Kizzy Ann Stamps (8 page)

I know I’ve been back at school awhile since the accident. I know we’ve been doing spelling bees and you’ve noticed I’m off my mark, losing right off the bat, and that I haven’t turned in homework, haven’t written in the journal, don’t speak up in class. I’m all right, Miss Anderson. I’m sorry I can’t talk to you when you pull me aside like you did today. I know you’re kindhearted and all, and I know there are others like you — people like Doc Fleck — but all the signals that I’m used to in life don’t seem to help anymore. I’ve tried to think that everybody is good — you be nice and the world will be nice to you. But that just isn’t the way it is, and I’m really having a hard time figuring it all out. Who am I supposed to believe? Who am I supposed to trust? Shag remembers kicks and smells. She seems to sense who she can count on by the way they
are.
And I don’t know how to talk about this to you or Mama or anyone in person — it is all so much easier on paper. You keep asking me to talk to you about how I feel about the snake attack, Shag’s recovery (she’s fine, by the way, honestly), about getting a group of us kids together to talk about being here in the white school, about my scar, about how I should really think about how it all is affecting me, when all I want to do is
not
think about it. All I want to do is move on, especially from the scar, away from it and from the people who stare and make me feel like I am some sort of freak because I have a crease on my face that makes me different from them. Differences aren’t welcome. Being the same is what matters. People like
same.
And I’m not the same. I’m me.

I liked it better when my life was easy. I was little, and all I had to worry about was getting dirty when I was supposed to stay clean and keeping Granny Bits happy with me. I know you worry about whether I’m bothered that the white kids aren’t talking to me or welcoming me back and whether I feel okay about my scar. I didn’t really expect the white kids would welcome us — this is the first year our school is integrated. I don’t feel like talking to them either, to be honest. Shag’s injury made me look at things different like. I think the lump in my throat, the one that kept me from saying what I felt or what I thought, is gone now, dissolved by my fear for Shag. Sometimes, Miss Anderson, it feels like a part of me has given up on being treated equal — on seeing the world get better for me than it was for my parents or grandparents. And yet I’ve had glimpses, from you and from Doc Fleck, of what it
is
like to be treated equal, and I’ve liked it, and that is part of what makes things not easy anymore. Seeing what life
could
be like is hard. What if I’ll always be coming in the back door, always be separate, always take a backseat? I don’t think that will be okay with me. And I can see that it isn’t going to be okay with lots of people — like James. But there are a lot of other people in the world who don’t want things to change, and that will be hard for them too. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, how I’m supposed to act, when I’m supposed to speak, or when I’m supposed to be quiet — and I don’t know if I even care about following the rules of the “supposed to do’s.” I think the world is going to be very unhappy for a while. And this is hard. Being five or something like that looks good again. But you can’t go back to being five, can you?

Sometimes, when you make us work in groups — and I’m not saying which days because they all run together from when I wasn’t writing to you before Shag was hurt, and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about all of this and I can’t make sense of it all — I’ve been watching how all of us treat each other. And the white kids don’t really know what to do about it all either. I see them starting to be nice too sometimes. Then it’s like they realize they aren’t supposed to do that, like they might get in trouble at home or one of their friends might tease them or something, and they get double nasty just to make sure they don’t look too nice to one of us black kids.

We start working together like regular kids, but then all of a sudden we remember, oh, yeah, they’re
them.

For instance, I worked once in a group with Frank Charles Feagans, good old David Warren, and that simpy Laura Westover. I think you had us looking up facts on ancient Egypt. Anyway, there I am, poring over the
Encyclopedia Britannica,
and Frank Charles, the little idiot, says, “Is your scar hurting today? There’s a storm coming in later this evening. Sometimes people with scars can feel storms coming in their scars, and it hurts.”

Great — calling more attention to my scar in front of Laura Westover, who sat up straight and stared at my cheek in complete fascination. She, David, and Frank Charles discussed the origin of the scar for a good ten minutes while I fumed. Frank Charles was bragging —
bragging
— about his part in the whole situation.

Laura pronounced, “That is one ugly scar, Kizzy Ann, but you could cover it with makeup from the Drug Fair — they have everything. Seems to me I’ve seen makeup for people of your complexion there.”

Frank Charles was nodding his head like his neck had a spring in it and repeating the words “There you go.”

David just mumbled, “I think she’s right purty like she is.”

I could feel a blush spreading from the base of my neck to the roots of my hairline, and I wished so much for the ability to blend in. Curse Frank Charles Feagans and his stupid scythe.

Laura actually pushed my hair back from my face and touched my scar, saying, “If you put makeup right here,” and then she gasped — she’d touched my skin. She pulled her fingers back like they’d been in an electric socket. I jerked my face back too.

All of us buried our heads in our work as if we’d done something terribly wrong.

I don’t know where the money came from or whose idea it was, but a bus appeared not long ago. I use the word
appeared
on purpose because we knew nothing about it before it just . . . came. Like magic. It is slow, and it smells strongly of oil and smoke and gas, and it seems to cough and wheeze like it smokes old cigarettes, but it does save a powerful lot of steps if you are tired. I don’t often ride it, to be frank. Mr. Fielder, the driver, doesn’t like us black kids, that’s clear — he told us the first day, “I don’t care what Rosa Parks said. You’re sitting at the back of the bus and that’s final, got it?” We all just nodded — a ride is a ride — but sometimes I just don’t want a ride that bad. Plus, there’s this kid from high school, Tommy Street, who always trips every kid who walks down the aisle (don’t worry, he doesn’t discriminate — he does it to
every
kid, any color). I hate being tripped. Finally, if I ride the bus, I don’t get to walk with Shag. The only good thing about the bus is that Mr. Fielder likes Shag. He’d apparently heard about Shag’s experience with the copperhead, because the second time I got on the bus, when Shag came all the way close enough with me for him to see her, he said, “Hey, I heard about that dog, that’s the one saved a girl from a snake — you that girl?”

