The Waking (12 page)

“
Yes ma’am.”

I learn to make haste slowly in a hurry, let me tell you. Feeding a sternwheeler crawling with four hundred passengers is no joke. As soon as the passengers stream back on board after tours and sightseeing in and around Marietta, the
American Queen
floats off the pier and starts churning south and west into the sunset. I mainly stay out of the way in the galley, dodging servers running in with tickets and out with trays. And it’s about the noisiest place I’ve ever been except for a Steelers-Browns game I went to once. Servers yell, “Table sixteen! Table sixteen!” Cooks yell, “Four up! Five up!” Plates and glasses ding, silverware tings, telephones ring, and the cooks sing. I could hoot and holler in here and no one would ever know.

“
My kitchen never sleeps,” Rose says, and I believe it.

As part of my daily duties, I will have to help serve breakfast, lunch, an afternoon tea, a five-course dinner, and a late evening sweet treat, and make sure there are snacks available twenty-four hours a day. “The galley’s like a refrigerator that’s always full and a cupboard that’s never bare at the same time,” one of the cooks tells me.

I’m not even sure what I’m helping to cook half the time, mainly because I’ve never heard of any of these dishes like jambalaya, lamb osso-something, and salmon la-something else. I don’t do much but stir this or turn the heat down on that or carry this up there or put a piece of parsley on that plate or tell the cook to burn this steak, but at least I’m busy. And whenever I can, I sneak bites of fried chicken and slices of angel food cake. For some strange reason, though, the collision of smells gets to me. In Auntie June’s kitchen, there are only a few smells, like roasted chicken, potatoes, and green beans. In the galley, you’ve got salmon fussing with chicken fighting with pecan pie throwing punches at veal and generally getting a beat-down from anything sweet or spicy. It’s all so confusing.

Rose puts me on brownie duty after dinner, mainly to keep me away from the chicken and the angel food cake. I wear an apron, hairnet, and plastic gloves mixing huge batches of brownie batter full of walnuts, and another cook named Penny, a white girl with a diamond stud in her nose, comes by to fill pan after pan with the batter. I’ve known girls like Penny, white girls who get the cornrows and the piercings and the tattoos and who act all street. She doesn’t have the worst looking body. She’s kinda curvy, but her eyes are too wide, her skin is too creamy, and there’s just something about that nose. Small
and
flat. And her cornrows aren’t tight at all, little flyaway hairs taking off all over her head. I wonder what she’s running from.

Or maybe she’s running
to
.

Though I’m bone-tired and weary after making brownie batter, I don’t ask for a break. I’ve already gotten plenty of breaks these past few days. As I stare at the brownie mix, I start thinking of my sugar, Mary, and not because she’s brown. It’s because she’s sweet and has a sweet tooth. I’ll have to make her lots of brownies when I get back to help her through her pregnancy.

After an hour or so helping with the dishes, I start thinking of Auntie June. All those dishes she washed for me, who wasn’t even her son, and I never had to wash a single plate, glass, or spoon. She took care of me like I was her own, and all I did was take advantage of her. I wonder if she’s worried. Whenever I disappeared in the past, she’d call County, and that would keep her from worrying because that’s where I usually was. But if she called County in the last few days …

I have to give her a call to let her know I’m all right. Maybe even call Mary. But what if her mama answers? Does this boat even have a payphone?

Rose, who must walk fifty miles a day from the kitchen to the J. M. White dining room and back, is rarely still, but when she is, the rest of us in the kitchen notice. “Too much basil in the sauce,” she’ll say, or “Not enough egg in this pie.” She pushes, prods, and encourages us to “make haste, chop chop,” but she calms, soothes, and warns the servers to “slow down out there.” My favorite phrase of hers is “Be efficiently slow.”

“
Take a break, Emmanuel,” Rose tells me, my soapy arms forearm-deep in a pot that held veal scaloppini or linguini or something ending in the letter “I.”

