My dread of leaving Martha Jean alone, with only Laura and Edna as her ears, was shared by Wallace. “What if somebody comes in? She wouldn’t even hear ’em. She can’t hear if somebody knocks on the door, ”Wallace protested.“I ain’t going to school. It ain’t gon’ hurt nothing if I miss one day.”
“Martha Jean gon’ be awright,” Harvey assured him. “Ain’t nobody coming out here.You going to school, Wallace, so you might as well shut up and get dressed.”
Sam leaned against the back wall behind the stove, grinning at the exchange and smoking a cigarette. He wore the same overalls he had worn the week before, and they were still relatively clean.
“I’m trying to think, Wallace,” he teased, “who gon’ come out here and bother Martha Jean? Who you think?”
Wallace did not have to think about it. He was ready for the question. “A stranger,” he said, “or the insurance man, or the ice man, or Mr. Poppy, or dirty ol’ Mr. Harper who brings the coal.”
“Why they coming?” Sam asked.“You done went and ordered ice and coal, and didn’t tell nobody?”
“Get yo’ clothes on, Wallace,” Harvey said. “You talking ’bout people don’t wanna come when they got to.”
“Bang, bang,” Sam teased, pointing a trigger finger at Wallace. “You gon’ shoot all them people wit’ yo’ cap pistol, Wallace? Make me wanna stay home and watch. I can just see it now. Mr. Poppy come to the door and ask for his rent, and you shoot him through the heart wit’ yo’ cap pistol.They put you on the chain gang for shooting people, boy, and that’s worse than any school I know of.”
Wallace stood up under Sam’s taunting, but finally went back to the kitchen and made a show of getting dressed.
After Harvey and Sam left, I poured warm water into the washbasin and began my morning bath. Tarabelle came from Mama’s room where she had slept for the past two nights. She didn’t say anything, but as she swept by me on her way to the kitchen, she purposely shoved my arm, and water sloshed from the basin.
I turned to stare at her and saw that she was wearing her white, cotton dress—the one with the tiny rose pattern and short sleeves. It was more suited for spring, but no one was going to tell her that.
“Grits,” she grumbled, coming back into the front room. “I’m sick and tired of grits. Oughta be something else in the world to eat besides grits all the time.”
“I want grits,” Laura said.
“You would, ”Tarabelle snapped. “You always want something. I’m glad I’m getting out of here today.Never nobody to talk to but a dummy and two whining brats.”
“There won’t be anybody to talk to at the Munfords’, either,” I informed her.
“Huh,” she snorted. “That’s what you think. Might not be nobody after today, but today you gon’ be talking to me. Don’t tell me you thought you was running off to school.”
“I am going to school. Harvey said we have to go to school.”
“Wallace might be going, but you ain’t. Who you think gon’ show me where these people live? I ain’t never been to no East Grove.You just expect me to walk up to some house and start cleaning? Tangy, you gon’ show me the house, where they keep things, how they like things, and how to do things. I ain’t working today, sister. I’m gon’ be watching you.”
“Come on, Tara,” I pleaded, “I missed school on Friday.Mr. Pace is gonna be upset with me.”
“So?” she asked, moving in to stand nose to nose with me.“Who you think you are? You think ’cause you can read a little bit better than the rest of us that it makes you special or something? You ain’t special, Tangy. Ever’ time you gotta do something, you whine.You just like Laura and Edna, whining all the time ’bout everything.”
She grabbed the undershirt that I was about to slip over my head and tried to yank it from my hands.“You think you special, Tangy?” she repeated, tugging and stretching the shirt.
“Yes!” I shouted, and pulled the shirt with all my strength.
My beautiful sister chose that particular moment to loosen her grip. I stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, bringing the basin of water with me, soaking the undershirt.
Edna began to cry, and Laura shrieked for Wallace who came rushing in from the kitchen.
