Elizabeth Flock - Me & Emma

One by one I empty out most of the boxes that sit about eye level to me. Mr. White was right; a couple of boxes only have one bitty bottle in them. They were just waiting for someone to remember them. I have no idea how much time has gone by, but I do know that I’ve flattened fifteen boxes flat and it’s time to start taking them out to the Dumpster.

When I cut through the store with my first armload, Miss Mary is tapping into the calculator, figuring out how much to put on Mr. Blackman’s tab. Back and forth I go and pretty soon I’ve taken out all the pieces I’d worked on.

“Oh, my dear Lord,” Mr. White says when he comes in to check on me later on. Uh-oh. I hope I haven’t messed up, but I look over at him and his open mouth is turning into a smile. A real smile, eyes and all. “Well, I’ll be darned. Miss Caroline Parker … you’re hired!”

I’m hired?

“Sir?”

“The job’s yours if you want it,” he says, running his eyes over the spaces I’d made on the floor. Now two people can stand side by side in there. “I guess I didn’t realize how much we needed you. You think your momma could spare you once or twice a week?”

“B-but, I’m only eight,” I say, my face getting all red for some reason. “Are eight-year-olds allowed to have jobs?”

Mr. White looks at me the way I think my own daddy used to look at me and I don’t feel embarrassed anymore. I feel relieved. “Honey, with what all you’ve been through,” he says real soft-like, “seems to me you could use a little break now and then. Place to get away. You know.”

And right then I guessed I did know what he was talking about. I nod. He pats me on the hand, shakes his head and turns to go back out to the store.

“Little Caroline Parker,” he says more to himself than to me. “Little Miss Caroline Parker.”

I wonder what Emma is going to think when I tell her. Maybe Mr. White would let her come with me to work. She’s scrappy but she’s strong, that’s for sure. No telling how many boxes we’d get through, working together. She sure could use a break now and then, too.

A little while later Mr. White comes back.

“I reckon that’s about all the work we can force out of you today,” he says, smiling again. It’s hot back here in the storeroom and he wipes his shiny forehead with his handkerchief. I don’t know why anyone would want to keep a used handkerchief in their pocket, but that’s exactly where the kerchief headed after he was through with it.

“I promised your momma I’d take you on home, so let’s get this show on the road.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, stepping on top of the box I’d emptied and untaped so it just fell flat like a pancake when my foot said hello. I s’pose Richard’ll find his own way home sooner or later. Unfortunately.

Mr. White’s car is hotter than the storeroom and the Nest put together since it’d been baking in the parking lot all day. The car seat scorches my rear end so I tilt up, pushing my weight into my shoulders until the air cools the seat off. Mr. White doesn’t seem to notice and I’m glad.

Pulling out of the parking lot, he starts talking. “Your momma was the belle of the ball back when she was just a hair older than you,” Mr. White says. “Now, you know we went to school together, don’tcha?”

“Yes, sir,” I say. I’m testing the seat but it’s still hotter than a butcher’s knife. Back when I was little, I used to study Momma’s high school yearbook—she looked like a movie star in it and Mr. White still had all his hair and looked funny, all dressed in black, the mean look he was trying to give the camera turned out to be just plain goofy. There was a haze around Momma’s head that made her look like she belonged up in heaven. Her hair was shiny, not quite brown and not quite yellow, and it was in a poufy hairdo that made her look older than she was. Her smile was perfect and it was from looking at that picture that I realized she has dimples. You’d never know it now. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with no trace of the lines that carve up her face now. She was wearing pearls that I know for a fact she borrowed from her grandmother just for that picture. The famous pearl necklace. I’d heard so much about the pearl necklace that I felt like I was actually there, later on that same picture day, when Momma and my daddy slipped in back of the school to kiss. Daddy was holding her head between his hands when the school principal came out, caught them in the act, startling Daddy so his hands slipped. They caught the necklace and sent the pearls scattering across the asphalt to their ultimate doom down the town drain. Momma was beaten within an inch of her life when she went home, shamed.

“Did she mention she went to school with me?” Mr. White looks over at me, and when he does I can see, just for a second, how he looked back then.

“I don’t remember. I guess I just knew it, is all.” No need to tell him about the yearbook. I bet he’d be embarrassed about his picture, anyway.

“Oh,” he sighs. “Well, all the boys were in love with her. ‘Cluding me, I reckon. But back then I didn’t have sense enough to come in outta the rain, so I surely wasn’t going to ask your momma out on a date. No, sirree,” he whistles. “Your daddy did, though, and truth to tell, I don’t know if I ever forgave him for taking my Libby away from me.” He winks at me, which is a relief because I don’t know if I could stand hearing Mr. White say anything bad about Daddy.

“We were all real jealous of your daddy,” he says, nodding. “I s’pose I thought they’d light out of this town once they got married, but your momma wouldn’t have it. No, sirree …”

While he’s talking, I ease my rear down onto the seat real slow. Phee-you, it feels good to sit normal.

“… she dug her heels in and I reckon they grew roots so they stayed on.”

I don’t quite know why, but all of a sudden a cloud comes over Mr. White’s face when he says this. So I keep my mouth shut. Nothing different from what I’ve been doing, really, but now it feels like I should be coming up with something to say.

“How’s school going?” Mr. White asks after we turn onto Route 5. We’re only about two minutes from my house, so luckily this won’t be a long part of the conversation.

“Fine, thank you.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s good. That’s real good,” he says as he turns his big boat of a car onto our dirt road. His car looks so out of place driving where Richard’s truck does.

“Here we are,” he says, trying to sound cheerful, but the look on his face doesn’t match his voice. So I hop out of the car fast.

“Thanks again, Mr. White,” I call out to him.

“You betcha,” he calls back. “Now, you talk to your momma and have her call me once y’all work out when you want to come in again. You can come anytime you like, Caroline. Anytime at all.” He winks again and I shut the door and run up the front porch stairs to find Momma and Emma to tell them about my day at White’s.

Mr. White is just like everybody else here in Toast, North Carolina—it’s never occurred to him to leave. Imagine that. I mean, I can understand it when you’re my age, but when you’re old enough to get out of town, why wouldn’t you?

“Momma?” I holler before the porch door even slams shut. “Guess what?”

Momma’s in the kitchen smoking with one hand, stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other.

“Momma, Mr. White gave me a job! I cleared out all the boxes from the storeroom and he said he never saw it so neat and clean and he hired me right there on the spot. I can eat penny candy anytime I want. Momma, please say I can do it, please.”

“Slow down, Jesus H. Christmas, slow down,” Momma says, turning to the icebox and staring at what’s inside. “Go on and get me that molasses out of the pantry, will you?”