Swan Place (9 page)

And I waited and watched. Miss Madison was still looking at a page of her notebook. But then she picked up her pen and started writing. I picked up my pen, too. But that beautiful, blank page seemed to look back at me and to say
What now? What a good question!
I thought. And what was it Miss Madison had said to me that morning when I asked about what I should write?
Anything you want.
I sat and sat and thought and thought. What did I want to write about? That was a hard question! But then I got to thinking about Mama and her honky-tonk songs, and I knew right away that was something I could write about. So I started writing and all of a sudden, my pen seemed to fly across the page. Why, I was so surprised when I heard Miss Madison’s voice suddenly jumping into the middle of my story about how Mama was so very, very beautiful and how she sang those sweet-sad songs.

“Lunch time is over, Dove,” the voice said. “Go on to class and I’ll see you tomorrow at the same time.” But coming up out of the writing was like heaving myself out of a pit of deep mud that kept trying to hold onto me. That was another surprise, and when I looked up at Miss Madison, I could feel it was the same way for her. Like her hand hated to put down the pen, and her eyes wanted to stay looking at the paper. Finally, we both got free from it, but when I left the room, I suddenly realized that while I had been writing about Mama, it was almost the same thing as having Mama right there again with me. Then I remembered what Miss Madison had said about always talking in the present tense and how a story happened over and over again, every time you read it. Yes, it was almost as good as really having my mama there with me. So I went about the rest of my school day with a gladdened heart.

During math class, Michelle went up in front of the classroom to sharpen her pencil. When she passed my desk, she whispered, “I don’t know where you’re hiding, but I’ll find you!” I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t
hiding
at all. But I didn’t, because right then and there, I started practicing what I knew I had to do. I completely ignored her.

“I’ll find you!” she hissed, but I pretended that I didn’t even hear her.

Every day at lunch time
for that whole week, I went to Miss Madison’s classroom, ate my sandwich, and wrote about my mama until Miss Madison would tell me the time was up. Sometimes, I hated to go to my other classes, because I really wanted to keep writing. But I always did as Miss Madison said.

On Friday morning, when I got to school, the homeroom teacher told me that Miss Frazier wanted to see me. I didn’t even feel the least bit alarmed, because I knew for a fact that I hadn’t said or done anything that Michelle could twist around and use against me. So I went right down to Miss Frazier’s office. When I opened the door, Michelle and the same friend of hers that had lied about my sticking out my tongue were sitting in chairs in front of Miss Frazier’s desk. Miss Frazier’s face was like a stone, and Michelle smiled at me just the least little bit. The mean smile. Her friend was looking a little nervous.

“You wanted to see me, Miss Frazier?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. She didn’t invite me to sit down.

“Dove, Dove, Dove
 . . .
” she moaned.

“Yes’m?”

“What do I have to do to make you see how serious this is becoming?”

I didn’t know what to say. So I asked, “What’s this about, Miss Frazier?”

“You know good and well what it’s about,” Miss Frazier’s voice was rising. I stayed as calm as possible.

“No ma’am, I don’t,” I insisted.

“You’ve said nasty things to Michelle
again
,” I looked at Michelle and her friend. Michelle wasn’t smiling that mean smile anymore, and her friend was blinking her eyes and biting her lip.

Michelle spoke. “You know good and well, Dove Johnson, that you called me a
 . . .
a witch with a capital B.”

“When?”

“At lunch time yesterday.” Michelle turned to her friend. “Isn’t that right? Didn’t you hear her call me that?”

The friend hesitated and then nodded her head the least little bit. I turned to Miss Frazier and took a deep breath.

“Miss Frazier, I have not spoken a single word to Michelle, and I have spent every single lunch time sitting in Miss Madison’s room, doing some extra work.” Miss Frazier’s eyes went wide and locked onto Michelle.

“You can ask Miss Madison,” I concluded. Michelle’s face was as white as milk, and her friend had turned beet red and was starting to cry.

“Dove, you may go,” Miss Frazier said, still with her eyes locked onto Michelle. And so I did, but not before I gave Michelle a mean smile of my own.

That afternoon, when I got Molly and little Ellis from Aunt Bett, I told her all about how the plan she made up had worked. She nodded and smiled, but then she said, “Now, Dove, the weekend is here, and you’ll have Molly and Little Ellis all by yourself, you sure you can handle everything?”

