Gone Crazy in Alabama

  I paid Vonetta no mind. I couldn’t believe my cousin had to milk a cow twice a day, every day.

  I bent down and touched one of Sophie’s fat udders. The low-hanging balloon looked like it could burst any minute, it was so full. Vonetta and Fern went, “Eww.”

  “What if you miss a day?” I asked.

  “Can’t miss a day.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t miss a day? What would happen if you did?”

  “Why do you have to know?” Vonetta asked. “If he can’t miss a day of milking that cow, he can’t miss a day.”

  “I asked him, not you.”

  JimmyTrotter shook his head like he was beyond our squabbling. “I can’t miss a day. Cow’s gotta get milked. I gotta be here to milk her. Just think about storing up all that milk. How much that’d hurt. She can’t milk herself, Delphine.”

  “Oh,” Fern said. “Poor Sophie.”

  Vonetta rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “So you can’t go out for track or baseball?” I asked.

  “It’s football around here, cuz,” he said. “Or for me, the sky club. And no.”

  “Sky club?” Vonetta asked. “What’s that?”

  “For kids who want to fly. Or like airplanes.” He tried to be cool but he smiled too much to be cool.

  “But what happens if you’re not here to milk Sophie?” I asked.

  “Miss Trotter milks her.”

  “Isn’t she too old?” I asked. “No offense.”

  “No offense to me,” he said. “Just don’t let Miss Trotter hear you.”

  Fern asked, “What about Butter?”

  “Butter’s getting her milking gears in order. She’ll be dropping that calf in a month. By then, Sophie’ll start to really taper off and Butter’ll be on, milking up a storm. We try to time it just right so no one’s without milk. A lot of our neighbors still like it fresh, and we’re a lot closer than the McDaniels’ farm. But if you want cream or butter you go to the store or to McDaniels’.”

  “Butter? Oh, nuts!” Fern cried. She loved buttered bread, and probably felt bad about taking one more thing from a cow.

  When I watched JimmyTrotter milk Sophie three years ago, he didn’t seem to like milking any more than I liked ironing white sheets in the heat. Now he’d talked himself into liking it and washed Sophie’s udders and hanging milk bag like it was nothing. I didn’t care what Big Ma said about being raised down here. One day he’d speak up for himself when he saw everyone else flying an airplane except him. Then we’d see how fast and plain he’d “Yes’m” Miss Trotter.

  Vonetta and Fern had had enough of watching milk shoot out of Sophie. They wanted to talk to Miss Trotter, although neither could settle on what they’d call her—Aunt Miss Trotter or Great Miss Trotter.

  “Holler when the milking’s done and it’s in a bottle,” Vonetta said.

  “Holler when you’re done hurting poor Sophie.”

  “It doesn’t hurt her,” Vonetta said.

  “That’s what you think,” Fern said.

  JimmyTrotter looked up to see that my sisters were gone. “We don’t have use for bulls but once every other year for mating.” He kept his voice low. “We were hoping Sophie was carrying a female. We could sure use a young milking cow, especially with Sophie getting older. No such luck.”

  While JimmyTrotter milked Sophie, I told him what happened earlier with Big Ma and why she was anxious to get rid of us for the day.

  “I don’t see the big deal over ironing sheets,” he said.

  “I know you don’t and I can’t explain it. I just didn’t want to be ironing and sweating. You know what ironing and sweating is?”

  “Tell me.” I knew he found me silly even before I said another word.

  “Ironing and sweating when you don’t have to be ironing and sweating is oppression. And I won’t be oppressed.”

  I was going for a “Right on, cuz!” but JimmyTrotter laughed. “That’s oppression to you? Ironing a bedsheet and perspiring?”

  “Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.”

  “Sometimes you have to know when to stand up and when to iron.”

  “Like milking cows?” I asked.

  “I don’t mind milking. I don’t,” he said. But we didn’t speak for a while. I was about to leave him with Sophie, when he said, “Delphine.” There was too long a pause after he said my name. “You have a boyfriend?”

  My skin must have darkened. My face certainly got warm. “I did.”

  “What happened? Started feeling oppressed and broke it off?”

