Once I got the needle started, I looked out at the little bit of the world you can see from my spot beside the barn. Wasn’t much to it besides the half dozen cabins just like mine lined up side by side, so close to each other you could just about hear your neighbor’s salt pork sizzling in the skillet.
In front of the cabins was a dirt footpath that led past Pleasant Grove Baptist Church and on to the cotton fields that took up most of Gee’s Bend. Past the cotton fields was cornfields. And in the far-off distance was a row of pine trees that marked the edge of the swamp. Beyond the swamp, the dark waters of the Alabama River snaked through the trees, keeping me on one side and the rest of the world on the other.
What was it like across the river? Wasn’t no way for me to know since I ain’t never set foot outside of Gee’s Bend. What I knew about was right here: this barn, this yard, this cabin. So when I heard banging sounds coming from inside, I knew my stitching time was just about up.
I tied a quick knot and had just got my needle put away when Daddy stomped down the wooden steps and into the yard. One look at the empty water bucket that was sitting on the ground next to the woodpile and I knew I had forgotten to draw the water. I real quick hopped off the feed sack and grabbed the handle. Daddy wouldn’t like me stitching before I’d finished my chores.
“Reckon today we’ll pull in what’s left of the cotton. Then all we got left to do is haul it to the gin,” Daddy said as he two-stepped across the yard. “Hallelujah!” Daddy’s whole face sparkled. We was all looking forward to being done with the harvest. Then we could take it easy till planting time came around again.
Mama’s lips curved into a half smile as she ran her hand across her big belly. “Make sure that boy does his share,” she said as my brother, Ruben, eased out of the house. As if Ruben was still a little boy instead of an inch past Daddy. As if he’d ever been a lick of trouble in all his sixteen years.
“He knows I’ll take the switch to him if I have to,” Daddy said, giving Ruben a wink. Ruben grinned as he came down the steps without making a single one of them squeak. He was the only person I knew who could get into and out of our cabin without making a sound. Mama always said when Ruben wasn’t being careful, he was being patient.
Mama never said those things about me. And it wasn’t no secret that, unlike me, Ruben hadn’t been switched in near about his whole life. He didn’t say a whole lot, but you could count on him to do whatever you asked. He was born that way, I reckon. But there was things about Ruben Mama and Daddy didn’t know. Things I found out by being neither patient nor careful.
Like how Ruben went fishing on Sunday afternoons, even when he knew as well as anybody Reverend Irvin said Sundays was for resting. The first time I followed Ruben out to the swamp, I gasped when I saw him pull a cane pole from behind a thick pine tree. Then, when he reached around another pine and pulled out a little tin bucket, I couldn’t stop myself from talking.
“This is your big secret?” I said, coming out from my hiding spot behind a hydrangea bush. “Fishing?”
Ruben didn’t jump or jerk, just turned to me like he knew I was there the whole time. “I reckon now it’s
our
secret.”
Wasn’t but one other person that knew about me and Ruben’s secret, and that was Etta Mae Pettway from next door. She’d come out if it wasn’t too hot. But that was before she went and moved off to Mobile. I reckon it’d been nearly a year since she fished with us.
Sometimes it seemed like them fish followed Etta Mae right out of Gee’s Bend. I got tired of holding on to that pole when nothing was biting. So Ruben let me be in charge of digging worms out of the rich dirt under the pines. Then, when I was ready to try again, he’d bait my hook for me so I didn’t have to be the one to kill those worms.
I swung the bucket by its handle as Ruben rocked back on his heels and Daddy gave Mama’s shoulders a squeeze.
“You take it easy, you hear?” Daddy said as he rubbed Mama’s arm. “Reverend Irvin said yesterday Mrs. Irvin will be by today with some onion broth. And won’t be but a day or two till we finish up with the cotton. Then I’ll be here to help, and the Pettways will too.” Daddy glanced toward the Pettways’ cabin next door. The Pettways was just like family, same as everybody else that lived in Gee’s Bend. I reckon that’s what happens when you work the same fields and go to the same church and live in cabins just about built on top of one another. “Looks like they beat us out this morning. Guess we better be getting on. Working in the far field today—good two-mile walk each way.”
“I’m just so tired,” Mama said, balling her hands into fists. “Cough won’t let up and my back’s been aching all morning.”
