Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  That evening, Timothy chipped at the clay clumps on his boots thinking on the path life had blown him onto. No need in pretending that he was fighting for the same cause as the white boys, who had already left for Tampa on the ship bound for Santiago. No matter where the wind blew Company E it wouldn’t be in the direction of battle. Not when they could use them for shit work.

  In a few years, he’d leave the cornfields for the mill. He couldn’t smith like Papa and had no interest in sawyering like Junior had. Sharecropping hardly allowed for a man to keep his wife and children looking decent. Boots aside, he removed a pair of dice from his shirt pocket and practiced setting them. His throws were short. He could hear Junior say, “You scooting them across the ground instead of letting them tumble and glide like this. You got to control your roll. Tumble and glide.” When he could set the dice without looking, he worked on his toss: a rhythmic roll, tap-skip-tap-tap-skip to the same mark time after time.

  Sundays brought Timbo to Palmetto Beach, rubbing his lucky button, rolling the bones for high stakes. Big winnings and a growing bankroll had made him popular since he could lend money to some of the players. For every three dollars lent, Timbo collected four. “Hi-lo,” he bet. Two or twelve, he thought as he shook the dice and let them fly.

  “Boy, you take away that kitty, you have enough to build your woman a house,” someone said.

  The first die skipped twice and landed on six. A six and he had the game. The second die took its time, a pirouette with a triple rotation.

  “Corn rows!”

  Six and six.

  .

  In the unlucky hour that found Timothy with no money, including what he’d put aside for Roena’s ring, a loud thud woke Lemon. She nudged her husband. “Ennis, something’s going on out there.” Maybe one of the chickens had gotten loose. Lemon crawled out from the wool blanket and the heat of her husband’s body and threw his coat over her shoulders. In the kitchen she groped blindly for the shovel somewhere in the corner. She crept toward the garden fence, straining to see and tightening her grip on the shovel. “Go on away from there. You hear me talking to you? Go on. Get now. Get!” she hissed, drawing the animal out into the moonlight.

  A dog, or something quite pitiful that would be a dog again someday, reclined on its haunches, its rib cage pressed against fur like garlic against its own papery skin. “I guess you don’t believe fat meat is greasy. When I say get, I mean—” The mangy thing sprang to his feet, bounding in the opposite direction as the coat slid from Lemon’s shoulders to the ground, where she caught it underfoot, stumbled, and fell. “They say hunger pains messes with the mind. It’s done surely messed with yours. When I get up from here we gonna find you something to eat. And you welcome to stay. But if you plan on staying we got to get one thing straight: you can’t be messing in my garden.”

  .

  Timbo and Ivoe had both been born in September. This pregnancy came at the worst possible time—when Lemon’s garden was not in bloom. To worry a wrong situation into rightness, she took long walks down by the creek, but not without a word from Ennis. “It ain’t summer. You fixing to fool around and catch your death out in that cool air.” She grabbed at her hips. “Ain’t enough cold to freeze all this here meat on me.” She had gained more weight with this baby than the others; this too she blamed on the weather. “Nothing to do but sit and eat,” she presently complained to May-Belle, who was staying with the family until the birth.

  May-Belle chuckled. “Sitting and eating ain’t all y’all been doing.”

  Lemon smiled to herself. With her other pregnancies, by the sixth month she could barely stand Ennis’s eyes on her let alone his hands. This time she blamed the baby for the extra sprinkle of sugar in his morning coffee, the care she took with his supper, the gentle filing of his nails. Countless times without knowing how or why she wound up on his path, she arrived at his work cabin, rucking up her skirt as soon as he opened the door.

  Lemon glanced over at the woodpile. April’s unusual cold called for nightly burning of the hearth. They were down to their last logs. Struggling to fasten the coat over her belly, she wondered about Timbo. “May-Belle, I’m gonna take some air.”

