Tiny Dancer (9 page)

“I was healed,” said
Rosetta. “Had a rash all up and down my backside the doctor could not cure. Now the whole thing dried up.”

That set them all to chattering about Reverend Theo’s Story Chair.

Dorothea rolled her eyes.

“See if it doesn’t work,” said
Rosetta. She pointed me toward the chair.

I felt a knot in my
stomach as if I had swallowed Jackie the Pig’s whole head. I could not tell this circle of strangers the worst thing that had happened to me, not without ruining the night for everyone. “Maybe next time,” I said, stepping away from the Story Chair.

“All right then,
ladies, next time—if she wants,” said Reverend Theo. He invited one of the children to take my place. Calvin Hildebrand’s little sister Soomy. Calvin teased her unmercifully calling her, “Baby Soomy.” He set off all the boy cousins. She stopped that nonsense right off and they all hushed up their teasing.                  

Reverend Theo smiled sympathetically at me.

While each of the guests oohed and moaned over Soomy’s tale of woe, I watched Reverend Theo. I tried to take my eyes off his bandage and black eye, but I could not take my thoughts off it. Vesta had not mentioned anything about what happened Tuesday. Matter of fact, she had completely shut up about the whole matter as if she had not ever been approached by Effie. From where I sat, I could see the corner of our shed and the barricade of sawhorses in silhouette.

I
inched away until everyone seemed to engage in the story Soomy told about a fight she had with her best friend Etta Jackson. I tucked my bread pan picture into my back pocket. Then I slipped off the porch where I sat relieved to be alone at the base of the giant cherry tree. The musicians had set down their instruments and gathered on the porch with the women and children. I sat in one of their empty folding chairs. It was the first time I noticed how the Miller’s cherry trees lined up right down the edge of the easement with our tree. It was as if a whole row of trees had all been planted there once in a grove. Funny, I thought, how a land joined for one purpose was now divided by the color of people’s skin.

I
finally enjoyed the slice of ginger cake, washing it down with sweet tea while I swallowed down the tears that had nearly erupted until Reverend Theo rescued me from being pulled into his Story Chair. I pondered my sister’s involvement with this mixed bag of people but kept it to myself.

When the last song of the night was played, Reverend Theo stood and banged out a song on a tambourine.
His nephew Calvin picked up a guitar while Cousin Whit joined them on the bongos. They played while the voices grew loud, burdens lifting off all present. I felt lighter having been in their company.

Then I
noticed my bedroom light flickered on and then went off, as if someone were searching the house for me. My cheeks hot for fear, I quickly got up and filled a plate of food and then carried it through the sunflower forest and across my family’s lawn hoping it would appease opinions about a group of folks I could neither judge nor hate.

                                                                                    * * * * *

Vesta had not come downstairs and that gave me a moment’s pause. I stowed my leftovers in the refrigerator. Then I drew the patio curtains closed as if hiding where I had been all day.

I could hear the hard clomp of Daddy’s shoes as he
trudged up the stairs. Vesta followed close behind. I dutifully poured Daddy his glass of bedtime milk and waited for him at the kitchen table. He took his time about coming back downstairs freshly smelling of Lava soap and wrapped in his tattered robe. “What you got for me, Sis?”

I portioned out s
ome of Dorothea’s ginger cake. He took the first bite with great enthusiasm as Vesta seldom baked except for Christmas and that from a mix. Then he looked up at me, his eyes reading the faintest traces of my thoughts as he had seemed to do as far back as I could remember. “You brought this from the colored’s house, I guess?” His lips thinned, the words barely seeping out except in a hoarse whisper.

I felt all the flush drain from my face. “Vesta
know?” I asked.

“She thought you had gone off with Claudia and forgot to tell us. I never told her any different. Best she believed that. But you know you’re dallying where respectable people don’t dally, don’t you?” He pushed away the cake.

When I fell quiet, he left a silence between us as heavy as bricks. I put away the salt and pepper mills left behind from their supper and the empty plate Vesta had left for me as I was expected for dinner. It took me a while to figure out the strange feeling in the pit of my stomach was only my habit of resisting the yoke of an awkward sense of guilt.

“You must like the Millers,” said Daddy. “You were over at their place the whole day, weren’t you?”

“I helped Dorothea with cooking. She taught me how to make bread rolls. I brought you some of them. Want to try one?”

“Did you make this cake?”

“No.”

“
If Vesta knew, she’d be of the opinion that you were over at the Millers to defy her. Or maybe, better said, to spite her.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know you’re not spiteful, Sis.” He said it with a bit of care. “Is that where you got that fancy necklace?”

My hand
rose, touching the medallion. I flinched. I wasn’t supposed to walk away with it.

“
You know how people talk.” He did not eat the bread or the cake, but pushed it all away. “I’d hate to hear my daughter lumped in with the lowlifes.”

