Good Graces (23 page)

Dave brought along a folding chair for Mother and set it at the edge of Jack Hoyt Woods next to Mrs. Callahan, who saved her a spot.

Dave pins on his judge’s badge and disappears into the crowd after giving me a chuck on the chin and Mother a kiss on the cheek. I would usually stick close to her, make sure that she had one of my lanyards around her neck so she could whistle for me to get her whatever she needs, but I’m not ready to forgive her yet for what she did to Troo. So I leave her there basking in the shade with her best friend, who right away starts salivating over the diamond engagement ring and says, “Jesus H. Christ . . . it’s . . . it’s the size of . . . you must give one helluva—”

Mother scolds, “Betty!” but she laughs louder than I have heard since Daddy was alive.

I’ve worked my way over to the edge of the crowd of jammed-together kids. I’m jumping up and down on my tiptoes, but I can’t see Troo, who I can usually spot easy because of her hair.

I would love to see Henry, too, but my boyfriend can’t come to the festivities because he could get stuck in the eye with a flag on a stick, which really happened once. Henry started bleeding and went white, and then a little blue around the mouth. The nurses at St. Joe’s gave him a special decorating badge before they sent him home with some extra blood. So he can’t come for the decorating and eating part of the party, but he can see the fireworks from the safety of the drugstore stoop. I’ll stop by on our way home and we can talk about our favorites.

Thank goodness, there’s Ethel. She really sticks out because she is so big and brown. She’s not with the other grown-ups, who are lounging around the refreshment booths. She’s up on the hill, looking down at where the zoo used to be. I’m dreading seeing what she’s seeing, but I really need to talk to the smartest woman I know. I also might be able to see Troo from up there. I know her. My sister wouldn’t skip one of the biggest bashes of the year even if she is, as Ethel would say, “fit to be tied” over the annulment news.

Ethel’s not in her white nursing dress. She’s got on a skirt of some kind of print I’ve never seen before. It’s many shades of green and very jungly. On her top half, she’s wearing a pale pink blouse that sets off her skin below her broad-brimmed hat that’s got fruit hanging off it. She looks scrumptious. I bet her boyfriend, who is standing next to her, would love to take a bite outta her. His entire name is Raymond Buckland Johnson, but he lets Troo and me call him Ray Buck the same way Ethel does. He is almost too handsome to look at without blinders. His hair doesn’t have coiled bounce the way Ethel’s does. He wears it parted on the side, slicked with something that looks like it’s never gonna dry out called pomade, which is the colored version of Brylcreem. Ray Buck is the snappiest dresser. Crackling crisp, always. Today he’s got on a snowy white shirt and matching pants and loafers that are a cool blue. Ray Buck goes over the moon for shoes. He doesn’t get them at Shuster’s, though. Negroes have their own shoe shops in the Core.

“Happy Fourth!” I shout to them when I’m a few feet away. Ethel spins around at the sound of my voice and says, “Well, look who we got here, Ray Buck.” She plants her hands on my shoulders and doesn’t seem surprised to run into me even though she is pretending she is. “Don’t you look like a breath a mountain air this mornin’, Miss Sally?”

She expects me to answer, “How kind of you to say so,” which I do, even though I probably look more like a breath of midnight in the swamp in my seen-better-days cutoff shorts and wrinkly yellow T-shirt. In all the excitement, Mother didn’t remember to braid my hair so it’s loose and snarled up. Ethel is just being polite, as always. When she opens up her school with her secret inheritance that she’s gonna get from Mrs. Galecki’s Last Will and Testament, by the time she’s through with them, the children who are lucky enough to attend will be able to beat out Miss Emily Post when it comes to manners.

“How do, Miss Sally,” Ray Buck says with a little bow and I go swoozy. If Ethel didn’t adore him and I hadn’t already promised to marry Henry Fitzpatrick, I would ask this bus driver to wait for me even though that is dreaming a dream that can never come true. Negroes cannot marry white people, but if they could, I would be the first in line. Ray Buck is from the South the same way Ethel is, but not from Mississippi. She calls him her “Georgia Peach,” and I would have to agree with her. He just oozes with juice. If Troo can have a crush on Rhett Butler and Father Mickey, I can have one on Ray Buck. Not only is he good-looking, he tickles my funny bone. When he stands sideways, because he is a little hunched over on top, he looks like a question mark, which makes him look curious all the time and that cracks me up.

