Belle Teale

by Ann M. Martin

  We stop dead in our tracks, so that HRH Vanessa runs into us from behind. She snorts at me and goes on her way.

  I stare at the truck and Little Boss’s father.

  “What’s he doing here?” I say.

  “Must have come to pick up Little Boss,” Clarice answers.

  “Means he’s out of work again.” Which is not a good thing for Little Boss. It’s just him and his daddy, and Little Boss tries to steer clear of Big Boss. When Big Boss isn’t working, that’s much harder.

  Big Boss waves one arm out the window of the truck. “Hey!” he calls, and I realize Little Boss is a few yards in front of Clarice and me.

  Little Boss slows down, stiffens just a bit. He puts his hand in the air, though, and waves to Big Boss.

  Big Boss, he doesn’t see. His eyes have shifted slightly, caught sight of something, and narrowed. “You! You, boy!” he shouts. “You go back to where you belong.”

  I see Darryl then. Darryl and the two other colored kids. And the three grown-ups who have arrived to walk them home.

  “Your kind don’t belong here!” calls one of the parents from the crowd. She’s holding a bent sign in one fist, and shaking the other.

  And then, Big Boss, he opens the door of his truck, jumps down, and spits on Darryl. Darryl looks up, wide-eyed, at his mother. She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket, wipes Darryl’s face, puts the hankie back, and takes Darryl by the arm. She does not acknowledge Big Boss, just walks away from him with her arm around Darryl.

  I have not been breathing. I realize this as I take in a gulp of air. Then suddenly I am running, pulling Clarice along. We don’t stop until we are on our bus. We tear by Bernette, crash down on a seat, and hang out the window to see what’s going on.

  Big Boss, he’s back in his truck now, and Little Boss is on his way to the truck. I know he’s scared of his father, but he walks with this swagger. And as he nears the truck, he spits in the direction of Darryl and the others. They are walking fast away from school and the spit doesn’t reach them, but Little Boss grins anyway. Then he walks around the front of the truck and I can’t see him anymore.

  Clarice and me, we sort ourselves out and decide to sit near the back of the bus. We stand up and hurry down the aisle. As we pass HRH, she snorts at me and says, “Piggy, piggy.”

  I smile sweetly. “Why, thank you,” I reply.

  Finally the bus rolls off and I lean back in my seat. Clarice is looking sleepy. It has been a day.

  And I have some thinking to do about Ray Stomper, Jr. Like, do I really want to be his friend?

  I half expected the school bus to be noisy on the way home. Bernette, I think she expected it too. But we are so quiet that she looks concerned. She keeps glancing in the rearview mirror at us kids as she hauls the bus through Coker Creek and around our hills. Clarice is not the only one asleep. And the kids who are awake are just staring out the windows. I don’t know about them, but I am thinking about Darryl and Little Boss and Big Boss and the spitting and the parents. Today wasn’t near as bad as Little Rock, but it wasn’t what I expected either.

  The spitting is so horrible that I can’t think about it for too long. It seems to me that when a thought or a memory is especially awful, my brain rejects it after a while. I want to note this in my journal. I imagine going to my room later, writing in my journal, and starting my autobiography. Then I try to remember key points in my childhood. And then I wonder what Miss Casey will write about. Before I know it, my mind is a million miles away.

  Bernette drops us kids off in the reverse order in which she picked us up, so I do not get to see where HRH Vanessa lives. I am dying to know what her house and her parents and her little brother the prince look like. All very fancy I am sure.

  “Bye, Clarice,” I say as Bernette flings the steering wheel around at the top of our hill, bus gears grinding. “Watch The Edge of Night for me.”

  “Oh, I will.” Clarice will get home in the nick of time.

  As I walk by HRH, she snorts at me again. This time I reply, “Bye, little piggy.”

  HRH looks startled. All she can think to say is, “You’re the little piggy.”

  I stare at her for a moment. I am not surprised that HRH has decided to pick on me. But I am not going to let it be easy for her. “You need more practice,” I tell her finally.

  “At what?”

