Beyond Molasses Creek Read Online Free Page A

fry. Vesey would clean the fish for me, and I would wait patiently on my dock for him to come back and deliver it. He was an expert at cleaning fish. Actually, he was an expert at anything he tried to do, as if he was born already having some foreknowledge. We were good friends as children go, but to be honest, his parents and mine never encouraged us to play, certainly not at each other’s houses. Back then, in the late 1950s and ’60s, we were still taboo, the two of us together—a black boy and a white girl. We didn’t know it, or if we did, we didn’t care. We must have sensed something though, because we carried on mostly in secret.
    I pick up my mug from Istanbul and hold it up to Vesey’s house. Then I make my way back indoors to shower. I have a big day ahead of me. Today the movers come. It’s out with the old and in with the new. If I’m going to be here for a while, the least I can do is make it feel more like my turf and less like Daddy’s. I don’t think Daddy would mind my removing his clutter. He always said, “You can’t take it with you,” and he was right. It’s all stacked up in boxes and drawers and nowhere close to where Daddy is now.
    By lunchtime, I have made it through his closet and Mama’s. They had separate rooms for as long as I can remember. Daddy snored and Mama liked her beauty rest, and it just seemed normal to me that married people would sleep in different rooms. Could be one of the reasons my marriage to Ronnie didn’t work out. We had different ideas of what normal was. And anyway, we never should have been married. We were much better friends. We still are. Being friends with your ex-husband? Well, I guess it goes right along with the normalcy of separate bedrooms.
    Ronnie calls me every day of his life, though we’ve been divorced for sixteen years. How one person has that much to say, I do not know. How he finds me all over the world, I do not know either. It’s like he has some tracking device on me. Oh, his wife, Marlene? She loves me too. In fact, she calls me almost as much as he does. Go figure. I think she loves the fact that there’s someone out there who knows him as well as she does and will listen to whatever stupid thing he’s done lately. Like putting a down payment on a new tractor with his bingo prize money. They could have used that money for almost anything, savings, groceries, but no, he’s wanted a stupid tractor as long as I’ve known him. Always wanted to plant roots and grow something, as if he could ever grow anything in that Georgia red clay. Ridiculous.
    The phone rings, and I stumble over stacks of old Time magazines and National Geographic s in the hallway to find it, yellowed, by Daddy’s favorite La-Z-Boy chair. The old chair is the color of moss and faded on the side closest to the window.
    â€œHello? Oh, hey, Ronnie. Yeah, it’s going all right. I’ve got the movers coming this afternoon. Yeah. No, I’m not getting emotional, I’m just cleaning up. I’m approaching this like any levelheaded person would do. I don’t have time to get sentimental; they’ll be here in two hours.” I sit down on the arm of Daddy’s chair. “Because I planned it that way, Ronnie. If I gave myself more time, I might get all weepy and I don’t want to do that, all right? Yes. I promise I’m fine. How’s your tractor, anyway? No, I’m not being smarty, I’m just asking.” I wrap the telephone cord around my finger and stare out the window at the creek. “Hmm. That long, huh? You do realize Marlene could’ve gotten that new sewing machine she wanted. She would have been a lot happier right now and you might have some curtains in your dining room. Okay, I’ll lay off, but . . . yep. All right, honey. Uh-huh. Listen, Ronnie, they’ll be here before I know it and I have so much to do . . . Okay? All right. Talk