Tomato Girl (30 page)

“I can try.”

“That's my girl.” Sheriff Rhodes patted my leg with his rough hand. “While I was visiting with your mother, I felt something hard under her pillow. Something like glass. When I tried to see what it was, she became right upset with me.” He turned his head and showed me some scratches along the side of his neck. “See here?”

I swallowed hard and stared at the red lines, four matching rows down his neck. “You didn't take it, did you? You didn't take the jar away from Mama?”

“No, of course not, honey. Your mama … I realize she's got … well, she's got some problems, doesn't she?”

“Bad problems,” I whispered. “Very bad problems.”

“Yes. That's why I thought maybe you could help me.”

“How can I help?”

“Well, maybe you could tell me what she's got in the jar and why she's so afraid to let me see it.”

“I can't tell. Mama would be so mad …”

“It's okay, Ellie. This will be a secret, just between you and me. Maybe if I knew, I could help. You want me to help, don't you?”

I wanted anyone's help, but telling anyone about Baby Tom scared me, so I kept quiet.

Sheriff Rhodes sighed. “Tell you what, how about we play a little guessing game? I'll guess what's in the jar, and you just nod when I'm getting closer.”

“You won't be able to guess. Nobody would guess right. It's too awful.”

“Is it something stolen?”

“No.” I said, pushing Sheriff Rhodes's arms from around my waist. “I don't want to play this game.” As I stood up, the tissues inside my panties fell, landing on the floor between my feet.
Red splotches showed on the white paper. My neck and face grew warm.

Sheriff Rhodes looked at the blood-spotted tissues. His face turned red, too. “Ellie, honey, did you … Well, honey … Uh, I mean, is this … Are you having your time?” He stressed the word
time
as if it somehow was a whole story or world of its own.

“I don't know.” My voice quivered. “Hank hurt me down there, but I don't know if it's that or …” I bit my lip to keep from crying.

“Wait a damn minute. Hank? Hank Shipes? He hurt you?” Sheriff Rhodes's eyebrows raised like dark flags.

“Yes, on the playground.” I felt like a tattletale, but somehow, it was a relief to see the sheriff switch his focus from Mama to Hank Shipes.

“What did he do, honey?” Sheriff Rhodes's round face glowed even deeper red. “Tell me what he did to you!”

I wouldn't tell on Daddy, or give away Mama's secrets, but telling on Hank Shipes suddenly seemed easy, as if it was one awful thing I could let go. “He pulled up my dress and pinched me. Hard. Down there.” I looked at the floor. “Then I went to the bathroom … and saw blood.”

“He ever done anything like this to you before?”

I shook my head. “No. Hank saw Mama and me walking home with Jericho, and didn't like that because Jericho is colored.” I swallowed hard, then blurted out, “I'm afraid, Sheriff Rhodes! Hank got suspended from school for what he did, and now he's really mad. He hid by the tree and threw a rock at me when I got off the bus.”

“Which tree?”

I walked over to the window and pointed next door.

Sheriff Rhodes bolted up like a startled rabbit and looked in the direction I pointed. He quickly shoved the blood-stained tissues into my hands. “Throw these away, honey, and stay put. I'll see to it that boy doesn't mess with you again.”

He stormed out of the house and let Bubba out of the car. The sheriff and dog then walked toward the tree next door where Hank was still hiding, maybe thinking I'd come back outside later. When Sheriff Rhodes neared the tree, Hank ran, but Bubba soon caught up with him and knocked him to the ground.

I couldn't hear what Sheriff Rhodes said, but by the way he yanked Hank up by his shirt, I knew he meant business. Whatever Sheriff Rhodes said, the boy must have agreed with most of it because his head nodded every few seconds. When the sheriff let go, Hank ran down Grace Street.

After he put Bubba back in the car, Sheriff Rhodes came back inside the house. He handed me the books I'd dropped, and told me to let him know the next time Hank Shipes even looked at me. “Now,” he said, “we need to get you over to Clara's house so she can check you out.”

