Welcome to Episode 24 of Dancing at The Orange Peel, a 1960-70s serialized historical novel. Just getting started? Episode 1 | Full Episode Guide | Extra fun content in THE MAILBAG
Go here if you missed Episode 23, Just Water. Or keep scrolling to read the next installment.
Recap: Episode 23, Just Water. Saturday, April 13, 1968. After a strange phone call rattles Mama, Libby is whisked away on an unexpected trip downtown, but not just to shop for Easter dresses. Mama doesn’t usually encourage rule-breaking, so her simple but defiant actions puzzle Libby at first.
Episode 24: Family Above All Else
While Mama drops in her dime and dials, I stand in the open doorway of the glass phone booth caddy-cornered to Antonio’s Deli.
“It’s a long story,” she tells Nate. “Libby and I are going to grab a bite downtown with Cheryl. I’ll fill you in later. . . . Okay.” She tucks her chin then cups a hand over her mouth and the receiver, but I can still hear. “Tomorrow? . . . It’s Easter. We go to Ma’s after church. . . . Okay. What time?” She turns away from me. Then in a sweet voice I don’t hear often, “Yes. Okay. Bye now.”
When she hangs up the phone, I tug at her sweater. “Are we doing something with Nate tomorrow? What time? For what?”
“Nothing, honey.” She pushes on the folding glass door and nudges me to step out on the sidewalk and turn right.
“But you asked him what time.”
“Granddaddy is taking you to Aunt Sivvy’s tomorrow, remember?”
“But I wanna go where you and Nate are going.”
She stops and a lady in a jumper with a big pink bow on the front swerves her way around us. “You’ve been looking forward to visiting Sivvy for weeks.”
I love visiting Mama’s big sister, for sure. But I still want to know what they’re doing tomorrow. When I stick out my lower lip, Mama shakes her head.
“You’ll have a great time there,” she says. “You always do. Now let me call June real quick.” She points beyond me down the street. “Then how about we go to the toy store?”
“Really!?” I love Wendell’s. I don’t go there much because Mama says it’s too far for me to walk by myself from the Chamber after my homework is done.
She digs in her purse for another dime, dials Aunt June, and tells her we’ll be later than planned. After she hangs up, she checks her watch. “We have twenty minutes.” Glancing down the block in the direction of the toy store, she urges, “Better hurry!”
“We could run!” I say. She looks at me like I’m nuts. I take off skipping and wave her to follow. “Come on!”
Before I know it, she passes me, skipping hard in her weekend flats, her handbag bouncing on her arm. It’s great to hear her laugh like that. When we get to the crosswalk, we’re both breathing hard.
“Ten minutes. That’s IT, young lady.”
“You said twenty!”
“You have ten inside. Hurry!”
When the WALK sign changes to green, we rush across, and I yank open the store’s door. Wendell’s shelves are full, not just with new toys but old-timey ones too. Gee-haw-whimmy-diddles and yo-yo’s right next to the hula hoops and Ooze. This place beats Ivey’s Toy Department by a mile.
When Mama gives me the times-up signal, I can’t believe it’s been ten minutes already. We leave without buying a thing. I add up my allowance and chores money in my head and figure by next week if I do one extra chore, I could come back for a Spirograph. Oh, but no. That would mean I can’t buy my transistor radio. Forget it. I’ll ask for the Spirograph for my birthday.
By the time we get to Antonio’s, Miss Cheryl is at a table near the window with a Pepsi in front of her. She waves us over. “I can’t believe you! I’ve never seen Wilkins so mad.” Everyone in the deli turns when she laughs. She puts a hand over her mouth as me and Mama sit down.
“He better get over it, “ Mama says. “They’re overdue taking those terrible signs down.”
As I picture those words again—COLOREDS ONLY—hanging over the Ivey’s water fountains, I shift in my seat. I quickly brush away the image.
Miss Cheryl shakes her head. “How in the world did you get this way, Gwen?”
“Whadda you mean?” Mama wrinkles her forehead, but smiles. Sometimes, even against her own rules of talking right, she’ll run her words together like that, trying to be funny.
