Mare's War (3 page)

Two old women climb the bus steps, chatting, followed by a girl in a red quilted car coat and feathered felt hat, carrying a suitcase. Her brows are arched like Rita Hayworth’s over big old green eyes and her lips flame red like store-bought cherries. She looks like a movie star going on a vacation to someplace like California.

The biddies put in their nickels,
click, click
. The movie star don’t put a token in the till but strides halfway down the aisle, collapsing into a seat like someone cut her legs out from under her. I blink, a little surprised that she isn’t going to get up and pay her fare. She sees me, but her eyes slide over me like I’m not there.

I turn away, look at my reflection in the window, my stomach clenching just a little. Somebody don’t pay, there’s going to be trouble. There is going to be some trouble.

The bus creaks in protest as the big-bellied driver climbs aboard. I hear the clink of the change as he checks the till, but my body still jerks a little when he speaks to me.

“Girl. You put a token in?”

“Yes, sir.” I sit up.

The man grunts and checks the till again. “We’re short.” He looks pointedly at me, his small dark eyes like bullet holes in the fat white plaster wall of his face.

The old women continue talking, chattering like a pen full of hens. The man turns a page in his paper. The girl with the lipstick yawns and looks bored.

“Well?”

“Sir, I put my token in,” I say, my eyes straying unwillingly to the girl in the hat.

“And I don’t see it here.”

“I—I put it in when I got on.” I twist my hands in my lap.

“Maybe you just
thought
you did.” The driver says his words real slow as if he were speaking to a small child or a fool. “I don’t see it here, and we’re short, so either you pay up or you walk.”

I swallow. I reach for my purse. That girl got rocks in her head if she think I am going to pay for her.

“No, sir, I paid. I ride this bus every night. I always pay you.”

The driver looks aggravated. “Girl,” he begins.

“Oh, here.” The girl in the red coat sighs. “Let’s don’t hold up the bus all night.” She thrusts her hand into her coin purse, drawing out her token.

“Now, miss, you don’t have to do that.” The driver sounds all sugary and oily.

“Let’s just go,” she snaps.

“Why, thank you very much,” the driver says politely. With a sharp glance at me, he heads toward the front of the bus.

I sag against the seat, breathing hard. Does that driver think I’m gonna say, “Thank you kindly,” to the woman for finally paying her own fare? I glare at the back of her stylish head. What is wrong with white folks anyway? The driver catches my glance in his rearview mirror. I look down and stay very, very still.

Don’t get uppity, Marey Lee
.

I am almost late to work with that nonsense and run to tie on my oversized apron to begin the task I most dread: draining fat. Mr. Young collects pork fat in old tomato cans like it was gold. It isn’t just the families of the sharecroppers and poor whites who are scrimping and saving and planting victory gardens anymore. It’s everybody; even folks like Miss Ida say times is tough. Mr. Young uses fat to flavor greens. Don’t hardly anyone use more than a little meat.

The clatter and the routine of the kitchen at Young’s calm me down some. Our cook, Samuel, is hollering out orders and flipping hash like his life depends on it. Betty King, an older woman from over Anniston way, is white up to her elbows, slapping down biscuits and turning them into the oven. Every once in a while, one of the other girls breezes into the back to grab some coffee. Mr. Young got no colored waiters, but we wash up and, if there’s a rush, bus tables. “Order up,” Samuel bellows, and slaps a plate of pork and greens on the deck. I slosh the last of the fat from the pan and wrestle it into the sink.

It is eleven-thirty when I scrape down the last pot and throw my weight behind the mop to wipe up the floor. Young leaves our wages in his office every week, and I pick up my $1.75. Mama don’t understand why I got to go out and take up another job when I work enough at Miss Ida’s, but I ain’t trying to be nobody’s house girl for the rest of my life. I aim to have something of my own someday, even if it takes all my blood, sweat, and tears.

“You ready?” Samuel jams his cap down on his head. I
nod and stumble out to his truck. I climb up into the back, watching out for splinters, and pull my hat down around my ears. Samuel drops off Betty and me every night so we don’t have to wait on the bus. Back there in the wind, my face aches, but I am glad to miss the bus tonight.

I can hear the air pushing out my sister’s throat, wet and heavy in a silent keening. Josephine cries like a five-year-old, and she is near fourteen.

