Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [54]
“Then I’m nothing. So no dumb law says I can’t chop cotton.”
“White folks’ heads full of rules ain’t never been writ down as law.”
“Well, they can’t have it both ways. They can’t block me from white things and Negro things at the same time. I want to chop cotton, so I’m going to chop cotton.”
“Ain’t you bold. And foolish. Listen here, Calogero. Cotton bolls stick to your fingers. And you got to bend a million times, so your back and neck hurt.”
“But it’s beautiful,” I say. “I want to work in the cotton fields. Italians work on the plantations down near New Orleans.”
“Ain’t no one ever seen no Eye-talian chopping cotton here. But maybe they hire you. Maybe.” Patricia pulls a little cylinder wrapped in paper from her pocket. She unwraps it, pulls it into two pieces, and hands me one. “Eat real slow.”
I look at her. She chews her half. I stick it in my mouth. It’s soft and chocolatey and chewy. “Yum.”
“Slow,” she says. “Ain’t no more where that came from.”
I make it last as long as I can.
“Tootsie,” says Patricia. “The name of the candy.”
“Did you buy it in the penny-candy store in Tallulah?”
“Y’all crazy? Only boys ’llowed in there—white boys. And y’all better put on a cap and knickerbockers even if you stand outside and ask to buy at the back window.”
“So Charles bought it for you?”
“Where Charles going to get knickerbockers?”
“All right,” I say. “How’d you get this candy?”
“Miss Clarrie. She visited New York City last summer. A store run by a Mr. Hirshfield. And Mr. Hirshfield got a daughter go by the nickname Tootsie. She like these candies, so they got her name now.” She runs her tongue over her top teeth. “Miss Clarrie gave five to each of us for Christmas. I been eating mine slow.”
“And you shared the last one with me.” So she didn’t mean what she said about her heart, after all. I move close to her. “Thank you.”
She pushes me away. “Don’t mention it.”
Why is it this girl brings up kisses all on her own sometimes and other times pushes me away? I feel half crazy. I want to run. So I do. I run a circle around her.
She doesn’t even look at me.
In the distance the plantation bells ring. People are waking for work.
The road follows a bayou on one side now, and a ditch on the other, with a meadow beyond. I look up and down the road and panic flickers in me. “Where can we hide if someone comes along?”
“Behind the first cypress you reach. Ain’t no one going to come after you in a swamp ’cause of the ’gators. ’Less they on the hunt for you anyway.”
“Are there really ’gators in this little swamp?”
“’Gators in every swamp, Calogero.”
I flinch. “Sicilians don’t go in swamps.”
“Oh yeah? I heard different. I heard you acted pretty brave in the skiff.”
“That was before I knew what was going on. I have a confession. I hate ’gators. I mean, I love eating them. I love the way you make them. But hunting them?” I shiver.
She laughs. “They’s worse things than ’gators, Calogero. At least a ’gator stay in the swamp and don’t get you by surprise. When you dealing with a ’gator, you know who you dealing with.”
I think of Joseph, talking about ’gators. He said they were honest. That’s sort of like what Patricia’s saying. But I don’t want to think about ’gators now. I’m spending the day with Patricia. With my girl. I sneeze.
“Do plants make you sneeze?” She points. “The tall purple flowers on the ditch bank, they asters. They don’t bother nobody. But them others, they goldenrod. Lots of people sneeze at them.”
“You know plants, too, besides birds.”
“Just the plants I like.”
We walk fast. And soon we’re past the bayou and between cotton fields again. A fat bird and her chicks are pecking by the roadside. “Partridge,” says Patricia.
Then the road passes through woodland with a ditch bank on both sides now. It’s cooler in this stretch of shade. Pine scents the air. Squirrels race chattering through the ferns and up a trunk. “You like squirrel stew?” asks Patricia.
“I never had it. But if you made it, I would.”
She laughs.
“I mean it.”
“Well, I know that.”
The towns