Zeke's big hand pull a tomato from the basket next to mine. His entire palm closed around it, "I want you to listen to me, now, Maggie," he said, tilting his head in my direction. "The job requires cleanin' and deliverin' a few things. But that's not really what makes it special."
"What does, Zeke? What does make it special, then?" I wasn't understanding him.
"What makes it special, Maggie," he said, looking around again before he went on— Lewis had run next door and was throwing sticks at the neighbor's dog— "what makes it special," he said, "is that the job requires you to keep secrets."
"Secrets?" I asked. On the ground lay split tomatoes seeping juice.
Zeke grinned. "These secrets is so secret, I can't even tell you, Maggie. Best I can tell you is that for every question that might come to your mind, the right answer is 'Don't ask.'"
"Well, now, how to goodness can anybody in Kinship expect to keep anything a secret? You know that this is the nosiest place in the world."
"Sure is," Zeke said. "That's why I want you for the job."
"Me?"
Zeke nodded. "One thing I know, Maggie, is that Maggie Pugh knows when to talk and when to keep quiet. Been knowin' that for a long time now."
Trudy Krisher was born in Georgia and grew up in South Florida. A graduate of The College of William and Mary, she has a been a book reviewer, a freelance writer, a newspaper columnist, an essayist, a young adult novelist, and a children's book author. Now a retired community college writing professor, she has won many awards for her writing: The International Reading Association Award, American Library Association Awards, Jefferson Cup honors from the Virginia Library Association, and many others. You can learn more about her at www.trudykrisherauthor.com.
Also Available from Trudy Krisher
Kinship
• Pert Wilson’s greatest dream comes true when her wandering father returns to Kinship, Georgia. Pert is immediately taken with her smooth-talking daddy and proudly introduces him to everyone in Happy Trails, her trailer park community. But something happens that suggests Pert’s daddy cannot be trusted, and the spunky young girl begins to understand the difference between blood kin and true family.
• “A compelling, often humorous story of love and the true meaning of family…poignant and on target.” Booklist
Kathy’s Hats: A Story of Hope
• When Kathy is diagnosed with cancer and her chemotherapy treatments make her hair fall out, Kathy’s perspective on the hats she’s always loved now changes. Her treatments are difficult and painful. Having to wear hats is another aspect of her cancer treatment which Kathy resents. Finally, Kathy begins to think of her hats as thinking caps which can help her fight her disease, an attitude which helps her cope with and overcome her challenges.
• “An important book dealing with what is generally taboo in children’s literature: life-threatening illness.” Read-Aloud Review
Uncommon Faith
• The 1837 livery fire in Millbrook, Massachusetts, which killed six people and wounded several others, becomes a starting point for characters concerned about rights for women, slaves, and workers. The novel’s ten narrators each tell a different story, some focusing on family issues, others focusing on large scale issues like slavery and religion and economic disadvantage. The most memorable narrator is Faith Common, a fourteen-year-old champion of women’s rights who leads her classmates to rebel against a cruel teacher who thinks that girls, unlike boys, are incapable of learning.
• “A crackerjack piece of historical fiction.” School Library Journal
Fallout
• “I had been a bystander all my life,” says fourteen-year-old Genevieve, an aspiring poet. It’s 1954, and in her small, hurricane-ravaged North Carolina town, she feels at odds with current social conventions. Then Brenda Wompers, a new student from California whose favorite word is “antiestablish-mentarian,” changes everything at school. Together with her parents, Brenda begins to speak out against nuclear power and other controversial topics, and as the conservative community openly rejects the Wompers family, Gen struggles to define her own beliefs about the political debates, as well as her feelings about friendship and family.
• “Krisher explores the storms of human nature and the ‘human tendency to factions and cliques, to whisperings and rumors, to control and power.’ It’s a story of witches, in the McCarthy witch-hunts, in the Salem witch trials studied in school and in the meanness of high-school cliques...,and the lesson Genevieve learns—that “Salem was in our nature”—will linger in readers’ minds. A rich novel full of topics for discussion. Kirkus Reviews
Fanny Seward: A Life
• On April 14, 1865, the night of President Lincoln’s assassination, Booth’s conspirator Lewis Powell attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward in his home just blocks from Ford’s Theatre. The attack, which left Seward and his son seriously wounded, is recounted in poignant detail in Fanny Seward’s diary. Fanny, the beloved only daughter of Seward, was a keen observer, and her diary entries from 1858 to 1866 are the foundation of Krisher’s vivid portrait of the young girl who was an eyewitness to one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.