  I hated it when he laughed at me so I played it off with a shrug. “We’re going to junior high in September.”

  “And?”

  “And I might as well have broken it off. You know how it is,” I said as cool as I could muster. “You get to your new school with all new people and suddenly you don’t want to be stuck with the same people you’ve known since the third grade. It’s like not growing up.”

  “Oh.” He was smiling at me like he’d seen through me. Smiling but silently laughing, I was sure.

  “So do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.

  He smiled and kept milking. He intended to make me wait. Finally he said, “I had a girlfriend. Reddish-gold hair. What do they call that? Strawberry blond? Brown eyes. Freckles right here.” He pointed to the bridge of my nose. “And pretty? Boy, she was pretty.” He whistled. Then Sophie mooed. He took the pails of milk and set them to the side away from Sophie.

  “We kept it secret and at first she understood—even said it was romantic and star-crossed. Yeah. Star-crossed. Then one day she said, ‘Let’s make a statement. To everyone in Autauga County. Let’s hold hands so everyone can see.’ I said, ‘You crazy? You want to get me killed?’ But she kept talking about the ‘Age of Aquarius’ and how we’re not our parents and such. And I said no. I wouldn’t walk up the school steps holding her hand for the world to see. Know what she said? She said, ‘James Trotter, if you don’t hold my hand I’ll scream so loud I’ll wake your dead kin and mine.’”

  “What did you do?”

  “I left her there.”

  He was probably waiting for me to say something but I was still taking it all in. I’d never heard a story like that.

  His eyes became bright in place of a smile. “Know what scorn is, cuz?”

  I nodded a cool yes but I was searching my brain for the word scorn. I knew it wasn’t good. It sounded like scorched. Like something burnt.

  “No one wants to be made a fool of,” JimmyTrotter said. “’Specially a girl. That’s where scorn comes in.”

  I said nothing.

  He laughed a little bit, although I knew he didn’t think it was funny. “I locked myself in my room when I got home, waited for a knock on the door and for her family to be on the other side.”

  “Did they ever come?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  That’s Entertainment

  We had been gone long enough. Long enough, I hoped, for Big Ma to forget why she had us “git” to begin with. The smells of cabbage, potatoes, and meat on top of burnt cornstarch, lavender, and metal from an afternoon of ironing saluted me when I walked inside Ma Charles’s house. I was hungry, and ashamed, but glad to be back. I hugged my apology to Big Ma, and for all of a second, she let me, and then she pushed me off of her, which was her way and her forgiveness. “Go on and wash up” was all she said.

  We sat at the dinner table, mosquito-stung and ravenous from our hike. When Ma Charles told me to say the prayer, I asked, “Aren’t we waiting for Uncle Darnell?”

  Vonetta cut her eyes but kept her mouth closed. Speaking her sassy mind was what had gotten her Big Ma’s belt just before Pa had asked Big Ma to leave our home in Brooklyn. If anything, the sting of Big Ma’s white church belt should have encouraged Vonetta to make that whipping her last.

  “He’s working an extra shift,” Big Ma said. I got the feeling our uncle would be working more extra shifts now that we were h
ere.

  “Get to praying so we can get to eating!” Ma Charles said. We laughed because our great-grandmother’s impatience was unexpected.

  “Rolls,” Big Ma said. “Delphine, go get—” Then, just as I was about to scoot out of my chair, she stopped herself, got up, and went inside the kitchen and came back with the rolls. I should have felt a victory, knowing Big Ma now thought twice about having me do everything. But I felt only shame and said the dinner prayer as fast as I could.

  The “Amen” was barely out of our mouths when Ma Charles rapped on the table and said, “Well?”

  “Yes, ma’am?” I asked. The South just slipped out of me. Big Ma smiled.

  “Well, what did she say about my gift? Speak up,” Ma Charles demanded.

  I fixed my mind and mouth to say, “Nothing, really,” but Vonetta jumped in front of me. “Miss Trotter said—” She made her face like our great-aunt, down to the pinched nose, and said, “Dentures? Dentures?” Then she opened her mouth full of cabbage and beef to show teeth and mimicked Miss Trotter’s strong and high-pitched voice: “Go on, young’ns. Run your finger ’longside the uppers and lowers.” And she chomped her teeth, even though Miss Trotter did no such thing.

