Glory Be (5 page)

F
rankie was back early the next afternoon. “Glory, open up. Please.” He kept up with his
tap-tap-tap
ping on our kitchen screen door, quiet like, while I sat at the table reading more of
The Secret in the Old Attic
. I wasn’t ready to talk, much less tell Frankie I’d been at Fireman’s Park all morning with Laura.

But it was hard to ignore somebody who’d been your best friend all your life. And pretty soon he barged in the back door.

His words came out all in a jumble. “I’m sorry about last night. Not staying to play with you and that girl. My brother’s just plain mean. Daddy gets him all riled up, talking about what might happen if somebody better than him makes the football team. Daddy’s mad about
everything. Doesn’t want me talking to somebody from up North. Or somebody who’s nice to people from up there.”

I folded my arms. “What are you doing at my house?”

“Don’t know,” he said, slouching down in the chair next to me. “I wish it was last summer.”

Since he was here sitting at my kitchen table looking pitiful, and since I’d already read
The Secret in the Old Attic
twice before, I decided to be halfway nice. “Where’re you going?” I asked him.

“J.T. says Coach is making everybody work out in shoulder pads, get in shape for real football practices next month. I’m going over there to watch him sweat.”

“You may worship the ground your mean, ugly brother walks on, but I never want to lay eyes on him again as long as I live,” I told Frankie, and I meant it. “I’ll only go with you to watch Jesslyn make a fool out of herself at pep squad practice.”

We rode our bikes fast to the field. Frankie leaned into the chain-link fence, watching his brother like he was God’s gift to the Hanging Moss High School Hornets. I moved to where I could hear the pep squad leader with her megaphone calling out stuff like “Pivot
left! About-face!” Jesslyn marched with her hands on her hips and her nose in the air and her long curly hair not moving an inch from the ton of hairspray she’d used this morning.

Watching football players sweat would be more fun. I headed back and ran into Jesslyn’s mystery boy from the library, holding the hose over his head. Stinking to high heaven.

“Hey, Jesslyn’s little sister.” He wiped his hands on his gold-and-black Hornets T-shirt and took a big drink. “I’m Robbie,” he said. “Robbie Fox.”

“How’d you know who I am?” I asked.

“Seen you around,” he said.

J.T. yelled out to Robbie, “You, pretty boy, ready to quit? Too hot for you, Elvis?”

Robbie turned his back to J.T. and started down the field. I hurried to keep up with him.

“Wait up. Why’d he call you Elvis?” I asked.

“Something stupid about my hair, I guess.”

“Are you new in town?” I was running along the fence, trying to keep up with Robbie Fox.

“Just moved here. Living with my aunt.”

“Who’s your aunt anyhow?” I called out. “Are you my sister’s boyfriend?”

“You ask too many questions. I gotta go.” When Robbie took off across the field, I moseyed back to sprawl out under a scrawny tree. The clouds drifted by and I turned the shapes into shells and ice-cream cones, thinking about this boy Robbie. Why was he here living with his aunt?

Pretty soon Frankie plopped down in the grass next to me. “Who’s that you were talking to?” he asked.

“Jesslyn’s friend, Robbie.”

“My brother says Robbie Fox thinks he’s hot snot. He brags all the time.” Frankie pulled up clumps of grass and tossed them at the fence. “About how many touchdowns he made at his other school.”

“J.T. and the rest of the stupid team oughta be happy. The Hornets stink at football,” I said. Frankie didn’t have an answer to that. He had plenty of book smarts from his encyclopedias, just didn’t know diddly-squat about football. I wiped the sweat off my face with the back of my arm and scooted closer to the skinny shade tree. “It’s hot as Hades out here. Let’s get our bathing suits and head to the pool later.”

“It closed.” Frankie announced this like the pool was something we didn’t give a toe bone about. Might as well have been saying the Piggly Wiggly was closed.

