Fiction

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“The Mustard Jar”
Darius looked up at the darkened room and imagined the ceiling collapsing in on him – he willed it. His face now in his hands as he sat on his bed, he felt betrayed when tears escaped his eyes, despite his lids being tightly closed. His lanky frame shook as his sobs grew harder as his hot tears slid down the palms of his hands and it wasn’t until he heard his mother’s heavy footsteps approaching the door that he found the strength to stop crying.
Strength? Or fear? For if his mother had only known the truth of what he had done her pride in her only child would evaporate like early morning dew. She rapped on the door and opened it without waiting. Shirley Foster was a tall and still slim black woman who still remembered her mother’s stories of drinking at separate water fountains and going to separate schools. Somewhere in the South, Shirley wasn’t quite sure where, her father was dragged out of a bar and hung.
The Fosters had plenty of stories like that. Shirley wasn’t sure what was true and what was false. She believed all the stories her mother told her when she was a little girl, but there were so many horrible stories told that it seemed unbelievable for so much tragedy to befall a family not named “Kennedy.”
Storytelling was as natural as breathing for the Fosters, it seemed to Shirley. Her mother told them; her four sisters and two brothers were all English majors and Darius’ estranged father was even a novelist. So when her only child, 18-year old Darius Foster, won a national fiction writing competition for a children’s short story, there was a pure pride and a wonderful sense of confirmation. Now he was really a Foster.
“My son the winner!” she beamed. She inspected his face, which was easy to do since (despite her height) he towered over her. “Are you crying?” Before Darius could reply, she said, “Of course! You’re so happy!”
Darius smiled meekly. He watched his mother’s eyes as they locked on to his certificate. “Grand Prize awarded to Darius Foster for his children’s short story entitled, ‘The Mustard Jar.’ ”
“That was such a great story,” she said. “I had no idea you were so creative.” Then her eyes perked up. “I just remembered something: your Uncle Corey is on his way.”
“Today?”
“Um hmm,” Shirley replied, looking around the room. “He should be here any moment. As soon as he heard about your prize, he said he just had to come over.”
“Oh… okay.”
Her eyes inspected the room again. She was about to tell him to clean up, but she decided to leave him alone.
“What are you going to do with all that money?” she asked as her son shrugged. “Just don’t be like your friends and get a car or something unnecessary.”
“Well, you only get two Gs.”
“Yeah, but this opens all kinds of proverbial doors,” she said. “Trust me.”
“How old were you when you wrote your first novel?” he asked, sitting on his bed.
“I was 25 when I wrote my first one, 26 when I sold it. Your Uncle Corey was 30, but after he got religious he stopped writing horror. That’s why he’s a teacher now.” She sat beside him and spoke very softly. “He’s so proud of you. All those weekends you spent over there, he felt like your father. He was more of your Dad than your sorry real life Dad was. Do you remember your father?”
“Yeah,” Darius said, “a little.” He closed his eyes and tried to stop the tears, but they fell anyway. His mother hugged him tightly – happy that he could express his utter joy in front of her.
But he wasn’t. Darius was simply remembering all the books his Uncle Corey had, all the books he read and all the stories that he remembered very well.
Hi uncle Corey Foster collected all kinds of books – horror, children’s, romance and science fiction. He saved old textbooks as far back as the 80s, when he was just a child. He still had the Scholastic Readers, a magazine for young children that encouraged them to read.
When he became one of those born-again Christians, he put most of those horror books away or sold them. Nestled in some of those books were Scholastic Readers. Corey simply ran out of space and put the magazines in between pages of novels he knew he’d likely never read again. Darius received the bulk of his uncle’s books, including a Scholastic Reader story entitled, “The Mustard Jar”.
The story, written by, oh well he forgot, started out in a store. A man entered and the storekeeper cried out, “No!” before he was zapped by the man’s ray gun. Some of the ray hit a mustard jar, which came to life and fought crime. Darius remembered that story, liked that story. He couldn’t help but put certain elements of the story in his short story. He couldn’t help that he was still staring at a blank page after two weeks. He had to put something on the page.
His mother left and Darius put his face in his hands again. He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, his Uncle Corey was standing over him and shaking him to wake him up.
*****
When Corey heard the news from his sister Shirley, he was sitting on a couch with Theresa, his wife. She was lying on his chest while reading a book and he was switching between ESPN and the Word network, hand firmly on the remote control as if it were his scepter and he was the king. Their two children were at the church and Corey was thoroughly enjoying his quiet time. He was done grading papers and he was tired. But when Shirley told him the news, he perked up.
“What did he win for?”
“A story for children,” Shirley exclaimed. “He called it “The Mustard Jar.’ ”
“Wow,” Corey replied. “What’s that about?”
“Something,” she said, “all I know is I didn’t write it so it’s legit! When are you going to write again?”
Corey smiled. Finding time to write a novel with two kids and a full time job is like trying to dunk a basketball at 40. It’s not impossible, but it’s pretty darn hard. He told Shirley that he was trying and he heard his wife laugh. Corey was still trying to impress his older sister.
After he hung up, Theresa looked back at her novel and asked, “So what’s the story called?”
