The Water and the Blood: A Novel

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We set fire to the Nigra church after the junior-senior Halloween costume party. Marty Haliburton brought the gasoline. Coby Brueller brought his cigarettes and a couple boxes of matches. The Bandy twins came with two pint jars of shinney each pulling down the side pockets of their overalls, and we’d all had several tastes by the time we did it. Those four boys were the root of all evil in our town for most of their lives. But the rest of us were there, too, just as much a part as the boys who spread the gas and fanned the flames.

My friends represented a few fairly nice girls and about the sorriest collection of humans caught in the throes of pre-manhood ever scraped together. Maggy, Neomadel, and Garnelle made a little half circle with me in the middle. I guess there’s something odd or poetic about me, a girl named Frosty, being in the middle of something burning on a hot October night in East Texas. That bunch of boys and girls would make up about a third of the graduating class of 1942 from Big Thicket High School, but in the fall of 1941 that event still seemed a lifetime away.

Neomadel dared me to taste the moonshine, and all the kids giggled as I took the jar. It looked just like water. I put it to my lips and just touched it with the tip of my tongue.

Garnelle snickered into her hand. Coby, don’t be pushing that on her, she said.

Coby looked back at her and shrugged. Nobody’s making her drink it, are they? Give it back or drink up, Frosty. He held out his open hand toward me. They were all watching closely.

Come on, Beans Bandy said. Gimme a swig.

I’m not drinking after you, I said. Just give me a second. I’ll take a drink.

She won’t either, Neomadel said. I knew she wouldn’t do it.

Nobody has to if they don’t want to, Maggy said.

I guess I wasn’t in the mood to be swept aside like that. I guess I had something in my craw that a good swig of liquid might wash away. I opened my mouth and gulped. The fire surged to a pit somewhere below my navel and boiled out the top, as if steam shot from my ears. My eyes watered; my nose stung; my throat closed like a large hand had reached around my neck and squeezed. From somewhere in the back of my head a little voice said, She isn’t breathing. Slap her on the back; get her to breathe.

Black sky and grass and stars and dirt rolled around in my eyes, and my face was pressed flat somewhere wet and dark and froggy-smelling. Sit her up, the voice said again.

Voices swirling in the darkness argued for a second; then I coughed so loud and long I thought my lungs would burst. All I could think of was Garnelle’s daddy coming home from the war gas and coughing his lungs out and barely breathing and what if I have to have an iron lung and live in a tube forever? After a few minutes the coughing subsided. I held my elbows tight to my ribs, and I could see the kids circling me.

Lookit, Marty said, We came to do something, and we’re gonna do it. You all can horse around later. Pass me that shine. He took a drink, smacking his lips with a satisfied sigh. Sissies and babies shouldn’t be drinking a man’s drink anyway.

Coby said, You girls just take a little sip first, till you get the hang of it. Y’all doing all right, Frosty?

I’m fine, I croaked. Your turn, Neomadel.

We passed that jar around the circle, and then we passed it again. I began to feel better than I had all day.

It was Marty’s idea that we come here tonight. The Bandy boys always had their hands on shinney, so that part probably wasn’t planned. Marty had a rusty yellow can full of at least three weeks’ worth of gasoline, and he was circling the little shack like he had a special purpose on earth, sizing up the place, checking for anybody hiding out that might tell on us. Satisfied, he returned to our cluster and said in a whisper, Let’s do it. Then he held out his hand to Coby. Gimme them cigarettes, Cobe.

Coby said, Nothing doing. You pour the gas, someone else lights. Otherwise you’re liable to set yourself up, too. Coby upended the first jar of shine and finished it off, smacking his lips and belching to punctuate the act. Farrell Bandy had already started on a second one. Beans had a whole one to himself.

The boys circled the little church, marching, pouring gas in arcs against the sides so the liquid left slick black hooks painted on the walls. The girls and I stepped back, watching intently as they walked round the building a second time, drizzling the gasoline into the damp ground. I took another step into the shadows cast by long pines under the watered-down moonlight. I knew there could be nothing hiding in the darkness any meaner than I was.

The scratch-puff of matches being struck made me keen in the direction of the sound. Abruptly there was a hustling noise, jostling, elbowing, and out of the darkness the boys ran, headed toward us. We waited. Nothing happened. After all the gas was gone and most of the matches, there was still only a meager flicker of flame on one side. It had rained just yesterday. The wood was soaked.

