Me & Emma

  One day I went with Richard to White’s ’cause Momma asked us to. It was still early on, when Richard did favors for Momma. “Caroline, why don’t you go along so Richard has some company,” Momma said. But I guess I wasn’t the kind of company Richard must’ve wanted: once we pulled away from the house and Momma was out of sight, the smile went away from his face and he stopped talking altogether.

  “Hey there, chile,” says Miss Mary from behind the counter. Then she tilts her head to the side and mumbles to herself loud enough for me to hear. “I don’ know what they be givin’ so much work to them kids at school fo’. Y’all look so tired all the time.” Then her head snaps back upright and she looks over my head altogether. “I’ll be right with you,” she says to Richard.

  “I’ll be right with you…” Richard says it like she did but he drags out the end so it’s clear she left something off of the end of her sentence.

  “I’ll be right with you, sir,” she says, looking down at her work. Richard likes everyone to call him sir, even people who’re old enough to be his grandma.

  Miss Mary’s nails are long and make a tapping sound when she pushes the numbers on the calculator to figure out how much you owe. Sometimes she uses the eraser end of the pencil that usually sits behind her left ear, but that day was a fingernail day. I watch her total up Mr. Sugner from the library that’s also the Toast Historical Society—if you need to know anything about Toast, Mr. Sugner’s the man to talk to. Tap-tappity-tap.

  Richard looks as happy to be here as if you’d driven a railroad tie into his foot. He scowls at Miss Mary and shifts from one leg to another, huffing, like it was Mr. Sugner’s fault he was here and not the fact that Momma needs Band-Aids, toothpaste and a cup measure. I got a funny feeling in my stomach when I saw the way he looked at Miss Mary, all mean like she smelled bad, so I went over to the rack that holds dusty postcards that no one’s ever bought even though they’re only ten cents each. They’re not postcards of our town, they’re North Carolina state postcards with pictures of the capitol and a town called Mount Airy.

  When I turn around Richard’s nowhere to be seen. I even check the aisle that has diapers and other soft-like things but no luck.

  “He ain’t here.” Miss Mary aims a fingernail at a spot to the left of her chin and gently scratches. “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Her mouth was turned down and she was shaking her head like she thought of him the same way he thought of her.

  “Where is he?” I ask. I only turned around for a second.

  “Check out by the Dumpster,” and I think I heard her say—she was mumbling, though, so I couldn’t be sure—“That’s where trash ends up.”

  “Miss Mary?” Mr. White’s voice slices the air like a paper cut. “Is there a problem here?” It’s weird how he can smile at me but keep that teacher tone with Miss Mary.

  “Miss Caroline, how would you like to choose a piece of penny candy?” He was holding out the big glass jar with fingerprints all over from where all us kids point at the exact piece we want. It had been refilled and was brimming full of Mary Janes, Tootsie Rolls, little-bitty Necco wafer rolls and Hershey’s. It was so packed that Mr. White’s thumb knocked a piece onto the floor when he gripped it from the top. The Mary Jane was lying on the floor between us like it was saying “Pick me, pick me!”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” I stare at it while I say this, hoping it would magically unwrap itself and hop into my watering mouth. “I don’t have any money with me right now.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly—” he smiles even nicer “—this is a gift. Take your pick.” He says this last part in Miss Mary’s direction, even though I think he was talking to me. Before he has time to change his mind, my arm, like it had a mind of its own, shoots down to the floor, past the old glass jar, and scoops up that Mary Jane.

  Miss Mary was busying herself with the zipper on her gray cover-up that has White’s Drugstore sewn over her heart and looks just like Mr. White’s, but is gray instead of, well, white.

  “Am I to understand you got separated from your escort?” he asks me. This always happens: people ask questions right when I’ve got my mouth full and I can’t answer. Mr. White’s so polite, though, and he keeps talking till he sees my jaw stop moving up and down on the peanut toffee. “This must be my lucky day, if this is true. I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a helper in the back room, someone to alphabetize bottles, you know, get things in order. Would you be so kind as to help me out for a bit, young lady?”

  He timed this question perfectly: I had just finished scooping the Mary Jane that was stuck in my back teeth out with my tongue. “Yes, sir, but I don’t know if I’m allowed.”

  “What if I call your momma for you and we can ask her permission,” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. I don’t know where I’d have gone, anyway, since Richard had up and left me there. Mr. White went over to the phone near Miss Mary’s cash register and dialed our number without even looking it up—that’s a small town for you, I guess.

  “Libby? Dan White.” He pauses waiting for Momma to greet him. Then he clears his throat, “A-hem, well, don’t mean to bother you, but Miss Caroline and I were wondering if I might be able to retain her services for the day, here at the store. It seems her companion had some, ahem, pressing matters to tend to, so if you could spare her I’d be much obliged.”

  Pause again. No telling what Momma is saying from the look on Mr. White’s face. He must be tired, his eyes are halfway closed and he looks like he was studying for a test, memorizing her voice or something.

  “I don’t quite know,” he says, shifting his eyes over to me for some reason. “We had a bit of a wait, so I’m sure he’ll stop back in when he sees we’re not so busy after all.” Then he winks at me and his voice rises back up to a normal level.

