out of the oven without using a potholder and burned his hand. He squealed like a stuck pig and started hopping like he had to pee. Rhoda applied butter to his burn.
During the conversation at the dinner table, Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright asked Rhoda a lot of nosy questions. All of them about her family, like how much money her daddy was worth, her family’s relationship with the Antonosanti family, and how much her daddy spent on his white relatives. Rhoda answered every question, giving answers so vague she confused Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright so much I think they got mad. “Lassie fixin’ to come on,” Mr. Boatwright said, looking from our wall clock to Muh’Dear. They both sighed, with relief I assumed, when I told them Rhoda and I would stay behind to do the dishes.
She didn’t stay long after helping me clean up the kitchen, and, under the circumstances, she had stayed longer than I expected her to. She excused herself just as Bonanza was coming on. Muh’Dear smelled Rhoda’s leather jacket before handing it to her. “It even smell new,” she commented, inspecting it like she was searching for a flaw.
“This evenin’ was…um…interestin’,” Rhoda whispered when I walked her out to the porch.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to jump all over you like that. They had no business asking some of the questions they asked you,” I told Rhoda. She made a dismissal gesture with her hand, chuckled, then trotted off our porch. I waited until she went inside her house.
“She sure is grown for fourteen,” Muh’Dear remarked, after I closed the door and sat down in the living room across from her and Mr. Boatwright. “You need to be more like her, Annette. I bet she don’t squall like a panda about house-cleanin’. And she eat like a bird. Why she barely touched all that good food Brother Boatwright put on her plate.”
“I wonder why,” I mumbled under my breath low enough so they couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t imagine a girl as pampered and sophisticated as Rhoda gnawing and smacking on neckbones like we had. I was surprised that she had eaten the corn bread and turnip greens.
“I heard she threatened to cut a white teacher’s throat last year,” Mr. Boatwright said quickly, nodding and fanning his face with a newspaper. “She’ll wind up in either a room in the state penitentiary or a room at Scary Mary’s place one of these days and start takin’ advantage of men. No wonder Scary Mary like her so much. You seen the way that little hussy was swingin’ them little narrow hips of hers, Sister Goode?”
“Just beggin’ to get herself raped.” Muh’Dear sighed and shook her head.
“What were you doing looking at her hips, Mr. Boatwright?” I asked under my breath.
“What you say?” he grunted, then belched.
“Nothing,” I whimpered. I couldn’t get to my room fast enough.
CHAPTER 20
About two weeks after Rhoda’s first visit to my house I accompanied her to her house, where we had planned to study.
She left me in the living room going through her records while she went to the kitchen to get me some of the peanut candy she had made the night before.
“You heard the new Beatles song?” It was Jock talking. I whirled around to see him walking into the room smiling. Fresh scabs ran the length of his face on both sides. There was a Band-Aid on his chin. I knew he got into a lot of fights so the scabs and the Band-Aid did not surprise me.
I looked at him, stabbing myself in the chest with my finger. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his smile gone. “Rhoda told me you’re a big Beatles fan, too.”
“I am. Do you like them?”
“They’re all right.” He let out a short chuckle and waved his hand. “I think they’re more for girls though. And white kids. I’m into Motown.” He turned on the stereo and put on an album. “Where’s Rhoda?” he asked, looking around the room, snapping his fingers to Marvin Gaye’s latest.
“She went to get some of that candy she made,” I told him. I was nervous. I kept looking toward the door, praying that Rhoda would return before I started sweating through my cheap blouse.
Just then an elderly, heavyset white woman in a plaid nightgown entered the room, walking with a cane.
“Jock, did you—” She stopped and looked at me leaning over the stereo with an album in my hand. “Whose little nigger