There is not much to want for.

Momma and I sit on the porch. We shell peas.

Wendell plucks a lonesome tune on his fiddle.

Days have passed in golden stupor and bees drone drowsily amid the clover. Summer is an old crone, holding us close to her heavy bosom and lulling us to sleep.

“Addie,” says Momma, “stop eatin’ the peas!”

“Sorry, Momma,” I mumble.

The rains have not come; grainy red dust has seeped into every pore, invading our nostrils, rendering us raw and dry.

The shanties are silent. The men have all taken to late afternoon siestas, sprawling out underneath the shady pine trees like sleek lions stuffed from the kill. Flies hum over a gutted watermelon and its scattered entrails. Wide-brimmed straw hats are drawn over eyes, and bronzed arms are limp.

We’ve become careless.

Even Momma.

Her kitchen is quiet and dark, the cold chicken put away. A pitcher of sweet tea sits out on the cracked steps, should anyone want to quench their thirst.

Like a pair of filthy virgins, Momma and I wear white cotton slips stained crimson from the dust. Momma says that it’s good advertisement. We want the men to be happy, she says.

Oh, and the men that make their home here! Coarse and weathered with bear-paw hands, these men have weaseled their way into Momma’s good heart for want of a seedy shanty and hot food. During the summer, they’re rooted deep in the land. Months pass by and their attempts to till the soil and harvest the crops are futile. And when the first frost hardens the ground, they are quick to abandon the crude shanties and Momma.

“Get me another beer. I’m parched,” says Momma. Lighting up a Pall Mall cigarette, she inhales sharply and squints toward the shanties where the men lie idle.

Momma laments. “Hard times are upon us! Hard times, Addie-girl. The land yields nothing ‘cept rocks and clay. The corn wilts away and is plucked by the crows."

“Maybe God’s waitin’ for a rain dance,” I offer.

“Humph! God? We weep, but he don’t listen. And you know why, don’t you, Addie-girl?”

“Sin,” I say.

“Sin! A multitude of sins. Those men lay in dirt like pigs in their ruts. They gorge themselves like they was Roman gods, and we sit here suffering!”

“Momma, I’m all but sopping wet here. Can’t I stroll on down to the creek and take a dip?”

“No, Addie-girl, you stay right here where my eyes can see you. Those peas won’t shell by themselves, you know.”

I pick up a shell from the tin bowl and place it between my calloused finger. I roll it between my index finger and my thumb. It’s hard and knobby. There ain’t no appeasing Momma. She’s coiled up in this acrid heat, like an angry copperhead waitin’ to strike.

“I got a letter from Finch,” I say.

Momma flicks a fly off her wrist.

“He’s in Texas. He likes the Army and they pay him twenty-one dollars a month!”

“Don’t talk to me about Finch,” snaps Momma.

Brother Finch don’t write Momma. He’s got his reasons.

“I miss Finch,” I say.

Momma slumps down in her chair. And then she says, “Finch is gone. He ain’t coming back, just like your daddy.”

I’m sick of Momma. I hate this farm with its ugly shanties and aching fields. I think that when the rains come, and they will, I’ll go.

“Now, Payne is sweet,” she says, “but dumb. You make eyes at him. You encourage him, Addie-girl.”

Payne. Last night I met him at our pecan tree. He was flushed and trembling. I was, too. His clammy hands held mine. He smelled like peanuts and earth.

“He ain’t dumb, Momma. Just different.”

“He’s a pet to you. That’s why you’re wanting him,” Momma snickers. “Your indolence rankles me, Addie-girl. Quick to follow the path to temptation, all for that blubbering idiot. Quick to forget your chores and God.”

And you Momma.

“He’s a nice boy, Momma. Clean. That’s why I like him. He’s got a scrubbed face, smooth hands and shiny nails. He’s gentle, too.”

Finch used to be gentle. Then Momma got to him.

Her smile chills my heart, and that Carolina wind blows up harsh on my sun burnt skin. I close my eyes and dream of Payne and his green eyes.

“He’s too quiet.” Momma fishes for another cigarette from her pack. “He looks angry all the time. Like he’s ready to shoot and kill.”

He’s nursing a hurt. Hurt’s no stranger to you, Momma.

“He speaks to me,” I say.

“Yes. You scurry on down to those shanties as if there’s gold to dig. You and him. I saw you two last night, sidling towards the old parish. What you do there, Addie-girl? You let him touch you? He put his hands on you?”