“But aren’t we?”
For here we lived, the poorest among the richest.

He laughed.

“Really, Daddy.”

“It’s the company they keep.”

“You don’t know them, Daddy.”

“I know. Can you just let me know next time you take off the whole day like that?”

“Yessir.”

“And let that be your last pass through the sunflower garden,” he said.

I sat trying to think of every good thing I could say to convince him that the Millers were really not pagans. “Reverend Theo, he’s a preacher you know.”

Daddy
handed me his empty milk glass. “They’re not our kind. Besides, I might have been worried too had I not looked out your window and saw you with my own eyes.”

“And now?” I poured him another glass.

“Now you’ve had your curiosity satisfied. You’ve seen how the other side lives. It’s time to move on. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I won’t do
it again,” I lied, but just a little. What I meant was that I wouldn’t be seen in plain sight in the company of the Millers. I wouldn’t let the neighbors know. I was confused by his worry over what others thought. We had lived out the Miller’s back door these past few years. It wasn’t as if they’d just moved in. They obviously knew all about us, and probably through Siobhan. Vesta had been so caught up in hiding out in a darkened living room that she had scarcely acknowledged my whereabouts anyway. I would not have been surprised if Vesta knew, but, like the day I came home with my hair dyed black, said nothing. Come to think of it, I was like a ghost in my own house. I had confessed more about myself to Reverend Theo and Dorothea than to my own family.

“You know about Vesta’s barricade, trying to keep the Millers out,” I said.

“Not any of your business or mine.” He sipped his milk in a hurry.

“He registered
to vote, though, didn’t he? Those men, they tried to stop him.”

“You don’t know everything. This world’s in
a turmoil. But you’re a kid, so just enjoy your childhood.”

“I saw his black eye. They hurt Reverend Theo real bad.”

“This past year’s been hard on us all,” he said. “Can’t blame you for being confused.”

I hated seeing disappointment in Daddy’s eyes. Here we had talked for five minutes and I knew less about him than before we had started.
“Daddy, the way we are now, our sadness changing every part of us? Will it pass?”

“I’m sure it will. It’s not like we’ve ever gone through something like this before. You understand don’t you?” he asked.

I nodded. Then I washed and dried his dishes and told him good-night. He headed up the stairs while I promised I’d be up later. “I might watch a late movie,” I called up after him. Really it was only an excuse to stay downstairs until Vesta and Daddy had stopped their running back and forth to the bathroom. I did not want to look into either one of their eyes and so I protected my need to be alone. Without anyone telling me until now, old rules got erected in the past week, seemed like old ones anyway. Vesta and Daddy might as well have taken sawhorses and made a big wall around me.

I found
a Dracula movie and settled into it, escaping the tension hanging over the house. Then I fetched some of the forbidden pork and devoured it like a vampire. I sat stuffing myself on Jackie the Pig like there was no tomorrow. But in spite of what my family chose to ignore, tomorrow was coming, like it or not.

The next week flew past in a searing haste. A cloud had settled over my attitude toward Daddy. I attended the next Saturday pig-picking, skating past Vesta’s watchfulness by telling Daddy I had cleaned my room and would stay outdoors for a bit to escape the chlorine fumes. I scarcely left a breath between my last word and sliding out the patio door. As casually as I could muster, I lounged out on the back porch reading a movie magazine. Then I busied myself watering Vesta’s geraniums. When I wound up the water hose, I carried it slyly into the front of the old shed and slid out the back door, round the barricade, and into the garden, pretty as you please.

I
came in by bedtime bearing another offering of spice cake for Daddy, though I left it for him in the refrigerator, slid right behind his beer, and disappeared upstairs into my room. The last piece he had turned away disappeared from out of the back of the refrigerator. He had a sweet tooth that could not resist temptations, especially home baked cakes. I was still feeling light and airy as I had joined the levity by dancing with the other youths. I had explained an Irish jig to the fiddlers. They picked up on it pretty well. Then the little girls joined me in the dance followed by the women. I noticed that two of the nephews were not around, Calvin and Whit. When I asked about them, not a soul would answer or tell me if they were coming or not. Ratonda had gotten up and gone into the house when one of the women had yelled for her to join in the dance. But Ratonda might have been far too strict on herself, not one to kick up her legs in front of the men. I placated myself with that thought anyhow, even when I caught Ratonda staring a mean hole through me.

I kept
the memory close of dancing under the moon with people whose ancestors would flip in graves over knowing they were dancing an Irish jig.

Remembering the guilt
from the prior weekend, I hoped no one at home would land on me with sharp opinions and sand away the good that came of it. My mind was covered in the evening’s glitter, as if it had sifted down between the clouds especially for my sake. I was greedy for the feelings of good will to remain and not pass. I floated into sleep as if my body was being lifted up to the stars.

