A Garden of Earthly Delights

  Clara swallowed. Her face was hot. She would remember this moment all her life, she thought—the colorful toys, her sweaty fingers closed about the dime, the saleswoman's pity, Rosalie's contempt. “This one,” she said, “what about this?”

  “That's just a dime, honey.”

  It was an ugly little doll without clothes. Clara did not want it but had to buy it. “Here,” she said, thrusting the dime at the woman. “I'll buy this.”

  She stared at the saleswoman's pudgy hands, waiting. The sales-woman did everything quickly and dropped the doll in a bag. “Here y'are, sweetie,” she said, stooping so that her smile would be in Clara's range of vision. “You come back again real soon, huh?”

  Clara took the bag from her and hurried away.

  Outside, she discovered she was trembling. Rosalie ran out behind her. “You act crazy or somethin,” she said. “What's wrong with you?”

  “Nothin.”

  “Why the hell'd you buy that crappy old thing?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Shut up yourself—”

  “You shut up first!”

  Clara walked stiffly ahead of Rosalie. Her lips shaped the words she would have liked to say to Rosalie, except she and Rosalie had fought already and she knew Rosalie could beat her.

  “Act like goddamn stupid white trash,” Rosalie hissed.

  “You know what you can do.”

  “I got fifteen cents left, all for myself.”

  “You know what you can do with it, too.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Clara stopped at a curb. There were no cars on the street. She held the paper bag up near her chest so that if anyone looked, they would know she had bought something. Rosalie waited behind her for a few seconds, then Clara turned. The girls looked shyly at each other.

  “Let's go up this way,” Rosalie said.

  She was pointing up a side street. They walked along together as if they hadn't argued. The street was bounded on both sides by a dirt walk and by buildings that looked empty. One of them was an old church; its windows were boarded up and weeds grew everywhere. “I want to go to church sometime,” Clara said.

  “We went once, it was lousy. Pa was snorin.”

  “Did he fall asleep?”

  “He can fall asleep anywhere—out in the field if he wanted to.”

  “My pa—” Clara thought of what to say, wanting to say something, but she knew she hadn't better say it: that her father sometimes did not even sleep at night, but stumbled outside to walk around and smoke, all by himself. He was like a stranger then, when he woke her up at night, stumbling over her and her brothers on his way out. He would never say anything.

  They were passing old frame houses. On a porch two withered little women watched them. Clara and Rosalie lowered their eyes as if in shame at being so young. They walked faster. It was hot in the sunlight but they did not mind. Clara saw that there was a smear of lipstick on Rosalie's lower lip and she felt a tinge of jealousy.

  “O.K., kid,” Rosalie said, “want to see something?”

  She took a comb out of her pocket—a red plastic comb like the ones Clara had seen. “What's that?” Clara said.

  “It's for you, stupid.”

  She held out the comb for Clara.

  “Where'd you get that from?”

  “From the bean field, stupid.”

  Clara took it wonderingly. But Rosalie had more to show: another tube of lipstick, this one with flashy pink jewels on it, and a spool of gold thread, and the celluloid airplane, and some tiny limp colored things that Clara could not identify.

  “What's that?” she asked breathlessly.

  Rosalie pulled them apart. They were made of rubber, blue and red and green. She put the end of one to her mouth and blew. It was a balloon.

  Clara clapped her hands over her mouth to stop her laughter. “How'd you get all them things?”

  Rosalie held out the airplane to her. “I told you—from the bean field. Ain't you seen things like this out in the bean field?”

  “You givin this to me?”

  “For your little brat brother. Go on, take it.”

  “It's awful nice.…”

  Rosalie shrugged her shoulders. Clara looked at the things, biting her lip. They were such a surprise, such gifts. She tried to run the comb through her hair but it caught right away on some snarls.

  She and Rosalie walked along with their arms linked. “You're awful nice, Rosalie,” Clara said. Rosalie laughed like a boy. “I shouldn't of been mean, back there,” Clara said. “Hey, what if you get caught?”

