I could smell the smoke of something cooking while we were still in the woods making our way over to Miss Trotter’s. I hoped no one noticed it until we were actually there, but Vonetta asked, “What’s that?”
“Smells good!” Fern said—then quickly added, “And bad.”
“Sure does,” I agreed, pretending it was a mystery when I knew what was happening over at Miss Trotter’s. I just didn’t want Fern to start crying and pulling my arm for us to turn back to Ma Charles’s house. We were here already and I didn’t want to stay on our side of the creek. There was nothing to do at Big Ma’s than watch the chickens fight over a cricket.
Miss Trotter and JimmyTrotter had a skinned deer roasting on a spit. JimmyTrotter cranked the handle to the spit and the deer turned around and around under a pit of burning coals. As we drew near, Fern, now close to me, close like she used to be, began to buckle at the knee. She was crying.
“Cut it out, baby,” Vonetta said.
Fern wasn’t up to fighting back. I could feel her folding into me.
“You cut it out,” I told Vonetta. “She’s your sister. Act like it.”
Miss Trotter caught sight of us and waved. “Just in time for barbecue!” Both Miss Trotter and Ma Charles called any meat roasting in an outdoor fire “barbecue,” when barbecue to us was sauce from the grocery store or sweet and spicy red dust on potato chips.
“No, no, no,” Fern meowed into me. She tried to pull me backward. I pulled her forward. “Come on, Fern. You don’t have to look at it. You can stay behind me.” And of course Vonetta said, “Come on, baby.” As much as I hated Vonetta’s meanness, her taunting was enough to prop Fern up and move her feet forward just to show Vonetta she wasn’t a baby. Fern grabbed a fistful of my top and stayed close to me.
The doneness of the animal going around and around said it had been cooking for a while. JimmyTrotter cut off pieces from the deer and put them in a pan and Miss Trotter salted the pieces. She had already been eating the barbecue.
“Come on, girls,” Miss Trotter said. “Come and get a treat.”
Vonetta, eager to please, grabbed a piece of meat and bit into it. She chewed and yummed like the actress that she was.
Fern cried out, “That’s no treat! That’s Bambi’s mother!”
JimmyTrotter started to tell his great-grandmother who Bambi was, but she put her hand up to him. “I know who Bambi’s mother is. A make-believe deer in the pictures. You see, young’n, I know. Now get over here. Come on.”
But Fern wouldn’t move.
“You,” my great-aunt said to me. “Let go of that girl.” Although it was the other way around, Ferns fists wrapped around the bottom of my top, I loosened Fern’s grip on my clothes and pushed her forward. “I don’t bite children,” she told Fern. “But I’ll give ’em a taste of the hickory switch if they’re bad.” She meant to jolly Fern. Vonetta, who wasn’t receiving any attention, rolled her eyes.
“Bambi is make-believe. This is a real deer. God-given to these woods to run about and breed.”
“Aunt Miss Trotter, God doesn’t want us to kill,” Fern said. “We surely shall not!”
Fern said it the way Big Ma would have been proud of, although Big Ma wouldn’t have appreciated that Fern talked back to Miss Trotter. Ma Charles, on the other hand, would have cackled and shaken her tambourine.
“God don’t want us to kill each other, young’n,” Miss Trotter said.
“Fern,” my baby sister corrected. “God don’t want us to kill each other, Fern.”
Miss Trotter turned to JimmyTrotter. “Boy, get me the biggest hickory switch you can find.”
JimmyTrotter kept basting and salting the meat.
We ate the smoky venison meat except Fern, who ate a piece of bread. Miss Trotter waited for Fern to ask for more to eat but Fern never asked.
Miss Trotter said to Fern, “This animal made an offering to us all and you won’t take it. Shame on you.”
Fern shrugged.
“This animal gave us her meat. We’ll share it with neighbors. And what we don’t eat, we’ll freeze for when there’s nothing. She doesn’t have much fat to her but she gave us her bones and hide. If it were a nice buck, I’d make good use of his horns. Everything the animal gives us is useful.”
