With the Might of Angels (15 page)

I reminded Mama about my miserable eraser job and about the Bell Ringer job I really want. As soon as she read the flyers, she put on her apron. “I’ll start baking, you start studying,” she said.

Soon our kitchen table was covered with sugar, bowls, textbooks, tablets, flash cards, and flour.

I asked, “How we gonna make sugar cookies with no butter or milk?”

“Canned milk and Crisco oil,” Mama said.

Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies. That sounded yuckier than yucky. If one person bought one of my cookies, I’d be lucky.

“But, Mama —”

“But nothing, Dawnie. Let’s get started.”

Mama wasted no time. She mixed the ingredients, kneaded cookie dough. I memorized state capitals.

Then we switched. I got busy with the rhythm
of our rolling pin. Mama worked with me on algorithms.

We baked enough cookies to feed all of Hadley. We let the Math facts flow. We sprinkled and studied. And tasted and tested. The Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies were sweet and good.

As I write this, I’m exhausted, but ready for the Bell Bake Sale and any bonus test questions thrown my way on semester finals. And — I’m ready for that bell. That big, beautiful bell.

One of the great things about a bake sale is that nobody knows who’s baked what. My Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies stood among all the baked goods for the Bell Bake Sale. I didn’t tell a soul that those glittery cookies came from Mama’s kitchen. If I haven’t learned anything else at Prettyman, I’ve learned that the kids at that school will do whatever they can to undercut me.

I watched with silent satisfaction as those cookies sold. Since Mama and I had made so many — and since they were the tastiest cookies ever — they earned the most money for our school. It made giving up milk and butter worth it.

My end-of-the-term tests went well, too. I whipped through state capitals from Boise to Nashville. Fractions — easy. Word problems — no problem.

Mr. Lloyd, our principal, announced the successful sale of so many sugar cookies, and told the whole school the bell was on order and would arrive by spring.

I came home with an empty cookie tray and a mind filled with knowing my stuff.

Today’s erasers spewed enough chalk dust to coat my tongue. Thank goodness Mama’d kept some of our cookies at home for all of us to enjoy.

I licked the red-and-green sugar crystals off two cookies. It was their sweetness that let me taste how unfair the bake sale was. My
cookies had earned the most money to help
buy
the school’s new bell, but I can’t
ring
the bell.

P.S. I haven’t seen Waddle for some time now. Daddy told me that raccoons don’t truly hibernate in winter, but they do sleep more, and only come out a little bit in cold weather. I wish I were a raccoon.

I’m writing so fast. And shaking. And my head hurts. I can hardly believe today.

Goober came to Prettyman to meet me after school. He’d come on his own. Another one of his surprises! I was leaving out the back way, which cuts to the street quicker. I spotted Goober far off at the place where Prettyman’s playing field ends and the railroad tracks begin.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Goober was waving with both arms. He had my pogo stick in one of his hands, waving that, too. He jumped onto the pogo’s pedals, pumping, then falling off, then trying again. From where he was, I could hear the squeak of the pogo stick’s rickety spring.

He called out to me, “Look, Dawnie! Look at
me! I can pogo, even when there’s a whole mess of snow!”

I raced to him. “Goober, what are you doing here? You’re not supposed to come out past our fence without first asking Mama or Daddy or me, not ever! And you’re not wearing a hat or mittens.”

I was super-angry at Goober, but I worked hard not to show it. He cries when I yell at him. The last thing I needed was for Goober to cry.

I yanked him off school property as fast as I could.

I have to wonder — are we wearing some kind of magnet that pulls the Hatch brothers to us? We were two blocks past Weedle Lane, and there they were! Again. The three of them — Bobby, Cecil, and Jeb!

I can’t even write all what they said. I don’t want to remember it, so I won’t put it on paper. But I will tell you this — only because if I don’t, I will break open from holding on to today as an ugly memory.

The Hatch brothers threw Goober down in the snow. Bobby punched Goober twice. Once in the stomach, then once in the nose, until it started bleeding. Then all three boys ran off.

The wet on my face from crying was stinging my skin, and making a frosty film from the wintry air. I sniffed once, hard. I didn’t want Goober to see me really crying.

I helped Goober up. He was yelping from the pain, and rubbing at his nose. I pressed my scarf to the place where his bloody nose still dripped.

Mama was right about Goober. He sees the world in his own way. I tried to encourage Goober to put his head back to stop the bleeding. But he was too fascinated with the snow.

“Look, Dawnie, look. Do you see it?”

“See what, Goob?” I said softly.

“It’s pretty, Dawnie. It’s red, like a flower. Like a rose with white all around it. It’s so bright in all the white-white.”

“Yes, Goob, I see it.” I couldn’t keep from crying, no matter how hard I tried.

Mama gently rubbed salve on the inside of Goober’s nose, and on the outside place where Bobby Hatch had punched him.

Goober let out a tiny moan. He flinched, then was silent.

Daddy held me while we watched Mama dab witch hazel.

That night I did some punching of my own. It started with my baseball mitt.

I rammed my mitt onto my left hand, then punched into its fold, hard, with my right.

Bam! Bam! BAM!

Something slammed at me right then, ’cause the punching grew to an all-out attack with my fist. I couldn’t stop.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

My punching hand got redder and redder and started to hurt me bad. But the
BAM! BAM! BAM!
kept coming.

