Sweeter Than Tea

by Deborah Grace Staley

  She turned to me, and her eyes sharpened for one brief moment, then her voice dropped back to the slightly vacant mumble I’d grown accustomed to these past months. “My fault. All my fault,” she said, shaking her graying head as she plopped back in her chair. “I signed the wrong papers. Gave away the machinery, everything. Forced you back here.”

  I hurried to her side and knelt by her rocker. “It’s okay, Mama,” I said, gripping her hand, her skin paper-thin, her fingers gnarled beneath my own. “I wanted to leave that life. Needed to come home.” And as I said it, the release spreading throughout my body told me it was true. The life I’d been living, the job I’d given my soul to, hadn’t filled me with the sense of belonging and accomplishment I’d expected and longed for. “I feel good about turning the farm to a new venture, just like you did, starting a fresh legacy.”

  Mama looked straight at me and said, “My fault you had to cart your equipment up to the attic.”

  My heart swelled against the tight confines of my chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mama.” My voice sounded faint to my own ears, and I sensed Agent Strate’s eyes boring me in the back.

  “You know, sugar. That computer you bought with what little you had left over from the court case and buying back this house.”

  I whirled to face Mr. Strate. He looked at me, his gray eyes meeting mine over his glass of milk. For a long moment, he studied me, his steady gaze inscrutable. Then he set down the glass with a thud on the mantle.

  I braced myself for the cold feel of metal around my wrists.

  He squeezed past me on his way to the base of the stairs and called up to the officers above. “Hey, Byron, Sheila, time to go. We’ve exceeded our warrant’s time limit. There’s nothing wrong going on here.”

  And as he was walking out the door in the wake of the officers, a hint of a white mustache atop his lips, he turned to me and said, “Maybe next time we meet it will be under more pleasant circumstances, Ms. Duke.” He nodded toward the mantle and hearth where he’d waited for so long. “I know a thing or two about fixing cracked churns.”

  The intense look he gave me left me wondering with an odd fluttering in my stomach . . . just which cracked churn was he planning to fix?

  Behind me, I heard Mama’s voice murmuring to Aunt Jessie, “Such a nice man, that Enos. But then his daddy always was a fine attorney.”

  “They’d make quite a match, wouldn’t they?” Aunt Jessie said back in a raspy voice meant to be a whisper. “That smart Agent Strate and your Lizzie Bet?”

  As I tried to choke down an involuntary snort at the ridiculous notion, Aunt Jessie’s next words came through loud and aggravatingly clear: “It’s like I always said, the cream always rises to the top, but only when it’s been run from raw.”

  The Agreement

  Misty Barrere

  When Mimi came to help with Mother I was in first grade, and I learned addition by playing Blackjack. On Independence Day, Mimi steamed oysters. We drenched them in hot sauce and took them on a platter to the front porch. We sat, swinging our legs over the edge and waiting for the fireworks to start over the water.

  Because of Mimi, my biggest problem back then was not saying “busted” when I reached twenty-two in math drills.

  She kept a change jar in her closet and let me grab a handful to buy toys and treats every time we went to the downtown Mobile CVS to fill Mother’s prescriptions. She never questioned why I bought the things I did, not even the last time. Somewhere she’d read that snakes in my tea leaves could mean I had a secretive soul, and she didn’t want to mess with that.

  I was at the pier with Daddy when she died.

  Yep. They said it was lung cancer. They said she hadn’t wanted anyone to know because Daddy needed her. They also said I was too young for a funeral. It would be a bad memory, and life has enough of those.

  So, I didn’t go.

  Daddy played basketball in the driveway, and he smiled when I interrupted him to help me with math. He promised to steam oysters, like Mimi. He promised to take me to the oyster beds in his boat, just like he and Mother did when they first started dating. He said it should be a tradition.

  “How ’bout it, Tibby?” he asked my mother.

  But she just closed her door, and he left, heading off to Biloxi for a few days.

  They said it wasn’t right to leave me like that.

  Daddy claimed it was the wind chime that kept Mother off the porch, so when he came home, he took it down. But nothing changed.

