Legend of Buddy Bush (9781439131824) (2 page)

As I lean over to pick my first one, I remember the stick that Uncle Buddy made for me to use to
push the vines back. I keep it hidden on the third row. That's my row to pick, so I know Ma won't find it. Nothing fancy, just a stick with a hoop on the end. Uncle Buddy said I was going to ruin my hands if I don't stop working like a 1947 slave on this farm. If that happens, according to Uncle Buddy my chances of becoming a city girl are over. We talk about the North all the time. No matter if he was born here, my uncle Buddy is a New York man and you can tell it when he talks. He ain't all-countrified like me and the rest of the folks on Rehobeth Road. He's dress different even when he's going to work. You could never know Uncle Buddy ain't blood kin. He is tall like Grandpa and Coy; and as black as midnight. I've never seen teeth as white as his. And don't nobody in Rich Square shine their shoes like he does. “You can tell a real man by the shoes he wears,” Uncle Buddy declares at least once a week. And he don't believe in the country stuff we believe in, like getting off the sidewalk to let white folks pass by. Uncle Buddy don't even believe in hanks. Folks on Rehobeth Road call ghost hanks. Uncle Buddy call
ghost ghost and he don't believe in them either. Yep, he's a city man all right. For the life of me I will never understand why he came back five years ago. Nobody knows for sure. He just showed up that Sunday morning after writing a letter and didn't say why he was coming or why he won't be going back. BarJean claims she know, but I don't think she know nothing. She claims some folks in Harlem said Uncle Buddy left because he could not have the woman he loved. A woman that belonged to somebody else. A light-skin woman! She claim Uncle Buddy heart was broken. I can't imagine going North for twenty-two years, then moving back here. I definitely would not leave because I could not have some man. I would just find me a new one. That's what Uncle Buddy should have done. Found him a new woman to love. A dark-skin woman! Anything except come back here. I live and dream of the day when I leave this place and go to New York. Not just New York, but to Harlem. Not even Ma can get into my dreams.

“Pattie Mae!”

Guess I spoke too soon.

That would be Ma. Trying her best to get into my dreams; yelling like I'm halfway cross the field somewhere.

“Mornin' Ma.”

“Mornin' my foot, what you doing in that field so early?”

I want to yell back, “Trying on my new diamond earrings.”

Ma ain't much on people joking with her so I better not say that.

“Just trying to beat the sun.”

“Trying to beat the sun. Child, you can't outrun God. You better stop listening to Buddy about that light-skin, dark-skin mess. Now come on this porch and wash your hands while I finish breakfast. I already put water in the face tub.”

Lord, when I get to Harlem I'll be done with using face tubs. BarJean told me she got running water and yes, a bathroom. I put my stick down and Hobo and me slowly walk back to the slave house. I don't know who use to live in it, but I know I feel like a slave this morning. Just look at
this place, all run down. But Ma keeps it so nice and clean. Cleaner than them white folks' yards in town. Probably cleaner on the inside too. They just got paint on the inside and the outside. This place ain't seen no paint since the Civil War. The closer I get to the slave house I want to scream, “I hate these fields. Please, BarJean, take me North!” By the time I make it to the porch Ma has turned around and gone inside. But not before I notice she is wearing a dress. I hope that I will be as tall as she is when I'm a woman. I saw on some of her important papers that she is six feet tall. Tall and beautiful with skin the color of a brown paper sack and hair that has as many waves in it as a newborn baby. When Ma walks, all the men look at her hips that are round and shake like Jell-O. Mr. Walter Garris likes Ma's hips so much that he screams, “Lord have mercy!” when she walks by. That makes Ma really mad. Uncle Buddy says I am going to be a pretty woman like Ma when I get older. He says probably not as pretty as Ma, because it's a “Sinfore God to look as good as Mer Sheals.” Her name is Mary. Somebody replaced the “a” with an “e” and
dropped the “y” years ago, just like they took “tricia” off of Patricia and added “tie Mae” to my name. That's just how it is on Rehobeth Road.

