Me & Emma

“Whatchoo up to on this fine North Carolina day?” He’s walking toward us, but I can tell by his speed that he isn’t interested in our answer.

“Nothing,” Emma and I say at the same time, both of us backing up to put more space between us and him. Just in case.

“Nothing,” Richard mimics us with his chin sticking out extra far. But he keeps on walking past us into the house. “Libby? Where you at?” I hear him call to Momma once the porch door slams behind him. “It’s payday and I’m in need of in-ee-bree-ation!” A second later I hear vacuumed air pop from a bottle and then the sound of a tin cap pinging onto the counter in the kitchen. Momma’s voice is murmuring something I can’t make out.

“Hey, Pea Pop, how’d you like a nice cold orangeade?” Daddy rustled my hair like I was a pet dog. “Lib? It’s payday! Getchur bag, we’re going shopping.”

Payday was always the best day of the month when Daddy was alive. I’d hear orangeade and it was all I could do to fit the tiny metal fork into the hole in the strap on my sandals, I’d be so excited.

“Can I get a large, Daddy?” I called out from the back seat, loud enough to be heard over the wind blowing in through all the open windows in our car.

“You can get a jumbo, pea.” He smiled, and caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

Our first stop was the grocery store. Momma pulled a cart from the stack all folded into one another by the glass entrance. The cold air gave me gooseflesh at first but by aisle two I was used to it.

“Stop swinging your feet, Caroline,” Momma tsked at me, “you’re kicking me in the stomach.” So I tried to keep my legs still while Momma threw food into the cart over my head.

“Momma? Can I pull from the shelves?”

“I guess,” she answered, checking her list, which was long since we hadn’t been to the store in a while. Maybe even since Daddy’s last payday.

“Whole oats. No, not that one. The red label. That’s it,” she said, moving the cart before I could even drop the tin into the cart. “Flour. The big sack. Yes, that’s the one.”

Daddy popped up from behind Momma, startling the both of us. “I’m going over to the meat counter. What you want me to order up for supper?” he asked her. “How ‘bout some liver?” He winked at me since he knew I hated liver.

“No!” I whined to Momma.

She was still studying her list. “Be sure to get the ground chuck. Four pounds.”

“Now, what do we need four pounds’ worth of meat for?” he asked her over his shoulder.

“I’m freezing it for later,” she said, pulling a box of cereal from the shelf that was high up over my head.

Seven aisles later, the cart was filled to the brim and Momma wheeled us over to the checkout stand. Daddy was already there, talking with Mr. Gifford, the store manager he played cards with from time to time.

“Time to settle up,” Daddy said to him, slapping him on the back.

“‘Preciate it,” Mr. Gifford said. “You’d be surprised how many people—now, I’m not naming names—I got to turn away, they so overdue on the bill. Your credit’s always good here, Henry. ‘Sides, might as well take your money here than at the card table!” Mr. Gifford laughed, shaking Daddy’s hand. “You got yourself a fine family here, Culver.” And he tipped an invisible hat on his head to Momma and me and went over to talk to Mrs. Fox, an old lady who dressed in her Sunday best every time she left the house.

“C’mon, Pea Pop.” Daddy lifted me out of my seat in the cart while Momma unloaded the groceries onto the moving belt. “Let’s you and me pack up these sacks.”

After we got everything on our side of the belt, and then after the cash register, Daddy squeezed behind me to count out bills for the cashier, Delmer Posey.

“What’d we owe you from last time?” he asked Delmer.

Delmer Posey went to my school when he was little, but he stopped going right after the seventh grade. No one knew why until he showed up at the grocery store asking for work. Momma said the Poseys were strapped worse than us, so every time I’d see Delmer I pictured him with a saddle tied to his back.

Delmer ran his finger down a long list of names on a page in a thumbed-up ledger that was kept behind the register. “Thirty-four fifty-seven, Mr. Culver,” he said.

