The Mighty Miss Malone (22 page)

I bit my tongue.

After a hour of walking and listening to a million different complaints from a thousand different people we had circled back to our blue gingham front door.

“Deza, I hope you’re able to get with your grandmother, but if you do need to stay here for a while it will be a pleasure to get to know you better. Stop by my place later and I’ll have a couple
Digest
s ready for you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Mother was inside the hut lying on her side, asleep like a baby. I pulled the blanket over her and her eyes came open. “Deza! My goodness, I can’t believe how tired I am, I’m not used to walking so much.”

I kissed her cheek.

She said, “So, Miss Malone, do you want the good news first or the bad news?”

“You know the news I want.”

“Sorry, Deza, no news there. No news about your grandmother either. Her house has been turned into apartments and none of the neighbors know anything. Flint’s as bad off as Gary.”

I didn’t expect to hear anything but bad news, but my spirits sank anyway. I shoved my hands into my dress pockets.

“I do have a bit of good news, though.”

“You went to the bank lady with Mrs. Carsdale’s letter and got a job?” Mother’s lines went to 1-1-1. She looked at me for a uncomfortable long time before she said, “I went to the woman but she didn’t need anyone. I didn’t give her that very interesting letter, though. We’ll talk about that later on.”

Uh-oh! I wonder if Jimmie ratted me out on that too?

“The good news is that I’m getting a chance to work with Mrs. Small at night cleaning offices. I won’t get paid for the first week, it’s like a tryout. If they like the way I work they’ll hire me.”

My fingers folded around the four dollar bills from the landlord in my pocket.

I pulled them out and Mother whispered, “Deza! Where did that come from?”

“I forgot! The landlord! He gave us this because we had to leave early. It seems it was so long ago but it wasn’t even a week!”

“Thank goodness! I’ll be able to get a few things in Flint.”

“Since Grandma’s gone does this mean we’ll go back to Gary?”

Mother’s lips moved. I’m sure she said something in English, but all I heard was “gang aft a-gley.”

Mother is a fantastic worker and very proud of everything she does so after trying out for a week she got hired working three nights a week cleaning offices. She even found another job picking up both day and night shifts at the Durant Hotel.

Before long Jimmie didn’t have trouble finding odd jobs and fruits and greens for us to give to the community pot. We even started saving a few pennies. The camp got easier to live in every day, but Mother said we needed to get a room in Flint as soon as we could.

Miss Stew and me got along just fine and she asked me to go on rounds with her every morning. We’d walk, she’d scold people and we’d discuss those horrible chopped-up stories from
Reader’s Digest
. We were together so much that people started calling me Little Stew.

Time played its tricks on me. One day we got up and Mother said, “There was a nip in the air last night, Deza, I know Flint winters can’t be anywhere near as bad as Gary’s, but I really don’t want to be out here once it starts getting cold. And there is school to consider.”

“School?” It sounds foolish but I always thought I’d be back in Gary by then.

“Mrs. Small said you’ve got to go register next week.”

I’d been having such a good time being Little Stew and trying to fill in all the missing words from the
Reader’s Digest
that time had completely run off and forgot all about me!

“But, Mother, Miss Stew needs me to—”

“You aren’t suggesting you stay here and help Stew instead of going to school, are you?” When she said it like that, it did seem silly.

On the outside, schools in Flint seemed a lot like schools in Gary, but they weren’t. Instead of having one teacher all day, in Flint we went from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher for each subject. The teachers were different too. First, all of them were white, and second, they weren’t anywhere as nice as the teachers in Gary. But one of Mrs. Needham’s lessons stuck: I was learning how to toughen up.

I got my usual As on the tests in mathematics, geography, civics and history.

After my first mathematics test, when class was dismissed, Mrs. Scott called me to her desk.

“Deza, have you always done so well in math? You’re the only student who got a perfect score.”

I sounded very humble, but the truth’s the truth. “Yes, ma’am. Mathematics is one of my favorite subjects.”

It was great to be back in school!

“Could I ask you a favor?”

Maybe she wanted me to help some of my classmates. Even though they were white, some of them were the spittin’ image of Dolly Peaches and Benny Cobb.

She slid a paper toward me. It had five unsolved story problems on it.

“Could you sit right there, right now, and solve these for me?”

Maybe Mrs. Scott was seeing if I was ready for harder work. I finished in no time.

