Belle Teal (8 page)

“Your aunt who lives next door?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“You told us. On the first day of school when you introduced yourself.”

“And you remembered?”

“Yeah. Hey, Darryl, the hospital where your mother works, is it Baptist Memorial? Because I had my appendix out there and maybe I met her.” Before Darryl has a chance to answer me, I go on, “And what is a machinist? I've been wondering.”

Darryl and I start talking and we can't stop. We finish our lunches and we're still talking. Then we go out to the playground and keep right on talking. Gran says I could talk the ear off a stalk of corn, and I have nearly a month's worth of questions stored up, and Darryl, it turns out he's quite a talker himself, even if he is on the shy side.

I can't wait for Clarice to feel better so she can get to know Darryl too.

When the bell rings and it's time to line up to go back to our classrooms, HRH oinks at both Darryl and me. Darryl backs away from her, but I stand nose to nose with her and say, “Okay, finish up, Vanessa. We'll stay right here. Come on, I know you're not done yet.”

Vanessa looks disgusted and walks away from us.

Darryl stares at me.

“You just have to know how to handle her,” I tell him.

T
hat cold bug keeps Clarice out of school for two more days. It keeps Winnie and Terrence out for one more day. On the day they come back, they sit with Darryl at their usual table in the cafeteria. So I sit by myself. I have just bitten into my peanut butter sandwich when someone slides into the empty chair across from me.

“Hey,” says Darryl.

“Hey!” I say. I look across the noisy room at Terrence and Winnie, then back at Darryl. “Don't you want to sit with them?” I ask.

“I see them all the time. It's okay.” Darryl grins.

“You sure?”

“Yup.”

So Darryl and me, we eat our lunches together. Later, on the playground, I notice a kid, I think it's Kayla's younger brother Jeremy, playing Four Square with Terrence and Winnie. Darryl and me decide to play with them for a while, but then we lapse away and just start talking again. I think Darryl doesn't want to all the time be stuck with fourth-graders, even if they are colored like him.

 

When Clarice finally returns to school, her eyes are red and streamy, and she is still blowing her nose. She keeps a tissue tucked up her sleeve at all times. But she says she is better. It's been so long since I've seen her that I'm more of a chatterbox than ever on the bus that morning. I tell her about HRH and the oinking, and then she wants to catch me up on
The Edge of Night,
but I am dying to move on to the most important topic, which is Darryl.

“We have been sitting together in the cafeteria,” I report. I tell her about our conversations, and about Terrence and Winnie. “You will really like Darryl. There is not a mean bone in his body,” I add, quoting Gran. “Unlike Chas and Little Boss and Vernon's bodies.”

That day, Darryl and Clarice and me eat lunch together. Now Clarice, when she doesn't buy cafeteria food, the inside of her lunch box is like a market. She has crackers and a brownie and a hard-boiled egg and two pieces of fruit and some cheese cubes and some nuts and even spaghetti and meatballs in a container. She eats the spaghetti with an actual fork her mother has rolled up inside a paper napkin.

Clarice's lunch is great for trading. She grins when she sees that Darryl has one of his cookies, which I have told her how good they are, and she trades him the brownie
and
the egg for it. I get the crackers and cheese cubes for just half of my sandwich.

Once all the trading has settled down, Clarice, she mentions
The Beverly Hillbillies
and Darryl, he says, “You have a TV?” His whole face has lit up. “You ever watch
Bonanza
?”

“A couple of times,” says Clarice, and then they are off and running about
Bonanza.

Little Boss walks by our table then and whomps into the back of Darryl's chair, making Darryl spill his milk.

“Hey!” I cry, but Little Boss walks on without looking back. I can't tell if it was an accident or not. “Little Boss, you come back here!”

“Ignore him, Belle Teal,” says Clarice. She opens her Thermos and pours some juice into a Dixie cup and pushes it across the table to Darryl. “Here,” she says. “Have this instead.” Darryl and Clarice, they go back to their conversation about
Bonanza.

On the playground that day, after Clarice has tried to explain
The Edge of Night
to Darryl, the three of us decide to make up our own drama. It is about three people in New York City, where none of us has ever been. Darryl wants to play a fireman in the drama, Clarice decides to be a movie star, and I am a struggling writer. Our characters all happen to live in the same apartment building. We call our drama
City Lights,
since we live in one of those lit-up skyscrapers like the Empire State Building, and I think our show is very good. We will make up our lines, which I will write down and then we will act them out.

Once or twice Darryl, he looks over at Terrence and Winnie, but they are playing Four Square again, this time with Jeremy and his friend Will. Four Square doesn't hold much appeal for us writers.

“Let's work on our drama every day,” says Clarice, and Darryl and me agree that this is a very good idea.

 

When school ends that day, Clarice and me and Darryl walk outside together. Darryl meets up with Winnie and Terrence, and we say good-bye to him.

“Hey, Belle Teal! Clarice!” calls someone from behind us.

We turn around and there is Little Boss with Vernon and Chas.

Right away, I sense trouble. “What,” I say, flat-like.

“Well, we were just wondering,” Little Boss starts to say. “What is in that colored boy's lunch box every day? Fried chicken and watermelon?”

“That boy has a name,” I reply, “and it is Darryl.”

