Page 3 of Junie

Chapter Three

The cookhouse is a square brick building with a couple windows and a dirt floor, but Auntie Marilla’s worked hard over the years to try to make it something special. The field boys painted the bricks a nice, clean cream color, Granddaddy made a table, and Muh sewed some delicate blue curtains for the windows. Unfortunately, there’s nothing Auntie can do about the heat. Smoke from the fireplace mixing with summer air makes Junie feel even more faint.

Her grandparents are already seated at the pinewood dining table, swatting their sweat beads like flies with kitchen rags. Bess buzzes around the kitchen, passing chopped vegetables to Auntie Marilla, who is bent over the fire; one hand stirs the food frying in the cast-iron pot, and the other sits on her hip to support her aching back. Sweat drips from her forehead into the bubbling grease, sending liquefied lard into the air. Critter, Minnie’s cat, sprawls across the dirt floor in a sunny spot, hoping to catch any mice or fallen morsels of meat.

“Sweet Cake,” Muh calls, fanning herself, scarf wrapped tightly around her head. “They finally let you out of the house? I ain’t seen you all morning.”

Junie’s body tenses. She kisses Muh on her damp cheek. Muh was once the head housemaid, but since her knees gave out, she has taken on sewing, nursing, and cooking. Everyone says Junie takes after Muh; the same warm brown eyes, the same full cheeks, the same gap-toothed smile.

“Go on and sit down next to your granddaddy,” Muh says, gesturing to a spot on the bench. “You ain’t seen him proper in at least a fortnight.”

Granddaddy doesn’t look up as she sits down. Junie winces as she leans to kiss his stubbled, thin cheek; there’s no chance he will forget about what he saw this morning.

She’s disappointed him again.

“I ain’t staying long,” Junie mutters. “Violet sent me to collect her some breakfast to take up to her room.”

“She ain’t eat this morning?” Auntie asks.

“McQueen and the mistress sent us away before she could finish her food, Momma,” Bess answers.

Auntie rolls her eyes. Violet wasn’t a stranger to being sent away without supper, so her missing breakfast isn’t enough to raise any questions.

“Well, I’ve already done away with most of the food, so you gonna have to wait while I cook some more bacon and cut up these peaches. You might as well eat somethin’ while you wait.”

Junie nods reluctantly. She’d walked into the cookhouse looking for answers, but now faced with the grandparent who’d caught her this morning and the other she was determined to keep in the dark, she wants nothing more than to melt into the floor. She collects her midday meal from the counter, a slice of stale cornbread soaked in milk, then pours a cup of leftover coffee from McQueen’s lukewarm brew, mixing it with canned milk until it turns to a pale brown.

She starts eating the milk-soaked bread over the counter, her stomach gnawing.

“Violet ain’t got you up there doing that book nonsense, do she?” Muh asks. “You remember what I told you back when you started in the house?”

Muh and the rest of the family knew she could read, but forbid her from touching another book after she started working, for fear of being caught. Of course, Junie hadn’t listened. Reading and writing are pleasures worth any punishment, something they can never understand. Lying is the only way to keep everyone at ease.

“Yes, Muh, I remember,” Junie mumbles. “And she don’t.”

“You also wasn’t home this morning when I woke up,” Muh says. “Auntie told me you was late for serving breakfast, too. You want to tell me where you went?”

“Let the baby eat a little somethin’ first, Sadie,” Granddaddy says. “You see how fast she’s eatin’ that bread, she hungry.”

“I was doing the laundry, with Bess,” Junie says, wiping the milk from her lips. She scoops the last bite of her food before again sitting next to her granddaddy at the table.

“Laundry. That early?”

“Yes, ma’am, the laundry.”

“They keepin’ the grandbaby awful busy from sunup to sundown,” Granddaddy says. His voice rumbles low, like thunder rising in a storm. “Ain’t that right, Junie?” He cuts her a knowing look before going back to eating.

Muh’s eyes narrow.

