Mulberry. Paulette Boudreaux

      AT THE TOP OF my mulberry tree, October wind curled around the branches, snaking through the soft yellow leaves, making them sway and hiss in the air around me. A few of the leaves released their claim and danced toward the bare dirt thirty feet below. Goose bumps rose on my face and arms and I clenched my teeth against the chill, but I wasn’t ready to climb down and go inside. I was chewing my cud, as my mother would have said. In fact, I had come outdoors into the chilly air and climbed as high as I could go—to get away from her and the aggravations of my younger brothers, Earl and Roy Anthony especially.

      Straddling my favorite branch with my back pressed against the strong trunk, the world seemed benign and uncomplicated. I could let my tangled thoughts and hurt feelings unravel and float away on the wind like pieces of string.

      Above me the sky fanned out like pale turquoise. Below me lay my segregated Mississippi community. This enclave of dirt roads and shotgun houses was called Harvest Quarters. The neighborhood was surrounded by dense woods, but most of the houses sat in barren yards along a wide dirt road that arced off of the main street into the woods for about a mile, curving like a giant horseshoe to the place where it emptied back onto the street. A creek had etched a deep ravine that ran through the woods at the heart of the Quarters and disappeared into the rural areas beyond. There were dirt footpaths that meandered down to the creek. In the summer I had ventured down a few of them, though Momma had told me never to follow any of those paths and to stay away from the creek.

      I gazed along the road to the place where it curved into woods and disappeared into the bowels of the Quarters, and there was Daddy, emerging slowly, his eyes trained on the ground, his boots crunching quietly in the gravel. His steps were deliberate, and he was swinging his metal lunch-bucket with rhythm like he was keeping time to a song. He seemed heroic to me then as I watched him striding toward home in his gray khaki work clothes and heavy black boots. My heart opened out with relief, and I started my long climb down. Momma’s mood always shifted into someplace easy and my brothers reined in their restless little-boy energy when Daddy was home and we all sat down for supper.

      I had almost reached the ground when I heard Daddy’s voice behind me.

      “Baby Girl, what you doing up in that tree in this cold air?” Daddy asked. “You and your momma at odds again? What’s it this time?”

      I jumped down the final few feet and ran to where he had stopped in the road across from our house. “I didn’t pass my spelling test this week,” I said. “Momma called me lazy. Said I didn’t put enough effort in,” I added, conjuring as many of my hurt feelings as I could recall like a small storm inside my chest. Mostly my wounded emotions had fragmented and floated off on the wind at the top of my mulberry tree. It was mainly the tight pinch of indignation and shame that came forward again.

      The lines on Daddy’s forehead softened. He looked relieved, then he grinned at me. “Well did you?”

      “Course I did. Momma even helped me study,” I said.

      “Your momma know you ain’t lazy. Don’t take too deep what she say. She ain’t her natural self these days.”

      Even at eleven, I didn’t have to think about it long to know he was right. My mother was carrying a baby inside her then, had been since before the summer started. In this, her fifth pregnancy, as in all the others, her belly had expanded selfishly around the baby. But this time the swelling hadn’t stopped with her belly. It was as if the baby was filling up every part of her body. Her face and neck were heavy and swollen. Even her legs had swelled, thick and smooth like naked tree trunks.

      “She hurt my feelings, Daddy,” I said, kicking at the ground in front of me. I still wasn’t ready to be sympathetic. I wanted Daddy to say something or do something to make me feel better. I could usually count on him for that. I didn’t need much.

      “Y’all’s schooling important to your momma,” he said. “You being the oldest she expects a lot from you.”

      “But—”

      “Come here.”

      He extended his arm toward me. I went forward. He pulled me to his side and put his arm across my shoulder. “Thicken your hide a little bit more, Baby Girl. Here,” he said, releasing me and pressing his scratched and dented black metal lunch box against my chest. “You need a hard shell like this pail. Maybe we can make you a tin suit.”

      He grinned at me again and put one wide callused palm on the top of my head. He rocked my head back and forth gently. I closed my eyes, pressing the cold metal lunch box into my chest and feeling the warmth from his hand radiate into my scalp.

      “Maddy, listen. Grown folk ain’t easy to figure. Sometimes we get beside ourselves. Say things we don’t mean. Do things we can’t account for. Your momma’s outside how she normally is ’cause of her condition. She’ll get back to herself after the baby comes.”

      I wanted to say I didn’t remember her ever being so mean before, especially to me. But when I opened my eyes to look up at Daddy, he was frowning and his jaw was clenched.

      “I’m late,” he said, lifting his hand from my head and turning toward home. “I know your momma’s been holding supper for me. Probably getting madder by the minute. Let’s get on inside.”

      “Everything gon’ be fine,” he said, his