Fern thought long and hard like she was at her desk figuring out homework. It would have been nice if she’d said, “Yes, Aunt Miss Trotter.”
Instead, she said, “Wish we could give it all back to her, Aunt Miss Trotter. Surely do.”
That evening Miss Trotter filled a tin pan with sliced venison and wrapped it tightly, placing it in Vonetta’s hands to carry. “Take this to your great-granny. She’d surely like to have it. But you don’t have to tell her I shot it with Daddy’s rifle. No. Don’t tell her that. But if you need to tell her something, tell her I brought the doe down with one shot and cleaned out all the buckshot myself. That is, if she’s worried about buckshot.”
“I’ll carry it,” I said, reaching to take the pan from Vonetta.
“No, no,” Miss Trotter said. “My dear one can carry it. She’s strong and eats all of her food.”
Her words were meant to make Fern feel badly, but Fern was in her world, humming and clapping. Almost the way Cecile did when she worked out her poems.
With the pan in her hands, Vonetta curtsied and we started back through the woods and over the creek. Vonetta’s politeness lasted only until we were out of Miss Trotter’s sight, and then she taunted Fern with the pan of cooked meat. I grabbed the pan out of Vonetta’s hand with a swift yank. It was a good thing Miss Trotter had wrapped that pan well. I heard “I hate you, Delphine” all the way home, but I didn’t care. Vonetta had to learn how to be a better sister to Fern, and I was going to teach her.
Vonetta pulled out all the stops and told Ma Charles almost word for word about how Miss Trotter shot the deer with her father’s rifle and cleaned out the buckshot. I knew Miss Trotter threw in that bit about her father’s rifle to rub salt in Ma Charles’s heart. That Slim Jim Trotter left his rifle with Miss Trotter’s mother and not hers. That it was probably true that Slim Jim Trotter spent more nights over the creek with Miss Trotter and her mother than here with Great-great-grandmother Livonia and Ma Charles when she was a little girl. But Slim Jim Trotter did make the chair Ma Charles sat in, and that was something.
If Miss Trotter had rubbed salt in Ma Charles’s heart, our great-grandmother didn’t let on. In fact, she clapped her hands and rubbed them together in anticipation when Big Ma unwrapped the meat.
“The Lord’s working on Miss Trotter,” Ma Charles said. “Let’s eat.”
When we sat down at the table, Fern said to Big Ma, “Why does Delphine get to say the dinner prayer? I can say it.”
Uncle Darnell didn’t have school that night and was seated at the table for supper. He winked at Fern.
Big Ma thought Bible school was “working on” Fern and that Fern had caught the spirit. Big Ma’s face brightened and she said, “Bless your heart, Fern. Go on. Bless this table.”
Fern cleared her throat, clasped her hands together, and lifted her turtle head high out of its shell.
Sorry, Chicken
Sorry, Deer
Sorry, Ham
Sorry, Cow
Sorry, Lamb
Chops are better
On a puppet
Or the lamb
They came from.
Baaaaaa—
But you can say
Amen.
Uncle Darnell said, “Amen,” and snapped his fingers beatnik style, and I followed suit, adding a “Baaaaa” to my “Amen.” Vonetta almost joined us but then stopped herself, refusing to take part in anything having to do with our uncle.
“The Lord’s not pleased,” Big Ma scolded. She pointed to Fern, who was proud of her protest poem disguised as our dinnertime prayer. “And you! Your head’s swelling up—trying to act like your no-mothering mother—while the rest of you stays puny because you won’t do right and eat what the Lord gave you. Mark my words. He won’t let you grow if you can’t offer Him a proper thanksgiving.”
Ma Charles thought it was all hilarious. “Go on, Rickets. That was a good prayer. Baaaaa.”
Fern bowed her head low and grand over her plate of corn and string beans. “Afua,” she proclaimed. “My poet name is Afua.”