  She came to a dry gulch lined with sticks and stones as fire shot across her lower back, forcing her legs out beneath her. She crawled into a position that offered little comfort. As soon as the pain lessened she would head home and have her baby. Bunk drew in close, his wet nose against her cheek until he turned his full attention to the drupes scattered on the ground. Not long after his feast began, Lemon let out a high-pitched yowl.

  Bunk barked at the door.

  “Where’s Lemon?” May-Belle asked, holding the door open.

  Bunk walked backward a few paces.

  “Where’s Lemon, Bunk?”

  He whimpered and shook his body, flinging hulls of a nutlike fruit from his dense cinnamon coat. May-Belle bent down and stared at the porch. She grabbed up a few things and followed Bunk to the hackberry grove. “Look like this one about ready to join us,” she said as she and the dog closed in around her writhing niece. She put aside the heavy quilt and withdrew a small metal box from her bag, then helped Lemon to her feet. Holding her belly from the underside, Lemon chewed the black cohosh from the tin as she walked to a tree, put her back against it, and squatted over the quilt. May-Belle knelt beside her, tearing off the wet bloomers and kneading the center of her belly. “This baby’s right at the door of life.” May-Belle never knew the premonitions to be wrong. Even on the walk to the birth site, she had batted away chilly visions. She had not told Lemon or anyone the peace this baby had taken from her, how often dark dreams rended her from sleep in a prickly sweat. The child would have virtue—others would struggle to keep theirs in her presence and she had seen the losing battles.

  “Soon come, Lemon. Soon come.”

  Bunk barked then squealed, digging into the cool spring earth as Lemon’s breathing changed to hisses and finally a long, deep groan.

  “What we got?”

  “Bless your heart, ’cause it’s gonna break for this one. Another split tail.” May-Belle placed the baby on a square of jute, swaddling her.

  Whatever Ivoe intended to say vanished when she saw the baby cradled in her mother’s arms. What color was it? Did it have hair? She could hardly wait to see if God delivered the right baby to fit her plan: a little brother brown like her with hair softer than Timbo’s—whose hair hurt your wrist just pulling a comb through. With a baby brother, she would remain Papa’s only girl, because even though he was tough on Timbo she could make her father see things her way and a little sister would only give Papa too many choices to think about. Baby brother would grow up to be like Timbo, another somebody Papa could wrestle and talk manly to, another somebody Momma could love, and someone she could play with and teach. Just thinking of all the reading aloud and new games she had to play with the baby made her tired.

  “Come on in and see what we got,” Momma said, staring down at the bundle in her arms.

  Ivoe halted. She had been so busy planning for the little fellow she had forgotten to ask God for the most important thing—that he not be born the same color as the Johnson children, who were called a lot worse than Alligator even though they always dressed clean and were smart. She crept to the bed. Please, God, don’t let my brother be black as tar—and ugly.

  “Them others didn’t have no hair, did they? Where in the world did this child get all this hair? That’s what I want to know,” Momma said to May-Belle as she raised her cradled arms.

  “What we gonna call the baby?”

  Momma demurred, as though she had forgotten that babies required names. “You know, Ivoe, your momma ain’t paid no mind to a name for your sister. You got any ideas?”

  A sister?

  May-Belle had prayed for this baby like she had for Timothy and Ivoe, but their prayers were easy because she knew
to ask for a strong will for Timbo and courage for Ivoe. She had intended to pray for the infant’s peace, yet when she opened her mouth, a crying plea for safe pathways tumbled forth. Now, May-Belle was sure of one thing: “Lemon, look like the way you miss your momma, Iraj is about all you could name her. Give the girl some of her grandmother. She gonna need it.”

  Late that evening, after delivering her mother a cup of pennyroyal tea, Ivoe returned to the kitchen, where May-Belle stirred a simmering pot: “I know something you don’t know,” she said.

  “A whole lot of folk got more in they heads than May-Belle. Now, what you know good?”

  Even her auntie told white lies, Ivoe thought, because it was impossible that anyone knew more than May-Belle, who had mixed the barefoot root with lard and cooked it down to a salve that fixed her sore arm and made the cherry bark tea that brought back Timbo’s hunger last autumn. The mayflower balm that, along with time, had healed Papa’s burned hand was also her doing.

