Like Sisters on the Homefront Read online

  7

  IF THAT BIG-BONED COUSIN girl said how natural Gayle was at caring for Great one more time she’d slap the fat off her. Cookie ain’t slick, Gayle thought. She just glad she don’t have to do the cleaning, changing, and feeding. Look at how fast she cut out to do her volunteer work.

  “It ain’t fair,” Gayle muttered. “Why I gotta be the slave?”

  She left Great, determined to do something for herself, just because she felt like it. Gayle lifted her son out of the crib, bathed and dressed him, then announced, “We going out to play.” She took a spoon and two jars of strained fruit from her shoulder bag in spite of what Miss Auntie had said about jarred baby food. No way was she making extra work for herself, throwing fresh bananas in a blender. Not when Miss Gerber done picked ’em, peeled ’em, mashed ’em, and put ’em in nice little jars.

  Gayle placed her son on her hip and marched downstairs and out into the backyard. Beckoning arms of fragrant peach trees called them to enjoy the shade. She chose a tree full of yellow fruit to sit under. It was a good spot. The house blocked the view of the eastern side of the property, where crosses and headstones seemed to have grown yet another inch out of the red earth.

  She looked down at her son. “You likes it here, don’t you?”

  He laughed at her. His mama was the funniest thing, especially the way her eyes got bigger when her mouth made singsong.

  “I hates it,” Gayle snapped. “It’s too hot and ain’t nothing to do. Don’t hear no cars, no music on the street, no street period! It’s dead ’round here. Just dead. Even got dead folks planted in the yard.”

  He drooled and cooed, listening to her voice ride up and down while her hands stabbed into the air. He caught hold of a finger and tried to bite it.

  “Stop dat! Just stop dat!” she scolded, though her chuckle gave her away.

  A long shadow on the porch told her to look up. Uncle Luther imposed his height and girth in the frame of the screen door, cutting off the light that flowed through it. Unlike Cookie and Miss Auntie, Uncle Luther didn’t bother with “good morning.” Instead he bellowed, “Grandma needs cleaning,” then stepped away, allowing light to pass through the screen.

  Gayle squinted and spit out curses at her uncle, who by now was in his study.

  “Is my name Fifi? Run, Fifi. Jump, Fifi. Go clean, Fifi. He must think I’m a dog, snapping his fingers at me. S’pose I wanna play with my baby?”

  José reached for her finger and tried to bite it again.

  “Stop dat!” she yelled.

  He let out a scream.

  “Hush that noise ’fore I pop you!” She scooped him up and brought him inside the house. José only cried louder, his face reddening. “I mean it,” she said, raising both her hand and voice.

  How did they expect her to watch José and do for Miss Great at the same time? How? Just how? She couldn’t leave José alone but she couldn’t take him in there. He might roll off the bed or swallow who knows what if she turned her back. She couldn’t make a move without thinking about him, him, him. And even if she could go somewhere he’d be strapped to her. Dog! Everyone was snatching her freedom right from under her feet.

  Gayle kicked her door open, when she could have just as easily turned the knob. She put José in his crib. He let out a holler, both hands reaching up to her. She ran out of the room and closed the door to keep from smacking him.

  Why he gotta need me like that?

  She went into the bathroom to fill the porcelain washbasin. The running tap water cooled her hands. When she felt herself calming, Gayle dried her hands and carried the basin into Great’s room.

  She could smell right away that Miss Great needed changing when she entered the room. Miss Great was stiff looking. Maybe even dead. Last thing she wanted to do was clean a dead person.

  “Miss Great. Miss Great,” she whispered, praying the old woman was only sleeping.

  Great’s eyes popped open, which Gayle felt she did on purpose. All the same, Gayle sighed, relieved. The last thing she wanted was to be the one who found her dead.

  “Miss Great, I come to clean you.”

  Gayle remembered everything Cookie had shown her. ’Sides, wasn’t much different than doing for José. She removed the soiled padding from Miss Great and began wiping and sponging. Mess like a baby, Gayle thought, putting on fresh padding. Unlike Cookie, who manhandled Great clumsily, Gayle took her time changing Great’s cotton gown. Miss Great was real easy and didn’t fight against her movements like José.