  “Well, it’s settled then,” he says, clearing his throat again. “I’ll keep Miss Caroline here with me until five and then I’ll bring her on home—” Pause. “Oh, it’s no trouble ’tall. I have to go out that way, anyway, to pay a call on the Godseys.” Pause. “See y’all then. Bye.”

  It takes my eyes a few seconds to get used to the back room, which was night compared to the day outside. Mr. White was right: it was a mess back there. Momma would say it’s a viper’s nest. There’s barely enough room for me to walk to the other end of the room; the boxes are piled one on top of another in every spare space on the floor.

  “Here’s what I was thinking,” Mr. White says from behind me, surveying the packed crowd of cardboard. “A lot of these boxes are pretty much empty. If you could go through and find the ones that only have one or two bottles in them, take those bottles out and put ’em all here on this lower shelf, and then go back and break down the boxes, that’d make a lot more room.”

  “Where do I put the empty boxes?”

  “Come on out back and I’ll show you where we stack for the garbageman.” I turn and follow Mr. White back into the store and then out the door that leads to a tiny parking lot out back. A huge Dumpster sat in one of the spaces.

  “Just stack the flat pieces here, next to the Dumpster.”

  “Okay.”

  “You sure you’re up to this?” he asks me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, then,” he says, patting me on the head. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You’re just like your momma. Once she sets her mind to something, she never lets it go.” He walks back into the store, smiling.

  I liked the idea of straightening up the storeroom. Plus, this way when Richard comes back, he cain’t call me lazy.

  One by one I empty out most of the boxes that sit about eye level to me. Mr. White was right; a couple of boxes only have one bitty bottle in them. They were just waiting for someone to remember them. I have no idea how much time has gone by, but I do know that I’ve flattened fifteen boxes flat and it’s time
to start taking them out to the Dumpster.

  When I cut through the store with my first armload, Miss Mary is tapping into the calculator, figuring out how much to put on Mr. Blackman’s tab. Back and forth I go and pretty soon I’ve taken out all the pieces I’d worked on.

  “Oh, my dear Lord,” Mr. White says when he comes in to check on me later on. Uh-oh. I hope I haven’t messed up, but I look over at him and his open mouth is turning into a smile. A real smile, eyes and all. “Well, I’ll be darned. Miss Caroline Parker…you’re hired!”

  I’m hired?

  “Sir?”

  “The job’s yours if you want it,” he says, running his eyes over the spaces I’d made on the floor. Now two people can stand side by side in there. “I guess I didn’t realize how much we needed you. You think your momma could spare you once or twice a week?”

  “B-but, I’m only eight,” I say, my face getting all red for some reason. “Are eight-year-olds allowed to have jobs?”

  Mr. White looks at me the way I think my own daddy used to look at me and I don’t feel embarrassed anymore. I feel relieved. “Honey, with what all you’ve been through,” he says real soft-like, “seems to me you could use a little break now and then. Place to get away. You know.”

  And right then I guessed I did know what he was talking about. I nod. He pats me on the hand, shakes his head and turns to go back out to the store.

  “Little Caroline Parker,” he says more to himself than to me. “Little Miss Caroline Parker.”

  I wonder what Emma is going to think when I tell her. Maybe Mr. White would let her come with me to work. She’s scrappy but she’s strong, that’s for sure. No telling how many boxes we’d get through, working together. She sure could use a break now and then, too.

  A little while later Mr. White comes back.

  “I reckon that’s about all the work we can force out of you today,” he says, smiling again. It’s hot back here in the storeroom and he wipes his shiny forehead with his handkerchief. I don’t know why anyone would want to keep a used handkerchief in their pocket, but that’s exactly where the kerchief headed after he was through with it.

  “I promised your momma I’d take you on home, so let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, stepping on top of the box I’d emptied and untaped so it just fell flat like a pancake when my foot said hello. I s’pose Richard’ll find his own way home sooner or later. Unfortunately.

  Mr. White’s car is hotter than the storeroom and the Nest put together since it’d been baking in the parking lot all day. The car seat scorches my rear end so I tilt up, pushing my weight into my shoulders until the air cools the seat off. Mr. White doesn’t seem to notice and I’m glad.

  Pulling out of the parking lot, he starts talking. “Your momma was the belle of the ball back when she was just a hair older than you,” Mr. White says. “Now, you know we went to school together, don’tcha?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. I’m testing the seat but it’s still hotter than a butcher’s knife. Back when I was little, I used to study Momma’s high school yearbook—she looked like a movie star in it and Mr. White still had all his hair and looked funny, all dressed in black, the mean look he was trying to give the camera turned out to be just plain goofy. There was a haze around Momma’s head that made her look like she belonged up in heaven. Her hair was shiny, not quite brown and not quite yellow, and it was in a poufy hairdo that made her look older than she was. Her smile was perfect and it was from looking at that picture that I realized she has dimples. You’d never know it now. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with no trace of the lines that carve up her face now. She was wearing pearls that I know for a fact she borrowed from her grandmother just for that picture. The famous pearl necklace. I’d heard so much about the pearl necklace that I felt like I was actually there, later on that same picture day, when Momma and my daddy slipped in back of the school to kiss. Daddy was holding her head between his hands when the school principal came out, caught them in the act, startling Daddy so his hands slipped. They caught the necklace and sent the pearls scattering across the asphalt to their ultimate doom down the town drain. Momma was beaten within an inch of her life when she went home, shamed.

