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  “You’re awfully kind,” Ma said. She poked at the collar of her dress. “There’s so many of us.”

  The woman took a stack of dishes from a shelf.

  “Is Robert working on the car?” Ma asked me.

  “He’s not doing anything,” I told her.

  “Ain’t nothing he can do,” Hyacinth said from the stove.

  They sent me to call Robert and Naomi. Naomi went in. Robert stood in front of the car. “I don’t go inside no nigger house,” he said. “Is that girl going into town for the part?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You send her out here.”

  “No.”

  “Who you think you’re saying no to?”

  I headed for the house.

  “You tell your ma I want her,” he called.

  I kept walking.

  “Injun!”

  I turned around. “That ain’t my name, anyways,” I told him, and I went in the house.

  Ma and Naomi were at the table. Hyacinth and the woman stood at the stove, talking in low voices. Ma looked over at them while they talked, and she folded the corner of her napkin. When I told her Robert wouldn’t come in, she started up from the table. But the woman raised her hand in the air. “Ease your load,” she said. “I am sorry if my food isn’t suitable for your man.” She brought the pot to the table and filled our plates.

  “Oh,” Ma said, “I’m sure your food is fine.” Then she looked down. “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Ma told the woman. “He gets moody sometimes. It’s because of the car.”

  “Seem like he’s had car trouble a long, long time,” Hyacinth said.

  “Girl,” the woman said to her daughter. Then her face changed, and the two of them eyed each other, without talking.

  The woman said to Ma, “You got your girls here with you. Eat and rest up.”

  They sat down with us. There were two empty places set.

  “Is someone else expected?” Ma asked.

  The woman smiled. “Hyacinth, can you pass that bread?” The girl reached her big arm out and handed the bread to her mother.

  The woman nodded toward one of the seats. “We keeps that place for my son,” she said.

  “Mattie,” the girl said. “Sometimes he comes here to us.”

  The woman gazed at her daughter, then nodded. She said to Ma, “He is a miracle, that boy.”

  The sun was beginning to sink, but it still burned hot and bright across the cornfield and grassy area in front of the house. Hyacinth stood at the pump, washing a tin pail of beets she’d just pulled from the garden. Naomi and I stood barefoot in the puddle, watching. Hyacinth rinsed out the pail, put the cleaned beets in, and filled it with water. “See how it turns pink?” she said. When we bent close to look, she splashed us.

  Naomi splashed her back.

  Hyacinth straightened up. “So. You alive after all?”

  Naomi looked surprised, too. Then she splashed Hyacinth again, and all three of us went at it.

  The woman called to her daughter from the porch. “I got to take these in now,” Hyacinth said. She drained the water from the pail. “Then I’ll go clean up them spark plugs, or you going nowheres.” She carried the pail into the house. Her mother sat down on a broken easy chair on the porch.

  Naomi and I stood in the cool water. She pushed the wet hair back from her face. Then she carried her shoes over to the tree. She sat down in the shade and started brushing the dirt and grass from her feet.

  From her seat on the porch, the black woman watched us – me at the pump, Naomi under the tree, Robert sitting on the car fender, his eyes on Ma.

  Ma knelt in front of the porch, at the far end from the woman, pulling weeds from the geraniums and petunias alongside the house. The woman had given her an old straw hat to wear. I watched Ma for a long time. She looked different with the straw hat, kneeling in the dirt. Her dress pulled tight across her back when she reached for a weed. She could have been a stranger. She could have been the one who lived in this house, who worked in her own garden.

  I knelt in the sun beside her. Already my clothes were almost dry. Ma didn’t look up. She kept working the dirt around the red and white and purple flowers. I could smell them, sharp and sweet. I watched Ma’s hands and saw the dirt on them, and the lines. Our hands almost touched. I didn’t know what it was I wanted to tell her.

  I heard the screen door close. When I looked up, Hyacinth was sitting on the arm of her mother’s chair, and they were talking. They stopped and looked our way, then went back to talking. I was embarrassed, thinking they were talking about us, that they knew everything there was to know.

