Belle Teal (5 page)

L
ordy, I do wish for my journal. So much is happening today that I can't keep apace of it all. I brought the journal to school once last year, but Vernon got ahold of it and read a choice selection aloud on the playground. Since then, the journal has never left our house and I just have to try to hang on to thoughts with my brain until I can grab a quiet moment somewheres at home.

All morning long I keep one eye on Miss Casey and whatever she is doing. I keep the other eye on Darryl, the kids in our class, and, outside the window, a small group of parents who are walking around and around. Now they are holding up those signs and chanting. It is a while before I get a good glimpse of one of the signs, since I don't want Miss Casey to catch me looking out the window.

The sign says, N
IGGERS 
G
O 
H
OME
.

When I read that, I feel something in my stomach, like a punch.

I look over at Darryl. His eyes are fixed on Miss Casey, who is about to pass out our Think and Do books.

HRH Vanessa raises her hand. “Miss Casey,” she says, “it is so awfully hot in here. I am about to expire. Could we please open a window?”

That is when I notice that, even though it is another hot-as-blazes day, every window in our classroom is shut. Miss Casey, she glances toward the parents outside. Then she puts on a bright smile and says, “Well, I can do better than that.” And she hauls a big fan to the front of the room and turns it on. A few papers riffle up and go flying, but that breeze, it feels like a drink of Gran's lemonade. Plus, the hum of the fan drowns out the sound of the chanting. Then Miss Casey, looking even brighter, says, “I have another idea. Let's pull the shades down to keep out the sunlight.”

She does that and I don't know if the room cools down any, but of course now the parents have been completely shut out of our view. I relax myself a little. Darryl looks like he relaxes too. His shoulders loosen up and he finally unclasps his hands.

I turn my full attention to Miss Casey and leave it there until she says, “Girls and boys, it is time for lunch. Please line up to go to the cafeteria.”

 

The Coker Creek cafeteria is big enough to hold three classes at once. When all of us fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders pile on in there, that room is a madhouse. Even with cafeteria monitors poking around. You can either bring your lunch, or you can buy the hot lunch. Also, you can buy milk or ice cream. The hot lunch costs twenty-five cents and ice cream costs a nickel. You can imagine that I don't get to buy those things too often. Milk only costs two cents, though, so most days I go off to school with milk money. Gran, she sets two pennies by my place at the breakfast table, and I drop them in the changepurse I wear on a chain around my neck and keep tucked under my dress. About once a month I find a quarter by my place, and I put it in the purse and wait for the next time pizza burgers are being served.

Today I just have milk money. But Gran, she has packed me up a tasty lunch.

“You buying lunch?” I ask Clarice as we enter the cafeteria.

Clarice holds out her empty hands to remind me that she did not bring a lunch.

“Okay. I'll save us a table,” I tell her.

We sit with Junie Partridge, and Mary Lee Hickerson, who's in sixth grade.

After we've got our straws unwrapped and all, the first thing Mary Lee asks us is, “You got any of the niggers in your class?”

I raise my eyebrows at Clarice.

Junie, she answers, “Yup. One. We also got us a princess.”

Mary Lee doesn't take the bait. She couldn't care less about a princess. “Where is it?” she asks.
It.
She means Darryl. “One of the others is in my sister's class. When Mama finds out, she's going to throw a fit. She said she'd pull us out of school if we had to sit with one of them.”

I am so mad that at first I can't think of a thing to say. But words don't fail me for long. I stand up. “And
my
mama,” I say, “said she would pull me out of school if I had to sit with someone like you. Since I don't want to leave Coker Creek, I better go eat at a different table.”

I move to one nearby. Clarice follows me, of course. Behind us, I can hear Mary Lee saying to Junie, “What does she mean, someone like me?” She doesn't get it at all.

I look around the cafeteria for Darryl. Finally I spot him at a table in the corner. He's sitting with two other colored kids, a boy and a girl, Miss Casey, and Mrs. Geary, who teaches fourth grade. I notice that there are a lot of empty tables around them.

