had started wearing ribbons in my hair like Rhoda and a little makeup. This particular day I had even put on some pierced earrings that one of Scary Mary’s women had given to me. Mr. Boatwright looked at my hair, my face, and my ears, and shook his head with pity.
“What?” I groaned.
“According to the Scriptures—oh never mind.” I thought he was done talking, so I started to walk away. “Makeup, earbobs, and all them hair frills. Don’t you know by now, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, let alone the whole sow. I don’t know what I see in you.” He sighed. “You look so much better without that makeup and them ribbons,” he said seriously.
“You think so?” I said sadly, crushed and confused.
“I know so. You go to that schoolhouse tryin’ to be somethin’ you ain’t, them kids really goin’ to let you have it. You follow the Scriptures, you’ll be all right. You know the Bible almost well as I do by now, so I know you ain’t forgot that lesson on Lot’s wife.” He gave me an affectionate pat on my head and turned and walked away.
I dragged myself back to my room and snatched the ribbons from my hair and kicked them halfway across the room. Before I could remove the makeup, Mr. Boatwright was in my room with a familiar look on his face.
“That’s much better.” He grinned, as he unzipped his pants.
“Mr. Boatwright, I’m on my period,” I lied.
He rushed out of the room, cussing under his breath.
It took me a while to get my hair under control again. Rhoda was long gone by then, and it ruined my day. I was late for class and had to do detention after school. When I got home, Mr. Boatwright gave me a whupping for getting detention.
Once my whupping wore off, I went to sit on the front porch. Rhoda was on hers reading. She looked up and waved, then returned her attention to her reading material. Pee Wee had told me that she was one of the smartest girls in the whole school. She had taught herself how to speak Spanish. She played the piano and knew a lot of grown-up card games that her aunt Lola had taught her. Pee Wee told me that a lot of the kids were afraid of Rhoda, as petite as she was. There were several reasons. She had a ferocious big brother named Jock, who was the leader of a street gang. Terrorizing other kids was a way of life for him. He had even beaten up Pee Wee a few times.
Another reason a lot of kids feared Rhoda was because she had a crazy grandmother living in the house. A white woman. I hadn’t seen her yet, but I had heard that she chased cars up and down the street and threw rocks at people and called Black folks niggers. Still another reason kids were afraid of Rhoda was, a policeman had shot and killed her other brother while Rhoda was in his bedroom one night when she was six, and she had never gotten over it. Everybody said it made her act crazy sometimes. And finally, her daddy was an undertaker. To a lot of kids, undertakers and boogiemen were interchangeable. Nobody wanted the boogieman’s daughter as a friend.
CHAPTER 10
History was my worst subject. But it was the only class I had with Rhoda, so I didn’t mind going to it. Since she was everything I wanted to be and more, I even looked forward to it each day. I flunked most of the tests and arrived late two or three times a week because this was my first class after lunch. I was always one of the last ones to leave the cafeteria because I usually went back in line to get additional helpings of whatever was on the menu.
I had been in the new school for several days before I got up enough nerve to approach Rhoda without her inviting me. The cafeteria was crowded for lunch that day. Sadly, it was divided by race. Our local news covered all the racial problems Black people were having down South, especially the violence. There was an occasional fight in our school between somebody Black and somebody white. Sometimes it was over something as innocent as a comment made about somebody’s mother. The words “nigger” and “honky” eventually came up during the confrontation, and that made it a race incident. I think all that had a lot to do with people making such a big deal out of somebody’s color even in Ohio. It wasn’t a rule like down South, but we still had to deal with segregation. Property managers found ways not to rent to Blacks, jobs advertised in the paper were suddenly “filled” when a Black person attempted to apply, and the service Black folks received in some restaurants was so bad, it was better not to go there in the first place. Most of the time when I attempted to sit with white kids in the cafeteria, they gave me dirty looks and sometimes said something mean about my mama or just moved to another table. It seemed like everything was based on Black or white and a few colors in between, even lunch in a junior high school. The only Asian girl in our school was sitting with the school’s only four Hispanic kids at a table in the back of the cafeteria. Near the Black kids, Rhoda was sitting at a front table alone reading Ebony magazine. I was sitting at another table halfway between the white kids and us across the room by myself.
I don’t know how I got up enough nerve, but I decided to take my tray and go over to her. Most of the food on her tray had not even been touched! I didn’t know what to say to her. I took a deep breath, walked across the room to the table by the exit where she was sitting, and said, “Can I have your French fries?” I sat down across from her.
“Sure.” She smiled. She sighed and pushed her tray toward me, then returned her attention to the magazine. “Annette, right?” she asked, not looking up.
“Yep! Just like the white girl from the Mickey Mouse Club on TV,” I told her. She didn’t look at me again until I let out a belch that could be heard halfway across the room. “Excuse me,” I mumbled, my face burning with embarrassment. Black kids and white kids snickered and glared at me. I had eaten the French fries in record time. I was horrified at my behavior.
“Are you still hungry? If you are, I’ll go get you some more,” she told me.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “With ketchup.”
“Can I watch you eat them?” she asked softly. Our eyes met for a moment. She seemed to be studying me. Suddenly, I felt like the main attraction in a circus sideshow.
“What? Why do you want to watch me eat some French fries?” I wanted to know.
“I’ve never seen anybody enjoy food like you,” she said, an incredulous look on her face. “You finished those fries in less than a minute.”
“Um…did I? Uh…don’t you eat fries?” I asked.
“Every once in a while. I have to watch my weight. Besides, the fries here are sometimes so greasy I wouldn’t feed them to a hog I don’t like.”
The fries suddenly lost their appeal, as did everything else edible.
“Yeah. They are greasy. And I am kind of full,” I muttered. “But, you can go get me some candy bars, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, you like candy too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ooh. I know how to make this real good candy with molasses and peanuts. One day I’ll make you some, huh?”
“Yeah!” I tried to conceal my excitement. I was liking this girl more and more.
“I’ll go get you some M&Ms for now. You like them?”
“Oh yes. I like them a whole lot,” I admitted. “Hurry up,” I urged. To my surprise, she seemed as excited as I was! She gave me that smile again, then excused herself.
The next day I attempted to copy Rhoda’s answers on a history test. I sat one desk behind her in the next row. She saw me and rolled her eyes at me in such an evil way I shuddered. I hadn’t seen anybody roll their eyes that hard since I left Florida. I lowered my head and started tapping my pencil on my desk.
I felt pretty low by the time I arrived home that evening. Mama had left a note saying that she wouldn’t be home until after 10 P.M. and that I’d better do anything Mr. Boatwright told me to do. Pee Wee was already in our living room with Mr. Boatwright, gossiping away.
Minutes