Precious Bones

by Mika Ashley-Hollinger

  Monday morning I woke up to Mama’s soft voice. “Rise and shine, Bones, it’s the first day of school.”

  Mama dropped me off along the county road to wait for the bus. By the time I got on board, it was half full of freshly scrubbed kids smelling like Ivory soap. Little Man had our usual seat saved. Skeeter Reems looked like an upside-down toad sprawled out in the backseat, and next to him, looking like a frog, was his younger brother, Smokey. I looked around and noticed that the seat where Martha and Ruthie usually sat was empty. “I wonder where Martha and Ruthie are?” I said.

  “Miss Alvie must need ’em more than they need school.”

  “I wish my mama felt the same way.”

  “Now, looky, Bones, don’t you go scrappin’ for trouble. Especially with them Barracuda Boys.”

  “I ain’t gonna look for trouble.”

  “Well, you know things are gonna get said, you just walk away from it. You hear? Now, everything is gonna be all right with Mr. Nolay. Just like my mama says, it’s in the hands of the Lord.”

  “I understand that. I’m just not so sure how Nolay and the Lord are getting along these days.”

  “Don’t worry. Just have faith, Bones. And you’re gonna like your new teacher. I had her last year in fifth grade, too, and she’s right likable.”

  “Little Man,” I whispered, “do you still have Nolay’s knife that I found in the swamps?”

  “Course I do. But we don’t know that it’s Mr. Nolay’s,” Little Man whispered back.

  “Well, you were the one that said we should keep it a secret and not show it to anybody. You must have been having some kind of thoughts on who it belonged to.”

  “I will admit some strange thoughts came in my mind, but I got rid of ’em. That’s not the way I want to be thinking. I got no idea whose knife it is.”

  I had no answer to that. Sometimes Little Man could be confusing. And I wished I could do the same thing, just get rid of some of the thoughts swimming around in my head.

  Being that Micco was located over twenty-five miles from school, it was a long ride in. The old bus jarred us along the highway for over an hour until we finally arrived. The schoolyard was a bustle of old and new faces. The Barracuda Boys were already trolling the new arrivals, looking for the weak and defenseless.

  As we stepped off the bus, I watched Skeeter and Smokey Reems saunter over and join up with a group of boys. Little Man glanced at me and said, “You stay clear of them boys, you hear?”

  “I will. I’m not looking for any trouble.”

  Little Man shook his head and started to walk away. “I’ll see you back here after school.”

  I walked over to a small group of girls and joined in on their conversation. They all lived in town, so we didn’t get to see each other all summer. Everyone was talking at the same time about what they had done over the summer, and I realized that I was glad to see some of my classmates again. Maybe school wouldn’t be so awful after all.

  Then I looked over by the swing set and saw Betty Jean Davis and her select group of friends. I sure did hope that she wasn’t in my class again this year. That girl thought she was the best thing since sliced bread. But as far as I was concerned, she was just a spoiled brat and meaner than a stepped-on rattlesnake.

  The morning bell rang, and we all went to our new classrooms. There were only two classes for each grade, so most of my classmates and me had shared at least one or more grades.

  As I walked down the hall, I saw that one of the first-grade classroom doors was open. Sitting behind her huge desk was the Lizard Lady herself. Quick as lightning her eyes fastened on me like the fangs of a snake. Just the sight of her sent a cold chill down my spine. Not only because she was the meanest teacher I ever had, but because seeing her reminded me of one of the worst days of my life. My first day at school. It was four years ago, but it felt like just last week. The summer of 1945, Nolay had just returned home from the war, and we were once again a family. I watched as Mama worked feverishly on her old treadle sewing machine. Her little legs pumped up and down and her delicate fingers deftly slipped pieces of cloth under the needle. Mama made nearly all my cowboy shirts and nightclothes. All I had to do was show her a picture of it in the Sears Roebuck catalog. But now she was busy making me cute little dresses.

  That first day of school Mama dressed me up like I was a little plastic baby doll. I had on a light blue cotton dress with white flowers spilling down the front and the sorriest-looking shoes I had ever seen, some shiny white plastic things with bows on the front.

