The Summer We Got Free (17 page)

wouldn’t
feel bad when the hugger turned and lifted Ava off
the ground and squeezed her as if she were the teddy bear they had loved and
lost as a child. Kenny’s embrace was all for her. For seven seconds, it gave
her what she needed.

Then, over her shoulder, he saw Ava and he instantly
fell out of love with Sarah, and instantly in love with her. He wriggled out of
Sarah’s embrace and ran over to Ava, bright-eyed and eager, and said, “Will you
be my girlfriend?”

Ava looked the scrawny boy over. “Who are you?”

“Kenny.”

She looked at Sarah, who was on the verge of tears,
then back at the little boy. “You got cookies?” she asked him.

He nodded. “I can get some.”

She shrugged. “Go ahead, then.”

He ran off. Ava turned back to the drawing she was
making in the corner of their mother’s program. Sarah ran over to Regina, who
was talking to Sister Kellogg, and wailed, “Ava stole Kenny from me!”

Regina looked at her. “You can’t steal a person, Sarah,”
she said, and turned back to her conversation.

Sarah watched as Kenny ran back into the chapel with
what looked like two oatmeal raisin cookies. She had no idea where he got them.

For the next
three Sundays, he brought Ava cookies, which she stuffed into her mouth before
their parents could catch her. When she finally got caught, and told Regina
she’d gotten the cookies from Kenny, Regina forbade him to bring Ava any more
sweets. Without the promise of cookies, Ava had no further use for the boy. But
he was still in love with her and that was where he stayed, for the rest of his
very short life.

By the time
Sarah was twelve, and Kenny eleven, she had long ago gotten used to the idea
that he would never really see her again the way he had for a whole week when
he was five. He liked her, she knew that, but she could not begin to match the
specialness of Ava, could not hope to inspire the feelings she inspired in him,
and in everybody else. Sitting out on the porch with him one morning, in the
spring of 1956, while they waited for the twins to get dressed so they could
all play four-square together, Kenny asked Sarah if she was excited about going
to junior high the next school year.

She shrugged. “I
guess.” She never tried to make herself more interesting in the hopes that he
would see her again. In fact, she tried to be even less interesting than she
really was, so that he would not feel obligated to pay attention to her out of
charity.

“Me, too,” he
said. He was a small boy, on the runty side, but his personality was big like
Pastor Goode’s. Sometimes, on special youth-themed Sundays, Kenny read the
opening prayer at church service, and he reminded everybody of his father up on
the pulpit, though he looked like he was always on the verge of laughing. “The
only bad thing is that Ava won’t be there for a whole ‘
nother
year,” he said. “I don’t like that.” He sighed. “I think my daddy’s happy about
it, though.”

Sarah looked at
him. “What you mean?”

“He
don’t
like Ava.”

Sarah frowned. “Everybody
likes Ava. Except maybe Miss
Liddy
, but she don’t
like nobody that much.”

Kenny shrugged.

“Well, why
don’t
he like
her?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. He
just got a lot of rules about how people should act. He
think
kids is supposed to do whatever grown-ups tell them. He
don’t
like back talk or nothing like that.”

Sarah had always
thought that Pastor Goode was too strict with Kenny. He wasn’t allowed to listen
to any music but church music, he had to wear a tie to school every day, even
though nobody else did, and his curfew was a half hour earlier than the twins’,
even though he was a year older than they were. Whenever his father was around,
Kenny always looked a little stressed.

“He don’t come
right out and say he don’t like Ava,” Kenny told her. “I just get a feeling.”

From then on,
Sarah watched Pastor Goode whenever he was in the same place as Ava. At first,
she didn’t notice anything peculiar in his behavior towards her sister. Soon,
though, she began to see what Kenny was talking about. One Sunday after church,
while everyone was gathered out front, saying long goodbyes to people who lived
on their same block and who they would see all through the week, Sarah saw the
pastor watching Ava as she sat talking to Kenny, and the look on his face was
hard and strained, as if he were trying not to frown. Another time, when Sarah
and the twins passed him on their way home from school, he smiled and said
hello to all three of them as he went by, but Sarah was sure she saw a sneer on
his face when she looked back after he had passed. It was subtle and anybody
not looking for it wouldn’t have been able to see it. She knew it wasn’t meant
for her, because the pastor was like everybody else in that he couldn’t really
see her. She doubted it was meant for Geo, because he was quiet and sweet and
never gave anybody a reason to sneer.

