The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had

by Kristin Levine

  I threw stones for a long time, till my arm began to ache and I wasn’t mad no more. I liked being friends with Emma. And now I’d gone and ruined it over some stupid rabbits. But the Fourth hunt wasn’t stupid—not to me—so I wasn’t sure what I could’ve done different.

  I felt her come up and stand beside me. Saw her throw a couple of stones into the water until I finally turned to look at her.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re right,” Emma said quietly.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tell you what to do. Mama always said I’d have more friends if I weren’t so bossy.”

  I hadn’t expected her to apologize. Chip never did that. I threw a few more stones. “You ain’t so bad.”

  “It’s just . . . I had a pet rabbit up in Boston. Used to keep her in a cage under our front porch. I had to give her away when we moved down here.”

  “Oh.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of friends in Boston, Dit, even though there were tons of kids around. Sometimes, that little rabbit was the only one I could talk to.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I know people eat them down south. They served them at the potluck at our church. So I guess I can’t say there’s anything wrong with you trapping them.”

  I nodded in thanks, unsure what I was supposed to say. We threw a few more stones, then walked home without talking.

  But even though Emma had given me her blessing, I felt differently about rabbits after that. Thinking about her alone, in the skinny row house, talking to her pet rabbit, well, it made me feel kind of sad. So the next day I gathered up my snares. I’d still eat rabbit stew if my mama served it, but I’d have to find another way to earn money for the Fourth hunt.

  15

  FRIED CHICKEN FOR SUPPER

  BEFORE I KNEW IT, IT WAS THE FIRST OF September and me and Emma were walking through the aisles of Mrs. Pooley’s store, buying pens, paper and ink for school. Emma picked up a box of chalk and put it in her basket.

  “Why you buying chalk?” I asked.

  “Mama told me to get some for the teacher.”

  “Teacher don’t need your chalk,” I scoffed. “She’s got her own.”

  “Dit,” Emma sighed. “I’m not going to your school.”

  Course she wasn’t. There weren’t no Negras at my school. I knew that. I scuffed my shoes on the dusty floor. “Guess you’re going to the Wilson school.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “But Elbert ain’t learned nothing there. He can’t read no better than Pearl.”

  “Mama says I’ll have to make the best of it.” Emma lowered her voice when we noticed Big Foot was standing at the end of the aisle. “I don’t really have a choice,” she whispered.

  Now that I thought about it, that didn’t seem quite right.

  Big Foot walked down the aisle toward us, a beer in one hand. “Only one school around here for a nigger. And if you ask me, that’s one too many.”

  I looked up at him. His mouth was drawn up in disgust, as if he had just caught me picking my nose. Emma stared at the chalk in her basket.

  “Thought I told you, Dit,” he continued, “stay with your own kind.” He knocked me on the back of my head with the bottle and strolled over to the front counter, his dusty black boots clicking on the wooden floor.

  “You won’t want to be friends with me once school starts,” Emma said quietly.

  “Yes, I will.” Sure, Emma sometimes drove me crazy with her worrying ’bout rabbits and broken windows, but spending time with her was never boring. Course school was starting soon and Chip was coming back. That got me thinking. Would he look at me the way Big Foot just did? I wondered if Emma was right.

  Late that afternoon, me and Earl were helping Pa. The new corn seed had come and was doing pretty well, so now we were working on planting a late crop of turnips in Mama’s garden. Mama had a big vegetable garden: tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, squash, string beans, carrots, lettuce and a whole bunch of other green leafy things I didn’t much like to eat. Mama prided herself on her garden, although it seemed to me that it was us kids who did all the work. ’Cept for the canning. Mama canned so many things, we had vegetables all winter long. I wished she could be like the other mamas and run out sometime after Christmas.

  To plant the turnips, Pa would dig a little hole with the hoe, then I’d drop in three tiny seeds. Earl’s job was to cover them up, but he lagged a row or two behind me and Pa. The half-gallon sack of turnip seeds was heavy on my shoulder. “Pa?” I asked.

