The Right Thing (20 page)

By the time I went to the bathroom, put on my shorts, shirt, and shoes, and scraped my thick blond hair into a messy ponytail, Aunt Too-Tai was in the kitchen. It was a long, narrow room with an old-fashioned iron stove at one end, a deep porcelain sink, a table, three chairs, and a new refrigerator.

“I'm hungry,” I declared. My stomach was rumbling.

“Here,” she said. Aunt Too-Tai handed me a spoon and a bowl with some dry cornflakes in it. “Milk's in the icebox.”

“Where's the sugar?”

“Rots your teeth,” my aunt threw over her shoulder. She was at the sink, washing her big-knuckled hands with a cake of yellow soap. “We don't keep sugar here,” Aunt Too-Tai added.

Glaring at her back, straight and tall as a white-haired telephone pole, I didn't dare argue, for it had dawned on me that my aunt was no Methyl Ivory, making sugar-butter sandwiches whenever I wanted. Instead, I ate my cereal without sweetening while Aunt Too-Tai drank black coffee. She lit a cigarette, popping the match head into a bloom of light. The sharp, sweet scent of cigarette smoke reminded me of my mother, and in that moment I missed her desperately. It would be months before I'd be allowed to go home.

“We're not going to church this morning,” my aunt announced without preamble. That was good. A more useless waste of time hadn't been invented, in my experience: even school was preferable to the eternity I spent squirming on St. Andrew's varnished oak pews in my Sunday dress with its scratchy petticoats.

“We're going to the garden,” Aunt Too-Tai said, “before it gets too hot. The tomatoes are covered with cutworms.”

The sun was well up when we stood at the edge of the garden's long rows of growing things. Our shadows, one tall and one much smaller, stretched before us in the morning. A haze of moisture lifted off the plants, soon to evaporate in the day's coming heat.

“Take off your shoes,” Aunt Too-Tai said. I piled my Keds and ankle socks beside a coiled garden hose. “Here.” She handed me a large glass pickle jar. “I'll pay you a nickel for every five worms you put in this jar,” my aunt said, pulling on a pair of work gloves.

“A nickel?” Even in 1964, it wasn't much.

Nodding, Aunt Too-Tai parted the towering rows of tasseled sweet corn and at once vanished from view. Her voice faded as she called, “If you're thirsty, get a drink from the hose. I'll be back in about an hour.” Corn stalks rustled, and I was alone except for the conversational grunts of the hogs in the nearby pen.

The dirt was cool and damp between my toes. I eyed the tomato plants with misgiving but didn't mean to ignore my instructions—not yet, anyway. Squatting beside the row, I wondered if there would be enough worms to be worthwhile. Tomatoes hung in green-striped balloons from their staked vines, and I soon discovered that hidden underneath their leaves were armies of cutworms. I held one up for a better look: the front end and the back end both had faces. The worm writhed as I dropped it in the pickle jar, coiling into a fat bud of destruction.

“That's one.” I was determined to keep count. Surely by the time I'd captured a jarful of worms, I'd have enough money to support myself when I took the Chevrolet and drove off to join the Foreign Legion. The garden was still in the hot morning, and sweat ran down the back of my checked shirt. A mockingbird called, another answered, and the verdant aroma of the tomato plants, rich and sharp as gasoline, filled my nose while a smiling breeze tickled the back of my neck. Engrossed in cutworm removal, I was fully into plans for getting to Africa and concentrating on the best way to stow away on a freighter when two big work boots appeared beside me in the dirt.

“I got fifty-nine, Aunt Too-Tai,” I said. “You owe me a bunch of nickels.” I looked up, squinting in the sun. The boots belonged to George. His ruined face was serious, arms in his faded denim shirt folded across his thin chest.

“Hey, Mr. George,” I mumbled. I couldn't take my eyes off that scar. Maybe he would finally say something. But no, his eyes were patient as he sighed just once and glanced in the direction my aunt had taken.

“Oh—you want Aunt Too-Tai?” I asked.

He nodded.

“She went thataway.” I pointed a dirty finger at the corn where a thin plume of cigarette smoke wafted. With a nod that might have been a thank-you, George disappeared between the tall, green spears.

