Promise, page 13
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Caesar, speaking calmly. “Ma’am, I was trying to settle the girls. There’s no problem here. The mess is all cleaned up, see?” Mr. Caesar whipped the bucket around quickly and gray, sudsy water sloshed out. I could see where sweat stains had erupted down the back of his uniform and beneath his armpits.
“Daddy!” said Lindy, pushing her chair away so she could reach his side.
He turned sharply. “Stay there, baby girl,” he said. “Sit down, Lindy. Learn these books, these lessons. That’s what I need you to do.”
A male voice whined from the speaker. Mr. Caesar rolled his bucket and mop expertly out of the room before our teacher could order him to stay.
“Good afternoon, Miss Alley, do you need some assistance with your class?”
She pressed the button, resuming the false, cloying sweetness of her strawberry voice. “Everything is just fine in here, thank you, Mr. Mitchell,” she said, fixing her eyes on the floor where Mr. Caesar had scrubbed away the black animal shape before it left any stain.
* * *
•••
It was clear: Miss Alley was a bully. Ez and I had decided not to tell our father when these moments happened to us. By now, there were too many.
At recess, Ezra, Lindy, and I stood apart, saying little, while we watched other children kicking rubber balls across the gravel circle.
“She really getting on my nerves today,” said Lindy finally. “That woman is this close to me breaking my foot off in her ass! Cinthy smarter than her! Cinthy could teach the whole lesson by herself if she wanted, and we know it. I hate bullies! Miss Alley ain’t shit. Shame on her.” Lindy’s voice was flat. Even with the dusty wind her clothes were immaculate. Dust could not touch her.
“Ever since she got here,” said Ez.
My eyes burned as I recalled how Miss Alley snapped at me earlier for no reason at all. I could hear my name—Hyacinth—in her mouth and how she made it sound like spit-up.
“White folks picked her,” said Ez.
“Mm-hm.”
“But picking on my sister?” said Ezra. “Oh no, she’s not going to do that.”
“No,” said Lindy. “She can’t do that. She’s not even a real teacher.”
“No, she isn’t. Sweet Jesus. Did you see her doing the numbers?”
Lindy giggled at Ezra. “My father said she’s a niece, or whatever, a distant relative of Mrs. Hobart. That’s how she got the job.”
“Well, that explains it,” said my sister. “Miss Irene would knock her head off and use it for kickball.”
We were quiet again, comforted by this image.
Recess would end soon. Not that it bothered me especially. Years ago, our parents had given us rules about recess: Recess was for white people. During that period, Ezra and I were to read or wash the chalkboards for our teachers. It’s not like we had friends to play with anyways, especially now that we weren’t talking to Ruby. All these years at Hobart, we’d never been invited to any of our classmates’ homes or birthday parties in the village. Our parents had never permitted us to have such parties either, because it would’ve meant inviting our classmates into our home. We didn’t want to go into white peoples’ homes because it would be neither safe nor fun. We didn’t want white people coming into our house and treating it like their own.
We stared at our classmates, whom we didn’t want to play with and who didn’t want to play with us. Then Ruby appeared from green bushes that edged the gravel lot where we stood. As she approached, I sucked in my breath and folded my arms when I realized that she intended to speak to me. I had no control over what Miss Alley might do to me, but I surely had some control over Ruby Scaggs.
“I know you got it,” she said, not bothering with any greeting for Ez or Lindy.
“Not anymore.”
“What’d you do with it, Cinthy?”
“First of all,” I said, “it wasn’t yours.”
“Shit, you don’t got a say about what belongs to me,” said Ruby.
“Get lost, why don’t you,” Ezra said, tossing away the stick she’d been fooling with.
“I can’t get myself prepared for pilot school if I don’t have my money. I put some in that suitcase, which I’m sure you would’ve found when you took it from me. I need my money.”
I could hear my blood ticking as I stared at her. “Is that my problem?”
