Even though my cousin was bent on flaunting his age and height over me, I relished the time I spent with him apart from my sisters. What a difference three years made between us. We could barely stand each other at nine and twelve. Now he was practically a grown man. Sitting on the back porch yapping with my fifteen-year-old cousin made me feel like the teenager I’d soon be in October.
We could both smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. The house was waking up. He gave my shoulder a light tap instead of a thump and said, “Let’s go inside.”
Soon there would be noise and chores and a mountain of white sheets with my name on them to wash, hang dry, and iron. I wasn’t looking forward to it but I went in with him.
Vonetta and Fern came alive at the table the minute they saw Cousin JimmyTrotter.
“Straight from Sophie,” he said, placing a heavy quart bottle of milk on the kitchen table. I carried the basket full of small brown and white eggs.
“Who’s Sophie?” Fern asked, but no one answered.
“Cold milk!” Vonetta cried. “In time for cornflakes!”
“Cornflakes?” Ma Charles said. “Cornflakes won’t put meat on those bony bones.” She turned to Big Ma and said, “Daughter, stir those grits up right. Extra hunk of butter—good butter from McDaniels’s farm,” she felt the need to add. “And bring out the ham and biscuits. These gals have been starving. See how they’ve wasted away.”
Vonetta said, “I want cornflakes. Great-grandma Charles, I know you have them.”
“And I don’t want ham,” Fern whined.
Big Ma said, “That’s not how I raised you two—telling your elders what you want and don’t want. Just as unmannerly as a seal on strike at the circus.”
“May I please have lots of milk with my cornflakes?” It was too fake and sweet for Vonetta.
“If that’s how you want to waste away, it’s all right with me,” Ma Charles said.
“Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am.” Fern called up all the southern talk she knew. “I’ll waste away on milk and cornflakes too. But please, ma’am, more cornflakes than milk and no thank you, ma’am, to pig ham.”
Big Ma said we would cause her slow and unmerciful death, but we knew she didn’t mean it.
Vonetta took the thick bottle of milk with both hands. “Why is it so warm?” she asked. “Milk’s supposed to be cold.”
“Like I said, cuz. It’s straight from Sophie,” JimmyTrotter said.
“Who’s Sophie?” Fern asked again, but no one answered.
Vonetta pruned up her face. “Straight from Sophie. That sounds nasty.”
“Where do you think milk comes from?” I asked her.
“The store. In a red and white carton.”
“With a picture of a cow on a farm,” Fern said.
“That farm’s across the creek,” JimmyTrotter said. “That cow is Sophie. And in a month, that milk’ll come from Butter.”
“That makes no sense,” Vonetta said. “Everyone knows butter comes from milk, not the other way around.”
“You tell him!” Ma Charles said.
Vonetta went on. “As long as I can have my cornflakes, I’ll take the milk straight from the cow. Just get here sooner and stick the bottle in the freezer.”
I was ready to kick Vonetta under the table but Big Ma told her to watch herself. JimmyTrotter laughed his head off and told her she was funny and cute.
“As long as—” Fern started to follow Vonetta, but stopped herself. “Cousin JimmyTrotter. Is it all right with Sophie? Us drinking her milk?”
“It sure is, cuz.” He answered so easily she had no choice but to believe him.
Ma Charles shook her head, amused and surprised by Fern’s question. “If that don’t beat all.”
Then Fern finished her thought. “As long as the cow says, ‘Mooo,’ I’ll drink it tooo.”
“All this talk about where milk comes from,” Ma Charles said. “Milk comes from a cow. Maybe a goat. In all my eighty-two years I never drank a drop of factory milk and I won’t start now. Never had an egg come out of a carton or a loaf of bread that didn’t rise up in my oven, and furthermore, it’s a sin to throw a nickel on a head of cabbage or a bunch of carrots that already grows up out of my own dirt.”
“Thank you, Claretha Darrow,” Big Ma said. Claretha must have been Aretha Franklin’s pulpit-preaching twin, for all we knew: Big Ma, like Ma Charles, was on a roll. She was funniest when she didn’t mean to make us laugh. “You all haven’t been down home a full minute and you’re already raising Mama’s pressure and mine along with hers.”
Ma Charles tsk-tsked about how lean and undernourished JimmyTrotter looked and then told him to sit down. “Your old great-granny is in such poor health she can’t rise up from her death bed to feed you.”
JimmyTrotter winked at me and said to Ma Charles, “Miss Trotter’s far from her deathbed, Auntie. She gets around and cooks plenty. I know because I eat plenty.”
“I doubt she gets around, as old and sickly as she is,” Ma Charles insisted.
“Mama!” Big Ma scolded. “You two are the same age.”
“Twins!” Vonetta exclaimed. “You’re twin sisters. I hope twins run in the family. I’m having twins.”
“You’re having breakfast,” is what Big Ma said. “Never mind no twins.”
“Twins nothing,” Ma Charles said, truly riled by the thought. “My mama had me first. Her mama had her second. You tell her that,” she ordered. JimmyTrotter gave her a “Yes’m, Auntie,” and threw me another sly wink.
“Do you hear this?” Big Ma said. “Stop telling the family business.”
“Aren’t we the family?” Fern asked.
JimmyTrotter said, “Don’t worry about Miss Trotter. Great-granny goes out with her deer rifle. Can still pick off a rabbit every now and then.”
“What’s that to me?” Ma Charles said, but she was now ruffled at being contradicted. “I fish the wide end of the creek and tend that garden.”
“Ma, you haven’t gone—”
But Ma Charles waved her hand to tell Big Ma to hush and continued to speak over her. “You tell her I said there’s no shame in using that cane I sent her. Pride goeth before the fall.” I caught my great-grandmother half rolling her eyes.
“Miss Trotter’s just fine, Auntie,” he said, although she was his great-aunt. “And she wants to know if your rheumatism’s any better. If you need another bottle of ginger and goldenseal.”
“Ma don’t need any Indian roots and berries,” Big Ma said. “She needs to see about her sister.”
“I know about my half sister, all right,” Ma Charles snapped real fast. “I know all about her.”
Fern whispered in a weak voice, “She hunts deer? And rabbits?”
Vonetta held up her fork as if it had a trigger and a barrel. I slapped the fork down and dared Vonetta to do something about it.
Then Uncle Darnell came into the kitchen and said, “Ma, you packed my lunchbox? My thermos?” Big Ma was especially happy to fuss over her son. When Uncle Darnell looked toward Vonetta, she turned her face away and chomped on her cereal as hard as she could.