Dance of the Happy Shades

Lois have a bargain on not to wear any stockings. Mr. Peebles says a word to us we’re going to say what do you think they hired you for, going around looking at everybody’s legs? He gets
embarrassed,
” she said. Her bleached head disappeared into the skirt of her dress with a lonesome giggle like the sound of a bell rung once by accident, then caught.
    “Huh,” the old woman said.
    May and Eunie Parker and Heather Sue Murray sat in the afternoon on the front step of the store. The sun had clouded over about noon but it seemed the day got even hotter then. You could not hear a cricket or a bird, but there was a low wind; a hot, creeping wind came through the country grass. Because it was Saturday hardly anyone stopped at the store; the local cars drove on past, heading for town.
    Heather Sue said, “Don’t you kids ever hitch a ride?”
    “No,” May said.
    Eunie Parker her best friend for two years said, “Oh, May wouldn’t even be allowed. You don’t know her grandmother. She can’t do anything.”
    May scuffed her feet in the dirt and ground her heel into an ant hill. “Neither can you,” she said.
    “I can so,” Eunie said. “I can do what I like.” Heather Sue looked at them in her puzzled company way and said, “Well what is there to do here? I mean what do you kids
do?
”
    Her hair was cut short all around her head; it was coarse, black, and curly. She had that Candy Apples lipstick on and it looked as if she shaved her legs.
    “We go to the cemetery,” May said flatly. They did, too. She and Eunie went and sat in the cemetery almost every afternoon because there was a shady corner there and no younger children bothered them and they could talk speculatively without any danger of being overheard.
    “You go
where
?” Heather Sue said, and Eunie scowling into the dirt at their feet said, “Oh, we do not. I hate that stupid cemetery,” she said. Sometimes she and May had spent a whole afternoon looking at the tombstones and picking out names that interested them and making up stories about the people who were buried there.
    “Gee, don’t give me the creeps like that,” Heather Sue said. “It’s awfully hot, isn’t it? If I was at home this afternoon, I guess me and my girl friend would be going to the pool.”
    “We can go and swim at Third Bridge,” Eunie said.
    “Where is that?”
    “Down the road, it’s not far. Half a mile.”
    “In this heat?” Heather Sue said.
    Eunie said, “I’ll ride you on my bike.” She said to Mayin an overly gay and hospitable voice, “You get your bike too, come on.”
    May considered a moment and then got up and went into the store, which was always dark in the daytime, hot too, with a big wooden clock on the wall and bins full of little sweet crumbling cookies, soft oranges, onions. She went to the back where her grandmother was sitting on a stool beside the ice-cream freezer, under a big baking-powder sign that had a background of glittering foil, like a Christmas card.
    May said, “Can I go swimming with Eunie and Heather Sue?”
    “Where you going to go swimming?” her grandmother said, almost neutrally. She knew there was only one place you could go.
    “Third Bridge.”
    Eunie and Heather Sue had come in and were standing by the door. Heather Sue smiled with delicacy and politeness in the direction of the old woman.
    “No, no you can’t.”
    “It’s not deep there,” May said.
    Her grandmother grunted enigmatically. She sat bent over, her elbow on her knee and her chin pressed down on her thumb. She would not bother looking up.
    “Why can’t I?” May said stubbornly.
    Her grandmother did not answer. Eunie and Heather Sue watched from the door.
    “Why can’t I?” she said again. “
Grandma
, why can’t I?”
    “You know why.”
    “Why?”
    “Because that’s where all the boys go. I told you before. You’re getting too big for that.” Her mouth shut down hard; her face set in the lines of ugly and satisfied secrecy; now she looked up at May and looked at her until she brought up a flush of shame and anger. Some animation came into herown face. “Let the rest of them chase after the boys, see what it gets them.” She never once looked at Eunie and Heather Sue but when she said this they turned and fled out of the store. You could hear them running past the gas pumps and breaking into wild, somewhat desperate, whoops of laughter. The old woman did not let on she heard.
    May did not say anything. She was