Grace (23 page)

33
/ FLASH

Just Outside City Limits—Conyers, Georgia, 1847

T
HE TINY LIGHTS
in the night sky make me a believer. Make me think I can wish on a star and all them wishes'll come true.

I close my eyes real tight, ball my fist . . .

I wish
Jeremy never left me.

Wish
I never made him mad.

Wish
this day never happened.

I open my eyes.

It's still night.

I'm still sick. And Jeremy's still gone.

To hell with them lying stars.

I fall back against the side of Mr. Shepard's house, hoping Soledad, the Mexican, will take me in. Hoping she'll remember her promise that she would, 'cause I was wrong about her. About calling her the devil when I saw her rage at Cynthia. She already knew something that I didn't. Had a friendship with Cynthia that ended for a reason.

Her street sign across the road is rocking back and forth, squeaking in both directions. The lamp above the sign is showering yellow light
on its words, “Hummingbird Lane.” It's too bright for me to watch for long, already starting me a headache.

I'm crying 'cause it's all my fault.

Jeremy left me, my fault. I ain't got no place to lay my head, my fault. I shoulda just told Cynthia, yes and yes, ma'am. I messed up everything. My freedom. My peace. Messed up the chance Hazel risked her life to give to me. I should have stayed on the path she set me on. I should have kept running 'til I found North. Should have never stopped at this place, never met Jeremy, never loved him. I want to erase every moment 'til right now. Want to start again, build a new life. Go anywhere but here. But as it is, I've only gone three miles tonight.

I could go farther. South could be my new north like Albert said. But after I told him to leave me alone, I don't know if he could forgive me, either. Everybody hates me.

Except Soledad. She don't know me.

The odor of strange food is wafting out of her house making me feel sicker. My throw-up comes again—mostly spit and noise this time. I wipe my mouth, scoot back against the side of the house, lean forward over my knees, try not to smell it.

I had imagined Soledad's house would be like this. No houses for acres around, and hers, dainty and clean like it's new out a gift box. A carved blue sign on the front door say, “The Shepards.”

I close my eyes because the light across the street felt like it was thickening and reaching over to me, touching me, thumping against my temples now. I'll keep 'em closed. No more wishes this time.

The screen door around the front of her house smacks open and I flatten myself against the wall.

“I can't do this, Sole,” a man say.

“Yes you can, Bobby Lee. You're here, aren't you? Mr. Shepard'll be out of town until next week, dinner's almost done. We can have wine, make it special.”

I peek around the wall, and see Bobby Lee standing on the front porch. She hangs over his back, climbing up on her tiptoes, pressing her
long, thin frame against him like a cape. Her sheer dress ripples away from her legs and a thin strap slides off her shoulder. She kisses his back through his clothes and say, “I can get you ready.”

She swirls around and ends up between the porch rail and his body. With her hands, she feels up the wall of his chest and he grabs both her hands gently, holds 'em together in one of his.

“Don't worry about him,” Soledad say. “Mr. Shepard and I understand each other. We have a special relationship.”

She inches up on her tiptoes again, leans into his mouth, lips to lips. I notice he don't kiss her back, though.

She pushes him. “Look,” she say. “We've already shared a bed so there's no reason for you to go and get righteous now.”

When Bobby Lee don't say nothin, she shoves him again. It only moves him slightly.

She say, “Everything's not good and evil, you know. You're always looking for somebody to protect. Last month, that person was still me.”

“'Cause no man should hit a woman,” he say. “Not Mr. Shepard, not nobody.”

“See, then you know what kind of man he is.”

“I talked to him, Sole,” he say. “You had me pinning that man against the wall, threatening to kill him, and he still swore he never did nothing to you.”

“You're taking his side now?”

“It's not about sides, Sole. There's right and wrong no matter what side you on. What we did was wrong. I know it. I take the blame. You're married. I . . .”

“It's that dead girl, isn't it? Your wife.”

In one stride, Bobby Lee clears the porch, throws his hat on. “I shouldn't have come back here,” he say.

