“Jim Beam wont him down there at five tomorrow,” Miss Billie had said. “He’s kind of shy, though, that’s his real reason. You know, he talk a little bit to peoples and then he kind of shies off. Always been that way. I mean he likes peoples, but he always after a while, shies off, you know. He wanted to meet you and Eva, though, I talk about y’all so much. Y’all my family.”
“Your father’s nice,” I told Charlotte. “Yeah.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t know what to say to me, or just wasn’t talking, then when we got further into the woods, she started talking.
“When we first came here I was afraid to walk in the woods by myself, then I got so I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “They don’t like me to go, though. Not unless I’ve got somebody with me. Once or twice I’ll sneak off and go. I’m twenty-seven. I ought to be able to go without sneaking off, though, don’t you think?”
I said, “Yes.”
“But I figure when you live with your parents, you owe them a certain courtesy, don’t you think?”
I said, “Yes.”
“I think so too . . . I wouldn’t be afraid to bring a man home, though. I mean, if I wanted a man.”
I looked over at her, but said nothing. She was twenty-seven, but didn’t look twenty-seven. She didn’t really act twenty-seven. She started jumping to catch the leaves from the branches that were low enough. When she got a leaf she would smell it, and then hand it to me to smell. One of them smelled like mint.
“This smells like pepper grass,” she said. “What does pepper grass smell like?”
“Like pepper,” she said. She jumped for some more leaves. “This reminds me of jumping for leaves to feed the goats.”
“Did you have goats?”
“Yes, we had two of them. A male and a female. They used to chase after me all the time and I was scared to go out in the yard, so they got rid of them. The doctor put Mama on a diet of goat’s milk for a while. I don’t know why, though. Sweet milk would turn sour on her stomach. Now she drinks sweet milk.”
I said nothing.
“I guess we ought to turn back,” she said. I said, “Okay.”
She didn’t jump for leaves as we went back. She held the ones she had and then would occasionally let one or two drop to the ground.
“No, not there. Over here.”
I had started for the house, but she pointed to the garage. It was a big wooden building that looked as much like a barn as a garage. There was a small pickup truck, beside not inside the garage. She opened the door. Inside, hanging from the garage ceiling, were rows of tobacco leaves. She shut the door. Some light came in through little cracks. She went and sat down against the wall. I followed her, and sat down.
“It’s nice in here,” she said. I said nothing.
“Daddy’s curing tobacco for the man he works for. They didn’t have enough room at his place, so they brought some back here. I know all about tobacco. I know as much about tobacco as a man.”
“You don’t work in it, though. Your mother said you a seamstress.”
“Yeah, I work for this ole white woman got a shop. In a couple of years, though, I’ma get my own shop.”
“My great-grandfather used to work in tobacco. My grandfather too.”
“I know how to twist tobacco. That’s the way they used to do it in the old days. Twist it by hand, you know.”
She grabbed a piece of tobacco down from the ceiling and started smelling it, and gave it to me to smell.
“Have you ever done it?” she asked. “Done what? Twist tobacco.”
“Naw. Done it. You know, with a man.”
It was cool in there, laying back against the wall. I didn’t answer.
“I asked you have you ever been with a man.”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes, her mouth was hanging open a little, then she made a sucking sound.
“Mama keeps asking me when am I going to get a man,” she said. “I don’t want a man.”
“That’s all right.”
“Not for her it’s not.”
“You not her.”
“That’s what I told her. But you know how parents wont grandchildren. They wont there to be a lot of generations.”
“That’s good too.”
“Whose way you looking at it?” she asked, angry. “Hers or mine?”
I said both ways. “That ain’t no help.”
She said nothing for a while then she took hold of my hand like she was studying my palm, and started tracing her finger along my hand, but barely touching the lines.
“It tickles, don’t it?” she asked. I said, “Yeah.”
She let my hand drop.
“He said he could tickle me somewhere else better.”
“Who?”
“Never mind who.”
She got up real quick. “Your mother doesn’t worry you about it, does she?” she asked.
“About what?”
“Having a man.”
“Naw.”
“I guess you too young, though. Wait till you my age.”
I stood up because I thought she was going, but she didn’t go. She touched my waist and said that I had a little waist. She kept her hand on my waist and then she walked out of the garage. I followed her. Before she got to the house, she turned. “I don’t wont to go in yet. let’s go back.” We went back to the garage. She pulled a mat from the corner and lay down on it.
“There’s room for two people,” she said. “No, there’s not.”
I stooped down, watching her. She frowned and closed her eyes.
“What did he do?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and looked at me hard. “Who?”
“That boy,” I said.
She said nothing, then she said, “He showed me what a man could do for himself. I mean, if I couldn’t do it . . .”
“You mean he . . . beat his meat?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Naw, he didn’t beat it, he did something else.”
“What?”
She
