Angels

by Reba White Williams

  On the way home from school, I asked Coleman how she felt about everything that happened. She looked real serious.

  “I’m not proud of bitin’, and I’m sorry if I caused you and Aunt Polly and Miss Ida any worry or shame. But that boy is wicked, and when he picked me up, he scared me for a little bit. When I’m scared, I get mad, and I just struck out to make him let me go,” she said. “I still don’t know ‘zackly what else I should have done. I know you’re s’posed to turn the other cheek, but I didn’t even think of that. And if I had, what would he have done? And how would it have all turned out?”

  She was quiet for a few seconds, and then, “I talked to Freddy about it, and he said I should ask God for help with gettin’ mad at folks, and I’m doin’ that. But I’m glad Ralph’s gone, and I’m thankful the school’s got rules about bullyin’, and I’m thankful for all our friends that made everything come out right, and that I didn’t get thrown out of school. It was a bad story, and me gettin’ mad is wrong, and I reckon bitin’ is wrong, but it had a happy endin’.”

  Coleman’s right—it was a story with a bad beginning, but the beginning was bullying at the school and nobody doin’ anything about it, ‘cept Aunt Mary Louise and Tommy the Tank. It was goin’ on a long time before Coleman came to Slocumb Corners. Her part was the middle of the story, and she made the happy ending come about. Seems like to me if there’s an angel involved here, it’s Coleman Greene. Maybe she needs help with her temper, but her heart is good. (I’d have bitten him, too, if I’d thought of it. Forgive me, Lord.)

  OCTOBER

  Polly

  October is one of my favorite months. The weather is beautiful—not much hotter than the mid-seventies, not much colder than the mid-fifties, and little rain. The children have settled into the school year, and the schools, churches, and civic organizations arrange lots of activities for them this time of year. Most of the events have to do with Halloween, which is important in our town, although it’s changed a lot since I was a child.

  We’ve never had a serious Halloween incident in Slocumb County, but we’ve had a lot of mischief—toilet paper in trees, soap on windows, graffiti, air let out of tires, and petty theft (underwear stolen from lines, and that sort of thing)—and, of course, we’re aware of terrible events elsewhere. We decided to take steps to protect the children and established a curfew, limiting the hours of trick-or-treating and allowing only children twelve and under with adult chaperones to trick-or-treat. The parents of older children arranged parties at home.

  Then a Bible study group in Raleigh researched all the holidays for their true meanings, and a newspaper published an article about their findings on Halloween. For Christians, Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, was traditionally the vigil before All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’ Day or Hallowmas) and a very holy night. But in pagan times, Halloween was associated with the damned and hell and the devil and everything evil, and over the years everything got all mixed up. That’s why all the fearful symbols—ghosts, witches, goblins, skeletons, bats, Dracula, black cats, Frankenstein, monsters, vampires, devils—are used as Halloween decorations and costumes. Even the poor jack-o-lantern was pagan. I’d always thought of “Jack” as a smiling, jokey fellow, but in folklore, Jack is associated with the devil and the dead. The Irish made jack-o-lanterns to ward off evil spirits and especially Stingy Jack, a poor creature who couldn’t get into either heaven or hell and wandered the world scaring folk.

  The symbols are intended to frighten the devil and bad spirits away, and the scary costumes to trick the evil spirits into believing that the wearer is also bad; they wouldn’t bother their fellow evil-doers. (Imagine a toddler dressed up like a witch, looking about as frightening as a kitten, tricking evil spirits into believing she is one of them. What nonsense!)

  Because of its associations with death, hell, the devil, and the occult, some churches don’t approve of Halloween. Then, too, small children can find Halloween frightening. When Dinah was little, she was terrified of ghosts and haunted houses, and she still has nightmares about them. (I believe she’s still afraid of ghosts, despite all we can do to persuade her that they don’t exist.) Many families can’t afford expensive costumes, or decorations, or candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters. So we decided to try to make Halloween nonscary fun for all children, take the strain off family budgets, and if not making the evening holy, at least making it part of a community program we can be proud of.