  “Insults. You got a ways to go.”

  I hurry down the steps and hop onto the road. “See you, Bernette,” I call. I run to our front porch, where Gran is sitting in the lawn chair, shelling peas. “Gran! Gran! Miss Casey is the best teacher in the world!” I exclaim.

  Gran takes both of my hands in hers. “I’m glad school is off to a good start, Adele,” she says.

  I almost say, “Adele?! Who are you calling Adele? That’s Mama’s name.” But something makes me stop. Instead I say, “Yeah, it’s off to a good start. I even like tonight’s homework. We each have to write our autobiography.”

  “Lord in heaven, what’s that?” asks Gran.

  “Our life story,” I say grandly. “We have to tell it in two pages. It’s so’s Miss Casey can get to know us better. And Miss Casey, she’s going to write her autobiography too. So’s we can get to know her better. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

  Gran allows as how she hasn’t. Then she says vaguely, “You better go round up Lyman now, honey.”

  Lyman is my mama’s brother. He’s been dead since before the thermometer broke and got stuck on forty.

  I am in my room with my journal. I am trying to sort out my thoughts about Gran, about Little Boss, about Darryl, and school. If I lie on my back across my bed in the wrong direction, with my legs hanging down over the side, I can look out the window at the sky. I try to imagine Gran’s God up there. Once in a picture book from the library I saw a drawing of God. He looked a little like Santa Claus — an old man with a long beard sitting on a throne in the clouds, surrounded by tiny angel-babies. I asked Mama about the picture and she said she didn’t think God was old or young or even a man. She said she thought God was more like a presence or a feeling. I said I had heard that God is love, and she wrinkled her nose and said, “Well, maybe,” and went back to her Salem cigarette.

  I wonder if God has all the answers. I could use some answers today.

  I sigh and get up to look at the clock in the kitchen. The Edge of Night is over. I am desperate to know what happened, but we don’t have a telephone, so I will have to wait until tomorrow when Clarice will fill me in on the bus. I put away my journal, open my notebook, and begin my autobiography.

  That night Mama is home again in time for dinner. I wish Mr. Titus would make up his mind about the double shifts, but I am glad to see Mama. I am about to tell her what went on in school when she says, “Guess what. I have good news.”

  I freeze. Mama’s good news is sometimes only good for Mama. Like the time her good news was that she had taken a job in Fort Hall and would only be home on weekends.

  Mama lifts her glass of Coke to her lips and I notice that she has painted her nails orange. “I,” she says, proud-like, “am going to be attending secretarial school.”

  “Really?” I cry.

  “Adele!” exclaims Gran. She sounds pleased, but then she adds, “How . . . ?”

  I know she means, “How can we afford it?”

  Mama hesitates just slightly, then fumbles for her Salems before remembering Gran’s feelings about smoking in the kitchen. “Well, I took out a tiny loan at the bank. Very tiny,” she says. “I’ll be able to pay it back in no time once I have a good secretarial job in Mechanicsville or somewheres. And also, I used a teeny bit of the school money.”

  There is silence at the table. The school money is so’s I can go to college one day. It is money that we have scrimped and saved for. Gran, she has sold our chickens’ eggs, and Mama, if she has had an extra dollar here or there . . . all that has gone into the jar of school money, and every time the jar gets full, we take the money
to the bank and put it in the school account. But, I think, college is a long ways away. I’m only ten now. Surely, if Mama has a good secretarial job she can pay the money back before I’m ready for college. Plus, school is school. Why should it matter whether it’s Mama or me who’s going?

  “Mama, I’m proud of you,” I tell her.

  “Thank you, precious.” Mama looks proud of herself, which is nice.

  Gran is still looking worried. “When are you going to go to school?” she wants to know. “How are you going to fit it in with the double shifts and all?”

  “Well, I talked to Mr. Titus, and now I am pretty sure I will only have to work days. School is at night. Three nights a week. If we need extra money, I can find something for the other nights. Bartending at the Lantern, maybe.”