Come Monday,
I left the house early as I had done every morning the past two weeks. But instead of hiding out in the sunflower forest to await an invitation from Dorothea, I headed straight for the Millers’ back porch for, in spite of Theo’s complaints, they would be expecting me.

“I made so many eggs this morning,” said Dorothea, “that I wondered to myself, now who will eat all of these eggs
?” She had set out fried eggs, bacon, and biscuits on the back porch table.

I
joined her unsure of whether or not Reverend Theo had gotten up yet. Soon enough he came out buttoning his top button. He had gone down into their cellar, he said, to fetch peach preserves. He wiped the jar and set it out with a spoon. His bandage had been removed, the scar beside his eye shiny and healing up, though the stitches were still visible. His black eye had blued, fading under his bottom lashes.

“You run into a wall?” I asked.

“A big one,” he said. “But I walked around it.” He did not look at me.

Tuesday
I went back. It was pancakes and strawberry jam syrup. Tiny blueberry muffins made from scratch and baked in silver holders sat on a Lazy Susan Dorothea said she had saved from her mother’s kitchen. I knew by now that Dorothea had grown up in Louisiana. She talked of high tea and customs fascinating to me. I imagined women in wide hats, stirring cubed not granular sugar into their teacups, nibbling biscuits no bigger than marshmallows.

“You both know
so many small details about your ancestors,” I said, rapt with Dorothea’s stories. The only thing I knew about my own was that my great-great-grandfather on Mama’s side was a German immigrant who farmed a plantation. It came to me that my ancestor might have kept the Miller’s ancestors like real estate. Then I imagined those whites drinking their tea while women like Dorothea waited in the kitchen for the bell to ring, much like the domestics all up and down Cotton Street. I decided for once not to blurt out what popped into my head.

Dorothea gave her husband a look that he seemed to interpret right off. He said, “My wife thinks that
we might have put you on the spot asking you to share a sad story in my Story Chair. So this is my apology to you, young Miss Curry, on behalf of our entire family.”

“
Oh no, I wasn’t offended. But I never can share my sad story out loud like other people. I mean, imagine me talking to my friends, like my best friend Claudia or our classmates, and they’re talking about bad haircuts or breaking up with boyfriends. All I’ve got in my back pocket is our accident. It’s a party ruiner, if you know what I mean.”

“Not to us,” said Dorothea. “
Sorrow knows us.”

“We don’t disconnect from our sorrow, is what Dorothea means,” said Reverend Theo.

“My family has no idea what that means, I can assure you.” I was tempted by the thought of spilling my pain out all over breakfast. I could not imagine doing such a thing. “My mother, Alice, she talked a lot after she had been drinking. Daddy was none too pleased about that, best I can remember. I guess our family’s always believed confessing too much is a flaw.”

“I can see the wisdom of that,” said Dorothea. She asked Theo to pass her the bread. Then she changed the conversation and soon was laughing and telling about the time she had climbed a tree to look down on her sister kissing a boy she secretly liked herself.

I sat cross-legged nodding and absorbing Dorothea’s story, feeling as if I walked alongside her into a place of mystery and wonder. An image darted across my mind, of Billy kissing me on the beach, the two of us like two flies stuck together. But I did not possess the power to come out of the shadows like Dorothea. When Dorothea paused, I sat looking expectantly, as if cuing her to keep talking. It was a skill I had learned from Daddy.

                                                                  * * * * *

The entire kitchen smelled sickeningly sweet, for a neighbor had dropped off three crates of strawberries. Daddy wanted to freeze them, saying how nice it would be to pour warm sugared berries over ice cream in the middle of December. Vesta wanted jam. “We could never eat all these,” she said, expressing her worry they’d not keep.

When
I walked in on them, Daddy’s cuticles were red as a surgeon’s. He had been cutting tops off the berries, passing them to Vesta who prepared them on the stovetop for preserves. One of Vesta’s aprons hung over his t-shirt although he had not deigned to tie it on fully. Daddy was laughing at the generosity of spending his Sunday morning in such a manner. It was not manly like cutting the grass.

“Here’s the extra set of hands we’re desperately needing. Daughter, grab a knife.” Daddy moved down a few inches to make room where he was stationed in front of the kitchen island.
I laughed squeezing in next to him. I accepted the task, enjoying his high spirits. A faint smile lightened Vesta’s countenance while she studied the jam recipe.

S
              he was young looking for her age of forty-four, especially with her long, somewhat course hair clipped up the back in hairpins.

             
“I’ve not seen so many berries,” I said, wondering if we might be up half the night slicing and canning.

             
Daddy dumped more berries into the bowl I had just emptied.