Let’s go home, Coby said. This is no good anyhow. There’s enough there to show ’em we meant business. It don’t have to really burn.

Marty’s face was hidden in the night, but I heard something edgy and pinched in his voice. Gimme the last of that shine. This thing is going up tonight, or I’ll know the reason why. This’ll teach ’em.

Clouds were thinning overhead. Maybe I wasn’t so mean after all. I felt a mosquito drilling at my ankle and heard another one annoying close at my ear where a drop of sweat moved from my temple toward my neck. I backed up one more step, jumpy and wary at the sudden croak of a bullfrog nearby.

I was on the outside looking in. Looking at these hooligan kids standing around like saps, wondering how to get themselves into trouble. The girls whispered together, not including me in their secret. Garnelle turned and stared directly at me. Frosty? You still with us?

Yes, ma’am, I said, mocking her. I don’t feel so swell, though.

I smelled the char of old wood. Brackish and bitter, dirty smoke rolled at us as dense and malevolent as a freight train off its tracks. Then it shifted straight upward, propelled by silent orange tongues of fire. When I saw that, a strange relief flowed through me, as if I’d been afraid this would not really happen. I watched the other girls, whispering, barely paying attention. We were doing the worst thing I’d ever done, and they were hardly noticing—careless and easy, the way you’d just roll off a log if you were tired of the sun in your face.

When the fire was waist high, it started to get too hot to stand nearby. And it smelled awful. Worse than a wood fire ought to. The mosquitoes departed. Ash flew from the building and settled on us like silent gray rain in the starry night. The moon looked through the smoke at us. Watching me. Mother says the man in the moon is the face of God. I’ve looked a thousand times, but I don’t see a face. She says it’s because I’m stubborn.

The girls backed from the heat toward me. I was dizzy and stumbled farther back, where they couldn’t see me. Maybe I’d just run. I was thinking about running away from home soon anyway. Maybe I’d go now. Or maybe I’d cut through the field here and head on to our church and confess all this. Maybe God would send a snake to bite me and they’d find me dead in the morning. Or they’d never find me and I’d become a hobo and jump a train and ride forever. Or I’d get pulled into the swamp by that fourteen-foot gator the Bandys’ daddy was always telling about that took off a piece of his left shin bone and left the foot still on. I’d be in the paper, a Missing Person of Unknown Whereabouts.

Frosty, what are you doing back there? Come on up here with us, and let’s go watch the Catholic kids shake a leg at their party. It was Garnelle’s voice.

Oh, all right, I said. You don’t have to pretend to be my friend. You can’t even see me back here. Anybody know what time it is?

Nearly eleven, Coby said.

I have to be home by eleven-thirty, I said. I better just go on home. You-all go watch them dance if you want to.

"You’re not walking home alone this time of night?" Neomadel could sound so much like my mother sometimes.

Unless you all want to walk with me. I knew good and well Garnelle Fielding, and probably Neomadel and Maggy, too, were not allowed by their parents to cross the train tracks over into the part of town where I lived. The boys, of course, went anywhere they pleased. I stared at the embers, pulsing red as if blood were coursing under a paper skin on the black wood.

Farrell reached his hand toward me and said, Too bad you can’t come with us. Maybe we’ll just all go home. We walked down the street a little ways, and he said, Better let me smell your breath. If you smell like liquor, you can chew on some lemongrass.

I wish I had a piece of gum, Garnelle said. I had some gum last year. I even kept the wrapper and smelled it for the longest time. It made my mouth smell like mint, Daddy said.

I’d never had a piece of gum. Deely and I chewed tar one time, pretending it was gum. It turned our teeth black along with our tongues. Mother thought we had diphtheria and gave us that brown tonic she keeps that gives me diarrhea. The whole way to my house they talked about what would take the smell of alcohol off your breath. I was thinking about the smell of my hands, though. I smelled gasoline on my hands. I don’t remember touching the can; the boys spread the gas. But I could smell it.

Let me smell, Frosty, Farrell said.

Don’t let him. He’s going to try to kiss you, Garnelle said to me.

Maybe I want to get kissed. Are you going to kiss me, Farrell? I said. He was always hanging around me at school, giving me hound-dog eyes.

He backed up slightly and laughed. These girls get some liquor in ’em and get fast real quick, don’t they?

