Glory Be (3 page)

I
hid behind a giant oak tree and looked into the library window, then over toward Fireman’s Park. Jesslyn was nowhere to be seen. I licked ice cream from my Dreamsicle off my fingers, wiped them clean on my shorts, and pushed open the heavy door into the library.

Still no Jesslyn.

I’d been helping Miss Bloom all summer so I knew my way around the library. I sneaked downstairs past the storerooms. I turned the corner near a box of old newspapers that stunk worse than dead catfish. Just as I was about to give up ever finding my sister, I caught a whiff of Evening in Paris. A rumbling floor fan made it hard for me to hear, but that was definitely Jesslyn’s voice coming from inside a room down the hall. That
was Jesslyn’s perfume, too. Another voice chimed in that didn’t sound one bit like Mary Louise Williams planning a birthday party. I pressed up against the wall, holding my breath.

“I love Elvis Presley. I have every one of his records,” Jesslyn was saying.

“Me, too. But I had to leave them back in North Carolina when I left so fast,” I heard a voice say. “Elvis and me — we even have the same middle name. Aaron. Did you know Aaron is Elvis’s middle name?”

As if Jesslyn didn’t own a scrapbook full of Elvis stuff and even a plaster of paris Elvis statue. She was liable to stand up and start singing “Love Me Tender” right then.

I held my breath and leaned around the door for a look. There was a boy with long sideburns! Sitting real close and talking to Jesslyn! I ducked back before they caught me.

“You look a little bit like Elvis,” Jesslyn was saying. I almost gagged.

“Maybe we can drive up to Memphis to see Elvis’s fancy house,” the voice with the sideburns said. “Or maybe Tupelo, where Elvis was born. You reckon your daddy’d mind?”

Now as sure as I knew
my own
middle name, our daddy, Brother Joe Hemphill, would no sooner let his daughter drive out of town with a strange boy with the same middle name as Elvis than he’d let her fly to the moon.

“My daddy won’t mind a bit,” my sister said.

Lordy, Jesslyn was in trouble for sure.

I hurried out of the library, back across the street, and sat down at the kitchen table to drink a glass of cold milk. Daddy sat next to me, working on his crossword puzzle when Jesslyn waltzed in breathless like she’d seen the real Elvis.

“Hey, honey,” Daddy said. “You get what you needed at the library?” He went back to his puzzle.

“Yessir, Daddy.” She didn’t even look at me. “And Mary Louise and I were talking just now. We need to go to Memphis to buy stuff for her birthday. And our batons for pep squad.”

“Batons? Don’t you already have a baton?” Our daddy glanced up but he kept his #2 pencil perched right on the paper so he wouldn’t lose his place. “Do you know a six-letter word for a mythical creature?”

Jesslyn stood with her hand on her hip. She did that a lot lately. She didn’t answer Daddy’s crossword
question. “The one I need is a fire baton. I’m learning how to twirl fire.” She dragged
fire
out like she was about to star in Mr. Ringling’s big-top circus.

Now, you’d think Daddy would have at least put his pencil down and thought a little bit about his oldest daughter traveling to Memphis to buy a fire baton, but no, he kept on worrying over that six-letter word for a mythical creature.

“I’ll think on it,” Daddy finally said.

“Mary Louise’s cousin is driving. She’s had her license for a long time,” Jesslyn said.

“That her aunt Betty’s girl?” Daddy knew most everybody in Hanging Moss.

My sister paused for one quick second before answering. “No, sir,” she said. “It’s somebody you’ve never met.”

T
he next morning before anybody woke up, I pulled on my blue shorts and T-shirt from yesterday and tiptoed downstairs to talk to Emma. She was already singing and humming to herself, what sounded like a churchy song. Emma might have been old enough to be my mama, but she wasn’t much taller than me, and her singing voice was high and tinkly. I stopped for a minute outside the kitchen door to listen. I dearly loved hearing Emma sing.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

Emma smiled. “Cooking biscuits. With bacon, like always.” She took the bacon out of the icebox. “Where are you off to today, honey?” she asked.