  “Did she mention she went to school with me?” Mr. White looks over at me, and when he does I can see, just for a second, how he looked back then.

  “I don’t remember. I guess I just knew it, is all.” No need to tell him about the yearbook. I bet he’d be embarrassed about his picture, anyway.

  “Oh,” he sighs. “Well, all the boys were in love with her. ’Cluding me, I reckon. But back then I didn’t have sense enough to come in outta the rain, so I surely wasn’t going to ask your momma out on a date. No, sirree,” he whistles. “Your daddy did, though, and truth to tell, I don’t know if I ever forgave him for taking my Libby away from me.” He winks at me, which is a relief because I don’t know if I could stand hearing Mr. White say anything bad about Daddy.

  “We were all real jealous of your daddy,” he says, nodding. “I s’pose I thought they’d light out of this town once they got married, but your momma wouldn’t have it. No, sirree…”

  While he’s talking, I ease my rear down onto the seat real slow. Phee-you, it feels good to sit normal.

  “…she dug her heels in and I reckon they grew roots so they stayed on.”

  I don’t quite know why, but all of a sudden a cloud comes over Mr. White’s face when he says this. So I keep my mouth shut. Nothing different from what I’ve been doing, really, but now it feels like I should be coming up with something to say.

  “How’s school going?” Mr. White asks after we turn onto Route 5. We’re only about two minutes from my house, so luckily this won’t be a long part of the conversation.

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “Yeah? Well, that’s good. That’s real good,” he says as he turns his big boat of a car onto our dirt road. His car looks so out of place driving where Richard’s truck does.

  “Here we are,” he says, trying to sound cheerful, but the look on his face doesn’t match his voice. So I hop out of the car fast.

  “Thanks again, Mr. White,” I call out to him.

  “You betcha,” he calls back. “Now, you talk to your momma and have her call me once y’all work out when you want to come in again. You can come anytime you like, Caroline. Anytime at all.” He winks again and I shut the door and run up the front porch stairs to find Momma and Emma to tell them about my day at White’s.

  Mr. White is just like everybody else here in Toast, North Carolina—it’s never occurred to him to leave. Imagine that. I mean, I can understand it when you’re my age, but when you’re old enough to get out of town, why wouldn’t you?

  “Momma?” I holler before the porch door even slams shut. “Guess what?”

  Momma’s in the kitchen smoking with one hand, stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other.

  “Momma, Mr. White gave me a job! I cleared out all the boxes from the storeroom and he said he never saw it so neat and clean and he hired me right there on the spot. I can eat penny candy anytime I want. Momma, please say I can do it, please.”

  “Slow down, Jesus H. Christmas, slow down,” Momma says, turning to the icebox and staring at what’s inside. “Go on and get me that molasses out of the pantry, will you?”

  “Momma, can I work there after school? Can I?”

  “Just get me that molasses can first of all,” she snaps at me. “We’ll have to talk about it.”

  “Why cain’t I? It’d be great. I’d earn my own money and I get to have candy anytime I want. Please, Momma.”

  Momma’s back stirring again, the wooden spoon turning slowly on account of whatever’s in there being too high up next to spilling over. I creep up closer to her ’cause I can hear her mumbling something, but I know
by now you cain’t push Momma too hard or she’ll turn around and do just the opposite of what you’re hoping for.

  “Storeroom clerk…” she’s saying. I think. “Moving…”

  See, all I get are snippets of words or phrases, so I know she’s working something in her head.

  “Momma?”

  “Goddamn son of a bitch.” The spoon picks up speed so it’s only a matter of time till something slops over the edge.

  It’s like she’s reciting a grocery list in her sleep; her words don’t make any sense.

  “Momma? Can I? Please?”

  “What?” She whirls around like I startled her out of the conversation she was carrying on in her brain, still holding the spoon but forgetting, I guess, that it was no longer over the pot so the red sauce dripped onto the kitchen floor like blood. Splat. I watch each drop spread into neat circles on impact. Splat.

  “Can I work at White’s?” Splat.

  She’s sizing me up like she just now realized I’d grown out of my jeans a month ago.

  “Just until we move? Please?”

  “Oh, why the hell not,” she sighs, and turns back to the bubbling blood on the stove.

  I forget for a second and hug her from behind, I’m so happy. When she stiffens up like a board I remember I shouldn’t touch her.

  “Go on and get,” she says woodenly into the pot.

  I run up to the Nest to find Emma to tell her my news.

  “Emma? Emma!” I take the stairs two at a time. “Where you at?”

  “Up here,” she hollers back to me.

  “Guess what I’ve got a job at White’s Drugstore and I can have penny candy anytime I want,” I say all at once since I’m out of breath from coming up the stairs so fast.