Seeing Red

by Kathryn Erskine

  All eyes were on me again. “Well…because…who cares?”

  There were a few gasps from around the room as everyone looked back at Miss Miller. I thought maybe I’d gone too far, so I tried to make up for it a little. “I mean, it’s all happened already and there’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s kind of a waste of time.” There were more gasps, and I realized that I’d probably made things worse, so I added, “Isn’t it?”

  Miss Miller sucked in her lips till they were all gone. She stared at me and there was no happiness in her eyes any more. I slid down in my seat some more as she started pacing back and forth in front of the room. All you could hear were her high heels clicking on the linoleum.

  Finally she stopped. “Red, let me ask you something.”

  I swallowed.

  “Have you ever made a mistake?”

  I wondered if she’d heard about the Thomas incident. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you ever learned from any of those mistakes?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you ever heard the expression ‘history repeats itself’?”

  “I don’t think so.” I had no idea where she was going with this.

  “If we don’t learn what has happened in the past, do you think we might make the same mistakes again?”

  I hated those kinds of questions. I never knew if the teacher wanted a yes or a no. I tried to hedge my bets. “If you say so.”

  There were a couple of gasps and oohs, and Miss Miller stared at me, her eyes narrowing.

  I guess it sounded like sassing, but I hadn’t meant it that way. She decided I could stay in at recess and help the janitor “pack up some history” in the boxes he was shipping to the county office building and maybe I could “learn a little something”. As if that weren’t enough, she made me switch desks with Emma Jean so I was at the head of the middle row, right in front of Miss Miller’s desk. I don’t know which one of us was more upset, me or Emma Jean, who had claimed a front centre seat ever since first grade.

  It was dark in the school basement, and it smelled of bleach. The janitor got up from a desk in the corner where he was eating a sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Can I help you?”

  “Miss Miller says I need to help clean up.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I see.” He handed me a broom. “What else did Miss Miller say?”

  I looked around the basement. “She says I might learn a little history of this place.”

  “Well, I’ve been coming here for close to forty years.” He picked up a box and stacked it on top of another one.

  “You mean, you went to school here?”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t go to this school. I went down the road a piece.”

  There was a shack overgrown with vines that folks called the “rows in wall” school, which always made me think of rows of desks attached to the walls, where black kids used to go. It was falling apart now. “The rows-in-wall school?”

  “It’s Ros-en-wald. He’s the man who put up the seed money to build the school and we matched it.”

  “Why’d he make you build your own school?”

  “He didn’t make us. It was a gift. Got a lot better schools that way than what the county would give us.”

  “But you wouldn’t have had to pay for it.”

  “Oh, we were paying for it—” He gave his head a little shake. “Where are my manners? I’m Philip Walter.” He held his hand out and gave a little bow.

  I shook his hand. “I’m Red Porter, sir.” Daddy said we had to say sir or ma’am to grown-ups, even if they were black.

  Mr Walter smiled. “I know.” His smile faded as he said, “I was surprised you were involved in that…event with young Thomas. I thought you boys were friends.”

  I felt my face going red. “We were – we are.” I looked at my feet. “We were.”

  “You don’t want to be hanging out with those boys, son.”

  “I know. I— It was really dumb.” I couldn’t look at him because what if he knew the part about me burning the cross? Thomas hadn’t told the sheriff, but maybe he’d told others.

  “I heard you got roughed up by those boys pretty good yourself, so I suspect you learned something.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

  “Well, we all make stupid mistakes, especially when we’re young. As a matter of fact,” he said, his voice sounding less serious, “I seem to recall your daddy being in the same position you are right now.”

  I looked up. “You knew my daddy?”

  “I told you, I been here a long time.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Got in a fight with another boy.”

  I thought about that for maybe two seconds. “Mr Dunlop?”

  He chuckled. “Yup, Baby Ray.”

  “Baby Ray? Is that what they called him?”

  “Now don’t you go repeating that.”