Sarah wasn’t sure if Ava was aware of Goode’s dislike
of her, but she didn’t mention it to her, or to anyone else. She liked the idea
that someone—and not just someone, but the pastor of their church and the
leader of their community—wasn’t in love with Ava, for a change, and she
decided to just keep watching and see what happened.

The hottest summer ever came in 1956. At least it
seemed that way to the twins. The heat came hard in May and by July it had
settled in so good that the sidewalks radiated it even at night. There was no
reprieve, whether in daylight or moonlight. In the mornings, even before the
sun came up, the sticky air hung heavy. By sunrise it was thick as butter and
it stayed that way all day, getting hotter and hotter as the day wore on. It
never rained.

Blessed Chapel Church
of God ran a day camp program in the summer months and Ava, Geo, and Sarah
spent five days a week there while their parents worked. It was a lot like
Sunday
School
, with bible study and sing-alongs, but
there was also arts and crafts, coordinated kickball games, and swimming
excursions to the public pool.

One afternoon
during arts and crafts, Ava and Ellen
Duggard
were painting
with watercolors, flowery garden scenes modeled after some of the front yards
on their block, when Sister Hattie, who was the arts and crafts teacher, came
by and nodded approvingly at Ava’s painting. “You sure are a talented child,
Ava Delaney. The Lord has surely blessed you with a gift.”

Ellen nodded in
agreement, and smiled at Ava. When Sister Hattie had moved on, Ellen whispered,
“You’re wonderful, Ava,” and kissed her on the cheek.

Ava started to
wipe away the moisture it left on her face, but decided she kind of liked it,
and went back to her painting without complaint.

A second later,
she heard, “She think she so great. Shoot.
She aint nothing.
She aint nothing but a stupid, nappy-headed
wanna
-be,”
and when she looked up she saw Sondra
Liddy
glaring
at her from the other side of the room, where, instead of doing anything
remotely arts-and-crafts-related, she was watching what other kids were doing
and making fun. Her cousin, Lamar Casey, was at her side and Ava thought he
looked sad as he sat there with his arms folded across his chest, his brow
drawn tight above his eyes, staring down at his shoes. She thought of her father
and the sad looks he sometimes got when he didn’t think anyone was looking. Geo
was like that, too. Sometimes he looked sad but wouldn’t tell her why. Boys
were funny like that about their sadness. She was thinking about all of that
when Lamar looked up and caught her watching him. The sad look on his face
changed then, morphed into something angry and mean. “What you looking at?” he
asked, getting up and moving towards her across the room. He stood on the other
side of the table where she and Ellen sat, hovering menacingly.

Ava wasn’t in
the mood for a fight. She just wanted to finish her painting, so she didn’t say
anything and hoped he would just go away. Instead, he picked up a bottle of
black acrylic paint and squeezed it all over her painting. For a moment, she
sat there in shock. Then rage surged up in her belly and she lunged across the
table at him. She could almost feel the skin of his eyeballs under her
fingernails, but she never made it that far. He jumped back and she missed him
completely, and fell over the table onto the floor at his feet. She heard Ellen
scream her name in a worried voice, and heard Sondra cackling. Lamar raised his
foot off the ground, his dirty sneaker poised for a kick, but suddenly Sister
Hattie was there beside him, pulling him away, saying, “Y’all stop all this
roughhousing. Lamar, take a seat.”

Lamar turned and
sneered at her. “You aint my mother,” he said, and then walked swiftly from the
room.

“You right I
aint,” said Sister Hattie, “and it’s a good thing for both of us.” She shook
her head and mumbled, “That boy aint got the sense God gave him.”

