The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Chapter 31





The second round of chemo with the new drugs gave me an even fiercer ass-whupping than the first round. To make matters worse, in

May the great love of my life deserted me. It wasn’t James. It was food that left me. I woke up one morning with a sour taste in

my mouth that wouldn’t be scrubbed away with a toothbrush or rinsed out with mouthwash. Worse than that, nearly everything I ate

tasted like tin. And what didn’t taste like tin, I couldn’t keep down.

Mama and Mrs. Roosevelt greeted me when I came into the kitchen. That morning’s breakfast was a cup of watered-down coffee—my

stomach wouldn’t take full-strength anymore—and a small bowl of oatmeal that I couldn’t persuade myself to eat.

For the first time in my life, my doctor was concerned that I was losing too much weight too quickly. I wasn’t skinny by any

stretch of the imagination, but I had lost several more pounds in a short period of time and I didn’t see any way I was going to

slow down the weight loss. Food and I just weren’t getting along.

When I gave up on my oatmeal and rose from my chair at the kitchen table to toss the remainder away, Mama said, “You know what

you need? You need some herb.”

“What?” I asked.

“Herb. Marijuana, ganja, buda, Tijuana tea, pot, bud, skunkweed, giggleweed, wacky tobacky, kif, reefer.”

“Stop showing off. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever you wanna call it, that’s what you need,” Mama said. “It’ll fix that appetite of yours right up.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d been thinking the same thing for a few weeks. I’d been on the computer researching it when

James wasn’t around, and I’d been thinking maybe medical marijuana might be the thing to get me back on track. Unfortunately, I

didn’t live in a state where I could get it legally.

I said, “You may be right, Mama, but it’s not like I can go to the drugstore and order some. And please don’t tell me to go

over to the campus and hang around at the frat houses. We both know where that leads.”

“Scaredy-cat. I thought you weren’t supposed to be afraid of nothin’,” Mama teased.

I wasn’t going to be baited that easily. “I mean it, Mama. James has had enough to deal with lately. I’m not about to get

arrested and add to it.”

Mama let out an exaggerated sigh. “I won’t get you arrested, Miss Priss. Get dressed and come on with me.”

Once we were in the car, Mama guided me along the familiar route from my house to her and Daddy’s old place in Leaning Tree. She

instructed me to park the car on the street, rather than in the driveway, and follow her around to the back. She led me and Mrs.

Roosevelt behind the house and toward what remained of her once-magnificent garden. It had been a damp spring and my feet sank

into the wet ground as we walked. I could hear Clarice playing the piano inside and I was thankful that she was occupied. I

certainly didn’t want her to see me sneaking through the yard and ask me what I was doing: “Oh, hey, Clarice, my dead mama,

Eleanor Roosevelt, and me were just heading out back to fetch some marijuana.”

We stepped onto the cobblestone garden path and passed the gazebo. It was already green with clematis and honeysuckle vines,

though they hadn’t bloomed yet. We passed the roses and alliums and walked through the vegetable garden, which was untended and

going wild that season. I hacked with my forearms at the tall reed grass and miscanthus Mama had grown at the back of her garden

to keep prying eyes from spotting the illegal crop that James and I had pretended not to know about. A sad thought came to me then

that brought our entire journey into question.

With as much gentleness as I could muster, considering I was panting with exhaustion by then, I said, “Mama, you do realize that

you’ve been gone for a long time now and nobody’s taken care of your special plants in years. I don’t think we’re gonna find

anything still growing back there.”

“Hush,” she said. “We ain’t goin’ there.” We trudged on several more yards and then turned. Ahead of us was an old tool shed

that I’d forgotten all about. It was a short structure, more the height of a child’s playhouse than a work shed. But Daddy had

been a small man and he had made this shed for himself. It made me happy to see that it still stood and that, even though the

vestiges of its white paint were long gone, leaving the bleached pine boards exposed, it looked solid. My daddy built things to

last.

Mama instructed me to open the door of the shed. It took some effort because, although only a sliding wood bolt kept the door

shut, reed grass and honeysuckle—which would smell divine in a month, but was now just an invasive pest—had nearly swallowed the

building. I yanked repeatedly at the door until it opened just wide enough for me to squeeze inside.