I chewed on a hangnail I’d been working on all
week. “I wanted to go swimming, but Jesslyn’s acting ugly, so maybe she won’t let me come with her. Besides, what if the pool’s already closed?”

Emma didn’t answer. Just went back to turning the bacon in her black skillet. I twirled my ponytail and stared at a speck of dust on our red tabletop. My Nancy Drew book sat open to the chapter we’d been reading yesterday. I opened and shut it to the rhythm of Emma’s quiet humming.

“Emma, you think something’s really broken at the pool?” I flipped the book cover back and forth.

She got quiet before she answered. “What’s broken is that some folks don’t seem to like anything changing. Everything’s got to stay the same in this part of town,” she said. “I bet nobody ever thought how it’s just as hot over where I live as it is where you live. Somebody ought to be fixin’ that broken-down slab of concrete they call a swimming pool near me.”

I shut my book. Emma didn’t usually say stuff about her side of town and my side of town. I never even considered how she might not have a nice place to cool off. I
loved
our community pool —
my
pool, I liked to call it!

My
pool had a snack bar, lounge chairs, swimming
lessons, and lifeguards. And I’d had my July Fourth birthday party at
my
pool most every year since I could swim. If I could remember back far enough, I even pictured my mama holding me while I put my face in the water for the very first time.

I started to ask more about Emma’s pool, but when she poked a long fork into the bacon like she was spearing something hateful, I swallowed my questions.

Frankie showed up just when the bacon was cooling on the kitchen table. He’d come right through the back door and made himself at home.

“Frankie, do you hear bacon sizzling all the way down Church Street?” I asked him.

“Can just about smell it,” he answered. He pushed his red hair off his forehead and straightened his glasses. “Smells good.”

“Here. Have yourself one.” Emma handed us toasted biscuits with bacon inside. Frankie and me sat on the back steps eating biscuits and licking butter off our fingers, being quiet together like we do sometimes. Then I got an idea.

“Hey, Emma. Can the girl I met at the library come to supper one night?” I called out. Emma could hear me through the screen door.

“Who’d you meet?” Frankie asked, stuffing the last bite in his mouth.

“A girl visiting from Ohio,” I said. “Name’s Laura. She likes Nancy Drew books, like me and Emma. Miss Bloom asked Laura and me to do story times together at the library. She says she doesn’t have one single friend here. ’Cept me now.”

Frankie leaned in, talked quiet so I could barely hear him. “Wonder if she’s one of those troublemakers in town from up North,” he said. “Here living with the coloreds. Trying to make them vote. Daddy says those long-haired hippies should stay where they belong. Plenty of people up North need help.”

Frankie’s daddy is the
James
in Bill and James’ Wild West Wear and Clothing Emporium downtown. Besides selling cowboy hats and fancy boots, and telling Frankie what to think, Mr. Smith was once upon a time a big football hero. He still has old pictures and even his jerseys from a zillion years ago hanging all over his store.

“For your information, Frankie” — I stood up and looked right at him — “my new friend’s not a troublemaker and she’s not living with any colored people. She’s here with her mama. Laura Lampert, that’s her
name. Laura and me went for a walk. I showed her the Pee Pool and the playground and all. We might make us a lanyard or a friendship bracelet at the park tomorrow.”

No use telling Frankie about the drinking fountains. I didn’t want to give him another reason not to like Laura.

Frankie scrunched up his face, looked hard at a pile of red ants next to the steps. What he said next made my stomach knot up.

“I hate Yankees. You better be careful, Glory. My daddy says they’re trouble.”

Between his daddy and his mean big brother, J.T., somebody’s always trying to tell Frankie what to think. Half the time I wonder if Frankie’s scared to death of J.T. and of his own daddy.

