Summer of My German Soldier (8 page)

“Please give me a chance to explain. It was an accident,” I said. “I was aiming at the hubcaps.”

He pointed a single quivering finger at me. “If you don’t come here this instant I’ll give you a beating you’re never going to forget.”

Did that mean if I came willingly he wouldn’t hurt me? His face showed no sign of a thaw. Then I felt the warming spirit of Ruth. “The Lord gonna protect all his children.” Fingers crossed, I stepped through the opening in the hedge to stand soldier-straight before my father.

“Closer!”

Only one foot advanced before a hand tore across my face, sending me into total blackness. But then against the blackness came a brilliant explosion of Fourth-of-July stars. Red,
yellow, blue, and then green. I never knew those stars were real; I had always thought they were only in comic books. The pain was almost tolerable when a second blow crashed against my cheek, continuing down with deflected force to my shoulder.

Using my arm as a shield, I looked up. I saw the hate that gnarled and snarled his face like a dog gone rabid. He’s going to find out someday I can hate too—“Ahhhh!”

Knees came unbuckled. I gave myself to the sidewalk. Between blows I knew I could withstand anything he could give out, but once they came, I knew I couldn’t.

Hands that were in the throes of a fit worked to unfasten his belt buckle. Rolling over, I hugged the hedges. He bent low to send the black leather flying. “Ahhhheeeeehh!” My God! Legs—on fire! After the first flash of piercing pain subsided, my hate roared up strong enough to keep the tears away.

“I’ll teach you to throw rocks at people!” he shouted, whipping the belt backwards through space.

“Nooo—ohhhh! Please!” I begged. Can’t stand more— can’t.

I heard the leather sing as it raced against the air—my eyes clamped closed.

And then they came, ugly and unexpected, those violent little cries that seem to have a life of their own. Short yelps of injury mingled with anger and defeat.

A car door opened and slammed shut. A motor gunned as though for a quick getaway and then roared off.

6. Frizzly Freak

W
HEN
S
ATURDAY CAME
I was glad. Most country folks stop working about noontime, and by one o’clock Main Street starts jamming up with muddy pickup trucks filled with yellow-haired children.

And there’ll be lots of colored folks in town with their kids too, only difference is they’ll be all scrubbed and shiny-shoed like it was Sunday. Another thing that’s different about them, and I do a lot of listening in on other people’s
conversations so I know, is how they speak to one another. So respectful and everything. It’s as though they try to give each other the respect that the rest of the world holds back.

I mean, if you’ll notice how the poor white people talk to one another, mostly they don’t even bother to call each other by name. But the colored are different, always remembering to give each other the title of Mr. Somebody or Miz Somebody except, and Ruth told me this, when they go to the same church and then it’s Brother Somebody or Sister Somebody.

Saturday has always been my favorite day because my father hires extra salesladies, and he never says a word when I pitch in to help. Working makes me feel useful for a change, and I get to talk with an awful lot of people. If you really, really listen, you can learn things. Sometimes you can learn things people don’t even know they’re teaching. Like the preacher’s wife, Mrs. Benn, who only last Saturday was talking about the greed of some people, always wanting things. And then in the very next breath complaining how the First Baptist doesn’t pay her husband enough so she can buy clothes or hire a Nigra.

From the corner closet, which I share with Sharon, I took out my light-blue middy dress. It happens to be my favorite and not only because I picked it out myself but because it has no sashes, no lace, and it isn’t pink. Within twenty strokes of the brush my hair came alive. And it’s just the right color hair too—not flashy red or dull brown, but auburn. Alive auburn.

Standing in front of the Victory Cafe, Mr. Blakey was talking to Mr. Jackson. Mr. Henkins pulled his black Oldsmobile into a narrow space, and before he was completely out of the car he called, “Hey, did y’all hear the news?”

“Sure did,” said Mr. Blakey. “Heard it on the radio not five minutes ago. Isn’t that something? Imagine the FBI catching those eight dirty Nazis ’fore they could do a nickel’s worth of damage.”

“Know whether they sunk the U-boats?” asked Mr. Jackson. “Sure hope they blew them to smithereens.”

“The radio didn’t say,” said Mr. Henkins. “But they caught all them saboteurs and that’s the important thing to remember.”

