The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop

Mouthful of Sorrow

MOUTHFUL OF SORROW [95] Mouthful of Sorrow DANA JOHNSON Why don’t you come and sit with me for a spell, keep me company? That’s right. Right c’here on the porch with me. It’s evenings like this I get to thinking bout things. When the heat start to break and the sky get that gray-blue in it, touching the tops of the trees out yonder. Best time of day in the summertime. I like to just sit back, listen to them bad children playing, cussing, and carrying on over in the holler. There they go, too. Hear how they voices carry? That echo almost picking at you, the sound of it making you sad and happy at the same time. Now ain’t that something you remember me! You wasn’t nothing but a little bitty thing last time you come round from California . You grown and look just like your mama. You her picture! You ain’t got no babies, is you? Good. That’s all right. Ain’t no need of you rushing it, hear? You ain’t but what? Seventeen? Take all the time you need, honey. Sit right c’here with me and pass some time. Bout this time I start looking for the little spirits. That’s what the lightning bugs look like early nighttime. What you say? Fireflies? They was always lightning bugs to us when we was coming up. At the start of night they come out drifting and floating and blinking such a little bit at first you ain’t even sure you seen em, like some- DANA JOHNSON [96] thing you caught out the corner of your eye. Put me in mind of little ghosts. Little ghosts just trying to find they way. But listen at me just running my mouth. Honey, you ain’t got to sit up on this porch with this old lady if you don’t want to. I ain’t even that old, but you wouldn’t know that, with this ragged housecoat I’m wearing, house shoes, hair all over my head. I’m telling you the truth, seem like I woke up old one day. You know where them kids is playing, down in the holler? Used to be a little joint down there called Lonnie’s. Everybody’d be down to Lonnie’s on a Saturday night. Get all dressed up, even though the place wasn’t nothing but a shack, really. If you was looking for somebody Saturday night, you knew where they’d be at. Now hand me my spit can. Look at you, handing it to me with your little finger all turned up like you giving me my slop jar. I used to do the same thing with Mama, my nose all wrinkled up, talking bout I ain’t never gone dip snuff. And here I am. Don’t talk bout what you ain’t never going to do. You make a liar out of yourself every time. One of the meanest tricks of life is not knowing what’s gone be the last time you do something or see somebody. You be talking bout “See you tomorrow” and the next thing you know, they be dead or gone. That ain’t right. Might be the Lord’s doing, but I don’t got to like everything he do. What’s on my mind when I’m telling you this is my best friend, Addie. You talk bout being close. Honey, let me tell you, we was tight. You hardly saw one of us without the other right up under her. People always used to pick at us and ask which one of us was the man, trying to be funny, you know, because we was always together . But back then, I didn’t b’lieve I loved her like that. Shoot, I had me a man, had Mosely. I loved her like she was my sister, cept maybe a little bit more. Wasn’t nothing we wouldn’t do for each other. Seem like whatever one of us needed, the other had it to give, before you know what it was you wanted your own self! I knew her like you know how to walk. Course we sho could scrap from time to MOUTHFUL OF SORROW [97] time, too. Used to fight each other like we was crazy, but bother one...