Promises to Keep

by Ann Tatlock

  As I carved lines in the ice cream with my tongue, I studied my neighbor out of the corner of my eye. She was a girl about my own age, with creamy brown skin and black hair pulled back tightly into two stiff braids. She wore a white blouse, a red pleated skirt, and black patent leather shoes, the toes of which shone brightly, reflecting the noonday sun. Clutched in one hand was the stub of a number 2 pencil; she was using it to scribble furiously in a spiral-bound notebook. I listened to the scratching sound of lead against paper and wondered at the words being poured out in small neat rows across the page.

  Finally she paused, lifted the pencil to her mouth, and captured the eraser in the snare of her teeth. She looked across the street, squinting in concentration. I couldn’t help staring, even though Mom said it was impolite to stare. I’d been pulled in her direction by the strength of her desire to capture something and put it into words. She must have felt my gaze, because she released the pencil from her clenched jaw and turned to look at me. Her eyes were deep dark pools, at once serene and glowing with life. In the few seconds we sat staring at each other, she seemed to be gathering her thoughts from distant places and bringing her mind back to the bench in front of the drugstore on Grand Avenue.

  I was trying to come up with an apology for staring, but before I could say anything at all, she whispered, “I know you.”

  I was hardly aware of the streams of melted ice cream dripping over the lip of the cone and down the rutted bank of my fingers. I had forgotten to grab a napkin from the canister on the counter inside.

  “You’re in Miss Fremont’s class, right?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Whose class are you in?”

  “Mrs. Oberlin’s.”

  “That’s right. Now I remember. I’ve seen you at school.”

  “Yeah. You’re new here.”

  “We moved here this summer. From Minnesota.”

  She lifted her chin in understanding. “What’s your name?”

  “Rosalind. But everyone calls me Roz.”

  “Roz what?”

  “What do you mean, Roz what?”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Anthony.”

  “Anthony’s your last name?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Rosalind Anthony.”

  I nodded.

  She smiled. “That’s a good name.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. It flows like a poem.”

  “It does?”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t you hear it?”

  I repeated my name in my head and tried to listen, but it didn’t sound like a poem to me. It just sounded familiar and plain. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Mara Nightingale.”

  “Nightingale?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like Florence Nightingale?”

  She looked away, shaking her head. “No, not like that. Florence Nightingale was a white woman.”

  “So?”

  “I’m colored.”

  “So?” I said again.

  She gave me a sharp look before asking, “You ever been friends with a Negro?”

  I pretended to think about that for a minute, though I knew right away what the answer was. Finally I shook my head.

  “See?” she said, sounding triumphant.

  “See what?”

  “It matters that I’m colored.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  She didn’t respond. She seemed to be trying to gauge whether or not I was telling her the truth.

  I asked, “You ever been friends with a white girl?”

  She dropped her eyes then, but her face relaxed. She looked away, bit her lip, shook her head.

  “Well then?”

  “Well then, what?” she said.

  “You want to be friends?”

  She smiled again. “All right. I guess so.” She glanced at my lap, back up at me. “You’ve got ice cream all over your shorts.”

  I looked at the tiny puddles of pink polka dots on my navy blue shorts. “You want some?” I asked, holding up the cone.

  She shook her head. “No.” Then she added, “Thanks.”

  “I better eat it fast.” I licked the ice cream, the cone, and my hand in an attempt to clean up the mess.

  Mara looked at the notebook in her lap, then closed it.

  “What were you writing?” I asked.

  “A poem.”

  “Can I hear it?”

  An emphatic shake of her black braids. “It’s not ready.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I’ll read you another one, a poem I didn’t write.”

  “All right,” I said with a shrug.

  Mara looked down at the yellow cover of the notebook, where she had written a poem in black ink. She paused just a moment before beginning to read in a clear, strong voice. “ ‘Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.’ ” She looked at me, as though to make sure I had caught the image of that broken-winged bird. I nodded while wiping at my chin with the back of my free hand. She went on, something about life becoming a frozen field of some sort, but I’d stopped paying much attention to the poem, so captivated was I by the passion in Mara’s voice and the look of intensity in her eye.

  When she finished she sighed deeply and raised the notebook to her chest, as though to hold the words close to her heart. “That was nice,” I said. “Who wrote it?”

  “Langston Hughes.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “No, I expect you wouldn’t. He was a Negro poet. He died not long ago. Last spring. May 22, actually.”

  I cocked my head. “Did you know him or something?”

  “No,” she whispered sadly.

  “Well, he wrote a nice poem,” I said again.

  “He wrote a lot of nice poems. Someday, I’m going to write poetry as good as his. I’m going to be a writer like him and like . . .”

  When she didn’t go on, I asked, “Like who?”

  She shrugged. “No one.” Her hand went to a locket the size of a dime that hung around her neck. She gave the locket a squeeze, then slipped it beneath her blouse.

  “I’ve got to go now,” she said. “Here come my mom and dad.”

