The Sweetest Thing (3 page)

“You can be so stubborn sometimes, young lady! Aunt Josie will faint when she sees you in that old thing,” Mother said, but I didn't change my mind. Turned out Mother was just about right.

I ventured across a very wide hall with numerous doors opening into different rooms. The walls were papered in beautiful floral colors, and gold sconces hung on either side of a small table at the top of the stairway. Another portrait, this one I recognized as Grandma Dillard, hung above the table. On the table lay a beautiful oversized book called
Birds of America
by John James Audubon
.
I started turning pages, enraptured by the gorgeous paintings of birds.

Later, I peeked in my aunt and uncle's bedroom—even bigger than mine—and went immediately to the vanity chest with the little mirror above. Silver-framed family portraits sat neatly on the vanity along with my aunt's silver comb-and-brush set. I peered down at one photograph. Sure enough, it showed Father sitting in Aunt Josie's lap when he was a baby. I felt a gentle relief that although Aunt Josie disapproved of Father's vocation, she nonetheless had enough affection for her little brother to keep this picture in her bedroom.

Going downstairs, I stepped into the fancy hall with its dark wood walls. Off to the right of the hall was a room with high ceilings and a grand piano, another fireplace, and more fancy furniture—winged chairs and sofas the likes of which I had only read about in novels and seen in magazines that my school friends passed on to me.

I wandered from room to room, each elegant in its own way, until I arrived in the kitchen at the back of the house. What a kitchen! The white Frigidaire stood almost as tall as me, the oven looked big enough to bake five chickens at once, and the sink was made of porcelain! No one was there, although evidence of dinner preparations lay along the shiny dark green counter.

I was leaning over to see what was in the sink when I heard, “Hello. I guess you'd be Miz Chandler's niece.”

I turned around to see a colored child staring at me. She was about eight or nine, her hair all in braids that were attached with bright little ribbons, and she was wearing a blue servant's dress with a white pinafore over it.

“Hello. Yes. I'm Mary Dobbs Dillard.”

“Uh-huh. I'm Parthenia Jeffries. My mama and papa work here for the Chandlers. We live down there in the quarters.” She threw a skinny arm out toward the backyard.

“Nice to meet you, Parthenia.” Then, “Where is everybody?”

“Ain't ya heard?”

“All I know is that my aunt received a phone call and got very upset and left the house. And it seems like everyone else did too.”

“Mr. Singleton passed.”

“What?”

“Yep. He's done passed, and Miz Chandler went over ta help and Papa and my brother, Cornelius, went too and I was told ta stay here, so I did.”

It slowly registered. “Do you mean that Mr. Singleton
died
?”

“Yep.”

“Would that be the Singletons who have a daughter named Perri?”

“Yes, ma'am, and Miz Singleton is Miz Chandler's best friend. A tragedy.” She stared at me when I didn't say anything. “I'd best be gittin' dinner ready now.” She went to the counter where carrots and potatoes lay and then opened the Frigidaire and took out a hunk of meat.

I stood there, shocked, thinking about Perri Singleton with her pretty see-through green eyes and her blond hair, cut in the latest bobbed style, and the way she had disliked me right away, and I hurt for her. Right then and there I started crying for a girl I had only just met.

I started to leave the kitchen, but Parthenia said, “You don't have ta go. I'm not embarrassed by you crying. I just stopped crying myself.” She handed me a white handkerchief that she retrieved from a frilly pocket on her pinafore. “Mr. Singleton was the handsomest, nicest man you'd ever want to meet. He always brought me cherry candy when him and Miz Singleton came over to play bridge.” Parthenia sniffed loudly, as if to prove she had been crying.

“Was he sick?”

Parthenia's eyes flew open wide, the whites showing around her dark face. “No, he wasn't sick. The picture of health. Miz Singleton's the one who's all scrawny. But Mista Singleton wadn't sick at all, s'far as I know.” She hesitated. “ 'Cept for mebbe in his head.”

I didn't know what to do with that information, so I asked, “Can I help you with anything?” She stared at me as if I were standing naked in front of her, then went back to peeling carrots. “I can do something. I know how to cook.”

