by Shana Burg
I take an extra step to the side. The truth is there probably isn’t a seventh-grade student in the county moving on steady legs this morning.
“Scared?” I ask him.
At Acorn Elementary School our teacher always told us there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but I reckon that was a lie, because Cool Breeze is looking at me like I asked the stupidest question that ever was asked in the history of the universe going all the way back to the dinosaur times.
I swallow. Well, at least I know exactly what to say next. “I’ve got a map of the United States in my bedroom.”
“That right?”
“Uh-huh.”
I think he might ask to see it, but he doesn’t. I think he might ask where I got it, but he doesn’t do that either. He just keeps walking crooked, his eyes fixed on the highway, his broad shoulders stretching out the white cloth of his shirt. I take in how his long fingers wrap firm round the handles of his canvas book bag. And I reckon maybe he doesn’t like maps. Maybe just little kids like maps. Maybe he thinks I’m dumb for talking about maps at all.
The slow grind of a motor sneaks up behind us. A tractor waddles by and I think of what Uncle Bump told me about my daddy. “Your father used to get in his jalopy, put down the top, take off his city hat, and go eighty on that two-lane road, waiting for another speeder to pass in the other direction so his car would spring off the ground. Up, up, away and sideways. That’s how your father took life,” Uncle Bump said, laughing. “He’d drive forever to catch freedom in his hair.”
Whenever I think about my daddy, I picture a handsome man in a fedora hat with twinkling eyes and a breezy smile.
I know one day Cool Breeze and me will walk to school and I’ll tell him all the stories about my father. That’s when he’ll hold my hand. But that’ll have to come later, after we talk about other, less important stuff. So I move to the third and final topic I’ve got planned. “You think Cassius Clay will be the greatest boxer in history?” I ask.
“Already is!” he says.
“Better than Joe Louis?”
He nods.
“What about Jack Johnson and Sugar Ray Robinson?”
“Cassius Clay is better,” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. And that’s the end of our conversation.
I look out at the plantation shacks that dot the cotton field. I wish Lovetta and Marcus could be walking with us today. But Lovetta and Marcus have to repeat sixth grade because they missed so many days last year. Even though the plantation boss man got a cotton-picking machine, the crop was wet and high last year, so it didn’t work too good. Every time it rained, Lovetta and Marcus had to stay home from school to trail the machine and pick everything clear.
Well, I’ll tell you one thing: if Lovetta and Marcus and Elias and Flapjack were here with me, then everything would be hunky-dory instead of the way it is now, me walking miles with Cool Breeze without anything to speak of at all.
It seems hours pass till at long last the children walking a piece in front of us turn off the highway to Weaver. Once I saw a postcard with a photograph of a sign that said LAS VEGAS in pink neon lights. I’ll bet there’s going to be a lit-up sign that says Weaver. I’m pretty sure folks there rush in every direction, carrying heavy books under their arms, pencils tucked in their hair.
The more I think about Weaver, the less I think about Cool Breeze and the faster my legs move till—I can’t help it—I’m in a full sprint.
“What’s with you?” I hear Cool Breeze yell. “It’s still school, you know.”
I suck in my breath and close my eyes like I’m making a wish on a birthday cake. Then I open them and turn right into Weaver, into a brand-new world.
CHAPTER 16
September 3, 1963
Never mind signs with pink neon lights. The only signs I see here are the green street signs that crisscross on top of the yellow pole. The Main Street sign dips on a diagonal like nothing can hold it up anymore. I glance around for the sign in lights, the girls with pencils in their hair, but I only see a shop with a plastic Coca-Cola sign on the door. Wooden boards are nailed over the windows but the store’s open.
An old white man with rippled skin and a rim of silver hair sits on a bench in front of the shop, his back curved like a crescent moon. I look at the ground like I’m supposed to, but when Cool Breeze catches up to me, I can tell he’s staring at the man.
“Don’t!” I whisper. I feel that worm stuck in my lip.
It seems Cool Breeze can’t help himself.
