Brad Watson: Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

THE MOTHER TOLD THE BOYS THAT SHE WAS MUCH unappreciated in this house. She was just like a slave. She pushed the vacuum cleaner back and forth on the floor at their feet where they sat on the sofa. They had been trying to watch a western show on the black-and-white television before she had turned on the vacuum and begun to shout her words over its howling motor. I am the only person who does anything around here, she shouted, yanking the vacuum cleaner back and forth. I cook, I clean, I wash, I go to work and bring home what little money we have and nobody helps. I am just like a slave but I’ll tell you one thing — and she turned off the vacuum cleaner over whose howl the boys had heard nothing but had sat there watching her bewildering expressions, her wide eyes and wide-open mouth — ONE OF THESE DAYS I AM GOING TO WALK OUT OF THIS HOUSE AND NEVER COME BACK.

The mother let the vacuum cleaner handle fall to the floor with a bang and she stomped into the kitchen where she had been frying a chicken. The boys really wanted to see what was going to happen in the western show, but now they had missed it because they had been watching their mother make faces and then yell that one day she would walk out of the house and never come back. And then they stopped watching the commercial that was coming on because they heard a banging and a clatter and a loud hissing sound in the kitchen, and saw a large cloud of steam and smoke, because the mother had burned her chicken and tumped her pan into the sink and now she came stomping past them toward the back of the house saying that they could Eat What They Wanted, She Didn’t Care.

The boys went outside in the gloaming while mosquitoes whined around their bare shoulders and talked about how they could keep their mother from walking out of there one day and never coming back. The youngest boy said they could trap her in her room, because that’s what the older brothers did to him whenever they didn’t want him to follow them or get in their way. The oldest brother called him a moron and said they couldn’t trap their mother in her room because she was a grown-up and grown-ups couldn’t be trapped in their rooms by their own boys. The middle brother said the point was that they wanted to keep their mother, not lock her away from them because she was a pest, which was why they would sometimes lock up the youngest brother. I mean, yeah, she wouldn’t be able to get away, he said, but it’s just not the point. The oldest brother said, All right, you’re both morons. Then the middle brother suggested they get one of the other families’ maids to come down and help with some of the household chores in their house and make it easier on their mother. The older brother thought about this for a second, then said, What are we going to pay them with?

If it was Rosie, the middle brother said, we could pay her in dirt.

All the brothers knew that the Harbours’ maid, Rosie, was a dirt eater, and so they considered this solution for long enough to decide that they would sleep on it. They went back into the house, which had chicken-oil smoke hanging up around the ceiling, and made themselves bologna sandwiches on white bread with lots of salad dressing mayonnaise and ate them in front of the television and went to bed at a reasonable hour, as that seemed the honorable thing to do. From the crack between their mother’s bedroom door and the flooring there came a steady drifting wisp of cigarette smoke and the sounds of muttering and weeping as they filed by to their own room in the rear of the house and went to bed.

It was summertime and the next morning after the mother went to work, the boys pulled on pairs of shorts and crossed the street to the vacant lot there and dug some premium blue-veined, hard clay out of it and put about a dozen good waxy chunks into a paper sack. Then they walked up the hill to the Harbours’ house to see the maid, Rosie, about their proposition. One of the Harbour twins, Derrick, was in the side yard in the sandbox digging a hole. He was far too old to be playing in a sandbox but they knew better than to ask him about it. Besides, he wasn’t playing, he was digging a hole, as if to excavate the sandbox. What do you want? he said to the boys. We want to talk to Miss Rosie about some chores, the youngest brother said. Talk to her about whatever you want, the Harbour twin said, but don’t call her Miss Rosie. Why not? Because she’s a nigger, the Harbour twin said. You don’t call a nigger woman Miss, you idiot.

He’s right, the oldest brother said.

If you had a maid, you’d know that, the Harbour twin said.

We had a maid, the middle brother said.

Shut up, the oldest brother said.

That’s right, the Harbour twin said. And then your old man knocked her up, and got sued, and almost got the nigger maid hung by the Ku Klux Klan, and got cut in the gizzard by the nigger maid’s nigger lover, who had to run off or get hung by the Ku Klux Klan, and lost his job, and ran off.

He didn’t run off, the middle brother said.

Shut up, the oldest brother said.

He didn’t run off, the middle brother said, he’s a traveling salesman.

He sure is, the Harbour twin said.

The boys knocked on the carport entrance to the Harbours’ house, the door that went straight into the kitchen, which was where they knew Rosie was most likely to be, unless she was off in the house somewhere vacuuming.

She was not. She was at the kitchen window doing something, and saw them before she even heard them knock, and they saw her face brighten like it always did when she saw them. Rosie had been their maid before their father had fired her in order to hire the younger, prettier maid whom he had then knocked up and all the trouble started, but Rosie didn’t hold it against the boys.

My babies! she said, swinging wide the kitchen door. Come on in this house. What you doing, coming to see me? She said this as if she were getting on to them, like, Did she get on to you about it? But they could tell she was still very happy to see them.

Rosie was stout but not round except in her face. She was tall, and kept her hair back in a tight little bun, and wore a clean blue maid’s uniform with a white collar. She had flat feet you could see because when she worked around the house she liked to go barefoot and the pink flat soles of her long feet slapped against the cool linoleum and hardwood floors. The middle brother remembered once, when he had asked her about it, she’d said, I like cool feets.

We brought you some dirt, the middle brother said, handing her the sack.

Mm-hmm, I see, Rosie said, looking into the sack. It’s some of that good dirt from the bank across the street from your house, by them blackberry bushes.

Yes, ma’am, said the middle brother.

The older brother popped him hard between his shoulder blades, and he shut up.

We were wondering if you wouldn’t come down to our house and help out a little bit, the oldest brother said then.

Rosie, who had been peering again into the sack of dirt, looked up and raised an eyebrow.

I don’t know if I know what you mean, since your daddy fired me two years back and hired that trash to come in and take my place.

They had to be careful now as it was clear she was getting her dander up.

Mama’s been having a hard time with having to work her job at the clinic and clean the house and cook supper and all that, the middle brother said. We were just hoping we could get her a little help at it.

Rosie frowned and looked into the sack full of dirt again. She was maybe thinking that if she had to go to work and then go home and do those things, then why couldn’t that white woman go to work and then go home and do those things? If her children had to help out with the chores around the house while she was at work, then why couldn’t that white woman’s children help out with the chores while she was at work? She might would have said those things right out if she thought anybody would’ve listened, and if she didn’t have a soft spot for these boys because she practically raised them. She was about to say something when the little brother said something.