“Can’t,” I said. I was at the kitchen table, looking through the Seventeen Mrs. Beasley had given us. I had to give it to Suralee later on—my turn was up.
“What do you mean, you cain’t?”
I didn’t look up. “I made plans with Suralee. We’re going to go somewhere. She’s coming to get me in half an hour.”
“Oh, I see. You just went right ahead, lay out your day, never mind checking with anyone else.”
I turned to look at her. “That’s right. And I can’t go to the store.”
“Well, you gon’ surprise yourself, because you will.”
“Suralee and I are entering a contest, and we need to collect box tops! We need the whole morning to do it!”
Peacie was quiet for a moment, wiping a plate. I knew she was reconsidering. Peacie liked sweepstakes, too. She herself would often enter, though never more than once. She put the plate in the cupboard, then said, “Did I say you going to the store this morning? No, I did not. You can collect box tops this morning, but you be back by noon. Or your behind meet up with a certain wooden spoon.”
“You can’t spank me anymore, Peacie,” I said. “I’m too old.”
“You too old, you say.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. If you so old, you don’t need no one beg you to get groceries that is mostly ate by you.”
“I said I’d go!”
“That’s what I said, too. We in agreement, ain’t that something. Now see if your mother done with that bedpan.”
I looked out the window on my way to the dining room. Trees moving in the wind. Wide blue sky. Miles of it. Birds soaring obliquely on an updraft.
My mother was done with the bedpan all right. “Get Peacie, honey,” she said. “Don’t you do this one.”
There were these small mercies.
“How are we going to pay for the envelopes and stamps?” I asked Suralee. We were walking home, carrying the amazing number of box tops we’d gotten. It seemed as though everybody liked Sweetnuf brand, and almost no one else was entering the sweepstakes. Suralee said it must not have been advertised in many magazines. In just under four hours, we’d collected 186 box tops—12 of which had come from one house alone.
“I’ll get some money from my mom,” Suralee said. “You can get it from your mom.”
“Right,” I said bitterly.
Suralee grabbed at a passing bumblebee. I jumped back, saying, “Don’t!”
“Relax,” she said, and smiled at me sideways, the way she sometimes did.
“One of these days you’re going to catch one and get stung,” I said. I hoped for it, actually. It seemed she deserved it. I didn’t wish her pain, only consequences.
“You need to come up with about ten dollars,” she said.
“Ten dollars!”
“We need good envelopes,” Suralee said. “Real thick ones that will just leap into someone’s hand.”
“What if we won first prize?” It hurt my chest to think about it.
“I know,” Suralee said.
We silenced ourselves—with our respective visions, I was sure. In mine, my mother’s caretakers were white registered nurses. They wore white uniforms and white nylons and caps. And they were there all the time, day and night. All night. I had my canopied bed, I had a wardrobe full of clothes, and I went to a fancy school. Not in Tupelo.
When Suralee and I got to my house, we saw Dell’s car pulled up in front. We looked at each other, understanding immediately what we needed to do. We tiptoed up onto the porch and looked in the front-room window. No sign of anyone. Then we heard voices coming from the backyard, so we crept alongside the house, behind the bushes, until we could see Dell sitting on the ground beside my mother. Peacie was a distance away, hanging sheets on the line. My mother was in her turquoise bathing suit, her back to us.
Suralee pointed toward the upstairs of the house. She meant that we should go into my bedroom, which was directly above my mother, so that we could hear their conversation better. “The screen door’s locked,” I whispered. Suralee rolled her eyes. She motioned for me to follow her, and we went back to the front-porch door.
“Now watch,” Suralee said. She pulled the screen door outward the short distance it would go, slid a box top into the small crack, and then quickly jerked it up, lifting the latch. We went inside and locked the door behind us, then raced up to my room.