“Ain't proper for guests to help with the meals. We's hired help.”

“Oh. But no one's around to see me helping.”

Looking almost fearful, she shook her head and said, “Ain't proper.”

I left it at that. She concentrated on every movement as she sliced first the carrots and then the potatoes.

“How old are you, Parthenia?”

“Eight and three-quarters,” she stated proudly.

“I have a little sister who is seven and two-thirds.”

Parthenia looked up with big puppy-dog eyes and frowned slightly, trying to hide a smile. She failed. “What's her name?”

“Coobie.”

“Coobie? I ain't neva' heard of a girl named Coobie.”

I almost remarked that I had never met another Parthenia but resisted. “Her real name is Virginia Coggins Dillard, but that somehow got shortened to Coobie.”

“I don't have any sisters, but I got my brother, Cornelius. He's gettin' near to fourteen, and he's a genius with his hands, but he kain't talk none. Neva' said a word in his life, he hadn't.”

“Ah.” Once again, I wasn't sure how to respond. “Well, I have another sister named Frances. She's thirteen going on thirty.”

That made Parthenia laugh out loud. “Mama always sez I's eight going on eighteen.”

Somewhere in the house a clock chimed four times. Parthenia looked startled. “Uh-oh. I'm late. I got to get the water boiling.”

“Are you in charge of dinner?”

“Well, it used ta be my mama, but she's ova' at the Alms Houses for stealin'. . . . She didn't do it, though, and everybody knows it.” She made a face and added under her breath, “I knowed it most of all.”

“She's in jail, but she's innocent?”

Parthenia frowned and said, “Well, it's not exactly jail, but it's where the destitute live. And then they keep the colored prisoners there to work the fields. My poor mama wishes she could come back home. Every day she prays that the Good Lawd would let someone find those silver knives, and then she could leave.”

“Silver knives?”

And right away, Parthenia spun her sad tale. “Mama was accused of stealin' Miz Chandler's silver knives, but she didn't do it. They was knives that specially meant a lot to Miz Chandler, from her granny and all, and they wuz worth thousands and thousands of dollars, and one night after a big party, they went missing. We looked all ova' everywhere for them, with no such luck.

“And then Miz Becca, she prances in all high and fancy and starts accusing Mama, saying she stole 'em.”

“Becca—my cousin? The Chandlers' daughter?”

“Yep, she's the oldest one, and I don't care for her a bit.”

“Ah.”

“We searched high and low and o' course we let them come into the servants' quarters and look and look, and they neva' found none of those silver knives, but they found the silver serving spoon that went missing too, and so Mama had to go to the Alms Houses anyway on account of a white lady accusing her and then the evidence they found.”

“That's horrible!”

“Sho' is! And the way my mama done he'p raise Miz Becca from the time she was born an' all.” Parthenia shook her head and, scowling, said, “Jus' goes to show you kain't trust nobody.”

“How long has she been there?”

“She's bin there almost one whole month. Those things went missing after the big Valentine's party the Chandlers had.”

“How much longer does she have to stay?”

“ ' Til we kin earn enough money to pay for the five knives, but ain't neva' gonna be able to do that 'cuz, like I said, they's worth a whole bundle of money. So me an' Cornelius'll always be workin' and neva' be able to go ta school no more. And it ain't Mama who did it.”

“You know who stole those knives, Parthenia?”

Her face went blank, and then she looked fearful as she backed away from me.

“I don't know nuthin', nuthin' at all, Miz Mary Dobbs. I promise I don't know nuthin'.” She turned her back and said, “I gots ta get this dinner made.”

I didn't ask any more questions, but as I stood beside the big iron stove, I wondered at the story I'd just heard, and I wanted to help Parthenia and her family. I had no idea how I could help, but maybe God did.

With her back to me, Parthenia said, “So Papa and me and my brother, we do the best we can. I'm a pretty fine cook, I am. Bin heppin' my mama since I was five.” She grunted slightly as she leaned down and lifted a heavy pot from under the stove.

