The Ladies' Tea Circle

(This story deals with racism.)

It was late August, and the coolness of school approaching was in the air, capping the evenings shorter by the minute. In the daylight savings, evening light, the mother-housewives gathered with their chairs, blankets and cups of tea on the walk in front of the Singers’ house for their usual evening catch-up chats. Motors hummed in the background, as the father-husbands competed to having their lawns be the crispest and the greenest. Morty Singer’s was always the best by far.

Johanna, and the other neighborhood kids, were playing SPUD in the street, while intermittently hopping on bikes and driving in continuous figure eights and mini races. Johanna loved her bike, the speed, and the breeze of flight and freedom through her long straggly dirty blonde hair.

She rode down the hill on her white, 10-speed Royce Union, and swooped in toward the ladies with a skidding stop that was sure to get attention. 

All the women clenched their tea cups and saucers, and grabbed their blankets tighter, ducking from what they thought was going to be an incoming crash.

“Oy gevalt, Johanna! Be careful the way you come in at us like that—you’re going to hurt somebody!” She turned to the ladies. “Is everyone all right? Did anybody spill their tea?” The ladies all murmured not to worry. 

“She’s just showing off what a great bike rider she is, aren’t you Johanna?” Joanie Katz said, laying down her tea on the little circle table in the middle of the group. Johanna laid her bike down and walked toward her mother who started to scruff her hair and tug at her ponytail as if ringing a bell. 

“Hello Joanna dear. How are you today?” Barbara Bernstein asked, pulling out a pack of Newports from under her blanket and grabbing a box of matches from the table. “Anyone?” She offered the pack toward the other ladies. 

“I’d love one,” Johanna’s mother said. “I’m trying to quit, but, well you know.” Everyone nodded as a smoke smoke cloud began to loom above. 

“Johanna,” Susan Cohen said, picking up her cigarette that had been resting in the ashtray. “Any boyfriends yet? You’re quite a looker, you know.” Johanna blushed and shook her head no. 

‘Oh you quit it Susan,” Johanna's mother said, flicking her hand at her. “She's too young for that now.” 

“What grade are you going into this year,” Betty Singer asked. 

“Seventh,” Johanna answered proudly with a big smile. She was the youngest in her family, finally old enough to go to the Junior High school. 

“Oh, they grow up so fast, don’t they?” Barbara said to the group.

“Mm, Hmm!” The ladies chimed in. 

Betty leaned over to give Johanna’s cheek a squeeze. Johanna dodged a bit, trying to avoid being scraped by Betty’s long red nails and her golf-ball sized diamond. “You just watch yourself with those schvartzes honey, when you go back to school, okay?” She released Johanna’s cheek and sat back. 

“Oy! Yes!” chimed in Joanie. “Do you believe!”

“Huh?” Johanna began, but the ladies began talking among themselves, forgetting it was her they originally addressed.

“Isn’t it the truth!” Johanna’s mother added. “Do you believe all the riots downtown? Those Black Panthers and all of them smashing all those windows. I'm afraid to go shopping now!”

“That Bobby Seale character is something else, I tell you,” Joanie said. “From California to here—what are we going to do?”

“And to think, all those beautiful, brand new schools built in their own neighborhood that they destroyed,” Johanna’s mother continued. “And now, they don't have any school left to go to, so they have to come and knock ours down?!”

Barbara shrugged, “I just don't know.” 

Johanna had been listening intently to the conversation, turning her head from word to word trying to catch just one that made any sense. She noticed her mouth was hanging open, and she was staring at her mother. She loved her mother. Her mother had a beautiful smile and a stroke of velvet when she brushed those loose hairs off Johanna’s forehead, and when she covered Johanna at night, and tucked her in with snuggle kisses. Wasn't her mother the one and only person she was supposed to listen to, no matter what?

Then, suddenly, out of a place of courage she didn't even know she had, Johanna said, “Not all black people can be that bad.” 

The ladies’ heads popped up as if suddenly woken by a loud alarm, and their eyes darted at her from every direction.

“Oh, honey,” Betty began. “You're so young. You don't know what you're talking about.” She pointed her finger at Johanna and her bracelets dangled. “You just listen to us, and you stay away from them. There're nothing but trouble.”

“Just mind your own business and don't make any waves,” her mother concluded.

Johanna wasn’t convinced, but there was no use arguing. She would only be scolded for talking back to grown-ups. Their conversations resumed as she faded out of focus. 

She picked up her bike, turned it around, pushed off, and zipped across the street up her steep driveway into the garage. After parking her bike against the wall she crept along the side of the house to the front and sat behind the bushes in her private clubhouse spot. 

She watched the ladies with their animated arms, and cigaretted hands, wildly gesturing as they spoke, each one getting louder than the next. One by one, the men joined them as they finished up their lawns, except Johanna’s father who went to watch his special news program. The wives wiped sweat from their husbands’ brows and tenderly pulled and tucked at their hair and clothes. The tea circle of ladies, became a huddle of couples, except Johanna’s mother who seemed to make a bulge in the otherwise perfect sphere. The conversations went back-and-forth from loud to soft, and occasionally there was a burst of laughter.

Leaning against the foundation, Johanna held her knees tightly to her chest and buried her chin and nose so only her eyes could reflect the scene across the street. She began to wonder if it was possible to love and hate at the same time. She felt split right down her middle as a log might feel after being severed by the axe. One side, would love her mother forever, no matter what. The other side would always do what was right and never fit in to this polished, white neighborhood. 

She went back to the garage, got on her bike and sped down the driveway faster than a jet. She leaned inches from the road as she turned right and flew up the hill. That night, she was just going around the block. But one day, she swore to herself, she would soar far beyond the small orb of the ladies’ tea circle.