Stella by Starlight (4 page)

As Stella and Jojo got their jackets and lunch pails, their mother warned, “Y'all be careful, you hear! Those crazy Klan folks are up to something. Until we figure out what, you're to come straight home after school. Stay together, stay out of the woods, and keep to the main road.”

“You got that?” Papa added.

Stella and Jojo nodded solemnly and headed out into the nippy, sparkling morning. But as soon as they were off the porch, Jojo cried out, “Race ya!” and he took off.

“To the apple tree in the Winstons' yard!” Stella hollered after him, breaking into a run herself.

“Winner gets to be the boss!” Jojo yelled back.

“Well, get ready to lose then!” Stella ran full-out up the dirt road. Laughing and breathless, she touched the tree just seconds before Jojo did, her lunch bucket clunking against the trunk. “Ha-ha! I'm the queen of the world!” she shouted to the sky.

“I almost beat you! You ain't even princess of Bumblebee,” Jojo told her, laughing as well.

“I am queen and you gotta do what I say,” Stella declared, folding her arms across her chest.

Just then Johnsteve Winston came out of his house, lunch pail dangling from his left hand. He was thick and sturdy, built like a man already.

“She think she's the queen again?” Johnsteve asked Jojo, his thumb pointing to Stella.

“Yup.”

Stella fixed them both with a steely glare, then said in her best royal voice, “Both of you must go and slay a dragon for me. Begone!”

Johnsteve raised an eyebrow. “First of all, Your Highness, I didn't lose no race. Second of all, you're in
my
yard.”

“And third,” Jojo finished, stretching out his arms, “there ain't no dragons around here!”

“Well, how about a bear, then?” Stella asked, hands on her hips.

“Maybe a bear,” Johnsteve mused. “But if I caught one, what would you do with it?”

“I'd put it on a leash and take it to church!” Stella said.

“Your sister's crazy,” Johnsteve said to Jojo.

“Yup.”

Mrs. Winston poked her head out her front door. “Y'all quit that skylarkin' and get your butts to school 'fore you be late! And mind you keep your eyes and ears sharp!”

“Yes, M'am,” they all replied, and commenced walking again. The town square, and beyond that, their school, were a little more than a mile away.

“So what all went on at the meeting at your house last night?” Johnsteve asked, changing the mood.

“Far as I can tell, all they did was swear to help and protect each other—and us,” Stella said. “I guess it's good they all got together like that, but . . .” She gave a rock a good, hard kick.

“You musta been pretty scared—seeing real live Klansmen!”

“A little,” Stella admitted. “Nighttime made them even scarier. But the way I figure it, those robes they wear must look pretty stupid in the daytime.”

Randy Bates ambled out of the next house they reached—a small, gray shack, the one on the road most in need of repair. Next door to Randy's house was the home of Dr. Hawkins and his family, freshly whitewashed, with geraniums still in bloom by the porch. Now
that
, Stella thought as she did every morning, was like a house in one of her storybooks from school.

Tony ran out the front door and leaped off the porch, sailing right over the geraniums. He pounded Randy on the shoulder. “You're it!” Then he took off in a blaze of speed, his bare feet churning on the dirt.

Randy and Johnsteve scrambled after him, but they gave up after a minute. Tony Hawkins was just too fast. He circled back around to the group.

“I beat you carrying a lunch pail
and
a book!” he crowed victoriously. Tony had an uncle in Raleigh who sent him a box of books every few months. Stella envied that.

“Aw, I let you win,” Johnsteve said, giving him a shove.

“Somebody had to stay back and protect Stella and Jojo,” Randy added, shoulder-punching them both.

“I can protect myself, thank you very much!” Stella retorted. But she had to admit, this morning especially, it felt good having others around.

Other classmates joined them as they walked down Riverside Road, a name that made no sense to Stella, because it wasn't even close to the river! While Randy and Johnsteve and Tony continued to push one another back and forth, the others seemed more subdued, the youngest ones looking downright nervous.

But as they rounded a bend, Stella perked up—they were nearly at Carolyn's house. Carolyn Malone was Stella's best friend, and not only that, their birthdays were just three days apart. They shared everything—from Stella's worries about school, to how to win at hopscotch, to Carolyn's sorrow when her baby sister, Wilma, had died three months ago. Carolyn ran to meet them, fresh red ribbons tied crisply at the ends of three long braids. That was the only thing they didn't share. Stella's thick, coarse hair never seemed to want to grow much past her ears. Carolyn hugged Stella and tossed a cat's-eye marble at Jojo, who caught it happily.

“How's your mama?” Stella asked her.

“Better, I guess. She still moves pretty slow. Ever since Wilma . . . well, it's like she's scared to get too happy.”

Stella gave Carolyn's hand a squeeze. Mama said there was nothing in the world worse than losing a baby.

Helen, Henrietta, Herbert, Hugh, and Hazel—just five of the thirteen Spencer children—straggled out of the last house on the road, the biggest house in all of Bumblebee. It was a true two-floor house, not just a loft upstairs, but a full set of rooms. The Spencers took turns going to school, the rest staying home to help their parents with chores and crops and the babies. The next day, they all switched.

From an upstairs window, Mrs. Spencer called out the same warning she did every morning, “Y'all be good now, 'fore you get knocked to the back side o' nowhere!” Stella had no idea what that meant, though she thought it was funny. But this morning Mrs. Spencer added, “And be watchful, children. Be watchful.”

