When I Crossed No-Bob (3 page)

In no time flat Miss Irene learned me and Little Bit how to wait on the table. While they eat, Mr. Frank talks about all that he wants—a carriage for Irene, a grist on his property, and a sawmill too. Then they wouldn't have to keep going to the mill and gin near the Jones County line. They laugh to think of all this dreaming.

"Have you heard from Buck?" Mr. Frank asks his ma.

She shakes her head. "Not since he wrote to say he couldn't come for the wedding."

"Who's Buck?" I say.

They all look at me, remembering I'm still here.

"Buck was a slave," Little Bit says.

"And Buck was a friend," Mr. Frank corrects her. "He was like a brother to me."

Little Bit goes on like she's telling me some once-upon-a-time story. "Pa and Frank walked Buck to the river Strong. Pa give Buck a pair of eyeglasses and his freedom papers and then he crossed over."

"Pa
gave
Buck," Mr. Frank says.

"He's in New York City now," Little Bit goes on.

"They say that when a person crosses that river called Strong, the Lord gives you what you want," Mr. Frank's pa says. "When we were there, I told the Lord I don't want nothing much, only to get back home. And here we are."

Mr. Frank smiles and makes a toast to his pappy. I nod, wondering about this family. What crazy people set their slaves free before the fighting was over?

We eat the pickled peaches and I say to myself,
These here peaches are now my favorite food.

I clear the table while Miss Irene and Mr. Frank's ma clean up in the kitchen. Miss Irene says she's sorry because she doesn't have enough sugar for the coffee. She sent me over before noon to borrow a cup from a neighbor, and the neighbor
lady sent the sugar back with me with a note saying to pay back in full measure. Miss Irene sent me to take the sugar back.

"That woman will not lecture me on rules of conduct," Miss Irene says to Mr. Frank's ma, who has a nice, gentle laugh.

I serve the men their coffee on the porch and listen to their talk about Mr. Frank starting a general store. He's saying how hard it is for people in the county to get things. He says they have to drop everything just so they can go to New Orleans or Montgomery for three days when he could get a whole lot of things himself, bring it back, then sell it all off for a profit. It's such a fine idea, I can hardly believe someone else hasn't thought it up.

Mr. Frank's pa talks about a store that opened on the Taylorsville-Williamsburg road. The owner hung a coffeepot over his door and served coffee made with fresh spring water and beans from New Orleans, using molasses drippings to sweeten it. A person could get either long or short sweetening, but no cream.

"Well, there's no post office here that's accessible and folks like a place to sit and talk," Mr. Frank's pa says. He says he'll back him and they clink coffee cups to seal the deal.

Mr. Frank's pa leans on the porch pole, itching his stump while he looks me over. He moves slow. I know that he lost his
arm in the war. Everyone has a story. But I'm not clear how the big story really started. All I know is that they were mad about something so they had a war.

"You could have this girl, Addy, do your work in a few years. Like Buck."

"She's not a slave, Pa."

I stand still while the two of them look me over.

"And she's not staying here forever."

As the day closes and Momma still doesn't come, I can see Mr. Frank making his surmising that Momma never did plan on coming back. If it were all up to him, I know he'd turn me loose. But he's aiming to please Miss Irene.

Momma knew what she was doing.

"Addy," he says after his pa, his ma, Little Bit, and Jack leave. "You don't need to be doing boys' work outside. Miss Irene will teach you to help out with the washing, ironing, baking, and the common et cetera of the house."

I know that Mr. Frank does not want me around him. Outside, he can be alone.

After he leaves the house, I have to ask Miss Irene if Mr. Frank always talks like a schoolteacher. "And who et Zet up?"

Miss Irene laughs, says for me to never mind, then shows me about rolling out dough because tomorrow it's baking day.
I miss Momma, but I am glad that Momma's misery weren't no catching sickness. Mr. Frank and Miss Irene have been nothing but good to me and this makes me feel growed up and good myself. They make me want to do right. I am not hungry either and I feel quicker and not so mad. I try to remember the word for what I am feeling. And then I recall.
Happy.
I am happy.

