Ellen Foster (3 page)

And what else are you going to say when the Bible comes flat out and says killing yourself is flinging God’s gift back into his face and He will not forgive you for it ever? The preacher leaves that out and goes straight to the green valleys and the streets of silver and gold.

My mama’s mama is sitting down the pew from me and my daddy. She has already leaned forward, looked down here and called my daddy a bastard.

She has a tidy sum. Every Saturday one of her girls rides
her to town to get her hair fixed. She shops and comes home with hats and dresses in boxes. When I go to her house she tells me to walk slow and do not slam the door. She acts like she doesn’t know me enough to trust.

She looks like she could fly out of her chair and fly in a frenzy all over this funeral parlor. I figure by the end of the day somebody will have to pull her off of him. One year he showed up drunk for her Christmas turkey dinner and she took a running start and threw her whole self into his face. She is small and fast and wild but they say she is not crazy. Nobody would say much if she scratched my daddy’s eyes out in private. But this is a public place and it agitates people when she starts in on him. Nobody wants to be the one that stops her. She calls him a nigger and trash so long and loud she gets hoarse. Just churning hate and nerve with forty years of my mama on fire under her. She may not sit through this service.

Starletta is lounging all over her mama. I know it kills her to stay for too long a time in one place. If her mama loosened up on her a little she would roll down the aisle and crawl out the window. In a minute Starletta will get her head thumped.

Amen and my mama’s mama is up and out the door. She does not yell anything back. No nigger or trash. Just out.

And my daddy will fool himself into thinking that is all. She is gone. Good. I do not have to pay for her girl.

Close the cover. Close it down. Your mama has flown. She would not wait to see them close the cover down.

I will not look. No.

So why do I have to watch anymore? I saw all I wanted to see in the church.

It will rain before long. And we will come back to this grave in the rain and get some flowers.

Do not do that with everybody looking. Folks do not want to see a body disappear before their very eyes. Not me at least.

Do I have to watch?

Is she in there?

It is all done with lights said the magician.

Where is she? Not in the box. You cannot rest in a box.

Oh and now the rain outside and blowing inside this tent so people pull their collars up around their faces wanting to go on home.

I have found my mama’s mama off to herself. Looking at all this through the rain. Like she has this funeral party staked out. Her hate flies through the rain and the wind to my daddy. He who has stopped everything but the breathing and must be brought back to feeling before she can hurt him.

It is done. You can look now. Some run to the cars but some come and put their hands on my knees. If there is anything you need please ask but no not now I will let you know. Somebody slipped me a dollar.

The smiling man pets my head and says he will take me home. His hand is big and warm and covers my whole head. I bet he will hold my hand and let me ride in the front seat. I walk close to him and smell his blue suit.

I do not have to worry about snakes anymore here. The pony scares them off and I am up high anyway so they cannot bite me.

When I stop to camp I put Dolphin nearby so he can keep them away. Then I do not have to worry.

The best way to camp all day here is to spread the pony blanket down and put your supplies on top of it. It takes so long to get from my house to the pine thicket that the pony gets hot and needs a long rest. I keep him tied on a long rope.

We can wait and eat. I forgot a book so there is nothing to do but lay back and watch the trees. They move back and forth like they know we would like a little nap.

5

When the smiling man let me and my daddy off in the yard I thanked him for the ride and went on inside. My daddy came in the house, got his keys, and left in the truck. He stayed gone until the next night and I cannot report all he did.

He missed some good food. Eating is the first thing I did after I got the suit off me. I folded it up and stuck it in a sack for Dora’s mama. She had to get on home to take care of some things and would pick it up next week. I knew she would want it back. It looked clean and smelled pretty good to me.

Women from the church had made pies and salads. No meat though. Three jugs of sweet tea and a greasy bag of corn bread. I ate right out of the bowls and didn’t use a plate.

It got late and dark outside. I made up my mind to go to school the next day.

Her mama died they will say.

I wore some of my mama’s clothes to school. Nobody would
know. Just some things up under my dress. She was not that much bigger than me.

I have a odd shape. But I am not ill formed. My head is too big for the rest of me. Just this side of a defect. When I get a chest and hips I will look weighted down. I have been waiting for them for some time now.

I enjoyed wearing my mama’s clothes. Just so I am not in a wreck is all I thought. I went through all her things that night.

The stockings even the ones she had wore were bent at the knee and ankle and laid flat in the drawer. I decided to wear a little something every day. That worked out fine because the only thing I had left that fit good was socks.

I could tell the teachers were dying to ask me some questions. They had took up money from the homerooms for flowers. They did not have to do that so I thanked them. I went to the library over recess and my teacher followed me in. She wanted me to tell her how my mama died even though she already knew. She could tell her husband over supper about how I told her. When it came my turn to talk and tell all I marched myself right back out of the library room and out the doors.

I had liked the teacher. The only reasons for ever going to school had been to check out books and scratch her back during rest time. My fingers would smell like powder the rest of the day. She let me take up milk money because I know how to count change.

Starletta was on the school steps. She is not as smart as I am but she is more fun. That day she was rolling her socks
down to pick herself. We decided to walk all the way home and not ride the bus.

When I got home it was already dark and he had the lights on. I went in and did not speak to him.

I did not speak to him or else I stayed outside most of the time. When they cut the lights off in the winter I had to ask him to take me to town with some money to cut them back on.

He stopped doing anything but drinking and sleeping. His two brothers Rudolph and Ellis came to the house and caught him laid out in the yard. They cussed him and put him in the bed but they came back the next day when he was sober.

