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Authors: Karen English

BOOK: Francie
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I still carried my school shoes, at least to the school yard, before putting them on. Daddy had sent them from Chicago in December and to me they were still new and special and too good to be getting dust or mud on them. I didn't care about the snickers I got from the Butler boys every morning as they joined me and Prez and Perry on the road.
“Why you carryin' your shoes, Francie?” Bertrum Butler asked me.
“Cause I don't want no dust on them.”
“Cause they from
Chicago
…”
“Maybe.”
“You always braggin' about movin' to Chicago. Bet you ain't even goin'.”
“Think what you want. It's no matter to me.”
We entered the school yard and I went straight over to the pecan tree across from Booker T Washington, the white clapboard building that was our school. Miss Lattimore came out onto the porch then to ring the bell.
I sat down under the tree and brushed off my feet, slipped on the new shoes, and stood up to admire them.
Oxfords. I loved them. Nobody had shoes like mine. I turned my foot this way and that. When I looked up, there was Augustine Butler staring at me from across the yard. She whispered something to her sister Mae Helen, and they both burst into laughter.
I didn't care nothin' about them—or any of their mean-spirited siblings. The Butlers were a large, angry family who sharecropped out near the county line. The boys and girls both were spiteful and always on the verge of a fight. You had to give them wide berth or wind up at the end of a fist. Their father was a known drunk who'd trade his mule for a bottle. All the kids stuck together like a pack of dogs. Augustine and Mae Helen, especially.
Today they were wearing thin cotton dresses with the waistlines heading up toward their armpits, and scuffed, laceless shoes. I straightened my shoulders and crossed the yard, eased past them where they were trying to crowd the doorway. The Butler brothers were taking seats in the back. I sat down at the desk next to my friend, Serena Gilliam, who smiled at me. She'd been over in Florida helping her sister take care of her new baby for
the last two weeks. Serena was a good friend but I only got to see her at school, I had so much work to do all the time.
“Hey, Serena.”
“Hey, Francie. We got Miss Lattimore today.”
“Ugh.”
Just at that moment, as if our thoughts had served her up, Miss Lattimore bustled in, carrying a bulging leather case that she grasped under the bottom and by the worn handle at the same time. She ignored us while unloading the bag onto her desk: workbooks, thermos, coffee mug …
On the chalkboard, in big expansive strokes like she was painting the side of a barn, she wrote the date. Finally, she whipped out a handkerchief from her pocket and mopped at her face.
“Let me tell you this right off.” The sudden sound of her deep, booming voice made everyone jump. Serena's brother Billy, who'd been busy whittling on a piece of pine, looked up and dropped his mouth open. “I won't take no mess from none of y'all. And if you know what's good for you, you won't test me.”
I frowned.
“Something wrong with you?”
It took a minute for me to realize she was talking to
me.
“Ma'am?”
“You look like somethin's botherin' you.” Augustine and Mae Helen snickered.
“No, ma'am.”
Miss Lattimore continued and I let out my breath slowly. “I want to see where you all are in your studies. Do these problems I put on the board.” She began to cover it with arithmetic problems. Then she pointed directly at me. “You. Get on up there and do the first problem.”
It was long division. A snap.
Daddy Mama Sister Brother,
I thought to myself—Divide, Multiply, Subtract, and Bring down. I finished it in a flash, because I knew my multiplication tables and division tables without hardly thinking about them.
She called Forrest Arrington next. He labored through a subtraction problem, but he got the right answer, and when Miss Lattimore said “Correct!” he beamed.
When she got to Augustine Butler, only the easiest problems were left. Slowly and heavily Augustine made her way up to the chalkboard like she was going before a firing squad. She stood a moment, facing the problem. Then, as if it might bite her, she reached for the chalk. It was three-column addition. I found myself running down the ones column in my head. Easy. With the tip of the chalk, Augustine touched the first digit, then tapped the second, lingering. With her left hand, down by her side almost hidden in the folds of her skirt, she tried counting her way to an answer.
There's nothing more pitiful than a big bully of a person being revealed as lumbering and stupid. The beads of sweat on her neck and her oil-stained collar made her
meanness all the more pathetic. I almost felt sorry for her.
“You're too big and too old to be countin' on your fingers, missy,” Miss Lattimore barked. “You should know your facts. They should come to you as fast as this!” She snapped her fingers. “Sit down. I have no patience for laziness.”
Augustine made her way back down the aisle, her eyes on the floor until she passed my desk. At that point, she glanced at me, a quick flicker filled with awful intent. She hated that I was smarter though a year younger.
 
As usual, the Butlers had no lunch. The boys and their baby sister, Ernestine, played while the rest of us opened our pails and dug into our corn bread, butter beans, and grits. Augustine and Mae Helen sat off by themselves on the tire swings, twirling themselves this way and that to show they didn't care. No past effort on Miss Lafayette's part had got them to accept a handout. They were poor but proud. Long ago I'd even tried to share my lunch with them—but they wouldn't have it. I'd learned that wasn't the way to go with the Butlers.
 