  I wasn’t awake when Daddy left for good.

  Nope.

  He waited until after I went to bed.

  They said he couldn’t take it anymore, so he called his little sister—that’s Lexie—and made a deal. Now, Lexie’s creamy hands put away the cereal and milk.

  They say Lexie doesn’t bother to clean down to the nitty-gritty, that our window sills are covered in dead bugs and that nobody better send us a peace lily since Mother lost the baby, because Lexie’s no green-thumb, either.

  “You’re all ears, Sophie Crandall,” Lexie says when I repeat their gossip. Her boobies are small, but her stomach is bigger than Mother’s ever was. Lexie hands me a Giant Mystical Sea-Life coloring book and a new box of Crayolas. “The Aunts are all talk,” she adds. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I don’t call her Aunt Lexie, because she looks nothing like Them. They wear big hats on Sunday and heels and want to read my tea leaves like Mimi, but I say No, Thank You because no one can replace my big-eyed, tan-skinned Mimi, even if they are her sisters.

  Losing a baby that was never born is not like losing a Mimi that you knew.

  There’s no funeral.

  Just a lot of silence and casserole.

  On a humid August morning, two weeks before second grade starts, Lexie has the TV turned up loud so we know it’s Tuesday. The morning news people say the heat is pressing toward ninety, and it’s not even nine a.m. We are supposed to go clothes shopping if it’s a good day. I’ve done everything I can to contribute because I want Daddy to come back home.

  On other good days, Mother will click off the news to quote things from her favorite book, which is all about pirates and this queen named Elizabeth. “It’s all true,” she says, while sitting in her favorite chair, painted yellow. Except she’s picking at the paint, showing that it used to be red. She rakes her fingers through her brown hair.

  “This isn’t a sappy romance novel, Lexie. Those Tudors were fighting for their lives. Elizabeth had guts.”

  Then she’ll ring up Daddy on the phone and call him Sir Francis Effin Drake. I don’t think this helps because Lexie grabs the phone from her and says, “Sorry, Peter.”

  So, I’ve done what I can.

  Right now, Mother’s medicine has kicked in, and she’s in the bathroom. She’s usually not in there until Sports Highlights. I’m already dressed, on my belly in my bedroom, coloring mermaids when she shrieks.

  “Snake! Snake! Snaaake!” Mother slams her bathroom cabinet shut.

  The thrill of possibility courses through me, and I drop my crayon and crawl across the floor, peeking under my door.

  Still in her old maternity night gown, the bottoms of Mother’s bare feet slip on the waxed floor.

  “Tabitha?” Lexie calls from the kitchen.

  I open my door with sweaty palms to see her stumble down the hall. Her fingers touch the chair rail, but she stumbles, trying to get as far from the bathroom as she can.

  My heart is leaping, bounding, squeezing.

  She might actually do it this time.

  I step into the hall. My tongue burns to tell her, “Go! All the way to the grass.” But, I keep quiet.

  The porch would be good enough.

  The porch would be a gold star.

  My hopes reach the fro
nt door, but Mother’s hand jerks back as if the knob is on-fire-hot. She whimpers and paws the wood like a puppy, then pounds it with her fist.

  “Snakes in the soap,” she says. “In the bathroom. Snakes in the soap.”

  “Tabitha?” Lexie asks. “Have you been watching Animal Planet again?”

  Lexie’s soft voice reminds Mother that the boards under the house have been checked and rechecked, as if she is reminding me that puddles breed mosquitoes. But scolding does nothing to help my mother. She scratches her eyes, screams that she wants to blind herself so she will never see the sight again.

  I cover my ears and back into the hall. Out of their view, I lie low, thinking if she blinds herself, I will never see her eyes again, which are blue like mine. I want her to stop. Now. But no sound comes out of my mouth.

  Lexie tries to hold Mother’s wrists and pull her close at the same time. “Stop it, Tabitha,” she says, irritated now. “You’re hurting yourself. I’ll have to call Peter.”

  “Peter?” Mother stops fighting at the mention of Daddy and collapses like a lawn chair, crumpled and shivering. With her knees to her chest, she lies on her side with her back against the door. But she still tears the tender skin around her eyes with her jagged fingernails.

