Tomato Girl (25 page)

“No, but …”

“Oh, Ellie, I know this is hard. You and I, we've never been apart, have we? And that's the way it will be again, angel, you'll see.” Daddy wiped my tears away with his calloused hands. He kissed the top of my head. I could feel his warm lips tremble against my scalp.

“Promise, Daddy? Promise me you'll come back? Promise me, Daddy!”

“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said, drawing an invisible
x
over his chest. He forced a smile. “Now, have you forgotten that it's Easter Sunday?”

My eyes widened. “I did forget!” Although part of me didn't care that it was Easter. After all that had happened, chocolate bunnies and dyed eggs didn't matter anymore. But Daddy was trying hard to make me feel better, and I loved him so much, I pretended to care.

“Well, run upstairs while I carry Tess's things out to the car. Wash your face and comb your hair. And don't forget to check at the foot of your bed.” Daddy winked.

I wrapped my arms around Daddy's neck and hugged him. He held me for a moment, then let go. “Scoot, now,” he said, swatting my bottom with his hand.

“You'll be here when I come back?”

Daddy nodded. He looked away.

U
PSTAIRS IN MY ROOM
, every sign of Tess was gone: her clothes, makeup, and stack of books. Only the smell of her perfume hung in the air. I wanted to open every door and window to rid the house of her, but somehow I knew it was useless. Tess was now a stain soaked into the bones of our house.

Daddy had left a large wicker basket at the foot of my bed.
Pink and yellow ribbons circled the handle and formed a bow on top. Rows of chocolate bunnies wrapped in tinfoil peeked over the edge. Right in the middle, next to a sugary marshmallow egg, sat a little green chick so much like Jellybean that my voice caught in my throat when I saw him.

My hands shook as I scooped him from the basket and untangled plastic grass from around his thin legs. I sat on my bed, held my new chick, and cried all over again.

I never knew my eyes could make so many tears.

D
OWNSTAIRS, THE DOOR CLOSED
.

“Daddy!”

I dropped the chick on my bed and ran as fast as my legs would move. Partway down, I called to my father, even though I could not see him. “Daddy! No, Daddy! Please don't go!”

I crossed the floor quickly and pulled the front door open. I ran onto the front porch and down the steps. The morning sun shone in my eyes, causing me to squint. I saw Tess sitting in the front seat of Daddy's car. She looked in the mirror. Wrapped in a quilt, she'd left one hand free to put lipstick on her mouth.

“Ellie.”

Daddy's voice spun me around.

“Do you like your chick, angel?” He wore his best gray coat and carried his brown suitcase. “I know it's not Jellybean, but …”

I nodded. My voice stuck in my throat.

“I have to go now, Ellie.” His eyes looked so calm they frightened me. This was not how things were supposed to be.
My father can't just leave,
I thought.
He can't get into the car and drive away. It's not possible.
I knew this could not be possible.

And yet it was.

Everything inside me broke. “No! No! No!”

Daddy hugged me with one arm, never letting his suitcase go. With his hand on my shoulder, he nudged me toward the house. “Go back inside, Ellie.”

I dropped to my knees and grabbed the hem of his coat. “Daddy, please don't go. I'll do anything you want,” I begged with all I had inside me. “I'll be good. I'll be nice to Tess. Please don't leave me, Daddy!”

“I've got to go, Ellie.” Daddy pulled his coat from my hands and walked to the car.

I ran behind him, my arms reaching for him, my voice crying, “Please, don't leave me, Daddy!”

Daddy slipped into the car and locked the door. I banged on the window, screaming for my father to stay.

The engine started, the slow vibrations tingling my hands.

All my tears and pleading couldn't make Daddy stay.

The car pulled forward, a sudden lurch that almost threw me off balance. I stepped back quickly. Loose gravel dug into the bottoms of my socks, hurting my feet. A wave of exhaust fumes hit my face.

Daddy drove away. He didn't wave or look back.

I ran after him as far as I could. The gravel and asphalt tore through my socks and cut the soles of my feet.

I tried to keep up, but the car grew smaller and smaller as it turned onto Gratton Street, then went up the steep hill. When the red taillights disappeared, I fell facedown on the asphalt and pounded the road with my fists.