We sat cross-legged, directly beneath my window. Suralee closed her eyes to hear better; I pressed my hand over my mouth and stared hard off to the side, my own way of concentrating. “No reason it won’t work,” Dell was saying. “Couldn’t be easier. After I bring Brooks back the measurements, he’ll finish building the platform today. I’ll give him a hand attaching it.”
“I can’t believe I’ll be able to go out, just like that,” my mother said. “And to a restaurant!”
“Are you nervous about it?” Dell asked, and I liked it, the ease with which he asked this rather personal question.
“I guess I am,” my mother said, laughing a little. “I know everyone will be gawking at me. But you know, I should go out once in a while.”
“’Course you should,” Dell said, then added, “Hell, I’ll take you somewhere. You want to go somewhere with me sometime?”
There was a thrilling pause. I looked over at Suralee, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. Then I heard my mother say, “Of course I want to.” And this I did not like. There was a tone I did not recognize in my mother’s voice. Things were all of a sudden moving too quickly for my taste. And too oddly. My mother, going out, with a man. With two!
Suralee stood up. “I gotta go.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Suralee pulled the box tops from the waistband of her shorts, made two even piles, and handed me one. “Mail these tomorrow,” she said. “Buy envelopes and stamps and mail them. Be sure you enter in your mother’s name—you’re not old enough to win.”
“I thought we were going to address them together!”
“No.”
“But you said—”
“I changed my mind. We have to do it separate. One of us might win, and…there can’t be any confusion!”
“…Okay.” My arm itched, but I wouldn’t scratch it until she left. It was bad enough she was standing above me, looking down at me.
“Remember, mail them tomorrow!”
“I will!” I watched her go. You could not reach her when she got like this. It had happened before that she would suddenly turn moody and pull away. She assigned herself certain privileges for being an actress in the making, and I believed she was entitled to them. Anyway, I wanted to listen to my mother and Dell without her. I wanted the space to feel whatever I felt, to not worry about what showed on my face. I waited for a minute, then went downstairs to lock the screen door again.
Back up in my room, I leaned on the windowsill and chanced a peek into the yard. Dell was looking up at my mother, and I feared he’d see me, so I quickly lowered myself back down to a sitting position. I could hear them well enough, and I’d seen what I wanted to: Dell’s handsome face, open and accepting, looking at my mother like he was just a man and she was just a woman. My mother had a widow’s peak, which gave her face its lovely heart shape, and she had a dimple in her chin. In strong sun, her black hair gave off blue highlights. She wore perfume; she had Peacie put it on her every day. Was he noticing all this? I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to or not. In my stomach was a knotted-up feeling. I could feel my heart beating in my ears.
“I don’t know where your daughter got to,” I heard Peacie say. “LaRue be here soon, and I told her she got to go the store with him.”
I bolted downstairs, raced out the front door, and walked around to the backyard. I’d need to get inside before anyone else so that I could lock the screen door again. If Dell wasn’t there, I’d have run right in, saying I had to pee. As it was, I greeted him casually, then walked slowly to the back door. “Hold u
p,” Peacie said. “I want you to take this laundry basket down the basement.”
I hesitated, then took the basket. Peacie followed me into the house. If she went into the living room, she’d see the open front door and start asking questions. I put the basket down just inside the back door and ran ahead of her. “Where you going?” she called after me. “I told you take this basket downstairs.”
“I think LaRue is here,” I said. “I heard a horn. I’m just going to tell him I’ll be right there.”
I ran to the screen door, pushed it open and looked outside, then came back in. “Nope,” I said. “It wasn’t him.” I put the latch in place, then walked past Peacie—with her crossed arms and narrowed eyes—to get the laundry basket.
“You hiding something,” Peacie said. “What you hiding?” She swatted at a fly buzzing around her. I didn’t answer. “Listen here,” she said. “After you take that laundry basket down, get the swatter and send that fly to glory. And when you go with LaRue, I want you mail them bills on the kitchen table. Count them, and that’s exactly how many I want you have in your hand ’fore you put them the box.”