  Approaching us from the direction of Woolworth’s was a large man and a slender slip of a woman. The woman carried a shoe box under her arm. Both were dressed neatly, in formal church clothes, though as they came closer I could see their garments were worn and faded, the man’s dress shirt frayed at the cuffs.

  “You ready to go home, baby?” the man said. His face was dark and wrinkled like a prune, while his hair was a woolly white cap. He walked with a certain stiffness in his joints, as though, like the Tin Man, he needed oiling. He’s old, I thought. Older than most of my friends’ fathers back home. Certainly older than Daddy.

  Mara jumped up from the bench, the notebook held tight in her crossed arms. “I’m ready, Daddy.”

  “Sorry to take so long,” the woman said. “Al wasn’t in today, and only that young assistant of his was there. He’s good at fixing shoes, but he’s slower than molasses going up a hill in January. He gave me new heels, though. Take a look.”

  She opened the shoe box and lifted out one brown pump. Though the heel was new, the shoe itself looked as though it had walked a thousand miles. I wondered why she didn’t just buy a new pair.

  “Looks nice, Mama,” Mara said.

  The woman smiled and, looking pleased, tucked the shoe back into the box. I couldn’t help but notice that she, like her husband, was older. Her hair was streaked with gray, and her hands were bony and gnarled. Fine lines sliced the skin at the corners of her eyes and dug tiny canals along her upper lip.

  “Don’t worry about taking a while, Mama,” Mara said. “I’ve been talking to Roz. I know her from school.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. She and her family just moved here from Minnesota.”

  “Well.” The woman smiled at me, a small
uncertain smile. “Welcome, then,” she said. “I hope you like Mills River.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said shyly. “I do.”

  The man nodded in my direction but didn’t speak.

  “Well, come on, Mara, let’s get home and get some lunch.” The woman put an arm around Mara’s shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  As my new friend was being led away, she hollered back to me, “I’ll see you in school, Roz.”

  I lifted a sticky hand in her direction and watched her go.

  chapter

  10

  Mara and I saw each other in school on Monday, but only from a distance. We didn’t actually speak until Friday, when an air raid drill sent everyone scrambling for the halls to take cover. All over the school, hundreds of kids dropped to their knees, touched their heads to the wall, and clasped their hands over their necks, fingers locked. We all went along with it because we had to, though we doubted being rolled into a ball would protect us from a nuclear bomb, especially if we suffered a direct hit on Mills River Elementary.

  Wally always claimed that a nuclear attack was a real possibility, seeing as how Russia was just itching to bomb America off the globe. Mom said they would do no such thing, since the Russians were every bit as civilized as we were. But whenever they argued about it, Wally brought up the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which he remembered and I didn’t. We might have all been blown sky-high right then, he’d say, and the Russian babushkas would have been dancing in the streets of Moscow.

  I figured if there were no chance of our Cold War enemy bombing us, then the teachers wouldn’t interrupt classes and make us line up in the hall like so many rows of sitting ducks. Surely they thought there was some merit to these drills. So whenever the air raid siren went off, I wondered whether all the old grandmothers in Moscow were putting on their dancing shoes.

  That’s what I was thinking about when the person in a fetal position next to me whispered my name. I peeked out from under my arm and saw one dark and roving eye peering out from under the arm of the person beside me.

  “Mara! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with your own class.”

  “When the siren went off, I ran down the hall to find you,” she whispered.

  “How come?”

  “I had to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Did I mean what?”

  “Shh! Quiet please.” It was Miss Fremont, my homeroom teacher. Her heels tapped on the linoleum-tiled floor as she slowly paced the hall. Mara and I retreated like turtles into our shells.

  After a moment, as the tapping of her heels grew distant, Mara said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to be friends?”

  “Sure I meant it.”

  “All right, then. Can you meet me tomorrow on the bench outside the drugstore?”

  “Well, yeah. What time?”

  “Around noon.”

  “Okay.”

  A scrap of paper traveled the distance between her head and mine, propelled by Mara’s index finger. “If you can’t make it, call me. Here’s my number.”

  I took the paper, clutched it in my fist. “Okay. But don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

  “If we don’t get blown up first.”

  “We won’t get blown up,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as her.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  Just then the all clear sounded, the wailing siren releasing us from our cramped positions and sending us back to our classrooms. I said good-bye to Mara, and we parted ways, having mercifully avoided the wrath of the Russians once more.

  That night the doorbell rang promptly at six o’clock. Wally answered it. “Yeah?”

  A well-dressed man stood on the porch, fedora in hand. He had a full-moon face, a sharply pointed nose and a swiftly receding chin. His dark hair, heavily greased, was parted on the side and combed flat against his head. Before he spoke, he pulled at the knot of his tie and thrust out his jaw. “I’m Tom Barrows,” he finally announced.

  Wally waited for more but was met with silence. I left the kitchen, where I was setting the table, and moved quietly out to the hall to get a better look.

