Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [79]
“You getting lazy, girl?” Lee teased me. “Better rev it up, we got cooking to do.” I wiped my mouth and imagined burying her under a truckload of carrots. I felt like I had been drinking whiskey, but my stomach was empty and flat. The blacktop on the way out to the Girl Scout camp seemed to ripple and sway in the sunlight. Lee kept talking about the camp kitchen, the big black gas stove and the walk-in freezer.
“This is going to be fun.” I didn’t think so. The onions still had to be sliced. I got hysterical when someone picked up my knife. Lee was giggling with a woman I’d never seen before, the two of them talking about macrobiotic cooking while rinsing brown noodles. I got the meat cleaver and started chopping onions in big raw chunks. “Bite-sized,” Lee called to me, in a cheerful voice.
“You want ’em bite-sized, you cut them,” I told her, and went on chopping furiously.
It was late when we finally cleaned up. I hadn’t been able to eat anything. The smell of the sauce had made me dizzy, and the scum that rinsed off the noodles looked iridescent and dangerous. My stomach curled up into a knot inside me, and I glowered at the women who came in and wanted hot water for tea. There were women sitting on the steps out on the deck, women around a campfire over near the water pump, naked women swimming out to the raft in the lake, and skinny, muscled women dancing continuously in the rec room. Lee had gone off with her new friend, the macrobiotic cook. I found a loaf of Wonder Bread someone had left on the snack table, pulled out a slice, and ate it in tiny bites.
“Want some?” It was one of the women from Atlanta. She held out a brown bag from which a bottle top protruded.
“It would make me sick.”
“Naw,” she grinned. “It’s just a Yoo-Hoo. I got a stash of them in a cooler. Got a bad stomach myself. Only thing it likes is chocolate soda and barbecue.”
“Barbecue,” I sighed. My mouth flooded with saliva. “I haven’t made barbecue in years.”
“You make beef ribs?” She sipped at her Yoo-Hoo and sat down beside me.
“I have, but if you got the time to do slow pit cooking, pork’s better.” My stomach suddenly growled loudly, a grating, angry noise in the night.
“Girl,” she laughed. “You still hungry?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t eat any of that stuff.” I was embarrassed.
My new friend giggled. “Neither did I. I had peanuts and Yoo-Hoo for dinner myself.” I laughed with her. “My name’s Marty. You come up to Atlanta sometime, and we’ll drive over to Marietta and get some of the best barbecue they make in the world.”
“The best barbecue in the world?”
“Bar none.” She handed me the bottle of Yoo-Hoo.
“Can’t be.” I sipped a little. It was sweet and almost warm.
“You don’t trust my judgment?” Someone opened the porch door, and I saw in the light that her face was relaxed, her blue eyes twinkling.
“I trust you. You didn’t eat any of those damn noodles, did you? You’re trustworthy, but you can’t have the best barbecue in the world up near Atlanta, ’cause the best barbecue in the world is just a couple of miles down the Perry Highway.”
“You say!”
“I do!”
We both laughed and she slid her hip over close to mine. I shivered, and she put her arm around me. We talked, and I told her my name. It turned out we knew some of the same people. She had even been involved with a woman I hadn’t seen since college. I was so tired I leaned my head on her shoulder. She rubbed my neck and told me a series of terribly dirty jokes until I started