Kizzy Ann Stamps

by Jeri Watts

  Miss Anne picked up her teacup then and took a sip.

  “I think you, Kizzy Ann, have a choice to make with your life. Do you want to be like my cousin, do you want to be like my friend, or do you want to fall somewhere in between? It seems to me you are a young lady with a whole lot of life to live and much to offer the world, but then I’m not the one living your life.”

  I sat there a few more minutes, holding my tea. Then I put it down and stood. I didn’t know what to say, but then I thought of something.

  “Miss Anne?”

  “Yes, Kizzy Ann?”

  “When you’re reading your poems . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “People stare, don’t they?”

  “Why, yes, child, yes, they do.”

  I don’t agree with Miss Anne Spencer that her cousin and her friend had scars from similar circumstances to mine. In my opinion, a fire is nothing like a scythe that slices through flesh. Maybe a fire that is set on purpose, but what she described was accidental fire, the kind of flame that rises out of dying embers left smoldering in the fireplace kicked up by a sudden gust down the flue, embers that dance and catch a curtain and climb quick and wild. That kind of fire you can feel sorrow for, you can feel sadness seeping into your bones, but I don’t think you would feel the raw anger I felt toward Frank Charles Feagans.

  I know you’re surprised to read that. I’m surprised to write that. I’ve never even told myself that, so how could you know? I’ve been friendly to him — I’ve shared my dog with him, for Pete’s sake — but I was so mad at him . . . well, angry, which I think of as a much bigger emotion than mad. But Granny Bits says anger is wrong, especially when things are accidental.

  And it was an accident. Frank Charles had no intent in his swing. His movement was distracted by the agility of my dog, my amazing, incredible Shag. And I can admit to you, here in my journal, I feel such guilt still feeling my raw anger toward him — and I do still feel some tiny bit of anger toward him, Miss Anderson — even though I think of him now as my friend. I am amazed to think he is a friend to me. I suppose I haven’t truly forgiven Frank Charles. I don’t honestly know how people forgive and forget, as we are told to. I say I do — Granny Bits insists on it — but I seem to hold on to my grudges and remember who said hurtful things. In fact, I can quote them back, almost verbatim, sometimes months after they happened. And that’s just little piddly conversations . . . so how in the world will I ever shed this ugly thing filling my heart?

  Today I ate with Omera and Ovita Stark. They have started to talk a little to me, if no one else is around. Shag ate over by my side, since Ovita in particular is a little scared of her. They sounded like chickens, clucking on softly to each other about this and that, about nothing really. But then they started talking about clothes. You know I don’t care a fig about clothes, Miss Anderson. But Ovita said, “I hate going to try on clothes.”

  I admit I hadn’t really been listening for a few minutes. I’d been feeding sandwich scraps to Shag and just half listening to the sound of their conversation. But it was clear they were waiting for me to say something, so I said, “Yeah, when Mama pulls one dress off and I’m standing there by my bed with chill bumps on my arms, hoping James doesn’t get the bright idea to walk in on us, I just want her to hurry up and get that next dress on! Good thing my granny can’t make but two at a time!” I laughed, nervous like, because they were staring at me like I was talking about weird things.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Ovita said. “You don’t get your clothes at the store. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  I just looked at them.

  They looked at each other. Omera took a deep breath, looked at Shag (I don’t know why), and then said in a whisper, “It’s humiliating, Kizzy Ann. Folks like us aren’t allowed to try on clothes in a dressing room. The owner of the store doesn’t want the clothes to actually touch our skin. He says . . . he says he can’t sell the clothes we don’t buy if they’ve touched our skin. So, we either have to just pick something off the rack and buy it or we put it on over our own clothes, right there in the middle of the store, and you have to wear long sleeves and gloves to try things on, so your skin and ‘body oils’ don’t ‘soil’ the clothes.”

  Ovita made a face. “Like our blackness will rub off on the clothes. Like we’re dirty.”

  I have never been so glad that my granny makes my clothes. I have never been so glad that my mama accepts hand-me-downs.

