Apron Strings (14 page)

On the evening of my birthday, Gordy, Helen, and I ambled about the house listlessly. My mother had invited several of the neighborhood kids over for cake and ice cream that afternoon. After they departed, the evening hours stretched out before us gray and dull in comparison. When Big Early drove up, we clambered into the truck bed to tell him about the party and show him the small gifts I’d acquired. He observed each obligingly and wished me a happy birthday. Feeling bold and entitled on account of the occasion, I ventured a favor. “Big Early, can you take us for a ride?” I asked. “With us back here?”

“I ‘spect it won’t hurt nothin’,” he said, slipping the truck into gear. “Hang on tight, you hear?” Big Early backed down the drive so slowly that we hardly stirred a breeze. I saw Mr. Dabney sitting on his back porch looking sour and thought I’d cheer him up. I waved from the truck bed. “Hey, Mr. Dabney! Look, we’re going for a ride.” Mr. Dabney stared at the truck with a mean look on his face.

Gordy kicked at me and hissed, “Leave him alone. You know we aren’t suppose to talk to him.”

“He’s not all that bad. Jest talks a lot, is all. ‘Sides you do things all time that Mama says not to do. So leave me alone.”

“Mama said…nevermind. Ya aren’t gonna listen anyway.” He said his nose and mouth all screwed up into a smerk. The oily truck exhaust settled around us as we inched our way down the drive.

“Faster!” we shouted, waving the fumes from our faces. When we got to the end of the drive, Big Early stopped. The gears clunked and the old truck shuddered back up to where we started. Ethel was standing in the drive with her purse draped over her arm and several paper bags tucked around her person. She was smiling at us. Mr. Dabney made a big show of getting up out of his chair on the porch and going in the house, slamming the door behind him.

“Big Early, can we go again?” The truck listed hard to the right on its old springs as Ethel climbed into the cab alongside Big Early. She slammed the door, leaned out the window and said, “Ya’ll sit down right back here.” She patted the back of the cab. “Don’ lemme see you standin’ up.”

We tittered and giggled as Big Early once again wrestled the truck into gear. This time we backed up, turned around and drove out of the driveway. Wind whipped my braids into my face and Helen’s curls blew every which way. We dutifully sat with our backs against the pickup cab, watching the telephone poles zip by. Gordy stood on his knees to get a better look only to receive a warning tap on the cab window and a fierce shake of the head from the ever-watchful Ethel. The only thing missing that would have made my birthday perfect was Lil’ Early. The ride in that truck would have been a million times more fun had he been there. We only went around the block, but for months afterward our conversations started with, “Remember when we…”

It had been at least six months since we last saw Lil’ Early. I got to wondering where he was, so I convinced Helen to do my dirty work for me. We popped our heads into the kitchen. I poked Helen in the ribs and she finally asked. I held my breath. With her mixing bowl in hand, Ethel paused and told us that he had gone to live with his father in Washington. When she told us we probably wouldn’t see him for a good while, I just about crumpled inside.

Helen, Gordy, and I were lounging in the den, still in our pajamas, one Saturday morning a few weeks before Thanksgiving. The good cartoons came on early. We’d been up for more than two hours plastered to the couch. During a commercial break, I went hunting for a snack.

I was standing on the counter checking out the contents of the cabinet when I heard the door open behind me. Two sets of footsteps walked
across the threshold. I sucked my breath in.
Not mama, not mama, not mama
, I repeated to myself with my eyes clenched shut. Then I heard it: his voice, now almost a tenor. I spun around just as Lil’ Early and Ethel walked past the stove. I shrieked, half-startled, half-delighted to see our old friend again. Lance jumped up to greet him, his tail banging against the cupboard, then spun back around to investigate my shriek and make sure I was all right. Lil’ Early stood there for a minute smiling, looking a little uncomfortable. He looked like he had grown too—and not just because his red corduroy pants were way too short. Early was no longer the beanpole I remembered; he was bigger all over. His hair was still close cropped like Gordy’s, but instead of blond and silky, Early’s was rusty-black and kinky. He was a lot more handsome than I remembered him being. His striped T-shirt looked well-worn but clean. Then he broke out in a big goofy grin and I saw that his teeth had gotten big along with his feet. He had on a pair of high tops that looked every bit as big as Daddy’s.

“What ya doing up there? You git on down here this minute afore I tan yo’ hide,” Ethel snapped, chuckling as she came into the kitchen. “Ya hongry?” she asked. I nodded yes.

I quickly jumped down, bouncing over to hug Lil’ Early. “Come on,
Mighty Mouse
is on,” I said as I grabbed his hand, tugged him toward the television, and then dropped it like it was a snake. I stole a look to see if anyone saw. “Can we have fried apples?” I asked Ethel, adding, “Please,” over my shoulder as we hurried into the television room.

