"Hey White Girl!"

Hey white girl! Stop walking on my street!

Yeah! You smell like pee-pee!

*

Sharalynn waited over-long in her hiding place by the thick hedges of a house near the corners of Marston and Oakland.  Having run there, her breathing was just now becoming regular.  She was on her knees, the handle of her book-bag still hooked inside her elbow while her heart pounded loudly in the aftermath of the boisterous part of the afternoon.  Peeking between two limbs of scratchy green she could see the muted colors of Sukie and Leslie’s coats still stalled in front of Mrs. Metrey’s house.  Sharalynn wondered why Leslie did not join her in their shared secret spot.  She rubbed a finger soothingly to her front gums while inhaling the smell of fallen leaves just beginning to rot.  A fat water bug strove to climb the mountains of mud clots that Sharalynn thought about puncturing with her thumb but changed her mind.  She felt dastardly:  2nd grade was turning out to be not-so-friendly for her and her friend, Leslie.

“Hey white girl---what you doing in those bushes?”

“I’m not white, I’m peach!” Sharalynn shouted in the direction of the teenage-boy-voice who had spotted her.  It seemed like the bushes were talking and that made the boy laugh but he was on his way somewhere important and didn’t have time to stop.  “See you later, Peaches!” he tossed the reply over his shoulder at Sharalynn who caught it with a gulp of surprise.

At school she knew some kids had nicknames like Junior, Candy, Neicy, Junebug, CeeCee and Peewee.  Teachers were not members of the club who could invent, call, or respond to nicknames.  Teachers always pronounced proper names aloud from their roll books, a red ink pen at-the-ready for marking someone absent, tardy, good, or bad:  Stanley Bronwell, Jr..  Candace Cummings.  Denise Espers.  Henry Flynn.  Cynthia Robinson.  Karo Abernathy.  

In the house where she lived with her three generations of family, Sharalynn Richmond was always called Sharalynn---her mother saying it breathily as though it was the most beautiful, ethereal name in the world.  But, then again, if her mother was in a bad mood she pronounced the Sh real hard like a curse word, then spit out the remaining syllables without a hint of music.

“Peaches.”  Sharalynn whispered to herself.

Then she heard Mrs. Metrey say “Come on, you two,” to Leslie and Sukie.  As Sharalynn stepped out onto the sidewalk a short limb from the hedges grazed her cheek.

Sukie was the first to see Sharalynn and it made her feel as proud as if she had actually rescued her from the taunts of Teddy, Wynn, and Sonya and the pebbles they had thrown; and how the one boy---dashing fast like a gazelle---had managed to stick his hands up under the coats of both Leslie and Sharalynn and yanked-up the hems of their skirts to reveal their underwear to the neighborhood.  Drying tears streaked Sukie’s face and a little ribbon of snot waved from her nostril.  “Look!” she gave Sharalynn a short-toothed smile and ran ahead to pat her her sister’s friend on the shoulder “Are you okay?”

Leslie’s grouchy scowl gave way to a tattered sigh.

“Oh, Lord,”  said Mrs. Metrey “I guess I’m going to have to walk you home, too.”  Sharalynn nodded her head.