Chapter 2

“Come on, don’t make me have to knock out your teeth get an answer, huh?” Carl said, eyeing her full, round breasts just barely covered by the blouse she held up against her womanly figure.

“Carl, Honey, toilet down here won’t quit running,” Ann called up the stairs.

“Miserable God damned cunt,” Carl thought, but called down that he’d be right there.

Tara took advantage of the brief respite and dressed in casual clothing quickly. Then she dropped all of her school clothing into the laundry hamper in the upstairs bathroom.

Over dinner, Tara told them she’d been elected as Homecoming Queen.

“Last time St. Peter and Paul won their Homecoming?” Carl said, face clouding over.

“Nineteen sixty eight, year Adam scored three touchdowns,” Tara recited.

“Then lost the next five in a row,” Carl smirked. “Well, your highness? What you think their chances are this year?”

“Going make it six in a row, I bet,” Tara agreed.

The next morning, Tara beat Carl outside and grabbed the Oakleaf Advertiser off the front lawn. Then she started up the percolator and brewed a pot of coffee while she read the news.

“Give me the Sports, huh?” her father grumbled, irked that, once again, Tara had managed to get the paper before him.

“Uh huh,” she agreed and slid the section to him.

She read the ‘Lifestyles’ section and smiled. Blazing Saddles was still playing at the Sweet Oak Cinema. She had seen the movie three times already, and each time was just as funny as the last. She wondered if Renee had seen the movie. She made a mental note of the times the film was playing that day, double checking that she was reading the Saturday times.

Carl gave her bottom a playful swat as she walked past.

“Daddy!” she squealed.

Before Tara could race out of the house, though, Ann delegated the chores Tara was to perform that day before she would be allowed to leave. Tara got busy, grateful that she had not been born a boy. Adam had always griped about having to do the yard work. Now it was Carl that griped about having to do the yard work.

After vacuuming, then raking the shag carpet in the living room, after sweeping them mopping the linoleum floors in the kitchen and both bathrooms, after folding the laundry, Tara was given a kiss by her mother. Tara raced through a shower, taking extra care to shave legs and underarms. Bernice Grattan had disavowed shaving and it turned Tara’s stomach to see Bernice’s hairy arm pits and stubbly legs when they showered after Physical Education class. Bernice was proud of the disgusting growth she sprouted and paraded around the locker room, flashing her pits.

“Looks like an SOS pad under them arms,” Tara muttered.

She dressed in a short sleeve knit top and some bell bottomed blue jeans and finally decided to put on her leather sandals. She had some dress shoes, but it was Saturday, not Sunday, so the sandals won.

“Hi Dad, bye Dad,” Tara said as she ran out of the house.

“Where’s she going?” Carl demanded.

“Out,” Ann shrugged, then pinched her nose. “You. Go take a shower.”

“Uh huh, after she already used up all the hot water?” Carl complained.

Tara retraced her route from the previous afternoon. Although it was only ten minutes away from her house, it was as if Tara had crossed some invisible line. The cars in Renee’s neighborhood were older. The houses were smaller. The yards were not as well-maintained.

Renee looked up from her homework when Nana gave a harsh knock at the door. She didn’t even have to look at Nana’s face to know that the fifty two year old woman was upset. When she wasn’t upset, she gave a light, almost playful rapping on the door. When she was angry, like now, it was a harsh rap.

“There some white girl here asking about you,” Nana barked, dark face twisted.

“What? Who?” Renee asked.

“What? How I know?” Nana barked.

“I’ll go see,” Renee said, getting up from her desk.

“Know I don’t like no white people coming around. They the devil, all of them,” Nana snarled, voice low.

She kept her voice low to keep the white girl from hearing her words. She had an intense dislike of white people, and an even more intense fear of white people. The whites had all the power.

Nanette Mills had experienced this first hand. She’d been a dishwasher at a diner, had worked hard to make money to help out her momma and her five younger brothers and sisters. One night, the cook, a white man had forced himself on her. She complained to the police, but the cook said she’d begged him for it. The police threatened to bring her in for filing a false police report and the owner fired her.

A few weeks later, as the cook walked from back door to his car, someone stabbed him in his groin. It was dark; he did not see who had stabbed him, removed his genitals.

The police did come and ask Nanette Mills about the incident. The frightened girl stammered and stuttered that she had no knowledge of the horrible fate the cook had suffered.

“We’ll be keeping our eye on you, hear?” the police chief threatened.

“You don’t need do that, I a good girl,” Nanette whimpered, eyes wide.

And as soon as the police left the house, Nanette smiled.

Her daughter was born seven months after the cook’s stabbing. Being half-white gave Georgia Mills no benefits, no privileges. She was treated as poorly as any other dark skinned person in America. Having the misfortune to be dark skinned in Texas, Georgia quickly learned to mistrust, fear the white man just as intensely as her mother feared and distrusted them. And having heard the story of her conception from her mother, having heard the details of the ordeal her mother had endured, when she was jumped outside of a bowling alley, Georgia did not even bother reporting the incident to the police.

Renee heard the stories, heard them over and over from Nana, from her momma. As a child, she too had a fear, a distrust of white people. Then some white people came to her school and administered some scholastic tests.

“Hi, Honey,” The white woman smiled at Renee as she completed her test while her classmates were still struggling with the first page of the four page test.