“
What?
The Community Pool’s really
closed
? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Don’t have a cow, Glory.” Frankie looked past me, over at the football players running around the field and the pep squad girls hollering cheers to empty bleachers. “You were so mad from last night, I didn’t want to say anything,” he said. “Daddy and the Town Council put a sign up this morning saying they’re fixing the cracks.”

“There
aren’t
any
cracks
.”

“Daddy’s committee had a meeting. He told me and J.T. it’s really to keep the colored people out.” Frankie took off his glasses, started cleaning them on his shirt. His voice got quiet. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

“Well, what’re we gonna do about it? I’ll have a sun-stroke if I have to spend the rest of the summer with no pool. I’m not swimming in the Pee Pool where all the babies go wading.”

“I don’t know” was all Frankie said.

“It’s not right for some stupid committee of old people to decide who swims in a pool and who doesn’t. Why’s it a secret anyhow? A secret from who?”

Frankie put his glasses back on and shrugged his shoulders at me. “A secret from people like you who’d get mad about it, I guess,” he said.

“Well, it’s worth getting mad about. And what about the Fourth of July picnic and parade?” I asked him. “What about my birthday party in eight more days? It’ll open back up by then, I’m sure.”

Frankie pulled up a few more chunks of grass. He didn’t say anything for a minute or two. “I don’t know, Glory. My brother says it’s a good thing they don’t let colored people and Yankees in there to swim,” he said. “J.T. thinks coloreds and Yankees stink.”

“You wanna know who stinks? J.T. stinks, that’s who. He doesn’t know anything. And your daddy doesn’t run this town, does he?”

Frankie may have thought his daddy knew everything, but what he said about the pool didn’t seem right. “I’m going to see for myself.”

We walked our bikes to the sidewalk. Then we rode real slow down the block. Maybe if I didn’t get there and read the sign, the pool wasn’t closed. But there it was, tacked up on the locked front gate of the Hanging Moss Community Pool for all the world to see:
Closed for repairs until further notice. By order of the Hanging Moss Town Council.

“You see anybody in there patching the cracks?” I pushed my fingers through the metal fence and peered
inside. The water was glimmering and peaceful, not a ripple, not one clue that anything was wrong. I pressed my face up closer for a better look. “Is somebody fixing the broken part of the fence over by our mimosa tree?”

All Frankie said was “Nope.”

“I want to rip that pool sign to a million pieces and climb over the fence and swim.”

Really and truly, what I wanted was to scream real loud at Frankie’s daddy. Maybe even at Frankie. Deep down inside, a small part of me wanted Laura and her mama to go on back to Ohio so the pool would open.

“It’s not right. It might as well be the dead of winter in there, Frankie,” I said. “Nobody’s swimming. No lifeguard whistles. No radios blaring. Nothing like it used to be.” I pushed my fingers harder through the fence.

Frankie just shook his head. “I told you so.”

“I’m getting out of here.” I rode my bike down the street fast. I leaned it next to the tallest tree shading the library sidewalk. I didn’t look back once at Frankie.

I
banged open the library’s front door and charged in.

Miss Bloom sat at the big checkout desk. “Hello, Glory.” She mouthed the words as she patted the chair next to her. I sank into the hard wooden seat and propped my head in my hand.

“I can assure you that won’t be happening,” she said into the phone. She straightened her back and spoke very slowly. One word at a time. Like maybe the person on the other end of that phone wasn’t hearing her too good. “We will not” — she stopped to take a deep breath — “be removing” — another breath — “library chairs. Anyone who wants to use the Hanging Moss Free Public Library is welcome here. Unlike the Town Council’s Pool Committee, I will never allow the library
to close.” Then Miss Bloom hung up the telephone with two fingers, so carefully I thought maybe it had cooties on it she didn’t want to touch.

“Are you mad at somebody, Miss B.?” I asked her.

“That was one of my board members. They worry there’s going to be trouble at the library. They are suggesting I remove all the chairs so anyone they think doesn’t belong here won’t be welcome to sit down.” Miss Bloom fiddled with the box of paper clips on her desk. “Or they say to close it altogether. Over my dead body will the library close.”