  Okay, you have to promise not to tell anybody anything about this, Miss Anderson. I shouldn’t tell you, I don’t guess, but this journal has sort of become where I put down everything I think, everything I work through in my head and my heart. Today I was working Shag and practicing commands like always, and I heard this voice, little at first and then desperate, calling for help. And I knew, not at first, but then I knew, that it was Frank Charles. Shag had already started running toward the voice, but then I kicked up and ran too. We’d been over toward that edge of the property, the Feaganses’ side — we are neighbors, after all. I guess they were collecting kindling or something. I think I noticed some firewood, but really, all I remember seeing was Frank Charles kneeling next to his mother, who was lying on the ground and shaking like Sassy, our cow. Remember how I told you she’d started having seizures — epilepsy, you know? Well, there Mrs. Feagans was, shaking, and Frank Charles was screaming at her, and he took her shoulders and I guess he was going to pull her to sit up.

  I don’t know why, Miss Anderson, but I sort of took charge. I put my hand on him and just told him no in a calm voice. I told him to leave her be, and I turned her on her side and talked to her in a low voice, like I do with Sassy. I think I might have seen this at my church once, when I was little, now that I think on it — a girl in my Sunday school class who stopped coming when her seizures got so bad, but before she stopped coming, the teachers just made us all sit quiet and treated it all very matter-of-fact and rubbed her forehead and talked her through her spell. I remember they told us that people in a seizure often spit up or wet themselves and they might need to sleep afterward and might not remember things for a while.

  So I guess I just remembered all of that in a way, and did that with Mrs. Feagans. I tried to keep things calm for her and Frank Charles. Shag stretched out right next to Mrs. Feagans, up against her back, and we just sort of stayed with them for a while and made it a time of peace as much as we could. When she came to, I was holding her hand and stroking her hair, and we talked. I’d sent Frank Charles for a blanket — it was February, after all, and we didn’t want her to get chilled badly. Of course, I ask you to keep this quiet because epilepsy is one thing for a cow and quite another for a family — I didn’t ask if this has ever happened before with Mrs. Feagans. It is none of my business, and I know Frank Charles wouldn’t want me to be sharing it around with everybody. He’ll tell you if he wants you to know. So please don’t ask him about it. I’m telling you about it only because things got . . . scary. I got her up and helped them gather their kindling. Shag and I turned to head back for home. I looked up, and there in the trees, watching, stood Mr. Feagans.

  And, Miss Anderson, I’m sure he had been there the whole time.

  As you know, we are writing our own Greek myth in groups. What a cruel trick of the fates, that I was put in a group without Laura Westover this time, but in with Ovita and Omera Stark and David Warren. Neither of the Stark girls says boo in front of other kids, remember, so David and I had to create a play where he and I said all the lines. We quickly realized we were going to have to ask to join with another group, and make Ovita and Omera into dryads, since who expects a tree nymph to talk, right? And whose group wanted to work together? Laura Westover, Frank Charles, and Mildred. Oh, well. Laura took over immediately, but at least she could see the wisdom of Ovita and Omera being dryads.

  She also agreed that David should stay Apollo. “You have a classic body for the god of war,” she said. Poor David, he blushed like crazy. “And our onl
y other alternative would be Frank Charles here, and he is the skinniest boy in Bedford County, so you’ll have to do.” Frank Charles huffed and puffed, but he couldn’t deny it, so we moved on.

  Today it was nice that the Starks dressed alike. They don’t do that most days, as you know. They used to do it all the time — Mr. Stark, Omera and Ovita’s daddy, is right proud that he has twin daughters and he wants everybody to know it. He figures when they are dressed alike you can tell from far away that those girls are twins — you don’t have to wait to get close enough to see their faces are look-alike images. But Mrs. Warren told him last year that she felt like Ovita and Omera needed to find their own identities, that they were “entirely too wrapped up in each other,” and dressing them alike was the first thing that had to go. And like I told you before, when Mrs. Warren says something, snap, people do it. I have to say, the twins are a whole lot more outgoing than they used to be. Just imagine how bad it was before! Come to think on it, as I write in this journal, I see how right Mrs. Warren was about a lot of things — but don’t tell her I said so.

