With the Might of Angels (20 page)

He said to Mama, “I hope you’ll hire a man whose child is taking such a bold stand by integrating her school.”

Mama had picked the morning paper up off our doorstep.

“Look, Dawnie!” Goober said. “Do you see Daddy’s truck?”

I smiled bigger than big. “I see it, Goob. I see it!”

Daddy came to where we stood. He hugged Mama. “Can I start calling you ‘boss’?”

Mama gave the top of Daddy’s head a playful slap with the folded newspaper.

She said, “You’re hired.”

Daddy’s truck is drawing a lot of attention. Loretta’s Laundry has officially come to Hadley, Virginia.

Mrs. Taylor told us today that the Bell Ringer job will now be decided by the results of something called the “Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.” Each student will take a final test for the school year. The test will cover every subject.

So, I need to know everything about parts of a cell. And, there might be so many questions about branches of government I’ll be wishing those branches could help me climb a tree out of my classroom window. And I bet the test will have enough algorithms to stuff a sofa. And probably
thirty
questions about “The Three Questions.”

The test will determine who becomes Bell Ringer starting in May and continuing through the next school year.

Tonight when I helped Mama pack up laundry deliveries for Daddy to make tomorrow, I told Mama and Daddy about the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam. Mama set her iron on its holder. The iron’s steam sputtered from its spout.

“One
test decides? Whose knuckleheaded idea was that?” Mama asked.

“The school’s,” I said.

Daddy was balancing a stack of brown-paper laundry packages. His chin secured the one on top. “There’s a gift in it, Dawnie,” he said with a voice that knows.

A giant exam. Where’s the gift in that?

The man on the radio announced the official start of baseball season is only ten days away! And even though it’s the first day of April, this is no April Fool’s joke. Batting time is finally coming soon.

The announcer asked everybody who was listening, “Will the Brooklyn Dodgers win the world championship?”

Daddy said, “If Jackie Robinson has anything to do with it, they will.”

The Dodgers have come close a few times, with Jackie playing on their team. They’ve played in seven World Series games, but not once in any of those series have they won the world championship.

Thunder. Lightning. Rain. Rain. Raaaain.

I am not like most people when it comes to a storm. I like the rain and everything it makes. When the sky sends down a sprinkle, I pray for a sheet. Raindrops on my face make me happy. And, I’m a true puddle lover.

When there’s so much thunder that it sounds like heaven has spilled a bag of baseballs, I ask the Lord to have someone up there hire
a drum band to bring on more booming.

As for lightning, let it strike!

How else can we see the sky’s design?

Mama practically sealed me in wax paper to make sure that not a drop of wet touched my skin. And she armed me and Daddy with umbrellas as wide as our porch roof. If there was such a thing as a wet-weather mask, Mama would have insisted on one of them, too.

Today, when Daddy walked me to school, I said, “I bet you can’t make it to Waverly and Vine without wanting to open your umbrella.”

“Bet,” Daddy said.

We were already soaked, and Daddy didn’t look too pleased. But Daddy, he’s a smarty. He slid his newspaper out from his coat’s inside pocket, opened it wide, and walked under the tent made by its pages. As good as rain feels on my face, it doesn’t compare to sharing a newspaper with my daddy.

More rain.

More puddles.

Goody, goody!

Today after delivering laundry packages, Daddy took me to the only public place in town that’s not segregated — the Hadley Public Library—so I could study for the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.

When I got to the library, Daddy and I slid into one of the study carrels, where we laid out all my schoolbooks and papers. The library is supposed to be a quiet place, but there’s one person whose whisper is loud — Gertie. She and
her
daddy were in the study carrel next to ours. They were doing the same thing, studying for the exam. As soon as I heard Gertie’s voice, I folded myself over the top of my carrel, peered down, and saw Gertie’s head. There aren’t many people I can recognize by looking at their scalps, but from watching Gertie somersault, I know the top of her head as good as I know my own.

“Gertie!” I tried to speak softly, but it came out loud.

When Gertie looked up and saw me half climbing into her carrel, she was through with whispering. “Dawnie, come down from there. Help me study! What does
metamorphosis
mean?” she asked.

I came around to where Gertie was sitting. Daddy followed. Our fathers introduced themselves. Gertie’s daddy is a small man with a kind face and glasses that slide to where his nose almost ends. When he shook Daddy’s hand, he did it with both his hands wrapped around Daddy’s. He introduced himself as Dr. Saul Feldman.

“Pleased to meet you,” Daddy said, and brought his second hand around to join both the hands of Dr. Feldman.

This is another thing I will never forget if I live to be a hundred. Four hands — my daddy’s strong brown ones and Dr. Feldman’s gentle white ones — clasped together, greeting each other.

Dr. Feldman said to Daddy, “You have quite a daughter. Gertie’s told me about Dawnie.” He smiled when he said this.

We all moved to one of the library’s center tables, out in the open, which we covered with our schoolbooks, papers, pencils, writing tablets, and plenty of scrap paper for figuring. We started with Gertie’s science question.

What is metamorphosis?

I knew the answer right off.

“It’s when something changes from one thing into another.”

I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, but I do believe in sweet things and surprises. Today, Easter Sunday, I got both.

At church, Yolanda kept to herself during the service. But afterward, when it was time for fellow-shipping, Yolanda asked if I wanted to play “Tell the Truth or Die Tryin’.” She was making an X over her heart before I even said yes.

Yolanda started off the game. “Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye. If I’m lyin’, watch me cryin’. ’Cause I know I will be dyin’.”

We pressed our foreheads together. Neither one of us had shed a “lyin’ cryin’ dyin’” tear.

“Dawnie,” Yolanda said quietly, “I’m gonna tell you something that’s the truth, but you gotta promise to keep it between us.”