“
I’m okay.” And I am. I could work all night as wired as I am from the doughnuts and angel food cake.

She pulls me away and hands me a towel. “Go out and deliver some of your brownies.”

I dry my hands and take off my hairnet, gloves, and apron. “Just … take a tray out there?”

“
Best way to get your bearings, to learn where everything is on the boat. I didn’t get a chance to take you for the full tour. Just take a walk. As soon as those brownies disappear, and they will, come back for more then go out again a different way.” She steps closer and sniffs my clothes. “You smell like chicken.”

“
I like chicken.” I smile.

Rose doesn’t smile.

“
I like chicken, ma’am.”

She flicks some chicken batter from my vest. “I’ll wrap you up some.”

“
Thank you, ma’am.”

“
Just don’t let Rufus get at ‘em. He can tear him up some chicken.”

Then I wander around the
American Queen.
I go up first to the sun deck where lots of folks, all of them white and most of them at least sixty-five, are taking pictures of the sunset and sipping mixed drinks, soaking in the pool, or playing an extremely slow game of ping pong. My tray of brownies disappears in less than five minutes, and one old guy even tips me five dollars. After taking a wrong turn at the Mark Twain Gallery, which looks like some rich person’s living room with enough wooden furniture to build a small house, I bring my empty tray back to the kitchen and get another load of brownies.

I serve folks playing cards and singing at the Engine Room Bar right near that spinning red paddlewheel. I empty another tray along what they call “The Front Porch of America” where folks rock on rockers or swing on porch swings. I get swarmed by some wonderful little old ladies in the Ladies Parlor playing bridge, and I even leave a tray for the cigar-smoking men to “munch on later” in the Gentlemen’s Card Room. Each time I return to the galley, I do it faster and more efficiently.

“
Getting any tips?” Rose asks, and I show her a roll of small bills. “They like you, Emmanuel. They don’t take to everyone, you know.”

“
They like the brownies, not me.”

“
Which
you
made. Don’t sell yourself short. They’re tasting the love you put into making them because you wanted to make them. There’s a difference, you know.”

“
All I did was stir them.” I didn’t make them with love. I made them with muscle and sweat.

“
And some of your love spilled over into the mix.”

I don’t believe that. I squeeze the money, and then I hand it to her. “Could you keep this for me until the bank opens?”

She nods. “Is money your trigger?”

“
My what?”

“
Your trigger, what gets you thinking about it.”

It has to be. “Yeah, I mean, yes ma’am. If I don’t have it on me …”

“
You won’t want it
in
you. I get you.” She pockets the money. “I’ll hold it for you.” She checks her watch. “My trigger’s a holiday, but I won’t tell you which one.” She looks down. “Used to like too much gin, so I know what you’re going through.”

This kindly grandmamma was a drunk? “How long, um, have you—”

“
Been clean and sober?”

“
Twenty-two years, but every time that holiday comes along ...” She sighs. “You already put in eight straight hours. Call it a night.” She points at a paper bag, grease soaking through at the bottom. “Don’t forget your chicken.”

“
Thank you, ma’am.” I grab the bag.

“
And be back here by sunrise.”

“
Sunrise? When’s that?”

She steps closer. “Boy, ain’t you noticed? This ship is full of old folks who can’t take enough pictures of sunrises and sunsets, and half of ‘em think they’re bird-watchers about to discover some new species. They get up
mighty
early
every
single morning, so we got to get up mighty
earlier.
”

Got to get up mighty … earlier. Get up mighty. I like that phrase. “I don’t have an alarm clock.”

“
Rufus is your alarm clock. When he comes in from his shift, it’ll be time for you to shower and get up here. And do me a favor.”

“
Yes ma’am?”

“
Get lots of sleep. Don’t stay up any later than you have to. You’re going to have at least a twelve-hour day tomorrow.”

I won’t ask what for. “Yes ma’am.”