Mr. Jackson became aware of my presence, so I just said, “Hello,” while I brushed some imaginary dust from the skirt of my middy before walking into the store. I straightened the story out in a logical sequence so I could tell it in a businesslike way to my father.

He was leaning against the register, taking a long draw from a cigarette.

I walked over. “I came to give you some important news.”

“What news?” He blew out smoke along with the question.

“The news of the landing in the middle of the night of the German U-boats. Right here on the American coastline.” I was encouraged by his head which jutted forward as though he wanted to get closer to the source of information. “Now, the Germans thought they could land saboteurs and nobody would know, but the FBI, through very secret information, found out about the scheme and captured them, all eight of them!”

“Where did you hear that?”

“It’s the big news. It was on the radio not five minutes ago.” Snapping on the shelf radio, he gave me a look while waiting for the tubes to warm. I tried to figure out just what the glance meant: I’m too young and/or stupid to comprehend
a news bulletin; I’m deliberately lying to him; or maybe I’m just having a childhood fantasy.

Finally the radio came on, and right away I recognized the voice of Lorenzo Jones apologizing to his wife, Belle, for buying fishing gear with money from the cookie jar. My father moved the dial—religious music. And again—a commercial for Pepto-Bismol.

“Just wait till the twelve o’clock news,” I said, already backing away. “You’ll hear about it then.”

My mother was busy taking ladies’ sandals from their boxes and placing them on a table where a boldly written sign stated: SPECIAL! ONLY $1.98. She worked hard in the store, you have to give her credit for that. And not just in selling or straightening up counters the way the other salesladies do but in thinking up ways “to turn a profit on the new and to get our money out of the old.” She was especially good at that because I think she likes the store better than anything else.

Mr. Blakey came into the store, throwing my father a wave. “Harry, didya hear the news? About the Nazi saboteurs? They were planning on dynamiting the Alcoa Plant in Alcoa, Tennessee. FBI caught them with their pants down. Carrying one hundred and fifty thousand bucks in bribe money.”

“Yeah, I heard,” answered my father. “Patricia told me all about it.”

“Patricia told me all about it” echoed in my brain. I had done something nice for my father, and he was pleased with me and he might never again question my honesty. And maybe I had even won the right to work in the store when it wasn’t Saturday.

Suddenly I felt greedy; I wanted my mother to be pleased
with me too. “Hey, Mother,” I said. “Did you hear about the saboteurs the FBI caught?”

She stopped her work to see if I looked decent enough. “Did you and Sharon have lunch?”

I must have passed inspection. “Yes, ma’am.”

She went back to unboxing the shoes. “What did y’all eat?”

“Oh, we had some—some—Oh, I know. Leftover meat loaf, and corn on the cob, and some of those store-bought cookies you bought for dessert.”

“What’re Sharon and Ruth doing?”

“Well, Sharon went to Sue Ellen’s, and Ruth is taking all the dishes out of the cabinet. Are we gonna get busy today?”

“No. Why don’t you run along—go play with Edna Louise instead of hanging around the store.”

Without her even trying, she could get me mad. “Because, like I’ve told you before, Edna Louise and Juanita Henkins and just about everybody I know have gone off to Baptist Training Camp. And I wasn’t planning to hang around; I was planning to wait on customers.” I thought of a few other things to tell her too. Things like if she doesn’t really want me then I’ll go along. She’d be sorry to lose such a good clerk on a busy Saturday. But I didn’t say it because I don’t think she’d care one bit if I left. Actually, I believe she’d prefer it.

I’ll tell her what a good saleslady I am. “Hey, Mother, you want to know something? Last Saturday I sold twenty-five dollars’ worth of clothes and stuff to just one customer! Did you know that?” Liar. My best sale was barely eighteen bucks. Damn it, Conscience, go away.

Mother stopped her work to look again at me. Probably she had no idea that I was capable of making such a big sale. “I wonder,” she said, more to herself than to me,
“if Miz Reeves has time for you today.”

Miz Reeves? Miz Reeves from the beauty parlor! “Oh, no! My hair looks fine just the way it is, and I washed it myself only two days ago.”

She started walking towards the telephone as though she hadn’t heard a word I said. “Let’s see if she can take you now.”

