thought she would do or say something about it, but she only wiped it off with the hem of her tanktop, her bicep forming at the slight exertion.
“Y’all lives up there in that little white house?” she said. “With the garden in the back?”
Jordan looked over at the house. It looked impossibly small, square as a box with a neatly pointed roof. “Yeah.”
“What you do out here all summer?”
“Live, I guess.”
“We used to live in town,” YoYo said, “but Pops say I get in too much trouble in town. But all my people in town. Ain’t nobody out here.” She looked all around as if she were expecting to see someone or something. There was nothing except the pastures, clouds, blue sky, a line of trees behind them, and, beyond that, the three tall red-blinking radio towers of KMUS.
Just then he got a strike and reeled in a small bullhead catfish. Jordan carefully unhooked it – he’d been stabbed before by the stout sharp fins on either side of the fiat head – and held it up. It croaked breathlessly.
“You hear that!” Yolanda said incredulously, pointing at the fish, which arched and slapped its tail in Jordan’s hand. “It’s a talking fish!”
Jordan laughed and faked an underhand toss to her. She screamed and jumped back.
“I will knock a motherfucker out, motherfucker throw a talkin’ fish on me,” she said, glaring at him.
“Just playing,” Jordan said, and threw the fish back.
“You better be playing,” she said. “You know what’s good for your narrow ass.”
Jordan stretched and began collecting his stuff. “Well, I’ve got to go. I’ve got baseball practice.”
“All right then,” she said, and offered her hand for The Shake, then quickly took it back. “You been messin’ around with worms and fish and shit.” She paused. “Maybe I see you tomorrow.”
“OK.”
Jordan and Butch watched her jog home, her yellow shirt flashing through the fields.
“Whatcha been doin’ hoss?” his grandpa said when he came in the door. “Catch anything?”
“Naw. Just some little ones. Threw ’em back.”
Jordan put his rod-and-reel and tacklebox in the closet and brought out his baseball, glove, and wooden bat.
“So, who was your little fishin’ buddy?” Grandpa said.
“No one,” Jordan said quickly.
“Got you a little black girlfriend, huh?”
He felt ashamed, then mad, then kicked the door open and stomped out on the porch.
He heard Grandpa laughing. “Whee!”
“Here now, Zeke,” his grandma said, “leave him alone.”
Jordan refused to come back into the house and waited on them until they came out to take him to practice. He stared off toward YoYo’s house, which squatted like a little fortress in the pasture. He wondered what black folks did in their houses all day.
“Gonna hit some homers for us today?” Grandpa said on the way to the truck. It was his way of apologizing.
“Of course,” Jordan said, laughing. It was his way of accepting.
The next day Jordan was lying on his bed under the fan when he heard a rare knocking at the door. He went into the kitchen to see who it was, but Granny was already there.
“Is Jordan here?” YoYo was asking her through the screen. Startled, Jordan began to turn around and retreat, but Granny said, “Jordan! Come here. You have a visitor.”
“Hey, YoYo,” he said, acting properly surprised.
“What are you doing? I thought I’d come by and say hi.”
“Just reading,” Jordan said, and held up an old baseball book. “What are you doing?”
Granny cut off her reply. “Well ask her in. Don’t just stand there talking through the screen door.”
Jordan unlocked the door and held it open. This was absolutely not what he wanted. She looked intriguing, new, and fresh now in her red tank-top, but he wanted to deal with her alone, not in front of his grandparents. She shook hands formally with Granny.
“My name is Yolanda Ledbetter. I’m very pleased to meet you, mam.”
“I’m Florine Tigertail and that’s my husband, Zeke,” Granny said, nodding towards Grandpa, who sat in his chair smoking and holding the newspaper wide open.
“Howdy,” he said without looking.
“Here, sit down,” Granny said, pulling a chair from the table. “Jordan, make her a glass of Kool-Aid. There’s some in the icebox.”
“I’m just fine, mam, thank you very much. That won’t be necessary.”
Jordan stopped on his way to the icebox.
“Oh, go ahead,” Granny said. “Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.”
They all sat at the small table. It had a red-and-white checkerboard pattern. Jordan stared at it, moving the salt and pepper shakers around to different squares.
“So, is your family moving from out of town?” Granny said.
“No, mam. We’ve been in Muskogee all our lives, but my father bought the property just recently.”
“I see,” Granny said.
Jordan heard the paper rustling in the front room. He opened his book and began reading about Pete Rose again.
“Put the book down, Jordan, that’s rude,” Granny said.
Jordan closed it and put it on the table. He drank from his glass. Grandpa glanced at him from behind his cat-eyed reading glasses. Yolanda picked up the book and began flipping through it.
“My father is a dentist and my mother is a teacher,” YoYo said. Jordan would have liked to stare at her more, but he didn’t want his grandparents to see him staring at her.
“That’s fantastic,” Granny said. “Well, I want to welcome you all to the neighborhood, as they say, even though it’s not much of a neighborhood.” She laughed and got up and went to the wooden cabinets Zeke had made when they moved in, replacing the bare open cupboards.
While Granny rummaged in the cabinet Yolanda slid the book opened to Jordan, nonchalantly pointing to the margin with a long red-painted fingernail. “FAWN IS A NIGGER,” stared back at him accusingly. It might as well have been painted on the side of a barn. Jordan felt his face flush. He couldn’t have been more embarrassed. He had scrawled those words after he’d had an argument with his sister last year. He’d forgotten
