Ludell
Copyright © 1975 by Brenda Scott Wilkinson.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.
Please direct inquiries to:
Lizzie Skurnick Books
an imprint of Ig Publishing
392 Clinton Avenue #1S
Brooklyn, NY 11238
ISBN: 978-1-939601-24-7 (ebook)
Contents
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Afterword
For Ethel, Sonia, Kim and Lori
“TODAY IS THURSDAY, October 25, 1955,” Mis Rivers had all stretched out across the top of the blackboard, like they were first graders instead of fifth.
Ludell gazed at the sentence shaking her head (as she’d done many times before), then focused her eyes to the window, where they’d been off and on all morning. Hearing the sound of the others’ pages turning, she automatically flipped hers, without as much as blinking down at the history book.
“Shoot! Look at all that rain coming down out there,” she said to herself, watching it come down like cats and dogs. “Aine no way in the worle it’s gon stop ’fore twelve o’clock, and we gon hafta have recess in the room. Dog! I sho don’ feel like eating and playing in here today, and just look at it—look at allll that rain!”
“Ludell, LUDELL WILSON—READ!” shouted Mis Rivers, so loud that not only Ludell but half the class jumped.
Turning her head from the window in a flash, she read, “Ponce, Ponce de Le-on . . .”
“We’re not there!” shouted Mis Rivers.
Ludell then darted her eyes to her right, attempting to see where Bobbi Jean Copeland had her finger, but Bobbi Jean pulled the cover of her book up, deliberately blocking her view.
“Hussy!” Ludell mumbled to herself in response.
“I knew you didn’t know where we were—probably don’t even know who was reading when I called on you!” hollered Mis Rivers. “You forever got your eyes out that window daydreaming! Let me have to speak to you just one more time about it and I’m gonna give you something that’ll bring you back down with the rest of us! And you know I’ll do it too—cause I got your parent’s permission!”
Mis Rivers would always add that about the “parents’ per-mis-sion!” since the Board of Education had passed the new ruling that you couldn’t whip children unless their parents said so.
Ludell’s grandmother (who was her mother so-to-speak) hadn’t sent any word one way or the other, but as long as your mama didn’t say she couldn’t, Mis Rivers called that permission and did.
Pulling her chair out from the desk, she got up and went to the window to spit out some of the snuff packed tightly in her lower lip. As she walked back over to her desk, she was eye-balling Ludell in such a manner that Ludell felt she was going to go ahead and beat her right now. Ludell’s fear mounted as Mis Rivers stared harder and harder. Then the bell sounded, bringing her relief.
At their teacher’s order, the children began to put their history books away, and as Ludell leaned down to stick hers under the desk, she caught Bobbi Jean’s attention. Since covering up the place from her, Bobbi Jean had avoided Ludell’s eyes. She looked now, smiling innocently, and Ludell cut her eyes dead to let her know that she didn’t appreciate what she’d done one bit! Bobbi Jean frowned back puzzlingly as if to say, “Why you looking at me mad?”
Ludell knew then that Bobbi Jean would come up with some phoney-baloney reason for blocking her view. “Wit her some-timey-behind-self,” she was thinking.
“We won’t be going out because it’s raining,” said Mis Rivers as if only she could see. “I’ll take orders for cookies, drinks, and ice cream,” she added.
“May I go pick it up Mis Rivers please mam?” Ludell shouted, anxious for the temporary freedom going would bring. “May I go pick it up plueeze?” she repeated, waving her hand madly in the air.
“Would you first let me get it down young lady?” replied Mis Rivers in the slow deep bass voice she often used in place of screaming when a person got on her nerves.
“Yes mam,” she said, easing her hand back down on the desk.
“Orders?” went Mis Rivers.
Ludell’s hand along with about five more persons’ flew up. A few of the other twenty children in the class had brought lunch from home. The rest of them (on whom staying on the inside was always hardest) wouldn’t have anything. They’d have to just sit around watching other people eat, wishing they were outside where they could go on and play after they’d filled up on water; or maybe begged somebody; or bullied some scarey person into giving them something.
People had started calling out their orders.
“A Dixie Doodle and a RC, a pack of pee-cheez and a grape, a coconut bar, a fudge bar, two R-er Cees and five cent worth of BIG MO-OOONS, a package of cheese squares, and a strawberry.”
“A orange and a nickel’s worth of two-for-a-pennies,” Ludell said when Mis Rivers got to her. She really wanted to get five big moon cookies cause they tasted the best and made you full in-a-minute; but everytime somebody bought, or even said “big moons,” some of the children would laugh—even some of the ones who didn’t have nothing!
Monkey Juice didn’t care though. He bought them all the time. He knew they were going to laugh when he ordered them. Especially when he said “BIG MO-OOONS” so loud like he had. Even Mis Rivers had smiled.
Mis Rivers was letting her go, even though her tone when she called Ludell up was none too pleasant.
“Long as she aine said no,” Ludell thought, strolling up to the desk.
“Let me seeee,” Mis Rivers said, looking at the list. “I don’t think you’ll be able to carry all this. Hmmmm, Bobbi Jean, come go with Ludell.”