  I have never seen my mother bleed before. Not on purpose. Not like this, doing it to herself.

  Lexie catches Mother’s wrists and starts to hum.

  “The snake,” Mother says. “It took the baby.”

  I shake my head. She always says this.

  “Shush, Tabitha. That’s an old wives tale, and you know it,” Lexie says in a voice that could get me to eat broccoli. She is a good babysitter. It’s funny to me that she is my Daddy’s baby sister. Baby sitter. Baby sister. I play with the words in my head, rearranging the letters.

  I twist a piece of my hair around my finger as tight as I can. It breaks, and I pull out another and wrap it around my pointer finger.

  “How ’bout a song?” Lexie says.

  Lexie was supposed to go away to college, but they say she’s blown her opportunity. Her friend, the musician, comes by on Sunday mornings and plays gospel music for her. He says Lexie misses going to church, but only for the music. Lexie says that isn’t true. She misses the coffee cake, so once, the musician brought her a coffee cake. If my mother is sleeping, Lexie will have a cigarette with him on the porch and complain if he’s ten minutes late and tell him he should really trim his beard. She always smokes for a long time after he’s gone and tells me to stay inside.

  Lexie sings for my mother, just like she did me that once. Lexie has a pretty singing voice. She does Landslide like the Dixie Chicks, but soft and shy, like she’s not done it much, like it’s her last choice.

  “Well, I been afraid of changing cuz I built my life around you . . .”

  After a few songs, it works. Mother doesn’t claw at her face any more.

  I unwind the hair and my finger slowly turns pink. I wiggle it to be sure it won’t fall off.

  “I hate this door,” Mother says, stretching her ankles. “I hate this snake-ridden house.”

  “There was just the one snake, Tibby. When I first came. Sophie tells me you and her used to dance in the grass barefoot.”

  I want to fling open the door and point to the yard. I want to say, “That grass. You and me. Mimi steamed oysters, and we ate them with hot sauce and crackers.” My mouth waters at the idea of something other than peanut butter, but my mother won’t remember oysters. When she looks at me, it’s like she wonders how I got there.

  “You should believe me,” Mother cries. “I hate snakes. I hate this door.” She cries until there are no hates left, and she is shuddering in sleep on the Oriental rug.

  The baby was a boy. He was supposed to bring my daddy back, but his heart stopped beating. That’s what they say.

  So, it’s up to me. But just like Lexie, I’ve blown my opportunity.

  Lexie pulls a pillow from a chair and rests Mother’s head on it. Lexie finds me hiding and guilty in the hall. She takes my hand and leads me to the front of the house.

  “One cigarette won’t kill The Adoptee,” Lexie whispers, pointing to her stomach. She means her b-a-b-y, but she won’t call it that and gets mad when the musician does. She says this whenever my mother is done freaking out. She holds up a finger, raises her fair, almost invisible eyebrows. “I’ll pour you some Kool-Aid when I’m done. One cigarette. I promise. And I’ll make spaghetti for dinner. You like it.”

  Lexie brings my mermaid book to the entryway. “Watch her, OK?”

  I begin coloring again, but not really. I stare at my mother.

  They talk about her in whispers, but I hear. They know that on bad days she spends most mornings raking her scalp with her overly-long nails that Lexie can’t convince her to trim. From the crown of her head to the base of her neck. Lexie tells them all about it. She’s really a double-agent.

  I lean over my mother and whisper, “Go outside, the weather’s nice.” I say it as many times as I can until my sweat drips into her ear, but she doesn’t move.

  I creep to the kitchen door and search for Lexie. It is never one cigarette. I pull Mother’s favorite chair to the kitchen sink and stand on it, searching the yard for Lexie. She is talking on the phone, walking back and forth, her ponytail snapping like banana licorice. Whip, stomp, whip, stomp, stomp. Maybe it’s the musician again. Sometimes she calls him when my mother is asleep.

