The Red Rose Box (15 page)

I stood up and walked over toward the cage. “Nice birdies,” I said.

Mrs. Martinez came back into the room.
“Pájaritos...
that's what they are called.”

“Pájaritos,
” I repeated.

“Very nice, Leah.”

She led me into her kitchen and I sat down at the table. She placed a bowl of soup in front of me. Three meatballs floated in the broth with small bits of carrots, celery, and onions. The rice had sunk to the bottom of the bowl.

“In Mexico, my mother used to make this for me and my brother when the cold rain fell. These are green chili tamales, very sweet. They are Gilbert's favorite. ” Mrs. Martinez put a plate with two tamales in front of me.

I blessed my food, dipped the spoon into the bowl, and brought one of the meatballs to my mouth. It was delicious. “Thank you, Mrs. Martinez.”

“De nada, señorita ...
it's nothing.”

I put down the spoon, picked up the fork, and took a bite of the tamale. It tasted like sweet corn bread.

Mrs. Martinez joined me at the table, made the sign of the cross, and began to eat her soup. The house was quiet the way houses get when it rains. Chili slept by the back door and while we ate silently, the rain began to fall harder.

When I finished eating, I thanked her for the soup and tamales. She tied the shawl tightly around my shoulders. I picked up my books and ran home.

“Adiós,
” she called.

I turned and smiled.
“Adiós.”

Later Michelle Jordan called. I was surprised. “I'm going swimming over at Charlene Cooper's house tomorrow and they said I could bring one guest. Do you think you can come, Leah? They have a huge swimming pool that they keep heated.”

I would go if it didn't rain. Tomorrow was Saturday.

Charlene Cooper's father, who met us at the front door on his way out, paused for an introduction. Michelle introduced me as Leah Hopper, niece of Bill Chapel, Chapel and Chapel Real Estate. That brought a look of respect to his sun-blackened face. Having made certain that I was not poor or country, though once I had been both, he tipped his hat.

Mrs. Cooper was as light as her husband was dark. She had wavy hair and hazel eyes.

Around the pool were the sons and daughters of old money, new money, too much money, used to have money. I remembered how I'd scrubbed many days on a washboard, how I'd sat in outhouses where centipedes crawled over my bare feet, and I was quiet in their presence as I changed into my bathing suit and put on my swimming cap.

Charles Cooper, Charlene's fourteen-year-old brother, approached me. I could see the sun glistening in his wet black curls, yellow ties in his back pocket. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Michelle, wearing a black bathing suit, saved me. With a bump of her right hip, she knocked Charles in the water and fell in after him. They came up for air, her smiling, Charles grinning like a tomcat with a new ball of catnip.

I longed for the creek in Sulphur in the summertime, throwing stones, watching them skip over the water once, twice, three times. I remembered Mama, the flawless glow of her smooth skin, the tenderness in her touch, my daddy's tall tales.

Someone splashed water on me and I looked around at the faces of colored boys and girls who had probably never tasted possum meat, whose fingertips had never been bloodied by the cotton plant, who had never been spit at or told to go to the back door, who were accustomed to looking white people in the eye, and I wished that Ruth was there. Ruth understood. More than these boys and girls ever could.

I thought about playing tag through hanging clothes, the warm wind blowing, frogs and crickets singing after sunset, Ruth and I holding hands while we ran like two red foxes through Sulphur, under the stars, the light of the full moon guiding us.

 

 

 

I
caught a glimpse of Gilbert from my bedroom window. Looking at him made me feel like I was floating in a pool of warm water at midnight under a full moon.

“He's gettin tall,” Mrs. Pittman said as I entered the kitchen.

“I know,” I said.

“Made some dandelion tea, still hot.” She poured me a cup and we sat down. “You got the look of love in your eyes, Leah.” She paused. “One day, Lord willin, you gonna turn round, be sixty, sixty-two, like me. Some things took me a while to learn. Everything gotta be two ways, scales gotta be in balance, can't love someone more than they love you, drive em away. I got some regrets but this life has been kinda sweet, not the sweetest, but sweet.”

I sipped the tea, searched her eyes, and looked out the kitchen window. A yellow-and-black butterfly teased with its flutter.

Mrs. Pittman said, “Now get up, girl, bout to teach you how to cook, in case you don't get you a rich one, in case you do. Bout seventeen ways to a man's heart. Stomach is one of em. Best kinda cook cooks from the inside, from knowin, no measurin; by taste, smell. Garlic, lemons, onions, potatoes, rice, salt pork, celery, cornstarch, bakin soda, butter, milk, white flour; can't say a house is kept without em. What we call the in-betweens. Smothered pork chops, let me show you.”

We diced onions, minced garlic, rinsed our fingers in lemon juice. Mrs. Pittman said, “You gotta promisin future in Betty Pittman's cookin school of colored delights. More to bein a wife than knowin when to welcome your husband into the bed.”

