Clover (5 page)

It had been my aunt's idea to go see the King Tut exhibition. Once we got there and saw the long lines, she changed her mind. We were getting ready to leave when she spotted one of her neighbors, a doctor at Howard University Hospital, waiting in line.

While they chatted, the doctor's beeper went off. I thought that was some kind of cool. I wished my daddy had one. Gaten volunteered to hold his place in line while he made his phone call.

It turned out he was on call at the hospital and had to leave. Gaten said the position in line was too good to give up. So he stayed. My aunt and I went shopping.

At breakfast the next morning, Gaten said he couldn't believe that just by chance he had bumped into someone he hadn't seen in years. “I mean I literally bumped into her,” he laughed. “When I turned to apologize, we recognized each other. We first met during my last year in college.”

Ruby Helen looked at me. “So that's the reason your daddy called to say he wouldn't be home for supper. I don't think he would have missed supper if he had known I'd baked a capon and made wild rice dressing.”

I sure didn't see what had been so special about the meal. Just another chicken dinner, as far as I was concerned.

“Well,” she said to Gaten, “maybe I'll see more of you up here now. It's sad that it takes some woman to force a man to visit his people.”

“The woman you've mentioned doesn't live in this area,” Gaten said quietly. “In fact,” he continued, “because of her work with the textile industry, she might temporarily move to the Carolinas. She's a textile designer.”

Gaten poured syrup over his pancakes. He smiled at his sister. “Pure Vermont maple syrup. At least someone in the Hill family knows how to live.”

If there is anything my aunt knows, it's food. Her husband travels in his work all the time. She stays home and eats. My aunt is as big as a house. She is still kind of pretty, though.

“Just wait until you sink your teeth into the fried cornmeal mush I'm going to cook,” she promised Gaten. “Remember how Mama used to let the cooked mush set overnight in the cold on the back porch so it would slice good the next morning? We would drench those crisp golden brown fried slices with fresh butter and molasses. But you haven't tasted anything until you've had it with pure maple syrup.”

Gaten laughed. “We only had it if it was cold weather. Mama never realized the refrigerator would have done the same job. She had to do it the way her mama did.”

It was so good between the two of them, remembering the times when they were young. If only it had ended there. But Ruby Helen had to keep on running her mouth and jump back on the lady he had dinner with.

I had no idea what my aunt meant when she said to my daddy, “Well, there is certainly nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At least it didn't used to be, but these days,” she paused and raised her eyebrows, “a decent family man
sort of stays away from that kind of thing.” She piled more pancakes on my plate. “If you catch my drift, big brother.”

I didn't know what she meant then. I still don't know. But what I did know was, I didn't believe anyone had ever made Gaten so mad before. He put his knife and fork on his plate. In the right position, of course. Gaten eats very proper. He learned all that stuff in college. “Thanks for breakfast, Sis,” he said.

If my daddy hadn't been so mad I believe he would have broken down and flat out cried.

I suppose whatever that one-night stand business was about, my aunt shouldn't have said it, or at least not in front of me. Anyway, I know that was what caused Gaten to end up cutting our visit a little short. Again, I didn't get a chance to see the White House.

“It's amazing,” Miss Kenyon said, “how one single turn in your life will lead you down a road of no return. How one, single unintentional act can affect you for the rest of your life.”

Miss Kenyon looked at Ruby Helen. “I don't know why you would let your brother get all tied up with a woman like her in the first place. Gaten should have sense enough to know that kind of a marriage never works out.”

My aunt shrugged. “Who says he is going to marry her?”

“You know full well he will.” Miss Kenyon's voice is sharp
and cutting. “And you and Jim Ed will stand by with your hands folded and let it happen.”

Ruby Helen squeezed her eyes into narrow slits. “Merlee Kenyon, tell me you are not accusing me of getting my brother and that white woman together. I may look like I'm crazy, sound like I'm crazy, but listen up, honey, and listen good, I am nobody's fool.”

Miss Kenyon dropped her head. “I'm sorry, Ruby Helen. So very sorry. I'm not blaming you. There is really no one to blame but myself. Me and my big mouth.”