  The churches and the civic organizations decided to devote Halloween to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF—the United Nations Children’s Fund—without any tricks, of course. UNICEF is a wonderful program—US children have raised millions for needy youngsters all over the world through UNICEF. The children carry official orange boxes for the money they collect; our children collect only money for UNICEF, no candy. They don’t need all that sugar, and no matter what measures we take, there’s always the possibility that a child will get a “treat” that makes him or her sick, or worse. (Now that we know peanuts are deadly to some people, we have to look out for accidental harm to a child—as well as the vicious acts by monsters.) And of course, buying all that candy is far costlier than most people think. I read that in the USA, people spend billions a year for Halloween candy. Think of the good that could be done with all that money!

  We settled the candy issue by putting up posters revealing how much it cost and explaining what a fraction of that money can do. For example, a million dollars will immunize more than fifty-eight thousand children for life, against diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus, TB, and whooping cough. Since children can’t imagine millions or billions of dollars, we pick a smaller number that children can focus on and understand, like sixty dollars to pay for a school in a bag, with basic schoolroom supplies for forty students and their teachers.

  The local merchants, who might have been unhappy about missing out on candy sales, make it up by selling families everything they need for parties given at home—mostly early-evening cookouts for the older children, who’re not allowed to trick-or-treat. They sell as many hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips and such at Halloween as they do in midsummer, but our town doesn’t confine itself to just the usual cookout foods. The merchants have come up with all kinds of suggestions for interesting and unusual recipes.

  Ida has her hands full cooking for Halloween parties, especially now that Dinah’s in school most of the day, so she turned to Mary Louise for help. Mary Louise found two Byrd teenagers, Molly and Elaine, to assist Ida in the kitchen after school and on Saturday mornings from October 15th to November 1st—they might work those same hours right through New Year’s Day, depending on their school schedules and what Ida’s business is like. But for now, all any of them can think about is Halloween. Dinah and Coleman love having the “big girls” around, and Ida couldn’t handle the orders without them. Both girls plan to major in home economics, and they learn a lot working with Ida. And they make money for Christmas presents.

  Molly and Elaine help Ida prepare goodies for the children’s parties—pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cake; orange-frosted cupcakes and cookies; and candied apples. The adult parties are more demanding—pumpkin soup (Ida makes it three different ways); pumpkin and bean couscous; pumpkin corn bread; pumpkin and sage torte; a dark chocolate pie with candied orange peel; black-bottom pie with or without bourbon; and my favorite, a pumpkin chiffon pie with a gingersnap crust. They roast ducks and pork, and braise quail. They prepare shish kebab on skewers ready to grill, and for Oktoberfest, German sausage, hot potato salad, and sauerkraut.

  When they’re not cooking for parties, they’re preparing food to sell at the produce stand. Just as Mary Louise forecast, sales are so good we plan to stay open through Christmas. She arranged for some of the young mothers to take turns sitting for each others’ children and running the stand. They get paid by the hour, and all of them are saving up for Christmas.

  People around here like to eat, and eat well. (A visiting Byrd connection from Colorado
told Mary Louise that Slocumb Corners was the only place she’d ever been where people started talking about what they’d have for lunch while they were still eating breakfast.) In my opinion, we think about food so much because we are still tied to the land and grow much of what we eat. In a country community like ours, each seasonal change means different foods. People in the city who eat fresh strawberries year-round may never know the taste of sun-warmed ripe strawberries, picked and eaten right out of the garden, or a perfect vine-ripened tomato eaten minutes after it’s picked. And, of course, when we aren’t growing or harvesting food, we’re freezing or preserving it.