I got a new vocabulary word I have been waiting to use on them. “You look
ravishing
this morning, Ethel. Simply
ravishing
. You, too, Ray Buck.”

Ethel’s lemony grin doesn’t cheer me up like it normally does because even though I told them not to, my eyes have moved down to where the zoo used to be. The bulldozers and the men that run them have this special day off, too. The only things I still recognize in the mess of broken-up white concrete and black iron bars is the moat around Monkey Island and our favorite climbing tree that hasn’t gotten knocked down yet. Daddy’s and my bench should be sitting below the tree, but it’s not. I should’ve rescued it. Now it’s gone forever, too.

I ask Ethel, “Remember how last Fourth of July everybody went over to visit Sampson?” He was the best part of the zoo, not only for me and Daddy. Everybody thought he was the cat’s meow.

Ethel takes a frilly hankie from between her bosoms, dabs at her broad face and says to Ray Buck, “I swear this humidity’s thick enough to slice and serve. Would ya mind fetchin’ us something cool to drink, sugar?” She waits until her beau heads down the hill toward the booths and then she says to me, “I hiked up here thinkin’ you might show up thinkin’ about that gorilla.”

“Oh, Ethel.”
Could there be a better best friend than you?
For a woman with bunions, it is no easy feat getting up this steep hill.

“Just ’cause they moved him, it’s not the end of the line,” Ethel says. “You can always go visit him at the new place.”

“That’s what everybody keeps tellin’ me, but . . . I don’t think it’ll be the same. Do you?”

“Hardly nuthin’ is, honey.”

“He’s gonna forget about me,” I say.

“Oh, ya couldn’t be more wrong ’bout that.” She’s fanning herself with one of the newspapers that she almost always has in her hand. She thinks it’s important to know the goings-on not just in the neighborhood, but in the whole world. “I read in the
Reader’s Digest
just last month how gorillas got longer memories than elephants.”

I hope she is not making that up. She mostly tells me the truth, but she’ll stretch it to keep my feelings from getting hurt.

“Ya know what I been thinkin’ we could do?” Ethel says. “We could ask Ray Buck what buses to take and we could go see Sampson on a pretty Sunday. Ya know, to put your mind at ease.”

“That would be very nice,” I say, thinking I’m not sure that anything, not even seeing Sampson, could put my running-at-full-throttle mind at ease and I’m pretty sure she knows that. Her brain hasn’t exactly been just cruising along lately either.

Yesterday I was kneelin’ in our room, saying my rosary, begging the Virgin for help in taming Troo. Even though I don’t hardly believe in God anymore, I will always have a special place in my heart for His mother and a rosary is almost nothing but Hail Marys. Through my window, I heard Ethel telling Mother over the fence that Mrs. Galecki won’t stop accusing her of stealing and no matter how much Pepto she gives her, her stomach won’t stop bothering her. “I tell ya, Miss Helen, don’t know whether to wind a watch or bark at the moon,” is what my good friend said.

Dave, who is the chief cook and bottle washer when it comes to the Fourth of July party, cuts the music off from somewhere down below, and says out of the loudspeaker, “Welcome, one and all! Father Mickey will open up today’s festivities with a prayer.”

There is a screeching sound like there always is, and then, “Bless us, o Lord, on this day that brings us all together to celebrate the birth of this fine nation.” Father pauses the way Willie O’Hara does right before he gives you the punch line of one of his jokes. “If you could turn the sun down a notch, that would be greatly appreciated.”

Everybody chuckles. Everybody except me. I wish I knew what it was about Father that makes my tummy feel like somebody threw a baseball at it. He’s charming to everybody, but especially it seems to our family. He’s always friendly to me, he spent hours instructing my sister and he burned the midnight oil to make Mother and Dave’s dreams come true.

“The annulment letter came,” I tell Ethel.

