The Little Friend

Harriet spent the afternoon reading on the front porch. Ida was washing clothes, as she always did on Monday afternoons; her mother and sister were asleep. She was nearing the end of King Solomon’s Mines when Allison, barefoot and yawning, tottered outside, in a flowery dress that looked like it belonged to their mother. With a sigh, she lay down on the pillowed porch swing and pushed herself with the tip of her big toe to set herself rocking.

Immediately, Harriet put down the book and went to sit by her sister.

“Did you have any dreams during your nap?” she asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“If you don’t remember, then maybe you did.”

Allison didn’t answer. Harriet counted to fifteen and then—more slowly this time—politely repeated what she had just said.

“I didn’t have any dreams.”

“I thought you said you didn’t remember.”

“I don’t.”

“Hey,” said a nasal little voice bravely from the sidewalk.

Allison raised herself up on her elbows. Harriet—extremely annoyed at the interruption—turned and saw Lasharon Odum, the grimy little girl whom Mrs. Fawcett had pointed out earlier at the library. She was gripping the wrist of a little white-haired creature of indeterminate sex, in a stained shirt that did not quite cover its stomach, and a baby in plastic diapers was straddled on her opposite hip. Like little wild animals, afraid to come too close, they stood back and watched with flat eyes that glowed eerie and silvery in their sunburnt faces.

“Well, hello there,” said Allison, standing up and moving cautiously down the steps to greet them. Shy as Allison was, she liked children—white or black, and the smaller the better. Often she struck up conversations with the dirty ragamuffins who wandered up from the shacks by the river, though Ida Rhew had forbidden her to do this. “You not going to think they so cute when you come down with the lice or the ringworm,” she said.

The children watched Allison warily, but stood their ground as she approached. Allison stroked the baby’s head. “What’s his name?” she said.

Lasharon Odum did not answer. She was looking past Allison, at Harriet. Young as she was, there was something pinched and old about her face; her eyes were a ringing, primitive ice gray, like a wolf cub’s. “I seen you at the libery,” she said.

Harriet, stony-faced, met her gaze but did not reply. She was uninterested in babies and small children, and agreed with Ida that they had no business venturing up uninvited into the yard.

“My name is Allison,” Allison said to her. “What’s yours?”

Lasharon fidgeted.

“Are these your brothers? What are their names? Hmm?” she said, squatting on her heels to look into the face of the smaller child, who was holding a library book by its back cover, so that the open pages dragged on the sidewalk. “Will you tell me what your name is?”

“Go on, Randy,” said the girl, prodding the toddler.

“Randy? Is that your name?”

“Say yesm, Randy.” She jostled the baby on her hip. “Say, That there’s Randy and I’m Rusty,” she said, speaking for the baby in a high-pitched, acidic little voice.

“Randy and Rusty?”

Nasty and Dirty, more like it, thought Harriet.

With scarcely concealed impatience, she sat on the swing tapping her foot as Allison patiently coaxed all their ages out of Lasharon and complimented her for being such a good babysitter.

“And will you let me see your library book?” Allison was saying to the little boy called Randy. “Hmn?” She reached for it but, coyly, he turned himself away from her with his whole body, grinning infuriatingly.

“It aint hisn,” said Lasharon. Her voice—though sharp, and richly nasal—was also dainty and clear. “It’s mine.”

“What’s it about?”

“Ferdinand the Bull.”

“I remember Ferdinand. He was the little fellow who liked to smell flowers instead of fight, wasn’t he?”

“You’re pretty, lady,” burst out Randy, who until this moment had said nothing. Excitedly, he swung his arm back and forth so the pages of the open book scrubbed against the sidewalk.

“Is that the right way to treat library books?” said Allison.

Randy, flustered, let the book drop altogether.

“You pick that up,” said his big sister, making as if to slap him.

Randy flinched easily from the slap and, aware that Allison’s eyes were on him, stepped backwards and began instead to swivel his lower body in an oddly lascivious and adult-looking little dance.

“Why don’t her say nothing?” said Lasharon, squinting past Allison at Harriet—who glowered at them from the porch.

Startled, Allison glanced back at Harriet.

“Is you her mama?”

Trash, thought Harriet, face burning.

She was rather enjoying Allison’s stuttering denial when all of a sudden Randy exaggerated his lewd little hula dance in an effort to wrench the attention back to himself.

“Man stoled Diddy’s car off,” he said. “Man from the Babdist church.”