The Lions of Little Rock (3 page)

4

FIVE LITTLE WORDS

I always walked home from school—guess Daddy figured I'd be safe enough with all the other kids around. Last year, I'd tagged along with Sally, but today she stayed late to watch the boys play football.

As soon as I opened our front door, I could tell Judy was in a bad mood. “School's not going to start until at least September fifteenth!” she yelled at me from the kitchen. “What am I going to do at home until then?”

I hung up my jacket and followed Judy's voice into the kitchen.

Judy was sitting at the table, watching Betty Jean pull a batch of cookies out of the oven. Betty Jean was tall and always wore a flowered apron over her clothes when she was at our house. To be honest, I'd been pretty upset about having a stranger hanging around, even if she was doing chores so I wouldn't have to. But Betty Jean didn't say much, and she never tried to get me to talk to her. Eventually, I thought of her as water. She took on the flavor of whoever else was around.

“There's a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Friday, September twelfth,” Judy explained. “To decide if the Little Rock schools have to follow the plan Superintendent Blossom came up with for integration.”

“And after that?” I asked.

“Hopefully,” said Judy, “the schools will open again, and they'll decide to give this whole integration thing a rest for a year or two.”

It sounded like Judy was against integration. I knew Daddy supported it, and I'd always thought it was a good idea myself. Why have two sets of schools when one would do? But I didn't ask Judy about it, even though I knew she wanted me to. Judy does so much for me, I hate it when we disagree.

I watched Betty Jean use a spatula to put the cookies onto a piece of wax paper on the counter to cool.

“Mother agrees with me,” said Judy, like she'd read my thoughts and was trying to convince me to come around to her side. “She said so this morning before she left.” Judy picked up one of the cookies, then dropped it. It was too hot to eat.

Betty Jean poured me a glass of milk and handed me a plate of cookies. We nodded at each other. The cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip, were delicious. But even the warm cookies didn't erase the pit in my stomach. I wasn't sure I could trust Judy's opinion about integration, but I also wasn't sure I could trust my own.

And worst of all, Judy didn't even ask me about the five words.

I could have brought it up, maybe I would have, but it wasn't till Betty Jean had gone home and we were eating dinner that I got the opportunity. Mother told us all about her lesson plans and complimented Judy on the job she'd done washing the windows before she got around to asking me about the first day of school.

“Fine.” I looked at my plate. “I said two sentences.”

“What?” said Judy. “Marlee, why didn't you say something earlier!”

I shrugged.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Mother, holding her hand to her heart, like women do in the movies when they are about to faint.

“Atta girl!” said Daddy.

“What'd you say?” asked Judy.

“‘Please sit down' and ‘I did.'” Then I grinned, embarrassed. “It's silly to get so excited about five stupid words.”

“It's not silly,” said Mother.

“What did Sally say?” asked Judy.

“I wasn't talking to Sally,” I admitted.

Everyone stopped eating and turned to look at me. I didn't like it.

“It was a new girl,” I explained quickly. “Her name is Liz, and she just moved here, and she has nice teeth.” That was a stupid thing to say. No one cares about teeth. I should have mentioned her nails instead.

“Well,” said Mother, and it sounded like she was just about ready to burst with pride. “I'm sure you made her feel quite welcome.”

Mother was pleased with me! I didn't know what to say.

Daddy just grinned.

“Why don't you invite her over sometime?” Mother suggested. “Betty Jean could make lemonade and sandwiches and—”

Judy laughed. “Maybe tomorrow she could just say hello.”

It was a really good dinner.

But that night in bed, instead of being happy, I felt kind of sad. Most of the time, I act like it doesn't bother me that I don't talk much. Usually I'm pretty convincing, even to myself. But sometimes, at night, when I hear the lions roaring and they're really going at it, just growling and yowling, and roaring like a jet engine, sometimes I wish I could be like them, that I could just yell out whatever I was thinking or feeling and not care one whit who heard. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can almost convince myself that I'm going to do it. That I'll just start talking.

But by the time I wake up in the morning, the lions are always silent, and so am I.

5

JAMES-THOMAS

On the second day of school, James-Thomas Dalton ran in late.

JT, which was what everyone called him, was tall and blond and played football too. He had blue eyes and a dimple on his chin, and his nose was just slightly off-center; I thought it made him look even more handsome. Like half the girls in my class, I had a crush on him.

Not that anyone else knew. I hadn't even told Judy. It was embarrassing to like someone who still didn't know his times tables. But JT had flair. He had confidence. That and really long eyelashes.

“My brother's car had a flat,” JT announced to everyone and no one in particular. “I had to help change it.”

Miss Taylor nodded in sympathy. “I'll excuse you this time.”

JT grinned at her, and his smile blinded us all to the fact that there wasn't a bit of grease or dirt on his clothes. The only open seat was next to me, so he strode over and threw his bag down. “Hi, Marlee,” he said. Of course he knew my name. We'd been in school together since we were six, but it still gave me a thrill.

I smiled back and tried to move my bag out of his way, but I bumped it instead. Four or five new pencils rolled out across the floor. Sally giggled as I gathered them up. JT handed me one of the pencils and our fingers touched and I could almost hear the wedding bells.