Clarice and me finish our lunches quickly and run out to the playground behind the school.

“Want to play Four Square?” asks Clarice.

I do, but I am nervous because I can hear those parents chanting on the other side of the school. I am afraid they will try to come through to the playground, even though I don't really think anyone will let them in the building. Then I spot Darryl. He and the two other kids are being shown onto the playground by Mrs. Geary. I see Little Boss, Chas, and Vernon nearby.

Uh-oh, I think. But Mrs. Geary stands by the colored kids. Doesn't leave them for a minute.

Little Boss, Chas, and Vernon won't take their eyes off the kids.

 

By the time recess is over and we are back in our classroom, I feel wrung out. I am glad for our fan and our pulled-down shades. Glad that Little Boss, Chas, and Vernon are sitting where they can't touch Darryl. I sigh, even though Gran says sighing is unnecessary and tiresome.

And then Miss Casey does a grand thing. She gives us an assignment. Most of the kids in the room groan. But I gaze at Miss Casey in wonderment. She assigns us to write our autobiographies that night.

“Just two pages to tell me about yourselves and your lives. I want to get to know you better. I am going to write my autobiography too. I will share it with you tomorrow.”

Well, I am dying. Because now I am going to find out all about Miss Casey. Where she grew up and who was in her family and like that. It is a dream come true. Plus, I will have fun writing my own autobiography.

 

When the last bell of the day rings, my heart gives a jump. I don't want to go outside where those parents are circling around. Clarice, she must be feeling nervous too, because she loops her arm through mine and we walk out of our classroom side by side. I sneak one last look over my shoulder at Miss Casey, who is working at her desk, and I call to her, shy-like, “Bye!”

“Good-bye, girls. I'll see you tomorrow,” she replies.

“Come on,” says Clarice. “Let's hurry.”

We will run by those parents fast, like they are the graveyard on Route 518.

I am surprised when we hustle through the front doors and I see the crowd outside. It is not as big as it had seemed before. Really, there are only about twelve or thirteen people. Most of them are women. But a couple of them are men who probably work the night shift. Or maybe they are out of work altogether.

The crowd is sort of muttering and murmuring, but that's all. I feel more confident. I un-loop my arm from Clarice's and we head toward our bus.

That's when I notice the old brown pickup truck and the man sitting in the driver's seat. I grab Clarice again. “Big Boss,” I whisper.

We stop dead in our tracks, so that HRH Vanessa runs into us from behind. She snorts at me and goes on her way.

I stare at the truck and Little Boss's father.

“What's he doing here?” I say.

“Must have come to pick up Little Boss,” Clarice answers.

“Means he's out of work again.” Which is not a good thing for Little Boss. It's just him and his daddy, and Little Boss tries to steer clear of Big Boss. When Big Boss isn't working, that's much harder.

Big Boss waves one arm out the window of the truck. “Hey!” he calls, and I realize Little Boss is a few yards in front of Clarice and me.

Little Boss slows down, stiffens just a bit. He puts his hand in the air, though, and waves to Big Boss.

Big Boss, he doesn't see. His eyes have shifted slightly, caught sight of something, and narrowed. “You! You, boy!” he shouts. “You go back to where you belong.”

I see Darryl then. Darryl and the two other colored kids. And the three grown-ups who have arrived to walk them home.

“Your kind don't belong here!” calls one of the parents from the crowd. She's holding a bent sign in one fist, and shaking the other
.

And then, Big Boss, he opens the door of his truck, jumps down, and spits on Darryl. Darryl looks up, wide-eyed, at his mother. She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket, wipes Darryl's face, puts the hankie back, and takes Darryl by the arm. She does not acknowledge Big Boss, just walks away from him with her arm around Darryl.

I have not been breathing. I realize this as I take in a gulp of air. Then suddenly I am running, pulling Clarice along. We don't stop until we are on our bus. We tear by Bernette, crash down on a seat, and hang out the window to see what's going on.

