Delores didn’t come back to school until that Friday. She wasn’t as late as usual and her hair looked fresh cleaned. I smiled at her as she walked past my desk. She must not have seen me, though, because she didn’t smile back.
We finished up our arithmetic lesson and Miss De Weese dismissed us for lunch. I waited in my seat until all the other kids had filed out and the room held just the teacher, Delores, and me.
“You wanna come to my house for lunch?” I asked, turning in my seat to look at her.
Delores shook her head but didn’t look at me.
“You sure? Opal’s making chicken and dumplings,” I told her. “It’ll be real good.”
Delores didn’t move, not to shake her head or shrug or anything. Not even to breathe, it seemed. It made me think of how a deer could sit still for hours so nobody’d be able to see them. I wondered if she was hoping I’d just stop talking to her and leave her be if she didn’t bat an eyelid.
“Come on, Delores,” I said. “Daddy said you could come for lunch any time you want. It’s no bother.”
She pulled her lips in between her teeth and bit down on them. Then she peeked at me real quick.
“Does she always eat with you?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Your girl,” she whispered.
“You mean Opal?” I asked. “Course she does. We don’t make her eat in the kitchen.”
“My mother said I can’t go to your house no more,” she whispered, turning her eyes down to her hands folded in her lap.
I leaned closer to her. “Why not?”
“She said I ain’t suppose to eat with them.”
“With who?” I asked, knowing who she meant but wanting her to have to say it.
“With people like her. She tries passin’ as white, my mother said, but really she’s a …” She paused and took in a breath. Then she looked to be sure Miss De Weese wasn’t listening before opening her mouth again.
Of all the cuss words I knew to use there was only one I’d never dared say. It was one Daddy’d warned me not to let slip out of my mouth, threatening a lick of a switch to my behind if I did. Some folks’d used it back in Red River, but never Daddy. Not once.
When Delores opened her mouth, she used that word for Opal. Even in her small, whispered voice it sounded like a growl.
“Don’t call her that,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice calm even though it wanted to break into a holler. “Don’t you ever call Opal that.”
It was a good thing I felt sorry for Delores. Had anybody else called Opal that word I would’ve given them a bloody nose.
Instead I left her to eat her sad little lunch all by herself.
Still, I didn’t feel good about it.
No matter how much I tossed or how many times I turned, there was no falling asleep for me that night. All I could see was the way Delores’s lips had moved around the bad word she’d called Opal and all I could hear was the “grrr” of the word grinding out of her mouth.
When Daddy came to check on me like he did most nights, I didn’t pretend to be asleep. I just kept my eyes open and said hi.
“I thought you’d be sleeping,” he said, stepping into the room.
I shook my head and propped myself up on my elbow.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You feeling all right?”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
He gave me a grin and told me he hoped I would.
“I don’t want to go back to school,” I said. “Can I stay home? I can learn everything from here. There’s plenty of books I can get at the library.”
“Darlin’, you gotta go to school,” he said. “I’m fixing to see you graduate from high school. You know, you could even go on to college if you wanted.”
I sighed and made sure he heard it. “I don’t want to be in school all my life.”
“I thought you liked school.”
“I guess,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“Somebody giving you trouble?”
I shrugged.
“Something happened today?”
“I guess so.” I turned my face up so I was looking at him. “Why’s that word so bad?”
He wrinkled up his brow like he was thinking hard. “Which word?” he asked.
“The bad one.”
“Can you spell it for me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “You’d whup me.”
“That bad, huh?” He nodded. “I think I know the one you mean. It starts with an ‘N’?”
I nodded. “It’s a real bad one, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” he said. “And you wanna know why it’s so bad, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, darlin’, far as I know it’s another word for Negro.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“But it’s more than just the definition. It’s what’s behind the word,” he said. “When somebody calls another man that word, he’s saying that man is worth hardly anything at all. It takes away a man’s humanity to call him that. Do you understand?”
“Calling a man that is saying that he has no soul, that he wasn’t made to be like God,” he said. “It’s saying he’s no better than an animal.”
“Why would anybody say something like that?”
“I guess maybe they don’t have any love for the person they’d say that about.” Daddy let out air from his mouth and shook his head. “Did you hear somebody say that word?”
I nodded. “Delores said it.”
“Hmm. Well, I imagine she doesn’t know better.”
“She said Opal was one.”
“And we know that’s not true,” Daddy said. “We know Opal’s a good person, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Delores told me she can’t come eat with us anymore because we let Opal sit at the table.”
Daddy nodded. “Well, we aren’t going to change what we do, are we?”
“Mama wouldn’t let her eat with us,” I said. “Remember?”
“I do.” Daddy stood before bending over to kiss my forehead. “I want you being as kind as you can be to Delores, hear?”
I nodded. “I’ll try.”