Little Boss ignores this. “So are you eating colored food for lunch now?”

I draw in a great big breath. I have to stop and think of Gran and her gentle ways and her belief in the Lord. Also, I look at the fresh bruise under Little Boss's left eye.

Finally I just say, “No.” Then I take Clarice by the elbow and lead her to our bus, where I choose one of the seats in the very first row. This means we will have to sit across the aisle from HRH Vanessa Mathers. But I would rather do that than sit within ten feet of Chas and Vernon.

 

The month of October is rushing by like the yellow leaves outside my bedroom window. Miss Casey has increased our homework little by little, but she makes up for it by reading aloud to us for twenty minutes every day after recess. Last week she started
The Big Wave,
by Pearl S. Buck, and when I listen to it I feel almost as breathless as when Sarah Lane Karr died on
The Edge of Night.
Miss Casey, she is a pure wonder.

One morning, about two weeks before Halloween, Miss Casey stands in front of our room holding a piece of chalk in one hand and
The Big Wave
in the other. She asks us to think about the stories she has been reading to us, and also about the little compositions we have written ourselves. I sit very still in my chair. I frown up my eyebrows. What, exactly, does Miss Casey want us to think when we think about our compositions? I try to remember the names of mine: “The Last Firefly,” “Autumn in Our Hills,” “The Lonesome Hound.”

Then, to my great surprise, Miss Casey, she says, “I believe it is time for you to write your own books.” 

Our own books? Lord above, I am not ready for that. 

“There are some fine writers in our class,” Miss Casey continues. “And some fine artists. I am going to assign you to work in pairs. Each pair will make a storybook, complete with illustrations and a cover, to share with your classmates.”

I am overjoyed except for that part about being assigned to work in pairs. I know teachers and they are famous for matching up two people who don't get along in order to make them get along. I am certain to be paired with HRH Vanessa.

Miss Casey puts down the book and the chalk and picks up a piece of paper from her desk. When she moves, her perfume from France wafts all the way over to my desk, and I breathe it in and hold on to it for good luck.

Miss Casey starts reading off pairs of names. Vernon is paired with poor Stephen. Clarice is paired with Mae. Now I am certain I am to be paired with HRH. I am trying to figure out how we could write our story without ever having to talk to each other, when I hear Miss Casey, say, “Belle Teal.” Inside my desk, I cross my fingers.

Then Miss Casey, she says, “Darryl.”

I let out my breath. I can't believe it! I turn my head to grin at Darryl. He is grinning back at me.

I love Miss Casey. I really do.

When she tells us to break into our pairs and start talking about our books, me and Darryl huddle up in the back of the room.

“You can draw all the pictures!” I say.

“And you can write out the story,” says Darryl. “But we'll make it up together.”

We are experts at making up stories by now, what with our work on
City Lights,
which we get to whenever we can. So far, we have written and acted out eight episodes. But our book, we decide, will not be another daytime drama. It will be a Halloween tale of some type.

 

When I get home from school that afternoon I make a beeline for my journal. I have to write in it immediately. Because of what happened on the bus.

It was Vernon who said it. As me and Clarice slid into our regular seat, Vernon leaned forward and hissed into my ear. “Nigger-lovers,” he said. Then he leaned back with his arms folded and glared at me.

I faced forward and just stared straight ahead. I could not answer him.

I don't like what he said, and I sure don't like how he said it.

I write this in my journal. What I really want to do is talk to Mama or Gran about it. But Mama is at work cleaning rooms at the R U Sleep Inn, and Gran, well, it does feel like I'm the one looking after her now, instead of the other way around. One thing, she hardly ever seems to know how to dress to go outside anymore. And not just because of the stuck thermometer. She appears to have forgotten about her special way of reading the weather. Sometimes she goes outside with three sweaters on when the temperature is creeping up on seventy. Sometimes the opposite. No jacket and it's not even forty. And Gran is
so
forgetful. Still, our meals are always cooked and the house seems about as clean as ever. Not as sparkly as on some TV commercials, but tidy enough. The yard looks a little scraggly, but then there's not much to do at this time of year. Still . . . Gran is not one for conversations lately. Mostly she putters around and sings little songs under her breath.

I look down at what I have written in my journal. I see “I HATE VERNON.” I pick up my pencil and erase that. “Hate just creates more hate,” Mama said. And she is right.

O
n the morning of October 17, I wake up as a thought springs into my head: Just two weeks to Halloween, and I don't have any idea about my costume. Every year I make my own. A lot of kids buy theirs. I have seen the stacks of costume boxes on the shelf near the cash register at Sherman's in Coker Creek. On each box is a picture of the costume — Frankenstein, a gypsy, a devil, a cat, a princess, a skeleton — and inside is a plastic mask or a cloth hood and a little suit you can slip into. Gran says we can't be paying for foolishness like that, and I am glad. The fun of Halloween is dreaming up a costume and then figuring out how to make it. Last year I was a caboose and I turned a cardboard box into a train car and wore it around my middle. Gran said, “My land, Belle Teal. I have never seen anything like it before.”

At lunch I ask Clarice and Darryl if they know what they are going to wear to our school Halloween party. Clarice says, “I have no idea. Maybe I'll be a fox.”