We sat in our rows at school, all of us wishing the teacher would tell us to pull our chairs closer to the radiator so we wouldn’t freeze to death in the too-cold room. It wouldn’t have made much difference, anyway, I didn’t think. Only time that radiator ever did warm anybody was when they bumped their arm into it and got a burn branded into their skin.
Miss De Weese sat at her desk, a little girl in the chair next to her. That little girl stumbled all over the words in the book the teacher had asked her to read. She didn’t seem to mind too much, Miss De Weese didn’t. She was real patient, which was good. And she never got mad, either. Miss De Weese wasn’t one for hollering or smacking hands with the broad side of a ruler. The only kid she’d put in the corner yet was Bob, and that was for tripping Delores Fitzpatrick while she walked past him to get to her desk.
I would’ve fattened his lip myself for doing a thing like that except he was the biggest kid in the school—at least twice my size—and I wasn’t so sure I could’ve reached his face with my fist if I’d wanted to anyhow.
Delores Fitzpatrick was the mousiest, dirtiest, poorest kid in all of Bliss. Everybody knew it. And because she and her family were so poor the other kids teased her something awful. She’d have fit right in if she’d been born in Red River. Down there, everybody was poor as dirt and knew it. But there in Bliss, it seemed folks didn’t want anybody else knowing they were out of money. And they had more than enough to say about folks like the Fitzpatrick family, that was sure.
Meemaw’d always told me folks make fun of what they don’t understand. I sometimes thought they even make fun of what they’re scared of. And I thought those kids, and some of the grown folks in Bliss too, were scared of living in an old chicken coop and having hardly anything to scrape by on.
Delores hadn’t come to school that day, and I didn’t blame her one bit. It was the coldest kind of weather and her coat wasn’t warm enough to keep her from freezing to death on the walk from way out on the edge of town where she lived. I just hoped they had some kind of wood stove or something, to keep them warm in that coop-house of theirs.
Miss De Weese had asked us to write letters to somebody and all our pencils scratched across the paper. I’d picked Millard Young back home in Red River. I had written about Bert’s pigeon and the town hall meeting and about Opal agreeing to teach me how to dance. Much as I’d wanted to, I didn’t ask him to leave Oklahoma to come live with us. Partly because I didn’t want to put upon him and partly because I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Red River was as much a part of Millard as his hands or feet or his brain even.
Of all the things I missed about Red River, I missed him the very most.
I finished my letter, looking it over to be sure I spelled everything the best I could. Done, I put my pencil in the groove at the top of the desk. All there was to do then was look around the room, trying to occupy my mind until everybody else was done.
Ray sat in the desk to the right of me. I watched him work at forming the letters on his page, his fingers holding the pencil just so and the tongue sticking out the side of his mouth the way it did when he was concentrating real hard. When he caught me staring at him he pulled his tongue back into his mouth and lowered his brows at me like he wanted me to leave him be.
“Cut it out,” he whispered. “You’re makin’ me nervous.”
“I’m done,” I said, my voice quiet, too.
“So what?”
“I’m bored.”
Ray rolled his eyes before going back to his work.
“Miss Spence?” Miss De Weese called to me from the front of the class. “Come here, please.”
Quiet as I could, I got out of my desk, hoping nobody else had heard me get called to the teacher’s side. I especially didn’t want Hazel Wheeler to know about it. She’d never have let me live that down.
Hazel’s father owned the general store in Bliss and they lived in the biggest, fanciest, most beautiful home in town. She hardly let a day pass without reminding somebody that her however-many-greats grandfather had founded Bliss years ago.
Hers was an important family. I knew because she’d made a point of telling me so no less than a dozen times.
I made my way to Miss De Weese’s desk, putting my hands behind my back so as not to let her see how they shook. I was just sure I’d be in trouble for whispering to Ray.
The little girl she’d been helping stood, her book hugged close to her chest. And she smiled at me.
“Pearl, if you’re done with your letter, would you mind listening to Gwendolyn read a story?” Miss De Weese asked. “You can sit over beside the window.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
The girl named Gwendolyn made her eyes big as saucers and she made a tiny clap with her hands, dropping the book in the process.
As Gwendolyn read aloud, I glanced out the window. All of the outside world looked to me like the picture shows, gray and black and too-white. I wondered if the whole winter would be so gloomy, so colorless. What I wouldn’t have done to see even a hint of blue trying to break a crack in the clouds or a shoot of green forcing a hole in the snow.
“Let us be friends,” Gwendolyn read, slow and clear. “What’s this word?”
I looked at the page.
“Because,” I told her.
