We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg Page B

itself, but we couldn’t have it, we couldn’t afford it. There would be vet bills and cat food, litter and a cat box—we couldn’t afford it. I put the cat back out and it ran away, which hurt me even more—had it not understood my intentions? Couldn’t it at least have hung around in the yard and let me keep it that way? I would have snuck scraps out. I would have brushed it every day. Callie, I would have called it, and I would have found blue ribbon for its neck.
    The next morning Peacie had come into my bedroom with a small wicker basket holding a stuffed animal cat and her three kittens. “What’s this?” I’d asked, and she’d said, “Some foolishness somebody give me that I do not want. You can have it.” I stared at the basket but did not reach out for it. Peacie put it on my bed and walked out of the room. I never did thank her for it, and I knew full well that no one had given it to her—she’d bought it for me. I still had it, buried somewhere in my closet. I had never told my mother; I didn’t want Peacie to get the credit. Peacie had not told her, either; she didn’t want my mother to feel bad for not being able to buy me such things. When Peacie once caught me brushing the little kittens, I’d said I was getting them ready to give them away. “Best brush the rats’ nests out your own hair, you be late for school,” she’d said. I’d felt bad—I could see that she was hurt.
    “Just kidding,” I’d said. “I’m keeping them.”
    “I know that,” she’d said. “Fool.”
    LaRue pulled into a parking place and pointed to a mailbox at the end of the block. “You go mail the bills,” he said. “I’ll start loading the cart—we got a lot of things to buy. I be in aisle one.”
    I went to the mailbox and dutifully counted the letters. Five of five. Then, just as I was ready to drop them in, I pulled out the Red Cross envelope and held it up to the light. Ten dollars.
    It was a sign. Of course I was meant to take it. I dropped the other envelopes into the mailbox and shoved the Red Cross envelope into my pants pocket. Later I would walk to town and buy envelopes and stamps. I would sit at the picnic table near the ball field and address every one.
    LaRue and I filled a grocery cart high with supplies. Large jars of peanut butter and grape jelly, boxes of macaroni and egg noodles, cans of vegetables, big packages of baloney and American cheese. Detergent and dish soap and scouring pads and rubbing alcohol. Potato chips, but not Lay’s, we never got to have Lay’s, we always had to have the crummy kind that did not have enough salt or crunch. Two loaves of white bread, a dozen eggs. Cereal. Packages of hamburger and chicken wings. Garlic—my mother loved garlic bread with spaghetti. White sugar and brown sugar. Margarine and lard. I watched the cashier ring up the purchases, and so did LaRue—once he’d caught an error, and I don’t know who was more proud, me or him.
    On the way home, I asked if he was taking a trip.
    “Who told you that?” he asked.
    “I don’t remember. But are you?”
    His face grew serious. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
    “Where to?”
    He thought for a while, so long, in fact, that I repeated the question.
    “Do you know what this summer is?” he asked finally.
    “Nineteen sixty-four?”
    “Yes,” he said. “It’s 1964, and it’s Freedom Summer.”
    “What do you mean?” I was impatient for him to tell me where he was going. It wouldn’t be for long, because he never left Peacie for long. But it might be to somewhere exciting. New Orleans, perhaps. The Negroes liked New Orleans. It was full of music and booze—they liked that.
    “We got a lot of things going on this summer in Mississippi,” LaRue said. “We got a lot of people coming from up north, lot of ’em college students, trying to help the Negro vote.”
    I thought of the white man I’d seen with Clovis in the drugstore. But they weren’t trying to vote. That was something