  “I want to have a word with you,” Robert told Ma.

  “I’m busy,” Ma said.

  “You come with me,” he told her. He tried to pull her to her feet.

  “Don’t act like a fool,” Ma told him. She stood up. She looked around to see who was watching. We all were.

  “Ma,” I said.

  “Hush,” she told me. “What’s happened, Robert? What are you mad at now?”

  “Nothing you don’t already know about,” he told her. “You come to where there ain’t no audience and talk.”

  Ma pulled away from him.

  Robert followed her. “You hear me?” he said.

  “Stop it,” Ma said. She was shouting at him. “Stop it! For God’s sake, stop.”

  Robert backed off. “Okay.” He ran his hand through his damp hair. “Okay,” Robert said to Ma. He glanced over at the black woman and her daughter. They were standing up like they were ready to come after him. I could see he was afraid of them both. “Don’t you think this is the end of it,” he told Ma. He turned and walked off across the field.

  Ma held her hands folded in front of her. She stood looking out at the trees.

  The black woman came down the steps. “Ma’am?” she said.

  “It’s all right,” Ma finally told her.

  I helped Ma finish with the flowers.

  We were all near the car, Robert, too. The woman told us, “It’s too late to fix your car today. You can sleep the night here.”

  “If your girl don’t want to go,” Robert said, “I’ll go myself.” He looked off to the side of the woman when he spoke.

  “The garage is closed now,” the woman told him.

  “What’re you talking about?” Robert said. “She said it’s open till dark.” He pointed to Hyacinth.

  “Used to be,” the girl told him.

  “Well, Christ Almighty,” Robert said. “Used to be?” He said to the woman, “You sure it’s closed?”

  “I’m afraid that’s right.”

  He turned on Hyacinth. “What the hell you trying to pull? You know I could’ve gone myself instead of waiting here for nothing.” He walked off a few steps, then came back. “Now what the hell am I going to do?” He looked around at the house, the fields, and the woods. “Why’d you say you was going?”

  “I said maybe.”

  “You little . . .” Robert moved toward her, then stopped himself. He felt for the cigarettes in his pocket. “We can’t stay here,” he said. He looked out at the sinking sun. “God Almighty. There’s got to be some other place open. I’ll go myself right now.” His hand shook as he lit the cigarette.

  “It’s all there is,” the woman told him.

  Robert looked hard at Hyacinth, like he wanted to hurt her. She bent down to fix her shoelace. “Something’s going on here,” Robert said. “What the hell’s going on?” Then he turned on Ma. “Essie?” he said.

  Ma shrugged her shoulders. She looked scared.

  “Okay, then,” Robert said. “Okay. I’m going myself first thing in the morning. Don’t you worry about that.”

  We left Robert and went inside. Ma was nervous about spending the night, too. She wanted us all to sleep outside in the car.

  “There’s nothing here to be afraid of,” the woman told her. “Don’t you know that?”

  Ma looked embarrassed. “I know,”
she said.

  They sat at the kitchen table, having tea. Hyacinth took me and Naomi to a wooden box in one corner of the kitchen. She opened the box and showed us the animals she had carved from soap. Naomi fingered the animals. I sat on the floor between the two of them and the women, listening. I didn’t care about the animals.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” the woman said to Ma, “how’d you get with him?”

  Ma looked down at her tea.

  “I’ve had my trouble, too,” the woman told her. “You wouldn’t know it.” The woman drank from her cup, then put it down and turned the handle away.

  Hyacinth handed Naomi a chunk of soap and a knife. “You want to try?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said. I rubbed my fingers against the soap rabbit in my hand.

  “Your mama ain’t going nowheres,” Hyacinth told me. She showed Naomi how to carve the soap.

  The woman said to Ma, “When she was little.” She nodded her head toward Hyacinth. “My boy, Mattie, he was fifteen. There was trouble all the way with him and that man of mine. Finally my boy left home. He went down to Mobile, all by his self, just a baby, too. It was bad between my boy and me. Real bad. He got killed in the train yards.”