Even though we were in homeroom, Miss Taylor couldn't help giving us a preview of what we were going to do in history that afternoon. She started going on and on about Arkansas and how we'd each pick a topic and give a presentation to the class. Pretty soon I stopped listening. Sally would ask me to be her partner, and I'd do all the work. That's how it always was. Besides, I was having too much fun imagining my life with JT.

By lunchtime I'd planned our honeymoon in Italy and was trying to decide if we should name our first son Orbit or Cosine, when someone slid into the chair beside me. I just about spit out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I realized it was JT.

“Hi, Marlee,” he said.

I knew I should squeeze out a “hi” or maybe “hello,” or maybe even “hello, JT,” but of course he knew what his name was and my mouth was full of peanut butter. Still, I'd promised Judy I'd try to speak, so before I could talk myself out of it, I said, “Hi, JT.”

I was pleased. I sounded so smooth and calm, at least until I reached for my milk to wash down the peanut butter and knocked over the carton instead.

JT, always the gentleman, mopped up the mess. “I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me with math this year,” he said as he pushed a pile of soggy napkins around the table.

I was too surprised to move. There was still a big blob of peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. If I said something, JT would be totally grossed out.

“Mr. Harding is a hard teacher,” JT went on. “I'm sure to fail if I don't find a tutor, and I don't want to have to repeat the seventh grade like my brother did. I'm not so good at math, and you're great at it. So, what do you say? Do you want to help me?”

I swallowed. This was my chance. “I do.”

He grinned, pulled out his math book and handed it to me. “The first assignment is on page twelve, numbers one through twenty-one.”

I knew that. We were in the same class. Still, I didn't mind being the brains in the family.

“Let's meet up before school tomorrow, and you can explain it to me,” he suggested. “Say at the picnic table by the football field?”

I nodded.

He patted me on the shoulder. “Thanks, Marlee,” he said. “You're a real sweet girl.” Then he walked off to join his friends at their regular table.

I was on cloud nine. I had a date—a real date—with JT. We'd had a whole conversation. He liked me. He—

“He just wants you to do the work for him,” Sally said, sitting down at our table.

I shrugged. I was happy, and I wasn't going to let Sally take that away from me.

“Maybe,” said Liz as she put down her tray. “But he sure is cute.”

I didn't hear the rest of the conversation after that. I was too busy thinking about Cosine and his little sister, Isosceles.

The next morning I had Daddy drop me off at school extra early. I had pencils, paper, both our math books and my homework. JT could use it as an answer key if he got stuck. He wasn't at school when I arrived, so I sat down on top of the picnic table to wait.

I waited a long time. Cosine and Isosceles were in college by the time JT's brother, Red, finally pulled up to the curb. JT might be a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles on the top, but his brother was castor oil. Red was seventeen, a year older than Judy. He had blond hair and blue eyes like his little brother, and his features were so regular, they looked like they had been laid out with a ruler. If you ask me, it's people's imperfections that give them character—a nose slightly off center or a dimple or one ear slightly higher than the other. There was something creepy about Red's perfectly symmetrical face.

Or maybe it wasn't about his face at all. Once, when we were all little kids playing in an old quarry near our house, Red had called me over to see a butterfly he'd caught. It was beautiful—black and orange—and fluttered like a tiny, pulsing heart in his hand. Then suddenly, he'd torn off its wings with his fingertips and laughed when I started to cry.

“You've got the mute girl tutoring you?” asked Red loudly as he pulled up to the curb. I knew he wanted me to hear.

JT shrugged. “She's pretty. And good at math. What else do I need?” He opened the door and got out.

Red sped off, almost hitting one of the colored women who worked in the cafeteria and was trying to cross the street. He leaned on the horn, and she hurried out of his way.

I wanted to say something to her as she walked toward the side door of the school.
Are you all right? Isn't he a jerk?
Or maybe even just
hello.
But before I could get up the nerve, she was inside the building and the moment was gone.

“Hi, Marlee.” JT sat down next to me on the picnic bench.

I smiled at him.

“So,” said JT.

So. I guessed I'd have to say something. In my excitement over planning the JT and Marlee love story, I'd forgotten that tutoring him would involve actual speaking.

“You ready?” he asked.

I opened my math book, and my homework fell out.

The first bell rang.

Great. We only had five minutes to get to class. There were twenty-one problems. We'd never finish in time!

But JT's grin was as wide as ever. “You're a sweetheart.”

Before I could swoon over his words of endearment, JT picked up
my
homework and put it into
his
book. He winked and slammed the book shut. “Thanks, Marlee. See you same place tomorrow. Okay?” He strode off without waiting for an answer.

All yesterday, I'd imagined the scene. JT and I would have so much fun working together, he'd say he wanted to spend more time with me. We'd do fractions at the Double Scoop Ice Cream Parlor and long division at Krystal Burger. I wanted to believe the best of him. Maybe he'd had another flat tire. Maybe his alarm clock hadn't gone off. Even though the truth was staring me in the face, I couldn't help thinking that maybe tomorrow he'd be on time.