Chinaberry by James Still Read Free Book Online

finishing the task, she pressed my head against her breast and sighed. “Put your clothes on and come to breakfast.”
    She sashayed out of the room, leaving her scent behind her. She smelled of violets. How often had I gone with my sisters to pick violets in our pasture along Hootlacka Creek. The source of this fragrance, which pervaded her presence, was a bottle of perfume, Violet Spring, on her dressing table. And the smell that clung to Anson was from a beaker of Lilac Vegetal aftershave lotion on the shelf where his shaving mug and long razor were kept.
    Then I saw on a chair at the foot of the bed my bib overalls and shirt, freshly laundered and ironed. I wore no underclothes, a lack soon remedied. And there was a pair of moccasins for me, a perfect fit, made overnight by Blunt from a single piece of leather, not single-tack-driven but bound together by thongs.
    At the table I discovered cornflakes. A bowl of them sat on my plate, floating in milk and sweetened. My first taste. I added three more spoons of sugar. I ate a second bowl of cereal when it was offered and would have downed a third had I not been ashamed. The scrambled eggs and bacon I hardly nibbled. I did eat a biscuit in sampling the three varieties of jam—fig, blackberry, and pear. This kind of diet would have been commented on by Anson, yet Lurie said not a word.
    In the kitchen behind us, Angelica and Rosetta were laughing. Anson often said they were probably born laughing. Their voices were a mixture of Spanish and English, although both could speak English almost without accent. Their families were the only Mexicans I was to see, and I was never to see a black person there. There was a black cowpuncher on Big Jack's ranch, but I never saw him. In Alabama, the black folk were everywhere, and there was one, Aunt Fanny, who had helped my mother care for the ten children as they arrived. Diapering, and diaper washing, seemed to be her chief employment, along with quieting whines and rocking infants to sleep. When my mother, with her many housekeeping chores, had no time to cure a hurt or answer a question, Aunt Fanny did.
    As for Rosetta's and Angelica's amusement, Anson was to say, “Don't ask what's so funny. They don't know themselves.” Once these young women had cleaned up the kitchen, Rosetta was off to change the sheets and pillowcases on the beds, which was done every day, sweep the floors, and dust; and Angelica had the gasoline-powered washing machine going to launder everything.From day to day, I never wore a garment twice if it was unwashed. After these chores, Angelica and Rosetta were off to do their own tasks at their homes, and they were back again at four to cook supper. The kitchen stove was not fired again until supper, to spare the house the heat. At noon Lurie and I snacked, the two of us, on pimento sandwiches, cold chicken or ham, and I drank buttermilk while she drank iced tea.
    That second day seemed short, as I had some exploring to do. I looked into all of the nine rooms except the one that was kept locked. The bathroom was two rooms down from Lurie and Anson's bedroom. The tub was huge and rested on four clawlike legs. Until adjustments were employed, I couldn't reach the chain that released the water into the commode or sit on the commode without my feet dangling, and sitting presented some danger of falling in. This was to be remedied soon. I used the shower in the washhouse, an act required of me morning and mid-afternoon in hot weather.
    That first free day at Chinaberry, I saw most of what there was to see. Anson's saddle horse, Blue, had a companion, Red, the horse Lurie rode. Red was red, a matching roan. I climbed up the ladder in the barn and looked; I peered into the cotton house, where a mountain of it was stored, awaiting the gin. There was the garden where grew the vegetables now beginning to wither in the heat. I discovered the flowers that Lurie could not grow in the yard or on the porch. They