  Ma made a surprised sound. Then she said, “I’m awfully sorry.”

  The woman nodded. “You know what I’m telling you.” She shook her head. “It was a long, hard time coming to me, though.”

  Ma looked at the woman, right through her into something else.

  Finally Ma said, “It’s not like that with Robert.”

  “No?”

  “He’s a good man. He was good to me when my husband died. After ward, too.” I thought of the dolls he’d given me and Naomi when we were little, and the rug he got for Ma, and the rosebush. Other things, too, but it didn’t matter. There was always a fight in the end.

  Ma fidgeted with her cup. She and the woman didn’t say anything for a while.

  The woman asked her, “How’d your husband die?”

  “He was sick,” Ma said. They were quiet again. I looked at Naomi and Hyacinth carving the soap.

  Ma said, “He loved me, and he loved his babies.” She smiled, thinking. “But then he got sick,” she said. “And it just got worse. I had to take care of him, and I had to take care of the babies. I couldn’t do it,” Ma told the woman. “I tried, but then I couldn’t do it anymore.” She held the teacup between her two hands.

  After a while the black woman said, “I see.”

  Ma took the handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and wiped her nose.

  The woman looked our way, then back at Ma. “How long you all got to pay for it?” she asked.

  Ma looked at the woman like she didn’t understand. Then she stood up. “You have been kind to us, more than kind, and I thank you.” She went to the screen door. “But I won’t listen to this,” she said, and she went out.

  We all looked at the door, the woman, too. Hyacinth said to Naomi, “What you got there, big sister?” She took the soap from Naomi’s hand. It was the head of a woman, her long hair falling down in back. “Not bad,” Hyacinth said. “Somebody you know?” She gave the soap back to Naomi. We all looked at the door again.

  “It’s all right,” the woman told us. “Don’t you worry now.”

  The woman put blankets down on the kitchen floor for me and Naomi. She told Ma she could sleep on the old couch in her spare room. She didn’t tell Robert anything.

  He started out on the porch, but when the bugs got bad he came inside and went to Ma. I heard her say, “I don’t want to talk.” Then, “Take my blanket. Go to sleep.”

  I lay on the floor in the dark and looked at the white light coming through the window. The room was silent. There was a smell of food in the air. I ran my hands along the cool linoleum and felt bread crumbs. Now and then a chicken ruffled its feathers outdoors, or the cow or mule made a noise or moved across the grass.

  I thought of Hyacinth living in this odd house. She was black and strong and mysterious to me. I thought of the look on her face when Robert told Ma to stay out of the house. And I thought of the way she smelled when I stood next to her as she worked on the car, a sharp-sweet flower smell.

  I drifted off to sleep and dreamed of Hyacinth. We were in a small boat together, riding the waves. Our arms touched. I didn’t dare look at her because even with her eyes closed she saw everything. “What you looking at, white girl?” she said to me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  What woke me was a pitiful sound. I thought one of the animals outside had been hurt. But it was coming from Ma’s room.

  Naomi slept heavily beside me, her breathing steady like waves. I got to my knees and looked around. The light from the window had shifted, and I did not know what time of night it was. I got up, and when I had stood all the way, the mule’s head loomed before me in the window.

  I was afraid of seeing Ma like that, crying in the night, but I went into the room just the same. She was in her slip, sitting at one end of the couch. Her hair fell down loose behind her. She was all white – white arms and neck and face and slip – in the dark room. Robert sat on the floor with his face in his hands. He was the one who had been crying, not Ma. Ma’s hands rested at her side. Her own face was turned toward the window. Her eyes were closed, as if she were listening to something out there, or else dreaming, while Robert sat with his face in his hands.

  He said, “I don’t know what gets into me, Es. I can’t help it.” His voice was thick and far away. “You got to help me.”

