by Randi Pink
A low growl emitted from Missippi’s stomach, and she released an enormous fart that smelled like rotten meat. Sue wanted to gag at the smell, but she held it in, since she didn’t want to embarrass Missippi.
“I can’t control them anymore.” Missippi hung her head. “I think somebody’s squeezing something out from the inside.”
“It’s okay,” Sue replied.
“I should’ve spoke up and told the other girls it was me the other night,” Missippi told her quietly. “They call you Stanky, but it’s me that’s stanky. I’m sorry.”
“It’s really okay.” Sue leaned in closer. “I don’t mind one bit. You can blame your farts on me anytime you like.”
Missippi smiled and stared at Sue for a long time. “Can I tell you something?”
“You can tell me anything in the whole world,” Sue replied with a gentle grin.
Missippi looked down at her large stomach, and her face dropped. “You can’t tell another soul, and if you do, I’ll know, ’cause don’t nobody else know.”
Sue held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“My dead mama’s brother did this to me,” Missippi said, almost matter-of-fact. “I don’t like talking about it or thinking about it. But if I got two of his little ones in my belly, will they come out wrong? Twisted up, I mean?”
Sue felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Flattened into the ground and sinking in deeper. Words escaped her. She didn’t want to answer, but she knew she had to. She wiped her face clear of the terror she felt on the inside and forced the words out one by one.
“No, Sippi,” she said before grabbing her in for an embrace. “Your babies will be perfect, just like you are.”
Missippi pulled back to look Sue in the eyes and smile. “That’s what my daddy calls me. Sippi.”
IZELLA/OLA
24 Weeks & 6 Days
A little over three months had passed since Walter and Izella took Ola to Mrs. Mac’s, and Ola was a brand-new gal. Even Walter was more himself, smiling and hugging Ola like they used to at the rec center. Izella, though, was more relieved than all of them put together.
She’d had the worry of the world on her little shoulders, and all the foolishness about keeping or not keeping babies was raising hive bumps in her forearms. Her fifteen-year-old self had flipped a coin in her mind and decided Mrs. Mac getting rid of the baby was the way to go, and thank the Lord she was right. Because if she wasn’t right, she would’ve never forgiven herself. Not ever for the rest of her life, and she had a lot of life left to live. But that was neither here nor there. Mrs. Mac had done it.
After mixing up her smelly potion, Mrs. Mac had poured a whole bottle of Three Sixes elixir into the basin and given Ola a big bottle of syrup to take every morning for seven days. She told them that baby would be gone by midweek, but the whole bottle would help get her along to heaven. Izella noticed Ola cringe every time Mrs. Mac called the baby a her or a she, and Mrs. Mac had the sight enough to see it, too. Izella wanted to kick Mrs. Mac when she did it. She knew good and well it was done on purpose.
As soon as they left Mrs. Mac’s house that night, Izella decided never to fix any more of her sister’s problems. If she was going to be stupid, she was going to be stupid all on her own. No more help from her. No, ma’am, not ever.
“You feeling all right?” Izella asked Ola, noticing a slight spread in her sister’s hips. “You got a shape.”
Ola reached to the back of the closet and picked out a light green shift dress with flowers across the top. She was wearing a too-small girdle pulled all the way up to her bra. “I’m feeling better than ever, Babygal! Like the old me.”
Izella felt a tiny bit of pride shoot through her body. She’d done it. She’d sent everything back to the way it was supposed to be. Her sister was picking out dresses and letting down pin curls. No grown-folks’ talk about having babies and picket fences and nonsense. Ola owed her big-time, Izella thought. If it wasn’t for her, she’d be crawling around the bathroom floor in the yellow instead of twirling circles in the closet like a happy girl.
“You owe me.” Izella couldn’t help herself. She’d been handling Ola with kid gloves for months now, and she was due a thousand thank-yous for all she had done for her big sister. “You owe me big-time.”
“Owe you?” Ola replied, shocked. “You didn’t do nothing, Babygal. I would’ve thought to go to Mrs. Mac myself before too long.”
“You ain’t smart enough to do nothing like that!” Izella shot out of bed. “Besides, you didn’t even know what Mrs. Mac was before I told you.”