So why is Ma wearing a dress? Surely she is going to pick cucumbers today. She always picks cucumbers when it rains. If she ain't chopping, she picks cucumber every day from late May until they are all gone, from sunrise to sunset. Ma stops chopping in August in time to work in tobacco, because tobacco workers make $4.00 a day and we only make $2.00 a day chopping. But August nor tobacco are on my mind this year, because I will be on that train going to the unknown by then. This will be the first year that I am old enough to work in the tobacco field, like it is honor or something stupid like that to turn twelve and prime tobacco. That's the rule on Rehobeth Road. You have to be twelve to work in the tobacco field. Myself, Pattie Mae Sheals, has other plans. Besides, Uncle Buddy says people who chop and prime tobacco ain't nothing but $2.00 a day slaves.

I stop on the back porch and wash my hands in the white face tub that Ma left there for me. Old like
everything else around here. Clean like everything else around here. The smell of her biscuits reaches my nose before I reach the back door that is falling off the way it does at least ten times a week. I'm sure Grandpa is coming up here with his toolbox and fix it as soon as he gets around to it. He has been a bit under the weather, so I don't want to mention the door to him again. No need to tell Uncle Buddy because it's dark when he leaves home and dark when he comes back. Ma never complains about what Uncle Buddy don't do around here. I guess that $35.00 a month includes Ma fixing things too. Ma swears that money keeps us out of the poorhouse. If this ain't the poorhouse, I don't know what is.

Inside the slave house, in the kitchen, on the table I notice Ma's black leather bag. The one that her oldest sister, my aunt Louise, brought her all the way from Harlem. I also notice that Ma doesn't have on just any dress; she has on her Sunday go to meeting dress. She would never dress like this during the week, unless she was going to a funeral or the relief office over in Jackson. Lord have mercy, I just want to ask her why she is all dressed up, but
Ma says that children ain't suppose to ask grown folks questions.

That's another rule on Rehobeth Road. “Don't ask grown folks no questions.”

I know I really don't have to. All I have to say is “Ma, you look so pretty.” And she does. Even if she don't, Uncle Buddy says never beg a woman. “If you tell her she looks good, she will tell you anything you want to know.” Stuff like “Honey, honey you fine as you want to be” and “Baby, you the sugar in my coffee.” Now that's the kind of mess Uncle Buddy says he used to tell them gals up in Harlem. I don't know about them city women that Uncle Buddy knows, but Ma loves a compliment. So I just take my seat at the end of the table, next to the stove, where I have been sitting since Ma took me out of the high chair. The high chair we sold back to the thrift shop in Jackson when I got too big for it. Ma has prepared the usual two eggs, two pieces of bacon, and one biscuit. No milk, just water from the rusty well in the backyard.

“My, you look pretty today, Ma.”

“Well, thank you, child. I thought I would get
dressed early. Mr. Charlie will be here soon.”

Ma would not be dressed like this just because Mr. Charlie is coming by. He comes by all the time. Mr. Charlie and his wife, Miss Doleebuck, are Grandpa and Grandma's neighbors and best friends. At seventy-five, the same age as Grandpa, Mr. Charlie has a car. A 1935 Chevy. That's it. The car! Mr. Charlie and Ma are going somewhere, but I have to find out where.

“I told you to eat your food. Mr. Charlie will be here in a minute. Now hurry.”

“He will?” I say, trying not to ask a grown folks question.

“Yes he will. I'm going into town with him and your grandpa. He's taking Poppa to see Dr. Franklin.”

“Doctor?”

No time to follow some silly rule about not asking
grown folks questions. I want to know why Grandpa is going to the doctor.

“Why?” I ask as tears run into the eggs that I don't want no more.

I know Ma is getting ready to say, “Don't ask grown folks questions,” until she sees the tears in my eggs.

“Now why are you crying, child? You know Poppa hasn't been feeling well for a while. And what did Buddy tell you about crying all the time?” If I tell her what he really said she would give him a tongue-lashing as soon as he steps foot in this house. But what he really said was “Crying makes you piss less.” I can't repeat that, so I say, “He said big girls don't cry.”

Ma smiles and say, “He's right. Now, hurry.”

