Tender Graces (19 page)

“Hi.” I pushed with my feet to make the rocker go faster.

“No, it’s ‘Hey’. That’s what we say here, ‘Hey.’” He sat in the other rocker and kicked off with his foot, making the chair go back and forth harder and faster. He made a scared-face. “Help! Help! My rocker’s gone mad as a farting bull!”

I laughed.

“What’re you doing in your same clothes?”

I looked down at Momma’s top and those ugly plaid pedal pushers. Both were wrinkled to an inch of their cotton, plus they had food stains. I said, “It’s sure hot here.”

“Yep.” Micah jumped up out of the rocker and tried to touch the ceiling. “Hotter than an elephant’s ass.” He slapped his thigh and laughed one of those loud half-fake laughs.

“Hush! You’ll wake up people in five counties.”

“No I won’t, guess why?”

I shrugged.

“Because they don’t have counties. They have parishes.”

“Par-what?”

“Like a county, but it’s a parish.”

“Huh?”

He jumped off the porch, then ran back up the steps. His hair was already getting soppy. “Okay, you got to learn some stuff about living here if you’re going to survive.”

I was kind of scared then. Maybe there were alligators under the houses with the snakes. And the encyclopedia said they had hurricanes blowing everybody to Kingdom Come. And lots of weird bugs crawling around.

“First, you have to say
yawl
. It’s spelled y-a-l-l.”

“I know what yawl is. Mee Maw says it all the time. I heard it at school, too.” I gave him my you-don’t-know-everything-smarty-britches look.

“Yeah, but you have to say it like yaawwwlll, like that—if you want to fit in.”

“Well, maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” I kicked my feet against the porch floorboards.

“Don’t matter to me none.” His eyes said I hurt his feelings, like he was about to run off.

“Tell me more stuff.”

He grinned and punched the air around him. “Okay, y’all means one person, and y’all means more than one person, but sometimes they say all y’allses. But y’all could mean animals, too.”

“It’s like you and all together.”

“Yeah, like, ‘All y’allses come here,’ or ‘Y’all look like a monkey’ and ‘Y’all dogs get from out that garbage.’” He sat and rocked in time with me while I sat quiet.

He picked at a scab on his knee until blood trickled down his leg and then wiped it with his white t-shirt. “And nobody drinks pop.”

“But I had one at the filling station.”

“They just don’t call it ‘pop’.”

I was getting dizzy-headed. I didn’t know I’d have to learn a foreign language. “What do they call it?”

It’s called coke. So, don’t go asking for pop or they’ll look at you like you’re stupid or something.”

“So, the only pop they have is Co-Cola?”

“No, Worm-brain. Orange drink is coke, grape drink is coke, and Co
-ca
-Cola is coke. It’s easy once you get used to it.”

I didn’t think so.

“Rebekha calls them soft drinks.”

“Well, which one do I call it then?”

“Just don’t say
pop
and you’ll be fine.” He looked down at my dirty feet. “You should wear shoes.”

I thought how I surely dirtied up Rebekha’s sheets.

He came over and flopped his arm over my shoulder, just like at home. “You’ll get used to stuff. I did, I guess.”

“Yawwwl did, Booger-face?”

He punched me in the arm and pulled my hair until I said Uncle. The front door opened and Rebekha came out wearing a green and white polka dot robe and fuzzy white slippers. “Hey. Y’all’s breakfast is ready.” Micah and I laughed. She said, “What?”

He said, “Yawwwl got any coke in this here parish?”

“I want a soft drink, yawwwl. In this parish county,” I said.

My brother and I laughed some more.

Rebekha shook her head. “Y’all come eat. We have orange juice.”

For breakfast, Rebekha made waffles and eggs. Daddy came in with his hair stuck up like a porcupine. “Hey Bug, how’d you sleep?”

I scrunched down at the table so he couldn’t see what I was still wearing.