• “At last Fanny Seward, the precocious, perceptive daughter of Secretary of State William Seward, gets her own book, the book she deserves: warm and literate and engaging.”—Walter Stahr, author of Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man
Copyright © 1994 by Trudy Krisher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law. For permission contact trudy.krisher@gmail.com.
ISBN: 978-1-57074-103-6
Printed in the United States of America
Printed by:
Greyden Press, LLC
2251 Arbor Blvd.
Dayton, Ohio 45439
www.greydenpress.com
Mama had the spoon in her fist. She was waving it in Daddy's face. They had started fighting again. First thing in the morning.
"A salesman's supposed to sell things, Henry Pugh," Mama said. "Not give 'em away free." Dadd had lost his job as a salesman with Johnson & Johnson this summer. Mama blamed it on his sample policy.
I escaped to my room and picked up the camera. I held it to my chest, peering into the viewfinder. It was a used camera but a good one, given to me by Zeke. He had dug the camera out of his trading sack, passed it to me, and insisted that I take it with a nod of his head. "I won't take nothin' for it," he'd said. It was one of many times I'd been grateful to Zeke.
The camera had two lenses, one for the viewfinder, one for the film. One was on top of the other, like a figure eight. I peered down into the viewfinder, the voices in the other room making pictures in my mind.
I heard Mama yelling again. "First it's a sample of baby powder, Henry," she said. I imagined her shaking a can of baby powder under each armpit. Aim. Click.
"Then it's a bottle of baby oil." I could see her on the film, running drops of oil down each forearm, rubbing them in. Advance the film. Trip the shutter.
I could see her pinning Daddy to the wall, shaking the spoon in his face. "And finally," she shrieked, "you're lettin"em take that nice pink baby soap in the silver foil, which they're probably savin' for the wife for Christmas."
I heard my daddy too. "Stop bein' such a hard one for happiness, Izzy," he said. I peered into the lens, imagining him there, mopping his forehead with his red bandana. "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." Focus. Click.
I needed to escape. Not just today. Almost every day since last summer. I didn't want to think about Mama and Daddy, but most of all I didn't want to think about what happened to Zeke. What happened last summer wasn't something I could talk about or even look at yet. The memory of it was like a picture you took when the people wouldn't hold still. I tried to keep that picture from coming into my mind.
My room was one way of escaping. The pecan tree in the corner of our yard was another. But my favorite way of escaping was going on a sneak with Pert Wilson. Nothing could get my mind off things like a sneak with Pert. On one sneak we had biked all the way to Troy for the double feature at the drive-in. Neither one of us had a red cent, so we stood outside the back fence, watching the picture even if we couldn't hear it, making up dialogue as we went along. Pert made the big strong cowboys in the John Wayne movie talk in high squeaky voices, and I made barking dog sounds for the people in Old Yeller.
Once we snuck over to Clifton Hill, where the rich folks live, to see Phillip Jubal Adkins's great-granddaddy's leg. P. J. Adkins's great-granddaddy had his leg blown off at Chickamauga in 1863. He carried it back to Kinship in his saddlebag and had it stuffed by the local taxidermist. It was mounted with the boot still on because Pj.'s great-granddaddy had stole the boots off a dead Yankee and wanted to prove it. Pert and I snuck into Adkins's house and saw it, sure enough. It was inside a glass case with a brass lock, and the spurs on the boot looked like the cockleburs that clung to my jeans when I ran through Lem Patterson's cow pasture. I knew for sure it was an Adkins leg; Adkinses had fat knees even back then.
On another sneak we took Daddy's old can of red paint, putting our red handprints up all over Kinship. On the trash can near the base of the Civil War statue of John B. Gordon. On the trunks of the trees at Pearl Lake. When Mama found out, her own handprint rose up red on my own bottom.
But I could see that I wasn't going to be able to escape on a sneak with Pert Wilson today. Mama had plans. She had started up right after breakfast.