  She loaded me up in the truck and chattered the entire hour’s drive to school. “Bones, you look so nice, and you are going to have so much fun. You’ll meet lots of new friends, and you’ll learn to read and write. Now, remember, you wait outside your classroom door and Little Man will come and get you so you can ride the school bus home.”

  Melbourne School stood in the middle of town like three giant pink tombstones. It was home to kids from first grade right up to twelfth. I got out of the truck and Mama latched on to my hand and gently pulled me toward the first building. We entered a bright yellow hallway that smelled of fresh paint and bleach. The muddled sounds of laughter and children’s voices drifted out of several classrooms as we passed by. Mama stopped at a door with colored paper numbers plastered all over it and whispered, “This is Miss Harms’s room, and she’s going to be your teacher.”

  She opened the door and pulled me inside. The classroom was filled with the most kids I had ever seen in my life; there must have been twenty of them. All eyes turned in our direction. Seated behind a large desk at the front of the room was a woman so wrinkled and gray she resembled one of my pet lizards. She wore a black polka-dot dress. Her blue-gray hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it made her eyes slant and pop out from her head. She stuck a bony finger in our direction and said, “Come over here, let’s see who we have.”

  Mama began to push me to the front of the room, but my feet froze to the floor. She put her hand on my back and prodded me toward Miss Harms’s desk. “This is my little girl, and she is so excited about coming to school.”

  I looked up at Mama, scared to death that God was going to send down one of his lightning bolts and strike her dead for telling such a lie.

  Lizard Lady squinted her beady eyes in my direction. “And what is your name?”

  I dropped my head and whispered, “Bones.” A chorus of giggles rose from the classroom. One stern look from her lizard eyes and the room fell silent.

  “Bones, well now, that is a curious name for a little girl.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but it’s the only name I got.” I decided there and then that I would not reveal my true name to this lizard-faced woman.

  In one swift movement she stood up, placed a cold hand on my shoulder, propelled me toward an empty desk, and said in Mama’s direction, “We’ll be just fine.” Her voice sounded sweet as corn syrup, but the hand on my shoulder felt like a stream of ice water flowing down my back. I did not have a good feeling about this.

  I sat down, folded my arms across my chest, and stared at the wooden desktop. When the recess bell rang, Miss Harms made us stand in two lines, boys in one, girls in the other. As we marched out to the playground, I saw Little Man standing by the monkey bars. He walked up to me and asked, “How you doin’ so far?”

  “I hate school, I want to go home.”

  “It’s only your first day, it’ll get better. I gotta go now. The boys are starting up a baseball game.”

  “Can I play?”

  “I don’t think so.” Little Man lowered his voice. “Leastways, not in a dress.” He started to walk away, then turned back and pointed across the playground to Skeeter Reems, who was standing with a group of older boys. “You see Skeeter and them boys over yonder? They ain’t never up to no good. You stay clear of ’em, you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Little Man looked at me like he had something more to say. But he pressed his lips together
and slowly walked away.

  A small group of girls walked over and stood by me. One of them girls, in a frilly dress, stepped forward and spoke to me. Her voice sounded like a kitten mewing. “My name is Betty Jean Davis. And what’s yours again?”

  “Bones.”

  “Bones … what kind of name is that? Were you born in a graveyard?” The other girls held their hands to their mouths and giggled.

  “No, I wasn’t, but I could put you in one.”

  “Oh my, aren’t you just so tough. But let me tell you something, Bones. My daddy is a lawyer. He is the county prosecutor.” She squinted in my direction. “You do know what the county prosecutor is, don’t you?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I sure wasn’t gonna let her know that. I’d ask someone soon as I got a chance. I replied, “Course I know what that is! I’m not dumb, you know.”

  Betty Jean continued. “We own a swimming pool and we have one of the very first televisions, ever. And if you even so much as touch me, my daddy knows every policeman in town and he will have your mama and daddy arrested and put in jail.”