  “Momma named the baby Irabelle.”

  .

  Lemon’s mind was full of all she needed to do. “Sugar and jars. Jars and sugar. These folks keep me busy, little one.” She took a small handful of peat from a canister and added it to the baby’s diaper for absorption. “Either got your momma on her knees planting seeds or on her feet in the kitchen. You think I’m about to work myself into an early grave for these folks?” The words of her complaint curled, revealing the delight with her new orders. In spite of themselves, one by one the women of Little Tunis had given in, especially to her tomato jam. In the beginning it was “Just one jar” from Ivoe, who pulled the red wagon down their road every Saturday morning. Behind closed doors, they made up a rule: Lemon’s jam would be eaten when there was nothing else. Nothing else arrived a day or two later. Seals were broken, lids popped and spun off, releasing a delectable aroma. Fingers and spoons dug into the mottled ruby pulp to taste what the dicty woman was all about. No one admitted it to herself, or to each other, but Lemon knew her business. Nothing made a biscuit or cracker taste better or satisfied both a sweet tooth and the hankering for something savory. Worse yet, nothing they themselves cooked made their children behave or their husbands cheery. The problem then became how to get more of the stuff without anyone finding out. They told their children to find Ivoe alone at school—only then were they to give her the money. At church, women grabbed Ennis’s hand, placed their hard-earned coins inside, and whispered what kind of jam in his ear. Those childless and without religion took sick so May-Belle would pay them a visit; then they could send the message through her. No one spoke to Lemon about her jams but the orders kept coming.

  Lemon pushed her buggy past the mailbox at the edge of the yard and shook her head. No word from Timbo in how long? Her mind traveled all the way to Florida then back to Ivoe. She wanted her to have something nice to wear at the town assembly. For a calico back button dress, she had settled on a floral print and some mint-green material for an apron chemise. With the baby and several new orders to fill there was no time to give the dress an eyelet trim, so she would be sure to buy a ribbon for the girl’s hair. She was deciding whether to shop for her cooking or sewing first when two women called out and waved her down.

  “Lemon. Lemon, why you all the time in such speedy-hurry? How you doing?” the nosy neighbor said, knitting her eyebrows at the carriage.

  “Fine.”

  “Lemon, you know Annie Faye, don’t you? She just come down with her family from Oklahoma.”

  “We’ve howdyed but we ain’t never shook. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Ain’t no great big secret why you don’t know nobody, Lemon. You know how you is. We been trying to friend with you for years. Can’t nobody confidence with you ’cause can’t nobody catch up to you.”

  Annie Faye fidgeted with the strap of her pocketbook, then said in a smoky drawl, “God know He love Texas ’cause He surely made His sun to shine bright on us, didn’t He?”

  Lemon’s head started to throb; she ached to run a hand across her abdomen where pools of sweat had nestled beneath her breasts. Who’s the bigger fool, you or them? she thought. Standing here fixing to stroke out running your mouth to women you could take or leave. Leave, mostly.

  “I see you done finally had that baby.”

  “Um-hum.”

  “What the good Lord give you?”

  As if you don’t already know. “A girl.”

  “Girls sure is blessings.”

  “Blessings my foot. They just a mess is what they is. You have a hard delivery?”

  Lemon acted as though their steps went unnoticed as she leaned over to pull the cover over the baby’s face.

  “Can’t say I did.”

  “Well, all three of mines liked to killed me.”

  Annie Faye laughed.

  “Well, y’all, Miss Stokes asked Ivoe to read something she wrote in school at the town assembly. I got to get after some material to make her a new dress for the special occasion.”

  “Before you go, Lemon, let us see that baby.”

  “Yes, honey, let us see.”

