Cheyenne Madonna. Eddie MDiv Chuculate
and Butch watched her jog home, her yellow shirt flashing through the fields.
“Whatcha been doin’ hoss?” his grandpa said when he came in the door. “Catch anything?”
“Naw. Just some little ones. Threw ’em back.”
Jordan put his rod-and-reel and tacklebox in the closet and brought out his baseball, glove, and wooden bat.
“So, who was your little fishin’ buddy?” Grandpa said.
“No one,” Jordan said quickly.
“Got you a little black girlfriend, huh?”
He felt ashamed, then mad, then kicked the door open and stomped out on the porch.
He heard Grandpa laughing. “Whee!”
“Here now, Zeke,” his grandma said, “leave him alone.”
Jordan refused to come back into the house and waited on them until they came out to take him to practice. He stared off toward YoYo’s house, which squatted like a little fortress in the pasture. He wondered what black folks did in their houses all day.
“Gonna hit some homers for us today?” Grandpa said on the way to the truck. It was his way of apologizing.
“Of course,” Jordan said, laughing. It was his way of accepting.
The next day Jordan was lying on his bed under the fan when he heard a rare knocking at the door. He went into the kitchen to see who it was, but Granny was already there.
“Is Jordan here?” YoYo was asking her through the screen. Startled, Jordan began to turn around and retreat, but Granny said, “Jordan! Come here. You have a visitor.”
“Hey, YoYo,” he said, acting properly surprised.
“What are you doing? I thought I’d come by and say hi.”
“Just reading,” Jordan said, and held up an old baseball book. “What are you doing?”
Granny cut off her reply. “Well ask her in. Don’t just stand there talking through the screen door.”
Jordan unlocked the door and held it open. This was absolutely not what he wanted. She looked intriguing, new, and fresh now in her red tank-top, but he wanted to deal with her alone, not in front of his grandparents. She shook hands formally with Granny.
“My name is Yolanda Ledbetter. I’m very pleased to meet you, mam.”
“I’m Florine Tigertail and that’s my husband, Zeke,” Granny said, nodding towards Grandpa, who sat in his chair smoking and holding the newspaper wide open.
“Howdy,” he said without looking.
“Here, sit down,” Granny said, pulling a chair from the table. “Jordan, make her a glass of Kool-Aid. There’s some in the icebox.”
“I’m just fine, mam, thank you very much. That won’t be necessary.”
Jordan stopped on his way to the icebox.
“Oh, go ahead,” Granny said. “Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.”
They all sat at the small table. It had a red-and-white checkerboard pattern. Jordan stared at it, moving the salt and pepper shakers around to different squares.
“So, is your family moving from out of town?” Granny said.
“No, mam. We’ve been in Muskogee all our lives, but my father bought the property just recently.”
“I see,” Granny said.
Jordan heard the paper rustling in the front room. He opened his book and began reading about Pete Rose again.
“Put the book down, Jordan, that’s rude,” Granny said.
Jordan closed it and put it on the table. He drank from his glass. Grandpa glanced at him from behind his cat-eyed reading glasses. Yolanda picked up the book and began flipping through it.
“My father is a dentist and my mother is a teacher,” YoYo said. Jordan would have liked to stare at her more, but he didn’t want his grandparents to see him staring at her.
“That’s fantastic,” Granny said. “Well, I want to welcome you all to the neighborhood, as they say, even though it’s not much of a neighborhood.” She laughed and got up and went to the wooden cabinets Zeke had made when they moved in, replacing the bare open cupboards.
While Granny rummaged in the cabinet Yolanda slid the book opened to Jordan, nonchalantly pointing to the margin with a long red-painted fingernail. “FAWN IS A NIGGER,” stared back at him accusingly. It might as well have been painted on the side of a barn. Jordan felt his face flush. He couldn’t have been more embarrassed. He had scrawled those words after he’d had an argument with his sister last year. He’d forgotten all about it. This was fast becoming the worst day of his life.
Florine put two big Kerr jars of okra and potatoes she had canned earlier in the summer on the table. “Here, give these to your parents,” she said.
“I sure will, mam, and I’m speaking for the whole family when I say thank you very much.” YoYo took her glass to the sink, dumped the ice, and rinsed it. She shook hands again with Granny and made for the door.
“Jordan, don’t you want to come outside with me?”
He thought she’d be mad at him and might even try to beat him up. He glanced at Granny.
“Well go on, Jordan. Get out of the house for a while.”
Jordan got up and moped to the door.
“See you again soon Mrs. Tigertail,” YoYo said.
“Yepsytoosky,” Granny said.
With Butch following, Yolanda and Jordan walked silently through the front yard out of the gate and onto the pickup trail which led to the pond. They stopped.
“I’m sorry about the book,” Jordan said. “You know, for what it said.”
“What’d it say?”
“You know.”
“I know I know but I want you to say it.”
“It said, ‘Fawn is a nigger.’”
“There now, OK,” YoYo said. “Apology accepted.”
They shook hands.
“Now, let’s race.”
The crisis over, Jordan felt jovial, clownish. “What? Are you crazy? You want to race me? I’m the fastest player on my team.”
So! You ain’t nothin’ but a pup. You ain’t fast. I be like Evelyn Ashford and shit.”
“Who’s that?”
“Never mind. Wanna race or not?” she said, then adopted a deep mimicking voice and pumped her fist at him. “We gonna get it on, ’cause we don’t get along.” She threw playful jabs at him like a boxer.
“OK then,” Jordan said. “To where?”
“Through that gate right there that goes to that pond.” It was about fifty yards away.
They stood side by side, eyeing the pond. Jordan’s arms hung loosely at his sides and his knees were bent slightly, as if he were leading off a base and preparing to steal. YoYo assumed a sprinter’s stance, bent over, balancing her weight on her fingers and kicking her legs out behind her like a horse. Jordan had never seen such a pose.
“What are you doing? I thought you wanted to race.”
“Just say one, two, three, go,” she said.
“OK. One, two, three, go!”
At “go!” YoYo broke, stayed low for a few strides, then slowly straightened.