  “I won’t. So was he a crybaby?”

  Mr Walter’s eyes widened. “He was a bully, but he turned into a crybaby as soon as any teacher was around. I think we were all ready for that boy to be laid out. It was hard for me to have to carry out any punishment on your daddy.”

  “What’d you make him do?”

  He tilted his head towards the corner where his desk was. “Sat him right over there and made him keep me company while we ate MoonPies.”

  I guess he saw the look on my face.

  “Well, my wife had packed me two and I didn’t see why I should have to suffer through both of them.” He winked at me.

  The rest of the time I was sweeping and then helping Mr Walter stack boxes of files, I kept looking at the corner, picturing Daddy at my age eating a MoonPie while he laughed with Mr Walter. It made me want to laugh, too, except that I couldn’t help thinking of the difference between us. He’d gotten in trouble for fighting a Dunlop. I’d gone off with a Dunlop and acted as nasty as they were.

  All I could picture of the grown-up Daddy was him staring at me and shaking his head, and it hurt to see the disappointment in his eyes.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Why Don’t You Paint Miss Georgia’s?

  I got off the bus and walked to the house but stopped before opening the kitchen screen door. Rosie was wearing one of Mama’s skirts, and Mama was kneeling on the floor next to her, a couple of pins held between her lips, pinning up the hem to make it much shorter.

  “I hope you don’t mind cutting off the bottom and making this into a miniskirt, Mrs Porter.”

  Mama took the pins out of her mouth and put them in the skirt. “I’m just glad you’ve grown enough that you can use these,” she said, nodding at several bags of clothes on the floor.

  “Hey, Red,” Rosie said, finally noticing me. “How do you like Miss Miller? Isn’t she cool?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Mama, smiling up at Rosie, “you had her last year.”

  “Just for a little while, as a student teacher, but I loved her,” Rosie said.

  “Well, I sure don’t,” I said, opening the screen door and banging my books down on the kitchen table.

  They both flinched.

  “Why not?” Rosie asked.

  “For one thing, she says we have to watch the news every night and discuss it the next day, and she’s giving us homework already!”

  “Imagine that,” Mama said with a hint of a smile, “a teacher giving homework. What will they think of next?”

  Rosie giggled and the two of them looked at each other, then looked at me, like I was some dumb little kid. I didn’t like it one bit, not them sharing smiles together and not Rosie looking at me like I was a little kid.

  I slammed the door behind me and went to the What-U-Want to find Beau.

  He stood up from stacking bags of kitty litter. “Hey, Red! How was your first day of school?”

  “Miss Miller hates me just because I don’t like history.”

  “Aw, I’m sure she don’t hate you. I bet she’s just trying get y’all to learn a lo
t. You’re real lucky, Red, ’cause you’re smart and you can learn.”

  Beau didn’t understand. Like Mama saying how lucky I was to have a brother. I could see why Thomas said that, what with being an only child and all, plus he didn’t have to live with J. Mama should know better.

  I propped my elbow on the edge of the counter and leaned on it, thinking about Thomas. “I just wish it were summer.”

  Beau grinned. “Boys always like summer better than school.” He lost his grin and looked at me carefully. “Are you ever going to hang out with Thomas again?”

  My elbow fell off the counter because it was weird how Beau was thinking of Thomas at the same time I was. “I don’t know,” I said, as I backed out of the What-U-Want.

  I decided to go over to Miss Georgia’s. I saw her sitting on her glider chair looking at something on her lap. When I noticed the box of tissues next to her I knew what it was. A photo album. She always got sad when she looked at the photos of her family and friends because most of the people were dead and the others hardly came to visit. When I got to her porch I saw that she also had the black album that was full of old news clippings, the one she never let me look at. I’d only seen it once when I was little and she snatched it away from me, all upset.