A deep, warm chuckle and a few bars of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” quickly dissolved into a hum were Ethel’s only reply. Then I heard her talking to Lance. “What you doin’ in here? You know you ain’t ‘spose’ to be in de house. Go on, git.” The kitchen door opened and closed. “Ya’ll done let ol’ Lance in the house,” she mumbled.

Even Mighty Mouse’s latest escapade couldn’t keep me from noticing the sweet and pungent aroma of apples and cinnamon wafting from the kitchen. “I hope she brought some sausage,” I said out loud to no one in particular.

“She did, and I helped make it,” Lil’ Early piped in. “My granddaddy killed the hog and then Miz Ethel and I butchered it.”

“You did what?” Gordy demanded. “You butchered a hog? Yuck.” He leaned closer, his nose and lips curled up as he launched into a slew of questions. “Was it all bloody and smelly? Did you get blood all over you? Did it fight back and try to bite you? Hogs are supposed to be mean. Did it try to kill you first?”

“Naw, it was already dead. Granddaddy stuck it in da neck. Miz Ethel and me, we’s just cut it up and put it in piles. We took the back legs and cuts ‘em up into hams and salted him right good and hung ‘im in the smoke house.”

“He stuck it? With what? You hanged ‘em? How do you hang a hog? Ya go up and say come here little hog lemme put this noose around your neck?”

“I tell ya it was already dead,” Lil’ Early insisted.

“I can make a hangman’s noose. You wanna see? Daddy showed me how. Watch, I’ll show you,” I said then raced off to find the piece of rope I’d been practicing with the day before.

“Why would you do that?” Gordy continued. “If it was already dead, why would you hang it?”

“I don’ know why. Just cuz that’s what they says to do.”

“Was it bloody?”

“Na, they grabs the hog by the back foot an hangs it up on a branch and all the blood goes away afore you do any butcherin’. Ain’t no blood to speak of. Jest a little. It don’t smell much ‘cept when’s you’s cleanin’ the chitlings. Miz Ethel takes them out an slings em up ‘gainst a stump ‘til dey might near cleaned out, then she cooks ‘em in water for a long time. That smells up ta high heaven like an ol’ outhouse in sore need of some limin’.”

“What’s an outhouse?” Helen asked, taking her thumb out of her mouth and adjusting her blanket around her like a cape.

“A bafroom,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Why da ya call it an outhouse if it’s a bathroom?” she asked, holding her thumb poised on the edge of her lips, ready to stuff it back the moment she finished her question.

“Cuz dat what it is.”

“So how do ya make sausage?” I asked as I held the rope in a figure eight in one hand while I attempted to wrap one end around the other
as I’d seen my father do. “Ethel’s sausage is the best,” I said. “Dang!” The figure eight unraveled in my hand. “I did it yesterday. Just hang on, I’ll show you.” I put the rope on the floor, made the figure eight, wrapped the loose end around the figure eight, and then pulled gently. The knot came apart the minute I took it off the floor

Lil’ Early picked up the rope. Before I could take in what he was doing, he’d handed it back to me in a perfect hangman’s noose. “After we git finished cutting up de hog, we takes the leftovers and grinds ‘em up in de grinder. Turning de handle was my job. Then we mixes it all up with some spices and thangs and wraps it up in paper. Some of it we freeze and some of it we eat.” He puffed up and sat taller.

“Wait,” Gordy interrupted, “sausage is hog? I thought it was pork. I don’t want to eat a hog; ‘specially one that’s been put up in a tree. Yuck.”

“Breakfast ready,” Ethel called from the kitchen.

The warm kitchen smelled of apples, cinnamon, and coffee, with that tantalizingly sharp mixture of spices, hot pepper, and browning pork.

“I brought ya’ll some sausages jest like ya’ll axt me,” she said as she popped two slices of bread in the toaster, then buttered two more with an economy of movement that made the toasting seem as if it were just an extension of buttering the bread.

I was already making my fried apple sandwich by placing the sausage on the toast and piling my apples on top. I was reaching for the cinnamon sugar when I heard a muffled, “I don’t want any,” coming from across the table.

I put on the last sausage and second slice of toast to top off my sandwich and took a bite. “Are you nuts?” I asked, chewing noisily.

“No, I don’t want any,” Gordy repeated louder and surer of his conviction. “I don’t like hog.”

“Pig and hog—they’re the same thing,” I said as I reached for the sausages on his plate.

“I want some Coco Puffs,” Gordy said. He got up from the table, went to the cupboard, pulled down the box of cereal and a bowl, and then plopped back in his seat.