"Get on in here, Maggie Pugh," Mama called to me from the front room. "I'll bet you're in there a-fiddlin' with that ol' camera again. You'd best be puttin' it away now, girl. We got dustin' out here. And dishes."
I put down the camera and picked up the dustrag, heading into the living room. As I worked, I watched Mama out of the corner of my eye. I saw her pacing, rubbing her hands, and tying her scarf up tight around her bobby pins. They were familiar gestures to me. They meant she was set on work.
Gardenia had been concentrating on the strings of a cat's cradle when Mama hoisted her up, plunking her down on the kitchen stool. "Hey, Mama," Gardenia wailed, "you're knottin' my cradle strings."
"Now sit still and stop your squirmin', angel," Mama said. She was looking Gardenia over the way she looked over meat in Shriner's meat case. The announcer on the radio, got on a trade with Zeke, was saying how the coloreds in Alabama could use the city parks same as white now and how a private school was opening up in Atlanta for kids whose parents were members of the Ku Klux Klan. After that he announced the price of bush beans and the number of board feet of sawlogs this year.
Then Mama snapped her fingers and pointed to me. "Get the comb and brush from the bathroom cabinet, Maggie."
First she brushed all over the top of Gardenia's yellow head. Next she brushed the left side, and then she brushed the right, mumbling to herself. "That fool daddy of yours might have lost his job and that fool sister of yours ain't got no future better'n housework, but Izabelle Pugh's still got her baby Gardenia, and the Hayes County Little Miss Pageant's next week. An angel as pretty as this one's as good as money in the bank."
Gardenia's blue eyes got round as globes. I stopped my mopping and looked into them.
Then Mama took the comb, parting Gardenia's hair in three sections. "Don't you think french braids would look nice, Maggie?"
She didn't wait for my answer. She was plaiting Gardenia's whole head lickety split, the comb clamped tight in her teeth like a pirate's knife. "Yes, sirree, Bob," she said. "The winner gets fifty dollars, an all-day shopping spree, and a chance to compete in the state pageant in Savannah."
The top of Gardenia's head looked like a braided basket. Mama pulled a daisy from the vase by the sink, sticking it behind Gardenia's ear. "Ohhhh-eee!" Mama said. "Ain't you somethin' else, baby!"
Then, just as quickly, she was ripping the whole thing out.
"Maybe we should try pigtails. I do declare pigtails with two big white ribbons might just do the trick." Mama was frowning. She was never satisfied.
"But I hates pigtails, Mama," screeched Gardenia. "Pigtails is for pigs."
First Mama had ripped out the braids. Now she scowled at the pigtails. This time she had decided on curls. "Curls," Mama declared, pulling out the big white ribbons, "is a sign of favor from the Lord. Curls is evidence that God put some extra time and attention into a person." I held my tongue, thinking of yet another way that Mama's God had ignored the Pughs. We had straight hair, every one.
Mama had rooted through the tithing box, pressing the change in my hand. "Now you run on up to Byer's Drugs, Maggie, and get me one of them Tonettes. I'm fixing to give your baby sister here a permanent wave. Take the extra, Maggie, and get you some film. We're gonna need pictures to show them judges at the beauty contest."
I was happy at the thought of the film, happier still at the thought of escaping Mama.
To get uptown from my house you had to go over ten blocks and down three, and you saw the way Kinship was laid out like a baseball diamond. Dividing it in two were the railroad tracks, running west to east through third base and first. Years ago Reginald Fen-wick had tried to get the railroad to run through Kinship. Almost did too. They'd laid the tracks and built the depot before the railroad bosses changed their minds, routing it through Macon instead. Because they went right through the middle of Fenwick Street, the tracks were a daily reminder of what it was to live in Kinship: things you hoped for always threatening to run out.
Mayor Cherry still pushed hope. He liked to mention how a branch of the Troy School of Stenography had been started up in an old brick warehouse and how the Trailways made regular stops in town now. But Mayor Cherry was running for reelection this fall, and most folks knew that what there was of promise in Kinship now was mostly on account of Fenwick Acres.
