Curtis, part twenty-five

Leta stood in the middle of the kitchen with her arms akimbo and frowned. The assortment of children that had been working on various projects all stopped while she tended to their youngest sibling’s burn. The oldest girl was sitting with her sister at the large table, soaking the little one’s hand in a bowl of cool water. The little one whimpered softly. Before the emergency, Leta had been speaking with her new husband in the living room. Without consulting or even informing her he had taken part of the miserably rainy afternoon to go to the market for groceries. She had wanted to go to the market herself and was irritated by his behavior. Then, while she was tending to his child, he and his oldest boy had quietly brought all of the supplies they purchased—mostly cooking supplies—into the kitchen, stacked them in the corner and then disappeared.

For the first time since she had married Curtis, she wanted to walk out the door of the shanty he called a house, wipe her feet on the miserable excuse for a front porch and head north to her own little room in the Toledo boarding house where she had been living before she married the man. At the very thought, she felt a kind of release from the relentless body of need, responsibility and labor she was currently living in. That one simple act would relieve her of this tremendous burden. She could be sitting in her chair, sipping bourbon and watching the rain through the window.

“Ma’am?” the oldest girl said quietly, distracting Leta from her contemplation.

Leta saw that all the children had stopped their chores and were staring at her.

“Okay, children,” she declared. “Time to get back to work.”

When Curtis returned to the house later in the evening, he said not a word, and she did not want to scold him in front of the children. Besides, being trapped in the house had made them all so irritable that any spark would create complete bedlam. The heavy fire Leta kept in the wood stove, the smell of cooked apples and fresh beef and gravy with a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes provided a welcome coziness, but Leta knew that the slightest comment, gesture or glance could disrupt the tentative calm.

After they had eaten, most of the children attempted to scatter as they had the previous night, but this time Leta was prepared.

“Hold it!” she commanded. “No one is leaving the kitchen until he has cleared his plate from the table and put it in the bin of water beside the sink.”

Several of the boys looked at their father imploringly, but Curtis, too, realized that there was tension in the room, even if he did not know why, and he simply shrugged his shoulder lightly.

“After you do that, I want you to light a fire in the fireplace,” he added. “We need to clear out some of this dampness.”

The room was getting dark and the rain renewed its relentless battering.

“And someone needs to empty all the pots,” Leta added, referring to the variety of pails and pots that were collecting water from the leaks, “before they overflow.”

While Leta could feel the tension rise in the little shack of a house, the children followed her instructions. The boys emptied all the pots and started a fire in the fireplace. Three of the girls washed and dried the dishes. The oldest girl put the smaller children to bed. And her husband checked on the animals.

An hour later they were all in bed.

To be continued.