  “Yes, Earl, uh, Raymond, I mean Dit?” He didn’t look up.

  “Why does Emma gotta go to the Wilson school? It’s two miles away.”

  “Walking never hurt no one.” My pa was big on walking.

  “I know. But why don’t Negras and whites go to school together?”

  Pa shrugged. “Always been that way.” He continued digging, each hole exactly the same.

  “Don’t seem fair, though.” I dropped my three turnip seeds. “Specially when there’s a perfectly good school just down the road.”

  “When I was a boy,” Pa said, “the Negras ain’t had no school at all.”

  “But after working in the fields all summer, Buster’s got skin darker than Elbert,” I pointed out. “And he don’t go to the Wilson school.”

  “Skin burnt brown by the sun ain’t the same thing and you know it. Besides, Elbert’s light skinned ’cause his grandpa was a white man.”

  “His grandpa married a Negra?”

  Pa stopped digging and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He was upset. I thought he was gonna yell at me, but all he said was: “I already said too much. Let’s just concentrate on planting these turnips.”

  I carefully put three seeds into each hole. “I still don’t understand why Emma can’t go to school with me.”

  “Dit, just . . . gosh dang it!”

  I glanced up. Earl was three or four rows behind us now. Mama’s chickens were following me, eating the seeds as fast as I put them into the holes.

  Pa exploded, “I’d like to kill every one of those dang birds!”

  So I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could. It hit a chicken. The bird fell over dead. I picked up another rock, but Pa grabbed my arm. “Maybe you better not kill them all.”

  Pearl ran out then, her apron strings dragging on the ground. “The chickens got out! The chickens got out!”

  “Thank you, Pearl,” Pa said quietly. “We know.”

  That night, we had fried chicken for supper.

  16

  I CALL EMMA A LIAR

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FIRST DAY OF school, we all took a bath. Used the same tub we used for the laundry, and it took just as long to fill. For hours we boiled pots of water on the woodstove in the kitchen. We filled the tub twice, once for the boys and once for the girls. When we were all scrubbed clean, we laid out our clothes. Mama inspected them, making sure they were ironed and had no loose buttons. I had new pants, a new handkerchief and the old leather loafers from the barrel.

  For breakfast Mama made sausage and eggs and grits and biscuits and let us smear butter and honey all over them. Ollie, Ulman and Elman went to the high school. Raymond, me, Earl and Pearl walked to Mrs. Seay’s grammar school, two blocks away. Robert and Lois were too little for school, and they always cried on the first day ’cause they had to stay home with Mama.

  I threw my book satchel over my shoulder and took off, leaving Raymond to walk with the twins. I liked to get there early and throw rocks at the two chestnut trees right next to the schoolhouse. That’d bring the chestnuts crashing down around my head. Had quite a pile collected before Mrs. Seay rang the bell and we all shuffled inside.

  The schoolhouse was one room with wooden floors and a coal stove in the front for the winter. There were rows of two-person wooden desks and a big aisle down the middle of the room. Boys sat on the right and girls on the left; little kids were in the front and the older
ones in the back. At the front of the room was a chalkboard and the teacher’s desk.

  Mrs. Seay wore a blue silk dress and her pearl necklace. A matching blue hat perched like a bird on her head. The whole outfit didn’t seem too practical to me, since Mr. Summons usually ended up covered in chalk by the end of the day. But if the president of the United States stopped by and invited her to dinner, Mrs. Seay would be ready to go.

  We all stood in a line in front of her, waiting to register for the year. Just ahead of me was Buster. His pa had run off a long time ago, leaving his mama with seven kids to raise alone. Even though we were the same age, his mama was so poor Buster had to work all summer in the fields. Like I’d told Pa, he was now a shade or two darker than Elbert, though his blond hair was even paler than it’d been last time I’d seen him in June. His overalls were clean, but the knees were full of holes. He didn’t carry nothing, not even a pen.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs. Seay as she moved her ruler down her role book.