My eyes were red, watering from the smell of chopped onion.

Ruth opened the side door, saw me with the apron on, and said, “I'm not about to eat anything that Leah put one hand in.” She threw a jealous look my way.

Mrs. Pittman said, “Guess you won't be eatin this evenin.”

“Guess I won't be,” Ruth said and turned to walk away.

Mrs. Pittman caught her by the collar. “Take that evil, mean spirit outta this house, go'on outside with it, shake it off, come in clean.”

Ruth went outside, did a little dance by the door, turned around three times, jumped up and down, and said, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, bless me, Father, for I have sinned against the holy one, Leah Jean Hopper, whose cookin pro'bly tastes like Dr. Ross dog food.”

Mrs. Pittman turned to me and said, “This child been baptized and still got the devil in her. How can that be?”

Ruth answered for me, “We all got some devil in us. Take off the d and what you got ... evil.”

Mrs. Pittman replied, “I'm glad you gonna be a lawyer. Then you gonna have someone to fight with every day.”

Ruth rolled her eyes.

The next day I was walking home from the corner store with Gilbert, listening to him talk about baseball, chewing on the red licorice I had bought. We were standing in front of my house when Hot met us at the gate and Chili began to serenade us with a howl. For the first time Gilbert took my hand and held it. He leaned forward, touched his lips to mine, and kissed me. We stopped kissing and looked into each other's eyes. His three love letters were in my red rose box. Love surrounded us and I liked the way it felt.

“I'm gonna be a famous baseball player like Babe Ruth,” he said. “He was left-handed like me but I'm a switch-hitter. Did you know that he was a pitcher too?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“I know a lot about baseball. You could ask me anything. One day I'll be in the World Series and I'll smack the ball so hard it'll fly outta the park. Then I'll be famous.” He had that dreamy look in his eyes and I thought about Daddy.

“You'll be famous and I'll come to watch you play.” I thought he was about to kiss me again but he just smiled. I released his hand and said, “See ya.”

“See ya,” he replied.

Chili was still howling. Hot was doing a dance around our feet.

I couldn't wait to tell Ruth.

 

 

 

T
he year scurried by quickly like a squirrel on a telephone line and it was spring. May flowers bloomed in Aunt Olivia's garden.

I can't explain to you where time goes but I know that it doesn't disappear, because you can always look back at it.

Uncle Bill had given me a camera for Christmas and taking pictures became my way of saving time, people, places. It was my way of keeping the winters and summers, one skipping over the other. I began to understand why people keep their photographs in safe places.

Mrs. Pittman said, “Colored girl with a camera, land sakes.”

One evening, the sky was prettier than almost any I could remember. Dark pink clouds swirled over the blue sky, little puffs of white showing themselves like a chorus.

I got my camera.

Ruth said, “Most people don't take pictures of the sky, Leah, most people don't even look up at it half the time. It's always gonna be there, like church on Sunday. What you gonna do with a picture of a pink sky?”

I said, “Frame it and give it to you for Valentine's Day, and if I want to take picture of an elephant's behind, I will.” Gilbert's kiss had filled me with confidence.

I wanted to throw my camera at her but she smiled at me and the feeling disappeared like fog in the heat of the sun.

“You think you're something, huh, Leah? Just because Gilbert kissed you and writes you love letters. Mama would say that you are fulla yourself.”

That night I took down my red rose box, read the love letters from Gilbert, looked through the twenty-four photographs of Aunt Olivia, Uncle Bill, Ruth, Mrs. Pittman, and Hot that I'd picked up from the drugstore, and picked out my favorites. I put them in the box with the others and locked it.

“Why don't you just get a picture album and paste em in, like everyone else, smarty-pants?” Ruth asked as I climbed down from the chair.

“Cuz I don't feel like it,” was all I said.

“I thought cuz was not a real word, smarty-pants,” Ruth replied.

“Get outta my room!” I yelled. “I'm tired of you callin me smarty-pants!”

Ruth walked out into the hall, head held high, screamed, “Shut up! ... Smarty-pants!” and slammed the door. The windows shook.

Ten minutes later Aunt Olivia knocked and entered. She looked happy with a mysterious smile like the Mona Lisa, no teeth showing. She opened a letter, from Sulphur, from Gramma, in someone else's handwriting. The letter said she was coming to Los Angeles with Elijah for my graduation from sixth grade. All I could do was smile, inside and out.

Aunt Olivia said, “You must be special, like the first ripe strawberry. Last thing I ever heard Elijah say was that he was never gonna set one big brown foot in quake country. Said he'd felt thunder, tasted lightning, prayed through hurricanes and flash floods, but he was never going to have the ground shake out from under him and swallow him whole the way folks swallow oysters off half a shell.”