A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  I ask Meemaw where that new kitten is and she says probably hiding under the bed somewhere. So we tiptoe into Meemaw’s room and peek beneath the bed skirt. I see a shiny set of yellow eyes but can’t really make out the cat’s body. It’s awfully dark under there, and Meemaw says Moses is jet-black. I reach out my hand to see if he will come to it, but he backs away.

  “He’s shy,” says Meemaw. “He’ll probably come out later if we just leave him be.”

  “Maybe we should frost that cake,” I say.

  She says that’s a fine idea, but the cake layers are still a little warm so why don’t I take a bike ride while they cool down? I say, “Yes, ma’am,” and go outside where I left my bike on the front porch. The license plate, attached to the handlebars with pipe cleaners, looks good. Real good. “JLMTIK” glitters like the golden treasure it stands for. I walk the bike down the porch steps and then I get on it and start riding down the street. I don’t see anyone out in their yards until I get to the house at the end of the road, where Jefferson Place dead-ends into Ansley. There is a Negro family out front. Two women sit on folding chairs on the porch while the kids run all over. Off to the side a man wearing shorts and a Braves T-shirt is moving hot dogs around a hibachi grill.

  I wave when I ride past and the fat woman sitting on the porch lifts her hand to wave back. I turn around on Ansley so I can ride by them again, only it’s uphill, so I have to stand to pedal.

  “Hey!” I yell.

  “Hay’s for horses!” yells one of the girls from the yard. She is tall and thin and dark. She wears a bun on the very tippy top of her head with a bright pink ribbon tied around it.

  I try to slow down so someone will ask about my license tag, but it’s nearly impossible to do that when you are pedaling uphill. You’re pushing hard against gravity as it is; any less speed and you might start wobbling.

  I figure I ought to look for other new kids around the neighborhood to show my tag to, since no one but Pink Ribbon has paid any attention to me and all she did was tease. I ride past several houses, passing Meemaw’s little brick bungalow, but the front yards are deserted, which is strange considering it’s a perfect spring night, warm enough to sit outside but too cool for mosquitoes. But then I smell meat cooking and I realize most folks are probably having a real barbecue out back, not just cooking wieners on a hibachi grill. Meemaw said we might even grill up some hamburgers for our supper and put chili on them like they do at The Varsity.

  I decide to try the colored family once more. I turn around and head their way. Maybe they haven’t seen my license tag. Because if they did, wouldn’t they ask about it or at least say it’s nice looking? Smack in front of their house, I turn my handles toward them so they can see the glittery letters. But I turn too fast and run into the fence. Pink Ribbon says, “That fool cain’t ride within an inch of his life,” and everyone laughs, though the fat woman on the porch tells Pink Ribbon to quit acting ugly.

  “I can ride. I can ride real good. I just wanted y’all to see my license tag.”

  “Well, come on over here and show it to us, then,” says the fat woman. She wears a sleeveless top with little strings that tie at her shoulders. Her arms are the biggest I’ve ever seen. They are bigger even than Daddy’s thighs, and Daddy was a football player in high school.

  I hop off my bike and walk it up the path that cuts through the middle of their yard. Pink Ribbon comes over and studies the letters. She stands with her legs apart and her hands on her hips. “So? Jesus love me too,” she says. “I was baptized in holy waters when I was a baby.”

  “How’d you know that’s what it says?” I ask.

  She taps her finger against the side of her head. “Cause I got a big ol’ brain in here.”

  “Keisha, you stop showing off,” says the woman on the porch.

  “Ain’t showing off when it true,” she says.

  “I got a big ol’ hand that can knock some manners into you,” the woman says, but she’s settled so deep into her folding chair, it doesn’t look like she is going to get up to knock anything into anyone anytime soon.

  I know I should be happy that Keisha is saved, but I can’t help but be disappointed. I wanted to bring a heathen to Jesus. “You know the ABCs of salvation and all that?” I ask.

