Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

falling against a saw in Daddy’s toolshed. I don’t remember the accident, only Daddy carrying me with a towel pressed to my face and the bright light in my eyes when the doctor stitched my cut. Daddy had been angry at Mama for letting me play in his shed. After we came home, he’d put a big padlock on the door and then sat out on the front porch, drinking so many beers he stumbled when he stood to come inside.
    A S MUCH AS I wanted to see Mama, the hospital scared me. Daddy must have sensed how nervous I felt. He held myhand as we walked toward the large glass doors, which opened like magic when we stepped on the black mat in front of them.
    While Daddy held one hand, I carried my pocketbook in the other, my sleeping chick tucked inside. I whispered to him to stay quiet so Mama would be surprised. I hoped that bringing him wouldn’t get me in trouble. This morning, Daddy had said it was against hospital rules for animals to visit, but Tess found my straw purse in the closet and told him, “Here, the chick will be able to breathe in this, and no one will ask to see inside a girl’s purse.” Daddy threw up his hands, which meant Tess and I had won.
    Just inside the door, Daddy stopped in the lobby and knelt in front of me. “Ellie, I don’t want you to talk about the baby around your mother.”
    â€œWhy?” I didn’t understand Daddy’s serious face or why he didn’t want me to talk about Mama’s new baby. “If she thinks about the baby, maybe that will make her get well faster.”
    â€œBut the doctor thinks Mama’s baby might not live, and that will make her very, very sad. Just because the baby is all right now doesn’t mean that it’s out of the woods yet. Remember when Nana and Grandpa died, how Mama’s sad mood came on?”
    I nodded. I had been only five when it happened, but I remembered, and I knew I’d never forget.
    W E’D BEEN EATING supper when the telephone rang. Mama answered the phone and then only listened. When she hung up the phone, she screamed and dug her fingernails into her face, leaving red trails. Daddy had to hold her down on the floor to make her stop, and she kicked and screamed, biting his hand so hard blood came.
    I remember I hid in the corner. Mama was scarier than any bad dream I’d ever had.
    Daddy had called for a doctor to come and give Mama a shot to make her sleep. This was before he started giving her shots himself. Maybe it’s where he got the idea.
    The next day, Mama walked around the house mumbling to herself, a wad of tissue clutched in her hands.
    Daddy and I drove her to the train station so she could go to the funeral in Georgia. I asked Daddy why he and I didn’t go, too, and he said something about my uncles not being on speaking terms with him. We never visited them and they never came to Virginia, and I don’t remember ever seeing a Christmas card from them. Daddy said some people carry grudges to their graves.
    A week later Mama came home wearing a black dress that she wouldn’t take off. She didn’t want to talk or eat or play. That’s when I started going to the store with my father, or staying at Mary Roberts’s house.
    One day we came home and found Mama sprawled on the kitchen floor, a bag of flour in her lap and a tablespoon in her hand. Mama was spooning flour into her mouth, and with each scoop, dough clumps stuck to her lips where the flour mixed with her spit.
    The doctor came back. This time he brought a nurse and a colored man who made Mama get into the back of their car. They took her away, and I didn’t see Mama for months.
    She wrote me, printing her letters so I could read them. She told me how sorry she was, and said that losing a mother and a father was very hard. She said I would someday know for myself, and then I would forgive her.
    Just before she came home, Mama wrote and told me how wonderful things were going to be. How she