something bad. Minnie didn’t know exactly why, other than what her mother said about the Devil, or Beng as the Gypsies called him, which she doubted was so, since she’d never seen the Devil in her life. She could not know, except somewhere in her soul’s silent memory, that she had almost killed her mother when she’d been born. She had been a breech and all the long night when her mother had screamed in pain and begged God to go on and take her, she had lingered there inside her mother’s body as though she refused to be born. As though it were a willful thing on her part, and her mother had been sure it was. Lying in the cold room, after the intense misery of a living hell, the old worn sheets stained with blood, her mother had looked at the baby, another girl, not even another boy like they’d wanted, needed, but another girl. The baby looked like a dressed squirrel, ugly and deformed in the face, eyes and nose and mouth all scrooched up like one of those little devils you see in pictures, squatting and looking at you like they know some secret, like they know when you’re going to die. She wanted the baby taken from her, but she had to feed her. Better the baby starve to death. But she couldn’t do it. Not then, anyway. She wanted Big Ralph—as opposed to Ralph-Son, her third oldest—to take the baby outside and smash its brains out upside a hickory nut tree, so she would never have to look at her. But she couldn’t ask him to do that, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. So she had watched the girl grow, skulking around, not able to pick even half the fruit—strawberries, peaches, apples or oranges, depending on the season and whatever state they were in, and sometimes cotton, too—couldn’t pick half the fruit her four sisters did, two of them younger than her, too, not able to keep her mind on anything for more than a minute, not even when she sat the girls down and read to them out of the ancient stories, like the devil had already taken half her brain, maybe while she was still in the womb.
“She ain’t right,” she said to Big Ralph. Minnie could hear her from where she lay in the bed, under the thin quilt, her four sisters breathing raggedly and not at all in unison on both sides of her, her eyes almost closed so that she could see only the glow of the fire, sense more than see the orb of the coal oil lamp through her almost closed lashes.
“Hush up about that,” her father said. “She can hear you.”
“Don’t nothin register with her, Big Ralph,” her mother said. Minnie was a freak, and she knew it. And maybe even the part about the devil was true, too. But there was nothing she could do about it. When she looked at herself in the shard of a mirror that one of the girls had found in a junk heap, she saw a slight girl with a narrow face, pitch black thick hair, the only thing odd about her those mismatched eyes, one the color of a dandelion leaf, the other the color of a Milk of Magnesia bottle. Her sisters were pretty, the oldest one already getting her titties, but Minnie’s body was like a stick figure, gaunt with lack of flesh, arms like twigs. Her hands were too big; half the time she didn’t know what to do with them, so they fluttered around her like startled butterflies.
One day it came to her like a splash of cold water in the face that she looked exactly like her mother. Her mother was skinny, too, but with black hair streaked with gray, pulled back in a loose bun at the back of her neck, wearing the same shapeless dresses as her daughters. But it was the same face, lean and constricted, narrow mouth, sharp cheekbones. Her mother’s eyes were both black, and she had dark circles under her eyes, where Minnie didn’t, and she was always tired and complaining that the girls didn’t help her enough, especially Minnie. Minnie saw her in the washtub, her titties flat and sagging like empty tobacco sacks. Big old black bushy hair between her slender legs. Minnie knew she would grow up to look just like that, except for the eyes. But because of her eyes, she would be a monster that nobody would ever love. Somebody hard and flinty as stone.
The old man’s cabin—one room, sparsely furnished—reeked of coal oil, sour ashes and his unwashed body. And old bacon grease that smelled rancid, and the fecal smell of boiling greens. And another slightly sweet smell that she knew was liquor, though her parents did not drink alcohol. She knew instinctively what it was; it was the devil’s brew that the old preacher talked about. She sat down at a three-legged table, one corner propped on a chair whose back was just the right height. The table was covered with crumbs and bits of food, several dirty dishes. The old man rummaged around over at the wood stove. It was hot in the closed house, oppressive with all its old-man odors and the dim, fading sunlight that seeped between the boards that now covered the windows. He had closed them when they came in, along with the door that creaked on old rusty hinges.
He came over to the table with a tin plate and fork. On the plate were a serving of turnip greens and a wedge of cornbread.
“Let us pray,” he said, “dear Jesus, this girl thanks you for her food. She’s lost on your earth, dear Jesus. Help her find her way. Amen. Eat,” he said. He set a glass of water next to it. “Sorry I ain’t got no sweet milk,” he said. She bit into the crumbling cornbread and chewed. The greens were only lukewarm but good, swimming in fatback grease. She could see his eyes watching her in the duskiness.
“You cook this?” she asked after she swallowed. The cornbread was dry and she drank some of the water, fresh well water that was cool and sweet.
“Who you think cooked it?” he said. “You don’t see nobody else around here, do you?”
“No,” she said.
“Well then, you know who cooked it then. Alexander Mossback Frill cooked it. At your service, ma’am.”
She heard the chair squeak under his weight as he sat down at the table. He just watched her as she chewed the greens. The only sounds were the scraping of her fork on the plate and the old man’s breathing, that seemed labored, like he’d just run around the yard.
“Did you know your eyes don’t go together?” he asked suddenly.
“No, I didn’t know that,” she said.
“You ought to get a job in a circus,” he said. “Folks would pay good money to see a girl with one blue eye and one green un.”
“I doubt it,” she said.
“Take my word for it,” Alexander Mossback Frill said. “I could take you down to Sarasota and sell you for a hunnert dollars.”
“Nobody’s sellin me, mister,” she said. She was gripping the fork tightly in her fist.
“Whoa, now,” Alexander Mossback Frill said. “I’s justa woofin you.”
She settled back and continued eating, aware of his eyes watching her, never leaving her. “Ain’t you gonna eat?” she asked.
“I done eat my supper,” he said.
She finished the food and pushed the plate away. “I reckon you want me to wash that up,” she said.
“Naw,” he said. She heard a scratch and a match spurted into flame; he lit a lamp on the table as the sulphur scent of the match drifted by her nose. He had a broad, flat face. The growth on his face was more whiskers than beard. The buttons were missing from the top of his undershirt. He was fishing around in a top pocket of his overalls and he came out with a wilted-looking cigarette. “You want to share this here funny cigarette with me?” he asked.
“No,” she said. She had no idea what he was talking about. She didn’t know why he called it a “funny” cigarette; it didn’t look funny to her, but sad and drooping. She just knew she didn’t want to share much of anything with him. His breath smelled like old hay that had been rained on and then left out in the sun.
“I’m sorry I ain’t got no pie nor nothin,” he said. He grinned. His eyes were watery and gray.
“That’s