We entered the shed to the rustling sound of small creatures scurrying for cover. Mama said, “Over there,” pointing at the back

wall.

I climbed over an ancient push mower and a rusted tiller, and then stood staring at the wall. All I saw were cobwebs, mouse

droppings, and corroded garden tools hanging from a pegboard. I asked Mama what exactly I was looking for and she said, “Just

slide that board over to the left and you’ll see.”

I curled my fingers around the edge of the pegboard and gave it a vigorous shove. I didn’t need to try so hard, as it turned out.

The board slid over on its metal track so easily you’d have thought it had been oiled that very day. Behind it, I saw an old

plastic spice rack that was screwed into the wall. In the cubbyholes of the rack were small glass jars, each of them filled with

brownish leaves and labeled in Mama’s neat, loopy handwriting with a name and a date.

I picked up random jars and read the labels: “Jamaican Red–1997,” “Kentucky Skunk/Thai Stick Hybrid–1999,” “Kona–1998,”

“Sinsemilla–1996.” There were around two dozen of them.

I reached for a jar that read “Maui Surprise,” and Mama said, “Oh no, no, honey, put that one back. That Maui’ll blow the top

of your head clean off. We’ll start you off with somethin’ tamer.” She pointed an index finger at a jar in the lower right-hand

corner of the rack and I pulled it out.

“Soother–1998,” I read aloud from the jar. “They’re all kind of old. You think they’ll still be good?”

“Trust me. An hour from now you’ll wanna kill anybody standing between you and a bag of pork rinds.”

I slipped the jar into my pocket and was about to slide the pegboard back in place when Mama stopped me. “Wait a minute. We need

that and that.” She gestured toward a small shelf below the rack. On the shelf, I found rolling papers and a box of wooden

matches. I grabbed them, covered Mama’s secret stash with the sliding pegboard, and left the shed.

Mama suggested that I take my herbal cure in the gazebo, but I had another idea. I stomped through more reeds and climbed the hill

at the back end of the property. I stopped when we stood beneath the sycamore tree where I was born fifty-five years earlier.

Mama and I sat on the cool ground and rested our backs against the tree. Mrs. Roosevelt, who seemed to have been energized by our

walk in the spring air, spun in a circle like Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music, and then did some cartwheels.

Mama said, “Pay her no mind. If she gets your attention she’ll never stop.”

When I opened the jar, the vacuum seal broke with a noise that sounded like someone blowing a kiss. I lifted it to my nose and

inhaled. It smelled like rich soil and newly cut hay, with a dash of skunk spray laid on top. It was as fresh as if it had been

picked that day. Mama might not have been able to cook worth a damn, but she sure as hell knew how to can.

Mama started in instructing me. “What you need to do is grab ahold of one of the bigger buds and roll it between your fingers to

get the seeds and stems out. Then—”

I interrupted her. “Mama, I think I watched you do this enough times over the years to figure it out.” Then I began to roll the

first joint I’d rolled in my life.

To my embarrassment, it turned out to be a lot harder to do than I’d imagined. Mama had to guide me through the entire process.

It was made worse by the fact that the papers were so old that they cracked whenever I bent them, and the saliva-activated

adhesive refused to activate. But I finally produced a functional cigarette. The old sulfur matches worked just fine, and soon

enough I found myself inhaling the sweet, pungent fumes of Mama’s Soother.

I had never smoked marijuana before and had only smoked tobacco once in high school, when Clarice and I had proclaimed ourselves

bad girls for a day and each coughed our way through a quarter of a cigarette before giving up. But in ten minutes that tinny

taste in my mouth was fading away, and I was starting to feel pretty damn good. I had to hand it to Mama: she had named the

Soother just right.

I looked up at the leaves of the tree. They were still the pale green of spring, and they shivered in the breeze against the

background of the blue sky.