  “I’m in the third grade. You think I cain’t read?”

  “That’s not what I mean! I mean, A) accept that you are a sinner. B) believe that Christ died for your sins. C) confess that you need Christ Jesus.”

  “I like that, smart boy. I’m gonna tell it to my daddy next time he come visit. He a preacher at Emmanuel Missionary Church in Birmingham, Alabama.”

  “There she go telling lies again,” says one of the other boys.

  “You shut up. He too a preacher.”

  “Maybe so, but he ain’t visiting you.”

  Keisha pounces on the boy, knocking him to the ground and pounding on his arms and shoulders with her fists.

  The big woman stands up faster than you would have believed possible and charges over to Keisha, plucking her off the boy by the back of her shirt and then turning Keisha around to face her. “Girl, you better watch yourself! Cain’t go knocking down everyone that hurt your feelings. Now you better start acting like a lady, or I’m gonna whup you till you do. You hear?”

  “Yes,” mutters Keisha.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now you sit yourself on the porch with me and behave.”

  Keisha’s head is bent as she trudges over to the porch and sits down on its top step. I follow, sitting next to her.

  “You sure you’re saved?” I ask.

  Her eyes are wet. She looks away. I have the sudden urge to touch her, to pet her arm and tell her things are going to be okay. But I keep still. After a minute she turns and looks at me. “They just jealous cause I’m a prophet,” she whispers. “I got a secret church to show you. Don’t you tell no one. You stay in that red house three doors up?”

  “It’s my grandma’s house. It’s not where I live all the time.”

  “You gonna be there tomorrow morning?”

  I nod.

  “Good. I’ll meet you out front at six a.m. Don’t be late.”

  “I don’t think my meemaw gets up that early.”

  “Smart boy don’t know how to open the front door?”

  • • •

  After supper, the Billy Graham hour, a big slice of chocolate cake with milk, a bath, stories, songs, and prayers, I lie in bed, unable to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Keisha, so tall and lean with that bright pink ribbon in her hair. I wonder if she really is a prophet, like Elijah or John the Baptist. Except I don’t know of any girl prophets. Girls aren’t even allowed to be in the Royal Ambassadors. They have their own group, the GAs, which stands for “Girls in Action.” But they aren’t like the RAs at all. They don’t participate in the turkey shoot or build race cars or go on overnight camping trips or learn how to tie eight different kinds of knots or do any of those things. From what I can tell, mostly they just have bake sales and pray for the missionaries.

  But maybe it’s different if you are colored. Maybe colored people have women prophets. Meemaw says that there are more and more Negro families joining her church at Second Avenue Baptist and that the choir has started switching off each week between singing white hymns and colored ones. Meemaw says you would not believe how much livelier the music is during the weeks when they sing the colored hymns, that Negroes just have something whites do not when it comes to song. So maybe Keisha is a prophet. And if she is maybe God loves her especially, the way God loved Joseph especially, even though his brothers sold him into slavery. Maybe I could get Keisha to say a special prayer for me. Maybe I could ask her to pray to God that I might be more like the other boys. That I might find a way to make friends easier, and for people to like me more and not tease me so much.

  But then I think maybe God’s already heard my prayer. And maybe God is answering it. Maybe G
od sent Keisha to be my new best friend.

  • • •

  I wake in the morning to find Moses curled up in my arm. I stroke his soft fur with my finger and listen to him purr. And then I hear a tapping noise. I look up to see the shadow of a head through the window shade. I try to sit up slowly, not wanting to disturb the kitten, but as soon as I move Moses jumps off the bed. I walk over to the window and pull up the shade. Sure enough, there is Keisha, her hair in the same bun as the day before, only today there is a yellow ribbon wrapped around it. I hold up a finger to let her know I’ll be there in a minute; then I pull the shade back down. Slipping out of my pj’s, I change into the clothes I wore yesterday. This is not like me. I like my shirts to be so clean they still smell of laundry detergent. But I am in a hurry to get to Keisha before she knocks again and wakes up Meemaw. I tiptoe out of my room and down the hall, walking right past Meemaw’s bedroom. Her door is cracked open, and even from the hallway I can hear her snoring. I find a notepad in the kitchen and write: “Gone on a bike ride with Keisha from down the street.” Then I unlock the front door and let myself out.

