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Authors: Karen English

BOOK: Francie
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Prez looked from Mama to me. “Where you been, Francie?” he asked me—to gain Mama's favor, anyone could see.
I ignored the question.
“Francie went to town,” Mama said. “Now the chores ain't done and we don't have no supper.”
“I was afraid,” I said quickly.
“Afraid of what?” Mama looked at me full of suspicion. Neither one of us had sat down.
“Augustine Butler was mad cause I didn't give her an answer on our math test.” I pulled the note out my pocket, glad that I had saved it. “She passed me this.”
“What's it say?” Mama asked. She didn't read.
“‘You're going to get it.'”
“Come on over here, Prez, and read that note. Tell me if that's what it says.”
Prez squinted at the note and nodded his head. “That's what it says, Mama.”
“And you didn't write it yourself, Francie?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Francie didn't write that note, Mama. ‘Going' ain't even spelled right. It's spelled g-o-n.”
Mama thought about this. She was quiet. Then: “You're not to go into town no more. You gonna have to figure out how to handle that ol' bully, but I want your behind to come straight home—with Prez—after school.
Straight home.
”
There was nothing to say to that. It gave me no answer to my problem, but I could tell by the tired way Mama took off her town hat and went to the basin to wash up that I wasn't going to be punished.
I woke up the next morning with my head filled with
schemes of how to avoid Augustine. I'd start out early and cut through the woods. If she saw me already at school helping Miss Lattimore, she'd just think the teacher asked me to come early.
Prez was trying to spoil my plan by not hurrying, determined to be hard to wake and slow about eating his oatmeal.
“Come on!” I said, pushing his book bag at him.
“I am,” he said, squeezing his foot into his shoe. “I ain't even finished my breakfast good.”
“I'll let you have some of my lunch.”
“What about Perry?”
“We ain't got time to wait for Perry. He'll have to walk to school by himself. Now, come on!”
The woods actually slowed us. We had to cross the creek by walking the flat stones without slipping in, and that took time and care and Prez's constant bellyaching. “She ain't got it in for me. Why I gotta go through the woods instead of on the road?”
“Shut up.” Fear made me irritable.
I thought of ways of doing Augustine in. I thought of beating her over her ugly head with a stick, or ripping her hair out, or pushing her off a cliff. Though we didn't have any cliffs around, I could imagine the satisfaction I'd feel in my hands as I sent her over one.
I peeked out from the deep coziness of the forest edge. The school yard was empty.
“Come on,” I said, pulling Prez by the arm. We crossed
the yard quickly to the classroom door. It was locked. I tried it twice, my heart sinking. Prez ran around to the window. He had to jump up to peek in.
“She's in there,” he said.
“Who?”
“Miss Lattimore. She's in there at her desk.”
“What's she doing?”
He jumped up again. “Nothin'.”
“Nothing?”
“Just drinkin' a cup of tea or coffee or somethin'.”
I went back to the door and tapped lightly. I waited, listening. When the door opened, I stepped back, speechless. Miss Lattimore, with a steaming cup in her hand, looked annoyed.
“What is it, Francie?”
“I just wanted to know if you needed any help?”
“Can't say I do—right now. You go on and play.”
How was I supposed to go and play? I sat down on the steps, feeling miserable. Prez was happy—he had the tire swing all to himself.
Then I noticed someone coming up the road. I could tell by the loping walk it wasn't Augustine. I shaded my eyes against the morning sun and closed my mouth, which had dropped open. It was a boy. A big boy. He walked right into the school yard, stopped for a few seconds to look around, and walked over to me, bold as you please.
His kinky hair was brushed back and packed down like
it had been under a stocking cap all night. His overalls and shirt were tattered but clean. He was darker than me, a reddish kind of dark. He didn't look me in the eye.
“What time this school start?”
“In a little while,” I said. He put one foot on the bottom step and looked off like he was trying to cover up some embarrassment. Prez hopped off the swing and came over to stare at him. He was still young enough to get away with it.
“Who are you?” Prez said.
“Jesse Pruitt.”
I was secretly happy that Prez was so outright nosy.
“I ain't never seen you before. Where you from?”
“Over in New Carlton.” He stopped to give Prez the once-over. Then something seemed to smile in his eyes but not on his lips. “Ain't no school in New Carlton.”
“Everybody know that.”
“Yea,” he said. Then there was silence all around.
As soon as the yard began to fill up, Jesse went over to a tree stump to sit and wait. Finally, Miss Lattimore came out and rang the bell. I dashed inside.
From the safety of my seat, I watched my classmates file in, the strange boy hanging back, I noted, in the doorway. Each person looked up at him as they passed, wondering who he was and why he was there. Augustine finally arrived, and she stared openly at him even after she sat down, seeming to have forgotten all about me.
Miss Lattimore took her seat, shuffled some papers,
then looked over her glasses at the boy. “You here for school?”
He didn't look her in the eye.
“Yes'm.”
“What's your name?”
“Jesse Pruitt.”
“Pruitt. I ain't heard that name before. Where's your people?”
“We stay up by New Carlton,” he mumbled.
“How old are you, Jesse Pruitt?”
He didn't answer right away. She waited, tilting her head to the side, like she was expecting him to lie. He said nothing. Augustine and Mae Helen snickered behind their hands. “Well, Jesse Pruitt, can you hear? I asked you a question.”
“Sixteen,” he said quietly. So quietly that I didn't know if I heard him right. Yes, there was something older about him and there was something serious, something weighing on him.
“Come again?” Miss Lattimore said. Jesse would be in an age group all by himself.
“I'm sixteen,” he repeated, his voice loud now as if he had a point to prove. I felt sorry for him standing there like he had no kin, no friends, not a soul in his corner.
“You're a big boy. Take that seat in the back. I don't want you to be blocking the view from the little ones. Pass out the readers, Francie.”
I got up to do as I was told. Augustine took hers out
of my hand with a little snatch. I placed one on Jesse Pruitt's desk and gave him a smile to encourage him. He looked at the book's cover, leaving it as I had put it. Upside down. I knew at that moment he was like Mama. He couldn't read.
Miss Lattimore got the lower grades practicing their printing, the middle grades their cursive, then she had us turn to
Hiawatha
in our books. Reading aloud was the most boring thing I had to endure every morning, because Mae Helen, Augustine, and several others who'd never learned to read too good would take ten years to drag through one sentence. The teacher had to tell them every other word. Then the next morning they would repeat the very same mistakes. Some of them were thick as posts. My turn would be over before I knew it, after waiting all morning for the teacher to get to me.
This time was different, because Miss Lattimore was making her way down the row to Jesse Pruitt. He came after Serena's brother J. Dean, who took minutes and minutes to limp through five lines. Then: “Okay, Jesse Pruitt, let's see what you can do. Take it from there.”
I looked back. His book was still closed and upside down. He touched it but did not open it. “I ain't learned to read,” he said, loud enough for there to be no doubt about what was said. Everyone whipped around then. Even the poor readers, probably glad that there was finally someone worse off than them.
“You don't read …” Miss Lattimore adjusted her
glasses, trying to figure out what to do with this big person who never learned to read. “You can't read at all?”
“I never went to school regular.”
“I see. Well, you comin' here after school's been in session for months. I don't have time to coddle you. Francie's a good reader. Maybe she can help you. Maybe she can't.” She looked over at me. “Francie?”
“Yes, ma'am, I'll help him.” I looked back at Jesse and smiled, but he was sitting there staring at his hands.
 