“Does your daddy even know this girl from Ohio?” I asked.

Frankie didn’t answer my question. I sat down again and glared, daring him to say one more thing about Laura.

“All those outsiders here in town might try to make us swim with colored children. And go to school with them. Daddy swears he’ll yank me and J.T. out of school if a colored person’s in my class.”

About that time Jesslyn appeared at the back door. And even as quiet as Frankie talked, she’d heard him. She marched herself around in front of us on the steps.

“Just because somebody talks a little different doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to them.” Jesslyn pointed her pink-painted fingernail at Frankie, then at me. “You think the world would come to an end if you had somebody not exactly like you sitting beside you in school next year?”

“We know plenty of different people. We don’t mind sitting next to them.” I didn’t like Jesslyn thinking Frankie was hateful or stupid, but he was sure acting that way.

Jesslyn looked hard at him. “Some people in this town — your brother included — need to learn a thing or two about getting along with people.” She stormed inside.

“Frankie, what you said, that was about the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Not going to school just because of who’s sitting next to you? What about mean Donnie Drake who steals your homework? Or Kenny. He’s been in our class since kindergarten. He smells like a billy goat and picks his nose. But you sit next to
him
.”

Frankie wiped butter off his fingers onto his T-shirt
and shrugged his shoulders at me. “That’s not the same.”

“’Cause they’re white? That’s what your daddy thinks.”

Frankie ignored that. “What’s that girl doing at the town library anyhow? Daddy says pretty soon they’ll be letting just anybody come in there.” Frankie stood up and brushed the crumbs off his T-shirt. “Why do you like that Yankee?” he asked.

“I told you, her name’s Laura,” I said. “Call her by her name. She’s nice, and we both love Nancy Drew books, and she needs a friend. She stays at the library while her mother’s a nurse working somewhere out on the highway. Least that’s what Miss Bloom told me.”

What I didn’t tell was about Laura’s mother running that clinic, helping poor people who don’t have any such thing as a doctor or a nurse. And if Miss Bloom says there are people who need this Freedom Clinic thing, whatever it is, then it’s true.

“I like knowing somebody from Ohio,” I said.

“My brother claims they talk and dress funny. And those freedom people try to make people do stuff they shouldn’t.”

Freedom people?
Wasn’t freedom something good? What was Frankie talking about?

But before he could tell me another lie that his brother or his daddy swore was the gospel truth, my daddy pushed open the back screen door.

“I’m going over to the church,” he announced. “See you in a while, Glory.”

“Thank you for having me to breakfast, Brother Joe. I sure do love Miss Emma’s biscuits.” Even when he wasn’t exactly invited, Frankie remembered his manners.

“You’re welcome anytime. Oh, and Glory, did I overhear you talking about a visitor girl you met at the library just now? Invite her to supper, why don’t you. You and Jesslyn can get to know people from other places.” Then Daddy headed across to the church.

“I’ll invite Laura Lampert to supper.” I smiled real nice at Frankie. “My sister and I will know somebody from far off.”

That is if Jesslyn would pull herself away from her new boyfriend long enough to pay me any nevermind. Or stop believing that trying out lipsticks with Mary Louise is more fun than playing Junk Poker with me. Then maybe Jesslyn would think having my new friend from Ohio over here to supper was fun.

Frankie let out a big sigh. “My daddy’s gonna be mad,” he said, and scooted home, kicking a rock halfway
down the block. “My brother’s gonna beat me up for playing with somebody who likes Yankees,” he yelled back to me.

J.T. was scary all right, and I hoped he wouldn’t beat Frankie up, I truly did. But right now I needed Frankie about as much as I needed Jesslyn’s fancy orange lipstick.

“Emma, I’ll be back real soon,” I hollered over my shoulder. “I’m going to the library to invite Laura Lampert to supper.”

From inside the kitchen, Emma shut the icebox door so hard, the milk bottles rattled.