Eating Memories (34 page)

“I don’t know. Whatever you like.”

With a crinkling of paper, she opened it. There was a teddy bear. As if winter had invaded the close, protected room, she began to tremble.

“I tore yours to pieces once,” he said as if he were discussing a game of tennis.

The bear was white and soft. It had anonymous blue button eyes just like her father’s. “I’m forty-three years old, Daddy. It’s a little late to be making restitution for a toy.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. She supposed he would never feel anything much again.

She looked at him closely. “Are you sure you can do this, Daddy? Mediate out-of-planet disputes? Do you think you can really manage?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That was the part they left me.” He picked up the empty package and crushed it. His hands were still strong. They’d left that with him, too. “Come. I’ll give you some flowers.”

In the sultry heat of the greenhouse he cut red roses and fleshy, yellow orchids. His fingers were deft and tender. “For your mother,” he said when he was finished, and put them in her hands.

An unfinished business, even the roses, had an ending. The world held its breath as everything toppled into place.

The bear cradled in her arms, she stood watching the snow beat small, soft fists against the window. “Daddy,” she said.

He was staring out into the snow beyond the glass, his face in repose. The dying always find a sort of peace.

“Why did you really invite me?” she asked.

For a moment she thought he was not going to turn. His eyes followed the drift of the snow. Finally he blinked as if the chip had told him to act. He pivoted suddenly toward her and, forgetting her training, she ducked her head down between her protective shoulders.

It didn’t seem that he had noticed her automatic, inevitable reaction. The small smile on his face never dimmed.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said.

Author’s Note:
“White Boy” is a very early story, I believe either the second or third story that was accepted for publication. If you’re a determined writer, you don’t much care if you get paid for stuff. Colgate University’s student group who puts out
The Mage
paid only in contributor copies; but, still, it gave me another story to refer to in my numerous cover letters, and because it was Colgate University, the mention was prestigious. They put out a good-looking magazine, too.

The white boy came out of the woods and stood in the silver noonday winter sunlight, staring towards the house. Leticia first thought he might be an hallucination. Then she figured he might be an angel. Since he didn’t disappear, and since he shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other—his attitude that of a deer about to run—she felt a squeeze of hope in her chest.

“Hey!” she called, stepping out of her cabin door. His eyes, dark patches of shadow on his face, found hers. They would, she decided before he was even close enough for her to distinguish his features, have to be periwinkle blue. He was that kind of white boy.

He came toward her, his arms swinging easily at his sides, walking something like Jimmy used to walk when he had been alive, only Jimmy had moved looser, more like a cat. The white boy moved like a good horse, all clean lines and bunched muscles. By the time he reached the porch, she could see the pink flush high on his cheeks. “What you doing here, boy?” she asked him sharp-like, not because she meant to scare him away, but because that was the way she always spoke to youngsters. Jimmy and his friends had liked it. She’d speak with that brass in her voice and, because she was so small and frail, Jimmy’s friends would hoot and fall all over themselves, opening up lips to blind her with their smiles.

The white boy, still grinning, shrugged.

“Cain’t you talk?” she asked.

He looked surprised. His eyes, just the color she thought they’d be, opened wide. “Yes.”

“Then what you doing here?”

He shrugged again. He was shy like a lot of boys used to be.

“You got parents, boy?”

“No, ma’m,” he said in a soft, nasal tenor.

Leticia felt a rush of sorrow for him. He must have been wandering the woods a long time. “Then you help me with the chores and I’ll fix you a good, sit-down dinner.”

“Yes, ma’m.” He was eager and clumsy as a young dog. “I’ll help you.”

She looked pointedly from one of his grimy hands to the other. “Ain’t you got no gear?”

“Gear?” he asked, sort of stupid.

“Extry clothes. Things like that.”

“Oh. No, ma’m.”

She nodded slowly. “You about Jimmy’s size. You chop me some kindling and I’ll fix you up.”

“Fix me?”

“Give you some extry clothes. Them’s about worn out.”

He looked so pleased that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Thank you, ma’m. Show me what you want me to do.”

She showed him where the axe and the wood were. “Gotta get it in splinters, see,” she said, holding up a precious piece of kindling she’d chopped the day, before. “So it’ll” go in the stove.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

Leticia left him studying the axe. As she walked toward the cabin she played with her menu. Fried chicken. It’d been a long time since she’d fried a chicken.

