“TAKE THE CHILDREN HOME,” LIONEL PARRISH TOLD Jenny. “They’re needing help over there. No need for the children to see.”
“Y’all come with me,” Jenny said. She took the hands of her daughters. “Andy, you and George hold their other hands.”
As though they’d forgotten something at home, Jenny turned the children around on the sidewalk. The boys had to step on the grass because the walk wasn’t wide enough to hold them all. Jenny glanced at the trees, saw their leaves were still coated with tired dust. Whatever had happened back there at Sixteenth Street Baptist, this world was the same here, a block or two away. Everybody else was running toward the church. They shrieked and the ambulance sirens and police cars screamed down the street.
“I want to help,” George said.
“Your daddy say we all to go home. Can’t no child help with this.”
“I’m going to,” George said, and he dropped Vicky’s hand and ran.
“George!” Jenny shrieked, and her voice was like a bullet that stopped him dead in his tracks.
George turned and came back, but his cheeks were streaked with tears.
Jenny reached out her hand, and with the thumb of her white glove, she smeared away his tears.
“These just the first,” Jenny said. “Gonna be many a tear before this day forgot. Come on now, baby, like your daddy said.”
They walked on, Jenny thinking I don’t like turning my back on this.
When they passed their parked car, George said, “Mama, ain’t you gonna drive us?”
“You know I not ever learned to drive.”
“Why not?” Vicky asked.
“We leave the car here for your daddy,” Jenny said. “It be waiting when he ready to come home.”
It would be a long walk in Sunday pumps. Buses hardly ran on Sunday. Already her right foot was kicking the left foot.