I nodded. He stuck his bottom lip out, thinking. “Ride tomorrow, here.”

The next day, when he pulled up for me, he stepped off the bus before I could get on. I backed up, as did Shag. Mr. Fielder, his suspenders drooping over his sagging tummy, knelt down in front of my dog, put his hand out for her to sniff him, and looked up at me. “Gotta let a dog smell you. They don’t just trust ya automatically.”

I nodded.
Got that right,
I thought. I prodded her to sniff his old white hand.

Shag looked up at me, then reluctantly sniffed the hand. Mr. Fielder turned it over slowly and opened it so she could see the good-size bone he held for her.

“Still got some meat clinging to it,” he explained. “Always had me dogs, till the last few years. Miss ’em bad. Nothing like a good dog.”

After I nodded to her, Shag eased the bone out of his hand and then ran off quickly. Mr. Fielder ignored my offer of a hand to help him up, held on to the side of the bus to steady himself, and got back on. I followed. “Got you one fine pup there, girl,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

If I ride any other day, Mr. Fielder mutters something rude to me, but every Wednesday, we do this thing with the bone for Shag and him telling me I got me a good pup. He says exactly the same words every time. He tells me how the wife makes stew or roast every Sunday, then he launches into the good pup speech. It’s gotten so Wednesday is the only day I reliably ride. I know I’ll feel differently when it’s really cold, but for now, I just can’t do it more than Wednesday.

All I meant to do was return some library books (and I admit, I was going to see if she had some books on makeup). Miss Anne Spencer has due dates, but she’ll allow you to keep books longer if you’re really using them. Otherwise she considers it hoarding, which she says is a form of stealing — you’re holding on to knowledge just to be holding, and that takes it away from others. Doesn’t matter if no one checks that book out for ten years — if you’re not using it, if you’re not reading it, you are a hoarder. I didn’t want to hoard.

I deposited the books at the desk. Miss Anne peered over her little reading glasses. “I expected you next Saturday,” she said.

“I came today.”

“But the books are not due until next Saturday,” she said. “I was going to have you meet a man.”

Puzzled, I looked at her. “What man?”

She pulled out a piece of paper. It was not a scrap like we have at my house, but a whole sheet of white paper (though not creamy, like what you have for letters), and she began to write.

Her script, as you would imagine, skimmed across the page. It was lovely and perfect, her
t
’s crossed and
i
’s dotted like a printing press in action. It was cursive, which I cannot read easily and certainly cannot decipher upside down. She folded the sheet and boldly penciled a name on the front: Donald McKenna.

“Take this down to the Farmers’ Market. Sometimes he’s there more than one Saturday a month. But I
had
told him next week.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, taking the note from her.

“You wanted to know about your dog,” she explained. “I cannot get a book for you, but I can get you a source. Fine man. He lives in your neck of the woods — near Goode. You go on, now. See that man.”

I tell you, Miss Anderson, I didn’t want to go see any man I didn’t know. But I did have a little curiosity, I admit. And saying no to Miss Anne Spencer is like saying no to Mrs. Warren. It is just not done. So I strolled down the big hill to the market on Main Street.

There were lots of people. I didn’t see a face I knew. Not that I’ve ever met a Mr. McKenna, but I suppose I thought I’d see someone I knew who could help me.

I was more than a little annoyed at that point. You ever pulled that hill up Polk Street? It’s practically straight up, so I admit I was peeved. And then I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked straight into a barrel chest and a plaid flannel shirt. I tilted my head to look up.

“You’re from Mrs. Spencer,” he said, and he pulled the note from my hand. I must have looked puzzled. “There are phones in the world, girl. I got a message to look for you. You’re as she described. You’d not expect that a poet couldn’t describe a person, now, would you?” He looked me up and down. “She says you have a dog.” His blue eyes darted across the page, his head bobbing and his bright white hair going every which way. Those six words boomed out. His accent was peculiar, sort of rolling in his mouth before it burst out.

“I have a dog.”

He looked at me then. Hard. His quick gaze swallowed me as I took a long look at him — his hearty head of white hair, a nose much like a beak, and white caterpillar eyebrows that wiggled back and forth over his eyes. It was clearly his turn to talk, but he wasn’t saying
anything.
I waited a little longer, but the caterpillar mustache he had that matched the eyebrows didn’t shift a bit. He wasn’t going to talk.

I repeated, “I have a dog.”

“You said that.”

“She’s a border collie.”

“So Mrs. Spencer said.”

I shut up then, Miss Anderson. I told you, I’m not walking on eggshells anymore. I didn’t ask him to talk to me, so I wasn’t about to scrape along trying to eke out a conversation.

We stood there then for well onto five minutes. Five minutes, Miss Anderson, is a long time to stare at a man you don’t know.

He finally spoke, his loud voice filling the space around me. “Lady tells me you want to work your dog.”

“I don’t know what that means, ‘work my dog.’ She does aplenty.”

He smiled at that. “Bet so. Can’t stop a border collie from working.”

It went on like that for quite some time, Miss Anderson, him saying three words, me adding four. Seemed to fill a long time, but all of a sudden I found I’d agreed to bring Shag to meet him one day, and I was on my way pulling that hill.

I’m wondering what I’ve gotten into. A white man with a funny way of talking and a face alive with hair. Kind of feels like I’m stepping into a hole I can’t see the bottom of. I’m tempted to not show up, but like I said before, I am a mite curious. And if it will help me make Shag her best, if it will help me look out for her in some way, I will go as deep as I need to go.