And it seemed to Stella that at every house they passed, parents—some already in work boots or maid
uniforms—poked their heads out of doors or stood on porch stoops, warning them, “Shake a leg, y'all,” or “Be careful, now.”

At the end of Riverside Road, the group turned left onto Main Street. As if on signal, Stella and her friends slowed, dropping their voices to a whisper, then finally growing silent. They couldn't help, every single day, staring at the perfect-looking brick building with perfect-looking grass in the front. Mountain View School. The school for white children.

In addition to a track team, Mountain View had a football team and was known around the state for its academic and sports successes. They even had their own library.

Each morning, as they headed to
their
school, the Mountain View students, most wearing leather shoes and woolen coats against the wind, would sometimes give them a wave as they passed by, sometimes not. But they all knew one another. In a town this small, it was impossible not to.

As the two groups eyed each other, a whoosh of thin, cool air encircled them all. Stella pulled her jacket closer, buttoning up her resentment.

6

“Let's go, y'all,” Stella urged them forward. “Mrs. Grayson is gonna have a hissy fit if we're late!” Their school was still half a mile away.

The back-and-forth that occurred nearly every morning rose up yet again.

“I wouldn't want to go there,” Johnsteve declared. “Too proper!”

“And they wouldn't want you!” Tony countered. “Too dark!”

“You think they got better teachers?” Johnsteve asked.

“Better than Mrs. Grayson?” Stella asked, with a smirk. “Not a chance.”

“I like our school, even though it's old,” Jojo said.
“And everybody's got ashy legs and scabby knees just like me!”

“Speak for yourself!” Stella retorted.

With that, they all laughed and hurried on to their next stop—Cathy's Candy Store. Mrs. Cathy Cooper opened early so that the children could buy sweet treats on their way to either school. Her twelve-year-old daughter, Thelma, helped her until it was time for her to go to Mountain View.

As they crowded into the store, Stella waved at Mrs. Cooper. She had to be the nicest white lady in Bumblebee, not just because she sometimes gave them free candy, but because she didn't shoo them to the back door like most of the other store owners in town did. It felt kinda good to walk in the front like everybody else. Stopping by the candy store made every day start off sweet.

Carolyn had a penny, so she bought a bag of red hots.

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Cooper said. “Tell your mama I said hello.” Carolyn promised she would.

Stella poked her friend. “Girl, you know I can't eat those things—they make my tongue go thick,” she grumbled.

Carolyn grinned. “Maybe that's why I got them!”

“No fair!”

Because they visited the store so often, Stella felt comfortable enough to say hi to Thelma. “It sure must be nice having a mom who owns a candy store,” she said this morning.

Thelma laughed. “I probably get less than any of you—Mommy's pretty strict!” She handed Stella a Bazooka Joe bubble gum when her mother wasn't looking.

Just then a group of five white children walked into the store, also carrying lunch pails and school bags. The room was suddenly quiet.

Stella inhaled sharply, a thought striking her. Had any of their fathers been in that field last night?

“Welcome!” Mrs. Cooper called out cheerfully, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Looks like we've got a full house this morning. Nothing better than a store full of children!”

The two groups, however, moved around each other like oil and water.

Paulette Packard, the doctor's daughter, pushed herself right up to the case and started choosing. Stella
could scarcely take her eyes off Paulette's dress—it was a pale lavender, and clearly store-bought. She wore patent-leather shoes and carried a matching pocketbook.

A pocketbook at school?
Stella thought.

While most of the children in the store, both black and white, scraped for pennies in their pockets, Paulette pulled out two crisp dollar bills and bought three large bags of candy. She sure liked Goo Goo Clusters!

So as not to be caught staring, Stella turned from Paulette back to Thelma and got up the nerve to ask her something she'd always wondered about. “How's school?”

What Stella really wanted to know was what the rooms looked like—the books, the desks, even the pictures the Mountain View teachers posted on their walls. She would love to have just a teeny peek inside Thelma's classroom.

But Thelma just shrugged. “Grumpy teachers. Lots of reading and reciting. Basically boring. How about yours?”

Stella couldn't understand how school could ever be boring. “It's not bad,” was all she told Thelma. But
she wondered if white kids ever had trouble figuring out writing and reading stuff.

Barbara Osterman, the daughter of the mill owner, must have been listening, because she stepped close and said in a low voice, “I don't get why we gotta go to different schools anyway. Seems kinda stupid to me.”

Stella agreed 100 percent, but she wasn't sure if she was allowed to say that to a white child. She glanced down to pick at the bubble-gum wrapper in her hand.

A tall, thin white boy whom Stella knew only as Kenneth leaned over and whispered to Thelma, “School together? Ha! We don't go to school with them because we don't have to.” Stella kept her eyes on the Bazooka as Kenneth went on. “They'll never amount to anything. My daddy says if they learn to cook and sew and clean, that's all they'll need. Hey, can I have some of them Zagnuts?”

Stella wanted to call
him
a Zagnut, or a Dum Dum, or a word that was not a candy, but a curse. Instead she gritted her teeth and looked away to notice that Paulette was slipping out the door. Without her classmates. For a moment Stella wondered if Paulette was
uncomfortable with what Kenneth was saying, but she quickly realized that wasn't it. Through the front window she saw Paulette's father on his sleek black stallion, reining in the horse. Paulette hurried to greet him. She held her hand out, and her father smiled and placed a bill in it.