Fenwick Acres was on the east edge of town in the direction of Troy, the county seat. Like first base Fenwick Acres was the place you were always trying to get to. Fenwick Acres was patio tables with umbrellas in the middle that looked like whales spouting water. Fenwick Acres was houses that were paid for with benefits that came from VA loans and GI bills. Most of all Fenwick Acres was people who had steady paychecks for TVs and washing machines. For that reason it was Mama's idea of heaven.
The houses in Fenwick Acres were followed by the shopping center with the new Piggly Wiggly, the drive-in up by Troy, and the shop that sold nothing but TVs and hi-fis. Not everybody liked Fenwick Acres. Especially Uncle Taps, Daddy's brother. He laughed and called it "Fertile Acres" since all the young couples who lived there had three or four babies. Mama sniffed whenever he told that joke.
Uncle Taps was my favorite relation. He got his name when he was in the Army. He was always going AWOL, so they made him play taps every evening. He was handy like Daddy. He worked jobs when, Mama said, he wasn't passed out in the hammock dead drunk. Uncle Taps had taken work over at Fenwick Acres and claimed the houses were made bad. Said he'd never trust a contractor from a big city like Charlotte who could throw up a whole house in two weeks. It didn't much matter what Uncle Taps or Mama or anybody else of our kind thought about it. Pughs would never get a pitch that could land us in Fenwick Acres. Even if we did, we'd swing and miss.
At the north end of town on higher ground was the rich part of Kinship. This was where Fenwicks and Adkinses and Matlacks lived. They had sloping lawns and maids and wills done up by fancy lawyers. The women had fair skin that burned in the sun when they went boating at the country club in Troy; the men wore their suit coats buttoned whatever the temperature and checked with their banker every day. Their money was passed down the family like their houses, and they made it in turpentine and pecan groves and pine boards and textiles from the sweat of people like Pughs. I secretly suspected that they got to second base the way most players did: by stealing it.
Our end of Kinship was on the west side of town. Like my own family our relations struggled to stay north of the railroad tracks. Uncle Taps lived near us, of course, and his wife, Aunt Ella, who cooked all day long. Mama's sister, Aunt Lolly, and her husband, Uncle Bunny, lived just a block from us. They were caretakers for Memory Lane Cemetery, the white cemetery. The colored cemetery was just a stone's throw away and didn't have full-time caretakers even though they had the most famous dead person in Kinship there. He was Dixon Mason, a male witch who once visited Queen Victoria and put her in a trance. Aunt Lolly and Uncle Bunny also ran a small business selling plastic flowers and memorial markers outside the gates of Memory Lane. They were rich as kings at Easter and poor the rest of the year.
Uncle Bunny always talked about the people who were buried in the cemetery like they were still alive. His favorites were Mary Anthony, who was hired to teach the actors in Gone With the Wind to talk like us, and Bud Parker, a safecracker who ran with the Dalton gang. Uncle Bunny and Aunt Lolly were proud of their job because they said they got to keep watch on every member of the family. Baby Edgar Pugh, who died when he was an infant, and Cousin Milton, a Merritt on Mama's side who had smoked cigars and kept a mynah bird that whistled "Dixie."
All four of my grandparents were buried in Memory Lane, and I was always glad that Aunt Lolly and Uncle Bunny could look out for everyone, especially Grandma Pugh, my daddy's mama. Grandma Pugh loved to crochet. She crocheted afghans for everyone in the family. She'd come to your house and sit a spell and ask you what colors you liked and then she'd go off and make one for you. Just before she died, she was working on Gardenia's afghan. Since Gardenia was the youngest in the family, Gardenia's afghan had been the last one for Grandma Pugh to make. Daddy kept it in a special place at the foot of Gardenia's bed. He left the crochet hook exactly in the place where Grandma stopped.
Aunt Lolly was always fussing over Gardenia and me, spitting into her hanky and wiping the dirt from our cheeks or inspecting our necks to see if we had washed. Uncle Bunny could wiggle his ears and do magic tricks. You never could tell that he worked in a cemetery all day long. Their kids, our cousins Willie, Sally, and Lester, were a lot like Gardenia and me. Not counting Willie, who had three front teeth, there wasn't anything much to notice about them, so nobody ever did.
