Despite the hardships Fern's arrival brought, I couldn't help but be fascinated with my little sister. I saw the way she discovered her own hands, studied her own fingers. Her dark eyes, Momma's eyes, brightened with each of her discoveries. Soon she was able to clutch my finger with her tiny fist and hold on to it. Whenever she did that, I saw her struggle to pull herself up. She groaned like an old lady and made me laugh.
Her patch of black hair grew longer and longer. I combed the strands down the back of her head and down the sides, measuring their length until they reached the top of her ears and the middle of her neck. Before long, she was stretching with firmness, pushing her legs out and holding them straight. Her voice grew louder and sharper, too, which meant when she wanted to be fed, everyone knew it.
With Momma not yet very strong, I had to get up in the middle of the night to feed Fern. Jimmy complained a lot, pulled the blanket over his head, and moaned, especially when I turned on the lights. He threatened to sleep in the bathtub.
Daddy was-usually grouchy in the morning from his lack of sleep, and as the sleepless nights went on, his face took on a gray, unhealthy look. Early each morning he would sit slumped in his chair, shaking his head like a man who couldn't believe how many storms he had been in. When he was like this, I was afraid to talk to him. Everything he said was usually gloom and doom. Most of the time that meant he was thinking of moving again. What scared me to the deepest place in my heart was the fear that one day he might just move on without us. Even though sometimes he scared me, I loved my father and longed to see one of his rare smiles come my way.
"When your luck turns bad," he would say, "there's nothing to do but change it. A branch that don't bend breaks."
"Momma looks like she's getting thinner and thinner and not stronger and stronger, Daddy," I whispered when I served him a cup of coffee one early morning. "And she won't go to the doctor."
"I know." He shook his head.
I took a deep breath and made the suggestion I knew he wouldn't want to hear. "Maybe we should sell the pearls, Daddy."
Our family owned one thing of value, one thing that had never been used to mend our hard times. A string of pearls so creamy white they took my breath away the one time I'd been allowed to hold them. Momma and Daddy considered them sacred. Jimmy wondered, as I did, why we clung to them so tenaciously. "The money it would bring in would give Momma a chance to really get well," I finished weakly.
Daddy looked up at me quickly and shook his head.
"Your momma would rather die than sell those pearls. That's all we got that ties us, ties you, to family."
How confusing this was to me. Neither Momma nor Daddy wanted to return to their family farms in Georgia to visit our relatives, and yet the pearls, because they were all we had to remind Momma of her family, were treated like something religious, they were kept hidden in the bottom of a dresser drawer. I couldn't recall a time Momma had even worn them.
After Daddy left I was going to go back to sleep, but changed my mind, thinking that it would only make me feel more tired. So I started to get dressed. thought Jimmy was fast asleep. He and I shared an old dresser Daddy had picked up at a lawn sale. It was on his side of the pull-out bed. I tiptoed over to it and slipped my nightgown off. Then I pulled out my drawer gently, searching for my underthings in the subdued light that spilled in from the bulb in the stove when the stove door was left down. I was standing there naked trying to decide what I should wear that would be warm enough for what looked to be another bitterly cold day, when I turned slightly and out of the corner of my eye caught Jimmy gazing up at me.
I know I should have covered up quickly, but he didn't see I had turned slightly and I couldn't help but be intrigued by the way he stared. His gaze moved up and down my body, drinking me in slowly. When he lifted his eyes higher, he saw me watching him. He turned quickly on his back and locked his eyes on the ceiling. I quickly drew my nightgown up against my body, took out what I wanted to wear, and scurried across the room to the bathroom to dress. We didn't talk about it, but I couldn't get the look in his eyes out of my mind.
In January Momma, who was still thin and weak, got a part-time job cleaning Mrs. Anderson's house every Friday. The Andersons owned a small grocery two blocks away. Occasionally Mrs. Anderson gave Momma a nice chicken or a small turkey. One Friday afternoon Daddy surprised Jimmy and me by coming home much earlier from work.