But I can’t help myself either. I’ve got enough troubles back in Kuckachoo. Lord knows I don’t need more, so I grab Cool Breeze and yank him away.
As soon as we get down the road, he pulls a hand-drawn map out of his pocket. Me? I raise my eyebrows but keep my mouth shut.
“Left on Park Avenue. Cross the tracks. Then head north,” he says.
And one thing’s clear: Cool Breeze isn’t too cool for maps after all.
When we get to the brick building, we see the school principal outside the door. He’s dressed up special in a yellow and blue striped bow tie. “Welcome to West Thunder Creek Junior High School,” he says.
When I hear those words, my chest opens up like a daisy.
I follow Cool Breeze through the crowded hallway to room 7, where I stand beside him in the doorway and take in the sight of our new teacher. The instant I see her, a rush of pictures fill my mind: The burning cross. The panic. The crowd. And Mrs. Jacks in the last row singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Today she looks magical. She sits at a desk on a platform in front of the classroom. She wears a plaid dress and a string of beads—each one has a letter of the alphabet on it—and her carved mahogany walking stick rests at her side. But Mrs. Jacks isn’t the most out-of-sight thing in the room. No sir! Get this: there’s enough desks for every student in the class!
Well, Cool Breeze finds his courage somewhere. He juts his chin forward and saunters to an empty desk in the back of the classroom beside a girl wearing a pink skirt. When he gets there, he slinks down in his chair and sticks one leg out in the aisle.
Next it’s my turn. I take a hint from him and thrust my chin forward. Then I claim an empty seat in the first row in front of a boy who’s got horn-rimmed glasses. I choose that seat for two reasons: First, I can get there with the least number of steps. Second, I can’t have Cool Breeze thinking I want to sit next to him.
Once all the seats fill, Mrs. Jacks clears her throat and leans across her desk. A hush grows as she looks up and down each row, inspecting one student at a time. When she sets her eyes on me, I feel her drink in the details of my life. A faint smile crosses her lips. I can’t help but wonder, does she see the bald spot in the middle of my left eyebrow? Does she think I’m not ready for seventh grade? By the time she raises her head to examine the boy behind me, all I can say is it’s a miracle I’m still alive.
The minutes drag on. There’s no talking, only the sounds of kids setting pencils on their desks, fidgeting with their lunch bags, smoothing wrinkles in their clothes.
At long last our teacher smiles wide enough for all of us to see her thirty-two teeth, including the gold ones on the bottom.
Then thwack!
Before I can smile back, Mrs. Jacks slams her walking stick flat against her desk.
I cover my lip with my hand.
“That’s it for the nice stuff,” she says. “Listen up and listen up good. Y’all talking to the only teacher in the school who’ll get within eleven feet of twelve-year-olds by choice. Y’all probably noticed that once you reach that special birthday, most teachers run from you like you’ve contracted the bubonic plague. Now I’m sure y’all understand to the utmost that other teachers here would rather be buried alive than take up such a despicable, unrewarding task as teaching the likes of you.”
All I can say is when I’m a television teacher, I’m going to be nice. I’m not going to say things that make people twitch on the inside.
> Mrs. Jacks lifts her walking stick over her head. “Y’all got one foot stuck in childhood, the other stuck in growing up. One hand plucking sun from daylight, the other picking moon from night. That’s why I call y’all Midnights. And the thing is, you Midnights are losing your balance. That’s where I come in. You need my help.”
It’s true. Sometimes I’m so mixed up I don’t know what to think. And with Elias missing, and folks believing he’s dead and gone, I could sure use someone to set me straight.
“We’re all Negroes in this room?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answer along with everyone else.
“As Negroes, we’ve got to run faster, work harder, and think better than all the white folks combined, so that’s what I’m going to expect y’all to do in the presence of a lady like me.”
Again, Mrs. Jacks leans across her desk. Her eyes scuttle from student to student. “Well, at least y’all aren’t dumb as a donkey’s bottom like most grown-ups I know. They only believe what they see with their eyes,” she says. She raises her eyebrows, her shoulders, her neck—almost her whole waddling body—without getting up from her seat.
