SUNDAY DISHES
Daddy cleaned up his own mess. I watched him from the stove as he done it. A disgusted look turned to one of sadness and hung heavy on his face. Was it on account’a Raynelle’s news? Was he as worried as me about another empty place in our house? His eyes was red, but something else in those eyes reached out and pulled me in.
I recollected the dream I’d had that night on the bench by the weighman’s shack. I’d dreamed of a sad, gentle Daddy who wiped rain from my face. It’d seemed like more’n a dream. And that Daddy had seemed more real than the Daddy who wiped up vomit and cleaned hisself up for Sunday dinner.
It was a quiet meal. Raynelle didn’t talk about Lud’s proposal, didn’t look like no happy bride-to-be. If a boy ever talked marriage with Jane Louise, she’d jabber and gush and flaunt her ring. Raynelle jist spooned boiled taters into her mouth in silence.
When Daddy and Blissie went outside to fetch firewood, me and Raynelle washed dishes. She slid off the yellow-stone ring and set it on the shelf above the sink.
“Why ya got to marry Luddy?” I asked straight out.
She scrubbed at a plate that looked right clean already. “On account’a he asked.”
“And then what? He’d stop coming around, stop bringing food from the Grocery. We need ever’ scrap he gives us.”
Gitting “scraps” from Luddy Webster seemed a whole heap worse’n taking a handout from the Quakers. I wondered if Daddy knew Raynelle took charity from the grocer’s son.
“If I marry Lud, I kin move in with him and his daddy,” Raynelle went on. “I’ll cook for the two of ’em, and put food aside for you. And ever’ bite will last longer without me here.”
“Pick said that, too. That the food would stretch further with him gone. But I’d give up eating forever and ever to have him home again.”
“That’s crazy talk.” Raynelle looked up from a sudsy plate. “I got to do this.”
I took the plate from her afore she had a chance to wash the blue flowers clean off it. “Do ya truly love Lud, Raynelle?”
“He’s good to me.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
“Ya’s too young to understand, Adabel.”
“Then I’m too young to take care of this here house and family without ya.”
“Don’t fret over it. I’ll teach ya what ya need to know afore me and Lud gits married. The way Granny Cutler taught me.”
I lugged the dishpan outside to dump its dirty water over the porch rail, Raynelle’s words chewing at my gut. I couldn’t let her marry Lud. She didn’t even love him. I’d have to be right slow at learning to take over. Might be if I dragged my feet enough, Lud would git tired of waiting.