  Buster swallowed hard. “Morning, ma’am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Buster.”

  “What’s your real name, son?”

  “Buster.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Seay scribbled something on her list.

  Buster looked at the floor. “I ain’t got the tuition money yet. My mama don’t get paid till next week.”

  “Bring it next week, then.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Buster went and took a seat.

  I was next in line. I held out the tuition money and smiled as she looked me over.

  “You must be Harry Otis Sims,” said Mrs. Seay as she took my money. She had dimples when she smiled.

  “Yes, ma’am. But everybody calls me Dit.”

  “I hear you’ve got a good arm on you, Dit.”

  I gulped. “Uh, yes, ma’am.”

  She made another note in her book. “When you’re playing ball at recess, please try not to break any windows.” She slapped her palm with the ruler and her smile suddenly seemed a little forced. I felt my face flush and stared at my shoes.

  I was so intent on getting back to my desk, I didn’t see Mary’s big old foot sticking out in the aisle. I tripped, dropping all my supplies. My bottle of black ink smashed on the floor, spraying me with little black dots. Everyone laughed.

  I boiled with anger as I wiped up the mess with my new handkerchief. Had Emma told Mrs. Seay on me after she’d promised not to? My head started to pound. I wanted to hit someone. I might have too, ’cept Chip sat down next to me.

  Chip Davidson had been my best friend since third grade. He had just gotten back from spending the summer with his grandma in Selma. Me and Chip always shared a desk at school. Chip was handsome and popular, with golden brown hair and eyes as green as emeralds. (Least that was the way my sisters described him. Tell me, which one of them had ever seen an emerald? But I guess eyes as green as pond scum just don’t sound as nice.) There weren’t no freckles on Chip’s perfect nose, and his teeth were so white and straight, when he smiled, he fooled everyone into thinking he was a perfect angel.

  They were wrong, of course. Chip’s pa was the mayor of Moundville, which meant he could get away with stuff no one would put up with from anybody else. Once we accidentally set Dr. Griffith’s shed on fire and I expected to end up with a whipping, but Chip talked so pretty, Mayor Davidson offered to pay for the shed and the whole incident was forgotten.

  “Sure am glad to see you again, Dit,” said Chip. “It was boring as sin down in Selma. My mama’s so scared of the ‘big city,’ she barely let me out the front door.”

  “So what’d you do all day?” I asked, happy to think of something besides the little black stains on my new pants.

  “Played dominoes with my cousins.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, once my older cousin snuck me into the pool hall. But my grandma caught us ’fore we could finish even one game.”

  “Too bad.” Wasn’t sure I believed him about the pool hall. Chip’s been known to exaggerate.

  “So what about you, Dit?” asked Chip. “Heard a family of Negras moved in next door.”

  I shrugged. “It ain’t so bad.”

  “Course Dit don’t think it’s bad,” said Buster, sitting alone behind us. “He’s in love with their girl!”

  “No, I ain’t!”

  “My brother says you always running around with her,” Buster said.

  “No,” I lied.

  Chip grinned. “Dit’s got a girlfriend!”

  “Shut up.” I tried to ignore them, but they kept chanting, “Girlfriend, girlfriend.”

  For the first time ever, I was glad when the teacher stood up and made us start learning.

  After school, me and Chip walked home, talking about baseball and laughing. I didn’t even notice Emma till she ran right up to me. “Hi, Dit,” she said all out of breath. “You won’t believe what happened to me today.”

  Chip took a long look at Emma, and poked me in the ribs.

  “The teacher made a mistake in a long division problem,” Emma continued. “I pointed it out and instead of thanking me, she scolded me for speaking out of turn! I think you’re right, Dit. I don’t think I’m going to like that Wilson school.”

  I didn’t say nothing. Chip snickered and made kissing sounds. I jabbed him with my elbow and he shut up.

  Emma looked at Chip, then back at me. “Is something wrong?”