Sex, Momma.

“No, we sit on the steps of the old parish, Momma. And talk. He likes to eat peanuts, Momma.”

The parish burned down two years ago, long before Payne was around. It’s a sad place. All of those graves shrouded in moss. So many men. Daddy used to take me there when I was little. He’d point to a crumbling tomb and say, There lies a fallen hero of the South.

“What have I told you, Addie-girl?”

“Be clean, but not too clean.”

His hands were fumbling and I could tell he was still shy. I told him it was all right.

“There are men with a jealous eye. Some would want to have you, Addie-girl. Even with your freckled face and pouting lips.”

And then he whispered, Life is good in Virginia. The land is lush and the corn climbs to the Heavens.

“You’re a peach ripened to rot, Addie. Soft on the outside, pulpy on the inside.”

And your heart is the blackened pit, Momma.

I can get work, Addie. And you can . . .

Tend to the house. And baby. I won’t have to worry about the shanties at night. Momma won’t shove me, and God won’t follow me. For when the rains come, and they will, we can sit out on the porch together.

“Don’t waste yourself on this boy,” Momma sneers.

Sweet Virginia’s singing to me, Momma.

Payne and I’ll eat pie and listen to the rain hit the tin roof. Payne says it’s like a momma’s lullaby.

“Regret comes soon enough. Maybe not now; youth don’t allow remorse for rash actions.” She stubs out her cigarette.

Momma knows regret. She gnaws on it like a dog gnaws on his bone.

Scarlet sun dips low in the sky. Momma’s furrowed brow is slick with the sheen of sweat. The fiddle’s quiet. Dusk is coming, and a slight breeze rustles the leaves.

 

Momma licks her tobacco-flecked lips. She’s afraid. Daddy’s dead and Finch is gone. The soil’s sour, and she knows the rains are coming.

When the rain pours down, it washes the red away, but hard grit remains. She ain’t God, Addie.

Momma gets up from her sagging chair and squats down beside me. Taking the tin bowl of shelled peas from my lap, she wraps her thin arms around my shoulders and cradles me to her chest. Her beer-breath is a balm for my hot skin. It carries me back to when I was a child and she’d croon lullabies.

I am sorry that I’ll have to leave her. But I don’t care to stay here long.

“We reap what we sow, Addie-girl,” Momma murmurs. “Look out to that wasted field and down to the shanties where the stench of human shit makes you retch. Is that what you want?”

“Life is there, Momma. And love.”

“And heartache, too. You and I share more than blood, girl. Secrets.”

My belly’s ripe with secrets.

“Payne ain’t gonna change you, Addie. He don’t know what you are.”

Down at the shanties, their raucous laughter knifes through the stillness and I shiver.

“He don’t want to sully his hands with you.”

Momma’s rawboned fingers toil diligently through my tangled curls. She blows softly on my chapped cheeks and it feels so nice.

Play it good, Wendell, the men shout out. Something lively.

“It’s just baby-love, Addie. That’s all. It’s holding a newborn and kissing its pureness. But baby grows up and pureness turns dirty. Then you toss it aside.”

I bury my face in Momma’s doughy breasts. Remnants of lilac talcum powder and cigarette smoke comfort me.

Wendell strums his fiddle.

It’s a pretty piece. I shut my eyes.

 

###

 

A crescent moon is high and bright.

My bare feet travel down the stony path, quick and light as an Indian. In the rural twilight, I’ll avoid shadowy rows of corn.

Hants might be there.

Finch said he saw a hant once.

Payne’s waiting for me. He leans against our pecan tree. He warns me to watch out for the black widows that crawl on the ground. They like to make their nests beneath the gnarled roots.

In his hand he clutches a crumpled grease-spotted bag of peanuts. Boiled and good.

“Rain’s coming,” Payne says. He pops a finger in his mouth and sticks it up in the night air.

“Yep. Rain’s coming.”

She means to keep me here but she is not God and cannot hold me.

The Lord knows that I don’t care to harm Momma. But, like seeds planted by the birds, I’ll drop, split and take root.

I tell Payne my secrets. And then Payne and I kiss as that Carolina wind blows in salt-rain.

 

###

 

I open my eyes.

Night is here. A crescent moon winks at me.

Another summer afternoon gone with Momma.

And Wendell hits his fiddle.