Clara knelt in the yard, pulling weeds that sprang up between the collard plants growing on the side of her house. She pushed a stone away and jumped to her feet when a small grass snake, no bigger than a good-sized worm, slithered away, seeking cover.
“Shit!” she spat. “Lord, I know they work for you, but can’t they do business somewhere else?” she asked.
Although a few days shy of her 60th birthday with a touch of rheumatism at work on her joints, a tiny snake could still make her move like a twenty-year old. She hated them and in truth didn’t care much for gardening, but poking around in dirt usually eased her mind when troubled. Sometimes she would go to the family plot, armed with rake and hoe, to cut back tough grass from headstones and markers, but more often, this patch of earth, beneath her kitchen window was where she worked out problems. She grew the collard greens she loved because nothing tasted better than homegrown after a frost. Smoked knuckles rested in the icebox, waiting patiently to season the broad green leaves.
“Hey Auntie,” Perry, her sister’s baby boy called, hopping the waist-high picket fence.
“Boy, get over here and give your old auntie some sugar,” she smiled.
“You ain’t old, girl,” he said stooping to kiss her. Clara wasn’t short, but he stood a full head taller and was skinny as a rail. If she hadn’t seen him clean a plate she would swear he didn’t eat.
“When you going back to school?” she asked.
“Next week,” he replied.
“Well, you should be on your job, making that money.” she teased, bending to pull a weed.
“I’m on my way, but we need to talk.” The change in his tone let Clara know something wasn’t right. She stood up and looked in his face. A furrowed brow and moist eyes told her it was something she didn’t want to hear.
“You should probably sit down,” he said, confirming what she suspected.
“No, baby, I’m alright,” she declined, bending again to poke around where there were no weeds. “You just say what’s on your mind.”
“Lena is pregnant,” he said so quickly, it sounded like one word.
Without warning, the ground began to rise. Perry caught her before it slapped her face.
Clara loved her nephews. She’d been secretly jealous of Clothilde and Deke for having boys while all she seemed to produce were girls, five of them. Those heifers had turned every hair on her head silver gray and left creases on her ebony face from torment. Even her big brown eyes had lost some sparkle. There was no rest; always a head to comb, dress tail to hem or dispute to settle. Girls could be so mean. Clara was convinced raising boys must be a joy, especially since her sister, though five years older showed no sign of age. There must be so much less to do. Boys don’t require as much care and attention. They’re content with a patch of dirt and a ball to toss around. You just have to make sure they don’t mess over someone’s daughter.
Clothilde was openly envious of Clara for having girls. Her nieces were little dolls. She was always making one or the other a dress on the old Singer and loved when Clara let her loose on those heads. They would leave her kitchen with more ribbon than a may pole and a single pink sponge roller to curl the bang. She felt cursed because God hadn’t given her a daughter and vowed not to rest until she got one. Always true to her word, at 48, after birthing seven boys, her womb produced a female. She was dead before they could place the screaming infant in her arms.
“Well Clo, You got your wish,” Clara told her sister’s corpse. “Now you can rest.” Cradling the sleeping infant, she moved away from the casket, looking over at her heartbroken brother-in-law and nephews. When the undertaker closed the coffin, Perry collapsed on the church floor. At the cemetery they all fell to pieces.
“Auntie!” Perry called from someplace far off. Opening her eyes she recognized her screen porch, where she was resting on Mrs. Grossman’s divan. It was really just a daybed, but the lady she cleaned for insisted on fancy names for everything. The cool, damp cloth on her forehead could not soothe her pounding head. She was about to ask what happened when she remembered.
“Pregnant?” She tried to rise, but could only lift her head, which fell back, pressed by the weight of sorrow, confusion and disbelief. Lena was her baby. Her others were daddy’s girls, not Lena. She was always up under Clara’s dress tail. The rest went running when Sam’s foot hit the back stoop, not Lena. She had been Clara’s shadow. Her baby couldn’t be having a baby.
“Are you sure,” she asked but already knew. He wouldn’t have told her if he wasn’t.
“I’m sure, Auntie,” he said. “Sister let it slip.”
Closing her eyes, Clara’s face turned to the wall.