I said, “Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”

Yolanda took a breath. She lowered her voice even more. “I wish I could go with you to Prettyman Coburn,” she admitted. “I want shiny books, and classes with names of things that sound like they make you smarter just by saying them. Most of all, I want to be in school together, Dawnie.”

Yolanda hooked her pinkie to mine. She said, “I know it’s hard being the only Negro student at that school. But if I was there with you, you wouldn’t be alone, and maybe we could help each other.”

I locked our pinkies even tighter. “Prettyman would be a lot nicer with you in it,” I said.

Yolanda said, “I’m sorry for calling you uppity, Dawnie.”

I asked, “Did you hear what Reverend Collier said this morning during his sermon?”

Yolanda shook her head. “I was too busy thinking about truth tellin’.”

I said, “Reverend Collier told us that Easter is about celebrating a new beginning that’s come out of a dark time.”

Yolanda nodded.

“Let’s go to the fellowship table and get us some colored eggs,” I said.

“Nice making up with you,” said Yolanda. She pressed her forehead to mine for the second time. “And that’s the truth.”

Gertie knows everything there is to know about government and the Virginia Plan of 1787, and how a bill becomes a law, and what statutes are.

No doubt she will ace the questions about American history.

I asked Gertie, “How badly do you want to be Bell Ringer?”

“Not half as bad as you.”

“Are you worried about the exam?” I asked.

Gertie was at it again, giving the same answer for a different question. “Not half as bad as you.”

Then she added, “As long as they don’t make me sponge the blackboard and clap erasers.”

Like Gertie, I repeated the answer, but put the answer onto myself. I said, “As long as they don’t make
me
sponge the blackboard and clap erasers.”

The afternoon’s drizzle is as thick as blackstrap, the same molasses that once filled my lunch tin.

I should be studying, but my mind is someplace far away, daydreaming about diamonds.
Diamonds with bases for running and rounding, and pretending to be player number 42 — Jackie Robinson.

If I had more time to go out and play, I bet I could hit an A+ home run on the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.

I thought the rain had stopped, but it’s back with an attitude.

As much as I love rain, I’ve now had enough of it.

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again some other day.

Stay all gone so I can play (after I get through seventh grade).

I’ve missed you! I thought you got lost somehow. But today I found out where you’ve been. Goober got his hands on you. He’s kept you from me, and for this whole week he’s made you
his
Diary Book. Eight full days without writing, eight days of wondering where you were, has been as hard as all these months with no pogo stick and a snowed-on,
rained-on tree mop. There’s some stuff to catch up on, but I’m pressed for time. The Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam is next week. If I don’t write about what’s happened, though, I’m gonna pop.

Your pages are scribbled and drawn on, and a mess. Goober’s covered you with pictures of pogo sticks and peanuts, peanuts, peanuts!! Peanuts with faces and arms and legs.

And to make it worse, I’m now running out of pages for writing. I probably won’t make it till summer with the few pages left. Summer’s the best time for a diary, because I’ll
have
time to write.

I AM SO ANGRY AT GOOBER!! And I told him so, too. I hollered at him as soon as I found my scribbled-on Diary Book’s pages, where Goober’d left the book on my bed. I don’t care that my hollering made him cry and rock. I don’t care that Goober told me he didn’t mean to ruin my book’s pages, and that he just wanted to draw stuff! I don’t care one bit! Goober has broken Daddy’s rule about keeping your hands to yourself!! First my pogo stick, now this.

Goober ruins everything!

How come I got Goober for a brother?

How come Goober’s so … so … ugh!

How come Goober’s Goober?

I’m too angry for more catching up. If I write anything else, my pencil will snap. That’s how mad I am!

I’m going outside to slam my bat at the tree mop. I don’t care that it’s raining knives and forks.
I’m
raining knives and forks!!!

The new hiding place for my diary is in my shoe box, where the Vaselines once lived, where that frog almost lost his life in the name of science, and where I’ve hidden my Christmas money. Goober can’t find my Diary Book there.

I’ve now had the chance to look more closely at Goober’s scribbles. His peanut people have broken legs and arms. And heads split open. And bandaged noses. And smiles turned down. And Xs for eyes.

Goober’s labeled each broken peanut person. He’s named all of them after himself.

Before Prettyman, there wasn’t a single lesson, paper, assignment, or test that turned me to
gooseflesh. Now I’m
all
goose. Nervous as a jumpy bird.

Back at Bethune when I took that test with Yolanda and Roger, I didn’t know what to expect, so I didn’t study. I was only just a little nervous. But that was different. The only truth
that
test
unveiled
is that it’s no secret I’ve got what it takes to succeed at Prettyman. But do I have enough smarts to pass Prettyman’s Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam?

Today was a church service filled with good surprises.

That preacher from Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr., had come back to Shepherd’s Way as our guest. Martin talked about the Sutter’s Dairy boycott.

He spoke about our progress as a people, and told us that change takes time. Nobody argued about nonviolence. But plenty grumbled about non-buttered toast, no milk for coffee, and baking without cream.

Before the protests got out of hand, Reverend Collier introduced a new member of Shepherd’s
Way. “Brother Arne Pelham, welcome.”

A pudgy man stood and nodded to the congregation. The reverend asked Mr. Pelham to tell us about himself. But Reverend Collier didn’t give Mr. Pelham time to speak. The reverend was eager to share the good news.

“Brother Pelham is a dairy supplier who’s come to Hadley from Maryland. His company, Pelham Dairy, will start operation throughout Lee County this month.”

I tugged at Daddy. “What does that mean?”

“It means we can buy our milk from Brother Pelham,” Daddy explained. “We now have a Negro selling us dairy products.”