Mrs. Callahan smelled so good that I almost started crying, but then I looked over at Troo and she shot me a don’t-you-dare look. She must’ve also smelled that Evening in Paris.
“I visited your mother yesterday,” Mrs. Callahan said.
Troo was getting antsy, looking over at the prize table and not even listening. I knew what she had her eye on. It was a genuine Davy Crockett coonskin cap. Being the lover of hats that she was, she’d been admiring them up at the Five and Dime for the last week and now Artie Latour was running his hand through the fur.
“My sister, Margie, who’s a nurse up at St. Joe’s, told me that Helen is holding her own,” Mrs. Callahan said.
Troo wandered toward the prize table and got up right behind Artie and whispered something in his ear. Probably threatening to drown him in the Honey Creek if he didn’t let her have that coonskin cap.
“You sure everything is okay at your house, Sal?”
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Callahan.” Now Artie had that coonskin in his hand and Troo was grabbing the coonskin tail and if I didn’t do something, this would turn into the kind of roll-around-on-the-ground fight that Troo had a bad reputation for.
I started to hurry toward them, but then I stopped and turned my head back to Mrs. Callahan. “Is that true what you just said about Mother? That she’s holding her own?” I wasn’t sure what that meant but it sounded pretty good and I wished she really was holding her own. Mrs. Callahan looked me directly in the eye and couldn’t say another word, so I pretty much knew she was just saying that to make me feel better.
“Fight!”
I turned and there were Artie and Troo wrestling and rolling in the dirt. She had the coonskin cap tucked under her arm and wouldn’t give it up, and then she kicked Artie a good one in the leg right before Mr. Lane came by to pull her off. Mr. Lane picked up the coonskin and set it on Troo’s head. I looked back at Artie Latour doubled over on the ground holding his leg. His shirt had got ripped and dirt caked his sweaty arms, and I thought in some special way our mother dying was working out okay for us because we were gettin’ cut all sorts of slack.
Troo was thinking the exact same thing. Because she got up off the ground, flipped the coonskin tail at Artie and took off laughing, waving her ice cream torch back and forth and yelling, “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled messes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
For fifteen minutes or so I lost Troo in all the red, white and blue, so I had a nice visit with Ethel, who had the day off from taking care of Mrs. Galecki. Ethel’d come with her gentleman friend named Mr. Raymond Buckland Johnson, who said we could call him Ray Buck for short. He was from the South just like Ethel. Georgia, I think he said. Ray Buck was a city bus driver and his skin was as black as a bad luck cat. Much blacker than Ethel, who was the color of a Hershey bar. Ray Buck was also tall, thin and a little hunched over in the shoulders, so when he turned sideways he looked like a question mark. Troo and me, we just adored Ethel and were getting to know Ray Buck a little bit better and were beginning to adore him as well.
Some people around here didn’t like the Negroes. Like Hall. And Reese Latour, who called me and Troo nigger lovers every chance he got. Troo and me had asked Ethel about why that was. She’d told us she didn’t know why for certain, but that it was true that some white folks didn’t care too much for coloreds. Down in the South there was even this club called the KKK that was really mean to Negroes. They dressed up in sheets and burned crosses on the Negroes’ front lawns to hurt their feelings, which made me wonder for a second if Rasmussen belonged to the KKK because of that pillowcase he had on his head when he’d tried to grab me at the Fazios’.
“So, Miss Sally, how’s your mama doin’?” Ethel asked, after she suggested that Ray Buck go off to the refreshment stand to get her a cool drink. Ethel always called us Miss Troo or Miss Sally because she had the best manners and liked manners in others. I just loved to listen to her talk. She was another one with an accent, but not like Willie’s Brooklyn one or the Goldmans’ German one, which were hard sounding, like they were just about to get in a fight with you. Ethel’s accent flowed like the Honey Creek water, and one time when I was helping her hull strawberries for shortcake I fell dead asleep on the kitchen chair because come to think of it, that’s what her voice really sounded like. A lullaby.
“Mrs. Callahan just told me that Mother is holding her own, Ethel, thank you for asking,” I said.
I pulled myself up onto the first limb of the tree that Ethel was sitting under, so I could get a better lookout for Troo.
“That so? Your mama’s holdin’ her own? Well, Lordy, that is good news to these tired ears.” Ethel was below me in a plastic chair, barefoot and fanning herself with a newspaper, which she said she liked to read because it was important to be educated to the goings-on. She turned to gaze up at me. “How come you and Miss Troo ain’t been by lately?”
“We been busy.” I wanted to tell Ethel how Rasmussen was trying to murder and molest me and I hadn’t felt much like coming by since she lived right next door to him. But as Mother always said, there was a time and place for everything. “How is Mrs. Galecki feeling?”
“She’s been askin’ for you. And so has Mr. Gary.”
“Mr. Gary’s here?” I asked, excited.
Mrs. Galecki’s son, Mr. Gary Galecki, lived in California and would come and see his mother every summer. The last time he was here he played old maid with me and Troo for over two hours out on the screened-in porch and that made Troo say that she thought Mr. Gary especially must like kids because damn, you couldn’t hardly get a grown-up to do anything with you at all. Mr. Gary Galecki was another good egg.
“Mr. Gary’s feelin’s are real hurt that you and Miss Troo ain’t stopped by to say hey.” Ethel looked scrumptious today. She had on a little straw hat with creamy pansy flowers and her dress was lemon colored and made her chocolate skin really stand out quite nicely. That’s why Ray Buck was looking at Ethel the way he was when he brought her back a cup of iced tea. She really did look good enough to eat. Ray Buck could see we were visiting so after he gave Ethel her drink and a wink, he moved over to the side with his smooth walk and lit up a cigarette with a snap of his lighter.
“We’ll come by real soon, I promise. Troo was just tellin’ me today how much she was looking forward to seeing Mr. Gary.”
“All right then, I’ll tell him he can be expectin’ you.” Ethel took a long drink out of her cup and then moved around in her chair a little to get comfortable because she believed in being as comfortable as possible at all times. Life had enough uncomfortable in it, she always said.
“Are you little gals bein’ careful? I been readin’ in the newspaper that there’s a crazy man out there and I heard tell that somebody grabbed at you over at the Fazios’ yard the other night. You best pay attention when you’re out and about.” Ethel sounded like she knew what it meant to be grabbed at. “Alls I gotta say is thank the Lord that Mr. Rasmussen lives next door to me. Gives me a feelin’ of such safety.”
Should I tell her? Shouldn’t I tell Ethel, my dear Negro friend, how very smart she was about certain things like how to take care of sick people and how to make the best blond brownies and how she had the singing voice of all the cherubs in heaven, but that she was wrong, dead wrong, about Rasmussen?
I looked out over the crowd while I was deciding about that and spotted Troo’s Statue of Liberty torch. She was talking to Uncle Paulie, who probably wasn’t working today at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl setting up pins for one dollar and ten cents an hour because the lanes were closed for the Fourth like everything else was. The other thing Uncle Paulie did to make money for himself and Granny was collect soda bottles out of people’s garbage cans and take them to Delancey’s Corner Store. Mrs. Delancey gave him two pennies for the bottles and Uncle Paulie always counted them real carefully, like maybe Mrs. Delancey was trying to gyp him.