“Bess, she tellin’ the truth?”

“Ma’am?” Bess asks. Junie’s eyes catch Bess’s in a flash. Bess’s mouth stiffens.

“Was Junie doing laundry with you, like she say she was?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bess answers, her eyes tilted toward the onions on her cutting board.

“You sure about that? You wouldn’t lie to your auntie now would you, Bess?”

“I saw the two of ’em hanging up the clothes when I came up this morning. She was there,” Granddaddy says.

Muh sighs. “Well, all right, then, I just want to be sure. You know what it does to me when I ain’t sure where you are. Ain’t like it would be the first time she was off somewhere she ain’t got no business being.”

Her family goes quiet in tacit agreement. In the silence, she hears their thoughts murmur.

She is a liar. She is a fool. She is a disappointment.

Junie picks at a callus on her palm and swallows down the lump in her throat.

“So, Granddaddy, where’d the master have you this time?” Junie asks, her eyes averted to the serpentine gaps in the table’s wood grain.

“Oh, here and there. We was in Biloxi for a time, then Montgomery toward the end. That’s where McQueen met this Taylor fellow who’s comin’ to stay tomorrow.”

“What now?” Auntie Marilla yells, whipping around from the hot stove.

“The young man and his sister are coming to stay for the week from Selma. They gettin’ here tomorrow, I believe,” Granddaddy says.

“We have guests staying here? Tomorrow? ” Auntie steps from the fire and slumps herself over the wooden counter.

“McQueen met him betting on a cockfight in Montgomery. Young, tall, good-looking sort of white man. Had on nice shoes.”

“And the sister?” Bess asks.

“You think the man would bring his sister round a cockfight?” Granddaddy answers.

“She’s got to ask silly questions because you’re hardly any help!” Auntie says.

“Great day, you only think to tell your sister this now, Tom?” Muh yells, raising her eyebrows.

“How was I supposed to know? I thought Queenie would have told her by now!”

Junie chuckles at the nickname Granddaddy calls the master’s wife when she’s not around.

“You mean, Tom, did Queenie decide to dirty one of those ugly dresses of hers to come down here and tell me I got to cook for two whole guests and whoever else they decide to bring with ’em for a week? No, she certainly did not. I bet if we was hosting Jesus and the twelve disciples she wouldn’t bother giving me any kind of proper notice.” Auntie tosses her wooden spoon in frustration, which ricochets from the floor into the fire.

“Oh shit, now look what I’ve gone and done,” Auntie Marilla says.

“Momma, go sit down, you ain’t eaten properly,” Bess says, ushering her mother to the table. Auntie snatches Muh’s fan to cool off.

“I don’t see where they’d expect us to get the food to feed all these extra people for all that time. It ain’t the right way to run a household,” Muh says. “And you know how guests are. They say one week, and next thing you know they’re here until Christmas.”

“I’ll kill a couple extra chickens and a pig when Mr. McQueen’s gone to sleep. As long as we ain’t serving ’em mule meat I think we can manage,” Granddaddy says.

“That’s easy for you to say, Tom, you ain’t the one doing the cooking!” Auntie Marilla says.

The lull in the conversation lasts a millisecond, all the time she’ll have before the old folks pick up another topic. If she is going to ask them what is going on, she has to do it now.

“Why’s the man so important?” Junie asks.

“What do you mean, Sweet Pea?” Granddaddy asks.

“I mean,” Junie mumbles, “we know McQueen ain’t hardly ever here. What’s so special about this man that he’d insist on coming back here and hosting him?”

Muh, Granddaddy, and Auntie exchange smirks, the same ones they’d shared when as a girl she’d asked where the new piglets came from or why Mr. McQueen liked collecting empty bottles so much. Her cheeks turn hot, knowing she’s made a fool of herself.

“Violet didn’t say nothing to you about it?” Muh asks.

Junie bites her lip. What could she say? That Violet listened to the conversation through the door?