  I guess I startled her when I said, “Hey, Miss Georgia,” because she jerked and the black album fell off her lap. I picked it up and she took it from me quickly, sandwiching it between two of her flowered family albums. After she blew her nose and wiped her eyes, she launched right back into talking about the Thomas incident even though I thought we’d already talked it through. I sat hunched on her porch feeling small.

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t run for help,” she said, leaning so far forward on her glider that I thought she might fall on top of me. “I know you can run fast.”

  “I didn’t know it was going to get so bad. And when they got the rope, that’s when their big goon sat on top of me.” I shifted against the porch post and rubbed my shoulder that was still a little sore from having my arm pulled out of its socket.

  She shook her head. “Next time, you get on out of there and get help.”

  “Next time?” I snorted. “There’s not going to be any next time.”

  “Not with Darrell Dunlop and his gang, maybe, but there’ll always be a next time.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling like I might throw up.

  “Oh, it may not be like the other night. But you’ll see more ugliness, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I’m not going to turn and run every time I do. That’s not what a Porter does.”

  Miss Georgia opened her mouth to say something but closed it again, working the sour words around like she’d just had a big swallow of milk that’d gone bad. I knew what the words were, though. Oh, and hangin’ out with Darrell Dunlop’s gang is what a Porter does?

  We were quiet for a while as I let the words she didn’t say sink in. I sure hoped Thomas hadn’t told her about the cross burning. Part of me wanted to apologize for it, but part of me wanted to pretend it never happened. I stared out at her Rambler that was back in front of her place, now that Beau had fixed it, just like Daddy would’ve wanted.

  “I bet Daddy could’ve talked them out of it,” I said softly. “He would’ve stopped them.”

  “Maybe,” Miss Georgia said with a sigh. “But you ain’t your daddy, not yet. I know you tryin’. He’d be proud of you for that.”

  I didn’t think Daddy would be proud of me at all. I bet he would’ve asked why I’d gone to a Dunlop with a problem in the first place. And I didn’t have a real good answer for that.

  “Well,” said Miss Georgia, shakily pushing herself up from her glider with one hand and leaning on her cane with the other, “I need to make me a tuna fish sandwich for supper. Why don’t you come on in and tell me about school.”

  She put some bread and honey out for me because she knew I didn’t like tuna fish.

  “Thanks, Miss Georgia, but I don’t feel like eating.”

  She tapped the tin sign above her stove that used to hang in her bakery in Atlanta: GEORGIA’S BEST: YOU WON’T LEAVE HUNGRY! “You need to have somethin’ in front of you if you’re sittin’ at my table.”

  All I wanted was to complain about Miss Miller, but Miss Georgia didn’t want to listen.

  “Did you hear that Thomas is going to Gonzaga?” she asked.

  “Where’s that?”

  “It a real good high school in Washington, DC, a real good school. It’s run by Jesuits, the kind of religious folk who think education should be open to everyone. That boy is going to go far, uh-huh, he sure is.” She took a sip of iced tea. “So how about you, Red? What are you doing with yourself at school?”

  When I told her about being sent to the janitor, she raised one eyebrow at me and shook her head. “Don’t be sassin’ your teacher like that.”

  “I wasn’t, or I didn’t mean to, anyway. The janitor was real nice, though.”

  “That’s young Philip, right?”

  “Young? Miss Georgia, he’s old!”

  “To you, maybe. To me he’ll always be young Philip.” She took a bite of her tuna fish sandwich.

  “Did you go to that Rosenwald school with him?”

  She laughed so hard she started choking on her sandwich. I got up and filled up her iced tea glass, adding three spoons of sugar the way she liked it.

  She wiped her mouth on her napkin. “That was way after my time, Red! My son and grandkids weren’t around to use it, neither.” She took a sip of tea. “But I gave money to help build that school, yes, I did.”

  “How come?”

  “If you’d seen where those children were tryin’ to learn, you’d a given money, too.”

  “Shoot, it’s just school. Nobody wants to be there, anyway.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “James, you see what I have to put up with down here? Now nobody wants to go to school.”