She moved to the curtained dining room windows, and stood peeking out at Gaten and Sara Kate.

A group of women dug through mounds of filled green plastic trash bags, carefully examining rolled and wadded paper napkins. Poking with sticks through chicken and rib bones. They were searching for Cousin Amphia's false teeth, of course. Every year she takes them out to eat, wraps them in a paper napkin and they get lost every time.

Amphia appears to be lost too. Wandering around worrying over her teeth. Her bright red toenails stick out of her open-toed sandals. Her toenails look as if she painted them with a spray can.

Miss Kenyon looked so lonely and sad I felt sorry for her. I knew she was crying inside. My aunt must have known it, too. She excused herself and left the room for a while.

When Merlee moved to Round Hill from Greenville, South Carolina, everybody said she was without a doubt the prettiest black woman they had ever seen. Merlee thought so, too. And she didn't try to hide it.

I know she was the best piano player I ever heard. I also knew she almost drove my poor daddy crazy. He couldn't keep his mind on nothing.

They were really tight for a while. Nobody had to tell me about it. I knew it for a fact. Her car was parked at our house so much, Aunt Everleen warned her she'd better slack off some, people would start to talk.

And then some talk started. Talk got out that Miss Kenyon said she was in love with Gaten Hill, all right and enough, but she wasn't about to take on a ready-made family. She also said she sure didn't spend the best years of her life getting a master's degree in music to take care of someone else's child. Besides, little girls get on her nerves, she added.

As soon as I heard what she had said I made up my mind that I was not about to show her the killdeer's nest I'd seen. I had found a good hiding place in a tree near the edge of a field and watched the little chirping bird build the nest right on the ground. It seemed the little killdeer found the smoothest little round rocks and gravel. It rolled them into a pile with its bill, then settled down on top of the little rounded-out nest like a setting hen.

I was supposed to have started taking music lessons from Miss Kenyon every Saturday morning. I had planned to take her to see the killdeer's nest when we finished the lesson. But I didn't even start taking the old piano lessons. I didn't care what Gaten would have said. I didn't show her my bird nest, either. That was for sure.

Well, when Gaten heard what his girlfriend said about me, he stopped courting her altogether.

I kind of thought Gaten might have said something about the music lessons. But he didn't. He didn't say anything about Miss Kenyon, either.

Once when I was waiting in his office for him to finish working, I said, “Gaten, we didn't really need Miss Kenyon, did we? We can get along real good without anyone, can't we?”

Gaten leaned back in his chair and smiled at me, “Real good, Clover,” he said, “real good.” When my daddy smiled, he was the best-looking man in the whole world.

I don't know if it was what Merlee Kenyon said about not liking little girls, or what she said about my mama, that hurt Gaten so much. “I really don't want to wear a dead woman's shoes,” she'd said, adding that even the woman's backwoods furniture made her almost throw up. She also said she could hardly keep from throwing out all the tacky little whatnots my mother left in the house.

According to Miss Katie, “A woman should never, ever
talk about a man's dead wife. They may not have gotten along worth a hoot when married. But if and when a woman dies, she suddenly becomes a saint in her husband's eyes.”

Downstairs the dining room filled up with women again.

“Gaten's new lady seems to like his little Clover a lot,” someone said to Miss Kenyon.

The truth is, Miss Sara Kate was singing a different tune from the first time I met her. I overheard her say to my daddy, “Clover is indeed a beautiful little girl, Gaten, you must love her dearly.”

“Yes,” Gaten smiled, “she is quite beautiful, and yes, I do love that little girl.” He laughed. “She is also difficult sometimes, and as you well know, one can never tell what's going to come out of her mouth.”

Sara Kate had laughed, a rich husky laugh that seemed strange coming from someone with a childish voice. “Tell me about it,” she said.

I couldn't help but think, this woman's got the smarts to say the right thing at the right time. She may not have wanted me any more than Miss Kenyon wanted me. People don't like to take on extras. But just maybe, I figured, she had sense enough not to say it. At least not to someone who would carry it back to Gaten.