Augustine Butler was hissing at me. I was pretending not to hear. Miss Lattimore sat at her desk at the front of the class, correcting papers. Every once in a while, her head snapped up, so she could snag anyone who was crazy enough to cheat on her math test.
“Number
four
…” Augustine whispered. I stopped writing for a few seconds, then stubbornly went on with my test, an awful anger growing in me. I was determined not to turn around.
Miss Lattimore stood up. “Do I hear talking?” We all held our breath. She squinted at us suspiciously, then sat down slowly.
I handed in my test first, picked up the class dictionary off the bookshelf, and went back to my desk. The only free-time activity Miss Lattimore allowed was reading the dictionary. As I began to get lost in the words, I felt a hand on my arm. Serena was slipping me a note—not from her, but from Augustine, who sat behind her.
Your gon to get it,
I read. I folded the note, slipped it in my pocket, and glanced up at Miss Lattimore. She'd be of no help. I looked back at Augustine. She sat there glaring at me.
“Time's up. Francie, collect the papers in your group. Ernestine, collect the papers in yours.”
Augustine held on to her test a second, then gave me a slow nod full of threat. Her paper was smeared with pencil smudges and erasures.
 
After dismissal, I washed down the blackboard, watered Miss Lafayette's plants—I wanted to keep them healthy and happy while she was away—and clapped the erasers out the window, all the while looking around the school yard for Augustine, but she wasn't among the kids who were playing before heading home.
“Come on, Francie,” Prez said from the doorway. “I'm ready to go.”
“Then go on,” I said.
“Mama wants us to walk together.”
That was a stupid rule, always having to walk with Prez. I could tell he was mad because Perry had gone ahead without us. I thought of something. “Come here, Prez.” He took his time getting over to me, sensing I needed him. “Go see where Augustine is and come back and tell me.”
“She's gone home.”
“How do you know?”
“I seen her leave.”
“How do you know she ain't somewhere waitin' on me?”
“I don't.”
Miss Lattimore looked up from her desk and I lowered my voice.
“You go on,” I urged.
“You comin'?”
“Git!”
“Well, where you going, Francie?”
“Never you mind.” I knew where I wasn't going—down that road toward home so Augustine could jump out at me from behind a bush.
Prez looked at me a second longer, shrugged, and turned to go.
“Anything else you need done, Miss Lattimore?” I had
swept the floor and dusted the shelves. I had corrected the math tests and straightened the books.
“I think you done all there is to do, Francie.”
 
I left the schoolhouse and stood for a moment looking up the road as if it led directly to hell. I walked in the opposite direction. Toward town.
I kept meaning to turn around and go the other way—where Mama's chores were waiting for me, where there was dinner to cook and the house to clean—but I couldn't. I couldn't. The farther I walked, the more I was resolved not to take any chances.
Town felt strange. Walking along Lessing Street, I just then realized I'd never been there before on a weekday during the school year. Clusters of white schoolchildren took up the walk. I had to step off the curb for children who barely noticed me. I stopped at Diller's Drugs and looked in the window, past the display of electric irons and mixers and toasters, to the pictures of malteds and french fries above the counter.
I wished I had some money. I wished I'd thought to get a nickel out of my savings in the can under my bed. I could go sit in the colored section and have me a Coke. I could sit there all relaxed, forgetting my cares. If I was rich and had money to spare I could get me another
Nancy Drew
, since I'd soon finish the one Miss Lafayette had given me. If only I had me seventy-five cents.
Clarissa Montgomery stood with a bunch of other girls
at the comic-book carousel. Holly Grace, Mrs. Grace's blond, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth daughter, said something to Clarissa, then moved over to the cosmetics aisle. She lifted a lipstick out of a socket display, opened it, and ran the tube across the back of her hand. She stared at her hand for a moment, looked around, then recapped the lipstick and slipped it into her pocket.
My mouth dropped open. Did I see what I thought I saw? Holly Grace—that Mama all the time had to be hearing about when she served at Mrs. Grace's biweekly book club? Holly's piano recitals, Holly's citizenship awards and perfect attendance—stealing lipstick?
I left the store and moved on, feeling funny about my aimlessness but also a little excited by my newly discovered information. I wished I could be at that next book-club meeting. I wanted to be like a fly on the wall and watch Holly put on her usual airs. I wanted to hear Mrs. Grace brag on her.
As I walked along, I daydreamed, my thoughts finally returning to Mama. She wouldn't be back from the Montgomerys' until just after dark. If I beat her home, I could say I was sick and couldn't get the dinner and chores done because of that.
Naw, I decided. That wouldn't work. I didn't have a fever and Mama could always tell when I was lying, anyway.
Two little white girls came toward me, holding hands. I stepped sideways to get off the walk. That's when I saw
Mama coming out of Penny's Grocers walking behind Mrs. Montgomery, loaded down with two brown sacks. It was too late for me to get out of sight. Mama looked me dead in the face with no expression at all.
I dragged myself over to her with slumped shoulders.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Montgomery,” she said. She looked down at me. “Where's Prez?”
“He's at home.”
“Why ain't
you
home?”
Before I could answer, she said, “Come on.”
We sat in silence in the back seat of Mrs. Montgomery's big black sedan. When we pulled into the driveway, Mama gathered the packages and got out without a word. I knew to follow her into the house.
“Sit down,” Mama said. She began to move briskly around the kitchen, putting away the contents of the sacks. When she was finished, she called to Mrs. Montgomery that she was going, got her hat off the hook by the back door, and put it on.
“Let's go,” she said.
It would be a long, quiet walk, because Mama didn't reprimand in public. You acted up in town and she just dug a thumb in your forearm and whispered a promise of a whipping in your ear. Mama could wait hours before she acted, and the whole time you lived with an awful dread.

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