Mulberry. Paulette Boudreaux

      THE LEAVES WERE GONE from my mulberry tree and the world was barren with the approach of winter when Roy Anthony, Earl, and I looked up from our Saturday morning play in the yard to see Momma walking up the road after nearly three weeks of being away at the hospital with Ida Bea. The boys rushed to greet her with their emotions flying. I followed as she went into the house with them bustling joyously around her. She pulled off her coat and sat on the edge of her and Daddy’s unmade bed.

      “Where’s y’all’s Daddy?”

      “Gone,” we all said together.

      Daddy had left the house at the crack of dawn just like he did on workdays.

      June Bug climbed onto Momma’s lap, and Roy Anthony and Earl dropped to their knees on the floor in front of her. I sat beside her on the bed and she draped an arm across my shoulders, leaned in, and pressed her cheek against the side of my face. The subtle odors of hospital antiseptics, fatigue, and rubber bandages wafted from her clothes.

      “Where’s the baby at?” Earl wanted to know.

      “The hospital.”

      “How come you didn’t bring her with you?”

      Momma’s smile flattened. “She needs to stay where the doctors can see her.”

      “Look at all you nappy heads,” she sang, her smile blossoming again. “You all gone get washed and clipped soon as me and Maddy clean this house.”

      Roy Anthony and Earl shook like puppies and jumped to their feet. “You’ll never take me alive,” Roy Anthony said. He posed briefly, as if he were running when someone called “red light.” He opened the door and ran onto the porch. His laughter floated in as Earl disappeared after him and slammed the door.

      Momma stood and lifted June Bug. The muscles in her forearms tensed, dark and sinewy as she held him in the air above her for a moment then rubbed his cheek against hers. He giggled and drew his knees up toward his chest. Momma settled him on her hip and began her survey of the rest of the house. I followed, seeing the mess through her eyes—the unmade beds, the pile of school clothes on great-grandmother’s trunk and in the rocking chair, school papers scattered on the dresser-top and the floor, the mound of book-bags in the corner, toys everywhere, dust bunnies lining the baseboards, dirt trails on the linoleum from the back door to the kitchen sink, leaves huddled in little clumps around the legs of the kitchen table, food cemented to the floor in crusty patches near the stove, dirty dishes leaning against each other in the sink.

      I stole a glance at Momma’s face. Her disappointment and aggravation were visible in the bunched lines between her eyes and in her pursed lips.

      I wanted to say it wasn’t easy to keep an eye on the boys and keep the house clean at the same time. She had to know how hard it was just to get the boys up and fed and dressed and out of the house, then back home safely every day.

      “You just don’t seem to know how not to shame me,” Momma said.

      She shook her head and made that familiar sound with her tongue like the speeded up ticking of a clock. “This house ain’t got no business looking like this with a girl as big as you living in it.”

      June Bug pressed his head against Momma’s chest, put his thumb in his mouth, and stared at me.

      “Maddy, girl, you got to act more grown now. You big enough to clean a house. I showed you how. I didn’t make you do as much housework as some people made they girls, but I showed you how. No excuse for this kind of mess. You got to make better use of yourself. I’ve told you. Ain’t no room in the world for no lazy colored girl. You understand what I’m telling you?”

      She was always saying things like that to me. I didn’t understand exactly, but I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

      “What I tell you ’bout ‘sorry’?”

      “It don’t fix nothing, and it make me sound like I’m no count and lazy.”

      “So why you standing here saying it to me now?”

      “I’ll do better next time.”

      “Please God, let that be the truth. Now don’t just stand there like a little empty-headed sow, we need the broom, the water bucket, the mop, the wash tub …”

      I followed her orders and we set to work cleaning the house. I helped her pull the sheets off the beds and put them to soak in a tub of scalding water laced with bleach and soap. While they were soaking, I washed dishes and helped scrub the floor of every room in our four-room house, including the little room on the back porch that housed the toilet. We took the sheets from their soak and scrubbed them on the metal scrub-board until they were pristine. Then we washed several weeks’ worth of dirty clothes, including Daddy’s work overalls with their stench of hay and chicken feed and droppings from his job at the poultry farm. Finally, we heated more water and the metal washtub was set in the middle of the kitchen floor and filled again with warm soapy water. One after the other, the boys and I climbed in and scrubbed away two and a half weeks of dirt.

      “Is this how it is when I’m gone?” Momma had asked in a snappish voice as we ate supper without Daddy. “Go watch for him,” she ordered as soon as our plates were empty.

      The washing was all dry, the beds remade, supper was eaten, and it was getting dark by the time we saw Daddy coming up the road.

      “Momma’s home, Momma’s home,” Roy Anthony and Earl sang, hurrying to meet Daddy when he strode into view, lumbering slowly from inside the Quarters.

      “She waiting for you,” Roy Anthony said, running backward in front of Daddy. “She ain’t happy neither.”

      On the front porch, Daddy stopped to tuck in his shirt, pull the front of his jacket together, and square his shoulders. He wiped his mud-caked shoes on the back of his pant legs, patted his kinky hair, and fixed a smile on his dark, lean face. The boys and I followed him inside.

      In the kitchen Momma leaned against the sink, her arms folded across her chest, a wet dishrag dangling from one hand.

      “Well, well, well, seems they was telling the truth,” Daddy said with a guilty smile.

      The tight expression on Momma’s face didn’t change. She turned her back to us all, sloshed the rag in the dishwater, wrung it out, and hung it over the side of the sink. “Y’all keep your coats on and go on back outside to play,” she ordered. “Me and your Daddy need to talk.” The heat of her anger fanned out, touching everything in the room.

      “Junie Boy can stay,” she added. “The rest of y’all go on out of here, but don’t leave the yard.”

      Roy Anthony, Earl, and I went onto the front porch. Earl’s eyes were moist. “What we gon’ do now, Maddy?” he asked.

      “Momma said play,” Roy Anthony answered. “So let’s play then. Pick a game you crybaby.”

      I suggested hide-and-seek. As soon as their backs were turned, I ran to the back porch, quietly opened the screen door, stepped in between the screen and the wooden door, squatted, and pressed my ear against the cold wood to eavesdrop on Momma and Daddy in the kitchen.

      “… nothing like before,” Daddy was saying. “Ain’t at all the same, Dot. This baby was born sick. Samuel was born healthy.”

      What was he talking about? Who was Samuel?

      “It’s