a scene

I slump further down in my booth and stretch my legs out under the other bench. I look taller that way. It’s just me, concentrating on that pose, when a plate smacks the table in front of me. It’s busting at the seams with meatloaf, potatoes, corn. No ketchup to be seen anywhere on the plate. Just my luck.
“Can I have some ketchup with that?”
The apron beside my booth leans in closer. I notice the white of the big, black lady’s eyes are not so white. She slings a towel over her shoulder. It’s streaked with red, brown, and yellow. I don’t even want to know. The empty hand lands on her round hip.
“You taste that meatloaf?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why you askin' for ketchup?” It sounds more like keechup.
I feel my nose wrinkle. “I put ketchup on everything, ma’am.”
“Then, boy, you ain’t never had Miz Beulah’s cookin', now have you?” The look she gives me makes me feel shorter than a toadstool.
“No, ma’am.”
“You taste that meatloaf, then you tell me you need ketchup.”
I’m afraid to disobey. Miz Beulah’s bigger than a house. I stick my fork into the meat with the most impertinence I can muster, but the impertinence comes off more like clumsiness. I think I hear Miz Beulah saying, “Anyone ever teach you how to eat, boy?”
I stick the forkful in my mouth before any more can fall off of it.
“Okay, you happy?” I say with a wad of meat in my cheek. “Now, get me some...” I stop. “Umm... napkins, please.” That is some meatloaf.
Miz Beulah’s scowl suddenly breaks into the biggest happy face I have ever seen. “That’s right, boy. That’s right.” Her laugh is more like a guffaw. “The only thing you need with my cookin' is some extra napkins.”
I nod, shoving another forkful in my mouth. My stomach has no bottom. Not right now.
“Now what’s that you say about puttin' ketchup on everything? Don’t your momma know how to cook?”
I shrug my shoulders, then shake my head. “Why do you think I’m eating here?’
She nods.
“What your momma do for a living, that she can’t learn how to fix you proper food?”
I stop. Not this. Please not this. “She… works… down on Sixth Avenue,” I say with all the composure I can muster.
Miz Beulah gave, at most, a two-second pause. “Your momma a prostitute?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, then. You go home, you tell your momma that ain’t no job.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then, you tell your momma she needs to come work for me. You got that? We’ll teach her to cook food that don’t need no ketchup.”
I don’t think my momma is going to like that idea. But Miz Beulah’s still talking.
“Now, she might have to work longer and harder than she does now, but you tell her that Sixth Street job, that ain’t no job. That ain’t no job.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I wipe my plate clean with the slice of potato on the end of my fork. “I gotta go.”
“You do what I said, now, you hear? You tell your momma, be here at ten tomorrow morning. You got that?”
I’m not sure Miz Beulah understands my mother. But I nod anyway. “Thanks for the meatloaf. I’ll be back.”
Miz Beulah’s furrowing her eyebrows at me as I swing out the door onto the sidewalk.

:: written on 12.January.2005 ::