Folly (5 page)

“I hope you won't be cuttin' off no fingers,” Folly said.

The comment stung. Mary Lou chugged at her beer. “Ain't you glad, Ma? Especially now with the walk-out? Ain't it good I'll be able to bring something home?”

“Yeah, candy bars. Can you bring home candy bars, Mary Lou?” Tiny asked.

“Not without paying, same as you. Tell him, Ma.”

“I just meant I reckon I'll worry a little,” Folly said.

Martha slapped the hamburger into patties and Folly placed them on the grill. “You'd best move a little farther out for playing ball under the influence of beer,” Martha said to Mary Lou, who had started a game of catch with Skeeter. Daisy's neck got exercised as she followed the ball back and forth from one to the other. The ease of them all there together the way that they often were, playing, talking, just sitting, was the mainstay of Martha's life. They had built up to this over the years. Daisy had already become a part of the family, spending more time caring for her children than Folly did, and after Martha had moved up, she and Folly had taken each other for neighbors with equal interest in good neighboring, women who had to work to pay their bills, leasers of two little plots of clay earth that shared a boundary, clots of crabgrass on either side, simple strugglers after a life that they took for granted was worth struggling after. Martha had never had to think in advance about what she might say to Folly. Just simply she had said anything that had come to mind to say over all these years, until then, when suddenly, she couldn't get herself to ask the question that was on her mind—was Folly still worried about Lenore, and especially now, if Mary Lou had a job at the A & P? Folly hadn't brought it up. Could she have forgotten? Martha was just about to say something when Folly flipped one of the hamburgers too high, then moved, fast, intercepted it on its way to the dirt. The current ran through Martha again, just as it had in the car. She had to force herself to let her breath out quietly.

“How long do you think we can stay out?” Folly asked.

“I don't know.”

“Come on. FOOD,” Folly announced as she gave the beans a turn in the bowl and began dishing them out.

“We'll have to think on it,” Martha said.

The kids had cleaned up after the picnic and then been sent inside to do their homework. Folly could hear the T.V. going. She wished
someone would rush in on Tiny or Skeeter or Mary Lou, whoever wasn't doing their homework, and punch the “off” button and stand right there in the spot in front of the tube and light into them about how television would turn them into jelly people, how idiotic it was most of the time. All those shows to show them what they didn't have, she didn't understand why they didn't get fed up with it themselves. She didn't have the energy to do it, having done it so many times before. And she had nothing new to say, and what the children needed was to be taken by surprise. Martha would do it if she asked, had done it before, but Martha seemed too remote to ask at that moment, so Folly tried to tune the sound out and concentrate on the feel of the cooler air which had come with darkness. She could count on the picture tube to go in the near future.

Folly could only make out the outline of Martha's face in the dusk, the strong jaw with its forward set, its severity broken by the roundness of Martha's cheeks. She could feel that Martha wasn't with her on thinking about the walk-out. She thought about turning the porch light on but didn't. They needed the quiet of the evening.

She didn't want to force Martha into focusing on her but she wanted her to be thinking on the same track. She didn't want to be out there alone, Fartblossom pissing in his pants over their defiance, and them not ready for the next step. She needed the strong look in Martha's brown eyes to put her at ease. Martha had actually been first to turn and show Fartblossom her back. Folly wondered about all the other women that had followed. What were they thinking now? Were they wishing they hadn't? There was no plan. Didn't anybody but her realize that there was no plan? There was no one but her to go tell her kids to turn off the damn T.V. Martha would do it if she asked. Who was going to make things work? She started to feel downright nervous, almost afraid. Cora's baby dead . . . blue in the face . . . the blue lights of the police in the front of the house . . . no rights . . . lint in your nose and you hardly got the right to sneeze.

“It ain't right the way age works,” Daisy said.

“What?” Folly asked, as if she had just been roused from sleep.

“It don't seem fair,” Daisy said. “You get old, and then you don't have to care much. You got a stake in each day and that's about all. So you could really run off your mouth but by then you've lost your teeth or your speaking ability or you can't walk, like me, so who's gonna listen to you. Or you're just plain weak. See, if I was a little bit stronger I'd plant myself right up at that mill on a picket line, and I'd
stick my tongue out at them and tell them they couldn't budge me with a bulldozer. When I was younger I would've been scared. Now I'm old enough to be past all my fears but I can't hardly stand up. Can't stick my tongue out either. I've tried it in the mirror. That's one of the things this here stroke will do to you.” Daisy's voice was feeble in timbre but strong in pitch.

Martha had leaned forward in her chair and was listening fully to Daisy. “That's all right, Ma. We'll be takin' your spirit.”

“What's gonna happen tomorrow?” Folly asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What are we gonna do? What are we gonna say? They're all gonna ask us questions?”