Lindy let out a hoot-hoot laugh. “Girl, please! Y’all, did she really say my money? Ain’t nobody in this whole wide world would ever put the word money near the word Scaggs with a straight face and that’s the truth. Honey child, I hope somebody takes all of that money. Standing here talking crazy like we all don’t know how you be stealing. You too stupid to have somebody’s money.”
Ruby pushed Lindy. Or tried to.
“Girl, please,” said Lindy. “Push me again and see what I do.”
“You got ’til the end of the day to give me my stuff back.”
“Or what?” said Lindy, laughing in Ruby’s face.
My sister spoke in a low hiss. “Cinthy didn’t take anything that belonged to you in the first place.”
“What do you really know about it?” said Ruby to Ezra. She wiped angry tears from the corners of her eyes. I noticed that there was a bright ribbon, not ours, in her hair. She was wearing a gold necklace with a little hot air balloon charm that glowed against her skin and a funny-looking gold belt cinched around her waist that reminded me of something somebody’s grandmother would wear. It didn’t suit her. “What I know is you’re a coward, Ezra Kindred. You was never worth being my best friend. You got to listen to who your mama say you can be friends with like you can’t think for yourself. No matter what you believe, I ain’t your enemy. I ain’t never caused you no harm!”
There was a whistle, signaling the end of recess, and then the bell at the entrance to the school rang three times.
“Ruby, you have no idea what harm is,” I said.
“Come near my sister,” said Ez, “and you’ll be coming the closest you ever been in your life to your last breath.”
I thought about going to the nurse to see if I could leave school early. I was dizzy and my stomach was queasy. I’d tell Mama what I’d done with Miss Burden’s suitcase. I’d tell her how Ez and me had shown our privates to Ruby. Because maybe that was the reason Miss Burden had died and why the deputy thought he could drive by the Junketts’ home and pretend to shoot at all of us for no reason. I’d tell Mama everything. Mama would find a way where I could just be Cinthy instead of growing into a womanhood that felt so strange, bewildering, and certainly didn’t suit me.
13
As Ruby’s classmates stampeded out of the classroom at the end of the day, Miss Alley asked her to stay. “A word with you,” she said. Ruby was surprised but nodded, aware that Ezra and Lindy were watching with their dark eyes narrowed to slits. Cinthy had gone home early for some reason, probably to mess with Miss Burden’s suitcase again.
The classroom blazed with end-of-day sunlight. Ruby could detect the very faint fuzz of downy hair on Miss Alley’s face. Thin, fine hairs had slipped past her foundation of chalky pressed powder. Her old teacher, her dead teacher, had never seemed willing to get this close to her.
“Ruby Scaggs,” said Miss Alley, her voice soft and mysterious as she strolled around the edge of her desk. Her blond hair bounced against her shoulders, reminding Ruby of her ma’s Bombshell wig, which had never regained its shape and luster after Ruby borrowed it. Miss Alley wasn’t a natural blonde either.
“I see you’re wearing a rather nice dress and ribbon today. Did your mother get that pattern from a magazine?”
“Ma don’t give me nothing,” said Ruby. “And I don’t trust nothing in them prissy papers she always reading night and day. They’re worse than candy rotting my teeth.”
Miss Alley threw her head back, laughing pleasantly. “Why, Ruby, I believe you’re smarter than all of us!”
Ruby liked this attention. It was new—her teacher telling her she was smart. Sunshine, honey, dear. She’d never had another woman, not even Ezra, tell her she was special.
“I can tell you everything you need to do to have everything you’ve ever wanted. It’s not as hard as it sounds, dear,” Miss Alley said, looking around the classroom as though they were on the top of one of those great skyscrapers in New York.
“What do you really want, Ruby? May I ask?”
“Ma’am?” It was hard for Ruby to hear her own voice when Miss Alley’s filled her head with height.
“What do you want from your life?” she said.
I want the feeling flying gives me when I think of it, Ruby almost said. She wanted to tell Miss Alley the truth. But she didn’t know how to trust anyone but Ezra Kindred, who could no longer be trusted.