When we finished, Daddy said he’d clean up the kitchen after he drank one more cup of coffee. I didn’t remember him doing dishes at home. When he waved his hand at us, I noticed the ring he wore was silver instead of the gold one that matched Momma’s. “Go on now, all of you. Daddy’s cleaning up today.” He kissed Rebekha on the mouth, putting his hand on her rear. She pulled away and laughed.

Micah whispered in my ear, “I think I gotta vomit.” He made gagging noises.

Daddy said, “If you want to do that, you can help me with the dishes.”

Micah and I hightailed it out the front door. He showed me around the neighborhood, pointing out the nice people, the meanies and the snooty-think-their-poop-don’t-stink people. On the next street over, a girl who looked my age sat on her front step playing with a doll. I smiled at her, but she frowned back. I looked away but not before I took in how she wore a dress, lacy bobby socks, patent leather shoes, and had her hair pulled back with a big black bow on top. It looked like she had a bat setting on top of her head. She was so pale I thought she might be a ghost.

I felt like I was ten feet tall with a light shining on me that showed all my dirty.

Back at Daddy’s house, Micah said, “See ya! I’m off to the wild blue yonder.” He tore around the house, came back on a bike, and raced off. That was when I remembered I hadn’t brought my bike, either. I had left too much behind.

I went back inside to my room and saw
Black Beauty
propped
on the pillows. I sat in the chair next to my bed, opened it, and read,
My Early Home—The first place that I can well remember was a large, pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.
I read on, smiling because it was the horse doing the talking. By the time I was to
My Breaking In
, someone knocked at my door. I didn’t know what to do since nobody knocked on doors at home. If you didn’t want someone coming in, you locked the door. So I said, “Hey!”

Rebekha came in. “Hey. I see you found the book. I forgot to give it to you that day.”

I closed the book, using my thumb to keep my place.

“I loved reading it when I was a girl.” She looked down at my feet, then up to my face. “I drew you a nice bubble bath.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“You can call me Rebekha instead of Ma’am.” She crossed the room and sat on the bed facing me. “I thought I’d see what you brought with you, your clothes I mean. School starts soon.”

I didn’t want to think about school in a different world, with new ways of talking.

She smoothed the bedspread and looked around the room “So, do you mind if I take a look?”

“No, Ma’am.”

In the dresser, she found three pair of white cotton underwear, Micah’s old britches he’d left behind and I’d took up to wearing, a pair of grass-stain-on-the-seat blue shorts, two shirts—the white one had a hole under the arm, a nightgown, and one pair of flip flops. Everything was just crammed in the dresser drawers, even the shoes.

She laughed and said, “You must have packed, Virginia Kate.” She turned to me with one eyebrow cocked up. “Hon, we need to go shopping. You’ll need dresses, and more shoes.” She looked down at my feet again as I tried to tuck them under me. “Well, don’t you think a bath would make you feel better?”

All I thought was then I’d have to take off Momma’s shirt with her smells on it, and I’d have to wash off the rest of the West Virginia dirt that was getting mixed up with the Louisiana dirt. Momma’s shirt would be washed where it’d smell like soap instead of her powder. I thought how I was dirty and didn’t have proper manners. How everybody wanted to make me into someone else since the West Virginia Kate wasn’t good enough. But all I said was, “Yes Ma’am.”

“Just leave your dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and I’ll wash them for you. You can use the vinegar to rinse your hair with, it really does work. Just put a little in the plastic cup by the tub and pour it over your head. It makes your hair all shiny and soft. My mother had me use it all the time.” She hardly took a breath until she got all that out.

While I marked my place in
Black Beauty
with a rubber band I kept on my wrist, she took the bedspread and sheets off the bed. She said, “We’ll get these freshened for you, too.” With my face as hot as the Louisiana wind, I helped her with the sheets. She carried them with her to the washroom.

I shut myself in the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and looked around. There was a pedestal sink, and a claw foot tub just like Grandma Faith bathed me in, except Grandma’s was old and beat up instead of white and gleaming with all those bubbles making rainbows. I stood, opened the bath closet. There was a hundred and two blue and white fluffy towels, even the washrags matched each other. They all faced with the folded side to me, not a one out of place. I sniffed and they smelled like soap. Momma had different colored towels facing any way we put them, and they smelled like fresh mountain air from drying on the line.