“Keep your voice down!” Ola said before rehanging the dress in the closet. “Evangelist might hear you.”
“Don’t you tell me to keep my voice down, you!” Izella said with the same disdain Mrs. Mac had when speaking to Ola. “I nearly ripped my hair out trying to get you and Walter out of the mess you made. And you tell me I ain’t done nothing? That’s it. I’m telling.”
Izella walked to the bedroom door. She wasn’t going to tell Evangelist on Ola. She would never do such a thing, but she wanted to scare her sister straight. Share in some of the pain of being overlooked and not recognized for all she’d done.
Ola grabbed Izella’s arm. “Okay, okay. You did it all, and I’m so grateful.”
Izella folded her arms, knowing she must look like a spoiled, stubborn child, but she didn’t care. “What else?”
“You told me about Mrs. Mac.”
“What else?”
“You cleaned up after me.”
“What else?”
“You covered for me, too.”
“What else?”
“What else you want?” Ola asked, frustrated.
“I want you to never call me Babygal ever again,” Izella told her. “Ever!”
“Fine.”
* * *
Even though Evangelist’s breakfast prayer was extra long, Izella and Ola didn’t peek at each other once. Izella was mad because Ola was such an ungrateful hag, and Ola was mad that Izella was such a self-righteous brat.
Still, when Ola cleared her plate for the first time in weeks, joy went through Izella’s body.
“These cheese grits are delicious, Evangelist,” Ola said with a mouthful. “Better than any I ever had.”
“They need to be,” Evangelist replied. “I’d been cooking them every morning for Missippi. I just about have them perfect now.”
“How she doing?” asked Izella, knowing the simple question could launch Evangelist into an hour-long rant. That was okay, though. The silence at the tiny table needed filling.
“I miss that ole gal,” Evangelist said, shaking her head. “I never thought I would. But I miss her.”
Ola and Izella looked at each other, both scared something awful had happened.
“Where she go?” they asked together.
“A few weeks ago, her papa sent her away to have her baby,” Evangelist said before stuffing a butter biscuit in her mouth. “Gal grew on me back when I was seeing about her. Such a sad soul, no mama and barely no papa. Every time I went by to drop off grits, she begged me to come on in and show her how to be a girl. Poor thing was all covered up in dirt and car oil when I first started going over there. She didn’t even know how to hold a mop, but after I showed her, she cleaned that little house top to bottom. Almost as good as you two girls.”
“They let girls that young have they babies?” asked Ola. Izella kicked her hard under the table. “Ouch!”
“They really don’t have much of a choice now, do they?” Evangelist asked with a touch of anger. “Why you care? You better not come here talking about you having no baby.”
Ola looked at her plate.
“Fig tree is about near overloaded.” Izella jumped in reflexively to cover for her sister. She couldn’t help it. It was a knee-jerk reaction—helping stupid Ola not get in trouble. “We might need to set up a stand out front again this year and sell by the pound. We made a pretty penny last year, rememb
er?”
“I saw them out there yesterday,” Evangelist replied before taking a hefty bite of bacon. “Still golf-ball-sized and hard green, I’d say. Hey, I was thinking of making Mr. Melvin and the boys some preserves, and catching the bus over to Tuskegee. What y’all think?”
“That’s a nice idea,” said Izella, happy Evangelist had moved on from Missippi and babies and other nonsense. “I liked them a lot.”
“Me too,” Ola added, mouth overflowing. “He was funny, Flossie.” Ola teased her mother.
The two girls laughed. Evangelist never looked or acted like a Flossie. Not until she was in the same room with Mr. Melvin, that is.
“Stop that now,” said Evangelist with a small, shy, unfamiliar smile. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend you want to take homemade fig preserves all the way to Tuskegee for?” asked Ola.
“No, no,” said Izella. “A friend you let call you Flossie.”
They chuckled again.
“Y’all need to stay out of grown-folks’ business.” Evangelist stood from the table and went to the counter, turning her back to the girls.
Izella also stood and began gathering utensils from the table. “It’s okay,” she said. “We liked Mr. Melvin. Ain’t that right, Ola?”
