Belle Teal Read Free Page A

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    â€œThose poor children,” murmurs Gran. “Heavens. What they went through. . . . Oh! Adele, honey, I just remembered. We are almost out of sugar. Tomorrow could you stop and pick us up another bag?”
    I look at Mama with my mouth hanging open, but I know enough not to say anything. I can’t bear to hear Mama patiently answer Gran, though, so I scoot my plate over to the sink, grab my journal, and head for the front porch.
    â€œBelle Teal!” Mama calls after me. “The dishes.”
    â€œCan I write first, please? Before the sun goes down?”
    â€œYeah, precious. Okay.” Mama only sounds a little exasperated.
    On our porch I sit in the old lawn chair, the one with the scratchy green and white strips that are coming apart. I draw my legs up underneath me and open my journal in my lap. I don’t lift my pen right away, though. I take in a deep breath and look out over our hills. I think how Gran has lived in these hills all her whole life. She can tell you everything about them — their weather and their trees and their animals. Gran, she reads the weather with one finger and her nose. Every morning she stands on the porch, holds up one thin pointer finger, and sniffs the air. “Hot today,” she’ll say. Or, “Snow coming.” Or, “No rain yet.” Lately, though, her predictions haven’t made much sense. For instance, this morning she stood here in the little light summer nightie that is the only one she’ll wear anymore, put her finger in the air, sniffed, and then looked at our broken thermometer, the one that’s been stuck on forty degrees for three years now. And she said, “My land, only forty. It’s going to be downright chilly today.”
    Now Gran knows as well as Mama and me that that thermometer is broken, so I don’t know what’s got into her head. It’s a good thing I pick up on facts pretty easy, because these days I have to sort out the facts from Gran’s new brand of fiction.
    I pick up my pen. I start to write about how I don’t look a thing like Gran. Gran is all skinny and birdish. Tiny too. And before her hair went white it was pure blonde. I’ve seen pictures of her as a girl. Me, I’m darker, like Mama, and I’m a bit on the plump side, which I guess I take after my daddy. Plus, I’m growing fast as a weed right now. Soon I’ll be taller than Gran.
    I am writing all this when behind me I hear Gran ask Mama about that sugar again and I want to leap up out of the chair and shake Gran by her bony shoulders. Then I think to myself about what Mama has said to me so many times: “We have faced lots of hardships, Belle Teal. You and your gran and I. But we can take care of ourselves. We do whatever is necessary. We have strength and patience.”
    I look up at the sky. I don’t know if there is a God up there or not. Gran is sure her Lord resides there, but I am still making up my mind. I know I get some comfort from looking at the sky, though. So I gaze at the streaky clouds turning salmon pink as the sun drops low, and I tell myself to have strength and patience where Gran is concerned. While I am at it, I wish that a little strength and patience would flow into the minds of the people who are making judgments about the colored students, and then I wish for extra strength and patience for the colored students themselves.
    I write a few more sentences in my journal. Then I go inside to do my chores and get ready for my first day of fifth grade.

T he sun wakes me the next morning. I jump out of bed in a big hurry. It is going to be another blazing hot day, and I imagine sticky seats and desktops, and heavy air hanging in our classroom. But mostly I think about Miss Casey and how wonderful fifth grade is going to be. I pull on my green shift, the one Gran made for me in the spring. It wasn’t the best-looking shift then, and five months later I am starting to pop