I’m not fast, I said. I’m just being careful. Besides…well, never mind.

They all laughed as if I’d said something hysterically funny.

I turned and faced the road we’d come down, my face hard and set. The kids moved on without me. I could still see a slight glow and the murky gray smoke reaching above the trees where it spread to the south. Funny how no one came. Usually when there’s a fire in town, people come running, if not to put it out then at least to watch. No one came to this one.

When I thought they were out of earshot, I took a deep breath. You lied to me, I whispered toward the building, to all the people it represented, to the hours I’d spent on those hard split-log seats, and to my childish epiphanies born there. Familiar faces, as worn and comfortable as old shoes from constant exposure, now became strange and harsh in my memory. Unnatural. The presence of those people seemed to close in on me. You lied, I said. These are my best friends now. The crackling remains of the edifice answered me with a sputter and sigh. I turned my back on it and ran to join the gang.

SEEMS LIKE HAVING FRIENDS is a small thing, unless you are a lonely child, desperately poor, in a new school in a new town for the seventh time in two years. From almost the beginning of the Depression until we landed back in his hometown a few years ago, Daddy’s lack of a regular job caused us to move every few months. Sometimes he had the same job but we found a new house, far from whatever place we’d been renting. Once we spent nearly half a year in a boxcar that leaned so badly off to one side that Mother put bricks under the head of the bed I shared with Deely and Opalrae to make it level. Opalrae wet the bed a lot in those days. I was never so glad as to live here and have my very own private bed.

During those years, in and out of place after place, I got real used to being the new kid. In some ways I kind of liked it. Not so much in others.

I was nine when we moved here to Sabine. Nine and scrawny. Went barefoot most of the time; had fine, limp hair; was perpetually hungry. For some reason I felt at home right away in this little sawn-log house. It was so much nicer than the side-railed boxcar that had been home for the previous six months. Still, I mostly played alone with our yellow brindled dog in a muddy settle behind the house. Berries grew on thorny bushes around it.

On a summer’s day a week after our arrival, a raggle-taggle gang of children about my age ambled by and a boy called out, Hey, you!

I was busy. Working on a mud face I was drawing with my finger.

Said, ‘hey, you,’ the boy shouted.

I heard you, I said.

Why you sitting in mud? You some kinda dummy or sumpin’?

I stared at him, not sure whether to answer. Boys were always out looking for a fight. Stupid ones were the worst.

The boy chucked a rock, hitting my arm soundly. I gritted my teeth hard and didn’t move, didn’t let out a peep so he’d know how it hurt. The rock was jagged and left an immediate welt. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground between us.

Nigga dummy! Mudpie dummy! the boy shouted, and those around him joined in. Say, how y’all make a mudpie? You gotta receipt for that? Take some dog shit and mix it in real good with yo’ hands, dummy!

They walked on by. Laughing. Whispering. Pointing at me. There was nothing wrong with making mud to play in. And only a hillbilly said receipt instead of recipe. I had a doll I kept in the house. Outside, by myself, there wasn’t much else to do that I knew. There’s only so much rock throwing and running and skipping a kid can do without a ball or a jump rope or a friend to try to outdo. Besides, I was used to being kept away from other kids because of the infantile paralysis. I figured I was too old to catch anything called infantile, but Mother and Daddy kept me alone anyway.

Two weeks later school started, and that rock-chucking boy sat right beside me in class. Marty Haliburton was his name. He kept up a steady stream of chants every time the teacher leaned away or was preoccupied. I’d hear, Dummy. Dummy. Nigga dummy. Dog-shit dummy, all day long.

Miss Breckenridge was strict. After finding out I had to take home lessons for Deely on account of her being a big baby and catching the infantile paralysis even though we were warned not to, I figured the teacher was pretty much inclined to take my side. Still, I didn’t tell her what Marty was doing just in case I had her figured wrong. I figured he probably went the opposite way home that I did; he never bothered me outside of school. Until the third week of January.

All day long he was singing, Dummy, dummy, dog-shit dummy, in my ear, over my shoulder, under his breath. I’d had enough.

I cornered him on the playground in front of a bunch of kids. You want to fight?

Who? You?

I’ll knock you into next Tuesday, I said.

You and whose army?

Just me. You’re gonna quit saying that in class or I’m gonna beat the liver out of ya.

Saying what, nigga dummy? Whatsa matter, dummy, cat got your tongue?

