It's Not Like I Knew Her (3 page)

After his last visit, she'd awakened not to the sound of his big laughter but to a heavy silence that hung over the house as though it had taken on a shape of its own. She first wondered if his visit had been a trick of her mind, so she searched the house for signs. Like all the times before, he'd brought her favorites: Rice Krispies, Del Monte ragged peaches, strawberry Jell-O mix, and animal crackers. She went outside and walked the tread marks left by the big Dodge. She didn't know whether they marked his coming or his going.

She'd known to look for Jewel sitting alone on the back porch steps. Smoke from the tip of the Chesterfield dangling from her lips rose to join the vapor steaming from the cup of coffee she cradled. Jewel's face, red from crying, held something much deeper than the sullen anger Jodie had come to expect with the departure of other men.

“You might as well know. He's not coming back.”

“Why? I thought he liked us. You, I mean.” She hadn't heard harsh words coming from the bedroom before she fell asleep, only their low voices. Now she thought their voices had been strained, but she wasn't sure.

“God, girl, it's never been about that.” Her jaw was set against whatever it was and the hurt it caused.

She shrugged. “I don't care. He was never my daddy, was he?”

“Maybe he's got a whole other life, but Red Dozier's your daddy all right. Same as if he got mail delivered to that box there.” She jerked her head in the direction of the road, and that was all she said.

Jodie felt better knowing her mama, at least, thought of Red that way. But her story didn't change “bastard.” For that to happen, Red would need to come back and stay steady, like Ginger's daddy next door. He came home evenings, except for those times he was in trouble with the law, to sit on the porch, sipping whiskey. When he was in a good mood, he pitched for Roscoe to practice batting, and Jodie and his younger brothers ran down fly balls.

If she was man-smart like Jewel, she'd take her knife to the swing's rope, learn to forget Red Dozier. Then, Jodie believed him different from the other men Jewel brought home on the occasions of her highs—men who watched her with eyes she distrusted. The same men she'd learned to walk wide circles around, making herself into a ghost.

A timid moon slipped in and out of cloud cover, and Jodie eased to Jewel's door and tapped lightly, quietly calling, “Mama, it's time.”

She listened for the slightest movement on the other side of the door, her only answer a heavier silence. She worried that Jewel had had what her boss called her final warning.

Again, she dared. “Mama, it's time to leave for work.”

“Get the hell away from my door.”

It was these times when Jodie wished Red had brought her a dog rather than pink biddies. She could pet a dog, talk to it, and never need to lie.

A
light tap sounded on the kitchen door, and Ginger peered through the screen. The fading light cast a halo effect around her fair hair and pale, round face. Jodie wished she believed in angels, because Ginger would certainly fit the bill.

“Hey, you're not supposed to be here. You're gonna get us killed.”

Ginger whispered, “You didn't tell her about yesterday? Our going to the bridge?”

“Hell no, I'm no fool.”

“What, then?”

Jodie shrugged. “She's just in one of her snits. But I can't go as far as the creek and chase minnows. Besides, you've gotta know by now they won't live in fruit jars.” Ginger wanted goldfish and a bowl she'd seen at the dime store in Eufaula, but since Red stopped coming, Jodie's pockets held nothing but red dirt.

“No, it's not that. Mama's visiting Aunt Trudy and she left me with a hamper of peas to shell. Won't you come help?”

Jodie couldn't be sure Jewel was sleeping. If she was drinking, her blues only worsened, and her snits could turn mean. Still, she followed Ginger across their adjacent yards and onto the Suttons' back porch.

The late summer purple hulls were dry and brittle, better suited for cows and hogs at this stage. Then, Ginger's family ate what they had when they had it, the same as she and Jewel.

“I wish we had the grape Kool-Aid you like. But there's leftover tea.”

“Don't drink it after it gets syrupy.” She liked that Ginger remembered her favorite, even if she had none to offer.

The worst of the day's heat had lifted, and a welcome quiet stretched up and down the row. They sat on the porch swing, each bent over a pan of unshelled peas. Neither spoke, but the easiness Jodie always felt with Ginger returned as they fell into the rhythm of shared work. The pile of hulls on the floor between their bare feet grew and their separate pans began to fill.