“Yep. We hear y’all talking on the phone all times of night like you slick,” Ola said. “He’ll make as good a daddy as any other, I’d say.”
Evangelist dropped the dishes in the sink with a crash. “Girls.” She turned back around to face her daughters. “No soul on earth could ever replace your daddy, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said together.
“We forgot our manners,” added Izella.
“Yes, you did,” Evangelist assured them.
As they cleared the breakfast table, they heard a female voice humming “Oh Happy Day” up the walkway.
“You expecting somebody, Evangelist?” asked Ola.
Evangelist shrugged. “Not until later on. Must be a church member come to say hi. Y’all girls finish up in here while I let them in.”
Ola and Izella did as they were told and took to the dishes—Ola sudsing them up and Izella drying. Izella kicked Ola square in the bottom.
“Don’t hit me, you cow!” Ola hollered out. “That hurt.”
“I didn’t hit you.”
“Who did, then? A ghost?” Ola dropped her dish and went to pinch Izella’s side, but Izella was too quick.
“Maybe it was a ghost,” Izella replied, jumping around the kitchen to avoid being pinched. “’Cause it wasn’t me.”
“You must really think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
“Nobody’s stupid in this kitchen,” announced a hauntingly familiar voice. “Two of my favorite gals.”
“Look who it is!” Evangelist said with pure joy in her voice. “It’s a miracle happening right here in Valdosta, Georgia. I can’t believe my own eyes.”
As Mrs. Mac crossed into their kitchen, Izella’s and Ola’s jaws dropped open in shock. She looked like an entirely different woman. Gray hair flowing down her back like a spring, skin alive and glowing, back straight, and eyes alive and less grayed over. She looked thirty years younger than she had the night before. But the sight of her terrified them. “Haven’t seen y’all gals in a minute. Where you two been?”
Evangelist continued swooning over Mrs. Mac’s appearance and completely missed the fact that her daughters hadn’t taken her bread in months. “How is this possible? God himself must’ve picked you up out that bed. You look like a spry young thing!”
Mrs. Mac placed her spindly fingers on Evangelist’s shoulder and smiled. Izella and Ola both wanted to flick her fingers off their mother. Witchcraft brought her back like this. Toiling and tinkering with young lives had given her a new lease on hers. She was trouble, they wanted to tell Evangelist. But they just stayed quiet and watched.
“It was your homemade bread that brought me back this side of heaven, child,” Mrs. Mac said to Evangelist. “So I come to bring you something I made for a change.”
The girls gasped as Mrs. Mac pulled the hand-carved ship Ola had stepped on a few months earlier from her satchel and handed it to Evangelist. Evangelist held it in her hands in awe.
“You made this yourself?” Evangelist asked with tears in her eyes. “I never seen anything like it.”
“Took years,” Mrs. Mac said, nodding. “Once a girl stepped on it, and I thought she’d cracked it in two.” She winked at Ola, and Ola cringed in return. “But it survived. Somebody need to hold on to it after I’m dead and gone. Ain’t nobody good as you. Probably be worth real money if you keep it away from clumsy little girls who don’t watch where they stepping.”
Evangelist held it to her chest. “I’ll keep it in the top drawer with my wedding rings, where nobody goes but me. I’ll be right back.”
As Evangelist turned the corner, Mrs. Mac eyeballed Ola skeptically. “You a little liar, gal. A filthy little lying little girl.”
Izella’s instinct kicked in. “You don’t talk to my sister like that.”
Mrs. Mac laughed a horrible cackle. “Defending her now, you are? Well, that’s nice. Watch her ruin your promise like she done already ruined her own.”
“You don’t know what you talking about,” Izella snapped. “We going on to live good lives. We ain’t doing nothing else stupid. Right, Ola?”
Izella noticed Ola didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at Mrs. Mac, who stared right back at her knowingly. Izella felt like a third wheel. An intruder butting into a conversation she wasn’t welcome in. In that moment, she felt young and naive. She hated feeling that way, so she pushed that aside and exchanged it for anger.
