by Marlys West
By afternoon the mulberry pickers were purple-stained and thirsty. The girls shifted the flannel-lined baskets from hip to hip, mouths thin with fatigue. I watched them from the porch, ignoring my mother, pretending to be asleep. I would not carry a pitcher of lemonade and my mother, in exasperation, called the girls up to the house. They filed past me slowly. I closed my eyes and heard the porch door shut gently behind them.
Years later when I taught theory of grammar, my summers were given up to research and I hardly went back to the house by the river. My mother sent boxes of baked goods which I shared with the other professors in the late afternoons in the small, cherrywood lounge. Most of us, myself included, were young, unmarried and hated going home at the end of the day to our small, hot apartments. We spent hours discussing our bygone youth.
Reminiscing usually began with discussion of our current studies. One afternoon, having brought both jam and tea bread, I mentioned that I was studying the comma, the mark indicating a division in a sentence. I explained that according to some theorists a comma resembles one half of the hieroglyph for "lungs." Both halves resemble a set of lungs, possibly ribs, indicating the need to take a breath at a particular point in a narrative or story. Several of the professors nodded sagely. I paused.
After spooning a generous helping of sugar in my tea, I noted that before I went to Egypt, before I went to the University, when I was just a boy, I sat on my mother's verandah watching mulberry pickers. My mother would only hire teenage girls whose families had fallen on hard times. She wouldn't hire boys.
I mentioned that in those days I'd known of boys who would have done anything for a dollar or two, even girl's work. Several of the other fellows in the lounge nodded their heads. I said that the Ashey boys, for one, would have mowed grass with their teeth if asked.
The Ashey boys were poor, but not so bad off that my mother and I didn't know about them. There were four of them, an angry clump of boys: Frankie, Aaron, Richard called Dardy, I don't know why, and the oldest one, a slow boy, Peter. All those boys were scrawny and black-haired.
One summer when the girls had been picking mulberries for three days in a row, my mother and I passed the Ashey boys on our way to the post office. They gave my mother a low, ugly, wolf whistle. My mother stopped. I stood still and wished I wasn't such a young boy with a very pretty mother and just a vague memory of a father who'd gone away and wasn't coming back. We were prey. My mother was ignorant of this truth. She turned around and gave those boys a casual smile.
It was hot and dry. The air smelled like new grass and sweet flowers. The Ashey boys stood four abreast, slouching and grinning. I stood where I was and tried to look unconcerned. One of my knees buckled slightly and one of the Ashey boys snickered. My mother walked right up to the bunch of them. Their slouches and grins didn't fade but grew stiff, just as if they'd stood up and made a straight face. If I'd run off at that point she'd never have noticed.
"How's your mother, Peter?" my mother asked holding up the envelopes to be mailed and fanning herself. Peter watched her fanning motion, swallowed and grinned, showing all his gums. He nodded and swallowed a few times before he could answer.
Back then everyone talked about how Mrs. Ashey coughed up blood periodically, but no one ever sent her away. At the time she'd been ill for several months. She was turning into a wraith.
"She's bad off," Peter said, all the time nodding at my mother. My mother nodded back slowly to catch him. The other boys looked relieved when Peter quit bobbing his head.
"Tell your mother I asked after her," she said.
"Sometimes she can't get up," Dardy said, his dark hair falling in his eyes.
The others hushed him and glared at me. My mother stopped fanning herself and told Dardy to come by our house after dinner, she had something for Mrs. Ashey. She said goodbye to each of the boys, turned, walked past me and slipped into the post office.
I stood outside watching the Ashey boys drift down the road. On the walk home I caught my mother's arm. She laughed and shook me off. I ran in circles around her, jabbing at the air like a boxer. It made her laugh because I wasn't ever silly like that.
Once we got home, my mother went into a flurry of activity. She asked one of the clever girls, one of the mulberry pickers, Susan, if she'd stay back and help her. Susan said she would but had to get her sister. She came back with the baby Emmaline, laid her on the dining room floor, and took the stack of magazines my mother handed her. I watched them from the kitchen, all the time pretending to do my lessons.