“You’re very special, Ruby,” her teacher said when Ruby didn’t answer. “But you must apply yourself in school from this moment on. First—your attendance. It’s not too late for you to graduate in the spring with enough education to get your life going the way it should. I used to be like you, but I applied myself. I’d be happy to come to your home to speak with your parents about your potential.” When she’d said home, a ripple of ice-splitting dread went through Ruby.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Ruby said quickly. “My folks live deep in the bluffs. It’s rough ground up there. If you don’t know your way, you could step on a snake or find yourself cornered by a pack of wolves. Maybe I could visit you in the village.”
“Well, dear, I’m counting on that,” Miss Alley said. “Still, I’d need your parents’ permission first, for some of my ideas. I wouldn’t want them to think I was trying to influence you in any way that defied their own plans.”
Ruby pressed her hands over her mouth so that she didn’t laugh in Miss Alley’s face. To her teacher, it probably looked as if Ruby were going to cry.
“Behind these rough ways you pretend to have, I know there is a sensible young woman who wants something better than the hand she’s holding. Leave it up to me, Ruby.”
Ruby’s face grew hot as she pressed her fingers against Cullen’s golden hot air balloon charm. He once asked her to truly consider the potential she had to improve herself. He’d told her that he believed in her because she was unlike any girl he’d ever kissed. Ruby thought of her freedom, pleased that she’d finally beaten Ezra at something, or at least that was how it was all feeling to her.
“Why would you want to help me?”
Miss Alley nodded, as if she’d anticipated Ruby’s question. “Besides my aunt, I don’t have anyone in my life. No husband, no daughter, no sister, no cousins. I arrived here and I guess I found myself taken by your guts. I’d want to have a daughter just like you, or a younger sister I could dote on, an angel I could protect.”
Ruby smiled without thinking. The woman made her tingle the same way Cullen had when he kissed her that very first time. Everywhere Ruby looked suggested a kind of dizzying romance where people wanted her, saw that she could be something else.
“There it is!” her teacher cried. “A one-hundred-watt smile from Ruby Scaggs! That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Striding quickly to her desk to open the creaking drawer where she kept her purse, Miss Alley spoke to Ruby in a friendly voice, as though they’d known each other since they were girls. “I’ll walk you outside, dear.”
Ruby stared at the corner of her teacher’s wallet, which she could see peeking from her purse. She thought of all those spilled coffees. The woman was careless, an easy mark. Grinning, Ruby allowed Miss Alley to take her arm, hooking it with hers.
“Off we go,” her teacher said brightly.
* * *
•••
Outside, Ruby’s father was standing alone in the schoolyard. He squinted nervously when he saw a pretty, well-dressed girl who resembled his daughter floating down the steps next to her teacher. He’d arrived at Hobart hoping to catch his daughter sneaking off to some pock-faced lover. She’d been more absent than usual, and Mr. Scaggs had no intention of letting his daughter think she was free to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted.
Because there was no one else in sight that could’ve been Ruby’s father, Miss Alley waved at the tall yet hunched figure. Calling out to him, she paused when she noticed Ruby had pulled back, shrinking into herself.
The sky suddenly split into a war of light. Half of the horizon threatened downpour while the other half sparkled, ignoring the rapid pace at which the darkening clouds moved, like horses prancing towards the center of a gray battlefield.
Rooted there on the steps of the school, Ruby took in her father’s appearance, worried that his usual lack of care for his clothing and hygiene would make Miss Alley reconsider the alliance she’d offered. But to her surprise, Ruby’s father wore a simple blue button-up shirt with no stains or holes in it and his good pair of gray pants. His whitish-blond hair fell neatly around his face. He’d shaved. Ruby didn’t know what to think. Was her papa putting on the face of a loving father so he wouldn’t be judged by her teachers? Or was he preparing to threaten harm to the imaginary beau he believed Ruby was secretly seeing? When Miss Alley presented her hand to him, Ruby’s papa shook it kindly. Except for not having a proper hat, he looked like a simple man on the rather handsome side.