  “ . . . needs big drugs, Peter. I mean, big, big drugs. They’re right. Sophie’s blue eyes can’t get any wider, staring at Tibby like this. You can’t keep ignoring them. Something has to change. You have to . . . you have to come get her.”

  I press my ear against the screen and strain to hear more. My heart is booming faster than I can think.

  “Now, Peter. You have to come now.”

  I glance at Mother—still sleeping—and run to the bathroom.

  This is even better than I hoped for. This is what my mother wanted. This is what she’s needed ever since she saw the snake in the yard. My mother made Lexie watch it while she called my daddy to come home from gambling in Biloxi to kill it. He never came, and the snake slithered under the house. We never saw it again.

  So, I have done it. I have helped, but Mimi would say, “First things first.”

  I have to hide my contribution.

  I open the cabinet door. Shifting lemon-scented soap, I snatch the drugstore snake with its cheap, half-painted tongue and carry it away with shaking hands. I creep down the hall and hide it under the loose vent in my bedroom. Hiss, hiss, hiss. Then I slide back to the entryway and flatten myself on the floor as if I’d never left Mother’s side.

  It’s a page of mermaids. Coloring those tricky sirens of the sea, I press the crayons deeper into their green slimy tails as sweat trickles down my neck.

  Lexie comes inside, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Hey, want to go to the pier for a while? We can see the dolphins. I’ve got money for ice cream.”

  So I’m not there when Daddy takes Mother away.

  Nope.

  In a lilac-scented nightgown with half-scabbed eyelids, that’s how I remember her.

  Lexie teaches me a new game called Uno. Sometimes, I win.

  I decide to keep quiet about the snake. I think of taking it to the curb like Lexie does the trash every Tuesday. Getting rid of the snake might make me feel better, but I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to be left alone, either.

  At night, the whispers come. Never mention your crimes to anyone, they say. They prick at my ears like scraping pencils on that math test when I knew none of the answers.

  We agree to keep my crime and the snake hidden. Then, the whispers go away.

  But not for long.

  I find Mother’s pirate and queen book in the kit
chen and read it at night, asking Lexie what every word means. I find Mother’s lilac lotion and keep it on my nightstand.

  School starts, and I don’t bother to make friends. Teachers tell Lexie my vocabulary is “off-the-chart,” but my math skills are stuck at “delayed.” I decide to grow my bangs out, and Lexie takes me to CVS for the little hair clips. I ask her if they come in black. I want black jeans, black T-shirts just like her. But she says, “Age eight is too early to be Goth.”

  She buys pink and purple clips with flowers, and I feel like a baby.

  For Halloween, the musician comes over, and we turn off all the lights and play Uno in the bathroom. He sings Lexie a song he wrote about whooping cranes and how they stay together forever. Her stomach moves. She smiles. We eat Fun Dip, play music loud to drown out the ding-dong of trick-or-treaters. Lexie falls asleep early, so he gets the TV remote. The musician and I watch a movie about a sea serpent. When he leaves, I tell him his song is stupid. I decide I am the sea monster, growing huge and sour like too much candy.

  Thanksgiving isn’t thankful, even though Daddy has given the house to Lexie and me, and he visits some weekends, like divorced dads. This is silly though, because it is Mother’s family’s house, and she will come back, right?

  They make us go to church, and then to one of the aunt’s houses for turkey and mashed potatoes. When we get back home, Lexie and Daddy argue because the only thing on me that has grown since school started is my bangs. They say my eyes look like a refugee’s from Afghanistan or Russia or something. With Them it is always yap, yap, yap.

  “She’s too skinny,” Daddy says. “Why don’t you cook some meat or something?”

  Lexie is not cooking meat. She says Mimi raised them on seafood, chicken and vegetables, and what is his obsession with meat anyway?

  Daddy turns to me. “Want to go to the movies tomorrow, Baby Girl? There’s popcorn. You love the warm butter. We can get cheeseburgers after.” He smiles, but his teeth don’t show.

  “Movies give her nightmares,” Lexie says. “She’s still hasn’t recovered from one Miles watched with her on Halloween, the idiot. And as for her weight, haven’t you ever heard of post-traumatic stress?”