Then she calls roll. When Mrs. Jacks gets to me, she says, “Miss Addie Ann Pickett, come over here.”
While I push myself up from my seat, I hear kids from Darwiler, Titus, Bramble, and Weaver lean across their desks to gossip with their neighbors. “That gawky girl? Couldn’t be his sister!”
Then thwack!
Silence.
As soon as I get to her desk, Mrs. Jacks whispers, “I’m awfully sorry about your brother.” She takes my hand. “That boy was brilliant beyond brilliant. He was going places. College was just the start. He was going to join the movement, wake up this world. He was quite a speaker. Quite a leader. I know that wherever Elias is, he’s thinking of you, wishing you well on your first day in seventh grade.”
Well, I’ve already learned one thing in junior high school: Mrs. Jacks doesn’t know how to whisper. Her raspy voice knits across the front row, tangling up one student after the next in its secret message.
If you’re going to bawl, you should know why. But tonight, after my first day at West Thunder Creek Junior High School, I’m lying in bed, crying for no reason. I listen to the plinkity-plink of rain on the rooftop till nightfall before it occurs to me. Maybe there is a reason for my tummy turning inside out. Maybe it’s because at West Thunder Creek Junior High School nobody jumps rope at recess. Or maybe it’s because I thought there might be a maid to clean out the classroom, but instead it’s just like Acorn Elementary. We’ve got to scrub the classroom clean ourselves, so we can’t start learning till the second week of school. Or maybe I’m a miserable wreck because I used to know Elias was okay even when Mama doubted it, but I don’t have that feeling anymore.
I look at my brother’s bed. A wreath rests on his pillow. The ladies from the church brought it with a basket of hush puppies. I lift the wreath off the pillow and place it against the window screen. Then I lie down on my brother’s bed, and through the circle of the wreath, I watch the circle of the moon.
I know right now, when the moon is full, Mr. Mudge needs to harvest his crops. But who else besides my brother can pick four bushels of butter beans, three buckets of cucumbers, two bushels of peas, and seven bushels of sweet potatoes in a day? No one. That’s why Mr. Mudge had to hire two people just to take my brother’s place.
I remember the night Elias dragged himself into the kitchen last spring. “Picked my record!” he announced with a weary grin. “Y’all invited to free dinner at the Corner Store.” Of course Elias was just joking. Everyone knows that even though we’re free to buy what we want from the Corner Store, only white folks are allowed to sit at tables there.
Elias plunked a grocery bag onto our kitchen table. “But look at this,” he said. He pulled out a sack of butter beans, four pork chops, and the four bottles of cola Mr. Mudge gave him for doing outstanding work.
By the time Mama and me cooked up the chops and beans, my brother was sound asleep. I pulled the sheet down from his face and said, “Time to eat!” But Elias snored on, so we celebrated without him. The chops were sensational! And Uncle Bump, Mama, and me ate those butter beans every which way: fried, mashed, and boiled.
That night, after I got in my bed, I belched louder than a tractor motor.
At long last Elias woke up. “Was it good?” he asked.
“The best!” I told him.
Elias grinned, but within a minute he was snoring again. Nothing could ruin his sweet dreams, not even me burping into the night.
Now rain thunders on the roof while I slip under my brother’s sheet and smell baseball mixed up with sage. I shut my eyes. My breath slows till it sounds like the fall wind whistling through the trees. Then even the sound of my breath is gone.
There’s a river in my chest. A river that runs clear and smooth over a hundred rocks in the way. I look down on the river from above. I feel the river from inside. Sunlight covers me. It is me. It’s my skin. It’s the sky. It’s the edges of my mind. Gooseflesh runs over me like a wave. My skin prickles up high, waiting. And I know my brother’s spirit is here—not his ghost but his spirit.
“What is it?” I ask.
I listen for his answer, but all I hear is rain hitting the roof.
“You don’t need to say anything,” I tell him. “I know you’re proud.”