  Keisha is waiting by the edge of the yard, and she has a bike with her, a bright yellow one that matches the ribbon in her hair. In fact, almost everything she is wearing is yellow, from her T-shirt to her Keds to her bobby socks. Only things not yellow are her white shorts and her black skin.

  “Morning, smart boy. You ready for church?”

  “You preaching?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  She hops on her bike and starts pedaling up Jefferson Place toward College Avenue, which is a busy street that I am not allowed to cross on my own. I have to pedal fast to keep up with her. I hope she will turn off somewhere, but no, we turn at College and start riding down it, toward Agnes Scott.

  “My daddy would tan my hide if he knew I was riding on College,” I say.

  “My daddy’s in Birmingham, so he cain’t do nothing to me,” Keisha says.

  “Yeah, but your mama would. I heard what she said yesterday.”

  “She ain’t my mama! She my auntie. And she cain’t beat me. I’d kill her if she tried.”

  We keep yelling back and forth as we pedal down the street.

  “Where we going?” I finally ask.

  “Smart boy, that is for me to know and for you to find out,” she says.

  We turn right on South Candler, passing Agnes Scott, then take a right at a little stump of a street. Keisha stops in front of a two-story farmhouse that needs to be painted. The lawn in front is scraggly and overgrown. Mama would never stand for such a lawn in our neighborhood. She would send Troy over with the mower, figuring that whoever lived there was either sick or an invalid, because otherwise why on earth would you let your front yard get into such sorry shape?

  Keisha hops off her bike, dropping it into the tall grass. I do the same thing, then follow her as she walks around to the back of the farmhouse. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She turns and glares at me. “Hush!” she says.

  She keeps walking, so I keep following, making our way down a stone path that leads to a set of tiered gardens. It is magical back here, garden after garden, the first filled with herbs like Mama grows, rosemary and lavender and mint and sage. Beyond that is a rose garden. There must be fifty rosebushes in it, all with different-colored blooms. We keep walking, down to the third tier, where there are tended beds like Daddy’s vegetable patch in our backyard.

  “Look at this,” Keisha says. She stands beside row upon row of little green plants with thick green leaves. She kneels beside one of them and pulls back a leaf. There are small red strawberries growing underneath. She picks one and hands it to me. I’ve never eaten a strawberry that tastes like this before. It’s so rich, with juice like honey. It’s nothing like the ones Mama buys at Kroger.

  I kneel beside Keisha, feel beneath another of the green plants, and find another berry, just as delicious as the first one I ate. “We allowed to do this?” I ask.

  “I ain’t never seen no one go in or out of that house,” she says. “And I ride my bike by here almost every single day when I go to my auntie’s. It’s a haunted garden. That or God put it here for us to find. Like the Garden of Eden.”

  She’s talking crazy, but I don’t care. Keisha is lively and she is brave and there is nothing more I want to do than to sit here with her looking for berries beneath the green leaves.

  “If we really were in Eden,” Keisha says, “we’d take off our clothes.”

  “Well, we’re not,” I say. “We’re in Decatur, Georgia.”

  “I’m gonna pretend,” she says, and she pulls off her shirt. Her chest is flat as mine.

  “You take off your clothes, too,” she says. “We pretending we Adam and Eve.”

  “Someone might see us.”

  “Who gonna see us?”

  “Let’s pick some of these berries and bring them back to my meemaw and we can eat them for breakfast with pound cake.”

  “Where we gonna put em?”

  “We could put them in your T-shirt.”

  “I ain’t riding back home with no shirt on.”