Ma's mighty out of herself this morning. She just rushing and fussing. She must be some kind of worried about Grandpa. He is definitely a little under the weather, but he must be really sick to go to a doctor. I figure that he has drunk enough of Grandma's leaves from the woods to feel better by now. Grandma claims she has a cure for everything. Puttin' tobacco on your chest for a sore throat. A penny around your neck to stop a nosebleed. A broom at the door so the hanks won't ride your back at night and roots from the grass of the unknown for colds. And she has birthed as many
babies in Rich Square as Dr. Franklin, the white doctor. She brought BarJean, Coy and me into this world and most of the children here on Reheboth Road. She nurses most of the grown folks on Rehobeth Road too, except Uncle Buddy. He says, “Never in this world.” As a matter of fact, Uncle Buddy don't trust no doctors around here. He drives all the way to Harlem twice a year to see his city doctor. There have been a lot of talk on Rehobeth Road about a new colored doctor coming to town. Not Rich Square, but Potecasi and that ain't too far. I guess that place is about ten miles away. Can't worry about a colored doctor that might come later. I want Ma to tell me about the white doctor that's here now and why Grandpa is really going to see him.

Ma still in deep thought, she doesn't say a word for a minute.

“Ma, I guess Grandma's medicine ain't working.” I'm trying my best to get her to talk. She looks like she wants to laugh at my belief in Grandma's homemade medicine. Like the time I couldn't stop pissing in the bed and she boiled me some green
stuff to drink for a month. Ma said that it wasn't that stuff that worked. She is probably right and it was her threats of beating my skin off if I didn't stop messing up her sheets that did. I just didn't understand why Ma went through all the pain of having me and then she planned to beat my skin off. Anyway, I want to know what is happening with Grandpa. My grandpa!

“Don't you worry about Grandpa. He just has a slight cold.”

I can't believe she just said that.

A churchwoman lying. Lord have mercy!

“Slight cold? It's June.”

Ma ignores me as she takes her old blue apron off and hangs it on a nail behind the kitchen door that don't have paint on it either. Then she sits down and takes off her bedroom slippers and puts on her black Sunday go to meeting shoes.

“Can I go with you to town? I want to see Grandpa.”

“No you cannot. You have to go and help your grandma pick strawberries. She is waiting for you.”

Grandma's strawberry patch is as big as our
cucumber patch and she sales them at the market every other Saturday as fast as we pick them. Sometimes folks, even white folks, come by the house to buy them by the basket. She only charges a dollar a basket. I overheard Uncle Buddy telling Grandma she should charge more for her big, pretty strawberries. She quickly told him he should mind his business. “Folks round here don't have that city money like you made in Harlem, boy.”

End of that!

Ma reaches in her bag and pulls out my letter from BarJean that probably arrived yesterday, but she forgot to give it to me. She forgets sometimes and I have to ask for my Thursday's mail. Rain, sleet, or snow, my letters come from BarJean every Thursday that the Lord sends. Always on blue stationery in a blue envelope and always on Thursday. As she gives me the letter, I hear Mr. Charlie's car horn blowing like he is running from a fire.

Before Ma can say, “Sit back down and eat,” I grab my letter, stuff it in my pocket, and run out of the door. Surely, she is not going to forget that I grabbed that letter out her hand. That will get me
one lick or no TV at Grandma's house for a week. Don't have to worry about the TV around here. We don't have one. Uncle Buddy says he don't care what Ma says, he's giving me a TV for Christmas.

Mr. Charlie is waving as I run down the long path trying to get to the car before Ma can even get her purse off the table. I want a minute alone with two of my three favorite men. Uncle Buddy is the third, of course. Actually they are the only men in my life. Uncle Buddy said my daddy, Silas Sheals, ran off with Mr. Charlie's gal Mattie when I was a baby. He also said that my daddy and Mattie got themselves a new baby girl named O'Hara. Named after that white woman Scarlett O'Hara from
Gone with the Wind.
Ma don't ever say nothing about my daddy and Mr. Charlie and Grandpa somehow managed to stay friends. Now Miss Doleebuck dares my daddy to dot in her door and the same goes for Mattie if she wants to bring him with her. So Mattie only comes on holidays and Silas Sheals don't show his face at all. Miss Doleebuck said they both are a disgrace. Grandma said, “Disgrace my foot, Mattie is a slut.” I'm almost sure that
Grandma is going to tell me what a slut is as soon as I am older.

I tell you one thing, if she don't tell me, Uncle Buddy will. All I got to do is ask him.

I pull the car door open and jump in Grandpa's lap.

“Hey, gal,” he and Mr. Charlie say at the same time.