less frightening than predicted, commitment to the wall project faded. The only section of Ballard’s Wall that made it to the full ten-foot goal was the portion that divided Leaning Tree from downtown. The rest of the proposed wall ended up as isolated piles of rocks, creating a dotted dividing line through town.
That part of the story of Leaning Tree was pretty well accepted as fact by everyone. Plainview’s children were taught that bit of local history in school, with the aesthetic aspects of the wall replacing much of the racial politics. But the history taught in school and what black children were taught at home took off in radically different directions at the subject of the naming of Leaning Tree.
In school, they learned that early settlers called the southeast area of town Leaning Tree because of a mysterious natural phenomenon—something about the position of the river and the hills—that caused the trees to lean toward the west.
At their dinner tables, the children of Leaning Tree were told that there was no mystery at all to the crooked trees. Their parents told them that, because downtown was on higher ground, Ballard’s Wall cast a shadow over the black area of town. The trees there needed sunlight, so they bent. Every tree that didn’t die in the shadow of that wall grew tall, top-heavy, and visibly tilted. A name was born.
Barbara Jean’s house was on the worst street in the worst neighborhood in Leaning Tree. Her street was only eight blocks from Clarice’s house, only five from Odette’s. But as they turned onto Barbara Jean’s block, Clarice surveyed her surroundings and thought that this place might as well have been on the far side of the moon for all the resemblance it held to the landscaped, middle-class order of her street or the quaint charm of Odette’s old farmhouse, with its fanciful octagonal windows and scalloped picket fence, courtesy of Odette’s carpenter father. In this neighborhood, people lived in tiny boxes with warped and splintering siding, peeling paint, and no gutters. Noisy, nappy-headed children ran naked over lawns that were mostly dirt accented with patches of weeds.
Barbara Jean’s house was the best on her block, but that wasn’t saying much. It was a little brown shack whose paint had faded to a chalky tan color. This house was only better than its neighbors because, unlike every other house on the street, the glass in all of its windows seemed to be intact.
Odette climbed up the two steps from the walkway and rang the bell. No one answered, and Clarice said, “Let’s just leave it on the stoop and get going.” But Odette started banging on the door with her fist.
A few seconds later, the door opened just wide enough for Clarice and Odette to see a big man with red eyes and blotchy, grayish-brown skin staring at them. His nose was flat and crooked, as if it had been broken a few times. He had no discernible neck, and most of his face was occupied by an unusually wide mouth. His shirt strained against his belly to stay fastened. He topped it all off with hair that had been straightened and lacquered until it resembled a plastic wig from an Elvis Presley Halloween costume.
He squinted against the sunlight and said, “Y’all want somethin’?” His words whistled through a gap between his front teeth.
Odette lifted the box and said, “My mama sent this for Barbara Jean.”
The man opened the door fully then. He stretched his mouth into a smile that caused a prickly sensation to travel across the back of Clarice’s neck and gave her the feeling he was about to take a bite out of her. She was relieved that they could finally hand off the box and get the hell out of this neighborhood. But the man stepped back into the dark beyond the doorway and said, “Come on in.” Then he yelled, “Barbara Jean, your friends is here to see you.”
Clarice wanted to stand on the front stoop and wait for Barbara Jean to come outside, but Odette was already walking through the front door and waving at her to follow. When they stepped into the front room, they saw Barbara Jean looking surprised and embarrassed to have two girls from school she hardly knew walking into her house.
Barbara Jean wore her funeral clothes, a too-tight black skirt and a clinging, shiny black blouse. Shameless, Clarice thought. During the walk to Barbara Jean’s, Clarice had admitted to herself that