S
HERIFF
R
HODES SAID
I could ride up front with him, but I wanted to ride in back in case I left a blood spot on the seat. I tried to keep my legs together and take slow, even breaths, believing if I kept still enough, the blood might not drip so fast. But my head began to feel light from taking too many shallow breaths, so I breathed deeply, and sure enough, felt a trickle between my legs. Even though Sheriff Rhodes couldn't see the drop of blood, my face still colored with shame. This was something a girl needed to share with her mother, not the sheriff. But when your mother is in her room, rocking a dead baby, you have to make do.

In the end, having Sheriff Rhodes help was better than being on my own. I felt suddenly sad and grateful all at once. I looked at him in the rearview mirror and when our eyes met, I smiled. He smiled back, then quickly looked away.

“Sheriff Rhodes?”

“Yes, honey?”

“If this is the monthly curse, does that mean I'm a woman now?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, uh, yes. Yes, I suppose that's exactly what it means.”

Sheriff Rhodes cleared his throat again, then drove a little faster.

Y
OU CAN ALWAYS
tell when someone's glad to see you by the way their face opens at the first sight. That's how Clara's face looked when she saw me. But then her face turned worried, and she wrapped her soft, dark arms around me and held me close. “You look flushed, child. What's the matter?” She put her hand on my head as if checking for a fever.

“How's Easter?” I asked.

“See for yourself.” Clara pointed to a small box by the stove.

I crossed and knelt beside the box. Inside, my small, green chick looked up at me. When I placed my hand over him, he pecked at my thumb.

While I cooed and hummed to my chick, Sheriff Rhodes pulled Clara aside and talked to her in a low voice. I heard Hank Shipes's name and figured they were discussing what happened on the playground. I felt embarrassed all over again, and hoped the sheriff hadn't told her the reason for Hank's anger.

“You go out back with Jericho,” Clara told Sheriff Rhodes. “We got women's business.”

After the sheriff went outside, Clara led me back to her bedroom and told me to rest on the bed. She propped the pillow under my head and turned on the lamp. “We got to check you, honey, since the sheriff said you're not sure if you bleeding because that boy hurt you or if your time has come on.”

“Okay.” I swallowed hard, feeling ashamed and scared all at once.

“Now, you just look up at the ceiling. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise.” Her voice was steady and soothing.

I did as Clara said, let my mind imagine pictures as she spoke.

“You see the bird up there? How his wings open to fly?”

I looked for the bird, saw the outline of wings in the cracked plaster above me. While my eyes stared at the ceiling, Clara took off my panties.

“See how the branches run like a tree?” Clara's hands parted my legs. Her fingers touched me while I looked for the branches. I thought about Mama bleeding out the baby, and my legs tightened again.

“All right then, you're all right,” Clara said. “Just look at the bird on the ceiling. Just look for the wings, the tiny feather lines.”

I looked back at the bird, fixed my eyes on the faded crack lines to keep from crying. Clara didn't hurt me, but I didn't want anybody to see or touch me down there.

“Well, you got a bruise, that's for sure, but the blood is your time.” Clara pulled my dress back down. “Now, we got to clean you up and find you a rag to wear.”

I blinked away a tear and took a deep breath. Clara returned with a damp washcloth from the bathroom and wiped the blood from between my legs.

She tossed the cloth into her clothes hamper, then opened her bureau. “I haven't bled for years, you know? You're lucky I don't ever throw nothing away. I'm sure to have that belt in here somewhere.”

“Belt?” The only belts I knew about where the ones men wore to hold up their trousers.

“You got to have a belt to hold the rag, sugar.”

“Tess left me something she said to use when this happened.”

“Ah-ha!” Clara shouted, then pulled out a white strap that must have been the belt she wanted. “No, girl, you don't never use them store bought things, you hear me? You put anything inside you before you're married and you ruin yourself. You go home and throw whatever she gave you away. Besides, the blood is magic. And you don't never throw magic away.”

Clara showed me how to fit the belt and how to fasten the
small white rags in place to soak up the blood. “I don't have any underpants to fit you, honey. Lord knows you'd be drowned in a pair of mine. But this will cover you up plenty until you get home.” She gave me some spare rags to change, then patted my belly. “You feel bad here? Any burning or tight feeling?”

“A little.”

“Well, I got roots you can put in some tea that will take that away. Now, come to the kitchen. You're too pale. I'll fry you some liver and onions. You need something hearty and rich on a day like today. And something special, like warm spoon bread.”