Miss Alley introduced herself, easing all of them into shallow chatter. Smiling and amiable, she spoke of Ruby’s good behavior, exaggerating little things Ruby had said or done so that it made her sound like a leader, like she was at the top of her class. She likened Ruby to a member of her family. “She’s like the daughter I’ve never had,” her teacher said. “She’s such a star pupil!” The image of a marvelous girl none of them had ever seen appeared right in front of Ruby’s eyes. Sunshine, honey, dear.
“Ruby got a mother,” her father said. “She ain’t never said she needed no sister or brother neither. I don’t know what kind of yarn she’s spinning now but she ain’t a orphan. Just to be clear—Ruby can get lost in that backwards head of hers so I’m here to steer her straight,” her father said. “Even decent young girls can find themselves in the hands of devils quicker than the wings of angels. I was a young man once. I figure if some bastard is going to try and get something from Ruby she should only be giving to her husband, they’ll have to think about me first.”
“Well, I certainly understand that,” said Miss Alley in an encouraging voice as she shifted her body to face Mr. Scaggs. “I wouldn’t dream of letting a nice girl like Ruby walk around alone, what with the way that colored boy showed himself off to me. Those nigger girls are even worse.”
“That right?” said Mr. Scaggs, running his hand through his hair. He went to the left pocket of his trousers and took out a cigarette. Then he offered Miss Alley one. Turning to look at the windows of Hobart over her shoulder, Miss Alley ducked her head shyly before she accepted it. Understanding her caution, Mr. Scaggs pointed to a far corner of the impressive lawn. The three of them walked a bit away from the entrance of the school. Ruby watched her papa offer her teacher the light of his match before he flicked his wrist to light his own cigarette.
“You mean a boy like Ruby’s age?” he asked.
Miss Alley shook her head at him. “The cleaning nigger.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Scaggs. Ruby could tell he was listening carefully.
“Today, he almost attacked me,” said Miss Alley. “I spilled a cup of coffee, so I had to call for him on the intercom. I could’ve cleaned it up myself, the way he took his time coming.” She lowered her voice. “I was raised to appreciate the basic, human rights of Negroes, of all peoples, but I was truly shocked at how he was staring at me. The outright contempt. No decent man has ever looked at me the way he did. I might as well have been naked.” Miss Alley had no idea that she was touching one of Mr. Scaggs’s deepest nerves speaking about Mr. Caesar that way. Ruby didn’t dare risk correcting her.
“Hm,” said Mr. Scaggs, pushing his hair out of his face. He’d lifted his eyes to take in the branches of the trees above them. Neither of them behaved as if Ruby was there. “He’s a cocky son of a bitch,” said her father. “That wife of his walks around here like the queen of the jungle.”
“I suppose she’d have to be a savage too,” said Miss Alley, “to let a brute like that love her.”
Soft autumnal air surged around their thoughts. They were both quiet as they smoked.
“What do you all do around here when you have a nigger who’s out of line?” Miss Alley continued. “He has to know his place, otherwise all of them think they’ve got the run of things. Surely you take action?”
“We don’t do nothing,” Ruby said, blurting the words out before she’d fully thought them through.
“Ruby, just shut up,” said her father. “You’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. I didn’t catch you today but I’m going to. You and whoever this boy is—I’ll catch you right on your back. You can be damned sure of it.”
Miss Alley turned to take Ruby in before she looked back through her lashes at Mr. Scaggs. “Is Ruby trouble?”
“Not more than any of you women are,” Papa said without a note of humor.
Miss Alley coughed. “Those colored girls in the classroom are downright brazen,” she said as though she hadn’t heard his remark. “Had I known niggers could sit next to girls like Ruby in the same classroom and be treated as if they were capable of learning what Ruby is learning, I’d have applied for a position elsewhere.”
“What is Ruby learning exactly?”
What Ruby now knew was that Miss Alley was a liar. She was trying to decide whether she minded. In her head, Ruby heard again how sweetly Miss Alley had spoken to her in the classroom. She imagined the two of them being close like sisters, or good friends. She tried to think of the kind of life she could live with a mother like Miss Alley. Ruby didn’t want to give that dream up just yet.