“The Jar of Mustard,” he said. “No, it’s called ‘The Mustard Jar.’ ”
“What’s that about?”
“Shirley doesn’t know,” Corey replied. “All she knows is that she didn’t write it so he didn’t plagiarize.”
Theresa laughed. Then she placed her finger in her book to keep its place as her eyes slanted closer. “The Mustard Jar?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Corey replied. “There are a few books out with that title and they’re not all recipe books.”
Theresa said, “I remember reading a book with that name as a child.”
“I thought you only read music notes as a child!”
“I read books,” she replied, playfully hitting him. “I would have rather played the piano all day, but I had to write book reports. That name sounds familiar though.”
“Really?”
“I mean, it’s unusual.”
“Yeah,” Corey said, his attention drifting to the TV again. “Like I said, there are a few books with that name.”
“Well I don’t remember if it were a book or one of those Scholastic Readers that you insist on keeping.”
“They’re classics,” he quipped.
“So are you going to see him?”
“Yeah,” Corey said, “tomorrow. It’s such a blessing to be so gifted that young.”
“What were you doing at 18?”
“It was 1998 and I was trying to get out of high school,” he quipped. “Shirley was already in college by then. I always to write like her.”
“I’d say you did all right for yourself Mr. Foster.”
He rubbed her chin and she fell back on his chest and they enjoyed the serenity of the moment – he watching TV and she in her book, listening to her loving husband’s heart beat.
*****
“Darius,” Corey said, “wake up man!”
Darius slowly opened his eyes and the first thing Corey noticed was how red they were. Corey didn’t smell any alcohol.
“Hi,” his nephew said meekly, slowly sitting up.
Corey sat beside his nephew and folded his hands. Darius looked at the floor. Once upon a time Darius won a track meet. He couldn’t stop talking about it; he spoke about it all day and all night for weeks. Six years later, Darius wins a national writing competition and acts like he received a death sentence.
“Aren’t you happy?” Corey asked. Darius shrugged. This really wasn’t making any sense. Why was he so downcast?
“It’s all right,” Darius said.
“All right?” Corey asked. “You know you’re the youngest…”
“Foster to win a competition,” he completed the sentence for his uncle. Corey sat down beside his nephew and gazed at him. Darius put his head down and sighed. His eyes betrayed him again and he began to sob. Corey rubbed his back. He was about to ask him it those were tears of joy, but he changed his mind. Still rubbing his back he asked him a simple question.
“Tell me about the Mustard Jar.”
The floodgates opened. “I didn’t mean… I just thought it would have been cool to see how much I remembered. Then I just… I just…”
Corey was about to give him an out – to say that he understood the pressure of wanting to be as good a writer as everyone else in his family. He wanted to let him know that he understood, but he didn’t. He didn’t understand any of it.
“The page was blank for so long,” Darius said. “And then the story… I just remembered so much of it. I didn’t remember who wrote it, but I remember it like yesterday.”
“So you… just…”
Darius nodded. Corey wiped his face with his hands and exhaled. He put his head down. Darius asked if his mother knew. Corey shook his head.
“I can’t lie anymore,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry Uncle Corey.”
“Let me read it,” his uncle asked.
Darius stood up and turned his computer on. After what felt like decades, the story was finally on the screen. Darius shook his head repeatedly. Corey stood up. Walking over to the computer table he asked, “What is it?”
“This is not the story I stole,” he said. “This is something else.”
“What?”
Darius whispered, “This is about a man who steals a recipe and hides it in an empty jar of mustard. It’s nothing like the old Scholastic Reader magazine.”
Corey looked up. He told his nephew that he’d be right back and not go anywhere. Corey marched to his sister’s bedroom and opened the door after knocking only once. Shirley was sitting on a chair with her legs crossed and her arms folded as if expecting him. Corey sat on her bed and looked at his sister.
“Why did you do it?” he asked her softly.
Shirley looked at her brother and asked, “When did you figure out that I did?”
“Just now, but it makes sense. You know everything about your son and you didn’t know what he was writing? And then when I asked you, you said that all you knew was that he didn’t plagiarize you. Did you want me to find out?”
Shirley sighed. “All I wanted,” she said, “was for him to admit that he lied. I kept asking him, but he kept crying. I wouldn’t care if he were illiterate, as long as he was honest.”
“Shirley, did you ever tell him that?”
Shirley shook her head. Corey looked down. As she stood up, she smiled.
“I’m going to have a long talk with my son. I’m going to tell him how much I love him.”
“Do that,” Corey said. “Tell him that if he were illiterate, you’d love him the same.”
Shirley remembered reading Darius’ entry a day before he mailed it off. The story sounded too familiar and was neither her son’s writing style nor vocabulary. After a while, it hit her and she remembered where she read it. So she sat at her son’s computer and rewrote it, mailed it out and when he came home from basketball practice, she told him that she submitted it for him. He gasped and she thought that right there Darius would fess up, but he didn’t.
Never did she think that she would win the competition, just keep her precious son out of trouble. Her son’s character was seriously lacking. What went wrong?
“How did you know he lied?” Corey asked. “How did you figure it out? It was such an obscure story.”
“Not for me,” Shirley said. “His father wrote the original.”

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