Every time I entered Aunt Ruthie’s kitchen, I thought about the nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard,” whose cupboard, too, was bare.
As we helped seven-year-old Li’ John and six-year-old Virgil place food in the safe, Papa clucked his tongue. “Bible say a man who won’t take care o’ his own is worse than a infidel. Lord Jesus, help that man do better by his family.”
I also thought of how the Bible says that if a man didn’t work, he ought not to eat. Yet there was Papa, once again supplying that lazy man’s kitchen with food. But I quickly dismissed the thought when I looked into the eyes of Aunt Ruthie’s daughters, four-year-old Mary Lee and two-year-old Alice, staring hungrily at the bags of beans, as if they couldn’t wait to smell them simmering in a pot.
“Y’all set a spell,” Aunt Ruthie said when we went back to the front room. She shooed all the children, even the baby, who had just begun to crawl, outside to play on the front porch. I prayed that they didn’t get struck by lightning, seeing how the house was surrounded by all those trees.
While Ma Pearl’s house was furnished with Mrs. Robinson’s halfway decent castoffs, Aunt Ruthie’s house was furnished with whatever anybody else in the family could’ve easily burned as rubbish in their backyards. That day, I made a promise to myself that when I found my way out of Mississippi and got an education and a job, I would buy Aunt Ruthie a house, just like I planned to buy one for Papa. I would fill her house with beautiful brand-new furniture and fill her kitchen with so much food that she would feel like she lived in a store.
Aunt Ruthie settled her skinny self down on a brown chair that had been thrown out by Aunt Clara Jean and turned to me, saying, “I bet you miss your mama.”
I swallowed the truth. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Anna Mae sho’ is lucky,” Aunt Ruthie said. “Always has been,” she added, sighing.
“How the chi’ren?” Papa asked.
“They fine, Papa,” said Aunt Ruthie. “You hear how they out there runnin’ round that porch makin’ all that racket.”
“Um-hmm,” Papa said, nodding, staring toward the wide window that overlooked the porch.
Even with hungry bellies, Aunt Ruthie’s children could smile. Their daddy might have been a trifling drunk, but their mama was always there. Always caring. Always loving them with everything she had.
“Ready for school?” Aunt Ruthie asked me.
I looked at Papa, then I replied tersely, “I won’t be going to school next week.”
“You won’t?” Aunt Ruthie asked, her brow furrowed.
Just thinking about school made a lump rise in my throat. I shook my head because I couldn’t answer.
“How come?” she asked.
This time Papa spoke for me. “Rose is needed at the house. I’m shawt on help for the pickin’, and Pearl gittin’ to the point where she need mo’ help too.”
“This jest till the harvest in, like we used to do, right?” Aunt Ruthie asked. “She goin’ back in November, ain’t she?”
When Papa shook his head and said no, I felt like fainting.
Aunt Ruthie grimaced and said, “You go’n take Rose outta school, as smart as she is?”
Papa sighed, but he didn’t answer Aunt Ruthie, just like he wouldn’t answer me. Instead, just like he had done when he questioned Mr. Pete on the day they left for Chicago, he crossed his right leg over his left knee, removed his pipe and Prince Albert tobacco from his shirt pocket, filled the pipe, and placed it between his lips. He puffed, even though there was no smoke, while Aunt Ruthie and I regarded him with the same curiosity with which he had regarded Mr. Pete when Mr. Pete had made a decision others could not seem to comprehend.
Chapter Twenty-One
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
I DOUBTED THERE WAS A NEGRO IN STILLWATER, other than Slow John, who wasn’t in church that morning. Even Uncle Ollie came. And Aunt Ruthie, which was rare. She and her children huddled in the last row of the church, near the window. Aunt Ruthie once told me that she didn’t like church, because when they came, folks stared at them as if they didn’t belong. I stopped staring when I realized I was acting like one of those folks.
I snapped to attention and stopped glancing around being nosy when Miss Doll belted out, “‘Je-e-e-sus, keep—?me neeear thy cross. There a pre—?cious foun-n-n-tain. Free to all a he-e-ealin’ stream—?flows from Cav—?re-e-e’s moun-n-n-tain.’”
The congregation joined in. “‘In the cross . . . in the cross . . . be my glo-o-o-ree-e-e evu-u-uh. Till my rap-tured soul shall find . . . rest . . . beyond . . . the ri-i-i-ver.’”