I didn’t make Opal ask me to help her get supper together. Matter of fact, I’d been following her around that whole day, hoping she’d find work for me to do. She’d found plenty, but kept looking at me like I’d sprouted a toe out the top of my head. I’d been doing odd jobs all day long hoping she’d see how big a help I could be to her. Maybe then she’d be obliged and offer to teach me to dance out of the goodness of her own heart. But when time came to cook supper I’d plumb run out of patience.
“Opal?” I said, watching her set a pan on the stovetop.
“Hmm?”
“Aren’t you ever going to teach me how to dance?”
“Well, I thought you’d forgotten about that,” she said. “You haven’t asked for days.”
“Will you?”
“Get the cutting board out.”
“You’re the best dancer I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I’ll bet you’d be a real good teacher, too.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she told me, shaking her head. “Besides after the meeting tonight, I’ll probably be forbidden to dance in this town again.”
“Nah, they wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“You don’t think so? You know they’re meeting because of the dances,” she said. “Hand me that washrag, would you?”
I did as she asked.
“I was the only Negro at that dance.” She took care to fold the damp rag into a square. “I know they don’t want me dancing with their white kids.”
“But you’re not all the way Negro,” I said. “Just half.”
“That’s more than enough for most people.” She shook her head and rubbed at a spot on the kitchen counter. “If I’d known it was going to cause such a stir I would’ve just stayed home that night.”
She handed me a couple carrots and the chopping knife. “Make them thin,” she said. “They’re for soup.”
I couldn’t cut up anything near as fast as she could without fear I’d take off the end of my finger. Still, she didn’t sigh at me for being slow the way Mama would have. Opal just went back to mixing up the cornbread she’d started.
“Opal?” I said, stopping my knife before setting to work on my second carrot. “You think they’ll split up the dances?”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some folks and Jim Crow.”
“Well, first off, Jim Crow isn’t a person. They’re laws about what colored folks can and cannot do in the south,” she said. “Keep your eyes on your knife. You’ll slice your thumb off.”
I looked back at my carrot.
“We don’t have Jim Crow laws here, thank goodness.” She cleared her throat and poured the cornbread batter into a pan. “And some folks are just busybodies. That’s all.”
She looked at me over her shoulder.
“You don’t have to tell anybody I said that,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“People who hate Negroes so much should move to Mississippi, if you ask me.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that, but didn’t ask. She’d started humming and I kept right on working until all the carrots were chopped. She told me to go ahead and put them in her stew pot. I did, liking the way they clunked on the bottom.
The cornbread in the oven and the soup on to simmer, Opal did up what few things were dirty in the sink and I dried them. She thanked me for helping her.
“Opal, can I ask you something?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“If they do split up the dances, which would you choose?”
“I don’t know.” She pushed a curl back into her loose bun. “Maybe I’d just have to start my own.”
“I’d come,” I said.
“That would be nice.”
Daddy told Ray and me we’d best stay home from the town meeting. He’d said it would just be a bunch of grown folks bellyaching about not getting their own way and it would only serve to bore us right out of our minds.
“Opal’s gonna stay with you until I get home,” he said. “You’ll mind her, won’t you?”
We said we would.
“Now, I won’t be too late,” he said, putting on his coat. “Y’all can stay up until I get back and I promise I’ll tell you about some of the meeting.”
After Daddy left, Opal turned on the radio, finding something nice and calm and slow. She said it was so Ray could concentrate on the letter he was writing to his mother and so I could read my book. Really, I thought it was so I wouldn’t bother her to teach me how to dance.
Even if she’d offered to give me a dance lesson that night, I would have told her no thanks. At least that was what I told myself.
I peeked at her every now and again out of the corner of my eye to see if she was giving any sign of wanting to dance. A toe tapping or a head bobbing. The way I figured, if she got into a dancing mood, she might just teach me a step or two after all.
But nothing. I knew it was a lost cause when she took up Mama’s mending basket and got to work on one of Ray’s socks. Somehow that boy could find a way to work a hole in his socks with every single one of his toes.
I just turned my eyes back to my book.
Ray beat me at four out of five games of checkers. And I was pretty sure he’d set me up to jump his last few pieces in the fifth game.
“You let me win,” I said, shaking my head.
“I never did,” he answered back. “I was just listenin’ to the radio.”
“You don’t have to let me win,” I said.
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t bicker,” Opal said, putting the mending down beside her chair and getting up. She checked the clock on the wall. “It’s getting late.”
“Can’t we stay up until Daddy gets home?” I asked. “Please?”
“He said you could.” She shook her head and went to the kitchen, letting the door swing closed behind her.
Ray went to the radio and bent at the waist, eyes level with the dial as he turned it up and down, trying to find something worth listening to. As fast as he moved it, I didn’t know how he could figure out what was playing. I didn’t care, though. I wouldn’t have admitted it to Opal, but I was tired.
Dropping onto the davenport, I leaned my head on the back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack that went all the way from one wall to where a light hung right in the middle of the room.
“Ray, if you could pick anywhere in the whole world, where would you live?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Pearl,” he said, still monkeying with the radio.
“I’d live in the library,” I told him.
“Seems as good a place as any.”
“You’d go out to California, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “Or Florida?”
He shook his head then settled on a radio program. He plunked down cross-legged, facing me.
“Would you go back to Red River?” I asked.
“Would you?”
I nodded.
“Then I’d go with you.” He bit at his bottom lip and shrugged. “Guess I’d just go wherever you went.”
We were all he had, Daddy and me. And, when I thought about it, he was all we had, too.
I slid off the couch and took the half step toward him. I settled into the spot on the floor right next to him.
We sat there, the two of us, listening to some program that I knew I’d never remember. What I would remember the rest of my days was how important Ray Jones was, and how having him around made me feel brave enough to face anything.
I could make it through just about anything so long as Ray was there with me.
Back in Red River the telephone had never rung. At least not that I remembered. The dusters had knocked over all the poles that held the lines. The wires had snapped at one point or another. Besides, most folks in town couldn’t have afforded to keep a telephone in their home even if the lines had been up.
So, there in the house on Magnolia Street, I still jumped whenever the telephone rang. My heart would beat fast and I’d feel like the very best thing to do was run and hide under the bed.
That night, the ringing surprised me even more because Daddy wasn’t home to let me know it was all right.
“Who’s calling?” I asked Ray.
He shrugged. “You gonna answer it?”
“Should I?”
“Might be your dad,” he said.
“What if it isn’t?” I turned toward the telephone where it sat on a table against the wall. “You answer it.”
“No thanks.”
“Well, if you’re scared …” I started, thinking he might take my bluff and pick up the receiver.
He didn’t. He just reached out and turned down the radio. “There, now you’ll hear the ringing better.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed myself up off the floor.
I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear, feeling the weight of it in my hand.
“Hello? Spence residence,” I said, just the way Opal always did.
“Pearl?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, trying not to drop the receiver for how my hand had started shaking.
It was Mama.