  Betty Jean placed her chubby hands on her waist, signaling for her butterfly girlfriends to stand beside her. They reminded me of butterflies ’cause they fluttered around her like she was some kind of special flower or something. Her eyes squinted nearly shut as she said, “I know who you are. You live out in the swamps with your half-breed daddy. You shouldn’t even be going to this school.” With that, she and her gang of friends giggled and walked away.

  The rest of my day did not get any better. Neither, for that matter, did the entire year of school. I ended up spending a huge amount of time standing in the corner or on my tiptoes with my nose stuck in a circle drawn on the blackboard. It was a happy occasion when I passed first grade and moved on to a different teacher.

  I shook my head as if waking from a nightmare. As I scurried past that room and all those memories, I could only hope that what Little Man said about my new teacher was true.

  When I entered the classroom, it was jumble of fresh-scrubbed bodies and new clothes. My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Watts, was as big as the side of a barn and had two front teeth like a rabbit’s. Her soft brown eyes sparkled with excitement as she walked around the classroom and handed each of her new students a home-baked cupcake.

  The first part of the morning was spent introducing ourselves and telling what we had done over the summer. There was one unfortunate event: Betty Jean Davis sat directly across from me. She was the first to stand up and tell about her family vacation to Atlanta, Georgia. When she finished, she turned her prissy face toward me and squeaked, “And I heard that some people went to jail over the summer.”

  As usual, Betty Jean’s little flock of friends, the butterfly girls, giggled at her every comment. From the first day I met her on the playground, I knew she was no butterfly. She was just a mean little wasp disguised as a butterfly. Anyone who was not included in her select group of friends had felt her sting.

  The first recess bell of the year rang, and we all shoved our way out to the playground. The Reems boys, along with a couple of other mean-spirited friends, had already surrounded a skinny little boy with protruding ears and thick glasses. It was a new year, and they were in search of fresh food. Of course, they had their return victims to feed on at leisure. There was Fat Polly, who sat alone in the lunchroom and was always the last to be picked for any game. I had had Polly in my classroom for two years and still didn’t know the color of her eyes. They were always cast down. There was Popeye Sullivan, who rode our school bus. Every morning he stood alone on the side of U.S. 1. Popeye’s right eye stuck out of its socket and stared, vacant and unseeing, like a dead mullet’s. There was Fish-Face Freddy, a chubby little boy who wore faded overalls and had no shoes. And Chicken Legs, a little girl in ragged dresses, her legs so skinny and covered with scars they looked like old gnawed chicken bones.

  As I walked past Betty Jean and her group of butterfly girls, I heard her talking to a small girl dressed in a clean, freshly ironed flour-sack dress. “My goodness, isn’t that a nice dress you’re wearing. I bet it looked better when it was full of flour.” The butterfly girls covered their mouths and giggled.

  The little girl hung her head in silent shame. I stepped up to her side and said, “Those are really nice roses on your dress. I think a friend of mine has one just like it.” Turning to Betty Jean, I said, “Nice dress you’re wearing, too.”

  She twirled around and made an elaborate little curtsy. “Why, thank you, Bones. This year my mama took me to Atlanta, Georgia, to buy school clothes. Sometimes I even go shopping in Miami.”

  “Well, isn’t that special, Betty Jean. I bet that dress looked better hanging on a rack.”

  Betty Jean’s eyes narrowed. The barbed tongue came out. “How’s the swamp, Bones? Eat any good possum soup lately?” The butterfly girls giggled and fluttered in closer.

  “No, Betty Jean, I don’t eat possum. They’re actually very nice little creatures. Nothing I would want to eat.”

  Sensing bigger prey close by, Skeeter and Smokey Reems, along with their no-account friends, left the little boy with protruding ears and sauntered over. They swaggered up to me and Skeeter said, “Well, hey, Bones, I heard your jailbird daddy went and killed a man and is going to prison for a long time.”

  Between the laughter and snickers I replied, “My daddy is not a jailbird. And you don’t know what happened.”

