Gogo nodded eagerly, and Vern, after one last steeling breath, began her story.
* * *
EARLY MORNING before the sun rose, Vern crutched herself to the kitchen fridge and ate a half dozen eggs raw. Gnashing shells between her teeth, she sucked down crunchy whites and crunchy yolks.
Frantic with hunger, she sniffed for more. Folded in white butcher paper was a two-pound block of ground venison. Bridget had set it thawing for tomorrow’s burger lunch, but Vern tore off the wrapping and drove her teeth into the mass of dark red meat.
“Hungry?”
Vern swung around. Gogo, a shadow in the dark, stood in the kitchen’s entrance holding a mug. “There’s more in the chest freezer out back if you want it,” she said. Vern wiped off her meat-stained mouth with her shoulder.
“Couldn’t sleep,” said Vern.
Gogo set a kettle on the stove and opened a cabinet. “You hunt?” Gogo asked.
“A little,” said Vern, even though it had been her primary source of food for the last four years.
“Good. We took down one buck in the fall, but I don’t know if it’s going to last us. I hope you like goose. It’s what’s in season.”
“I like anything,” said Vern. She didn’t have her bow anymore, but she could make a new one from PVC pipe. She’d taken down flying game before, though with her eyesight the conditions had to be just right.
Gogo wet a dishrag under the tap, squeezed, then walked up to Vern with it.
“What?” Vern asked.
Gogo reached up slowly, effectively asking permission, and pressed the wet cloth to Vern’s face when Vern did not protest. She cleaned the blood left on Vern’s mouth with gentle precision. The kettle whistled and Gogo grabbed it quickly. Vern guessed she didn’t want the shrill ringing noise to wake the children.
Gogo moved in silent surety around the kitchen. Vern watched, captivated. The sight of her easy confidence paired with her brusque mannerisms was enough to distract her from the pain of hunger and inflamed joints.
Gogo finished filling her mug, blew into the steaming liquid, took a sip, and winced. Vern lifted an eyebrow. “Dandelion root,” Gogo spat. “Bridget keeps telling me I need to drop the caffeine, but how can I if this is her alternative?”
Vern smirked. “You got to have it with cream and sugar.”
“If only,” said Gogo with a snort. “Bridget doesn’t keep food like that in the house. She says if there wasn’t some version of it that was a part of our traditional food ways, she’s not gonna buy it. When I do, she throws it out.”
Vern took a seat in one of the unfolded chairs tucked underneath the card table. “That reminds me of Cainland,” said Vern, the memory infused with neither pain nor warmth. She’d risen past hate and nostalgia to a functional acceptance.
“Ouch,” said Gogo, and leaned against the counter, her legs crossed and kicked out in front of her.
“I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just after Sister Rita wrote a newsletter about the history of sugar plantations in the Caribbean, we started raising bees and sweetening things only with honey and maple. Of course, then my brother, Carmichael, pointed out that the honeybee is not native to North America, so then we were down to just the maple.”
Gogo looked at Vern with that hard gaze of hers. “Do you have a lot of good memories of growing up there?”
Vern couldn’t be sure. Even sweet things could be made bitter by the knowledge of hindsight. “Not really, I don’t think, but I do think about it all the time. No use denying what was. I was there, I was a part of it. There’s a piece of it inside me.”
Gogo set her mug down on the counter and filled the coffee percolator sitting on the counter with fresh water and coffee grounds. “The fungus, you mean?” she asked, emptying the dandelion root brew into the sink and rinsing out the mug.
“Not just that,” Vern said. Sunlight crept inside inch by inch as the dawn came, and they were both cast in shadow. It made Vern braver, the way the darkness held on despite the encroaching light. “There are parts of it that I still hold dear.” Vern couldn’t deny the softness of the memory of Sister Rita’s newsletter or of Carmichael’s presentation about the European honeybee at a picnic after church. “I guess I like the part of Cainland that was a rebellion,” Vern admitted. “Before there was the compound, it was just poor Black people pulling together to save themselves. They learned medicine and built clinics. They started schools. They got people food. Started community farms. They taught people how to defend themselves from the Klan. They armed folk. They were fighters. They made the compound into their home.”