“You crying?”

There is nothing but the wet sound of Josephine’s snuffling breaths.

“Feen, what is the
matter
with you?”

The floor creaks in the hallway outside our room.

I roll my eyes. Sure, I love her, but sometimes the girl ain’t nothing but an aggravation. Feen cries at the drop of a hat. Always jerkin’ and jumpin’, scared of her own shadow.

The floor creaks a little more, then the knob rattles. Now I understand why Feen is crying. Toby. Like a bad wolf. All teeth and tongue and eyes.

“You scared of the dark, Feen? You know that’s all that’s out there.
Dark
. Anything else I got something for.” I raise my voice a little, letting Toby know I know he is out there.

Toby got his nerve anyway, walking around this house at night. He got Mama doing for him, sewing up his shirts, doing his wash like he ain’t the hired man. Sister Dials think he tryin’ to be our new daddy. I ain’t studying on having no new daddy around here just yet.

Josephine draws in a shaky breath. “Just had a dream,” she mutters. “Nothing wrong.”

“Go to sleep, then. You got school, and I got to put up with Miss Ida in the morning.”

There is a listening silence.

“I can’t go to sleep,” she whispers. “He still there!”

“I’m up,” I say.

“What are
you
gonna do?”

“Shut up, Feen. Go to sleep.”

There are some long moments of silence before I hear the floor creak again. Toby went on, but it was a little while before I let my stomach loose itself. He didn’t call my bluff tonight, but what if he had? It is time to make a plan.

Tonight, while Mama was listening to the radio with Feen and Toby, I took the hatchet to the whetstone out back and sharpened it.

Sundays are always the best day of the week. Sundays, me and Feen get up early, slop the hogs, and collect the eggs. We go with Mama to the African Methodist Episcopal church on Fourth Street. We wear our good hats. We step down the road, looking this way and that, seeing and being seen. On Sundays, the whole world is fine.

Even Josephine starched up a little this Sunday. Not only is it three weeks till Thanksgiving, yesterday Toby made some talk about how he had to see about his mother, so he had to get out of town. You should have seen the smile on that girl’s face. Toby up and left just after dark.

He’ll be back. But now I’m ready.

Last night before dinner, I made Feen slop the hogs, and I got the eggs myself, so Feen could stop crying about that
setting hen that pecked her. I went into the henhouse, and Toby was there so fast I dropped my basket. He put his arm ’cross my throat and pushed me against the wall. He tried to reach down and pinch my privates, but I fought him like he was the devil. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” isn’t that what the Book say? The chickens got riled and started cluckin’ and Mama hollered I better stop fooling around out there. Toby sucked his teeth and grinned at me.

Mama uses the hatchet to take the heads off the chickens after she wrings their necks. It ain’t big, but it’s sharp like it’s stropped. Last night, I slid it up under my bed.

Now I’m ready.

At Bible study this Sunday, I heard tell that one of Saphira Watkins’s boys is leavin’ for the navy. Now she’s braggin’ that her boy’s gonna “see the world” before he settles down. That Sister Watkins just about always got something to say. Mama says most likely her boy’s gonna see a mop and a bucket to swab the deck, and that’s all. At services, Reverend Morgan preached a sermon all about the prophet Deborah and how she prophesied to the general Barak that a woman would slay the evil tyrant Sisera, that the Lord would bring about His plan through the powerless and not the general and his army. Then, just like she said, Sisera ran away from the battle and came to Jael to sleep in her tent, then Jael nailed his head to the floor with a tent peg. What God says, He does—ain’t that the truth? Then little Ananias Caldwell sang with the choir. Now, that boy has got a sweet voice. He might be famous someday. I’m gonna say I knew him when.

We came home for Sunday dinner, it being First Sunday and all. Mama made some corn bread to go with our beans,
and
she fried up a chicken, even though she was fussed that she couldn’t find that hatchet. I scraped out some fatback for the corn bread, and it was good, good. Mama made us save half the chicken for Toby. She hopes he’ll be back on Monday.

He’ll be back. But now I’m ready.

Then Mama took a little rest with her bourbon, and Feen and me went to sew quilts for the needy with the Dials girls. While we was sewing, Sister Dials announced we having a Christmas social next Sunday. Sundays are always the best days of the week.