Jawbreakers
Blanche Spann stood half-hidden behind one of the brick columns supporting her house. Sonny, her tow-headed next-door neighbor, leaned against the trunk of a chinaberry tree, his eyes pressed against his folded arms.
“Hey!” Madeleine Smith greeted them as she walked past Blanche's back yard. “Y’all playing hide-’ n’ -seek?”
“Hey!” Blanche returned the greeting with the deference a four-year-old owes a thirteen-year-old. “You going downtown?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where to?”
“The five-and-ten-cent store.”
Three-year-old Sonny dropped his arms and turned to see who Blanche was talking to. He trotted barefoot over to the high picket fence and looked up through the slats. Blanche came out of her dark hiding place into the sun and joined him, glints of gold flashing from her carrot-colored curls.
Staring at Madeleine, Sonny envisaged her walking up the shady sidewalk along Cashua Street. The picture of tapering flat concrete stretching as far as the Graves’ house, two doors from his own, popped into his mind. Beyond that remote point, the image faded into the formless, misty brilliance that stood for downtown – and candy.
“Bring us back some candy,” he begged.
“What kind?"
“Jawbreakers.” His mouth watered as he imagined the tart, sweet, round balls and recalled how they kept him from closing his mouth until they had melted down to the size of a big marble, how they made his face bulge out to one side when he shifted them to his cheek with his tongue.
Blanche and Sonny watched Madeleine until she was out of sight, then went back to playing hide-and-seek. Within minutes they forgot all about jawbreakers. It seemed days had gone by when they heard Madeleine call out to them.
“Don’t y’all want your jawbreakers?”
Blanche and Sonny rushed to the fence.
“I got a purple one and an orange one. Which one do you want?” Madeleine asked.
“I get the grape one,” Sonny squealed.
“Where are your manners, Sonny? Ladies first. Blanche gets to choose.”
Blanche chose orange and Sonny heaved a sigh of relief. Madeleine took the goody from a paper bag and held it between thumb and forefinger across the top of the fence. Blanche stood on tiptoe and stretched. It remained inches from her grasp. Madeleine withdrew her hand and put the jawbreaker back in the paper bag.
“All right then, Blanche,” she said, “if you don't want yours, too bad for you.” She took a purple sphere out of the bag. “Here’s yours, Sonny.”
Stretching his arm high above his head, Sonny jumped with all his might. He missed the prize by nearly a foot. Madeleine put it back in the bag.
“Well, if y'all don’t want ’ em,” she smirked, “I’ll just keep ’ em for myself.” She twisted the neck of the bag and took a few steps in the direction of her house.
“You’re mean, Madeleine Smith," Blanche pouted.
“I’m gonna tell my sister on you and then she won’t be your best friend anymore,” yelled Sonny.
Mrs. Spann materialized on the back porch.
“Shush! What’s all the ruckus about?” she demanded in a low voice.
“Hey, Mrs. Spann,” Madeleine fawned. “I was just teasing.”
“Keep quiet, all of you. You’ll wake the baby." With a stern look on her face, Mrs. Spann opened the screen door and vanished into the darkness.
“Why didn’t you tell me Cindy was taking a nap?” Madeleine rebuked Blanche softly. She took the orange candy out of the bag and held it a few inches off the ground on her side of the fence. “Here, Blanche.”
Blanche thrust her hand between two wooden slats and seized the sweet. Sonny wasted no time in putting his hand through another opening. Madeleine placed the big purple ball in his hand. He grasped it tightly in his fist. Smiling to herself, Madeleine turned and strode briskly away.
Blanche and Sonny pulled. No matter how hard they tried, they could not get their clenched fists through the spaces between the slats.
“Call your mother,” Sonny pleaded.
“No,” Blanche demurred. “It might wake Cindy up.”
Near tears of frustration, they fretted in the blazing sun, yanking until their wrists were scraped and hurting.
“Hold mine,” Blanche said, “I’ll go through the gate and get 'em from the other side.”
Sonny put his free hand between two slats and strained in vain to reach Blanche's jawbreaker.
A boy big enough to go to school turned the corner onto the dirt road. Sonny tried to whistle. A barely audible whooshing sound came from his pursed lips. He pulled his empty hand from the fence and cupped it over his mouth like a megaphone.
“Hey, Wade-Hampton,” he called as loudly as he dared. The boy continued on his way.
“Wade-Hampton!” Sonny repeated, more loudly. “Come over here. Please!”
Wade-Hampton stopped and stared. He took a few steps toward the fence.
“What’sa matter?”
“Hand us these jawbreakers.”
“What’ll you give me if I do?”
Sonny thought long and hard, mentally inventorying his treasures.
“I’ll give you my alphabet blocks."
“Where are they?”
“At my house."
“I didn’t want any ol’ alphabet blocks anyway,” said Wade-Hampton, a firm believer that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. “What else you got?”
Sonny suddenly remembered the coin in his pocket.
“I’ll give you a penny.”
“Uh-uh. I'll do it for a nickel.”
“I haven't got a nickel. Please, Wade-Hampton. It’s a lucky penny. It’s a real Indian head.”
“Oh, all right. Give it here.”
Still clutching the purple ball, Sonny dug into the pocket of his shorts with his free hand. In his struggle to retrieve the penny, he loosened his grip on his jawbreaker and it dropped to the ground.
As he tended the coin to Wade-Hampton, he glanced glumly at the sullied candy. It would be all right, he thought, once he had licked all the dirt off. He withdrew his hand from the fence and picked a splinter from his wrist. Noticing the sticky purple patch on his palm, he anticipated joys to come by tasting it with the tip of his tongue.
Wade-Hampton took the penny and put it in his pocket. He removed the orange jawbreaker from Blanche’s hand, then stooped and picked up Sonny's purple one, dusted it off and shoved it in his mouth.
“Fanks,” he said, strutting off down the sandy road.
~End~