Vada Faith Read Free Page A

first bite of the fat chocolate bar.
    “I might just start calling Joy Ruth Baby Ruth,” I thought as I waited. I looked back at her, acting cool, flipping her hair in John Wasper’s cute boy face. She would hate being called baby anything. She thought being born one minute before me made her the oldest sister. The more superior.
    Daddy said it didn’t. He said I might have been born first except Joy Ruth was wrapped so tightly around me she caused me to be blue and they had to pull her out first. He said she squealed for an hour after they untangled us. Then when they put us together in the same crib he said we snuggled up like two peas in a pod.
    “Hello, Vada Faith,” Miss Wright had said that summer day at the A & P, looking down at me as she rang up my candy bar. I learned from her name badge that her whole name was Miss Emily Wright. I only knew her as Miss Wright. She taught Bible school every summer at the Tabernacle Holiness Church on Park Street which wasn’t close enough for us to walk to but we did anyway.
    “Hello, Miss Wright,” I said. She peered down at me with her big milky eyes, magnified by thick glasses framed in tortoise shell.
    She turned to Miss Dunkel who ran the register beside her and jerked her permed head toward me. “Bea,” she said, nodding, “this is Vada Faith. One of the Dunn twins.”
    I knew Miss Bea Dunkel too. She served cupcakes at Bible school from the kitchen in the church basement and she got mad if you got crumbs on the floor.
    “I know Vada Faith,” Miss Dunkel said to Miss Wright, her eyes never leaving her register. She stared over half glasses that hung by a rhinestone chain around her skinny neck.
    When Miss Wright held out my change, I could have been a mechanical doll wrapping my fingers around the cold coins for all the heed she paid me. I turned to go.
    “Helena and Delbert’s girl,” Miss Wright said, snapping her words off like breaking crackers. “Hel-e-na Car-ter.” She started talking loudly as if Miss Dunkel had ear wax build up.
    “Oh, Helena, yes,” Miss Dunkel said. She sounded as if she and my mother were best friends and that she had the inside scoop. Well, my mama was a mystery. Even I knew that.
    “Helena always fancied herself higher up the totem pole than us.” Miss Dunkel’s voice sounded again. “Then doesn’t she marry that handsome Delbert Dunn. He didn’t have the best reputation. Just the best body.”
    “You mean Doolittle Dunn?” Miss Wright’s fingers hit the register keys with a clang as she checked items for the man who’d stood behind me. She had put special emphasis on Daddy’s nickname. Doo-little.
    “Well, Helena ran off and left them,” Bea’s voice rose to a high pitch. “So poor Delbert can’t hold a regular job raising those wild girls. I feel so sorry for him.”
    I was nearing the door, fighting back tears. The Wheaties I’d had earlier that morning were threatening to slide back up my throat. How could they say such awful things?
    My enthusiasm for the candy bar was gone.
    “It’s a cryin’ shame,” Miss Wright said, “a real cryin’ shame.”
    I made it outside before the tears came. I swallowed hard and threw the Baby Ruth into the trash barrel on the sidewalk. Through the big plate glass window of the A & P, I could see Miss Wright and Miss Dunkel ringing up other customers.
    I ran across the parking lot as fast as I could go, covering my ears to try to stop Miss Wright’s voice going around in my head.
    I wanted to shut out the truth in her words. Our mama had left us and our daddy didn’t have a job. I knew all that.
    I refused to let anyone see me cry. Not Joy Ruth who thought our life was fine and certainly not John Wasper whose boy face I had already begun to love.
    Behind me, John Wasper started calling out, “Hey, Vada Faith. Wait up, you hear. Wait up. Vada Faith?”
    Years later, I would wait many times over for Mr. James John “Wasper” Waddell but not that day. I kept on