Girls Like Us (6 page)

Biddy went on down to Lizabeth. I took me a shower and dressed in the brown pants and white shirt the Brown Cow give me to wear in the store. I hear Ms. D. honk, and I left to start work at my new job.

Ms. D. introduce me to the store manager. He give me papers to sign, and Ms. D. tole me what all they mean. I sign and we go meet the lady bakery workers. The bakery ain’t just a bakery; it has all kind of food. Salads and roast chickens and vegetables and soups and such. One of the ladies tell me and Ms. D. that I’m gonna be doin’ “prep” for now. She start explaining, but I stop her talking by saying, “You want me chopping the onions and celery and measuring out the ingredients and such as that.”

The lady cut a look at Ms. D., then she say I was right. She hand me an apron and point to a chopping table. Ms. D. tap me on the shoulder and kind of nudge me into a little corner. “Quincy,” she say close to my ear. “Try to be friendlier to these women. Don’t interrupt when someone is giving you instructions.”

“That woman think I’m stupid,” I say.

“Quincy, not every word a person says is an insult. Try not to fight the world and everybody in it.”

Ms. D. work with Speddies, but she ain’t one and don’t know what it like. I flap the apron out and work at tyin’ it ’round my waist. I didn’t look at Ms. D. Then she step up and hug me ’round my shoulders. I stiff up and tears sting my eyes. I don’t like touching, that’s all.

Ms. D. sigh and say, “Good luck, Quincy.” Then she left.

I look up at the lady. “You want these onions chop, dice, or mince?”

After lunch, Miss Lizzy said I can have time to myself while she take a nap. Then we’ll do her exercise. Miss Lizzy told me her inside ear make her balance bad. That’s why she use her walker — so she don’t get dizzy and tump over. To help her get better, she does exercise. But she needs me to help her tie cheese. I didn’t say nothing. If Miss Lizzy think tying cheese will help her not be dizzy, then I’ll help her tie cheese.

I cut and chop and mince and dice and mix most of the morning, then I clean and sort stuff in the back. The work ladies, Ellen and Jen, tole me I was a good worker. Like that surprise me.

I got some potatoes, leeks, cream, and a loaf of fresh French bread that been teasin’ my nose all day, charge them to Lizabeth, and head for home.

The sacker with a long, greasy ponytail and skinny little beard look me over when I was checking out and made a snort in his nose.

“They shore hiring ’em ugly lately,” he said.

Shoot-a-goose, I be used to hearing stuff about my face. I pick up my sack and say, cool as you please, “Look like they hired ’em ugly before me too.”

His neck turn red and he look at me real mean. “Bitch,” he say, real low, but he say it with a pop. It make me feel like he wanted to bite a hunk out of me. He had that evil face that Mama’s boyfriend had right before he grabbed up that brick.

I turnt around and hurried out the store. Once I put enough geography between me and the store, I forgot that boy a little bit. I couldn’t let somebody scare me on my first day. When I got to the ’partment, Biddy was talking into her tape with door closed. I change clothes and took the groceries to Lizabeth’s. That girl been a cleaning fool. It was clean this morning, but now that kitchen sparkle and smell like — umm, sort of — a cool day after a rain shower. I couldn’t get a oven or a floor that clean if I work two weeks. The girl got herself a talent.

I peel the potatoes and set ’em to boil, rub a wood bowl with garlic, mix up a salad, and slice my French bread. I set the table purty, and when the potatoes ready, I finish the soup and call the hogs to the trough.

Biddy help Lizabeth to her chair, and they dip they spoons into the soup.

“There’s grass in mine,” Biddy say.

“Fool,” I say. “That’s a parsley sprig. It’s call a garnish. You don’t got to eat it.”

“What’s it for, then?”

I roll my eyes up and Lizabeth say, “It’s to make the soup attractive and give it a bit of extra flavor, Biddy. And, it shows us that Quincy sees her cooking as an art and that she’s proud of it.”