"Old man Stratton's selling the garage," he announced. "With those two bigger and more modern garages being built only blocks away, business has begun to drop off something terrible. People who are buying the garage don't want to run it as a garage. They want the property to develop housing."
Here we go again, I thought—Daddy loses a job and we have to move. When I told one of my friends, Patty Butler, about our many moves, she said she thought it might be fun to go from school to school.
"It's not fun," I told her. "You always feel like you've got ketchup on your face or a big mole on the tip of your nose when you first walk into a new classroom. All the kids turn around and stare and stare, watching my every move and listening to my voice. I had a teacher once who was so angry I had interrupted her class, she made me stand in front of the root until she was finished with her lesson, and all the time the students were goggling me. I didn't know where to shift my eyes. It was so embarrassing," I said, but I knew Patty couldn't understand just how hard it really was to enter a new school and confront new faces so often. She had lived in Richmond all her life. I couldn't even begin to imagine what that was like: to live in the same house and have your own room for as long as you could remember, to have relatives nearby to hold you and love you, to know your neighbors forever and ever and be so close to them, they were like family. I hugged my arms around myself and wished with all my heart that one day I might live like that. But I knew it could never happen. I'd always be a stranger.
Now Jimmy and I looked at each other and turned to Paddy, expecting him to tell us to start packing. But instead of looking sour, he suddenly smiled.
"Where's your ma?" he asked.
"She's not back from work yet, Daddy," I said.
"Well, today's the last day she's gonna work in other people's houses," he said. He looked around the apartment and nodded. "The last time," he repeated. I glanced quickly at Jimmy, who looked just as astonished as I was.
"Why?"
"What's happening?" Jimmy inquired.
"I got a new and much, much better job today," Daddy said.
"We're going to stay here, Daddy?" I asked.
"Yep and that ain't the best yet. You two are gonna go to one of the finest schools in the South, and it ain't gonna cost us nothing," he announced.
"Cost us?" Jimmy said, his face twisted with confusion. "Why should it cost us to go to school, Daddy? It's never cost us before, has it?"
"No, son, but that's because you and your sister been going to public schools, but now you're going to a private school."
"A private school!" I gasped. I wasn't sure, but I thought that meant very wealthy kids whose families had important names and whose fathers owned big estates with mansions and armies of servants and whose mothers were society women who had their pictures taken at charity balls. My heart began to pound. I was excited, but also quite frightened of the idea. When I looked at Jimmy, I saw his eyes had shadowed and grown deep and dark.
"Us? Go to a fancy private school in Richmond?" he asked.
"That's it, son. You're getting in tuition free."
"Well, why is that, Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm going to be a maintenance supervisor there and free tuition for my children comes with the job," he said proudly.
"What's the name of this school?" I asked, my heart still fluttering.
"Emerson Peabody," he replied.
"Emerson Peabody?" Jimmy twisted his mouth up as if he had bitten into a sour apple. "What kind of a name is that for a school? I ain't going to no school named Emerson Peabody," Jimmy said, shaking his head
and backing up toward the couch. "One thing I don't need is to be around a bunch of rich, spoiled kids," he added and flopped down again and folded his arms across his chest.
"Now, you just hold on here, Jimmy boy. You'll go where I tell you to go to school. This here's an opportunity, something very expensive for free, too."
"I don't care," Jimmy said defiantly, his eyes shooting sparks.
"Oh, you don't? Well, you will." Daddy's own eyes shot sparks, and I could see he was maintaining his temper. "Whether you Like it or not, you're both gonna get the best education around, and all for free," Daddy repeated.
Just then we heard the outside door opening and Momma start coming down the hallway. From the sound of her slow, ponderous footsteps, I knew she was exhausted. A sensation of cold fear seized my heart when I heard her pause and break out in one of her fits of coughing. I ran to the doorway and looked at her leaning against the wall.
"Momma?" I cried.
"I'm all right. I'm all right," Momma said, holding her hand up toward me. "I just lost my breath a moment," she explained.
"You sure you're all right, Sally Jean?" Daddy asked her, his face a face of solid worry.
