Tiny Dancer Page 7

  “Course she liked it,” said Dorothea, pressing her for an answer. “Best in town, right?” She laughed.

  I could not tell if Ratonda was the type woman to bring me into her confidence or throw me under the bus. One thing was certain though. She had not told her mother-in-law about Vesta’s refusal of Dorothy’s casserole. I appreciated her discretion. I pasted on a grin for Dorothea’s sake and said, “Maybe you could share your recipe.”

  “She will do that for you,” said Ratonda. “Mama Miller’s generous to a flaw. And your mother? Did she like it?” She rested on her elbows, her hands clasped in front of her like an arrow.

  “I think she wants your recipe, for sure,” I said, and then changed the subject.

  * * * * *

  Theo and Dorothea Miller had six children all told, Anton bringing up the rear as the youngest. He married Ratonda seven years earlier right after he had graduated the Friendship Community College. He had joined the army in officer’s training and was off overseas, Dorothea said, keeping watch over some soggy rice paddies, but a safe place.

  When a circle of women visitors seated on the back porch recollected memories about the preacher’s children, I eavesdropped like a June bug hiding on a table leg. Reverend Theo had come into their church as a young janitor until the pastor who founded the church took him under his wing, even funding his schooling. A woman named Rosetta remembered how he married the minister’s daughter, working so hard to prove himself to Dorothea’s daddy. It was one thing, she said, to study for the pulpit, but another to be so brash as to ask for the hand of the daughter of Reverend James Hildebrand. She never forgot how proud Reverend Hildebrand was the first time he laid eyes on his first great-grandson, Dorothea’s nephew. Calvin was such a big baby and then his sister that followed, Susan May or Baby Soomy, as she was nicknamed, was so tiny that she had to be moved into a special ward in the hospital, a protocol hard to arrange for the weakest colored babies. The maternity floor was split in two, white mothers on one side and black mothers on the other. Soomy’s mother had some kind of dishonor hanging over her. “Shame about the mother,” Rosetta said, but then changed the subject. “But how all of the Miller children fawned over their baby brother Anton! And didn’t he know it?” Rosetta went on and on. “He acted like the kingpin,” she said. “I can see him ordering soldiers round over in China, like he did his brothers and sisters.”

  “Not China,” said Dorothea, trying to say it was Laos, but Rosetta was off on a new story saying, “It don’t matter. I wouldn’t know China from the islands of Hawaya.”

  Each visitor showed up with a covered dish, a few who bore stringed instruments reserving their seats under the canopy of the pecan tree. I had not heard of some of the dishes such as crackling bread, jambalaya, Dixie chicken shortbread, Hopping John, spiced devil’s food cake, and None So Good Jelly Roll. Some of the guests were Latino and, I assumed, from the Cuban side of the family. One of the relatives brought in black beans and yellow rice, plus flan, a custard, she said, brushed shiny with egg white.

  Candle pails were lit down the perimeters of the lawn, and in a careful square around the sunflower forest. The garden looked like an Aztec temple, all golden and lit up. I tried hard not to think about Vesta staring across our backyard into the gleaming garden, her imagination running helter-skelter. My one consolation was that the sunflowers blocked Vesta’s view of me from her downstairs window.

  The sun was settling duskily, almost like the cicadas were set on edge by the fading light for the noise from the trees ratcheted up considerably. The pig was lifted out of the ground by two strong black men holding up the pole’s ends, carrying the smoked beast indoors for the women to divide and platter.

  A circle of boys set to pounding bongos. How I wished they would play less noisily. My innards were in turmoil over the loud percussion. Vesta would walk straight to the window and glare across the back lawn on account of the noise alone.

  I was introduced to a youth name of Whit Hildebrand who could have kept up with Billy Thornton on the bongos if the gift was measured in speed. I had not seen Billy play his drums since the day of the Irish festival.

