A freckled boy with a thin mustache and sweated-out orange hair leaned across Ricky. A grin revealed his tobacco-yellowed teeth. “What’s the matter, darkie?” he asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
Ma Pearl always said that one day my foolish tongue would get me into trouble. Without my permission, it poked itself right out of my mouth to assure the freckled boy that the cat didn’t have it. I bit it. But not before the freckled boy noticed.
He frowned, then leaned over and felt around on the floor of the pickup. When his hand came up, it held a beer bottle filled with black liquid.
“Uppity nigra!” he yelled, and hurled the bottle toward my head.
I ducked as it whistled past me and crashed against a tree.
Tobacco juice spewed in every direction.
The quartet in the pickup hooted, and Ricky gunned the engine. “Next time it’ll be a bullet, you coon!” he shouted over the clanking.
Shaking like a beanstalk in a windstorm, I huddled near that tree until the sound of the pickup disappeared. When I was sure they wouldn’t return, I grabbed my egg crate from the side of the road and scampered home. Miss Addie would have to make do without eggs this month, as I wasn’t about to make a second trip and take a chance on Ricky returning for more of his devilment.
Folks said that Ricky wouldn’t actually run over anybody. He just liked to give colored folks a good scare so we’d remember our place. Well, he’d given me, Rose Lee Carter, a pretty good scare. I vowed to never walk alone again, especially on a Saturday, when fools like him had just bloated their bellies with beer.
I’d been surprised to see Jimmy Robinson riding around with the likes of Ricky. His folks were what Ma Pearl labeled “good white peoples.” And he always seemed friendly when I went to the Robinsons’ house with Ma Pearl while she worked. He had once even been friends with Fred Lee, back when we were real little. He used to come over and play all the time. But at around age nine or so, Jimmy cut Fred Lee off like a bad ear of corn, barely even speaking to him anymore. As I passed their house, standing stately and white among the brown and green of their vast pecan grove, I couldn’t help but wonder what his mama thought of him running around with a peckerwood like Ricky Turner.
Unlike the Robinsons’ grand house, our unpainted house—?with the two front doors and the rusted tin roof—?paled gray against the lush green of the long rows of cotton in the surrounding fields. But as I kicked up dust along the path to the weatherworn front porch, I was happy to see Mr. Pete’s shiny black car parked in the yard, adding a bit of sunshine to the scene.
Mr. Pete was my mama’s husband, and he had only recently bought himself a shiny new car. A DeSoto is what he called it. That car seemed as long as a train and was niftier than any fifty-dollar suit. No one in Stillwater had ever seen anything like it. And seeing that none of the white folks in Stillwater—?other than Mr. Robinson—?even owned a car that fancy, Papa, my grandfather, said that Mr. Pete could get himself killed just by driving the darn thing.
Whether it was a danger for him to drive or not, my heart leaped with joy every time I heard Mr. Pete’s car pull into the yard. That Saturday, I was surprised to see his car waiting when I got back. We didn’t see Mama often, and we weren’t expecting to see her for another two weeks.
As soon as I reached the ancient oak in the front yard, Mr. Pete’s children, Sugar and Li’ Man, bolted out of the screen door from the parlor. They moved so fast that their little feet barely touched the porch before they bounced down the front steps.
Sugar, her two braids flying high behind her, crashed right into me. It was the second time my egg crate went flying out of my hand that day.
Li’ Man came right behind her. His crash sent us all to the ground.
Both of them sat on top of me, grinning.
“Aunt Rose! Guess what!” Sugar said, her eyes shining brighter than a noonday sun.
“First, y’all get up off of me,” I said. “Then I’ll guess.”
They both scrambled up, but not before Sugar hugged my neck and kissed me on the cheek.
Sugar was seven and Li’ Man six. They were Mr. Pete’s children with his wife who died before he married Mama. Their real names were Callie Jean and Christopher Joe. It was Mama who started calling them Sugar and Li’ Man. It was also Mama who insisted that they refer to me and Fred Lee as Aunt Rose and Uncle Fred. I thought the idea was stupid. But Mama and Mr. Pete thought it was cute.
I pushed myself off the ground and dusted my dress. Sugar picked up my egg crate and hugged it to her chest. I was so happy to see them that I almost stopped worrying about that trouble with Ricky. Besides, nothing was bruised but my pride, and I was already used to folks beating away at that.
“Okay, now y’all tell me what’s going on,” I said as we headed toward the steps.
Sugar shook her head. “Nuh-uh. You gotta guess.”
Because she was grinning so, I squinted at her and asked, “You lose another tooth?”