You be here at four o’clock. And come hungry. You’re gonna eat a knuckle sandwich.

Marty laughed.

Four o’clock came, and everyone from the third, fourth, and fifth grades was there, standing in a ring. The air was crisp. I shivered. Most of the kids around me had on coats.

I was wearing my school dress. It was made from a cotton flour sack, more faded in front than in back. I’d gone home and put on my daddy’s oldest tattered shirt, too, to protect my school dress from dirt, because I couldn’t very well tell Mother I needed to wear old clothes to go have a fight. The sleeves of Daddy’s shirt hung below my wrists. My hands balled up with all my might into bony fists. I lifted Daddy’s holey sleeve with my whole arm, motioning to Marty. Step up here, I said. Step up and get your whoopin’. I’m gonna whoop you.

A murmur rippled through the spectators. Marty sauntered into the center with his three friends and looked me nose to nose. Aw, you’re shakin’ like a leaf.

I held up my fists like a prizefighter and hollered out, Just cold. You kids gonna fight four against one? We don’t have those kind o’ cowards where I come from. I guess the other kids were eager to see a fair fight, so they started jeering at Marty, pushing him alone into the ring.

He put his arms up, wobbling the wrists at me, and said in a high-pitched mocking voice, I’m gonna whoop you, I’m gonna whoop…

Before he finished the last word, I popped him straight on the chin and caught him cold. He teetered and sank to his knees.

He opened his eyes wide, with the help, it seemed, of arching his brows. No fair! he shouted. I wasn’t ready. You cheated, dummy. You’re supposed to toe a line.

Standing near him, I put my hands on my hips, aware of my shadow in the dirt, the big winglike sleeves flopping clownishly with my every move. Without looking down, I knocked him again, nailing his cheek with a peck. I said, Get up. You ready now?

I ain’t fightin’ no cheater.

What’s my name?

He looked dumbfounded, rubbing his cheek. His tongue touched his teeth and he toned, N-n-n, for three seconds.

The kids got quiet. Get up. Fight, Marty, someone said.

What’s my name? I said again, facing the crowd.

Don’t know, Marty said.

I looked right in his face, shaking my fist. I didn’t think so. A few kids laughed. It’s a pretty silly name, Frosty is. You’ll get a kick out of it when you start using it. Then all of them laughed, and I turned around. It took every ounce of courage I had not to run home, and I shook so hard I thought my teeth would break against each other. At the back porch I dropped two palm-size stones I’d held in my fists all the way to and from the school. My fingers were black and blue from pounding that boy with the rock held in them, but it worked.

What’ve you been doing? Mother called from the back door.

Some boy at school said he’d show me how to juggle these rocks if I’d show up with some smooth ones, I said. He couldn’t do it at all. Busted my knuckle trying.

People here don’t teach their kids better than to lie about what they can do, Mother said.

Yes, ma’am.

Get in here and sweep this floor. Your sister is driving me to distraction.

Yes, ma’am.

SOMETIME LATER, I think it was late in February, Mother met me in the yard after school. Looks, said Mother, will help you make friends, especially if a girl has nice, curly hair that all the other girls wished they could have. I knew I was supposed to agree, although I didn’t know if other girls wished for curly hair or not. But I did know that mine was about as limp and uncurly as if it were a wet rag all the time. Mother went on, This afternoon I got a permanent-wave kit. They were just throwing these away from the dime store and said I could have one. Come on in the house. It was a bright, cloudless Thursday afternoon, in those balmy days of spring when winter sputters to a close in fits and starts. The weather today was joyous. I wanted to play some baseball with the kids.

That afternoon, over the space of three hours, Mother rolled my enormous bundle of slick, belligerently straight hair onto four dozen pencil-thin permanent-wave rods, which I handed to her one by one, rubber-band-side down. After all that, she applied smelly, dripping liquid that got in my eyes and burned my nose.

Then she pulled out all the curlers, which hurt so badly she ended up threatening to leave them in if I didn’t stop howling. When it was all done and dried, Mother ceremoniously called the whole family into the kitchen. She turned me to face them, and I smiled my best smile. Deely and Opalrae’s eyes opened wide. Opalrae started to giggle, then looked at the floor. Daddy rubbed his chin with his hand over his mouth.

Doesn’t she look pretty? Mother prodded them. Well, Daddy?

Oh, yes, he said. Just terrific. Real pretty. Great job. Right, girls?