I never liked liver and onions, but I was so hungry, I ate every bite. Clara fried them both until they were caramel in color and tasted sweeter than any I'd ever eaten. I drank two glasses of milk and ate a large chunk of spoon bread spread with butter. After my meal, Clara gave me a cup of tea with a white root floating in the cup. The taste was spicy like horehound candy.

Jericho and Sheriff Rhodes came back inside just as I finished the last of my tea. Jericho leaned down to scoop Easter from his box and hand him to me. My chick fluffed his feathers and settled into the bowl of my hands.

“Feed him some of Clara's spoon bread,” Jericho said, “and that chicken will gets as fat as a Thanksgiving turkey in no time.”

“You should eat some yourself, old man, you and that skinny backside,” Clara teased as she wiped the crumbs from her table.

Jericho grinned and handed me a piece of spoon bread from the bowl. “Don't you love a bossy woman?” he asked the sheriff.

Clara interrupted. “Looks like from them scratches, you been in a cat fight.” Clara pointed at Sheriff Rhodes's neck.

“Well, I …” Sheriff Rhodes leaned against the kitchen doorframe.

“Don't even try that with me. You a good man, George Rhodes, but you don't knows whose bed to leave your boots under, do you?” Clara chided him.

Sheriff Rhodes cleared his throat.

“Sit. Let me put some salve on there before you go home to Millie and end up sleeping with Bubba tonight.”

Sheriff Rhodes sat on a chair in the middle of Clara's small kitchen as she shoved his head to one side and dabbed blue salve on the scratches Mama had made on his neck.

Before we left, Clara fixed a plate of food for Mama. “You makes sure she eats it. And there's some extra spoon bread in there for you,” she told me. She handed the wrapped plate to Sheriff Rhodes.

I kissed Easter's green head and gave him back to Clara.

“Don't worry about your chick. He's doing good, real good,” Clara said. She put a brown paper bag in my hands, then whispered in my ear so Jericho and Sheriff Rhodes couldn't hear. “There's special magic in a girl's first blood. Tonight, you plant this in the ground outside your window, and a wish will come true.”

B
ACK HOME
, I
GAVE
Mama her plate of food in bed. She looked better after she'd eaten a few bites. A little pink color brightened her cheeks, and her eyes seemed less dull and sunken. She lit one of the cigarettes from the pack Sheriff Rhodes left and took a long, slow drag.

While Mama smoked, I sat on the edge of the bed and told her about my day at school. Nearly everything I told her was made up. I couldn't bring myself to tell her about eating hamster food, or what Hank did to me on the playground, or how my first blood had come. While I talked, Mama puffed on her cigarette, then put it out on the edge of her plate. She reached under her pillow and lifted Baby Tom. “You haven't said a word about the baby since you came home.”

“I'm sorry, Mama.”

Adjusting the jar in her arms, Mama unbuttoned her night gown and pressed the jar to her breast to nurse him. “I think he's growing a little, don't you, Ellie?”

I patted her arm. “Yes, Mama. He's growing.” Really, he'd shriveled some and turned darker. His wrinkled face looked like a walnut.

I kissed Mama and Baby Tom good-night, then went into the bathroom and washed by hand a pair of panties, socks, and my yellow school dress. I hung them on the shower rod to dry overnight.

Before going to sleep, I sneaked outside with the bag Clara had given me. With the spade from Daddy's shed, I dug a hole in the ground, directly under my window.

Inside the paper bag, Clara had placed my blood-stained panties, folded neatly. I took them from the bag, laid them in the shallow hole, and stared for a moment at the moth-shaped stain. I covered the panties with dirt and packed the soil with the palms of both hands to make it hard for any animals to dig there. I made a wish with closed eyes, just as Clara told me.

With my blood magic, I'd bring Daddy home again.

T
HE NEXT DAY
went a little better. I didn't miss Daddy any less, and still worried about Mama, but somehow I woke with a clearer mind. Maybe becoming a woman the day before made the difference. I stayed in bed a few minutes and tried to imagine my bones inside my skin. Woman-bones inside woman-skin. I felt new and grown-up. Maybe this afternoon, I could even tell Mama my news. She might even be happy for me. We could go to Joe's for ice cream or buy a cake mix and have a party. No boys allowed, not even Baby Tom.