  “Miss Great, don’t you miss going outside?” Gayle asked. “It feel like prison in here.”

  “Miss a lot of things,” she said.

  “Like that peach liquor you wanted Cookie to get.”

  “Freshie, that ain’t liquor. More like a tea. A healing tea.”

  “Anything you say, Granny.”

  Great pursed her lips like she had to spit. “Something ugly as you otta be sweet.”

  Gayle chuckled. As many boys told her she was a fine yella honey, she knew better. And Troy was gonna buy a gold tooth to cap her chipped one. Man, she had to get back to South Jamaica!

  Great studied Gayle’s face then shook her head. “A boy draws on his mama’s looks. And you ugly—mercy, mercy! Ain’t seen nothing so ugly.”

  “Granny, is you trying to break on me?” Gayle said.

  “Just look at you. All your teef fell out.”

  “Just got one chipped toof,” Gayle said.

  “Chirrens rob your teef and more. Every child a toof will drop.”

  “That’s just an old wise tale.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Great testified. “Better get this wisdom while I got it to give. It’s handed down like the recipe.”

  Gayle rolled her eyes and thought, She a hustler. An old hustler. Face suddenly full of color like she gonna live another year.

  “Old Luther’s mammy used to make it,” Great continued. “Passed it on to me. Got it from her mammy, and so on back to the root. Know how t’tell a groom in love? He’ll walk miles and miles to fill his jar with the healing. Know how t’tell a old married man? Missus come miles and miles fill her own jar.” Great laughed, straining her. Gayle didn’t get the joke but said “hah hah” to be polite.

  “Mothers brought daughters for cramps. Womens took it for headaches, backaches, and all women pains. Good for the change too.”

  Gayle knew about cramps and backaches. She didn’t know about changing, though Great looked like she done changed a couple of times. She so old.

  “I suspect you can use some family recipe, being all through it. A little taste will put things right.”

  “Miss Great, you ain’t slick. You just want some liquor and you want me to get it.”

  “Listen, you toofless yella frog.”

  “Fa-rog?”

  “I was nothing but fourteen when I slipped my first. Slipped another one three months after that. Mammy Gates knew what to do. How to make everything heal. I got my strength up and had a giant. My Sonny. Carried him full time. Now, seem like you could use a healing. Make that recipe and you’ll be whole in no time.”

  “I ain’t miscarried,” Gayle declared. “I had an abortion.”

  “Keep pulling on them roots. See if nothing grows.”

  “Nothing wrong with me,” Gayle insisted.

  “Nothing the recipe can’t heal.”

  Make, make, make. Great was asking her to do another thing. “Why don’t Cookie go buy you some?”

  “Can’t buy family recipe. Got to be made,” Great said. “Cookie is her daddy’s baby. He put it in her head it’s wicked. What I calls healing, he calls hoodoo. Devil rooting.”

  “Oh, it’s some kind of crime against God? Cookie big on God.”

  “Little Luther hides ’hind God,” Great whispered, as if Luther could hear them. “You’d never know his daddy was a big drinking man. Not that Sonny was no drunk. He was a giant. Laughed big, talked big, drank big. Y’always knew when Sonny home. He made the house c
ome alive.

  “Sonny was a marching preacher, now. Got kilt during them Civil Rights marches. When Little Luther went to get the body all he could remember about his daddy was the smell of bourbon. Little Luther never forgot it, never forgave it. When he got to be grown, took over his daddy’s church, Little Luther made spirits his number-one devil for destroying mens and families. Ain’t been no one making family recipe since Ruthie. We made it in secret, you know.”

  “Now you want me to make it?”

  “If I could get up in them trees and pick them peaches myself I wouldn’t sorrow you with the recipe.”

  “Me climb a tree? Granny, you must be mad.”

  “Ain’t you never climbed a tree? Played Indian or something? What kinda gal is you?”

  “Kids don’t be climbing trees in South Jamaica,” Gayle said.

  “You don’t want the ones up in the trees no way. You want the ripe ones already dropped. Ripe, not spoilt.”

  “What I know ’bout cooking up wine?”

  “Best get this wisdom while I got it. I’mo pass it down like Mammy Gates passed it on to me.”