I ran slightly ahead of her. “Mother, would you please for once in your life listen to me? My hair is the best thing about me. People are always telling me how lucky I am having such naturally wavy hair. And you
know
Mrs. Reeves can’t set hair. All she ever does is to make those tight, little-old-lady curlicues.”

She picked up the receiver and gave it a crank.

I pressed it down again. “Listen to me! Everybody makes jokes about Mrs. Reeves. They say she only thinks she can set hair because she fixes up the lady customers at the Spencer Funeral Parlor and none of them ever made a complaint. And that’s the truth!”

She looked at me, not liking what she saw. “Well,” she said, “I’m very sorry you don’t think Miz Reeves is good enough for you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. A girl your age going around looking like you do.”

I guess what she really was trying to tell me was that it shouldn’t have happened to her. A beautiful woman—everybody says she’s beautiful—has an ugly baby girl. Me. A wave of shame flooded over me followed by another wave of full-grown anger. Shame and anger, anger and shame mingled together, taking on something beyond the power of both.

“You listen to me!” My voice was pitched high. “I absolutely will not go and you can’t make me. And another thing,
if Mrs. Reeves is so good then why do you have to drive all the way to Wynne City to have your hair done? Can you answer me that? And one more thing,” I said, looking her straight in the eye, “I don’t even like you!”

She pushed my hand away, releasing the hook, and within moments she was smiling her saleslady smile into the mouth of the phone. “Hello, Miz Reeves, how you getting along on such a hot day? ... Well, you drink yourself a cold glass of iced tea and that’ll perk you right up. Miz Reeves, you know who this is, don’t you? ... Yes, that’s right. I was just wondering if you could possibly give Patricia a permanent wave right now? ... Oh, fine. I’ll send her over. Bye-bye for now.”

A permanent. She did say a permanent. For months and months, a frizzledy freak. Mother walked away, not bothering even to glance at me. From across the store I heard her voice soaring above the other noises. “And you’d think she’d be ashamed of herself going around like that. A girl of her age. And poor Miz Reeves just sitting there waiting for her too.”

“Let’s just see if she refuses me!” answered my father, coming closer.

Mrs. Fields and her customer, Mayor Crawford’s wife, didn’t even pretend to be interested in house shoes anymore.

“Har-ry, now don’t you hit her!” My good old mother was pleading for me. “She’s nervous enough from you as it is.”

“Don’t you tell me I make her nervous. That’s a God damn lie and you know it!”

Mrs. Crawford, what would she think of us? Her pinched little face tilted a bit to the right while her dark owl eyes stared.

Then there he was, standing over me. He just looked down without saying anything. Was he waiting for something? I will not beg or cry—and he won’t even be completely certain that I’m afraid.

He looked at his watch. “I’m going to give you exactly two minutes to get yourself over to Miz Reeves’s or else you’ll get a licking like you never had before in your life. Understand?”

Nod Yes.

“You answer me!”

“Yes, sir.”

The most direct route to the door was straight past my father. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of walking around him. But carefully. There! My arm whispered past his sleeve. When I finally reached the door my breathing came back.

Out on the sidewalk my thoughts jostled and bumped each other fighting to be heard. Break a leg or an arm. Catch a cold or a train. Hide in the hide-out above the garage or under the railroad trestle at the edge of Nigger Bottoms.

Mrs. Reeves’s house sat on the corner of Silk Stocking and Main. Its dull brown paint had been flaking and peeling for as long as I could remember. A front screened-in porch sagged toward the center and dusty wooden steps had been waiting a long time for the good, honest feel of a broom. For a while I just stood there, trying to remember the names of men who died fighting for their liberty.

Then, from within the house, a phone rang. My father! I took the three front steps with a single leap, pushed open the screen door, allowing it to slam closed.

“Oh, howdy, Clara,” said Mrs. Reeves into the receiver. “How are you a-managing on such a day? The temperature is near about ninety-six degrees, and wouldn’t you know it,
I’m giving a permanent wave today. ... The Bergen girl. ... No, Patty, the oldest one.” She laughed a conspirator’s laugh into the receiver. “I reckon I can’t hardly say you is wrong. Well now, Clara, I’ll ring you a little later on. You try and stay cool, you heah?”

She placed the phone back on the hook and turned to greet me. “Ooh-whee, it’s too hot for the niggers today. Ain’t it awful?”