He comes in my direction and I slide back a little further in the shadow, flat as I can go.

“You can't mourn her forever, Bobby Lee,” Soledad say. “You deserve to feel something. Anything.”

He stops in the dirt next to me, don't see me.

Almost pleading, she say, “I can make you feel good, Bobby Lee!” But he keeps on up the road, out of sight.

I
T
'
S GETTING COLDER
out here and I'm hungry. Soledad didn't go back inside 'til long after he left. I huddle my legs to my chest and wrap my arms around 'em. That stanky food is smelling good now. I close my eyes and imagine it's Momma's cooking. Something
savory,
she called it—stew beef. Or maybe pigs' feet. A side of greens. Some biscuits. Smothering gravy with onion and pepper, poured thick and rich over everything.

It's only been about three hours since I left Cynthia's and I'm already half starved to death, slobbering in my mouth for the food I imagine be inside. I finally knock on the door and take a whole-mouth swallow of spit.

I knock again.

I can hear Soledad sing-songy from the other side. She say, “Coming.” When the door opens and she see me, the smile she had goes. “Naomi?” she say, 'cause she'd hoped for Bobby Lee, then, “Darling,” like she'd wished it was me all along. “Come in,” she say and grabs a blanket from her arm chair. “You could catch your death of cold out there.”

She puts it over my shoulders. “Let me get you some warm tea. You must be hungry.”

“Thank you, ma'am. I didn't have no place else to go.”

“Then you've come to the right place.”

She takes my hand and guides me to her dining table like I'm her little girl, helps me sit. She takes a pink apron laid on top of the table, hooks it over her neck, then ties a bow around her waist.

“You don't have anything to worry about now,” she say, and glides toward the back of the house, swaying from side to side as she go.

If she ask me where I been or where I'm going, I'm gon' first say, “For a walk.”

She's in the kitchen where I can see her cutting some green vegetable I don't recognize. She say, “You look like a girl who can handle a little spice. This soup is my family's recipe.”

From on top of the stove, she lifts a wagon wheel–sized lid from a deep black pot. What's inside steams over her face as she stirs with her wide wooden spoon.

I feel so small sitting at the head of her big table in her big house. Even the vase on the table is big. Its fresh flowers reach out in every direction like a frozen and colorful explosion at the center of her table. The longest stem points to a wood and glass cabinet where little clay people are faceless. The painted-on clothes is how I can differ the boys from the girls. The porcelain dresses are green, yellow, and red, and the boys got wide hats of the same colors.

“Make yourself at home,” Soledad say.

I don't even know what “home” means.

“I hope you're hungry,” she say. “When we're finished here I'll fix a bed for you in the guest room.”

“No, ma'am. That would just be too much.”

She peeks around the wall at me. “We've got a bond, Naomi. You may not know it yet, but I understand things about you because I know who Cynthia is. And I know what it's like to escape mistreatment. To be alone out there. Not a friend in the world.”

She jots around the kitchen area.

“Stay as long as you need,” she say. “Charlie won't be home for another week or so. And when he's home, he'll agree to your staying.”

I want to feel what it's like to stay.

I'm tired.

Tired of all the running.

“Do you drink spirits, Naomi?”

I lie and say, “No, ma'am.”

“Then you're a good girl.” She sets two bowls on her countertop. “I'm sure you've never had any stew like this before. It's from Mexico. My mother's recipe. It's called menudo.”

“No, ma'am. I haven't ate that.”

“Then you're in for a treat.”

I fold my hands together on the table, trying to act like I been taught some manners. The crocheted placemats feel lumpy under my hands and these silver spoons and forks is catching light. I put my fingers in the diamond-shaped holes of the tablecloth, give the net a little tug, slide my finger inside the scoop of the spoon, pick it up and see my reflection.

“You'll like the bread, too. Finely ground corn, water. A few seconds on the griddle then . . .” She walks in slowly. “Mexican flatbread. We call them tortillas.”