  These days, Halloween decorations are about autumn and the harvest, rather than about ghosts and the devil. A favorite decoration is a scarecrow, because the Downtown Business Association sponsors a contest for the best scarecrow, and nearly everybody in town participates. You never saw so many scarecrows on stoops and in yards and gardens. (If the crows are paying attention, they’ll move out of Slocumb County until we switch to Christmas decorations.) The produce stand sells autumn decorations, too—gourds, squash, pumpkins, pots of chrysanthemums—anything one of us believes will sell. Beach traffic has slowed down, but people from all over the county come to buy.

  Dinah

  In September, when the school library opens after bein’ closed all summer, the librarian puts on the bulletin board a list of books for every class and lists of characters to give us ideas for Halloween costumes. Coleman has never had a Halloween costume, and she says she wants to be Winnie the Pooh. I’m dressing as Pooh’s friend Kanga, with my favorite toy Roo, who’s gettin’ a makeover, in my pocket. (I think Coleman picked Pooh because she knew how much I wanted to be Kanga, because I love Roo so much. Coleman’s good like that.) We borrowed a Pooh book with colored pictures from the school library to help us plan the costumes. Coleman wants her costume to be a bear color, which she says is light brown. Aunt Polly suggested we use some of Aunt Olivia’s ol’ white cotton flannel sheets to make Pooh’s costume. They are faded yellow, but she says we can dye it ‘zackly the shade Coleman wants.

  In the book, Kanga looks like a toy—bright red, with a white front and pouch, with a little red and white Roo sticking out of the pouch. We’re takin’ that picture as the model for my costume. We’ll bleach the same old sheets for Kanga and Roo’s chests and tummies, and an ol’ red flannel skirt of Aunt Olivia’s for their bodies. I can hardly wait!

  It’s worth making a fuss over costumes, because we get to wear ‘em so many times. We can even wear ‘em one day at school—on October 31st if it falls on a school day, or the nearest school day to October 31st if it doesn’t. Aunt Polly told me a new costume at the store can cost as much as thirty dollars. A lot of people, including us, can’t afford that, but we’re lucky ‘cause Aunt Polly can make ‘em. And now with all that cloth from Aunt Olivia, we don’t have to worry about buyin’ anything for our costumes. Our costumes get worn over and over, ‘cause after Halloween, everybody turns in outgrown costumes to the thrift shop, and folks can buy used costumes real cheap. All my costumes have been bought and used again, especially a pumpkin outfit I wore when I was little. (I can’t remember it, but I’ve seen pictures. Aunt Polly says that pumpkin costume has been worn by half a dozen babies since me. She can recognize it because she embroidered “punkin” across the chest in dark green thread.)

  We have lots of parties and such to go to, and we’ll wear our costumes to most of ‘em. Watkins Park, the state park nearest us, is running a hayride and an “owl howl,” with a guide to help spot the owls, and apple-bobbin’ and a cookout for under-twelves. One adult for every two children is the rule, and Aunt Mary Louise is organizing it for our school, so Miss Ida is lettin’ us go, and we get to wear our costumes.

  On the other side of town at Hardin Plantation, they run programs teachin’ how folk lived before the Civil War. They’re doing a program on bringin’ in the harvest, and preservin’ and such. Miz O’Quinn is taking the second grade. She’s arranged the bus and grade mothers to go with us. (We can’t wear costumes to that.)

  My very favorite is the Fall Festival at school, even more fun than trick-or-treat night. We can’t wear our Halloween costumes to that, because everybody wears special costumes by class ‘cause we’re all in a pageant. But that’s all right. Last year I was a bunny rabbit in the pageant and wore a mask with tall ears. I love that festival.

  Polly

  The Slocumb Corners Fall Festival is held from five thirty to ten thirty on the last Saturday night in October unless that’s October 31st—then it’s held on the 24th so as not to interfere with UNICEF night—in the gym at Coleman and Dinah’s school. The gym used to be big enough, but the festival is so popular, they’ve added an attached tent. All the churches, civic organizations, and local merchants participate, because every child in the school has a part in the pageant—and just about everyone in town has a relative attending the school. No one wants to miss seeing the children perform.