  “Fine. We’ll use mine. I’m not playing Adam and Eve, but I guess I don’t mind biking shirtless.”

  She shrugs and starts picking strawberries. I take my shirt off and place it down on the ground. We lay our strawberries on top of it. When it is full I tie the ends around it and make it into a little satchel, which Keisha carries as we leave the garden. Once again she motions for me to shush as we walk by the old farmhouse. There is a plastic basket on the handlebars of her bike. She puts the T-shirt full of strawberries into that. Then we hop back on and start riding home, the early-morning air slapping gently against my bare chest.

  • • •

  When we arrive home, Meemaw is out front, fertilizing her hydrangea bushes.

  “Well, I am sure happy to see you!” she says. “Though I really ought to switch you for running off like that.”

  Meemaw never switched me in my life.

  “We just went on a little ride,” I say.

  Keisha jumps off her bike and holds it steady while she gets the satchel of berries out of the basket. Then she lets the bike drop to the ground. “We brought you a present,” she says. “They wild strawberries.”

  “Wild strawberries?” Meemaw takes the satchel, opens it, and frowns. “These don’t look like no wild strawberries to me. You took them out of someone’s garden, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, before Keisha can make up another lie. “But it was a really big garden. They won’t even know these are missing.”

  “Lord have mercy, Bobby, you just cain’t do that! You hear me? Whoever grew those berries could have come running after you with a gun! People are protective of their crops, specially something hard to grow as a strawberry.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. I had started to feel bad about taking the berries during our ride home. Now I feel awful. I wonder if God will punish me for stealing.

  “And you too, young lady,” says Meemaw.

  “Yes, ma’am,” says Keisha, though she does not sound sorry.

  “All-right then. Why don’t y’all go inside, wash up, and let me fix you some breakfast. These strawberries would taste right perfect on a slice of pound cake, but I think that might be sending you two rascals the wrong message, so how about scrambled eggs and bacon instead?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “Miss Keisha, you want to run tell your aunt that you are over here?”

  “Aw, she won’t mind.”

  “Well, why don’t I just phone over there and make sure. You know your number?”

  Keisha nods.

  “And no more sneaking off, you hear? You and Bobby can play together all you want; you just make sure a grown-up knows. And Bobby, you go put on a shirt. Your daddy is coming to pick you up at nine. I don’t want him to think I’m turning you into a wild Indian.”

  Meemaw follows us inside. I go to
my bedroom to get a clean shirt. I can hear Meemaw speaking in gentle tones on the phone. She keeps saying, “No bother, no bother at all. Those two are getting on like gangbusters. Oh no, don’t you worry.”

  After Meemaw hangs up she fixes us our breakfast, then goes back outside to keep gardening, saying she already had a bowl of oatmeal. While we eat, Keisha and I play a game where we pretend that each sip we take of orange juice gives us the power to transform into anyone—or anything—we like. Keisha pretends she is a banana split from Dairy Queen, because that way she will always have its taste on her tongue because her tongue is part of the split. I pretend I am a bullhorn so everyone will listen to what I have to say.

  “You just need to speak up, smart boy,” says Keisha. “You kind of sort of whisper your words. Who gonna listen if you do that?”

  I shrug, then bend over and lick her arm. “Yum,” I say. “I got the part with strawberry syrup.”

  “You crazy,” she says, but she is smiling.

  There is a loud knocking on the door. Keisha’s auntie, probably. I hear Meemaw answering it. “Well, hey there, sweetheart! Didn’t expect to see you this morning, but I’m sure glad I get to! Where’s your daddy?”

  “In the car. Listening to the Braves game. Is Bobby ready?”

  It’s Hunter.

  “Should be. I’ve got a pound cake for y’all. Come on in the kitchen and I’ll get it for you. Bobby’s in there.”

  Hunter and Meemaw walk into the kitchen, where I stand by the sink, rinsing off my dish. Keisha is still at the table, finishing her juice.