by Jeri Watts
I just wish it didn’t matter to me.
I don’t think I’m writing in this journal anymore, Miss Anderson. No offense to you or anything. I can sit in your room, I can get to see new encyclopedias, and I can wear Laura Westover’s frilly leftover dresses. But I am never going to be really equal. Not really.
Thank you, Miss Anderson, for sending my work home with David Warren, and for not saying “I told you so” about not writing in the journal anymore. Shag getting hurt just stopped everything for a while — I didn’t even do my chores. (Can you believe James did them for me without a complaint? That’s how serious things were.) It’s been so many weeks since I could do anything but take care of her since the accident, but she is better now, and I just have to write to tell you all about it. Part of it is to get it off of my chest. Part of it is to thank you for your kindnesses. I have never asked you if you love dogs (I know you didn’t have a dog, with your daddy’s allergies, and your turtle, Mr. Boxster, and all, but you still could be a lover of dogs), but now I’m thinking you must, to understand how I could not come to school. And how I would not be able to stay away from my writing, especially after a time like I had.
It was all pretty amazing when I stop to think about it. And I’ll admit to you that I was mighty scared — you see why I didn’t trust myself to write until now. I sure didn’t want to put my fear on the page — I thought writing it might make it more real, more likely to happen. And I could not go on without my Shag.
It was just a regular Saturday. I’d done my chores and taken Shag for a dip in the pond (I love to watch her herd those stupid geese all around the place). I was just getting started shucking corn for supper. Shag wasn’t looking for trouble. She wasn’t looking at all. Her eyes were closed, and tiny snores escaped her with every breath.
That ridiculous Frank Charles Feagans was waiting for Granny Bits to give him change. He comes over right often in late summer to get corn, tomatoes, and string beans. His mama just plain has a black thumb — she can’t get weeds to grow, and come September, all those Feaganses are practically drooling for good vegetables. (That’s what Granny Bits says. I do like fresh limas, but I pretty much only drool over fresh-churned ice cream.) Anyway, Mrs. Feagans buys from us. And even though I don’t think Mr. Feagans ever asks where the vegetables come from, Frank Charles’s mama sends him over to collect the vegetables only when Mr. F. is busy, just in case.
Frank Charles comes slinking across the fields. He never climbs over a fence but slides quiet like between the rails, like a sneak thief. I’d tell him no myself — I’d refuse Feagans’s money — but Granny Bits says pride never put meat on the table, that money is money, and besides, none of God’s children should go hungry for the harvest of the Lord.
He was inching closer to me and the pile of corn. “That dog of yours sleeps heavy,” he said, pointing his head to Shag.
“She worked hard all day,” I said. I was going to tell him about those geese, but I didn’t get any further because as I leaned forward to pluck an ear from the pile, Shag jumped up. Mama says it was a sixth sense, but I don’t know about that. All I do know is that as my hand reached into the pile of Silver Queen, Shag darted in quicker, passing my hand in a flash. I jerked back like I was on fire and screamed, “Snake!”
“Lord,” Frank Charles said, backing up and stumbling. Daddy rushed from the barn, Mama from the kitchen, but they could only watch, like I did. The copperhead, its tan markings blending with the silk tassels of the corn ears, had been ready to strike. Shag took that strike for me across her right front paw. One yelp, and then she caught the snake behind its head and snapped firmly.
Shag dropped the lifeless snake, took two steps, and then dropped herself. Frank Charles amazed me. His voice didn’t shake at all when he said, “Snakebite. Vet’s at my farm.” He ran faster than I’ve ever seen him move, and as I knelt beside my Shag, I saw him all but hurdle that first fence. Mama wrapped her dish towel tight around the still paw, where two sharp pricks bled brightly above Shag’s nails.
Daddy pushed into the kitchen and came back with a kitchen knife. I knew he meant to use it to cut her, to let the poison drain out. I could hardly swallow around the lump in my throat.
“Hold her,” he said to me, and I have never felt so strong, although Shag did not move once. Her eyes held mine, and, I guess because of her chocolate eyes, I thought of Hershey’s kisses. Shag didn’t allow one tear to fall, but an ocean rushed down my cheeks.
It seemed like just a minute and then Frank Charles was back, with Doc Fleck beside him. The old vet was huffing and puffing so hard I was afraid he’d pass out.