“Who all?”

“Fartblossom . . . the women on the line.”

“One at a time. Okay?”

Martha was right there with Folly, and Folly breathed relief. They fired questions, fired answers back. Daisy followed their voices as she had followed the ball landing first in Skeeter's glove, then in Mary Lou's. They worked together this way—clear, direct, smooth but excited. They edged toward the front of their seats as they went along. “What about the union?” Folly asked.

“I don't know,” Martha said. “We've got the guy's number. They'd help us, but then they might scare some of the girls off too.”

“Would they give us money?”

“Maybe.” Martha went to silence trying to picture the union. She'd met a guy hanging around the gate one night, an organizer, and that's whose phone she had. She'd known a few people who had belonged to unions, but she wasn't sure what they had done for them.

“Ma, what do you think about us bringin' in the union?”

“They'll all be men, you can count on that. They might do something for you, but they won't care much about Cora's baby. That's all I'd know for sure.”

“The way I see it, we gotta put it to a vote before we call in anyone. See what the other women want,” Folly said.

“Right. Tomorrow we take a vote on how many want the union man to come talk. That's all—not do anything but just let us ask him questions.”

“Good. And we set up who's to come when to be on the line, and who's to look after the children of the picketers and who all's gonna be on the walk-out committee to decide when we'll go back . . . .”

“Yes, what we'll be satisfied with, and who's finding out about Cora and collecting the money for bail.” Martha was orchestrating with her hands when Folly grabbed them both for a brief second.

“We did it,” she said. “We goddamn walked out on the old fart.” She laughed out loud, a laugh that came from deep inside her and rolled out across the back yard.

Martha had her hands back to herself, but she could still feel Folly's touch as if a memory imprint had been planted on them. She felt childish, as if she were playing a mystery game with a shadow, holding herself enraptured with the various possibilities. She wanted another beer but was reluctant to touch the cold can with that same hand that Folly had squeezed in the middle of a gesture.

As if she were a mind reader, Folly got up and brought out the last two beers. She handed one firmly to Martha so that there was no choice but to open the palm and take it. Martha took too large a gulp which made tears come to her eyes.

7.

Martha pushed her cart to the back of the store, wandered up and down the meat counter, and saw that no one was tending it. She saw the sign: RING BELL FOR SERVICE, but she wasn't the type to ring. She went on around the store, picking up the rest of her groceries, then returned to the meat counter. Still, no one there. She seriously considered the buzzer. Daisy needed her liver. As if she had heard Martha's thoughts, Lenore's head appeared in the oval window of the door to the back room, and her eyes caught Martha's. She pushed through the door with a tray of packaged chicken and set it down.

“Hi. What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I need a piece of liver.”

“About a pound?”

“Fine.” Martha didn't bother trying to calculate how big a piece it would be. She knew that Lenore was assuming it would be for her and her mother and would make it come out right.

Lenore went back through the swinging door. She had the walk of an athlete—a friendliness with her body, a slight bounce in her stride. Martha thought of Cookie, of how she had liked watching her move as she packed a crate of oranges. She brought the liver and displayed it to Martha before she wrapped it. “Looks fine,” Martha said.

“I've been hearing about y'all down at the mill,” Lenore said. “How's it going?”

“Not easy but we're holding out.”

“I saw Cora's out of jail.”

“Yeah. That much we got done. When it came right down to it, they didn't really have nothin' to keep her on. But it took bringing in a lawyer to tell them that.”

“Well, that's something,” Lenore said. She wanted to say more, to express her admiration for what they were doing, but she couldn't think of how to say it. And she didn't know if Martha'd believe she was really on their side. She didn't know if Martha knew about her mother going in as a scab.

“We're staying out 'til we get some kind of policy on taking time off for sickness at home.”

“I imagine it ain't going to be easy to get anything out of that old Fartblossom, but I sure hope you do,” Lenore said.

“What he's up to now is trying to hire a whole new crew, as if our jobs didn't take any skill or practice or anything. He's going out trying to find every woman in this town who doesn't have a job and stick her behind our machines.”

“That's lousy,” Lenore said. “That's plain lousy.” Martha must not know about her mother or she wouldn't be talking to her like this. Either that or she was one of those people who realize that you don't have to be forever after associated with your mother—you can be someone different on your own. Martha had come to her mind when she had been trying to think of someone to pass that Sappho book Betsy had sent on to. She had her suspicions about Martha based on nothing but an inkling, that and the fact Martha had never been married. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with her.

Martha put the liver in her basket and scanned it for other needs. Lenore had to say something fast, or she was going to leave. “Do you like to read?” she asked.

“I do,” Martha answered. “I read a lot.”

“What kind of books?” Lenore asked.

“Mostly mysteries.”