"I'm all right; I'm all right. There wasn't much to do. Mrs. Anderson had a bunch of her elderly friends over is all. They didn't make no mess to speak of. So," she said, seeing the way we were standing and looking at her. "What are you all standing around here and looking like that for?"
"I got news, Sally Jean," Daddy said and smiled. Momma's eyes began to brighten.
"What sort of news?"
"A new job," he said and told her all of it. She sat down on a kitchen chair to catch her breath again, this time from the excitement.
"Oh, children," she exclaimed, "ain't this wonderful news? It's the best present we could get."
"Yes, Momma," I said, but Jimmy looked down.
"Why's Jimmy looking sour?" Momma asked.
"He doesn't want to go to Emerson Peabody," I said.
"We won't fit in there, Momma!" Jimmy cried. Suddenly I was so angry at Jimmy, I wanted to punch him or scream at him. Momma had been so happy she had looked like her old self for a moment, and here he was making her sad again. I guess he realized it because he took a deep breath and sighed. "But I guess it don't matter what school I go to."
"Don't go putting yourself down, Jimmy. You'll show them rich kids something yet."
That night I had a hard time falling asleep. I stared through the darkness until my eyes adjusted, and I could faintly see Jimmy's face, the usually proud, hard mouth and eyes grown soft now that they were hidden by the night.
"Don't worry about being with rich kids, Jimmy," I said, knowing he was awake beside me. "Just because they're rich doesn't mean they're better than us."
"I never said it did," he said. "But I know rich kids. They think it makes them better."
"Don't you think there'll be at least a few kids we can make friends with?" I asked, my fears finally exploding to the surface with his.
"Sure. All the students at Emerson Peabody are just dying to make friends with the Longchamp kids."
I knew Jimmy had to be very worried—normally, he would try to protect me from my own dark side.
Deep down I hoped Daddy wasn't reaching too hard and too far for us.
A little bit more than a week later Jimmy and I had to begin attendance at our new school. The night before, I had picked out the nicest dress I had: a cotton dress of turquoise blue with three-quarter sleeves. It was a little wrinkled, so I ironed it and tried to take out a stain I had never noticed in the collar.
"Why are you working so hard on what to wear?" Jimmy asked. "I'm just wearing my dungarees and white polo shirt like always."
"Oh, Jimmy," I pleaded. "Just tomorrow wear your nice pants and the dress shirt."
"I'm not putting on airs for anyone."
"It's not putting on airs to look nice the first day you go to a new school, Jimmy. Couldn't you do it this once? For Daddy? For me?" I added.
"It's just a waste," he said, but I knew he would do it.
As usual, I was so nervous about entering a new school and meeting new friends, I took forever to fall asleep and had a harder time than usual waking up early. Jimmy hated getting up early, and now he had to get up and get himself ready earlier than ever because the school was in another part of the city and we had to go with Daddy. It was still quite dark when I rose from my lied. Of course, Jimmy just moaned and put the pillow over his head when I poked him in the shoulder, but I flicked on the lights.
"Come on, Jimmy. Don't make it harder than it has to be," I urged. I was in and out of the bathroom and making the coffee before Daddy came out if his bedroom. He got ready next, and then the both of us nagged Jimmy until he got up looking more like a sleepwalker and made his way to the bathroom.
When we left for school, the city looked so peaceful. The sun had just come up and some of the rays were reflected of store windows. Soon we were in a much finer part of Richmond. The houses were bigger and the streets were cleaner. Daddy made a few more turns, and suddenly the city seemed to disappear entirely. We were driving down a country road with farmhouses and fields. And then, just as magical as anything, Emerson Peabody appeared before us.
It didn't look like a school. It wasn't built out if cold brick or cement painted an ugly orange or yellow. Instead, it was a tall white structure that reminded me more of one of the museums in Washington, D.C. it had vast acreage around it, with hedges lining the driveway and trees everywhere. I saw a small pond on to the right as well. But it was the building itself that was most impressive.
