My mother screamed out in the bedroom again.
I wondered where in the hell a woman like my mother would run across a man like Mr. Farrell. I had once seen an austere photo of James’s father in our local newspaper, and he didn’t seem like the type that hung out in bars.
But then I remembered . . .
Before James C. Farrell the Third started his congressional campaign, he was the head of Farrell Fine Hair. And Cora worked on the assembly line at Farrell Fine Hair. Had they run into each other while he was touring the factory? On the way to the bathroom maybe? Had their eyes connected in the hallway?
But I stopped wondering after Cora’s and James the Third’s origin story when I looked back to the sidewalk and saw Veronica Farrell staring straight at me. She lowered her right hand, and I thought for a second that maybe she really did have a gun.
Maybe she was going to shoot me and my mama and her daddy for lowering himself enough to come into this place. But then she turned and walked back to her car.
The engine revved as she turned the key in the ignition. She looked like a beautiful robot as she drove off into the moonlight without a backward glance. That I could see.
FOUR
I could not fall back to sleep after that.
It was only a few months into the school year, and Veronica had already developed a reputation for being very, very mean. In fact, she flat-out scared people. Case in point: As much trash as Tanisha Harris had talked behind her back on that first day, she had never gone on to say anything to Veronica’s face. Also, Veronica didn’t get messed with for being high yellow. I had seen girls darker than her get shouted down with calls of “light-skinned bitch” at Glass. But there was just something about the older Farrell girl that froze everything that came into her vicinity. The normal insults would get stuck in the throats of even the most ornery kids at our school, which was impressive, because Mississippi kids are pretty bold.
I told myself that what had just happened didn’t matter, and that Veronica Farrell probably hadn’t seen me. For the first time in my life, I prayed that what the kids and the Southern ladies said about me was true: You could lose me in too much night.
Because then she definitely wouldn’t have seen me. Wouldn’t know that I was the daughter of the woman who had cast a spell on her father.
But she had looked straight at me. And her father would be back. I could tell from the way he carefully left the house, tiptoeing so as not to disturb me.
He was going to be a repeat. The one-offs always rushed out of there, like running away could erase its happening.
. . .
I got up early the next morning, got my books out of my locker, and arrived at my class about twenty minutes before I had to be there.
I opened my Spanish book and studied, though I knew this to be a useless endeavor. The teacher had announced the first day of class that fifty percent of our Spanish grade would be based on oral performance. Still, Spanish was a requirement. And though I had thought about requesting a transfer to special education classes, I already knew that I didn’t quite have the grades or a low enough mark on the mental health questionnaire—I had filled one out at the school’s insistence halfway through my first silent year of high school.
While working on exercises in my Spanish workbook, I focused on going to see James during chemistry. I tried not to think about the fact that I had four classes with Veronica: honors English, advanced algebra, health, and worst of all, gym.
I tried to believe that Veronica had not seen me and did not know that I belonged to Cora Jones.
. . .
My next class was English. And to my relief, Veronica didn’t say anything to me. She didn’t even look at me as she passed by my desk.
But then came our algebra class, where we got our test papers back.