  I quickly asked Dorothea to put me to work. I first lent a hand with the pineapple ham where I worked among the busy ladies slicing the butt portion with a butcher knife. I formed a fan of sliced ham festooned with radish rosettes that Ratonda carved expertly while I waited for my pan of rolls to brown.

  Soon the timer sounded and Dorothea pulled out the bread. “Don’t them rolls look nice, so nice?” she said smiling proudly at me. She chased the men out of the kitchen for pilfering from the smoked meat platter. But not before one of them made off with the pig’s head, a young man called Calvin Hildebrand, Dorothea’s nephew. Standing behind him, a youth called Jimmy Roy goaded him although the details of his scheme was garbled in boyish whispering.

  Finally Calvin displayed that pig’s head on a plate, dressing it with a baseball cap and calling it Jackie Robinson. His cousin Whit stuck a cigar in the pig’s open mouth. That was when his mama Rosetta smacked Whit upside the head. “Throw away that demon tobacco,” she said. He did.

  From that time on, everybody said they were so sorry to be eating poor old Jackie, but wasn’t he tasty?

  Some of the men conversed quietly, but I could hear them asking Reverend Theo about his injuries. He only whispered he would tell them later.

  A pan of sweet sauce rocked atop the back burner. Dorothea snapped off the burner and poured the sopping sauce into bowls, ordering all guests outdoors. The women set to work arranging their array of dishes all up and down the buffet tables. Then came the ginger cakes and the chocolate Indians. And didn’t the aroma make them all long to make the dessert the first course! I helped place the cakes on racks for cooling. I pulled the buttery frosting from the refrigerator, covering it with a cloth to keep out flies. Dorothea told me that setting it out allowed the icing to soften for spreading.

  I frosted the cakes and then joined the women on the porch, my dinner plate full. Yet there were selections I would have to return to sample since not all of them fit onto my oversized dinner dish. I was good to tell the women who had brought the dishes that I would not overlook a single offering and therefore offended none of them.

  Before I could take a seat,Rosetta got up and announced, “We have a first time bread dough chef in our midst. Time for a tasting.”

  All of the attention suddenly focused on my pan of rolls. Two ladies came outside through the kitchen, one holding the door open for the other who carried my bread pan with oven mitts. I blushed while the women made me stand to my feet.

  “First, let me be the judge,” said Rosetta, and all of the adults and children gasped like court had opened and my bread was on trial. She pinched the top of one of the rolls. It pinched softly and perfectly, she said. Then she took a sample bite. “Lordy, girl, you make bread just like—”

  I felt a shiver run through me for everyone fell silent. Dorothea sat open mouthed.

  “Nearly as good as me,” said Rosetta. Then she dropped a necklace over my head. “Flannery Curry, you may wear the honorary gold cross.”

  I did not react or act as if I had ever seen that heavy piece of jewelry until now. The women smiled effusively.

  “Time to butter your bread.” Dorothea’s voice jolted me back to the present. “But first a picture.”

  For a moment I could not remember how I got fused into the Miller’s festivities. I felt like I walked through a dream while one of the women slid two oven mitts onto my hands.

  She handed her camera to Rosetta and told her to take my picture with my first pan of rolls. The pan was slipped into my hands while Dorothea wiped her fingers with a dishtowel. Then she snapped on her bracelet and placed her hands on my shoulders. I smiled but glanced quickly at that bracelet. Resting on my shoulder was a gold charm in the shape of a cotton boll.

  All of the women clapped as if I had won the Miss America title. I forced a smile but my eyes misted. I
felt like a page pasted into my little sister’s story. But it was a story with whole missing parts, ones for which I knew no narrative.

  Rosetta’s son looked at the Polaroid snapshot and then handed it to me. There I stood, holding out my bread exactly like my little sister had done, except posing in my snapshot was Dorothea’s smiling face.

  The bread pan was shuffled off to the serving table and I was handed back my dinner plate. It was a beautiful big heavy plate.

  Ratonda told me right off the dinnerware was from her grandmother-in-law’s trunk she had brought from Cuba.

