Clover (7 page)

We're just different, I guess. Miss Katie's still mourning over Gaten and she's not even kin. After Gaten was killed, she tried to cook but the pans fell to the floor. So she took to her rocking chair. Sometimes I would go and sit on the floor beside her. To tell you the truth, it was about the only place I could find space to sit. Anyway, she made me cry, too. I'm glad she's getting over Gaten.

People in Round Hill don't know it, but Sara Kate didn't really get over Gaten dying as fast as they think she did. Sara Kate was powerfully sad after my daddy died.

After the funeral she lit a candle and sat alone in the dark. I haven't been able to quite figure out why. People I know in Round Hill don't light candles when folks die. I didn't ask Sara Kate about the candle. I didn't even tell Everleen about it, either. I guess, in a strange sort of way, I don't want anybody thinking like, well, that Sara Kate was strange and everything. Maybe in a sly way I was trying to protect Sara Kate even if I can't stand her sometimes. Somehow, I really believe it was because I'm trying to please my dead daddy.

I'll probably find out about this candle business when I'm watching TV. I don't care what people say, you can so learn a lot of stuff from TV.

Daniel said if his grandma had watched enough TV, she would have known that the movie
57 Pick-Up
wasn't about a pickup truck, and would have never gone with him to see it. She liked to have died when they started spitting out all them nasty cuss words. And when the half-naked women started prancing about, she was more ashamed to leave than to stay. So she slid down in her seat, pulled her hat down over closed eyes and prayed and prayed that if the Lord would forgive her that time she'd never set foot in a movie place again.

Sara Kate's got to be bad lonely working in the house all day, all by herself. Sometimes she writes little notes on fancy flowered paper. I never see her mail them. I think she likes the pretty stamp too much to use.

She hurries up and mails the letters to the places that send the pictures of all them little sad-eyed dogs and cats. On the outside of the envelopes they beg, “Will You Please Help Save Them?” I do believe she sends money every time the little pictures come in the mail. It didn't take them people long to find Sara Kate in Round Hill.

Everleen says all white women give money to the animals if they have it to spare. She says it's because they feel
so guilty over the way their people treated us. They think by being extra kind to animals, it'll get them into heaven. But Everleen says the Bible says “the animals are born to be destroyed.” She thinks the Lord would smile down more on Sara Kate if she took some of that money and helped out the poor children right in Round Hill. Everleen knows her Bible.

I guess if I had extra money I'd feed kids before I'd feed the animals.

Sometimes Sara Kate plays the piano in a room empty now except for one new chair. It's covered in cloth that feels slick. Sara Kate bought it. She calls the cloth chintz. Everything else is pretty much like it was when Grandpa died. He made Gaten promise never to sell the mirrored umbrella and hat stand in the front hall.

I like it when Sara Kate plays. The house seems to come alive. Gaten used to play tapes of the same kind of music. Miss Kenyon used to play classical music also. Maybe that's why Gaten was in love with her too.

That kind of music is great to listen to. But it isn't hitting up on nothing for dance music.

I guess Gaten would have been happy with Sara Kate in this house. I know one thing, if Gaten could see her feeding dogs—much less stray dogs—out of the bowls we eat out of, he would just up and die again.

Sara Kate may think she is so clean, but this letting dogs eat out of dishes will never set with me. Me and Gaten didn't eat after no dogs. I bet if Jim Ed and Everleen knew about all this, they'd never eat a bite in this house.

I don't think Gaten would have liked all those little yellow notes stuck all over the refrigerator, either. Gaten couldn't stand a messed-up place.

I guess in her own way Sara Kate's not all that bad. Everleen even bragged about the way she took care of Aunt Maude. She is my great aunt and is some kind of old.

Well, after she had a stroke, she fell in her kitchen. Trying to stir up her a bite to eat, she said. It was some kind of big bite. Stewed chicken and dumplings, green onion tops and onions smothered in fried fatback drippings, green crowder peas with snaps, cornbread and grated sweet potato pudding. She made the pudding because she wanted to try out a new rum flavor she bought from a Rawleigh Product salesman.

