They shook hands, and Hazel said, “Goodbye and good luck.”
“Goodbye, Hazel.”
She waited on the sidewalk until his car reached the corner, then she waved to him and Gordon waved back, very gaily.
Though she had a premonition that she’d never see him again, she wasn’t depressed at the prospect of losing a good job with a pleasant boss. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that she mightn’t have been so eager to help Gordon get away if he hadn’t been taking Ruby with him.
She stood on the small roofless porch reluctant to go inside and face the questions of Josephine and Ruth. A mockingbird flew up out of the pyracantha bush. Though the berries were barely beginning to show orange, the birds had already been at them. She resolved now, as she did every year, to save the berries for Christmas decoration by screening them with nets, but she knew perfectly well that by Christmas the bush would look as it always did. The red berries would be crushed and half-eaten, showing their yellowish pulp, like ruined immature apples, and every tiny leaf would be partly nibbled to its spine by snails and beetles. Even if she could save the bush from the birds it was hard to wash the beetles off before bringing the berries into the house. The beetles hid and clung, and only after they’d been in the house for a day or two would they abandon the berries and seek the bright yellow patches in the slipcover of the davenport. Motionless and rapt, they would sit absorbing the color. They never returned to the berries, and they never went anywhere else in the house.
The mockingbird came back and began to squawk insults at her from the porch railing.
A teenaged girl was coming up the street on a bicycle, riding very slowly, wobbling from side to side to keep her balance. She had long black hair that danced in a frenzy around her head with every gust of wind. Perched on the carrier behind her was a boy of five or six, hanging on to the girl’s waist and holding his legs out in the air to avoid interfering with the girl’s pedaling. In the basket at the front sat a fat sunburned baby with a soother in his mouth. Every time the bicycle wobbled the baby lurched to one side, but he didn’t make a sound, either because he didn’t want to lose the soother, or because he was enjoying the ride. The girl paid no attention to the baby or the boy behind her. Like the captain of a well-run ship, she seemed to assume that they each knew their places and would perform their duties.
The bicycle zigzagged again, and Hazel started down the porch steps and called out, “Aren’t you afraid he’ll fall?”
The girl stared at Hazel suspiciously for a moment. Then she applied the brakes and put her left foot down on the road. Simultaneously, as if from long habit, the boy put his left foot on the road, and slid off the carrier. “I didn’t hear what you said, lady.”
“I was just wondering if the baby would fall when you’re going so slow and wobbly like that.”
“He won’t fall,” the girl said flatly, blinking her dark eyes at the baby. “I got him tied in. Anyway, I’m only going slow because I’m looking for something. I can ride perfect, without hands even.”
“And backwards, and standing on the seat,” the boy added.
“My goodness,” Hazel said. “I never even heard of that.”
“Connie can do it,” the boy said. “Go on, Connie, do it for her.”
Connie hesitated, torn between the desire to show off and the desire to appear sophisticated. “Naw,” she said. “That’s baby stuff, and Pop wouldn’t like it anyway.” She explained to Hazel, “It’s my pop’s bicycle.”
“He goes to work on it,” the boy said. “He’s a gardener.”
“A landscape gardener,” the girl corrected him with a frown.
“I wouldn’t know the difference,” Hazel said.
“There’s lots of difference. You get more money if you’re landscape.”
The soother fell out of the baby’s mouth and he let out a howl of rage. The girl glanced at Hazel with some contempt. “See? I told you. He’s yelling because he thinks the ride’s over.” She picked the soother up off the road, wiped the dirt off on her blouse and popped it back into the baby’s mouth. “He’s not afraid of falling, even if he could. Which he can’t. Are you, Bingo?”
Bingo rolled his eyes and Hazel laughed. “He’s very cute.”
“He’s called Bingo because my mother was at a Bingo game just before he was born, only his real name’s Truman.” The girl added, with infinite scorn, “My parents haven’t the faintest idea how to name children.”
“Is that right.”
“I wouldn’t dream of using my real name at school. It’s Consuela, but I just call myself Connie, Consuela sounds so foreignish. If I just call myself Connie, people think my real name is Constance which stinks too, only at least it sounds as if I was born in this country. Which I was.”
“We all was,” the boy said. “My mother, too.”
“His name’s Vicente,” Connie said, with a worldly shrug. “Only he’s not old enough yet to realize how awful it is.”
“I do so,” the boy protested.
“If you realize now when you’re only six, just think how much more you’re going to realize when you’re nearly sixteen.”
The boy hung his head under the weight of this future, and began to shuffle his feet in the dust. Connie glanced at Hazel as if she wasn’t certain whether to continue the conversation or not. Then she said curtly, “Come on, Vin,” and she and the boy took their places on the bicycle simultaneously.
It wasn’t until they had moved a couple of yards ahead that Hazel recognized the skunk tail hanging from the carriage, and the reflector that spelled out “Watch My Speed.” She called out, and the bicycle stopped again, and the boy and girl turned their heads at exactly the same time and with equal suspicion.
“Maybe I can help,” Hazel said. “What are you looking for?”
“A hedge clipper,” Connie answered. “My pop lost it and it cost five ninety-five.”
“Enough for one hundred and nineteen ice cream cones, Pop said,” the boy added.
“That’s not counting tax,” Connie said severely. “If we don’t find it on the road, Pop said to go to Mr. Anderson’s house, 2124 the number is.”
“That’s my house.”
Connie blinked. “I know.”
“You can come in the yard and look around if you like.”
“Pop said to look up and down the road first.”
“It would probably be picked up by now if he lost it on the road,” Hazel said. “He may have left it at my house, I’ll go and see. Do you want to come inside and wait?”
“I’ll come inside,” Connie said, flashing a look at the boy. “Vin can ride Bingo up and down the street.”
“He can come inside too,” Hazel said quickly. “He doesn’t look big enough to sit on the seat and reach the pedals.”
“You don’t have to sit on the seat to ride a bicycle. Go on, Vin, show the lady.”
Vin obliged.
“See?” Connie said, and Hazel admitted that she saw and the two of them went into the house.
The front room was empty but it had the air of having just been abandoned at the approach of company.
“Sit down, Connie,” Hazel said.
“I’d just as soon stand. I like to stand, I do it all the time.”
She stood along the wall with her hands behind her back. She felt too sophisticated to stare at the furniture with the crude curiosity of a child, the way Vin would have done. She narrowed her eyes and gazed out of their corners in a manner meant to indicate a bored indifference. It was the expression she used at school when one of the teachers asked her a question she couldn’t answer. She merely lifted her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes to show that she didn’t care but that she certainly would know the answer if she did care.