At the door she turned. Her heart went into palpitations. Her hands flew to her face. “No! God Almighty! Stop that, boy!”

The white boy paused with the axe suspended in the air and looked at her.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, stalking back across the yard as fast as her arthritic feet could carry her. “Sweet Jesus. Ain’t nobody showed you yet how to chop wood?”

She took the axe from his hands. “Get your legs apart. That’s it. That’s right. Now. Bring the axe up over your head.” She pushed his body into the right stance. “Now bring it down.”

Chips of fragrant wood flew as the axe embedded itself into the trunk.

“Okay. You just go on and get me a kindling pile going, hear? Keep your legs and feet outten the way.” She started to walk off, but stopped. “Hey, boy?”

He glanced up. His face was gold and pink as the inside of a sea shell. “You got a name?”

He grinned. “Bobby.”

While Bobby chopped wood, Leticia rustled around in the tall grass, for the speckled chickens’ eggs. She found six, enough for a pound cake. She didn’t know many white boys, but she never knew a boy that didn’t like sweets.

Going to the hoard of staples Jimmy had put up for her before the war, she measured out her sugar and flour. She started her batter, humming as she went. It had been along time since she’d had company. A long time since she’d had anyone to do for.

When Bobby had chopped enough wood, she showed him how to set the fire. “”Put some water on, and I’ll make us some grits,” she told him.

The boy looked confused.

“Go on. You’ll like grits, boy, if you ain’t never had any.” She turned her back to him.

“Put water on where?” he asked.

“God Almighty! On the stove, boy. You slow, or what?” She was immediately sorry she’ d said it. There was a sort of painful innocence in his face, the kind that spoke of ignorance. She lowered her voice and showed him the pan. “Here. Put it in this. About up to here.”

Ashamed to look at him, afraid she’d hurt his feelings, she turned away. A moment later his voice came quietly to her back. “I’m not slow. Not really. You have to show me the first time. The next time I’ll do it right.”

“That’s all right, son,” she said just as quiet. “I’ll be sure and show you real good.”

When she had dinner on, she showed him where the shower was and how to pump the water out of the well. She gave him some of Jimmy’s clothes and then she stood outside the bathroom for a while, just listening to the water splash and the breathy sound of his private singing. He was singing some old rock and roll number she’d never heard, and when he la-da-dad through some part of the words he didn’t know, he laughed at himself in a sound silver as the day .

Just about the time she was putting dinner on, he came out in a pair of jeans and a Polo shirt she’d given Jimmy for Christmas. A sob stuck itself in her throat. “You look just fine,” she told him.

He glanced down at himself.

“Sit down,” she told him, and he did.

He didn’t eat.

“Eat up, Bobby,” she said a little spitefully. “Black folk’s food ain’t gonna turn your skin dark.”

“Yes, ma’m. I know.”

“Then why don’t you eat?”

“I can’t.”

“You sitting your ass in a black woman’s chair, you in a black folk’s kitchen, and you telling me you cain’t eat black folk’s food?” Leticia felt resentment burning her belly. “I use up some of my sugar, I use up some of my grits. Ain’t like I can go to the store and buy more. So you just close you eyes, pretend you in a white folk’s house, and you eat so’s you don’t die of hunger. I pays you back for chopping my wood. Then, if you ain’t happy here, you can go.”

Bobby stared down into his plate for a long time. “I don’t want to go,” he said.

“Uh-huh. You gonna look real stupid staying here turning into a skeleton on me.”

“’The people I was staying with,” he said without looking up, “they did.”

“Did what?”

“Turn into skeletons. Eventually.”

Leticia’s fork dropped to her plate, making a sound like a nervous bell.

He glanced at her. There was an ache in the blue eyes, a sort of pain she’d never seen before in a white person. To Leticia, all white folk’s grief was like that she used to find in Ann Landers—silly stuff. Nothing like wondering where your next meal was coming from, nothing like having a husband murdered. Bobby’s pain seemed real. A lot of things had changed after the war.

“When the lights went out and we couldn’t get television anymore, they started to get sick,” he said.

Her dark, calloused hand moved unconsciously over his pale one. With his free hand, he covered his face. His broad, brave shoulders shook.

“I wanted to help them,” he said in a voice so thick and soggy she could hardly understand the words.

“Know you must have, son.”

