Clover (6 page)

I like the man's picture on the Cream of Wheat box. He looks just like my grandpa. I guess my grandpa is still roaming around looking for that mansion in the sky they said he was going to go to. If he finds it I'm sure he'll get a room
for me. That is, if there is any truth to that. I'm not so sure about that thing.

Everleen tells Daniel to put down the terrapin he's turning over and over in his hand. “If he bites you, he won't turn you loose until it thunders,” she says, looking up at the cloudless sky. Daniel throws the terrapin down.

My uncle tells me to stack empty peach baskets. I hate to, I always hurt my hand. But I do it. Jim Ed is so worried about this peach crop I don't want to put another frown on his face. It wouldn't have any place to go, anyhow. His face is all filled up.

A late spring freeze caused the peaches to have split-seeds. That means that once the seed of a peach freezes, the peach will split wide open as soon as it starts to get ripe. When customers complain about the way the peaches look, Aunt Everleen will tell them right quick, “That's the Lord's work.”

It's a real slow day at the stand. Everleen jumps to her feet when a brand new pickup truck pulls up. “I see you have Elberta peaches on your sign,” the man says.

“Yes, we do,” Everleen brags. “It's the finest canning peach there is. Del Monte cans Elbertas. Says so right on the can.”

“Oh, I was just wanting some to eat,” the customer says.

“It's the finest eating peach there is,” Everleen put in quickly. She rubs one on her big fluffy shirt, and takes a big bite. “This is truly the best peach I ever tasted.”

She stuffs the money he gives her into her pocket. He is a physicist down at the nuclear plant. I put his peck of peaches in his truck.

Everleen is reading the newspaper. “Just listen to this,” she says. “This little girl is not even nine years old, and she's . . .” She didn't have to finish telling me. I know it's a story about some little girl doing something great. My aunt has never forgotten that Samantha Smith of Maine was invited to Russia because of a letter she wrote.

Everleen thinks if I write Mrs. Reagan I might get invited to the White House. We've been too busy with my spelling, though.

I go and get the dictionary out of the truck before she tells me to. She makes me spell five pages a day, winter or summer. “I think I'm going to have you do your C's again, Clover. You seem to have had a hard time with them.” I believe I had a hard time spelling them because she had a hard time saying them. “If a C you should espy,” I chant, “place the E before the I.”

I watch Everleen's lips move as she whispers C-A-U-C-A-S-I-A-N. She can't whisper worth a hoot. All I have to do to spell it right is to spell after her. Finally she says, “Kak-kah-sin.” “C-A-U-C-A-S-I-A-N,” I spell. “My mother is a member of the Caucasian race.”

She jumps up to give me a big hug, and knocks over a bushel of peaches. Peaches fly everywhere. There is a
peach jigsaw puzzle on the ground. Everleen cuts me a really big piece of pineapple-coconut cake. She dances her way through the spilled peaches. “Washington, D.C., make room for Clover Lee Hill, 'cause here she comes.”

To this day, I wonder if that sentence was right. I wish I could ask Gaten. Everleen doesn't know too much about stuff like that.

I open a can of Pepsi. “You'd better eat with your daddy's wife tonight, Clover,” Everleen frowns. “I'm sick and tired of all the junk food your uncle piles in at this stand. If you drink another Pepsi you gonna turn into one. It's not good for you. I believe in a balanced nutritious diet.”

Aunt Ruby Helen said Everleen didn't know beans about a balanced meal. Not a woman who cooked macaroni and cheese, corn pudding, fried okra, potato salad, turnip greens, candied yams, and fried chicken for an ordinary Sunday dinner.

I know what the real problem is. It's money. Jim Ed will go to a machine and pay sixty cents apiece for Pepsi. Everleen only buys them from the grocery store when they go on sale.

We've been having a lot of customers come to the stand this year. Everleen says they think they might get a glimpse of that beautiful white woman Gaten married. Jim Ed says it's because the peaches are fifty cents cheaper at our stand.

Before I leave for home Aunt Everleen combs my hair and makes me hide behind some bushes and change into clean clothes. She always keeps me a set of clean stuff, just in case I get dirty.