  Lemon pulled back the cover, causing Annie Faye to gasp and draw up a hand to cover her raggedy mouth. This was the moment when one or both women should say, “What a pretty brown baby,” because that was the compliment all new mothers were given in the Bottoms. Only not a speck of brown was found in the infant’s milk skin. This was the season when tiny bumps covered every child in Little Tunis. Why had the sun smiled on this one? Spared her the heat rash. And all that hair. The two leaned in closer, making Lemon stifle her laughter at the picture before her—two grown women climbing into a buggy. Irabelle cooed prettily then. As if she could sense their gawking, her eyes fluttered open. Stunned by the large, glassy eyes that looked blue one second, brownish the next, then purple, the women withdrew themselves abruptly, bumping heads and rocking the carriage. Lemon rolled off with deep satisfaction. Now they knew she and Ennis made them smart and beautiful too.

  .

  Soft bustling charged the cabin and excitement clung to the faces of the Williams family. Irabelle cooed. “Even the baby carrying on like she fixing to talk to a crowd.” Hearing her father—dressed like the preacher but much more handsome—call a thing like it really was—“talk to a crowd”—made Ivoe nervous as she thought of the day ahead. May-Belle tied her chemise strings in a bow and patted her on the back. Now, with the exception of one, they were ready.

  Ivoe watched her mother wrap a long bright green shawl around her shoulders and then cross it over her breasts. She looked every bit the lady as she took up her pocketbook. So as not to muss their finery in the heat, they walked at a leisurely pace, past the shriveled cornstalks and downy fields, along the cracked dirt road that eventually turned into Main Street. As her father opened the door to the town hall, he leaned down to whisper to her, “You smart as a whip and pretty enough to frame today.”

  Ivoe did not recall ever seeing a Negro girl in Little Tunis with a dress like those she admired in the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog. She had never looked so fine in her life, down to two braids instead of the usual four, the ends of which were tied with ribbon and, with the aid of the humidity, turned perfectly under. She walked to the front of the auditorium and stood before the lectern, far away from the last seats, filled with the people who mattered most. Shifting from one leg to the other, she flattened her hands against the podium to prevent her voice from trembling, but it was no use. “Dear Mr. President,” she began in a voice scarcely heard beyond the first row. She opened her mouth to speak again but the words within her stopped short. What good did it do to know the letter by heart when the muscle inside her chest was too busy pounding away to give up a single word of it? She stared down at the paper as if she had lost her place rather than her courage. Soon it would be lunchtime. Over sandwiches and lemonade everyone would wonder what the letter said that made it so special.
She looked up, surprised to see another person standing in the back of the room. May-Belle’s eyes shone pure satisfaction the way Papa’s had all morning. Ivoe started again, catching the sound of her words and liking it.

  The corpulent man wiped sweat from his brow a third or fourth time while congratulating Miss Stokes. As mandated by Texas law, each year he traveled from Austin to attend the assembly in order to judge the teacher’s success by her students’ abilities. And each year he found her work irreproachable. He was impressed by a teen’s dramatic recitation of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetry and the Caddo boy’s memorization of all forty-five U.S. states, but the thoughtful letter to President McKinley read by the little girl before him had moved him most. Her plea that the commander in chief never forget the effort of her brother and men like him and her ideas on how he might protect them overseas were a marriage of simple facts and opinion born of heart. He invited her to read it again at the all-state educators’ conference later that summer. “The teacher usually travels with the student to Austin,” he said. “We pay the train fare. It’s a long day. Sure to be a hot one too. But a day I reckon Miss Ivoe will remember.”

  Ivoe’s eyes widened at the thought of a train ride anywhere, while the beaming Miss Stokes agreed to chaperone her, assuring the man that the invitation was not wasted on a student who possessed enthusiasm, imagination, and diligence. She had noticed the way Ivoe took great pains at getting things right when called to the board; how she deliberated when asked a question; the care she gave to handwriting even though a sentence poorly written could be erased and rewritten, giving the final product a dimensional aspect as if the scrawl might float right off the page.

  To keep herself from smiling Lemon shifted the baby from one hip to another, saying, “Well, you want to go? Come on now. Folks got better things to do besides stand around in all this heat while you make up your mind.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I want to go.”