Peacie did this every time I mailed something—told me that I should count the envelopes when I first picked them up and then again before I dropped them into the mailbox. If I did not have the right number, I was to bring them all home so she could see what I’d lost. I had never lost anything, but she always told me to count.
Today there were five envelopes: the electric bill, the phone bill, the rent, the Sears bill, and one more, a plain envelope with money being sent to the Red Cross. My mother never had money to spare but gave to a charity every month anyway. She put no return address on the envelope, and she sent cash—it was important to her to make her donations anonymously. I thought for her to give away money was insane, and I told her so on a regular basis. “It’s very little that I send,” she always answered. And then she always added, “You’ll grow into an understanding of why I do it.” I was sure I would not. For one thing, I didn’t want to understand. I wanted the money.
There was a hole in the floor of LaRue’s car. I liked riding with him for that reason, the sight of the black road rushing by below us, the safety of me sitting above, incapable of ever falling through that four-inch hole—but what a thrill to imagine it!
“How you doing this fine afternoon?” LaRue asked as we pulled away from the curb.
“Okay,” I said. He was wearing a new hat today, and I complimented him on it.
He thanked me, then said, “Now I’m gon’ show you something make your eyeballs spin in they socket.”
“What?”
Without taking his eyes from the road, LaRue took off his hat and showed me the inside. There was silk lining, all in rainbow colors. He snuck a look at me. “Ain’t that something?”
“Yes, but my eyeballs aren’t spinning.”
“I bet your heart be lifted up, though. Ain’t it?”
I smiled. “I guess so.”
“Well,” he said, putting his hat back on carefully, just right. “That’s even better.” His voice was so warm and slow, I liked him so much. I couldn’t imagine what he saw in Peacie. Today I decided to ask him.
“LaRue? How come you love Peacie?”
He laughed, then bent his head sideways to have a good look at me. Handsome, too, LaRue was. “What you mean? Don’t you love her, too?”
I said nothing, stared tactfully straight ahead.
“Well, I think she a beautiful woman. She got those big eyes, those cute little ears. Mostly she got a big heart. She a good woman.”
“Peacie?” I couldn’t help myself; it burst out of me like spurting liquid when you’ve just taken a drink and someone makes you laugh.
He laughed again. “I know you think she mean. But she ain’t in her heart, that’s where the difference lie. Some people act all nice on the outside and they got a heart like a dried-up prune. Peacie the other way around. And you know, she love you like her own child.”
Now it was my turn to laugh.
“You growin’ up fast, Diana. When you growed up some more, you understand.”
Somewhere inside me, I thought he was probably right. Nonetheless, I straightened in my seat, looking to reclaim some sense of outrage, to continue my move from fear of Peacie into a kind of equality with her. I had felt the budding of such independence just this morning, when I told her she could no longer spank me.
What came to me now, though, was a time I was eight years old and found a kitten in the backyard, on Christmas Day. It was a dirty little calico, shivering and mewing, sneezing a little, and so thin you could feel every bone. I brought it inside and asked my mother if I could keep it. No, she said immediately. I began to cry, saying the cat would die if we didn’t take it in. My mother said it wouldn’t; it would find another home or fend for itself, but we couldn’t have it, we couldn’t afford it. There would be vet bills and cat food, litter and a cat box—we couldn’t afford it. I put the cat back out and it ran away, which hurt me even more—had it not understood my intentions? Couldn’t it at least have hung around in the yard and let me keep it that way? I would have snuck scraps out. I would have brushed it every day. Callie, I would have called it, and I would have found blue ribbon for its neck.
The next morning Peacie had come into my bedroom with a small wicker basket holding a stuffed animal cat and her three kittens. “What’s this?” I’d asked, and she’d said, “Some foolishness somebody give me that I do not want. You can have it.” I stared at the basket but did not reach out for it. Peacie put it on my bed and walked out of the room. I never did thank her for it, and I knew full well that no one had given it to her—she’d bought it for me. I still had it, buried somewhere in my closet. I had never told my mother; I didn’t want Peacie to get the credit. Peacie had not told her, either; she didn’t want my mother to feel bad for not being able to buy me such things. When Peacie once caught me brushing the little kittens, I’d said I was getting them ready to give them away. “Best brush the rats’ nests out your own hair, you be late for school,” she’d said. I’d felt bad—I could see that she was hurt.