  Anyway, Laura looked over the script we’d started. “Not bad,” she grudgingly said. “Let’s add some scenes with Zeus and Hera — after all, Hera’s jealousy is probably going to explain how the dryads got turned into trees — and then we can bring in Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty.” She fluffed her blond hair, clearly implying that she would play that role. I wanted to throw up.

  David said, “Well, I think Kizzy Ann should play that role. She’s the prettiest girl here.”

  Frank Charles punched David in the arm. “You got it sweet for Kizzy Ann, huh?” Frank Charles sort of nodded encouragingly and smiled at David, who blushed furiously and stared at the floor.

  Laura erupted. “Kizzy Ann is most certainly not the prettiest! She has a big old scar running down her cheek. She can’t be Aphrodite! I have to be Aphrodite! Besides, Kizzy Ann is black.”

  “That’s why you can’t be Aphrodite,” David said. “If I’m Apollo,” he explained, pointing to his face, “you can’t be Aphrodite. Think about it.”

  Mildred tried a different approach. “You know, Hera was married to Zeus, and he was the king of the gods. That makes her the queen of the gods. I’m not thinking you want Kizzy Ann to play the queen of anything.”

  That sure got Laura to shut up. You could see the wheels in her brain spinning. She’d already been planning out what all was going to happen in this play — she had it all mapped out in her mind — and if she took on the role of Aphrodite, she was not going to get to be the queen. It was be the queen or be the prettiest. And if she was the queen, she played opposite the white boy. Things began to fall into place in her mind.

  I know you heard some of this, Miss Anderson, but you were stuck with that group that was having a conniption fit about costumes — I guess you were wondering today why you even wanted to be a teacher. Anyway, Mildred did a pretty good job being a peacekeeper, also being the set director. I kept my mouth shut for a change, because I was about this close to hauling off and knocking Laura Westover into next week. If she said anything else about my scar, I would have done it, I think.

  I don’t know how I feel about David Warren and all of this — I was mostly so ticked off at Laura Westover running things I was seeing red, I’ll tell you. But I can’t believe that old David Warren. And when we were practicing with Shag today, that ridiculous Frank Charles would not let it drop. It was David Warren this and David Warren that. Peesh! You’d think a skinny white boy would be a little more careful around a girl who has a dog who will do anything she tells her to. . . .

  I’ve thrown away the makeup. I did try it once. I felt I had to do that, after Mr. McKenna spent all that money. I went down to the pond, where I could see it on me. Our pond is just a cow pond, but it is the best place to look on my face in privacy — I told you Granny Bits says having a full-size mirror is pure vanity, and besides, I couldn’t let anybody in the house catch me examining my face, touching my scar, sliding my fingers down that stretch of puckered skin. So, to the pond I went. And the pond is a flat of shimmer much of the time, a wide-open reflection. None of our cows were down there today when Shag and I went. I knelt in the dry, wheaty-colored grass and listened to it crackle as I eased my way over to the edge and leaned over to peer at my reflection. I saw myself as I am. Then I closed my eyes, thought of the diagrams I’d seen in the books from the library, and spread the makeup carefully. It did cover the scar some. It made me look different, strange. Shag came and sniffed me. Then she backed up and sat and stared. She lay down and looked at me. I looked again into the pond at myself, at my reflection, and I felt so odd, Miss Anderson. Who was that girl reflecting in the water? It was like she was a whole other person. The makeup didn’t bring back the old me. It wasn’t the old Kizzy Ann. It was just some other girl, someone I didn’t know. It was a disguise, just a disguise.

  I don’t know as I see the point of it all. I think I would get just as many stares.