  “Well, I don’t want to.”

  “Then what you gonna do with your life?” She coughed and picked up her glass again.

  I looked around to give myself time to think of something to say. My eyes settled on the three pictures above her fireplace: Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., and that lawyer from Richmond. I pointed at the photo of Martin Luther King Jr. “He was a minister, and Bobby Benson said he never even got a high school diploma.” I figured she couldn’t argue her way out of that one.

  She put her glass down with a slap. “Red, you best stay in school because right now you showin’ your ignorance. It’s true that he didn’t get a regular high school diploma, but you know why?” She looked up at Martin Luther King Jr.’s picture like she was talking to him. “He skipped two years of high school and went on to college at fifteen years old. After he got his college degree he went on to divinity school and got a degree there.” She glared at me. “What do you say to that?”

  I sank down in my chair. What could I say to that? “Oh?”

  She stared at me, but all the anger seemed to drain out of her and she laughed. “Oh? That’s all you got to say?”

  I nodded and smiled, kind of embarrassed. “Oh.”

  Pretty soon she was saying “oh” in all kinds of funny voices, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Hey, guess what else, Miss Georgia? I know what Mr Dunlop’s nickname was in school – Baby Ray.”

  She raised her eyebrow at me again.

  “I know, I’m not going to say it in public, but I figured you already knew it.”

  “You right about that. I heard it from your daddy, matter of fact. He and Ray never got along.”

  I told her all about the fight Mr Walter told me about, including the MoonPies afterwards. “Do you know about any other fights they had?”

  “I’ll tell you one story from when they were a little older than you are.” She sat back in her chair. “Your grandmother used to send your daddy up here to help me out, pullin’ weeds in the summer, rakin’ leaves in the fall, shovellin’ sn
ow in the winter. I didn’t have no money to pay him but I baked him cookies.”

  Just the word cookies made me realize all of a sudden that I was hungry, and I tore into my bread and honey while I listened.

  “Well, I didn’t know this, but your daddy acted like he was gettin’ somethin’ real good, like money, which made Ray all jealous. So when my house needed paintin’, your daddy said he’d allow Ray to do it and Ray worked real hard. When he was done and came to the door, I gave him a whole bag of cookies. His face fell down to the floor. I said, ‘What’s wrong, Ray? You don’t like chocolate chip?’ His face went all red. ‘I can make you some oatmeal raisin if you like them better.’ But he was fit to be tied. He ran off so fast he didn’t even take the cookies. I heard later that he and your daddy got into a real big fist fight over it. After that your daddy would tease him, sayin’, ‘Why don’t you go paint Miss Georgia’s?’ ”

  I laughed, and Miss Georgia was smiling but she shook her head. “Yeah, it’s a little bit funny but a little bit sad, too. You see, Ray always felt like he was bein’ made fun of. Ray’s spent his whole life fightin’ back, even when no one’s fightin’ him.”

  “You’re not blaming Daddy for making him mean, are you?”

  “No. Ray was never a nice boy. But his daddy was never kind to him, either, and I think that’s what turned him from the beginnin’. Ray never learned kindness. Ray’s grandaddy beat his daddy, his daddy beat him—” She sighed.

  “And now he beats Darrell,” I finished for her.

  “They’re a long line of angry, fightin’ folks. That Ray is still fightin’.”

  “I sure wish they didn’t live right next to us.”

  “You and Rosie are good friends.”

  I shrugged. “The rest of them I could do without. I hate Mr Dunlop, and Mrs Dunlop stays in her bed all the time—”

  “Now, Red, she’s sickly.”

  “Yeah, sickly of Mr Dunlop.”

  She gave a little snort of laughter but tried to make her face serious. “Some women ain’t as strong as your mama.”

  “Mama? She’s not—”

  A phone rang, and I about jumped out of my chair because I didn’t think Miss Georgia had a phone.