There was a long silence. The Odoms looked around at each other, the women’s faces livened with panic. Then their eyes fell on me. It hit me all at once what they were thinking. I turned to John, hoping he could read my expression. “Well,” he said. “I guess Myra could do it. She’s been telling me she’d like to get out of the house.” Peggy and Jewel sagged with relief. They went back to their food, not waiting to see what I would say. After a while Hollis spoke up. “That’d be all right, wouldn’t it, Daddy?”
“I reckon,” Frankie said. “If she knows how to fix soup beans. Long as I’ve got a pot of beans and a pan of cornbread, I’ll be just fine.”
“Myra knows how to cook,” John said. “That’s one thing her granny taught her.”
I sat there like a stone, unable to look at anyone. The Odoms went on eating, the tension gone from the room. When his plate was clean, Frankie Odom said, “How about a cup of coffee?” Peggy stood up and went to the kitchen, like they all expected her to. I felt trapped, the table so crowded my elbows were touching Hollis’s on one side and John’s on the other. When I mumbled I’d be right back, I didn’t think anyone noticed I was leaving. They had begun to argue about the store. Their querulous voices, John’s the loudest among them, chased me out the front door. I sat on the porch steps, grateful for the evening air. I breathed deeply, trying to still my hands. I pictured what Granny might be doing at that hour, reading her Bible, mending old dresses, knitting doilies, eating cornbread and buttermilk. I wanted to forget her warning about being careful what I wished for. I told myself I loved John and it was worth everything to have him. I needed him to come out and check on me. When the door creaked open behind me, I turned around hopefully. But it wasn’t John, it was Hollis. My face must have fallen because he said, “He’s a little bit busy right now. Him and Daddy’s going at it hot and heavy. I’m like you, I don’t like to be in the middle of a fuss.” He sat down on the steps beside me, uncomfortably close. He paused, gazing across the yard. Then he turned and studied me.
“You’re looking kind of sickly,” he said. “You all right?”
I glanced at him. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
“You know, I used to get sick a lot when I was little. I always thought it was something in this old house making me puny. But I don’t get like that anymore.”
I turned my face, hot and flushed, wanting him to disappear. Sweat trickled under my dress even though the sun had gone down, bats wheeling around the streetlights.
Hollis didn’t take the hint. “I know what happened in yonder,” he said. “Nobody asked you what you wanted to do. But me and Daddy won’t be too much trouble.” He put his hand on my back. It took every ounce of my will not to recoil from his touch. “Don’t you worry about none of it. You got a friend right here. I won’t let them run over you.”
After that night, John began dropping me off at the Odom house twice a week. The first time, Frankie Odom answered the bell and said, “Hey there, darlin.” I followed him with my purse clasped to my side, holding my breath as I walked into the stench. He showed me to a bag of hairy green stalks on the table. “Do you know how to fry okrie?” he asked. I looked at him for a moment without answering. I had fried okra many times, but never for breakfast. “Well, get busy,” he said. “I’m starving plumb to death.” He sat there as I tried to cook, not telling me where the iron skillet was or the lard or the flour or the knife, only talking about everything else as I sweated over the stove. He didn’t comment when I presented a plate of hot fried okra. He fell to eating and I stood fidgeting, not knowing what else to do. After a while he lifted his head from the plate as if remembering my presence and said, “You can give the bathroom a going-over.”
I searched for something to clean with until I found a jug of bleach and a scrap of yellowed shirt under the kitchen sink. I did the best I could with what I had to scour away the mildew and rust stains. When I heard the front door open and close an hour later, I hoped it was John coming back for me. I stepped into the gloomy hall and it was Hollis again, standing in a square of light in the foyer. “Got to work and figured out I lost my dadblame wallet,” he said, to no one in particular. Then he saw me and froze, head cocked like a bird of prey. “It’s your day to cook and clean, I guess.” I nodded. We looked at each other. It would have been impolite to go back into the bathroom and pretend to scrub. I stood still as he came creaking down the hall to me, aware of being alone in that foul house with two men I didn’t know and who didn’t feel like family.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “I ain’t seen that pocketbook since yesterday. I bet you it dropped out of my britches when I was out yonder pulling weeds.” He paused, appraising me in a way that made my ears warm. “Are you good at finding things?”
“What?”
“Two pairs of eyes is better than one. Come on out here with me and look for it.”
I stepped blinking into the sun behind him, out the back door and down the steps into the yard. My feet were heavy as if in protest, the bleach-smelling rag still in my fist. I looked down at it numbly and dropped it in the dirt beside the stoop. He stopped, hands on his hips, surveying the yard. I stood a few paces behind him, waiting for him to go on. Finally, I shaded my eyes against the sun and asked, “Where were you pulling weeds at?”
“Out in the garden.”
I saw it across the yard, dry cornstalks leaning over a patch of snarled briars and weeds, a few tomato vines and green bean plants rising out of the ruins. I wondered what good it would do to pull weeds in all that mess. I followed Hollis across the yard and up close it was even more overrun. He stood at the edge and said, “Go ahead, your eyes is keener than mine. A woman pays more attention than a man.” When I didn’t move right away, he took me by the elbow and guided me into the patch. “A man can’t do without his pocketbook,” he said. “My driver license is in there.” He stooped and began to pick his way across the rows. “It’s odd how my eyes works. I can’t find nothing when I’m looking for it, even if it’s right under my nose.” I was relieved when he fell silent. We searched for a while without speaking, but I should have known he wouldn’t keep quiet. I was learning fast about his awkward need to tell me things. “But you take any kind of pattern and my eyes will make a picture out of it,” he blurted, startling me. “Like when I was little, I got to seeing faces. The worst one came out of this water stain over my bed. Had an open mouth with pointed teeth and the meanest eyes you ever seen. You might say I was dreaming it, except I seen it other places. I seen it in the wallpaper and the spots on the mirrors. It got to where it followed me everywhere. Then one day, I told John about it. He was washing the dishes and I was drying them. I was seeing it right then, in the suds of the dishwater. You know what John said to me? He said, ‘I see it, too.’ That was all. Not another word about it to this day. But that was all I needed. After that, we was brothers in a way that went deeper than blood.” I didn’t know how to respond. I concentrated on looking for the wallet, hoping to find it fast. I was beginning to feel frantic, green flies buzzing around my head as I ran my hands over the ground. When my fingers finally passed over the wallet, hidden under the bug-bitten leaves of a melon vine, I almost sighed with relief. I held it up, black cowhide warm from the sun. He laughed and said, “I knowed you’d find it quicker than me. I’m a pretty good judge of people.”
We stood up and I handed him the wallet, thinking I would escape. Then he said, “Let me show you something.” It was all I could do to remain there beside him, half sick from his closeness and the heat. He opened the wallet and reached in with thumb and forefinger to pull out what looked like a clump of gray hair, pressed flat and bound with a rubber band. “I ain’t never showed nobody this,” he said. “But me and you can tell each other things.” He held his hand near my face. “Did John ever say how Mama died?”