  I was set to kick Vonetta for repeating Miss Trotter’s words and tone like that. But Ma Charles seemed to enjoy Vonetta’s imitation and reared her head back and cackled. “Do it again,” she said. “Just like that over-the-creek gal said it. Go on.” And she readied herself to hear it as if she were waiting for the second act of the show. For her, this was entertainment.

  Vonetta obliged her, only too pleased to perform. She cleared her throat. “Tell her my teeth are just fine. Tell her, why would a wolf need teeth she already has?”

  Ma Charles slapped the table and cackled harder and longer. Vonetta was in her glory. “What else she say?”

  Fern started to speak, but Vonetta hushed her. “This is my story. Mine.” Vonetta cleared her throat again, put on her Miss Trotter face, and said, “Denture rinse. I got something for her. You wait.”

  Ma Charles applauded. “Go on, baby. One more time.”

  Big Ma had had enough. “Less talking and more eating. Good food is hard to come by.”

  In spite of Big Ma’s order, Vonetta repeated her line. If Big Ma asked for a tree switch, I would have run out to the pecan tree and found a nice one.

  “This is your fault, Delphine.”

  I almost choked on a gob of mashed potatoes. Big Ma’s forgiveness wore off quickly.

  “Marching them through the woods, across the creek to dig up trouble.”

  “Big Ma, you said ‘Git’ and they wanted to see cousin JimmyTrotter.”

  “And the cows,” Fern added.

  Ma Charles cackled. “They saw an old cow, all right.”

  Vonetta and Fern laughed at their great-grandmother for calling her half sister a cow. Ma Charles and Miss Trotter might as well have been Vonetta and Fern, the way they sniped at each other.

  “The Lord wants you to make peace, Ma,” our grandmother said. “Before the sweet by-and-by.”

  Ma Charles coughed or rolled her eyes or made a sound that was as good as teeth sucking. “I’ll make peace when that old Negro Injun makes peace first.” To Vonetta she added, “And you can tell her I said so.”

  Part-time Indian

  Since Vonetta wanted to ride JimmyTrotter’s bike and Fern wanted to moo with Sophie and Butter, we spent most of our days with JimmyTrotter and his great-grandmother. Whenever we came across the creek, Vonetta wheeled JimmyTrotter’s bicycle out of the barn and rode it in circles around the barn and house while Fern chased after her. JimmyTrotter and I always lagged behind to talk about teenage things while keeping an eye on Vonetta and Fern.

  “You catching on?” JimmyTrotter asked with a smirk.

  “I got it,” I told him. “But why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s how they want it. Now that you and your sisters are here, you can play along while I get back to my airplane models.” He told me the story that I had heard pieces of from Pa. The story Big Ma didn’t want spoken aloud. How my great-great-grandfather, Slim Jim Trotter, married two women at the same time.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “’Cause I hear it every third day. Milk the cow, cross the creek to Aunt Naomi, and she tells me her side. Then I come back home to Miss Trotter with a basketful of eggs, and as she inspects each dozen, hoping for a bad egg to fuss about, she tells her side. I know the story inside and out. Backward and forward.”

  “Don’t you get tired of hearing it?”

  “What do you think, cousin?” He kicked a cone in his path. “I won’t be around long. When I go off to flight school who’ll they tell?”

  “Why don’t they just tell each other? They seem to be the only ones interested.”

  “They don’t speak to each other.”

  “Never?”

  JimmyTrotter thought for a second. “Only once that I recall.”

  “Oh.” I knew when. The funerals. Four caskets.

  “Auntie said, ‘Sorry for your losses, Ruth.’ Then Miss Trotter said, ‘Thank you kindly, Naomi.’ Then your grandmother invited us in for the repast but Miss Trotter said she wasn’t up to it and we went home.”

  It was funny that Big Ma loved her soap operas during the day, television dramas at night, and supermarket gossip magazines when Uncle Darnell brought them in for her, but she wouldn’t talk about our own family.

  “Our family is a regular nighttime soap opera.”

  “You got that right,” JimmyTrotter said.