In an hour, they'd made a little picture book from cut up magazines and sewed a pretty, yellow ribbon along the binding side. They even wrote short captions underneath the pictures, like, "a day at the beach means sand and a picnic," in neat handwriting. Susan didn't know how to spell "beach," or picnic." This worried my mother. I was embarrassed for Susan, but she didn't notice me, sitting red-faced at the little breakfast table. I could spell anything at that age, even lieutenant.
My mother waited for Dardy to show up after dinner, but he never did. So we piled in the car and drove to the Ashey house which was more like a shack, but not too dilapidated. For some reason my mother got shy just then and asked Susan for Emmaline. My mother struggled out of the car and knocked on the Ashey door with Emmaline on her hip and the book wrapped neatly in brown paper in her free hand.
When Mr. Ashey opened the door, my mother stiffened slightly. Emmaline squirmed. Mr. Ashey was a short, wiry, black-haired man. He never smiled. My mother held the book up and said she was very sorry his wife wasn't well and that we'd brought a little something for her to pass the time with. Emmaline whimpered. My mother handed Mr. Ashey the book.
Mr. Ashey took it with a wooden face and looked my mother up and down. It made the back of my neck red.
"She ain't in bed," he finally said, holding his hand out with the book still in it, "and she ain't sick."
Behind him his wife appeared, pale and haggard. The cords on the side of her neck stuck out like sticks. She opened the sagging door wide enough to look at all of us. Susan looked at her and shrugged slightly. I looked away at the dirty yard. My mother addressed Mrs. Ashey and shifted Emmaline awkwardly to her other hip.
"Your boys said you felt poorly, so we made a little picture book for you," my mother said. I think she was smiling.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Ashey in a flat voice. She picked the book up out of her husband's hand. Emmaline arched her back and wailed.
My mother took a step back and said she hoped she hadn't bothered them. The Asheys looked at her blankly as she turned and hurried to the car. She handed the sobbing Emmaline back to Susan who had her quiet by the time my mother backed out of the pitted yard. None of us said anything in the car. Emmaline smelled sour and I rolled my window down because of it.
Long after that I was afraid of running into the Ashey boys. I knew my mother had done something wrong, but didn't know what. When I asked Susan about it, she said it was charity and made people feel small. I said it wasn't. Susan said I didn't know anything. I remember wishing my mother hadn't glued together a book for Mrs. Ashey who most likely couldn't read anyway.
Mrs. Ashey died a few weeks after my mother took that picture book to her. Mr. Ashey told anyone who'd listen that his wife was strong as an ox until the day she fell over, but no one listened to him. I remember how skinny and awful she looked back then. It made me hungry.
My mother's lemon tea bread was almost gone. No one liked to eat the last, soft, yellow slice. I reached for it and held it in my lap. The nervous fellow, the one who thought punctuation was ridiculous, asked about my mother.
She bakes once a week, I said, nodding at the tea bread in my lap. I told him how before I left she used to bake at least once a week; breads, pies, cakes, muffins, everything. Never idle, I told the fellow, and swallowed my tea. She was always up to something. I stared at the wall behind him.
Once when I was young my mother had some silly idea about making a book for a lady who lived in the poor section of town. We drove to this lady's house where my mother stood on a rickety porch. I didn't know what was wrong with us, but I knew we weren't doing things the right way. None of the Ashey boys beat me up after that. Sometimes I almost wished they would, but they didn't.
And before that, when I was a younger boy, there were girls in my backyard picking mulberries, their arms up like new trees. Once they picked for three days straight. On the last day they sat under the trees eating tiny sandwiches my mother made. They arranged their thin dresses in careful folds over their skinny knees. Some of them ate little handfuls of berries from our baskets. I knew they were thirsty.
My mother kept calling my name from inside the house. I wouldn't answer her, I didn't move a muscle. I was pretending to sleep on the back porch, spying on the mulberry pickers taking lunch and waiting for their lemonade. My mother was calling for me to take the girls their refreshment and I was not answering her.
Finally they filed past me, hands and mouths dark with juice. My mother asked them where I was. One of the younger girls told her I was sleeping on the porch. My mother must have leaned down to look closer at this girl because there was an awkward pause back in the kitchen. My mother must have looked at all the girls just then. She asked them why their mouths were blue. I heard bare feet shuffling and ice clinking in the glass pitcher. I really did fall asleep waiting for someone to answer my mother.