’s coats, David.” I might be cold, hands full a their things. But I had to stay till they came with me. Otherwise, I would be in trouble.
I cannot understand how they don’t move when you callin them. Sometimes I wanted to let them starve. Or leave them out there till night fell, hard and black and brutal onto them. Course, when they was ready, they’d come runnin in, stickin their hands in anything that smelled like food.
&nb
sp; No washing, no consideration, no restraint.
“Why don’t y’all answer when I’m callin you, David? I called y’all all the way here.” They were not really listenin to me, what I said. I don’t know what they were thinkin. Oh, one time David did manage to answer, Aw girl, you ain’t callin nobody, you just walkin round singin. David always was the one to honestly name a thing. When I examined the sound of my memory, I had to admit their names did make a sing-song for me. That was how I paced myself, going from home to where they were.
Well, I still learned as a little girl to make a mess a their game. An important little sister skill: stand stubborn in the middle and refuse to let them play on. Then they would come.
Unless I did all a that, they might just keep on playin, ignorin me. Be outside till Kingdom come, raisin a rowdy ruckus. Coats tossed to the ground, sweaters flyin open, things to do forgotten, wind yankin at their screams.
SUNDAYS IS DAVID’S day to sleep late now that he works all the time. It’s the one day in the week that six o’clock can come and go without his havin to splash water on his face. So he stays in that bed like a slab; gets up hungry, round eleven or twelve. Sundays is the one day that Luke beats David to the morning.
ONCE I START TO CLEANIN, IT’S HARD FOR ME TO STOP
I HAD MY coffee alone at the table. Drank two cups. In the quiet of the morning after my return, I realize I let Harold Grayson go without saying goodbye. Without findin out when he will see Granma’am again. I decide to begin a letter that I can just sign my name to whenever he stops by on his way. I hope he remembers to stop by.
I take up my cot and collect all the plates and glasses layin round the front room. I wash them up. The kitchen is clean, and I stand starin out the window to the back alley when the sandman loosed his hold on the folks who still slept. David and Big Jim both are gone, I find out. Only Margarete and Luke edward are in the house with me.
They both come in the kitchen wantin coffee, Luke first. We both hear Margarete stirrin round.
Luke edward comes in, “Hey, Dee-Neesey!” grinnin, glad to see me. “How you doin? Did you forget in your sleep where you were?”
“Naw,” I answer him. I set a cup a coffee down in front of him. I have figured how to use Margarete’s electric percolator and I am proud. “I heard you in here eatin last night. What was you eatin?” I said. “What time did you come back in?”
“Whatever I was eating, it’s gone now.”
He says everything so flip.
“This is good coffee, girl. I see you didn’t have no trouble finding things.”
“Y’all disappeared. Where did you and David go?” I stick to my subject. I want to know what everybody does, so I can decide what I will do, now that I’m here.
“We went to look at Harold Grayson’s fancy car. Boy, what that mortician money won’t buy.”
“Dog, Luke edward,” I say. I feel like I should discourage him from bad-mouthin how money gets earned.
“Ain’t sayin nothin ain’t true,” he answers.
“Where David?” I ask, as Margarete comes to the kitchen where we are. Margarete and Big Jim’s bedroom is the closest to the kitchen and the biggest, off the back of the house. Look like it could of been the dining room or a second parlor room for the use of the whole family at one time.
Margarete and Luke edward both say David is at work.
“Yeah?” I say. “What time he go?”
“He leaves about seven-thirty, with Jim,” Margarete answers. She helps herself to the coffee, while I sit at the table with Luke edward, wonderin what is his schedule.
“Luke edward,” I return to our conversation, “was you and David just comin in when I heard you in here shakin salt in the tinfoil?”
“Lord, Coyote Ears is back,” Luke edward says.
Margarete laughs. “You in trouble now, Luke baby. Got somebody else watchin you come and go. Now tell your baby sister you stay out half the night, every night.” She sips after this.
It’s easy for me to look at Margarete while she talks to Luke edward. She always looked at him intently, her eyes full of challenge and amusement. She’s been looking at him that way since we were kids, when Miss Lena used to chide Margarete and say he was gone be rotten and wrong. I can’t figure anymore about her eyes and how she looks at him these days, because she looks at him and not at me, so there is no face for me to read. She looks different, older, though. I notice that her veins in her hands have risen above her flesh; this from age, and work, I suppose.
“What time David come home?” I ask, turnin my back to them to refill my cup. I don’t really want any more, I’m just nervous. I pour in the muddy coffee, I empty the can of milk.
