With the Might of Angels (17 page)

I have never met Lester Rudd, but I think he’s very confused. I have never seen a frozen TV dinner. Why would anyone want to eat a dinner that’s frozen and shaped like a TV?

The phone woke us this morning. Four rings in a row. Then silence. Then four rings more. We all came into the kitchen. None of us answered the phone. Daddy was in his bathrobe still. With
his tool kit, he carefully dismantled the phone. He took the whole thing off the wall!

Now the phone never rings. Daddy’s hushed it for good.

Another day of Vaseline cheeks and slippery somersaults. Today Gertie asked me how I get my skin so smooth. “Vaseline by the ton,” I said.

Gertie and I walked home again today. She had a pocketful of gumdrops, all colors. But our walk turned from sweet to sour as soon as we got off school grounds.

Somehow the Hatch brothers had hooked up with Theresa Ludlow and her friends — the PE class witches — and they were following us from behind.

Theresa started off with the troublemaking. “A colored
and
a Jew, both at our school. That’s a bad combination,” she said.

Next came Jeb Hatch, calling out, “I think I smell fish.”

Cecil said, “That’s not fish, that’s how dirty Jews smell.”

I started to walk faster, but Gertie was slowing down. Then she just stopped, dead in her tracks.

She turned to face those boys and the witches, and stepped right into the center of them. I have never seen a white girl stare down a white boy with such fury. Gertie got right up in Cecil’s face. “
What
did you say?”

All my insides were clanking. The Panic Monster had his
shaboodle-shake
on full blast.

Nobody said anything.

Gertie just kept glaring. One of the witches said, “Better not mess with her. She may put some kind of Hebrew hex on you.”

Gertie leaned in. Cecil backed away. So did his brothers and the other kids. So did my Panic Monster.

Gertie turned toward home, walked past all of them, her shoulder bumping through the wall made by the group.

“C’mon, Dawnie, let’s go home,” she said.

Right then, on what was probably the coldest day in Virginia, I was warm as coals stoking a potbellied stove.

I asked Mama, “What’s a dirty Jew? And what’s a Hebrew hex?”

Mama looked horrified. “Where in the world did you hear such disgusting talk?”

I knew anything coming out the mouth of a Hatch boy, or one of those witchy girls, had to be bad. But I wanted to ask the question just how they said the words, so I’d get the full, real answer.

Mama said, “If I
ever
hear you talk like that again, I will wash your tongue with lye, do you hear me, Dawnie?”

I told Mama all about Gertie Feldman, and the Hatch brothers and Theresa and her friends. “Gertie lives on Maple Street, down by Orem’s,” I said.

Mama sat me down. She explained the history and culture of Jewish people, and the persecution they’ve endured. She told me about a man named Adolf Hitler, and World War II, and something called the “Holocaust.” “It is an ugly story,” Mama said.

Now
I
looked horrified. I knew nothing about Jewish people. I thought white people were white people, and if they had different religions, it didn’t matter because they were white.

I had no idea that whites hated other whites because of their religious beliefs. Living in Hadley, all I knew was that most white people hated Negroes, and the same was true the other way around — most Negroes did not like whites.

Well, I now had a white friend. And she liked me, too. So, as far as Gertie and me were concerned, there was no other way around it.

With all due respect to Mama and Daddy, I don’t believe there is no hate in God’s eyes. Has God seen the Hatch brothers and Theresa Ludlow, and their friends? They are full of HATE! HATE! HATE!

They probably invented the
H
word! And I HATE it!

Gertie came to school with more shine than me. “I tried the Vaseline,” she said. “How does my face look?”

Gertie had caked the stuff too thick. Even her eyelashes were gloppy.

In the girls’ room, I helped her thin down the Vaseline by spreading my palm across her forehead.

Now Gertie Feldman is a city slicker who’s not
too
slick.

The other thing I really miss about Bethune is Negro History Week. Yolanda told me that starting Monday, seventh graders at her school get to pick their favorite “Notable Negro” and give an oral report in front of the class.

If I was still a student at Bethune, I wouldn’t have to think twice about the subject for my oral report. I wouldn’t need to study or practice, either. I can speak good about what colored people have accomplished. I would be happy to give a speech.
The Panic Monster takes a vacation during Negro History Week.

There is no Negro History Week at Prettyman Coburn School. There is no Negro History anything at Prettyman Coburn.

Very early. Before the in-between. My throat hurts.

Missing school and having to make up work will hurt worse.

Prettyman, here I come.

Feels like I’ve swallowed a rusty saw. Oh, my throat!

I spent much of today wishing I could put my head down on my desk and sleep. I’m sure my classmates would’ve laughed from here to Halifax County at the sight of me drooling onto my books. Thankfully, there was no drool, only a long day at school.

That rusty saw has met up with a heap of cotton inside my head. My ears are more stuffed than Mama’s pin cushion. I’m so tired. I’ve been moving slow all day. Thinking slow, too. What was Mrs. Elmer saying about bacteria? I bet that’ll be on Monday’s Biology test.

Spent the day coughing, sniffling.

This morning I woke up with a nose so red, I could have been mistaken for a circus clown. I must have sneezed ten times before rolling over on my pillow. My sheets were clammy, too. When I looked out my bedroom window, there was a whole mess of hurly-burly snow flying sideways. I could tell by the rattling of my windowsills that there was some mean wind outside. Still, I was hot as heck when I sat up in bed.

Morning was full-on bright. “What time is it?” I asked Mama.

“You’re staying home from school today,” Mama said, bringing me tea and two handkerchiefs.