  “For my oldest granddaughter’s hope chest,” said Dorothea, “For when she gets married.” Charlotte beamed upon hearing the pronouncement.

  That set the older women to reminiscing when they were young and saved family heirlooms and practical things in a hope chest.

  The bellies were getting full and that got the musicians tuning up for a time of singing. They played some gospel tunes first out of respect, what with being in the home of a minister. They had always done it that way. But then I knew that was true because I had heard them from my window.

  Reverend Theo called out asking what time it was. The children shouted that it was time for the Story Chair. Several women wanted to take their turn first in the big blue wooden chair, all of it a curiosity to me. “First time is for our honored guest,” Rosetta insisted, offering the seat to me.

  “I don’t know how to play,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go last.” I blushed with all eyes fastened on me in such eager expectation.

  “Ladies, let’s not push her. It’s not actually a game,” said Reverend Theo explaining the chair’s purpose to me. “My daddy bought this chair off a woman who made potions down in a Louisiana swamp. He said the woman had cursed the chair, putting a spell on her enemies who she would lure to sit in the chair to tell her of their woes—and then laugh about it behind their backs, casting curses down on them using everything from a thread left behind or even a hair, anything she could pilfer without them knowing. But Daddy redeemed the chair, he said, for good.”

  I was skeptical about how a chair could be redeemed. I had heard tell of the redeemed in church when Daddy and I had attended with Vesta.

  “Now anyone who sits in this chair cannot help but spill out a story of something bad that has happened to them,” said Reverend Theo. “Then low and behold if good doesn’t follow them after that.”

  “I was healed,” said Rosetta. “Had a rash all up and down my backside the doctor could not cure. Now the whole thing dried up.”

  That set them all to chattering about Reverend Theo’s Story Chair.

  Dorothea rolled her eyes.

  “See if it doesn’t work,” said Rosetta. She pointed me toward the chair.

  I felt a knot in my stomach as if I had swallowed Jackie the Pig’s whole head. I could not tell this circle of strangers the worst thing that had happened to me, not without ruining the night for everyone. “Maybe next time,” I said, stepping away from the Story Chair.

  “All right then, ladies, next time—if she wants,” said Reverend Theo. He invited one of the children to take my place. Calvin Hildebrand’s little sister Soomy. Calvin teased her unmercifully calling her, “Baby Soomy.” He set off all the boy cousins. She stopped that nonsense right off and they all hushed up their teasing.

  Reverend Theo smiled sympathetically at me.

  While each of the guests oohed and moaned over Soomy’s tale of woe, I watched Reverend Theo. I tried to take my eyes off his bandage and black eye, but I could not take my thoughts off it. Vesta had not mentioned anything about what happened Tuesday. Matter of fact, she had completely shut up about the whole matter as if she had not ever been approached by Effie. From where I sat, I could see the corner of our shed and the barricade of sawhorses in silhouette.

  I inched away until everyone seemed to engage in the story Soomy told about a fight she had with her best friend Etta Jackson. I tucked my bread pan picture into my back pocket. Then I slipped off the porch where I sat relieved to be alone at the base of the giant cherry tree. The musicians had set down their instruments and gathered on the porch with the women and children. I sat in one of their empty folding chairs. It was the first time I noticed how the Miller’s cherry trees lined up right down the edge of the easement with our tree. It was as if a whole row of trees had all been planted there once in a grove. Funny, I thought, how a land joined for one purpose was now divided by the color of people’s skin.

  I finally enjoyed the slice of ginger cake, washing it down with sweet tea while I swallowed down the tears that had nearly erupted until Reverend Theo rescued me from being pulled into his Story Chair. I pondered my sister’s involvement with this mixed bag of people but kept it to myself.

  When the last song of the night was played, Reverend Theo stood and banged out a song on a tambourine. His nephew Calvin picked up a guitar while Cousin Whit joined them on the bongos. They played while the voices grew loud, burdens lifting off all present. I felt lighter having been in their company.