“Now, you know your alphabet?”
“My ABCs?”
“Yea—your ABCs.” Jesse Pruitt and I had stayed behind after everyone had been sent home. Miss Lattimore was grading quizzes at her desk, not seeming to pay any mind to us.
“My mama taught me.”
“You know the sounds of the letters?”
“No—I don't think so.”
I looked at him. It was going to be a long, hard row to hoe, I decided.
By the time I'd taken him through the sounds of the consonants so that he could remember them, I'd changed my mind. Jesse Pruitt wasn't no dummy, and I was going to teach him to read. The idea gave me butterflies in my stomach.
I looked out the window. The school yard was nearly empty now, and Miss Lattimore was packing up to go.
Prez was kicking a pebble around. He was soon going to grow tired of waiting on me every day. I wished Perry would stick around with him.
 
“How come that boy never went to school?” Prez and I were hurrying home to get there in time to do our chores.
“Mama never went,” I said.
“How come Mama never went?”
“She had to take care of all her brothers and sisters when her mama died.”
For a moment, I felt sad for Mama—her never going to school. But then my sadness vanished as soon as I remembered I was teaching someone to
read.
I quickened my pace, determined to keep Mama satisfied with my work so I could keep staying after school, helping Jesse Pruitt. I was feeling so good, thinking about this, I forgot all about Augustine.
And suddenly there she was. Augustine stepped in front of me with Mae Helen right behind her. She wore her ugly grin on her face, like this was something she'd been planning all day. I was more surprised than scared. Then I felt a prick of anger. Prez looked from me to her.
Without a word, I tried to go around her, but Augustine blocked me, and Mae Helen joined her to widen the barrier.
“You think you so cute, don't you—just cause you think you movin' up to Chicago.” Augustine turned her head and spit on the ground. “Shoot, it ain't so special. I got a cousin up there and it ain't so hot.”
“Yea,” Mae Helen said, inching closer. She was bigger than Augustine, with a halo of unruly hair that stood out all around her face. I weighed her role in this, deciding I couldn't fight one of them—let alone both.
“I never said it was special and I don't think I'm cute,” I said, my voice breaking and sounding frightened to my own ears.
“You shoulda give me that answer.”
“Miss Lattimore would've torn up my paper,” I said.
“So?”
Augustine didn't care about no answer. She just didn't like me. She was simply giving herself something to go on—giving herself a reason to beat me up.
I stepped back, knocking into Prez. Augustine, taller than me, leaned forward, her arms behind her a bit, her chest out. She brought her face close to mine. It was like a dance. She'd said her ugly words, and next she'd be giving me a hard shove. I braced myself for it, so when it came, it took more effort than she expected to knock me down. But Augustine outweighed me by about twenty pounds. I fell hard on my elbows, scraping them on the gravel. Both girls laughed. When I tried to get up, Mae Helen pushed me down.
“Come on—get up. Ain't you gonna get up?” Mae Helen looked at Augustine, I guess for instructions on what to do next.
Prez began to cry, taking Mae Helen's attention off me for a second. I hurried to stand up. “Aw, no you don't,” Augustine said, readying herself to shove me again. But
just then Jesse, appearing out of nowhere it seemed, grabbed her from behind, nearly lifting her off her feet before setting her aside. She went down on her butt hard, her eyes wide with surprise. She struggled to get up, but Jesse Pruitt held her down by the top of the head, so all she could do was get purplish with the effort to push against his big flat palm. Prez laughed, suddenly feeling brave.

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