Chapter 11 #2
Why, you afraid an orphan might get out? Miss Birdie says and they both glance at me. It’s five inches. Meg, see can you squeeze through there.
I go sit in my chair. I will be staying out of this, thank you. I wonder what Miss Frances would say if she knew there was a portrait of her under this desk called The Asskisser.
Put the board back, please, and just do your assignment, Miss Frances says. You’re supposed to ask Garnett before you go and do things like that.
Miss Birdie rolls her eyes. Fine, I’ll go find a hammer and nail it back on. I’ll see you in the lounge in a minute.
When her sister is gone, she studies the wonderful part-open window. I can smell a summer storm coming in.
I reckon Miss Garnett knows best … she says and sets the board up on the sill so it only looks boarded up but a little air is still coming in. But what she don’t know won’t hurt her now, will it?
Maybe this lady has more sense than I thought.
When I am back from lunch, all that good air has made a difference. Of course, when Miss Garnett passes by in the hall, she looks over. She knows something has changed in here. Better. Cooler. When she cannot set her finger right on it, she moves along.
Thunder rumbles outside. The storm is almost over our heads.
The house falls dimmer, and I yawn and Miss Birdie yawns.
She sneaks the bottom board off again. Those tin cans set around the big girls’ room will be filling up with rain soon.
I write out more cards to pass time and wonder could I skip the next View Day since I am headed to the cannery anyway?
Not have to see a mama I sent one of these cards to hold a baby or toddler, look her deep in the eyes like she was hers all along.
Did somebody bring you here? After your mama disappeared?
Miss Birdie asks me this out of the clear blue.
You said she went to the store, she asks soft. And she just didn’t come back?
I open my mouth but … doesn’t she know? How long it has been since somebody asked me a soft question like that? The only thing these ladies ask is, What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?
That you could ask me a different question?
How about that?
Behind Miss Birdie, rain blows in through the window opening. It’s a shame when she has to get up and close it.
Look in the drawer, Miss Birdie says the next several mornings.
Sure enough, waiting on me are two biscuits, yesterday with strawberry jelly, the day before with blueberry, and today with actual ham.
She has also brung in a day-old newspaper and, without my even asking, hands me the funny pages.
Like I am just a regular person. She eases her feet up on the desk and spreads the paper open.
So I lean back and do the same. The first biscuit I got to gobble up quick, but the second I like to make it last until Miss Garnett gets in here to ruin my day.
I hear a hiss and look to the hall. There is mean ole Dorella sticking her tongue out at me. That letter I gave her a few days ago is already a thing of the past.
Hey, Nutmeg, whatcha doing, Nutmeg? Why ain’t you in school with the other girls?
Miss Birdie’s face is behind her own part of the newspaper.
Lord, I feel like I have been waiting my entire life on this.
Behind the funny pages, I show Dorella my second biscuit.
Then I take a bite and chew it ve-ry slow-ly with my mouth open so she can see every morsel.
She is so jealous—oh her eyes turn to slits!
I know I will get me a Indian burn for this later, but sometimes the crime is worth the punishment. I heard that on the radio.
By eight thirty, our newspaper is put up, those biscuits ate up, and that bottom board set back flat to the window.
Here she comes, Miss Birdie whispers, and we get the dull look on our faces.
I am pretty sure Miss Birdie only does this for my fun.
She has not figured out Miss Garnett is a big phony, since when you get grown, you sort of lose a ability to see that kind of thing.
Like the monster under the bed or waiting on you in the closet.
When my mama looked, she saw nothing, but oh I knew it was there.
Miss Garnett comes in Glory be to the Lord-ing and How we coming along?
We, she says.
I’m not exactly sure what some of these expenditures were for, Miss Birdie says.
Miss Garnett stands with her back to the window, looking over Miss Birdie’s shoulder, and starts to prattle how that was fabric to have new gowns made for the toddlers …
this was to have the nursery painted, it was getting a little dingy, and this one’s carpet cleaning in the lounge.
Miss Garnett smiles like they got a secret between them.
We have to keep them comfortable or we won’t have any volunteers, will we?
Huh, Miss Birdie says and glances at the wall with mold crawling down it.
Before she goes on, Miss Garnett tilts her head. Does it feel a bit cooler in here today?
Miss Birdie straightens up like she is just now noticing it. Why, I believe it does.
