Caleb's Wars (8 page)

"Try not to mind her," Aunt Lou whispered to me after Voncille had snapped at me for handing her a wet saucer. "She ain't nothin' but white trash without the manners God give a mule."

But I did mind her.

I was sweating as I bent over the sink, which was too low for me, and my back started to ache. Clean plates, glasses, coffee cups, and silverware piled up in the drainers. Whenever there was a free second, I had to dry them and stack them on shelves by the griddle. Tomorrow I'd bring a head rag and some rubber gloves—if there was a tomorrow. The thought of quitting kept coming back, and I kept shooing it away. Quitting after one day would be worse than doing it before I ever got started. If I didn't come back tomorrow, Pop would say it was because I couldn't take it. No way I'd give him that satisfaction.

By ten the breakfast rush was over. Plates of cold food stopped showing up on the sink, and there was no more to scrape into the garbage cans. At last everything was caught up—for a while. Aunt Lou inspected my work and said I'd done a good job. "Let's take a break," she said. "Caleb, you ready for your breakfast?"

I said I could eat one of the plates, I was so hungry.

"Come on, then. I cook you something. How you like yo' eggs?"

Aunt Lou cooked me three, sunny-side up, and I was trying not to gobble them when Miss Sondra came into the kitchen. She looked at me and frowned.

"We had no agreement about this boy eating here. Why didn't you ask me first, Aunt Lou?"

"Caleb done work hard all mornin'. I reckon he earned hisself a plate o' food."

"I don't believe it's customary for restaurants to feed their employees for free. He can get himself something before he comes to work. There's a war on, and I can't afford charity."

I put my fork down and looked at my breakfast. Everything tasted like poison now. She could keep her precious food. I pushed the plate away.

Aunt Lou looked annoyed, but she kept her temper. "He got to leave the house mighty early. No time to get no hot meal."

"That's his problem, not mine."

"You mind if I feed him dinner? What he eat wouldn't be nothin' compare to what folks be wastin'."

"Those two things have nothing to do with each other! If he wants to eat his dinner here, he can pay for it, like everyone else. I'm willing to be fair: fifteen cents a day for his dinner. Fifteen more if he wants his breakfast." She looked at her wristwatch. "I'm late for my beauty appointment. I'll be back in an hour. You know what to do to get dinner finished."

Yes, ma am.

When she was gone, Aunt Lou told Uncle Hiram exactly what she thought about that high-and-mighty Sondra Davis, who wasn't anything better than a backcountry cracker and a gold digger to boot, who had most likely been making time with Mr. James Ewell all those nights her husband was shacking up with his harlot. She said Miss Sondra had her claws so deep into Mr. James Ewell now, he'd never get rid of her, and she bet he was sorry he'd married such a hussy.

I enjoyed every word.

"I know it ain't Christian for me to talk like I do," Aunt Lou went on, "but sometimes I think God done put the Davis family on this earth jus' to test my faith. If that woman don't lay off, I'm gon' to be gone from here real soon.
Real
soon! Didn't want to come over here anyway. I belong back in my own kitchen at Mr. Lee place! I's a fool to let him sweet-talk me into comin' over here. I ain't no restaurant cook. Five days—only five days!—and I already done had enough."

Uncle Hiram put his arm around her shoulder. "Come on, now, sugar. Don't let that woman upset you. She ain't worth a drop o' yo' spit, and that God's truth."

"Sayin' that Caleb got to pay for his meals! Three hours' pay for a breakfast and a dinner? No way! Don't you worry," she told me. "I's gon' feed you, and that tight-fisted bitch ain't never got to know one thing about it."

"How, Aunt Lou?"

"She can't be in here every minute, can she? Not as long as she havin' so much fun playin' hostess. What she don't know won't hurt her."

"What about the waitresses? They come in here all the time."

"I can feed you outside the back door if I got to! Both of them stuck-up white ladies too good to go back there with the colored help."

I had to smile again. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all. Not with Aunt Lou on my side.

***

While Aunt Lou worked on dinner, I was sent into the dining room to sweep and tidy up. The room was empty, the front door locked, and a Closed sign faced the sidewalk. I felt nervous, like I was trespassing. Any second I expected some invisible white person to tell me to get out.

