The Summer Kitchen (21 page)

We got to the pink house, and I stood on the sidewalk, thinking about it. Mama would be way embarrassed if she ever found out I was out, like, begging for food. She wouldn’t like where Rusty and me were living, or that we had some stripper crashing in my bedroom, or that Rusty’d dropped out of high school, or that we couldn’t afford food. She’d feel bad about it. She’d feel like she didn’t do enough to take care of us, and it was her fault she died and left us this way.

I stood on the curb, wondering if people in heaven sit around looking at us, or if sometimes they’re busy, and they just check in every once in a while. I didn’t want to hurt Mama’s feelings.

My tummy growled, and then Opal’s growled, too. Probably Ronnie, Boo, and Angel were checking out the Dumpster by now. There wouldn’t be much in there this time of the month, three weeks since people got new money on the food stamp cards, and a week until they’d get any more.

I took Opal’s hand, and we started up to the door. I went kind of slow, hoping the lady would see us coming and we wouldn’t need to knock, but the door didn’t open by magic. There was an old-fashioned bell on it when we got there. It had a little twisty knob. I reached through the burglar bars and turned it, and the bell jingled, seeming really loud since the street was so quiet. Opal wanted to do the bell, too, but I pulled her hand away.

“Ssshhh.” I listened to see if I could hear anyone coming. There was nothing, so after a minute, I let Opal twist the bell.

When the sound died, I heard footsteps inside, I thought, but then they stopped and the door didn’t open. All of a sudden, I felt weird about being there. “We better go,” I told Opal.

Before I could grab her, Opal reached through and did the bell two more times.

“Opal!” I pushed her hand off. “No!” Opal jerked away like she thought I was gonna smack her. I wondered again if someone had hit her before. I looked into her big pistachio pudding eyes and thought,
Who in the world would hit a little thing like Opal? Would Kiki do that? Did she let somebody else do it?

If Kiki’s old man beat her up, maybe he smacked Opal around, too.

A sad feeling seeped over me and stung in the back of my eyes. Even when things were bad at Roger’s, Rusty and me always had people we could of told, if we had to. When Roger started really creeping me out, I let him know that my teacher at school always asked how
everything
was at home. That worried him some, to know she was checking up.

But little bitty Opal couldn’t even talk enough to tell anybody about anything. She didn’t have a big brother or a teacher to go to.

“Hey,” I said, and bent down so I wasn’t standing way over her. “It’s all right. I wasn’t going to—”

The front door creaked, and I looked up, and there was the sandwich lady. I hadn’t thought about what I was gonna say if she actually opened up. It worked out all right, though, because she was just about as surprised as I was. Opal slipped around behind me and grabbed my shorts. I picked her up, and she whacked me in the eye with her book.

“Oh, Opal!” I felt my eye to make sure it was still there.

“Gob a owie,” Opal said. “Uh-oh.”

My eye went watery, and I rubbed it, all the while trying to look at the sandwich lady through the other eye.

“Uhhh . . . hi there,” she said finally, then pushed open the burglar bars and leaned over to look at my eye. “Are you all right?”

“Opal just whacked me with her book, that’s all. She didn’t mean to.”

Opal put her nose against mine, trying to see my eye. “Uh-oh, owie.”

I felt someone’s hand on my arm, and the sandwich lady said, “Come on in here. Let’s take a look at that.” I hung back a minute, and I guess she thought I was afraid to go in, but really I couldn’t see anything because my other eye went watery, too. “It’s all right,” she said. “There’s no one here but me.”

I let her lead me in by the arm, and I could sort of see a room with dark wood walls, a wood floor, and tall windows. The room was empty. Our shoes echoed as we moved through it and into the kitchen, where the walls and cabinets were white, and the countertops were bright red. I let Opal slide down, and I heard her clogs squeaking across the floor, and then something rattling. I smelled paint, and maybe peanut butter also, which was a good sign.

The sandwich lady ripped a few paper towels off a roll. I heard the sink go on and off, and then she touched my hand. “Here, let me look at that.” Her fingers were careful when she dabbed around my eye with the wet paper towel. “There,” she whispered, and for a second my mind told me I was back with Mama. Something squeezed inside me, and I missed her all over again. It was always the weirdest thing, because I never knew when that feeling was gonna come. My eyes were already watery at least, so the sandwich lady couldn’t tell anything was going on.

