Playing With Matches (4 page)

While Uncle Cunny sat with his bottom lip between his teeth and his head in his hands, Miss Shookie stretched Bitsy’s unders on the line, with six clothespins to hold them. I’d never seen such enormous drawers. I was embarrassed for Bitsy for more reasons than one.

I’d heard Uncle Cunny say Bitsy was aiming to be as stout as her mama. If she would slim down and adjust her attitude, he said, the girl might make something of her life. But I’d seen Bitsy kissing boys behind the church, one time letting a Farm guard lift her skirt. I held less hope for her than Uncle did.

6

O
n Potato Shed Road, my best friend was Claudie Maytubby, one of a family of thirteen, living mostly on food stamps, government cheese, and brown beans. Claudie was round of face and sturdy of body. She was black as a raven’s wing, her hair short and four-pigtailed, and her two dresses were plaid and coming apart at the seams. I loved her dearly, but more—I coveted her.

Unfortunately she was double twin to her sister, Eulogenie, who had one arm. Those girls had come into this world with only three arms between them. They were joined together from one wrist to belly button like a French chorus line. Claudie was the bigger, tougher one while Eulogenie was smaller, with finer bones, shaved-back hair, and tiny teeth. Miss Shookie said that at some time in the womb, Eulogenie had drawn the short stick.

“After we was born,” Claudie told me one day, “we got too big to be carried around, joined up as we was. Mama dreamed she heard Eulogenie saying,
‘Go on, Mama, and give this here arm to my sister.’
 ”

I watched Claudie’s big pink tongue move around in her mouth. “People came and wrote us up in their magazine. Then a
doctor took us to Montgomery and cut us apart. We didn’t share no internals, so that weren’t no problem.” She draped the coveted arm around her sister. It had a wrist and hand and five normal fingers, and underneath was the scar.

“After,” Eulogenie said in her little voice, “they put us in two cribs.”

Claudie said, “Eulogenie cried so bad, they laid us in one, and the nurses taped our good hands together, so we’d each know the other’n was still there.”

Eulogenie’s hearing was bad, her eyeglasses repaired at one corner with a gob of dirty masking tape. I was also embarrassed for her name. For several months she’d gone without, until her mama heard that word at a funeral service. I took to calling her Plain Genie, which fit her better. I knew that hurt her feelings, but I didn’t care. I wanted Claudie to myself.

Sometimes, in our playing, we two would drift over to Auntie’s place. But here’d come Plain Genie, hanging around, blinking her eyes and sucking her thumb. Auntie’d bring out jelly sandwiches for us all—Plain Genie too—and that irritated the living hell out of me.

The twins never came to our house on Sundays, or on Wednesday nights, so they never met up with Miss Shookie, and I was glad. Claudie was dramatic about everything. If God sent her a letter stamped with all the seals of heaven, she would have rolled her big eyes. She did that a lot, and I could picture her watching Bitsy at dinner. Those eyes would’ve wobbled out of Claudie’s head.

Down the road from us, the Maytubbys lived in one-half of a duplex. Because the other half was empty, they had spilled into it too, and when the landlord found out, he boarded up the other side.

One afternoon, I sat with Claudie on their porch. Most of the Maytubbys were home that day, because Denver Lee was due to arrive anytime. Denver was the only Maytubby in the history of False River to go to college. I knew there was a boy younger than Denver, name of Roland, but they never so much as whispered his name.

The oldest girl, Alvadene, was fourteen and twice over a mama. She sat on the porch too, rocking and nursing her son at one breast. The boy was pig-suckling and naked but for a hank of diaper in the awful heat. His little sister dug in the dirt with a spoon.

After Alvadene, a girl had been born, but she died when she was one day old. A tiny hammered-wood cross was planted in the ground near the river. There was a gaggle of Maytubby boys too, and they all looked alike—shaved-headed and skinny and just now wrestling around in the yard, a tangle of knobby elbows and knees.

Today, like a leper touched by Jesus, Miz Maytubby had risen out of her bed. In the house, a brown-sugar cake was baked and sitting on the table. Newspaper was tacked over the windows to keep out the sun.

