Holding the heavy bucket with both hands, I walk across the porch stiff as Frankenstein. Our boarders sit rocking and fanning away the heat. “Excuse me.” Kneeling down, I scrub under their feet and rockers. “Pardon me.” I take my brush and spell my name on the floorboards in capital letters.

Auntie offers up lemonade and molasses cookies to Mrs. Ruby and the rest. I dunk the scrub brush into the water again. They laugh at Mr. Buster’s jokes. I push my sour, sweaty bangs out of my eyes. Touching my hair with my shriveled up fingers, I think about the girls in Jet magazine. No tangles or plaits. Just long, straight, beautiful hair. “Hair is as bothersome as a dress,” I tell my pretend servant friends. “If I had my way …”

Auntie can hear as well as any vampire. This dress and scrubbing are my punishment, she tells me, for traipsing around in the dead of the night chasing poor old Mr. Davenport. So she tells me to settle my mind and get back to work.

“Shuma.” Jonah’s mother walks up to our house, stomping across my clean porch. Jonah stands at the curb wearing a big smile. “I’d like to discuss your niece and something else of importance.” Mrs. Nicholson drinks buttermilk for breakfast, I bet. She always looks as if she’s had something sour. “Keep your distance, Jonah” — she points — “away from her.”

Jonah squats behind a bush near the curb. His mother takes off her beige gloves, one finger at a time. “Morning, all,” she says, beating Auntie into our house. “Fine day, ain’t it?”

No sooner than the screen door slams shut, Jonah pops up. “Octobia May. I need you — quick.” He holds out his hand, showing off his winnings. A handful of nickels. “I won. I did. I got more kisses than anybody else. Thanks.” He promises to buy me anything I would like.

I don’t want money. Or lemon cookies. I want to know if Jonah remembers that Mr. Davenport is a vampire, I say, looking at him from the porch. His crooked eye sets itself on me a good long time. “Jeepers creepers, Octobia May. You know I don’t believe in vampires.”

Walking down the steps, I set my bucket down and remind him again about Mr. Davenport’s fangs. “Sorry, Octobia May. I didn’t see his fangs.”

I push back my hair and get down on my knees to scrub the pavement. Talking to my pretend servant friends, I ask why our lives are so hard and troubled. Jonah asks about my hair. He sniffs and picks at it like he’s pulling weeds from the ground.

“Ouch!”

“Dresses and knotty hair,” I say to my servant friends. “Boys do not know a thing about those.”

Putting away his nickels, Jonah picks raspberries from our bush to eat. “Who’s that?” he says when Bessie comes outside and sits on her front steps. Using his back pockets for a napkin, he wipes his hands clean.

“Bessie. The new girl.” Juppie hears Bessie’s name and walks across the street.

“Sure is pretty.” Jonah fills his hands and mouth with more berries. Bessie sets her purse on the step, and picks up a comic book. Veronica from the Archie series. I can see them on the cover.

“She can’t talk.”

Juppie jumps in across her lap. “Guess you talk enough for the whole block, Octobia May.” Jonah compliments her hair, asking when I last washed mine.

When our screen door squeaks open, all the rocking chairs stop. By the time Auntie and Jonah’s mother step outside, he and I are back where we belong. I am on the pavement on my knees. Out of breath. Jonah is in the bushes.

“More freedom’s coming than girls, or us coloreds, ever seen before.” Auntie offers his mother a glass of cold tea. “A gal without a thimbleful of courage and wit will never make the best of it.”

Jonah’s mother huffs and puffs down the steps. She says that I do not have courage. I have a wild streak as long as Bend River. A reckless spirit that does not serve our neighborhood well. She frowns at my hair. She’s a hairdresser and wonders when Auntie last took a hot comb to it.

I stand straight and tall and say I love my hair. She calls me haughty and proud.

“It’s a poor frog that doesn’t praise its own pond,” Auntie says. Then she sets her hands on her hips. “Anyhow. You came for two things, Sarah Jean. Insulting my niece won’t get your niece what you want.”

I braid a loose plait while Mrs. Nicholson talks about her spinster niece. She is almost twenty-eight. The family wants her married. Jonah’s mother stares up at Mr. Davenport’s window. “Poor thing. He works so hard. No wonder he don’t have the wherewithal to eat or mingle.” She pats her pearl necklace.

“Vampires don’t need food,” I remind her.

Auntie gives me a good looking at. “Hush,” she says out the side of her mouth.

Looking proud of herself, Mrs. Nicholson speaks louder than she needs to. “Every man needs a wife.” Cutting her eyes at Auntie, she grunts. “Suitable Negro men to marry are a dime a dozen, if a woman does the necessary work to snag one.”

Who would want their blood relations to marry a vampire? I think.

“Write the invitation. I’ll pass it along to him,” Auntie tells her.

“What invitation?” I’d like to know.

Auntie ignores me. “And I get in that group. Right?” She stops Mrs. Nicholson from trying to speak. “And these kids” — her finger points at me and Jonah still behind the bush — “they get to be children. Play together. Make mistakes. You agree?”

Mrs. Nicholson warns me. “Do not bring trouble to my door ever again, Octobia May.” She puffs her hair, and faces Auntie. “The ladies in the group are all married, you know.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be the only single one.”

Auntie says she’s got her reasons for wanting to be in that group. Walking up the steps, she tells me about the lady in the Do Some Good Ladies Club who is married to the chauffeur for the president of S and L Bank. She read it in the newspaper and has been thinking how good it would be if he spoke to him on her behalf. All the times she has gone to banks for a loan, it has not worked. But this just might, she thinks.