  “They need somebody there again?” asks Gran at the same time I say, “When are you going to do your homework?”

  Mama shrugs. I can tell she has not thought her plan all the way through. We will just have to see what happens.

  Gran turns to me. “Belle Teal, how was school today?”

  I tell myself that Gran is asking this for Mama’s benefit, since Gran already knows darn well how school was today. On the other hand, I didn’t tell her anything about Darryl and the colored children, and maybe that is what she is asking about.

  I put my thoughts in order. I try to tell Gran and Mama everything that happened, from seeing the parents at school when I got off the bus, to Darryl’s arrival, to Big Boss and Little Boss and the spitting.

  “I was scared of those parents,” I say finally. “They sounded so angry.”

  “But not at you,” says Mama.

  “I know. They’re angry at Darryl and the others.”

  “I don’t know as they’re angry at them,” Mama says slowly, “so much as —”

  “They sound like they hate them,” I interrupt her.

  “Well . . .”

  “Why?”

  Mama sighs and fiddles around again for her cigarettes. “I suppose they think the colored children shouldn’t mix with their white children.”

  “They think they’re better than them just because they’re white,” I say, and feel heat rising to my face. I realize I’m not scared after all. I’m angry. I’m angry like those parents. Angry at the parents. I think of the spitting. I’m angry at Little Boss too.

  I am trying to settle down when Gran says, “Well, Belle Teal. The first day of school. How did it go?”

  I am dumbfounded. I stand up in a rush, sending my chair crashing into the wall behind me. “I have to write my stupid autobiography, that’s how it went,” I say, and stomp off.

  By bedtime I have finished the autobiography, and I know it isn’t stupid. It is two and half pages long, though, and I hope Miss Casey won’t mind. Some teachers, when they say something they really mean it. They won’t give an inch. I don’t know much about Miss Casey yet, but I have a feeling she won’t mind an extra half page. Besides, I have worked really hard, and I think what I have written is good. I am reading it over one more time when Mama comes into my room.

  “Did you wash your hair yet, precious?” she asks me.

  My hair is not wet and I have a feeling I look like a pigpen, so Mama’s question annoys me.

  “No,” I say.

  “Get up half an hour early tomorrow then, and you can do it in the morning. It’s bedtime now.”

  “Okay.”

  Suddenly I feel like a very little girl again. When Mama sits down on my bed I lean into her and she strokes my hair. “Precious,” she says, “my classes start next week. If I do get a job at the Lantern I won’t be home much at all. You and Gran will be on your own.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “So you take care of each other, okay? Can you do that?”

  Now Gran, she has always taken care of me. And of the house and the chickens and the garden. I wonder what it is Mama wants me to do for Gran, beyond what I already do, which is generally help out with things.

  “You want me to take on more chores?” I ask. I won’t mind doing that. Mama’s education is important.

  “No. Just help Gran with remembering . . . what to do.”

  “Mama, what’s wrong with Gran these days?” I move away from Mama so’s I can look at her face.

  “Oh, she’s just getting old, precious.”

  I think that Mama, who’s gazing across my room, is looking a little old herself.

  On the way to school the next morning, I make up my mind. I am going to say something to Little Boss about the spitting. Big Boss can be as mean as he wants, but if Little Boss is going to follow in his daddy’s footsteps, then he is going to have to deal with me.

  Clarice and me are sitting near the back of the bus again. Clarice has already filled me in on The Edge of Night and now she is looking ahead in our fifth-grade reader, sneaking a peek at the tall tales we will be studying later. In the front of the bus, in the very first seat, is HRH, the Supreme Goddess of Everything, wearing a different skirt-and-sweater set. This one is pink, and Lord, I hate to admit it, but it is the exact color of strawberry ice cream, and if we could ever afford a skirt-and-sweater set for me, that is probably the one I would want, although I am usually not one for pink.