“Here, just hold this a minute. There’s a little scrape on your cheek, but it’s nothing bad. It’ll feel better in a sec.” I took over holding the paper towel, and she moved back, and the wanting Mama feeling went away.

“Oh, honey.” The lady walked over to where Opal was messing with something. “Those things came out of the cellar. They’re dirty. I meant to take that stuff out to the trash pile yesterday.”

I wiped my eyes and could see Opal squatting on the floor, digging in a box. She had a little Raggedy Ann doll under her arm, and she was trying to get a Cootie game out from under an old coffee-pot.

“She doesn’t care . . . I mean, if you don’t. That the stuff ’s dirty, I mean.” I could tell that if we tried to get that doll away from Opal, we were gonna have a hissy fit on our hands. The doll was old, and its dress had mold on it, but I thought if we took it home, I could put it in the sink and try to wash it. Then Opal would have a doll to play with. “She likes dirty stuff. That way, she doesn’t have to worry about not messing it up.” I didn’t want the lady to think Opal didn’t have anything at home, so I said, “You know, some of her nice toys, she can’t take them outside in the dirt and stuff.”

The lady gave me a weird look, but then she just smiled and said, “Okay. Well, she can have anything she wants. It might be good to wipe it off with Lysol or something when you get home. I think that box has been down in the cellar since I was little.”

“Wow,” I said.

She chuckled. She had a nice laugh, really. “Well, now you’re making me feel old.”

I felt my face go red. I didn’t mean it that way, but she had to be, like, forty or fifty, even though she looked good. Her skin was pretty and perfect, and she only had little bitty wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. I figured someone like her could afford all that laser surgery and Botox, like they talked about on
Oprah.
Anyway, she was a pretty lady with friendly goldish brown eyes and a nice laugh. She was taller than I remembered from yesterday.

We kind of stood there watching Opal pull out the Cootie game and open it. She picked up one of the Cooties that was almost put together and said, “Wook! Bug. Big wed bug.” I didn’t know she knew the color
red
.

“Yes, that’s a red bug,” the lady said, and smiled at Opal. “It sure is. It looks good with your shoes. Did you get new shoes?”

Opal nodded and smiled real big, pointing a finger and touching her shoes. “New tshoo-s.”

For a minute we couldn’t find much else to say. I wiped under my eyes again and came up with mascara smudges, then looked for a place to throw away the towel. “Over there.” The sandwich lady pointed to a trash can full of paper towels with paint on them and junk. I tossed the towel in and noticed bread laid out on the counter, and jelly and peanut butter jars. The sandwich lady didn’t say anything about them.

“So . . . anyway, me and Opal were just going by, and I thought we saw your house.” That sounded dumb, but I was embarrassed to come right out and say,
So, are you handing those out?
“I gave the kids next door those sandwiches yesterday. They ate two each, and then they came this morning, like, knocking on the door. My mama always said, if you feed a stray, you might as well name it, because you can plan on it coming back.”

The lady smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but the kind of smile somebody gives you at a funeral, where they think it wouldn’t be right to look too happy. “Your mom sounds like a wise woman.”

“She always said things like that.” I was looking at Opal, so I didn’t think about the way that sounded until after. Opal’d sat down crisscross with her doll in her lap, and she was trying to put together the Cootie bugs. “I mean, Mama still says things like that, but she’s been sick, and, besides, where we live now, we don’t get any stray dogs, like we used to in Helena. We lived in the country when I was littler. My brother’d feed stray dogs all the time. A whole herd of them used to come around the back door after sup pertime to see what they could get. Sometimes there’d be so many they’d eat up all the food before our dog, Missy, could get any. Missy didn’t like watching those other dogs eat all her leftovers.” I hadn’t remembered until right then about all the food we used to toss in the old metal bowl outside the back door. We never thought anything about it. Now it was hard to picture having extra food you didn’t save for later.

It was kind of like we were the stray dogs, but I didn’t want to think about that too hard.

Those sandwiches sure smelled good.