  We had a nice lunch and a slice of pie that came in a white bakery box. Unlike Ma Charles, Miss Trotter sent JimmyTrotter into town to buy groceries from the store. She kept an herb garden for her “medicinals,” as she called them, and a much smaller vegetable garden than Ma Charles’s, but she had no hard, fast rules about where everything came from. She chose to be stubborn in other ways.

  Miss Trotter watched us gobble down the pie, her own cheeks rising in little, hard apples. Then she asked us, “Speak up if you know who Augustus is.”

  Fern said, “I don’t know who it is, but I know when it is.”

  “Not August, dope,” Vonetta said.

  “Cut it out, Vonetta,” I said.

  “Can’t one of my sister’s prized greats tell us who Augustus is?”

  We didn’t know who Augustus was, which suited Miss Trotter just fine, and that was the point.

  “Earliest we know, we sprung from my grandfather, Augustus,” Miss Trotter began, but not without a few words of spite disguised as pity about Ma Charles. “She didn’t bother to tell you that? Well, maybe she’s getting on and can’t remember the family history. Poor old thing.”

  JimmyTrotter tossed me a wink.

  “I was going to mix up something special to repay her for the denture rinse but I’ll give you some history instead.” To Vonetta she said, “Tell her, ‘Great-granny, today we learned our family history from one who knows it.’ That’ll repay her just fine.”

  Vonetta promised she’d say it just like that, even with me balling my fist at her.

  “Our Augustus, my daddy’s daddy, was not a free man, but became one: a freedman. He wasn’t a man at all. Just more than a boy. Like this’n.” Her chin pointed to JimmyTrotter. “Only younger.”

  Miss Trotter was all too happy to tell the history and to have someone to tell it to. I knew she had told this story over and over because she sang it more than she plain-spoke it. She said, “One night when the cotton was ready for picking, Augustus looked at his hands and they bled. Just bled at the thought of having to pick cotton from daybreak to day-be-done. ‘No more bleeding and picking cotton for me,’ he said. So Augustus watched the moon and stars in the pitch of night and chose his time and stole away. Through the woods. And the marshes. And prickly burs and such. He grew hungry shortly after he’d set out and came upon a lake. In that freshwater lake, fish with long whiskers swam down deep and close to the mud
. He knew this and knelt and raised his stick to spear one, but the fish slipped on by. He tried again and missed. And missed again. When he was mad enough to spit, the water laughed at him. Augustus didn’t like the water laughing at him so he said, ‘Stop your laughing at me.’”

  Miss Trotter raised her make-believe spear for my sisters’ delight, thrusting it downward, and Fern gasped, which Miss Trotter liked.

  “He felt something smack the side of his face. It seemed that laughing catfish’s tail jumped up and splashed him. Augustus was fit to be tied. He was hungry and that catfish was making sport of him, so Augustus bided his time. He studied the ripple of the water, studied his fish wriggling this way and that, found the spot where the ripple and wriggling flowed as one, and speared that rascal with the sharp end of his stick. Just when Augustus knew he’d humbled that rascal, he heard the laughter again! But the laughter didn’t come from the water. It came from behind him. When he turned, he saw eyes that belonged to a girl, no taller than he. She led him to her family, who’d fished those creeks since the creeks ran. When he came into their family to live as one of them, the girl’s father said his daughter had caught a big, black fish. He told his daughter she increased their wealth and when the time came and she was old enough, she could claim her prize.

  “It wasn’t long until all the Indians that lived along the creek, the pine, and the coast were forced to move themselves from the land and go west until their feet bled and the old folks dropped. Isn’t it funny that even the good things of the earth can make your hands and feet bleed? And that is as far back as we know. Back to my father’s father. A boy named Augustus. Now, take that back with you.”

  As soon as we were on our way, Vonetta said, “We’re Indians. Just like Great Miss Trotter.”

  “Aunt Miss Trotter,” Fern said. “JimmyTrotter has aunts. We have one too.”

  “I guess that makes us part Indian,” I said. “Just part.” But I already knew this from looking at Slim Jim Trotter standing next to my great-great-grandmother Livonia.

  “My part’s probably bigger than yours. I look more like Miss Trotter than you do.”