Ketchup
Mrs. Barry has long slender legs and jet black hair. She is married to Captain Jack Barry who is an Air Force pilot. Mrs. Barry brought her soft southern accent all the way from Tallahassee to Ohio where the Captain is stationed. Suzie her youngest daughter is my best friend. Suzie inherited a full head of jet black curls from her mother along with her confidence. By four years old it is plain that I am inconquerorably shy and awkward. Mrs. Barry, Jackie, to her peers always frightens me a little with her directness, saying exactly what is on her mind.
My mother leads my sisters and I down the front porch stairs. The four of us are wrapped in our matching bathrobes and slippers. The four of us shuffle across the asphalt drive way across the grass, on to the Barry’s driveway, up to the front porch. Mrs. Barry is on the porch holding the screen door open. It is June and the air smells like roses. I enter the door, slip my slippers off and walk across the cool wooden floor planting myself on the couch next to Suzie. She leans close to me. Suzie’s older sister Lynn soon joins us. She is my oldest sister’s best friends. We are families of girls and very close. I am used to both my mother and Mrs. Barry watching us as we play outside or as we go house to house looking for something new and interesting to do. Cartoons are on and I don’t hear what my mother and Mrs. Barry are discussing. Instead I am mesmerized by the black and white images on the screen whose familiarity help me settle into what we know so far of moving day.
My mother leaves as the moving van pulls up to the front of our simple cracker box house tucked away in a cul-de-sac near the runway of the airbase. We have all grown accustomed to the sound of the planes taking off. We are even familiar with the crack above us as aircraft break the sound barrier. The cul-de-sac is our little world and the huge truck is rattling it by the front curve. At Mrs. Barry’s instructions I get up and come over to the door and peer out at the behemoth of a truck. With a clear strictness Mrs. Barry instructs us. “Girls you are not to go outside. The moving van is here. You may watch it from the door or at the kitchen window.”
I do not have an ounce of desire to move out from behind the screen door to encounter this truck that I see is being opened and readied to carry off all my things and take them to the new house. We only visit our mysterious new house in the dark by the light of my father’s flashlight. Every so often as it is being built we bundle up and are taken by car to this new destination after my father gets off work at the men’s clothing store he manages. It is always late night and pitch black. Our street begins where the farm land ends where cows graze in the fields by the dairy farm. My father lifts me up to the side door because the side steps are not yet in place. The new world of this house smells like fresh cut board. We walk through the skeleton of a room, the sky still in view through the rafters as we try to imagine our new rooms.
Mrs. Barry has been at work in her kitchen for about a half an hour when she calls us for breakfast. As I enter the sunny kitchen decorated with strawberry trimmings I see Mrs. Barry sticking toast into the shiny silver toaster. “Do you want blackberry jam with your toast,” she asks us.
“Yes, mame.” Suzie says. I imitate her reply. I do not have such formality with my mother, whose sweet disposition contrasts with Mrs. Barry’s directness. My mother accepts, “yes.” But I am afraid of being rude in Mrs. Barry’s house. I never want to be rude. So I follow Suzie’s cues in how to navigate politeness.
Mrs. Barry sets a plate of scrambled eggs, toast and jam and hash browns down in front of me. She asks concerning orange juice and I manage a “yes mame,” as she places a small strawberry decorated glass in front of my plate. I look up at Mrs. Barry’s lovely southern face and ask. “May I have some ketchup for my potatoes, mame?”
Mrs. Barry’s face lights up and with more passion than I think she means and asks, “Why child would use ruin my beautiful hash browns with ketchup?” With those words hot tears stream down my face, I cannot hold them in.
Mrs. Barry places a bottle of ketchup on the table, lifts me in her arms and holds me close as she walks over to the kitchen window. “Look Ruthie, there’s your mother. She’s been there all morning instructing the men on what to do.” Then she leans her face into my hair and whispers as she kisses my head, “I’m sure going to miss all my little girls.”
Politicas de privacidade
6 years ago