“Beautiful,” I said. “It looks like a painting. You know, Mama, I think it’s all like a painting.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Life. It’s like you’re filling in a little bit more of a picture every day. You stroke on color after color,

trying to make it as pretty as you can before you reach the edge of your canvas. And if you’re lucky enough that your mama had

you in a sycamore tree, maybe your hand won’t shake with fear too bad when you see that your brush is right up against the frame.

”

Mama said, “You’re stoned.”

“Maybe, but I think this is the loveliest spot on my canvas. When the end comes, I think this is where I’d like to be. Right

back here where I started out,” I said.

“I don’t like to hear you talk like that. Makes me think you’re givin’ up. You probably won’t have to think about dyin’ for

a long time.”

Mrs. Roosevelt, who now knelt beside me after tiring of turning cartwheels, shook her head and frowned as if to say “Your mother

may think you’ve got time, but I say you’re a goner.” Then with the grace of a jungle cat, Eleanor Roosevelt hitched up her

skirt and scrambled up the trunk of the sycamore and into its branches until she was nearly at the top of the tree. She put a

satin-gloved hand up to her brow to block out glare from the sun and proceeded to scan the horizon—looking for mischief to get

into, no doubt.

I said, “I don’t dwell on it, or anything. But when I think about it, this is always the place that comes to mind when I imagine

the end. I like the idea of making this big ol’ jumble of a life into a nice, neat circle.”

Mama nodded and looked up at the sky with me.

I don’t know how long we sat under the sycamore staring up at the passing clouds, but I called a halt to it when my behind

started to go numb and the damp of the ground began seeping through my hose. I pushed myself up, using the tree trunk for

leverage. After I straightened and stretched, I brushed the dirt from my rear end and said, “Well, I guess we’d better head on

home.”

Mama and I—Mrs. Roosevelt chose to stay up in the tree—began to walk back through the garden. My first few steps on the soft,

uneven ground were not too steady. Mama commented, “I think your nerves might be a little too soothed for you to drive right now.

Let’s go sit in the gazebo for a spell.” I agreed, and we walked back toward the house.

The open side of the six-sided gazebo faced the rear of the house, so we couldn’t see into it as we approached it from the back.

Even from the front, it was impossible to make out more than a narrow slice of the dim interior from outside. So we had no way of

knowing who was inside when we heard the unmistakable sounds of lovemaking—a man’s low grunts, a woman’s sighs—emanating from

the gazebo as we came closer to it.

Mama said, “Sounds like Clarice and Richmond are gettin’ along better these days.”

I turned away from the gazebo and walked as fast as I could toward the house and the driveway that led back to the street. I was

even less eager to come across Clarice and Richmond in this situation than I was for Clarice to catch me foraging for marijuana.

I had just about made it to the driveway when I heard the back door of the house open and then heard the sound of Clarice’s

voice. She called out, “Odette! Glad you came by. I was just going to call you to ask you over for lunch.”

Confused, I looked back at the garden. Clarice followed my gaze and then we both heard muffled voices. A head stuck out from the

entrance of the gazebo and looked back at us. Clarice came and stood beside me and we watched a young man come in and out of view

inside the gazebo as he hopped from one side of the structure to the other, struggling ungracefully to get back into his drawers.

The young man was Clifton Abrams, the fiancé of Clarice’s cousin Sharon.

Mama shook her head with pity as she watched Clifton hurry to cover his nakedness. Holding up her thumb and forefinger spaced

about two inches apart, she said, “Poor boy has the curse of the Abrams men. Did you notice?”

A woman’s head popped out and peered at us, then receded into the shadows. We heard more shuffling as the two of them bumped

around, climbing into their clothes. The young woman was not Sharon.

I glanced at Clarice, wondering, but not saying, Who the hell is she?

Clarice read my mind. “Her name is Cherokee.”

“Like the Indian tribe?”

“No, like the Jeep. Come on in and I’ll tell you all about her. I’ve got some leftover turkey breast. You hungry?”

My stomach growled at the mention of roast turkey and I was surprised that I was able to honestly answer, “Yes, as a matter of

fact, I am hungry.”

We left the garden and strolled back toward the house. Mama came along, saying, “Told you your mama knew how to fix up that

appetite.” With that, the three of us stepped together through the back door of Mama’s old house.