“Oh.”

“I'd best be gettin' on,” Martha said.

“If I can do anything for the strike,” Lenore said, “I'd like to do something, but I don't know what I could do.”

“I'll think about it,” Martha said. “I'll let you know if I can think of something.”

Victory was a straight and narrow town, Betsy always said. It felt to Lenore as if the town were wearing a belt, tight in the middle, to hold itself from bursting. Or was that just the feeling inside her as she offered to help, while her mother was offering to scab? She drove from the A & P on down Main Street to the diner, only three blocks. She might have walked, but it was in the direction of her room on Back
Street. A stretched out straight and narrow town—Main Street, Front Street, Back Street. Front Street was where the classy buildings were, Main Street was business, Back Street was where the less than high class whites lived, cracked sidewalks along one side of the street. The Blacks lived up past the A & P on a couple of streets running the other way from Main, dirt roads really, no sidewalks on either side. Victory was supposed to be peacefully integrated, but integration was a word that didn't mean much anymore—politicians spoke it with quiet drawls, trying to make it sound something like nutrition, and it certainly had little to do with neighborhoods. Beyond Colored Town was a long, flat swamp extending far back on either side of the road, then a couple of hills and beyond them, the trailer parks that had come in when they had opened up Victory Mills.

You could sit out there by the marsh at night and turn your engine off and listen to the swamp noise. Lenore and Betsy had done it together sometimes. The noise would start out quiet, almost distinct. Crickets rubbing their legs, a hoot owl far off, the glog of a bullfrog. Then everything would start mixing together and the noise would grow and grow in your ears. Screeches, saws, haunting calls. They would hold hands, sharing their fascination. Lenore had tried once after Betsy left to do it alone, but she had not been able to enjoy it. She had been nervous and felt too much like a spectator.

Lenore bounced up the entrance steps to the diner. It had once been painted bright yellow but now was back to an almost pure silver look since most of the paint had worn off. Sabrina looked up and nodded a greeting as Lenore rounded the corner at the end of the counter and sat on the last stool. This stool was more home than Mrs. Henry's room to her. The slits in the vinyl of the seat were covered with strips of black tape, as they had been for all the years since Lenore had gotten her first pocket knife. Her mother had been waiting the counter then, and absentmindedly, without even knowing who she was mad at, Lenore had cut two slits along where her thighs had straddled the stool, her dime coke sitting idle in front of her.

“What'll you have?” Sabrina asked.

“Apple pie and a small coke.”

The next day Evelyn had come home from work and told Lenore and Angie about discovering the slits in the stool. “Some folks ain't got no respect for other people's property,” she'd said, elevating herself into the category of those who did. Lenore had reddened with shame, looked out the window, smiled behind her mother's back at the sense of possession she had of that stool, and for once, kept her mouth shut.

She had a regular habit now of checking in, reaching down without looking and feeling the edges of the tape. She watched Sabrina set out the pie and cut her piece. Many a day she had sat here with her papers spread out in front of her, pencil clenched by her teeth, supposed to be doing her homework, but watching her mother work instead. Watching her estimate an eighth of the pie, the knife drawing tentative lines so she could still redo it if her first guess was off, then the cut, the pie spatula sailing to the plate, Evelyn's index finger swiping the lip of the pie pan, into her mouth with the crumbs the same sec her eye checked the customer to make sure he or she wasn't watching. Lenore had seen her divert her finger, almost miraculously, to the apron, when she had found the wrong eyes upon her.

If Sabrina had snuck the crumbs, she had been too fast for Lenore's eye, and Lenore had been vaguely watching her even as her mind wandered to her memories of her mother. Now she realized Sabrina had been waiting for her eyes to say yes to the scoop of vanilla ice cream she held poised over Lenore's slice of pie. Sabrina came toward her. “Trying to give you a bonus,” she said.

“Thanks, looks good.”

Sabrina's eyes danced, and Lenore smiled at her as she walked away. They were both the same age. Sabrina looked solid, stern about the mouth. She had dark brown skin, an Afro short enough to make her skull look close to a perfect shape. Lenore found herself constantly drawn to staring at it. It was in Sabrina's deep brown, playful eyes that she had seen and begun to recognize the friendliness that had grown up between them, almost too slowly to be noticeable, not too sure yet.

