Hazel Wheeler busied herself with talking behind her hand into some girl’s ear. Both sets of eyes followed me all the way from the gate of the schoolyard to an old tree not three feet from the steps. It was only the second day of school and already I felt a fight coming on.
“Don’t you pay her no mind,” Ray told me. “She’s just tryin’ to get your goat.”
“Well, she’s already got it,” I muttered. “I hate everything about her.”
“You don’t hardly know her.” Ray stayed standing and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Don’t borrow trouble, Pearl.”
That’d been something Meemaw had said when she was still alive. Somehow it hadn’t irked me near as much when she’d said it.
“I’m telling you what, if that girl says one sideways thing to me …”
“You’ll turn around and walk away from her,” he told me. “She ain’t worth gettin’ in trouble over.”
“Maybe she is,” I said under my breath.
Ray sat on the stump beside me and leaned forward so his elbows rested on his thighs.
“Pearl, that girl will never be half as good as you,” he said. “You know that?”
I didn’t know that but I kept it to myself. Good girls didn’t drive off both their mamas before they’d reached the age of twelve.
“Don’t let her get to you. That’d just be givin’ her what she wants.”
I wanted to ask Ray when it was he’d started talking just like Daddy, but Miss De Weese came out the school door, ringing her bell as the kids hustled to get in line. I hung back so I was right behind Hazel and the girl she’d been whispering with.
The part of me that was full of evil wanted to yank on her perfectly bouncy sausage curl until it straightened right out.
Then I remembered what Meemaw’d told me time and again when somebody treated me mean back in Red River. She’d dry my eyes with the hem of her apron and pat my cheek with her crooked-fingered hand.
“You gotta find a way to bless ’em, honey,” she’d said. “When somebody treats you bad, you gotta think of somethin’ good to do to ‘em. They might hit you again and again, but you gotta come back with blessin’s every time.”
Some days I wished I could stop remembering things Meemaw’d told me. Seemed easier just to smack Hazel across the face and be done with it.
Walking behind her and watching her silky and shiny ginger-colored hair sway back and forth across her shoulders, I couldn’t think of one thing to do to bless Hazel. She already had everything she needed and I sure didn’t want to tell her she was pretty.
Pretty is as pretty does, I thought.
Right before we walked in the school she peered at me over her shoulder, giving me a look that told me she thought I was worse than worthless.
“Good morning, Hazel,” I said in the very sweetest voice I could make. “I do hope you have a nice day.”
Her eyes grew wide before she narrowed them at me.
My kindness took her by surprise. It felt better than punching her in the mouth would’ve. Besides, kindness wasn’t near as hard on my knuckles.
I held my shoulders back and felt a smile creep up on my face.
Miss De Weese held me after class to wash the chalkboards and clap the erasers. The fine powder that puffed in the air in front of my face reminded me of Red River. It was fine and silky just like the Oklahoma dust. It also made me cough something awful when I breathed it in too deep.
I deserved the punishment and I knew it. Still, I’d felt justified in tripping a boy in class after I heard the nasty word he’d called my mama.
When the teacher had asked me why I’d done it, I just looked her in the eye and told her I didn’t know for sure. That wasn’t the whole truth but the last thing I needed was for her to know our family business, even if the whole rest of the town seemed to know more about it than I did.
Ray had waited for me on the stump, gnawing away at his fingernails that could’ve used a good clipping. His hair was growing out dangerously close to his collar and it seemed his pants had shrunk a good inch in the legs.
Mama never would’ve let those things go. And she wouldn’t have tolerated the grime that’d taken up housekeeping in his ears, either. I thought I’d have to see what Opal could do to help him.
“Ready?” Ray asked once he saw me walking down the school steps. “Wanna cut through the woods?”
“Nah,” I told him. “I’m too tired.”
He kicked at a pebble that was loose on the pavement. I could tell just by the way he half shuffled his feet that he was disappointed.
“You go on if you wanna,” I told him. “You don’t need me holding your hand.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Sure I am.” I shook my head. “I know the way home without you.”
He didn’t wait for me to tell him twice. He took off running toward the woods fast as he could. I imagined him one day with a big old woolly beard that grew all the way down to the middle of his chest and hair so long it curled up around his ears and at the nape of his neck. He’d have a cabin all his own where he’d live in the woods, trees growing all the way around so he wouldn’t even need a fence.
Ray wouldn’t be a hermit. He wasn’t that kind. But he would like to keep to himself sometimes. He’d always let me come and sit to visit just so long as I brought him food enough to last a month.
And if I’d ask real nice he might even let me live out there with him.
I dreamed of all we’d have out in our cozy cabin in the woods until I got to the front porch. Opening the door, I saw that Opal was there waiting for me.
“May I please have something to eat?” I asked.
She nodded and walked to the kitchen without saying so much as a word. It seemed odd to me that she hadn’t asked how school was or why I was so late getting home. She hadn’t even asked what I’d like to eat.
That was when I realized something about the house felt wrong. A little bit emptier.
The portrait of President Roosevelt still hung on the wall above the radio and the rocking chair was still in the corner with Daddy’s ashtray on the table beside it. The photos of our family were there, still where Mama’d placed them on our first day in the house. The telephone and the few books Daddy’d brought from Red River and Meemaw’s old Bible all stayed where they lived on the table.
Mama’s music box was gone, though. And the lacy doily she’d kept under it. Her mending basket was missing from beside the chair she’d liked to sit in.
I went to the bedroom my parents had once shared, the one Daddy had avoided since Mama left. Anything that had been hers was gone. Dresses and shoes and even the quilt from the bed. Checking the dresser, I saw that her wedding ring was gone, too.
“Pearl,” Opal said, standing in the doorway with a piece of bread and jelly on a plate. “Come on out of there.”
“Were we robbed?” I asked.
“Your mother …” She sighed. “Mrs. Spence. She came for a few things.” As an act of instinct, I felt for Meemaw’s locket where it would’ve been on my neck had I put it on. But that morning I’d left it in my dresser up in my room. I’d worried about it getting lost or broken. It was my most prized possession and all I had left from Meemaw and Beanie.
I’d wanted to protected it, so I’d left it home, safe in my top drawer. Racing up the stairs, I crashed into my room, the door banging on the wall behind it. All was normal, just the way I’d left it that morning.
If only I hadn’t gotten myself held over after school I might’ve seen her.
I’d have begged her to stay. I would have done anything.
I put my hand on the cool metal knob of the top drawer and pulled. Without looking, I felt around for the chain of my necklace, for the gold with tiny chips of diamonds. It wasn’t there.
I opened the drawer wider, leaning over it to inspect. My eyes only caught a glint of light on my shears and a stack of folded-up letters from Millard.
I slid the drawer closed gentle as I could and rested my fingertips on the top of the dresser. Mama’s fingers had just touched that same metal and wood. Her feet had been in the same spot that mine were in just then.
My chest felt squeezed by some large and unseen hand that wanted to crush me to dust. I tried to breathe deep. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth.
I never did tell Daddy that Mama’d stolen my locket from me. To speak it would have been to make it true. It would have made me admit that Mama’d done something so low. That she’d hurt me once again.
What I did do was imagine how I’d be if ever I did see her again. Every time I thought on it, I pictured Mama walking my way, her sorry eyes fixed right on me. As far as I was concerned she could just keep on walking.
I would just turn my back on her.