  “I can’t help you, Robert,” she told him. “I’m tired of this.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know you’re tired. But I mean it, Es. I swear this time I mean it. No more fighting. No more . . .”

  “I can’t see it, Robert,” Ma said. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t open her eyes. “I can’t see it at all.”

  I left the room and lay back down with Naomi. I lay awake a long time, looking at the white light as it entered the window. Then I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing.

  When I woke, Hyacinth was standing over me, laughing. Ma and the woman talked near the stove as they cooked breakfast. Sunlight poured in through the window and screen door.

  “Just open up your mouth,” Hyacinth told me, “and we’ll drop your breakfast down to you.” She stepped over me, raising her red high-top sneakers carefully. She wore turquoise pedal pushers with frayed cuffs. When she went out the door, the tails of a man’s white dress shirt flapped behind her like wings.

  My eyes rested on the small stand near the door. The carved legs shone dark brown in the sunlight. A piece of old newspaper lay folded on the stand, and on it was the coil Hyacinth had taken from the car.

  I sat up. Naomi was already gone. Ma turned around, cradling a yellow mixing bowl against her body. She looked fresh and bright, standing in the sunlit room.

  “Well,” she said. “Did we wake you?”

  The black woman winked at me from the stove. “You can fold up them blankets and put them over in the spare room,” she told me.

  I stood and folded the warm blankets. Ma was telling the woman how she used to fix hair, “before my babies came. Maybe I could open a shop down there in Texas,” Ma said.

  I held the folded blankets and looked at the two of them. Ma never talked with me and Naomi. She never told us things. I wondered what had happened to make Ma friendly with the woman again.

  Ma said, “I’d love to do something like that.” She glanced at the woman’s hair, then away.

  I dumped the blankets on the couch in the spare room. I didn’t want to walk back through the kitchen where they were, but it was the only way outside.

  Ma said something to the woman about the relatives in Texas. “Are you hungry?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  I went outside. The air and light and the open space all hit me at once, and I felt dizzy. I walked to the tree where the chickens were. I sat on the rusty barrel and looked down at
them.

  I could not imagine Texas. I tried to think of the home we’d just left, our neighbors, the school. I couldn’t see any faces. I couldn’t remember the house. I remembered Robert, and Ma and Robert together, fighting. I remembered me and Naomi leaving the house, always leaving, waiting for them to stop. We were both the wrong babies.

  And now I was here, nowhere, and Ma and the woman were inside, friendly and talking. When the tears started, I would not wipe them away. I would not touch them. They were not mine.

  Naomi walked in front of me and stopped. I kept my hands pressed against the rusted barrel.

  The dress hung on Naomi, and her hair fell down in back like Ma’s in the night. She was small and thin. She looked like a ghost to me. I knew if I touched her my hand would pass right through her bones and out into air.

  I expected her to run from me. But she moved closer, until she almost touched my legs.

  “You all right?” Naomi asked me.

  I nodded my head yes. I kept nodding my head while she stood there with me.

  We ate breakfast without Robert. Hyacinth said, “I wonder if he’s started his long walk yet.”

  “You better go tell him never mind,” the woman said.

  Ma looked worried.

  “He’s all right,” Hyacinth told her.

  Ma fidgeted with her spoon.

  The woman took a pan of biscuits from the stove and set them on the table. Hyacinth reached out and took two.

  Ma studied Naomi’s face while we ate. “Look at those snarls,” Ma said.

  The sun came through the door behind Naomi, lighting the side of her face and her hair. “I’ll have to use that horse brush to get those snarls out,” Ma said.

  Naomi kept her eyes lowered. I could see she was pleased.

  Hyacinth left the table before anyone else, to “go do what I got to,” she told us.

  As soon as we’d cleaned the breakfast dishes, I went out, too. I stood at the top of the porch steps. Robert was at the shed, with Hyacinth and the mule. He held on to the mule’s halter with one hand while he pushed Hyacinth away with the other. She grabbed at the harness that he was trying to hitch to the mule.