  I myself am wearing the same outfit I had on yesterday. Gran, she looked so sorry when she said this, but she told me I would have to make do with the green shift until the next day when she could get around to letting out the hems on the two skirts from fourth grade that I can still wear. She said maybe on the weekend she and Mama and I can run over to Mechanicsville and look through the clothing rack at Woolworth’s. I am hoping that the Sears catalog will arrive in the meantime, since there is nothing I like less than trying on clothes. Anyway, what I really want is a new pair of boots, ones that won’t pinch my toes.

  HRH has turned around in her seat, and her eyes have glommed on to me. What is she staring at? I took a bath and washed my hair this morning, so I am as fine as I am going to get.

  I concentrate on what to say to Little Boss. He is a funny one. Threats don’t usually work with him. But once last year when I had had enough of him, I told him I wasn’t going to be his friend anymore, and right away he stopped teasing Clarice about her new glasses.

  The bus pulls up in front of Coker Creek Elementary, and I realize I am holding my breath, waiting to see what those parents are up to.

  “Look,” I say to Clarice as Bernette brings the bus to a stop. I am pointing to the walk in front of school, where only four parents are standing, and only one of them has a sign. I guess they have gotten the message that Darryl and the others are here to stay.

  “But look at that,” replies Clarice.

  I feel my stomach turn over when I see Big Boss sitting in his pickup by himself. Just sitting.

  “I wonder if Darryl is here yet.” I scan the kids who are walking into school, but I don’t see him.

  Clarice and me, we step off the bus and run by Big Boss’s truck as fast as we can. We have already reached the front doors of the school when we hear a commotion behind us. I dare to turn around and look. There’s Big Boss yelling and banging on the sides of the pickup with his bare hands.

  Darryl has arrived. He’s with his mother again, along with the other two colored kids and their mothers. Because of where Big Boss is parked, the six of them have to walk by his truck. Either that or walk across the school lawn, which is not allowed, and I do not think they are going to break any rules. So they look straight ahead and just keep walking.

  Big Boss starts swearing to beat the band. I think maybe he has had something to drink.

  “Where’s Little Boss?” Clarice whispers to me as we run inside.

  I shake my head.

  We reach the door with the yellow paper sun taped to it and hurry to our desks. I see Little Boss standing at the windows, looking out at the pickup truck, and his eyes, they are so confused. Maybe even a little sad. I almost forget about the speech I have planned for him. B
ut then I remember the spitting, and decide to go ahead with it. I grab his elbow and pull him to the back of the room.

  “Little Boss, if I ever see you spit at Darryl or anyone again —” I start to say.

  “Yeah?” Little Boss sticks out his jaw, defiant.

  “Then I’m not . . .” I almost can’t say it. “I won’t be your friend anymore. And I mean it.”

  “What are you, some kind of ni —” Little Boss stops himself.

  “I mean it,” I say again.

  “All right.” He jerks his elbow away and stalks across the room to Chas and Vernon.

  The parents with the picket signs give up pretty quickly and go home. Not long after, Big Boss leaves too. I am pleased. Now I can give my full attention to what is written on the blackboard. It is Miss Casey’s own personal autobiography.

  “I will read yours in private,” she tells us. “You may have shared things with me that you didn’t intend for the entire class to see. But I want you to get to know me, so I have copied my autobiography on the board for you to read. I’ll leave it there until the end of the day. Feel free to read it whenever you have a moment.”

  Reading Miss Casey’s autobiography, that is the highlight of my day, maybe even of my week. It answers a lot of questions that have been running through my brain. For instance, Miss Casey has an older brother and a younger sister, so she is a middle child. She allows as how that was not easy for her, and I could just swoon over this bare honesty. Miss Casey is twenty-six years old. She lives outside of Mechanicsville. She is not yet married and she does not have any children, although she points out that five days a week she has nineteen children. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States. She went to college in Boston, but she was born and raised in Minnesota. In my mind, that is the only disappointing part of her autobiography. That Minnesota gets to claim her. I wanted Miss Casey to be from around here, in our hills, so’s we could claim her. And I do wish Miss Casey had answered the more personal questions I’ve been wondering about, like who her friends are and what she eats for dinner, but I understand that she couldn’t cram in every little detail.