Belle Teal Read online

  Praise for

  ANN M. MARTIN’S

  Belle Teal

  “You will love Belle, her mom, and Gran. This family of women knows how to raise a young one to stand up for what’s right.”

  — Book Sense Children’s 76 Picks

  “Honest and moving . . . Preteens will relate to Belle Teal, whose observations provide an eye-popping introduction to social and personal injustice.”

  — Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Her voice is so convincing that we understand at all times where she’s coming from. . . . There’s not a single false note; the characters she tells us about are all real ones we believe in completely—and consequently care about. And the story she tells seems right and inevitable, as all good stories do.”

  — Book Page

  “A genuinely moving tale about the necessity to reach out to others, even when it’s difficult.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “A thoughtful novel about significant issues . . . Belle Teal learns that not everything is as it seems, and so will readers of this provocative book.”

  — Palo Alto Weekly

  “Considerable child appeal and heart . . . a solid piece of work with an absorbing plot.”

  — School Library Journal

  “With the same sincere and empathetic handling of grade-school life that made her Baby-sitters Club books so popular, Martin here deftly draws a more complicated portrait of a racially integrating fifth-grade class. . . . The writing is graceful and easy, with Belle Teal’s narration distinctly and convincingly evoked.”

  — Horn Book

  A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

  A Child Magazine Best Book of the Year

  For my nephew,

  Henry Raynsford McGrath, with love.

  Special thanks to Liz Szabla, Jean Feiwel, Laura Godwin, and especially to Pat Skarda, who set the story in motion.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  After Words

  About the Author

  Q&A with Ann M. Martin

  What Was Desegregation?

  Things to Do from Belle Teal’s World

  Ann M. Martin’s Writing Tips

  Copyright

  Gran’s vegetable garden has been a pure delight this year. I am sitting in the middle of it, and even though it is September, I am surrounded by bush beans and cucumbers and carrots and peppers and peas. We put the peas in early this year, Gran and me, so early that we had one good crop, and then we put in some more and had another good crop.

  Gran, she is amazing, even if she has become a little forgetful. She can figure out how to do just about anything. And she can always see the good in people and situations, like in that song about accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. Sometimes when our radio is not on, I hear Gran making her own music in our kitchen. She sings, “You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, e-lim-mi-nate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative. Don’ mess with Mr. In Between . . .” Now me, I would sing at the top of my lungs, but Gran says that is not ladylike and she always sings nice and low and soft.

  My journal is spread across my bare knees, but at this very moment I am not writing in it. My head is so stuffed full of birdsongs and insect music and thoughts about the last day of summer vacation that there is no room for concentrating on writing. Also, the sun is hot. Beating down hot. It has been one long, simmering summer. I don’t remember a summer quite like it, here in our hills. Mama and Gran and me, we sleep most nights with the windows wide open, not caring about all the flies and mosquitoes and no-see-ums that fly inside to escape the heat with us.

  I wiggle my toes in the dirt and inspect a scab on my knee. I wish Mama was home for my last day of summer freedom, but she went into Coker Creek this morning to begin her new job. Mama, she starts jobs like I start library books — one right after the other. I think she is overlooking one of the key things about having a job, which is sticking with it. A library book is meant to be finished, but a job is meant to be stuck with. Mama means well, though. She just wants more for our family.

  Our family has been Mama and Gran and me for as long as I can remember. Daddy, he died before I turned one, and Grandpop was gone before Mama married Daddy. But Mama and Gran and me make a very cozy family. And I like a family that is all women. Me and Gran are real close. We spend a lot of time together, since apart from switching jobs so frequently, Mama also usually works two to three jobs all at once, depending on the time of year. Waitressing, bartending, whatever she can find. This new job in Coker Creek, it’s a maid’s job, at that motel off Old Route 28, at the edge of town. If I know Mama, it won’t satisfy her for long.

  I pat my stomach. It is full from the lunch Gran just made. Also it is on the puffy side. I have increased in size over the summer. I wonder how I am going to fit into my first-day-of-school dress, which was also my last-day-of-school dress in June. Oh, well. I am not going to dwell on that. I am going to eliminate the negative. I believe I’ll head on over to Clarice’s house for the rest of the afternoon. I have done all my chores except for the evening ones, and anyway Gran, she has already said, “Belle Teal, you just enjoy today. Tomorrow your school responsibilities start again.” Actually, she said that twice this morning, the second time with almost the exact same words she used the first time around, as if she didn’t remember she had just said them half an hour before.

  I ease back inside our little house and hide the journal under my mattress. Then I slip off my dirty shorts and pull on a pair of jeans. “Gran,” I say as I poke my head in the kitchen, “I’m going to Clarice’s.”

  Gran is mixing batter for corn bread. She is at the table, and the kitchen is so hot, I think I could suffocate in it. I can feel sweat forming under my hair and starting to slide down my forehead. But Gran stands there looking all tidy and cool-like. I hear her humming a tune I recognize as “G.I. Jive.”

  “Gran?” I say again. “I’m going to Clarice’s.”

  Gran emerges from some kind of fog in her head. “Okay. Home by dinner . . . honey.”