The people at our end of Kinship lived in small frame houses huddled near the turpentine plant and the textile factory that made raincoats for Sears and Roebuck. We filled up the trailer park and the local schools. We looked over the used-car section of Mat-lack's Ford dealership and bought the do-it-yourself kits from Bucky Gleason's hardware store. Except for Newell Puckett, who had a window air conditioner, there's not much to say about our end of Kinship. It was out in left field. Even so, the west part of Kinship was a darn sight better than south. South was on the other side of the tracks. South was colored.
I knew near about everybody in Kinship and passed half of them on the way to town. Olive Shriner worked out on her porch, beating rugs hung over the railing. She gave me a wave with her carpet beater. Martha Leonard was running her broom across her front porch. Martha lived on Madison Street with Charlie, her retarded boy. Every morning she swept not just the sidewalk but the curb. When. Jim Bob Boggs held up the First National Bank of Kinship, they parked the getaway car in front of Martha's house. When she knocked on the windshield and asked the driver to move so she could sweep the curb, he did.
Boyce Johnson was painting his house. He painted one side of his house every summer. You could write the calendar from it. If he was painting north or south, it was an odd-numbered year. If he painted east or west, it was even. I used to think it was a clever way to mark the calendar, but after what he did to Zeke, I decided it was a dumb way to mark time. Boyce gave a frown in my direction; it was his way of saying hello. I wouldn't even look at him. I wasn't going to give a fellow like Boyce Johnson the time of day.
I missed seeing Zeke. There were still plenty of coloreds uptown. Missy Moses still sold sweet summer fruits from her apron in front of Shriner's Grocery. Rocker still passed out religious pamphlets in front of the bank. Reverend Potter still wore a straw hat when he walked the streets, and he still conducted prayer sessions for the lonesome people at the Trailways station who were just passing through. But I missed Zeke.
Ever since I was small, Zeke had been uptown, his trading cart stuffed with old sheets, aluminum foil, church keys, and broom handles. After last summer he kept to his side of town more and more, and I saw his creaking wheeled cart less and less. The thought of it wrenched my heart.
Zeke and I went way back. At first it was the cart that led me to Zeke. The drawers and compartments Zeke had made himself bulged with pomade and iron skillets and rhinestone dog collars. There was a statuette of a Chinese lady, her head tilted slightly, her hands folded quietly in front of her red kimono. There was a plastic flyswatter in the shape of a green frog. There was a pink bed jacket that matched a pair of pink mules. In my mind Zeke's cart was the closest thing Kinship had to the circus.
After that it was more than the cart; it was the things Zeke did for me. The summer before I started school, Cousin Lonnie Burris, who was visiting from Milledgeville for a few days, dropped the collection plate in church. It made a sound like heavy chains laid down link after link. On the scramble back into the plate a few dimes found their way down my socks. After all, it was Daddy's birthday the next Saturday, and I didn't have two nickels to rub together.
On Monday morning I headed straight to Zeke's cart. I had my heart set on the shaving mug on the corner of the second shelf. I held up two dimes.
Zeke looked over at me and squinted. "Where you be gettin' that money, Maggie Pugh?" he said.
"Found it, Zeke," I lied.
Zeke had been folding a white chenille bedspread. His big hands were making short work of it when he let a corner slip and bent to me. He smiled, his white teeth gleaming. He looked like he was fixing to laugh.
"Found them dimes just laying around on the street, Maggie?"
I nodded.
Zeke's mouth broke into a full grin and his big shoulders shook. "Is that money laying around on the street any relation to the money that's 'sposed to be growin' on trees, Maggie?"
I hung my head. It was filled with Baptist sin. That I stole was bad enough. But then I had to go and lie about it.
Zeke put his face right next to mine. "Never be afraid of the truth," Zeke said, his eyes locking mine. Then he wrapped my fingers around the handle of the shaving mug, pressing it into my hand. "It's yours, Maggie. No charge."
I wasn't sure that I'd ever be able to speak the truth without fear, but I was sure that I was grateful, and it was the first of many times that I'd be grateful to Zeke. Pughs never got anything free.
After that it was the things Zeke told me that bound me to him. "Lordy, Maggie Pugh," he'd say, dusting a cracked china cup and saucer, "the things folks think. Don't give a lick that Lem Patterson got drunk on corn likker and beat LouAnn. All's they can talk about is the way he left his cows in the field, mooing to be milked." Once I saw Zeke trading Reverend Potter a bookmark for a pair of nail clippers. Afterward he said, "Reverend Potter's a real fine gent'man. Don't put on no fancy airs. Shaves with the same soap he takes a bath with."