Still on the
floor, rubbing the shoulder she’d fallen on, Ava watched Sondra follow Lamar
out.

The first half of July was burning hot. Whenever they
weren’t at day camp, Ava and Geo kept holed up in the house, lying
half-conscious in front of the fan and only getting up every few minutes to
stick their heads in the freezer. Finally, one day, after a dry lightning storm
that had gone on for hours and killed a couple of people somewhere out in the
boondocks of Pennsylvania, they awoke to some cool. Relatively speaking.
Eighty-five degrees and balmy.
They decided to spend that
day outside.

The game that afternoon was
dodgeball
.
Because Ava and Geo shared their street with lots of kids their age, and
because they both made friends easily, there were always kids to play with.
Besides Kenny, their best friends were Miss
Maddy’s
children, Jack and Ellen, Rudy Lucas, and Juanita and Louis Jackson, who lived
a few houses up from them. They were all among the kids playing
dodgeball
that day in the street right in front of the
church. Sondra and Lamar were at opposite ends of the invisible court,
each acting
as thrower, as usual, because the ball belonged
to Lamar. Kids ran in all directions as they tried to avoid getting hit,
squealing with excitement with every bounce of the overlarge red ball.

Geo was the best at
dodgeball
.
He had a knack for timing his dodges and almost always got out of the way in
time. He was the last one standing after the first round and he raised his arms
in triumph. Ava, Kenny, and all their friends cheered, then scrambled back into
the line of fire for another round. This time, the first throw, from Sondra,
came directly at Ava and she dodged it. The second one, from Lamar, skimmed the
edge of the crowd, eliminating Juanita. The next one came directly at Ava
again. Every time Sondra threw the ball, she aimed for Ava. After it had happened
several times in a row, Ava screamed, “You’re aiming right at me! That’s not
fair!” But Sondra didn’t stop. Time and time again, she hurled the ball at Ava
and Ava dodged it. Finally, Lamar threw the ball into the crowd and tagged Ava
and she was out.

Geo won that round, too, and then a bunch of them took
a break and sat on the front steps of the church, while Sondra, Lamar, and some
of the other kids continued to play. Everybody was lauding Geo’s dodging
skills, and discussing possibly going down to
Cobbs
Creek later, when a whizzing sound cut through the air, and Ava looked up just
in time to see the dodge ball, once again coming right at her. She ducked and
barely avoided it, and it smashed into the side of Geo’s head with a hard
boing
, causing him to fall off the steps
onto the ground.

Ava looked over and saw Sondra standing there,
grinning.

Geo rubbed the side of his head and tried not to cry.

“We were on a time-out!” Ava yelled.

Ellen screamed, “You can’t throw at us when we aint
playing!”

“I just did!” Sondra hollered back.

Ava glared at her. “Imbecile!” she screamed.

Sondra ran over and grabbed Ava by the arm, pushed her
down onto the ground. “What you call me?”

“Did I stutter?” Ava asked, unafraid.

Lamar rushed over, looking eager at the idea of a
fight.

"You think you so smart, don't you?" Sondra
sneered, holding Ava down by her shoulders. Ellen ran over, and Geo and Kenny
followed, and they all tried to pull Sondra off, but for an eleven-year-old
girl she was large, and taller than both boys. She glared down at Ava. “You
think you better than everybody.”

Ava rolled her eyes. She was sick of this.

“Oh, you got a eye problem,” Sondra said. “Well, I’m
gone fix it for you.”

Kenny and Geo
looked at each other, and at Ava, who looked less concerned than either boy
thought she ought to be.

“I aint scared
of you,” Ava said.

Sondra put her
face close to Ava’s. “Then you aint as smart as everybody think you is.”

From her
position on the ground, looking up, Ava saw something in one of the windows of
the church, and she blinked, trying to focus, and saw Pastor Goode looking down,
watching them. She expected him to call out, to tell them to stop all this
roughhousing, but he only watched, saying nothing.