CHAPTER 17
September 24, 1963
This afternoon I race home, plunk down at the kitchen table, and take out the short story called “Split Cherry Tree.” It looks like Mrs. Jacks copied it on the mimeograph machine about five hundred years ago, so it’s hard to make out all the words. The story was written by a man named Jesse Stuart. It takes place in the state of Kentucky, which in case you’re wondering is two states north of here.
In the story, a boy goes on a field trip to a farm, where he chases a lizard up a cherry tree. Tough luck for the boy, the cherry tree breaks, so the boy’s teacher makes him stay after school. For two hours! After school, the boy tells his teacher, “I’d rather you’d whip me with a switch and let me go home early. Pa will whip me anyway for getting home two hours late.”
But the teacher in the story spares the rod and spoils the child. He won’t whip the boy with the switch! I reckon that’s why Mrs. Jacks likes this story, because tough as she is, she’s just like that teacher. She doesn’t believe in paddling our behinds to teach us our lessons either. So all told, I have to say “Split Cherry Tree” is real good.
The only bad part is I’ve got to copy the first three pages by tomorrow! Mrs. Jacks says copying stories is the best way for us to practice cursive writing and grammar. By the time I finish, my arm’s asleep. But heck, I’d rather get my arm poked all over with pins and needles than get my behind whupped with a switch.
While I walk over to the Tates’ house, I shake my arm to get the blood back in.
And wouldn’t you know it, Ralphie picked today to fuss instead of sleep. As soon as I get him in the crib, I’ve got to use my tired old hand to run my finger back and forth across his forehead like Mama showed me. Back and forth. Back and forth. Till I’m almost dreaming myself.
But I’m not dreaming of good things. I’m dreaming a nightmare. Not a make-believe one but a real one, also known as my life.
It was nine days ago, and just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. It was a Sunday, a couple hours after the morning service let out. The reverend sent word calling everyone back to First Baptist. Of course, after the cross burning, there was no way in the world Mama was going to let me go to church for anything other than the morning service, so I just stayed in the yard jumping rope, while everyone besides my family rushed back to church.
Only a few hours later, Mama, Uncle Bump, and me were finishing up supper, when someone rapped real hard on the side door. Mama opened it.
There stood Delilah, looking like she’d just come back from the underworld.
&
nbsp; “Sit down, honey,” Mama told her.
Even though it happened more than a week ago, I can see it clear like it’s happening right now: Delilah standing in our doorway, Uncle Bump pulling out a kitchen chair, Mama taking Delilah by the elbow, leading her to the table.
“What’s a matter?” I asked.
That was when Delilah spilled out the awful news.
“There were four girls. They were at Sunday school. At the Negro church. In Birmingham. Birmingham, Alabama. They didn’t do nothin’ wrong. They didn’t do nothin’.”
Mama and me could only guess what horror was coming next, and I reckon we were content to let Delilah keep talking in circles so we wouldn’t have to hear it.
But Uncle Bump went ahead and asked. “What happened, Delilah?”
“Someone bombed the church. Now they’re dead. Dead!” Delilah buried her face in her hands and bawled, while questions fell all over me. What did those girls ever do to deserve this? Were those girls just like Delilah and me? Will we get killed too? I was sure I’d upchuck.
Mama’s eyes filled. “That’s terrible, just terrible,” she said. Then she thought on it another second and said, “But you know, girls, that was all the way over in Alabama.” Mama said it like Alabama was next to Japan, but I know my map and that state’s right next to Mississippi. Right next to here! Mama stood, wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, I’m gonna strike a match and bake some snicker-doodles. You girls wanna help?”
Delilah and me both said no. Did Mama really think baking cookies would make us forget what we just heard? Delilah and me dragged ourselves outside to sit on the swing.
Ever since we heard the awful news, I try to play more with Ralphie, because when I’m with him, I can almost forget about those four girls, and I can almost forget about my brother a couple minutes in a row.
Now I look down at Ralphie. I’m still running my weary finger across his brow, glad he doesn’t hate me yet. But I know one day his daddy will teach him to. So I try to fix it in my mind how Ralphie is right now: how innocent, how sweet. But the second I get a good look at him, I see his cheeks, they’re bright red!