  I’ve been thinking a lot on Miss Anne Spencer’s words, about her friend and her cousin, their approaches to life and the layers in between. Remembering how I’d wanted to pull back into myself, cocooned into my corner of bed, but Shag kept facing me out to see the visitors Mama and Daddy brought to my room. Thinking on the fact that my church, my school, and this part of Bedford County rallied to make sure I had company every day for Scrabble games, read-alouds, storytellings by the bedside, and old maid challenges. I didn’t have one day when somebody wasn’t at my side forcing me to look out at them, forcing them to look back at me. So I think I know how the friend felt: I’m just lucky that I’m surrounded by friends amid the starers. I may change my mind, but for now I feel free and sure. I am like Miss Anne Spencer’s friend who had a lot of living to do. I’m not exactly celebrating that people are staring at me, but I’m not going to be ashamed of them looking either. Let them look. I’m a girl with a scar. I’m Moon Child, me, just a girl who can teach her dog some things, while that dog teaches things back.

  The big spelling bee! I’m a pretty good speller. I’ve been working all year, and all those reference books I’ve been reading at your school — I mean our school — must be a help with this, right? They’re filled with words that are all in my head now — words I use in this journal, words I use in my head every day when I talk to Sassy and Shag and myself. Winner for the school goes to the state championship in Richmond. Well, that sounds like fun! I’ve never been to Richmond. I’m starting to study extra hard right now. And now that I’m not worrying about makeup, I’ve got some space in my head I can fill up with more spelling words. All those words like countenance I learned from Miss Anne Spencer could come in handy, right? I’m practicing words too. You didn’t even have to give us that pep talk today. I’m going over the dictionary and the Bible. The Bible has lots of beautiful words in it, Miss Anderson. I love words. They just pour over you like hot syrup on corn bread. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, rush, rush, rush. I hear you say them all day, I hear them all night in my head when I sleep. I see them behind my eyelids when I practice in class — it’s like I just can’t miss. I know I’m on my way to Richmond, Miss Anderson. The syrup, the words, are a rush, pouring over me in my mind.

  Wouldn’t Mrs. Warren have her socks knocked off?

  I guess you read the paper and you saw that letter to the editor. I almost missed it. I’ve been working with Mr. McKenna, Frank Charles, and Shag just about every afternoon until dark, and then I help with a few chores and get my homework done. Still, many nights we also go to see James and the JV basketball team. They’ve been undefeated, just like the JV football, and the local paper just will not put anything in it about them, just like the JV football. It’s a stand against integration. Rumor here is that the editor said, “Might can make the schools accept ’em. Can’t make me write about ’em.”

  And then that letter — saying how black or white, purple or green, athletes should be noted when they’re local talent. And that the bus
inesses owned by the signers of the letter would remove their advertising if things didn’t get reported on all the local athletic teams. . . . And all those signatures, black businessmen and white businessmen. Almost one hundred signatures. I think Pastor Moore had a hand in it — shoot, I believe he pulled it all together — but it is downright amazing all the same.

  Between that and the undefeated season, I’m seeing my brother return to himself. He works hard for school again, works hard for the farm, and talks to all of us. He and Cabbie are still close, but thank goodness they stopped hanging around with that Montgomery Watkins. He got arrested for breaking into houses last week. Stole from at least twenty people, by the looks of the stuff they found at his house. That could have been James, you know. It could have been us crying like Montgomery’s mama did when they took him away in handcuffs.

  There’s a dog trial coming. I can’t believe it — Shag may actually have a chance to show off what she knows! It was Frank Charles who brought us the news.

  “Holy cow!” he cried. “Did y’all see the bulletin out at the stockyard down on Main Street? A real dog trial, with a judge from Scotland. Any herding dog is allowed to enter. I bet Shag could beat ’em all.” He was bouncing, he was so excited.

  I looked at Mr. McKenna. “Could she? Is she ready?”

  “Better question is, are you ready?”

  I felt my shoulders sinking.

  He shook his head. “Relax, girlie. You are. Depending on the competition you face, you may even place. I don’t think you’ll win, but perhaps. Not many around here use herding signals from Scotland, as you’ve been trained. That might help. You may do quite well.”

  I couldn’t sleep last night, Miss Anderson. I’m saying commands in my head, working Shag this way and that in my dreams. Could it really happen?