From May to September I work hard to prove to Mr. Frank that me and all the other O'Donnells aren't the lazy, mean good-for-nothings he thinks we are. Already it is October, and after I gather and put up the corn, after I dig the sweet potatoes and Miss Irene and I can the tomatoes and okra, after we make the maypop jelly and wild plum wine, after Mr. Frank kills the hog and we salt the meat down in the smokehouse so it won't rot, and after I bury the squash in the hay, Mr. Frank pays the one-dollar school tuition so that I can
go to school with him and I can hardly stand it, I'm so excited. School is my reward.

All the work wasn't all bad either. Working with Mr. Frank goes fast. I tell him about everything—Momma, Pappy, I tell him about living when I lived in No-Bob. He listens and listens, taking it all in. I prove to Mr. Frank that I am a better worker outside than in.

Momma told me whistling inside or outside the house was bad luck, but I want to whistle right here, right now, so I do and I am glad that I am still able. I walk with Mr. Frank the three miles to the schoolhouse carrying a lard pail with our lunches. Meat and biscuits and two cold baked sweet potatoes. There is a puddle just outside the schoolhouse, and before I step inside, I step into the puddle to get my feet good and clean.

Mr. Frank, he stands aside and watches.

The schoolhouse is a pine log cabin with a dirt floor and a stick-and-dirt chimney. We children sit on split logs with pegs for legs. I take the back seat near a redheaded boy named Rew Smith so I can rest my back against the wall. The girl next to me says it is a hard matter to learn much after walking three miles to get here and then have to sit on these seats. I say I am just glad to be here.

We spend the morning studying our McGuffey's Reader. Mr. Frank says I'm not so far behind as he would have thought. He doesn't keep one switch in the room, and if students spell a word wrong, he doesn't whip us.

I need me some friends and I set to work. At lunchtime, outside, I start walking funny the way Pappy taught me. Pappy was the funniest man in No-Bob. Everybody liked Pappy. He showed me how to act like I'm hurting myself without hurting myself. He showed me how to make folks laugh, and they do. Little Bit laughs and so does her brother Jack. Even that girl Nona Dewitt laughs.

But then I hear Rew Smith say, "I won't play with that little O'Donnell girl. My pa told me not to." I hear: "That Addy. She's got the devil in her."

For lunch we all sit on the ground to eat. Little Bit says to look out for wild hogs who sometimes come up out of the woods and grab our food. Mr. Frank passes around a bottle of milk with letters marked on the bottle. There are no cups and we are to drink to the next letter. When Little Bit passes me the bottle, I hold it up. I am to drink to the letter
M
and I do. I pass it to Rew.

"I'm not drinking after her," Rew Smith says. His hair is
the color of red apples and I'm wondering if being with it in the sun makes him hotter. This Rew seems to have the respect of the others, and I recognize it. He's mean the way an O'Donnell is mean. He looks at me and comes so close I think he will push me down. "She's gotta be part nigger. That's what my pa says." I look at him, ready to fight. But Mr. Frank rings the bell for us to come back inside the schoolhouse. We are to learn more spelling, and after that comes arithmetic.

It is a long first day.

In my second week of attending Mr. Frank's school, I decide to play teacher. Surely this will win me friends.

Mr. Frank's desk is supplied with drawers in which he stores his books and what he calls the other et ceteras of his profession. He has a pipe he smokes, and while everyone files in, I light Mr. Frank's pipe with a match I find in his drawer, and I take to puffing it before Mr. Frank comes into the room. Everyone laughs. Everyone, even the older ones. Then, from the back of the room, Little Bit shouts, "Hey, Addy. You're turning green." And I commence to getting sick all over Mr. Frank's desk, and when I look up, there he is, standing in the doorway, Mr. Frank watching, shaking his head.

***

That evening after supper Mr. Frank catches me crying with the chickens. We sit together on a log under a tree and I am nothing but ashamed. Mr. Frank, he smiles at me, and from where I sit I can see that one of his front teeth sticks out past his bottom lip just a tad. I have not seen this before and it makes me smile because now that I seen this I think that Mr. Frank looks to be about twelve years old. I think of what he must have been like when he was my age, a little boy messing around, him and his pa sitting around the family table all happy-like, his ma feeding them pickled peaches, but as soon as I start thinking on that, I stop.

"I wish I had Momma back." The sun is not down yet and the sky is pinkish.

"But she punished you so much, Addy. You told me so yourself."