“Don’t you worry.” Daddy kissed the top of Mama’s head. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” Then he kissed the top of my head while Ruben kissed Mama’s cheek. When he got to me, Ruben didn’t kiss my cheek. He thumped my eye patch instead. Same as he always did. I don’t reckon there was a better brother in the world than Ruben.
When they got to the chinaberry tree that marked the edge of the yard, Daddy turned back and hollered, “Lu, you mind your mama,” Then he grinned that grin of his. Even when I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but grin back.
Once they was gone, it got quiet in the yard again. I lifted the bucket onto my head and walked toward the spring that was tucked away in a little patch of poplar trees past the outhouse.
Just as I was turning the corner of the cabin, I heard a door slam shut and something yellow caught my eye. When you like to quilt, it’s like your eyes is always on the lookout for color. Because it might be a scrap of cloth you can work into your quilt top. The yellow I saw that day was more than a scrap of cloth. It was a whole dress! And it was on a girl that was sitting on the porch steps of the Pettways’ cabin next door.
Nobody had to tell me who it was. I knew right away.
Girl in the Yellow Dress
“ETTA MAE!” I SAID, DROPPING THE BUCKET IN THE dirt and running toward her. “I didn’t know you was back!”
It was like the sky had opened up and poured sunshine out of a honey jar. Etta Mae Pettway was just about my favorite person in the whole wide world. At least she used to be, before she went to work a job in Mobile.
“Just now got here,” Etta Mae said, her face hidden in the shadow of the front porch. “Missed the last ferry yesterday from Camden, so I had to wait for Willie Joe to cross over this morning.”
The ferry was the quickest way in or out of Gee’s Bend. Otherwise you had to walk up through Rehoboth and around about forty miles to get anyplace. And Willie Joe was the one that worked the ferry. Wasn’t no getting across without Willie Joe’s help.
“Where’d you sleep?” I said as I climbed the steps of the Pettways’ cabin.
“On the riverbank in a pile of pinestraw. Same as you and me always did.”
I grinned as my mind went back through all the sticky summer days me and Etta Mae waited on the riverbank while our mamas crossed the river to sell blackberries in Camden. Etta Mae was the one that watched after me and all the other children while our folks worked the fields.
Was I glad to see her! Ever since I was a little child, it was Etta Mae that helped me when I got myself into trouble. Like the time I stepped on a fire ant bed and got bites all over my legs. Anytime I got a fever or a rash of poison ivy, it was Etta Mae that stayed with me and rubbed mud on my itchy spots. She told me stories too. About things that happened in far-off places where there was deserts or snow or mountains so tall it took days to climb ’em.
Seemed like things hadn’t been right ever since she’d been gone. Wasn’t nobody else who’d take the time with things the way Etta Mae did. When she went off to Mobile to look after some white family’s children, I wasn’t sure she’d ever come back. And now here she was, standing right in front of me, like she ain’t never left.
She looked just the same except for the dress. I ain’t never seen Etta Mae in anything other than a plain old sack dress just like mine. That yellow cloth sure wasn’t made out of no fertilizer sack, that’s for sure. I liked the way it set off her dark skin. I wanted to run and throw my arms around her same way as I always did, and tug at her hair that was caught up in them short braids she liked, the ones that always reminded me of blackberry brambles. But my legs just wouldn’t move. Not when Etta Mae wasn’t running toward me neither.
Hadn’t been but a year since she left. What in the world could have happened to make her hang back in the shadows that way? Why wasn’t she running out in the yard to be with me?
The air was suddenly cool again and nipped at my arms. I sank into my dress, wishing it had longer sleeves.
“Mercy, Ludelphia,” Etta Mae said, finally coming out from under the eaves of the cabin. “You done shot up tall as a cattail since I’ve been gone.” She wasn’t telling me nothing I didn’t already know. But I sure was glad she noticed! Maybe now she would throw her arms around me?
I leaned forward ever so slightly, but she still didn’t reach her hands out. Set ’em right on her hips instead. Then she sat down on the top step and patted the seat next to her. “Might not have known you if not for that eye patch.”
Real quick I scrambled up the steps. At least she was inviting me to sit with her. Our eyes met for just the briefest second before Etta Mae turned away. It was like she didn’t know what to say to me. She seemed worried about something, nervous. And that made all them words I had stored up to say to her just disappear.