“She didn’t say nothing about any guests,” Junie replies. “She was just readin’ when I left.”

“I know that’s a lie,” Muh says. “Lord knows Violet could tell you the president is coming to stay and you wouldn’t say a word.”

“Now I wouldn’t say that, Sadie,” Granddaddy retorts. “You know good and well Violet’s always got her nose down in some book or another. She might’ve not said much about it.”

“The McQueens kicked us all out of the breakfast room to talk, including Violet. She don’t know anything about it,” Junie says. She remembers the glisten of tears in Violet’s eyes, talking about the guests this morning.

“You ain’t still readin’ those books, Junie?”

“No, Muh,” Junie lies.

“Good, and you keep it that way. It was one thing when you was just a little thing and playin’ with Miss Violet in secret, but the white folks won’t take well to no maid readin’ books.”

Junie swallows, desperate to change the subject. She’d promised Muh the day she became Violet’s maid that she’d stop reading, knowing she’d never keep it. She shifts around in her seat.

“I just don’t see why it matters so much that a man’s coming to stay.”

The room bursts into laughter. Junie’s cheeks go hot. She wills her body to disappear into the floorboards, but it doesn’t give.

“Oh, Baby, sometimes you start to look so grown I forget how young you still are. When white folks start bringing young men around their daughters, it always matters,” Auntie says.

“Yes, I’m certain they intend to marry Miss Violet off to this man,” Muh says.

“Oh, of course! She’s old enough for it. And besides, Tom said he got nice shoes, and nice shoes mean money. It ain’t a secret that McQueen’s drinking away all of theirs. They just fired that overseer last week,” Auntie adds.

“Can’t believe it myself,” Granddaddy says. “Seems like Miss Violet was just tripping around in her diaper, asking to pet the horsies.”

“Miss Violet’s seventeen. That’s older than I was when I married George,” Auntie answers.

“And white folks are always trying to marry their girls off to somebody richer. Especially the pretty ones,” Muh adds. “Tom, Marilla, and I were around when the master’s sister got married away, and if I recall they were only courting a week before they were off to the chapel.”

“May not have even been that long,” Granddaddy says.

“A marriage would certainly please old Queenie,” Bess says. “You know she’s on her head to have Violet good and gone.”

Marriage .

The word rings like a punch to the ears. Junie’s mind fixes on the idea of Violet in a big white dress wandering down an aisle toward a mysterious and faceless man. Her stomach ties in a knot at the thought.

The tears on the edges of Violet’s lids, the Jane Eyre, the talk of wanting more. Even if Violet hadn’t mentioned marriage this morning, she knew what this meant.

It’s only Junie who’s the fool.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Junie asks, her voice wavering. “McQueen’s sister. I ain’t never seen her.”

“Well, no, she ain’t been back here as far as I can remember,” Granddaddy answers. “She and that husband moved out west somewhere. Running after gold, I believe.”

“It’s too bad, she took your Auntie Josephine with her,” Auntie says. “That’s your Uncle George’s sister, Baby.”

“Why’d she have to go?” Junie asks.

“Auntie Josephine was her maid, Sweet Cake,” Muh says.

“Lord knows these white folks would fly to the moon and still want us there straightening their bedsheets and cleaning out their chamber pots,” Auntie says.

A chill slithers up Junie’s spine.

“And she never came back?”

Muh and Granddaddy both cut looks at Auntie, whose eyes widen before dropping to the floor. Granddaddy reaches for Muh’s hand and squeezes it.

“Well, yes, Baby,” Muh says. “When you’re a white girl’s maid, you go wherever she goes.” Muh brings her hand to her lips, as though she could push the words back into her mouth.

“Don’t worry yourself too much about it, Grandbaby,” Granddaddy says. “We can’t tell what God has in store for us.”

Steam from the cookhouse fire wraps around her neck like a noose. She has to get out of this room.

“Auntie, is the food ready?” Junie says, pushing herself from the table so fiercely she rattles the silverware.