A ponytailed redhead wearing a white, collared shirt without a single wrinkle in it writes down our order, then stuffs the pencil behind her ear. As she walks away, Miss Cheryl leans on her elbows toward Mama. “You’re not like the other people in this town.” Miss Cheryl came to Kent Creek all the way from Miami and is always saying she’s never seen a place like here. I wonder how Miami is different from Kent Creek. And what she means by Mama not being like the rest of us.
Miss Cheryl adds, “You’re especially not like your daddy.” Mama’s friend sips her drink. With her glass still tilted, she mutters right into it, “That bigoted, prejudiced, old”—her eyes turn to me and she sets down the Pepsi—“meany.”
Mama glances at me, too, and lays her hand on Miss Cheryl’s forearm. “Not right now, okay?”
I’ve heard Uncle Dennis call Granddaddy a ‘bigot.’ I’m not quite sure what it means, but in the same conversations, I’ve heard ‘prejudiced,’ too. I’m sure from Granddaddy’s arguments with Mama that he’s that. He won’t be happy if he finds out about me drinking from the colored fountain. Sure hope she doesn’t tell him. Any inkling that’s left of the bravery I felt when me and Mama marched out of Ivey’s slips away. I squirm again in my chair.
“It’s just—” Miss Cheryl cocks her head at Mama. “I’m sorry—he’s sooo . . . ” She side-eyes me, then stretches out the next word, nearly growling: “Unkind.”
A sweet smile I don’t expect spreads across Mama’s face. She whispers in a Southern belle accent, “That’s just it, darlin’. I a-um what I a-um because my daddy is whut he is.”
The redheaded waitress brings my root beer, fries, and ham and cheese. I don’t know what Mama means, but Miss Cheryl is dead right. She’s nothing like Granddaddy.
The waitress brings more food and slides plates in front of Mama and Miss Cheryl. As the girl turns away, Mama says, “I could never work it out in my head when I was little.” Even though she’s looking at me, she seems to be talking to herself. Her eyes drift off to study something far away. “Daddy’d fuss about them all week long. Blacks,” she adds, spreading her napkin on her lap. “He’d cuss at them. About them. When he saw one, he’d treat them . . . so ugly. Then he’d take us to church on Sunday, insisting we learn to be good and kind to everyone.” She pauses. “Everyone.” She shakes her head. “Just never added up for me.” Sitting up straight in her chair, she continues, “In my life, Jerome Dewitt has proven he’s way wrong about a lot of things.” She always uses Granddaddy’s full name when she’s stewing about him. She reaches for the mustard. “Even as a kid, it wasn’t hard for me to see how wrong he was about that.”
I kinda know what she means. Granddaddy can be one way then another, all friendly to some stranger, and then for no good reason, mean to one of us—even though his favorite saying is: “Family above all else.” If that means family is the most important and special, why can’t he be as nice to us as he is to a total stranger? Nicer even? Thinking about it makes it hard for me to swallow my sandwich. I reach for my root beer.
Miss Cheryl unfolds her napkin in her lap. “Well, you’re sure good at making him steam.” She pokes a thumb toward the door. “And that little act of yours a while ago. . . .” She leans in like she has a secret. “Just wait till he gets wind of that.”
Her saying that makes my stomach go tight. Mama shrugs like she doesn’t care, but that doesn’t help my nervous feeling. My fries don’t look so good anymore.
Picking up her Reuben, Miss Cheryl asks Mama, “You called . . . ,” she lowers her voice, “that man?”
She means Nate, but why doesn’t she use his name? Mama nods and grins.
“And does Jerome know”—her eyes dart to me, then back to Mama—“about all that?” The way she says “all that,” it must be important.
“All what?” I ask.
Mama bites her lip and shakes her head. Miss Cheryl raises her eyebrows and seems to be waiting for more from Mama.
Mama wraps her fingers around the Pepsi glass. “I’ll explain later,” she says, staring into the brown bubbles.
I don’t know if she’s saying that to me or Miss Cheryl, but she’s been telling me a lot lately that she’ll explain things “later.” When is that? I frown but she doesn’t see it.
She turns to Miss Cheryl. “Daddy’ll get used to the idea. Has to.” She pops a French fry in her mouth, still so hot she has to suck air in and fan her hand in front of her face. She chews fast, then swallows. “And all the better if I make him steam a little along the way.”
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