  “So what?”

  “What if they put you in jail?”

  “I'm gonna get in trouble anyway, so what's the difference?” Rosalie said. Her mouth was twisted down.

  “Huh? What kind of trouble?”

  “You'll find out.”

  Their arms fell loose of each other, as if by accident. Rosalie said in a sneering voice, “Bet you'd be afraid to take things.” Her face was slightly flushed, as if she had just said something she regretted. “You're a little baby sometimes.”

  “I don't want no police after me.”

  “Hell, they don't get you. People holler at you, that's all.”

  “Did they ever catch you?”

  “Sure, three times. So what? Nobody put me in jail.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “The first time.”

  “Did they tell your pa?”

  “So what if they told him?” Rosalie said sharply.

  Clara saw some kids coming and wanted to cross the street, but Rosalie wouldn't. The kids—three boys and a gawky, scrawny girl—let them get past, then they began whooping and throwing stones at them. Clara and Rosalie started to run. “Dirty bastards!” Rosalie yelled over her shoulder. The kids behind them yelled too, laughing. A stone hit Clara's back but didn't really hurt, it just made her angry. She and Rosalie ran wildly down an alley, across another dirt lane, and through someone's junk heap. A battered old kettle struck her leg, knocked down from higher up on the pile, and she cried out with pain.

  Then they were in a backyard, behind a fence. They stared at each other, panting. Their eyes were big.

  “Where are they? Ain't they comin?”

  “I don't hear them—”

  They waited. Clara whispered, “I'd like to have a knife like my pa does, to kill them. I'd kill them.”

  “I would too.”

  After a while Rosalie looked over the fence. “We might could run out the front way—I don't see nobody back here—”

  They caught their breaths and ran, Rosalie first. Down a nice brick walk and out onto the street. Clara kept waiting for someone to yell out the window at them.

  “Look at the grass they got here,” Rosalie said.

  It was like a rug on the ground, green and fine.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rosalie said. They walked along the street, bumping into each other. They had never seen such nice white houses. “The people that live here got money. They're rich,” she said.

  “We better get out of here,” said Clara.

  “Yeah …”

  “We better go back.…”

  Clara was staring at a house some distance from the street. It was a bright clean white like the house in that schoolbook, with trees in the front yard. There were two stained-glass windows in the entry-way. For some reason Clara started to cry.

  “What the hell?” said Rosalie. “You sick?”

  Clara's face felt as if it were breaking up into pieces. The stained-glass windows were blue and dark green with small splotches of yellow. “I could break that window if I wanted to,” Clara said bitterly.

  “What, them windows?”

  “I could break it.”

  “Well, you ain't goin to!”

  Rosalie pulled her along. She acted nervous. “We better be goin back, I'm hungry. Ain't you hungry?”

  “Or I could take that,” Clara said. She was pointing at a flag that hung down from the front porch
. The porch had been screened off with dark, green-gray shades.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I could take that easy as anything,” Clara said. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, as if to make the red-and-white-striped flag smaller, to get it into clear focus so it wouldn't mean anything. “I ain't afraid—”

  “You are too.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “You're so smart, go on and take it!”

  Clara stepped on the grass. Her thudding heart urged her on, and the next thing she knew she was running and was up on the porch steps, then she was tugging the stick out of its slot. It was a thin little pole that weighed hardly anything. Rosalie stood back on the sidewalk, gawking.

  “Hey—Clara! Clara!”

  But Clara did not listen. She tugged at the stick until it came loose. Then she ran back to Rosalie with her prize, and both girls ran down the street as fast as they could. They began to giggle hysterically. Laughter began deep inside them, rushing up to the surface like bubbles in the soda pop that forgotten man had given them.