I screamed for my father, but he'd gone too far for my voice to bring back.

L
ORD, CHILD, WHAT
are you doing laying in the middle of the road?” Fingers tugged at the back of my dress. I tried to see who stood beside me, but could only make out two scuffed shoes a few inches from my face. “Come on now, let's get up from here before a car hits you and me both.”

My arms and legs felt numb from kicking and pounding on the road.

“Come on now,” the woman said again.

I tried, but didn't have the strength to push myself up.

“Jericho! Jericho! Get out here and help me with this child. Mercy, who left this girl in the street?” The woman's voice rose louder. “Jericho, come here!”

A door slammed and footsteps came toward me.

My eyes and nose stung from crying. I squinted to see who stood over me. Their voices sounded like ones I'd heard before, maybe in Daddy's store, maybe in the market.

A wing-shaped shadow opened above me as two wide arms
lifted me from the road. My head felt dizzy. I tried to breathe deeper, wanting to stop the pinwheels spinning inside my head.

The man smelled like familiar things, tobacco and coconut, and I looked at his huge face. His skin was the dark brown color of coffee beans, his eyes black like my ragdoll's button eyes. When he smiled, a gold tooth glinted from behind his lower lip.

As he took a step back, my head felt light and dizzy. “I'm Jericho,” the man said.

“Tess … no, Ellie … I …” My head and eyes burned, my throat felt dry and scratchy.

“Well, which is it, honey? Are you a Tess or an Ellie?” When he chuckled, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down in his wrinkled neck.

“Ellie. My name is Ellie.” I licked my lips. “Are you an angel, Jericho?”

“Well, I don't know if I'm quite that good, but I sure ain't a devil, Ellie.”

“Come on, Jericho, let's get her inside,” the woman said.

Jericho held me close to his chest as he took long strides down the sidewalk, and even though I didn't know this man and should have been afraid, I wasn't. He was solid like an old tree, a tree that had lived through storms and harsh winters. You can lean all your worries against a tree like that.

Up two steps, we entered a pink clapboard house with white shutters. I smelled coffee, and something like roasted corn. A dog barked, and from far away, in another room, gospel voices sang on the radio.

“Hush up, Leo!” the woman hollered. “Go on, get outside!”

The door opened, then slammed shut on the barking dog.

“Put her in our room, Jericho.”

He carried me down a narrow hall. I saw a picture of the crucified Jesus on the wall, and a calendar from Daddy's store. I swallowed hard, not wanting to cry. Somehow I knew there'd be more
tears, that I was a long way from finished, but my body hurt so deep I couldn't cry again. Not yet.

Jericho carried me into another room and laid me on a bed. “There now. You rest, gumdrop.”

My body sank in soft down. “Are you leaving, Jericho? Don't go!” I reached up to wrap my arms around his neck.

“Aren't you something?” he laughed. “Attached to me already.”

The woman swatted Jericho's leg with a towel. “Don't flatter yourself, old man.”

She sat next to me on the bed, and I looked at her face a long minute while she looked at mine. Gray hair ran in plaited rows across her head. Her skin, not as dark as Jericho's, glowed with tiny sweat beads. Her eyes looked more gold than brown, and lines spread out from her eyes and lips.

“Jericho ain't going nowhere, child,” she said. “I couldn't get rid of him if I tried.”

“Who are you? I've seen you before.” I studied her face.

“Why, I'm Clara. Jericho's wife. This is Gratton Street, where me and Jericho live.”

I knew that mostly colored people lived on Gratton Street, and maybe one or two families from Mexico who had come here to work at the poultry plant on the edge of town. Mary Roberts and I weren't allowed to play on Gratton Street, but it wasn't far from my house.

Clara turned to her husband. “Jericho, don't you have some work to do?” she asked.

“It's Easter Sunday. I'm not working on the day our Lord rose from the grave.”

“You going to be in your own grave soon enough if you don't get out of my way and let me tend to this child.” Clara laughed as she scolded her husband.

Jericho leaned over and touched my cheek with his finger. “You rest up, little Ellie. Clara's just fussing at me 'cause she loves me so.” He winked and added, “Don't pay her no mind.”