Both my hands were shaking with a rage. Soon all of me shook. I roped both my arms tight around myself. A throb pulsed into both my fists, till I fell asleep on top of my bedcovers.

Goober’s gone somewhere I can’t reach. He’s locked himself off in a place that’s deep inside him, and has slipped down a silent hole. He won’t talk. This morning I unfolded our checkerboard, set it up with peanuts as playing pieces.

“Goob, wanna play?”

Goober rocked in his seat at the kitchen table, eyes looking past me to where only he could see.

“Leave him be,” Mama said.

After what happened to Goober, Mama and Daddy have put my pogo far back in our cellar’s canning closet. They said it’s too dangerous to leave it in my bedroom closet, where Goober can find it.

“You’re not to play with that stick, or even go near it,” Daddy said sternly. “Do you hear me, Dawnie?”

I understood why Daddy was being so strict, but winter passes quicker when I can at least
see
my pogo stick.

Mama said, “You can take it back out in May for your birthday. You are not to look for it before then.” She was firm. “That stick stays where it is until the eighteenth of May.” “Yes, Mama,” I said.

May is forever from now. The
eighteenth
of May is more than forever away.

The only thing I can do is wait.

I tried to make Goober laugh tonight before bed, but it was no use. I put my curlers on each of my bare toes, and danced the Slop. He didn’t even crack a smile. He watched me dance, though, with a quick flick of his eye following my sloppy toes.

Goober’s nose is badly bruised.

So are my knuckles from punching.

Goober padded into our living room with woolen feet. He yanked his Christmas stocking off the
banister. It was filled with peanuts. He cupped a bundle in both his hands, offered me a bunch.

“Happy Christmas, Dawnie!”

My Christmas stocking jangled with fifty pennies, ten nickels, and five dimes — a whole $1.50! I’ve put the coins inside my Vaselines. That’s the only good use for those shoes.

My report card came in the mail today! I made the honor roll. I have pasted my report card here!!!

So yeah, they can trick me into taking a test on the wrong day. They can ignore me in Math and keep me hopping in English.

I may not be a super-duper genius, but I know what I know. What I know is that when I bat, I’m playing to win. Same for school.

Prettyman, pitch as hard as you want, ’cause I’m going for a home run.

My name is in the
Hadley Register
for making the honor roll. And what’dya know—they’ve listed the students alphabetically, and I’m in the right place with the
J
s. I sure hope Mrs. Taylor reads the paper.

Our phone is back to ringing. All day.

Today I answered it.

There was a voice coming through the receiver.

A muffled man’s voice.

“Milk bath,” he said.

I hung up quickly.

“Don’t answer that phone!” Mama scolded.

Here it is, the last day of the year, and the front page of the
Hadley Register
carried this headline:

The article said integration has come too fast to Hadley, that segregation is the natural order of things, and the “rapidity with which integration has happened has caused social and emotional unrest for the students at Prettyman, thus making it difficult for them to learn.”

I looked up
rapidity
and
tarnish
in my dictionary.

Rapidity:
The quality of moving, acting, or occurring with great speed.

Tarnish:
To make dirty. To stain. To soil. The only thing occurring with great speed is how fast I’ve been able to get good grades at Prettyman. If this has “tarnished the learning
effort” of those other kids, then they weren’t too smart to begin with.

Rapidity, stupidity.

We went to midnight church services to celebrate the coming of a new year. Reverend Collier made an example of me in front of everyone. From his pulpit he congratulated me for making the honor roll. He then referred to the newspaper article in the
Hadley Register
about the school superintendent wanting to end integration.

Boy, did the reverend preach tonight! He gave a sermon that started in the final half hour of 1954 and lasted through the first hour of 1955! He referred to the article again and again. He called me up to stand next to him in front of everybody. “And here,” he proclaimed, “is the Negro influence!”

I really don’t mind church, but our family seems to be getting a lot of attention. No wonder Yolanda’s gone sour on me. After services, Yolanda came up close behind to where I was standing. She spoke so only I could hear what she had to say. She poked me at the waist. “This here,” Yolanda whispered, “is the uppity influence.”

Yolanda Graves has turned sometime-y. She’s become one of those friends who’s nice sometimes, and sometimes not nice. The problem with sometime-y people is that you never know which sometime they’re on — nice or not nice.

I’m glad I made the honor roll, but this New Year doesn’t feel happy, or new. We’re pushing the same old rock up the same old hill. At night I dream about Goober’s blood piercing the snow.

And about the Hatch brothers turning into haints.

And about Daddy working at Sutter’s Dairy, and getting eaten alive by a giant cow.

And Yolanda calling me uppity sometimes, and sometimes singing and making snow angels.

I’m bone-tired from not sleeping good. I’m hot-mad-angry, too.

This is not a New Year to celebrate.

If Jack and Jill went to the top of Hadley’s same old hill, not even fetching a pail of water could put out the slow fire burning in me.

It’s the in-between, and I’m restless. I’m so glad to have this Diary Book. The book and my red pencil have become good friends. I need friends now.

The sky is purple, same color as a scab. That means more snow. I don’t like more snow. More snow gives me nightmares about Goober’s bloody nose staining the white.

My window has set that scab-colored sky behind a screen of gray, put there by the radiator’s steam. The radiator paints the glass with its hot breath.