Belle Teal (6 page)

I wonder if God has all the answers. I could use some answers today.

I sigh and get up to look at the clock in the kitchen.
The Edge of Night
is over. I am desperate to know what happened, but we don't have a telephone, so I will have to wait until tomorrow when Clarice will fill me in on the bus. I put away my journal, open my notebook, and begin my autobiography.

 

That night Mama is home again in time for dinner. I wish Mr. Titus would make up his mind about the double shifts, but I am glad to see Mama. I am about to tell her what went on in school when she says, “Guess what. I have good news.”

I freeze. Mama's good news is sometimes only good for Mama. Like the time her good news was that she had taken a job in Fort Hall and would only be home on weekends.

Mama lifts her glass of Coke to her lips and I notice that she has painted her nails orange. “I,” she says, proud-like, “am going to be attending secretarial school.”

“Really?” I cry.

“Adele!” exclaims Gran. She sounds pleased, but then she adds, “How . . . ?”

I know she means, “How can we afford it?”

Mama hesitates just slightly, then fumbles for her Salems before remembering Gran's feelings about smoking in the kitchen. “Well, I took out a tiny loan at the bank.
Very
tiny,” she says. “I'll be able to pay it back in no time once I have a good secretarial job in Mechanicsville or somewheres. And also, I used a teeny bit of the school money.”

There is silence at the table. The school money is so's I can go to college one day. It is money that we have scrimped and saved for. Gran, she has sold our chickens' eggs, and Mama, if she has had an extra dollar here or there . . . all that has gone into the jar of school money, and every time the jar gets full, we take the money to the bank and put it in the school account. But, I think, college is a long ways away. I'm only ten now. Surely, if Mama has a good secretarial job she can pay the money back before I'm ready for college. Plus, school is school. Why should it matter whether it's Mama or me who's going?

“Mama, I'm proud of you,” I tell her.

“Thank you, precious.” Mama looks proud of herself, which is nice.

Gran is still looking worried. “When are you going to
go
to school?” she wants to know. “How are you going to fit it in with the double shifts and all?”

“Well, I talked to Mr. Titus, and now I am pretty sure I will only have to work days. School is at night. Three nights a week. If we need extra money, I can find something for the other nights. Bartending at the Lantern, maybe.”

“They need somebody there again?” asks Gran at the same time I say, “When are you going to do your homework?”

Mama shrugs. I can tell she has not thought her plan all the way through. We will just have to see what happens.

Gran turns to me. “Belle Teal, how was school today?”

I tell myself that Gran is asking this for Mama's benefit, since Gran already knows darn well how school was today. On the other hand, I didn't tell her anything about Darryl and the colored children, and maybe that is what she is asking about.

I put my thoughts in order. I try to tell Gran and Mama everything that happened, from seeing the parents at school when I got off the bus, to Darryl's arrival, to Big Boss and Little Boss and the spitting.

“I was scared of those parents,” I say finally. “They sounded so angry.”

“But not at you,” says Mama.

“I know. They're angry at Darryl and the others.”

“I don't know as they're angry at them,” Mama says slowly, “so much as —”

“They sound like they hate them,” I interrupt her.

“Well . . .”

“Why?”

Mama sighs and fiddles around again for her cigarettes. “I suppose they think the colored children shouldn't mix with their white children.”

“They think they're better than them just because they're white,” I say, and feel heat rising to my face. I realize I'm not scared after all. I'm angry. I'm angry like those parents. Angry
at
the parents. I think of the spitting. I'm angry at Little Boss too.

I am trying to settle down when Gran says, “Well, Belle Teal. The first day of school. How did it go?”

I am dumbfounded. I stand up in a rush, sending my chair crashing into the wall behind me. “I have to write my stupid autobiography, that's how it went,” I say, and stomp off.

 

By bedtime I have finished the autobiography, and I know it isn't stupid. It is two and half pages long, though, and I hope Miss Casey won't mind. Some teachers, when they say something they really mean it. They won't give an inch. I don't know much about Miss Casey yet, but I have a feeling she won't mind an extra half page. Besides, I have worked really hard, and I think what I have written is good. I am reading it over one more time when Mama comes into my room.

“Did you wash your hair yet, precious?” she asks me.

My hair is not wet and I have a feeling I look like a pigpen, so Mama's question annoys me.

“No,”
I say.

“Get up half an hour early tomorrow then, and you can do it in the morning. It's bedtime now.”

“Okay.”

Suddenly I feel like a very little girl again. When Mama sits down on my bed I lean into her and she strokes my hair. “Precious,” she says, “my classes start next week. If I do get a job at the Lantern I won't be home much at all. You and Gran will be on your own.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“So you take care of each other, okay? Can you do that?”

Now Gran, she has always taken care of me. And of the house and the chickens and the garden. I wonder what it is Mama wants me to do for Gran, beyond what I already do, which is generally help out with things.

“You want me to take on more chores?” I ask. I won't mind doing that. Mama's education is important.

“No. Just help Gran with remembering . . . what to do.”

“Mama, what's wrong with Gran these days?” I move away from Mama so's I can look at her face.

“Oh, she's just getting old, precious.”

I think that Mama, who's gazing across my room, is looking a little old herself.

O
n the way to school the next morning, I make up my mind. I am going to say something to Little Boss about the spitting. Big Boss can be as mean as he wants, but if Little Boss is going to follow in his daddy's footsteps, then he is going to have to deal with me.