I eased shut the closet door, and then took off my clothes, dropping everything on the floor but Momma’s shirt, which I hung on the door. I slipped into the bubbles and scrubbed with the washrag full of almond-smelling soap. I washed my hair with the soap, rinsed it in the dirty water, and then poured some of the vinegar over it, wrinkling my nose at the smell. I rinsed again under the faucet extra long to get the stink out. Finally, I stepped out, dried off, put on the clean clothes. I was almost brand sparkly new.

Daddy took me for a ride with the top down so all the hot could blow around our faces. I snapped pictures whenever we stopped at red lights or stop signs. I liked how some of the granddaddy oak branches came down to the ground and rested, too heavy for the old tree to hold them up anymore. Crepe myrtle bloomed white, pink, red, and purple. Those Louisiana people walked around as if it wasn’t hot at all, talking loud and all wearing shoes.

We drove around the little lake (it was nothing like my creeks) and I took pictures of ducks, egrets white as the moonshine, cypress trees and cypress knees, and lots of Spanish moss hanging. Daddy said the moss was full of bugs and that’s where the saying don’t let the bed bugs bite came from. He said because people used to make their beds with moss and then got all itchy. When I took enough pictures to share with Momma and Andy, Daddy took me to a diner for lunch. It was old and a bit dirty, but smelled like good food.

We sat down and a girl came over to the table. Her hair was long down her back and it was almost as dark as mine. Her name tag read,
Soot
. Her eyes were dark and sparkly, and she grinned at me with big orange-lipstick lips. She asked, “Whatchoo two hungry for?” She set glasses of ice water on the table.

“Are
you
on the menu?” Daddy grinned like that
Alice in Wonderland
cat.

“Why dontchoo ask my boyfriend. He’s right over there—the big fella fixin’ to bust you one.”

I looked at her big ole boyfriend and figured Daddy better keep his mouth shut. He cleared the donkey out of his throat and said, “We’ll have two shrimp po-boy’s with extra tartar sauce. My daughter hasn’t ever had a po-boy.” He winked at me. “And a big order of fries, Soot.”

“Whatchoo want to drink, Boo?”

I didn’t know what a
boo
was, but she was looking at me. “I’ll have a pop . . . I mean, a coke. An orange coke soft drink.”

She laughed, showing her strong white teeth—just like mine—and then touched my nose. “An orange coke soft drink it is. Boy, you’re the cutest. I could carry you home with me.”

I felt warm inside.

Soot turned to Daddy. “Whatchoo drinking, Don Juan?”

Daddy laughed, then said, “Whatever beer you have that’s good and cold.”

“It’s all good and cold.” She tossed back her hair and walked away with her hips rolling.

Daddy watched her for a bit, then said, “Well, Bug, you’re in for a treat.”

Out the window, an old man picked up used cigarettes off the sidewalk and put them in his pocket. He saw me looking and waved. I waved back.

Soot brought our drinks with a big plate of fried potatoes. “Get started on these while they’re hot.”

She waited, so I took one and bit into it. I chewed, said, “Mmmm.”

“Good, huh? Marco fried extra just for you ‘cause you’re so pretty.”

I felt prissy, because she paid so much attention to me. I thought I might love her.

“So, you hadn’t ever had a po-boy, huh?”

“No Ma’am.”

“Where you from? I hear an accent.”

I thought it was Soot had the accent. “I’m from West-By-God-Virginia.”

She laughed beautiful, then asked, “You’re a long way from home, arentchoo?”

I nodded, ate another fry.

“You poor thing.”

Marco hollered out, “Come get this here food, Soot. You just love them kids too much.” He said kids like kee-yuds.

Soot winked at me, then turned to get our sandwiches. “Oh, put a sock in it, Marco.” She snapped a towel at him and he laughed. I thought it would be grand to go home with Soot. Pretend she was my sister, or my momma.

She soon carried us sandwiches as long as my arm. “Y’all enjoy. Call me if you need something.”