Kizzy Ann Stamps (2 page)

Right into the sweep of Frank Charles’s scythe.

The cut went from the tip of my right eye to the corner of my smile, and I know I looked a sight, because when my daddy pulled me up, he had turned ashy. Frank Charles fainted on the spot, and Shag started barking at everybody. Daddy says she was trying to get us to help me. I remember being carried faster than I’d ever believed Daddy could go across a field of broken cornstalks — we flew. I know Shag was beside us, because I had no control over my hands — they were hanging limp by my daddy’s legs — and I could feel Shag’s delicate lick against my flesh every now and again. Step, step, step, lick, step, step, step, lick. I suppose it hypnotized me a bit, because I really don’t remember anything else till I woke up in my bed with old Doc Morris peering into my face.

He slid a finger next to my cheek, and I heard Shag growling. “Ain’t hurting her,” Doc Morris murmured. “Just looking for reflexes, pup.” I heard Shag settle beside my bed, and when they all left, Mama and Daddy patting my feet and trying not to cry, I felt Shag jump up and lie down beside me. I went to sleep with my fingers curled tight in her fur.

Mama says it is bad manners to stop in the middle of a story, so if she knew that last letter I sent you ended like that, in the middle, she’d probably make me get a switch, but I’m not really sorry. I think the best stories are the ones that build suspense and make you wonder what happened next.

Did you wonder what happened to me next?

When I woke up, it was just getting light. I lay there, thinking back to the day before, and I was afraid to touch my cheek. But the Good Lord says you got to meet your problems head-on, so I eased up out of my bed and walked on shaky legs to the sliver of looking glass we have in the hall. (My granny says it is pure vanity what makes my mama hang up a piece of mirror to look on herself, but Mama still hung it up and looks on it every day.)

I turned my head back and forth and saw a huge bandage covering my cheek. There was dried blood in my hair, and the edges of the bandage were dark and stained. I was surprised because I didn’t feel a thing. I realized I felt nothing because of the painkiller. The whole side of my head had a heavy, weighted feeling. I got back in the bed and felt myself starting to shake all over.

Before you could say “jackrabbit,” Shag was coming back in, her toenails clicking across the floor. She eased up next to me, her warm, grassy breath surrounding me, her body pressing mine until I stopped my desperate shaking and fell back into dozing.

She was like that, by my side, for weeks as I healed, as my skin knit together and I came to terms with my future. She never slept in the room, but she was there most of every day. It was a sacrifice for Shag, I know, because working the farm is what she enjoys, but she stayed with me. I’d wake up to see her looking out the window, listening to the bellowing of the cows, and it was like her whole body was aching to go to them, yet she did not go. She’d turn her head back and lick my face, not quite touching the bandages, knowing that wasn’t allowed, but telling us both she was tending me, she was working here, working me instead of the farm animals. Little by little, she made me leave my bed, herded me out of my blankets, forced me out of my carved-out pillow space. When friends or gawkers came by, she nestled over against the wall where I liked to rest my injured cheek and pushed me to face them, to look at them head-on, to get the stares over and done with, but always with her to lean on, always with her support.

Mama says it was the most important work that dog has ever done.

Daddy says, “That there is some kind of dog.”

He’s got that right.

One time, during my healing, I watched outside my window when my brother, James, and his best friend, Cabbie Simpson, went through a ritual to become blood brothers, pricking their fingers and mixing their blood up. I thought I might do the same with Shag. Then she would have a scar, too, and she would be my sister. I called her to my bed, and she came, edging up beside me. She put her paw in my lap, as I asked her to, and I rubbed it, smoothed it.

She began to gently lick my scar for me, because by then it had scarred up. I think she sensed that we were . . . what? Exchanging in some way? Looking out for each other? She began to sniff my scar, too, sniff my hairline, then lay down and fell asleep. Shag goes through her life depending on her sense of smell, you know. Dogs have to. So even though I
thought
I was thinking about cutting us, she knew I really wasn’t. Because she smelled that she could trust me. She knows the smell of trust.

So we’re not sisters by blood after all. We’re just us.

I have to say one more thing before Daddy takes this to the mailbox. I cannot believe I am writing all of this to you. And more amazing, I cannot really believe you are reading it and writing back. It is stranger to me than Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy used to be. . . . It just feels so good to say some things I’ve been wanting to say for so long, things I didn’t even really know wanted saying.

Miss Anderson, I am so sorry you’ve never had a dog. What a disappointment for you that your father had allergies. If you would like, sometime, you can meet my Shag, if you want to. It isn’t the same as having your own, of course. I’m glad you had Mr. Boxster, even though turtles aren’t as good as dogs. James had a turtle once, but I dropped him and he died. I didn’t mean to, but when I picked him up, he kept moving his legs, and it felt so nasty, the way his legs felt against my fingers, I let go, and even though I was only three, he fell from my eyeball height to the floor. That isn’t any small-potatoes height when you are a turtle, I guess. I suppose his little innards couldn’t take the drop. We buried him.