She looked them over. “Hmm, perfect again, but next time you
must
make sure to show all your work. You’re dismissed.”

I was surprised that was all she said.

In English class I
really
showed how much I’d toughened up.

Flint teachers don’t have the imagination that Gary teachers do, so instead of giving grades back so everyone knows what you got, they just walk around the class and hand your test or your paper back to you. Upside down.

Mr. Smith was passing out our first essay. I’d followed all of Mrs. Needham’s advice. I’d written it at the Flint Public Library and was very careful not to use the dictionary or the thesaurus too much. And I didn’t digress at all.

I made sure my posture was good, crossed my ankles and folded my hands on the desk when he got close to me.

He handed me my paper and smiled. “Very good job.”

My heart flew! “Thank you, sir.”

I turned my paper over.

He’d written, “Good for you!” and put a giant C+ with three exclamation points.

I turned the paper back over. Maybe I saw it wrong.

I looked again but it was the same.

One sign that I had toughened up was that instead of crying I thought of a little joke that Jimmie said he did whenever he didn’t like his grade.

“I turn the paper over, then, the same way people bang on a machine if it ain’t acting right, I smack my hand on the paper. Maybe if I bang it hard enough my grade will jump up a mark!”

It was nonsense, but I slapped my hand on Mr. Smith’s essay.

I turned the paper back over and smiled.

I’d have to tell Jimmie that it still wasn’t working.

Mrs. Needham would’ve been proud. Instead of bawling I looked at Mr. Smith’s back and said to myself, “OK, buster, I’m going to make sure my next essay is the best thing I’ve ever written. You won’t have any choice but to give me my A plus.”

When me and Loretta were walking back to camp I asked, “What grade did you get on your essay?”

“I don’t know, the same old D. What’d you get?”

“C plus.”

She stopped walking. “Uh-uh, no, you didn’t!”

I showed her my grade.

“Ooh, girl, you must be
real
smart.”

“For getting a C plus?”

“All these teachers up here at Whittier’s prejudice. Katherine Williams was the smartest colored girl in the school and all she use to get was a C. You must be a genius to get a C plus!”

She laughed. “I’m gonna see if I can sit next to you when we take our next exam!”

Early every morning, Mother and I would leave the camp and walk for half a hour to downtown Flint. Jimmie would go his own way.

After school I’d go to the library and read until Mother picked me up. We didn’t have a official address so I couldn’t check out any books, but I still got to read.

It wasn’t long before we stopped looking fresh and had seniority in camp. Stew said I had a bubbly personality so she had me help the new children get used to living here. Some of them didn’t have any idea what to do, mostly the boys.

I pretended they were my students and was very patient.

Two little boys from Flint came in one day all by themselves. One of them reminded me of myself. He seemed scareder than his friend so I took him under my wing.

He was very nervous and shy, but you could see how sweet he was too.

His first evening in the camp, I didn’t want him and his friend to think they were going to get a free ride so I had them help me with the dishes. I took the little boy and showed him the creek where we clean the camp’s pots and dishes. We sat on a big rock and I washed and had him dry.

He said, “Are you leaving on the train tomorrow?”

“Uh-uh.” I’d been lying so much about how we weren’t alone that without thinking, I said, “My father’s going out on it, he might leave for a day or two for work.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“Well, Mother says I might have to keep going here in Flint at Whittier.”

The sad-eye little boy said, “I’m hopping the freight to go west, me and Bugs are gonna pick fruit.”

“I wish you two well.”

I’d hand him the dish after I’d washed it and when my hand touched his he’d start blinking a lot and would get twitchity and fumble the cloth when he tried to dry the dish.

After while I started touching his hand just to make him squirm. And squirm he did!

He counted softly, “One, two, three …,” then blurted out, “I’MNOTAFRAIDOFGIRLS!”

I laughed. “You aren’t?”

“Uh-uh. I even kissed some in the home.”

“Really?”

“Yup, I got three kisses.”

He held up four fingers.

I looked up at the moon. It was huge and yellow and yolky. “Isn’t the moon lovely?”

I looked back. The little boy had closed his eyes, puckered his lips and leaned in toward me!

I started to slug him, just a arm punch. But looking at how sad he was made my heart melt.

He was all alone except for a person named Bugs.

What else could I do?

I kissed his forehead three times and said, “Kisses … kisses … kisses make you stronger.”