  Great’s eyelids fluttered, heavy with fatigue. Her lips moved soundlessly.

  Gayle leaned forward to hear better. “What’s that, Miss Great? What?”

  “Cut them up. Tho’ in the pit. Won’t need much water, not more’n y’otta. Go round to Mahalia. She won’t fail you.”

  “Who that?”

  “Tree ’longside the peach. Mahalia got cramp bark. If Little Luther cut that down—like he always threatened to do—d’ain nothing. Snatch you some catnip. Batch growing near the headstones.”

  “Over by the dead people?” Gayle was mortified.

  “If none of that, squaw vine do fine.”

  “They sell it at the store?”

  “Shave off a bit black licorice. Tho’ it all in the jar ’long with the peaches. Set cotton cloth over it and let it keep in the dark. Some mason jars in the pantry. I think that little girl uses them to plant things in,” she whispered.

  “What little girl?” Gayle asked.

  “Little girl what runs ’hind Little Luther giggling and grinning. It’s a wonder he could stand something that silly.”

  “Cookie?”

  Great made that bout-to-spit face. “Ginny.”

  Gayle almost asked who Ginny was when she realized Great was in the past remembering Aunt Virginia as a young girl.

  “Don’t let Little Luther find it,” Great said before her eyes closed from exhaustion. “He’s looking for the devil.”

  “Unh-unh.”

  Gayle left Great and returned to her room, determined to take José back outside to play. She looked into the crib. José had worn himself out crying and was sleeping on his belly. She turned his head more to the side and stroked his hair. She wanted to do something so he wouldn’t have nightmares of her during his nap. She wanted to sing a lullaby, though none came to mind. Instead, she sang over and over, “Go round to Mahalia, she won’t fail you” and anything else she could remember from the recipe.

  8

  “I KNEW SOMETHING WAS UP,” Gayle told José, who gazed up at her from the blanket he sat on. “Reason Miss Auntie only wrote laundry on my list last night was she knew laundry was an all-day affair.”

  José banged on the rubber basket with both hands.

  “It’s like she knew I planned to get into some trouble. Get those ingredients. Brew up some recipe. Great’ll have to wait another day.”

  She jumped up to pull the line down in order to pin linen napkins to the clothesline. Why couldn’t they have a dryer? They had two washers plus all the money in the world. What was the problem?

  “And miss all this sunlight?” Miss Auntie had said the night before. Work, slave, work, is what she meant.

  Gayle was no stranger to laundry duty. She had always washed two or three loads for Mama on Saturdays, but never no jailhouse loads like what Miss Auntie had in mind. She almost cracked a rib stretching to pin the clothes to a line that was obviously built for skyward women like Miss Auntie and Cookie. José’s bibs and T-shirts were the hardest to hang, as they didn’t drape. Not to mention Cookie’s big old cotton bloomers and those kneesocks. And Miss Auntie had a thing for linen napkins. Miss Auntie said paper napkins were bad for the environment. Bad for the environment, nothing. Miss Auntie used linen napkins at dinner to be showing out. Then there was Great’s things. Gayle could use an entire line to hang Miss Great’s sheets and bedgowns, which she went through like Kleenex. At least Miss Auntie brought Uncle Luther’s shirts to the cleaners. Gayle didn’t want to do any more for her uncle than she had to.

  A gnat hung at her ear, needling her lobe. She swatted furiously. Damn gnats. They were everywhere. Swat one, here come his brother. Take care of him, here come his cousins.

  What was Cookie doing that she couldn’t come out and help with this laundry? Didn’t they say at the clinic no heavy housework for six weeks? She smiled, thinking, Miss Auntie would make her lie down if she said she had the woman pains. She laughed aloud. José laughed with her. Woman pains wouldn’t cut no cloth with Mama, ’cause Mama’d say, “You got to be a woman to have woman pains.” Gayle told José, “That Mama be pissing me off and making me laugh.”

  The laundry basket was empty again. She pulled it away from José and started for the pantry. José cried out. She was leaving him.

  “What you spec me to do? I can’t carry you and get clothes too. Stay there,” she yelled back.

  José wailed.