His hand fell, inert, to the table. “And sometimes they’d say, ‘Bobby, fetch water.’ Sometimes they’d say, ‘Bobby, get the aspirin.’ Then they got too sick to ask anything. It made me feel strange. I went to get help, but, everyone else in town was sick, too. Then Tommy’s mother, Elaine, wasn’t moving anymore, so I held Tommy’s hand like Elaine had done with the others. See? I learn by watching. But after a while he stopped moving, too, sort of like all the lights had gone out in him. He wasn’t just asleep, either. I waited a long time to see.”

“They die, son,” she, told him. “After the bombs a lot of people done.”

“Died? Like Cinnamon did when the car hit her?”

“Like Cinnamon done, I reckon.”

“I never realized people could do that. They never told me. I’ve learned something. Thank you.”

“Why ain’t you sick?”

“I don’t know,” he told her.

She got up slowly from the table, something prickling at her mind.

He must have noticed the look on her face. “Ma’m?” he asked.

“Why ain’t you sick?”

He got up quietly and came to her. She could feel his arm, around her, and she could smell Jimmy’s scent trapped in the weave of his shirt.

“I’m not very smart, but I learn quick. The Harrison’s had me for five years, and I learned to cook and clean and take care of the children.”

“You’re a robot.”

He didn’t answer. His arm wasn’t warm like it should have been. There was no smell to him, nothing good, nothing bad. In a moment she shrugged out from underneath his cold arm and went to the back for a good cry. When she wandered into the kitchen a half hour later, the robot had lit the lamps and was washing the dishes. The table had been cleared.

“What you think you’re doing?” she asked in a hard, angry voice.

There was the tender simplicity of a child in his face. “Cleaning for you. I’m a household unit.”

“You get your ass out of my kitchen.” Leticia grabbed a plate out of his hands.

“But I want to help. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt right.”

“You a rich white folk’s play-toy, robot. Don’t need you round a place like this.”

“There’s work to do.” There was a note of pleading in his voice. “I’ll chop wood now that I know how. I’ll cook. I already know how to dust and sweep.”

“Don’t need me no day-help.”

Instead of leaving, the boy sat down in a chair and watched her. “You said you’d fix me.”

“Listen. I been waiting on men all my life. Had me a boy and three husbands, and the husbands was worst than that child for waiting on. Don’t need nobody to do for me. Especially something that ain’t even human.”

Bobby left that night, packing the grip she’d given him. The next morning she woke up and found a waist-high stack of kindling in the yard.

“Hey!” Leticia shouted. Her voice echoed on the dark wall of the woods. “Hey, you! Robot!”

He stepped out of the forest, his thatch of yellow hair aflame in the sun. Walking out to the edge of the old okra field, he stood among the dry, brown stalks. The snow had burned away, leaving little icy drifts at the boles of the trees.

“You get away, hear? You get on, find yourself somebody else to live with.”

“There is no one else!” he shouted back to her, apparently afraid to come to closer. It looked as if the robot had learned something of human anger.

“Must be someone somewhere. You go on and find ’em.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Yes, you can. You get your metal ass away from this house. Don’t want to see your white face no ways. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said.

The next night it snowed. She found his footsteps that morning in the ground around the porch. He’d cleared the steps of ice and had brought the wood closer so she could reach it easy. That day she didn’t shout anything to him.

Two days later he was back, leading a scruffy dog.

“Thought I told you I didn’t want to see your face,” Leticia said.

He shrugged like a kid would.

“Sure is an ugly dog you got.”

“Yes, ma’m. Thought you might want it.”

Her hands played in the tuck of her apron. “Why’d I want an ugly dog like that?”

“You had a dog once.”

“How’d you know that?”

He pointed toward the ruins of King’s doghouse. “Cinnamon had one, too. Before she was run over.”

“Yeah, well, what in the world I gonna to do with a dog, robot? Don’t want no dog.”

Nodding, he started back into the woods, calling the dog to him. It pranced up to his legs, its tail wagging.

“Hey!” she called.

He turned around.

“Where’d you get that ugly dog?”

“He came up to me when I was in the woods. He must have caught the scent of your son on the clothes. I think he’s lonely. And probably hungry.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well, bring him round back. I’ll give him something to eat. No use having a hungry dog like that round. He’ll eat the chickens.”

“Yes, ma’m,” Bobby said politely.

“They ain’t many houses round here. Dog must have come a long ways.” She watched the animal tear into a plate of bacon rind and potatoes. He’d be a pretty dog, Leticia realized, if he’d get some meat on his bones. He seemed to like the robot, because he even let the robot pet him while he was eating