Family (10 page)

Sun just stared at him and round the good-size stand. It was for sandwiches or somethin like that, and french fries. I never heard em called that, we just called em fried potatoes.

The man went on talkin with his strange accent that turned out to be French. “I’m not gonna take it anymore! I’m gonna close the damned stand and just keep the restaurant in New York I run myself. I’m sick of this American business shit!”

Sun just started movin around pickin up things
for the man. He was still listenin as he put em on the nearest convenient spot, piling dirty pots and pans in the sink.

The man just kept talkin, but began to pick up and place things with a little more thought to his actions. Said, “I tried them all: church people, no-church people, women and men, all. The church people were sometimes the worst of them all!”

Sun ran dishwater and rolled up his ragged sleeves. He sure did know how to do any kind of hard work. What he was doin now was easy to him. He asked the man, “How you make one of them san-whiches?”

The man looked at him, “Where you been, kid?”

Sun answered, “Nowhere.”

The man looked at him harder. “How old are you?”

Sun answered, “Twenty.”

The man laughed, “Twenty!”

Sun asked again, as he kept plowin his hands to the shoulder almost, into the soap suds, washin dishes and pots and pans. “How you make them things what you sellin?”

The man said, “Okay. You doing some work. I didn’t promise you no thing … but you doing some work, I tell you. If there anything left to show you with, I show you. Then I clean up, lock up and go. I’m sick of this problems.”

Sun said, “Show me. If I make a mistake, I’ll eat it.”

The man stopped and suddenly laughed. “You not smarter than me, kid. I come to America a lot younger, and smaller than you are. I come through a lot … a lot more than you ever know, and I make it. I am only tired now.”

“Me too.” Sun tried to smile. “And hungry. Thinkin I eat, I won’t be so tired and I’ll clean up this whole place and make them san-whiches til you make me stop. And I’ll sell em and give you all your money … and,” went on Sun, “and I’ll work for you three weeks for nothin but a bed to sleep and food to eat. I don’t eat much. And after that, if you like me and know you can trust me, you can pay me whatever you want to pay me. And I’ll work here til I die and you’ll never have to worry bout closin up this here place again.”

The man, whose name was Mr. DuBois, sat
down on a box and looked at Sun. “You will work … for nothing?”

“For nothing.”

“Three weeks?”

“Til you know you can trust me, for a bed and food. I’ll sleep right here in the back.” See, he had no place to go at all and no food at all, so for him that would be like a fortune or somethin. Mr. DuBois made a wry smile and got up, picked up a wrinkled loaf of bread layin under the counter and stepped to the sandwich bar. “See? You take the bread and this is called mayonnaise, I make mine myself. Maybe I show you how sometime, if you work out like you promise. It’s the best in America. And after three weeks, if I want you to stay, and if I trust you, I pay you fair.”

Well, Sun was hungry for everything, needed everything, and didn’t have another choice in the whole world at that moment. His happiness made his name show on his face. He worked good and kept that place open and did good business cause, my son, he was a nice person and grateful. He smiled cause he was full and he slept without waking
all through the night wonderin what or who was close to him.

That place worked and the business grew even in the small time was left in that first season. Mr. DuBois then took him into the city to work with him there. Soon, a year or two, another one was opened, the third. Soon Sun was just running them, helpin Mr. DuBois. And then there were four. All different places. And Sun was paid good cause he worked good and he learned all he could.

By that time Sun knew all Mr. DuBois’s family. His pretty daughter, Colette, was just a little older than Sun, and educated. She fell in love with Sun and Mr. DuBois was glad because money should stay in a family and Sun had a future there. Course, they didn’t know Sun was a negro and a slave. He never talked bout that to nobody. In time, they married. I knew then Sun had his future pretty good. Because he worked hard.

But he also went to worryin less and less bout Always comin to him. She was very light, but not white … enough. He stopped writing Loretta bout buyin her. Wellll, I knew Sun had his future
going pretty good. He would have money. And children. Little African, French and whatever all the Master had been, but, white children, new blood. I went to thinkin on Always. Pretty soon, I went back to Always, my blood.

BACK TO ALWAYS
. That same ole time was still the same kind of time when I reached Always. She was sad in her heart, and alone in her mind. She worked and thought, but always with that sad, depressed hard rock sittin on her chest, lodged in her breast, just above her baby’s head. She was almost through workin on her chicken-house shack. Her mind was always runnin.

Masr Jason gave her a hand when he could. Cause he was sittin a horse now and overseein most days. It was true, it brought some life back to him. He only didn’t like that it took two men and Poon to put him on, tie him, then untie him and take him off. Poon had to rub and soothe his tired muscles and chafed skin. But he did it. After all, it was his farm too.

Doak was glad about the arrangement. It gave him even more time to be off and gone on whatever he called his business. Lookin over livestock, goin to dog races, rooster fights, things like that. His farm was doin better than ever and he didn’t really know why, just knew it was. He wasn’t really a dumb man, just not born a farmer, but was born to know he liked land and money. Knew the land could bring him money, and slaves, but after knowin that, he really didn’t feel much like workin at it, just havin it. Farm doin well, pretty wife havin his baby, that was all he knew and cared about. He was gone when Always moved into her chicken shack. He was gone, again, when the babies were born.

FIRST OFF, MISTRESS SUE
came early by a week or so. Always did all the work with her swollen, heavy belly pullin her down. Heavy, heavy. She was up thirty-nine hours with Mistress Sue til that baby boy was born.