“Not quite,” Auntie says. “So you can stay sittin’ up with your Granddaddy and Muh a while longer.”

“I’ll clean up, then,” she says, snatching the dirty plates off the table.

“Well, you gonna need to fill that bucket up first,” Auntie says, gesturing to the cracked bucket next to the water basin. “I swear I just filled this sorry thing, and now I’m out of cleaning water.”

Junie nods. Any excuse to get out of this cookhouse.

A smile cracks Muh’s lips. “Now look who’s being a helper. Marilla, you remember how she was about cleaning when she was a baby?”

“Of course, remember that time with the flower jar?”

Muh points at Auntie and laughs. Granddaddy lets out a chuckle.

“I don’t know that one, Muh, go on and tell it!” Bess grins. Junie picks up the bucket and clutches it, impatient.

“Well, y’all know how Junie hates working. Always trying to find some way to get out of a chore so she can run off and dig for rocks or bugs or something. Anyway, one day, I’m sitting here in the cookhouse, and Marilla asks little Junie to go down to the water pump and rinse out this old jar so we can keep some flowers in the cookhouse. Now, you would have thought she’d asked Junie to walk from here to Timbuktu. Junie stuck out her fat bottom lip and cried crocodile tears like you’ve never seen.”

Splinters pierce Junie’s palm under her grip.

“After we both finished whooping her behind, she was red-hot. She took that jar to the well, and right when she thought we couldn’t see her no more, she threw it as hard as she could, and it just shattered! It was by the grace of the Lord that glass didn’t slice her to bits! Marilla and I ran over, and Marilla was about to start on her, but I stopped her and I asked, ‘Baby, what happened to the jar,’ and this child looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I dropped it.’?”

The room bursts into whoops and claps.

“Marilla, to this day I don’t understand why you asked Junie to do that, knowing how she was about working. Now, Minnie…”

Muh’s voice trembles, as though surprised to hear her dead granddaughter’s name on her own lips. Junie’s hands shake as her vision begins to blur through tears. She swallows them down.

“Minnie…” Muh continues, her tone a low hum, “she wasn’t never like that about work. She was always a helper, even when she was little. Always looking after everybody and everything. You never had to tell that girl something more than once, and she never complained. And so pretty, with them nice eyes, like she was made for workin’ in a house. Got that toughness from her momma; y’all know Charlotte was that way, too—”

“I hear you, Muh, all right?” Junie says, interrupting. “I ain’t never gonna be as good as Minnie. I understand you. You don’t have to find ways to keep telling me.”

The room falls silent. Muh’s lips close with a sniffle.

“Grandbaby,” Granddaddy starts, “you know Muh don’t mean it like—”

“I’m not perfect like Minnie. I ain’t ever going to be as perfect as Minnie.” Junie wipes away the tears and sweat dripping down her face. “I’m sorry that the good sister is the one who’s dead and gone and you’re stuck with me. Maybe if you’re lucky, Violet will get married and I’ll be gone for good by the end of the week.”

“Baby, that ain’t what I think, I didn’t—”

Junie runs out of the cookhouse before Muh can finish.

—

She takes off to the water pump, dropping to her knees next to it as her lungs swell and keep fresh air from coming in. Why does everything in her life come back to Minnie? Even in death, her sister won’t give her peace. Junie pulls her knees in to soak her sobs.

It was freezing the day of the funeral. The kind of cold that, once you felt it, never fully left your bones. Granddaddy spent the morning worrying that the ground would be too frozen to chip through with a shovel, but under the force of the two field boys, it gave. They shoveled the red dirt until they’d dug a six-foot grave to the right of Junie’s father’s, behind the colored church up the road. The McQueens provided them with a pine box that nailed shut.

Muh made her wear her church dress, a navy-blue calico with puffed sleeves and a high, white collar. It was the nicest dress Junie owned, made by Muh specifically for church with the remains of some fabric she’d used to make a day dress for Violet. Her leather shoes, the same too-small pair she wore for cleaning the house, squeezed her feet more than usual with the additional layers of threadbare socks. Muh told her to take the thick, red shawl in the cabin, the one that belonged to Minnie. Something to honor her with, she said. Junie left it by the fire.

