But sometimes, I got the notion that Mama was looking for something of the man who made me in my features. My nose was long and small at the tip. The bridge was slender and maybe too long for my round face, but my eyes, Bastie always said, were like melted chocolate to match my skin. Sylv was darker than me, his nose wider, his lips plump and wide like his daddy and never once had I caught Mama looking at him with anything else but sweet love, maybe a little sadness for the man she’d loved and lost too soon.
So because I knew it so well, I didn’t waste much time thinking on the bad mood that came up on Mama when she looked too hard at me as I trotted towards the crossroads. Instead, my attention went to the wide field surrounding the Simoneaux property and the stalks of sugarcane that rose up taller than a grown man.
When we were little things, me and Dempsey would run out in that field, hiding and laughing like fools, chasing each other with the scratch of the tall grass and the thick stalks slapping against our knees, the sweet residue from the sugarcane making Dempsey’s britches and my thin cotton dresses sticky with dirt. Sometimes Sylv would play with us, tapping the tips of the stalks just to prove his stretch could reach, that he was bigger and braver than us.
Once, when we were twelve, Dempsey gathered several stalks and took the pocket knife Uncle Aron had given him for his birthday to the skins, cutting away the surface until only the meaty insides, sweet and satisfying, came dripping out in a slow, delicious trickle. We made ourselves sick that day and Dempsey’s daddy whipped him good for coming home in such a mess.
The memory stuck with me then, as I cleared the north corner of the field. I’d just about forgotten how that field, empty and still despite the spring wind coming up to push around the stalks and drying grass, and had come closer toward the end of the gravel road. I could make out the street sign ahead and glanced over my shoulder at Bastie’s little cottage that looked like a dollhouse silhouetted against the lowering light. It was Dempsey and that sweet juice that took away the fear that always came to me when I walked away from the farm, from the protection of my sometimes home. From Dempsey, too. Good sense told me I should have remembered. Remembering, minding what you knew, good and bad, tended to keep you far from trouble.
It didn’t that day.
I smelled Joe Andres before I saw him. It was the bourbon-thick scent of his bottle along with the dirty odor of his sweaty body that rose up to spoil the sweet sugarcane perfume in the air.
“Hey gal… you come here a minute.”
They always called us gal, no matter how grown we were. Bastie was pushing upwards of seventy and every white man that came across her still called her “gal” and my grown-ass Uncle Aron got called “boy”.
I might not have been grown-assed myself, but I knew better than to let some piss drunk white man get his hands on me if I could help it.
Pretending not to hear him as he came out of the field worked for just about a minute. To my side, I caught the stumble of his shadow when he tried to keep up. It was a stupid wobble of a step broken something fierce by how many times he brought that sloshing bottle up to his mouth.
“Hey gal, I said come see me.”
That shadow got bigger the closer he came no matter that I was almost jogging. Joe Andres had a fat, jiggling belly and one shot of a look over my shoulder told me he had his dingy white button up shirt open to show the dirty undershirt underneath. But he was a full grown man and could move a pace when he wanted to.
He wore a tan hat with the brim pushed up and his sweaty brown hair curled up to wet the fabric making a damp line form against his forehead. When I didn't stop, he took a sip, stopping for a second to guzzle the brown liquid in his bottle before he threw it to the ground. Then, he came at me.
“Get over here, you little bitch.”
I didn’t wait to hear what else that nasty man would call me. I took off running, moving closer and closer to the cross ways, praying like a nun that God would keep me out of this old man’s grip. I was so scared that it felt like someone had turned up the speed of my heart and started burning my insides.
There were a handful of steps between me and Andres, a few more that I kept adding to it, counting on the liquor he’d drank to keep him slower and his fat gut to make chasing me a stupid idea that he’d get tired of doing when he got too winded.
But that nasty white man kept at me, grunting and wheezing and he put his own speed into his steps and I swore I could smell the sick stench of his breath fogging in the air around me, getting closer until it was against my neck.
My moves went sloppy and the buckle from my t-strap shoe popped, slowing me into a stumble, the gravel from the road falling into my shoe until I couldn’t move much, until a hop or two to remove it had me falling on my knees just long enough for Andres to catch up.
“You listen to me.” His words were clipped, winded and came out in a rasp and he edged closer, reaching out his thick, short fingers toward me. “When I say you come to me, you better get your tail right in damn front of me. You hear me?”
He was drunk, I reminded myself, knowing that what I did just then this bastard wasn’t likely to remember, and then Andres took hold of my arm, pulling me up from the ground to shake me between his damp palms.
“I tell you to… to come… and you…” He shook me hard, fingers curling, grabbing onto the collar of my shirt until he had a fistful of fabric in his fist and two buttons popped from the movement.
He lunged closer and all I could smell was that hooch: thick and warm and wet and the dirty, sickening smell of his sweaty, round body. All I saw was those chapped, fat lips of his coming closer and closer. My sense returned and again I told myself this drunk man wouldn’t remember, and I did the only thing I could; I hauled back and socked Joe Andres one good time in his eye.
I think, maybe he was surprised. I was barely a hundred pounds and there wasn’t a whole lot of strength in that punch. I knew that and reckon he did too. But Andres stopped trying to put his mouth on me. He made a small, shocked noise, something that might have been a belch, maybe the air sticking in his throat but the sound was wet and gurgling, something that would have made me laugh if he still didn’t have his hands on me.
Andres opened his mouth, reminding me of a guppy sucking on the air around him when he jumped out of his bowl, but I wouldn’t let him speak. I jerked back, twisting away from him and I think, maybe, he was too surprised to move at first, that some “gal” had the gumption enough to fight back.
The gravel under my feet dug into the soft surface of my heel, and I pulled away from Andres, twisting my hips to get out of that tight grip, but he held on and I could hear a ripping sound as I moved. Four sharp steps back and Andres held part of my shirt between his fingers. I looked down, mouth hanging open and breathing hard as I pushed down that burning sweet anger that had me wanting to scratch this drunk bastard’s eyes out, and noticed that my skin was against the open air and my skimpy undershirt was showing. And when Joe Damn Andres looked down at my bosom, when he threw down the rip of my shirt and took to licking his lips and stepping toward me, I stomped my one-shoed heel onto the top of his foot and didn’t wait to see how bad I’d got him afore I was off in a scared rabbit run, back the way I’d come.
The sun was nearly gone now, except for the faint shadow that covered the ground. I ran on and on until I’d cleared most of the empty sugarcane field, ignoring the rich smell in the air and the row of crows watching me thunder down the road back toward my Bastie’s cottage.