I walked over to Boukie and punched him in the arm, so he’d know I was full of contempt and painful possibility.
He stuck his tongue out. “That ain’t hurt.”
*
I don’t remember when Boukie Crawford and Baybay James had become my playmates. They were like the orchard in the field that my grandmother called her yard; it was no use trying to investigate where any of them had come from. They simply existed.
Baybay’s mother worked full-time caring for the elderly and paid my granny to babysit her son. She dropped him and his best friend off five times a week. It was a two-for-one financial arrangement since the boys were inseparable.
Boukie and I constantly squabbled even then. I annoyed him because I wouldn’t disobey my granny’s orders. No playing in the ruins of the plantation house. No going down to the creek without my sisters, and no climbing the pecan trees, either: the last time I’d fallen, resulting in stitches at the town hospital. Boukie didn’t care, though. He liked to sell wolf tickets in word and deed: he squinted his eyes and talked smack.
When Baybay came up with the idea about the peeing contest, my competitive side came out. They weren’t grown men like Gandee, so they didn’t scare me. I was eight and they were nine, but I was chunky where they were lean. And I’d already beaten up Boukie a few times.
Moments later, I stepped out of my shorts and day-of-the-week panties—Thursday—but the sound of the screen door paralyzed me. Piss ran down my legs while Miss Rose walked down the steps.
“Ailey, why you naked? Did you have an accident? I thought you stopped that last year.”
She called my name a few more times, and I wept in fear. My mother didn’t spank or hit, but down south the rules were different. She had told me my granny had a right to chastise me however she saw fit.
When I was able to unstick my tongue, I saved myself.
“Boukie the one made me take my panties off.”
Miss Rose processed that information, then walked a few yards through the field, until she found a peach tree. She broke off a long switch, came back, and stripped it of its leaves, as the boys howled. Boukie got the worst of it. When my granny went back into the house, he told me that God was going to get me, “’cause you made us get a whipping.”
“I ain’t make you get no whipping. You and Baybay the ones started it.”
“But you was in it,” Boukie said. “So you supposed to get a whipping, too. We the Three Mouse-tears.”
“The what?”
“The Three Mouse-tears. We supposed to stick together. Ain’t that right?” Boukie turned to Baybay who nodded his head and showed his teeth, though tears dripped off the bottom of his chin. “You better tell Miss Rose you was in it. If you don’t, you a lie, and that’s a sin.” He solemnly clasped his hands together in a convincing imitation of Elder Beasley, down to church.
“But I don’t want no whipping,” I said.
“A’ight, then, you better watch out for Jesus. And we ain’t playing with you no more, neither.”
Baybay gave me a farewell hug, a kiss on the cheek, and whispered that he loved me, but Boukie ignored me for two whole hours, until their ride drove up to collect them.
Three days later, I made a mistake and drank orange juice with my breakfast—something I tried to never do on Sundays given my fear of the wasp-infested church outhouse. I was sitting in the amen corner when that orange juice hit me, and the urge to pee came down. It was right after Elder Beasley preached and one of the church sisters caught the Spirit, the wood floor of the church shaking with the Holy Ghost, and before Baybay’s mother gave him and Boukie the inevitable pinch for being mannish.
Before too long, I wiggled around on the pew.
“What’s wrong?” Lydia held a church fan and, like our granny, rocked as she fanned.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“Can’t you hold it?” she asked.
“I’m trying.” Wiggle, wiggle, oh, wiggle.
Two of the church sisters thought I’d gotten happy, and wasn’t that a blessing for such a little girl? Just like Jesus when he was a little boy. They rushed over to fan me, because the Spirit could take the air from your body.
“Let it go, baby. Just give it over. He’ll take care of you.”
Thankfully, a lady on the other side of room hopped up with the Spirit, and she was fat; no telling what sort of damage if she fell out on somebody. They left to attend to her, allowing Lydia and me to walk to the outhouse.
She saw the wasp only after I’d worked down my lace tights. She told me to stand motionless. It worked its way over. Zigzagging. Twirling. Flip-flopping in the air. I wanted to do what Lydia ordered but I was frightened. I ran away from the wasp and fell over, but not before peeing on my tights and my patent leather shoes, and I got stung anyway, right on my booty.