Clara pushed Jericho toward the door. “Find something to do
while I clean up this child.” She turned around to face me. “Now, let's get you washed up,” she said, then disappeared into the next room. I heard water running and she returned with a basin and towel in her hands.

Clara dipped the cloth into the water, rubbed on soap until she worked up a good lather, then reached for my hand. “What happened to you, honey?” She rubbed the warm soap over my dirty knuckles, then over the palm of my hand. She noticed the red line where yesterday the glass sliver had cut my hand. “What happened here?”

“I fell and broke a glass,” I explained.

Clara kept washing, careful not to scrape my wound. Soon, the cloth turned gray.

“I see,” Clara said as she wiped my face. She stared at me a moment as if studying my features. “Why, I know who you are now.” She nodded, sure of herself. “You're the little Sanders girl, right?”

“Yes. Ellie Sanders. But how do you know me?”

“Rupert Sanders is your daddy? Runs the store down on Henders Lane?”

I nodded.

“Well, it sure is a small world, Ellie. I was just down there not two days gone to buy mousetraps and penny nails. Your Daddy's a fine man, but he charges too much. I've seen you in there on Saturdays a time or two, I believe.”

“I'm there after school sometimes, too. I help Daddy sweep floors and look after the chicks.” I remembered her now, the colored woman who asked about Mama and bought dried corn cobs to feed birds in winter. I'd seen her there only a couple times. Daddy said she knew magic and could read people's futures.

Clara left to refill the basin with clean water. When she returned, she sat next to me and continued to wash my hands, face, and arms. She pulled off my dirty socks and washed my feet. “How are your folks? Somebody told me your Mama had taken sick, is that true?”

“My mother fell … and, well … I don't …” My bottom lip quivered.

“It's all right, go on, you can tell Clara. Won't be much I haven't heard in the sixty years I've been walking the earth. I've got ears for listening, now you tell me.”

“My daddy … he …” I couldn't finish. There was so much to tell, too many places to begin the story and all of them made me sad.

Clara lifted my head and held it between her hands. “Your daddy didn't hurt you, did he? That's not why you ran away, is it?”

“No … he … Daddy went … I don't even know where he went. He left with the tomato girl!”

I bit down on my lip, but the tears came anyway. I dropped my face in my hands and cried.

“Oh, honey, you're going to be just fine. Whatever it is, don't matter how bad, Clara's right here. You just cry it out.” Clara sat close and wrapped her arms around me. “I got you now, you just let it all out. Spill those tears, little one.”

I cried so hard my whole body shook. My eyes and throat burned, and my stomach ached. I cried so hard I gagged. Through it all, Clara held me like she'd promised. She didn't flinch, or move, or let me go, not for a second.

I don't know how long I cried, but it felt like hours. For the first time in days, I felt clean inside. It had taken so much of me, trying to be good for God and to keep Mama from sinking into her sad mood. I'd held so much inside, I couldn't hold it any longer. I needed somewhere to let my worries go. Clara's arms was just the place.

When my sobs slowed, Clara wrapped me in a heavy blue quilt covered in stars. My fingers traced the gold stitches. “This quilt belonged to my mother,” she said. “Whenever I have a hard day, I curl up in Mama's quilt and dream my troubles away. You give each worry you have to one of the stars. Remember that. Don't
matter how many worries you got because there are always more stars than worries.”

I closed my eyes and prayed Clara's quilt would bring Daddy back to me.

In the moments before I drifted off to sleep, Clara's voice floated in from another room. She spoke to Jericho. “Go down to Tucker's house, see what you can find out about Rupert Sanders who runs the store on Henders Lane. When y'all find Mr. Sanders, tell him we've got his girl here. And you tell him Clara says he's got a heap of explaining to do.”

C
LARA RAN HER
hand across my cheek. “You nearly slept the whole day away, child. Don't you want some food? I baked an Easter ham, some potato salad, all kinds of pie.”

“I'm not too hungry, Clara.”

“Maybe something to drink, then? Jericho bought Coca-Cola last night. He won't miss a little.”