“David and Jim both come back around seven,” Margarete answers me as her chair scrapes back from the table. In my mind, I practice, “Luke edward, you workin?” When I turn around to say it out loud, I see that it’s Luke edward who left.
I don’t have a choice but to sit down at the table with Margarete. I cain’t think of anything else to do in the short space between the stove and the table, where Margarete sits. It seems to me the humor has mostly evaporated from her eyes. I ask Margarete if she slept all right, and she answers me Yes. I ask her if there is any more canned milk in the house for coffee. She tells me we have to buy some. She goes on as if I have asked her all the questions about the house routine that I will ask in time. David has to be cross town to work at eight, so he’s up and gone shortly after seven. And Big Jim works in the plant from eight too, so he’s out right with or right before David. Luke ain’t workin, she tells me, and that’s all she says about him. She ask me if I’m lookin forward to school in Detroit.
Before I can answer, Margarete changes the subject again, like she just thought of it, and thanks me for cleanin up the dishes. “Lord, chile,” she said, “don’t these men leave everything everywhere?”
I smile because she noticed and she thanked me. Everybody’s glad I’m here, I decide.
I HAVE TOLD Margarete I don’t want to go to school. She ask me what I mean I don’t want to go to school. “Yet,” I say. She don’t ask me much more, since I guess it’s only three days after I get there. She tells me she can’t let me sit around and do nothing.
But I am not doing nothing—I don’t say this part to her—I am cleaning.
She notices my progress. “Oh, Neesey, you wouldn’t believe what a time I have keepin this house clean.”
I don’t answer, because anybody got eyes would believe.
Margarete goes on. “I can get help with the heavy work. I can get David or Jim or Luke edward to get up on a ladder for me. But by the time I pick up all these cups and glasses and socks and things and wash them up, and dust and wipe all the furniture, and sweep the rugs and floors, too, I’m tired, and I still have to go to work. Lord have mercy, I’m so glad you here to help me.”
I feel one a Margarete’s hugs on the way. It’s been a long time, but I still know how she is. Sure enough, she comes over in the midst of her chatter, and so while I’m trying to listen, and I am slow to look, the bauble of her voice comes close. I squeeze the broom handle, it is familiar and hard. She puts two of her hairdresser fingers under my chin. She has shaped her nails. She pulls my head up so she can look directly at me. She smiles. She says again: “You are such a help.”
Her mouth is lined with worry. Her eyes seem open but maybe they are not kind. I will have to watch. I guess they do look wary, and may be bruised a little, too. Her skin is fadin some, caramel, and her hair is envy thick. She is thirty-six. I see Granma’am in her features. I hadn’t noticed that before. The first time I saw Granma’am in Margarete.
I HAVEN’T SEEN Margarete in more than two years. The last time I saw Margarete was down home, and looking at her visit us down the country was much different than looking at her now, what with me being back to stay. She pulls me and the broom both toward her, and pats me on my back. She smells like bottles and jars: like hair grease, and bath salts, and other things
I don’t recognize yet.
Granma’am told me things would be strange for a while, but that they would calm down and I will feel at home again. “You and Mahr-greet will be a good team,” Granma’am said. “You just be a worker bee, like I taught you.”
I PRETEND TO be a doctor to the flat. I try to keep everything clean and organized. I try to keep the meals to a schedule. Mostly we eat one at a time, whenever we come in the house. So I give myself the job of makin sure there’s food to eat, when the folks in the house are ready to eat it.
Most of what I did for the first two weeks was clean and sleep.
Didn’t have much else in mind to do.
No matter where you are, or in whose house, if you stay there long enough, you can find dust in the corners, a need for hands to straighten the closets. And because Margarete had two boys and a husband, there was no need to look for places to clean and sweep. Just start anywhere.
I HAVE WIPED all the way round the kitchen. I started when Big Jim finished at the table, while he counted his money and left a message for Margarete. It happens to be Saturday and Big Jim is out early, the first of the men to leave the house. When he passes through the front room, he ask me do I need anything else to finish what I’m doin.
I lean back on my heels and shake the can of powder I have almost used up. “I need some more Bab-O,” I tell him.
He says, “It’s three dollars in there on the table.” He says I should get some ground meat for dinner if I want, because he will take Margarete out this evenin.
“Is David gone be in?” I ask him.
“Yeah, David be back, far as I know.”
“Is Luke edward gone be in?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“OK,” I answer; David likes meat loaf.
EVERY MORNING I wake up and the flat still snores. I try to decipher the who’s. Recognition comes slow. I still expect to open my eyes to down home. I realize through a thin veil of sleepy that I am not down home. These are new walls.
Good Negress Page 2