Everleen starts stacking peck baskets and telling me all the things I should or shouldn't say to Sara Kate. “Now, remember, Clover,” she warns, “we never repeat the things we talk about here at the peach shed. This is family talk.” Then she turns right around and says, “Now, remember Sara Kate is family, so be nice and tell her her cooking tastes real, real good. You know how white women are. They want you to brag on 'em all the time. To tell them you love 'em. They don't care whether it's the truth or not. So you be nice, baby girl.”

Everleen knows good and well I'm not about to tell that woman I love her. I do put some nice peaches in a basket to take her, though.

“Don't you go carrying peaches to her, Clover,” Daniel fusses. “Sara Kate don't hit a lick at a black snake all day long. If she wants some peaches she can bring her uppity self up here and get her own peaches. It wouldn't hurt her one bit to help Mama sometimes.”

I put the peaches back. I got sense enough to know they are not Daniel's words, they're his mama's. The only thing on his mind and tongue is a dirt bike.

Here of late everybody is getting on my nerves so bad. Clover, do this. Clover, don't do that. Say this to Sara Kate, don't say that. It's no wonder my leg hurts all the time. I guess it knows my heart sure can't hold all the hurt in it. So I guess it's trying to help it out. Everleen says I've lost my hearing, completely lost it.

I might lose what little eyesight I got left in one eye for real, though. I got some peach spray in it this morning. I washed it out right good, but it still kind of burns. The warning below the poison skeleton on the bag said it could cause blindness if it got into the eyes. I would have hurried up and told Gaten if he'd been here. I know if I tell Sara Kate she'll rush me to the doctor to have it checked out. So would Everleen and Jim Ed. I've made up my mind. I'll tell one of them about it after a while.

Sara Kate must have known we were talking about her. No sooner than I'd put the peaches back, she wheeled up and threw on her brakes. A cloud of dust blew everywhere. Everleen puffed her lips out and pushed them into a wide upsweep over her nostrils. Her mouth looked like a gorilla's mouth.

“Hi, Everleen. Hi, Clover,” Sara Kate says.

I say, “Hey.”

Everleen pulls her lips down. “Hey, Sara Kate.”

A nasty old yellow jacket is sucking away on a piece of
candy I laid down. I know better but I still start to smash him.

“Don't kill that yellow jacket,” Aunt Everleen fusses. “You know if you kill one of them their whole family will swarm in and try to sting you to death. We may not be as allergic to them as your uncle Jim Ed, but we sure don't need to invite them just because he's not here.”

The truth is I did know if you kill one yellow jacket more will come. But I didn't really know why until I read in the newspaper recently that when you squash a yellow jacket they release some kind of chemical, pheromone or something, that signals a defense alarm that alerts other yellow jackets and they swarm in and sting anyone that's around.

Everleen is some kind of mad. All you have to do to tell when she is mad is look at her mouth. She is right pretty when she's not mad. She pulls a towel off her shoulder and starts dusting off peaches right fast. Sara Kate knows she's brushing her off. She turns to me. “I made your favorite supper, Clover, so don't fill up on peaches again.”

Poor Sara Kate. She doesn't know it, but it's Everleen's good cooking I'm always filled up with, not peaches.

Sara Kate is trying to be friendly. “The peaches are so-oo pretty.”

“Most of 'em is split wide open. And there's no size to 'em. It's a poor crop,” Everleen snaps.

“They are kind of small,” Sara Kate agrees. “May I take a few of them?”

“You asking me for peaches? Part of this orchard belonged to Gaten Hill. In case you've forgotten, you did marry him.”

Sara Kate turned redder than a Dixie-red peach. You can tell when she's mad, too. I guess everybody's got some kind of way of letting you know they're mad without saying so. She starts toward our pickup truck. “Be sure you're home in time for supper, Clover.”

“I'll ride back with you,” I say. I need to tell her about my eye. Then without so much as a word, she turns back, grabs a peck basket, and marches toward the orchard. She is walking fast, her head high. She is pounding her feet on the hard baked ground harder than necessary.

Everleen rolls her eyes and grunts, “If that woman don't act like she owns this place, I'm not setting here.”

When Sara Kate storms back, she just hops into the truck and speeds away. She forgot all about me. Everleen hugs me. A quick but soft hug. “Miss High-and-mighty wouldn't even let you ride home in your daddy's truck.” She draws a deep breath and adds softly, “That is, it was his truck.” Her eyes fill with tears.