Yes, I'd decided, Sara Kate could so fool Gaten if she really wanted to. Poor old Gaten, he just might be simple-minded
enough to believe that if Sara Kate would be happy with Clover, then Clover would be happy with her.

Everleen brings a platter piled high with fried chicken. “There's enough food left over to feed an army. Where's Clover? Her daddy is looking for her.”

“Probably at the top of the stairs listening,” laughs Ruby Helen.

I sneak out of a dormer window and, when no one is looking, slide down the chinaberry tree at the end of the porch. I need to find my daddy anyway. I got some kind of a bad stomachache and it looks like I'm not the only one.

Aunt Everleen could certainly tell something was wrong with Sara Kate. “Go find out if there is anything I can do for her, Clover,” she said.

“Leave them alone,” Cousin Lucille said. “When people are in love they want to be alone. Alone behind closed doors.”

If anybody had looked at Sara Kate right good, they would have known by the way she looked, the way she walked, weakly leaning on Gaten. She certainly was not leaving for any hanky-panky, like they said.

Gaten and Sara Kate were in his bedroom. They were alone all right. But the door sure wasn't closed. It was wide open. Sara Kate was lying on the bed, her head propped up on a pillow. Gaten sat on the bed by her side, trying to get her not to talk. But Sara Kate talked anyway. She kept
saying over and over, “I'm so sorry, Gaten, so very sorry. Why did I have to get sick?”

“It's because you've been eating like a crazy person,” I said. I brought her a foaming glass of Alka-Seltzer, and put a cold damp face cloth on her forehead. My daddy hugged me, and said, “Brilliant.” It wasn't anything. I've done the same thing a thousand times for Aunt Everleen when she gets one of her migraine headaches.

People are starting to leave. Sara Kate is sitting all alone at the end of a long table. What little lipstick she had on is all gone. She is as white as a sheet. She looks as sick as a dog.

A dying day brings on dying moods. A cousin up from lowlands is playing his guitar and singing the blues. “Lord, Lord,” he sings, “sometimes I feel like I'm dying.” He kind of looks like he's dying, with his red eyes and puffy lips that look like somebody put purple lipgloss on them.

Gideon's beagle hounds are raising some kind of fuss. Running some poor little rabbit, as hot as it is.

“Pick that thing, baby,” Cousin Lucille says to the guitar player. She has put herself together as carefully as a clown. She is wearing every shade of purple I believe there is. I'm surprised her hair isn't purple. She is wearing a new wig, a frizzed one. The old one caught on fire while she was bending over a gas burner.

Lucille must have forgotten she's supposed to be a born-again Christian now and given up dancing. Because now she can't hold her dancing spirit down. Either that or it's those chiggers setting her body on fire. She's been in the blackberry thickets every day.

Somebody said, “She looks like she's having a spell the way she's twisting and carrying on.”

“Leave her alone,” Ruby Helen said. “She lost her husband.” By that she meant, not lost like you can't find him. Everybody in Round Hill knows where he is. Right in the cemetery under an old stunted pine tree. He's dead.

So Lucille danced, all alone in the still twilight. A lonely woman whose body wins out over a guilty heart. I don't care if Lucille's getup was unlike anything you'd ever seen. It still made all the menfolk look at her. And that made the womenfolk kind of jealous. I think it's because of her walk, not her dancing. Lucille's walk is a swaying motion, her soft, curvy hips move under her skirt. I wouldn't mind having her shape when I grow up.

It's too bad Lottie Jean has gone home with the new camera she got with her S&H green stamps. I wish she could have taken Lucille's picture.

Sara Kate has made Cream of Wheat for breakfast every day this week. She loaded us up with every flavor they made. I still like cinnamon apple the best.

On the back of the package there is a doodle. An easy way to draw an elephant is shown. You can do it even if you can't draw a straight line.

At the peach stand I follow the directions and draw a perfect elephant. I hide it behind my back when Everleen wants to see what I've done. If she sees it I'll be drawing elephants for the rest of my life. It will make her think I'm gifted and talented. I sure hate that they put that in people's minds about little kids. They never let you play anymore.