I close my eyes, wishing away what I've said. I should not have talked about Momma while I worked alongside Mr. Frank. I should have stayed loyal to her. Already I have told Mr. Frank too much. I have told him about Momma's seasons of sickness. I have told him how she locked me up in the chifforobe.

I tell Mr. Frank that it wasn't so bad, being in the chifforobe. It smelled of pine, and if I moved Momma's two hanging dresses and the folded-up quilt, it was big enough to stand up in, and because it was an old chifforobe, there were cracks for air and plenty of turning-around room to change positions every once in a while. When Momma shut me up in the dark after I did something wrong, I had time to think. I rubbed my eyes with my knees to see the pictures behind my eyelids. I counted the stars inside my mind.

"With all due respect to your momma, Addy, that's no way to punish a child."

"I know. But she made me. She could do what she wanted with me."

"God made you too, Addy."

"Did God make you?"

"Yes, Addy, he did."

"So we're kin?"

"You could say that."

We're looking down at the bald ground where the chickens are scratching. I have these dark feelings and I wish it was spring again instead of fall. The best thing to do is do like Mr. Frank and Miss Irene. Grow up, get married, and try to make a home for yourself. But what if I have a fierce love and a fierce marriage like Momma and Pappy's? But who would ever marry me, anyway? An O'Donnell. A termite.

"I'm mad at God. I don't think I like him."

"Why not, Addy?"

"'Cause he makes some of us rich and some poor. Some O'Donnells, some not. Why can't he just make us all pretty and rich?"

"I don't know. Maybe you need to ask him yourself. Talk to him."

"Talk to him how? Once, I knew a prayer called the Lord's Prayer, but I forget all the words."

"Talk to him like you would your own pa or ma."

"I don't know. He don't seem to be like most folk."

Mr. Frank puts his arm around me and squeezes me to him tight, so tight I think I might cry. "Start with thanking him."

And before I can say, "For what?" Mr. Frank says, "You need a pair of shoes, Addy. I'll make you a pair myself. But for now, let's just sit here for a while."

He doesn't say anything. I watch the leaves fall. A ladybug sets to crawling on my leg. Sitting here with Mr. Frank feels the way I think holding hands with the Lord would feel. Good. Close. Like you know you're going to be OK because you're with someone. I imagine that's what being married feels like too. Being in love must feel like sitting on a log with someone special, someone a little like yourself.

I don't seem able to sit still and do my reading and writing work like the others. Even at Mr. Frank's house, Miss Irene wants me to sit on the stool in front of the weaver and spin thread and run the loom and I hate hate hate it because I'm bad at both weaving and sitting still. Miss Irene says I won't get good at it unless I stay at it. She says that's what her mother did for her. She says her mother says a woman's worth is determined by her tiny, even rows of stitches. I let that sit for a minute. But then Miss Irene laughs and lets me go outside.
She says around her house, people ought to do what they're naturally good at.

I feed the chickens and collect their eggs, milk and feed the cow, and clear out the stalls every day. I feed the new hogs corn to keep them tame, and when the acorns fall I take the hogs to the woods and let them root around some. I know it's time to cut a good supply of firewood when I see the hogs raking and toting straw, a sure sign of a cold spell.

Mr. Frank, he got himself some good land here with plenty of nut-bearing trees: big-bud and scaly-bark hickories, black walnut, chestnut, beech, pecan, and chinquapin. I pick plums from under the trees too and tote them to the two hogs so they'll taste better. I gather red-oak, elm, maple, and juniper bark. I set it out to dry and then grind it up so we can stew it down and use it to dye. We use borax, alum, and bluestone to set the dye. I set aside some red-oak bark for fevers and colds. Lots of things you can do to get ready for colds, like collecting and drying mullein and horsemint for teas. Momma taught me about such things that Miss Irene isn't so keen on.

One afternoon, I am sweeping the yard with a brush broom when Little Bit stops by, picks up another of Miss Irene's brooms, and starts sweeping alongside me, humming some song.

"After this, you want to play marbles?"

"Don't you got chores?" I say. Little Bit is pretty and young, so she gets spoiled. She plays. I work.

"I climb trees," she says, moving a pigtail. "I'm not a Miss Priss."

Miss Irene hails us from the porch. She sweeps and tells me to go on off and play. She says I've already done a fine job.