  7

  A month later, about six o'clock in the evening, Nancy was sitting in the doorway, smoking, her legs outstretched in front of her. Both her arms rested comfortably on her stomach, which was beginning now to get big. Clara was scraping food from the supper dishes into a pail. She sang part of a song she heard out in the field:

  Whispering hope of his coming …

  Whispering hope …

  She had a thin, tuneless, earnest voice. Everyone in the camps sang, even the men. Clara's father did not sing, though. People sang about someone coming to them, someone saving them, about crossing the bar into another world, or about Texas and California, which were like other worlds anyway. Clara asked Rosalie about Texas, was it so special, and Rosalie said she couldn't remember anything. But Rosalie always laughed at everything; she didn't take anything seriously. She was like her father and that whole family. Clara liked to laugh at things too but she was like her father and knew when to stop laughing. In a group of men Carleton would be the first to smile and the first to stop, because he was smartest. Then he would sit back on his heels or turn his face slightly away and wait until the rest of the men finished laughing.

  “Clara, get me a beer,” Nancy said.

  Clara got a bottle of beer out of the cupboard. When Nancy turned to take it from her Clara saw that her face was creased with tiny wrinkles. She was always frowning these days. Clara waited while Nancy opened the bottle and stopped to pick up the bottle cap. Those little caps could cut somebody's feet; Clara went around picking them up in the cabin and around the cabin, outside, where Nancy and Carleton let them roll.

  “Is Rosie better now?” Clara said.

  “No, she ain't better, and you ain't goin to go an' find out,” Nancy said.

  Clara hadn't been able to see Rosalie for four days. Rosalie didn't go out to work in the morning, and when Clara got back on the bus with her family they wouldn't let her go down to see Rosalie. Rosa-lie's father, Bert, was out working today and Clara had noticed how cheerful and nervous he was—he mixed with work crews from other camps and was always in the center of the loudest group, where people were laughing and talking and maybe passing bottles around. This was against the law. You weren't supposed to mix with the people from a certain camp because they always caused trouble, there were lots of fights, but Bert did whatever he wanted to. He liked everyone.

  “Somebody said there was a doctor out,” Clara said.

  Nancy did not bother to turn. “What's it to you?” She sat with her shoulders slumped inside a soiled shirt of Carleton's. Her hair was stiff with oil and dust from the fields; everything she said or did was slowed down. Clara, who remembered how happy Nancy had been a while ago and how, at night, she used to laugh and whisper from the mattress where she and Carleton lay, felt sorry for her— she had never been jealous of Nancy's happiness, because she thought that anyone's happiness would turn out to be her own someday. Now, Nancy's slurred words and irritated face frightened Clara because there was no reason for them. She could not understand what was wrong.

  Rodwell and some other kids ran past the shanty, yelling. Nancy did not bother to look at them. “He better watch out, that big kid's gonna beat him up,” Clara said. The kids were gone. They ran between two of the shanties, pounding against them with their fists as they passed, as if they wanted to break the shanties down. Roosevelt was out somewhere, Clara didn't know where. Their father was out talking the way he was every day after supper. When Clara was through with the dishes she'd go out to find him, squatting on the ground with some other men, and when she came up to them she would hear important, serious words that made her proud: “prices,” “Roosevelt,” “Russia.” She did not know what these words meant but liked to hear them because they seemed to make Carleton happy, and when he came back home later in the evening he would often talk softly to Nancy about their plans for next year. He would tell Nancy and Clara and whoever else wanted to listen that the country was going to change everything, that there would be a new way to live, and that when they went through a town the next time he was going to buy a newspaper to read up on it. Nancy was not much interested, but Clara always asked him about it. She thought that “Russia” was a lovely word, with its soft, hissing sound; it might be a special kind of material for a dress, something expensive, or a creamy, rich, expensive food.

  It began to rain outside again, a warm, misty drizzle. “Christ sake,” Nancy said sourly. “More mud tomorrow.”