I loved the stories Zeke told me of how things arrived at his cart. My daddy's new shaving mug, for instance. Zeke said it was sold at the estate sale after Lawrence Fenwick died and bought by the Alhambras, who started a taxi service, which Mama thought made them uppity coloreds. The Alhambras gave the mug to the Tabernacle Baptist Church white elephant sale, where it was bought by Joey Stoddard, whose daddy ran the white barber shop and surely didn't need another shaving mug. It was given to Zeke along with razor straps, old cloths, cracked combs, and half-used ends of soap when Douglas Stoddard did his spring cleaning. And then it ended up with me. "Things in Kinship get swapped around like rumors," Zeke said. "Truth don't go out much."
In the end it wasn't the cart or what he did or what he said that tied me to Zeke. It was finally just Zeke himself. Thinking about him reminded me of what Mama said about the difference between milk glass and cut crystal. Said you could always tell when crystal was real. Crystal rang with a sound that was pure and high. Mama knew because she had run her fingers around the rim of Tillie Fenwick's water goblets at the UDC get-acquainted tea while Tillie was filling her silver platter with squares of raspberry crumb cake. When Mama heard the proper ring, she declared those glasses were real. It was the same with Zeke. Everything Zeke said rang true to me. I swear to goodness that I missed him.
Although the first thing I looked for in the center of town was always Zeke, the first thing most folks noticed was the bank building. It sat in the center of Fen-wick Street and faced north. Like the pitcher's mound it was smack dab in the middle of things. Every day the fortunes of Kinship passed in and out of its heavy brass doors. From the same solid oak desk were written the foreclosure notices when the Shriners' cotton fields were ruined by boll weevils and the improvement loans when the Matlacks expanded the car dealership. The daily deposits from Russell Simmons's pecan factory and Clarence Adkins's sawmill and the daily withdrawals that went into Raymond Niedermayer's gambling and Ira Gaines's pretty women were made from the same bank window. Into the big black safe of the First National Bank was deposited the money for Pearl Jackson's Christmas fund, the start-up costs for Frank Alhambra's taxi company, and the Sunday collection from every church in town. First National was about the only place in Kinship that didn't care about your color.
From the steps of the bank you could see the statue of General John B. Gordon to the east at one end of Fenwick Street and the top of the cross of Thaddeus Adkins's cemetery plot to the west at the other. Straight across from the bank was Byer's Drugs, which faced south. It sat between Gleason's Hardware, where Bucky Gleason tied crepe-paper streamers to his electric fans to beef up sales, and Millie's Curly Q Salon that smelled of nail-polish remover and permanent-wave solution. Down a block was Shriner's Grocery, the Bijou Theater, and the Texaco station. Over one was the feed store and the Trailways depot.
Elmer Byer had hung a set of jingle bells from his front door ever since I could remember, so the door to Byer's Drugs gave a little jingle every time you went through it. When the bells jangled behind you, they made you feel like buying stuff. Today I really could.
I liked nearly everything about Byer's Drugs. The beauty aids section. The pharmacy. The comic-book rack. The fact that my friend Pert Wilson worked the lunch counter. The only thing I didn't much like was Hazel Boggs. Like most of her family she was mean and lazy. When she worked the register, she made you wait while she finished filing her nails or looking through the pictures left off for developing that were none of her business. I gave Hazel the money for the Tonette and the film, and she gave me a dirty look with my change. Then I headed on home.
When I returned from Byer's, Mama whisked an old white dishcloth under Gardenia's chin, fastening it at her neck with a clothespin. Mama bent over Gardenia's head all afternoon while I dusted and mopped.
"This stuff's icky, Mama," Gardenia said, holding her nose as Mama splashed her crown with waving lotion, the sharp smell of ammonia piercing the air. The radio announcer was singing the praises of Vidalia onions in between bits of news.
"Shut that dern radio off, Maggie," Mama said. "I can't stand all that news about the coloreds. All that stuff about using the public parks when their own is twice as good as what white folks got. And the Kennedys. John Kennedy this, and John Kennedy that. If the American people's stupid enough to elect a Catholic, we'll be takin' orders not from the President of the United States, but from the pope of Rome."