Daddy let out a slow whistle and added that to the amount we just spent. “Here’s an extra five for the books,” he said, smiling his smile at Delmer, who looked confused. “Just put it down as credit so Mrs. Culver can come grab whatever it is I’m sure we forgot today.”

Whenever you’d say anything to Delmer Posey, it’d take a minute or two before he could understand it, like he spoke foreign and was waiting for someone to tell him what it meant in English. But soon he got what Daddy said and we wheeled the cart to a spot alongside other carts by the glass door with the bright red Exit sign above it.

“You keep an eye on this for us,” Daddy winked back at him. “We’ve got some business over at White’s.”

Momma and Daddy held hands down the sidewalk to White’s Drugstore. They never used to mind when I ran ahead to put in my order at the counter.

“Hey, Miss Caroline,” Miss Mary called out after the bell over the door jingled to let her know someone’s inside.

“Hey, Miss Mary,” I said. “May I have a large orangeade, please?”

Miss Mary put her paperback book down so the pages were splayed out on either side of the middle. “I don’t see why not.” She waddled over to the countertop. Miss Mary was always fat. Fatter than fat. Daddy used to say there’s more of her to love.

The jingle up front told me Momma and Daddy had come into the store.

“Miss Mary, how are you?” Daddy said from the stool alongside me. Momma was picking out a few things from the shampoo shelf. “Isn’t that a pretty dress.”

But it didn’t sound like a question.

“Thank you, sir,” Miss Mary said shy-like, smiling down at herself so hard her cheeks almost folded over the corners of her mouth. “Mrs. Culver here, too?”

“Oh, don’t mind her,” Daddy said, “let’s you and me run away together. Let’s really do it.”

“I’m over here, Mary,” Momma called from behind the only aisle in the place. “Just picking up a few things we been needing for a while. I’ll be right over.” Momma was used to Daddy asking Miss Mary to run away with him. He did it every time he went into White’s. I reckon she smiled so hard and blushed ‘cause no one’d ever asked her that before. She’s about a million years old and lives alone with two tomcats and a rooster named Joe.

“What about me, Daddy?” I asked him. “You gonna run away without me?”

“I’m gonna put you in my pocket and take you with me,” he said. Then he leaned over from his stool and kissed me on the head like he always did.

“Orangeade for you, too?” Miss Mary asked Daddy, still smiling.

“You bet.”

Miss Mary cut each orange down the middle until there were ten halves. I counted each one. Then—and this was the best part—she put each one in the big metal press and leaned all her weight onto each orange rind until nothing more dripped into the glass jar underneath it. Then she poured sugar into the jar, added some soda water, screwed a lid on and shook it good and hard until it was fizzy and frothy. The glasses were kept in the icebox so there’d be a nice cool film of cold all over them. I wrote my name in the frost on the side of my glass. White’s had bendy straws so I never lifted the glass off the counter, and that was how Daddy and I’d drink them: without hands.

Ping. Another tin beer bottle cap hits the kitchen counter.

“What do you want to do now?” Emma asks me. She’s been leaning against the porch railing, counting the pings of the bottle caps just like I have—both of us wondering how many it’ll take to turn Richard into Enemy Number One.

“I don’t know.”

“How about we walk down to the fence out back and do the balance thing?”

The balance thing is something Emma and I like to do when we’re superbored. Actually it’s kind of fun. The top logs on the fence that used to separate our land from the neighbors, back when we all cared about that sort of thing, are all missing. So Emma and I walk on the lower logs between the fence posts and see who can stay up the longest without falling off. The loser has to do whatever the winner makes her do.

“I’ll start, you count.” Emma is already on top of the first log. It’s the easiest since it’s so old it’s split long ways in the middle so it’s wider than all the rest. The tricky one is the newer one that’s next.

“Go,” I say, and I start counting out loud. Emma can do this without even extending her arms and that makes me mad for some reason so I count slow.