I squint my eyes, trying to study if Lizabeth be making fun of me. Too soon to tell.

“Quincy,” Lizabeth said, “this is a lovely soup and it’s so smooth.”

“I run the potatoes and the cream through the blender before I add it to the white sauce in the pot,” I say. “I don’t like no chunks of potato lumping ’round in my soup.”

“Yes, I prefer it this way too. It’s wonderful.”

Biddy was lapping her soup and using her spoon like a shovel.

Lizabeth look at Biddy, then over at me. She say this was a meal like a princess would eat, and we ought to pretend we in long dresses at a fancy dinner and use “company manners.”

Biddy look up with her mouth open and half full of soup.

Lizabeth talk on ’bout a princess would sit with her back straight and on the front of the chair. Lizabeth was already like that. Biddy hitch up her back and waggle her big ole butt forward.

Lizabeth pick up her spoon and say that a princess hold her spoon pretty and dip it in the soup, and a princess would spoon away from her body. Then she dip her spoon into her soup and held the spoon up. Biddy turnt her grip on the spoon so that she wasn’t holding it in her fist, but on her fingers, and spoon her soup just like Lizabeth did.

“And a princess brings the spoon to her mouth, not her mouth to the spoon,” Lizabeth tole her. Biddy tried. Her head kept pulling down to the bowl, and she look like one of them toys that duck in and out of a water glass. When she finally got how to keep her head up, the soup slop off the spoon.

“A princess fills her spoon half full so she can take dainty princess sips.”

A smile march right ’crosst Biddy’s face. She try the whole thing again, and this time got her some soup into her mouth.

Lizabeth kept up her chatter, showing how a princess would use a salad fork and how to break the bread into little pieces rather than tear at a whole slice with her teeths. Biddy was having herself a high ole time pretending she be some kind of fancy lady.

I got me good table manners. Mr. Hallis show me all that when he taught me cooking. He didn’t talk no stuff ’bout no princess.

I ain’t White Trash. Miss Lizzy said I’m a princess. And a princess don’t wear a coat full-up with food. I’m going to push it in nextside the hangers at the back of my closet. I’ll just wear it if I have to go in the world.

We went back to our little apartment and I tole Biddy we need to have us a talk. She nod her head and plop down on the couch. More like she set perched on it with a straight back, like Lizabeth just taught her. Got to admit, the girl hold tight to things oncet she learn ’em.

“Biddy, we got to have us some rules.”

Biddy nod again. She even got that Lizabeth smile on her face.

“It’s about menfolk.”

That smile drop off her face like — I don’t know the word, but like you drop a rock into a bucket.

“Menfolks?”

“See, the whole world know about you and menfolk. What you do with men is your bidness — but I got me a right not to want ’em ’round here.” I point to the dent in my head. “Sometimes folk get hurt from other people’s men hanging around.”

Biddy surprise me then. She didn’t start no crying or snatch up a cleaning rag. Her look sat with a backbone inside it.

“Quincy, when you see me with boys or menfolk?”

My mouth open, but my words seize up. I thought hard a minute. Since seventh grade, I ain’t never seen Biddy having no truck with boys. They call her names, but she don’t talk to none of them. In fact, she don’t even look at any kind of man. My brain got addled.

“I guess I hasn’t.” I kind of jut out my chin and sound mad, so she don’t think I’m wrong or nothing.

Biddy stand up. “Well, then.” And she turnt her back and walk off into her bedroom and shut the door.

Seems to me, other peoples in this world got as much trouble learning as I do.

Biddy march off to her room and shut her door. Left me there with my mouth hanging. Back in school with people watching or poking at her, Biddy would have thrown some kind of fit, or get her feelings hurt and run off crying. But after Lizabeth tell her she a princess, just one little time, Biddy be a whole ’nother person. It like she and Lizabeth be some kind of team together.