“I don’t need Wallace,” I croaked from beneath a black oxford that was firmly planted atop my naked chest.Tears sprang to my eyes.“Mama said we don’t fight each other,” I whimpered, and the heavy shoe was immediately replaced by a gob of saliva. I could feel it oozing across my ribcage, and I used the wet shirt to wipe it off.
“Silly, ”Tarabelle said, as she turned on her heels and marched across the hall.
“I’m gon’ tell Mama on Tara,” Laura said with such sympathy for me that I felt ashamed for myself and for Tarabelle.
“Ain’t nothing to tell,” Wallace said, helping me to my feet, although I did not want his help. He refilled the basin with warm water, then turned his attention to Laura and Edna.“C’mon,” he told them, “Martha Jean’s got breakfast ready.” On his way out, he stopped long enough to whisper, “Tara’s just a bully.You’ll get her one day.”
Alone in the room, I thought about bravery and common sense, exploring the thin line that separated the two. I was not a brave individual, and common sense told me that my strength would be no match against Tarabelle’s, but I was not afraid of her, either. Not really afraid.
Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it.
I stared at my reflection in the basin of water, remembering that day vividly, and shuddering from the memory.
I am ten, sprinting the miles between Plymouth and Stump Town with sticks and stones pelting my thin winter coat, being chased by four girls who are no bigger or older than I.
“Pee baby, cry baby, pee baby, cry baby,” they yell from behind me, and I run even faster.
“You’d better run.”
“Ugly, stinky, tar baby.You’d better run.”
Their words hurt worse than the rock that draws blood from my scalp, and the stick that bounces off my leg and does not draw blood. I run with fear pumping through my veins. My notebook and pencils are scattered somewhere miles behind me, and I am trying desperately to reach the safety of my mother’s arms, screaming her name in my flight.
I round the bend, running from Fife Street to Penyon Road, and I see my mother. She is standing on the front porch, staring down past the field and directly at me. She turns her back and opens the front door. I think she is going inside, deserting me in the presence of my enemies, and I scream for her again.
“Mama! Mama!”
Martha Jean and Tarabelle emerge from the house. My mother rushes them toward the road, and they obey. My warriors charge the battlefield without armor, attacking my predators, pulling clothes, and hair, and skin, drawing blood and screams of terror, as I fall to the dirt, panting and crying.
Above the noise of my pounding heart and panting breath comes the distinct sound of bone cracking. I turn my head slowly and see three of the girls running back toward Fife, and the unlucky fourth sitting on the road, holding her right arm with her left hand.
Tarabelle circles the girl once, then turns her cold eyes on me, and before I can blink, she rams a knee into the girl’s face. Martha Jean, a long red welt running from ear to chin, helps me to my feet and delivers me into the waiting arms of my mother.
Mama makes herself comfortable in an armchair and pulls me onto her lap. She strokes my hair, then wraps an arm around my back, drawing me closer to her heart.With her other hand, she motions to Tarabelle, and my sister steps away from us. Mama brings her arm around and under my thigh, pinning my body to hers.“You a Quinn, baby,” she says softly.“We don’t run from nobody. Nobody! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumble against her breast.
“You gotta fight. Don’t take nothing but swinging yo’ fist.You understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m gon’ make sho’ you understand it,” she says, loosening her grip on my thighs.“Hand me that poker and hold her feet, Tarabelle.”
Tarabelle clamps down on my feet, immobilizing me.There is no time to cry out as my mother brings the searing fire iron down onto my leg. I swoon from the pain, and my mother’s voice trails me as I enter into a darkness that is death and float deeper still into Hell. “I done branded you a Quinn, girl. Don’t you ever run from nobody else long as you live.”
Much later, the next day or the day after that, my mother’s face comes into focus before my eyes. She opens her mouth, and the strong smell of onions assaults my nostrils.“It wouldna burned you so bad if you’da been still,” she says.
I remembered wanting to fade back into the darkness, but being unable to. I will forever wear a brand on my lower left leg that I am able to hide beneath a sock. Sometimes when I am most afraid, I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.