Jim Ed drives up in his pickup. “Don't block what little air is stirring,” Everleen fusses. “Park over yonder. The dust
just settled down after your high-and-mighty sister-in-law drove from here like a bat out of hell. And here you come raising up another dust storm.”

Everleen is having another one of her fussing spells. But her husband won't fuss back. He's scared she may get one of her bad headaches, or get mad and quit on him.

A funeral procession led by a police car with its flashing light passes along the highway. Jim Ed puts his straw hat over his heart and bows his head. Everleen starts to cry all over again. She crosses herself and mumbles something. She doesn't know why she's doing it. It's something she saw on TV and copied it.

“I can't see why you crying, Mama,” says Daniel. “The cars got North Carolina tags and all the people are white, you don't even know them people, Mama.”

Everleen is really crying hard. “You don't have to know people to feel sorry for them.” In my heart I know she is crying for my daddy, because his brother, Jim Ed, is crying also. I'm going to cry, too.

Sara Kate had the table set real pretty. She put peach leaves around the peaches she picked. It made the peaches look like they were still on the tree.

There was a postcard from my aunt Ruby Helen beside my plate. At the end it read—“P.S. Wish you were here.”
If I had gone to live with her, I would have been in Bermuda instead of eating Sara Kate's soupy grits and chicken. I sure hate that I told her I had a taste for some grits.

Sara Kate spooned the watery stuff on my plate, and some chicken swimming in tomatoes and green peppers. I drank my ice tea first. Her eyes were all over my face. Darting like the eyes of a trapped rabbit from my eyes to my mouth. The grits slid through my fork like water soup. If she cooks me grits again I will die, just plain die. “Sara Kate,” I blurted out, “you sure can't cook grits.” Sara Kate was hurt. I could see the red hurt under her skin. She's got the thinnest skin I've ever seen. Her eyes misted over, but she held the tears back.

I remember all the stuff Everleen said about her. Like white women being so easy to hurt and all. “You have to remember,” Everleen had said, “the most of them have been sheltered and petted all their lives. The least little thing just tears them up.” I take a bite of the chicken. It's got the strangest taste. But I eat it anyway. “This chicken is some kind of good, Sara Kate,” I said.

Sara Kate offers to put more chicken on my plate when I finish. I shake my head, no. “Clover,” she says sharply, “you know how your father felt about shaking your head for an answer. Now, would you like more chicken?”

“Uh, uh,” I mutter. There was no way I could have gotten a no answer out of my mouth. It was crammed too full
of grits and that tomato chicken. That was the first time Sara Kate ever laid something my daddy said on me.

Sara Kate's back had been turned to me when I'd walked into the kitchen. The radio was playing “Song Sung Blue.” Her slim body swayed from side to side. A body moving not to music, but to sadness. There is a big difference, you know.

I'd tiptoed up behind her, and shouted, “boo.” She jumped like I had scared the living daylights out of her. She wasn't the least bit mad, or scared for that matter. I could see she had been crying. Her green eyes were all puffed up and red. She has started crying an awful lot here of late. Just up and cries for no reason.

There is a lot of sadness sewed up in Sara Kate. A sadness I can't figure out. Like it's hidden on some shelf too tall for me to reach. I'm beginning to think it's not because Gaten's gone. It's because she is stuck with me. Now I'm starting to think, maybe I ought to run away. Then maybe she won't be so sad all the time. I can see she's got her own set of sorrow, a set just like mine.

Sometimes I believe she really loved my daddy. It doesn't make me love her more, though. Still, something in me wants to like her—to have her like me, too.

I guess I kind of wish I could play with her like Daniel plays with his mama. He puts his hands over her eyes and in that strange, new, high-pitched voice of his, cranks out, “Guess who?” Everleen will guess and guess till she has to finally give up. Then in that voice that changes every time he opens his mouth, Daniel will say, “It's me, Danny, your son.”

If Sara Kate had done some of all the crying she's doing now at Gaten's funeral, she wouldn't have seemed so curious. There wouldn't have been so much talk about how easy she took her husband's death, either. Everleen says white folks don't cry and carry on like we do when somebody dies. They don't love as hard as we do.