My sisters mumbled, Pretty. Yes. Real pretty.

Next week I’ll do both yours, Mother said, proudly beaming at the other girls.

I watched those two nodding as they were expected to do. They looked as if they’d been promised next week they would be peeled and boiled. I hurried to the mirror in the bathroom to get a look. My mouth opened and closed soundlessly, gulping for air, for words, for something. My skin was chapped, pale, and drawn, my eyes and nose blood-red and weepy. Oh, the hair. Rather than being curly, it stood out from my head like a giant rusted orange steel-wool pad, its entire length suspended in a crown of matted, damaged-looking sponge. The bangs, too short anyway, stood up in front like melted doll’s hair, wiry, brittle, fried. Some hair was burned right off at my scalp, making pink bald lines. When words finally came, they were unintelligible groaning noises. A great sound came from my stomach, like a belching roar coupled with a wild animal’s cry.

Daddy came running, flung open the door, and said, What the devil is the matter with you?

Look at my hair! I shrieked, spittle running down my raw-feeling chin, tears burning the chapped skin on my cheeks. I’ll pull it out. Cut it off. Please, cut it off, all of it. Please, Daddy, cut it! I can’t go to school tomorrow looking like this. Cut it—I jerked at the hair—off. I stretched my arm to the ends of the hair, standing out like a clown’s collar from my head.

Daddy’s face was softening in recognition of my plight. When Mother reached the bathroom door, though, his face grew suddenly cold. He said, That’s no way to talk when Mother has just spent the entire evening doing something nice for you. It looks real nice. Stop carrying on, or I’ll get the belt. You tell your mother you’re sorry. Now. Tell your mother ‘thank you’ and that you like it, he said, his jaw tightly clamped.

I looked back and forth between them. I’m sorry. My lips were dark rose above a chin that I clenched so hard it hurt. I said, Thank you, Mother. It’s very nice. I think I’ll go to bed now. I’m very tired. Thank you. I like it a lot. You can give Deely my supper. Maybe it would go down by morning.

I undressed in the dark in my room. I had to do a lot of dressing in the dark in order not to wake Deely, so I knew where everything was without light. I put my aching head on the pillow and reached up to touch it, feeling the stubbly strip of baldness at my right temple. The dawning inside me became brighter; they hated me—wanted me to be publicly humiliated, beaten, taunted by the kids at school. They loved only Deely, whom I’d had to give every freedom to and for because of her polio. (If only I’d had polio and she had this hair!) If they could look at this and say it was nice-looking, they would lie about anything. Anything. I cried myself to sleep, muffling the sounds into my pillow, until I racked with heaving and thought I might vomit in my bed. I forced myself to stop crying and turned over to face the ceiling, dry-eyed, unsleeping, wishing I could die before the sun rose.

Breakfast was a silent trial, no one looking in my direction. Mother soaked the hair down with water and dried it again, but it still looked the same. I know what will fix it, Mother said, jumping up from her coffee cup and rushing toward the bedroom. So even Mother realized it needed fixing, though there would never be any admission that it was a bad job. Good intentions were all that really mattered.

My face was nearly touching the cold oatmeal in my bowl. The smell of Daddy’s cup of chicory and coffee lingered in the air. The solution Mother came up with was to tie a large scarf about the hair, the way she wore it when she worked on her parents’ farm as a girl. But the hair would not lie down or be tamed. It bobbed around in its new binding, perpendicular to my head, and the scarf crawled halfway down, tied just tight enough not to be able to slide across the massive ends.

By that time, Delia and Opalrae had already left for school, early, so Delia could walk slowly. I was going to be late and have to take a note from Mother. Plus, I would have to walk in late, getting everybody’s full attention. As Mother bent to place her customary morning peck against my cheek, I stuck my tongue out at my reflection in the window of the front door. Here, Mother, I said, pulling the scarf from my hair. Several strands came with it. It’ll be all right without it. I turned to the little window in the front door, my reflection in it bright from the angle of the sun. I looked away.

I don’t mind you wearing it, Mother called. It’ll stay put if you just tie it better.