The front entrance resembled the entrance to a great mansion. There were long, wide steps that led up to the pillars and portico, above which were engraved the words EMERSON PEABODY. Right in front was a statue of a stern-looking gentleman who turned out to be Emerson Peabody himself. Although there was a parking lot in front, Daddy had to drive around to the rear of the building, where the employees parked.
When we turned around the corner, we saw the playing fields: football field, baseball field, tennis courts, and Olympic-size pool. Jimmy whistled through his teeth.
"Is this a school or a hotel?" he asked.
Daddy pulled into his parking spot and turned off the engine. Then he turned to us, his face somber.
"The principal's a lady," he said. "Her name's Mrs. Turnbell, and she meets and speaks to every new student who comes here. She's here early, too, so she's waiting in her office for both of you."
"What's she like, Daddy?" I asked.
"Well, she's got eyes as green as cucumbers that she glues on you when she talks to you. She ain't more n' five feet one, I'd say, but she's a tough one, as tough as raw bear meat. She's one of them blue bloods whose family goes back to the Revolutionary War. I gotta take you up there before I get to work," Daddy said.
We followed Daddy through a rear entrance that took us up a short stairway to the main corridor of the school. The halls were immaculate, not a line of graffiti on a wall. The sunlight came through a corner window making the floors shine.
"Spick and span, ain't it?" Daddy said. "That's my responsibility," he added proudly.
As we walked along, we gazed into the classrooms. They were much smaller than any we had seen, but the desks looked big and brand-new. In one of the rooms I saw a young woman with dark brown hair preparing something on the blackboard for her soon-to-arrive class. As we went by, she looked our way and smiled.
Daddy stopped in front of a door marked PRINCIPAL. He quickly brushed back the sides of his hair with the palms of his hands and opened the door. We stepped into a cozy outer office that had a small counter facing the door. There was a black leather settee to the right and a small wooden table in front of it with magazines piled neatly on top. I thought it looked more like a doctor's waiting room than a school principal's. A tall, thin woman with eyeglasses as thick as goggles appeared at the gate. Her dull light brown hair was cut just below her ears.
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bsp; "Mr. Longchamp, Mrs. Turnbell has been waiting," she said.
Without a friendly sign in her face, the tall woman opened the gate and stepped back for us to walk through to the second door, Mrs. Turnbell's inner office. She knocked softly and then opened the door only enough to peer in.
"The Longchamp children are here, Mrs. Turnbell," she said. We heard a thin, high-pitched voice say, "Show them in."
The tall woman stepped back, and we entered right behind Daddy. Mrs. Turnbell, who wore a dark blue jacket and skirt with a white blouse, stood up behind her desk. She had silver hair wrapped in a tight bun at the back of her head, the strands pulled so tightly at the sides, that they pulled at the corners of her eyes, which were piercing green, just as Daddy said. She didn't wear any makeup, not even a touch of lipstick. She had a complexion even lighter than mine, with skin so thin, 1 could see the crisscrossing tiny blue veins in her temples.
"This here's my kids, Mrs. Turnbell," Daddy declared.
"I assumed that, Mr. Longchamp. You're late. You know the other children will be arriving shortly."
"Well, we got here as soon as we could, ma'am. I—"
"Never mind. Please be seated," she said to us and indicated the chairs in front of her desk. Daddy stood back, folding his arms across his chest. When I looked back at him, I saw a cold sharpness in his eyes. He was holding back his anger.
"Should I stay?" he asked.
"Of course, Mr. Longchamp. I like the parents to be present when I explain to students the philosophies of the Emerson Peabody School, so everyone understands. I was hoping your mother would be able to come as well," she said to us.
Jimmy glared back at her. I could feel the tension in his body.
"Our momma's not feeling that well yet, ma'am," I said. "And we have a baby sister she has to mind."
"Yes. Be that as it may," Mrs. Turnbell said and sat down herself. "I trust you will take back to her everything I tell you anyway. Now, then," she said, looking at some papers before her on her desk. Everything on it was neatly arranged. "Your name is Dawn?"