  “What do you want?” Wally finally asked.

  The man tugged at his tie again, and a nervous fear flashed behind the lenses of his glasses. “I believe Mrs. Anthony is expecting me.”

  “She is?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “For what?”

  The man frowned, then sniffed. “We’re having dinner and – ”

  Before the stranger could finish, my brother turned and hollered up the stairs. “Mom!”

  “Yes, Wally?”

  “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Yes. Is he here?”

  Wally looked at Tom Barrows, then back up the stairs. “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure? Is someone at the door or not?”

  “Um, yeah. Some guy’s here. Says he’s looking for you.”

  “Well, invite him in, please, and tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Wally opened the door a little wider and waved toward the living room.

  The man stepped inside, eyed me briefly, nodded at Wally. “Thank you,” he said. Crablike, he moved sideways into the living room, where he stopped just beyond the threshold. He seemed not to want to make himself at home.

  Wally shut the door and crossed his arms. “You taking my mother out on a date or something?”

  The fingers grew taut on the rim of the fedora. “We’re having dinner and going to a movie.”

  “How do you know my mother?”

  “I . . . well, I bought a hat from her.”

  Wally actually snorted. “You bought a hat from her?”

  “Um, yes, but not for me, of course. For my mother. For her birthday. She liked it very much.”

  Mom came down the stairs then, wearing one of her nicer dresses and smelling of perfume. “Hello, Tom,” she said brightly.

  “Hello, Janis,” he said with a nod and a small, relieved smile. “You look lovely.”

  Wally took a step forward, as though to come between them. “Mom,” he said, “you didn’t ask me if you could go out tonight.”

  Mom looked startled. Then she gave a small laugh. “I’m sorry, Wally, but I didn’t know I needed your permission.”

  “Yeah, well, I – ”

  “I’ll be home after the movie, around eleven, I suppose. You don’t need to wait up for me.” A sweep of her eyes brought me into the conversation. “Now, the two of you mind Tillie and help her out with Valerie, will you?”

  She retrieved her fall jacket from the closet, kissed the top of my head, and exited the house with a man neither of us had ever seen before, not even at Tillie’s welcome home party.

  Wally and I cornered Tillie in the kitchen. “Did you know Mom was going out tonight?” Wally demanded.

  Tillie was kneading a batch of biscuit dough and didn’t let Wally’s question interrupt her work. “Of course. She put me in charge of you kids.”

  “So why didn’t she tell us she was going out?”

  “I don’t know, Wally.” Tillie kneaded and shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t want to have to fight with you about it.”

  “I wouldn’t have fought with her about it. I would have just told her not to go.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because the last thing we need around here is another man.”

  “Merciful heavens, Wally, she’s not marrying him. She’s just going to a movie with him.”

  “Yeah, and one thing leads to another, and next thing you know . . .” Wally slapped his hands together loudly. What that meant, I didn’t know.

  Tillie flattened the biscuit dough with her rolling pin. “Now, look, Wally. I know what you’re thinking and I know what you’re afraid of – ”

  �
�I’m not afraid of anything – ”

  “Not every man in the world is like your father.”

  Wally clamped his jaw shut and looked at Tillie. “He’s not my father,” he said.

  “Be that as it may,” Tillie countered, “your mother deserves some happiness. Wally, wait a minute. Where are you going?”

  “Out.” Wally flung open the kitchen door, slamming it shut behind him.

  I looked at Tillie, who looked at me. She shrugged, picked up the cookie cutter, and cut circles in the dough. “He’s going to have to let your mother live her own life,” she said quietly.

  “But, Tillie?”

  “Yes, Roz?”

  “Is he a nice man?”

  “Mr. Barrows? I don’t know him all that well, but he has a good reputation around town. He’s county clerk, you know. Has been for years. Works over there in the courthouse in Wheaton.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, he looks kind of . . . I don’t know. Boring, I guess.”

  “Maybe boring is exactly what your mother needs, after the last man she had.”

  She laughed lightly at that, but I didn’t think it was funny. The last man in Mom’s life was my father. Not Wally’s father but mine.

  I narrowed my eyes and wrinkled my nose. “But he’s old and ugly, and anyway, isn’t he married by now?”

  Tillie nodded. “He was once. Some years back.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The story I heard was that one of his deputies left a pile of divorce filings on his desk. Tom looked through them and found his own, and that was how his wife let him know she was leaving him.”

  “She left him?”

  “She did. Poor Tom didn’t contest the divorce. He signed the papers, and even before the ink was dry, his wife ran off to Montana with the deputy county clerk.”

  “The one who left the papers on the desk?”

  “One and the same.”

  I went back to setting the table. I couldn’t help wondering whether Tom Barrows sat on his porch steps crying when his wife left him. It almost made me feel sorry for the guy, because I was sure he must be lonely, but I was just as sure I didn’t want my mother to be the answer to his loneliness. One glance at him told me he’d never make her happy.