With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney Read Free Book Online Page A

’Cause I know I will be dyin’.”
    She had to be lyin’. This could not be true.
    “Are you telling me a story, Yolanda Graves? ’Cause if you are, cut it out.”
    Yolanda shook her head. “I’m telling the truth, Dawnie, I swear.”
    Yolanda didn’t need to cross her heart to show me she
wasn’t
lying. Her down-in-the-mouth expression told me she was being real.
    Then I remembered the paper Mama and Daddy had signed. I’d been so flabbergasted by seeing their names, that I’d forgotten to look to see if Yolanda’s parents had signed the form, too. I guess they hadn’t.
    “Well, if
you’re
not going to Prettyman,
I’m
not going, neither,” I said.
    But I didn’t mean that, and Yolanda knew it, too.
    “You gotta do it, Dawnie,” she said. “How willwe ever know what it looks like inside that school if you don’t go?”
    “Roger Wilkes can tell us.” Yolanda said, “Roger Wilkes’s glasses have more smudge on them than a windshield stuck with mosquitoes. I’m surprised he can see his own feet.”
    Yolanda wouldn’t look at me. “Besides,” she said quietly, “Roger’s not going to Prettyman, either. His daddy and ma wouldn’t even open the door for those NAACP people.”
    “So it’s just me?” I asked.
    Yolanda kicked at the gravel under her feet. She nodded. “It’s just
you
going to Prettyman, Dawnie.”
    Just
me?
    If a balloon could feel what it was like to be sat on at a birthday party, it would know what I felt right then —
pop!
Saturday, July 31, 1954
Diary Book,
    This weekend, Reverend Collier is hosting folks from Calvary, a visiting congregation from Reston. To welcome them, we held a church-wide picnic at Orem’s Pasture.
    I don’t know who does the naming of places in Hadley. Orem’s Pasture isn’t really a
pasture,
like where cows gather. Orem’s is a raggedy patch of crabgrass that separates Ivoryton from Crow’s Nest. It is the closest we come to the white part of town. The grass is more brown than green, but the
pasture
is wide, and offers plenty of open space, and is closed in by a chain-link fence.
    Seeing as there were so many people needing to picnic, I guess Reverend Collier chose Orem’s to give us all enough room for spreading our blankets.
    There was a boy from Calvary who’d brought two baseballs, a bat, a bunch of mitts, and even an umpire’s mask. I’d brought my bat, too. And my mitt.
    The kid’s name was Lonnie. He called together a baseball game soon after everyone from both congregations had gathered.
    All the boys from Calvary came to the center of the pasture. So did the boys from Shepherd’s Way. So did I.
    Lonnie looked at me sidelong. “This ain’t softy ball,” he said. “It’s a baseball game.”
    What Lonnie didn’t know is that I can knockthe jelly out of any ball that comes at me, and that I’m no softy.
    Freddy Melvin spoke up quick. “Let her play,” he said.
    Lonnie wasn’t having it. “No girls.”
    Freddy made a sour face like he was being forced to eat okra. But he was faking. “We’ll put up with her.”
    Fake sour face and all, Freddy wanted me on his team. “We can stick her in the outfield,” he told Lonnie.
    Now I was the one making a sour face. “The
outfield
?” I protested. Everybody in Hadley knows I’m a second baser, just like Jackie Robinson.
    “You wanna play, or not?” Freddy asked.
    “Yeah, I
wanna play.
But I
wanna play
where I
can
play, not dawdle with the butterflies.”
    “Dawnie, when it’s time to bat, you’ll play, ’kay?”
    “Not
okay
,” I huffed.
    But Lonnie was already assigning his players and the game was starting.
    It was Shepherd’s Way against Calvary.
    Roger was quick to join our team. Goober, too.
    “They playin’?” Lonnie asked.
    There’s only one thing I hate about baseball —losing. I couldn’t tell Roger not to play, but I had some control over Goober.
    Before I could think of a way of gently encouraging Goober
not
to play, Mama was at centerfield