I flipped the dial, watching Mama out of the corner of my eye, thinking how she never took orders from anyone. She examined the thin squares of white endpaper, holding them reverently to the light. Next Mama rolled each strand of hair onto rollers that wiggled and squirmed in her hands like pink worms, fastening each to Gardenia's scalp with a pinch, a sigh, and an "Owwww, Mama! That hurts!"
When she had finished, Mama brushed out the curls, training them into separate ringlets around her bony fingers. Then she stood back, admiring her work. "Go get your camera now, Maggie," she said.
I struggled to open the camera, grateful for the film. I'd checked out a photography book from the Kinship Public Library to study how to take good pictures and to see how you loaded the film in case I ever got any. I'd been practicing with the camera, snapping pretend pictures, ever since Zeke had given it to me. I'd head out by the depot, composing the lines of railroad track through the viewfinder, noticing the way they disappeared at the horizon line. I'd head up to the feed mill, composing the piles of feed sacks through the lens, snapping imaginary pictures again and again.
I finished loading the film and closed the camera. I peered down into the viewfinder, focusing on Gardenia. Through the glass I saw that everything about Gardenia was small and delicate. Her clear white skin, filmy as the gauze from Daddy's sample case, stretched across the high bones of her cheeks. The blue lines of veins along her neck looked like underground streams, giving her a cool, fresh look. A bridge of light-brown freckles ran across the top of her cheeks, forcing your eye to travel back and forth between the two blue pools of her eyes. Her nose tilted up at the end, fragile as glass.
I felt my blood rush the way it did whenever I looked through a lens. "Hold still, Gardenia," I said. "Say, 'Cheese.' "
She moved at the last moment, the instant I tripped the shutter. She had scratched her nose, wrinkling it as she scratched.
I knew the image would be blurred.
My hand shook as I remembered the blurry images in my own mind and tried again.
"Hold still, angel," Mama said. Mama fluffed Gardenia's curls while I refocused. "Watch the birdie!"
The images came rushing back, black and white all mixed together like a double exposure. The patterns of light and dark swam up from last summer, and I concentrated on the images in the viewfinder, willing away the images in my own head.
As I tripped the shutter, I wondered why.
I asked, "Why?" all summer long. Why was I standing before this pile of dishes? Why was I in this stranger's house? Why did I have to live in a hateful place like Kinship, Georgia?
The dishes were the easiest to explain. I had always been good at cleaning. Mama said so herself, and Mama was always right.
What Mama had really said was "You ain't much to look at, Maggie. It's a good thing you can work." Mama gave a compliment the way she gave spankings. With the back of her hand.
The stranger was something different. Lord knows I needed the work. Mama stuck a card up at the Piggly Wiggly. Big Strong Girl Likes to Clean, Etc. EXMOOR 6281, it read. Mama even took some extra cards to her once-a-month canasta club. I hated the thought of being passed around like cookies.
But in the end it was Zeke who got me the job. I told Mama that her ad had worked, that a new couple over in Fenwick Acres needed someone to clean. She never knew Zeke was the one to get me the job.
Things had changed in Kinship this whole year, and it seemed most of the changes had something to do with Zeke. The change you noticed most, of course, was the way Zeke was hardly ever uptown. He'd been in the center of things there for as long as I could remember. He knew the number of drunks on Saturday night and the amount of the collection plate on Sunday morning. He knew the state of Martha Leonard's rheumatism and Waldo Rumple's gout. He knew which relations had come to town and which ones had got mad and left. He knew that if Alf Linderman had just made a move in the continuing checker game in front of the feed store by the time you left for the bank, then Ray Snowden would still be thinking over his next move by the time you got back. But even though Zeke knew everybody's business, he never let on about it unless you asked and he decided to tell. Zeke was different from Lucy Tibbs, Kinship's switchboard operator. She knew everybody's business and blabbed.
So naturally Zeke knew my daddy had lost his job and naturally I was pleased as punch at the chance to make some money, but, Lord, the job itself didn't sound so all-fired natural.
