Sallie Reynolds

Word Count 1344

Today, Azariah asked me to drive her way out in the country to an abandoned farm. She wanted a white vinca plant from a graveyard for her garden.

The dusty road was empty, both ways. No neighboring houses. Southern rural desert-land. There wasn’t even a piece of the house left.

Az walked straight to the little cemetery, stepping over a broken gate – she’s so tiny, the weeds swallowed her almost to her cropped white head. Her hair used to be a shining crown, but she’s whittled it down to dandelion fur.

“Why white vinca?” I asked. “Why from a grave?”

“Spirit flower,” she said.

She pointed at some weeds. I pulled them away for her – and there was this stone, a big rough rock.

All around us, a dozen rocks, maybe a foot and a half high. “What is this, Az?”

“Slaves.”

Slave graves?

Az was my mother’s cook, long ago, and back then I never once heard her say that word: slaves.

Under a dark bone-fed oak, she found a clump of bright blossoms, like little stars. With her pocket-knife, she cut four stalks, wrapped them in scraps of wet newspaper and put them in a glass jar.

When we got back to my car, she set the jar between her feet and we left.

Maybe a tenth of a mile down the road, here came a big black truck. “Well, look who found us,” I said. “The sheriff, and he’s got his red lights flashing.” The truck roared right  up till it nudged my bumper. The sheriff sat writing on his pad, then he got out, put one hand on the roof of my car and leaned down, pretending he’d never seen us before in his life. He frowned at my license, stared at Az in the passenger seat. “How do, Mr. Hodgkiss,” I said.

This all started one dark wee-hour, when Mr. Hodgkiss came to Az’s house, pounding on the door, gun drawn. Looking for prowlers, he said – “Pray-a-lars.” My old second-grade teacher sicc’d him on us that time, because I’m white and sleep at Az’s house where I have no business. She told me so herself.

Now, he comes by on some excuse almost every time I visit.

“You were observed on a propitty back there,” he said, “which don’t belong to you. You were observed removin’ something from that propitty.”

Az stared straight out the windshield. I picked up the vinca jar, held it up to him. “Miz Neal knows the people used to live there, Mr. Hodgkiss. She wants to root some of these vines. Two or three cuttings, Mr. Hodgkiss.” Maybe I’d shame him into behaving himself. “We didn’t take anything else.”

“You were dess-i-catin’ graves!” He took the jar. “You,” speaking to the back of Az’s head, “who is the owner on the propitty you claim you was visiting?”

“Tis-dale,” Az said. “Robert Tis-dale, married to Marie Neal, my mama’s cousin.”

“Well, those folks don’t own it now. So you’re stealin’. I’m a mind to run you in. And look at you!” he leaned close enough, I got his spit in my face. “Shamin’ your daddy’s memory!” He threw the vinca jar into the ditch. “Don’t let me catch you out here again.”

His face was red, he was wheezing like a pig. He hadn’t shaved it must be for a week. I could smell him.

Then he seemed to catch up to himself. He roared off in a spray of gravel.

Az got out of the car, heading for the ditch. I beat her to it. There was water in it. My sneakers got soaked and the jar was busted. But the vinca wasn’t hurt, so Az handed me a fresh piece of newspaper. I wet it and wrapped the vines.

Soon as we started off, sure enough I had to pee. I pulled over and, waiting to be sure the black truck wasn’t lurking, slipped into the bushes.

At the house, Az mixed some root water, with sugar and a drop of ammonia, and set the glass with the vinca in it on her window sill. “So what’s the vinca spirit going to do for us?” I asked.

“Tell us if we did good.”

But what if we did bad?

*

Now we’re sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee, lifting her good bone-china cups politely to our lips. I see three deep wrinkles on the outside of her fist, right in the bend of her little finger. A palm-reader told me those lines predict how many children you’re going to have. Azariah has four wrinkles but she had only one child, if you don’t count me. Her son, Sweets, died in Korea, age 25.

Neither of us mentions Hodgkiss. Hawgkiss, Az calls him. Words won’t hold up under it. But we’re waiting for him.

After a bit, she pats my hand. “We just do what we do, sugar. Little tiddlers in a big pond. I got a chicken to pluck now.”

She gets to her feet, rubs her shorn head, laughing at herself. Right before I got here this month, she cut her hair all off. Took her scissors and whack-whack-whack, practically down to scalp.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

“So I could throw out all those old cooking caps!” Nylon stockings, which she rolled up and put on her head to keep out the grease. “No hair, no grease! Whole new world!”

When she cooked for my mother, she had to wear one of those caps all day – not that Mother cared about the grease. She didn’t want Az’s hair in her kitchen. Those days, at night, when Az was getting ready to go home, she’d take the cap off her head, and her hair would fly up like a bird. She’d look in the little cracked mirror on the kitchen porch, turning this way and that, glancing outside for Mr. Big, who was waiting in my parents’ driveway. Who’s that, Az? Somebody. She’d paint her mouth bright red, dab her cheeks with a little powder that frosted her face like sugar. Then she’d go out to the waiting car and be swept away like a queen.

Tonight, while she’s cooking, I set the table, and catch myself in her mirror: slightly protruding pale eyes, head of tangled straw. First time Hawgkiss came here, he said, Lawd! I don’t hardly know you!

Az puts a plate of roast chicken on the table. Carves me a slice of breast. That was always Daddy’s. Sometimes he’d take a small piece and put it solemnly on Mother’s plate. But only if she’d been good and hadn’t gotten on his nerves.

Az still likes the feet. Sucks them clean, lines up the little bones on the edge of her plate in the shape of the chicken’s foot. She winks at me.

When we’re done, I wash up, run a hot mop over the floor. We get into our nightgowns and I set out her “foot spa,” Epsom salts in hot water.

Maybe he’s not coming tonight.  

Az eases her feet in up to the ankles and we wait while the salts do their thing and the water cools. Then I dry her feet, rub off the calluses, smooth Vaseline on the heels. She’s too stiff to do that herself. She’s the 80-year-old wise woman. I’m her apprentice human being.

She leans over, pats my cheek. “Don’t worry so much.”

She’s the one I worry about. Hawgkiss isn’t going to shoot us or anything. He gets his jollies scaring us. But he could make life hard for her.

She lifts the jar of white vinca down out of the window, away from the night drafts. “Plants and kids do better if you’re tender with them,” she says. And shows me the end of one sprig. Already there’s a little swollen spot.

Later, lying in the dark, listening to ourselves breathe – the wind singing in the cedar tree by the window, she says, “Sugar, we got what we got.”

And so we do.

We have it for now.

Sallie is 85, lives back of beyond in Northern California with her painter-writer-mechanic husband, a grand dog, and two hawks (she’s a licensed falconer.) She had to live this long in order to become a decent human being. Her stories are here and there, her two novels are on Amazon.