When Clothilde died, her boys wanted no part of the baby girl they claimed killed their mama. Deke wouldn’t even look at her. Two weeks from her birth and five days from her mother going in the ground, the child remained nameless. She was simply Baby Girl. Clara waited another five days and called them all to her kitchen.
“Clothilde wanted this child little girl so much. I imagine she’s offended y’all don’t.”
The boys looked sheepishly to the floor. Deke stared blankly into a cup of black coffee. Clara held the sleeping baby so they could see her face.
“I hoped y’all would warm to this child. That’s why I kept her this long, but you don’t seem to want what Clothilde prayed for.” She lapsed into the lie she practiced. “I called the children’s home for them to pick her up this afternoon. Since you didn’t have a chance to say good bye to your mother, you can say it to this baby.” Clara placed the little girl in Deke’s arms and left the room.
She sat on her porch and waited with no intention of sending the child away. Family stays with family. She and Sam were prepared to raise her, but Clara felt she could shame Deke and the boys into caring. She was right. They left her house, fighting for turns to carry the baby Deke named Elma, but the boys called Sister.
One would have thought she was a piece of Jesus. Deke worked like a dog to give the child any and everything she wanted. The boys became nearly invisible, unless he needed them to do something for his little girl. Her brothers were no less attentive. If she pointed at a thing, they got it for her. As the older boys grew and left home; Lil’ Deke to teachers college, Roy and Ray to the Army and Marvin to the juvenile home, the younger ones stepped up to spoil Sister. At five she was so rotten, nobody but them could stand her. That same year Deke died, leaving 15-year-old Perry to raise Elma.
Clara helped where she could by making clothes, dressing that nappy head and trying, without success, to impart some discipline. She popped the girl in the mouth so often, her lip stayed swollen, but she didn’t stop talking back and telling lies.
Lena and Elma, born three months apart, became best friends and did everything together. Clara, trusting Perry, allowed Lena to spend summer weekends with her cousins. They’d walk her home Sunday evening, after church and stay for dinner. When Elma turned sixteen, Roy taught her to drive. She and Lena rode around in the old Model T until it gave up the ghost. She cursed, cried and screamed until they bought her a 1937 Packard. She was spoiled, nasty and lazy, but none of it rubbed of on Lena. She remained sweet, but sometimes let Elma lead her into mischief. Clara thought about limiting their time together, but instead pleaded with Lena to think for herself and avoid trouble.
Clara cried hot tears for all her pleas, apparently unheard. Raising her head, she turned her face from the wall to look into Perry’s red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” he cried. “This is my fault. I didn’t pay attention.”
She reached over to caress his smooth, brown cheek. “No, baby,” she cooed. “You did your best.”
It was the truth. He knew he couldn’t control his fast sister, but did the next best thing. His threats and occasional beat downs, had every boy in town scared to look at Elma and Lena. He simply forgot about that car, parked innocently and patiently, waiting to spirit Elma to nearby towns and boys unaware of her brother’s reputation. Clara remembered and forbid Lena to ride beyond the city limits, but it appears she did and got herself ruined by some nasty little boy from Red Bank or maybe Asbury Park. In the next moment she learned Lena’s indiscretion occurred much closer than she thought.
“Allowing Donny Webb in our house was my mistake,” Perry’s voice broke. “I trusted him and he took advantage of my cousin.”
She shut her eyes tightly, squeezing out a single tear that left a moist trail to her chin. Her head dropped, like and anvil, onto the pillow.
“When I get to work, I’m gonna kill him,” he planned aloud, like it was any mundane task, performed throughout the course of his day. He might just as well have said “I’m gonna empty the trash” or “take a bath. His intention was clear and Clara’s blood ran cold. She groped at her faith for renewed strength and sat bolt upright, swinging her feet to the floor. She firmly grasped Perry’s forearm.
“Leave Donnie Webb alone,” she said with urgency in her voice and eyes. “Swear on your mother you won’t touch him.”
“But, Auntie,” he began.
“Swear!” she screamed, halting any further argument.
“Alright” he sighed.
“Does he know?” she asked.
Perry shook his head.
“Then say nothing.” Using his shoulder for balance, she rose and pulled him up after. “March your narrow ass in that bathroom, wash your face and get to work.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, meekly, entering the house. Alone again, Clara sat on her porch and created a pool of tears. She cried for what she had just learned and what she already knew; the very thing that sent her poking around the collards where Perry found her.
