When I rang the hospital on Saturdays to check on my father, my mother wouldn’t put him on the phone. He wasn’t well enough, she said. Coco called down from Boston, but she was useless, talking in confusing, technical terms—she thought she was a doctor already.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Is he going to die or not?”
“Yes,” Coco said.
“Why would you say that? You’re so mean!”
“I’m trying to dispel this fantasy you have. Very few Black men live to be senior citizens, especially ones who’ve had heart attacks.”
“Coco, I’m only fifteen years old! Can’t you let me have my dreams?”
“All right, then, Daddy’ll be fine. He just needs to change his diet and lose seventy-five pounds. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m glad you’re happy. And by the way, you better be careful with boys. You know what I mean.”
On the mornings when my granny’s hymn-singing didn’t drive me from bed, she would knock on my door.
“You ain’t up yet, girl?”
“Miss Rose, I’m still sleepy.”
“You too young to be tired. Come on and get this breakfast.”
As we ate, she gave her regular advice: don’t worry about my father. I needed to put everything in the Lord’s hands, because He was in control and nobody else. If I kept busy, I wouldn’t worry, so she ordered me to pluck weeds from the garden with her and Aunt Pauline, who walked over from her house across the field. We followed Miss Rose, walking between rows so as not to squash the vegetables. The dirt flew everywhere, in my two plaits, underneath my nails, as I plucked weeds, the oppressors of food. They had to be killed, violently wrenched from the earth before they put down roots: Pull. Throw in the aluminum pail. Brush the dirt from your hands. Repeat.
Miss Rose bent over, her broadness lifting the faded dress she wore. The backs of her fleshy knees were crisscrossed with stretch marks and purple, broken veins. As she plucked weeds, she offered non sequiturs: Zucchinis took over any patch. Snapping beans had given her arthritis in her left hand. A long time ago she had ground her own corn grits and meal, but now she bought them ready at the store. It was too much work and her arthritis made it hard to grind now. She paid no mind to the rabbits hopping around the edges of her garden. That’s what the chicken wire was for, to keep them out. On the other side of the wire was the clover patch where my former playmates and I had searched for four-leaf specimens. But it served another purpose: the clover diverted the rabbits from human food.
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“I don’t recall, baby,” she said. “Just seemed something I always have knew ’bout rabbits—hand me that there bucket.”
I pretended I didn’t hear the broken verb. In the City, my mother and Nana ruthlessly corrected my grammar, but down south I wasn’t supposed to get above myself. There’d be trouble if I insulted an elder.
“All these bunnies running around, how come Uncle Norman isn’t out here with his shotgun?”
“Shotgun for what, baby?”
“He loves to hunt, I mean.”
Aunt Pauline straightened, a long weed in her hand. She called over to me, chiding my foolishness. We don’t eat no rabbit in this family. That was crazy talk, she and Miss Rose explained, they don’t eat no rabbit, they don’t eat no squirrel, and they don’t eat no possum. ’Cause all them creatures is kin to rats. Aunt Pauline returned to pulling weeds, as Miss Rose said, a body needed some pride. No matter how poor she was, she didn’t want to eat rats, and none of they family, neither.
“So we leave the rabbits alone,” Miss Rose said. “We let ’em eat the clover and that’ll keep ’em away from our garden and away from the poke salad.”
“What’s that?”
“Poke is sorta like spinach, but it grow wild. It’s some out there, going toward the creek. Dear Pearl used to love her some poke, but I never did get the taste for it. Maybe ’cause if you don’t cook it right, poke’ll poison you. And you know rabbits can’t cook nothing! They get on my nerves, shonuff, but rabbits is still God’s creatures. And sometimes, we creatures got to look out for each other. Hold on, baby.”
Miss Rose raised her hoe and swung, separating the head of a long snake from its body. I belatedly screamed, and Aunt Pauline stepped over green things toward us. She picked up the two pieces, dripping blood, then dropped them again. She told my grandmother, wait, and then walked to the house. After some minutes, she returned with a dish towel and wrapped the snake pieces in the cloth. She walked to the edge of the garden plot and dug a small, shallow grave with her hoe.