Free Clover by Dori Sanders Page B

think I needed extra help in being raised, anyway. All my life, as far back as I can remember, I’ve just had one person at a time. First it was my grandpa before he died. And then I had Gaten.
    When I was little I was alone with my grandpa most of the time. My uncle and aunt were in and out of the house every single day, but they didn’t live with us. My daddy came home almost every weekend.
    After I started going to school my daddy wanted to take me away to live with him. He was teaching school somewhere around Charleston, South Carolina. He claimed Grandpa had been too easy with me. Allowed me to pick up wrong habits. Gaten hated for me to spit and use coarse words.
    Grandpa didn’t teach me that kind of stuff. I learned it from my cousin Daniel. The one thing Gaten didn’t really like was, I missed a lot of days at school. It was true that Grandpa did not make me go to school all that much. He said it didn’t matter if I missed a few days here and there. I had the rest of my life to go to school.
    To this day I believe it was my aunt Everleen who put it into Gaten’s head to come and take me way down there to live with him.
    I started crying when Gaten called to say he was coming for me. School or no school, I couldn’t see how my daddy could begin to think of splitting up me and my grandpa. I couldn’t have gone and lived away from Aunt Everleen, anyway. Who in the world would have fixed my hair? I’ve always been tender-headed. I’ve never liked people fooling with my hair.
    I kind of believe my grandpa was crying also. He sucked-up real hard through his nose and wiped it with the back of his hand. I can never tell by his eyes if he is crying. He is getting kind of old and his eyes look watery all the time, anyway.
    At first, Grandpa had said to my daddy, “But son, she’s all I got. I just don’t think I am prepared to lose her right now.” In the end, though, all he said was, “I will have my baby girl ready and waiting when you come for her.”
    Breakfast was on the table when my daddy walked into the house. We had grits, ham and eggs, and red-eye gravy. Grandpa had spread butter and Aunt Everleen’s homemade blackberry jelly on hot biscuits as soon as he took them out of the oven.
    All the time we were eating breakfast, I didn’t raise my head to look at my daddy. Every now and then, I did cut my eyes up to glance at him. Each time he was looking dead at me. My aunt had really fixed me up. My hair was pulled into a pony tail with a big purple bow. It matchedmy new purple flowered dress, with puffed sleeves and a little white pique bib in front.
    I dug little ditches in my plate of hot grits and watched yellow melted butter run through like little streams of water.
    When Grandpa passed my daddy the hot biscuits for the umpteenth time, he tipped the Ball mason jar with the wildflowers I’d picked, and water spilled all over the red-checkered tablecloth.
    Grandpa blotted up the water with a dish towel. “You might know Clover picked these weeds, I mean flowers. The child is a spitting image of her departed mama. Even when there was snow on the ground, her mama found red berries or something to pick and put on this table. This house hasn’t been the same without her.”
    He could never stand to talk very much about my mama. He said he loved her like she was his own daughter. I guess he now felt he was about to lose me, too. He was sad and started to cry. Real tears streamed down into the lines and wrinkles of his brown leathery face.
    I sure never remembered seeing all those wrinkles in his face before. My daddy said, “Old age made them.” I guess day by day old age was using its hand to carefully draw them on. “Oh Lord, oh Lord,” he cried out, “help me, because I am weak. Send me your mercy to lean on.”
    Like lickety-split, I was by my grandpa’s side. I putmy arms around his neck. “Don’t