             
Vesta was quiet, saying little while Daddy bantered with me. He loved teasing me, never having been around girls much growing up. He had a younger brother but they had grown up and apart. He glanced at Vesta and then at me. Then he removed the apron. He rinsed what he could from his hands although it was evident the red stain might challenge the first few washings. Then he gave a nod to me as if he were leaving me to engage in some kind of woman’s ritual with Vesta. But the silence between us after he slipped from the company of females only left me to fidget. I kept to my work, not a thought to what I should say next.

             
That had been the way of things between us since forever, even before our accident. I knew the space between us ought to fill up with the kind of talking and laughing I had observed between Dorothea and Ratonda. I yearned for it but when the moment was right to feel close to Vesta, I felt like a girl fallen from grace.

             
Then, as if ready to include me in her plans, she said, “The ladies bridge club is going to hold their next meeting here. Maybe you could invite Claudia. The two of you could serve, you know, act as hostesses.”

             
I did know what she meant, to serve her rich friends like domestics. She had asked once before and Claudia had nearly abandoned knowing me. I had to manipulate her and promise her we would dress like socialites, not domestics. “I don’t think she’ll want to do it,” I said.

             
“I’ll talk to Irene,” said Vesta. “She’s good to help out with Claudia.” She ignored my one protest as if I had never spoken it.

             
I knew Vesta had worked long at arranging a club meeting at our house, a house somewhat smaller than the homes picked for the club’s usual gatherings. She wanted to make up for size with window dressing. “I’ll ask her, all right?” I finally said.

             
Finally Vesta came beside me, examining the mound of berries Daddy and I had prepared. “We’ll have jam for all winter and the relatives too,” said Vesta, smiling at the sight of so many berries but admitting she might have overdone it on the amount.

             
“We could label the jams,” I said. “Strawberry Preserves—From the Kitchen of Vesta Curry. Give them out as Christmas gifts.”

             
Vesta liked my idea. I promised to start collecting tiny baskets from the thrift store.

“Red and green ones, if
I can find them in Christmas colors,” I suggested convivially.

Vesta helped
me finish and then asked if I might help her jar the hot strawberry potion. I put on two oven mitts to protect my fingers from the searing hot preserves. Helping Dorothea these past two weeks had given me confidence as a kitchen helper. I screwed down the lids once Vesta filled each jar, leaving headroom at the top, as she instructed, for expansion during the pressure-cooking phase.

We processed
the last batch, lifting the frame from the hot pressure cooker. I wiped down the jars and lined them in a box Daddy had cut in half. Leaving them to set allowed time for the sealing process to complete. Vesta pointed out, “When a jar pings it’s sealed.”

I
turned away after pushing the box of jams onto the island. I did not push it far enough, though, leaving the box of heavy hot jams imbalanced.

“Flannery, no
!” yelled Vesta.

She startled me
. I jerked away. Maybe a mouse had leaped from the cupboard. I did not know. The box slid onto the hard ceramic tiles, the jars slamming against the floor, exploding like little red grenades.

Vesta stared in disbelief. She was angry, red-faced, clinching her fists and staring at the broken glass and the still-steaming preserves splattered all over her
freshly mopped floor.

Daddy ran into the kitchen calling out, “What’s wrong?” When he saw Vesta kneeling, her
mouth agape, he asked, “Flannery, what’d you do?”

I could not breathe nor could I
hold back the hot tears spilling down my cheeks. I wanted to take back the last minute, to close my eyes and make the jars fly magically back into the box, safe and not wrecked.

I was a terrible magician though. Nothing that broke open could go back the way it was. That was the way of everything, didn’t I know, especially the Curry family.

                      
                                                        * * * * *

Reverend Theo sat with his foot propped most of the evening. His right foot was swollen after standing on it Sunday night and guest-preaching in Rock Hill but he wasn’t going to let it slow him down. Dorothea had invited church folk over for a Wednesday night crawfish boil. He joined the musicians in the circle with his guitar. Dorothea made a big pot of crawfish in a giant cook’s pot over an outdoor flame. She and the women spread newspapers on the tables and then poured crawfish, halfed corn cobbettes, and boiled hot potatoes on top of the newspapers, much like our clam bake on the beach.

Charlotte demonstrated to me h
ow to suck on the crawfish head to draw out the savory juice. It took me a few moments of observance before I mustered the courage to try it out myself. Crawfish looked for all the world like giant bugs. But finally I gave in and tried one. The juice was good as promised. I peeled crawfish, eating each as fast as I could peel it. The corn and potatoes were cooked in a boil along with the crawfish, seasoning the vegetables hot and spicy. Even the youngest Miller granddaughter Diana devoured her weight in spicy food.

“Should she eat that hot food?”
I asked.

Ratonda said
, “Anton’s grandmother on his mother’s side would feed all her babies a hot pepper in their high chairs to groom the child’s palate.” She kept her eyes on the task of rolling up the littered sheets of newspaper. She still refrained more often than not on keeping her distance, making little eye contact with me.