  Then I noticed my bedroom light flickered on and then went off, as if someone were searching the house for me. My cheeks hot for fear, I quickly got up and filled a plate of food and then carried it through the sunflower forest and across my family’s lawn hoping it would appease opinions about a group of folks I could neither judge nor hate.

  * * * * *

  Vesta had not come downstairs and that gave me a moment’s pause. I stowed my leftovers in the refrigerator. Then I drew the patio curtains closed as if hiding where I had been all day.

  I could hear the hard clomp of Daddy’s shoes as he trudged up the stairs. Vesta followed close behind. I dutifully poured Daddy his glass of bedtime milk and waited for him at the kitchen table. He took his time about coming back downstairs freshly smelling of Lava soap and wrapped in his tattered robe. “What you got for me, Sis?”

  I portioned out some of Dorothea’s ginger cake. He took the first bite with great enthusiasm as Vesta seldom baked except for Christmas and that from a mix. Then he looked up at me, his eyes reading the faintest traces of my thoughts as he had seemed to do as far back as I could remember. “You brought this from the colored’s house, I guess?” His lips thinned, the words barely seeping out except in a hoarse whisper.

  I felt all the flush drain from my face. “Vesta know?” I asked.

  “She thought you had gone off with Claudia and forgot to tell us. I never told her any different. Best she believed that. But you know you’re dallying where respectable people don’t dally, don’t you?” He pushed away the cake.

  When I fell quiet, he left a silence between us as heavy as bricks. I put away the salt and pepper mills left behind from their supper and the empty plate Vesta had left for me as I was expected for dinner. It took me a while to figure out the strange feeling in the pit of my stomach was only my habit of resisting the yoke of an awkward sense of guilt.

  “You must like the Millers,” said Daddy. “You were over at their place the whole day, weren’t you?”

  “I helped Dorothea with cooking. She taught me how to make bread rolls. I brought you some of them. Want to try one?”

  “Did you make this cake?”

  “No.”

  “If Vesta knew, she’d be of the opinion that you were over at the Millers to defy her. Or maybe, better said, to spite her.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know you’re not spiteful, Sis.” He said it with a bit of care. “Is that where you got that fancy necklace?”

  My hand rose, touching the medallion. I flinched. I wasn’t supposed to walk away with it.

  “You know how people talk.” He did not eat the bread or the cake, but pushed it all away. “I’d hate to hear my daughter lumped in with the lowlifes.”

  “But aren’t we?” For here we lived, the poorest among the richest.

  He laughed.

  “Really, Daddy.”

  “It’s the company they keep.”

/>   “You don’t know them, Daddy.”

  “I know. Can you just let me know next time you take off the whole day like that?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And let that be your last pass through the sunflower garden,” he said.

  I sat trying to think of every good thing I could say to convince him that the Millers were really not pagans. “Reverend Theo, he’s a preacher you know.”

  Daddy handed me his empty milk glass. “They’re not our kind. Besides, I might have been worried too had I not looked out your window and saw you with my own eyes.”

  “And now?” I poured him another glass.

  “Now you’ve had your curiosity satisfied. You’ve seen how the other side lives. It’s time to move on. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I won’t do it again,” I lied, but just a little. What I meant was that I wouldn’t be seen in plain sight in the company of the Millers. I wouldn’t let the neighbors know. I was confused by his worry over what others thought. We had lived out the Miller’s back door these past few years. It wasn’t as if they’d just moved in. They obviously knew all about us, and probably through Siobhan. Vesta had been so caught up in hiding out in a darkened living room that she had scarcely acknowledged my whereabouts anyway. I would not have been surprised if Vesta knew, but, like the day I came home with my hair dyed black, said nothing. Come to think of it, I was like a ghost in my own house. I had confessed more about myself to Reverend Theo and Dorothea than to my own family.

  “You know about Vesta’s barricade, trying to keep the Millers out,” I said.

  “Not any of your business or mine.” He sipped his milk in a hurry.

  “He registered to vote, though, didn’t he? Those men, they tried to stop him.”