Voncille and Betty Jean had left me the tables to clean, even though that was supposed to be their job. The ashtrays were full. The floor was littered and some wet, sticky places needed mopping. I hadn't made any of this mess, but it was my job to clean it up. Ma said she wondered why so many Negroes spent their lives picking up after white folks. Now I truly understood what she meant.

While I worked, good smells got my mouth watering. By half past eleven, when the Dixie Belle opened for dinner, Aunt Lou and Uncle Hiram had put together a menu of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes or rice with gravy, macaroni and cheese, collards, squash casserole, black-eyed peas, and pans of cornbread. For dessert there was banana pudding or lemon icebox pie.

If I thought breakfast was busy, dinner was crazy. And it lasted just as long. I had my arms in my third sink-ful of hot, soapy water when Mr. Davis burst into the kitchen. His son, Stewart, a handsome, blond-haired guy Randall's age, was right behind him.

"How y'all doing in here today?" said Mr. Davis. "Lou, you all right?"

"Yessuh." She didn't even look up from her skillet of pork chops.

"Caleb, how's it going?"

"Just fine, sir."

"They keepin' you busy?"

I grinned at him. "Yes, sir!"

"I knew they would! Aunt Lou knows how to crack the whip."

Stewart Davis broke in. "Where's that lemon pie?"

Aunt Lou nodded toward the refrigerator.

"And a plate?"

"On that shelf over yonder."

"What about a knife?"

"Somebody cut Mr. Stewart a piece of that pie."

Uncle Hiram got a knife and fork, but Stewart insisted on cutting his own piece—one big enough for three people. "No one makes lemon pie as good as you, Aunt Lou," he exclaimed through a mouthful. "I can't forgive Daddy for lettin' you come work here. We sure do miss you back at the house."

"You best take that up with him."

"Lou, we've been over this," Mr. Davis said. "It don't have to be forever. Just help Sondra and me get started. One thing for sure: we got ourselves some satisfied customers out there. Folks say they can't get chicken good as yours anywhere around here, not even up in Augusta."

"Them's mighty fine words, Mr. Lee, but please understand one thing. We
got
to have another cook, and that's a fact. Hiram and me is too old to keep up this pace. Either you find me some more help, or we both gon' quit. You let Miz Sondra know that, too. Now I got to watch these pork chops so's they don't burn."

"Fry a couple real crisp for me," Stewart said. "You know I like mine extra brown." He put down his pie plate and tried to hug her.

Aunt Lou shrugged him off. "I ain't got no time for no foolishness! I can take care o' yo' pork chops, but you got to let me be."

"I'm goin' back into the dining room," Davis said. "Come on, son."

"You be sure to tell Miz Sondra what I said," Aunt Lou called after him.

"She won't want to pay for more help," Stewart said after his father was gone. "Aunt Sondra likes to stretch a dollar."

He started to pinch off some of the crusty top from a pan of macaroni and cheese, but Aunt Lou swatted his hand away. "Quit that! Folks don't want to eat nothin' after you got your grubby fingers in it. We ain't back at the house."

"Oh, all right. I'll go keep Daddy company. Have one of the girls bring out the pork chops when they're ready."

"Anything to get you outta here! I got more to do than I can manage.

I kept my eyes on the dirty plates in the sink. Betty Jean brought another load and dumped them on the counter.

"Looks like you got more than you can manage, too!" Stewart joked. "Look sharp, now!"

He went into the dining room. I had some ideas what to do with his pork chops before Aunt Lou sent them out to him, but it wasn't my place to say anything. No, my place was to scrub pans clean from macaroni and cheese, where the cheese had baked on to the metal and had to be worked free with a wire brush.

While I washed and rinsed, Aunt Lou's ways with the white folks kept coming into my mind. She was respectful to Mr. Davis, but she talked to Stewart like he was one of her own grandchildren. And Stewart obeyed her, too. Not many Negroes I knew could talk to whites the way Aunt Lou did. I figured she'd earned it by all the years of what Lee Davis would call "faithful service" to his family. I knew that meant getting up in the dark to be at the Davis kitchen in time to put a hot breakfast on the table every morning, even Sundays. It meant staying late in the evenings to clear the table and wash the dishes while the white folks socialized and called for more coffee and dessert. It meant a lifetime of scraping dirty plates, scrubbing dirty pots, and drying and putting everything away at night so the whole mess could start over again next morning.

