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Excerpt I’ve mostly forgotten about the place. God knows it was the best thing for me. But every now and then, the wicked secret comes out in a dream, or even sometimes just walking down the street on a beautiful sunny day. I try to ignore it, shoo it away like a swamp fly—like the ones that used to come around every spring near the water’s edge. They’d nest in the reeds and bushy punks where Jenny and I would hide when Uncle Joe got into one of his mean moods. Big, blue shiny things they were, with teeth—or at least, that’s the way I remember them. By the time Jenny and I come out of hiding, usually around dark, when Mama would call us to supper, we were bit up to death. By then Uncle Joe would be sleeping, the whiskey once again showing us its kind side. Mama always did the best she could with the greens and cornbread and whatever meat she could trade for sewing, but most nights we were happy to clear the table and get on with it. Mama was known for her sewing all over the county. It was probably the only reason we didn’t starve and why Jenny and me weren’t took by those state folks who come and take away poor kids. They always said they were doing best by the children, but most cried awful and were never heard from again. Usually their mamas just had more. Sometimes the state never found out about them. Country folk soon learned it was better to birth at home so there’d be no trace. Schooling never mattered no-how because the most one could expect from life was the farm, and what good was reading and writing for that? But Mama had a special gift. The rich ladies from Taversville would buy her lace tablecloths and matching napkins. The local folks traded her fine stitchery for pig or chicken and the occasional clutch of fresh eggs. Mama was proud of her work, and we were proud for her. Mama’s ample heart could swallow the entire county. She was always feeding neighbor children despite our own meager supplies, believing that God provided for those who sacrificed themselves for the sake of others. Even though there were nights my growling belly challenged that thinking, time proved her right. I hate to admit this, but it took me a long while to figure the virtue in all of her kindness. Even when skinny Reggie Robinson, who I known from birth, come sneaking around one morning for some of Mama’s cooking, I angered at her giving up what should be mine. I screamed at Reggie to go on home to his own mama’s lame concoctions. Mama jumped towards me with a face full of anger. “Addie Mae, you get over here, girl!” she demanded, as poor Reggie fled from the kitchen table and out the back door, crying. I wasn’t much of anything then, maybe eleven going on twelve, but Mama figured I was old enough for mercy to take hold. She stopped yelling, though I could still feel temper percolating inside. It was her disappointment that hurt most, blistering more than any rage she could have mustered. I hung my head and skulked shamefully towards the table. “I’m sorry Mama, but that Reggie’s always hangin’ ‘round like we don’t know what he’s truly after. Maybe me or Jenny gonna want your cookin’ later.” For a flash Mama looked at me like I wasn’t her daughter, like some other mouth released them harsh words. Then she smiled with her usual forgiveness, settling with me at the kitchen table. “Givin’ up somethin’ ya own is hard to consider, I know that, Addie Mae. But all through life you gonna be forced to let go a things you reckon to be yours alone. Nothin’ belongs to nobody. We just borrowin’ from God and the land and them pesky spirits that try our nature. You gotta learn to give back if you don’t want that gracious circle to be broken. When you offer somethin’ to someone in need, it’s like puttin’ love in the bank. One day that love will return just when you need it yourself, reappearin’ in the shape of your own heart’s desire.” Mama sat there waiting for me to understand, waiting for that loving spark to catch fire. I’d like to say her words turned my thinking, but they didn’t. They only changed my behavior, which I guess was enough for her right then. I moseyed over to Reggie’s house and apologized, coaxing him back with Mama’s griddle-cake kindness, though still hoping he’d leave something good on the plate for me. On most days, Jenny and I would wake at dawn, Billy Milgrin’s prized Red cockadoodledoin’ so to wake the dead. We didn’t mind though, Jenny and me, because we were young and full of life. And for us, life began at dawn. Mama was already up. Uncle Joe, usually sober yet, was out tending the fields. Morning was glorious, the sun coming up over those big strong oaks, turning the land all sparkly and new. The smell of coffee was somehow reassuring, though Mama never let us touch it. It was just one of them grownup things, we reckoned; one of those things we’d get our own chance at in due time. And we sure seemed to have lots of time ahead of us. Of course, chores filled most our day, either helping Uncle Joe in the fields as he got drunker and lazier, or walking clear past the Robinson place for water as we did but twice a week. We never stopped talking. From the day Uncle Joe showed up with Jenny, after Jenny’s mama died in a terrible fire that also killed her baby brother, we talked. Rumor was Uncle Joe started that fire, be it by accident or not. But because Uncle Joe was Jenny’s step-daddy and only family, they let him go, saying to leave town quick. So he did, showing up one morning on Mama’s doorstep. I saw them coming that day. This big dark man with even darker eyes being trailed by Jenny, who wore a pretty yellow dress covered in lilac flowers. She looked different than me, with long chocolate hair and blue eyes. I never seen blue eyes before. I once asked Mama why Jenny and me looked so different, if we were cousins and all. She told me about Jenny’s grandmother, and how she had got pregnant by a white boy passing through town. This boy was traveling the country doing God’s work is what he said, and Jenny’s grandma was supposed to be one of his converts to a better God. By the time he left town, Jenny’s grandma was more than converted. Jenny was the first one in the family to get the blue eyes of God’s work. This did not make life easy. Her mother did the best she could, protecting Jenny from the hate-mongers who called her the devil’s child. Black folk in this part of the country still had raw rememberings of the slave days, and Jenny’s blue eyes reminded them of this painful past. The dark-skinned children threw rocks and pulled her long hair, braided like the little white girls in the magazines. The lighter-skinned children just ignored her, afraid that whiteness would reflect too much in them. So she spent most her days alone, walking along the river, listening to the birds rejoicing. Jenny loved the woods and its coolness. Even on the hottest summer afternoon, she found refuge near that boisterous river. Lying long on the dark green moss, her cheek pressed to the soft ground, she watched the parade of ants march over the hill as they made their way to a hole at the base of an old tree stump. She’d park there for hours, jawing to herself and her ant friends, watching the leaves frolicking above her head. It wasn’t until her baby brother was born that Jenny had another soul to talk to. He didn’t speak of course, the tiny thing. He simply was, and he smiled, and she imagined he loved her. On the occasional days mama traveled to town for provisions, she’d let Jenny take her baby brother to the woods. She loved sharing her magical place with that magical new life. By now Uncle Joe was already drinking too much, blaming her mama for all his life woes. He hit her once or twice, always apologizing straight off then not touching a drop of liquor for a whole day or two. It never lasted though. Soon he was railing on again about his fate in life and how much better he could have done than Jenny’s mother and that bastard child of hers
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