“
Good night, Emmanuel.”

“
Good night, ma’am.”

But I can’t go to sleep yet. It can’t be later than nine o’clock, and because I haven’t seen the entire ship, I wander around. I find that the
American Queen
has a beauty salon, a theater, two elevators, and an athletic club. It’s like downtown Pittsburgh, like a little city chugging down the river. And the view from the back rail of the Promenade Deck next to the Calliope Bar is priceless. With the ship lit up more like a wedding cake than any birthday cake with all those tiers and the lights of the towns passing by, it’s like “Silent Night, Holy Night” or something and—

“
Hey,” a voice says.

I look beside me to see Penny smoking a cigarette. “Hey.”

She takes a long drag and blows out a stream of smoke. “You’re not supposed to be out here off duty, you know.”

“
I’m not?”

She shakes her head. “
Ma’am
didn’t tell you? Rose is like that, you know. She forgets to tell you stuff, and then when you get into trouble for not knowing, she says, ‘You should have known better.’ Passengers aren’t supposed to see us unless we’re working.”

“
You’re out here.”

She flicks her cigarette into the paddlewheel. “Just getting a smoke, yo. Who died and made you the po-lice?”

Penny’s cute, with her corn-fed, rosy cheeks and freckles. But the cornrows and the pierced nose … and is that a pierced eyebrow? This girl is a long way from Iowa or wherever that accent’s from. I guess if you darkened her up some, she’d be all right. The girl needs a tan, but then again, so do I.

She unwraps a stick of Juicy Fruit and sticks it in her mouth. “Emmanuel, huh?”

“
Yeah.”

“
That your real name?”

“
Yeah. Is Penny yours?”

“
What you think? Shoot.”

Nice attitude. “So where are you from, Penny?”

“
Kansas City.”

I was close. Iowa’s over there somewhere, I think.

“
How ‘bout you?” she asks.

“
Pittsburgh.”

She turns and puts her back on the railing, the diamond stud in her nose gleaming. “We was just up there a few days ago. Nothin’ much happenin’ though. Nowhere to party. Too much rain.” She cracks her gum several times. “You, uh, you like to party, Emmanuel?”

“
I don’t, um, I don’t party anymore.”

She turns back to the railing and drapes her arms over the edge. “That’s not what I heard.”

Man, this ship is like small neighborhood or something. “What’d you hear?”

“
I heard that you were some OG from the East Coast on the run from the po-po.”

OG? Po-po? What bad movies has Cornbread Penny here been watching? “You heard wrong.”

“
Uh-huh. Right. You just happened to get on a steamboat in a hick town in Ohio with nothin’ but some borrowed clothes and some boots that don’t
even
match.” Penny’s been stalking me. “They even said that you didn’t have no draws on and you got tattoos all over your body.”

What? “Who’s been telling you all this?”

“
You’ll never know, unless …” She smiles and licks her lower lip.

I can’t tell if she’s serious or not, but I’m not about to ask “Unless what?” because I already know the answer. “What you got?”

“
A little ecstasy, a little weed, a little wine,” she whispers. “We’ll have us a
good
time.”

And that’s how it gets started, though I never did ecstasy. I sold a lot of it to the white boys who came over from the University of Pittsburgh, many of them asking for GHB, that date rape drug. Penny needs a wakeup call, and I’m just the one to do it. “I used to smoke weed and drink a lot.” I pause. “When I was
your
age.”

“
I’m twenty-nine, yo.”

“
You ain’t older than eighteen,” I say.

Her shoulders slump. “Shoulda said twenty-two.”

I unbutton my right cuff. “Wanna see my tattoos, Penny?”

“
Not now.” She spits her gum toward the paddlewheel and pulls out a pack of Newports.

“
They’re special tattoos, ones I made myself.” Even though I know more of my story will be floating around on this boat, I push up the sleeve to reveal my scars.