“Did you get the spreader going?” Several rows over, my aunt's voice was faint but clear. “Just leave it behind the barn, then. We'll fill it with that moldy hay, spread the bad stuff over the south pasture after you're done with the gear box.” Shrugging, I went back to work. Sixty-one, sixty-two . . . A sibilant whisper of corn shocks meant Aunt Too-Tai's return, and I clapped the lid on the pickle jar just as I finished the row.

“You done with the worms? Good.” She took the glass jar from my hands. “Looks like about, oh—sixty to me.”

“I got eighty.” Well, it was almost that.

“Eighty, you say? That's sixteen nickels, then. Put your shoes back on and come along.” My thighs aching, I stood up, but as we walked across the backyard toward the barn, a dark, sinuous shadow slung itself in rapid
S
-curves across the mown grass.

I jumped backward in instinctive fright at the snake. I was mortally afraid of snakes. In a panic, I froze, my mouth wide open and ready to holler like I'd seen Frankenstein's green-skinned monster lurching around the yard, but Aunt Too-Tai put her hand over my lips.

Almost too low to hear, she said in my ear, “Stay put now, Annie. Don't move a muscle.” The shadow had coiled under the shade of a sweet gum tree, near hidden in the tall grass around the roots. My aunt slipped away from my side and let herself into the darkened doorway of the barn.

“Aunt Too-Tai!” It was a tin-whistle whisper of a scream. “Don't leave me!”

An age ticked by. Positive I would have no choice but to stand there and burn up in a fever of terror, I practically melted in relief when Aunt Too-Tai came through the barn doorway with a garden hoe. Raising a finger to her lips, she glided across the grass to the sweet gum tree, and fast as a snake herself, she raised the hoe and struck. Divots of earth flew. A meaty hunk of snake shot skyward as she reduced the snake to its component parts in unimpassioned efficiency until it was done. I was openmouthed with admiration. The snake's dispatch was the most thrilling thing I'd ever seen that wasn't on television.

“Come on to the house, Annie,” Aunt Too-Tai said. She leaned the hoe against the tree trunk. “I'll get George to bury that cottonmouth.”

Back inside at the kitchen table, she lit a cigarette and poured us each a glass of ice water. “Here.” She handed me a twist of paper. “Put this BC Powder on the back of your tongue.” I rolled my eyes like a balky horse since I was skittish of even baby aspirin and dreaded pill taking to the point of hysteria, but Aunt Too-Tai was too forceful a presence to deny. Look at what had happened to the snake.

“Why do I have to take it?” I asked plaintively. “I don't have a headache.”

“Do it. It'll calm your nerves.” The powder was bitter and dry, but I managed to wash it down with the cold water. My tongue burned like I'd scrubbed it with Comet. “Now you sit here and wait for that to make you feel better. I'll go find George.” She hesitated and then landed an awkward pat on my shoulder. “Be a good girl and put that snake out of your mind.” The screen door banged shut. “George!” she called. “Get a shovel.”

Alone again, I sat on the kitchen chair, swinging my feet and drawing faces in a puddle of water on the rock-maple table, fast becoming bored, never a desirable state. My eyes lit on the pack of Pall Malls by the sink.

Smoking. I'd always wanted to try it but knew my mother would have shaken me bald-headed if she'd ever caught me. I tiptoed to the sink, shook the pack, and a lone cigarette fell on the floor. Almost without thinking, I put it in my shirt pocket—but I was definitely planning ahead when I took the matchbook.

I had just returned to my chair when Aunt Too-Tai called to me from the yard, “You can come out now.” Still, I lurked on the other side of the screen door until George had finished with the last of the cottonmouth, finally screwing up my courage to edge past the sweet gum tree. I tried not to look at the blood and ran to join my aunt at the barn.

The old wooden barn was a dim, vaulted cathedral of cobwebs and dust, where ancient birds' nests festooned the crossbeams. Arrows of sunlight pierced the tin roof high overhead, falling on sawhorses, a decrepit set of harness, bald tires, a rowboat with a hole in the bottom, tools, stacks of lumber, an engine, heavy tow chains, paint cans, bundled magazines, and a thousand other discarded, wonderful things. An orange cat stretched in the shaft of light pooling on top of a mountain of hay.

“That's last season's hay crop. It's gone to mold.” Aunt Too-Tai stooped to pick up a snarled length of baling twine. “It needs out of here before we get the first cutting done next week. You can handle this—you did a fine job on those worms.” My aunt smiled, and her sun-faded eyes looked at me with an unusual expression. It was a moment before I recognized it as approval, an opinion I was fairly unfamiliar with, especially recently.