Clarice and me are sitting near the back of the bus again. Clarice has already filled me in on
The Edge of Night
and now she is looking ahead in our fifth-grade reader, sneaking a peek at the tall tales we will be studying later. In the front of the bus, in the very first seat, is HRH, the Supreme Goddess of Everything, wearing a different skirt-and-sweater set. This one is pink, and Lord, I hate to admit it, but it is the exact color of strawberry ice cream, and if we could ever afford a skirt-and-sweater set for me, that is probably the one I would want, although I am usually not one for pink.

I myself am wearing the same outfit I had on yesterday. Gran, she looked so sorry when she said this, but she told me I would have to make do with the green shift until the next day when she could get around to letting out the hems on the two skirts from fourth grade that I can still wear. She said maybe on the weekend she and Mama and I can run over to Mechanicsville and look through the clothing rack at Woolworth's. I am hoping that the Sears catalog will arrive in the meantime, since there is nothing I like less than trying on clothes. Anyway, what I really want is a new pair of boots, ones that won't pinch my toes.

HRH has turned around in her seat, and her eyes have glommed on to me. What is she staring at? I took a bath and washed my hair this morning, so I am as fine as I am going to get.

I concentrate on what to say to Little Boss. He is a funny one. Threats don't usually work with him. But once last year when I had had enough of him, I told him I wasn't going to be his friend anymore, and right away he stopped teasing Clarice about her new glasses.

The bus pulls up in front of Coker Creek Elementary, and I realize I am holding my breath, waiting to see what those parents are up to.

“Look,” I say to Clarice as Bernette brings the bus to a stop. I am pointing to the walk in front of school, where only four parents are standing, and only one of them has a sign. I guess they have gotten the message that Darryl and the others are here to stay.

“But look at
that,
” replies Clarice.

I feel my stomach turn over when I see Big Boss sitting in his pickup by himself. Just sitting.

“I wonder if Darryl is here yet.” I scan the kids who are walking into school, but I don't see him.

Clarice and me, we step off the bus and run by Big Boss's truck as fast as we can. We have already reached the front doors of the school when we hear a commotion behind us. I dare to turn around and look. There's Big Boss yelling and banging on the sides of the pickup with his bare hands.

Darryl has arrived. He's with his mother again, along with the other two colored kids and their mothers. Because of where Big Boss is parked, the six of them have to walk by his truck. Either that or walk across the school lawn, which is not allowed, and I do not think they are going to break any rules. So they look straight ahead and just keep walking.

Big Boss starts swearing to beat the band. I think maybe he has had something to drink.

“Where's Little Boss?” Clarice whispers to me as we run inside.

I shake my head.

We reach the door with the yellow paper sun taped to it and hurry to our desks. I see Little Boss standing at the windows, looking out at the pickup truck, and his eyes, they are so confused. Maybe even a little sad. I almost forget about the speech I have planned for him. But then I remember the spitting, and decide to go ahead with it. I grab his elbow and pull him to the back of the room.

“Little Boss, if I ever see you spit at Darryl or anyone again —” I start to say.

“Yeah?” Little Boss sticks out his jaw, defiant.

“Then I'm not . . .” I almost can't say it. “I won't be your friend anymore. And I mean it.”

“What are you, some kind of ni —” Little Boss stops himself.

“I mean it,” I say again.

“All right.” He jerks his elbow away and stalks across the room to Chas and Vernon.

 

The parents with the picket signs give up pretty quickly and go home. Not long after, Big Boss leaves too. I am pleased. Now I can give my full attention to what is written on the blackboard. It is Miss Casey's own personal autobiography.

“I will read yours in private,” she tells us. “You may have shared things with me that you didn't intend for the entire class to see. But I want you to get to know me, so I have copied my autobiography on the board for you to read. I'll leave it there until the end of the day. Feel free to read it whenever you have a moment.”

Reading Miss Casey's autobiography, that is the highlight of my day, maybe even of my week. It answers a lot of questions that have been running through my brain. For instance, Miss Casey has an older brother and a younger sister, so she is a middle child. She allows as how that was not easy for her, and I could just swoon over this bare honesty. Miss Casey is twenty-six years old. She lives outside of Mechanicsville. She is not yet married and she does not have any children, although she points out that five days a week she has nineteen children. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States. She went to college in Boston, but she was born and raised in Minnesota. In my mind, that is the only disappointing part of her autobiography. That Minnesota gets to claim her. I wanted Miss Casey to be from around here, in our hills, so's we could claim her. And I do wish Miss Casey had answered the more personal questions I've been wondering about, like who her friends are and what she eats for dinner, but I understand that she couldn't cram in every little detail.

I find Miss Casey's autobiography a satisfaction.

 

Miss Casey, she runs things very smooth in our classroom. She is as wonderful and as sweet as I thought she would be, but she does not let us get away with a thing. Which is why nobody, not even Chas or Vernon or Little Boss, says one mean word to Darryl. 'Course, nobody says one nice word to him either, but this is only his second day here. I myself am storing up lots of things I want to ask him when the time seems right.

At the end of our second day in school, three of the parents show up to hoot and howl at the colored kids and their folks. And Big Boss, he's sitting in his truck again. I make a point of walking outside with Little Boss. I walk him as close to the pickup as I dare, and I give him a couple of pinches in his side to remind him about the talk we had in the morning. Little Boss glares at me and looks put out, but he does not say anything to Darryl and the others.