Ginger paused to point out the flittering fireflies, sprinkling what she liked to call magic dust across the back yard. She spoke hopefully about catching a few and putting them in a jar.

“If you ask me, there's no point in that.” Catching critters and holding them in jars till they died was senseless, even mean.

“I only want to hold them closer. Make things brighter.” Ginger's small voice carried a wistful tone. So much so that Jodie set aside what she knew of hope as a poor excuse for truth.

Rufus, the Suttons' three-legged coonhound, came from beneath the house, barked, and limped across the side yard toward the road. Jodie tensed. She glanced in the direction of Jewel's bedroom window and listened hard for sounds of her mama's disagreeable stirrings.

“It's nothing. That danged old hound will chase a shadow quicker than a cold biscuit.”

“Where'd you say everybody was?”

“I didn't. But Roscoe's gone to Eufaula to take Daddy clean clothes. He ain't due back till after dark.”

Normally, Ginger's daddy didn't stay locked up long enough to need clean clothes.

“What about Rabbit?” He didn't taunt her as much as Roscoe, but he was two-faced, bad to snoop and tattle.

“Him, too. There's just us.” Ginger smiled shyly.

Ginger's smile was soft like a kitten's paw, and Jodie leaned into its warmth. She knew Ginger wasn't that crazy about shelling peas, which likely meant she'd bribed her mama in order to stay behind. The notion of Ginger bargaining time to be with her made Jodie giddy. She stared into the pan of peas, hundreds of eyes staring back at her, and although she saw Jewel's threat in each, she relished the good she felt more than she feared Jewel's wrath.

“Jodie, why don't you have a daddy?” Ginger didn't look at her.

“Don't you think that's a question better put to my mama?”

“But are you … a true bastard?”

“What if I am?”

Ginger's tone was nothing like the high-pitched chants of “whore brat” and “bastard” Jodie had settled on as hateful, but words that connected her to Red on those occasions when he came and stayed for a time. But “bastard” out of Ginger's mouth felt worse than a thousand wasp stings.

“Please, Jodie, don't get mad. But is that why mama says I'm to play with nice girls?”

“I don't know. Why should I? She's your damn crazy mama.”

The back door hinges squealed like a doomed hog, and Mrs. Sutton burst onto the porch. She stood, bug-eyed, rage distorting her features, and she screamed, “Filthy bastard, I'll teach you to sneak around on my back porch,” in a voice Jewel was bound to hear. She slapped Jodie, her rough handprint burning into her cheek like a branding iron.

Jodie jumped to her feet. The shelled peas spilled across the floor as if they were running for their lives. Ginger screamed but Jodie was too shocked to cry out. She leaped off the porch and ran past Roscoe and Rabbit as they rounded the corner, demanding to know what had happened. Mrs. Sutton hurried after Jodie, her furious name-calling echoing up and down the row.

Jodie stumbled onto her and Jewel's front porch, her chest pumping like a smithy's bellow at the sight of Jewel staggering bleary-eyed through the door.

“What the hell's all this racket about?”

Jodie opened her mouth to speak but her throat seized.

“I'll tell you what it's about. I caught that … gal of yours on my porch. And I want to know what you mean to do about her.”

“Jewel, please. It wasn't like that.”

“Shut your mouth, Jodie. I'll get to you.”

Jewel looked straight through her as if she were a stranger before turning her full fury on Mrs. Sutton.

“It's not her you need to worry about, but that wormy, peckerwood husband of yours I keep having to chase away from my back door.” Jewel's voice was deadly calm. Her hands rode her hips, her bare feet firmly planted, and her strong legs spread. “You need to take your tight ass out of here before I come off this porch and do harm we'll both regret.”

Whatever Mrs. Sutton imagined in Jewel's threat had her gathering her boys and hustling back across the invisible property line that Jodie believed was certain to become an impregnable wall.

Jewel turned to Jodie, her face pained, as though she'd suddenly bitten into something too bitter to swallow. “Lord, baby girl, it's starting to look like you're going to need to take up far less space in this world. Double up on them clever lies you're so good at. That's if you figure on staying alive.”

Jewel's shoulders slumped as though her strength seeped like rosin from a freshly scarred pine; she turned and staggered back through the door without another word.

