“Thank you.”
I didn’t want to drink from that jar, but he was watching me. I closed my eyes and took a long swallow. It tasted like iron, but it cooled my throat. I awkwardly crossed my legs at the ankle. I had on my uniform, but I wore a long blue cardigan over it. There was a T for Townsend sewn on the sweater pocket. I caught him looking at it. “You working today?”
He tilted his head. “Not directly.”
“What do you mean?”
He lifted his bare foot and jacked up a pant leg to reveal a lump on his calf.
“How long have you had that?” I reached out to touch it, but he jerked back.
“Ain’t nothing.”
“Has a doctor looked at it?” I was already thinking the worst, like it could be a tumor.
He scowled. “Ain’t no need for no doctor. Just a bad leg is all. To answer your question, Mr. Adair say he hiring a company to work the farm so I ain’t got to work today.”
“Are you saying he fired you?”
His face softened suddenly, as if he were switching on another part of himself. “You sure is a fox, you know that?”
I put the glass down on the floor hard and some of the water spilled. “Can I take the girls or not?”
“Hey, calm down now. I’m just messing with you.”
I tried to recover. “If you need a new place to stay, I’ve got an idea. I was thinking I could help y’all get into public housing. Sound like you might need to move soon.”
“Woman, what in the world are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a brand-new apartment. Don’t y’all get assistance? The government will pay.”
He crossed one leg over the other and his foot bumped mine. “We get all kinds of ’sistance. Every week somebody coming out here talking about assisting with something or the other.”
“Then it should work for you.”
I opened my purse and dug around. I still had the paperwork Mrs. Livingston had given me.
“Just sign this paper. And I’m going to need you to tell me the name of your social worker so I can make sure we go through the proper steps.”
He looked down at the paper and then back at me. “That lady don’t come round here no more. Act like she scared or something.”
I fished for a pen. “You remember her name? All you got to do is sign here and I’ll take care of the rest. I’m sorry, but . . . do you have a pen?”
“Naw, ain’t got no pen.”
I tried to force a smile. “Okay, well I’ll bring one back when I drop the girls off later this evening. If you want to keep these papers and take a look at them while I’m gone, that’ll be fine.”
He didn’t move.
“Mr. Williams? Here.”
His lip trembled, and, for a second, my hand hung suspended in the air. I wanted to slap myself as it dawned on me. The man couldn’t read, and now I was embarrassing him.
I didn’t know what to do next, so I picked up my glass and finished off the water. My hands shook as I returned the papers to my purse. “Or I could just take them with me and you could sign another time.”
He was quiet.
“I’m not sure yet how much you’ll have to pay, but it won’t be much. I’ll also see about getting you a job. How long did Mr. Adair give you?” Even though I heard myself saying this, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I was the nurse. The giver of shots. Not the fairy godmother.
“Thank you for visiting, Miss Sybil.” He said the “miss” in a high note, paused, then added my name in a mocking tone.
“It’s Civil.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll bring the girls back around seven. Is that alright?”
“Go on and take the girls. I ain’t never denied my girls a thing in they life. But you can move in your . . . apartment”—he said it so forcefully that a bead of spit tripped off his tongue—“yourself.”
I stumbled on the broken porch step as I left the house. Daddy told me to stay in the car. I should have listened. Blew my car horn. Called them outside and given the shots right there under the clear blue sky. Then hightailed it out of there.
That old farmer didn’t have to worry about me doing anything more for him. Old lizard with his dirty water and broken chair. I called out to India and Erica and slammed my car door once we were all inside. I rolled down the windows to let out the stench. I would just do what I could for these girls. Their daddy and grandmama could tend to their own selves.
EIGHT
I was shaken by the girls’ daddy, but I tried not to let it show. He was just embarrassed that he couldn’t read was all. I could handle that. I’d just explain the papers to him when I saw him again. I’d be patient just like my daddy was with folks who didn’t understand his medical terminology. In those days, we talked a lot about that kind of thing in nursing school. Nurses had to show a genuine respect for their patients; otherwise, folks sensed condescension and clammed up. I hoped he hadn’t experienced that with me, but I had a feeling he had.
“Where you taking us, Miss Civil?” asked Erica.
She turned a hopeful chin up toward me. In the rearview mirror, I noticed the same earnestness on India’s face.
“I’m taking y’all to Kmart to get some clothes.”
“K what?”
“Kmart. You haven’t heard about it? A new store in Montgomery.”
“What’s wrong with these clothes?” Erica looked down at her shirt and shorts.
“Don’t you need some underwear and things?” I turned onto East South Boulevard. “When is the last time you went shopping?”
She shook her head ever so slightly. I’d done it again. Embarrassed myself and probably them, too. There were clothes all over that house, but they all appeared to be hand-me-downs. And not the good kind, neither. The moth-bitten, faded, worn-out kind. And since they weren’t doing laundry properly I knew anything I bought would end up on the floor with everything else.
“We’re going to Kmart and then I’m taking you to my house. You can take a bath in my tub and I’ll fix your hair. Feed you. How does that sound?”
Erica half smiled for the first time since I’d met her, and I could see that one of her teeth was brown. I would start by buying her a toothbrush, and once I found the social worker, I would find out if the girls had ever been to see a dentist. It was only a matter of time before their teeth decayed.
I steered the car into the parking lot and the girls leaped out. I peeked inside my purse. I’d stuck some money in the inside zipper that morning but hadn’t bothered to count it.
“Is you rich, Miss Civil?” Erica peered at me through the car window. India stayed off to the side, bouncing on one foot.
“No, course not,” I said, snapping my purse shut and getting out of the car. “Child, if I was rich I’d be hanging out with Billy Dee Williams.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know who Billy Dee Williams is?”
She shook her head as we walked into the white building. I’d decided on Kmart instead of Loveman’s over in the Normandale Shopping Center because the Kmart was newer. At almost one hundred thousand square feet, it was also the largest store in the city. Inside everything was white and clean, and the aisles were so wide they never got crowded. Overhead, rows of fluorescent lights lined the ceiling from one end to the other. Furniture, beauty products, electronics, toys, clothes, shoes, even a pharmacy. All under one roof. If a fairy with wings had appeared in that store, I don’t believe those girls would have been surprised.