“Here, let me help you.” I filled the pot with water from the faucet, and then Parthenia struck a match and got the gas eye going, and before long she had a pot roast in the oven and vegetables cooking on the stove. The aroma of good food cooking in the kitchen wrapped around me, and I relished it for a moment, almost tasting it. The Chandlers' kitchen represented bounty to me.

When six o'clock came and still no one arrived home, Parthenia asked, “Do ya wanna see the stables?”

I shrugged. “Why not?”

We went out the back door, passed the garage—big enough for five cars—and walked into the stables, where we stood in the hallway looking at the horses and ponies, their fine arched necks and velvet muzzles sticking out over the wooden half doors to the stalls. Parthenia patted one. “This here's Red. He's my favorite.”

“Do you ride him?”

Again that shocked look, the whites of her eyes lighting up her face like two big exclamation points. “No! But sometimes I he'p Cornelius feed 'em.” As we walked through the stables, the smell of fresh hay and oats greeted me. “And ova' there is the pig and the chickens and the cow.”

We had just left the barn and were halfway down the hill to the lake when we heard a car engine rumbling in the driveway. “Uh-oh. We's gotta git back to the main house, quick!” Parthenia took off at a gallop with me following behind. We rushed in the back door, letting the screen door slam shut, and hurried into the kitchen, out of breath.

A few minutes later, the man who had driven us home from the train station came into the kitchen. He nodded to me and said, “Hello, Miz Mary Dobbs.” He had a serious expression on his face, and he was big—not just tall, but big in every way, and every inch of him seemed to be muscle. I thought I would never want to make Hosea mad. But then he knelt down, and Parthenia ran over to her father and hugged him tight around the neck, and he didn't seem threatening at all.

“Is it really true? He's dead? And did ya haveta cut him down, Papa? Did you and Cornelius haveta do it?”

He glanced at me with a worried expression, patted Parthenia's braids, and said, “
Shh
now, little one. You be askin' too many questions, and they's not appropriate for a child. Sho' does smell good in this kitchen. Who done fixed such a delicious-smellin' meal?”

Parthenia beamed. “It's me, Papa.”

He picked her up, hugged her close, and swung her around, and then he took the roast out of the oven, sliced it, and ladled meat and potatoes and carrots onto two plates for us. “We gonna take the rest of this dinner out to the car. The Singletons gonna be needin' as much food as they can git.”

In five minutes he was gone.

I spent the first evening at the Chandler house picking at the pot roast and vegetables at the little kitchen table with Parthenia. I had lost my appetite.

Later that night, I lay on my bed and thought of my friend Jackie, her wavy brown hair, the naughty eyes; I could almost hear her robust laughter. And inevitably I saw the coffin in my mind's eye. Saw Mother in tears and Father standing by the grave, his round face so pasty white, unable to speak, and Jackie's mother all doubled over with grief.

The room started spinning, and I half expected the canopy above me to float down and tangle me up in its fluffy folds until I suffocated. Clutching my stomach, I sat up and waited for the dizziness to pass.

Then I closed my eyes and saw pretty Perri Singleton disapproving of me, her eyes flashing defiance—albeit a very quiet and respectable defiance—as well as a fierce kind of pride. She seemed like a girl who had determination and spunk. I wondered if she had enough to get her through this tragedy. And as I imagined her sitting somewhere in her house, tears running down her cheeks—those cheeks that had two perfect crimson spots on them when I'd embarrassed her—I just felt my heart rip in two, and I
knew
what she needed.

I went to the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer where I had put my pitiful lingerie. Underneath a pair of panties I retrieved a thin, light-blue hardback book. “
Patches from the Sky
,” I read out loud, remembering when Hank had handed me that book all those months ago. Just thinking of it made my heart soar and then beat hard.

I was sitting in one of the back pews of the church, hunched over a history book and fiddling with my hair, making a tiny braid and then letting it unravel.

“Hey there, Mary Dobbs!” Hank came and sat beside me. “You doing all right today?”

I shrugged.

He stood there for a moment, then said, “You don't look so good. Something's wrong. Do you want to talk about it?”

Hank had been helping Father for two or three months, and we had struck up several conversations, but today what was bothering me was a lot deeper.