You two are the businessmen he said to them. I never was much into business. You do what you feel like you need to. I ain’t hardly able to take care of myself much less this farm, he said to them.

So they asked him to sign everything over and they rode to town to sign the papers.

Now, my daddy said when they brought him home and left him, now I can relax.

After that he was a free man he kept telling his colored buddies.

Each month one of his brothers would bring him some cash money in an envelope and I would make sure I got to it before my daddy did. They left it in the mailbox I guess because they did not think one of us was at home. I figured out what I needed and took it. You got the lights, gas to heat and cook, food, and extras. The people who sent the bills said do not send cash but at least I sent them the right change. I let him
have the rest of the money and he would stock up so he would not have to worry.

I always walked in wide circles around him.

The only hard part was the food. The whole time I stayed with him he either ate at the Dinette in town or did without. I would not go to the restaurant with him because I did not want to be seen with him. That is all.

I fed myself OK. I tried to make what we had at school but I found the best deal was the plate froze with food already on it. A meat, two vegetables, and a dab of dessert.

Every week the school bus driver let me off at the store and I got a ride on home.

I hated to see it get cold. Starletta’s daddy called the heat man for me and took me to town to get a coat. We went to the stores in colored town and he got me and Starletta corduroy coats. Mine was lined with sheep fur. Starletta said it would make her sweat so hers was plain.

The fish man kept coming to the house even though it got cold. He was a man named Jim and he drove a red station wagon with scales and fish in the back and boxes of candy bars in the front seat. I bought a fish regularly and he told me how to cook it. I bought a box of candy bars whenever my supply got low. It is best to buy in bulk.

I always had him cut the heads off the fish and clean them good for me. His fish came from the fresh water and I liked bass fish the most. I do not know how he caught the fish when the ponds froze over. I cannot feature Jim fishing Eskimo style.

It got too cold for me and Starletta to play outside in the
ditches. That was too bad. Her nose ran all the time. Her mama started making her stay home after school.

I had to have something to do so mostly I played catalog. I picked out the little family first and then the house things and the clothes. Sleepwear, evening jackets for the man, pantsuits. I outfitted everybody. The mom, the dad, the cute children. Next they got some camping equipment, a waffle iron, bedroom suits, and some toys. When they were set for the winter I shopped ahead for the spring. I had to use an old catalog but they had no way of knowing they were not in style. I also found the best values. The man worked in the factory and she was a receptionist. They liked to dress up after work. I myself liked the toddlers with the fat faces. Some of the children looked too eager.

Do I look like I am a leader of girls? When I got tired of the catalogs I joined the Girl Scouts. They put up membership drive signs at school and it looked OK to me.

There was some extra money in the envelope so I had Starletta’s daddy drive me to town to buy my uniform and accessories. She yelled and went limp on the floor when I did not buy something for her. She could not have a uniform because they do not have a colored troop in my county. They might in town.

I suited myself completely. Canteen, socks, bow tie, Rule Book, everything official.

In six months I had all the badges except swimming. I wanted the badges more than I needed to be honest so I signed my daddy’s initials saying I had made a handicraft or wrapped a ankle or whatever the badge called for.

I stayed in the Girl Scouts until Christmas. I got tired of going to the meetings.

Christmas came to my house with the people drinking egg nog and decking the halls on the television set. I am glad I did not believe in Santa Claus. As my daddy liked to say—wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one gets full first.

Although I did not believe in Santa Claus I figured I had a little something coming to me. So on Christmas Eve I went with Starletta to the colored store and bought myself some things I had been dying for and paper to wrap them with.

I knew my mama’s mama was having her usual big turkey dinner that night but that was OK because I had turkey sliced up with dressing along with two vegetables and a dab of dessert.

As long as there is a parade on the television.

I got Starletta and her mama and daddy a nice spoon rest. When they were not looking I had the sales lady wrap up the one I saw with the green chicken on it. Then I had the rest of the money for my own self.

It made my heart beat fast to shop. The store was all lit up with Christmas cheer and shoppers with armloads of presents.

I got two variety packs of construction paper, a plastic microscope complete with slides, a diary with a lock and key, an alarm clock, and some shoes.

When I got home I wrapped the presents and wondered if I ought to wrap something laying around the house for my daddy. I did not have enough paper. He did not come home that night anyway.

I wrapped them at the kitchen table and hid them.

When I found them the next day I was very surprised in the spirit of Christmas.

6

You can see the smoke rising out of the chimney from the road. You know it is a warm fire where the smoke starts.

The house Starletta and her mama and daddy stay in always smells like fried meat but if you visit there a while you adjust.

Come on in the house is what her daddy says to me and takes my package. They pay grown men to do that in the more stylish places.

Her mama is at the stove boiling and frying telling the daddy not to let all the heat out through the door.

He sneaks up behind her and pinches her on the tail.

I saw that.

They would not carry on like that if they were at the store or working in the field. They walk up the road and pick cotton and do not speak like they know they go together. People say they do not try to be white.

As fond as I am of all three of them I do not think I could drink after them. I try to see what Starletta leaves on the lip
of a bottle but I have never seen anything with the naked eye. If something is that small it is bound to get into your system and do some damage.

They clean this house all the time but it is still dirty. They got dirt and little sticks all between the floorboards. They either need a rug to hide it or a thing to suck it all up. Her mama says you can sweep and sweep and sweep until you is blue in the face.

All three of them stay in one room. I myself could not stand it. They do their business outside and when it is cold they do it over in the corner in a pot. I guess they hide their eyes and hum while somebody goes. I hold myself until I get home.

And they never have had a television set.

The only one that can read is Starletta and she misses words.