Shag hasn’t had good experiences with white people since I’ve had her — she doesn’t ever forget a kick — but the doctor put his hand out first and let her sniff it. I reckon she could smell all the animals he’s looked after. I don’t think trust has a color, but it sure must have a smell.
Doc Fleck looked at Daddy, still clutching the bloody knife, where he’d cut an X across those two sharp pricks. Without a pause, the doctor knelt over Shag and sucked at the poison. Then he spit and sucked again. Slowly, he eased the tourniquet towel away and massaged her, which eased the flow of blood back into her paw. Shag put her eyes on mine again, and I didn’t look back at the vet to see what he was doing. Shag shuddered only once.
Mr. Feagans had come up, unnoticed until he spoke. His hands were on his hips. “I ain’t paying you to tend to a darky’s dog.”
Silence followed his words, but I was sure I heard the cracking of eggshells.
The old white vet said nothing, just kept working on Shag. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and he slid his hands over her body. He held her as her lungs gasped air in and out, and he checked his pocket watch in time with the gasps.
“Right big copperhead,” he said, looking up at Mama and me for the first time. “Good thing we’re acting fast.”
“Will she be all right?” I asked. And I’ll tell you, Miss Anderson, my breath was coming as fast and shallow as Shag’s.
He pulled a bottle of medicine out of his bag and shoved it at me. “Every day, like it says.” He got to his feet and started to make his way, much more slowly, back across our land. He didn’t look at Mr. Feagans, and he didn’t look at Frank Charles. He only looked back at Shag, who raised her chocolate eyes to him.
“Pray,” he said. “Don’t forget to pray.”
When I demanded she be carried to the hook rug in my room, right beside my bed, no one protested, not even Shag. She lay very still, and I stayed awake all night and listened for the little snores that proved she was still breathing.
I have given her the antivenom medicine every day. She’s been very sick, I know, because she has stayed on my rug most of every day and not once has she worked the cattle.
Mrs. Warren’s oldest son, Wilson, is studying to be a vet. He said lancing wasn’t a good thing to do — that can lead to infection — and that, frankly, he wouldn’t have wasted medicine on “such a puny dog.” I figure that shows how he doesn’t know beans from apple butter. My daddy says that Wilson Warren is smart and learning new things is important, so maybe lancing isn’t good anymore, but Daddy will never take any of our animals to Wilson Warren no matter if he is the only vet left in Bedford County.
Doc Fleck showed up at our house three days after he saved Shag’s life. It was the only time a white man has been in my house. Daddy carried Shag down to the kitchen for the vet to examine her. Doc Fleck nodded as he felt her head and ears. He looked me up and down while he felt her stomach and listened to her heart, and then he closed his eyes. “I like a dog to have a child to love ’em and grow with. Gives ’em a job to do.” He nodded at me. “Keep her busy.”
He rubbed Shag’s ears. She sniffed his hands and slowly, slowly licked him.
Daddy said, “We’re obliged to you, Doc. Long way for the vet in Bedford.”
“She wouldn’t have made it,” the old white man said. “Can’t have a dog like this go down
, not after something like what she did. Just can’t have it.”
My daddy swallowed. “We’re obliged. Need to pay your fee.”
Doc Fleck looked in my pup’s eyes. “I’d not say no to a mess of that Silver Queen the girl was working on, if you’ve still got some that’s good. The wife and I do love corn.”
My father pulled his shoulders high. “I can pay money, sir.”
Doc Fleck patted Shag and put his hand out to my father to shake. “Sure you can. I got money for my time out here that day, though. Don’t need that right now. Could use the corn. You got some?”
The corn changed hands, and my dog and I went back upstairs.
You know, Granny Bits says that everything happens for a reason, and I guess that’s so.
Anyway, I care a lot less about dog shows and Laura Westover now.
I will never shuck corn again.
I am even more confused about white people than I was before. Laura and the girls at school are mean. The vet and you are nice. Mr. Feagans is mean. Frank Charles’s fast action probably saved Shag, so I guess I’d put him in the nice category even though he is annoying as all get-out. . . .
But there is one other thing I know in the category of happening for a reason for sure.
Shag will not sleep in the barn anymore.
Now Shag sleeps with me.
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.