"Behold my servant." I saw Aunt Lou wipe the sweat off her face while she tended to Stewart's frying pork chops. She and Uncle Hiram had spent their whole lives serving white folks. And for what? I wanted something different for myself. Something better. If God was calling me to be his servant, surely that didn't mean spending my life waiting on white people.

Toward the end of the dinner shift, Miss Sondra came in and started wrangling with Aunt Lou about getting a second cook. Miss Sondra argued that things would get easier and that money was tight, but Aunt Lou held on. Either they found another helper, or she and Uncle Hiram were leaving. If nothing changed within a week, they'd be gone, and Miss Sondra could stand by a hot stove herself and see how she liked it.

Four o'clock came and went before my work was done. The dining room was swept, everything in the kitchen washed, the garbage hauled to the alley, and the kitchen mopped. Aunt Lou told me again what a help I'd been. That made me feel good.

On my way home, I thought some more about how Aunt Lou broke the rules I'd heard all my life. "Never let a white person see you angry or upset." "Never threaten a white person." "Do what a white person says without asking why." She had earned the right to disobey those rules. And she had paid a lot for that right, as far as I could tell.

***

At home, Ma was working on supper. "How was your day?" she asked. "Was it hard? You look tuckered out."

She sounded so sympathetic that I told her the truth. "Awful. It's hot, the sink is too low, and my back is killing me. Miss Sondra is rude, and so is one of the waitresses."

"I'm sorry. You could quit and go back with your father."

"Not a chance. You saw how he was this morning."

Ma sighed, then brightened up. "A letter from Randall arrived today. Guess what? He's coming home on leave soon."

"Does Pop know?"

"Not yet. Take care of your chores, and then you can wash up and rest."

I started to go, but Ma called after me, "Remember that your father is a stubborn man. He can hold out a long time."

"I'll remember, Ma."

Like I could ever forget.

Over supper, Pop told us about his day, and then he and Ma discussed when Randall might be home and what we'd do during his visit. Of course Pop didn't ask about
my
day—that was part of my punishment.

I waited until he had a mouth full of field peas. "I had a busy day, too, Pop."

"So?"

"Aunt Lou said I did a good job."

"Huh."

"She and Uncle Hiram are gonna quit unless Mr. Lee hires more help."

"That ain't no concern o' mine. The man can hire a hundred more slaves if he want to. Or burn the place down. It don't matter a bit to me."

"Look, Pop. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings."

Pop looked up from his plate. "Hurt my feelings? Is that what you think?"

"I don't know. Why can't you be glad I got my own job?"

He put down his fork. "You call washin' dishes for the white folks a
job?
That ain't nothin' but nigger work! You don't make nothin', you don't learn nothin', and you don't count for nothin'."

"I've washed plenty of dishes for them in my time," Ma noted. "Was that 'nigger work'? All those clean dishes helped put food on this table."

"That different! Ain't no other kind o' work for Negro womens. You had to do it, and I'm thankful you did. But Caleb here—he had a choice, and he made a bad one. Ain't nothin' more to say."

Enough was enough. I jumped up from the table and headed for the front door. If I didn't get out of there, I'd end up yelling at Pop, and that wouldn't end well.

I threw open the door.

And there was Randall.

H
EY, LITTLE BROTHER!
" he exclaimed, grabbing my shoulders. "Where you goin' in such a big hurry?"

I pulled the door shut behind me, too surprised to speak.

"What'sa matter? This any way to welcome a soldier?"

"What are you doing here?" I managed to ask.

"I live here!"

"Ma got your letter today. We didn't expect you so quick."

"I thought I'd surprise y'all. Looks like I have."

I took a deep breath. "Oh, man, it's good to see you."

"Something wrong?"

"Pop and I are fighting."

"Just like always. What about?"

"Later. Come on. They'll want to see you."

Randall grinned. "Listen! You go back in and tell 'em you got something for 'em to see out here."

"Okay."

In the kitchen, Ma was pouring Pop some coffee.

"Y'all come to the porch."

"Why?" Ma asked.

"Somebody wants to see you."

"Who?"