islands where I think he came from.” His jaw still twitching, Daddy paused and blinked fast and hard. But a single tear still managed to slide out of his eye. “I declare, I loved that little gal as much as I love my own.” He paused again and grinned, wiping the tear off his cheek with the back of his hand. “You ever gwine to be my girl again?” He sniffed hard and downgraded his grin to a weak smile.
“I’ve always been your girl, Daddy. And I always will be.” I patted Daddy’s shoulder and looked away, sucking in air so hard a sharp pain rolled through my chest. “How come you didn’t tell me Lillimae looked like that?” I asked in a whisper, leaning my head close Daddy’s.
He looked at me with genuine surprise. “Look like what?” He glanced toward the back room, where Lillimae was slamming closet doors and banging dresser drawers shut.
My face was flaming as I caressed my cheek and cocked my head to the side. Talking out of the side of my mouth, I said in a controlled voice, “She can pass for white.”
Daddy shrugged. “I can sure enough understand you havin’ a beef with white women…”
I gave Daddy a thoughtful look and a smile. “My closest female friend back in Ohio is white. I don’t have a problem with white women. But it was a real shock to find out that my own sister looks like one.”
“Well, Lillimae ain’t white. At least not by these rules the white folks done laid down. And while we on the subject, every nigger I know claim to be part Indian. Even me! Only ones ain’t braggin’ about havin’ Indian blood is the Indians. Shoot. White blood, Indian blood, don’t matter how much of it you got. If you got any Black blood at all, you Black in this white man’s country. Case closed. Lillimae is a Black woman and she proud of it.” Daddy paused and gave me a thoughtful look. “And I hope you proud of your color, too.”
“I am, Daddy. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”
I could not believe that I had only been in Florida for a few hours. It seemed more like a few days. Daylight was coming to a dramatic close. Lightning bugs and dim streetlights lit up the night as Lillimae and I made our way from the living room to her old Chrysler. She kept it parked in a narrow driveway by the side of her house. The full moon, shining like a huge silver ball, looked like it was about to drop right out of the darkening sky. It gave me an eerie feeling.
It was still just as hot as it had been when I’d arrived that afternoon. All of the doors to the neighboring houses were standing open. People in their nightclothes had gathered on their front porches. They were fanning, drinking, and listening to radios playing everything from Gospel to the Blues.
After the visit to the drugstore, Lillimae and I stopped at a vegetable stand. She wanted to pick up more turnip greens and a bag of red-skinned potatoes. The place was crawling with sweaty people pushing shopping carts, loaded with everything from watermelons to ten-pound plastic bags of raw peanuts.
There was a long line of customers at three of the four checkout aisles. Since Lillimae had only two items, she rushed to the express lane. I stumbled along behind her, chewing on a handful of grapes that I had snatched off a counter next to the greens.
The cashier, a middle-aged blonde who would have been pretty without the dark circles and heavy bags under her large blue eyes, smiled as we approached her counter. She had chatted with the white man ahead of us, telling him how sorry she was about his sick wife and telling him she was going to pray for him and his whole family. Naturally, I assumed she’d show us some level of courtesy, too.
Just as Lillimae placed her greens and the sack of potatoes on the counter, a sharp-featured white man wearing a manager’s identification tag appeared out of nowhere. He stood rooted in a spot near our cashier, with his hairy, sunburned arms folded and a grim expression on his face. The cashier’s face immediately went from a smile to a scowl. She roughly stuffed Lillimae’s greens into the same bag with the potatoes, even though the bag was clearly too small. Then, she practically threw Lillimae’s change at her, ignoring her request to have the greens put in a separate bag. Instead, the rude cashier waved us through her line and snapped her fingers at the customer behind us and yelled, “Next!”
I had to remember where I was, because I was tempted to say something. By the grace of God, I was able to restrain myself. But I still glared at the cashier. Somehow, Lillimae managed to remain pleasant, even telling the woman, “Have a nice day.”
I was further annoyed when the manager put his hands on his hips and watched us until we went out the door.
“I guess some things never change.” I sighed as Lillimae and I approached her car parked on the street directly in front of the vegetable stand. “I’ll never forget the way some white folks used to treat Muh’Dear and me when we lived down here.” I snorted so hard I had to rub my nose. I was surprised to see specks of blood on my fingers. Lillimae didn’t respond until she had tossed the bag with her vegetables onto the backseat.
“I would have gone to another stand if I had known that woman worked here,” Lillimae hissed, gripping the sides of the steering wheel. The weather had cooled off considerably by now, but beads of sweat covered most of Lillimae’s face. She was red with rage. “I work my fingers to the bone at that damn post office so me and Daddy can eat good. This is one of the best stands in town and one of the closest. But them motherfuckers’ll never get another one of my hard-earned dollars. I don’t have to put up with that shit.”
“I would not have been as nice to that old peckerwood witch as you were,” I snarled, looking back toward the vegetable stand.
The same cashier who had behaved so rudely was now standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the vegetable stand under a streetlight, looking at us. For a moment, her eyes locked with mine. I blinked because I couldn’t believe the unbearably sad look on the woman’s face now. I gasped when she offered a faint smile before we drove off. I let out a deep sigh and turned back around.
I saw no reason to share what I had just seen with Lillimae. As far as I was concerned, the woman was nobody. But what Lillimae said next made my eyes burn with tears.
“Her name is Edith,” Lillimae told me, her voice cracking.
“Who?” I asked, my eyes staring at the side of Lillimae’s head.
“That old peckerwood witch that just waited on us.”
I gasped. “You know her?”
Lillimae nodded. “She’s my mama.”
CHAPTER 7
The first few hours of the first day of my visit with Daddy and Lillimae had already been difficult enough. Seeing Lillimae’s mother at that vegetable stand had made it even more difficult.
Lillimae had prepared her absent sons’ small bedroom next to the kitchen for me to sleep in. I took a long bath in a huge, claw-foot bathtub, noticing that the Florida sun had already started drying out my skin. By the time I crawled out of the bathtub, slathered Vaseline Intensive Care lotion over most of my body, and returned to the living room, Lillimae and Daddy had disappeared to their bedrooms. I waited until I was sure they were asleep. Then I padded into the kitchen to use the telephone on the wall next to the refrigerator to call up Muh’Dear, my mother.
Before I could dial Muh’Dear’s number, that greedy cat from next door started clawing and thumping on the kitchen door. He was meowing so loud, I let him in before he could disturb Lillimae. Since she seemed so fond of him, I knew she would come out to feed him again. Once the cat rolled across the floor, straight to the refrigerator, I took out a slice of raw bacon and tossed it to him. He dragged it to a corner and started gnawing. He was already halfway done with it by the time I finished dialing Muh’Dear’s number so I knew I had to talk fast.
Muh’Dear must have had the telephone in the bed with her, because she answered before the first ring ended.
“What your daddy got to say for hisself after all these years? I bet he done already told you enough lies to fill a hog trough,” Muh’Dear said hotly.
Before