Big Boss, he's back in his truck now, and Little Boss is on his way to the truck. I know he's scared of his father, but he walks with this swagger. And as he nears the truck, he spits in the direction of Darryl and the others. They are walking fast away from school and the spit doesn't reach them, but Little Boss grins anyway. Then he walks around the front of the truck and I can't see him anymore.

Clarice and me, we sort ourselves out and decide to sit near the back of the bus. We stand up and hurry down the aisle. As we pass HRH, she snorts at me and says, “Piggy, piggy.”

I smile sweetly. “Why, thank you,” I reply.

Finally the bus rolls off and I lean back in my seat. Clarice is looking sleepy. It has been a day.

And I have some thinking to do about Ray Stomper, Jr. Like, do I really want to be his friend?

I
half expected the school bus to be noisy on the way home. Bernette, I think she expected it too. But we are so quiet that she looks concerned. She keeps glancing in the rearview mirror at us kids as she hauls the bus through Coker Creek and around our hills. Clarice is not the only one asleep. And the kids who are awake are just staring out the windows. I don't know about them, but I am thinking about Darryl and Little Boss and Big Boss and the spitting and the parents. Today wasn't near as bad as Little Rock, but it wasn't what I expected either.

The spitting is so horrible that I can't think about it for too long. It seems to me that when a thought or a memory is especially awful, my brain rejects it after a while. I want to note this in my journal. I imagine going to my room later, writing in my journal, and starting my autobiography. Then I try to remember key points in my childhood. And then I wonder what Miss Casey will write about. Before I know it, my mind is a million miles away.

Bernette drops us kids off in the reverse order in which she picked us up, so I do not get to see where HRH Vanessa lives. I am dying to know what her house and her parents and her little brother the prince look like. All very fancy I am sure.

“Bye, Clarice,” I say as Bernette flings the steering wheel around at the top of our hill, bus gears grinding. “Watch
The Edge of Night
for me.”

“Oh, I will.” Clarice will get home in the nick of time.

As I walk by HRH, she snorts at me again. This time I reply, “Bye, little piggy.”

HRH looks startled. All she can think to say is, “You're the little piggy.”

I stare at her for a moment. I am not surprised that HRH has decided to pick on me. But I am not going to let it be easy for her. “You need more practice,” I tell her finally.

“At what?”

“Insults. You got a ways to go.”

I hurry down the steps and hop onto the road. “See you, Bernette,” I call. I run to our front porch, where Gran is sitting in the lawn chair, shelling peas. “Gran! Gran! Miss Casey is the best teacher in the world!” I exclaim.

Gran takes both of my hands in hers. “I'm glad school is off to a good start, Adele,” she says.

I almost say, “
Adele?!
Who are you calling Adele? That's Mama's name.” But something makes me stop. Instead I say, “Yeah, it's off to a good start. I even like tonight's homework. We each have to write our autobiography.”

“Lord in heaven, what's that?” asks Gran.

“Our life story,” I say grandly. “We have to tell it in two pages. It's so's Miss Casey can get to know us better. And Miss Casey,
she's
going to write
her
autobiography too. So's we can get to know her better. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

Gran allows as how she hasn't. Then she says vaguely, “You better go round up Lyman now, honey.”

Lyman is my mama's brother. He's been dead since before the thermometer broke and got stuck on forty.

 

I am in my room with my journal. I am trying to sort out my thoughts about Gran, about Little Boss, about Darryl, and school. If I lie on my back across my bed in the wrong direction, with my legs hanging down over the side, I can look out the window at the sky. I try to imagine Gran's God up there. Once in a picture book from the library I saw a drawing of God. He looked a little like Santa Claus — an old man with a long beard sitting on a throne in the clouds, surrounded by tiny angel-babies. I asked Mama about the picture and she said she didn't think God was old or young or even a man. She said she thought God was more like a presence or a feeling. I said I had heard that God is love, and she wrinkled her nose and said, “Well, maybe,” and went back to her Salem cigarette.