She balances two bowls of soup in one hand and a stack of flatbread covered mostly by a cloth in the other. She slides a bowl to me and sits down in front of hers. The steamy red stew washes up the side of my tan clay bowl and settles.

“My father used to eat menudo all the time. My mother said it was to cure his hangovers but he said it was to stop her nagging.” She laughs, unwrapping the cloth from over the stack of tortillas. “Menudo reminds me of family.”

The smell of simmered onions and garlic, tomato, and something sweet and green, unfamiliar, rises from the stew's fog. White balls, like lumps of grits and brown meat, peek out of the juice like little mountains in a lake of red. She watches me bring a spoonful to my opened mouth.

“You want to know what's in it?” she say before I eat.

“I'm not picky,” I say, shoving it in and swallowing it down. I fill my spoon again.

“It has stomach in it,” she say.

I stop the next spoonful midway to my mouth.

“Beef stomach,” she say.

I send it on in and muddle, “I eat chitlins, too—pig intestines.” If she wasn't watching, I'd tilt my head back and drink it whole.

“I like you,” she say. “We'll get along just fine. I'll show you how real friends should treat each other.”

All I want is that.

No promises I cain't keep for her. No nothing. If I could find somebody like me and Hazel was, I'd be better. And for now, I could help out around here.

Soledad stirs her food and her face lightens with a memory of something. “Cynthia hated menudo. I used to make it for her anyway.”

“Cynthia can't stand anything to do with something's insides,” I say. “Bits neither.”

“Is that right?” Soledad say.

“Yes, ma'am. If she tastes the grit of black pepper in her food she'd spit it out.”

“So you know her pretty well, then?”

“No, ma'am. Not at all.”

“Well, it sounds like you ate with her.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sounds regular to me if you knew how she liked her food.” Soledad twirls her spoon and sighs. “She'd be satisfied giving me what was leftover after she ate.”

Soledad starts saying grace: “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”

When she finishes, I watch her long fingers move along the table. They're dainty soft, like their ends are made of swan feathers, brushing the spoon to lift it from beside her bowl. She dips the silver in the stew and puts it to her mouth in a smooth stroke. So light those fingers are. Weightless, they seem. Her thin lips, delicate, too. Like egg shells sipping spice on her tongue and into the pockets of her cheeks.

“It wasn't the leftovers that bothered me,” Soledad said. “It was sleeping on her floor where she put every drifter or any of her girls who stopped working. Hurt my back that way. In fact, it was a splinter there that caused an infection. She spent ten days treating it. That floor was the last thing we argued about before I left her. Did she tell you?”

“No, ma'am.”

“How's that floor treating you?”

“I sleep in her son's room. The second bed. His dog's got the other half of his.”

“She allows you to take care of her son?”

“Nine years old and he's like a brother to me.”

Soledad stops eating altogether. She sets her spoon down on the side of her plate like she's re-setting the table.

“So you do sleep in a bed?” she say.

“Not at first. Before, I slept on her old trunk that she made look like a bed.”

“Well . . .” she say, blinking too much, making me feel like I said something wrong. “It doesn't seem like you had it so bad after all.” She picks up her spoon again, runs it into her stew, pushes the meat to the sides of her bowl, stabs the meat with her spoon, and shimmies it in half. “Would take me all day to make this,” she say. “Never a thank you. She'd just keep reminding me of the stomach inside.” Soledad rolls her tortilla and dips it in the stew, bites the top of it. “Cynthia has a way of turning any good thing to nothing.”

That's true.

“How was she when you left?”

I lift my shoulders. Don't want to talk about Cynthia no more.

“Well, we shouldn't be speaking of her anyway,” Soledad say.

“All right,” I say.

“Too much good food to waste, right?” Soledad spoons her stew, eats it, and taps her napkin to her lips. “Tell me,” she say, “do you have a boyfriend? Or someone?”

I nod. My heart hurts again. I say, “But he don't love me no more.”

“Men are that way, aren't they? Get what they want and go,” she say. “No matter. There will be others.”