Sophia pressed her hand against her throbbing cheek. Then she remembered where she was and what she had discovered last night.
“Rusty, I ain’t got all day. I worked a double shift, and my dogs are tired. Now, ’less you want to walk your ass back to the farm, you better come on.” Ma slung her pleated hobo purse over her shoulder and turned toward the hallway, and her footsteps reverberated out the front door.
Sophia found her Mary Janes, then picked up her train case and huffed after Ma Deary. It was dark out, and a frigid chill blew through her as she teetered behind Ma Deary. The red Rambler was parked three houses down at the curb. When Sophia slid into the front seat, the car was still warm, and the beige interior smelled like Ma Deary’s lily-of-the-valley perfume, reminding Sophia of home.
“How’d you know I was here?”
Ma Deary flipped open a box of Lucky Strikes and slipped a cigarette between her faded purple lips. “How you think?” She flicked her red Winston lighter, closed her eyes, and pulled until the tip of the cigarette was bright orange. “Wayon called me on my job, and you know I don’t like that shit. Talking about how you just showed up at the house.”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Ma Deary released the brake, pulled on the clutch, and steered the Rambler away from the curb. “Why ain’t you up at that fancy school? You done run away from there too?” She blew smoke out the side of her mouth.
Sophia waved fumes from in front of her face. “That’s not it.”
“I knew it.” Ma Deary switched the clutch from third to fourth gear. “Got all the way up there and realized that your raggedy ass didn’t belong, just like I said.”
“School is closed for the holiday.” Sophia bit her bottom lip.
She had belonged enough. Hadn’t she? A cola bottle rolled around on the floor in the seat behind her, and she closed her eyes to the memory.
Looks like someone is stripped down so that everyone can see what a fine field nigger she’d make… How much would you pay for her?
Sophia did not want to think about Patty violating her in the locker room or feel the emptiness that had stretched inside her since leaving Mrs. Gathers’s home. She had no clue what to do next. Sophia had thought Unc would drive her back to the farm, giving her time to think of what her next move would be. She wanted to confront Ma Deary, demand more information out of her, but each time she stole glances out of the side of her eye, Ma Deary’s scowl stopped her in her tracks.
Sophia knew from experience that Ma Deary’s anger was not to be stoked. Last summer, when Sophia had refused to go up to the garden to pick the vegetables because the news had declared that everyone should stay inside due to the extreme heat wave, Ma Deary had replied, “You worried about the heat? You should be worried about me.”
Then she’d dragged Sophia to the shed and locked her in with no water for hours. Sophia had sat in the corner on the dirt, sweating and swallowing her saliva. When Ma Deary finally let her out,Sophia’s mouth was dry as cotton, her legs weak from lack of sustenance, and Ma Deary still refused her dinner until she went up to the garden and came back with the crop.
The memory haunted Sophia, but she realized that being denied food, working in the heat, even the strap that Ma Deary hung on a rusted nail in the barn to keep the kids in line, wasn’t her biggest fear. What Sophia was most afraid of was Ma Deary preventing her return to school. Sophia’s chest tightened at the thought of being confined to the farm again with no future in sight. She decided she would hold her identity close until she had a chance to talk it through with Walter. He had always been her voice of reason and would know what to do next.
The sun looked like an egg, sunny side up, low in the sky, as they turned off the main street and meandered onto the narrow tobacco road. The tires jolted over grit and gravel as the Rambler moved toward the farmhouse, while the rooster crowed and crowed, welcoming Sophia back home. Ma Deary pulled up to the front door and killed the engine. The bald spots in the roof where the shingles were missing still hadn’t been repaired. Metal bumpers in varying sizes, left over from old vehicles and tractors, were scattered all over the patchy front lawn. The plastic that covered the front windowpane buckled and blew with the wind.
“How many hands you got working the farm now?” Sophia asked.
“Depends who shows. Today might be two or three.” Ma Deary opened her car door and stretched her legs in front of her. “Go on and change clothes and give your brothers a hand. The twins don’t seem to know their head from a hole in the damn ground without you.”
Karl, Lu, and Walter. Sophia’s heart fluttered at the thought of her brothers.Biological or otherwise.
As she walked along the side of the house, the early-morning chirp of crickets and the jug-a-rum of the bullfrogs relaxed her breathing.Dead leaves cracked beneath her feet as she rounded the bend. In the distance, she could hear the horses, cows, and pigs waking, and the smells of fresh dew, earth, and manure unleashed a familiarity inside of her that she hadn’t known she had missed. Just as she reached for the screen door to the kitchen, she heard “Rusty, that you?”
Sophia turned to see Walter, and her whole body smiled as he barreled toward her, swooped her up in his arms, and gripped her so hard that she was sure if he didn’t let go soon, she would snap in two.
“Whatcha doing here?”
“We’re on break.”
“It’s good to have you home.” He smiled, a piece of straw resting at the side of his lips. He was wearing his Carhartt chore coat over bib overalls, and his hair had grown into a limp Afro.
“Somebody needs a haircut.” She reached up and tousled it.
“You just ain’t been ’round to cut it for me.” He grinned.
“Well, you have an official appointment.”
Walter chuckled as Ma Deary descended the stairs and tsked her teeth. She said, “Reunion over. Go on and wake the boys and get to your chores. And Rusty, after you pull the eggs, make sure them boys clean up that barn. Smells like hot piss and old cabbage in there.” She let the door slam behind her.
Sophia and Walter exchanged looks and then burst out laughing.