“Yes ma’am?” Renee asked, afraid she may have done something wrong.

“Can I see your test? You are finished, right?” the woman smiled warmly.

Renee silently handed the pages to the woman. She watched as the two white men and the white woman read through her test. The taller of the two men dug through a cardboard box and, smiling warmly, approached Renee.

“Miss Mills? Could you take this test?” the man asked, voice deep, resonant.

“Yes sir,” Renee answered, eyes wide with fear.

She struggled slightly with some of the problems, but did her best. By the second page of the three page test, though, she had figured out how to deduce the answers.

There was a chorus of groans when the second man called ‘Time!’ and made everyone pass up their tests. The woman quickly intercepted Renee’s test and again the three huddled over it.

“This next test? It’s ‘Language Skills’ and it’s very simple,” the woman said as the two men put papers in front of the students. “We just want you to read the word, then check the box that matches that word. The first one? Honest? You would check ‘Truthful,’ which is the same as ‘Honest,’ right?”

Renee squirmed in her seat. As she read through the test, she could feel the eyes of the three white people on her.

“All finished, Honey?” the woman smiled as Renee checked the last box on the far too easy test.

And suddenly, instead of going to George Washington Carver High School the following year, Renee Mills was attending Sacred Ascension High School. The three white people had selected her and two others from her school. The two males were now attending St. Peter and Paul High School. Slowly, her mistrust, her fear of whites slipped away.

But Renee never forgot that she was black. She may only be one quarter black, but she was still considered black.

“You gets that white girl out of my house,” Nana was still whispering hoarsely as Renee walked down the hall toward the living room.

“Hey,” Tara Derkelager smiled when Renee stepped into the living room.

“Hey girl,” Renee said. “Nana? This Tara; she go to my school.”

“How you doing?” Nana asked, false smile on her face.

“I’m well, ma’am, thank you,” Tara said. “And how are you, ma’am?”

“Oh I good, I good,” Nana said.

“A, So, uh, what you doing here?” Renee asked.

“I uh, you uh, you seen that movie, Blazing Saddles?” Tara asked, suddenly nervous.

“Blazing, no, it a Western?” Renee asked.

“No, well, yeah, but it’s so funny,” Tara enthused.

Renee turned and asked her Nana if she could go.

“What time it let out?” Nana demanded.

“First one starts at two, um, next one starts four fifteen, so about four, I think,” Tara said.

“You be home six, hear? I have dinner on that table six o’clock, bet you better be here you wants any, hear?” Nana said, squinting one eye at Renee.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Nana,” Tara said as she happily pulled Renee to the door of the small home.

“Oh yeah, they all smiles, they all ‘how you doing’ and minute you turns your backs on them?” Nana snarled hatefully as the door closed.

Tara chattered nonstop from driveway to parking lot. Renee couldn’t tell if the girl was really that excited about the movie, or if she was nervous.

They did get some strange looks, even one or two glares from other patrons of the theater. The two also garnered their fair share of male attention.

“Yes?” a bored looking woman asked through a metal grate.

“Two, Blazing Saddles please,” Tara called through the grate.

Tickets in hand, Tara dragged Renee to the concession stand and bought two boxes of popcorn.

“My mom makes popcorn at home,” Tara said as they waited for the ticket taker to tear their tickets in half.

“Then wouldn’t it be Mom corn?” Renee asked.

“Huh? Oh!” and Tara giggled.

“Anyway, she makes popcorn, but it’s never as good as you get here, I swear,” Tara said as they decided they’d sit all the way in the back.

Renee insisted they sit in the back; she didn’t want anyone behind them. When she was younger, she’d gone to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ at this theater and some people sitting behind her and Nana had thrown their popcorn at them. They’d complained bitterly about black people being allowed to go to the same movie as ‘good Christian, God-fearing people.’

The two girls sat and nibbled on their popcorn and waited for the lights to go down. They chatted in low tones about classmates, teachers, the things they had in common.

“Ugh! Bernice!” they both agreed, thinking of the hairy girl.

“Seen Tori shaved hers all off,” Renee observed, pointing to her crotch.

“Know why?” Tara giggled.

“No, think it’s kind of cute, though,” Renee said.

She pointed to her crotch again.

“Been thinking I’m going do that,” Renee said.

“Oh!” Tara let out a little yelp.

Then she blushed hotly. She was grateful the lights began to dim at that moment.

The movie was hilarious and the girls laughed and squealed and giggled together. Tara found many reasons to touch Renee throughout the movie.

Then afterward, there was the impatient, foot tapping, squirming wait for an available stall in the women’s room. They laughed when a woman stepped out of one stall and loudly announced, “Next?”

Tara and Renee met again, outside of the women’s room and pushed through the tinted glass doors. They spilled out of the far too chilly theater into the broiling Texas afternoon.

“Whew, I about froze to death in there,” Tara said.

“Oh, oh! Now, why Tori shave her…” Renee looked around, but no one was paying them any attention.

“…her pussy?” she whispered.

“Her boyfriend gave her crabs,” Tara giggled, eyes wide with delight.

“Nuh uh!” Renee gasped, scandalized. “You mean, she done it?”

Inside the van, both girls whistled as they gripped the scalding hot cranks and rolled the windows down. Then Renee looked around the van.