  For just a second I have this spooky feeling that she might have forgotten my name. But I shoo the thought aside and run out our door, across our yard, and down to the dirt road. It’s a two-mile walk to Clarice’s, and I haven’t bothered with shoes. By this time of summer the soles of my feet are so hard, I wouldn’t need shoes for anything but warmth, and that is not an issue.

  Clarice, she once told me she sometimes gets bored on the walk between our houses if she is alone. I can’t imagine that. I always use the walk for thinking. Today I am thinking about tomorrow — about the first day of fifth grade at Coker Creek Elementary, the new colored students, and wonderful Miss Casey.

  Clarice and me, we have been best friends since the beginning of kindergarten, which was way back in 1957. And we have been waiting since 1959 for Miss Casey to be our teacher. We have wished for her since the moment we set eyes on her, her first day at Coker Creek, when she arrived at school all dressed up and smelling of perfume that was probably from the country of France. None of the other teachers looked like Miss Casey. Or smelled like her. I fell in love with Miss Casey that day.

  I walk along the dir
t road, trying to avoid the bigger rocks, watching as grasshoppers zip ahead of me in the heated air. This is the easy part of the walk, going down our hill. Coming back from Clarice’s will be another story. Tomorrow I will cover part of this trip on the school bus. I wonder if any of the new colored students will be on our bus route. I don’t see how, but you never know.

  It’s funny. The only thing me and Clarice have been able to wrap our minds around this summer is the joyful thought of sitting in Miss Casey’s class for a whole year. The only thing most other folks have wrapped their minds around is the notion of letting the Negro children into our school. So far those students have been going to the colored school over in Peapack, but starting this year, some of them will be coming to Coker Creek. It makes more sense. Coker Creek Elementary is much closer to those kids’ homes than the school in Peapack is.

  Mama says, “You be nice to those children, Belle Teal. They’ll want to see smiling faces.”

  Why wouldn’t I be nice to new students?

  The road widens slightly toward the bottom of the hill. And when it meets up with Route 518, which if you turned left on it, would take you into the center of Coker Creek, it becomes a paved road. I cross 518 and soon I reach Clarice’s father’s auto body shop and then Miss Wanda’s beauty salon, where sometimes I stop in for a grape soda and a chat with Miss Wanda. And then one, two, three houses, and there’s Clarice’s.

  Clarice Baker meets me at the screen door before I even get to the top of the wooden steps. Those steps are painted a deep green, which I think is a lovely color, as lovely as the rest of Clarice’s house. I wouldn’t ever want to live anywhere except in our house in the hills with Mama and Gran, but there is something delicious about the Bakers’ home. I step inside, into the dark coolness. Our house sits in a clearing and the sun beats down on it all day long. Clarice’s house is surrounded by big shade trees, and in the summer the ceiling fans, one in almost every room, turn slowly, stirring the air.

  Clarice and me, we step into the living room and the first thing I set my eyes on is the television. The Bakers got it almost three years ago. It is some invention. I have learned so much about life from what I have seen on it.

  “Hey, Belle Teal,” calls Clarice’s sister from the kitchen.

  “Hey, Shari,” I reply. Shari is fifteen and will be a sophomore in high school.

  “You ready for school tomorrow?” she asks. She is sitting at the table, putting pink nail polish on her fingers.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply.

  “Do you girls want any help with your outfits?”

  I glance at Clarice. “Well, no, I guess not. I think we’re all set.”

  Now Shari, she is sweet to be so nice to Clarice and me. She always offers to help us with our looks, and I know she could do a good job because she is a real fashion plate herself. She is pretty and has a chest that she needs to contain with a bra, and boys call her on the phone all the time.

  Me and Clarice never take her up on her offers of fashion help, but Shari doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Want a Coke?” Clarice asks me.

  “Yes, thanks,” I reply, all polite, since Shari is sitting there.

  Clarice snags two bottles from the refrigerator and we take them back into the living room, where we sprawl on the floor.

  “Is it time for The Edge of Night?” I ask.

  “Not quite. I’ll fill you in on the last few days.”

  Clarice watches The Edge of Night and As the World Turns as often as she can. I am not as interested in As the World Turns, but The Edge of Night, now that is really something. When Sarah Lane Karr died while saving her daughter, well, Clarice and me were breathless. We talked about it for days.

  Four-thirty finally rolls around and the show starts. Shari rushes in from the kitchen, waving her fingers in the air so’s to dry her nails, and Mrs. Baker hurries inside from the back garden, where she has been weeding in her straw hat. We all sit absolutely silently for one half hour, until five o’clock when the show ends and we can breathe again. Clarice and me have been grasping hands, and now we let go and wipe off the sweat on our jeans. Those Karrs are quite a family.

  Shari switches off the television and a few minutes later Mr. Baker steps through the front door, kind of grimy from his day at the auto shop.

  “Hello, Bakers!” he greets us, and he means me as well as the others. He says he considers me an honorary Baker and his third daughter.

  “Hello!” we all reply.

