February melted away and March came in with a little more sunshine and a little less chill to the air. What Uncle Gus had called a cold snap seemed to have broken right in half and let the warmer days through. I was glad for that. Seemed all of creation agreed with me the way the birds swooped through the sky and the squirrels chitter-chattered in the tree branches. Most folks even smiled easier.
Most days before class I’d meet up with Hazel and a couple of her friends to dance in the schoolyard. We’d pair up and take turns being the lead and the follow. I never would’ve thought Hazel could giggle, but she did. When she did, the sharp, pinched up look on her face dropped away and I saw how pretty she really was.
Sometimes I imagined we’d become friends, Hazel and me. The kind of friends that shared secrets and played with each other’s hair, like Aunt Carrie’s friend she’d told me about.
But then she’d snap at her partner for stepping on her toes or glare at Delores when she made her way to her desk, and I’d remember how nasty she was.
“Folks is as they is,” Meemaw might’ve said. “Ain’t like to change this side of heaven.”
After all my eleven years of living, I had to think she’d have been right about that.
Every once in a while Bert would come over and watch us dance, hoping we were unevenly paired. When we were, I’d have him dance with the younger girl named Gwendolyn. She seemed just pleased as punch to be dancing with him even if he did stomp on her feet more often than not.
When I wasn’t at school or home helping Opal with chores, I was out in the woods that stood between the house on Magnolia Street and the apple orchard behind Uncle Gus’s barn. I’d climb over snow-buried stumps or clumps of leaves. I’d try to climb into the branches of trees I thought had been there since God spoke Michigan into being. There, not too high above the earth, I’d read out of a book I’d stowed away in the wide pockets of my coat. It wasn’t near warm enough to be sitting out in the air like that and Mama’d have pitched a fit seeing me there with my skirts all bunched up on my legs.
But Mama wasn’t there to see me. She was off who-knew-where doing who-knew-what with Abe Campbell. She’d not called or so much as written a note since the time Daddy’d gone off to see her.
It was just as well. We didn’t need her. We were doing just fine living the way we were.
At least I talked myself into believing that just about every other day when my heart tried to trick me into missing her.
A couple days a week Opal still gave me a dance lesson. She’d keep the radio off, the only music was her counting off the rhythm. Then we’d go to the kitchen to get supper around, Opal putting the radio on in the background. Every once in a while a good song would come on and we’d both put down whatever it was we were chopping or stirring and we’d dance with small swings of arms and kicks of feet so as not to knock over anything from the stove or the counter.
It was a Thursday and Opal had put the casserole in the oven. Her other chores for the day were done, so we went out to the living room and danced for a couple songs before one of them made Opal stop right in the middle of a step. She went over to the radio and put her ear up to it, shutting her eyes with a smile tipping up the corners of her lips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Hush,” she answered. “It’s Cab Calloway.”
Even though my heart was pumping loud and my body still wanted to move, I settled in next to her, our ears close to the radio to listen to that man as he half sang, half hollered out a whole bunch of nonsense words.
The way Opal knit her brow and sighed while listening to that song, I would’ve thought that Cab Calloway had set the earth to spinning. She put her hands to her chest and slumped back against the radio stand as if the very thought of him made her weak and unable to put together any words, just sighs and swooning.
“If I ever make it to New York, I’ll find him,” she said after the song ended. “I promise you I will.”
“You’d go to New York?” I asked. “Why would you do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know how to explain it,” she answered. “I guess it’s easier for somebody like me in a big city, Pearl. There are more who look like me and think the way I do.”
I did not understand what she was talking about, but I didn’t say a word to her about it.
“There’s a club on every block in the city. At least that’s what I’ve heard.” She smiled, closing her eyes like she was dreaming. “I bet I could go to a different place every night of the week and never get tired of it. Can you imagine?”
“Do you think you’d get famous if you went there?” I asked.
“Maybe.” She opened her eyes and raised one brow. “They’re always looking for dancers out there for the shows. I could make a little money to send home.”
She stopped and bit on her bottom lip.
“Do you think you’ll ever go?” I asked.
“Probably not.” She reached up and fussed with the back of her hair. “I’d never have enough money to make it there.”
I thought if I could scrounge up all my nickels and dimes, I could save until I had enough to buy her a train ticket or a seat on a bus. Maybe I’d even hold back a little so I could get her a store-bought dress so she wouldn’t have to wear one of her flour-sack ones in the city. While I was at it, I didn’t think it would take too much more to get her a brand-new pair of shoes—the kind she could dance in.
I imagined her getting off the train or the bus, looking at all the buildings that reached up to touch the clouds, her neck craning to see the top of them. It would be loud, New York would be, with lots of people bustling down the road. But Opal wouldn’t be scared about it. And she wouldn’t be nervous. Not one little bit.
She’d feel right at home there. Nobody’d look at her funny, trying to figure out if she was white or colored. They wouldn’t look at her tight curls and her full lips or her bright eyes and her fair skin and think of how she didn’t belong. They’d just see her, how her eyes lit up when she smiled and walked and how her hair bounced. What the folks in New York would see was Opal.
And that was good enough.
She’d be walking down the street, paying too much attention to all that was around her to see what was right in front of her. With a thump and a bump, she’d run right into a man wearing the most beautiful suit she’d ever seen.
He’d put his hands on her shoulders and ask if she was all right. She was and would tell him so. But then she’d move her eyes up to his face.
“Cab?” she’d ask, feeling weak in the knees the way women in the movies sometimes did.
He’d nod. “That’s right.”
He would ask her name and say it was just right, the kind of name that should be on a marquee somewhere. Opal Moon. A name meant for flashing lights. That would make her blush and smile her prettiest of smiles.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to dance, would you?” he’d ask. “One of my girls is out sick with the flu. I could use a gal like you in my show tonight.”
Opal would tell him she did dance and he’d believe her. Taking the suitcase out of her hand, he’d give her his arm and they’d walk down the road together, not even noticing the cars speeding by or the people rushing past them on either side.
She got up, Opal did, from in front of the radio, saying she needed to check on the casserole, and left me sitting there on the living room floor, the radio playing a song that made me feel sad for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on.
As much as I would have liked to keep Opal with me, I knew she couldn’t stay forever. She’d have to go back to her family or strike out for a new town, maybe even a big city like New York.
There had to be someplace that would be more home to her than Bliss ever could be. I just had to believe there was.