The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat Read Free Page B

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    As it often happened when a child was born under unusual circumstances, old folks who claimed that they’d been schooled in the wisdom of the ancestors felt called upon to use the occasion to issue dire warnings. My grandma led the chorus in forecasting a dreary future for me. The way she explained it, if a baby was born off of the ground, that child was born without its first natural fear, the fear of falling. That set off a horrible chain reaction resulting in the child’s being cursed with a life of fearlessness. She said a fearless boy had some hope of growing up to be a hero, but a fearless girl would more than likely be a reckless fool. My mother also accepted this as fact, although she leaned more toward the notion that I might become a hero. It should be remembered, of course, that Mama was a grown woman who thought climbing a tree in her tenth month of pregnancy was a good idea. Her judgment had to be looked at with suspicion.
    Nearly everyone, it seemed to me, believed that coming into the world in any manner that could be seen as out of the ordinary was a bad omen. People never said, “Congratulations on managing to deliver a healthy baby while you were stuck in that rowboat in the middle of the lake.” They just shook their heads and whispered to each other that the child would surely drown one day. No one ever said, “Aren’t you a brave little thing, having your baby all alone in a chicken coop.” They just said that the child would turn out to have bird shit for brains and then went on to treat the child that way even if the kid was clearly a tiny genius. Like the doomed child born on the water and the dummy arriving among fowl, I was born in a sycamore tree and would never have the good sense to know when to run scared.
    Not knowing any better, I listened to what I was told about myself and grew up convinced I was a little brown warrior. I stomped myway through life like I was the Queen of the Amazons. I got in fights with grown men who were twice as big as and ten times meaner than me. I did things that got me talked about pretty bad and then went back and did them again. And that morning I first saw my dead mother in my kitchen, I accepted that I had inherited a strange legacy and visited with her over a bowl of grapes instead of screaming and heading for the hills.
    I know the truth about myself, though. I have never been fearless. If I ever believed such a thing, motherhood banished that myth but quick. Still, whenever logic told me it was time to run, a little voice whispered in my ear, “You were born in a sycamore tree.” And, for good or ill, the sound of that voice always made me stand my ground.

Chapter 3
    Clarice and Richmond Baker claimed seats at opposite ends of the window table at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat and waited for their four friends to arrive. The restaurant was an easy walk from Calvary Baptist and they were always first to show up for after-church supper. Odette and James Henry’s little country church, Holy Family Baptist, was farthest from the All-You-Can-Eat, but James was a fast driver and, being a cop, unafraid of getting speeding tickets. So they usually arrived next. Barbara Jean and Lester Maxberry were members of grand First Baptist, the rich people’s church. It looked down on Plainview from its perch on Main Street and was closest to the restaurant, but Lester was twenty-five years older than the rest of the group and he often moved slowly.
    Clarice caught her reflection in the window glass and imagined that she and Richmond must resemble a luminous peacock and his drab mate. She was hidden, neck to kneecaps, beneath a modest, well-tailored beige linen dress. Richmond, leaning back in his chair and waving hello to friends seated at other tables around the room, demanded attention in the pale gray summer suit Clarice had set out for him the night before along with his favorite shirt, a cotton button-down that was the vivid ultramarine of aquarium rocks.
    He had