“Ya feelin’ all right, honey?” Ethel inquired, putting her hand gently on his forehead. “Ya ain’t gots a temperature, do ya?”

He pushed her hand away. “Na, I’m OK. I just don’t like hog. Never did,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Ain’t dat somethin’? I always thought you did. Why, yo’ favorite meal is poke chops, ain’t it? I ain’t got you confused with somebody else now, do I?”

“I do like pork chops. I just don’t like hog.”

“It’s the same, Gordy,” Ethel said flatly. “If’n you don’ want no sausage, d’ya want some apples?”

“Well then, I don’t like pork, and I don’t want apples that have been next to hog.”

“You are dumb, really stupid,” I said, stuffing the last of his sausage in my mouth. I licked my fingers, savoring every delicious, juicy bite of sandwich. “Early, this sausage it is better than ever.” I jumped up and gave Ethel’s tree-trunk-sized thigh a hug. “What are we gonna do today?”

From his place at the table with his bowl of Coco Puffs, Gordy perked up. “Let’s go to the big woods down behind George’s house.”

“Don’ let me catch you in dem woods,” Ethel said. “You not s’pose’ to be down there. Ya’ll got a perfectly good yard to play in—ya don’ need to be going acrost the street down in dem woods. Ya hear me?” She shook the spatula in her hand for emphasis.

“I cross the street all the time. My best friend lives across the street,” Gordy said.

“Who’s your best friend?” I asked as I mentally went down the list of who lived across the street.

“Would you shut up?” he snarled. “Ethel, I walk home from school every day right by those woods. Why can’t I play there?

“Don’ be tellin’ yo’ sister ta shut up,” Ethel said. She bent down to look Gordy in the eyes. “Them woods ain’t yo’ property, is one thing. An’ I told ya not to, is the second thing. So don’ lemme catch you down there. Now, ya’ll go on out an’ play. And Mista,” she had her beam on Lil’ Early now, “don’ you be leadin’ no wil’ goose chases, hear me?”

“Yes’m,” was the polite response.

“Sallee, you take yo’ little sister and keep an eye on her. Don’ be leavin’ her behind.”

My mouth opened, ready to form a protest, but I saw in her face that it was useless to argue. “Yes, Ethel,” I said, resigning myself to a miserable day. Helen was a fine playmate if there wasn’t anyone else around, but Early was here and there were always more fun things to do than swing and play with dolls. “Come on,” I said to Helen gloomily, hurrying her along to catch up with the boys.

“An’ don’ cha take her out de yard, neither,” Ethel called, ensuring that my Saturday was going to be no fun at all. By the time Helen and I got outside, the boys had disappeared. I stomped down the back steps and as far away from her as I could get. Helen had the good sense to wander off toward the swings. I kicked at dirt, broke twigs, and hurled them into the grass.
Well, Ethel didn’t say I had to play with her
. I collapsed on the ground in despair. Lance lumbered over, flopped down next to me, and panted a smile. Then, overcome with the effort, he dropped his great, saggy head to the ground with a massive groan. After I snuggled up to his warmth, I burrowed my nose into his black, fusty fur. He groaned again, let out a huge “humph” of a sigh, and then proceeded to snore as if he’d been asleep for hours. Using his flank as a pillow, I rolled over on my back and looked up at the November sky. It was deeper and bluer than any Crayola sky, no matter how hard you pressed the crayon to paper.

Clouds floated like giant icebergs. As I watched a dragon transform into a fish then a duck, I stuck my hand into the pocket of my dress and pulled out the locket I’d found in my mother’s bedroom the day before. I glanced over to make sure Helen was still playing on the swings. I opened my fist and let the locket dangle above my face on its tarnished chain. Flat, gold, and heart-shaped with a little diamond starburst in the center, the locket shimmered against the blue sky. Gingerly, I held it between my fingers, sought the little clasp on the side, and pried it open.

I discovered the locket when I tiptoed into my mother’s room and rummaged through her dressing table. I ran my hands under her silky slips and sniffed her perfume bottles. Then I came across a small jewelry box tucked into the corner of a drawer. It wasn’t as fancy as my mother’s big leather jewelry box where she kept her diamonds—it was plain,
made of pressed red cardboard. I pushed the gold latch and peered into a treasure trove of costume jewelry. There were pop beads that looked like pearls, gold bangles and broaches of all sizes and shapes; dazzling glass jewels, earrings without mates, and a wad of chains and necklaces. The locket peeked out from the cluster. I carefully untangled its chain from the others and held the prize in my hand. Just then I heard Ethel singing in the hallway. I shut the box, slipped it back into its place, and closed the drawer as quietly as I could. Ethel never saw me.