It won’t stay on. I looked at the scarf, hanging from my hand, and at the many long, burned-looking strands of hair that came with it. The bell just rang. Here—it might fall off without me knowing it. Might get careless. I ran in the direction of the school without looking back or saying good-bye, without a note for being late, without my lunch. All the way there I saw a bizarre shadow in the slanted morning light, gaunt and long, a giant bouffant of hair bobbing with every step. When I opened the door, the second bell rang startlingly loud. I stared into the middle distance, praying that the woman in that kitchen holding the ugly yellow scarf could hear the kids taunting, see them pointing.

All day I held tightly to the hope that Mother would be overcome with horror at the way the other children treated me, rush to the school, whisk me all the way to Beaumont to a real beauty shop, and pay gobs of money to have my hair repaired or at least shaved off. Afterward we’d have ice cream sundaes like I read somebody did in last year’s Reading Robins book. By lunchtime I’d thought of another possibility: Mother could meet me at the end of the day, weeping, begging forgiveness, and offering to let me go to a different school, maybe after taking six months off to let the mess grow out. Then Daddy could drive me to Miss Emily’s Metropolis in Toullange for the latest Hollywood style.

All the way home I watched my feet, taking slow, tiny steps so as not to rush and miss Mother driving this way in the Smiths’ borrowed Studebaker. When I finally got to the front porch, Mother was plucking feathers off a chicken in front of a scalding kettle. The stench of burned feathers and chicken guts hovered around the door.

Delia and Opalrae did not receive permanent waves.

WHEN I THINK of that hairdo, I remember the smell of sulfur and the weepy, raw feeling of my face and eyes. Mostly I remember falling in love with the Missionary Way Evangelical Tabernacle and Mrs. Jasper and Reverend Swan.

The first time I laid eyes on Reverend Swan, I was amazed at his enormous smile. He had large ivory teeth and fleshy, plum-colored lips on a dark face laced with the fervent passion of preaching that rang the people sitting in the stuffy little building like bells on ropes. He was lean, the very definition of the word; a secondhand suit coat swung on his shoulders as loose as if he were a scarecrow in a field. Mrs. Jasper was the opposite: round and short, warm and steamy like a little teapot. She always smelled of cooked rice. She was one person I wanted to see as soon as I could get over there.

It was that very Sunday that I’d discovered Missionary Way. I had gone through the rest of the week, jeered at in school and repeatedly warned by my teacher to keep quiet. I would have torn out my own tongue rather than say a word in class those days; the kids around me couldn’t keep still. Sunday morning, just after Sunday school started, Mrs. Brady told me it was my turn to take the roll book to the church office. As soon as I took it from her hands, it slipped from my fingers to the floor. I bent to retrieve it, and the drooping scarf my mother had again tied around my head slid off. The hair pillowed out from it, waving about my head in springs of coppery wool and crimped brass wire.

Laughter billowed around me in waves, and Mrs. Brady was forced to thump her cane on the floor again and again. When quiet was finally restored, Mrs. Brady frowned at me. I searched her face for sympathy. I was always fond of her. I could not tell what I saw there. Frosty Summers, she said sternly. "Go to the lavatory and put some water on that and see if you can flatten it down."

I went to the lavatory. I ran the water and put my hands under it. Feeling the coolness. Seeing it go down the sink. With the roll book clapped under one arm, I cupped the water and drank, and it wasn’t as cool in my mouth as it felt on my hands. I balanced the roll book on the corner of the porcelain sink so I could get a bigger handful to lift to my hair. When I pulled my hands back, the book fell into the sink and the water washed away the checkmarks on the edge of the Class Five page. Sure that I’d now ruined the roll book, I felt the hounds of hell at my feet as I turned off the faucet and ran for my life.

I tore through the knee-high grass and weeds, found I was at the edge of the churchyard, and slipped through a thicket of mayhaw before I reached the pine woods.

The woods near the church were thin, and pine went to hickory in a few steps; then a sudden opening in the trees revealed a small meadow, clumped with weeds and low boggy places, bristling with green bottle flies. I stumped on across the meadow, tripping over an old limestone foundation still sticking up where it marked a large rectangle on the ground, and found a narrow wooden picket fence at its far edge. There, two magnolia trees drooped with their load of yeasty, glistening blossoms, lemon-smelling and big as a plate. I stopped running and turned back to see where I’d come. I could not see the Sunday school building or the separate church house. But I heard preaching.

A singsong voice bounced among the trees, calling, almost trembling in urgency, and voices answered it in chorus, Glory, Lord. Come, Jesus. Come on, Jesus. Hallelujah. Amen and amen.

