The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I’d killed a man.
That’s a heavy burden for a girl to hang on to, but it didn’t surprise me so much to have that trouble come in the summer time. Every bad thing that ever happened to me seemed to happen in those long months.
The summer I turned five, Granny Rose died of a heart attack during the Independence Day fireworks. The summer I turned seven, my dog Skippy ran away with a tramp who jumped the train to Baltimore. And the summer I turned eleven, a drought took the corn crop and we couldn’t have any corn for my birthday, which is what I’d always done because my favorite food was corn from Daddy’s field, boiled in a big pot.
To top it off, here in the South, summers are long and hot and sticky. They drag on and on, making slow things seem slower and bad things seem worse.
The fear and guilt of the summer of 1932 still clings to my memory like the wet heat of southern Virginia. That year we had unbearable temperatures, and we had trouble, just that it was trouble of a different kind. It was the beginning of a time that taught me bad things can turn into good things, even though sometimes it takes a while for the good to come out.
The day I turned thirteen was one of those summer days when the air is so thick, you can see wavy lines above the tar on the rooftops. The kind of day when the sound of cicadas vibrates in your ears and everything smells like grass.
On that day, as Momma got ready for my birthday party, I told her that I wanted nothing to do with watermelon this year.
“We have some fine ones,” she told me. “Just don’t eat any.”
“But the boys will spit the seeds at us like they do all the time,” I said. “And they’ll hit me extra hard today since it’s my birthday.”
“I’ll tell them not to,” she said absentmindedly as she checked her recipe again with that squinched-up look she always got when trying to concentrate.
I knew I was only another argument or two from being scolded, but I tried again. “Those boys won’t listen to you.”
“Those boys will listen to me if they want to eat,” she replied before muttering something about needing a cup of oleo.
“They don’t even listen to Teacher at school, Momma.”
That last reply had done it, and I stepped back a ways as Momma picked up her wooden spoon and peered at me angrily, her free hand on her apron-covered hip. “Jessilyn Lassiter, I won’t have you arguin’ with me. Now get on out of this house before your jabberin’ makes me mess up my biscuits.”
I knew better than to take another chance with her, and I went outside to sit on my tree swing. If God wasn’t going to send us any breeze for my birthday, I was bound and determined to make my own, so I started pumping my legs to work up some speed. The breeze was slight but enough to give me a little relief.
I saw Gemma come out of the house carrying a big watermelon and a long knife, and I knew she had been sent out by her momma to cut it up. Gemma’s momma helped mine with chores, and her daddy worked in the fields. Sometimes Gemma would help her momma with things, and it always made me feel guilty to see her doing chores that I should have been doing. So I dug my feet into the dry dirt below me to slow down and hopped off the swing with a long leap, puffing dust up all around me.
I wandered to the picnic table where Gemma was rolling the green melon around to find just the right spot to cut into. “I guess this is for my party.”
“That’s what your momma says.”
“Are you comin’?”
“My momma never lets me come to your parties.”
“So? Ain’t never a time you can’t start somethin’ new. It’s my party, anyways.”
“It ain’t proper for the help to socialize with the family’s friends, Momma says.”
“Your momma and daddy have been workin’ here for as long as I can remember. You’re as close to family as we got around here, as I see it. I ain’t got no grandparents or nothin’.”
Gemma scoffed at me with a sarcastic laugh. “When was the last time you saw one brown girl and one white girl in the same