The McQueens got the pastor from town to say the blessing, and her family buried Minnie in the frozen earth, leaving a wooden stake on top to mark the spot, along with a jar of Minnie’s favorite things, as was the custom. It was a family tradition, one Muh said came from Africa long before she was born.

Junie couldn’t look at her sister’s coffin. She couldn’t speak to her sister’s memory when everyone else in the family did. She could only look at her feet and think about the cold.

“It ain’t your fault that she’s gone,” Granddaddy said the day they buried her. “It ain’t nobody’s fault but God’s.”

It doesn’t matter what Granddaddy or anyone else says; every vein in her body tells her she is the one who caused it.

Now, Junie drives her face harder into her bony knees. A hand brushes over her shoulder, followed by the familiar smell of tobacco and hay.

“It’s me, Grandbaby.”

She doesn’t look up. Her grandfather wraps an arm around her and squeezes. She urges herself to feel the warm glow that used to roll through her body when he held her, but the absence of feeling remains.

“I’m sorry I ran out like that,” Junie whispers, opening her eyes.

“You know Muh didn’t mean nothing by what she said, don’t you?”

“Don’t mean she needed to say nothing to begin with,” Junie answers.

“She misses your sister. I think she misses you a little bit, too. You’ve got your feelings about the past and Muh’s got hers, Grandbaby. We all handle those feelings a little different, is all.”

She can’t talk more about her sister. The grief isn’t supposed to be this fresh anymore; yet like a picked wound, it still bleeds.

“Is it true what Muh said, about being a white girl’s maid? About going wherever she goes?”

Granddaddy reaches into his pocket. He wipes his brow with a handkerchief.

“It’s like I said, we can’t know what the Lord’s got in store for us. Just gotta have faith that He knows what is best,” Granddaddy says. Junie meets his gaze, searching for his calm. Instead, she sees the deep lines around his mouth, the wet shimmer on the edges of his eyes. He curls his lips to smile, but all Junie sees is the helplessness hidden behind his teeth.

“I should go and see about Miss Violet,” Junie says, pushing herself to her feet. Granddaddy’s smile fades.

“Before you go, I brought you Miss Violet’s plate to take upstairs,” he says, reaching behind a rock to pick up a plate covered with a cloth napkin.

“Thank you, Granddaddy.”

He purses his lips and sniffs.

“I got this, too.” Granddaddy pulls her faded yellow sleeping scarf from his pocket. “He didn’t see it, but I’d know it anywhere.”

Junie picks at the cut on her palm.

“Please, don’t tell Muh.”

“Now, why are you only worried about trouble with Muh and not me? You don’t think I worry, too?”

“I know you worry, too, Granddaddy, but—”

“I didn’t tell her this afternoon, and I don’t intend to tell her because I don’t want her to worry, either. Now, I know you about as hardheaded as they come, but I hope you’d listen to me and heed what I’m tellin’ you.”

Junie purses her lips and nods.

“Do not go back into those woods, especially by yourself, and especially at night. I know you used to do that when you were a girl, but I’m telling you times are about to be different around here. I didn’t say this in the cookhouse because I didn’t want to start a fuss, but I think you need to hear it. There’s news coming from the North that’s puttin’ all the white folks on edge. There’s even talk in Montgomery of going to war. Even McQueen is gonna wanna tighten his grip around here. You hear?”

Junie nods. Montgomery might as well be the moon.

“You ought to go back to the house. I’ll take the bucket back for you,” Granddaddy says. “Don’t forget Miss Violet’s food, neither.”

“Don’t you need to see after McQueen?” Junie says, taking the plate.

He smiles. “That man put back three bourbons after breakfast and went into his study. Doubt he’ll be seen or heard from until the dinner bell.”