  “You told Mrs. Seay I threw stones at her house!” Soon as I said it, I felt like a fool. I hadn’t meant to just accuse her. All afternoon I’d been telling myself, talk to her softly, sometime when you’re alone. But then when she embarrassed me by being my friend in front of Chip, it just came bursting out.

  “You threw stones at Mrs. Seay’s house?” Chip asked.

  “I didn’t tell,” Emma stated firmly.

  I snorted. “Mrs. Seay said to me, ‘Be sure not to break no more windows.’ How else would she know?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Emma protested. “You know I promised not to.”

  “Your promise ain’t worth a dang!” Then I spit in the dirt.

  Emma’s face swelled up like an insect bite. I thought for sure she was gonna burst into tears, but she just picked up her skirt and ran off in the opposite direction.

  Me and Chip watched her go. “You threw stones at Mrs. Seay’s house?” he asked again.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “And the nigger girl knew about it?”

  I just kicked at the dirt. Chip knew I hung out with Elbert during the summer, and he had never called him a nigger. I wanted to tell him not to call Emma that, but the words just wouldn’t come out.

  “I gotta go home now,” I said.

  Chip nodded. He knew I had chores after school, and I knew he didn’t.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, and ran off.

  That evening as we were getting ready for bed, I told Raymond what had happened. He just shook his head. “Well, shoot, Dit, everyone knows you’ve got the best arm in town. And you did break Dr. Griffith’s window last year playing ball. Word gets around.”

  He was right. People had teased me for months about that. I had forgotten. “Maybe Emma didn’t tell,” said Raymond.

  I had a sinking feeling he was right.

  17

  FUN AND GAMES

  THE MORE I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, THE SURER I was that Emma hadn’t told. Who would she have blabbed my secret to? I didn’t think she had any other friends. But I didn’t do nothing about it, not even when I saw Emma on the way to school the next morning. I wanted to call out to her, but before I could think of what to say, she turned on her heel and ran away, fast as a spooked rabbit.

  I trudged into school and sat down next to Chip. When Mrs. Seay was busy up front helping the little kids with their reading, I turned to him and said, “I ain’t seeing that Negra girl no more.”

  “Course you ain’t,” said Chip, pretending to work on his arithmetic assign
ment. “Cause you got your eyes closed when you’re kissing her.”

  Behind us, Buster snorted and chuckled.

  “I’m serious, Chip.”

  “I know. Kissing is serious business.”

  Buster just laughed harder.

  I turned to look at Buster. “What’s so funny?”

  “You are,” said Buster.

  “Shut up!”

  Mrs. Seay looked up then. “There’s a lot of talking going on.” She looked around the room and caught my eye. “Dit, stand up, please.”

  I scrambled to my feet.

  “Is there something wrong?” Mrs. Seay asked.

  “No, ma’am.” I looked her straight in the eye, feeling my face burning up like a kettle left on a stove after it’s boiled dry.

  “Good. Please get back to your arithmetic.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I sat back down and looked at my math book. Chip had drawn little hearts over half the problems so I couldn’t read the numbers.

  “Chip!” I hissed.

  “Just tell Mrs. Seay you couldn’t do your work ’cause you were blinded by love.”

  “I ain’t in love!”

  “That’s what my brother said,” chimed in Buster. “Right before he got married.”

  They burst into laughter. Mrs. Seay turned around and glared but didn’t say nothing to them. I ground my teeth and pretended to concentrate on my work.

  At recess, things just got worse. Chip and Buster wanted to play marbles, so I drew a big circle in the dirt. We put our marbles in the middle, then took turns flicking our shooters into the circle. If your shooter pushes another marble out of the circle, you get to keep that marble and go again. The person who ends up with the most marbles wins.

  Everything was okay at first, till I won the first game. We ain’t supposed to gamble at school, but we had each bet a nickel. This meant I had won ten cents. Chip smiled and said, “Now you can buy something for your sweetie.”