  One of the other boys piped up. “Well, I know what I read in the newspaper. And I know what I hear folks talking about.”

  I stepped forward and clenched my fists. “You better take them words back.”

  I felt a hand wrap firmly around my shoulder. A familiar voice said, “Hey, so what y’all talking about? Bird huntin’?”

  I turned and looked straight into the brown eyes of Little Man.

  Skeeter and Smokey Reems slowly backed up. None of them wanted to scrap with Little Man—he stood a full head above every one of them. Someone mumbled, “Yeah, bird huntin’.”

  Little Man put his hand on the back of my neck, turned me around, and pushed me in front of him.

  “Gol-durn it, Bones, I told you not to go scrappin’. Especially with them boys.”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do, just let ’em call my daddy names?”

  “It’s just names. I don’t want to be takin’ on all them boys.”

  “The two of us together could lick ’em.”

  “That ain’t what I want to do. Now you go on back to class. I’ll see you on the bus.”

  On the bus ride home I said quietly to Little Man, “I’m really scared for Nolay. I don’t know what to think anymore. You know that day we took the train to the movies and we saw Sheriff LeRoy at the place where Peckerhead got run over?”

  “Course I do. What of it?”

  “Well, the sheriff was holding a red handkerchief just like the one Nolay always wears when he’s fishing and airboatin’.”

  “That don’t mean nothing. There’s hundreds of red handkerchiefs around.”

  “But Nolay’s isn’t around. I’ve looked everywhere for it. It’s nowhere to be found. And the sheriff keeps saying they have evidence against Nolay. There’s been two murders close by us, and Nolay had run-ins with both those men.”

  “Bones, you gotta stop thinkin’ like that. That’s your daddy you’re talkin’ about.”

  “I know that, and it scares me, but my mind won’t stop thinking about it.”

  The next morning, when I walked into the classroom, a piece of paper with a cutout cartoon pasted on top was lying on my desk. The cartoon was of a blackbird, and printed on top was jailbird. The next morning there was a picture of a chair with the words electric written over it. But the worst one was on the third day. It was a picture of a piece of bacon.

  Betty Jean pranced into the room and stopped by my desk. “That’s what they do to murderers in Florida, they send them to the electric chair. And they
fry just like a piece of bacon. I should know. You do remember my daddy is the prosecuting attorney for Brevard County? And that is just where he is going to send your daddy.”

  “Shut your mouth, Betty Jean, before I punch you in your fat nose!”

  “If you do that, you’ll be joining your daddy in jail.”

  That afternoon as we rode home on the bus, I showed the pictures to Little Man. I had been too ashamed to show him before. He looked at them and said, “Where did these come from?”

  “Who else but Betty Jean Davis? Every morning there’s one sittin’ on top of my desk. When I look at it, her and her friends all start giggling.” I turned away from Little Man, blinking back my tears. Swallowing hard, I said, “She is so mean, I nearly hate her. And all she does is talk about how she has a television and a swimming pool, and how her daddy is so important. If you ain’t part of her special group, she treats you like a clod of dirt. I swear, I just want to poke her right in her big nose.”

  “You don’t want to be doing that, Bones; it’ll only make things worse.”

  “Well, I want to do something. I’d like to put a snake down her dress. Not a bad snake, just one that would scare her half to death.”

  Little Man turned to me and smiled. “Now, that there gives me an idea. Maybe you should give Betty Jean a little present.”

  “A present? What kind of present?”

  “You got any leftover wrapping paper and ribbon?”

  “I think so. Mama usually keeps some in her cedar chest.”

  “You bring some tomorrow, and I’ll bring you a little gift for Betty Jean.”

  “What kind of present are you thinking of?”

  Little Man winked. “I got one that lives by the front door of the chicken coop.”

  Friday morning on the bus, Little Man handed me a small box. “You got the wrapping paper and ribbon?”

  “Yep, right here.”

  “Make sure nobody sees you.” Then, in a whisper, he said, “This here is what I want you to do.”

  I followed Little Man’s instructions to the letter. Like Nolay had said, Little Man was one bright boy.