“The pool’s closed,” I told her. “Frankie’s daddy claims it won’t open in time for July Fourth, the picnic and parade.”

“I’ve worried about that.” She shook her head and sat back in her chair. “It’s a shame.”

“I might not go to the stupid celebration anyhow.” I twisted my ponytail.

“Glory, you love the Fourth of July — it’s your birthday.” Miss Bloom peered over her cat’s-eye glasses. “Besides, Laura is counting on sitting with you.”

“The parade’s the same stupid thing every year.” I crossed my arms and slumped deeper into the chair. “A bunch of old men carrying flags. A parade queen
with a fake crown. Mrs. Simpson and the Esthers in their muumuus and bathing caps covered with plastic flowers, perched up on the biggest float like they own the town.” I looked at Miss Bloom. “What fun’s a July Fourth celebration when it’s blazing hot and there’s no swimming pool? You think anybody’ll remember it’s my birthday? Not even Jesslyn! Even if I have a party, Frankie’s daddy won’t let him come. Everything’s going wrong!” I stopped to catch my breath. “How can anybody think closing the pool’s fair?”

“That’s a lot of questions, honey.” Miss Bloom pulled a big book off the shelf behind her and dusted it with her hankie, which was embroidered with cats. When she slipped her hankie back up her jacket sleeve, she set the book in front of me, real careful. “Look here. We have scrapbooks from every celebration,” she said.

I pointed to a faded picture tacked down with little silver triangles. “Who’s that funny-looking man?”

“Your friend Frankie’s grandfather, when he was young. See there? He owned the first car in town and decorated it up for July Fourth.” Miss Bloom turned the scrapbook’s crumbly black pages.

“Stupid Frankie says his daddy won’t let him play with me anymore because of Laura.” I looked at the
picture of his grandfather sitting in that old car. I thought about Frankie. And about Laura, and Jesslyn. How some friends seem born into your life and others just pop up when you need them. But shouldn’t a sister be both kinds of friends? Jesslyn used to be both, but I was starting to wonder.

Now Miss Bloom turned to a picture of the swimming races from a long time ago. “What’s wrong with our pool?” I asked. “You think it will open by July Fourth?”

“Some people are unhappy that it’s closed. And probably just as many think it ought to stay that way,” Miss Bloom said. “A few of our citizens would like to see our town shut down tight — even the library — or at least go back to the way it was in Frankie’s grandfather’s day,” she said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

I reached under the desk to pet her cat, Bobbsey. I felt like climbing under there to curl up in the coolness next to Bobbsey. “There’s nothing wrong with the pool, is there?”

“I don’t think so, Glory. At least nothing that can be fixed with cement. Hanging Moss is all mixed up about a lot of things. We have to figure this out, work
together. But if you’re worried about the pool, maybe you can do something,” she said.

“Oh, sure. Me, eleven years old, get people like Frankie’s hateful daddy to open it and let everybody in town swim.” I kicked at the desk in time to the cat purring.

“Gloriana, it’s not just Frankie’s father who counts. First of all, there’s the law. Believe me, if the law says the Community Pool stays open, sooner or later it will be open.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t understand that. The law and all.”

“Look here.” Miss Bloom turned to a row of newspapers hanging on a rack of wooden rods. She opened the
Hanging Moss Tribune
to a page of letters. “See these?”

“Are those what people send to the editor of the paper? Daddy told us about those letters. I wanted to see them, but Jesslyn claims I’m too young to read them.”

“Hogwash. You read whatever you want to. If you’ve a mind to, I do believe you could write a letter yourself.” Miss Bloom handed me the newspaper.

I sat up straighter. I turned the paper toward me.
Dear Editor
, one started.
I am writing to express my
displeasure at the way the Hanging Moss Town Council has responded to the recent upheavals in our community.

That was sure a heap of words saying nothing. “Can I borrow some stationery, Miss Bloom?” I asked. “I can write a better letter than that.”