“Yes’m,” I assured her. And I had absolutely no doubt in my mind at all that I was equal to the task.

“Yes’m.”

“Now if you’ll get me your canned beans, I’ll show you how to fix them up a little bit.” I got the cans and opened them. Aunt Bett emptied them into a bowl and then she added some mustard and ketchup and brown sugar. She stirred it all together and gave me a spoon to taste it.

“Oh, that’s better than just plain beans.”

“Now what you do is this,” she went on. “Empty these seasoned beans into a baking dish and put some raw bacon slices on top and bake it until the bacon’s done.”

“Yes’m.

“You’ll learn, little by little, and one of these days you’ll be a good cook,” she pronounced.

“Like you,” I said, and she blushed.

By the time Aunt Bett
took her basket of clean clothes home to hang on her own clothesline, she had helped me to make a cottage cheese and canned peaches salad and a chocolate sauce out of cocoa powder, sugar, and canned milk for putting on ice cream for dessert. The next week, Aunt Bett got a new belt for her washing machine, and Roy-Ellis put it on for her on Sunday afternoon, so she didn’t have to carry her laundry down to our house. But she took me to the grocery store with her every week and taught me lots of things, like how to give Molly and Little Ellis slices of apple with peanut butter on them, instead of so many cookies; how to mix dry milk half-and-half with real milk so that it tasted just fine and was cheaper; and how to find day-old bread at a better price than fresh.

At school, Michelle stayed away from me and even though everything was fixed, where Michelle was concerned, I kept on spending every lunch time in Miss Madison’s room. I loved doing that so much that I almost hated for school to be over. But I made up my mind that I was going to get me some notebooks and keep on writing about my mama.

So I guess we spent the rest of that springtime and the first few days of summer doing what Aunt Bett said we would have to do—just carrying on the best we could, just doing what had to be done and not thinking much about it. Roy-Ellis worked lots of extra shifts, because we needed the money so bad, so he came home late almost all the time. Most of the time, he was too tired to have any supper at all, so he just had a cold beer and went to bed.

Then something happened
right in my own backyard at the end of May that made that summer such a happy one for me, in spite of everything. Because even though we had an electric clothes dryer on the back porch, I always hung our sheets out, where they got all crisp-like and smelled like sunshine and were ever so much nicer to sleep on. And besides, running the dryer made the electricity bill way too high.

So that day, I washed a load of sheets while Molly and Little Ellis were having their lunch, and when they went down for their naps, I took the sheets outside in a big basket to hang them on the line. The sun was high in the sky, and the earth was just roasting under its heat. Even the little bit of grass in our backyard sounded crispy when I walked across it in my bare feet. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, that I knew of. Just making sure to get all the wrinkles out of the sheets before I clipped on the clothespins. So I’m not sure of when I first noticed a scurrying sound in all the tall weeds under the dead pecan trees farther back in the yard. The part that we shared with Aunt Mee.

She had come and knocked on our back door about once a week or so, to check on us and see if we needed anything. I always invited her in, but she smiled and shook her head. Except for once, when she came into the kitchen to help me figure out if a moldy piece of cheese was still any good.

“Oh sure, honey,” she had said. “This cheese is fine. Just you trim off the moldy part, and the rest is fine.” But I hadn’t seen her recently, so maybe that sound I heard that afternoon was her coming to see about us.

“Aunt Mee?” I called, and the sound stopped right away. No answer.

“Aunt Mee?” I called again. “Is that you?”

I heard a giggle and then more scurrying sounds in the weeds.

“Who’s there?” I called, suddenly feeling prickly all over. Another giggle, and I knew at once there was nothing about that silly little sound to be afraid of.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound impatient. “Who’s there?”

“Me!” A high-pitched voice. Then another giggle. I walked toward the tall weeds, and suddenly, a face appeared through them. The funniest face I have ever seen in my life. It was a girl, maybe about my age. Maybe a little younger, but it was hard to tell because the face was scrunched into shut-tight eyes, pouting lips, and a wrinkled nose. While I stood there, she stuck out her bright pink little tongue at me. I laughed.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The eyes popped open, big and brown, and the face unclenched itself—a face the color of coffee with lots of milk in it. A deep smile carved itself right in front of my eyes, in between two deep dimples like I’ve never seen before, except on a store-bought doll.