“You did well before, too—being so still,” she said. “I bet you didn't know that if you run from a cottonmouth, it'll chase you all the way to Memphis. You were a brave girl.”

Well, I had been, hadn't I? Joel Donahoe would've run off screaming for his mommy, more than likely. My aunt handed me a pitchfork taller than I was, then pushed open a big sliding door in the back of the barn, allowing the breeze to come play inside.

“Just toss that hay into the manure spreader behind the barn over here.” Aunt Too-Tai gestured at the boxy machine attached to the tractor just outside the door. That machine was the manure spreader, whatever that was. “Come on back to the house after you're done, and we'll have dinner.” Then she was gone, leaving me with a pile of hay higher than my head.

I got busy right away, stoutly flinging the hay through the door into the waiting manure spreader. As I struggled with the unwieldy pitchfork, dropping more hay than I picked up, I reflected on the morning's activities and discovered I enjoyed the newfound feeling of being responsible.

At home,
responsible
meant “don't do that.” Here, I'd eaten cereal without sugar. I'd made sixteen nickels and saved the tomato crop single-handed. I'd helped Aunt Too-Tai kill a dangerous snake and taken bitter medicine without complaining. Now I was in charge of moldy hay removal, and it wasn't even dinnertime yet. I was in love with this feeling until about ten minutes into the project, and then the hay began to get under my shirt collar, into the waistband of my shorts. My nose itched. The cat had moved to another patch of sunlight on top of the lumber pile. She opened one eye, blinked, and went back to sleep. I deserved a break, I decided. The breeze beckoned me out behind the barn, so I dropped the pitchfork and slipped outside.

A crow lit on the steering wheel of the tractor and cocked its head, cawing once before it flapped off to the fig trees to poke holes in the ripening fruit. Off in the distance down by the pond, Bob the white mule grazed in the water-meadow amid the purple vetch and cow parsley, his switch tail busy swatting flies. Resting against the manure spreader, I contemplated the new me with satisfaction until I remembered the cigarette in my shirt pocket.

It was time to have my first smoke.

Unaccustomed to playing with fire, I used half the matchbook before I could get the thing lit. The first puff was awful, and the second one was worse. I tried to get the hang of it with another drag and broke into a coughing fit. The cigarette had lost its charm, but I carefully stubbed it out on the edge of the manure spreader and was ready to put it back in my pocket when I heard my aunt's voice.

“Annie—dinnertime!”

I forgot about saving the cigarette for later. Tossing it over my shoulder, I ran around the back of the barn to the house, suddenly starving.

Sunday dinner was on the table, a feast of vegetables in bowls: sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, tender corn fried in bacon drippings, snap beans with bacon, stewed okra, butter beans and bacon, biscuits, and golden summer squash, also with bacon. Three desiccated pork chops looked lonely on a platter all by themselves. I seated myself, and George walked in the back door and came in the kitchen. He washed his hands and sat down at the table.

I was more than a little surprised. I'd never eaten with a colored person before. The rare times I'd seen Methyl Ivory eat at our house, she took her meals in the laundry room and used her own plate and silverware, kept in the cabinet with the box of Tide soap and the Pledge.

But George put his napkin in his lap, just like everybody always did, so I put mine in my lap, too. After my Aunt Too-Tai's perfunctory grace (“Bless this food. Amen.”), I helped myself to some fried corn and a pork chop, but I couldn't take my eyes off the scar climbing George's upper lip as his jaw worked around a mouthful of butter beans.

“Please pass the salt, Annie.” My aunt generously salted everything on the table. “And don't stare—it's impolite.” She speared a tomato slice on her fork.

I looked down at my plate.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. Sneaking a glance at George again, I marveled at his stoic mastery of the tough, dry pork chop with his knife and fork. I'd barely made a dent in mine. He wiped the scar with his napkin and broke a biscuit, raising a piece to his mouth. There was an eyeblink of knurled red gum, a twisted knot of flesh brilliant against his dark lip.

“Annie!” My aunt put her fork down. Her look was icy. “What did I just say?”

“But Aunt Too-Tai,” I said, defensive, “I can't help it. What's wrong with Mr. George's mouth?” George pushed snap beans around on the plate with a hunk of biscuit.