Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [44]
I shook my head. The tears started again, and with them hiccups. Mama went and got a cool washcloth to wet my face. “Don’t cry, honey. It’ll be all right. We’ll take care of it, it’ll be all right.” She put the Tootsie Rolls in a paper bag and gave me a handful of pennies to carry. She kept talking while she brushed my hair and then hers, called Reese in and told her to stay on the porch, turned the heat down on the beans that were cooking on the stove, and walked me out to the car. She told me about when she and Aunt Raylene were girls, how they had worked for this man out past Old Henderson Road, picking strawberries for pennies every day for weeks, going through the rows and pulling loose the red ripe ones for him to sell in his stand by the side of the road.
“Only the ripe ones, he kept telling us, but it was so hot and the dust was so thick, sometimes we’d pull up the ones that weren’t quite ripe, you know—green ones, or half-green anyway. We’d hide them under the ripe ones when we set them up for him. People would buy a box and then get home to find those half-ripe ones, call him up to complain. He’d get so mad, but we were just kids, and his yelling didn’t bother us so long as he kept paying us for the work.”
“What’d he pay you?”
Mama waved her hand as if that didn’t matter. “Not enough, you know, not enough. Strawberry picking is terrible work, hurts your back, your eyes. You get that juice all over you, get those little prickers in your hands. An’t enough money in it even for children, even if you eat as many as you can. After a while you don’t want any anyway.” She laughed.
“Though Raylene sure could eat a lot. Faster than you could see, she’d swallow handfuls of berries. Only proof she’d been eating them was her red red tongue.”
She stopped the car in front of the Woolworth’s, cut the engine, and sat for a moment, her hands resting on the wheel. I looked out at the big display windows, where stacks of plastic picnic baskets, little tin office waste cans, and sleeveless cotton sundresses on hangers were squeezed behind ratty stuffed animals and tricycles with multicolored plastic streamers on the handlebars. The thought of going back in there with Mama made me feel sick to my stomach and almost angry at her. Why couldn’t she just let me promise never to do it again?
Her hand on my shoulder made me jump. “Your granny found out what we’d been doing, ’cause we got lazy, you know, and started putting more and more green ones in the bottom of the boxes. Grandpa laughed about it, but your granny didn’t laugh. She came over there one afternoon and turned half a dozen boxes upside down. Collected a bucket of green strawberries and paid the man for them. Took us home, sat us at the kitchen table, and made us eat every one of them. Raylene and I puked strawberries all night long.”
“You must have hated her!”
Mama was quiet, and I got scared. I didn’t want her to think I hated her. I didn’t even want to be angry at her. I clamped my teeth tight and tried not to start crying again.
“There an’t no other way to do it,” she said quietly. “I hate it. You hate it. You might hate me for it. I don’t know, and I can’t say what might happen now. But I just don’t know no other way to do it. We’re gonna go in there and give the man back his candy, pay for what you ate, and that will be all there is to it. It will be over, and you’ll be glad it’s settled. We won’t ever have to mention it again.”
Mama opened the door briskly, and I followed her numbly. There was a flush on her cheeks as she walked me back to the candy counter, waited for the salesgirl to come over, and stood me right in front of her. “My daughter has something to tell you,” she said, and gave me a little push. But I couldn’t speak. I held out the bag and the pennies, and started to cry again, this time sobbing loud. The girl looked confused, but Mama wouldn’t say anything else, just gave me another little push. I thought I’d strangle on my tongue when the manager walked over to us.
“What’s this?” he said in a booming voice. “What’s this? You got