Out of breath and frantic, I knew I could not run back across the field and show up in Sunday school without the roll book and with dirty socks and mud-caked shoes to complement my squirrel’s-nest hair. But I was expected to be in church, and my parents were strangely lax in knowing my whereabouts as long as they’d seen us to the church grounds and rounded us up to go home to dinner. I tiptoed toward the door and read the neat hand-painted letters over its frame. MISSIONARY WAY EVANGELICLE TABERNACLE. ALL WELCOME. Reading was my best subject in school. ALL WELCOME included frazzle-haired kids with dirty socks, because ALL meant all.

Tall people were standing inside, singing: a song I knew, but different somehow. …Safe and secure from all alarms, they sang without organ or piano. By the time they got to the last Leaning on the everlasting arms, I found a spot wide enough to slip into and piped in with everlasting arms.

The congregation sat. It was quiet, but murmury-quiet. A man, thin as the rail fence I’d squeezed through, taller than Abraham Lincoln, came to the pulpit. I was startled to see he was a Nigra man. I never knew a church to have a colored man stand up in the front, only tucking around back dusting and fixing things when church was out.

I wondered if I should be scared of him, because he was a little bit raggedy-looking. Like my daddy said, watch out for hoboes, swamp Cajuns, and raggedy colored folks. Watch out, and if they talk to you, run. But I didn’t run. This fellow began to talk again, but he wasn’t real raggedy, just poor—heaven knows we were all poor in 1933—and his voice was that of the sing-talking preacher I’d heard. Wide. Warm. He recited something from the book of Proverbs and had just held up a miraculously long, bony finger toward heaven when he glanced in my direction. I nodded toward him like girls and women were supposed to do to show you were paying attention to the preaching. Men could say Amen, out loud. The serious look left his face, and he leaned his head a little sideways. He looked worried, then something else. I wasn’t sure what. He smiled. God love us! he shouted. God will—he smiled again and turned directly to me—God will love…you…too.

Amens came from all around me. Then whispery sounds. Then chuckling, gurgling sounds. Even that tall, thin colored man was laughing. Suddenly I felt, more than saw, dozens of pairs of eyes on me. I turned my head and looked around. I was surrounded by Nigra people. I’d never been near so many black-skinned people together in one place. Still, I didn’t run. They weren’t scary; they were laughing.

Then I remembered my hair. I touched it with one hand. The volume increased with the movement of my hand, as electricity jumped from my palm to the frizz. Tears filled my eyes. The lump that had been in my throat since I first looked in the mirror that morning threatened to strangle me. I tried to put a smile on my face and said, Don’t worry. It ain’t catching.

The little church rang with laughter. I’d been brave as long as I could. The tears brimmed over and flooded down my cheeks. The place got quiet. I sniffed. The tall, lean man stepped toward me. Why did you come here, child? he said.

It took a few seconds to find the words. Your sign said ‘all welcome.’

I guess I’ll never forget the look that came over his face. He worked his big lower lip in and out, making it slick and red. Then he stuck it way out. For a second he looked at the floor. He looked at the ceiling. He said loudly, Suffer the little children to come, Lord.

Yes, Lord, came the response.

"All welcome! I mean a-a-all. A, double L! Thank you, Lord," he called.

Thank you, Jesus, the people hollered back.

Sending us this lamb to remind us, he said.

Lamb. Lamb of God. Come on, Jesus, the people said.

Sisters, he called, can we help this child?

Yes, Lord.

Sisters, who’ll step forward? Come on up here. Come on up!

Hands took my shoulders. Hard hands, bearing down on me. Suddenly I had to pee.

Hallelujah! the preacher bellowed.

Hallelujah! Come on, Jesus. Come on, Jesus, they all started chanting. Pretty soon it broke into a song, just like that; without anyone calling out a page number, all these colored people were singing glory hallelujah and amen and amen. It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard.

Come here, a woman said to me. She was gray-haired and fat. Her fingers were swollen and short, and her glasses were so thick her eyeballs looked like brown eggs bobbling around behind the lenses. It’s just a little old girl. Come here, little thing, come on. She pulled at me, and her hands started tugging on my hair, raking her fingers through it, pulling and jerking. I thought she was going to rip it all out, and really I was glad of that. The whole place seemed to grow quiet, waiting, watching her pulling her hands through my hair. She spoke into my head, loudly, her nose just above my brains, Lurinda? Give me a bob-pin. Lord knows you got forty-’leven of ’em in that setup. Here we go. Looka there in that window.