She put on the water, folded the bed back, tied ropes down each side of the bed to be pulled on when needed. Laid out all the clean rags and towels she thought they would need. Boiled the scissors for cuttin the cord. Kept layin Mistress Sue back
down and squeezin her hands when she screamed. Wiped her when the sweat just poured out of that scared young woman who kept screamin for her husband that was too far away to hear her. The birth took so long, Always had to keep going out to the well to get more water for boilin. She even changed the wet, soiled sheets a few times. Had to. Heated soup for the young woman who could not eat more than a spoon or two. The woman, Sue, cried, Always cried, holdin each other, both feared of how this new life was comin. When the time got real close, Always had to hold and lift that woman and she didn’t feel small nomore. She was heavy longside that weight inside her own body.

The blood gushed along with the water, at last. Hot and heavy with its odor. It made Always retch and like to vomit on the woman cause she couldn’t let go her hands. The woman had strength! Always asked, “Let me call Poon!” Mistress Sue screamed, “No, no! I don’t want nobody to see me like this. I only want you!” So that was the end of that. When that baby was born, Sue was screamin and Always was cryin, tears runnin
down her face. But she never stopped movin, tearin rags, wipin, pullin gently, cuttin that cord, tyin it and cleanin that baby. Mistress Sue lay back, at last, exhausted and near death, tho neither one of them knew how close.

The baby, a boy, was pink and ugly as almost all new babies are. It had dark hair and what looked like dark eyes when you could see em. A fine boy. Mistress Sue shook her head, No, when Always was handin her the baby, so Always made a sling and tied him to her own chest.

When Mistress Sue was restin, Poon was called in to help clean up round things. That’s when Always’s pains came and she went to her shack to lay down, rest, til the pains would leave. But the pains stayed and soon her body was heavin in her cornshuck bed … alone. She screamed, in spite of herself, but she had bit down, again, on her already ragged lips. Poon came. She sent Poon away, even still keepin Sue’s baby with her, layed to the side of the bed, while she gave birth to her own. Said she knew all what to do for herself. Just bring hot water, she already had everything else ready.

In two hours or so, Always gave birth to her baby. As fine a baby boy as ever you want to see. He had dark hair and blue eyes like his daddy. Always looked at him and smiled. She smiled as she struggled to clean him and then clean herself. She smiled when she lay both babies to her breast and fed them. Then she fell asleep. An exhausted, deep, hard sleep, which she needed so bad.

Poon woke her up hours later. Said Mistress Sue was still sleepin. She brought broth for my grateful Always. Poon tried to pull back the homemade baby blankets, but Always pushed her away, sayin, “Leave em be. Don’t wake em up. You got time nough for years to see these younguns. And let Mistress Sue be. I’ll feed her boy for her, cause she too weak.” Poon wouldn’t argue, she left to go check again on Mistress Sue fore she went to see bout gettin Masr Jason off his horse. Mumblin, “Womens and babies, womens and babies. What’s all goin on round here.”

Always woke during the night and lay lookin down at the two baby boys. Holdin them, thinkin.

In the early, early dawn she got up and, takin one of the dyin embers from her little fireplace,
she burnt a tiny place on her hip a little bigger than the size of a good-size pin. It hurt, but the plan was made. Then she burnt her own son on the same hip she had burnt on herself. She rubbed a little soot on it, then a little healin salve she made herself. Every day she rubbed that soot and that salve on it. When it healed, it looked just like a mole, a big mole. Hers and his looked just alike. While she was doin this, she prayed Master Doak did not return. He didn’t.

Each time Mistress Sue awakened and asked for her son, Always would take the blue-eyed baby to her to hold a moment. She said Mistress Sue was too weak to hold it long or to open the blanket and fondle the baby. She always took it home with her at night, or if she stayed in the main house to be close to the mistress, the babies slept with her. In this way the wound healed each day. No one knew it was there but Always. She was considered by all to be a perfect slave to her Mistress. And, in this way, Sue grew to love the little blue-eyed baby boy. Her son.

Sue had noticed in passing that both the babies looked alike. Something inside her twinged, but
her faith in what Always had never said kept her from dwelling on it. Both babies were white. That was natural to her when she thought of travelers and the Master of the plantation Always had come from. Besides, she knew her son was hers because of his blue eyes.

When Doak did finally return, ecstatic at the birth of his son and the new slave-son, he ordered Always to leave his son in his house. Not outside in some nigger shack. She could always go home to tend her own as best she could. But stay in the main house til Mistress Sue was able to care more for their son, whose name was now Master Doak Butler, the Third, tho they called him Doak Jr. Doak was glad to see his wife’s son had blue eyes. So there would be no misunderstanding by Mrs. Butler. Now, the burn was healed, was only a mole anyway. Always named her son “Soon.” But she took care of both of em.

Master Doak, the Third, was wrote up in the family Bible and given a doctor’s certificate. Soon was wrote down in the account book as a slave with his estimated value. These two sons grew up together. Played together, slept together sometimes,
ate together sometimes, said their prayers together sometimes. Was friends most times. That’s the reason Soon was never sold, his friend the Young Master loved him and wanted him there. So he was the one Always was able to keep with her. Her others, my grandchildren, as they was born and got to be bout five or six years old, was sold. Was four more of em; all was Master Doak’s children with Always.

When the children was sold and the money used to buy more land or somethin for the land, Always named whatever was bought by the name of her child. So there was fields named Lester, Ruby, and Lark, and a whole lotta cows named Satti. But these came later, when, under the invisible hand of Always and the cripple body of Masr Jason, the farm did better and better. Grew. The fields just abundant with growth, healthy. The livestock growing and healthy. Chickens givin eggs and meat to sell. Cows givin milk and meat to sell. Money comin in. Both Always and Masr Jason cachin some away, buryin it.

While all these things was goin on, Mistress Sue got better, but she never got really well. In about
two and a half years or three she was pregnant again, but she was so thin and weak still. She truly loved her son Doak and clung to him much of the time. That’s another reason he got most whatever he wanted and was able to keep Soon with him.