Jodie continued to sit, long after the sounds of Mrs. Sutton's fury and Ginger's pitiful pleading had ended. Up and down the row, a sense of normal returned: windows framed in soft light, and cicadas, crickets, and frogs serenaded. Yet Jodie knew that here on the row, and maybe even beyond, Jewel's warning had set her apart in some peculiar way. A deep sense of aloneness washed over her, and she wrapped her arms tightly about herself. Unable to abate her tears, she sobbed.

T
he screen door slammed, and Jewel came onto the porch wearing her red backless sundress. The smoothness of her bronze skin caused good men to stare in a way that made Jodie proud, while she'd learned to hate the looks from men whose eyes burned with lust. Townswomen like Mrs. Sutton shunned Jewel and swapped slanderous stories behind her back. If Jewel was bothered, she hid whatever she felt behind her best kiss-my-ass smile.

Jewel came to the edge of the porch and called to Jodie.

“Get down out of that swing before you kill your fool self. Ought to cut the damn thing down.” She shaded her eyes against the sun's glare. “Fixing to go to the store. Get something decent to cook. I'm thinking pork chops.” She paused. “Come along if you want.”

Troy came onto the porch, puffed like a strutting rooster, and said to Jewel, “Come on if you're coming. I don't have all day.”

Jodie hated that Jewel was willing to spend money they didn't have just to please Troy. After sleeping until noon, Troy would stretch out his long legs beneath their kitchen table, bragging that he could open doors. The more he talked, the more Jodie felt her doors to her mama closing. Jewel's dream of the Grand Ole Opry was bigger than any truth.

“Well, get on in here. Wash that nasty face. And for God's sake, take a hard brush to that bushy head.” Jewel hadn't said as much, but Jodie knew her mother sometimes hated her dark curls. In better times she'd spoken of her curls as a gift from Red, and had washed and brushed it out for her. Jodie now believed Jewel's ambiguity was like what she felt for the swing.

“God, baby, we don't have time to wait on her.”

Jodie watched her mama like a junkyard dog. Lately, her moods were more fleeting than ever.

“Girl, if you're coming you'll need to shag ass.”

Jodie ran past a pissed Troy and whispered, “You ain't the boss of me.”

Troy now parked his bus full-time in the overgrown field behind the house. Jewel had never once bothered to ask her about him taking her place in the big bed. The makeshift cot in the kitchen was hers full-time. She slept among the odors of onions, potatoes, whiskey, and sweaty men who sprawled about the front room on made-down pallets, their drunken snoring every bit as pretty as their playing.

J
ewel's words scattered like a flock of jabbering blackbirds, and Jodie caught only the part about their leaving. Based on nothing more certain than a month of Troy's boasting, Jewel quit her job and sold her prized phonograph, removing the last vestige of Red Dozier from their lives. She sold the double bed, their kitchen table and chairs, and the rusted ice box for fifteen dollars to a new couple who had nothing but their love, the stringy-headed, pregnant girl had exclaimed. Jewel tossed the balance of their meager belongings, including her scratched Bessie Smith records, into an old trunk Troy lashed onto the back of the made-over school bus.

The morning Troy picked to pull out left Jodie barely enough time to risk a stolen good-bye with Ginger. She crouched in the tall weeds at the edge of the Suttons' cluttered back yard, waiting until Hattie Sutton had taken a bucket in hand and gone into her garden before knocking on the back door.

“Oh, Jodie, aren't you afraid?” Ginger looked in the direction of the garden. “What's all the commotion at your house? Who's that skinny man with whiskers?”

“Never mind about him. Jewel's moving us. We're leaving right now.” Jodie's words came thick to her throat and she swallowed hard.

Ginger's small hand flew to her mouth and she stammered, “Oh no, Jodie. That's not fair.”

“No, it's not. But I can't fix unfair, now can I?”

Jodie ignored the blaring horn and handed Ginger the two crinkled dollar bills she'd stolen from Jewel's coffee can.

“This dollar's for them goldfishes and that bowl you want. The other's for chicken feed.” She'd said an earlier good-bye to Sadie, Sally, and Shirley. A dollar wouldn't buy much feed, but Jodie knew those three old gals were destined to find themselves floating in a sea of dumplings before the bus reached the hard road.