“Know all ’bout that. Your mama come over first thing this mornin’ to tell me.” They’re friends, too. Not as good as me and Ethel are, but they get along just fine. “There’s nothin’ like a weddin’ party to liven things up, don’tcha think?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t.” The one where Hall and Mother got married at the courthouse was on Beggar’s Night so there were ghosts hangin’ everywhere. Nell and Eddie’s wedding almost gave me whiplash it went by so fast. But worst of all was what Bobby had in mind for our ceremony. “Ya know.” Ethel knows all about how Bobby told me on his way over to the lagoon that night that he was going to make me his bride. She’s the only one who will let me talk about what happened. Everybody else tells me to put it out of my mind, go back to sleep, let bygones be bygones, get control of my imagination, which I would really love to do, but no matter how hard I try to forget, it seems like that night at the lagoon is engraved in my memory.

Ethel runs her chocolate pudding hand down my arm and says, “Well, this here weddin’ is gonna be different. This’ll be a fine celebration. Gonna hafta get me a new pair of dancin’ shoes.”

I didn’t hear Mother say so, but I bet the party afterwards will be at Volpano’s Supper Club since it is the ultimate around here. The popular Mill Combo will play, so I could dance with Ray Buck, but what about Troo? Now that she knows what her future holds, what does she have to look forward to? Her life is all downhill from here on out. It’s not only the annulment news. She really was counting on winning that blue decorating ribbon and she didn’t even bring her bike over this morning. I checked after she ran off.

Dave gets back on and announces, “Children under twelve, you’re up next. Meet under the oak tree with the red ribbon near the picnic tables.”

“Here ya go, ladies,” Ray Buck says, coming back up the hill with our drinks. Gosh, he smells like he just stepped out of a tray of ice cubes. “How about after y’all drink that down we move over to the lagoon? I’ll row the both of ya ’round for a bit.”

Ethel gives me a wondering look. She knows I don’t go to the lagoon anymore or too close to the rowboats, but she doesn’t want to be rude and not ask me to join them. It would also be safer to take me since the boat is really gonna sag on her side and I could add a little more balance. I’m gonna save her the trouble of inviting me, even though I really would like to watch Ray Buck row us. He may be thin, but his chest and arms are muscular, which for some reason is something I really like to look at.

“You two have a good time,” I tell them. “Thank you for askin’ me, but I gotta go be with Troo.”

“And where
is
your sister?” Ethel says, not letting me off that easy. She hasn’t said anything, but she knows that Troo did not take the annulment news well. She doesn’t miss much. “I know what a momentous day this is for your sister. I’d like to wish her good luck.”

“Twelve and unders. Last call,” Dave says over the loud speaker.

“Troo’s . . . ah . . .” My eyes look the hardest they can down at the crowd. At first I don’t, but then, over near the judging area, just for a second, I get a glimpse of Troo’s hair. “Right there,” I say, moving my arm to where Dave told the twelve-and-under kids to gather to compete for the blue decorating ribbon. There’s gotta be at least forty or more kids. Why’s my sister hanging out where everybody’s waiting to be judged? That is so heartbreaking.

Ethel puts her hand to her forehead like an explorer. When she sees Troo, she says, “Lord. What in tarnation does that child got on? Is she blinkin’?”

What in tarnation
does
she got on? I’m not as tall as Ethel so I can’t really make out all of it, but Troo definitely
is
blinking. I gotta get down there.

“Ask for boat number six. It’s the one that’s rotted out the least. I’ll meet ya at the fireworks, same place as always,” I shout back to Ethel and Ray Buck.

Barreling down the hill toward my sister, I’m remembering how she was the Statue of Liberty last year and how we ran into Greasy Al and he took out his switchblade and cut off all the flowers she had taped onto her bike and squished her crown between his fingers. I haven’t forgotten him for one minute. Just because he hasn’t shown up yet doesn’t mean he’s not going to.

“Excuse me, pardon me . . .” I’ve got my arms out in front of me, swimming through the kids. I’m trying to get to Troo, who I’ve lost sight of now that I’m on flat ground. She’s been swallowed up again. Ahead of me, I can see Mary Lane floating through the crowd so easily because she can get through tight spaces that normal-sized children can’t. “Mary!” I shout. About twenty kids turn to look at me because I forgot to add on her last name. “Mary
Lane
!”

She looks to the left and to the right.

“Behind you!”

When she gets a bead on me, she stops and waits.

I shove closer until I get right up next to her. She’s got the Stars and Stripes tied around her neck with a jump rope.

Mary Lane says, “I been lookin’ all over the place for you. Ya like my costume?” She tries to spin around to show it off, but there’s not enough room with the crush of kids, even for her. “I’m a flagpole.”