I smoothed my dress under my legs and sat down beside her. I couldn’t count the times me and Etta Mae had sat beside each other on this very same step. I reckon I’d spent more time in my life with Etta Mae than with my very own brother, even though she and Ruben was the exact same age. Both of ’em, sixteen.
That’s the way it was in Gee’s Bend, the boys and men out working them fields, and most all of the women too. Ever since Etta Mae had been gone, I’d been the one to look after the little ones.
My mind was empty as a plate that had been licked clean. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I scratched under my eye patch, then reached up and felt my own hair. Mine was caught up in tight braids real close to my head.
My eye settled on Etta Mae’s hands. How many times had them thick knuckles braided my hair for me? Her hands was big, same as the rest of her. Not fat, but able to do anything. Seemed like wasn’t nothing bad could happen when Etta Mae was around.
Underneath her hands the yellow cloth shined. Right away I started thinking about my quilt. What I would give for a piece of cloth like that! Etta Mae must have worked real hard to get such a fancy dress.
“You get that dress in Mobile?” I said, my hands folded together in my lap, when what I really wanted was to touch it and see if it was soft as it looked. But I didn’t dare.
Etta Mae rested her hands on her knees. “You ain’t heard what happened?” She looked me straight on for the first time, her forehead wrinkling from the top of her eyebrows all the way to where her hair started. “Aunt Doshie ain’t been ’round talking about what Mrs. Cobb told Willie Joe?”
I shook my head. What could have happened in Mobile? “Aunt Doshie was here just yesterday, checking up on Mama. But I didn’t hear her say nothing about you or Mrs. Cobb.”
“You sure?” Etta Mae stood up and started walking across the yard toward my cabin. “Willie Joe said the only reason he was carrying me back over the river was because he’d told Aunt Doshie all about it, and he knew she’d warn folks about me.”
Warn folks? About what? I didn’t know what on earth Etta Mae was talking about. As I followed her the few dozen steps between her cabin and mine, my mind flipped but still turned up nothing.
When we got to the front porch stairs, Etta Mae squatted down and pointed underneath. “See that?” she said.
I tilted my head and strained my eye till I could see a dusting of white powder all over the ground. Wasn’t no mystery to me what it was. It was devil’s lye. For warding off evil spirits.
“You know how my mama is,” I said. I made my voice light, like me and Etta Mae was just playing around same as we used to do. “She says it’s best to be prepared. ‘You just never know’ is what she says. You remember, Etta Mae. Mama even keeps a flour sifter up under the mattress. Just in case some evil spirit gets in the house it’ll be so busy counting them holes in the sifter that it’ll plumb forget its business.”
“I’m telling you, Lu. That devil’s lye ain’t there just for some old evil spirit.”
What was Etta Mae getting at? “What do you mean?” I said. Wasn’t nothing new about superstitions in Gee’s Bend. Most times we just laughed when Aunt Doshie would start up about “witch’s corners” and how the dirt from the graveyard was bad luck. One time Etta Mae took all us children out to see the headstones and we loaded our pockets with that dirt. Ain’t nothing bad ever happened.
When Etta Mae turned toward me, her dark eyes was bright and wet. Was that tears? There wasn’t a time I could remember when I’d ever seen Etta Mae cry.
“Etta Mae?”
She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her fingers. “Ain’t nothing,” she said. “I’m just glad to be back in Gee’s Bend where there ain’t so much noise and confusion. Don’t reckon I’ll ever leave this place again.”
“You trying to tell me you missed this place?” I fingered the ragged hem of my sack dress, then reached out and ran my finger along the smooth edge of Etta Mae’s dress. “Where things is the same day after day, and there ain’t no such thing as fancy clothes?”
Etta Mae’s lips spread into a smile and a little laugh came out.
There was the Etta Mae I knew and loved. There was the face I remembered.
“Ain’t but one thing I’m gonna miss about Mobile. And it’s got nothing to do with dresses.”
I leaned back on my elbows so I could watch her as she talked. “What then?”
“The missus, she had a piano. You should have seen it, Lu! The outside golden brown, like maple wood, only shiny? And them keys was so in tune it was like angels singing. Not like Reverend Irvin’s broken-down church piano at all.”