He spied me at Edmonia Jennings's tomato stand. Edmonia Jennings grew tomatoes every summer at the patch at the side of her house. She had dozens of bushes, and the red tomatoes and green vines all mixed up together put me in mind of Christmas. Once her tomatoes got ripe, Edmonia moved back and forth between the side yard and the front porch all summer long, growing and picking and selling her tomatoes in what struck me as a handy way to run a business. Mama sent me to buy some of Edmonia's tomatoes because they were always the best early tomatoes in Kinship. That plus Mama wouldn't be caught dead trading in person on the south side of town.
I was digging down into one of Edmonia's tomato baskets when I heard Zeke's voice. I'd know that voice in the dark. It was deep and trembly like a slide trombone. "Heard about your mama's ad, Maggie," he said. "Still need work?"
I stopped my digging and smiled up at Zeke, hoping my smile said it was sure fine to see him. "Sure do, Zeke," I said. "Work and money are the same things to Pughs, and I don't have either one."
I started rooting in the tomato basket again. Some of the tomatoes were still attached to fuzzy lengths of vine that felt like caterpillars when they brushed my fingers. I picked up a big firm tomato, pushing on it to feel how ripe it was.
"I think I can get you somethin', Maggie," Zeke said.
I stopped pushing on the tomato and looked at him. "Sure 'nough, Zeke?"
"But it's real special, Maggie. It's a job for a real special person."
"What do you mean by that, Zeke?"
"Well," Zeke said, looking around, waiting to finish until Edmonia had gone back into the house and the screen door made a little slap behind her. He began talking again when he saw that only Lewis Jennings, Edmonia's son, was left on the porch. Lewis was climbing on and off the front porch railing; after he tired of climbing, he began jumping off the porch onto the grass below. "It requires someone who can clean real good," Zeke said.
"That's me, for sure, Zeke," I said. "But being able to clean's not anything special."
"It's special to your employer, Maggie. But there's something more to this job than just cleanin'."
"How you mean, Zeke?"
"Well, you might have to deliver stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Oh, letters to the post office. Packages to me. Maybe a few things to Reverend Potter."
"Zeke," I said, "what's so special about that?" I had decided that the big tomato in my hand wasn't ripe enough. I bent back to the baskets. The tomatoes still gave off the sharp green smell of their vines.
"It's special to your employer, Maggie," he said again. "It's special to me."
"Well, Zeke," I said, "I can't see what's so special about cleaning up somebody's mess and taking a few things to the post office."
Zeke's big hand pulled a tomato from the basket next to mine. His entire palm closed around it. "I want you to listen to me, now, Maggie," he said, tilting his head in my direction. "The job requires cleanin' and deliverin' a few things. But that's not really what makes it special."
"What does, Zeke? What does make it special, then?" I wasn't understanding him.
"What makes it special, Maggie," he said, looking around again before he went on–Lewis had run next door and was throwing sticks at the neighbor's dog–"what makes it special," he said, "is that the job requires you to keep secrets."
"Secrets?" I asked. On the ground lay split tomatoes seeping juice.
Zeke grinned. "These secrets is so secret, I can't even tell you, Maggie. Best I can tell you is that for every question that might come to your mind, the right answer is 'Don't ask.' "
"Well, now, how to goodness can anybody in Kinship expect to keep anything a secret? You know that this is the nosiest place in the world."
"Sure is," Zeke said. "That's why I want you for the job."
"Me?"
Zeke nodded. "One thing I know, Maggie, is that Maggie Pugh knows when to talk and when to keep quiet. Been knowin' that for a long time now."
Inside I felt myself swelling up just a tiny bit. I knew Zeke was right. If there was anyone in Kinship who could keep a secret, it was me. After all, I'd been living with Mama for almost fourteen years.
I'd work two days a week, Zeke said. I'd get five dollars each time.
"What's the name of my employer?" I asked.
"Don't ask," Zeke said.
"What will the messages be about?" I asked.
"Don't ask," Zeke said.
"Why is this job so all-fired secret?" I asked. This time I gave a little stamp with my foot. "Zeke," I said, "something's fishy. Seems to me you're asking me to keep a secret when I don't even know what the secret is. So what is it I got to keep secret about, Zeke?"
"Don't ask," he said. Zeke looked at me and smiled. I smiled back, and then we both busted out laughing.