“Ola ain’t no fool!” Izella told Mrs. Mac, who was showing a mouth full of old teeth. “She might was before, but she ain’t no more.”
But still, they both stayed silent and stared at each other without blinking. Then Evangelist appeared in the doorway, and the moment passed.
“I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Mac,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how few folks think to thank me, let alone bring me things. And I can’t get over how good you looking. Why don’t I fix you a glass of sweet tea and you tell me about the fountain of youth you found.”
Mrs. Mac tilted her head and grinned. “Oh, no, thank you. I need to get on back home,” she said before resting her gaze on Ola again. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back to check on what’s what.”
“Anytime,” Evangelist said. “You’re welcome anytime.”
She was not welcome, Izella and Ola thought.
* * *
For the next few days, Ola and Izella kept turning over Mrs. Mac’s strange visit. Talking and fussing over it.
“That old fool,” said Ola. “She’s just talking. Ain’t no truth in her.”
“Ola!” Izella replied, frustrated. “You saw what she can do. The woman’s touched.”
“Touched by demons and not much else,” Ola said while clipping her nails and pretending not to give a care. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not taking her another bite of bread ever again. She can curl up in that bed and crumble for all I care.”
Izella couldn’t understand it. They’d been sitting around the same table. Watching and listening to the same things that night. Walter, Ola, and she had seen a woman send a baby on to heaven like a poof! Gone! And stupid Ola still doubted her.
Izella used to like Mrs. Mac. Never love. She was too smart to love such a potent woman. Loving Mrs. Mac would be like loving a vial of deadly poison. Petting it and sipping on it until it killed you. Never love, not even once. But she respected Mrs. Mac for what she was. Stupid, stupid, stupid Ola, she thought. Would she ever not be this stupid?
Izella sat back on their bed and watched her older sister get dressed and ready for the day. It was a strong Valdosta Friday—rumbling clouds and mean, biting rain. Izella would wear overalls in such weather, knee-scraped ones that nobody cared whether they got ripped or scuffed. But she watched as s
tupid, stupid Ola hummed through her pretty closet in her girdle, pulling out pastel skirts and button-down tops. Izella knew she would come home mad and muddy like always.
One time, a few months ago in the spring, Ola had to throw out a fresh pair of white stockings. On a day much like this one, she’d been standing in the same spot that morning. Picking out the stupidest possible outfit to wear on such a rainy day. Izella told her not to wear them. She’d warned her not to do what she was about to do, but no, no, no. Ola knew what she wanted to wear. Not too long after they left the house, a bus splattered a full puddle onto her pretty white legs. She came home covered in muck and scrubbed those stockings for hours, but it was no use. Stupid Ola had to throw them out. Just like she had to throw out her baby a few months ago.
Izella tried not to hate her sister. But it was getting harder.
Evangelist knocked on their bedroom door. “Girls,” she said in a voice of exuberance. “We riding up to see Mr. Melvin tomorrow! So we need to get all of our deliveries out the way today. Double Mrs. Mac’s bread. And y’all need to eat a banana and some figs on the walk. No time for breakfast. I’m heading on out!”
Izella heard Evangelist whistling her way down the hall. She whistled louder and stronger than anybody in Valdosta, especially when she was happy.
“I think she really likes that man,” Ola started. “Old Mr. Melvin.”
“Who don’t like that man?”
Ola rolled her eyes. “He was kinda funny, I guess.”
“You guess?” Izella wanted to smack some sense into her. “He gave you his most prized possession! And you guess?”
“Oh,” Ola said before stepping into another fresh pair of white stockings on a muddy, rainy day. “You believe that story? Only a baby would believe that. He made it up. Pennies don’t flip up to heaven and come back down hours later burnt up. He probably ran over and over that thing with a tractor, and scorched it with a match. You believe anything you told, girl.”
Izella could hardly breathe. The last thing she wanted was to actually call her sister stupid to her face, but she felt the word rising up inside her. Why couldn’t Ola ever see the obvious things? The penny wasn’t important. It was the story that mattered. The wisdom of heeding warnings from those who’d touched the stove, so you didn’t have to. It was not fair at all. Being the younger sister to a stupid was not fair!