She had come to the diner, always, regularly, because it was a home to her. When her mother had been fired and Sabrina had replaced her, the first Black waitress they had ever hired at that counter, Lenore had continued to go daily to sit on her stool and have her coke, sometimes her pie and sometimes not. She'd been disappointed that the waitress was Black because she needed her to be someone she could talk to, and she knew she wasn't supposed to talk to Black people, really, other than to ask for what she wanted. But she'd continued to go in the mornings, too, for her coffee and donut. She thought of the counter as belonging to herself as one of the regulars, although she remembered her mother raging at that attitude. “Where the fuck do these folks get off thinkin' they own the place?” First she tried to absorb Sabrina as if she were just a piece of the familiar environment, only this had required constant blotting out of Sabrina's Blackness, both the fact of it and the implications which flew around, colliding in her mind's eye. Lenore wore
down rapidly. For one thing, Sabrina's Blackness was striking; for another, Lenore found her own eyes over and over seeking to explore just who this woman was. She had no knowledge in herself of any Black person, one to one, but she knew there was a spark to Sabrina that she liked.

A few times Lenore had come in when there were no other customers and Sabrina had been standing by her stool, the same place her mother used to stand around waiting for business. They'd talked more then, still casual, joked about the weather and how slow things were in Victory. Once Sabrina asked her about her job. “Seems like a right good job,” she'd said. “It is,” Lenore had agreed. “I'm not complaining. I could be a whole lot worse off.” She didn't say anything about how bored she got with it sometimes, so that she felt like she could fall asleep on her feet. “Do your feet hurt after a day here?” she'd asked instead.

“They sure do.”

“My ma used to complain about that. I get it sometimes at the store, too.”

“I don't know how these older womens takes it,” Sabrina said. She took one foot out of her loafer style nurse's shoe, placed it on the floor and exercised the toes. Both of them watched her toes stretching and curling. Lenore noticed that Sabrina's toenails were nearly the same color as her own.

Peters, Lenore's boss at the A & P, had come in then and sat midway down the counter. Lenore had felt momentarily conspicuous about him catching her talking to Sabrina when she prided herself on her reputation of unfriendliness to him. She nodded a greeting, then looked down. “Too bad, other foot,” Sabrina muttered and went off to wait on him.

Peters was slow on decisions, and Lenore noticed that while he pondered what to have, he stared at Sabrina as if he were looking right through her. There were times when a person needed something to fix the eyes on to think clearly. Lord knew how many hours of Lenore's life had been spent staring at the stainless steel plungers for the fountain flavors. But for Peters to stare at Sabrina that way, as if she were a fixture . . . . She hoped she'd never done that, but she had an uneasy feeling which probably meant she had.

She couldn't stop watching Peters. She kept herself on Sabrina's side of the counter though she knew she was breaking some unspoken requirement that she be looking from Peters' side, the white side. She noticed Sabrina's foot tapping quietly to no music, calling up a reserve of patience, Sabrina's mouth opening and closing as she gathered in long,
deep breaths. Finally Peters ordered a hot fudge sundae and Sabrina, released, went about making it. Loudly, vigorously, she flipped the steel refrigerator covers over the ice creams open and closed. She distributed a handful of chopped nuts on the sundae as if she were shooting craps. The instant whipped cream farted out. Then she pinched the cherry with her agile fingers, poked it onto the white mound, and glided to Peters, napkin and spoon in one hand, sundae in the other. She glided back to Lenore's end, put her elbows on the counter, her back to Peters. She rolled her eyes up in a gesture of frustration. Lenore felt as if her own eyes were furtive, almost hidden by comparison to Sabrina's, whose eyes seemed to talk more than any she had ever known. Sabrina took Lenore's empty coke glass and refilled it from the fountain. They both watched while the foam ran down the sides of the glass before she brought it back. Lenore leaned over and whispered, “Hey, is there still mold in that hot fudge?”

“Yeah, all around the edges,” Sabrina laughed. “How'd
you
know that?”

“My ma used to tell me. You never saw me order hot fudge in here, did you?”

Sabrina inclined her eyes, this time to signal who was eating the hot fudge mold. She bent over, laughing. Lenore snuck a glance at Peters who was licking his lips, oblivious. She restrained herself, thinking it was just as well that Peters remain oblivious, otherwise he'd take it out on her. But this had been a point in opening up the two of them together, which had led to Lenore coming more and more to find the times when the counter would be empty and she and Sabrina could talk.

The counter was empty now and Sabrina had one shoe off and was massaging the bottom of her foot on the corner of the ice cream cooler.

“Easy day?” Lenore asked.

“Easy to starve with business like this. Slow . . . real slow. Must be connected to them being out at the factory.”

“Yeah. It's slow at the store, too.”

Lenore had finished her pie. She squashed the few small crumbs on her plate with the fork.

“What's eatin' you?” Sabrina asked.

“My ma.” Lenore looked down, weighed her need to tell against her shame.

“So what else is new?”

“You know what she's done?”

“What's she done?”

“She's gone down and took a job at the factory. She hasn't worked since she left here three years ago. Now those guys want anybody they can find with two legs and two arms . . . . They'll take her and that's all she cares. She thinks she's going to get herself all straightened out this way.”