So now you won’t be surprised when you meet me. I’ve told you just about everything there is to tell, I think. My scar is sizable, I suppose. People do stare. And it aches plenty when the weather socks in. Mama calls me Moon Child, because the scar is shaped like a crescent moon. Sometimes, when people hear Mama call me that, they look askance, like they think that is horrible, but I think it is special. It seems like a bond between us, somehow, that she turned what many people think of as my tragedy into a special name between us.

I admit, though, I don’t like it when folks stare. Most of the folks around here know me and have seen that scar, so you’d think that would just be that, but scars on your face seem to be hard to turn away from. I feel hot when they’re staring, and I can’t keep my eyes from turning down to the ground. I get mad at myself for looking down. What do I have to look down about? Why do I have to feel ashamed? I was doing honest work. It wasn’t my fault that Frank Charles hit my arm. It wasn’t my fault I was being neighborly to a family that doesn’t even help mine — that old Mr. Feagans is too mean to help black people but takes help from anybody when his crops need pulling in! It wasn’t my fault.

What will probably be harder for you to turn away from more than my scar is the attitude I have, the one that Mrs. Warren says needs “serious adjustment.” She has been my one and only teacher so far, but I figure you will find me as trying as she does.

When I came to our schoolhouse, I was six years old and tiny. Mrs. Warren explained to us that in your school you have actual classrooms for different grades. We just have the one room, so everybody is in the same room. Mrs. Warren put me in the front row — where everybody starts — and then you move back by rows depending on how smart you show yourself to be, by how much you know. So you can have older kids sitting in the front row with the littlest kids — it doesn’t matter. It took me only half a day to get my rightful place two rows back, even if I was just six years old. I knew letters and numbers (I read everything I can get my hands on), and I could add, subtract, and read whole parts of the Bible, including several psalms. (I can do
all
the psalms now, but some of those words are killers when you’ve just started reading. King David knew some powerful complicated words. I admit that the Bible is pretty much the only book at my house because of Granny Bits, and there’s lots of times when I’m bitten by the reading bug, so you see why I could already read whole parts of the Bible when I started school.)

’Course, it wasn’t but an hour into the day when I was sent out to get my first switch. I’d done what Mrs. Warren would not allow — I’d interrupted her and asked “Why?”

Even back then at six, I could tell that a part of Mrs. Warren was downright excited to have a student ask anything. But she had forty-two students on days when everybody came, and she would have
order
in her classroom, let me tell you. So you didn’t interrupt, and if you had questions you had two options — write them for her to answer later or look it up yourself. But she really wanted you to do it yourself. I do look things up — I really like to find out stuff for myself — but there are times I don’t want to wait. I want to know NOW!

We didn’t have reference books in our classroom. Do you have reference books in your room? Maybe even encyclopedias? I love encyclopedias — you can learn all manner of stuff collected right in one place! That could be one good thing about integrated schools, if I could see and use some reference books in class.

For now I go to Miss Anne Spencer’s library near downtown Lynchburg. I know I told you she was a poet. She must love words aplenty — writing them, reading them, and surrounding herself with them in every way. Only white folks can use the city library — well, of course you know that, but it bears saying because what I am going to say next is so amazing. Miss Anne (we call her Miss Anne as a sign of respect, even though she is married and has children) has been inside of the white library once — I don’t know if she was allowed in somehow or she just sneaked — and she says it is a building full of light, books, and knowing.

Her family’s house, which is where our library is located, is dark in the rooms where she keeps the books, so they’ll stay in good shape for longer. She has her life going on in that house amid the books. It’s a busy place, a tumble of life and knowledge, fun and facts. So it may not be light, but it is a place of books and knowing.

I’d like the light, though.

I have a lot to tell you, so I went and got more paper! (By the way, I like how our letters are crossing each other in the mail — this way it isn’t just straight answering each other’s questions — we had pen pals once, from a class all the way over in Campbell County, and my pen pal had about as much imagination as could be in Shag’s toenail! All she could do was answer a question, then ask the same question back at me. It was like talking to a wall. This way is much better. I never know what you will say to me, and I’m betting you likely never know what I will say to you.)

Today Shag and I went into the woods to round up kindling. It’s a job that needs doing every so often, and it was a good way to get out of helping with the garden, which is flat-out hot this time of year.

Shag likes work such as this. She herds me toward big piles of sticks, which makes my time more useful. I create big, big piles and then guide my brother to them with his wheelbarrow. He’ll gather them, pile by pile, and we’ll have kindling for the winter.