Everleen was going to take her in, but Sara Kate offered, since Everleen was working so hard at the peach shed. That was one time Sara Kate came in real good. I couldn't help out too much with Aunt Maude, because she kept mixing me up. After her stroke her mind was affected. She lost her marbles, that's what happened. She forgot Gaten had been killed. Every day she would say, “Gaten come in yet?”
Or she'd say, “Come on, Clover, let me comb your hair. Go and change them dirty clothes. Put on a dress. I want your daddy to see he's got a little girl when he gets home from school.” Then she'd tell about the time when she was teaching school. They made a fire in the big wood heater and a big snake crawled out through the grate.

Sara Kate makes mugs of coffee or tea in the microwave, does needlepoint and listens. She picks up enough of Aunt Maude's slurred speech to laugh. Sometimes when she talks about Gaten as a young boy, Sara Kate cries.

Poor Aunt Maude's mind has got to be torn up pretty bad. She's been eating Sara Kate's turnips and things cooked flat-out in water, without a speck of grease. Once she zipped her lips and wouldn't eat. And don't you know Sara Kate fixed up her plate all pretty, dotted the greens with red Jell-o cubes and Aunt Maude ate it. You got to be in mighty bad shape in the head to eat greens and Jell-o.

In no time Sara Kate had nursed her back to health. She got well enough for her daughter to come and take her to Greensboro to live.

Maybe if Sara Kate could get ahold of poor old drunk Gideon she might cure him up. They didn't do a thing for him down at that first place he went to. He is walking down the hot dusty road now, swaying from side to side. He said he's learned AA's twelve steps. It seems like he's
taking twenty-three steps to make his twelve. If he keeps on he'll do a solo two-step dance.

Gideon's thin body looked like the frame of an undressed scarecrow. Leaning into the wind, his body traveled faster than his feet. Even so, that body had started to look like it housed a living creature. Gideon had spent seven days in a detox center. He'd been sober all those days and it showed. He showed off a white button he got at the AA meeting. His wife was so proud of him, she said it even tickled her bones.

I am probably kin to Gideon, but not as close kin as he makes us out to be. Good old Aunt Everleen tries to tie us up to as much kinfolk as she can. She stretches out the family line just like she stretches out sadness. She needs kinfolk to worry about, to be sad over, and make unhappiness so big she can save some over, so it'll be handy in case she needs it.

If she could see Gideon right now, she'd just pinch off a little sadness and moan, “Poor Gideon, bless his heart.” Then she'd hurry up and bake him a little tin pie-pan cake. She calls it a sample cake. She never bakes a cake unless she makes a couple of samples first. She has to try out one, just in case the cake needs something. I've never seen her add anything to the cake batter. I think she just can't wait until the real cake is done. I love her sample cakes.

For a little while Gideon was sober. But then, that was
yesterday. Today he is waving a notice from Duke Power Company. They are going to shut off his lights. Today Gideon is as drunk as a blind cooter.

Sara Kate's bedroom door is closed. It's the room she and my daddy would have slept in. I stand outside for a few minutes trying to think up a way to tell her about getting poison in my eye. I clean forgot to tell her at suppertime. I'm only planning to tell her now because, now that I think about it, it's my good eye that got the poison in it.

I doubt if Sara Kate knows I don't see all that good out of one of my eyes as it is. That is, when I don't wear my eyeglasses. I hardly ever wear them. My glasses are hidden in Gaten's bottom desk drawer. I never could stand to wear the things. Like I told Gaten, “One eye will see enough of everything I need to see.”

I cannot believe Gaten would have told Sara Kate about my eye. I imagine, like me, he would have thought it was something she didn't necessarily need to know.

When I finally knock on Sara Kate's door, there is no answer. I guess I did knock kind of soft. But I don't go around knocking on people's doors that much.

Gaten closed his bedroom door if he was getting dressed or something. I'm almost sure he didn't close it when he was ready to go to sleep. I kind of think he left it open so
he could hear me if I was having a bad dream or something. He also had to know that ever since Grandpa died, I've been a little scared at night.