“Because I am like you,” she went on.
She kept reading and I turned my attention back out the window, not that there was anything to see. Not really.
Gwendolyn finished and I told her she’d done a fine job.
“You want to hear it again?” she asked.
Before I could answer, she opened the book to the first page and started over at the once-upon-a-time. It was fine by me. I was happy to stay there staring out the window.
From where I sat I could see the houses that ran up and down the streets nearby. That was where most of the kids in school lived. Daddy’d told me the men in town worked in a factory up in Adrian when there was a job for them to do or as field hands around harvest time. Nobody in Bliss was rich, expect maybe the Wheelers, who Hazel said had old money.
I didn’t know how old money could help anybody or where they’d keep such a thing. But by the store-bought dresses Hazel wore and the parties they put on every once in a while, I thought maybe they were better off than most. At least they showed off like they were.
I watched out the window and saw somebody coming on the road toward the school. It was a small somebody wearing a gray coat and some kind of stocking cap. The closer she got, the more I could see the patches on that coat and how ill fitting it was.
Delores Fitzpatrick had made her way to school after all.
“All right, children,” Miss De Weese said. “You’re dismissed for lunch. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
It’d taken Delores all morning to get to school. It seemed a real waste that she’d just have to turn around and walk back home in a couple hours.
All the kids rushed to get their coats on. Most of us went home for the noon meal on account we lived so close. I knew Delores would sit in the classroom with the teacher and eat her folded piece of bread with butter spread thin as paper on it.
As for me, I didn’t hurry. I knew Ray’d wait for me. Bert might, too. As much as I could, I put off being out in that cold-snap air. I took my time getting to my coat and putting it on. Once I got out to the schoolyard I saw most of the kids standing in a circle.
Through a gap in the circle I saw Delores with her eyes to the ground, holding her lunch pail to her chest, and the boy named Bob standing in front of her with a nasty smirk on his face.
“Leave her be,” Ray said, stepping into the circle with them.
“I’m not hurting her,” Bob said. “I’m not, am I, Delores?”
She didn’t answer.
Ray stepped to Delores’s side. “Come on,” he said to her. “I’ll walk you in if you want.”
She turned from him like she wasn’t sure if he was teasing her too.
“What’s in your lunch?” Bob asked, putting out a hand to grab at her pail. “Let’s see what your ma packed you.”
“Cut it out,” Ray said, slapping Bob’s hand away.
“I seen your name on the list for taking handouts,” Bob said.
“Most people’re on that list.” Ray stepped right between Bob and Delores. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
Bob moved forward, putting both hands on Ray’s shoulders, shoving him back and back and back.
“Nobody asked you to get in the way,” Bob said. “She’s nothin’ but white trash.”
“No she’s not,” Ray hollered.
“You don’t know,” Bob said, getting real close to Ray’s face. “Her dad’s a bad man. The worst.”
“That don’t make her bad,” Ray said, his voice as full of gravel as I’d ever heard it.
“Yeah? What do you know?”
Bob turned, reached for Delores’s pail and tipped it, making her pitiful lunch fall into the snow. Delores dropped to her knees, digging in the snow, trying to find her food. Ray gave Bob one last sharp look before lowering to a squat beside Delores.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “Leave it. You’ll come eat with us today. All right? Mr. Spence won’t mind. I promise.”
Ray picked up her pail, empty except for the snow that’d fallen in. He helped her to her feet. She walked beside him to leave the schoolyard, Bert following behind with wide eyes.
I thought about stomping on Bob’s foot as I walked by, but didn’t know that I had the strength to run away from him if he came after me. Instead I gave him my strongest sneer. All he did was roll his eyes and shake his head.
“Pearl,” Ray called to me over his shoulder. “Come on.”
Delores slumped her shoulders like she was trying to make herself so small nobody’d be able to see her. I thought she’d have been content to disappear. I couldn’t have blamed her.
“Coming,” I said back.
“He’s right,” Bert said, grabbing me by the arm as I caught up. “Bob’s right. Mr. Fitzpatrick’s bad.”
I jerked my arm away from him and followed after Ray and Delores, leaving Bert behind me.
There was a handful of things I knew to be true. One was that Jesus lived in my heart and another was that Daddy loved me deeper than an ocean. I knew the sun would come up every morning, even if I couldn’t see it for the thick Michigan clouds.
And I knew without a shadow of turning that just because a man was bad didn’t mean his kids would be too.
The man whose blood ran through my veins was wicked as the devil himself.
I refused to believe I could be even a little like him.
Bert called after me but I just kept on walking.