  The pageant is devoted to North Carolina products and history. The kindergarten crowd—the five-year-olds—represent agriculture: each child wears a paper hat to show what she or he is (a tomato, a cotton ball, an ear of corn, a black-eyed pea) and every child carries a sign to make sure no one can possibly misread a costume. They draw lots for their roles, as do children in each of the other classes. The PTA designed the program to make it as fair as possible, and children can’t argue that they want to be a watermelon instead of a carrot, or that so-and-so is teacher’s pet because she’s the tomato. None of the small children has to say a word; they just march across the stage looking adorable.

  The first graders are North Carolina animals, tame and wild, and wear masks: the wolf and the fox, and the cow and the horse and so on. The second-grade children are trees. We have a big lumber business and a lot of beautiful ornamental trees in North Carolina, so there are plenty of trees to go around. This year, Dinah is a maple tree and Coleman is a dogwood, and they wear plain brown smocks, and big headdresses, with branches and leaves, flowers, berries, nuts—whatever applies. The third graders are fish and sea creatures, and the fourth graders are settlers: English, Scotch Irish, African American, Chinese, Native American—North Carolina’s a real melting pot. The fifth grade carries the North Carolina flag and sings “Carolina in the Morning,” and “Carolina Moon,” and everybody joins in.

  The pageant takes place on a temporary stage set up in the tent and is followed by two other staged events. Gullahs come up from coastal South Carolina every year to tell us one of their animal stories, accompanied by gestures and motions. The children know some of the stories—they were popularized by Joel Chandler Harris in the Uncle Remus tales. But they come alive when told by the Gullahs. (My favorite is the misadventures of a bird that decides not to go south for the winter. Every time a bird flies, the Gullahs wave their arms around like wings and say “whsshe.”) The next event is gospel music by a group from Mary Louise’s church, and most people know the songs well enough to sing along. The final event is an award by Mayor Rankin of the prize for the best scarecrow in town. (Last year Freddy Byrd won; his scarecrow was a six-foot-tall eagle. Freddy was sure the eagle would scare off nasty crows.)

  About the time everyone is tired of sitting still, the pageant ends, and we all move into the the gym, which is set up with stalls and booths—a flea-market stall, a secondhand bookstall, a bake sale run by high school home-ec students, a lucky dip, a fortune teller, two pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey stands, loop throws, ball throws, and anything else anyone can think of that kids might enjoy, or adults will buy.

  We’ve worked out the entrance fees to the festival pretty well—the children in kindergarten through fifth grade get in free; older children can come free if they work for the festival—helping set up and take down chairs, running one of the booths, or whatever else needs doing. Everyone else pays a dollar to get in, and there’s also a “contributions” box for the school to use to buy extras. Every family is asked to
bring at least one nonperishable food for the local food pantry. Adults use money at the various stands to buy items or to play the games, but the children use food items for the pantry to pay for what they want. We work hard to make sure no one in Slocumb County goes hungry, and this is one of the ways we replenish the pantry’s supplies.

  I think our little town has done a great job of turning Halloween into a time for good deeds instead of mischief, taking out the scary parts and shifting the emphasis from the pagan toward good deeds. But there’s always room for improvement, and sometimes it takes a fresh eye to see it. I wasn’t surprised when Coleman came up with ideas.

  Dinah

  The Slocumb County Library is a short walk from our house and has a lot more books than the school library, ‘cause it has books for grownups, not just books for children. Miss Sutton, the librarian, is real nice and likes to help people find the kind of books they want. Aunt Polly took me to the library as soon as I could walk, and I’ve been borrowin’ books ever since. I usually visit the library nearly every week, but in June and July I was so busy helping Miss Ida, working on the produce stand and spending time with Coleman, I didn’t get there. In August when we found out how much Coleman liked reading, Aunt Polly took us to the library to introduce Coleman to Miss Sutton and to get her a library card.