She turned me brusquely away from her so that I faced a glass window with sunshine streaming through it. My hair had been transformed into two rolling, crownlike braids, one on each side. Thick, tight, they encircled my head like a halo of even, perfect coils. Applause erupted. I felt that woman’s hands planted firmly on each of my shoulders. She leaned heavily on me to lift herself to her feet, muttering, Jesus, Jesus. Praise Jesus, the whole time.

Then she began to sing. That was the first time I heard Mrs. Jasper dole out Rock of Ages like it was heavy chocolate cake. She leaned on me as we swayed to the rhythm. People hummed as if the whole place were one glorious choir. I’d never heard such a sound, and it carried me on its shoulders, lifting me from the floor.

When the song was over, Reverend Swan called out, Will we have a collection today? Y’all remembers, could be angels about unawares. Could be a lost lamb come, but ’s really a angel. Not saying so, but could be. Will there be a offering for the Lord?

The people shouted, Yes, yes, there will, and when the plate passed by me, I had the presence of mind to reach into my sock and take out the penny I’d been given for the offering and put it in. The plate lingered just long enough under my nose for me to see two quarters and eight dimes and about twenty pennies. Then it was over. People milled toward the door. Why, these colored folks acted in church just like we did. They all talked the same, too, when they weren’t calling back to the preacher. And children, too. I’d never in my life seen a Negro child do anything but hide.

I was so relieved. All the time Mother had warned me against talking to these people, and they were just fine. Just kind and neighborly as could be. Now the only thing left on my list of people to look out for were men with tattoos and hoboes. Mother would be glad when I told her there was nothing to worry about with colored people anymore.

At the door a little line formed to shake the preacher’s hand, just like at our church. Mrs. Jasper pushed me ahead of her. A light-brown-colored man blocked the way for a minute. He was facing the preacher, leaning on two canes, looking older—my grandmother Summers would say—than Methuselah. We can’t have that white child here, he said, loud enough that I heard it easily. It ain’t right. Ain’t. Gonna bring ’em down. All ’em down on us.

Reverend Swan shook the man’s hand. His face turned gentle, and so sympathetic I thought he would shed tears right then and there. He held the man’s hand warmly, putting his other hand on his arm, and said, Brother Luke, the sign says ‘all welcome.’ I can’t turn anyone away from the Lord. It’s gon’ be all right. You’ll see.

Brother Luke, behind Reverend Swan as he bent in my direction, said again, It’ll bring trouble. You know it’ll bring trouble.

Reverend Swan said to me, Trouble brings itself. But we’ll not turn out any child comes in the door without malice. Mizz Jasper, thank you. Will you explain to your little friend?

Sure enough, Mrs. Jasper said. And she tried to, I suppose. Mostly what I got out of her explanation was that my folks would be worried sick if I was missing and they’d be angry if they found me fooling around outside of my own Sunday school where I belonged.

Thank y’all for my hair, I said. People been laughing at me all week since my home permanent wave. They even sent me home from school with a note saying I was a disruption.

Your mother did a permanent wave in your hair?

She’s not my real mother, I said bitterly. I wish I could always wear these braids. Mother and Daddy will say I been up to something if I come home this way, though.

Mrs. Jasper adjusted her glasses, which sent her eyes rolling around on her face unnaturally through them. You know where Porter Lane is? she said.

No’m, I said. Our side of town had streets and avenues. Their side had lanes and ways. Both of us had roads here and there.

You know where Ricker’s is, that lane run past a old cut-down cypress stump?

Every kid in town knew the cypress stump: a place of dangerous roots and hiding holes, and once or twice a hobo had been run off after sleeping underneath it. Yes, ma’am.

You keep on going down ’at lane until you come to a bottle tree. First one you see. That my house. If you get there before school, I’ll fix your hair for you. You takes it out before you get home. Then the chil’ren won’t laugh.

Mrs. Jasper changed my life. I went across Ricker’s Road to colored town every morning for three weeks. And I brought Mrs. Jasper treasures my young mind told me she needed. A real brass pen nib I found that had been swept behind a doorjamb. Paper from my tablet. A brand-new green crayon. A cube of fool’s gold we were given for paying attention to a science lecture on rocks. Two marbles I won from