Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [104]
“Could be worse. You could have a family with no women in it, like I grew up in.”
“Now that’s true, that would be worse.”
They fall quiet. The window gives their eyes a place to go when they need to take a rest from each other.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Alice pipes up, “what’s going on with that tree over there?”
“That’s Boma Mellowbug’s bottle tree,” Annawake says. “Our little thing of beauty. Boma is, I guess you’d say, the town lunatic.”
“I think maybe I saw her. In a dress and a ski hat?”
“That was Boma. You really have to be sure you don’t run over her with your car. Sometimes she’ll stand in the middle of the street and have a conversation with the oaks. But everybody’s crazy about Boma.”
“She did all that by herself?”
“No. She got it going. Back when I was little, she started sticking old empties down over the ends of the branches of that redbud. And pretty soon somebody else would come along and add another one, and then we all got into it, keeping our eyes peeled for something special. Once I found an old blue milk bottle in a ditch, and another time, one of those fancy glass cups they used to have up on the electric lines. I couldn’t wait for Uncle Ledger to drive me over here in his truck so I could put my things on the tree.”
“Well,” Alice says, “it’s different.”
“Not for here. For here it’s just kind of normal.” She laughs. “One time in law school we were discussing the concept of so-called irresponsible dependents. That a ward of society can’t be a true citizen. I wanted to stand up and tell the class about Boma and the bottle tree. That there’s another way of looking at it.”
“What’s that?”
“Just that you could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they’re not self-sufficient.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Annawake shrugs. “There are things I can’t explain to white people. Words aren’t enough.”
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Alice says. “If we could get it across, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Earlene comes back carrying two bowls of soup and grinning from ear to ear. “Oops,” she says, “I forgot to get up that sugar.” She lumbers briskly away singing, “Here comes the bride!”
Annawake stares at Alice, the woman from the family without men, and hatches the most reckless plan of her life.
23
Secret Business
LETTY IS STANDING IN HER garden with a butcher knife when Annawake drives up. She looks formidable, but Annawake kills the engine anyway and makes her way through the bean patch. She waves Letty’s pie plate in the air. “I’m returning this to you,” she says.
Letty puts a hand on top of her dead husband’s hat and squints at Annawake, frowning, until her face lights with recognition. “Annawake, I swear I wouldn’t have knowed you, except you was here at the hog fry. With that hair all cut off.”
“Well, Letty, I’m growing it back. I’ll look presentable in a year or two.”
“I reckon you will.” Now Letty stares at her pie plate. “How’d you get hold of that?”
“I took some of your sweet potato pie home from that hog fry you had for Cash. We took it home to Millie, remember? It’s her favorite.”
“Well, she should have come. She missed a good one.”
“She wanted to, but the baby was cranky from getting his shots.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“He got over it. Millie says thanks for the pie. She wasn’t going to return the plate till she had a chance to catch her breath and cook something to send back in it. But that’s not going to happen for about twelve more years, so I snuck out with it this morning. I figured you’d rather just have the plate.”
Letty laughs. “That’s how it is with kids, all right. They’re all over you like a bad itch. I miss mine, though, now that they’s done growed.”
Annawake looks around for evidence that a person might need a butcher knife to stand out here in the garden. There is no danger she can see. “You look like you’re hunting for another hog to kill.”
“I would, if one run through here, and that’s no lie. Or a ostrich. Did you hear about that ostrich feather Boma Mellowbug’s got