Well, we can thank the Lord for that, can’t we?
When she has walked out, Miss Birdie says, Or you can thank me.
Even though Miss Birdie is a grown woman, she doesn’t talk down to me. She talks to me like I am near grown too. She says her sister is difficult. Her mama worrisome. Her meemaw—
Hold it. What is a Mee. Maw? I have got to ask.
Your mama’s mama, or your daddy’s mama. Sweet and scary is how I’d describe mine. You didn’t have one, Meg?
When my mind drifts back, the folks I see most are my mama, old Ophelia, some cute puppies, a man shaking his head and saying, We need to get you somewhere, get you something to eat …
Meg, I told you to sit up straight, Miss Garnett says, nosing by.
Does she always talk to you like that? Miss Birdie asks.
I inform her yes. In fact she does.
The hours go faster with somebody chatting. How often do y’all hold this View Day? she asks. Miss Birdie’s questions come out of thin air and she always has her a opinion.
I tell her, Three or four times a year.
And how many folks usually show up?
Six or seven sets. Most we got was maybe ten. We had a fair amount of babies.
Why haven’t you gotten adopted?
Ha. What does she think, folks stroll in here like Daddy Warbucks from the funny pages? Asking for a eleven-year-old girl, too small to work and too big to cuddle? Miss Garnett says I am—
dirty filthy
better off going to the cannery.
The cannery always gets her goat. She says she does not truck with little girls working in factories, and it does not add up, and have I seen a picture of one of those places in the newspaper before?
No, but they pay real cash money, so do the math on that. I wonder if I will get it for back-talking; after all she is still a volunteer lady. But Miss Birdie just chuckles. She has a little gap between her front teeth like mine.
Another good part to having Miss Birdie here is Miss Garnett thinks twice about coming in and fooling with my hair, calling me names.
You can drop the Miss if nobody’s around. Just call me Birdie, she says. In her opinion it sounds stuffy and conventional, and why should we have to follow the rules in a place that won’t even get a window fixed or properly repair a roof?
That afternoon, after Miss Garnett announces she’s going to get the mail, Birdie says she needs to stretch her legs. Can I come? I ask. If I promise to be quiet? She says sure.
I follow her upstairs to the big girls’ room, where she looks at our old rusty cots, eyes that ugly ceiling.
If you stare up at those water stains enough, laying in bed, you will start to see things you don’t want to see.
A angry woman’s face saying You’re fired, a runny nasty oyster from a jar, a fat man asking who is respons’ble for letting those puppies die in the freeze.
It is a wonder I sleep at all with that going on up there.
After that I follow her down to the kitchen.
It is not office hot in there; kitchen hot is something else.
Kitchen hot sticks black to your lungs. I do not know how Lucinda can stand it.
Birdie wrinkles her nose down in the pots boiling any kind of damn taste out of our food.
When she tastes our mushy peas, she says Oof.
Leaning against the counter, she and Lucinda talk easy, the way Mama and Ophelia used to.
How long you worked here?
Coming on fie year. Wherebouts you from?
Warren County, down in the Delta.
Law I got people down in the Delta, sho nuff do.
The kitchen could be on fire and the other white ladies would not come in here and talk to Lucinda. I hunt for a corn pone to steal, but they are still getting baked in the stove.
Birdie wonders should she make a list of what all Lucinda could use, maybe Garnett would—
They ain’t enough paper in the wuld for that, Lucinda says and spits snuff in a little can. I hear the words bland and chalky and no meat or butter to speak of. Words you do not want to hear in a kitchen.
Since she come on, she don’t let me feed ’em nuttin good, say it’ll spoil ’em. Lucinda waves her wide hand. They orphans. How you spoil a orphan?
Did things used to be different around here? Before Garnett showed up? Birdie asks.
Yessum. Lass couple years things done change a fair piece around here. And Lucinda goes back to chopping carrots like she is done talking about that.
When we get back to the office, Birdie looks up at the mold. She squats down and peers in the hole behind my chair. Says, I know you’re in there. She takes my pink eraser and smudges at a mildew spot on the wall—
Birdie, stop, you’re making it worse, Miss Frances says. She has come in holding sleeping Ella Jane. She is cute asleep like that, but wait till she starts screaming.
Doesn’t this room bother you? And the big girls’ room upstairs? Birdie asks her. The rest of the house doesn’t look like this.