Auntie had told me the story about Denver Lee. Apparently, Mississippi Southwest sent a scout up one day to watch him play high school basketball. Here in False River, it wasn’t his grades that had kept him in class but his strong good looks. The coach’s daughter, Janelle, having checked out the contents of Denver’s pants, made a deal with her daddy. She’d do Denver’s homework, and for her keeping this fine, tall jump-man on the team, Coach would say nothing about their coupling behind the gym as long as she didn’t get pregnant and nobody saw them. Over time, however, Coach paid for at least two trips to Greenfield—one to have his baby girl “scraped” and another to get Denver shot full of antibiotics.

On the basketball court, Denver Lee had pure-greased glide and lift. The college scout liked his looks and his moves, and said
Come on down
.

But Denver would have to leave Janelle behind.

“Go on and play ball for us,” the grown-ups told him, and Denver Lee said
Okay
. He’d make money and bring home a truck full, and they’d all be rich. But he never did.

While Denver was away, his daddy passed of a weakened heart. Denver had a game that Saturday and couldn’t get home for the burying. That winter, he wrote to his mama, saying he’d met this new girl, liked the look and feel and smell of her, and they’d got married by a justice of the peace.

Word got around.

“That’s what them Maytubbys need,” Miss Shookie said during a Sunday gab on our upstairs gallery. “Another mouth to feed. If that girl had any sense, she’d take Denver up to Jackson and forget this bunch down here.”

Miss Shookie was always moving people to Jackson.

Today we were gathered for Denver Lee’s homecoming.

“He bringin’ his new wife,” said Plain Genie in her slow voice, grinning with her pink gums and tiny teeth. “We got us a sister-in-law.”

So we sat on the porch while the dogs slept underneath, and we waited in the heat, not wanting to start on the lemonade till they got there.

I leaned back on my hands. “Why’s your mama stay in bed so much, Claudie?”

“She been laid up since we was born.” Claudie waved a hand like the whole thing was of no account. “Our birthin’ was that hard on her. She had no sense, squeezin’ out two more after us.”

I looked down to the riverbank, where the smallest boys ran
naked as jaybirds, their butts caked with clay dust and their bellies round. Claudie got up and called to them, “Y’all come on and cover your bidness now! Clean pants is on the ironing board.”

“Poor Mama,” Plain Genie said. “She lay in the bed and moan all day and all night. She say she goin’ to die any minute.”

“Any minute?” I said.

“For seven years now.”

But their mama was up today, wearing a bathrobe and peeking out through the porch screen. I said to her, “How you doin’ there, Miz Maytubby? You feelin’ any better this day?”

“You’re a dear child for askin’,” she said. “Y’all, ain’t that Denver Lee’s car coming up the road?”

It was, in a cloud of dirt roiling thicker than bees.

“Hey, y’all!” Alvadene rose out of the rocker, the baby on her hip, a bead of milk on her nipple. The baby set up a terrible fuss.

“Girl, button your blouse,” her mama said.

A red car pulled up, with more rust spots than paint. The top was down, and Denver Lee was waving like he was his own parade. He had a big grin on his handsome face, and the lady beside him wore a wide-brimmed hat and gloves and a yellow sundress. A slow buzz rose up. When Denver came round and opened his wife’s door, she stretched out two long white legs, and the whole family drew back.

“Y’all,” said Denver Lee, grinning, “this here’s my wife, Lucille. Lu, this is Mama, and Alvadene, and Claudie and …”

The screen door had gone shut.

Denver rushed his wife up the steps and inside. I heard his voice in the dark kitchen. “Mama, I know Lucille is white, but she’s a real lady, and she’s got fine, wide hips. You got to get to know her, is all.”

“Well, ain’t we done in now,” Alvadene said. She sat down in
the rocker and flopped that one breast back out, offering it to the squalling boy. The little girl wobbled up the steps, climbed on her mama’s leg, and peeled her shirt away from the other.

Claudie and Plain Genie shared a secret look. After a long, bare silence Denver came to the door. “Y’all come in now. Supper’s on the table.”

The boys scrambled in from their game of killing each other.

I knew this invitation included me too. The kitchen was tiny and filled with the heat of the stove and summer bodies. There were four chairs, a bench, and a piano stool squeezed around that small deal table. Miz Maytubby moved to the stove and back. The chairs were for grown-ups. Lucille was balanced on Denver Lee’s lap. In this crowded house there was no prayer, no hymn, no
Thank you, Jesus
. Everybody reached and dipped and poured and dug in. Claudie and Plain Genie and I were passed cracked cereal bowls, and we ate with spoons and our fingers, standing up.