  Gayle refused to turn around. All of that cooing and coddling would only slow her down. She went into the pantry, where two washing machines were filled with whites. One machine completed the spin cycle while the other was churning strong. José’s cries were not to be drowned out by the washers. She moved quickly, emptying a damp pile into her basket. She ran outside with her basket to her son, whose arms were outstretched.

  “See! Ain’t nothing to be crying about.” She wiped his face. “You hungry, ain’t you?”

  “Aaak!”

  “Awright, awright,” she said, setting the basket on the grass. “I kinda figured that one little jar wouldn’t hold you.” She took out a jar of cereal and a spoon from her apron. She sat down, unscrewed the jar, and began to feed him. He fussed, knocking the spoon away. “Had some real food, don’t want no jar food no more. Well you gon’ starve, li’l man. I’m not creaming no sweet potatoes and grits ’cause you getting spoiled eating these people food.”

  José blew spit bubbles at his mama.

  “Eat this or eat nothing.”

  José reached, trying to knock the spoon away. He shook his head left then right and blew more spit bubbles.

  “Ain’t got all day. Stop being stupid and eat this.”

  The screen door swung open. Miss Auntie came flying out of the house like the roof was on fire.

  “Did I hear right? Did you call this sweet little angel stupid? We don’t allow such a word in our house, let alone on a baby. He’ll grow up stupid because you told him he was stupid.”

  Gayle glared at her aunt. “Okay,” she said. “Eat this here cereal or starve, little genius.”

  Her aunt did not care for the remark and snatched up the baby. “Emanuel, sweetheart,” she said, knowing full well his name was José, “you hungry, baby?” He stopped fussing the minute she opened her mouth. “Auntie will feed you.”

  Gayle folded her arms and squinted at Auntie, who paid her no mind. Not only had Miss Auntie undone her mothering, but she had managed to soothe her baby with her lilting voice. Gayle watched her son drool at the sight of Miss Auntie’s mouth oozing honey as though that were food enough. And when Miss Auntie carried him off, he didn’t cry or search for her over Miss Auntie’s shoulder.

  A gnat landed on Gayle’s arm. She smacked it hard. Had to smack something even if it was her own skin.

  “See if I care.”

  She yanked a towel out of the basket and threw it up to the line. A pain, sharp
like a hand squeezing her deep down inside, made her double over. She stayed bent, waiting for the grip on her insides to ease. It was the woman pains! They were for real. Better not fool around, she thought. She sat in the grass and rocked back and forth on her sits bones to pass the pain. The sun was in her eyes when she could stand on her feet. A tree with the widest trunk stretched out its arms, then tilted its leafy head upward from a sudden breeze. It had to be Mahalia. The only fruitless tree standing next to the peach trees.

  She had to make that peach recipe. It would put her right, like Great said. She took a few baby steps toward the tree. She stopped, hearing the back door swing open. It was Cookie.

  “’Bout time you got out here. What was you doing besides eating breakfast?”

  “For your information, Cousin Gayle, I had the bathrooms to clean, all the floors to mop, and the carpets to vacuum. Then I gave Great her wash-off, fed her breakfast, and read her Psalms.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So you busy.” Gayle’s breath was heavy.

  “Cousin, are you all right?”

  “It ain’t nothing. Just a cramp.”

  “Why didn’t you use the stool? Look at you. You’re a midget.”

  “Who you calling midget?” Gayle asked sharply. “Do you hear me calling you out?—though I could.”

  Cookie had no intention of paying back ugly. She went into the pantry.

  Gayle took a few deep breaths. She rubbed her pelvis and looked to the tree. Mahalia. The pains seemed to pass.

  Cookie returned with the stool. “Mama’s in there feeding José,” she said cheerfully. “She loves him terribly.”

  “If she loves babies so much why’d she stop at you?”

  Cookie spoke secretively. “Great said Mama almost died having me and couldn’t have no more babies.”

  “Those the breaks,” Gayle sang, puzzling her cousin with her sudden glee. “Why didn’t she take some of that family recipe Great be talking about? The way Great tell it, that thing can cure cancer.”

  Cookie laughed then, and it was Gayle’s turn to be puzzled. “You can’t go by Great. She exaggerates everything—especially the powers of that old recipe.”