  “Mama, can Belle Teal stay for dinner?” asks Clarice, even though she knows she isn’t supposed to ask right in front of me in case her mother doesn’t want a guest for some reason.

  Before Mrs. Baker can answer, though, I say, “Thanks, but I better get on home. I don’t want Gran to have to eat alone.”

  “Where’s your mama at?” Shari wants to know.

  “New job,” I tell her.

  Nobody asks any questions. They are used to Mama.

  I stand up. “Thank you for the Coke,” I say. “See you in the morning, Clarice.”

  “I’ll save you a seat on the bus,” she replies.

  “You all are going to have some day tomorrow,” says Shari thoughtfully. “I wonder if any of those Negro children will be on your bus.”

  Mr. Baker sits down on the couch next to Mrs. Baker. “Doesn’t matter whether they’re Negro children or not, Shari,” he says. “They’re all just children.”

  Mr. Baker says this so gentle that it doesn’t sound like a scolding.

  I scoot out the door then and begin the walk back home.

  I am not expecting to see Mama until my bedtime that night. When she left for her new job this morning she said her very first day of work at the R U Sleep Inn was going to be a double shift. But when I come trudging across our yard after that walk home from Clarice’s there is our car parked off to the side of the house.

  Suddenly my tiredness slides away and I pick up speed and run on inside. “Mama!” I cry.

  She’s sitting at the kitchen table smoking one of her Salem cigarettes, dropping ashes into a grape jelly jar that we use as a drinking glass, and so Gran is sneaking little frowns at her. And she’s wearing this turquoise uniform that has ADELE stitched across a pocket on the front. Now isn’t that something. Strangers who have never met Mama before are introduced to her as Adele. That is not right. They should be introduced to her as Mrs. Harper. Immediately I tell my mind not to see Mama in that uniform, but instead in her red polka-dotted dress, the one she wears with the beautiful wide shiny patent-leather belt.

  “Hi, precious,” Mama greets me. She leans down to brush her lips across my hair and I smell cigarette smoke and something else. Maybe Lysol.

  “Hi, Mama,” I say. “I thought you had to work a double shift.”

  Mama shakes her head. “Mr. Titus got a notion. Changed everyone’s schedules today.”

  I am not sure what to say. I’m glad Mama’s here for dinner. But we could have used that double-shift money.

  Gran eyes the cigarette and says, “Adele, honey, put that thing out now or go outside with it. The kitchen smells like a chimney.”

  “You need help with supper, Gran?” I ask, hoping she’ll say no. I look around and see that while I was at Clarice’s, Gran has gone to the vegetable garden and picked lettuce and tomatoes for salad, and has shelled a bowlful of peas. The corn bread is just about ready, and one of our chickens is roasting in the oven.

  “No, thanks, honey,” Gran replies. And she adds, “Adele, we are almost out of sugar. Can you pick some up tomorrow?”

  Mama rises from the table, taking her cigarette and the jelly glass with her. “Sure, Mama Belle,” she says. And I feel that little prick of pride I feel every time I am reminded that I was named for my gran. She is Belle Teal Rodes, and I am Belle Teal Harper.

  Mama and me, we settle in on the old porch swing. Mama swings and puffs out smoke, and I swing and think about what Mr. Baker said as I was leaving Clarice’s.

>   “Mama?”

  “Yeah, precious?” Mama sucks on her cigarette. Her nails are painted red, and they would match her patent-leather belt if she was wearing it. Mama cares about fashion in the way Shari does.

  “Today at Clarice’s,” I begin, “Shari, she wondered will any Negro children be on our bus tomorrow, and Mr. Baker, he said don’t think of them as Negro children because they’re all just children.”

  “Huh,” says Mama. “Good for Mr. Baker.” She stares off into the hills and blows out a stream of smoke.

  “Mama, how many Neg — I mean, how many new kids will be at our school tomorrow?”

  “Three,” replies Mama.

  “Any of them in my class?”

  “I’m not sure, precious.”

  “Mama, why did you tell me to be nice to the new children? You said, ‘They’ll want to see smiling faces.’ I wouldn’t be mean to a new kid. Least, not unless the new kid was mean first.”

  Mama drags on her cigarette. “Huh,” she says again. “You are absolutely right.” She starts to say something else, then stops, lets out a sigh.

  Gran appears at the screen door behind us and says, “Adele, honey, can you stop and pick us up some sugar tomorrow? We are almost out.”

  “Gran!” I exclaim. “You —” But Mama, she lays her hand on mine quick-like, so I don’t say anything more.

  Gran disappears into the kitchen.

  “About the new children, Belle Teal,” says Mama. “You just keep in mind that our family does not judge people by their appearances. We don’t want to be judged that way, and we don’t judge others that way.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I want to ask about a million more questions, but Mama has gotten that far-off look in her eyes. Conversations with Mama only last so long.

  I think that now the front porch is smelling like a chimney too, so I go on back into the kitchen. Gran is standing by the table, gazing out the window, up our hill.

  “What is it, Gran?” I ask, thinking she sees an animal. Maybe a coyote.

  Slowly her focus shifts back to me. “Oh,” is all she says.