It is every child’s wish to hear her mama say she’s staying home from school. And I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t admit there have been times I have prayed for the croup so I could miss at least one day of school. But couldn’t the day be next week —
after
my Biology test?

“I’ll stay home tomorrow,” I told Mama, kicking off my sheets.

Mama’s hands came on fast, sliding my bedcovers back near to my chin. “You’ve got a cold, Dawnie, and you shouldn’t be spreading it.”

I told Mama about the test, and how missing the test would hurt my grade.

“I’ll send a note to the school, explaining,” Mama said. She tried to comfort me by adding more honey to my tea, but a bathtub of honey could not have sweetened the ache I felt from having to miss my Biology test.

Then Mama brought a jar of camphor rub and started gooping it on my chest, under my nose, and behind my ears. I thought Vaseline was bad. But camphor
—yeech!
That stuff is sure powerful! Its fumes could clear the pipes on the crustiest church organ in Lee County.

I never, ever thought I’d write this—but more than anything, right now I want to be sitting in Mrs. Elmer’s class answering questions about how bacteria grows!!

Home from school again. Swallowed the rusty saw all day. Cotton on the brain. What day is it? Too weak to write more.

Two more milk bottles were thrown at our house tonight. Two more quarts of hate. Skidding onto the snowy floor of our front porch.

Daddy’s taken to spending nights propped in a chair by our front window.

Watching through our curtains.

Trying to keep us safe.

Goober’s made me a red paper heart that’s as big as his head. When I told Goober Valentine’s Day
has come and gone, he said, “Love is all the time, Dawnie.”

More sideways snow.

The tree mop’s strings are a frozen clump of cold, stuck to an icy rope.

How many days till May?

Feeling better. I
begged
Mama to let me go to school today. If she’d have allowed me to get out of bed for something other than to use the bathroom, I would have gone to Mama on my knees, saying,
please, please, please.

“You’ll go back to school tomorrow,” she said. “One more day at home will do you good.”

This must be what jail feels like. I hate being stuck at home.

At least the snow has melted. As I write this, the sky outside is a beautiful shock of bright blue. My waxed-paper leaves are showing off their colors, their opposite-but-same yellow and red veins.

Mama loaned me a wax pencil from her pattern-making kit. I have decided to name my leaves. I wrote their names at the top of each.

Dawnie’s the one in yellow. Gertie’s wearing red.

People say if you can smell something bad on yourself, it really stinks. I knew I’d be showing up at school today smelling like camphor. Mama would only let
me
go back to school if I agreed to let her make me the Queen of Camphor.

Whew,
is that stuff powerful! The only things smellier were the already-dead frogs from Biology class.

No wonder the snow has melted. The camphor fumes must have seeped from our windows onto the streets. Today its odor rose so high off my clothes that even the neighborhood dogs ran in the opposite direction when they smelled me coming.

Same with the kids at school. More than usual, they did their best to avoid me.

Gertie was glad to see me, though. “Camphor” was the first thing she said when I slid into my
homeroom seat next to her. “My papa uses camphor rub on me when I’m sick,” Gertie said.

“Your daddy the doctor uses camphor?”

Gertie nodded. “Rubs it all over me, like he’s waxing a car.”

I will not be telling Mama that a real true doctor uses camphor. If she ever finds out, she will for sure keep me steeped in that stuff.

Gertie had volunteered to clap erasers and sponge the blackboard when I was gone. She said, “There’s only one good thing about that bad job — Mr. Williams, the janitor.”

Today I was back to clapping the erasers on my own. When I got to Mr. Williams’s closet to dump my chalk water, he helped me lift the bucket to the lip of his sink. “Missed you,” he said.

He smelled me right away. He said, “Camphor’s good for the soul.”

Daddy showed me a
Look
magazine article about Jackie Robinson. In the picture, Jackie’s holding his bat high over his shoulder. I clipped that photo and pasted it to my bedroom mirror. I can see why they put Jackie in
Look.
He sure
looks
strong.

Daddy’s grown restless trying to find a job. While I did my homework, Daddy went outside in the cold dark nighttime. He took my bat with him. From where I sat at our kitchen table, I could see Daddy out our back window, swinging and swinging at my tree mop.

When I finished my homework, I asked Mama if I could go outside with Daddy, expecting she’d say no. But she let me. I yanked my hood strings tight at my neck, put on my mittens.

Daddy and I took turns batting righty.

Today in Mr. Dunphey’s History class, we talked about current events. Bobby Hatch brought in the
Look
magazine article about Jackie Robinson. He stood up, waving the page with Jackie’s photo. “I don’t care how many runs Jackie Robinson’s had,” Bobby said. “He should’ve stayed playing with coons. That’s why there’s a
Negro
League. The game is called baseball, not
blackball
.”

The other kids laughed.

“Bobby, stick to the article, please,” Mr. Dunphey said. “What’s
current
about what you’ve read?” he asked.

Bobby did something I have never seen a kid do. He smart-talked a teacher, right in front of everybody. Bobby said, “What’s
current
is that the major leagues
currently
have a new song to sing. It’s called ‘Darkie in the Dugout.’”

Something ripped through me then. Something so powerful it could have only been what Mama has called “the might of angels.”

My chair screeched when I stood up at my seat. I was glad my throat was better. I needed to speak. Negro History Week is over, but colored people make history every day, so I had a lot to say.

I talked, talked, talked about Jackie Robinson and the accomplishments of notable Negroes. I kept talking. And Mr. Dunphey let me. I told everybody about Mary McLeod Bethune and Thurgood Marshall, one of the lawyers from the New York paper. During my time at Prettyman, I’d held on to my gift of gab for too long. Today was the time to use it.