A great pot of black-eyed peas sat in the middle of the table, and Denver Lee rose to dish them out while a platter of corn bread went around, and another heaped with fried potatoes. Nobody said a word. Without Denver’s help, Lucille wouldn’t have got a thing on her plate, because soon conversation rose up about Alvadene’s babies, and nobody spoke to, or about, Denver’s new wife. Like she wasn’t there, like she didn’t count.

She was so pretty. Her eyes were big and round and green, and she kept touching Denver Lee, like she needed to feel something familiar under her hand.

When dinner was done, and I’d thanked Miz Maytubby for letting me join in, Denver Lee said he was going down the road to visit old friends, and he’d be back directly. Lucille’s skin went so pale, she looked almost blue.

All the boys tore out the door.

The rest of us moved around the kitchen like I reckon women have for a million years. When Alvadene handed out dish towels, Lucille didn’t get one. Nobody let her pour up the peas or wrap the last square of corn bread. Lucille sat down on the floor and tucked her legs under her, set to play with the babies, but Alvadene scooped them both up and took them off to bed. Claudie took over the washing, passed me a towel, and I dried the dishes and stacked them by the drainboard. Eulogenie put them away. Lucille rose from the floor, and with one hiccuping sob, ran out the back door.

They all stood, looking at the linoleum. I put down my towel and headed out too. I saw the door slam on the outhouse, and I sat down in the grass to wait. Time went on, but the door did not open.

“Miss Lucille?” I called. “You got to step out sometime.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“That’s one nasty outhouse. Denver Lee will come back, and you’ll smell like shit.”

She opened the door.

“I greatly admire your yellow dress,” I said.

She looked me over, causing me to brush a crumb from my shirt and retie one sneaker.

“I don’t understand,” she said to me. “White girl, what are you doing here?”

“I’m friends with Claudie.”

She sighed. “I’m wife to their oldest boy—”

“I know.”

“—and I just wanted to play with the little ones.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over on her rouge. “I hoped they’d all like me, especially his mama. I tried to be polite.”

“You were,” I agreed. “Although you didn’t eat much.”

“How could I?” she said. “It’s like I was carrying some almighty disease.”

I smiled with one corner of my mouth while I searched for something to say. “They were excited when they got Denver’s letter, saying he was married.”

She looked at her sandals, at the hard packed ground. “I told Denver Lee to explain, that it wouldn’t set right. This is Mississippi and—well, they weren’t expectin’ him to bring home a white woman.”

“Just give them time.” I got up to leave.

“Wait!” she said, the word sharp on her tongue. “You got any more advice?”

“Well—I can tell Genie already likes you.”

“Oh. The skinny little thing with her mouth hanging open?”

I nodded. “That’s her. And Claudie’ll take to you. Look, Denver’s mama will be back in the bed now. Go on in, ask how she’s doing, can you get her anything.”

“I don’t know—”

“Then get you some cool water, sit out on the porch, and wait for Denver Lee. Go on, now.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Clea June Shine,” I said. “I stay twelve houses down, at Miss Jerusha Lovemore’s.”

“She’s white too? She your foster nanna?”

Auntie was neither. The air had grown cool. “No, ma’am.”

“Then how come she keeps you?”

“My mama gave me to her. I reckon it’s bad manners to give back a present.”

“Girl,” Lucille said with a small pink smile. “I bet you came tied up with a great big bow.”

7

I
t seemed like the right thing to do that day, it being too hot to come out from under the willow.

Claudie came over, and we formed a plan. We would put on a show and do it up right, charging nickels and all. Three cents for the kids.

“I can’t sing,” I told Claudie. “And I sure can’t dance.”

“Hell you cain’t,” she said. “Anybody can dance, girl, just move with the music—like this.” She commenced to hum something surprisingly deep-throated, her shoulders rotating like broken helicopter blades and the rest of her bopping up and down. Genie watched from among the oaks along the river.

“First thing we got to do is have microphones,” Claudie said. And she took up a fat stick and broke it under her bare foot. She held one half to her chin. “What you wanna sing?”

“Well—”

“I can see you gonna be a joy kill,” she said. “You don’t got the beat.”