I knock again and again. In my heart I know I am knocking too softly and I know why. I really don't want her to hear me. As sure as shooting, if I tell her about my eye, she'll rush me off to the hospital. Besides, my eye had stopped burning anyway. Even so, I still splashed cold water into it until I couldn't stand it anymore.

The first thing Everleen wants to know the next day is how Sara Kate's dinner turned out. I say it was awful, that the grits were plain nasty. “That's not nice to say, Clover,” she fussed. I can tell she's glad I didn't say it was all that good. I can tell you, she wants to be tops in the cooking department.

“You and Daniel, get outta the sun before you have a heat stroke, Clover,” she warned us. “Anytime you have them old cicadas singing so strong this early in the day, you know it's gonna be a scorcher. They said on the evening news last night this is the hottest, driest summer we ever had in South Carolina . . .

“You know it's got to be bad here, when we make the big-time news . . . thank the Lord all them Northerners are trucking down hay, ‘cause if it gets any worse . . .”

I move into the shade. Daniel and his daddy go to buy fuel oil. They're tired of listening to Everleen.

I think about Sara Kate. All alone in our quiet house. Thinking her quiet thoughts, writing quiet words. Daniel wants me to sneak out some of that writing. He thinks it might be stuff about us.

Once or twice I started into Sara Kate's room to slip the papers she'd written out. Each time something inside me stopped me. Maybe it was the hand of an angel. My grandpa used to pray for the angels to watch over me. I believe in angels.

I've known for a long time to never, ever mess with Sara Kate's drawings. Once I picked up some of the pretty little sketches on drawing paper, and forgot and left them out on the back door steps.

We looked everywhere for the sketches. We even took everything out of her big zippered artist portfolio. It's more like a briefcase for a giant. I just had a notion the sketches may have been there, but we never did find them. The white Federal Express truck came and left without them.

Well, Sara Kate was really, really angry with me that time. And she didn't mind letting me know it, either. “Clover,” she fussed, “those sketches were to be sent to a company who wants me to design a line of fancy wrapping paper. I spoke with a man from the company and promised him he'd have the sketches tomorrow. There is good money in that, Clover, and right now we can use it.”

Her mad spell didn't last too long. But, oh boy, let me
tell you something, when a white woman gets mad, she gets mad.

Sara Kate finally smiled and sucked in her breath when I said, “Well, Sara Kate, maybe the next day won't be too late. If you had all them pretty flowers and things in your head in the first place you ought to be able to find them again. At least we can find your head. It's not lost, that's for sure.”

I still can't see how Sara Kate can stand so much sitting down all the time. If she isn't drawing or painting, she's writing. No wonder her hips are so flat.

Anyway, I've left the papers alone for good. If Sara Kate is writing something bad about us, I don't want to find out.

A little girl about my age is screaming at her mama to hurry up and buy the peaches so they can go to McDonalds. She has blue, blue eyes and hair I guess they call blonde. It sure looks white to me, though.

“Please wait, darling,” says her mama sweetly, “we'll go as soon as I buy the peaches.”

“I don't like peaches,” the little girl screams. “I hate peaches.”

I put a peck of peaches on the back seat of their car, one of them new Toyota jobs. The white-haired girl sticks her tongue out at me. I stick mine out right back at her. She
makes a face as they drive away. All I can say is, if she does that to me at school, she'll get her lights punched out. She'll probably go to one of those private church schools they started setting up when the public schools started getting so many black principals.

Gideon's sister and her husband thought after they got high-paying jobs at Duke Power Company they would send their kids to one of those schools. But Everleen said the good old Baptists had no room for good old black Baptists. And to this day, there is not a single black there.

About a half a mile up the road, the signal light on an old Buick blinks for a left turn. A line of cars and eighteen-wheeled trucks brake and screech behind the Buick, slowly snaking its way to the turnoff.

“Lord, Lord,” Everleen groans, “Mary Martha is gonna get herself run clean over, crawling along that busy highway. A cooter could travel faster than that.”

Mary Martha has to put both feet on the ground and hold onto the door frame in order to pull her fat body out of the car. She has the body of a woman, but her face is a girl's face.