“Just kidding,” I’d said. “I’m keeping them.”
“I know that,” she’d said. “Fool.”
LaRue pulled into a parking place and pointed to a mailbox at the end of the block. “You go mail the bills,” he said. “I’ll start loading the cart—we got a lot of things to buy. I be in aisle one.”
I went to the mailbox and dutifully counted the letters. Five of five. Then, just as I was ready to drop them in, I pulled out the Red Cross envelope and held it up to the light. Ten dollars.
It was a sign. Of course I was meant to take it. I dropped the other envelopes into the mailbox and shoved the Red Cross envelope into my pants pocket. Later I would walk to town and buy envelopes and stamps. I would sit at the picnic table near the ball field and address every one.
LaRue and I filled a grocery cart high with supplies. Large jars of peanut butter and grape jelly, boxes of macaroni and egg noodles, cans of vegetables, big packages of baloney and American cheese. Detergent and dish soap and scouring pads and rubbing alcohol. Potato chips, but not Lay’s, we never got to have Lay’s, we always had to have the crummy kind that did not have enough salt or crunch. Two loaves of white bread, a dozen eggs. Cereal. Packages of hamburger and chicken wings. Garlic—my mother loved garlic bread with spaghetti. White sugar and brown sugar. Margarine and lard. I watched the cashier ring up the purchases, and so did LaRue—once he’d caught an error, and I don’t know who was more proud, me or him.
On the way home, I asked if he was taking a trip.
“Who told you that?” he asked.
“I don’t remember. But are you?”
His face grew serious. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Where to?”
He thought for a while, so long, in fact, that I repeated the question.
“Do you know what this summer is?” he asked finally.
“Nineteen sixty-four?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s 1964, and it’s Freedom Summer.”
“What do you mean?” I was impatient for him to tell me where he was going. It wouldn’t be for long, because he never left Peacie for long. But it might be to somewhere exciting. New Orleans, perhaps. The Negroes liked New Orleans. It was full of music and booze—they liked that.
“We got a lot of things going on this summer in Mississippi,” LaRue said. “We got a lot of people coming from up north, lot of ’em college students, trying to help the Negro vote.”
I thought of the white man I’d seen with Clovis in the drugstore. But they weren’t trying to vote. That was something else.
“They got CORE and NAACP and SNCC,” LaRue was saying. “A man get confused trying to remember what all those letters stand for. But don’t matter what the letters is, I know they trying to change things ’round here should of got changed long time ago. Long time ago. So I’m going back home to Meridian, help get folks registered. You remember my nephew, Li’l Bit? I’m gon’ work with him.”
I was disappointed. This was his trip? Even I’d been to Meridian, on a bus trip with my school choir to sing at another school. Nothing I saw there was exciting. Nothing.
“Li’l Bit got beat up last week. Got his jaw cracked, got a black eye, swelled plumb shut for a couple of days. And he ain’t see good before that! But he just keep on. I’m gon’ down walk beside him.”
“Why’d he get beat up?”
LaRue looked over at me, a rare sadness in his eyes. Then he turned back to the road. “You ever learn something in school, make you want to jump up?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. Mostly at school I only looked out the window.
“Well, I done had that happen,” he said. “I learn something make me want to jump up. Li’l Bit say the black man won the right to vote in 1868. Now, that’s a long time ago! But here in Mississippi, the Negro don’t hardly never vote.”
“Why not?” I asked. “You just go to the school and wait in line; they’ll help you.” I had seen this, at my own elementary school. Lines of people, waiting to vote.
We Are All Welcome Here Page 8