Earlier that morning, as night struggled with day, Clara lay awake after seeing Sam off to work. Marva, the knee baby crept in and sat on the bed beside her.
“Mama, you awake?” she half-whispered knowing her mother could never reclaim broken sleep.
Clara heard sorrow in the girl’s voice and tried to search her face in the dark. Panicked, she clicked on the lamp and looked in Marva’s swollen eyes. The panic increased.
“I’m in trouble, mama,” she said, burying her face in Clara’s lap.
“What kind of trouble?” Clara asked, though she had some inkling.
“I’m having a baby,” she said.
“Girl,” Clara began and clicked off the lamp so she could smile in the dark. “That ain’t trouble. You’re a grown woman. You work everyday and don’t ask nobody for a damn thing. You ain’t in no trouble, unless you don’t want it or can’t identify the daddy.”
“It’s Donnie,” Marva said sternly.
Clara knew that too. She’d been watching him chase after Marva since his family arrived from South Carolina. That country boy was determined. She had hoped for an engagement and wedding beforehand, but this wouldn’t be the first or last baby to speed nuptials.
“I haven’t told him and don’t know what he’ll do. He said he would marry me when we started doing it, but that was last year. I’m not sure how he feels now.”
“Do you want to marry him?” Clara asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied.
“And you will,” Clara stated with a confidence that put Marva at ease.
With dawn announcing day’s victory over night, Clara crept into the collard patch to decide how to tell Sam and also consider their action should the young man be hesitant. Before she could decide anything, Perry jumped her fence. Months before, Clara warned Donny if he messed over her daughter, he was getting married. Now, with a turn of events no one could have anticipated, he had a choice of daughter.
By mid-afternoon, Clara had served lunch to Mrs. Grossman’s Bridge club and was nearly finished preparing dinner. While cooking, troubling thoughts retreated to the back of her mind, but seated at the kitchen counter, eating matzo and leftover chopped liver, they rushed forward. Startled by the loud ring of the telephone, she rushed to lift the receiver before it disrupted the Bridge game out on the porch that her employer called a lanai.
“Casa Grossman,” Clara announced, as instructed.
“Auntie?” Perry’s hushed voice on the line was worrisome. That last time she received a call on her job, her sister had passed.
“What’s wrong,” she asked, not really wanting to know. Certain that nothing could be so disturbing as what he shared earlier, her confidence waned when he said she should sit.
“Sweet Jesus,” she prayed aloud.
“Donny came in this morning,” Perry began, “down in the mouth. Said there was a problem and he might be leaving town. He’s got another girl having a baby. If you’re seated I’ll tell you who.”
Thinking Marva must have told Donny before heading to work, Clara was about to tell Perry she already knew, but thought she heard him say something about Earline Kinsey.
“What about Earline Kinsey?” she asked.
“That’s the girl,” he replied.
Her mouth fell open and she nearly dropped the phone. “He got another girl pregnant?”
“You gotta keep up, Auntie,” he teased. “That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“And that’s who he’s running from?” Clara said, dumbfounded. “That girl already got a baby and no husband. He needs to be running from me.”
“I know,” Perry laughed. “He said Earline’s cousin was coming from Georgia next week to handle him.”
Clara knew that was a lie. Nobody came when Alvin Adams ruined that girl and refused to claim a baby that was clearly his. They have the same big water head.
“Why are you so quiet?” Perry asked.
“Thinking,” she said, realizing what she had to do. “Where’s Donny now?”
After learning he was working at the Chelsea Avenue pier, she told Mrs. Grossman there was a family emergency and removed her uniform. Slipping on her shoes, she thought about how both of her girls were about to suffer, but one would do it as Donny Webb’s wife. She checked her purse for the pistol sewn into the lining. Stepping onto the sidewalk, a breeze from the ocean, kissed her face. She turned and walked, with determination, against the wind.
(Clara Brown’s Butter Cream Cheese Icing)
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract
1 box (16 ounces) confectioners' sugar
Beat cream cheese, butter, sour cream and vanilla in large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar until smooth. Fill and frost cooled cakes.
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