  Clara couldn't see much out the window, because it faced the back of another shanty, so she went over to Nancy and looked out; she had to be careful because Nancy didn't like anyone standing behind her. A few people across the way were standing in their doorway too. They were a funny family no one liked because they couldn't talk right. Clara and Rosalie didn't like the girl, who was their age, because she talked funny and had thick black hair with nasty things in it. Nancy told Clara that if she came home with lice she could sleep under the shanty. She could sleep out in the out-house, Nancy said. So Clara and Rosalie and all the other kids pretended to be afraid of the kids in that family, circling around them and teasing. The people in that shanty threw their garbage out in the walk, too, and that was against the rules.

  “Lookit them pigs over there,” Nancy said. “They ought to be run out of this here camp; this is for white people.”

  “Are they niggers?”

  “There's a lot more niggers than just ones with black skin, for Christ sake,” Nancy said, shifting as if she were uncomfortable. “Where's your father? We're s'post to go down the road, what the hell is he doin with it rainin out?” Her voice went on listlessly, with a kind of dogged anger. It was as if she had to stir herself up when she began to forget about being angry. She scratched her shoulder. Clara watched how the worn green material of the shirt was gathered up and then released by Nancy's fingernails. It was hard to believe that Nancy was going to have a baby: Nancy was not much different from Clara.

  “I'm gonna see Rosie,” Clara said.

  “Like hell you are.”

  “How come I can't?”

  “Ask your father,” Nancy said. “What about them dishes, anyway?”

  Clara splashed cold water from the pan onto the dishes. Each day when they came back on the bus she went out to get water from the faucets, then kept this water around until the next day. She washed the plates by putting them in a big pan and pouring water on them and swishing her fingers around. Then she took the plates out and put them facedown on the table to dry, so the flies couldn't get at them. There was old, faded oilcloth tacked on the little table, and Clara liked the smell of it. She liked to clean the oilcloth and the dishes because they were things she could get clean while other things were always dirty—there was no use in scrubbing the walls or the floor because the dirt was sunk deep into them, and if she tried to clear away the junk around the cabin it would just come back again.

  “I'm goin out now,” Clara
said.

  “It's rainin.”

  “Everybody else is out.”

  “So the hell with Rodwell and Roosevelt,” Nancy said, drawling. “If they want to get worse colds, let them.”

  Roosevelt was bad: he ran out anytime he wanted, and he never got over being sick. He was sick all the time now and wouldn't lie still. He wanted to come along to the fields with everyone else, then when he got there he wanted to play with the little kids and not work; if Carleton slapped him he would mind the way an animal minds, not wanting to but doing it out of terror. “Roosevelt's poison, that kid, an' Rodwell ain't much better,” Nancy said. “I told him I wasn't goin to bring up no baby of mine around them. I told him that.”

  Clara's face got warm.

  “I could leave here anytime I fuckin want,” Nancy said. She drank from the bottle, noisily. “He don't give a damn, that's his trouble. Always talkin about some goddamn half-ass job with buildin a road or somethin—when was he ever on a road crew, huh? There's all kinds of bastards lined up for that work, and chop down son-ofa-bitch trees, any kind of crap you can think of. Buy me! Buy me! Sonsabitches saying women are whores, well all of 'em are fuckin whores. And this here, crawlin in the mud, this is so shitty nobody wants to except niggers. You tell him that, huh? Tell him Nancy said so.”

  Clara was trying to understand this, that flew past her head like a swarm of riled yellow jackets. “Pa said we were goin to leave real soon,” Clara said apologetically. She felt older than Nancy, sometimes. It made her tired. It would come upon her suddenly, a sense of expansion, something dizzy, too much for her to bear; like in those dreams where you are running, running, running—but where? Or, awake, like your eyes are rubbed raw, you see things other people don't see, or don't wish to see.

  “Shit, I heard that before.”

  “Pa says—”

  “Pa says, Pa says! A lot of crap Pa says and he ain't gonna fool me with it anymore.” Nancy finished the bottle and tossed it out onto the ground with a flourish wanting it to break. It made a noise but didn't break.

  After that, Clara would not remember anything clearly.