My stomach rumbled, and my mouth started to water. “I could help you make those.” Mama would of died, if she could see me right then. She’d of shot me the mama-eye, and said,
Cass Sally Blue! You watch your manners!
“If you want, I mean.” I hoped up in heaven Mama was busy at a crochet class or something.

The lady didn’t seem to mind. “Sure,” she said, and we moved over to the counter. “I’m in a bit of a hurry today, actually. My son had a minor car accident yesterday, and I don’t want him to be home by himself this evening.” She picked up a knife and handed it to me, and I was glad that she’d only got to the point of putting peanut butter on one side of the sandwiches. I started taking the other sides and covering them.

“We always put it on both pieces, so the jelly doesn’t make the bread all soggy. It’s an impermeable barrier,” I told her, but then in my head, Mama said,
Cass Sally, were you raised in a barn? Little girls shouldn’t be bossy.
“But I don’t have to. I mean, I don’t want to waste your peanut butter or anything.”

“You’re fine.” Her voice was gentle and nice, like she didn’t think I was bossy at all. It made a warm place inside me. “Actually, I’d forgotten that trick, I have to admit. It’s been a few years since I’ve made PBJs for lunch boxes.”

For just a second, I was worried the sandwiches were for lunch boxes, and then I decided that was stupid. Who’d be packing ten lunch boxes at once, and besides, nobody even lived here.

It’d be cool to own so many houses that you had an extra one nobody lived in.

While I worked on the peanut butter, she started doing the jelly and closing up the sandwiches. Strawberry again, darn it. “We always buy the grape kind, because it’s, like, easier to spread,” I said when she was mashing the gloppy strawberries around. “No lumps.”

“I’ll remember that.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye, and the tiny wrinkles there scrunched up a little.

“But strawberry’s good, too. Grape’s cheaper, though.”

The wrinkles scrunched a little more. “I hadn’t noticed. You sound like a good shopper.”

It was stupid, but I liked it when she said that. It’d been a long time since anybody had said anything good about something I did—since back in school, I guessed. Mrs. Dobbs always said good things. “I’m real careful about it—shopping, I mean. Somebody’s got to be. My brother’d spend all the money in two seconds. You know how boys are.”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

“He’s always over, like, looking at truck stuff when he’s supposed to be picking up hamburger.”

“That’s what they do.”

“I told him, Rusty, you can’t eat a steering wheel cover, even if it is Mossy Oak camo color with rubber grips.”

She laughed. “That sounds familiar. Boys love their cars.”

I finished doing the peanut butter, then moved back to the front of the line, and she handed me the sandwich bags.

“How old is your brother?” she asked while I was trying to get the first sandwich into a bag. Jelly was dripping on my hands, and I wanted to lick it off, but that’d be rude.

“Twenty-one,” rolled off my tongue, just like it was the truth. “I’m seventeen.”

“Oh.” She looked over at me with one eyebrow hiked up.

I had a feeling I’d better change to another subject. “How old is your son—the one that had the car wreck?” That didn’t come out sounding great, so I also said, “He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” She reached up and brushed her forehead with the back of her hand like it hurt to think about it. I was sorry I brought it up.

“I bet he’s kinda upset, huh?” I remembered the first time Rusty hit somebody’s car with our truck. It took him a whole three days after he got his driver’s license to do it, and then another day to admit it to Mama.

The lady chewed the side of her lip and went back to spreading jelly. “Christopher’s had a hard time with fender benders since he’s been driving.”

“Oh, listen, Rusty’s the fender bender king of the universe. He had, like, ten when he started driving. Mama said she was sure she’d got five years older in six months. She told him he better quit showing off for girls and watch the road, or she was gonna take the keys and he could get to football practice on foot.”

“Well, Christopher’s dad isn’t too happy about it, either,” the sandwich lady said.

I was gonna have to ask her name, because I was tired of thinking about her as
the sandwich lady.
She looked upset about Christopher and the driving. “Mama made Rusty go down and take a driving class at the college building on a Saturday. He had a fit, because he was gonna miss a track meet, but it turned out he didn’t mind it much. He met a cute girl there, and his driving got better.”

The sandwich lady nodded like she thought that wasn’t a bad idea. “I’ll have to give that some thought. That might help.” She finished with the jelly and started helping to bag sandwiches.